Heard in the house

Just rediscovered this gem I jotted down from a round of cards during Christmas break. Kind of makes me wish I was 12 again:
Youngest daughter: "Sometimes I just change out cards because I feel sorry for them."
Laughter. Heads shaking.
Son: "I change out cards, but I do it so people won't know what I'm doing. Not for stupid reasons."
Youngest daughter: "I believe everything has feelings."
Husband: "Even a piece of paper?"
Youngest daughter: "Everything."

A change in perspective

Nothing this morning seems quite so important as updates emerge about the devastation of yesterday's earthquake in Haiti. News of the impoverished country enduring yet another round of suffering and hell is almost too painful to read.
Making lunches, dropping kids off at school, drinking the morning coffee and getting ready to teach yoga — the daily routine lacks substance and meaning. Everything I might have cursed yesterday about what is wrong and hard in my life returns today as a mocking reminder.
For an up close and personal view of Haiti, its people and Tuesday's destruction, check out this blog — http://livesayhaiti.blogspot.com/ — written by Tara Livesay, a missionary from Minnesota, living in Haiti with her husband and children.

A work in progress

New year, new you? Not me. Rather than resolutions, I'm more of an evolution type of girl.
It's not that I don't believe in making resolutions. They're great. For other people.
To me, a resolution is too daunting because of the potential for failure. What if I can't do it or if I feel like bailing along the way? The risk vs. the reward just doesn't do it for me.
Instead, I figure if I identify a goal and head in a forward motion in that general direction, then life is good and, possibly, rewarding.
And so, with that philosophy in mind, I'm getting back to the old blog and charting a new course. Not that I'm making any commitment to write any more frequently than I have in the past half a year — although, I think I can do better than once a month. And, it could be that this new venture runs its course in a few weeks or months. Along with not making resolutions, I don't do promises.
So, here's the plan: I'm going to keep with the concept of daily life, but I'm going to add in an element from my yoga classes, where I get to visit with a variety of wonderful women every day; women of all ages, occupations and life paths.
The commonality that we share beyond yoga is a sense of bliss that we take from class and into the world beyond. We don't spend much time with each other beyond the 45-minute class, but we do enjoy passing along thoughts on everything from parenting to recipes and good finds in faraway places.
I also often get asked such questions as how to dress for running outdoors in the winter, what running shoes I like, what I do to stay in shape or where I get my workout clothes.
So today, after exchanging email addresses for recipes and talking about a new restaurant in Minneapolis, the thought occurred to me that lifeontherun could be a place to exchange ideas and information.
With that, I pass along a fabulous recipe for Malaysian Chicken Pizza from Cooking Light magazine:

3/4 c rice vinegar
1/4 c firmly packed brown sugar
1/4 c low-sodium soy sauce
3 tbsp water
1 tbsp minced peeled fresh ginger
2 tbsp chunky peanut butter
1/2 to 3/4 tsp crushed red pepper
4 garlic cloves, minced
cooking spray (I use olive oil)
1/2 pound skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces
1/2 c (2 oz) shredded reduced fat swiss cheese
1/4 c (1 oz) shredded part-skim mozzarella
1 12-inch pizza crust (make from scratch or use a mix)
1/4 c chopped green onions

1. Preheat oven to 500˚
2. Combine 1st 8 ingredients in a bowl, stir well with whisk.
3. Heat skillet coated with cooking spray. Add chicken and saute for 2 minutes. Remove chicken from pan.
4. Pour rice vinegar mixture into pan and bring to boil over medium heat. Cook mixture 6 minutes or until slightly thickened. Return chicken to pan, cook 1 minute or until chicken is done. (mixture will be consistency of thick syrup)
5. Sprinkle cheeses over prepared crust and top with chicken mixture. Bake at 500˚ for 12 minutes on bottom rack. Sprinkle with green onions. Let stand a few minutes and serve. Yield 6 servings.
(You can also cook on the grill: Brush grill with olive oil, place dough on grill & let cook briefly before flipping over. Put toppings on and cook until done.)

Calories 293 / Fat 7.3 g / Protein 18.2g / Carb 38.3g / Fiber 1.8g

Welcome to my world

My life has been reduced to waging a battle of wits against a 9-year-old, neurotic yellow lab.
For several years, we've been using old baby gates to corral our two dogs. The procedure was nothing more than a mild nuisance. And, until about two months ago, it worked.
Then, the universe shifted and threw our household's canine alignment completely out of whack.
One moment, the dog is merely borderline annoying, yet still endearing. The next, he is full-on paranoid schizophrenic, chased by voices only he can hear.
In this newfound desperation, he (the one in the back) figured out that all he had to do was push the gate until it crashed to the ground, leaving him free to wander the human world.
The problem hasn't been so much that he escapes, but rather what he does when he roams freely throughout the house without any surveillance.
Under our watchful eye, he lulls us into complacency and sticks to the dog bed or the carpet. When we're not around to know better, he skulks through the house, finding comfort on a couch or a pile of clothes in the son's room (which, I would say, is well-deserved since the clothes should either be in the dresser or hamper). In his wake, the dog (not the son) leaves a blanket of dog hair and dog stench.
We responded first by propping chairs up against the gate. It seemed like a reasonable measure.
But we quickly discovered, it was no match for the muzzle. Each night we would awake to the sound of a crashing gate followed by the skitch, skitch, skitch of doggy toenails on the kitchen floor, hightailing it for the great beyond.
Because man is always drawn to a challenge and can always build bigger and better, the husband made a seemingly more sturdy gate from leftover wood flooring. We fortified the new contraption with three chairs and went to bed reasonably assured of our superiority.
The next morning, our household awoke with an air of celebration. The wall stood. The dog was still in the kitchen. Seriously. This was a monumental achievement of epic proportions.
Unfortunately, we wouldn't know it for a few more days, but the jubilant moment was short-lived.
Several more weeks passed. Some nights, he stayed put. Others, he found the super-canine strength and agility to batter down the gate/chairs contraption.
"Maybe he really has thumbs," suggested one daughter.
We stepped back and reassessed the ground floor configuration of our house. Maybe instead of gating the dog into the kitchen, we reasoned, let's just gate off the rest of the house.
One gate blocked the stairs to the basement. Another gate cordoned off the stairs leading upstairs. I threw a third gate on top of the living room couch. The homemade fence protected the tv room.
Once again, we outwitted the dog. A week later, though, he stuck his damn nose between the fence and the woodwork to gain access to the tv room. We reinforced the fence with dining room chairs. He still managed to move the entire contraption with his snout.
Many people might have noticed the pattern, accepted defeat and given into the inevitable. Not me. I refused to wallow in the defeat of dog hair.
It was then that I spied a pair of 35-pound hand weights sitting on the floor. I put one on each chair. Hah! Try moving that!
It took a couple more days, but he did. It's got to be the thumbs.

Sometimes, love doesn't make sense

Me: "There's this new online newspaper and they say I can write for them."
Husband: "Are they going to pay you?"
Me: "Uhhhh, no."
Husband: "Why would you want to do it, then?"
Why, indeed.
Why, when I couldn't find a newspaper job right after college, did I feel so blessed to land an internship at a small, N.H. weekly that didn't pay, but compensated me with gas money and a nice tote with the paper's name on it?
Why was I thrilled when this same internship bestowed on me the awesome authority of writing up obituaries AND the police log?
Why, when I finally landed my first real newspaper job, was I so excited that I accepted without asking how much I would be paid?
Why didn't I even think about being paid until I called my father with the tremendous news and HE asked me how much I was being paid?
Why, when I found out that the weekly pay was $180 (this was 1984), did I still happily report to work the first day and pretty much every day for two years?
Why did I (and others) withstand the all-consuming fear of not making deadline, missing a story, getting something wrong, all in exchange for writing up whatever occurred in the course of daily life in our readership area?
Oh, I could go on. Working in newspapers for 17 years was, in some ways, an abusive, dysfunctional relationship. But, unlike real abusive, dysfunctional relationships, newspaper work used to be amazing fun.
I left the ink-stained world in 2000, before the technological explosion of online media, when the burden of being an editor of a small, daily paper in South Dakota became too much to juggle with a family of four young children and a husband who traveled for his job.
Since then, I've freelanced for anyone who would pay and print me. I wrote about stuff I knew (kids and families) and stuff I didn't (soybeans and stadiums — yes, there are markets for both). I wrote a book about South Dakota State University.
But, a blossoming second career as a yoga instructor (at a whopping hourly rate of $12) sidetracked my writing ... until this new opportunity arose at http://www.thepostsd.com/, thanks to the creativity and tech-saviness of people much younger than me.
So, here I am, with a new lease on my former newspaper self, writing and in love all over again. Sure, it's early in the relationship and the job doesn't pay much at the moment, but minor detail.
I told the son about this new venture and how I broke a story on H1N1 on the SDSU campus.
"Mom!" he exclaimed. "You've got your mojo back."
Indeed, I do.

There's nothing good about saying bye

I wake up this morning with dread churning in the gut. The mind pings back and forth in emotional upheaval.
Our oldest daughter is returning to college.
Sure, I should have gotten used to this. She was gone all last year, coming home only for holidays and the summer break.
But, here we are again, saying good-bye and sending her off for what seems like forever — to a first apartment. This means she will stay there next summer.
It is so final. So ending. So done. Nineteen years together and that's it. From this point on, she will only visit, not live here.
At the same time, on the other end of life's spectrum, there is my 86-year-old father, coping with the inhumanity and unfairness of aging. Worn out body parts. Forgetfulness. Falls.
There again, is the finality. A winding down of what has been.
And, with both the 19-year-old and the 86-year-old, there lies a huge, roiling vat of uncertainty. What will they do? How will they cope? Will they be safe?
Letting go means worrying every time the phone rings or every time it doesn't.
I tell each one about the need to — please — think things through. Make good choices. Be aware of unintended consequences.
Neither one has a convincing, solid grasp of common sense — she hasn't gained it fully, yet, and he's kind of lost it. Both are stubborn, too.
How crazy that at 48, I am the fulcrum of wisdom? In the void of knowing what is right and good and best, I emerge as the knowledge source?
Those who have traveled this path before me have said this is what it would be like as the family landscape shifts. But, like labor and childbirth, you never fully understand it until you experience it firsthand.
The cell phone rings and jars me out of this deep, disturbing contemplation. It is the daughter.
"Dad is freaked out," she reports. "He wants me to get pepper spray and mace."
Hmmm. The thought of a viable, protective force helps settle my unhinged mental state about life beyond control.
I'll take that spray in a plastic shield, please. And, make it a double.

Putting the fun in dysfunction

We are hours away from ending our 3-week family vacation, visiting family and friends on the East Coast.
Getting here was a highly-organized initiative that involved stuffing 5 adult-sized humans and one 11-year-old into the family van with eight duffle bags, two totes of casual/beach/running shoes, two pairs of rollerblades (unused), one set of Perfect Pushups (barely used), the 11-year-old's blankie collection, a couple of pillows, six iPods and two coolers for food and drink.
We set out from South Dakota at 7:15 p.m., Sunday, Aug. 2, and arrived in Westport, CT, about 23 and a half hours later. Tomorrow, we do it all in reverse.
Looking back on the three weeks, I find it amazing that 1) we are all still alive, 2) we are still talking to each other and 3) we had fun most of the time.
This is no small feat, considering that despite swimming in the same genetic pool, we are six people with six definite agendas that, often times, are diametrically opposed.
Sure, we tread on common ground — eating, running and going to the beach — but from there, the potential for discord ramps up and peace-keeping efforts grow a little dicey.
In addition to visiting family, we had the singular pursuits of college tours (son), work & Bruce Springsteen concert (husband), shopping (two teen-age daughters), random play (11-year-old), and laundry (me).
Along the way, the van got a flat, but no dramatic rescue or side of the road tire change. We got lost driving from Boston to Cambridge. The six of us stuffed into a two-bed hotel room for two nights. And, unsupervised and unknowing, the 11-year-old played with a wind-up "Little Pecker" toy in a quirky shop.
True, there were tears and bickering. Mostly, though, there were good memories. And, if that's not enough, we've still got another 24 hours in the van to work things out.