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.

Tee-Shirt Lovah

I've become a Threadless.com tee-shirt junkie over the past couple months and if you bump into me these days odds are I'm going to be in one of the following designs.

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

I picked up Tweety's ashes today. They're in a nice little cedar box with a gold padlock and key, and a printed note on the top that reads

"In Remembrance of Your Beloved Pet

TWEETY

Cremation Service Provided for

Anita and Dana Cadonau-Huseby

January 15, 2007"

Several years ago an elderly couple who were my neighbors at the time learned their faithful golden retriever had terminal cancer and that they would need to eventually put him to sleep to prevent their friend from suffering. For several weeks I'd peek through my front window or stand quietly in my driveway and watch as the man and woman would accompany their dog outside in the rain and the sunshine, tossing a ball into the empty field across the street from our home, and every time that old golden retriever would return to them with the ball wedged in his jaw, tail wagging, they'd lean down, rub his head gently and speak words to him I couldn't hear but that I'm certain were filled with affection and love. Words that were often accompanied by tears and a prolonged hug between the man and woman.

One day they told me that the next morning they would be taking their dog to the vet's to be put to sleep. He was in pain, whimpering and limping, and as much as they hated it, they knew the time had come. That afternoon I went and bought a copy of the children's book, "Dog Heaven" by Cynthia Rylant and the next morning when they left for the vet's, I took the wrapped book and placed it against their front door. It's all I knew to do for them.

So why did this memory come back to me and why am I telling you about it? I don't know. Maybe just because I'm feeling over-the-top sentimental sitting here beside a small wooden box that holds the ashes of one of my best friends. I'm a mush-ball when it comes to those I love (furry or furless) and I accept that about myself. You should too or face the inevitable fact that at times reading my blog will make you a tad queasy. Chill and deal peeps, chill and deal.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow, when the copy of "Cat Heaven" I ordered will be arrived to my front door.

The Magic Elixir

I went to the podiatrist's office to seek professional help with the ongoing saga of the Evil Twins which I'm hoping to resolve before getting too far into my training schedule. After looking at my feet and confirming that the Twins are indeed acting up as a result of nail fungus, he offered me four treatment options.

Option 1: The nails could be removed (oh now, that sounds fun!) however there's every chance the fungus would return. Nix that.

Option 2: The oral medication Lamisil could be prescribed however a side effect can be liver damage so monthly blood tests would be required and there's only a 40% success rate. I'm gonna say "no thanks."

Option 3: Penlac Nail Lacquer, the first FDA-approved topical treatment for nail fungus could be applied but again the success rate isn't that high and the cost is 300.00 for an extended treatment. Better but try again Doc.

Option 4: A nightly application of Vicks VapoRub. This home remedy is affordable, pain-free, liver-friendly, and if you check around the internet, apparently highly effective. So it's off to Long's Drug Store for me.

In My Other Life

Remember when you'd stay home from school because you were sick (or had successfully frayed illness to avoid going to school) and upon returning to school you presented a note to your teacher signed by your mom explaining your absence? Consider this my note, unsigned by my mom, for why I've been absent from blogging for the past week.

I was working. It's true. I work. It's hard to conceive of how I'm squeeze a job into my rigorous schedule of "Gray's Anatomy" and personal training sessions but there you have it, I work, when push comes to shove that is. My official title is the Programming Director for the Center in Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry (CLGS) at PSR in Berkeley and the Co-Director of the Bay Area Coalition of Welcoming Congregations (CWC). And yes, that all fits on one business card which is no problem as long as you can read point 3 font size or your business card is produced on 8.5 x 11-inch card stock. My other unofficial, non-business-card-reflective job title is that of Audio-Visual Girl and Caterer and this weekend I wore my caterer's cap at a conference focused on transgender issues and religion that was attended by 60 transgender leaders in religion and in the nation. Preparing five separate meals (one reception, two breakfasts, two lunches, assorted snack breaks) required one week that included: 72 hard-boiled eggs, 50 grilled chicken breasts, 30 bags of garbage, 12 bags of ice, 8 gallons of tomato basil cream soup, 5 full carloads of food and equipment, 4 trips to Costco, 3 continuously emptying coffee pots, 2 pounds of triple-cream brie and 1 sore and weary Phatgirl. It was an incredible amount of work but the participants were all so appreciative of every little thing I did that it made it all a pleasure, however I learned a valuable numeric lesson in the process. Two 16-hour work days and one 50-year old Phatgirl are incompatible. You would think that after several months of core-training and cardio nearly every day of the week a few days of hard physical work wouldn't leave me feeling like a 4 ton truck had driven over my body but if you would have thought that, you'd be soooooo wrong. Whimper, whimper.

Four Days Til' Friday

Friday is the official start of Phatgirl's return to training with a 2 mile walk scheduled, and then it's training walks four times a week, and core-training/cross-training three times a week. My plan is to follow the Marathon for Mortals training schedule so that I'm up and running walking in time for the April 29 half-marathon in Eugene, Oregon. I still have the option of doing the full-marathon but honestly, it would be a real time crunch and I'm not all that invested in all those long-distance training walks so soon. Besides, I honestly have one full-marathon goal and that will be my second attempt at the Portland Marathon in October. I have to try that one more time and so I shall. Those two events plus the Napa to Sonoma half-marathon in July are my only planned events for the year and the latter may be forfeited for a potential two week trip to Greece. Been there, done that, want to do it again.

My other intention around marathoning is to volunteer at several events this year because I want to be one of those wonderful people who stand on the side-lines, hand you water and tell you how courageous and amazing you are. I want to be there long after the fastest runners have zipped by to cheer on those who are hobbling more than running, and stumbling more than walking to say "You can do it. You've come this far already. You're doing what others only dream of doing." Those are the words that bring tears to your eyes when you're out there on the pavement nursing fantasties about giving up and feeling discouraged because it's not going the way you thought it would. Even in my pathetically short marathoning career of one completed half-marathon and one attempted full-marathon, I know how important those volunteers are and I wouldn't at all mind paying it forward a time or two this year.

Today holds another step forward in preparing for training. A visit to the podiatist's to have a direct confrontation with the Evil Twins, particularly Leftie, he being the toe on my left foot riding shotgun to Big Toe. This runt has caused me nothing but trouble since last January when he emerged after a six mile walk. I don't know what miffed him off originally but ever since then he's taken every opportunity to be a nuisance and today I say "Enough!" I'm all for having his nasty little nail yanked clean out of the nail bed if that's what it takes. Okay, I'm willing given enough drugs that is. I didn't mean to go overboard and sound like a big brave dyke when the reality is I'm just a big baby whinypants. So much for bravado.

The Kindness of Blogger Buddies

This is just a short and sweet blog note to shout out a heart-felt thank you to those of you kind people who took a moment from your lives to offer a kind word at the loss of our favorite furry friend. There have definitely been tears around our house this past week and Annie, our other cat has resigned herself to the fact that for the time-being she's going to have to endure excessive hugging and holding in our desperate need for kitty consolation. She's our official grief counselor. Isn't it amazing how much love and fun and comfort such tiny little creatures can bring into our lives?

And finally, in tribute to my sweet kittencat, here's a rather humiliating video I made of her a couple years ago with mi amor. The humiliation isn't attributed to Tweety since all she's doing is minding her own business and politely tolerating her annoying human, who in a goofy moment is talking babytalkese, thus the humiliation factor.

My only disclaimer to what you are about to see is that Tweety did in fact have brains. She had smarts and plenty of them, proven in her firm grasp of the English language as her second language. Everytime I called her name, she came running. Everytime I said "Tuna" she looked at me with eyes filled with hopeful anticipation. And so the "no brains" comment in the film is just playful teasing. Tweety and I were like that. We teased and played jokes on each other. I'd say "you got no brains" and we'd laugh and laugh. She'd cough up a furball in the middle of the night somewhere on my usual three in the morning journey from bed to bathroom and she'd laugh and laugh. What a jokester.

Mourning Morning

Life is sad around the Phatgirl home this morning. We only had Tweety home for a few hours yesterday before she died on my lap on the way to the Emergency Clinic late last night. This morning we miss calling her name and having her lumber through the bedroom door to get her five fingertips of coffee. We miss being pawed awake and getting squished under the weight of 18 pounds of pure cat sweetness piddy-paddying over us. She was Phatgirl's phatcat, a beautiful cat, a goofy cat, and one of my most faithful and loyal friends for the best nine years. It's a wonder how something so small can bring a person so much joy and comfort when all they ask in return is a bowl of water, a little food, and a scratch under the chin every so often. And your heart. They require all the love your heart can spare and Tweety most definitely had that. She always will.