I Have Been to the Mountains...

I figure by now the consensus is likely one of the following options:

a. I did NOT survive the Jersey Shore Relay, I simply got washed out with the tide.

b. I decided while in Seaside Heights to embrace my true Jersey Girl Self, call myself K-Mom, and start a reality show about people who don’t really drink, never go to bars, have natural volume to their hair that they try to subdue daily, and get sunburned way too easily to hang out at the Shore for long.

c. I was so flummoxed by trying to run that I headed off course and am still somewhere on the Turnpike murmuring “what exit? What exit?” to people driving by. (1)

d. I actually SURVIVED the Jersey Shore Relay, Basked In My Own Glorious Survival, Marveled at NOT dying on the course, and then Collapsed Utterly Wordless for 3 months.

Note (1) for true wannabe Jersey folks, this would take SOME wandering, as it is of course the Parkway, not the Turnpike, that takes us to the Shore. Not the beach. The Shore.

I did survive the race. Actually, I kicked some race bu…ok, let’s not get crazy, I survived. It was wildly emotional, physically yikes, and surprisingly satisfying. I still hate running, but running for a cure for NF, this maybe I could do again.
We’ll see.


This has been a season of mountain climbing, figuratively, for me. Maybe I’m prepping for being officially grown up in less than a year. I always hoped I’d grow up to be Aretha Franklin. I still have my fingers crossed on that, but things don’t look promising. Growing up is hard to do.

Anyway, in May I got back on an airplane for the first time in 15 years. This was a mountain of Everest proportions for me. I have a deep seated aversion to altitude, far more deep than my aversion to running. If I collapse running, police could figure out who I was pretty easily, I wear an ID on my ankle. (http://www.roadid.com) But collapsing from 35,000 feet? Ugh. I left a toothbrush at home in case investigators needed DNA evidence to figure out which pieces were me if we didn’t make it. Really, I did.

Without going into the 2.5 hour delay with thunderstorms followed by 6 hours of eek that constituted my flight, I can now say I survived that too. I might even fly again. To Florida or points closer. No more West Coast for me. At least not without medication. The theoretical “big girl pill” does not have the clinical strength of an actual pill. I have learned that the hard way (see “6 hours of eek”). But I got through it, and I’m glad I did.

At the end of that airplane ride was an adventure, the Golden Gate Bridge, astounding mountains bigger than any I’ve ever seen (or driven over, YIKES! What is it about guardrails that folks out west find so offensive? Eek!), a beautiful wedding, a new sister in the family. Just like the race, the plane ride “mountain” was ultimately totally worth it.

I’m not sure what mountain is next. Maybe a class trip with 22 high school seniors to our hospital city? Maybe just getting through our next medical moment? I’m not sure. But I will keep climbing mountains, or at least scaling hills, or stepping over speed bumps or something. The morass of my own head tends too often to suck me in, and I lose my ability to write things out. But even though I may never be the Queen of Soul, or feel like a Natural Woman, I plan to keep moving. Even little mountains count for something…

Even little mountains like putting backside in chair and writing a blog entry…