feeling helpless...and going on...

38 days til grandma's.

training continues.

work life continues. (though it's still insanely quiet business wise compared to what we were used to. yes, we've only been open 2 weeks now, so i do think it'll pick up...still weird...)

stress about balancing these wacky schedules (2 jobs, training & a marriage) is still high.

i am ready for the race to be done, so life can return to whatever 'normal' is.

training is good. but it IS time sucking. no doubt. but no one can expect to run for 5 hours straight and NOT put time into getting ready for that.

i eat like a horse. i burn a lot of calories. and i try to buy clothes that don't fall off me. (and i am by no means bragging. it is seriously hard to find small/tall clothes. i have become a huge oxymoron. try not to run with that one too much please ;)

looking ahead...

mark and i have at least 2 if not 3 camping trips planned for the summer.

REI had a sale the past 2 weeks and we stocked up on some new gear (sleeping pads, sleeping bags, camp cookware..) and borrowed other supplies from generous friends...I am ready for the campfires, the coffee hot in the morning, steaming in the cup with the sounds of birds singing and nothing else (well maybe the sounds of other campers waking up since we'll be in parks) but that's about all...

that's good news of late.

the bad news is i know of yet another friend who's marriage is totally crumbling, through absolutely NO fault of her own. and she has 3 young children who are also suffering...

i have this insatiable need to try and help those that are close to me. those who i trust, those i call a good friend. and when they are hurting, and have a life literally combusting apart at the seams, i feel so helpless. but i do what i can to help, and just try to be there. what more can i do?

so that's thrown me and my runner girls. it's one of our own who's totally hurting.

and who ran her first marathon, a bit spur of the moment in fargo, nd last weekend (where 10 of us ran the half marathon on a chilly cloudy october-feeling saturday morning...) and this woman? this mom of 3? totally ROCKED.IT. she finished in 4:19, and for those who are totally not runners, that is a very STRONG, pretty fast first marathon. amazing. but she had a lot of energy and emotions to run through, and she did nothing less than what we'd think she can do.

but here? things are pretty well overall. i am wondering just what goal i should have after this 16 weeks of working towards running 26 miles is over.

i have a few ideas.

but for now? like i have to do so often...i take it a day at a time, and i realize that some things are just not in my control. and i have to just keep going and understand/accept that. and try not to think so much...

if anyone had told me 5 years ago that i'd be running 100+ miles per month and training for a marathon, of course i'd say they were freaking out of their gourd.

and so, here i am. doing things i never even had ever considered...

so no fancy pictures.

no funny quips.

just a ruminating kind of post...
peace, ~jd

be careful what you wish for...

okay i hope i don't get busted for taking that graphic.

but it really feels like how work is lately.

so first....the good news?

lots of patrons love the space.

the board president stopped in today and loved the space.

but the bad news?

the staff can't rattle off in milliseconds where things are any more.

i mean i've been able to say for 7 years that readers were in aisle 13.

now they're in aisle F? I think??

and a friendly coworker said today that they felt kinda lost while working at the kids desk.

answers to patrons 'where are these?' take a little bit longer to fire off from the brain to the tongue these days...

and after being closed a month, and only checking in items that long, there is still a *lot* on the shelves to go out, and there is very little coming back in. so far.

so for all of that time that we were barely able to breathe and were crazy busy for *years*?

this *temporary* quiet lull is just plain weird. and we're just biding our time til 'normal' returns..

have a great rest of the week.

tomorrow? i have to face a very very long day....before leaving early Friday morning! yeehaw to leaving town :)

sometimes you feel like a nut...

sometimes you don't.



i wish i was talking choclate.

i'm talkin' about somehow i managed to run 18 miles on saturday. (some would call that crazy nutty)

tonight?

i s-l-o-g-g-e-d my way through 7.3. (no nuts, no nothin' involved...)

dead legs. felt like i was running through jello or underwater.

my girls who have done marathons said 'jd. your body just did 18 two days ago. this is normal. you broke down a lot of something-or-other (micro muscles? energy? i forget what they said. that's how much i want to block this out) so give yourself a break.'

well. somehow i gotta keep chuggin' along and take it workout by workout. but MAN tonight was hard.

tomorrow? no running. lots of librarianing. and storytime is back on my new turf. bring on my toddlers :)

~jd

today?

i ran.

18 miles.

in 3 hours, 40 minutes.

for perspective.

if you drive from my house to just about grand marais, minnesota on the north shore without stopping?

or if you drive from my house to 30 minutes past the wisconsin dells.

it takes the same amount of time.

or you could watch three john hughes' movies in that time.

here's a handy 'jd's show and tell' for where myself and 5 other friends/runners went. if you press 'hybrid' it shows the lakes, and player cracked me up to see the animation...

not quite over the river, but through many many woods and lake areas. actually very scenic for just being around home...

it was hard work. it was long. but with phenomenal friends and others doing the same thing i was (3 of us are marathon training virgins, so this was our inaugural 18 miler), it made each mile much more bearable.

at one point cindy turned to me and said 'i really want to stop. but what am i going to do? i'm in the middle of shoreview!' :) so true. you just have to keep going. i know that race day on june 20th will feel just like that. i know there will be times i want to stop. but i'll just keep going..

after i got home we set up the tent. (part of some campin' stuff a friend lent us for our first outing in years at the end of the month..)



then i promptly got out my new sleeping bag, and fell asleep. i earned a nap.

today is ending much better than yesterday. yesterday consisted of a trying waitress job and tears shed on the way home. i am so very tired of working 2 jobs. and i'm having regrets about leaving the wrong place...i'll just go with it was an off night.

have a great rest of your weekend! mark just asked if i wanted to go to REI to get some more stuff since they're having a sale-palooza. outstanding!
~jd