Running Chick

It was a busy Saturday for us starting with a 6:25AM “service x is down” alert from Josh. He fixed that in a jiff, and promptly took a nap on the couch. Once I’m up, I’m up, so I drank coffee and trolled the intarwebs for a while, until I got bored and decided to go for a run.

It was about 17 when I headed out and, thanks to the summery temps earlier in the week, the roads were icy. Scary icy. I decided that I’d like to keep my 41-year-long streak of not having any broken bones and elected to head back home after a mile. However, I noticed that while the salt trucks didn’t get to the cross streets, the up & down streets were perfectly bare. Hello impromptu hill session, I’d forgotten how much you hurt! Actually, it really didn’t hurt as badly as I thought it was going to. I think that’s due to the bike trainer Josh got me for my birthday. I’ve been trying to get at least two 45-minute rides in per week and I think it’s really increased my fitness level because when I got to the top of my hill, I only sorta felt like puking. Last year when I did hills, I really felt like puking. Improvement!

When I got home, Josh was still napping on the couch so I decided to wake him up by doing a kettlebell workout. Nothing jolts you off the couch more than the possibility of a 10-pound kettlebell hitting you in the melon. Once he extracted himself from the couch, we were off and running. We poked around downtown at various stores and went to lunch at 5th & Elm Coffee House (they have a new location in Houghton and their lunch fares are so yummy). Hop over to Josh’s blog to see what he had because I didn’t think to take a pictures of my tuna sandwich & tomato basil soup. We looked at a few houses on the market and then decided to head out to McLain State Park to take some pictures.

Sky & clouds using my circular polarizing filter.

Stamp sand out in the middle of the ice.

Things on logs.

And me doing a really bad warrior pose on a stump.

Need to work on my form for sure. There’s more pictures in the gallery, if you are so inclined.

Dinner at a packed Michigan House capped off this fun, action-filled day. It was good.

It’s been a rough couple of months for me. Losing Simon in November was hard, but then losing Spencer just two months later was devastating. For 16 years, it was just the three of us, then it was the two of us, now it’s just me. I did not anticipate how lonely I’d feel and how sad it would be to be here at home without them. People have been telling me that I should seek comfort through my memories, but at the moment my memories just make me sad.  And just about everything else, for that matter.

Grief is so hard. Just when I think I might be working my way out of it, something triggers a memory and my tears come again. There are 5 stages.  I’m clearly in stage 4, which is depression.  I imagine this is the stage where most people stay the longest and for me, it’s the hardest. There’s nothing anybody can say to me or do for me to make me feel better and there’s nothing I can do to make myself feel better. Mostly, I just want to be left alone to deal with my feelings on my own terms.

I decided that I wanted to get something personal that would memorialize them and how much they meant to me. I custom ordered a necklace that just came today.

I think it turned out really nice and it makes me happy.

My life will never be the same without you. My heart is shattered.

Spencer

January 28,1995 ~ January 28, 2011

I Only Wanted You

Author unknown

They say memories are golden
well maybe that is true.
I never wanted memories,
I only wanted you.
A million times I needed you,
a million times I cried.
If love alone could have saved you
you never would have died.

In life I loved you dearly,
In death I love you still.
In my heart you hold a place
no one could ever fill.

If tears could build a stairway
and heartache make a lane,
I'd walk the path to heaven
and bring you back again.

Our family chain is broken,
and nothing seems the same.
But as God calls us one by one,
the chain will link again.