Balancing act

I feel like I'm balancing well these days. Sometimes my life overwhelms me...I feel like I'm doing a really good job at one of my roles but none of the others, or a passable job at most of my roles with one seriously neglected, or any variation on combinations of those.

Lately I've had time to run, kept up with my house, done my visiting teaching, read my scriptures, made cupcakes for Bee's class, taken J to all sorts of museum-y places, written on my proposal, had great talks with Ben, run a race together (well, sort of), and managed to do all of my teaching stuff on time or early.

I feel so different than I did at this point last year, when I was drowning in lists and exams and dying for a house and hating teaching because the classes were mediocre and sleep-deprived because I was nursing a baby and hating myself because I felt overweight and unattractive and angry that I couldn't help Bee work through her anger issues any faster....etc etc etc.

I'm thinking that the ebb and flow of life is a good thing, because if I didn't have years like last year (that are horrific), I wouldn't enjoy the moment I'm in right now NEARLY as much. I'm grateful for the pendulum swinging. Hope it never gets stuck in an "I hate my life" phase.

Teaching

There's not much that I love more than putting finishing touches on a lesson that I feel really good about, one that I know will keep my students interested and will teach them the material effectively.

I love food, and I love listening to my students talk about food. It's a lot of fun. It's a rare thing that I'm truly excited about teaching, even though I always enjoy and look forward to it. Tomorrow should be a good day.

Knobstone mini

I registered for this at the last minute when I found out that it uses some of the same trail as the Tecumseh marathon. I had started to seriously doubt my ability to finish the 26.2 on a trail in under their cut-ff time, so I thought I'd check it out and see how I did. This is the first trail race I've ever done. I mean, I ran cross-country in high school, but this was a whole different animal.

I'd have to say that the highlight was miles 4-7 when I ran in a little mini-pack with a girl named Heather and a guy I called 98-marathon-man (he said something about doing 98 marathons) until I met him after the race. He was a great pace-keeper, and we had some decent race chatter. I only used my iPod for the first 40 minutes or so of the race.

When I started up the hill after the 7-mile mark, I was seriously wishing for some excuse to not finish. It was a doozie, nothing like you'd expect in a "flat" Midwest state. But I survived and kept going.

There was a turn-off point at mile 10 when you could finish and just do the ten-mile race or go the last three miles to make the 1/2 marathon. I think that's cruel and unusual....mile 10 is my drop-dead point. But I kept going, and from there I had no alternative but to finish. I fell on a tight, tiny switchback at around mile 11, and then twisted my ankle pretty good someplace in the 7 minutes after that....was NOT happy at the close spacing. It was okay, though....recoverable.

They had great cookies, soup, hot chocolate, and apple cider, besides the usual water, Gatorade stuff. The kids really liked it....the hung around with some friends while Ben did the 5K, and then Ben kept them busy til I finished.

I finished in 2:16. I think I'll be able to do this marathon....maybe. :-)