The sky was large and in charge all week long, with gorgeous sunrises and sunsets, and a variety of colors and clouds during the day. My posterior tibialis tendinitis was also a big factor. I hit the PT hard all week and started feeling pretty good. With sky-high hopes, I ran on Friday to reward myself annnnd... re-learned that tendinitis doesn't go away in one week.
Journal excerpts, interspersed with pictures:
We had an "off week" wherein we had zero cross country meets. Yesterday was our first meet-free Saturday in five weeks! I was expecting to get more done around the house and yard and feel more rested by the end of the week and then do more yardwork on Saturday, but instead I barely managed the minimum functional at-home-work and felt tired all week. Why did our off week feel like more of an off week than a rest week? When I was puzzling over this question, it occurred to me that I forgot to account for the attrition of the past five busy weeks. So instead of a catch-up and get-ahead week, it ended up being a rest and recover week...with 11 hours coaching at six cross country practices for Jeff and me, a full week of teaching for Jeff, and a full week of early morning seminary for Jay and Rose, with an orchestra concert and youth activities in the mix too. Hmmm the illusion of a rest week is fading away...
My parents flew in for a weekend visit to watch Jay, Rose, and Amber race at the Max Jensen Cross Country Invitational on Saturday, October 10th. Just now, as I started writing, I realized that that this was the last cross country meet where all three of my kids ran a race at the same meet. Woah. We all tried to make the most of the day: enjoying our visitors while doing business as usual at a cross country meet.
Each day this week had one Main Project that took most of my day. Monday was Rose Day: she had her first iron infusion and we also picked up her one year supply of contact lenses from the eye doctor. Tuesday was Mow Everything Day wherein I mowed 3+ acres in about 3.5 brutal bouncy hours. Wednesday was Fingerprinting Day for me, another step in the surprisingly complicated process of becoming a substitute teacher (my motivation wanes the longer the certification process drags on). Thursday was the cross country meet at The Gorge Amphitheatre, requiring me to leave my house by 10:15am to help get everything ready. Friday was Housecleaning Catch-up Day, since it was the first day I had time to clean all week. And Saturday was another cross country meet: the Max Jensen Invitational in Richland. Whew! As usual, lots of other things happened in and around these big daily projects, which filled the week to bursting!
Last Sunday evening (Sept 27th), Grampa Dan brought his two dogs over to visit. Amber threw a tennis ball for them and our puppies watched the bigger dogs play fetch. It was a rather idyllic backyard scene with the sunset melting in the background:
On Saturday, September 26th, Jeff and I took our varsity cross country runners to Spokane, WA to the Nike Bob Firman Invitational. The meet was held on The Course, a brand new this year purpose-built cross country course in scenic Spokane Valley. That means this course is ONLY a cross country course. It is not at a park that is used for other sports. It is not in playing fields full of divots from cleats and pivots. It's not even a golf course. It is a wide path of velvety grass that was planted and cultivated especially for running. It was the smoothest natural grown grass that I have ever experienced. The smoothness was noticeable even in the short time my feet were on the course-- I only jogged across the course a few times while watching the races. The Course just barely opened up in the past year, and this was our first time there!
We heard back from Nissan! When the factory recall procedure bricked and ruined Jeff's electric car six weeks ago, Nissan promised to pay us Kelley Blue Book value plus 40% to replace the car. Jeff estimated it would be about $14,000, which was not quite enough for an electric car with more than 120 miles of range, but still better than nothing. The replacement car he bought was $20,000. Once Nissan's payment came through, it would take us another uncomfortable year to pay off that last $6k, when we had just finished paying off the original car a few weeks before it was ruined! It was such an annoying financial setback, but what could we do? All month it was in the back of my mind, wondering how we would save any money over the next year while paying for such an expensive car. Nissan took its sweet time getting all of the information and paperwork together, and this week, nearly six weeks after the car died, they finally told us the amount they deemed sufficient to replace it. In a rare twist of fate, the replacement payout was more than we expected! On Friday, Jeff texted me one number with no explanation:
We are in the dog days of cross country season: putting in the work over and over and over. Yesterday we traveled nearly 4 hours by school bus to the Tacoma area for the Fort Steilacoom Invitational. This coming Thursday, we will be hosting a league meet on our home course. Two days later on the following Saturday, we are traveling 3 hours to Spokane for another big cross country meet. It's not the 17 hour days or the crowded busy meets that get me; it's those endless skeleton-wrecking hours jolting along in the school bus. I need to start doing yoga again or something!
We hosted our home cross country meet, The 4th Annual Sunburn Cross Country Invitational, on Saturday, September 12th. As usual, it was a lot of work! But at the end of the day, Jeff and I looked at each other and agreed that it all went smoothly--usually we have at least one big snag, but we didn't this year! Come to think of it, maybe this year's snag happened the day before the meet while we were measuring the course. We had a list of distances between landmarks on the course from last year, so we walked the measuring wheel between each landmark to make sure it was accurate. The numbers were not adding up! We were so confused, because we have hosted meets at this course four times (the annual Sunburn Invite meet three times, plus one league meet) and the distance has always been perfect. Why was it different this time??
Jay is a high school senior, and I am trying to keep up with all of the necessary traditions. I used to take pictures of my little kids with a real camera all the time. It was a self-taught hobby that reached a natural conclusion when the kids got older and weren't home as much. Since we still have the big Pentax K-5 DSLR camera that we bought on eBay 15 years ago, I decided to dust off my photography skills to take some senior pictures of our boy. First I did some online research to find some good photo poses for boys. Then I asked my sister Em (the professional photographer) for advice.
All of a sudden, we have two dogs! They showed up in our yard a week ago and we couldn't resist. They adopted us, so we adopted them. Nobody has claimed them, so we are keeping them. We didn't really have plans to get pets, but we have always told Amber that if another stray came along, we would feed it. These puppies are more than just gross traumatized strays; they are sweet energetic trusting youngsters who need a family. Sooooo we named them Sherlock and Watson and started feeding them everyday.
After a six year break from fundraising, we brought back the Grizzlython this year --our high school cross country team fundraiser-- and made it into a 24 hour relay, because why not start the grueling school year as sleep deprived and exhausted as possible?
I loved visiting SVU so much back in June that I went again last week! Actually, my friend's daughter Kennedy is interested in attending SVU. While Kennedy and I were talking after a cross country run one day in July, I offered to go visit SVU with her if she needed a companion. Her parents (also my friends) ended up taking me up on my offer, and they booked me and Kennedy plane tickets! Less than a month later, on August 19th, Kennedy and I were flying to Virginia together to see SVU! I have coached Kennedy for cross country and track ever since her 8th grade track season, so we know each other pretty well. I felt honored that her parents trusted me to take her across the country! We had so much fun on our girls trip, exploring, running, hiking, eating ice cream, and lots of good long talks. I loved showing Kennedy one of my favorite places in the world!
The end of the summer has begun. It doesn't happen all at once because Jeff goes back to work as a teacher a week before the kids go back to school as students. First, Jeff goes back to work. Then, fall sports practices begin. Then comes the first day of school. Basically, the end of the summer begins with Jeff starting work, progresses with Jeff and me both starting to coach official cross country practice, (with Jay and Rose attending as members of the team and Amber attending as daughter of the coaches), and finishes with all of the kids starting school. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't feeling all of my usual end of summer beginning of school year emotions, plus a few new ones since this will be Jay's senior year of high school.
Wildfire smoke blew into our valley on Monday, August 3rd, and would not go away. The AQI hovered in the red zone, between 150-190, for four days. Even though this has happened in the past, worse, and for longer, it is never fun, and it messed up our outdoor plans (running and yardwork). I took Tuesday off from running, and it felt nice to have a recovery day. By Wednesday, though, Jeff and I were both ready for a real run. So we hauled Jay, Rose, and Amber up to the highest mountains that are the closest to Sunnyside: Chinook Pass. Rose drove us the entire 100 miles (1 hour and 50 minutes) to the parking lot by the Pacific Crest Trail in Chinook Pass.
On the morning of the wedding (Saturday, August 1st), I went on an urban-nature fusion adventure run to Torrey Pines Preserve. At 8am I caught the city bus #30 and rode it for 45 minutes up to the base of the steepest section of Torrey Pines Road. Jeff had run that segment the day before, and I was curious what it was like. After a quick pit stop at a gas station, I started the ascent. This section of Torrey Pines Road is about 1.5 miles uphill, but it's only about a 5% grade so it was very runnable. I didn't push the pace; I just ran up. When I got to the top, I decided to follow the mental map I had created with research and continue along North Torrey Pines Road to the Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve.
Saturday, August 1st was wedding day!! I started the day with a nice long 10 mile run (that's a separate post). We were instructed to meet at Balboa Park in downtown San Diego for wedding pictures at 3pm, so we left our motel at 2:15pm to give us time for traffic and parking. Except...we couldn't get out of the motel parking lot! A large SUV had parked crooked and half out of a compact car space next to us, and a big pickup truck had parked in the space behind ours, and our rental Mazda mid size SUV did not have the requisite tiny size or turning radius to squeeze out. I had to go to the "lobby" building of the motel and wait for the guy to help us. Thankfully the owner of the badly parked SUV was in his room and was able to come out right away to move his vehicle, but the whole process still set us back at least 10 minutes.
Jeff's brother Sam got married!! We went to San Diego for it. Our original plan was make the 20 hour drive from Sunnyside, WA to San Diego, CA, but the closer it got the more I dreaded the 40+ hour round trip of driving. We were going to swoop up through Utah on the way home to check out BYU. It was going to be a whole weeklong family road trip. Jeff's health is generally good during summer break... until it's suddenly not, like when he accidentally eats anything with even a smidge of tomato, potato, or chili pepper in it. This summer Jeff has also been navigating how to hydrate sufficiently with his dysautonomia, with bouts of dizziness and migraines in the mix. If any of these carefully managed areas were to be affected while we were on the road, the potential fun of a family road trip would be OVER.
Those thoughts came to me over and over while Jeff was dealing with a flare-up a few weeks ago, prompting me to find relatively cheap plane tickets on the budget Allegiant Air to replace our road trip. When I crunched these new numbers and discovered that flying and renting a car for 3 days would actually be $1,000 cheaper than driving, I was sold. We flew, rented a car, and arrived at our motel a little after 8:30pm on Thursday, July 30th.