Punch me right here as hard as you can.

I have begun running. I'm not good at it. I look like an absolute moron bouncing around the park, but I'm running anyway. My husband is trying to get in more PT (physical training - the army uses acronyms for all things, by the way) hours so he'll be ready for basic training. But, when he gets home from work it's hard for him to keep his motivation up. So the past couple of nights at 9 pm we've gone together. It's easier to exercise with someone else.
I don't really enjoy exercising, but it feels good. I like feeling my workout get easier the next time and the next time. And I like feeling my body change a little bit over time to become stronger and healthier. I used to accept that I just wasn't fit. I'd watch scary movies and think, "If that guy comes after me I am so screwed. I'd make it down the block and then ask him to kill me to stop the burning in my lungs." However, now I think I'd make it a little further. (Or because I've had a little training now, I could stop and turn around and book it at him to do some serious melee damage. ... That's right.) One form of exercise I do love is weightlifting. It feels awesome to me. A lot of this change has come about because of some surgeries I had recentishly. I was born with bone spurs in my shoulders that had basically been boring into the tendon my entire life. So, they went in and removed bone and muscle (two separate times). After a couple of days of pain and throwing up (I don't handle being put under very well) I went to the physical therapist. I'd been working with him before my surgery also. He asked me to lift my arm up above my head as far as I could. And I couldn't. I didn't even make it to nose-level. I had thought I'd already reached my all-time humility point before (when your husband has to pull your pants up for you, you just don't have the same finesse you used to) but I finally realized how weak I was going to be. Even now, 2 years later, I can't do one push-up. I have to do wall push-ups which are not as cool. So, now I'm trying to rebuild the muscle I lost and reinvent my body to be able to do whatever I need to do. I grew up my whole life feeling broken. I wasn't allowed to do a lot because of my shoulders or whatever else could be wrong. Now I'm carrying the groceries without pain and loving it. I'm free now. And I don't want my face to turn red walking across the mall parking lot. I've been given the chance to redefine my life and live it without anyone else's voice in my head telling me I can't. Therefore: I run like a dork at the park hoping some day I'll lap Johnny instead of the other way around. Or at least match him. Or at least still be able to tell which person is him way over there. Don't say I don't have goals!
And now I issue a challenge: let's move more. We only get the one body. And I intend mine to be smokin'.

Summer Shower

Last night, Johnny and I went for a walk in the rain. We'd been in the apartment most of the day, and at nine o' clock I needed a change. We walked down the busy street we live on and over to a quiet, dark park. The air chilled over and forgot summer for a while as we stopped to swing on the swingset. Johnny leaned back and watched the sky as he sank and rose, and I could almost see him as a ten-year-old holding onto the chains and breathing deeply. We talked and talked about who-knows-what and held hands and stopped for a hug and kiss or two. We were pretty wet when we got back, but we cuddled our kitty (he didn't speak to us for a little) and played video games and felt much younger than we are. It felt like there would be no tomorrow and there was no yesterday, time was only tonight and here and now. It made me so happy and comfy - it felt warm-sweatery and hot-chocolatey, as if warm cookies were baking somewhere nearby. I realized good memories and happiness must be chosen, must be created. Sometimes when you don't know what to do, throwing on some really good jazz and asking each other random questions - things you don't know about each other even now - can make a dull evening one of your precious memories. (Question examples: What idiotic thing did you steal when you were little and why? What did you take for granted when you were little that you've never found again? and so on.) NEway, I just wanted to say I had a really good night in the rain with Johnny.

9 years ago today...

Today is July 24th. 9 years ago my Johnny and I began to fall in love. I tell the whole story in an earlier post. (Go to older posts and look for the picture of people kissing.) So, I won't tell the whole story again. I just want to say how happy I am that I fell for that strange, charming boy so long ago. I never get tired of him, you know. I never stop melting when I look in his eyes. I never get tired of his voice -- I'm addicted to it. Our fingers touching is still the center of the universe. I still can get swept away with one kiss. He still gives THE BEST hugs. I've seen him come from that boy to being the best driver they've got at his job, one of the best soldiers in his unit-thing (I don't know all the words!), and the best husband I could have hoped for. He's my hero; I wish I were more like him. I didn't think my soul could contain this much love. I overflow. I'm lost in it. So, this is my tribute to him.
I wrote this cheesy little poem for him when we were apart. We lost touch for about a year while he was serving a mission for our religion. We'd just gotten back in touch and I was taking a creative writing class in college. You should know my Johnny has gold eyes (rimmed with a mist of green) or this won't make as much sense. (Don't judge it too harshly. I was like 19.)

Golden
Those spheres of wisdom
look through my shell
encasing me in tenderness.
You hold me in your eyes
of glimmering gold and
firelight,
soothing my tremors of fear.

When I study these seers
I realize the fire is no
reflection,
but that your soul is
a quintessence of light
whose warmth escapes through
the expressive stars of your face.

And, through this illuminating pair,
I've found myself fulfilled,
bathing in the radiance
that glows tremendously from your eyes.
I find purity in them,
as mine well with tears
in their sight.

*awkward silence*
Moving on.
This poem's first, third, and fourth stanzas are read in the movie Patch Adams, that we saw on our first date about 10 years ago, when we both had crushes on each other but didn't say anything. We were watching the same movie with a group of friends when he proposed. He hid the ring in a plastic bubble in a box of cracker jacks. Just like Spiderman proposed to Mary Jane in the comic. When I found the "prize" and pulled it out, they stopped the movie and John was on his knee in front of me. He promised to make me happy. He told me he loved me. It's all a little misty now. I mostly remember we were both crying and I squeaked out a little "yes." I really don't deserve him, you know.

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

--Pablo Neruda

I am so happy I said yes that day. And he has made me very happy. I can only hope that I've made him as happy. I'll never stop trying. I'll draw my last breath loving him with the core of my being. Now that I've shared our love verses of yesterday, I want to give him a new poem to read to each other in years to come.

Love arrives;
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet, if we are bold
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity.
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave.
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet, it is only love
which sets us free.

-Maya Angelou

Thank you for loving me, Johnny.

My kitty.

John and I had only been married a little over a year. We'd just gotten home from somewhere and I heard a tiny little sound. I realized it was a cat somewhere and followed the crying. As I neared a big hedge full of thorns I saw a little gray puff peeking out at the bottom. I reached for it, but a big truck roared past and the fluff disappeared into the hedge. I knocked at the door of the hedge's house and the lady there said the kitten had been crying all day and night the previous day. I realized that if it had been that long, the mother wasn't coming back for it. We hadn't seen any other kittens around. We called my mom's neighbor, who rescues animals. Hours were spent crouched around that villainous hedge, meowing, kitty-kitty-kitty-ing, and reaching into thorns. John donned leather gloves and we pulled out our secret weapon: the can of stinky wet kitten food. We knew the little mite hadn't eaten for a while. He could only resist so long. He crept toward the food several times, head bobbing as kitten-heads do, but always scampered back when we reached in. It was getting late. Towards 11 pm, the kitten was laying down and closing its eyes. The woman helping us suddenly got very urgent, telling us we needed to get it out of there as soon as possible. He was giving up. John started yelling the word "meow" at it so it couldn't go to sleep. (And if looks could kill, that cat would've made me a young widow.) It decided to pull itself over to the food one more time. John struck into the hedge with reckless abandon and extracted a flailing little gray fiend. We closed him into a cat carrier. It sounded like we'd thrown some firecrackers in and closed the door. (A bit feral, eh?) Well, my mom's neighbor took him to her place for the night and helped him eat and taught him ... about kitty litter and so on. We made our eyes as big as possible, welling with tears, and asked our landlord if we could keep it. (How many flashbacks to fatherhood he must have had.) He said yes. Our kitten was only about 4 weeks old. He started getting sick and we realized he hadn't had anything to drink. John stuck his finger in the water and let a drop fall onto the sluggish baby's nose, causing him to shiver and lick the drop off his nose. This process was repeated a few times and then Johnny gently dipped the little nose into the water dish. Thankfully, the kitty made the connection and lapped up the water gratefully. We had to put canned wet kitten food in a dish mixed with a little water and microwave it just a little so it was warm. Then he could lick it up. He still licks up the pieces of his dry food before chewing. (It's frickin' adorable!) We debated for days about a name. People names, stupid names, degrading names. After the Felix, Muffin, Dusty fiasco, we landed on the one that stuck. Miles. Miles Prower, to be exact (in honor of Tails, from Sonic the Hedgehog). It fit him perfectly. He has a lot of dignity, even if his rear is in the air. And if he could talk, we have a feeling it'd come out British.
Well, now it's almost 4 years later. He does have a little belly (in his defense, all fixed kitties have one) and he is awesome. He has turned off a lightswitch by himself, turned on the fan and laid down in the breeze, and mimics the way we talk. (John always calls out, "Honey?" when he's looking for me. Miles soon started doing a little "pirrup" in the same tones when he wants me. He also pulls my hair when I sleep too long.) And we've gotten to that disgusting point where we refer to ourselves as our cat's mama and daddy. But, he's no ordinary cat. When I'm sick he sits on the bed staring at me worriedly. When I'm having a nightmare, he always comes and sits on my pillow by my face. He licks my forehead when I have a fever. And he trips me frequently as I go down the hall -- seriously, he sticks his paw between my feet as I walk.
We're a weird little family. But, we always feel "the cozy" feeling when the three of us are together. He cares about us and we take care of him. Sounds like family to me.

Clarification: None of the above cutie kitties are our Miley, but he looks just like that. Thank you lolcats.com.

Reaching For The Horizon

Sometimes I get homesick when I'm already home. A while ago I was sick and thus staying home feeling blck and I'd just woken up when I told my husband, "Let's go somewhere." He smiled patiently, still in his work uniform, and asked, "Where do you want to go?" "Home."
I think there is a part of all of us that isn't meant to feel at home here. I'm pretty sure I'd feel safer where God is (He is God, after all). Maybe that feeling is part of this weird drive I have. A drive to become and to change and to just... be more. I feels like there's something I need to do -- not a specific thing like destiny, I just need to do something. I try to talk about it. How I want to finish my degree and use it and be something. I can't describe it well enough. I thought it would fade as I got older, but it's gotten stronger. I want being a mom to be part of it, too, but it's something else apart from even that. I wish I knew what it is. And why it is. I just feel like a plant in too small of a flower pot. Like I've got to keep growing or die. Whatever it is, God's glad I want to be better. Just sometimes I feel like I'm crazy because no one seems to know what I'm talking about. (And then I think I should stop talking before they make that call.) Whatever and whyever, I never want to stop. Never never.

To The Doomsday Machine!

I saw something on TV today that I just can't keep to myself. So, I was watching the History Channel as I ate lunch because they had a show on about torture areas and old mines and quarries that the Nazis used in WWII. (I am oddly drawn to WWII stuff.) The host said, with a straight face, that Hitler had a back-up plan for the apocalypse or something. A doomsday machine. *unthrilled expression* They even had a CG diagram showing how it would operate. This large drill-type machine would, if the war went terribly wrong, bore its way through the earth and ignite the core, causing the planet to explode. ... They did not, however, go on to explain that it was total crap!!! That the "doomsday machine" would melt into nada just into the mantle, if it got that far. And even if it were at all possible to make it to the core, I wasn't actually aware that solid iron and nickel were combustible. Could Hitler have been operating as if he were in an anime, by chance? (Because, as we all know, in anime everything is combustible and all people have like a million gallons of blood in their systems -- which is also combustible.) *sigh* Kind of like that movie that recently came out about the sun "going out" (because it's a giant lightbulb, apparently) and the dangerous space mission to reignite the sun. Gah! If the sun is nearing the "going out" phase it would swell to a size that would encompass the Earth anyway. I'm sure you can all imagine how many movies this ruins for me. The new journey to the center of the earth movie is not really on my must-see-list for the summer. However, Iron Man, now that's a flick I gotta see -- comic books have their own reality, much like anime. I dunno. I don't like science fiction unless the creator really knows what their talking about. Like, David Zindell, for instance. He is a mathematician that took up writing scifi and brought about the best world-creation I've read in his Requiem for Homo Sapiens trilogy. It wasn't one of those what-if-a-person-got-crossed-with-a-plant stories that brings the jolly green giant to life in a sinister yet all too predictable plot line we've all read before. (Like anyone could surpass Hawthorne's story of Rappaccini's Daughter anyway! It's so good!)
Well, I feel better now that I've had a little rant about the implausible mysteries of the show I watched earlier that did not make my spine tingle in the least. Better luck next time, History Channel. Apologies to you all for my extensive use of sarcasm in this blog entry. Cheers!
Oh - and the dragon and death there are just a fun doomsday-type picture. And, well, because it's a friggin' dragon! -- and thus awesomeness.

It smells like home...

I've been realizing more and more what a large part of life food can play. I recently found my love for cooking, so we've had more homestyle dinners lately. And then today I nuked a tv dinner for lunch and found it so unpalatably salty that I could barely get it down. There's something about the smell of cooking onion and garlic, chopped fresh herbs, and sizzling meat that creates that cozy childhood feeling of safety. My mother cooked every day when I was growing up, which I didn't appreciate because I thought that was just "the way." Now I don't know how she had the energy. Especially to do all of the dishes right after finishing eating. (I sprawl on the couch and forget about it. *tsk tsk*) She made a lot of simple things that tasted great - and if I smell them cooking now, I'm seven years old again. She'd make spaghetti a lot - not the most Italian version, but it's my favorite version (and I usually like to go traditional with recipes from other cultures - there are no Asian recipes involving spaghetti in my kitchen). Barbecue chicken, chow mein (again, not-so-Chinese, but still yummy), manicotti, and sometimes we'd have the simplest of all: scrambled eggs and coffee cake. I wasn't raised to be a picky eater. If I didn't like it, it fell under the category of "too-bad-so-sad." And most the time I just didn't want to try it. This is probably why I have a low tolerance for picky eaters. I don't like cooking for the picky because I put a lot of myself into my recipes and food and it's like a slap in the face when adults pick stuff out or eat one bite and leave the rest. Manners were a big deal in my family growing up. Also, my husband was really poor for a while when it was just he and his mom. He ended up taking mayonnaise sandwiches to school for lunch or eating plain rice for a snack because he was so hungry it didn't matter what it was. So, when someone turns their nose up at something, it bugs us. (And yes I wish I could go back in time and give him my lunch in the cafeteria.)
My husband and I have wanted our new lives together to be heavy with tradition. I don't keep a lot of my family's traditions because, well, some of them don't have good memories. There'd be a fight every Thanksgiving and every Christmas morning. (Actually, anytime we did anything all together.) But, one thing we kept from my family is the finger-food Christmas Eve dinner. Apparently my older brother would eat anything bite size, so my mom took advantage of it. And it stuck. Little tuna sandwiches, little vegies and dip, cheese ball, little sausages, the works. Same way with dessert - fudge, cookies, little cakes... We did come to a problem with the gift-opening traditions. John's family opened all their gifts on Christmas Eve. I found this shocking. No all-night torture and sleeplessness? No waiting until 6:59 am (cause it takes a full minute to walk to the next room, of course) to go wake up Mom and Dad. Of course we'd try to peer down from the top of the stairs to see what Santa had brought in the night. Then we had a long present-opening taking turns and then had breakfast. A compromise had to be made (cause going one way or the other would stomp on all tradition for someone) and we open one present on Christmas Eve and the rest in the morning at the tree. My mom always made sweet rolls, but we wanted to come up with a special breakfast all our own for Christmas breakfast and this last year landed on: banana pancakes. I mean, a griddle makes everything feel more special. (If I were southern, I'd add a y'all on the end of that, but it's annoying when people who don't have a clue say y'all.)
And currently our favorite homey, cozy yummy is a soup I've adapted from another recipe. It has chicken meatballs and gnocchi (pronounced nyokee) and carrots and celery and peas (my husband thought he didn't like peas until he had them in this and loved what they added) and there's other stuff, too, but let's not give it away.
So, that's my spiel on why cooking matters. And I leave you all (damn I wish I were southern) with my mother's (from my dad's mom and who knows who before that) recipe for Fruited Barbecue Chicken.

Fruited BBQ Chicken
Combine: 1 8-oz. can tomato sauce, 2 Tb. white vinegar, 2 Tb. brown sugar, 1/4 tsp. worcestershire sauce, 1 8-oz. can crushed pineapple (or pineapple tidbits) with the juice. Combine ingredients in a big skillet and bring to a boil. Add pieces of raw chicken (I just add cubes of breast meat) to the sauce. Cook 10-15 min. or until chicken is no longer pink in the center. (If it's bone-in chicken, it'll take longer.) Serve over rice or noodles. (If the sauce gets too thick, add a little water or stock, if it's too thin add a mixture of a little bit of cornstarch and water to the sauce.)