No Longer Posting But Still Walking

If you've stumbled on to this blog from parts unknown, I've discontinued my little Phatgirlwalking adventures. You can find me over at my main site at SisterFriends-Together.

Gone but Not Gone Really

Put your fears to rest for Phatgirl is alive and well and still under the cardio-manic care of D_wn, personal trainer extraordinaire. I just haven't been blogging about it because there are only so many ways to add a creative, spell-binding spin to "I did 50 minutes of cardio on the treadclimber." Even I, the great rambling blogger that I am, have my limits.

Since April, when last I posted, life has continued on, the big event being our recent trip to Greece which, of course, I blogged about each step along the way for family and friends. If you'd like to go on a cyber visit to Greece, then by all means, just click on over to

Our Big Fat Greek Vacation

That's all for now my little jogging, walking, running peeps!

Aromatic Aerobics

This would seem to be 'sound' evidence against exercise, specifically after a meal of beans and brussel sprouts.



Which reminds me, I put in a 90 minute cardio work out this morning, 30 on the TreadClimber followed by 60 on the elliptical machine. Free of sound effects or any other sensory unpleasantness. I've been increasing my cardio time in recent days because while I'm getting stronger and more toned, I'm not getting lighter and leaner. This is no mystery. I like food. I like to eat food. This isn't to imply I'm pigging out. I eat three meals a day consisting of fruit, protein and veggies. No sugar. No alcohol. No fast food. Minimal flour, fats or processed foods. I don't stuff myself with food but it would be fair to say I have a hearty appetite and have developed the uncanny ability in the course of each day to consume precisely the number of calories equaling the calories burned that day resulting in no gain, no loss, no harm, no foul. Let's put a positive spin on this. I'm an expert at maintaining my weight, a skill that a lot of other people seem to lack and this would all be a wonderful thing were I actually at a weight I wanted to maintain. And so to make some headway, I've developed a two stage strategy plan.

1. Increase my time at the gym in strength-training and cardio workouts which will burn additional calories and then,
2. Convince myself through self-deception that instead of having been to the gym I've actually been laying on the couch all day long. Thus with the false belief securely in place I'll automatically regulate my intake of calories to equal calories burned on a lazybutt day and not a sweat-n-grunt day.

Madness or genius? Only time and the bathroom scales will tell.

Athens Anticipation

Our trip to Greece is still a couple months away and I'm already in full-obsession mode. I've done quite a bit of traveling out of the country: Israel (6 times), Greece (2 times), Italy (2 times), El Salvador (2 times) and 1 visit each to Jordan, London, Denmark, and Sweden, but all these trips were years ago, long before the internet. For me, half the fun of any trip is in the planning and getting ready, so here are some of the sites that are eating into my blog time.

A Travel Guide to Greece
This is the most amazingly helpful, fun, extensive, and anticipation-building resource on Greece you'll ever find, especially when it comes to what to see and do in Athens. Dana and I will have a couple days to ourselves in the Big City and so I've been feasting on his photos and suggestions for day adventures. I know there's been big changes to Athens since I was there last in the 1980's so I'm excited to discover it all over again! Rick Steve's Europe Through the Back Door is another good travel site though it provides more general information like how to pack. I guess there are secrets to packing beyond "open suitcase, put in clothes, close suitcase." Who knew?

When it comes to shopping for travel-friendly-throw-in-a-bag-and-go clothes head over to TravelSmith, Ex Officio, or ever faithful REI, and for those who'd like to provide comic relief to Athenians young and old, try learning just enough of their language at I Learn Greek to humiliate yourself while leaving them snorkeling ouzo out their noses! Remember, they'll be laughing with you, not at you.

Yep, two months before we jump a plane for Greece and did I happen to mention my carry-on bag is already packed and ready to go?

April 6, 2002

Seven years ago
We met.
I adored you from the start.
I was crazy in love with you in a week.
By the end of the month I couldn't remember what life was like before you.

Six years ago
I asked you to spend the rest of your life with me.
Impatient, controlling, stubborn, overly-opinionated, emotional me.
I'm still in awe and over the top grateful you said yes.

Five years ago today
We were married.
A gift of God in every moment.
Grace upon grace.

Four minutes ago
I looked at cute you on the other side of the couch...
Three minutes ago
I listened to your familiar warm laugh...
Two minutes ago
I held your hand in mine...
And in this very minute
I'm whispering another thank you to God who brought you into my life because it only gets sweeter and better and deeper and truer with every passing day...minute by minute by minute.

Silly corny lovestruck words from silly corny lovestruck me to beautiful, sweet, brilliant, kind-hearted, forgiving, gentle-spirited, hysterically funny, adorable you.

Happy anniversary Honey.
You and you only.
Forever and forever.

The song, "Forever with Me" was written and performed by Nedra Johnson.

Eyes and Thighs

I've been losing weight slowly. I've been getting stronger slowly. And apparently while all these wonderful signs of physical health are progressing along, I'm on a collision course with the reality of getting older.

Evidence for the court's consideration.

When I use to get a stiff back or sore muscles years ago it was for a real reason. I'd unloaded a six-month supply of snacks for the early childhood department at my church from the back of my car. I'd mowed the lawn, pulled out a couple dead shrubs and spread out 15 bags of top soil into the flower beds. I'd hauled food supplies upstairs from the camp cellar and then spent 16 hours prepping and cooking on a hard tile kitchen floor to feed 200 campers. I'd singlehandedly hauled an antique kitchen cabinet, complete with a porcelain table top down a flight of stairs. All valid reasons for some muscular discomfort.

Nowadays reaching the wrong way for a bar of soap in the shower can have me wincing and gnawing on anti-inflammatories. Turn in bed? Proceed with caution. Reach down to get a book off the bottom shelf? Surely there's a book on the top shelf that could satisfy my literary interests. Drop the TV remote on the floor and find myself considering reaching down to get it? Hey, this info-merical isn't all that bad. An hour with D_wn my personal trainer and the next morning even if I don't feel any pain when I first wake up I end up limping down the stairs to get my coffee just in case something decides to go out on me willy-nilly. This is all up for me because more than a week ago I went on a cleaning spree in our house and my hip and legs are still a little achy. Whether it was the dusting or polishing that put me over the age, I really can't say but I intend to avoid them both in the future as a safety precaution.

If I hadn't been doing core-training for the past several months who knows...the vacuuming might have left me in traction.

Pathetic.

Oh yes, and I just returned from the optometrist. No, I take that back. I don't have an optometrist. I have an opthalmologist which is another indication that I'm getting older. I've come to the conclusion that given the realities of aging and the increasing odds that when something finally goes wrong it will require a major overall rather than a minor tuneup, I just head directly to the big guns these days...the opthalmologists, the pariodontists, and any and all medical professionals who have given their entire lives to train in a miniscule and confined area of expertise in hopes that they will just so happen to be skilled in treating the precise bit of real estate on my body that ultimately decides to go out of whack. [As a point of reality, I enjoy excellent health and am extremely grateful for it...this is nothing more than silly nonsense, which is in actuality my particular area of expertise. As if I need to tell you.]

I was talking about my appointment at the opthalmologist. It seems I need stronger glasses. Computer glasses; formerly known as reading glasses, yet another clear indication Bob Dylan knew what he was talking about when he sang "the times, they are a' changing." With glasses designed for a specific task, the doctor mentioned it was important to know as near to the exact distance that the computer would be from my eyes to create the best prescription and without hesitating I crossed one leg over the other knee, placing my hands on the invisible keyboard across my bent leg and confidently said "Right here" and so I'm happy to report that in 10 days I'll have a pair of glasses perfectly set for viewing my laptop 24 inches away...e-x-a-c-t-l-y.

A Little of This A Little of That

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is my honor to present Mr. and Mrs. My Brother. I mentioned in a previous entry that I had just been in Portland to attend the wedding and it was indeed a beautiful day and they are a wonderful couple. Mazel Tov!

It just came to my attention that I received a mention by the organizers of the 2006 Portland Marathon in a follow-up article they wrote on Steve, BayCityWalker. Hey, I have no problems riding in on someone else's sneaker laces! And thank you Steve! It was an honor my man, an honor.

I've been getting to the gym every day for cardio and a little one on one with D_wn, my personal trainer, who I am here to report is no longer just a personal trainer but in recent days has been promoted through the ranks of 24-Hour Fitness to the lofty status of Master Trainer. Considering how she's been increasingly upping the ante in my training sessions, and my misery threshold, calling her D_wn, my Master Trainer seems only right. Today during the last 5 minutes of a brutal-show-no-mercy-take-no-prisoners session as I was straining to complete a final set of one-legged squats, I muttered under my breath something about how someone might think she was a really nice person because of her cute appearance and not the cruel task master that she is, to which she smirked, and I swear by Nautilius that it was a smirk, and said "That was even more true when I use to wear pigtails to work." Oh please. Sweating to the oldies with Pippy Longstockings no less. Trust me. She is no Pippy Longstockings.

A Day of Good Stuff

I have nothing spectacular to report but after my recent double dip plane landing I'm just fine with blogging on the mundane. Mundane. Good. Double dip landings. Not so much.

The day started at 7:00 a.m. at the gym. Not that I wouldn't have loved to have slept in and worked out later but the 24-Hour Fitness I go to when I'm in Portland is smack dab in the middle of 'burb-landia and if I'm not there that early the Mommies get there before I do leaving nary a vacant TreadClimber, Elliptical machine or Treadmill in the house. As it was, I beat the Mommies to the punch and had a good 30 minutes on the Elliptical and 30 on the TreadClimber before racing to Starbucks before the maternal herd migrated in that direction.

Yesterday I made a beeline for Zuppan's Grocery for a few bottles of Viso, the magical yummical elixor of all beverages made here in the Rose City. We're talking vitamins, minerals, electrolytes, deeeelicious and oh so hip in a totally cool blue bottle. I decided this time a few bottles wouldn't meet my growing dependancy and so I bought two cases of the sugarfree flavors, one of Pina (pineapple) and one of Razza (berry) to ship back home where careful rationing and a no share policy would be instituted. But then, oh joy, oh bliss, I visited their website again this afternoon on a whim to discover they've recently begun shipping Viso! A cold bottle of Pina after a workout...liquid paradise.

What else has been good in the day?

• Time with Mommy, my Mommy, not the sweaty ones at the gym though I'm sure they're equally nice. . . as long as you don't get between them and their cardio-machine of choice.
• Wearing my favorite lime green Crocs with rainbow-colored jelly buttons.
• Discovering some really amazing blogs by evangelical christians of the open and seeking variety.
• Listening to the latest podcast of NPR's "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me!" Nothing makes me laugh like this NPR offering of pithy wit.
• Reading the next chapter from Sara Miles', "Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion." I've been going through spiritual memoirs like an elephant goes through peanuts.
• Watching "Darshan: The Embrace" on DVD. It's a amazing documentary on Amma, the Indian Mahatma (guru) who's known as the hugging saint, and the film follows her as she travels cross-country through India doing what she does best...embracing and touching thousands upon thousands of people, young and old. The photography of India is stunning and unlike anything I've ever seen.

All around a mellow, low-key, cozy day. For which I'm so very thankful. Amen.

Plane Peril

Have you ever been in the mood to blog only to discover your mind void of bloggable chatter? Such is this moment in my life. Wanna blog. Got nuthun. Oh, except for escaping death at 300 miles per hour by mere inches yesterday. Other than that, nuthun. Let me round out the details for you just in case you care and I know you do. Why else would you be here day in and day out if you didn't love the Phatgirl?

I took a flight to Portland yesterday because my younger brother (younger of two brothers but both older than me thank you very much) is getting married this week and I'm the flower girl. Okay, I'm not the flower girl. It's just fun to imagine myself in a frilly pink dress with ruffles, mary jane's with lacey ankle socks and little white party gloves. Oh wait, that's my Easter outfit. Nevermind. Back to my near death experience.

We were just about to land in Portland, the landing gear was lowered, the engine slowing for the last minute of descent, the lights in the cabin dimmed, tray tables and chairs in an upright and locked position, and random passengers grabbing for their bags to have their cell phones at the ready, forbid that they keep them off one minute longer than required by air traffic safety regulations. We were (and I'm making every effort to not exaggerate in some cheap attempt to over-dramatize the actual events) THREE INCHES from touching down on the runway when the pilot lifted the nose of the plane, pushed the pedal to the metal and tore us back into the sky at a rather severe Movie-of-the-Week angle. For a moment more than I feared the possibilities of a plane crash I feared that the second glass of Diet Coke and the bottle of water I drank had been a tragic mistake. Do I need to spell this out for you or do you have a general sense of what I'm talking about?

The funny part and I use that word ever so loosely, were in those few minutes following the unexpected re-entry into the stratosphere and before the pilot explained to us what the heck was going on, we all found ourselves looking at the person next to us fully realizing that though their lips weren't moving they were in their head and heart in the middle of a rapid-fire conversation with the God of their understanding just as we were. Nothing like a hearty dose of fear to bring Jews and Christians and Muslims and agnostics all together in communal prayers and supplications. My own went something along the lines of "Oh God, I beseech thee now to hearken onto me, your faithful daughter and servant Anita. It's been a really great life and I want to take this moment to personally tell you of my deep gratitude for your blessings O Lord. Please comfort and draw close to those I love as I now prepare to enter into your presence with humility of spirit and thankfulness of heart. Amen."

Or was it more like "God, HELP!!!" ? My memory is so fuzzy on details.

What I do remember with crystal clarity is that when the pilot was finally able to break away from his decaf skinny latte and call to his wife to see if she wanted him to pick up anything at the local Piggley Wiggley on his way home, he informed us that another plane that had just landed before us on our runway was going so slow that we had to pull up at the last minute to avoid the unlikely risk of making contact with the other plane. It seems that when a Chevy Chevette makes contact with the back end of a Ford Tarsus at a stop light it's called a fender bender but when the same occurs between two landing Boeing 737's it's a whole different ballgame.

One more detail I think I should mention, not for your benefit but for mine since I really need to just get this off my chest so that the healing can begin...when the pilot was explaining what had just taken place he had used the expression "during our first attempt at landing..." and then he went on to say something about our upcoming "second attempt." Have you ever looked up the word attempt in the dictionary? Well save yourself the time because I've done the research and the definition is, "to try to do something, especially without much expectation of success" and the synonyms offered included "take a crack at, make a stab at, take a shot at, give it a go." I'm not making this up people and maybe you're all just fine with this but personally, I don't take a lot of comfort in the idea that my pilot is going to TRY and land the plane that I happen to be occupying. I need a little something more than "This is your Captain. We are now approaching the airport and I'm going to take a stab at landing this bad boy so hang on!" I require a modicum of conviction from those who hold my life in their hands. I wanna hear the squeak of the cabin speakers followed by "This is your Captain, and I'm going to land this plane on a silver dime I had the ground crew toss in the middle of the runway and if I miss it by so much as a centimeter drinks are on me!"

Oh, and I'll save the story about the girl and the barf bag for another time.

As I said, I got nuthun to blog tonight. Nuthun.

Live, Lunge and Learn

Here is my arm. If you look close you'll see a black line across the top of my arm. See it? Okay, now look really close. This will no doubt involve leaning in toward your monitor but you will be rewarded for your efforts. Trust me. Now that you're up close and personal, squint and focus directly above the black line and you'll notice the widdle biddy bump of MUSCLE extruding from my upper arm. There! That's it! That my peeps is what you get for 2 and 1/2 months of core training. Breath-taking, isn't it? Now, may I direct your attention to the dotted line toward the midway point of the photographic image. Step back from the computer. In fact, go position yourself in the doorway of the adjoining room. Now look at the photo again. Oh wait....

Look at the photo again! Do you see

that fleshy mound dangling toward the

floor? See it? Okay, now come back

into the room and sit down again.

That dangly mass of flub took me 50 years of intensive eating and couch occupation to develop. Breath-taking, isn't it? But I gotta tell you, I'm far more hyped about the widdle biddy lump of MUSCLE than I'm discouraged by the dropping flubbage. I'm just a half-full glass Phatgirl.

A story for your reading pleasure. The teeshirt in the photo is one I had made at Zazzle. The personal trainers at 24-Hour Fitness wear red teeshirts that say "Personal Trainer" across the back. On the back of mine it reads "Personal Trainer's Victim" and on the front is a block of text comprised of all the pithy, annoying little phrases, questions, and demands D_wn, my personal trainer, offers as accompaniment to my workouts. The melody goes something like this, "Are you okay? How you doing? Keep your heels down. Keep your chest up. Stop rounding your shoulders. Breathe! Tighten those ABS! Posture! How do you feel? Are you okay? Pull from your shoulder blades. You should feel it there! 10 more. Another set. Quit crying you babypants!" Okay, it doesn't actually contain the last line but now that I've thought of it, I wish it did. Back to the story and yes, there is one. So in I stroll the other day sporting my brand-new-my-trainer-is-going-to-bust-a-gut-over-this-one teeshirt and sure enough, she grinned. And then she proceeded to put me through a workout that lacked any trace of compassion, gentleness or simple human kindness. Brutal I tell you. Brutal. After 50 minutes of this little glimpse into the bowels of Hades and sweating like a long-haired dog in the middle of the Negev on an August afternoon, I pointed to the words on the back of my teeshirt and grasping for that last breath of air I had misplaced during the final set of lunges (lung-less?) I said "Truth in advertising." And that's when she laughed. Outloud.

I'm wearing a white teeshirt tomorrow. No graphic images. No words. Nothing. Unadored. Innocent.

The King and Queen

SimbaKitty, the Black Panther of Suburbia
Stuffed and catnip-laced mice, you have met your conquering king!

AnnieCat, Still Reigning Queen of the Shag Princess Tower

The child kitten bores me. Off with his whiskers!

Pictures Speak Louder...

I pass by this memorial to the American soldiers who've died in Iraq every day that I drive to work. I've watched the crosses added and the hillside fill up. The number doesn't even begin to reflect the number of military dead from other countries or the citizens of Iraq killed since this all began. My fear is we'll run out of hillside before we run out of war.

For more on the Lafayette Cross Memorial

Racewalking Weekend

I returned home this morning from Carmel-by-the-Sea where I was participating in a racewalking clinic with Dave McGovern. The same one I attended last year. Since making the decision to discontinue walking for the time being I reconsidered whether I should cancel my plans to attend but after our schmooze and supper on Friday night I discovered eight reasons why being there was so important.

1. Brandon
2. Steve
3. Sue
4. Ann
5. Vickie
6. Melody
7. Becky
8. Dave

These are the folks I got to know last year and with whom I've encouraged and been encouraged by for these many months via a casual little mailing group we formed following our first racewalking clinic gig. I love these people. Love. In the real sense of the word.

Vickie has become nothing short of freakishly fast racewalker and were she not so incredibly kind I might feel inclined to envy her. Becky's racewalking form is a pleasure to watch and Ann isn't anyone I'm going to be catching up to anytime soon. Better form, faster speed. Melody is our Disney athlete with a half or full marathon at Disneyland or Disneyworld always up ahead on her calendar. My personal suspicion is she's got a secret thing going on for Goofy but if she says it's about the race. Fine, sure, whatever. Then there's Sue who I refuse to mention on my blog until she ponies up and gets her sorry racewalking booty on the internet! Apparently she's too pre-occupied driving her 1972 Chevrolet Chevelle down the road to the haunting tune of "Hotel California" playing over her 8-track tape player and 3-inch woofers and tweeters to catch up to modern life! And when it comes to "the boys," they've already had center-stage on my blog and in my heart more than a few times. Steve is the definition of humble tenacity and five months after the fact, I still can switch on the tears remembering those last yards as he ended toward the Portland Marathon finish line. Then there's Brandon. I could describe him in single words like funny, generous, thoughtful, and tenderhearted but let's just say, if you're needing some inspiration and encouragement Brandon is the guy you want in your corner. A true-blue sweetheart. And then there's Dave. As in pavement-blistering member of the US National Racewalk Team stop-by-my-website-and-buy-some-of-my-merch-as-long-as-you're-there Dave McGovern. Elite athlete. Trainer and coach extraordinare. A really nice guy with a certifiably twisted sense of humor.

These are the eight people who in one weekend a year ago made up for all those really horrible years I endured in gym class with their kindness and genuine encouragment. So where else should I have been this weekend but with those eight and the other racewalking pleebs and pros who joined us this year?

I haven't done any racewalking, fitnesswalking, powerwalking or hurry-up-or-you're-going-to-be-late walking in months and so it felt great to get out there and give it a go again. While my foot placement is solid (a nice roll from heel to toe) and my front knee lift needs more heighth, the place I noticed the most improvement from last year was in my posture. Last year I was pitched forward, bent at the waist, shoulders rounded. This year it was stomach in, back straight, shoulders back. Thank you core training. Thank you D_wn, my personal trainer! After this weekend of hanging out with bona fide racewalking atheletes and all-around cool peeps, I'm giving some thought to aiming for a local 5K race. Not as a fast walker but as a racewalker. Right now I couldn't keep the pace or the form for 3 miles but I'm just simmering on the idea for the time-being and seeing where it leads.

Funny story. I woke up Saturday morning in the hotel and realized when I went to pull my yogurt and blueberries out of the mini-fridge that I'd forgotten to pack a spoon. I looked around the combination kitchen/bathroom, a combination I don't imagine will ever take off in residential home design, and spotted a cellophone bag containing coffee stirrers, a pack of sugar, and a napkin. I took the three plastic coffee stirrers and tying them together at one end with dental floss fashioned a utensil with which to eat my breakfast. The spirit of McGyver lives long after it's vanished into syndication!

The Man of the House

What I've Come to Know About Simbakitty in His First Week

1. He has the funniest meow I've ever heard. Imagine the sound of a toddler's delighted squeal mixed with the low contented sigh of an old man eating apple pie ala mode and framed within a question. You now have something close to this little guy's chatter.
2. When Simba's sleeping on our dark burgundy couch he becomes nearly invisible to the human eye.
3. He's pretty convinced that the cursor moving across the screen on my computer monitor is something he should capture and bring to me between his teeth as his manly duty. For the sake of my monitor I pray not.
4. a) His poop stinks to high heaven and b) he has feline flatulence that could peel paint off a wall. Following the vet's advice we're going to try a new cat food. If that doesn't work, I'm tying a lemon-scented car deodorizer to his kitty collar.
5. Simba's most active time of the day is 5:35 a.m. when he enjoys doing a close examination of my head. Nothing wakes you up in the morning like a cold wet nose attached to pokey whiskers sliding across the bridge of your nose.
6. When 4b takes place while 5 is occurring the biggest concern is not paint peeling off the wall.

Did I Mention?

We have a new 9 month old rescue kitten. We knew another cat would be joining the Cadonau-Huseby family at some point since Annie the Cat has been pathetically sad and pouty since Tweety took a direct flight to Cat Heaven. Okay, so have I but that's not the point. Anyway, Dana and I had some long conversations about what kind of cat we'd bring into our home and had decided that while we were open to consider any cat we were leaning toward a kitten and perferably not a black one and definitely not a male one.

Welcome Simba. A nine-month old black male cat. Annie's new playmate, once she quits hissing at him that is. She has yet to fully grasp the ramifications of his gender limitations, for as a male she will always retain the Queen of the House status she inherited from Tweety and he will forever be her little prince. Her very own boy toy. Simba is a bombay cat and has all the appearance and movement of a baby black panther, along with being a total love monkey. Just a big ball of purring cat love. I can't keep my hands off him. Now, there's a sentence I've never typed before but I digress.

Anyway, so we're back to a two human two feline household and it feels really nice. And just right.

Tread Climber Utopia

This morning after blogging my last entry I went to 24-Hour to put in an hour of cardio. I noticed as soon as I arrived that all the individual televisions that were installed months ago on the elliptical machines and a line of treadmills were finally functioning. And then...and then...I can barely talk about this without tears welling up in my eyes...give me a moment please.

Okay. I can do this. As I started to say, I had just about reached the line of machines where my beloved TreadClimber resides, that sweetspot in the gym that I race to each time I enter the hallowed halls of the fitness sweatshop so as to beat any other cardio-seeking souls when I noticed....deep breath...that the four old faithful TreadClimbers that have been at the heart and soul of my cardio workouts for the past four months had been replaced. Now, standing heroic and proud in a row seven brand new right from the factory shiny beautiful and most certainly virginal TreadClimbers. Here come the tears again.

With fingers trembling from emotion I punched in my weight, my desired speed and time and then, unable to contain it any longer I began to gently hum a music classic that captured all that my heart was feeling, "I'm the luckiest girl in the whole U.S.A."

Christmas has come early this year.

A Change in Plans

I've been silent on the blog front for a few weeks because I've been doing a lot of thinking and if you follow my blog with any regularity you understand that thinking and blogging don't always occur simultaneously with me. What I've been thinking about is walking. Not ordinary walking as in walking across the grocery store parking lot, something I tend to do without much thought involved and do quite well, thank you very much, but walking as in training for a marathon walking.

The collective sum of all my thinking has led me to decide not to continue to pursue marathon training. At least not in the foreseeable future. My natural resistance to quit anything plus the vast wealth of electronic gear and quik-dri apparel I've accumlated over the past year intensified the mental ping-pong tournament going on in my brain but having made the decision I felt relieved and the relief confirmed the decision I arrived at was the best one for the time being.

The biggest con in my decision making was that after two solid months of recovery time, two months of physical therapy, and strength training work since January I continue to be plagued with problems in the same leg and foot that led to my DNF in the Portland Marathon last October and given that completing a full marathon seems doubtful at this point. I've already thrilled at the excitement and sense of accomplishment in crossing the finish line at a half-marathon and the starting line at a full-marathon, and with doubt looming over the possibility of reaching the ultimate goal of crossing a marathon finish line, I lack the motivation to make training the priority it would need to be.

With that said, it's the pros that ultimately helped me reach my decision; those being that all I had hoped to gain from walking, training for a marathon, and then entering a marathon have already been realized beyond my expectations. I had three hopes when I began; to gain physical and spiritual health, to find a new purpose, and to have something to do. I needed all three desperately and I needed them right now to keep one foot moving in front of the other following one of those ridiculously painful, "life at its snarliest" moments. In walking, first for no other purpose than to get out of the house and then walking to prepare for a marathon gave me all that. Walking in the rain cleansed me. Walking in the sun warmed me. Walking in the solitiude of early morning and the calm of closing twilight centered me. And walking fast and long re-energized me. As I said, I received all that I wanted and more.

The more I received was you, the people I've met along the way. The wonderfully amazing people I met last Spring at a Dave McGovern Racewalking Clinic, strangers when we gathered for the first time at the Friday night orientation dinner and now people I easily call my friends. And then there's you, the bloggers who walk, run, and joggle, who train for 5K Fun Runs and full-out marathons, who parent and love their families, who laugh easily and share honestly, and who offer encouragement and kindness to someone you've only met in words glowing from your monitor screen. Training for a marathon, if even only one marathon, gave me all that and I'm to-the-bone grateful.

Just in case you're wondering, I'm staying right here. Phatgirl will keep walking (for pleasure) and blogging away about everything and nothing, and you can be sure I'll be around to cheer you on. Keep sweating!

Happy Valentine's Day

Dana,

Anita

I Told You So

I just returned home from a torturously long appointment with my adorable little gay hairstylist (Can you wrap your mind around the atypical reality of a gay hairstylist?), to see my original copy of Marathoning for Mortals on the kitchen counter. I told you right in this very blog it would take ordering a new copy from Amazon to set the wheels of the lost-being-found principle in motion. Trust me when I tell you such things. With book in hand I hurried upstairs to ask Dana where she had found it, having already assumed it was to her credit, and not to Annie the house cat's, who is still very much alive and meowing. This simple inquiry led to the moment when my dear wife with more patience than anyone else I have ever known, the single most important factor that assures we will live out all our days together since endless patience is required to endure a lifetime with me, revealed that she had found the book in my gym bag while searching through the entire house to find the gym locker I had borrowed from her the other day with the absolute promise that I would return it to her immediately. When I tried to suggest that perhaps it had been divine intervention that had caused me to not return the lock so that she would be led to find my book, she simply muttered something about my faulty, full-of-holes theology and returned her attention back to her studies. Fine. I was wrong to not return the lock and more wrong still to blame God for having a hand in it, but still, I was right about the whole order a new book so you can find the old book thing. Tie goes to the runner. She shoots. She scores.

On another note, I channeled my car this morning. What I mean by that is I knew what my car was thinking and I felt it's pain. Let me explain. Oh wait....one minute. I hear the UPS truck. Just as I suspected. I now possess two copies of the same book. Convenient if my eyes ever row back into my ears and remain lodged there. Back to what I was saying. As Opie and I were heading down the freeway, Opie's my car but you already knew that, I saw it coming. It being one of the biggest rocks that has ever been propelled airborn by a semi-truck tire into unsuspecting traffic and in that dark instant before impact I could have sworn I heard Opie groan with resigned acceptance "Oh, this is gonna hurt." We wept together.

Who would have thought that the sound of a front windshield giving way to a hurling projectile would be reminiscient to childhood memories of a favorite breakfast cereal. Snap. Crackle. Pop. And so it appears both Opie and I will soon be developing a meaningful relationship with the folks down at Hank's Auto Glass Repair & Meditation Center.

Lost in PhatLand

I can't find my copy of "Marathoning for Mortals" anywhere in the house! It's not in the bookcase (no surprise there!), the garage, my car, any of the three backpacks I'm currently rotating, the storage bins in the cat room, my nightstand, the living room, the office, the bathroom reading basket...nowhere! My one and only copy, autographed by the one and only John "the Penguin" Bingham. A crisis situatino under any conditions but all the more so now because my plan was to sit down tonight with the book and my calendar and chart out my Phatgirl training schedule, scheduled to begin in the morning, with my regular Anita life. I finally gave up and ordered a rush delivery on a copy from Amazon and I think we all know what that means. That's right. My original copy will show up before the UPS driver knocks at our front door with the replacement but then, if I didn't order the second copy, the first copy would never show up so I had no choice but to set the wheels of fate into motion.

Before I committed to punching the "order now" button on Amazon, I succumbed to my need (a word I use loosely) for another motivational toy and ordered the Tanita BC554 Ironman Glass InnerScan Body Composition Monitor, a bathroom scale that in addition to weight, outputs body fat percentage, bone mass, metabolic age, body weight and while it's not listed on the manufacturer's product description, I suspect it might well spit out daily lottery numbers and my credit rating in the United States and most sovereign nations east of Ecuador. I'm wagering that among all the calculations that spew out of the scale everytime I risk standing on it there will be at least one result that doesn't completely unravel my ego. One can hope.