From the 3-Day boards:

Experienced 3-day walker: Microfiber Bath Towels are great for after your shower or if it rains (heaven forbid!)and the mylar blanket comes in handy if it does rain and you get chilly or experience mild trauma [my emphasis].
New walker: Thank you so much!!!!! I can’t wait to get packing. This is the most fun I have had in a very long time.

Experience mild trauma? Most fun I’ve had in a long time? Am I missing something here? Mild trauma? As if walking 60 miles wasn’t freaking me out enough – we’re walking 60 miles the last weekend of July in full summer heat, and now I have to worry about the fact that walkers PLAN for mild trauma?
Not only that – I’m starting to get my gear together so I don’t get whammied with a major REI bill in June. What didn’t tell us when we signed up to raise $2,000 was that it was going to cost us as much out of pocket to buy all the suggested damned wicking socks, clothing, sneakers, medical kits, walking packs, sleeping bags, inflatable foot bath (!!!) and moleskin so that we can stay away from mild trauma as much as possible. And you know what? If this were some little 20-mile thing, I’d be like, screw the Nike Dri-Fit $32 sports bra, but I have this fear that if I don’t listen to the women who have done this before, I’m going to be crawling by day two, crying that I should have spent the money on the good socks and offering to trade our firstborn to borrow someone’s inflatable foot bath.
Mild trauma. Wheeee. And the first person to say, “But it’s for a good cause!” gets a smack upside the head – don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Awwww yeah, baby. Gotta love Fandango.
Randomness:

I have the worst toothache ever. It’s totally my fault, too. I haven’t been to the dentist (excuse me while I fend off full-body twitches) in over a year, and last time I was there, he told me I had a cavity right about where the throbbing pain is now. Can we say root canal, class?

Spent last night indulging in raspberry margaritas and lots of laughs with Amy, Jeff, Jenn (also of scriptygoddess fame), Su, Reilly, Jessie and Jay. Amy and I were supposed to walk 10-15 miles at 7:30 this morning; instead, we walked the four-mile round trip at 10 to Bickford’s for breakfast. Not like that change in plans came as a surprise to any of us, really.

We planted the garden today – lots of ‘maters, lettuce, cauliflower, jalepenos, cukes (they’re “diva” cucumbers – how could I resist?) and a bunch of different herbs. Of course, by the time they’re ready for pickin’ in July, I might not have teeth to chew with… (yeah yeah, so we have a dentist appointment the day before my birthday in June – fun, fun! – but I’m allowed to be a little drama queen on occasion, ok?)
And finally -

Congratulations Christine and Mike on your wedding yesterday! We toasted in your honor last night. Sorry we couldn’t be there to celebrate with you!

Oh, the cool things I get to read this summer! I just got my first book from my half.com order – these are all in the curriculum I’ll be using. Yay!
First on the list – given my experience working with Cambodian youth, I’m really excited to read it (and teach it!):

To Destroy You is No Loss, Joan D. Criddle. From Library Journal: When the Khmer Rouge achieved victory in Cambodia (Kampuchea) in 1975, Teeda Butt Mam and her well-to-do family left Phnom Penh as the cities were cleared of all inhabitants. For the next four years Mam experienced constant fear, hunger, and deprivation. And death; thousands of her compatriots were killed by a regime seemingly intent on not only rewriting the past, but on destroying all who remembered it. Mam’s story, told to Criddle (who sponsored the family’s emigration to the United States), reveals with simple sensitivity and insight another perspective of the nightmare brought to light in the film The Killing Fields. A moving, difficult, important book. Highly recommended.
And the others, for now:

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Julia Alvarez

Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel

Speak, Laurie Anderson

Girl with a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier

The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros
Good stuff. YAY!

File in the ever-growing “Not the brightest idea eka’s ever had” department:

1. Turn shower on to get squeaky clean for lunch with Jay, Alisa and old coworkers (though, really, I could have just as easily stood outside in the freakin’ deluge with a bar of soap).

2. Weigh self on the scale next to said shower (and cheer that my lack of training and my recent ice cream indulgences haven’t bumped the numbers up any!)
3. Decide to weigh the cats, since I can, on occasion, do easy whole-number subtraction in my head: total weight – my weight = cat’s weight. Easy enough.
4. Momentarily consider the running water just inches from the scale, but still think somewhere in my brain that this is a perfectly good idea.
5. Pick up heavy, sharp-clawed, water-hating Max from comfy sleep on bed.
6. Feel little kitty body get tense as we approach running shower.
7. Continue to neglect to little voice in my head that’s jumping up and down and screaming that this might turn out ugly.
8. Stand on scale with grumpy-woken-from-lazy-cat-sleep Max next to running water.
9. Try not to scream bloody murder as he claws his way over my shoulder and flees the bathroom, stopping only long enough to turn back and hiss cat-obscenities at me.

Sometimes even I’m amazed at the dumb ideas in my head – and even more amazed that at some point, I think those dumb ideas should be carried out – and even worse, that I actually go ahead and do them.
Bad mommy. And people want me to have children?
(For the record, Max is a hefty thirteen pounds. I keep telling him that he should cut back on the carbs, but that cat thinks he knows everything.)

Once upon a time, I had lots to say. Remember those days?
It’s been cold and raining since Sunday. More rain tomorrow. I’ve been hiding. Some rain is good. Lots of rain makes me sad.
The sun peeped out this afternoon and I couldn’t soak it all up into my body fast enough. I felt like if I didn’t, it would be like that really really sad story about the little girl who lives on a planet where it rains forever, and she keeps telling the other kids that the sun’s gunna come out for the first time in a century! and they don’t believe her, so they shove her in a closet and then the sun comes out and they play and play and then when it starts to rain big, heavy drops, they remember that she’s locked inside and that she missed it all.
I feel inside like I imagine she felt inside, and I can’t shake it.
It’ll pass, I know.
Effin’ rain.

So it looks like I’ll be recording the final performance episode of American Idol while Jay and I are at the Red Sox game tonight. Diana or Daubach – decisions, decisions… Welp, here’s hoping the skies don’t open up while we’re sittin’ out in the bleachers! Either way, you can bet your ass I’ll be sitting at Fenway, alternating cheering on the boys and redialing AI to vote for Diana.
The “dangerous lightning” last night hit a church in our town – I told you it was bad! It’s still grey and yucky out, and even though I was feeling really blah (again!), I managed to get in a four mile walk this morning – a nice little reminder to my body that I need to get back in a serious training routine. I’m planning on doing a 10-mile walk Saturday morning and a 15-mile walk Sunday morning, as well as 4-mile walks every morning this week. There’s only two months left before the walk, and I’m starting to feel that little twinge of “holy shit, what did I sign up for?” panic in mah belly.
You know what I hate most about this icky weather? Wearing jeans and shoes again. I love being barefoot, and I hate taking those free-lovin’ toesies and sticking them back into mean socks and claustrophobic shoes. Fifty degrees, especially when sitting in an outdoor stadium, is sadly just a tad too cold for sandals. Give me warm open-toe weather, dammit! Free the toesies!

Holy crap, we just had the worst thunderstorm I’ve ever experienced – and I’ve been through some sketchy doozies back while living in Binghamton, where tornadoes were not uncommon and hail was a regular occurance. There’s a reason why I don’t live in the midwest, thanks.
I think I’ve finally stopped shaking enough to be able to breathe like a normal person. I swear, we were in the thunder. The lightning crashes were layered on top of the thunder that never stopped thundering. The whole house was deafened by the shaking vibrations of battling air masses that I was certain would be the demise the old wood holding up the walls and roof and all of us inside. The kitties are all wide-eyed and freaked out – I’m glad I’m not the only one who felt the need to cower in the corner; at least this way, I could simply explain that I was tending to the needs of our frightened cats. I’ve never really felt unsafe in a storm, as long as I was in a house. That – that was unnerving. I just can’t do it any justice trying to write about it.
Shit, it’s thundering again. I need me a good sedative, pronto – there’s only so long I’ll be able to pass off my neuroses as “No, honey, I was trying to calm Princess down. Yes, we’re hiding under the stairs, in the basement, away from windows that could explode and roofs that could come crashing down and anything metal or electric. She’s a smart kitty, that one. I’m just down here to make sure she’s okay. Really.” Gah.
Xanax, someone, please. And quickly, thanks.

Our local grocery store has a little coffee counter. I usually pick up a small cup to drink while walking through the store. I was kinda mopey this morning – it’s really grey and cold out, and I’d gotten used to having Jay home with me (he’d been home since last Thursday), and I was being want-him-with-me-and-not-at-work-grumpy-moody.
This morning, when I got to the counter, there was an older couple – mid 70s, maybe? – making coffee together. I stood a bit off to the side and thought to myself that I hope Jay and I are still that cute and sweet to each other when we’re their age. The man stepped aside and apologized for “being in my way.” I told him, “No, no – I’m in no rush. Take your time.” Both he and his wife perked up and smiled at me. “I haven’t met a young person who wasn’t in a rush in years,” he said. “So important. You miss so much when you’re in a rush.”
He went back to putting sugar in his wife’s coffee, stirred it up and handed it to her. They both smiled at me again, told me to have a nice day and slowly walked off together.
It just kinda made me think, s’all.

When we first moved in, our neighbors (with the nicely manicured lawn and pretty gardens) chatted us up. “Yes,” they said, “The previous owners were really nice. They just… didn’t do much with the house.”
No effin’ kidding.

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I’m thinkin’ stopping for sweet rice treats at the Southeast Asian market along our seven-mile walk is not only counterproductive to my training, but counterproductive to – oh yeah – that whole low-carb South Beach thing we’ve been doing, too.
But mmmmm… Jay had a sticky rice cake and I had half a starchy banana-y plaintain-y fruit rolled in sweet rice and wrapped in banana leaves. I love those. Anyone out there know what they’re called? One of my Cambodian coworkers at the teen center used to bring them in for us every so often. So very yummy. We wandered along the river (and past “Save Kerouac’s Bridge!” signs), through the diverse little neighborhoods and shops – the Brazilian bakery with its yummy looking custards, past the Spanish bakery with the sweet bread smells calling to us, into a Vietnamese market with strange meats and fresh crabs still kicking in a bucket, and around the projects and neighborhoods that honestly still make me a little uneasy – I know what goes on in many of them simply from working at the center for so long – but that truly embrace so many different immigrant populations you can’t help but really feel different cultures seeping through.
The best thing about finding those cool little markets is now I know where to get yummy fresh spices for ridiculously cheap prices – fresh cilantro, basil – and it feels like I’ve left our little world for those twenty minutes. The market was filled with Khmer sounds and wonderful smells, families chatting away and picking up foods I never knew existed. Of course, I also felt a little out of place, turning odd-looking vegetables over in my hands, trying to figure out what everything was and what one did with it, and while sometimes I wish for the wide lawns, cookie-cutter neighborhoods and safe strips malls of my suburban youth, I truly love really discovering whole different worlds – different and new to me, but familiar and comforting to others – all in a simple walk from our house.