Where I step back & realize I’ve disappeared

So, wow. Um, hi! I guess it’s been a little while. The absence? Well, it wasn’t entirely a conscious one. You see, every day, there’s a little thought in the back of my head where I’m hoping to write a blog post — but, in the past year, I guess, that little thought has never germinated beyond being “gee, I wonder if I’ll actually get to post today.”

And then months, and then more months, go by.

So, let’s see, what’s happened since I last left ya’ll:

• My kids are still around. I think. Maybe. Probably. I mean, there is firm evidence, in that cookies & ice cream disappear from my house, that I have children. I’m sure of it¹
• The family went to the beach – I can neither confirm nor deny reports of sunrise, nude yoga on the beach. I happily confess to eating tremendous amounts of Island Creamery ice cream. Somehow, for the first year, I didn’t sunburn myself to the point where I feared taking a shower.
• I switched jobs – still doing mostly the same stuff – I define work as “computer stuff” when my kids ask me what I do when I go to work.
• I’ve maintained my My Fitness Pal streak, going on for five years now. And I’m still as honest with things as I was when I started. I started at 256 pounds in 2013, I’ve been between 178 and 206 since 2014. I’m 191 right now & I can honestly say that I don’t overly stress about maintenance like I once did.
• I ran three marathons:
  • September, I completed the Maritime Marathon in Nova Scotia, Canada. The previous year, I had run the half-marathon. While going to another country and running a half-marathon is something to brag about – I couldn’t shake the feeling that, as I ended that race, I had more in me. Did I have another half-marathon in me? That I don’t know . . . but I felt that I had *more*. So as the race started to fill up, I looked at the airline prices & saw that they were unusually reasonable, and I booked myself into the race. I ran what I believe must be the most beautiful marathon course in the world. And I *finally* broke the four hour landmark time, in my tenth marathon attempt.
  • November, I re-ran the New York Marathon. I can talk about this in detail, but I did that the first time I ran it. This time? I actually slipped on a banana peel. We were somewhere between mile 25 and 26, getting close to the end. All race, there had been a slight drizzle. I knew I was close, and I knew I had passed all of the danger-spots which would keep me from repeating a sub-four-hour follow-up. And I slipped on a banana peel. Now, it wasn’t enough to actually take me down. And I did finish (about 30 seconds slower than the prior marathon finish). But I always thought that banana peels were only slippery in Mario Cart. But a peel on wet pavement? Whee!
  • December, I ran the Rehoboth Marathon – my mom’s best friend lives in Rehoboth, and every year, we’d spend a significant portion of our summer vacation here, so it was kind of fun to visit all grown up. On this super-flat course, on a beautiful day, I bested my previous best by over 5 minutes (well, it might be 10 minutes, see, there was a little side track with runner trots at mile 16….do I take the offical time, or do I take the watch time, where things were paused as I dealt with nature?).
• Got a new dog – her name is Blondie and she walks on three legs. She poops more than the kids. And she cannot see someone cuddled on a bed/chair/sofa with a blanket and not jump up and have her own cuddle pile.
• Christmas Happened. When you have kids, it really is a miracle to see just how much stuff you can get into your house. Apparently, my kids ended up on the good list this year.
• Duffy & I celebrated our 14th anniversary — no grand gestures this year – just a quiet night with a mountain of sushi. It was just about perfect.
• I turned 40. /throws confetti.
• I’ve been playing a LOT of music — it’s almost to the point where I think I’m actually a pretty good bass player. Sometimes.

I’m hoping to not be a stranger around these parts – but, well, you never know what might come. That said, as the weather starts to warm up, I’m going to figure out a way to get myself running again (it’s been so cold that I haven’t even been walking the dogs – but the new job is in a stone’s throw of Wildwood Park, which is where the wheels fell off on my first ever marathon run. The park isn’t part of the Harrisburg Marathon route these days, but, despite the hills & memories of exhaustion, I get a little nostalgic when I run it). I’ll still be listening to Audio Books as I run (I actually think that may be my next regular thing – #FridayReads, where I detail the book I’m listening to — I work better when I hold myself to a regular schedule). I think I’m *FINALLY* over this cold which has been plaguing me, and with that,
progress toward doing a single, goddamn muscle-up will continue. There may be some long-form fiction that I want to write . . . I know there’s a novel in me, so maybe if I post here, more often, I’ll just write more often? And the musical – I need to work on that, too.

Anyway, thanks for reading – really hope to be back here more often.