The original idea was to run a half in my town. I’m not much of a runner in the everyday sense of the word. The road doesn’t call to me. I never feel the desire to lace up my shoes and go for a run. Honestly, I only took up running as part of my weight loss journey. But I do love organized runs. I like being in the group at the starting corrals as everyone stretches, sets their watches, etc. I love the sound of my feet and hundreds (or even thousands) of others hitting the pavement. I love to read people’s t-shirts and to see crowds cheering on the runners. Mostly though, I love the finisher’s medal. Something tangible that says I just ran 13.1 miles.

So this last weekend I ran the Austin 3M Half Marathon. It was a cold start – 26 degrees with the wind chill. My fingers and nose may never forgive me for the pain of that first mile as my body heated up from the workout.

Just over 6,000 other people had the same idea I did. Once I got running though, I felt far worse for the spectators. They had to be freezing. At least I had my body heat to keep me warm.

I was very out of shape but I finished in a decent time and I felt good about getting my year off to a healthy start.

But mostly, I just loved getting my medal

I can add it to the others I’ve already collected and those still to come as a reminder that every step is a step toward my health and happiness.

My local Whole Foods has an ice skating rink on the roof every winter:

I arrived just as one session was ending and the ice was being prepped for the new group:

I donned my skates and scooted around the rink (basically gripping the wall the entire time) but had a blast.

My husband came with me and while he is a good skater, he humored me and stayed by my side until I’d had enough. After I had my fill, he zipped around a few more times and then bought me a hot chocolate.

I won’t be a proficient skater anytime soon but I did enjoy the experience and may try it again next year.

At 10:00 in the morning I threw on a bathing suit and headed to the local swimming hole. A swimming hole is the best description. Barton Springs Pool is a man-made pool that exists as a channel of Barton Creek and is filled by water from the Barton Spring.

The water maintains an even temperature throughout the year so while it was chilly when I first jumped in, it warmed up after a few laps.

And, I certainly wasn’t the only person to usher in the new year this way. About 100 other brave sould joined me.

I would definitely make this a yearly tradition, and maybe some year I’ll even take the plunge in a cooler climate.

I hope you all had an equally fun start to the new year!

You were expecting bad news, weren’t you?

So she celebrated and grew anxious for new adventures to come, but, on account of many of lifes obstacles, she had to hold off.  It was a tough decision (grueling, really) but it was a decision that needed to be made.

Why am I re-hashing sad stories, you ask?  Well, I’m not.  The upside to this is that our heroine has opportunity to chase her dream again, just after sometime.  While it’s never ideal to put your dreams in forebearance, it’s also not an open-and-shut case.  They are there for the pursuing, lest you not forget about them.

This got me to thinking of dreams I’ve long deferred.  Namely THE dream I’ve let slide, on account of many things: fear, other budding dreams, convenience, terror.  Because I’d sooner explain the day away in prose, here’s a good summation:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Heavy, yes, but Langston Hugh’s had it right.  There’s a difference between putting off a dream with reason, and hiding it away out of fear.  So I decided to dust off ye old dream and try to tackle it.

As such, I’m back to school. 

I’ve always harbored a desire to help people.  Really help.  I want to use my nervous sensitivities and ability to emphathise for reasons bigger than me, but for reasons that have always been hard for me to articulate, I never went to full mile.  When I decided what in the world to do with myself professionally after a period of statis in corporate America, I thought, I should look into counseling.  But, well, I was afraid.  What if I got too close?  What if my own neuroses came to the forefront?  What if I couldn’t handle the emotion and responsibility and ferver of the work?  What if I simply wasn’t adept to the task?  I weighed this heavily against Library Sciences (a field I did enter) and ultimately went with the latter.  While I’m belly-full of informatic know-how I feel a longing, a perpetual pull toward the discipline of the former.  I truly feel it’s my calling and I just let it dry out and run.

Why?  Well, the why is important but perhaps I should focus on the how.

There’s a musician I love that has a line in a song that reads/sings, “If you really love something then get up and be it.”  This could be interpreted so many ways, but I love relationships.  I love human interaction and shared understanding and feelings.  I love to talk about feelings.  I’d transform my terse office into a feel-goodery if I could and the idea of exhausting years of my life studying the philosophy behind and the current practice and methods of a pursuit I so strongly support sounds amazing.  AMAZING!  Furthermore, I work in academia.  Academia loves company and will pay, part-time, for me to attend school.  WHAT HAVE I GOT TO LOSE?

Well, we are often our own worst enemies, but this time around, I thought to do as desired and met with faculty at U Mass, studied up on their program offerings, and am registered and attending a summer course in Introduction to Family Therapy.

Swoon.

So it starts.  I filled out a professional development plan with my employer, paid for my summer course and have been dutifully attending.  I have sharpened pencils, homework assignments and a newfound lease on dreams – one of which perhaps, one day, I’ll fully own.

 “Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson

Day 12: Something that makes you happy (Conglomerative Craning)

By now most anyone that knows me understands that if given the option I’d rather write it out.  Meaning, I’ll defer to text over talk; email over skype; personal readings over public readings.  I’m a slave to my own introversion and while it’s something I’m working on (see: year of adventures makes me uncomfortable), it’s also something I’ve come to recognize in myself.

All told, this has served me well.  I’ve convinced myself that I like writing and then I write.  I pretty much shun all the other lovely art forms out there because, well, they are intimidating and beyond my realm of comprehension and ability.  Would if I could write and illustrate and pontificate and prepare as others can, but I can’t.  I dead-end with the pen and that’s that.

Well, maybe not.  This week (month) had me follow

Day 28: The weather today (Sunny, says Hiro)

ing the lead of a dear old friend, Ms. Myndi.  Now a new mother, mama Myndi has the Midas touch for making anything (and I mean anything) into a beautiful something.  Of late I’ve been a fan of her photography.  Even more, I noticed that she took part in a ‘photo-a-day campaign’ via Instagram.  This charge had her produce a photograph a day, in accordance with whatever the list decreed.  The results were lovely, often unexpected and always so Myndi.  So I thought to live life through the eyes of the photog and give this game a go. 

It’s not nearly as easy as it seems.  First off, composition is everything.  That said, composition really is everything.  There is SO MUCH to photograph.  There are infinite stores of color and light and people and places in this world.  There is so much matter that might perfectly depict, “A word I love” (Day 10) or, simply, “fun” (Day 4).  How does Myndi do this?  How does anyone do this?  I thought to find out.

Day 7: Something that inspires you – Kazuo Ishiguro

There is something to possessing power over a viewfinder, even if only that of an iPhone.  It feels uninhibited.  As I’m a woman who craves control, I had power over my posture and that of the frame.  And the beauty in that it, it’s all up to personal preference.  I like to snap photos off-center.  Hiro bemoans that I do so.  He loves forward focus.  He loves a character in full, central frame.  Who’s better?  Well, likely Hiro since he understands the fundamentals of photography and is pretty adept to the task, but philosophically, who knows?!  Beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder and I had great fun in deigning my own design.

Day 30: My personality

I don’t think I have a future in this art, but it did help me to better construct description.  Mostly I pull descriptors out of my head in long strings of words that might sound lovely without any reverence for the picture that might populate someone’s mind in reading them.  Looking into the camera, well, you see what you’re after.  That’s what’s what.  You have no recourse but to work with nature and make your move.  Words can help.  And that seems a lovely union of the two.

I completed my campaign, taking 31 shots in the month of May and I’m sorry to set the shutter aside.  But now, instead of scrawling down what I think I want to see, I might take a moment to actually look.

“With writing, we get second chances” – Jonathan Safran Foer

Kids say the darndest things, don’t they?  You might think, and they are quite darn, but kids also have an amazing propensity to say all the things we adult sometimes keep ourselves from saying.  They are compact truth seekers – perpetual ‘why’ yowlers, who keep us on our toes and remind us of the people we once were (which in turn, speaks to who we’ve become).  So while they may not speak in polysyllabics, the ‘stuff’ of their speech should be heeded.  And heed I will.

I volunteered at a local Boston Public School, The Timility, in a campaign called, “Promising Pals”.  The premise is simple: volunteers (typically professional graduate students and adults in the community) will pair up with an assigned student and exchange letters throughout the year.  At the end of the academic year the volunteers will convene for a school assembly and breakfast with their long-time ‘pal’. 

Me & Mr. Musse hamming it up

It’s such a sweet concept.  The assembly: sweeter (but more on that shortly).

You can request a student, but I had no gender or age preference and rolled the dice.  Lucky roll as I received a letter crafted in fine penmanship from Mr. Musse.  He was a seventh grade student with a love – a FERVENT LOVE – of math.  What luck!  A studious student!  Someone who would appreciate the intent and philosophical push of this campaign.  He employed good grammar!  He showed ambition in education!  Everything was as I’d otherwise request, with one some caveat.

Mr. Musse hated writing.

This is a great blow to a writer. I must confess that when I envision my ‘pal’ I imagine a wee thing of a student with a burning desire to rewrite Nancy Drew sagas.  In my reverie I see someone scrawling slanted tear-stained words in a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper journal during lunch when they face the cruelty of adolescent meanness. 

So I guess, if you deconstruct this, I did have a preference in mind.  I clearly wanted an awkward girl who harbors dreams of being a writer.  Instead I got Musse, the mathematician. 

So he didn’t like to write, eh?  Well, he wrote well.  He wrote more than I did.  More frequently and, I’m embarrassed to note, with more substance.  He told me about himself and his family, but, in moves well beyond his age, he asked terrifically pointed questions and commented on comments I’d made in earlier letters.  Mr. Musse made me want to be a better writer – but more than that, a better pal.

I had to be more than an assembly of words on paper.  I had to get to know Musse for who he is, as opposed to who I’d envision he’d be.  That’s hard to accept – when you realize how selfish you are in doing something uniformally self-less.  And I have to thank Musse for that.  He took me to task.  He edited my drafts in a way no editor could.  Thank you, Musse.  You are going someplace great, kid.

So I met him.  We volunteers were first ushered into a gymnasium to watch an assembly replete with harp demonstrations and a gaggle of middle school girls reappropriating Michael Jackson’s “Girl In the Mirror”, and many, many thanks on behalf of the Principal, the Superintendent, local Non-Profits.  It was sincere and all in honor of community and relationships.  We were then ferried to our students – I, more nervous than expected to find …

Well, I found Musse.  And he was not impressed.

To say he never smiled is taking it lightly, but I have to believe he was putting on some tough-guy bravado, because when I followed his lead – asked him the questions that suggest we really listen, well, he answered.  He answered in a manner that determined that he paid attention to me, too. 

In the end isn’t that what everyone wants?  To be heard.  To have someone to hear? 

I bought Musse a book to make him smile.  He did, but was quickly approached by his friend who’s ‘pal’ worked for the Red Sox and brought him game tickets.  The smile dissipated but, but, but my dear Musse, there’s always next year.  Either I’ll appease you with tickets or win you other with my writing.  But I won’t give up.  You’re too crafty to allow me that.

However, I can’t remember the last time I looked through a telescope.

My father has a telescope, and I’m told that when I was younger, we would look through it together.  But these memories are sadly lost to me.  However, as I’ve discovered countless numbers of times over the years, the impression of these events with my father has stuck with me.  So for my adventure, I decided to observe the Transit of Venus through one the largest telescopes available to the public in the Twin Cities, which was at the University of Minnesota.

I was somehow able to convince three people to join me by saying that looking at a shadow of a planet as it crosses the sun is a fun thing to do (thanks for humoring me).  And I’m glad they came along, because the event was attended by far more people than I was expecting.  The line was over an hour long, and the event itself was only visible for close to three hours from our location.  I won’t lie, I was kind of worried that we wouldn’t make it to the telescope in time.  We were inching forward and racing the sunset.

But we made it!

We were able to see the transit maybe twenty minutes before sunset.  And though I was only able to view it for ten seconds, I was absolutely floored.

My mind has a difficult time grasping such vast notions as space.  The distance between our planet and Venus is staggering, and yet I was able to see it.  And it was only a small dot compared to the vastness of the star that helps to sustain life here on Earth.  And our star is only one of an infinitely large number of stars in this universe

When I look towards the heavens, I am so humbled.  I am literally able to look back in time just by looking up.  I am able to realize how I am such an infinitesimal cog in the gears of the universe.  Yet, I’d like to think that I have the ability to make large, positive, and shattering contributions to my friends, my family, and the world at large.

This contrast makes me feel nothing shy of giddy.

However, these were all things that sort of happened naturally.  Yes, they were amazing and enjoyable and I had put forth a great spirit and vibrancy to them.  But the lone fact that I didn’t consider them to be a part of my “Year of 52 Adventures” just didn’t make them feel quite as alive for some reason.

I am sure this is all a psychological freak out in my head, but it made me want to adventure again.  So here I am!  Attempting to finish what I started just over five months ago.

I have a lot of catching up to do.  Therefore, this may be the busiest, craziest summer ever.  But I think I can cope with that idea.

In order to make up for the lost ground, I will have to do multiple adventures during many weeks.  Therefore, from now on, instead of marking my posts based on the week they took place, they will be titled based on which Adventure Number they represent.  Not that you care; just a matter of housekeeping.

So look forward to Adventure #8, coming soon!

We are mere renters but Hiro and I attend to our space like new homeowners.  Never have we had the luxury of space, of grass, of shed and neighbors all to ourselves!  Perhaps in preparation of one day being real-time home owners and because the worst of the winter gracefully passed, I dedicated my next adventure to gardening.

Let me tell you, it’s not easy being green.  My grandparents were ardent groundskeepers.  Their lawn was the envy of the surrounding Chicago neighborhood and they maintained a vegetable patch that rivaled anything you’d see in Better Homes & Gardens.  It’s one of my greatest regrets, not learning the delicious art of it all.  Now that they’ve passed there is no one left to try to maintain their legacy.  What remains of my family, in way of botany, is suburban lawns and some perennial flowers near front doors.  It seems a shame, to let all that our patriarchs built dry up, so here’s my attempt to water the seeds of newfound family tradition.

I have to start simply.  In part because I began this at the tail-end of the winter frost, but mostly because I have NO IDEA what I’m doing.  I’ve begged the internet for advice only to find that my remedial starting point is so far below what most gardeners consider beginner that reading alone won’t suffice.  I needed to start small and understand the basics, so I’ve begun with herbs.Why herbs?  Well, my grandmother was also a darling cook and the idea of making use of my creation is exciting AND fiscally responsible!  Plus, I can start indoors which makes for morale boosting gratification.  Finally, there seems to be a lot of help in literature and chat boards on how to grow indoor herbs.  Perhaps this is the stuff of novices but THINGS ARE HAPPENING!  Just look at the evidence!

I bought a little starter kit and seed packets of cilantro, basil and oregano.  After moistening the soil and distributing even amounts into pots with holes in the bottom, I spread the seeds out to avoid crowding.  (The pictures will document that I got a little too excited and planted an egregious number of seeds.  This is a urban herb garden).  After that I wrapped my darling pots in plastic wrap to capture moisture and left them in the sun to their own devices until I started to see things bloom!

It was tempting not to poke and prod, but I kept them packaged until sightings of a second leaf appeared (as per my seed packet instructions).  When the leaves courted I unwrapped and continued to feed and water them.  At present they are still infantile, but look at the progress!

It’s encouraging to see things grow.  Am I becoming somewhat maternal?  Maybe, but that can wait.  I’m saving all my love for these little guys now.  Dinner party to come!

So it was in Japan when I tried serving Green Tea only to splinter the bamboo stirrer in everyone’s cup; or my embarrassing inability to NOT use the words “lovely”, “bullocks” and “right-o” when speaking to anyone with a British accent.  I make attempts, and my trip to sunny San Diego is no exception.

What is inherent to Californians?  Those clever celebrity-dense ad campaigns would suggest sun and able-bodied fun.  I grew up in the land-locked US.  My family didn’t jet-ski or engage in bouts of sand volleyball.  We were efficient travelers.  We used up all our time riding every ride imaginable in Disney World.  The idea of sun-soaked leisure is new to me.

Some posts ago I referenced my very real fear of showing skin.  I wear 3 piece bathing suits and I hate the summer because everyone seems to strip down.  Strip down if you will, but don’t expect me to follow suit.  And this is what I feared most- that to do as the Californians do, I would have to wear a bikini and vapidly dismiss everything in a valley accent.  I can now say my preconceptions of the dear state of CA were wrong.

We visited so that Hiro could present at the American Chemistry Conference in San Diego, CA.  It was a first time for us both and I was a-flutter with suggested trip plans.  The internet would have you find that there are a bounty of free things to do in SD!  Due to our wedding budget we did so much of what was suggested, but the one thing – the thing that seemed so very SoCal – I wanted to do was ride a bike on a pier in sunshades.

Note Hiro is an avid cyclist.  I last rode a bike in Japan when I had a basket on the front and the bike and rode slowly on paved sidewalks at the speed of all the neighborhood grannies.  That’s why, when I saw a brochure for a scenic 3 hour adventure tour through La Jolla, replete with cave dwellings, canyon cliffs and seal parks I signed Hiro and I right up!

This was not for the timid cyclist.  Our tour guides (see: SO FRIENDLY) attached a smart phone to the back of their bikes, blasting Bob Marley and riding on the street at speeds I would otherwise not travel.  There was no safety-briefing on how to signal to cars, or brake on a hill.  In fact, there were no questions what-so-ever concerning our abilities or know-how.  I LOVED it.  That meant I had to keep up.  That meant I had to cruise at a quicker clip so that I could see all the amazing sights they had to show.  Let me be fair to our ragtag tour team – they would not let us ride to danger, and I trust had been eyeing our abilities discreetly (one lagged behind, humming his own Bob Marley). 

Still, it felt so free to ride up a cliffside for a stunning view of the ocean expanse; to ride the boardwalk and dodge Cali skateboarders; to cruise the winding streets of the HGTV-ready La Jolla suburbs, taking downhill straight-aways at heart quickening speeds! 

It felt lovely to be one with the sun, keeping active with the locals (although I must have seemed such a tourist!).  Our tour guide, originally from Delaware, told me that he sometimes misses the Northeast.  I asked why, incredulous.  He said that in Delaware, on a rainy day, you can just stay in.  You have reason to outlast the poor weather by doing nothing with you time, if you choose.  But in San Diego, he said, the weather is so often nice that you have no choice but to get out and exercise.  Enjoy the wind and the weather.  Be one of the many moving parts.

What a nice way to consider a state’s role!  I’m ever so happy to have played the part and will gladly again.