It’s been a minute since I cleared the Notes app on my phone and shared the memorable nuggets from the mouths of my babes. Here are some recents from the sissies.
“We’re working on compound words and contraptions.” – Sloppy Joan
“If I was death-spert I would just hide longer. But only if I was super, really death-spert.” – Sloppy Joan
“That is in-say-ying!” – Sloppy Joan
“That was the doctor’s appointment when they asked me about pubeder.” – Spike
“Any changes to your medical history?” – Doctor “My mom’s peeling from Turks and Caicos.” – Sloppy Joan
“Their parents are probably so proud of them!” – Sloppy Joan after the AJR concert
“Ants weigh less than an inch.” – Sloppy Joan
“I think he got tiggers.” – Sloppy Joan, meaning chiggers
“My butt has been on so many toilets.” – Sloppy Joan
“Find a clean one. That’s my motto in public bathrooms.” – Sloppy Joan
Husband comes home to Sloppy Joan playing her electric bass hooked up to the amp in the garage. “Whatcha doin’?” – husband “Makin’ some money!” – Sloppy Joan
“I can’t tell if he’s an old man or a dad.” – Sloppy Joan
“I might have gotten a 2-second butt rash, I think!” – Sloppy Joan
“I hope I get a good husband with good babies.” – Sloppy Joan
“We’ll meet you at Crackle Barrel” – Sloppy Joan
“What if he just ignored you because he thought you were a boomer?” – Sloppy Joan
“Yeah, the tortoises at the zoo are always doing it.” – Me “Wait … I thought they were giving each other a ride.” – Spike
“I’m not very religious but his freckles and cross necklace just do something for me.” – Spike, crushin’
“These boots are too small.” – Spike “It’s OK. You’ll get through it. Like the time I wore a bra to school.” – Sloppy Joan
“I haven’t had a Pepsi in a hot second. Like literally just a few seconds.” – Sloppy Joan
“Your breath stinks.” – Spike to JoJo before basketball practice “It’s OK. It’s basketball, it’ll smell like sweat soon.” – Sloppy Joan
“She was born on Valentine’s Day.” – Me, sharing that friends welcomed a grandbaby on Feb. 14. “Ohhhhhh … She’s gonna love sooo many people!” – Sloppy Joan
“Op, tomorrow’s spring 1st.” – Sloppy Joan
“I thought that bunny was laying babies.” – Spike
“The Office is like an adult show and a kid show combined, because it’s really funny, but also, they’re working.” – Sloppy Joan
“I’m so glad we aren’t super rich or anything cuz then I’d have to dress all fancy and look all nice. Plus, I couldn’t fart.” – Sloppy Joan
“I’m not getting a second load.” – Sloppy Joan “You mean a refill?” – JoJo
“Aw, shoot! It’s the real Slim Shady.” – Me “Mom, it’s Eminem.” – JoJo (annoyed)
“He’s the best drumist.” – Sloppy Joan
“I opened my belly button, the water ran into it, I folded the skin and when I lifted it, the water was gone!” – Sloppy Joan “Where did it go?” – Me “Into my belly. I drank through my belly button.” – Sloppy Joan “Wow.” – Me “Does your belly button ever get hungry?” – Sloppy Joan
“I left you a scent packet.” – Sloppy Joan, after tooting in my car
“We played zombie.apicklelips.” – Sloppy Joan
“If I wanna keep one good one I gotta stop farting.” – Sloppy Joan, referring to dating/marriage
“Maya Angelou was born in Ar-Kansas.” – Sloppy Joan “Where?” – Me “Ar-Kansas.” – Sloppy Joan “Oh, Arkansas?” – Me “I guess!” – Sloppy Joan
“We’re going to The Empathy.” – Sloppy Joan, the day of her field trip to the Embassy
Courtney, you’re alive! Of course I’m alive. Well, I mean talk about a cliffhanger!
The comment initiated a six-disc shuffle in my head, not uncommon when I run into people I haven’t seen in some time. On this occasion, however, I had no idea what my friend was referring to. A book club I forgot I was in … shuffle … some trending Tik topic … shuffle … The Golden Bachelor? Sensing I was searching with a faded flashlight, she threw me a rope.
Your blog. Ireland. I was following it and then, poof! You stopped posting. What happened?
Oh my gosh, yes. Thirteen months and a thousand years ago, I had been writing about our trip to Ireland.
I went home and opened the Notes app on my phone. There, in chronological order, were the half-formed, inarticulate receipts outlining the incidents that thwarted the completion of my romantic trip recaps and routine, as it were, in November 2022.
The first order of business here, out of respect for Days 1 through 7 and the sweet sediment that trip left in my soul, is to stoke the lingering embers of my memories and tie up loose ends. So, let’s begin there.
Ireland, Day 8 – Cliffs of Moher
On our last full day in Ireland, we decided to drive to the Cliffs of Moher. It took an hour and half, but felt sacrilegious to come to the country and not snap a photo by the infamous rocks.
This is probably a controversial opinion, as documented by a woman who, at the time, was riding the high of a series of enchanting excursions (see posts for Days 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7), but Hank and I were both slightly underwhelmed by the popular attraction, ranked, I might mention here, as the ninth best Natural Wonder of the World. Looking at photos from the day now, more than a year later, sitting in my office chair, those read like the words of an insatiable moron. But I do remember feeling as though our secret had gotten out and hundreds of strangers had showed up to crash our epic vacation.
You have to walk in a single-file line a good distance as you head south along the edge, the direction we started in. (Ironically, we, with a herd of international humans, shuffled like cattle alongside a field of actual cattle. I got a kick out of that.) What you won’t see in pictures, is that the path, worn and weathered by the soles of millions of visitors’ shoes–some more practical selections than others–is punctuated by arbitrary gaps in the fences and barriers bordering the perimeter. These partitions are wallpapered with a collection of messages and, for universal interpretation, illustrations warning pedestrians not to jump and urging them to reach out for help if they’re feeling low. With these public service announcements infiltrating the experience, while completely understandable, it made each break in the boundary wall feel like a siren call. A whisper to step into the margin of danger, if you dare. I looked it up, so you don’t have to; the most recent record indicates that 66 deaths occurred at the cliffs between 1993 and 2017.
Eventually, the borders disappear and there’s nothing between the trillions of cells that make you, you, and the 390-foot drop into the swirling, thrashing Atlantic below. And maybe that’s the thrill of it. You can’t stand on the brink of such a formidable assassin, awe-inspiring as it may be, and not taste your mortality. The cliffs are astounding in their enormity, unexpected symmetry and allure. But they command respect. And an awareness of your phone at all times.
We walked as far south as we could, and then up the northern path. We snapped too many selfies, windburned and drunk on vacation. It started to sprinkle, which felt so on-brand. We strolled through the gift shops and vendor stalls, like obedient tourists. And then we went in search of something delicious.
We settled on kebabs at a greasy hole in the wall in Ennistymon, where the only employee rang us up and disappeared to fry our chips to order. A pair of young, unsupervised boys came in and asked for sodas. The man made them say “please.” It takes a village. They did so, begrudgingly and darted to the table across the small space, the only one next to an outlet. They clumsily, frantically plugged in their tablets and faded into a digital battleground. I thought of the girls, at home, probably negotiating tablet time of their own. Kids are kids are kids, no matter where you have your kebab.
We drove into a rainbow on our way back to Galway.
That night, we walked to Monroe’s for dinner. Tucked into an intimate pocket that enclosed a pair of two-person tables, I had a warm goat cheese salad that solidified my love affair with the region’s soft dairy. After we ate, we walked back to hear the band and, like the boys and their screen addiction, I was reminded that in every bar, in every corner of the world, some universal experiences hold true. On that particular night, I noted the following:
A group of travelers, who spoke only French, lost their collective minds when the band played “Country Road, Take Me Home,” and I don’t know why, as I sang along, it surprised me so much.
Four girlfriends up from their university for the weekend commandeered the table next to us and, in the cutest British accents, unpacked the nuances standing in the way of one of the girl’s pinning down her crush. Eventually, the girl cried. They comforted her. Women forming and fiercely defending their tribes is ironclad and unequivocally, the best thing ever. Also, they were surrounded by attractive boys their age. I suppose this is how missed opportunities get missed.
“Sweet Caroline” came on and I clutched my heart. Is there any hidden crawlspace on this planet where that song doesn’t hit just the right note?
Day 9 – Dublin
Most of the bars in Galway close around 2 a.m. In the six hours between last call and 8 o’clock Mass, something incredible happens. The streets, peppered with broken glass, food wrappers and over-served twenty-somethings just a short time earlier, are cleared, making way for the good Catholics of and in the area to receive the word of the Lord, sans a single sign of residual debauchery.
Hank and I marveled at the janitorial feat as a priest shook hands with parishioners on the steps of a towering cathedral. It was a brilliant morning, sunny and comfortable. We’d gotten lucky, yet again. We popped in to Aran Island for wool sweaters and gifts that would ship to us weeks after we’d settled back into life as we knew it. We had Murphy’s Ice Cream as a late supplement to breakfast. The Dingle Sea Salt was a triumph. Street performers sang and recited poetry. We strolled and pressed our lips against the cold dessert. Nothing felt familiar, and yet, the ease of the slow morning felt more comfortable than anything.
“Let’s. go to Dublin,” Hank said.
We stopped along the highway for convenience store snacks in preparation for the heightened navigation necessary for the big city. Our last night, we stayed at the adorable Brooks Hotel. Our room was a magnificent space we barely saw.
We walked around Dublin, taking in Trinity College and The Temple Bar. It was crowded in the way capital cities are. What I remember most is our dinner at a small table at Darkey Kelly’s. A bowl of seafood chowder with mussels between us, we sipped our final ciders and heady beers, and I reminded myself to open up every porous part of my being and soak this in. The lively trad music in the adjacent room, the heat of bodies packed into tables and booths, not a disgruntle face among them. Only voices building to recite familiar folk songs.
I love you well today, and I love you more tomorrow.
If you ever loved me, Molly, love me now.
In a kiosk in the Dublin Airport, Hank picked up a calendar featuring the sheep of Ireland. “I was going to try and sneak it, and give it to you for Christmas,” he said. “But that just seems so far away.” The cashier slid it into a parchment paper sack and we went to our gate.
Welcome home
We crossed the ocean and picked our lives back up where we’d left them. Summer ended. The chicks went back to school. Hikes and afternoon toasties gave way to sports physicals and bumper-to-bumper Zoom meetings. There wasn’t anything particularly unique or shocking about the evaporation of our vacation glow. It was expected. Autumn was unfolding as autumn does. We were playing our parental and professional parts, with duties, as assigned. And for a while, everything fit into tidy “before Ireland” and “after Ireland” buckets.
On November 3, I turned 40.
On November 12, Hank and I went to my friend’s wedding. Mom and Dad agreed to keep the girls overnight. Around midnight, the screen on my phone illuminated the room, offending my eyes, powered down and acclimated to the darkness. It was Mom calling. “Don’t panic,” she said. “Dad’s having trouble breathing and there’s an ambulance here to get him.” Hank was already putting his shoes on.
What I didn’t know then–what none of us could have known then– was that we were standing at the precipice of a months-long gauntlet of progressions and setbacks. Uncertainty and altered expectations. Our family as we knew it had reached the end of the well-worn path and protective walls.
You are now entering a time warp
For the sake of brevity and, because the details have been diluted by time and diagnoses, I will say that my dad developed severe health complications after being exposed to pasteurella multocida, a dangerous bacteria found in cats’ mouths. My parents live on a farm, he has dry, cracked skin in the winter, a persistent barn cat nipped at his finger and that simple, seemingly innocuous event forever tilted our family’s axis.
While Dad was initially hospitalized for the infection, he really got into trouble when he aspirated into a Bi-pap machine shortly after being admitted. In the early morning hours, with only my sister at his side, he made the proactive decision to go on a ventilator. I saw him on a Monday and less than 24 hours later he was sedated in the ICU. (If this post isn’t long enough already and you want more details about his stay in critical care, you can check out this post.)
Thus began a strange new relationship with time. Hours in his hospital room crawled by, filled with numbing beeps and extreme temperatures. No one could seem to figure out the thermostat. My sister and I took turns sleeping on the convertible sofa under the window, 30 minutes here, a two-hour run if you were lucky. The buckets were no longer “before” and “after.” Time was suddenly temperamental and teetering between “best case scenario” and “worst case scenario.” For days we existed in an if-then purgatory, the paralysis of our patriarch’s unstable swings in either direction serving as tools for emotional torture.
The cruel reality of adulting is that the universe doesn’t get an “attention all” memo when a piece of your personal life is swallowing you whole. Outside the hospital walls, nothing stopped, or even mercifully slowed. It was picking up, if anything. We were still signed up to bring in dinner for the basketball team’s home game. The dog needed more heart worm medicine. I was still fully employed. And, as luck would have it, the holidays were coming. It was the happiest time of the year.
My dad woke up. I watched the sunrise on Thanksgiving morning–Mom’s birthday–over the freezing ledge of his new room in the progressive unit. He moved to inpatient rehab at a different facility. It was a depressing place. We were supposed to be happy, but nothing felt light or promising. Shortly after being sent home, Dad had a setback and was readmitted to the hospital. More medical terms to look up. More sparse nights of sleep on the foldout couch. More fickle thermostats.
Christmas came and went. Dad was so out of it. He always made a big breakfast spread before we opened gifts, so we all pitched in to make eggy casseroles and slapped sweet frosting over the cracks in our nerves. The ball dropped, ushering in 2023. I hung my sheep of Ireland calendar in our closet so I could admire it every day.
Just before spring, an unpredictable shift at work doubled my responsibilities. I waited. Still, no “attention all” memo, much to my disappointment. Then, another hospitalization. “Your dad has A-Fib and Congestive Heart Failure,” a sweet nurse told me as I tucked a fitted sheet around the thin cushion of the familiar convertible furniture, bought in bulk a decade before. “Think of his heart as a house,” she said. “He has issues with both the electrical and the plumbing.” Everything he knew and was doing would have to change. The house wasn’t just on fire, it was flooding, too, and everyone was burning and drowning, quietly, with artificial smiles plastered across our faces.
Sands through the hourglass
I was working more than ever before, searching for low-sodium recipes I thought Dad would eat and Mom would make between running the chicks around, meetings and writing. Then, one day, I looked up at my sheep of Ireland calendar, the blackface gals of March with their backsides painted pink hung above me. It was the end of August.
I had been living in a heightened state of response for so many days, stitched together with the thinnest thread, that when I tried to think back on the specifics of those weeks, I couldn’t grab anything tangible. I’d checked off hundreds of tasks, appointments, deadlines, only to have them vacuumed into some black hole, where all the hurried, tasteless, empty moments spent surviving over thriving go to die.
I listened to a podcast a few months back about anticipatory grief. How, when we hear of a loved one’s terminal diagnosis, realize our parents’ health is failing, sense the demise of a relationship nearing, we protect ourselves by preparing for the death as early as possible. In this case, I thought we were going to lose Dad, then gratefully accepted that we weren’t, and then sobered up to the reality that we had, in fact, lost certain parts of him.
So, what is that … Griefus interruptus?
The physical trauma and chronic diagnosis only happened to one member of our family. And yet, to look at the dynamic overall, we’re like the letter-coated dice cradled in a freshly shaken Boggle board. We’re all still here, but shifted. We’ll probably never go back to exactly the way we were before.
Processing and accepting that required a super-sized portion of self-preservation for this desperate soul. In the wake of Dad’s last hospital stay, with the appointments that immediately followed and the ever-lasting struggle to deliver caring but not condescending messages and the tireless grind of keeping my head above water, I turned toward anything that helped me rage against the changing of life as I’d known it. I started writing a novel. I purged my Instagram feed and did Amy Poehler’s Masterclass, which made me smile. I leaned hard into reading actual printed books and got lost in Ann Patchett essays, which made me smile and cry.
And then I ran into a friend who reminded me that this space exists. That this blog, like my sheep of Ireland calendar, was stuck somewhere in the “before Dad got sick” bucket. For anyone who noticed, I can only offer this:
Attention all: Life got really hard, heavy and scary there for awhile. I appreciate your patience during my absence, and your readership if your eyes are passing over these words now. As for Ireland, I cannot recommend it enough. I will cherish the views from the highest cliffs and summits, sweetness of the ciders, and warmth of the toasties and the people forever. Those ten days were a dream, spent with my favorite human. I don’t know how often I can meet you here, in this corner of the vast internet that we sometimes share, but I’m happy to be here now. And I promise not to let so much time go before we meet here again.
Please note: During our trip to Ireland, our priorities were hiking, the most beautiful scenery, pubs and live music. We also rented a car. You won’t find much in these posts about fine dining, shopping or the public transportation, though I’m confident there are great resources for these topics elsewhere online. I have also included some resources at the bottom if you’re planning a similar trip.
I had another great night of sleep in our cozy second floor room at Rolf’s. It’s interesting, there aren’t any screens in the windows in Ireland, but I never saw any bugs. We had a perfect breeze, and everything was so comfortable. This was probably my favorite of all the places we stayed. We woke up, enjoyed another great breakfast in the restaurant and packed up to head to our next stop on the trip: Killarney.
On our way, we decided to go see Mizen Head Signal Station (pronounced by locals with a short “i,” or with a ridiculous long “i” if you’re a silly American), the most southwesterly point in Ireland. We passed through cute towns like Skibbereen, with charming brightly colored buildings, and drove by land and seascapes that took my breath away. Particularly as you get closer to the point, the oceanfront scenes are exceptional. Of course, you endure a matrix of insanely narrow roads to get there, so as I’d say, “Oh my God, just look at that!” Hank would just smile out of the side of his mouth, his hands gripping at 10 and 2.
Our afternoon at Mizen Head is one I’ll never forget. People told us it was like the Cliffs of Moher on a smaller scale, and I would agree with that, but I would also say that the entire experience was closer … more humbling.
There are so many ramps and steps, that you can walk as much or as little as you like. We started by going out over the bridge toward the station. Suspended over water, Hank looked down and spotted a seal living his best life in the small inlet under the bridge, a long, playful body moving in a natural teal pool.
There were look out points pointing you toward jagged peninsulas, with the Wild Atlantic as far as the eye could see. I suppose some lucky folks have spotted whales off the shoreline. The wind pounded against my ears and lifted my hat as I put my life in the hands of an iron fence and ventured down the planks hovering in the air.
As we went the other way, down by the main cliffs, I was amazed at all of the intricacies layered into these shale and sandstone faces. Within the profiles of the cliffs, there are inlets and coves and caves for exploring. I stood at the closest point, with the sun riding the tops of the ocean’s ripples and tried to commit the scene to memory. A magnificent marbled silhouette, limbs outstretched into the diamond-studded water, trimmed in the lace of the waves connecting with ragtag earth. We were observing a poem in motion.
There is a café and nice gift shop on site. As we were leaving, a family was passing around a teapot at a picnic table overlooking the cliffs and it made me smile. We drove by a group of cows on the way out and Hank asked if I thought they knew what a great setup they had.
As we made our way back down the narrow roads that took us to the cliffs, Hank had a better view of the beaches. “We’re going down there,” he said. “We’re going to figure out how to get there and we’re getting in that water.”
And so, we did. We took a right over a one-lane bridge and parked at Barleycove. A short stroll down a boardwalk and over a floating bridge of plastic blocks, and our naked toes were pressing into the Ireland sand.
I will tell you that there, on that beach with our pant legs rolled up and our shoes dangling from the crooks of our fingers, I felt parts of my spirit wake up. I felt more present, more connected, more in touch with this world than I have in years. I let myself get lost in the intoxicating spontaneity of it all and it felt like heaven soaked in salt water. I saw it in Hank, too. There were people bundled up, in wet suits, in bikinis … all grasping at the final feathers on the tails of Ireland’s warm season. The water was chilly and sensational, and if I could have bottled it all up, I would have.
We looked for a little pub in Goleen, but nothing was quite open yet. We grabbed lunch at Along the Way Café Goleen, two yummy pastrami sandwiches, and coffees and a piece of s’mores fudge to go. On our way to our car, we stopped into the visitor’s center, where a lovely woman told us the most scenic route to take to Killarney.
I would be lying if I didn’t tell you there were moments when we, as a couple, doubted the instructions we were given, both by our friend in Goleen and the Polo’s GPS. We ended up on a less-than-one-car-wide lane through a nature preserve, kicking up rocks and dust. And then … without any warning at all, the route spit us out onto the top of the most beautiful valley I’d ever seen. The sun was shining down in streaks over the verdant green scene beside us. A sheep, escaped from the grass below, could have kissed our car as we passed. It was like coming out of the dark into a perfect panoramic portrait painted just for us, and we had no idea it was coming. I suppose no one can really prepare for beauty like that anyway.
We drove through three tunnels, came around a curve and pulled off at Molly Gallivans Cottage and Traditional Farm. This place was like stepping back in time. The second you get out of your car, under the watchful eye of a towering carved druid, you hear traditional Irish music echoing out over a rolling calendar-worthy hillscape.
The cottage is more than 200 years old. At one point, as a widowed woman with many mouths to feed, Molly turned it into an illegal pub. Eventually, she toned it down and started offering tired travelers tea and home cooking to make ends meet. According to the website, “Jeremiah Gallivan was the last of Molly’s descendants to live in the cottage. Jeremiah, a bachelor, farmed the land using the same traditional methods as his ancestors” until his death in 1997. If you saw the living quarters in this place, you would understand why I wanted to start that last sentence with, “Shockingly, …” Let’s just say I doubt Jeremiah was catching the latest Seinfeld when the rest of us were.
Molly’s has a surprisingly large shopping area, bathrooms and the most wonderful, sweet smoky smell. It’s worth the stop to catch your breath and soak up a little Neolithic vibe. If you are planning a visit, their website has more details about hikes, dining and shopping at the visitor’s center, so be sure to check it out.
We were riding a high as we drove into Killarney. Day 4 had been a feast for the eyes and the soul, Ireland was everything we could have dreamed it would be, the world was all pots of gold and rainbows and then … Bam! We almost died. I’m not even joking. Two older women turned right in front of us. Hank had to swerve and slam on the brakes and you guys, I’m telling you, that little VW Polo came through for us in a big way. Between his reaction time and that little car’s insane ability to stop on a dime, I lived to type these words. I needed new underwear, but I lived.
We were still a little shaken when we pulled into Loch Lein Country House after 5. Of all the places we stayed, this was probably one of the only ones I wouldn’t necessarily stay at if we went back. It was lovely, but if you like to walk, it’s just not convenient. Well, I guess that’s not really a good way to put it. It’s kind of perfect if you like to walk … far.
We cleaned up and did what we’d done in the other cities we’d been to, we decided to head out for dinner on foot. There was a place just up the road, but when we got there (after a roadside sheep spotting) it didn’t look very promising. “Let’s just keep walking toward town,” I said. Hank pulled out his phone to see what I was getting us into. While he had his face in the screen, my ankle rolled and Wham-o! I went down onto the gravel on the side of the road, cars driving by. I got up and clapped the dust off my hands. My husband didn’t miss a beat. (I’m a very graceful creature.)
The pads of my palms throbbing and peppered with pebble dents, we soldiered on. It was a not-so-brief 4km walk into town. Thankfully, Hank spotted a nature path across the street, and it made for a nice commute. We saw so many stags and an older couple told us they are all over the park. The wildlife certainly made the brisk walk go faster.
By the time we made it to the main strip in Killarney, our feet were screaming. We saw a cute place down an alley and went with it. Stonechat was yummy. Hank had Irish stew and I had fish and chips, of course, and an awesome strawberry lime cider. The host told us to go to Paddy Sheehan the Grand Bar and Niteclub for traditional Irish music, which is where I think they send everybody after the dinner hour.
There was a group playing traditional instruments and singing toward the front when we got there, so we sat at the modest ledge and small stools along the outside of the room. One thing you should know when you go to Ireland is that much like any venue in any town in any country, getting a table is a sport. A congenial sport, but still a sport. A table opened up and I moved in fast. A couple next to us leaned over and struck up a conversation, eventually joining us in our corner booth. They were from D.C. and going around Ireland for a few days before they headed to Scotland for a wedding and then wrapped up their trip in London. (They were actually there when the queen passed.)
A cover band came on at 11. I forgot how much I love a good cover band and a late night. There was a group of college-age students next to us, playing drinking games and dancing. Time is a funny thing. I can remember being that girl, clumsily moving toward the dance floor like a pinball on its way up to the top bumper. Stepping on strangers’ toes and flashing a drunken, crooked smile to imply it was all in good fun. Screaming every word to every song, which was my favorite song, every song. Dancing at the front, with new friends whose names I never quite got. It was both yesterday and a million years ago. We stayed until about 1 a.m. and caught a cab home, ears buzzing.
Quick reference details for those planning a trip to Ireland
Travel agent – We worked with Maria Lieb at Discovering Ireland. We were given her name by an acquaintance who took a very similar trip to ours. Maria helped us narrow down locations, the duration of our stay in each town, selected and booked all of our hotel and inn rooms, reserved our car and insurance, and provided travel guides. You can reach her by emailing maria@discoveringireland.com.
Transportation – We opted to rent a car so we had flexibility each day. We did the full insurance, including tires, and rented the GPS navigation. In Ireland, compared to the United States, the steering wheel is on the other side of the car, and they drive on the other side of the road, which can be confusing, but you catch on. Also, be prepared … some of the roads are very narrow.
Dates of our trip – While most people go to Ireland in June, July and early August, we were there August 26 – September 5, in an effort to still get decent weather but avoid some of the crowds.
Weather – We were spoiled with the weather while we were there! Temperatures were typically mid- to low-70s during the day and the 60s at night. We only had rain two days.
Money – We primarily used our credit card, which was very easy. They will often ask you if you want to pay in euros or dollars. It’s best to select euros. We also used local ATM machines to get cash, which came in handy for cabs and snacks. In our experience, ATMs were better than exchanging currency at the airport.
Things I packed and didn’t need –
Hair straightener (couldn’t use in any of the outlets)
Good hiking boots and trail shoes (I took these and loved them)
A light backpack for hiking
Crossbody purse (or hip bag) for evenings and days out
Sunglasses
Raincoat
Umbrella
Moisture-wicking layers (tanks, ts and long-sleeve)
Small bottles of hand sanitizer
Hair ties (my hair was in a pony or braided most days)
Good socks
Dramamine (If you get motion sickness, this is life in Ireland)
Notes app or a journal
Fitbit charger (we averaged 22k steps a day)
Phone charger
A mobile hotspot (we rented a wifi candy and picked ours up at the Dublin airport)
GPS
The flight – We flew out of Chicago, which is about two hours from our home. The hardest part was finding a place to park at O’Hare! We got there about three hours early and had plenty of time. The flight was direct to Dublin and took around seven hours – give or take – both ways. I thought Aer Lingus did a tremendous job of keeping everyone fed, comfortable and happy. Take a little something to help you sleep and you’ll be there before you know it! Our experience at the Dublin airport was incredibly positive. Quick and painless!
Please note: During our trip to Ireland, our priorities were hiking, the most beautiful scenery, pubs and live music. We also rented a car. You won’t find much in these posts about fine dining, shopping or the public transportation, though I’m confident there are great resources for these topics elsewhere online. I have also included some resources at the bottom if you’re planning a similar trip.
Adequately rested after a marathon Day 1, we woke up around 8 a.m., ready to see where the day would take us. I’d read good things about a breakfast place called The Fig Tree, but it didn’t open for another two hours. Simply by default, and perhaps divine intervention, we ended up at Café la Coco.
I loved absolutely everything about this meal, from the pottery our food came in, to the immersive setting. We sat outside and took in the bustle of a Sunday morning in Kilkenny. Young workers moving trash from the night before into dumpsters locked away behind brightly colored sliding doors. Twenty-somethings in messy buns stumbling down for a quick coffee and pastry. Those a decade or two up walking the dogs, pushing a stroller, running errands.
We both ordered breakfast sandwiches and coffee, a latte for me and an Americano for my date. While ours were both equally delicious, I have to say, our neighbor had the Bacon and Maple Pancakes and they looked insanely good. I actually saw him running his finger around the bowl to lick it clean, which is quite the endorsement, universally. He was an older gentleman, a marathoner, from Northern Ireland. In fact, he can “see Scotland from his doorstep.” I know this because in Ireland, unlike many places, the charming countrymen and women love to strike up a conversation. In a last-minute stroke of genius, we ordered a blueberry lemon scone to go.
On our stroll back to the hotel to finish packing, we realized how nice it is to walk to and from a meal. In our town, it would be a real roll of the dice to commute on foot. But in most of the towns we visited, it was easy to hoof it, and it just felt great. I think we largely underestimate the benefits of a casual pre- and post-meal jaunt.
Kilkenny to Blarney Castle and Gardens
Before we left, Hank and I both agreed we would be perfectly fine with skipping the “touristy” attractions in order to leave more room for hiking and exploring. And we honestly didn’t intend to do the whole Blarney experience. But we did, and I gotta tell ya, it was pretty freaking cool.
Initially, we planned on going to a different area, but as we were driving and converting kilometers to miles, Hank realized it was going to put us at our hotel pretty late that evening. So, I picked up the trusty GPS and typed in the only name I recognized from the signs: Blarney. (Did I mention we didn’t really have a solid itinerary?) We’ll just take a quick look, since we’re here, we thought.
We purchased tickets and two ice cream comes and spent the next few hours walking around the majestic Blarney Gardens. The wait to kiss the stone was an hour long and, call me COVID-crazy, but I just didn’t have a burning desire to match lips with hundreds of my newest acquaintances, so we skipped it. But it didn’t take anything away from the experience.
The grounds have every type of tree you can imagine and tout some of the tallest in Ireland. There’s even a tree – a Western Red Cedar – that appears to have grown two new trees. (See picture for reference, it’s so hard to explain.) Everything is meticulous and vibrant, with names like the Carnivorous Courtyard and Poison Garden.
It was while poking around Blarney House, a historic residence on the grounds, when I thought I saw Daniel Radcliffe with another gentleman and two small children. This was on the heels of Hank thinking Paul Mescal from “Normal People” checked us into Hotel Kilkenny the night before. We were painfully wrong, on both accounts.
Of everything we saw, waterfalls and giant ferns and floral archways, my two favorite parts of Blarney Gardens were the Wishing Steps and the Seven Sisters, mostly because I just love a good legend. According to the sign, any believer with a wish in their heart who closes their eyes and walks first forward, then backward up the Wishing Steps will have their dream come true. I am notoriously clumsy with both eyes open, so I did not opt for the full immersion here, but I did watch a couple go through the ritual and it made me smile. And I’d be lying if I didn’t say I recited a little wish to myself as I ascended the ancient stairway.
The Seven Sisters story gave me goosebumps. Here is the version from the website: “Just northeast of the Castle can be found a circle of nine standing stones, two of which have fallen. It is said that in medieval times a chieftain who had two young sons and seven daughters took his sons on their first battle against a troublesome neighbour who was constantly raiding his cattle. The chieftain was victorious in the battle but at great cost: both his sons were killed. Returning to his cattle with his troops and the bodies of his sons, he stopped at this familiar spot and to mark the death of his sons the grieving chieftain ordered his men to knock over two of the stones.”
As a mother, I mean … it just tears ya up. Even if it is just a circle of rocks. Overall, I would say the Blarney experience is worth the trip, particularly if the sun is shining and you’ve got good walking shoes.
Blarney Castle and Gardens to Baltimore, County Cork
It was roughly 90 minutes from the Blarney grounds to our destination for the evening, Baltimore, County Cork. Listen to me when I say that this was the longest 90 minutes of. my. life.
Allow me, if you will, to paint a picture for you … Imagine being strapped into a chair that is barreling along a hedge at 60 mph. Every once in a while, a box truck, or a van or a greedy compact car or, in the worst of worst-case scenarios, a semi, comes flying around a curve and you get to dip into the hedge and find out if there’s, say, a stonewall hiding behind the shrubs. Between the Polo’s hyper-sensitive brakes, my husband’s unscratched itch to be a racecar driver and my natural tendency to get sick as hell on anything that moves, it was a real ten-layer trifle of terrifying. My forearm started to spasm I was gripping the door handle so tight. The commute was gorgeous. Absolutely gut-wrenching. But gorgeous. But the true saving grace was that scone. Oh, that beautiful scone. When has a well-made pastry not been able to cure the woes of the world, I ask you?
Coming into Baltimore is what I imagine the coastal areas in New England are like, though I’ve never been. Boats tethered and spaced in the harbor, bobbing in the last minutes of the day’s sunlight. Streets that slant and build in activity until they crescendo down by the water, the main attraction.
We pulled into Rolf’s Country House & Restaurant around dinnertime. A pair of gentlemen helped us get our hefty suitcases up into our room (“Do you have Grandma in here?” one of them joked) and brought us crisps (potato chips) and prosecco, which made me instantly fall in love with them. This was by far my favorite of the places we stayed. Not just because they fed me carbs, but the rooms, of which there are only 10, are beautiful.
We downed our bubbles, showered and walked down toward the harbor to find dinner. There was live music close to the water, but nowhere to sit, so we backtracked a bit to The Algier’s Inn. Fate, again took a hand. This was one of my top meals for the whole trip. At the suggestion of our absolutely adorable waitress, I went for the fried fish sandwich and skinny fries, paired with a lovely local cider. I still have dreams about this sandwich. The fish was perfectly breaded and crispy, dressed in the yummiest sauce. Hank had a burger and a West Cork IPA, brewed by one of the only female brewers in Ireland (#girldad), who also happened to be helping out at Algier’s that very evening. (So, we did have at least one legitimate celebrity sighting.)
After three different servers professed their love for the Sticky Toffee Pudding, we basically had to give it a go, and it was delicious. After we said we were done, the same saint waitress who recommended the fish, demonstrated the proper way to scrape up the remaining gooey bits and lick the spoon clean. As Sticky Toffee virgins, we had no clue how dedicated this dessert fan base is. I’ve got nothin’ but respect for the bowl scrapers out there.
Full and happy, we walked back up the slanted streets to Rolf’s, on top of the hill. It got pretty dark in some spots, so we picked up the pace and burned off some pudding. I don’t know if it was all of the walking, or the jetlag finally catching up with me, or my satiated belly or, I’d like to think, the lovely breeze coming off the water and through our open window, but I slept like a baby that night. A fat, insanely joyful baby.
Quick reference details for those planning a trip to Ireland
Travel agent – We worked with Maria Lieb at Discovering Ireland. We were given her name by an acquaintance who took a very similar trip to ours. Maria helped us narrow down locations, the duration of our stay in each town, selected and booked all of our hotel and inn rooms, reserved our car and insurance, and provided travel guides. You can reach her by emailing maria@discoveringireland.com.
Transportation – We opted to rent a car so we had flexibility each day. We did the full insurance, including tires, and rented the GPS navigation. In Ireland, compared to the United States, the steering wheel is on the other side of the car, and they drive on the other side of the road, which can be confusing, but you catch on. Also, be prepared … some of the roads are very narrow.
Dates of our trip – While most people go to Ireland in June, July and early August, we were there August 26 – September 5, in an effort to still get decent weather but avoid some of the crowds.
Weather – We were spoiled with the weather while we were there! Temperatures were typically mid- to low-70s during the day and the 60s at night. We only had rain two days.
Money – We primarily used our credit card, which was very easy. They will often ask you if you want to pay in euros or dollars. It’s best to select euros. We also used local ATM machines to get cash, which came in handy for cabs and snacks. In our experience, ATMs were better than exchanging currency at the airport.
Things I packed and didn’t need –
Hair straightener (couldn’t use in any of the outlets)
Good hiking boots and trail shoes (I took these and loved them)
A light backpack for hiking
Crossbody purse (or hip bag) for evenings and days out
Sunglasses
Raincoat
Umbrella
Moisture-wicking layers (tanks, ts and long-sleeve)
Small bottles of hand sanitizer
Hair ties (my hair was in a pony or braided most days)
Good socks
Dramamine (If you get motion sickness, this is life in Ireland)
Notes app or a journal
Fitbit charger (we averaged 22k steps a day)
Phone charger
A mobile hotspot (we rented a wifi candy and picked ours up at the Dublin airport)
GPS
The flight – We flew out of Chicago, which is about two hours from our home. The hardest part was finding a place to park at O’Hare! We got there about three hours early and had plenty of time. The flight was direct to Dublin and took around seven hours – give or take – both ways. I thought Aer Lingus did a tremendous job of keeping everyone fed, comfortable and happy. Take a little something to help you sleep and you’ll be there before you know it! Our experience at the Dublin airport was incredibly positive. Quick and painless!
This month, my parents are celebrating 50 years of marriage. People, that is 18,250 days, 54,750 meals, 13,035 episodes of Jeopardy and 350 major holidays together. Just shy of a 15-year union myself, I’ve had a tablespoon-size serving of the subtle art of sharing a life with another human, so I can admire the marathon these two kids have conquered.
Mom and Dad knew each other for several years before they began dating. But once they started smoochin’ it didn’t take long for them to decide to tie the knot. Six months, maybe. They had a small, simple ceremony on – fun fact – the same day my mom’s father got remarried. (Less than ideal, I’d say.) Their color was red, a bold choice for a bold romance. They had their reception in the church basement and danced off to the theme from “Love Story.”
The road has not always been smooth for my parents. In the beginning they literally collected change in a piggy bank so they could go out for dinner once every few months. My father had two heart attacks at a very young age, one shortly after starting his own business and with a fresh-faced baby at home (this girl!). Their parents passed. Mom battled and beat cancer. But truthfully, these hurdles jumped from the page like boogie men in an otherwise entertaining and joyful pop-up book.
Because my folks truly, sickeningly adore each other. I’ve had a front row seat for 40 of the 50 years they’ve been tethered, and I can tell you, they’re pretty much masters at the whole till-death-do-us-part promise thing. They understood the assignment.
Being witness to two people who are playing the long game definitely gives you some perspective on how to navigate your own marriage. In honor of my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary, I want to share with you a short list of the lessons I’ve taken note of from the observation deck over the last five decades.
Clearly, you’re nuts.
My parents are almost always together. They work together, they live together, they eat and sleep together. And yet, their views of a reality they predominantly share for all intents and purposes, often differ. Mom always claims she told Dad about an event or appointment, but he never seems clued in. He attributes this to his ability to blend into the background, or, as he puts it, live as a mushroom who’s kept in the dark and fed shit. Mom attributes it to his senior brain.
My father’s ability to recall names and dates from the past is insane, but often comes after an exhaustive back-and-forth with my mom. Watching the two of them retrace their steps to an old colleague or classmate is how I imagine charades play out at a retirement home. We’re gonna get where we’re going, but it might take a while.
We always say that Mom and Dad need a reality show, though I’m not entirely sure who the target demographic would be there. They get themselves into the wildest situations and do the most ridiculous things. Dad’s known to fight people in his sleep to the point where he flips himself out of bed. He hikes his jeans up to his nipples and can recite every stupid commercial and dirty poem from his youth without prompting.
But his bride isn’t much better. In fact, one might argue she would be the star of the reality show. My brother calls Mom “America’s treasure.” You guys, this woman once ran from her shoelace because she thought it was a snake. She has fallen, tripped, slid, tumbled, collapsed, faceplanted on and over every surface you can imagine. Why she wasn’t, in a twist of poetic irony, named Grace, we’ll never know.
And when you put these two crazies together, it’s comedic dynamite. They love music, and if you’re ever privy to one of their private performances, you’ll notice they start at a low, synchronized hum before eventually building to a bold chorus, Mom always on a 5-second delay because she really doesn’t know the words and thinks that, by coming in late, none of us will notice.
And God help me, I just love ‘em to pieces for all of it. They are my trail mix of choice; full of nuts with plenty of sweet stuff sprinkled in.
Let’s be honest, the cheese is slowly sliding off of all of our crackers. I don’t trust a person who doesn’t look for their sunglasses for an hour only to discover them on their head. Who doesn’t walk a lap with their skirt tucked into their pantyhose or get to work to discover their coffee mug took a ride on the roof. Marriage is about running your freak flag up the pole and having your partner salute, knowing you’re going to salute right back.
Everyone has bodies buried in the backyard.
Hitch yourself to someone who knows where they are, doesn’t care and doesn’t dig them up during a fight. That is all.
Arguments are like farts; best to let ‘em rip in private.
When I was in elementary school, I was at a friend’s house and her parents started going at it about something the other forgot to get at the grocery. I remember thinking, “Oh my gosh, how will she pick which parent she is going to live with?”
Believe me when I say I never saw my parents fight growing up. Now, notice I didn’t say that my parents didn’t fight. I’m sure they did! How could you not? It’s as inevitable as spandex in a Super Bowl halftime show. But I’m so thankful they chose to hold onto it until after we were all out of the room. I came of age, after all, in the days of “Full House” (RIP, Bob Saget) and “Growing Pains” and “My Two Dads”. Couples didn’t break up. Maybe one died or was mysteriously just missing from the plot, but they didn’t fight or get divorced.
It’s a courtesy I extend to others in my own marriage. Let’s be honest, there’s nothing worse than watching a couple fight. It’s uncomfortable for everyone. I don’t know where to look or whether to offer a sympathetic courtesy laugh or eye roll. What am I doing with my hands? Do I run? No one wants to be courtside for your significant other smackdown. Sit on it for a minute and wait until the room clears out.
As they’ve gotten older, and I have as well, I’ve seen my parents get a little feisty with each other on the rare occasion. Nothing too intense but it would definitely keep the reality show spicy.
Laughin’ is livin’.
When people come around our family for the first time, I am certain they think we’re insane. We love nothing more than to gather around a table and tell the same stories we’ve told a thousand times, maybe with some new spice added, maybe not, and laugh our collective asses off. The more self-deprecating or embarrassing to one of our own, the better the reception.
In this life, there are moments to grieve and to be somber and to sit in silence, but laughter is the magic potion that fills all the spaces in between and makes processing the heavy stuff palatable. Laughter is the salve for the sore spots, and I truly believe it’s been the secret cement for my parents, and my entire family.
“If you can’t laugh at yourself, you’ll never make it,” Mom says.
Marriage is a team sport
In any good partnership, it’s important to 1) know your role, and 2) be prepared to get called up to the majors with little notice.
My mom is the queen of many things, but for the sake of brevity, here are just a few highlights:
Making potato salad, deviled eggs, broccoli salad and any meat-and-potato combo
Gift gifting
Entertaining
Problem solving
Christmas. Full stop.
A few years ago, she slowly started losing mobility. Severe back issues and arthritis made it difficult for her to walk, get up out of chairs or stand upright for long periods of time. As you can imagine, this impacted all of her typical tasks.
Instead of abandoning the meals and traditions our family was accustomed to, my dad came up out of the bullpen and stepped in where he was needed. He started handling the grocery shopping and hauling in the shipments from the North Pole with only mild grumbling.
I guess the point is, there will come a day when your partner gets taken out of the game, be it due to injury (mental or physical), disease or dire straits of a different color. You have to be prepared to get tapped in and take the reins like a boss. Because that’s what it means to really show up for each other.
Love is the only thing that matters.
My dad will tell you he didn’t fall in love with Mom the first time he met her, when they were teenagers. But from the second those feelings changed, his love for her – and hers for him – has been unwavering. It’s one of the greatest truths of my life. As they welcomed each of the three little humans they created and watched our families grow, as adversity roared and subsided, in the face of almost losing each other, their bond never blinked. Not once.
I can’t explain the voodoo of the higher power that pairs people off in this world. I don’t know the magic formula of scent and sight and heart that triggers the chemical reaction of commitment. But I can tell you that the stars aligned for my parents, and we’ve all been blessed to blaze within their constellation.
It’s cliché, I know, but it is a miracle. Two people fell in love and a family was born. A family with three children and 11 grandchildren, 10 gutsy girls and one golden boy. A family tied tightly together in trials and laughter. A family that genuinely enjoys being with each other, because our relationships are an extension of the strong roots planted the day they said, “I do.”
Happy 50th anniversary to my two favorite crazy people. Keep being weird and loving each other so damn much. It’s cute.
JoJo and I decided to go on a short morning walk around the path behind the house. “Let’s do this every morning,” I said, my voice whimsical and drunk on the optimism I’d sponged off of celebrities’ Instagram stories just minutes before. The sky had a gray glow about it and the air was cold but welcoming. Birds flew over us in arrowhead formations and mismatched groups of three. They were talking to each other. JoJo and I were talking to each other. The day was rising and it was all going to be fine.
JoJo saw her friend’s Great Dane trotting around his backyard. “Hi Jake!” she boomed. “Hi Julie!” she called to her friend’s mom, who was standing at the door trying to coax her small horse of a canine back into the house. The poor woman, likely braless and uncaffeinated, smiled and shyly stepped onto her back porch. She gave a slight hello. “Good morning,” I offered, and urged JoJo to keep moving, out of respect for this woman and the quiet house I could see just beyond her shoulder. This, I realized, might be the only somewhat peaceful hour in her entire day. Let us not tread on that.
7:55 a.m.
Hank was waiting in the garage when we got back to the house, showered and ready to go face the public and all its pandemic-feeding germs. We walked into the house and found two little chicks awake and sniffing around for breakfast. “Can we get donuts?” Sloppy Joan asked. There’s something about a 5-year-old with raised eyebrows and a glazed twinkle in her eyes that just melts me.
“Does everyone want donuts?” I asked. I was trying to give off the oh-this-is-such-a-sacrifice vibe, but anyone who knows me knows that a donut run is just like a warm bubble bath to me. I’m always up for the cheap thrill, given the time. We climbed in the SUV, turned up “Hot Girl Bummer” and went for a box full of Long Johns and fritters of various sorts.
After my second cakey sour cream wheel, the guilt set in hard. I’m realizing that more time at home also means more time near my pantry. That, paired with my impressive impulsive stress eating habits, is shaping up to be quite the scale shifter. I’m tuning into a familiar inner dialogue:
Me: You’re going to go for a walk every morning, at lunch and to end the work day. You’re going to get all your workouts in, even extras when you have time.
Also Me: We should probably eat those zebra cake rolls to make room for more healthy staples. Also, that last fritter isn’t going to take care of itself.
I was on a phone call with a co-worker while eating my morning pastries. She expressed similar concerns about the carb-laden, shelf-stable staples she had in her cabinets. “Do you think the COVID 15 will become a thing?” she asked. I mean … if the last nine hours are any sign of what’s coming down the pipeline for this mama, it’s not out of the question. Thank goodness I only buy things with elastic around the waistline these days.
8:25 a.m.
I work in social media. Healthcare social media. Times are not slow, I assure you. The last several days have been an onslaught of direct messages, tweets, comments, replies, emails … all of the digital forms of all the communication. They haven’t tapered or showed any signs of slowing. I don’t see that as something that’s coming any time soon. And that’s OK. People are so scared. They’re sick or their loved one is sick and they’re trying to make the best decisions in a climate filled with booby traps and quick sand and unknown enemies lurking around every hidden door.
In my lifetime, we’ve never encountered a situation like this. So many lives are on the line and people – as empowered as we truly are given the option to distance ourselves and really impact the outcome here – are terrified. If I can offer an answer in someone’s moment of uncertainty, I am here for that. I am plugged in and on stand-by for that.
I sat down at my desk and refreshed the feed of messages. It looked much like it had for the past 72 hours – a colorful bouquet of political divisiveness, prayer, conspiracy theories, rally cries, questions and hate. So much hate. I don’t care how many years I spend scrolling the depths of social media, I will never get used to the anonymous warfare that plays out in hand grenades of profanity and bazooka blasts of disregard for civility. The things that people type from the safety of their cowardly keyboards is astonishing. Surprisingly, times of crisis, when the world should be pulling together and dosing out love in abundance, seem to amplify the disgusting dialogue. I’ve seen more people wish this virus on total strangers, simply because they don’t like their preferred political candidate or agree with state- or city-level restrictions, than I care to count.
If I may just offer one small suggestion … If you, unlike me, don’t have to jump into the deep, dark ocean of chatter and social scuffles, don’t. Follow and fill your feed with the people and personalities that lift you up. Lord knows that’s what we really all need at a time like this. Opt for facts. Stay above the rumors and run-ins and just hunker down with hope, happiness and humorous memes, instead. (There are some really good ones floating around.) Let all the children out there scream at their screens. Right now there’s all the time in the world, and absolutely no time for that.
11 a.m.
It took no less than a few hours for Spike and JoJo to start fighting. Ugh! The fighting. They were playing Battleship and lying about the location of their missile carriers, or whatever they’re called. Who raised these children, I ask you? We’d already had a handful of come-to-Jesus chats the day before, so they were familiar with the high points … We’re going to be spending a lot of time together … We have to work together as a family to get through this … Your sisters are going to be your best and only friends for a while … I will send you all to your rooms … blah, blah, blah … etc. and so on.
It’s so tired. Everything I say is so tired. They don’t wanna hear it. I don’t wanna say it. And every time I start in, I find myself already thinking about how many times I’m going to have to give the exact same lecture in the weeks to come. All we want is more time with our kids, until we get more time with our kids and realize just how unreasonable they really can be.
I told them they get one hour on the tablet or watching TV a day, so they better get creative. JoJo picked up her cookbook and chose a soft pretzel recipe. (Shout out to the Man Upstairs real quick for tucking that half a pouch of active yeast in the top cabinet. Thanks brotha!) This kept her occupied for a pleasant chunk of time.
Noon
I hung up from a conference call and realized there wasn’t any chaos. They were playing, peacefully. They’d repurposed the Battleship game into some sort of pirate-Medieval times scenario. There was a lot of scurvy and talk of those poor souls held captive, and I just kept typing away until the crew inevitably started demanding lunch.
JoJo’s timer beeped and she checked her pretzel dough. She was confident in the proof. I wasn’t quite convinced it had the right bounce-back, but I was trying to be pretty hands-off. She started rolling and shaping that dough like a gosh dang boss, and I couldn’t believe the Auntie Ann’s showmanship on display. “What? We had a pretzel guy come to our preschool class,” she shrugged.
“OK, guys,” I clapped my hands together, “We’re going to eat the more perishable foods first. So, what do you want for lunch?”
“Chicken nuggets!” Spike shouted.
“No, that’s a frozen food. We can hold onto those for a bit.”
“Ramen!” Sloppy Joan requested.
“Nope. Again, that’s a food we can hold onto for a long time.”
I was starting to realize that my children were 1) Sodium-seeking junkies, and 2) Not on the same page as me. We settled on deli sandwiches, apples and a second round of my lecture on sisterly love.
When JoJo’s pretzels were done, we all picked a condiment and grabbed one, warm off the baking rack. You know when your kids make stuff and you eat it to be nice or fan the flame of their creative fires? This was not that. These were so good, you guys. Like a warm, expandable hug that traveled down your esophagus, deploying miniature baby hugs all the way down. Here we go again, I thought. The COVID 15 is coming for me. Hard. Should I even fight it at this point?
3:20 p.m.
The governor just confirmed the first death related to COVID-19 in our state. The article announcing the news said that the patient’s wife also has the illness. “A nurse stayed with the patient so he didn’t have to die alone.”
I read that sentence, and then I read it again. And then I cried for a man that I never met. And I cried for his wife, who will hopefully one day soon feel physically healed, but who will be left with a scar so deep and so sore I can’t imagine the pain. I cried for the enormity of it all. And I cried for the beautiful, selfless, heart-wrenching gesture his nurse made today. One soul sitting with another soul, walking them right up to the place where the human experience crosses over into something else. That is so overwhelming and big. Bigger than any petty inconvenience this pandemic may cause. Bigger than politics and policies and brackets that never get to be busted. It’s as big as it gets … people loving people.
It’s a reminder that behind all of the climbing numbers on the maps and closure announcements and fear-inducing headlines, there are real human beings, fighting for their lives. And there are real healers and housekeepers and delivery people and manufacturers working tirelessly and giving relentlessly to this battle. It’s frightening and moving and immensely humbling.
6 p.m.
My phone vibrated on the desk next to me. A message from my friend Britni to the thread of gals I’ve been training with for the GE40, a 20-mile trail race in April. The event is canceled. It was a text I’d been waiting for, and dreading for a week now. All those miles we’ve logged. Not for nothing, but certainly a disappointment. We shuffled down rooty, soupy paths and up slushy hills in 30-degree weather in pursuit of a better time than the year before. I guess it isn’t in the cards. Onto the next challenge, whatever that might be. One that doesn’t involve more than 10 people coming together in one place apparently. It feels like everything is falling away, being taken off the table, one at a time, and seemingly all at once.
I put my phone down and finished up dinner. Sloppy Joan was rambling about who snuggled with whom last night and at what times.
“And then,” she said, “I walked in and I saw two little coochies in your bed.”
“You saw what?”
“Coochies. Two of them!”
And just like that … we smiled. We even laughed a little.
At the base of the mountain, we came upon another truck, an appropriately sized model for traversing a mountain. The driver pulled to the side, a trio of show-worthy Foxhounds dancing behind the cab. My brother rolled down his window.
“Hey man, do you know how we get to the fire tower on Albert Mountain?”
“Yeah, just take the detour through the parking lot up ahead. There’s a beautiful loop if you got time to hike. I think it’s about a mile or so.”
“Thank ya, sir.”
Tank’s engine growled, asserting its machismo, as we drove on to the scene of our wrong turn. There still wasn’t a phone signal among us. The correct road was perhaps five inches wider, and much less threatening. We were making up time, which was good, because, as we climbed higher and higher, the pressure in my bladder, fueled by two cups of lackluster continental breakfast coffee, was growing more and more intense.
Every time we came around a bend, my hopes for relief would be dashed. Until finally, we saw the trail and knew we had to be close. A few minutes later I was dashing from the truck into a patch of rhododendrons, smiling at the sweet satisfaction of release. We’d made it. In more ways than one.
There were two shuttles waiting for us, both SUVs. The General and Captain Cordage were loading their things into one of the vehicles with a gentleman in Carhartt overalls. The driver’s speech was a peppy southern twang that fit his face perfectly. Lieutenant Blazer and his friend Johnny, a first-time backpacker, were organizing gear in the Lieutenant’s mini van. Without a formal discussion of how we’d be dispersed, we started loading our packs and poles into the back of the other driver’s car.
There’s always an interesting energy in a shuttle, similar I suppose to an Uber ride across town, but more like backcountry Taxi Cab Confessions. It’s strange climbing into a vehicle with a total stranger and trusting them to move you down the side of a mountain. The reward for this faith is a beautiful bouquet of strangers’ biographies. I’ve yet to take a shuttle in to or out of the mountains without cracking open a treasure chest of nonfictional tales about others on the trail. This particular driver fell in love with a backpacker, took up hiking herself, covered trails all over the eastern part of the country, and landed in Georgia. I felt nothing but hot breath and silence from the three men behind me as I volleyed questions back and forth and encouraged her to unwrap more details of her past. It was a way to pass the time, and this woman, like most AT shuttle drivers, had seen some things.
After a little over an hour, we arrived at Unicoi Gap. The sun was shining and the parking lot was a flurry of resting thru hikers, day adventurers and section hikers settling up with their shuttles. We pulled gear from the backs of the SUVs and started finalizing the details of our wearables – tightening shoelaces, applying knee braces, adjusting pole heights. No matter how many times you’ve anticipated it, replicated it, lived through it, there is nothing that prepares you for that first day with a full pack on. It’s like offering a 5-year-old with a death grip a four-day-long piggy back ride.
The ascent north out of Unicoi Gap was a stupid steep climb by suburban dweller standards. I shrugged my shoulders a bit to settle and distribute the weight of my pack and met up with a familiar rhythm. Pole, pole, leg, leg, pole, pole, leg, leg … slow and steady up toward the mountaintops, where the views are spectacular and cell signals are weak or nonexistent. It was 10:30 in the morning and we had 11 miles to cover. I was ready.
It took less than an hour for reality to set in. “I did not take my preparation seriously enough,” Gravy huffed behind me. He’d done more than I had. Beginning around the first of the year he’d been putting weights in a pack and walking on the treadmill at an incline for an hour at night. But simulations in Indiana basements often pale in comparison to the drastic elevation changes of the southern states. There’s just no work around. These climbs in particular felt unforgiving and relentless.
I chatted with my inner philosopher as I heaved and forced by body over the dirt beneath me, arriving at the teachings on Mother Nature’s lesson plan. For this particular morning, we would be ruminating on challenges. Often, we find ourselves at the start of a tumultuous obstacle. And we resolve to take it one step at a time until we conquer it. This is the basic plot for nearly every compelling human account. Woman lives. Woman struggles. Woman overcomes. But, it can’t be easy or it wouldn’t be worth showing up.
It’s mirrored in the climb. Every time I come around a turn and see that there is still a significant way to go, I have to accept the challenge all over again – come to terms with the obstacle like I’m back at the beginning. The higher I get, the harder it becomes to accept the truth, and the harder it is to focus on how far I’ve come. Ten steps start to feel like 100. And who hasn’t been there in life? Who hasn’t believed they had something under control only to fall and have to get up again? The trail is everyone’s teacher. It doses out humility in varying prescriptions, but always with intention.
Around 1 p.m., Gravy and I stopped for lunch on a rocky overlook. An army of newly born bugs swarmed my sweaty head as I squeezed a few dollops of almond butter onto a tortilla and searched for my dried mango. I hadn’t seen Just Matt since we left Unicoi Gap that morning, but that wasn’t unusual. I assumed he’d come strolling up to the ledge, complain about how everyone’s always stopping to eat and press on just ahead of me. Bambi had already come and gone.
I looked out over the slate and dirt canvas of a thawing landscape. The powder blue sky went on forever, dotted with fluffy clouds outlined in the most brilliant white the angel’s could pull from their palettes. Thru hikers would shuffle up to the edge of the rock, pause, make some comment, like, “Pretty,” or a simple, satisfied exhalation, and then they’d walk on, with miles and miles yet to cover before the sun fell behind the peaks.
I ran the zipper around my pants at the knees and removed the bottom portion. Instant shorts to minimize my excessive sweat. Not my best look, but the breeze bouncing off of my alabaster shins was a welcome sensation.
“I’m going to go ahead and get started,” I told Gravy. He was making adjustments of his own, with one boot off and his shirt untucked. I hoisted my purple Deuter up off the ground. Still no sign of Just Matt or The General.
It goes without saying that a dramatic slope is tough to climb. But the coming down is often what gets ya. Some of the downhills are steeper than the uphills, with large rocky steps guiding your path. Your balance is off and it’s a constant battle to bridle your downward momentum. Add to that, you have at least 35 pounds on your back. So, every time you step down, that weight presses against your back and down into your knees. I had two good knees and I was feeling it. I could only imagine what was going on in my brother’s joints somewhere behind me.
I came to a winding portion of the trail covered in a canopy of rhododendron plants. The jungle green was a welcome reprieve from the brown dirt and naked trees dominating my surroundings. Lost in the lyrics of “Shallow”, I didn’t see it coming. My ankle jerked to the right, and eventually my body followed. My boulder of a pack slammed up over the back of my head and I crashed down on my bare right knee and palm. My pants, a pair I seldom wore, had been sliding down all morning. Now, as I managed to get both of my feet underneath me and dig my poles into the ground, they were mid-ass, revealing a few inches of underwear. Humility still counts, even when no one is around to witness it.
I brushed the trail dust off of my knee and hands and grabbed my shorts on either side to pull them up over my hips. Gravy came around the corner just as I was readjusting my pack. My ankle was tender for the next five minutes, but eventually returned to the normal, tolerable strains and pains.
Throughout the afternoon, each taxing climb seemed more aggressive than the last, steeper and steeper as they came. The mountain was flexing its muscle and I was feeling every vein and bulge. As a reward for going up, the hills were tailed by unforgiving descents. Up, down, up, down, and so the hours between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. went on. The heft of my pack pulled me backward on one giant step down. I came down on the ledge behind me, every ounce I ws carrying surged into my already skinned palms.
We knew we had to stop for water at Sassafras Gap Shelter, one mile before Addis Gap, where we planned to camp for the night. Gravy, Bambi and I got to the blue blaze around 5 p.m. The boys went down the path to fill our bladders and Nalgene bottles and I sat down under the sign to wait. A thru hiker was across the way, waiting to see what others she’d met on her adventure would be doing for the evening. If they intended to press on to the next shelter, I imagined she would do the same.
“Hi Dad,” I heard her say across the way. “Just letting you know I made it to my shelter for the night.”
They discussed some family business and I sat a stone’s throw away pretending not to listen in, swatting tiny bugs from my salty, sweaty face. I wondered how old she was and how worried her parents were. I envisioned what they told their friends at dinner parties. “Oh, you know Sunny, she’s just so wild at heart. But we’re certain she’ll take that internship after she gets this out of her system.”
I pulled out my own phone and turned the power on. As soon as the device found the weak signal a hundred text messages started popping up.
Bambi: Where are you guys?
The General: Just Matt and I are taking a nap.
Bambi: Enjoy it
Just Matt: If you guys get to Sassafras and decide to stop there, that’s fine.
Bambi: OK
The guys came panting up the path a few minutes later.
“That drop down there is no joke,” Bambi said. Admittedly, I seldomly go on water gathering duty on the AT. I’m not here to make excuses. I don’t really know how to work the pump, though I doubt it’s super complicated. But being the person who typically stands on the trail where the water fetchers reemerge, I can tell you that most water sources involve a dramatic drop off of some sort. The guys almost always come back red faced and breathless.
“Have you been looking at your texts?” I asked.
“Yeah. Dad wants to just stay here I think.”
“I think it might get crowded,” Gravy said.
“Plus then we’d have to do 13 miles tomorrow,” Bambi agreed. He pulled out his phone and started typing.
Bambi: We decided we want to keep going and finish the day.
Biscuits: Stick to the original plan, folks! We’ll see you at camp.
I don’t know that I ever saw an answer to these texts. Given the events that followed, I would guess that was because Just Matt and The General were grappling with the consequences of our decision.
Lieutenant Blazer and Johnny came along just as we were done putting our packs back together with full water. The Lieutenant had seen the others a few hours or so before and felt confident they’d be along fairly soon. Bambi and I decided to take off toward our final stop for the day.
My joints were starting to rust and lock up, and I knew we had to be close to the end of our 11 miles. I’ve covered a lot of ground – jogging, walking, hiking – and it’s amazing how different 5,280 feet can feel, depending on your state of mind and body. On that day, beautiful in the low 70s with an invigorating breeze, I felt every strike of my boot against the earth in the last mile. I’m certain it was my mind that willed me on.
When we got into Addis Gap, there were two areas to set up tents. A higher section with several spots circling around a fire, and then a small, uneven section on the other side of the trail. Guess where Bambi wanted to be. We started making our slanted lot a residence. Our cozy two person North Face® tent took all of 15 minutes to put together, so Gravy helped Bambi with their sizable three-person shelter. They wrestled with poles and snaps and tarps while I started inflating various mats and pillows in our tent.
Captain Cordage had an impressive hammock set up going near the fire on the other side. Lieutenant Blazer and Johnny came along a short time later and selected a nice area just in front of the Captain for their tent. The campsite was a buzz of chatter and construction. Everywhere you looked someone was boiling something or unpacking their mobile home. A young, chipper couple worked hard to strike up a conversation, but I was too drained to give them the verbal courtship they were after.
About 45 minutes into our work, a sizeable figure came down the trail. It was Just Matt. He walked over to the tarp extending outside of his almost entirely built tent, dug his poles into a pile of dirt and collapsed. His knees were like cantaloupes, round and bulging with various inflammatory fluids. Liquid from his leaky water bladder hose made a dark circle around the left side of his chest and beads of sweat consolidated and dropped onto his shoulders. He was one long exhalation of profanities. He unstrapped his braces and hurled them through the thin material he’d crawl into in mere minutes.
“Where’s the General?” I asked after he’d calmed down for a few minutes.
“Aw, man, I wouldn’t be surprised if he just decides to stay back at Sassafras. I haven’t seen him in three hours.”
“You haven’t?”
“No, I honestly don’t know if he’s going to make it.”
It was starting to get darker faster. I had chills from my dried sweat and the mounting wind. Everyone was worried, but nobody knew quite when and it how it was appropriate to act on the concern.
I decided to start on dinner, a pouch of burrito fixins to be boiled and loaded onto a tortilla. Gravy was having a killer corn soup that I was admittedly jealous of. I sat on a log and balanced my jetboil cups. The sun was dropping. The wind pursed its lips and blew just enough to topple my dishes. An older gentleman was to my right, explaining his trail name, Pot Hole. “Because I can really slow you down,” he said with a chuckle.
Across from him, a woman from Switzerland was indulging with a fake laugh. Again, I couldn’t deliver. I asked if she was planning to do the whole trail.
“That’s the hope,” she said. “I have until September and then one way or another I have to go back home.”
“You’ll make it,” I offered. She was banking on her partner and host family being able to visit her in June, but other than that, she was on her own. She seemed like the type who didn’t mind that much. We exchanged pouches of instant cappuccino. I gave her my favorite – Trader Joe’s instant coffee with cream and sugar – and she gave me her preferred pouch, Nescafe. I can admit I thought it would be some sort of fancy Dutch coffee, so there was some disappointment on my end. She didn’t like things that were too sweet, so I imagine there was some on her end as well the next morning.
Lieutenant Blazer came over to inquire about The General’s status. I didn’t have an update. At least not one that would make him feel any better. There was often distance between us on the trail, but even still, you never felt alone. It never seemed dangerous. But as the trees grew murky against the Georgia nightfall, we all felt the gravity of one of our guys being out on his own.
“I’ll give it a few more minutes and then head up the trail and look for him,” he said. As if on cue, our bearded buddy came strolling into camp, instantly chatting with the other hikers. He would just be starting to set up his camp for the night while the rest of us were getting ready to call it. I chewed a melatonin and started down a side trail to go to the bathroom behind the widest tree and brush my teeth.
By 9 o’clock I was shimming down into my sleeping bag, enjoying the addition of a soft liner Gravy got me for my birthday. The sack, made from a t-shirt-like material, offers up to 10 degrees more warmth. Just outside I heard my brother.
“Did you already eat?” he asked Bambi.
“Yeah, I had some mac and cheese.”
“Did you make me some?”
“Ah, no.”
“Where is the bag?”
“I hung it in a bear bag down over there.”
“Cool. So I just won’t eat anything then.”
And then silence, as I drifted off into my melatonin-endorsed sleep that I hoped, but knew wouldn’t last. Because out here it never does.
Sometime in the indistinguishable hours of night on the mountain, we awoke to an electric flash of lightning and then, a minute later, a gut thumping boom of thunder. It was raining and a storm that no one knew was coming was roaring into Addis Gap.
I need to talk about something kind of crazy for a few minutes. About a month ago, my husband’s family did the nicest thing ever and treated all of us to a weekend-long amusement + water park extravaganza. Because we only had about 48 hours at Walley World, including travel, we packed a lot into a day. With three little chicks, that means, more specifically, a million bathroom breaks, a handful of meltdowns and a few moments of sheer panic when passing through swarms of farmer’s-tanned strangers.
I don’t do well in crowds. You might not know that about me. I have some lingering claustrophobia I blame on my older brother, Matt, who used to wrap a blanket around my head and sit on me. I think it’s an intense aversion to feeling trapped. Wearing sweatpants under a heavy quilt makes me feel trapped. People wrapping their arms around me from behind makes me feel trapped. And crowds definitely make me feel trapped. But in addition to that, there are some very unique nuances to the amusement park environment that no one really talks about that are Level 100 unsettling.
Entering the park
After you’ve been herded through the gates – bags searched (Why yes, those are my feminine hygiene products, sir), ticket scanned – you’re in. You’re golden. Then you look around and your momentary joy is immediately replaced by a mudslide of unease. The common area just past the gates at an amusement park looks like what I imagine Times Square would look like 5 minutes after a nuclear attack hit the west coast.
People are running around grabbing park maps, filling up lockers, pointing and pleading. Those who aren’t in motion are the ones standing in groups either lost entirely or fighting loudly about which area they should hit first.
“I want to go to the Land of Lollipops before the Happy Hills, damnit!”
“The Happy Hills blow, Gina. We’re going to Jubilant Jollyville and you can shut your face about it.”
On this particular occasion, we were guided to a booth to get wristbands with our cell phone number to put on the girls’ wrists. This, I was told, would come in handy if we got separated somehow in the sea of 20,000 people. I don’t know about you, but this type of exercise always comforts this mama’s soul.
The wave pool
I could write an entire novel about the living night terror that is the wave pool. My children are drawn to this attraction like Carrie Bradshaw to a shoe sale. They can’t be bothered to stop at anything else. If it has the words “wet” or “splash” or “rapids” in it, they’re waist deep before I’ve set the towels down on a sticky bench.
If you’ve never had the pleasure, a wave pool at a waterpark is essentially a giant bathtub, filled with a melting pot of humanity and children who can’t swim well, that routinely ripples with less-than-impressive waves. My favorite part of standing knee-deep in this urine bucket is watching everyone – adults included – lose their shit when the bell sounds, signifying the waves are about to begin. I can’t imagine what these people do at the actual ocean with actual waves.
True to form, my chicks begged to go straight to the nasty ripple fest. I stood there, as far back as I could be while still maintaining a rescuer’s stance, and watched a glob of thick black hair from an identifiable part of a stranger’s body float by my shins. To my left, a group of moms floated on noodles, speaking a language I didn’t understand. They’d been there, no doubt, at least two pees. To my right, a rather large man covered from head to big toe in a familiar thick black hair squatted curiously. Things inside me shriveled as I watched JoJo mermaid dive about 5 feet away, emerging with her mouth wide open.
This is the wave pool at an amusement park. And we’re all pretending it’s totally normal.
Also, peeing in a bathroom near a waterpark is like squatting behind a fern in the amazon. That is all.
The swelling
This falls under the category of “self-inflicted first-world problems” but I swell like the Pillsbury Thanksgiving Day parade float in amusement parks. That happens, you know, when you go an entire day without consuming a drop of water and eat only things that fall into one of five categories:
Cheese
Sugar
Fried cheese
Fried sugar
Fried bread
It’s not necessarily convenient to pull out a giant vat of grease and fry up strips of bread or Twinkies at home, so if you’re going somewhere and they’re willing to do it, it seems silly, almost insulting, not to take advantage. The problem is, after a day of this circus diet, I can’t move my wedding ring and my ankles don’t bend. A sacrifice I’m willing to make? You’re damn right.
The “thrills”
When I was growing up, the Magnum at Cedar Point was it. If you could get your happy ass on the Magnum and live to brag about it, you’d made it. You had balls as big as a Clydesdale and everybody knew it.
This summer, my JoJo was tall enough to hit the major rides. There was no way I was going to look at that big grin and not get on a roller coaster with her. As we climbed on, I reached over and grabbed her tiny hand. She was shaking, but still pumped. We shot out of the gate and went head over feet, feet over head for a solid 45 seconds, laughing and screaming and loving every second.
Not to be outdone or left out, Spike insisted she ride the tallest coaster in the park, which she just so happened to be tall enough to ride, by a stray curl. So, we got in line for the last ride of the day. This was one of those old wooden roller coasters. The kind that sounds like an angry mob trying to break the rusty hinges off an old storm cellar every time it blows by. Still, I felt like it was a solid parenting choice.
We climbed on, JoJo next to me, Spike and Hank behind us. As soon as I saw the lap belts, I started sweating. I frantically pulled the belt, trying to make it so tight it cut off both of our circulation. I pressed down on the lap bar, which seemed to be suspended 4 inches above our thighs at least. It didn’t matter, we were going.
As we climbed up the first hill, the biggest in the amusement park by a mile, she still had a whisper of a smile on her face. And then … like our equilibrium, it was gone.
As the old rickety ride hurled us over hills and down through black tunnels, I heard her screams:
“Mommy, I don’t like it!”
“Mommy, save me!”
“Mommy, I want off!”
“Mama! Mama!”
“Mom, I don’t want to die!”
Hell, if I wasn’t a 35-year-old mother, I would have been screaming the same exact shit. But I was just screaming, period. All I could think was, I willingly, voluntarily put two of my children on this death trap. I did this. And now we’re all going to die.
What was likely just over a minute, felt like an hour. Our bodies jerking and jolting through the humid summer night air. As it came to an abrupt end, it felt like I had fire in my throat. I realized I’d been holding onto JoJo’s lap strap the whole time. My wrist felt bruised from being brutally hurled against the divider between us. I unclenched things I didn’t know you could clench. My oldest daughter looked at me like I’d just given her a puppy, then promptly poisoned it. It was, “How could you?!” without a word being spoken between us.
I turned around and there sat Spike. Eyes wide. Smiling like an insane person. I guess it takes all kinds, doesn’t it?
Some of you have asked about the day after The Livin la Vida Vegan Challenge, and I guess, in hindsight, I did kind of leave you hanging a bit. Blogging every day for 14 days was a little intense for me. If you don’t want to read on, or suspense just isn’t you’re thing, yes, I finished the half marathon, and yes, I ate ALL the things, and yes, I got sicker than a dog. Read on if you’d like a deeper dive into any of the aforementioned statements.
The big race.
This was my third half marathon (running, sixth if you count the times I walked that mug). The beautiful thing about coming into a race like this with a few under your belt is the reassurance that you will, eventually, finish. It might not be pretty, but you’ll get there. I think that’s the most encouraging mantra to keep in your back pocket. “I will finish this. I will not die. I will finish this. I will not die.” People always say, “I couldn’t run that long,” or ask, “How do you do that?” and the truth is, you just keep shuffling along.
Jackie (my partna) and I are not record-setters. We don’t wear the fancy, fast shorts that look like bathing suit bottoms. We don’t have compression socks, or special sunglasses. We are just a couple of moms, with semi-soft bodies (me more so than her), who’ve been friends for a couple decades, who like to come out together and turn in a lackluster performance. That’s just us. That’s our m.o. We own that.
Forget your corral letter, forget your pace group, that is the categorization that matters. When you know who you are and what you’re doing there, the perspective really alleviates the pressure. We’re pretty content in the middle of the pack, because, for us, it’s just about proving our bodies are still capable of carrying us that far. We are not broken. We are not entirely swallowed up by our roles as mom or wife or nurse or writer. We are strong, amateur athletes with veracious lions (or more like angry kittens) sleeping just beneath our skin. At least for one day of the year that’s what we are.
The morning of the race was chilly. I didn’t eat any meat or dairy. I made a smoothie with spirulina, 1 scoop protein powder, coconut water, spinach and some Beet Elite. I ate a bowl of multigrain Cheerios, too, because it sounded good. That was it. And my stomach felt … off.
It was touch-and-go right up until the cannon went off marking the start of the race. Once we got moving, things in my belly really calmed down. In fact, the first 3 miles flew by. I felt great, Jac felt great. We were right on the heels of the 2:20 pace group. Considering we finished around 2:23 last year, that was pretty damn good.
“At Mile 4, let’s stop and have a chew and some water,” I said.
“Yup, that’s what I was thinking,” Jackie agreed.
This would be the biggest mistake we made all day.
Mile 4 is where the course takes a turn off of the initial long drag. In the past, it’s been a point where we picked up momentum. This year, it was the death of it. There was a gradual decline in our pace from Mile 5, on. I felt fine mentally, and it was an absolutely gorgeous day, but my legs just started running out of steam. Like, in my mind they were flying, but in my shadow they looked more like a baby colt in a pool of tar.
We walked a few times, but we knew our friend Molly would be waiting at Mile 10.
“If we can just get to Molly,” Jackie would say.
“Right,” I’d agree.
“If we can just make it to Molly we’ll stop, have a chew, and then finish strong.”
“Yeah.”
And then …
“There’s Molly’s ass!” Jackie yelled.
“That’s not Molly’s ass.”
“Isn’t that her ass?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“There’s Mol!!” I said, pointing to our dear girl, standing on a corner waving with her two kiddos.
It was like seeing a well in the desert. We’d been talking about her for so long. I think we both thought something might spark deep down inside us when we reached her embrace on that sunny September morning. But instead, we just felt full of dread.
Three miles to go.
My hips for sure hurt, though not as bad as they had on our longer training runs. Jac’s knees were getting to her. But bottom line, we just had nothing left in the tank.
“Oh shit,” Jackie said, motioning her head over her shoulder.
I turned to see the 2:30 pace group right behind us, seconds from passing. I shrugged and reminded her we just wanted to finish. We were racing ourselves. And all the other bullshit we tell ourselves to get our broken down bodies across the finish line.
And cross the finish line we did, at 2:31. “Totally plant-powered!” I exclaimed in a rush of dopey adrenaline. Jac wasn’t into it.
Passing my small tribe on the way into the arena, I was reminded, yet again, why we do this. Why we log the miles for 12 weeks beforehand. Why we abuse our aging bodies and spend so much time away from the kids. It’s for that moment you look down at your feet, knowing you can stop. That your children are watching. That you and your best friend just ran 13.1 motha truckin’ miles, together. Just a couple of moms, with semi-soft bodies (me more so than her), who’ve been friends for a couple decades, who like to come out together and turn in a lackluster performance, just ran 13.1 miles.
I ate 1.5 donuts and half a Gatorade. My stomach, again, was … off.
The very hungry caterpillar.
At noon, I had a Big John from Jimmy Johns and chips, but I was still hungry.
At 12:45, I had 2 cookies, but I was still hungry.
At 3, I had 2 giant chocolate truffles, but … I had to go to a wedding.
Dinner, and a deathblow to veganism.
The wedding was so amazing. It was touching and lovely and just entirely enchanting. I had to leave before the reception and head over to Matt’s for his Second Annual Fancy Dinner Party. I chugged water with an electrolyte tab on the way over and prayed for a solid stomach.
My brother bid on a special dinner-in-your-home package at a live auction last fall, and that night a special group of friends, myself included, would garner the rewards of that bid. The theme was Bourbon Pairings, so, on the plus side, we all knew we were in trouble right outta the gate. There wouldn’t be any surprises.
We started with bourbon sours. They were that perfect storm of delicious flavors in small glasses. When we ordered another round after the first course I think we sent ourselves down the path of mass destruction. It was a force greater than ourselves. They were too delicious. The glasses seemed so tiny, so harmless.
Basically, from there what transpired was a parade of meat butters and creamy dairy delights. Goat cheese-stuffed dates, fancy tater tots with a sauce you want to cheat on your husband with, duck tongue tacos (I know, I had the same reaction, but those tongues were tasty), pork belly that fell apart the second it touched your tastebuds, and bourbon s’mores. As meals go, this one was up there with the Wicked Spoon buffet in Vegas and last year’s Straight Outta Compton Fancy Dinner.
First Course
Herb De Provence chevre stuffed dates / wrapped with prosciutto ham / blue cheese fondue
Sixth Course
Bourbon Marshmallow s’mores / ”campfire smoke”/ snap-crackle-pop graham crackers / dark chocolate ribbon
I emerged from my brother’s basement – the scene of the meat butter massacre – around 11:30, sat down, and let the doom wash over me like a 50-gallon bucket at a waterpark. I was in trouble. My stomach, my head, my body. I’d been still long enough for everything to catch up to me and now there was no running from it. My legs were too tired. My tummy was too full of all the animal things I turned away for two weeks. Plus, the bourbon. I gave Hank “the look” and we made an exit.
I slept on our new bathroom floor.
It was cold.
Linoleum.
And that, dear friends, is what happened the day after the Livin’ la Vida Vegan Challenge.
I need to take a pause from the vegan diet updates for just a sec to talk about something very troubling. It’s pee. Piss. Urine. Golden streams. Or yellow puddles. In my regular routine, I come into contact with pee – not my own – no less than three times a week. Whether it’s my kid, or another kid, or a dog or a frog, there is a No. 1 situation flowing right through my day, at some point in my day, every day.
It’s like running a kennel for special puppies with small bladders. Yesterday, when I got home from work, JoJo’s sheets were in the laundry room. One of the kiddos who comes to our house during the day had an accident during nap. It happens. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that we basically live in a giant urinal. Well, my eldest was having nothing to do with it. She funneled her fury – which was only further fueled by her discovery that Spike and I might also start a pen pal exchange, similar to the one JoJo and I have – into a very strongly worded letter.
It read as follows:
Dear Mom,
Tomorrow I’m giving MeeMee (the sitter) a piece of my mind about my bed!!! I’m ganna say that no more kids in my room and no kids sleeping in there! And you and Spikey canot be pen pals! Focus on you and my Because I’d crie to my death.
[Illustration of JoJo with a happy heart (“Mom and JoJo pen pals”) and then a messy stick figure with the caption “me cring. heart Broken.” just below that.]
Love, JoJo
But oh how the mighty do fall. At 4 o’clock this morning, I woke to the gentle whispers of our oldest daughter, confessing that she herself had an accident on our floor. Why she was on our floor, right next to the hairy, nasty dog bed, and not in her sister’s cozy queen size bed? I don’t know. I never know. This is an every night thing in our house. Does anyone else know?
Hank threw a towel over it, cleaned her up and moved both her and Spike (who was spooned up next to her on the ground) back down the hall so we could go “back to sleep”. Of course, we’re never really back to sleep, are we? Parents. Anything past the REM cycle is considered a luxury at this point in life. Right up there with solo time on the toilet and sitting. I guess that’s just what this chapter looks like … tired souls with urine on their hands.
7:30 a.m.
I put a full teaspoon of spirulina into my smoothie today, and backed down a bit on the powdered peanut butter, which has more sugar than I’d like. The algae flavor was slightly more noticeable, but not enough to tickle the ole gag reflex, so on we go. I’m thinking phase 2 is cutting the creamer from my coffee. It’s a liquid sugar bomb, and it’s got too tight of a hold on my heart.
I mean it’s not hard, because that’s really what this is. It’s totally doable, but also an insane life choice that’s making everything ten thousand times harder. It’s natural and against my human nature. It feels healing and like all my weaknesses are exposed. It’s funny because it’s really just food, but the change is making me a bit of a kook. And kooky people are freaking hilarious.
Noon
Earth Fare run for seitan and tempeh at lunch. There’s a sentence I never thought I’d type.
I came home to throw together a taco salad with my leftovers, but something was wrong. Terribly wrong. There, on the counter in the kitchen, sat a box with a dozen cookies from my favorite local bakery. Come inside my sick mind for a sec, k …
“What … the truck … is that? Why are those there? Who put those there? Is someone messing with me. Someone’s messing with me. Is there a camera in here? Who would do this? What kind of sick, twisted person would do this?! [Find card.] The car dealership?! Why in the hell is the car dealership sending us cookies?! It was a gosh dang trade in for crying out loud! Those bastards. Those car-selling bastards, with their sweet treats and good customer service. OK, I’m just going to lift the lid. [Lift lid, stick nose into sugar cloud. Close eyes.] Oh, shit. Alright, what’s my end game here? Should I throw them away? Just throw them away. My God, you can’t throw these away! You’ll be arrested. I’m a grownup, just set them out for the kids. But they won’t appreciate them the way I would. Maybe we can freeze them. Yeah, I’ll freeze them. We’ll just pull out our favorites and freeze those, give the rest to the kids. But I love them all. I’m going to put them down in this cabinet until Hank gets home. He’ll know what to do.”
And then I put the box of cookies down low, behind my slow cooker, and walked away; unable to discard them and unable to give them up. This, brothers and sisters, is how you know you are ill.
I assembled my salad: leftover taco “meat”, guacamole, crushed up tortilla chips, a dollop of coconut yogurt and salsa. It was bomb. I stood, leaning against the cabinet door where my cookies were sleeping and enjoyed every single bite.
“Goodnight, sweet cookies. I’ll see you again soon.” I whispered.
3 p.m.
What I really want is chocolate and popcorn, so what I’m having is the rest of my suja organic ginger kombucha. Really hoping that quenches the craving.
6 p.m.
Made it! Tonight, we’re cookin’ up some Crispy Orange Seitan from the Vegan for Everybody cookbook. Oh my gosh … you don’t know what seitan is? How do you not know what seitan is, you silly, carnivorous fool. Psych! I don’t know what the hell it is, either. And I looked at the ingredients, so that makes it extra scary. From what I gathered, it’s like globs of gluten or something? They call it “wheat meat”. So there ya go.
The toughest thing about these recipes is making sure you have all of the ingredients on hand. “It looks like you emptied out your cabinets,” our sitter said, as she watched me assemble the handfuls of sauce components. But once I had it all in there, this one came together pretty fast. The nice thing about cooking with these fake meats – tempeh, tofu, seitan, veggie crumbles – is they cook up fast as Rizzo. It’s a big time saver.
I used bagged cauli rice from Costco for a side, along with some peanut butter + celery courtesy of my sous chefs and chopped up plum, mango and blueberries for dessert. (I’d like for it to be known that I did NOT have a cookie tonight.)
This was pretty darn good, I gotta say. The cauliflower needed a little more flavoring, but the seitan was a pleasant surprise, as seitans go. Hank dubbed it “fine” which, if you speak Hank, you know translates to, “not exceptional, but good”. I would make it again.
This is my 6-year-old on seitan:
7:30 p.m.
I knocked out my last training run before the race Saturday; A snail-like 3 miles with lots of sweat. I notice on this diet, I don’t cramp as much and I can steady my breath a little easier during the run. Could be the training or it could be some vegan magic. Either way, by the time I was done, I knew my body needed something. I slammed a handful of walnuts, dried blueberries and pumpkin seeds.
JoJo was waiting for me at the top of the stairs. She found the notebook I gave Spike so we, too, could be pen pals. She told me I broke her heart. That she wanted to be special. That Spikey could never write messages as special as hers would be. It felt like the emotional climax of a Nicholas Sparks novel. I think I got her down off the ledge enough to sleep tonight, but we’ll see. There could be tears. Or pee. Maybe pee.
