Redemption

This past weekend my family and I went to New Jersey, where I was provided with the opportunity to redeem myself from the week's failed attempt at an eleven mile run. As usual, God knows what is best for me because this run was nothing less than a gift from Him.

As opposed to the miserably humid 80 degree weather I experienced earlier in the week, Saturday morning welcomed me with a cool and crisp 60 degrees. I had decided to run down to a nearby lake and the forested paths that surround it. To those of you surprised by this talk of forests, lakes, and nature, I am still talking about New Jersey. You may associate New Jersey with those images seen in the opening shots of "The Sopranos"--the Turnpike with it's picturesque factories billowing smoke out out of their immense smokestacks, the dilapidated buildings, the hustle and bustle of the cities surrounding New York. New Jersey is these things, there is no denying. But in the northwestern part of the state, only about 40 minutes away from the city, New Jersey is lakes and forests and mountains and beauty. And I was able to enjoy it's beauty early Saturday morning.

The house I was staying at sits on top of what can only be described as a small mountain, or at the very least, an extremely steep hill. In order to get to the path by the lake I had to run down this hill, knowing full well I'd be paying for it on the way up. The lake run is worth it, though, and my downward jaunt was rewarded by the sighting of two deer prancing through the woods as quietly and as gracefully as anything. Once I got to the lake I was able to run on a path that took me through the woods and past several streams, waterfalls, and smaller lakes. I adore trail running and was reminded that I actually used to mountain bike along these trails once upon a time--it was wonderful. The trek back to the top of the mountain was tough, as was to be expected, but I honestly didn't mind. I was feeling at the top of my game. The run had completely energized me and had driven away all previous thoughts of my prior failed run that week. I had been redeemed.

The weekend was redeeming in other, more important ways, as well. I had the chance to witness a family that had been plagued by tension, broken or failed relationships, and heartache reunite for the first time in a year. As difficult as it may have been, individual family members put their differences aside for the sake of the family as a whole. Sure, the weekend was not Utopian. Hiccups rose up, some that required attention, others that needed to be ignored or buried. But, for the most part, the family overcame these obstacles. They began the slow process of rebuilding: fixing that which needs some repairs, preserving that which can be salvaged from the past, and figuring out how to work with that which can not.

The redeeming events of this weekend led me to reflect on the one who gave us full redemption, Jesus Christ. Without him, we would be eaten alive by negative feelings of inadequacy, doubt, and shame. Our relationships would remain broken, with no hope of resuscitation. But, praise be to God, "for he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins" (Colossians 1: 13-14). Jesus has freed us to live our lives fully to his glory. He has empowered us to do great things in his name. So let us forgive those who have hurt us. Let us put aside our pride and try again, even though we may have failed in the past. Let us continue doing what is good, what is right, even if it is tough, for this is what we have been called to do.

We have been redeemed.

Setbacks

To the so-called running experts who recommend getting up early in order to beat the heat: running at 5:00 doesn't make it any easier, it just makes it darker. My goal this morning was to get in eleven miles before seven o'clock, which meant waking up around five (I say "around" because the snooze button will inevitably get pushed at least once, much to the chagrin of my husband. Hey, it's on there for a reason). We've been experiencing a heat wave and today promised to be a scorcher, so I figured getting up early would make the odds of me finishing this run and not turning into a puddle increase significantly. Wrong.

As I stepped outside, I was hit by 82 degree air that was the consistency of molasses, and indeed, molasses is what I felt I was running through, if you can call what I was doing "running". Generally I run with relative ease, choosing when I want to step up the intensity. Not so today. Each step was s-l-o-w and required maximum effort. Honestly, if running was always that excruciating and difficult I would be carrying hand weights and power walking. I quickly realized that eleven miles just weren't going to happen today. I was forced to do five instead, and they were the slowest five miles of my life. Feeling defeated, I returned home and went back to bed, disappointed that the sun was barely up and I had already failed to reach one of the day's goals.

Runs like today's can really mess with a runner's head. Because running is such a mental activity, these runs often do a great deal of damage to a runner's self esteem (at least they do to the fragile esteem of this novice runner). All the previous successes you've had get wiped out and replaced by a new image of yourself as this slow creature incapable of distances of any sort. It is only with your next run that you are reminded of your potential as a distance runner, and even then the failed run still remains to lurk in your mind.

Unfortunately setbacks like these can and do permeate other areas of life as well. You think your marriage is running smoothly until you hit a relational pothole the size of a small house. You are pleased with the effort you are making at work until your boss tells you she expects more. You are convinced that your child has finally learned how to play with others when he hauls off and smacks his brother in the head with a truck. And the list goes on...

Knowing that we are "destined for trials" (1 Thesalonians 3:3), why am I so caught off guard when they hit? I supposed it has a lot to do with expectations. My expectation is that, in all areas of my life, I should be growing or improving. If we were to plot an area of our life, say, our marriage, we would expect our relationship with our spouse to be linear: as time goes by, our relationship grows. All one has to do is look at the divorce rate, however, to know that this is obviously not always the case. Our marriage may fail. We may get fired. Our child may be a social misfit forever. We become slow runners as age takes its toll. Things don't always improve.

Or do they? Sometimes life is going in the direction we desire. The route we are taking, though, may not be a straight line leading to perfection but rather a jagged line with a lot of mini valleys, hills, and plateaus. When we find ourselves in one of the valleys after a setback it is sometimes easy to lose sight of the progress we've made. That is when we should reflect on the situation, evaluate it's seriousness and decide on a proper course of action.

So what do we do when life refuses to go the direction we want? Because, let's face it, things don't always work out. We all know someone whose circumstances seem so dire that we begin to question God. Why, God? Why would you let this happen? How much can one person take? Fortunately, I've never been in a situation like this, although I have had my share of difficulties, however minor, and I fully expect to see more. And, as impossible as this may seem, I am to view these troubles as opportunities to grow. Indeed, Romans 5:3-4 says, "We rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope." Rejoice. We are to rejoice when we suffer!

Now I'll be honest, I'm not rejoicing when I suffer, and I don't want to rejoice when I suffer. I wasn't all that thrilled to have fought with my husband this week, and I definitely didn't feel like celebrating after my failed run. I'm pretty sure I could do without these things. But, I have to admit that there is some comfort in knowing that these setbacks can produce some good, some growth. A friend put it like this:

If God gave us no rough roads to walk, no mountains to climb, and no battles to fight, we would not grow. He does not leave us alone with our challenges, however. Instead, he stands besides us, teaches us, and strengthens us to face them. (Brandy Clark)

Reflecting on my flopped run, I've decided to commit a verse to memory, one that I can hold on to in the face of a rough run or any tough situation, for that matter. It is:

Habakkuk 3:19 The sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights.

Help me to run like a deer, Lord. Be my strength.

Let's get muddy!

As long as habit and routine dictate the pattern of living, new patterns of the soul will not emerge. -Henry Van Dyke

Routine. I, for one, am a fierce defender of it. My boys were put on schedules from day one, Jack willingly, Ben not-so-much (but he gave in eventually). Schedules permeate my family life: we know what we are doing when we wake up, when we eat lunch, when we wake up from naps--everyone knows what to expect each day because each day looks the same as the last.

This form of living simplifies life, but admittedly gets dull rather quickly. Necessity dictates that every now and again we switch things up: last week my husband and I deviated from our typical restaurant date and tried our luck on the tennis court. A few Mondays ago my boys and I made an impromptu visit to a friend's house rather than grocery shop. And this past Saturday I participated in a run. But not just any run. A MUD run.

I was initially drawn to this particular mud run by the picture on the event's brochure. It featured a buff-looking girl crawling on her hands and knees through a waist-deep mud pit. Now I'm not usually the "let's get dirty" type. I admit to sometimes struggling with letting my boys go outside because of the inevitable dirt they are going to accumulate on every inch of their bodies. And I abhor dirty feet. So ordinarily this type of thing wouldn't appeal to me. But something about that picture made me think that this wasn't your typical run. And I was in a running slump, which happens (at least it does to me) when you do the same thing long enough.

Running isn't exactly what I'd call an "exciting" sport, if, indeed, you are to label it a sport. Sure, you can run different distances, or try varying your pace, or look for different landscapes or routes in which to jog, but essentially you are doing the same thing: running. That's why runners sign up for races, because races offer some excitement. The collective adrenaline and nerves while everyone waits for the race to start...the varying emotion on people's faces as they strain to go just one mile longer...exhilarating. But when you sign up for a race it involves training, which brings you back to the same. old. thing. again....running.

But, like I said, this run looked different. The brochure described the event as a "five mile run featuring various obstacles...water pits, sand traps, rivers, and mud". Five miles is a distance I can easily do, so I needn't train for that. And I wasn't about to turn my back yard into an obstacle course (although my boys might actually enjoy something like that). Plus, I managed to convince four other girls to run it as a team, only by promising that we would do it for fun only and not for time, which released me from the usual pressure I put on myself to run as fast as I can without puking. This would be the first race I didn't have to train for, and that was liberating.

Well, the mud run turned out to be more of a sand run--the course was probably three-quarters sand, which does not make for easy running. It did, however, feature a river and a climbing wall (albeit a small one). There were hills of sand to climb and trails to pass through. There were plenty of water pits, and, yes, there was a huge mud pit at the very end in which you got IMMERSED in mud that was the consistency of pudding, if pudding had small pebbles in it. We went at a pretty relaxed pace, which made the run seem casual and allowed for conversation. I think all of us were pretty excited to have done something that we had never done before.

And now it's time for the part where I compare running to life and my few readers groan and probably go back to Facebook, because at least Facebook doesn't throw running analogies at you. But come on, who out there can honestly say that they don't suffer from the occassional slump? No matter how good we have it, we all experience moments when the monotony and routine of life just pulls us down and we wonder why. Why do we do it? And how are we going to continue to do it for another x number of years?

It is during these times when we need to do find a mud run. Now your mud run may look different than mine. It may be a trip to the movie theatre by yourself on a Wednesday night or an unplanned visit to see an old friend. It may be a last minute mini-vacation to a neighboring state. It may be completely clean with no mud at all. But we all need to mix it up sometimes by doing something different. It doesn't have to be something big or drastic, it just has to be something that we wouldn't ordinarily do. Something that awakens our souls and makes life fresh again.

Life is good, even if it doesn't always excite us. The ordinary isn't bad and routine is nothing to fear, unless it dictates all action and makes deviation from the norm impossible. So with that being said, let's get muddy! (don't worry, pictures to follow!)

Ode to Homer Simpson

I've been a casual Simpson's fan from it's conception back in the late 80s. Being a square straight-A's Lutheran girl, I was initially drawn to bad boy Bart's impudence and lack of respect for all authority (did he really just tell his teacher to eat his shorts?!). I don't watch the show as frequently these days, but during those occasions when I catch it I find my devotion has been diverted to another character--this time to Homer.

Just what is it about the bald-headed, pot-bellied, simpleton Homer that catches my eye? His obsession with donuts...aggghhh. Yes, it is his devotion to all things sweet that resonates with me, for I, too, am a sugar-haulic.

Today my drug of choice came in the form of Nerds and Laffy Taffy. This week I made the egregious error of buying a large bag of this type of candy to keep in the car for bribing Jack. (Go ahead, judge if you want. This is not a blog about good parenting, after all, and it works). Now this was poor judgement on my part for various reasons, the main one being that, due to an extreme lack of self-control, I have been using the sugary stuff to cope with what can only be described as a week to forget.

Now I know that there is nothing redeemable about this food (if that is an accurate term for something that is fluorescent red and yellow and tastes like bananas from a can). It is pure sugary junk and does horrible things to my body's glucose levels, has high teeth-rotting potential, and makes me feel like flopping down on my couch and watching tv (see "Simpson, Homer").

Lately I've been wondering how cutting out refined sugar from my diet would affect me--my workouts, my energy levels, my moods. In Ultramarathon Man, (a book I would not recommend unless you are interested in reading a poorly written autobiography about a man with an extremely high estimation of himself) the author talks about how he was forced to cut all white sugar and simple carbs from his diet in order to train for his 100+ mile runs. Now I consider myself a reasonable person so obviously I would never do something that extreme (I am talking about cutting out all sugar, but the running 100 miles seems a bit insane to me as well). It would be, however, an interesting experiment to try: would the gains made in energy and performance outweigh the sacrifices made in taste? Not sure if I'm willing to try this...yet.

Dietary reasons aside, though, I have been thinking a lot about my relationship with food. Our culture has an intense love/hate relationship with food. We use it in occasions of celebration and mourning. We make it the center of social gatherings, but we also often find ourselves eating alone. We laud food for the joy it brings, while cursing it the next morning when we are unhappy with the number on the scale or that empty pint of Ben and Jerry's, as will be the case tomorrow (it was worth it!!!). It is the body's source of energy, yet it can kill us if we consume the wrong things. On the whole, the way we think about food can be complex and confusing.

This doesn't resonate more clearly with anyone than it does with me. Food is something I've struggled with in some form or another for as long as I can remember. I've had something referred to as "disordered eating", and while God has helped me through that, there still remains something abnormal in the way I eat. This week is a perfect example: between Boy #2's teeth, Boy #1's cold, and Kevin's grad school, I just about went insane. My usual stress relievers--working out, time to myself--were encroached upon by uncooperative children and I found myself at my wits end. So, to whom did I turn? Nerds. Laffy Taffy. Candy. I turned to candy and I ate to my heart's content and my stomach's discontent.

There are many problems with this, but the main one is that I turned to food during a time of stress when I have a resource, a stress reliever, a source of comfort like no other. The God of the Universe wants nothing more than for me to call upon Him in my day of trouble. He is omnipotent and promises to deliver me. I believe this, yet when things get tough, I find that my functional savior turns out to be lumps of oddly-shaped sugar that will do nothing but rot my teeth and add pounds to my hips.

I want to eat healthy. I want to feel good about myself physically. But more than anything, I want to tap into the power of my Redeemer. I want to call on Him in every season, good, bad, or indifferent. I want to live as though every bite of food I put into my mouth should be done in communion with him, as though we are dining together. This is possible. I just have to turn away from my measly gods (and they are gods, if I am honest with myself) and turn completely to Him.

So sorry, Homer. I envy your ways, sure. Who wouldn't want to eat a box of donuts before lunchtime? But your donuts have got nothing on my Lord.

Disappointment. (For Lisa)

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
-Henry David Thorough

Disappointment This week has been fraught with it. There has been the disappointment I've felt in Virginia and it's unrelenting heat. I'm so over the 100+ degree days I could scream. Seriously, summer, we get it. You're hot. Can we move on now? It sounds melodramatic, but I feel like the heat's affected almost every area of my life--I can't take the dog and the kids for a walk without putting all of us at risk of heat stroke, I can only enjoy our new screened-in porch by gazing at it from inside my house, I've been extremely irritable and impatient with my kids, and I'm L-A-Z-Y. The heat has zapped my motivation, which means no early morning workouts, which means working out later on in the day, which means not running or swimming or biking, which means a lower quality workout, all which translates into another form of disappointment--the disappointment I feel in myself.

Fortunately, last night I was blessed to have found something to serve as a scapegoat for my disappointment. Actually, it was a place--a restaurant I will call Shoe, or the restaurant formerly known as The Shoe, so as not to give away it's real name. Shoe is a local restaurant in a trendy area of town with a laudable goal: to "explore and preserve our fine Virginia heritage food-ways". Meaning, I suppose, it tries to buy locally grown food when it can and changes it's menu to correspond with the seasonal harvest. I can definitely support this. I enjoy jumping on bandwagons, as Shoe has done with the localvore movement (or, in our server's words, "the slow-growth movement"). So my husband and I, along with two dear friends of ours, decided to give their fare a try.

Unfortunately, Shoe is going to have a difficult time convincing anyone to eat local with food items such as they served last night. The biggest travesty they committed was in their calamari. A little known fact about my husband is that he LOVES calamari and likes to order it at most every new restaurant at which we eat. I'm sure if The McDonald's offered calamari as a new item on their dollar menu he would give it a try. Thus, seeing it on Shoe's menu as an appetizer, we decided to order it.

Bad idea. The server brought out the calamari. There were four of them. As in, four pieces. For those of you who have never ordered this delight, most places serve calamari much like french fries. There are a bunch of them and they are fried. Squeeze some lemon on them and muaw--delicious. So to see four pieces of grilled squid come out was a little--wait for it--disappointing. The squid had been cut up and stuffed with what the menu claimed was "shrimp, orange, black olives, basil, and zucchini". What the cooks REALLY stuffed in there was onions, onions, and some more onions with a side of mandarin oranges from a can. We all were game for trying it, though, as this was an $11 appetizer. As you can imagine, no one at our table was even the slightest bit impressed. The squid itself was rubbery and tough to chew. The stuffing was all onions, which I, for one, do not even like. As for the shrimp...well, if it had managed to find a spot in there amongst all those onions, I couldn't taste it. Nor had I the opportunity, as when you are eating one little piece of squid the size of your thumb you don't really have a chance to savor its flavors.

The entrees? I'm afraid they were a disappointment too. Jonathan's potatoes were cold, Kevin's lasagna was burnt, and our pasta (Lisa and I ordered the same thing)--which the waitress told us was far and away the best pasta dish being served--was, well, disgusting. And perhaps we should have guessed this, as we ordered black fettuccine. Come to find out that they use squid dye to give the fettuccine its color, which may make the pasta "a little saltier" than that which we are accustomed to. A little saltier and a great deal less edible, in my opinion. Yuck. Needless to say, we won't be eating at Shoe again. As far as I'm concerned, Shoe deserves The Boot (o; (this is an inside joke for those of you who are wondering what is wrong with me).

Fortunately, there is a silver lining to my week of disappointment. So I didn't work out first thing in the morning. I have just come off a two week vacation. I am ok with giving myself a grace period to readjust to normal life. At least I didn't waste my time taking a post-workout shower in the morning, only to step outside and immediately be drenched with sweat. Next week will be better (at least for working out). And although our dinner was yuck, I thoroughly enjoyed the company of our friends last night, as I think we all did. The nasty cuisine only made for more jokes. And because no one enjoyed their meals, no one ate very much, and we all felt entitled to get some ice cream following dinner. So I got to dine on a large bowl of Cold Stone guilt free. How's that for compensation, Henry David?

Now, reading this post you may be disappointed that it has almost nothing to do with the rest of my blog. Maybe you are right to feel that way. Or maybe you can view it as a form of solidarity--not only are you reading about my experiences with disappointment, you are experiencing a form of it yourself. We now have that in common. You see? I'm just doing my part to bring us closer together. You're welcome.

Tri time!

I just realized it's been almost two weeks since the big day (my triathlon) and I've yet to blog about it! In my post-race excitement, I've been too caught up in searching for future tri's to reflect on my inaugural race. Obviously, this means the triathlon went well, but this blog would be incomplete if I didn't at least touch on my first tri, the Stevens Point Lactic Edge Sprint Triathlon (how official sounding!).

Let me begin by saying that there's a lot more prep work for a triathlon than for a running event. The eve of the triathlon found me scrambling to get together all the equipment needed for this deceptively simple event. The swim required a cap and goggles. I needed a towel to dry off following the swim, and I needed shoes and socks following that. I had to make sure my bike was ready and that my helmet fit. And I couldn't forget my running visor or my stopwatch. And I am an amateur, which is to say that I don't use a wet suit for the swim, or special bike shoes which I would have to change in order to strap on my running shoes. All the prepping didn't help my nerves, but fortunately I had everything I needed come race time.

My dad and I drove the half hour to the park in Point where the event was taking place. I was immediately struck by how small the crowd was: there were maybe 250 or so people taking part and another handful volunteering or spectating. The other thing that jumped out at me was the lack of hybrid bikes people were unloading from their cars. Now I had expected to be one of the few with a non-road bike but I didn't see ANY hybrids, which caused me to panic. As this was my first triathlon and I didn't know what to expect, I had set the goal for myself to not stick out, meaning, don't do anything embarrassing! Finishing dead last because I had a bike that resembled the one on The Wizard of Oz was not going to help me keep my goal. Fortunately, I found myself next to an easy-going guy my age who walked me through the events. He had a road bike, albeit a very old one (think 1970s Schwinn) and was a first timer as well, which helped me relax.

After waiting an obscenely long time, during which I must have checked my gear and gone to the bathroom at least seven times, the race started with the 500 yard swim that took place in a dirty-looking river (I am not exaggerating when I say that I had a lot of green gook in my shirt post race). Entering the race I was pretty confident with my stroke, but when I actually got out in the open water with all the other frantic swimmers, my nerves--and the other swimmers' elbows, legs and feet--got the best of me and I panicked, causing me to loose my breath. I did make it, though, albeit slowly, and didn't have to be rescued by one of the folks on the long boards, which counts as not sticking out. Yay for meeting my goal in the first leg of the race!

Next it was on to the bike. The 17 miles took us through the back roads of Stevens Point, which are brown and boring. There was very little to see, but it was beautiful. Why? There were no red lights to wait for, no intersections to stop for, no cars to move over for, and no obnoxious drivers yelling out the window for me to get off the road. I could bike without fear. I was slow, but I loved the ride and felt great throughout it's duration. (And I did not come in last. A win.)

The last leg of the tri was a 3.1 mile run. This was really the only portion of the race in which I felt confident. Initially my legs rebelled at running after biking for an hour, but I've run for much longer distances before so they eventually gave in and shoved on.

And that was it! I finished! And didn't do anything too embarrassing. Overall, I loved the triathlon, but while participating a few thoughts came to mind that surprised me. First, I was shocked to feel so...isolated. Obviously you are not talking to anyone during the swim portion. The bike portion really separated individuals from each other, so that I occasionally forgot that I was in a competition. I found myself yearning for the type of conversation you hear during running events, about how crazy we all are for doing this, or how hard it is or where the next water station is. There's a connection between runners, albeit unspoken, in the body contact and even in the small talk you hear between people. This tri had none of that and it surprised me how much I missed it.

Secondly, and this is by far the bigger issue for me, raw talent and training can only get you so far in triathlons. If you do not have the proper gear (read: "bike") you will not be competitive. I haven't looked into the cost of a road bike, but I know the good ones are a few thousand dollars, an amount which I am not willing to dole out on a bike for myself quite yet. And so I pedal my mountain bike, going nowhere and getting passed by everyone. This was fine for my first race, acceptable even, but I know myself and I know that in future races I will not be quite so cavalier about it. It really made me appreciate running. All you need are a pair of shoes (not even that if you come from other countries) and you are as apt to perform well as anyone else.

Despite these pitfalls, I loved my first triathlon. [Oh, I should mention that my dad was not able to compete due to an injury that set him back (he is on pace to compete in the Waupaca tri come August), but he was my number one fan and I loved having him there to share in my excitement.] The excitement still lingers, and I definitely plan on doing one again, although there is some work to be done between now and then (for starters, I need to learn how to swim. A road bike would be nice, too). And I must now make the decision on whether to train for another tri or for the OBX marathon in November. Oh how I love choices like these!

When life gives you lemons...

I have an informal list running continuously in my head that consists of the reasons I enjoy living in Hampton Roads. Although the list is something I forced myself to compile, I try to dwell on it frequently, as thinking about Virginia's good points helps me to have a positive attitude toward my circumstances, something I struggle with occasionally. My reasoning is that we aren't leaving the area any time soon, so I might as well embrace it.

Lately, however, the list has been receding to the background as I find more and more faults with the area. The most prominent fault as of late? Jellyfish. Just when I became comfortable swimming in the bay and embraced that body of water as a convenient alternative to my pool, out of nowhere I get attacked by one of those horrid creatures.

Jellyfish are something I have never given much thought to. I've seen the strange gelatinous creatures wash up on the shore in the past, their transparent membranes plastered to the sand, rendering them seemingly innocuous. But do not be deceived by their heavenly beauty. From my scant research, these predators will search you out with whatever primitive sensors are available to them. And when they do, any part of their tentacle that touches you leaves a toxin that feels the equivalent of 1,000 bee stings.

My initial reaction to the sting was panic. I instinctively reached for my leg to pull it off, which proved to be a mistake as the diablo just stung my hand and arm as well. With a yelp, I ran onto the beach, screaming to Kevin, "I've been stung by a jellyfish!" over and over. A few feet away a lounging beach couple took that as their cue to come over and strike up a conversation whose topics ranged from the jellyfish sting the guy received the previous day to our adorable boys to where we originated from. Now, ordinarily I am a fan of meeting random people on the beach, but this was hardly the time. I was in PAIN. I was also being actively pursued by a gigantic horsefly who had decided to lunch on my leg. The sight of my now bloodied leg proved to be the straw that broke the camel's back, and I hastily made my retreat from both my family and the well-meaning couple with the poor timing. I jumped on my bike and headed for home, where I learned that the best remedy for treating stings is NOT to pee on yourself but to cover yourself with a vinegar-baking soda paste and let that sit for five minutes. (good to know, as it seems much more reasonable and far less disgusting to carry these things in your beach bag than a bottle of urine).

As I rode home I'll admit that I found myself crying. The tears were not so much from the pain-- although believe me, they very well could have been--as from a feeling of betrayal. Betrayal from what I'm not sure. The bay would be a likely candidate. I've been faithfully swimming in that unfamiliar body of water with the hope that I would grow to embrace it, or at the very least to tolerate it, and I felt like I was making progress. With this sting, though, I've been set back quite a bit. I figure it just as easily could have been my two year old getting stung, a lively little boy who ADORES water, waves, and sand. An event like that would have scarred him, much like it did me.

As much as I want to blame the bay for all my woes, I am discovering--or rather, admitting--that overall I am just not at home in this place. The busy roads that qualify biking as an extreme sport, the monotonous concrete blocks, the salt water and stinking jellyfish--it is not my ideal. Of course, I may be overly nostalgic as I'm writing this from my beloved state of Wisconsin in my beloved (I can't believe I just said that) hometown. I've been here for close to two weeks and have been running daily on wooded paths, biking on trails and friendly roads, and swimming in fresh and jellyfish-less waters. I am drinking in the slow-paced life that this place offers and yearning for it, not just because it suits me so perfectly, but because it suits family life so well. Sharing some of the places most precious to me with my boys has been close to a dream come true. Sadly, those places just don't exist for me in Virginia.

One thing Virginia does have, however, is jobs, so there we remain. I hate admitting it, but I've resigned myself to that fact and I feel defeated by it. Hopefully this thing with the jellyfish is just a small battle lost in the war to change my attitude toward Hampton Roads. Right now at this moment, though, it sure feels like I've surrendered the war.