My Body and Me

On Mornings

Me: I have to get up now. I have things to do today.

My body: Sooo sleepy....

Me: What? No! Don't close your eyes! Don't -

My body: *honk shu*

Me: You cannot be... Seriously? I'm awake over here!

My body: *rolls over*

Me: Hello? I'm still here! Let's move!

My body: *still asleep*

Peaceful Negotiations

Me: OMG! Look at these cute clothes! I need to lose weight so I can wear them!

My body: But I like being 180 pounds!

Me: What if we do yoga everyday?

My body: That's fine, but the weight stays.

Me: What if we run three times a week?

My body: 180 pounds! Forever!

Me: What if we diet?

My body: Bitch, I will cut you.

At the End of a Hard Day

Me: Mentally exhausted. Let's just go to sleep.

My body: I'm so awake right now.

Me: Can we just lay in bed and try to sleep?

My body: Couch time!

Me: Are you even listening to me?

My body: What's on TV tonight?

Me: Fine, but if you quiz me on this later, we will fail.

My body: Ooh! He’s a pretty actor! Quick! What else have we seen him in?

Me: What did I just say?

My body: Doesn’t he look like Matt, just a little?

Me: I’m not actually watching this, remember?

On Healthy Things

My body: Check out the frosting on that donut... Oh, yeah! Lookin' good!

Me: Excuse me?!

My body: What? I wasn't doing anything.

Me: You were looking at that donut!

My body: Baby, I would never do that to you!

Me: We're supposed to be eating healthy!

My body: We do! I like healthy things!

Me: Prove it! Eat this lettuce!

My body: ...

Me: FFS!!!

On Bedtime Routines

Me: Nice hot cup of tea...

My body: Oh, thank you! That's so nice of you!

Me: How about a hot bath?

My body: That would be wonderful.

Me: Then some nice relaxing bedtime yoga?

My body: Sounds fantastic!

Me: Then we'll drift off to sleep for our early day tomorrow.

My body: Wh-what? Early? Who's getting up early?

Me: We are.

My body: Hell no.

Me: I've calculated it out. We'll be able to get a full 8 hours in.

My body: I can't go to sleep! I have plans!

Me: Please, enlighten me.

My body: ...

Me: Are you kidding me?

My body: I can lay here awake all night!

On Teamwork

Me: Okay, so first I'll make a grocery list and then start dinner. Or I'll make the grocery list while dinner is cooking. Maybe first I put on my pajamas and have some tea. Or maybe I... Hang on... How the hell did I get home?

My body: No sweat. I got this.

Me: You drove all the way home without my help?

My body: You were busy!

Me: That's not acceptable behavior!

My body: What's the big deal? I do stuff like this all the time. It's fine!

Me: Do you even know what a red light is? What did you do at the red lights?

My body: Of course I know what to do! I... wait... honestly, I don't remember if there were any red lights...

Me: !!!

Hunger Games

My body: *Growl!*

Me: Woah, there, tiger! What was that all about?

My body: I might be hungry.

Me: Might be?

My body: Yeah.

Me: You don’t know for sure?

My body: *Growl!*

Me: I’m gonna take that as a “I’m hungry.”

My body: Okay.

Me: What do we want?

My body: Don’t know.

Me: Want an apple?

My body: Meh.

Me: Boiled egg?

My body: *yawn*

Me: Make you a salad?

My body: Don’t want salad.

Me: What do you want?

My body: I really don’t know. Name off some more stuff.

Me: Chicken? Beef? Bacon? Celery? Stir Fry? Almonds?

My body: *unresponsive*

Me: If you’re waiting for me to suggest pizza you’re going to be waiting a long time.

My body: I’ll take the apple then.

Me: Thought as much.

On Yoga

Me: I can’t remember… did I pay that vet bill? How long ago was that? Should I have got a bill by now?

My body: Excuse me?

Me: That’s right. I put it on the credit card. Did I pay it off right away or do I still need to?

My body: Do you mind? I’m trying to do yoga here!

Me: Oh, sure. Don’t mind me. You keep doing what you’re doing.

My body: I really need you to be quiet.

Me: Well, just relax over there for a bit and I’ll be done in a minute.

My body: This IS how I relax.

Me: Huh? Oh! Yoga! Right. Sorry. I’ll be quiet.

My body: Really?

Me: Yeah. For real.

My body: *balanced*  *poised*

Me: I’m pretty sure I paid that off.

My body: *stumbles* If you keep talking, I WILL fall down and it WILL be your fault.

Me: Sorry! Sorry. What can I do to help? Give me a job.

My body: I guess you could focus on the breathing while I do all the poses.

Me: Consider it done!

Me: *breathing in*

Me: *breathing out*

Me: *breathing in*

Me: *breathing…*        I think I’ll wear the blue shirt tomorrow. I could wear the long blue and green beaded necklace with it. Or my turquoise butterfly. Maybe the chunky brown necklace Grandma Kay gave me for Christmas last year… Would it go with that shirt? Hmm. Maybe I should wear the dark green shirt inste-

My body: BREATHE!!!

Me: Breathing! Breathing! Sorry! I’m sorry. I’m focused now.

My body: Just stop helping me.

Do or Do Not

Me: Got my running shoes and my running pants and my running app... Let's go running!

My body: buh.

Me: We're gonna do three 12-minute miles.

My body: I totally can't do that.

Me: Of course you can! You just did it on Monday!

My body: Absolutely INCAPABLE of doing that.

Me: You did it on Friday too, remember? We felt great!

My body: I weigh 800 pounds! Whales don't run! Return me to the sea!

Me: Shut up and run or so help me...

My body: It is physically not possible! No human could do this!!!

Me: Benjamin literally runs twice as fast as I’m asking you to!

My body: He’s a space alien. You’ve seen how he eats.

Me: No food until you do this.

My body: We can’t pick up enough speed! We’ve got no dilithium crystals!

Me: That’s it. I’m done. Even my body is a nerd.

Tori's Running Playlist with Mental Commentary

Three times a week, I lace up my running shoes, put in my headphones, and go. I’m always shocked at first. Wait, I think. Why am I doing this again? But eventually I settle into a rhythm, one foot in front of the other, breathing well and steadily, and my mind begins to run alongside my body, wandering wherever the music takes me.

Today, let’s peek inside my head on a typical run, complete with soundtrack (click the links to hear the songs).

---

Chrono Trigger "To Far Away Timescapes" OC ReMix

Oh Heck Yeah! Video game soundtracks playlist! Woot! This is the music that was playing that one time when I saved the world! So catchy!

Even if the time travel doesn’t really make sense. Did these people read any Bradbury before they wrote this game?

Still, how many other video games have both dinosaurs AND robots?

Hmm… well, actually, quite a few of them do. And several novels. Doctor Who as well…

But this game still rocks! For other reasons, which I can’t think of right now.

Obviously, the soundtrack was bitchin’.

There must be other things…

You know what? I am totally not healthy enough to outrun a dinosaur. Or to engage one in combat to the death. I need to run more. Before we discover time travel.

--- 

Zelda 2 "TempleTrance" OC ReMix

Link and I have saved the world hundreds of times. Why, that one time when Matt had to work late, we saved the world together from start to finish in about four hours!

And I obviously never ever need to play that game again.

Come on, Tori. Link runs all over Hyrule all day. If he can do it, so can I.

Of course, he’s the Hero of Time and I’m not. I can cut myself a little slack.

Also, I don’t know that he runs all day at quite this pace. Possibly it’s just a light jog…

Or maybe he runs faster? I don’t know… fit people can run really fast and make it look effortless. He might be running way faster than he looks.

How would I calculate his pace?

I’d need to figure out how many miles across Hyrule is… But how?

---

World of Warcraft "Club Thrall" Myndflame

You want to talk about a character that runs all over the landscape all day, my Warcraft character did that. We’re talking hills, and snow, and sand, and inside a volcano, and that chick just kept right on running.

She sure looked good, too. And everything came in her size and looked spectacularly on her. I can’t even find a good bra.

AND she had a pet dragon to ride on. How is that even fair?

How many hours did I spend playing Warcraft before I quit? If I had spent those hours working out instead, how much faster would I be running right now?

Maybe if I had as many reasons to run as she did, I’d be more motivated? What I need are some murlocs! That’d get me running! With those teeth, and their big eyes, and their gurgling murgle… You bet your biscuits I’d run enthusiastically from those!

I could make a fortune in the fitness industry from genetically engineering murlocs. Not to mention from all the people who would pay good money for the privilege of killing them. Repeatedly.

---

Kirby’s Dreamland "Fountain of Dreams Redux" EliteFerrex

I feel like I have a lot in common with Kirby: we’re both squishy, we eat everything in sight, we gain superpowers from food, we dance when no one’s looking…

Although…

I can’t say I’ve ever gained power from consuming bits of my still-living enemies.

Damn, Kirby’s a little bit of hardcore. That’s, like, Viking berserker stuff right there. A pink, pudgy warrior out of ancient nightmares, the monster that the mommy waddle-dees warn their babies about.

Maybe King Dedede had the right idea all along. Hit it with a giant hammer.

I guess I don’t have as much in common with Kirby as I thought…

---

Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past "Farore Lies in Wait" OCReMix

Oh, yes, that’s right. Where were we?

Measuring Hyrule.

Maybe we can use the trees somehow?

If we imagine that Link is an average height, say 5’8”, and he’s standing right next to a tree and the tree is twice his height – we’ll call it a Link Length – then the tree is two Link Lengths. So when you’re far enough away from the tree that it appears to be the same height as Link, or 1 Standard Link Length, and then figure out how many seconds it takes to reach the tree, we could theoretically come up with a distance and then a pace.

Or, I could, you know, just spend all that time running more and leave the math to people who actually know what they’re doing.

Maybe I could ask an engineer? I know a few of those! I even know a few who wouldn’t look at me funny when I ask them this very crazy question!

In fact, to most of them, the craziest part of the question will be the fact that I wish to apply the knowledge to my running workout.

Yeah, I’m a bit mystified by it myself.

Things the Books Teach Me: An Education

(This was my speech for the library's annual volunteer appreciation dinner on 4/12/13. For last year's speech, click here.)

I wonder what it does to my brain, working around all these books.

I mean, have you noticed the way things change when they’re in sync? How longtime spouses grow to resemble each other, or your pets behave just like you, or how your best friend is always mistaken for your sibling? Well, sometimes, I think about my job, and how twisted and weird it is, and I wonder what this says about me. How much do I resemble the books I work with?

I often see books that resemble their topics. I’m not talking about your normal, run-of-the-mill book humor, here: Of course the book about do-it-yourself plumbing came back to the library dripping wet – it’s the sort of book one would take into a soggy environment! And of course the book about dog training was eaten by the dog, or the book about raising well-mannered children was returned with crayon damage! The uninitiated find this sort of thing humorous, but such a turn of events barely elicits comment in a librarian’s world.

No, I’m talking about the way perfectly normal books sometimes cause me to question things.

For example, I was once stumped by a Richard Scarry picture book about a character named Lowly Worm, who is just a worm. He wears clothes and a hat and a single shoe, but he’s a worm – no arms or legs. I caught myself wondering, “If he doesn’t have any hands, how does he tie that dapper tie?” and my mind has been uneasy about the subject ever since.

Another time a science book touted itself as “The True Story of How Science Tamed the Weather.” I flipped through the book once, twice, a third time.

“What are you looking for?” a coworker asked.

“Hubris,” I said.

Other times the books literally ask me questions. One day, I was processing a book about women and money that, in bold letters on the back, inquired, “Why don’t women make what they’re worth?”

“Gosh,” I wondered aloud to Karyn, who was sharing the desk with me that day. “Why don’t I make what I’m worth? Could it be because I work at the library and there are budget cuts all around? Or because I work in, when you get right down to it, a nonessential service job? I mean, I love what I do and I believe in the power of reading and all that, but the fact is there will be little room for librarians on the colony ship to Mars.”

Karyn looked at me over the top of her reading glasses, eyebrows raised, but I carried on, “I’m serious. Librarianing is not an essential skill when one is populating a new planet. But those OCD housewives whose well-appointed homes are featured on all those decorating shows? They’re not getting on the colony ship to Mars either. I take great comfort in that.”

Karyn merely sighed and went back to doing actual work.

The books often cause me to imagine scenarios that otherwise would never occur to me. Once, while I was checking a book for damage before returning it to the shelf, a page fell out and fluttered to my feet.

“This book about snakes is shedding its skin!” I said.

Benjamin snatched the page from the floor. “Is it missing the page about venomous snakes?” he asked. “Can’t you just picture it?”

Without missing a beat, we dissolved into an elaborate game of pretend. I sank into my chair melodramatically. “I’m bit!”

“Quick!” Benjamin said, feigning panic, “'Which snake is the one that bit you?'“

“'I don't know!” I cried, frantically flipping pages. “It's not in the book!”

Our coworkers looked on, shaking their heads.

The books have exposed me to hobbies I never knew were hobbies. When once a giant coffee-table style art book was donated to us, I glimpsed the duck on the cover and assumed it was a book of wildlife photography, but closer inspection revealed it to be “The Great Book of Wildfowl Decoys”.

“Hang on,” I said to Kathy. “There's a whole book for that?”

She shrugged and began to flip through it with me, admiring the flocks of wooden ducks, wooden geese, wooden swans, and one lone wooden owl. Noticing that the top of one page was labeled “Connecticut,” Kathy said, “Let's find the pages for Kansas!”

To our horror and dismay, the index revealed that the decoys were not sorted by species or habitat; they were, in fact, sorted by the home states of their famous wood carvers.

“Gracious me, these people are serious!” I cried.

It was at this point that we found the appendix of “Prices at Auction” and discovered that the rustic wooden duck on the cover could fetch a cool $300,000 in the right market.

We put the book back in the donate pile and tried to forget.

Just as informative are the things the books don’t tell us. For example, we have books on introverts but none on extroverts. “Guess they’re too busy to write one,” Benjamin mused.

And also, I don’t want to alarm anybody – I mean, it could just be a coincidence – but we have no books on the Illuminati. And it might be a conspiracy. I’m just saying.

We have a nonfiction book called Death for Beginners, about planning your will and such. It fills me with questions: Is there a Death for the Advanced Learner? How about Death for Dummies if Death for Beginners is too hard?

I’d like to ask, “What makes this author a qualified expert on death?” but for all I know, he’s been through it. We get books written by dead people all the time. Robert Ludlum has been dead ten years now, but we still get a new book by him every six months or so. Benjamin and I have more than once discussed the inevitable future of the publishing industry, how someday all stories will be written not BY different authors, but UNDER different authors. Every novel will be published under a name instead of a genre. The children of this dystopia won't say “Someday I’ll be an author,” or “I want to grow up to be a novelist.” They'll say, “I want to be a Nora Roberts.” or “I’m going to be a James Patterson when I grow up.” Instead of offering degrees in British Literature or American Classics, universities will employ stuffy professors of Lee Child studies or Clive Cussler technique.

I think about books a lot, and not just their weirdness. I think of their humor, their depth, their willingness to embrace adventure. I think about their possibilities and the daring spirit with which they question the way things are, their willingness to embrace the world both as it is and as it could be.

And when I lay in bed at night, wondering what the books have done to my brain, asking myself if the books have rubbed off on me, the answer is…

God, I hope so. 

Well Endured, Part II

(For Part I, click here.)

When I looked in the mirror the other morning, what do you suppose I said to myself? Was it “Hello, sexy! All the running is doing you good. You’re looking mighty fine today”?

Sadly, no, that is not what I said to myself. That’s what I would like to say to myself. Psychologists these days go on and on about positive body image and healthy self-esteems, building yourself up through positive affirmations… I’ve really given the matter a lot of thought.

But I didn’t say any positive affirmations to my mirror the other day. On the day my 38DD appeared to be loose, I said some very naughty words followed by, “This cannot be happening! I just got this! It was too tight! It cost a fortune! Why did I take up running anyway?!”

---

Returning to Lane Bryant like an abusive relationship I just couldn’t tear myself away from, I got measured again.

“I’m showing you at precisely a 36DDD,” said the shop girl. Such conviction! Precisely that size and no other! Not between sizes anymore, praise the Lord!

Except…

“Triple D? That sounds like an impossible size to find!” I said.

“Well, you for sure won’t find it here,” said the shop girl, turning to leave the fitting room as though I no longer interested her. “Our smallest size is a 38.”

---

Oh my God! Ten years we had together! Sure, there were ups and downs, but we had had a pretty good thing. I couldn’t believe Lane Bryant was breaking up with me!

Now, I would have to find a new store. I would have to go shopping in places I had never shopped before…

I could change! I could gain back all that weight I’d lost! Don’t do this to me, Lane Bryant! Let me stay at the plus size store! I’m so bad at shopping! I don’t even know which stores are likely to carry bras! Especially a bra with so many letters in it!

---

In the only other bra store I could think of, Victoria’s Secret, I wandered the aisles like a soul in purgatory, lost among bras made of too much lace and not enough elastic. People joke about how Victoria doesn’t have many Secrets left, but she still has one: namely, the secret to wearing bras that look like that because, obviously, wearing it like a bra could never actually work.

I was mystified. Where were the bras with the reinforced backs and padded straps and extra wide bands? Why should I care if my bra is sexy? The only man who ever gets to see it is allowed to see me without it, and I'll generously give you three whole guesses as to which view he prefers.

When the shop girl approached me, I worried she might ask me what the Secret is, like it’s a closely guarded password. I wouldn’t know the Secret and wouldn’t be allowed to shop there. Instead, she only asked, “Can I help you?”

“Lane Bryant kicked me out because I lost weight,” I said.

“Congratulations!” she said, more brightly than I felt. “What sort of style are you looking for?”

“A supportive one,” I said.

She stared at me, smile slipping, as if awaiting more. There wasn’t more. “Okay,” she said finally. “And what size do you wear?”

I told her. She pulled a few samples out of a labeled drawer and steered me toward a fitting room. Grabbing a marker for the dry erase board on the door, she said, “And can I have your name?”

I thought, briefly, about making something up, but it seemed ridiculous just then to lie to someone who already knew my bra size, so I told the truth. “It’s actually Victoria.”

We stared at each other for a long beat.

“The humor of this has not escaped me,” I said.

“Okay, then,” she said, writing it down. “I’ll be back to check on you in a few minutes.”

Alone in the fitting room, I looked at the bras she had set out for me, all shear lace and anorexic cotton straps. It looked like if I pulled one taught it would snap into dozens of wispy ephemeral pieces like a flash frozen daisy. I was sure it didn’t stand a chance against the gravity of my situation.

Trying them all on only proved me right. “How are we doing?” the shop girl asked, knocking on my door.

“Are you sure these are all the same size?” I asked.

“Yes. Why?”

Back in my own clothes already, I opened the door to show her the offending bras. “I’m falling out the top of this one but the band fits well. The band is too small on this one, but the cups are the right size. And this one is the right size but the underwire is trying to stab my lungs.”

“Oh, it’s normal for all of our bra styles to fit differently depending on your body type. You’ll just have to try on everything in your size to find the style that fits you best.”

Hmm, yes, trying on different styles to see what fits, I thought. I’ve heard of this before… what was it called? Oh, yes: Sizes.

“Are you sure that’s the right size for you?” the shop girl asked. “When was the last time you were measured?”

“About ten minutes ago, at Lane Bryant.”

Her face flickered between emotions. I caught her sneer before she got it under control. “Well, different stores measure these things differently,” she said, thus explaining why the women’s underwear industry has a standard sizing system in place to begin with. (I’m so glad we cleared that up.) “Why don’t I just measure you again?”

I sighed, but relented.

“Well,” she said, clucking her tongue. “It looks to me like you could wear either a 36 or a 38.”

“If there’s no such thing as a 37, we’re done here,” I said.

“No, that’s not a thing,” she replied, in an eerie echo of the Lane Bryant shop girl six months before.

“Thanks for your help,” I said. “I can see myself out.”

Keep your secrets, then, I thought. Some things are not worth knowing.

Well Endured, Part I

It was about a month after I started running that I encountered a slight problem as I was getting dressed one morning.

I checked it twice. The straps were adjusted properly. It was, in fact, on the tightest setting. Yes, it wasn’t just my imagination: it was loose. All the hard work and exercise and dessert deprivation had paid off. I needed a smaller bra…

Damn it.

Other people enjoy weight loss. “OMG!” they say gleefully, “Look at me! I can wear a smaller size! It’s time to get new, cute clothes!” Maybe they save up for these clothes. Maybe they shop all the sales. I don’t know.

But I have grown to accept that I will never have an affordable wardrobe because, underneath it all, it costs a small fortune to cover a pair of large breasts.

And bra shopping is not and never has been fun for anybody ever. It’s traumatic.

---

At Lane Bryant, the store for fat girls, where I had shopped for the past ten years, I walked with glorious purpose. Confident in my destination, I honed in on my favorite bra style and grabbed the next size down, waltzing to the fitting room to try it on.

Alas, it was too small.

“Oh well. I guess the elastic in my old one just gave out. I’m still in the same size.”

Back in the store, I picked up the same bra in the size I had been wearing.

Alas, it was too big.

What sorcery is this? I thought. Waving to a shop girl, I asked, “Could I get measured for a bra, please?”

She broke out the tape measure and squinted at the number. “Looks like you could wear either a 38 or a 40.”

“You don’t have half sizes? Is there such a thing as a 39?”

“No. That’s not a thing,” she said, sneering at the apparently offensive idea.

“Because I just tried on both a 38 and a 40 and I really can’t wear either of them.”

“Sorry,” she said. “I just work here.”

Oh, I thought. You just work here? That’s okay then. I guess I can spare you when I go all Carrie White on this place, since you’re so innocent.

“Why don’t you go with the 40 since you can get into it?” she suggested.

Sure, I thought. Let me just drop eleventy gazillion dollars on a bra in the exact same size as the one that currently doesn’t fit me.

I bought the 38 out of spite and resolved to run more.

---

If you’re built like me, running requires a sports bra. “We don’t carry those,” the Lane Bryant girl told me. “Like, you know? ‘cause we’re not that kind of store.” I didn’t have to ask what kind of store she meant.

Sports bra shopping is two kinds of uncomfortable. You’ve got your bra shopping, which on its own is only slightly better than water boarding, but you’ve also got your strange and unfamiliar store to do it in. I can barely make it through the grocery store near my house – new stores are as foreign and scary to me as an alien asteroid, and I explore them with all the caution of one who knows there could be face-huggers around every brightly-colored-spandex corner.

I do not feel as if I belong at the sporting goods store. Gazing over the sea of skin tight, neon lycra, I know that the creatures who favor these garments are not my people. My ways must be offensive to them, as these shorts are offensive to me.

But in just the same way that the fat girl store didn’t carry athletic wear, the sporting goods store didn’t carry fat girl sizes. The sports bras, for example, came in sizes like small, medium, and large. FYI, these are not actual bra sizes: without a cup size and a band size, it’s just a tiny tight shirt.

But I’ve been running! I told myself. Maybe these are my people after all. Perhaps I can wear their traditional fashions and blend in. I picked out several bras, shorts, and tops in the largest sizes available.

In the fitting room, my eyes beheld horrors that I cannot unsee. Even the extra large was too small. I looked like a sausage, conveniently packaged for alien consumption. I longed for the earth to split open and swallow me – if I’d even fit down there.

---

At a friend’s suggestion, I turned to the internet for sports bras. She recommended a few brands, based on her own experiences and a few magazine articles. My industrial strength super bra (with enough straps and fasteners for a bondage porno) arrived from Amazon within a week, and subsequently trimmed a full minute off my morning run. I decided I was done bra shopping, but the universe had other plans.

Not to be outdone by Lane Bryant and (the aptly named) Dick’s sporting goods, Macy’s wanted in on my humiliation.

Innocently seeking running shoes, I was blindsided by a ladies’ underwear sale, the store’s walkways lined with tables holding bins full of bras. I just want shoes, people! I thought. I’m avoiding bra shopping! You can’t just wave a bunch of bras at me as soon as I walk through the door!

But as I proceeded toward the shoe section, the idea grew on me. It wasn't like I had to go bra shopping; they were conveniently bringing the bra shopping to me. I passed the various sizes in the clearly labeled bins: a huge bucket of 32A, then 34B; a lot of 34C, which is what I wore in high school; and on and on. The bins runneth over, stunning in their variety. I’ll just see what they have in my size, I thought, since it’s on my way and everything.

They ran out of bins somewhere in the middle of the 36s. Not a good sign, I thought. At the end of the line of tables, a handwritten sign saying 38DD was taped to a tattered cardboard box. The box held only one bra. It was ugly…

But not as ugly as the language I used when I saw it.

Why does this have to be so hard? I thought.

(To be continued... Click here for Part II.)

My First 5k

“Carla tagged you in a post,” said Facebook one Monday night in August.

That’s nice! I thought.

The post said simply, “For Tori and Benjamin!” above a link to the Zombie Apocalypse.

“What?” I said, clicking the link.

“Navigate a series of challenging obstacles throughout a 5k zombie infested course,” it said.

That sounds so fun, I thought, for someone else!

Because I am not a runner.

---

“Did you see the link Carla posted?” Benjamin said with too much enthusiasm as soon as he arrived at work the next day.

“Yeah,” I said. “Looks like fun for you!”

“For us, you mean,” he said. “You should do it with me!”

I looked slant-eyed at my coworker, ten years younger and fifty pounds lighter than I am. “I don’t run,” I said.

“You could learn!!! You have time!!!” he said, enunciating the exclamation points.

“I’m pretty sure I don’t,” I said.

But that night, I looked at 5k training programs online. “Couch to 5k in 8 weeks!” said one. “In 10 weeks!” said another. I counted off weeks on the calendar.

I had twelve weeks.

And no excuses.

---

The next morning, I stepped outside with my ipod and my determination. In my earbuds, a cheerful jock encouraged me to join him on week one of his “Couch to 5k” running program.

“This program is designed to be run three times a week with a resting day between each run,” said the podcast.

“Okay,” I said.

“You’ll have a five minute warm up walk followed by eight sets of sixty second runs and ninety second recovery intervals. You’ll finish with a five minute cool down.”

“That’s a lot of numbers…” I said.

“I’ll give instructions every time you should change your pace,” the narrator guy promised.

“Good, because I didn’t follow half of that,” I told him.

“So let’s get started!”

“Oh, must we?” I said. The sun was only just peeking over the horizon.

---

After the first run, my leg muscles collapsed in on themselves like neutron stars. I writhed on the floor with the agony of stellar evolution.

“I expect to fail,” I told my husband from my place on the floor. “Then I can get the whole mess out of the way.”

My idea of “failure” was to collapse in an exhausted heap on the sidewalk, like an Olympic marathoner just shy of the finish line. That didn't happen the first week. When you get right down to it, sixty seconds of running is not a lot. I was able to finish the run, even if I felt like celestial death afterward.

But the second week! Yes, that would be the real clincher. Then I would fail to get through the podcast and I could tell Benjamin I had given it the old college try but that, for the good of the galaxy, running just wasn’t in my future.

---

The running intervals got longer as the weeks went on.

Ninety seconds of running was only slightly worse than sixty.

Three minutes is a lot at first, but then you have to run for five minutes and suddenly three minutes seems like a very easy goal.

Ten minutes is just two five minute runs without the walking in the middle.

By week five, my legs stopped trying to implode. By week six, I was running for twenty minutes straight. Even then, I never did collapse on the sidewalk. I wondered if I ever would.

The only way I can possibly fail now, I realized, is if I decide not to run in the first place…

---

I didn’t like running. It was hard. It was too early in the morning. It was hard. Sports bras were ugly AND expensive. Also, running was hard.

I huffed and puffed outside of my inner brick house, at constant war with the inner pig who demanded pizza and donuts in payment for these torments. The best part of running was getting to stop at the end. “This,” I said of my hot shower after each run, “must be that runner’s high everyone talks about.”

“I should never have told Benjamin I was 5k training,” I complained to Matt. “Now I can’t quit without looking like a wimp.”

At the end of September, we signed up for an ironically named two mile “fun run.”

“It’ll be good practice!!” Benjamin said. “It’ll be fun!!!” Again with the exclamation points.

He tried to stick with me for a while. He zigzagged. He ran backwards. He literally ran circles around me. I was just too slow.

He got bored and said, “I’m going to go finish and then I’ll come back for you.”

I plodded along at the best pace I could manage. Several moms passed me. With their kids. And their dogs.

I’m the slowest slow person there is, a sad voice whispered from the dark recesses of my mind.

Don’t be ridiculous, another part of me responded. There are plenty of slower people in the world. And they had the good sense to stay home and take a nap.

I stared at my feet as I ran, not even noticing when Benjamin came back for me. “You’re doing great!” he said. “You’re almost done. Let’s go faster.”

Maybe today will be the day I collapse on the sidewalk, I thought.

But it wasn’t.

---

At the 5k a month later, the exclamation points struck again.

“Come on! Let’s go faster!! You can’t stop yet!!! Let’s go!!!”

“I expected this from Benjamin,” said Sarah, who came to town to run with us, “but not from you. When did you become such a drill sergeant?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Sometime in the past twelve weeks, I guess?”

Around that time, Benjamin jogged back to us from the finish line. “Hey, you’re almost there! You just have to get through that field of zombies!”

“More zombies?” Sarah said, pulling up short. We stopped on the crest of a hill and looked out at them stretched out below us.

Benjamin looked at me and grinned stupidly. “Think you can keep up with me?”

“I can damn sure try,” I said.

“Then catch me,” he said as he set off, and he screamed it again over his shoulder, “Catch me!”

I ran. I ran the fastest I’d ever run in my whole life. Past the zombies and the spectators and the finish line. I’m not ashamed to say I couldn’t keep up with him. I’m proud to say I didn’t quit. I haven’t collapsed in a heap on the sidewalk yet. Because I’m a runner.

A slow runner.

But I make up for it in enthusiasm!!!

Zen and the Art of Sci-Fi, Part II

Zen.

Peace.

Tranquility.

Sounds gorgeous, doesn’t it? Fantastic, even.

I find all sorts of beautiful pictures online of peaceful homes meant to exhibit the embodiment of Zen: homes in calm neutral colors, where the minimal furniture is comfortable, serviceable, and matches the décor, with sparse art on the walls and a single orchid or maybe a bonsai tree on the end table.

Sometimes I look around my home and I wonder if I might be further along, spiritually speaking, if I gave my environment a bit of a makeover.

Wouldn’t it be great to live in a house that looked like that? I wonder.

Except where would I hang my Iron Man poster?

Let’s see what sci-fi can teach us about our homes.

Meditate with me.

-

“The enemy’s gate is down.” - Ender Wiggin, Ender’s Game

Ender’s genius is that he looked at the same battle room as everyone else and saw it in a different way. What do you see when you look at your home?

When I see the beautifully decorated homes in the ladies' magazines, I agree that they look nice but I don't want to live there. I want to live in my own house with my own things.

I used to wish my house and my things looked like the magazine houses. I followed the advice in the magazine articles, but nothing worked. The sci-fi books everywhere, the entertainment center littered with games and peripherals, the anime wall scrolls – these things just don’t belong in decorating magazines.

The problem with my house, I thought, is that it looks like I live there.

But here’s the thing, guys: that’s not actually a problem. I do, in fact, live in my house. It is good and right and appropriate that my home look like I live there.

Pretend your home is the battle room and you are the prodigious child soldier. Is there actually something wrong with your home or are you letting an enemy magazine tell you what to do? Are you going to take that from them or are you going to fight back?

-

“There is no spoon.” - Creepy kid, The Matrix

I often catch myself thinking that, just maybe, if I get my home in order, the rest of my life will naturally fall into place. If I can just get the knack of a better home (and garden), I'll somehow magically sort out my childhood issues. If I had a fully stocked pantry with all the food organized into elegant glass jars, I would wake up tomorrow at my goal weight and never have to diet again. If I ever actually find the perfect living room set, I’ll find enough change in the cushions to balance my budget forever.

It’s not me, I want to think. It’s the house.

Oh, please.

I know it’s painful to admit, but it’s not the house. These limitations are all in my head. Maybe they’re in your head too? The truth is that even if I magically woke up tomorrow in one of those perfect homes with a sand garden and a tranquil pool of koi, I would still be disorganized. I wouldn’t remember to take care of the pool until the smell of rotting fish carcass became overpowering and I’d be sitting there in the stink wondering why I didn’t take the blue pill.

Instead of stressing over the state of your home, focus on the inner issues that are truly bugging you. Remember, it isn’t the house – er, that is, the spoon – that bends, it is only yourself.

Free your mind.

-

“Don’t blink.” - Ten, Doctor Who

We all know the feeling. You clean your house, it looks good, then you turn your back on it and when next you look around, your living room has become the gravitational center for all random chaos in the known universe. How the heck? When… just… what?

Two words: Weeping Angels. 

The unfinished projects, the unending laundry and vacuuming, the way there’s always more picking up to do no matter how much time you spend on it: they won’t kill you outright, but they’ll take your time, eat the years you would otherwise be living.

If there’s anything we’ve learned from Doctor Who, aside from an unnatural fear of statues, it’s that the inanimate objects can only get you when you take your eyes off them. The trick is to keep your eyes open. Yeah, life gets in the way, but if you only pay attention for like ten minutes a day, you can stay on top of this thing. A few minutes a day is the difference between well managed laundry and spending your whole weekend sorting clothes.

Just don’t blink.

-

Obviously, if they ever invent a colony ship to Mars, we’re not going to be able to take all of our stuff with us. We’ll have only the finest pared-down possessions in our Martian abodes. Advanced air filtration systems will clear the red dust from our homes as our robot servants spare us from mundane chores like dishes and laundry.

Our minds will be free to focus on deeper spiritual issues, and I promise at that time to write a more relevant article on Zen and the art of science fact.

Until then, continue to find Zen in the art of science fiction.

And maybe get a head start on paring down those possessions. It couldn’t hurt.