Rusty

I've been in the mood to scrapbook lately, and I'd even printed off a ton of pictures at Walgreens, spread them all out on my worktable and took inventory of all my supplies (way too much but never enough, you know?). But it was only today (after going to see My Sister's Keeper with my good friend and fellow scrapper Janice--we were the only people in the theatre and we were disappointed with the film but still both needed the tissues we'd brought) that I put a page together. It's been quite a while since I've scrapped. In fact, I don't know that I've done anything for the fifth year of my son's life and he's well into his sixth. But I'm not going to beat myself up for what I haven't done and I'm not going to backtrack and try to start from way back when. I'll get to it all when I get to it. I think blogging has freed my mind on that...I'm able to document so many little things here that the scrapbooks will just be another venue for whatever memories I'm able to grab, and I know it won't be all of them.

I found myself to be quite rusty after all this time, but I do love the photo of my boy and I hope he always follows his heart. That's another revelation that's been freeing to me: to let my son just be. Just be himself and not me or not his dad or like his friends. We'd both like him to play sports because we both enjoyed them so much growing up, but we just haven't pushed Macauley to do a bunch of stuff because everyone else is. Maybe we should nudge him a bit to try some new things, but he's only 6 and he'll figure out where his heart is in his own good time. At least that's how I see it as of now.

I hesitate to even put into words my newest goal, because then what if I don't do it? I had intended to start doing this at the beginning of the summer and now it's 2/3 gone. And I don't want my blog to be about fitness or weight loss or any of that Debbie Downer, non-lovely, uncreative stuff. But...I decided today was the day I started running again after a long hiatus. This made me feel rusty, too, but not as awful as I thought. I was hoping I could run a minute without collapsing, but I was able to chase after Ryan on the trail through the woods behind our house for over 13 minutes without stopping! And I kind of felt like, after some inital tinges of cardiac arrest, that I could have kept going. (Fun side note here: We found, at one of the trail we don't usually walk to and right behind our house, a rope swing into a spot in the creek with murky water that looked deep enough to swing into and Ryan tried it out. The water turned out to be over his head and freezing. He said it wasn't like me not to try it, but I didn't. Something about water where I can't see my toes is really creepy to me. I'll try it before summer is over, maybe.) We decided that we would try to go every night this week to try to ingrain some kind of habit, and that running the trail in the woods, with all sorts of branches and roots and rocks to watch for is a good way to start...you think so much about watching your feet and not tripping over anything that you almost forget how out of breath and old and out of shape you are. I'm not really sure why I haven't been able to consistently make fitness a part of my life in my 20s and 30s. I loved playing sports in high school, and I played intramurals and even took a half-marathon training class at Drury. I worked out fairly regularly after having Macauley, but it's been spotty since. I would say I am an athletic person, but I guess I miss playing volleyball or doing something to "win" or be part of a team instead of exercising just to not get fat(ter). That's no fun to me. But neither is looking at pictures of myself and seeing someone different than the me I see inside my head. A much puffier version. An older and wiser version with better hair and eyebrows and clothes than the 18-year-old me in my head, but puffier nonetheless. I'd like to run a 5K this fall, something I've done before just not in a while, maybe with my dad, who runs all the time and has done so for well over 25 years I'd say, and maybe with my sister Lane, who recently took up running herself and is doing really well with it. So we'll see.