Post traumatic stress disorder of the snow variety

Kids are supposed to love winter and snow. Think about it! Snow angels! Sledding! Christmas! Snowmen! Snowball fights! Huzzah!

The other day Jonas and I got on the lamentable topic of winter. Sadie overheard us, and her eyes grew big and watery.

"Oh NO!" she said. "Winter is coming and there is gonna be SNOW on the ground! I won't be able to ride my tricycle in the park because there will be SNOW!" You'd think she was talking about chest-deep blood and gore.

Sadie's only memory of snow is of the traumatic twelve foot variety. Snow that is too deep to even fathom playing in.

I think it was July when someone on the radio said the word 'snow' and it filled me with dread. Last winter was still too fresh in my memory for that to bounce off me. Usually by September I'm warming up to the idea of winter fun. But last year? Man, 'winter fun' was a total fucking oxymoron.

I still get nervous making left turns. Last winter, with the twelve-foot snow banks, it was a leap of faith that there was no oncoming traffic. You just sort of had to shut your eyes and hope for the best.

Forecast after forecast called for huge amounts of snowfall. By January we were all laughing about it, asking how it was possible. By February nobody was so much as cracking a smile. By March we had lost all hope and made our peace with the fact that we would never see grass again.

Summer did come, but it came abruptly. One Monday in late April, we were still trudging through thigh-deep snow. By Friday, the park was crawling with kids in t-shirts, not a flake of snow in sight.

Summer found us gasping for warmth and fresh air. And last winter was so suffocating, that we're still trying to catch our breath. And the mere mention of the word 'snow' is enough to take it away entirely.

I'm going to run the marathon, for all bereaved parents

Last week, my good friend's little boy passed away suddenly. He had just turned a year old. He was the sweetest, fluffiest, nicest and most hard-won little boy, with such a gentle disposition and the kind of smile that you could feel in your heart.

Needless to say, my friend is in the worst kind of agony imaginable. It is the worst thing in the world. I know there's nothing I can do to make her feel better, but I wanted to figure out at least how not to make her feel worse. Or how to be supportive.

In my research, I came across an organization in Toronto called Bereaved Families of Ontario. They are a volunteer-led organization that offers group support sessions and matches newly bereaved parents up with other parents who have lived through the same hell on earth. My friend has been in contact with them, and hopefully she will be able to benefit from their programs when she is ready.

Some of you may know that I have been doing the Marathon clinic at the Running Room, with no real intention of running a marathon, because marathons are for lunatics. I just wanted to see how far I could take it. It's really hard, but I'm still in the game.

I noticed on the Bereaved Families of Ontario website that they have a team running in the Scotiabank Waterfront Marathon. Everything just sort of made sense and came together, and I decided to join the team and run for my friend and for all the parents in Ontario who have suffered through the loss of a child. It will be agony for me, but my agony will not even register on the scale of agony that bereaved parents experience.

I am really not normally a fund-raisery person or a seriously sponsor-y person either, so this is really unusual for me. But if you would like to sponsor me, I'd really appreciate it, and I really think you'd be helping out a lot. This organization doesn't have the profile that breast cancer does, or heart disease or whatnot, but what they do is very very valuable and important. And let's hope that none of us will ever ever have to find out first hand just how important it is.

I noticed while I was browsing the site, that there is an Alison Parrott memorial library as part of the organization. I went to grade school with Alison (as did many of you), and in fact was on the same lunchtime track team as her. Her mother is quite active with the organization. All the more fitting that I should do this.

Here is the link to sponsor me. Heartfelt thanks for reading this, and for pledging any amount that you can.

http://my.e2rm.com/personalPage.aspx?registrationID=480353&LangPref=en-CA

Kind stars

Yesterday just before lunch I nipped out to go grocery shopping with Benson. I was having a pretty good grocery cart day, and in fact, I could hear the grocery cart I was *meant* to have about two aisles over. It was a strange mix of joy and empathy. I almost wanted to go up to the guy and apologize for the mixup, but sanity prevailed and I finished my shopping trip with no swears. When I got home, somebody had broken in, and done the dishes and left me a bowl of macaroni and cheese. That's just the kind of day it was.

iRun, iCost a lot.

I often wonder how cavepeople did it. Like, how did they train for marathons without maps and heart rate monitors? And they would have had to bring musicians with them, since they didn't have portable music players. Can you imagine how fit you'd have to be to be a drummer in that scenario?

I used to think running was cheap. Slap on a pair of running shoes and off you go. No membership required. But this has actually turned out to be the most expensive athletic endeavour I have ever undertaken.

Running 40-50k a week requires a significant quantity of apparel. First of all, you can only wear something once before it stinks to high heaven. And all this stuff is made of high-tech polyester fabric which must be air-dried. So if you're doing laundry once a week, you need five of everything. Five bras, five pairs of pants and shirts in each length (short, medium and long). Don't even get me started on shoes.

But that's nothing compared to the electronic requirements. Back in my more casual running days all I needed was my walkman. Remember those? The ones that played tapes? Mine even had a GRAPHIC EQUALIZER. I went through a brief period where I tried running with a discman but that was pretty fu-fu....fufufufufu...fu-fu-fuuuuuuuuuu....futile.

Then along came MP3 players. They didn't skip! And they were light! But you need a computer to load stuff onto them, so that's a pretty significant total expense. Then somewhere along the line it became necessary for me to monitor my heart rate and time my runs. Back then, a Polar was a pricey little gadget for what it did.

Fast forward to today. My girlfriend coerced me into signing up for a marathon training clinic "just for fun". While we're at it, let's pour hot sauce on our eyeballs and snort wasabi powder! Wheeee!

We are nearly halfway through the program, and I am deeply ashamed at how much money I have spent on gadgetry. It started innocently enough with an iTouch, which is essentially a tiny computer not much bigger than a credit card. I ran with it once, and realized that the little darling would not mix well with sweat and rain.

So my dear husband bought me an iShuffle, an adorable little thing that just clips inconspicuously onto your hem. But when he tried to download stuff onto it, our laptop crapped out. So we had to buy a new laptop that could handle our new iGadgets.

Not two days later, my Polar heart rate monitor died. I saw this as a sign that I should buy a Garmin Forerunner 405, so that satellites in outer space could track my route, pace and distance and plot it all against my heart rate and load it all onto my computer before I even sit down to stretch afterwards. Seriously, how did cavepeople do it without satellites?

Only problem is, I am horribly technologically inept. The user manuals for all these things could fill the library of congress. I may have a shiny new laptop that can handle all the gadgetry, but my three remaining brain cells cannot. Lucky for me I have the ultimate gadget that figures all this stuff out while I sit there and drool blankly. It is called Jonas and everyone should have one.

Benson, Queen of the Dairy Kings