Walk This Way

Once upon a time, I started walking with my pal Lacie at 6:30 a.m. That lasted for a whole summer.

Ahhhhh. 6:30 a.m. Those were the good old days. It was a beautiful and wonderful summer.

Then our good friend Elizabeth returned to town and somehow tricked Lacie and I into walking at 5 a.m. F.Y.I. :Nothing is beautiful and/or wonderful at 5 a.m. NOTHING!

Elizabeth and I kept up the 5 a.m. walking thing for a couple of years. Then Elizabeth married Ratha and mysteriously became waaaaaay too tired to walk at 5 a.m.

That is when the lovely and talented Krystal started walking with me at 5 a.m. For two years, we would meet up at the crack of dawn for some serious walking and talking.
Exercise with a healthy side of therapy? Wonderful! 5 a.m.? Not so much.

But then Krystal decided to move to Boise, which made it kind of difficult for the two of us to meet up for some early morning exercise. I was sad. And lumpy. Not a good combination.

But then yesterday, Krystal (and her cute boy!) came for a visit and I stopped by to give her (and her cute boy, and her cute family) some baked goods (that were full of carbs in an uncharitable effort to spread the lumpy around) . While I was there, Krystal's mom, Diane volunteered to walk with me at 5 a.m.

How sweet is she? So we meet up dark and early this morning to get our walk on. It was a blast. I wanted to get some photos to commemorate this new chapter in my walk of life.

Behold: Miss H and Diane walking @ 5 a.m.
I was about to say that it is unfortunate that it is so dark at 5 a.m., but then I remembered what I look like when I roll out of bed at that time in the night/morning. I think darkness at that time of day is probably nature's kindest, most under appreciated gift to mankind.

Diane looked impeccable as always (her clothes matched and everything!), but since nobody really enjoys having their photo taken that early in the morning, I thought it would be best to use some stand-ins who significantly resemble us.

Thanks for being my new walking buddy/therapist, Diane! And to those of you who used to do the 5 a.m. thing with us in the past, you are always welcome to repent and come back to the fold.

Really Elizabeth. You can even bring Ratha.

Exercises in Humiliation

These are my friends Elizabeth and Lacie. As you may recall from THIS POST , it is their fault that I have spent the last two years waking up at an obscenely early hour to exercise.
When we started our masochistic workout routine nigh unto two years ago, I thought it would eventually get easier to drag my lazy carcass out of bed at 4:50 a.m.

Twenty three months later, I am still waiting for "eventually" to roll around.

At night I go to sleep in my comfy bed in my cute apartment, but every morning I wake up to my own personal Gitmo with Major General Elizabeth McPain as the self-appointed head torturer.

Of course there are perks to speed walking through my cute little cow town at 5 a.m. For example, the cool/cold weather creates an opportunity to cover up my early morning ugliness with layers and layers of clothing. Of course, the layers aren't really all that necessary considering that we are pretty much the only people awake at that time of the night/morning who aren't milking cows or dodging the police.

Not that it matters, because at 5 in the A.M., layers or no, the view looks an awful lot like this...

I have given both Elizabeth and Lacie a whole lot of grief about "forcing me" to get up that early over the past two years. This summer, however, I discovered that waking up at 4:50 a.m. is NOT the worst thing in the world.

No. That honor belongs to "waking up at 5:50 a.m."

Elizabeth, bless her hard-working-heart, decided to start teaching her private lessons a hour later this summer. That meant that we could sleep in a full 60 minutes before hitting the road each morning. I was pretty darn excited about that until my first post 5 a.m. wake up call rolled around and I realized that...

...THE SUN IS UP AT 5:50 a.m.!
At 5:50 a.m. I have no cloak of darkness to hide behind or cold-weather-excuse to justify my 6 a.m. hideousness under layers of sweatshirts and hoods.

Oh, and did I mention that there are other people awake at 6 a.m.?

Because there are.

There are a lot of them.

And they do not have swelled udders or flashing police lights to distract them from the not-so-beautiful results of my beauty sleep the night before.

Over the course of our first 6 a.m. walking session, Elizabeth and I crossed paths with our favorite shared student who was riding with her mother to soccer camp, one of the most distinguished musicians in our stake who was out for a walk of his own, my branch's missionary couple out for a stroll, a former kidlet on his way to swim team practice, and about eight other folks from the top of my "people who I NEVER want to see how I look when I roll out of bed" list. I may have burned a few calories walking those miles that day, but that is nothing compared to the water weight I lost crying countless tears of shame later that morning.

The big problem for me at that time in the morning is the toxic level of bedhead that I wake up with. I had no idea that, when I asked Tricia to chop off my longer locks, I was sentencing myself to countless mornings of near-fatal morning hair freakouts.

For those of you who have been lucky enough NOT to see me speed walking through your neighborhood at 6 a.m. this summer, here is a "visual approximation"

Wait.

That's not quite right.

When you combine my bedhead with a lack of eyeliner and toss in a healthy dose of oily skin and sandy eyes, my early morning exercise look is closer to this...

OK. So maybe I'm not quite THAT bad, but dude: I am NOT kidding about the bed head.

I've tried brushing it, combing it, and wetting it down. It's not long enough to subdue in ponytails, and ball caps just can't contain it.

I was actually very close to giving up my much-needed morning exercise time until I found out that the city pool offers an early morning lap swimming session. It was the perfect solution! Now, a few mornings each week, Elizabeth drives down my street, slowing down just enough for me run down my steps, across the lawn, and jump into her waiting car. The only people at the pool when we arrive are a few sleepy staffers, who are either setting out chairs on the far side of the pool or napping on the front counter wrapped up in towels. We leave our money on the counter and slip unseen into the locker room where the high-pressure pre-swim-showers force my bedhead into submission long enough for me to jump in the pool and successfully drown it for the rest of the day.

When our buddy Krystal started joining us in our early morning splash sessions, lap swimming became the perfect post-sunrise exercise program: visit with friends, burn calories, build muscles, and tame unruly hair follicles with out any of the bedhead induced humiliation that I continue to face on our walking mornings.

Aren't we lovely?

And for those of you who think that it is illogical for me to be so concerned with being seen with freaky hair while being not at all embarrassed about being seen in my swimming suit please consider the following: 1)I am a public school teacher at a junior high school 2)I live in Idaho and am not at registered republican 3)I willing provide my nephews with water guns and Nerf swords when I know that the minute the weapons are unwrapped I become the chief target and 4) I let my friends talk me into getting up at 4:50 a.m. for the last two years to walk around town in the dark. In short, the logic train hasn't made any stops in Mindyland for quite some time now. But I do have a lifetime pass on the crazy town express, and most days I get one heck of a ride...and I wouldn't want it any other way.

Back to School

For the past two weeks, I have been seeing the tell-tale signs of summer's end all over town. Sure it still feels like summer, but when you see the freshly painted crosswalks you know the buzz of the early morning alarm can't be far behind.

I really started getting excited when I saw that Kings had their school supplies out (pre-bagged neatly by school and teacher, how cool is that?). I have fond memories of school supply shopping with my mom, grandma, and siblings at our local (and now defunct) Kings. Picking out the pencil box was my favorite part. But can I pause in the midst of these touching recollections to point out that the back to school signs are in the shape of coffins? Does anyone else think that sends a negative message to the kids?


Here's another sign that the school year is about to start...the early morning masochist walking society has taken to the streets once more. Aren't Lacie and I cute?


You know it was very early in the morning because Liz not only posed for this photo, but she also didn't try to destroy my camera or kill me after I took it. She must have been very, very tired to have had such a HUGE lapse in judgment (By the way, Liz, I'm gonna save this one and have it put on matching t-shirts for you and your future stud muffin to wear on your honeymoon).


The kidlet's lazy days' demise is even more obvious in my classroom. The content and language objectives I wrote on the board today read like summer vacation's obituary.

And nothing spells out "Back to School" more clearly than a fully decked out bulletin board. Don't panic if you suddenly start to smell the scents of pencil shavings and Elmer's glue as you look at this picture. You're not having a stroke. It's just the effect a photo of a properly decorated bulletin board has on people. Keep scrolling down and you'll be fine.

Even my wigs, witches hat, and Mo-bats are out and ready for the first bell to ring. My sister Jenny made me this great sign for my room that plays off my "wicked witch of the west" persona that says "Don't make me get the flying monkeys!" so of course, I had to hook myself up with some(Sweetums is on the right and his girlfriend Pookey is on the left).


Do you remember, back when you were a kid, organizing all your cool new school supplies in your awesome new backpack? How big of a nerd does it make me that I still do that? Wait, don't answer that. I had a good reason for doing it, really. You see, I am planning on riding my bike to school while the nice weather holds and I had to make sure my backpack was evenly balanced so as not to impair my already iffy equilibrium. That's a serious adult reason, right? RIGHT?!?!?

Another vital day-before-school-starts-activity for youngsters is going through your school clothes and picking out the perfect back to school outfit. As a teacher, I like to make sure that the students first impression of me really sets the tone for the school year. This ensemble, for example, makes it absolutely clear to the 12, 13, and 14-year-olds that...


...their teacher is a total dork.
Now, please excuse me while I go sharpen my pencils and repack my backpack for the umpteenth time. SCHOOL STARTS TOMORROW!!! WOOOO WHOOOOOO!!!!!

Like Crack, But Good For You

This is my friend Elizabeth. This picture is payback for getting me hooked on early morning exercising, then making it harder to get my fix.

Last summer I started exercising with my friends Lacie and Elizabeth. It all started out innocent enough. I'd get up around 6:30 a few mornings each week and meet them for a brisk walk around the neighborhood. It was easy. It was fun. It felt good. It was also addictive.

Fast-forward to August of last year. Elizabeth, the orchestra teacher for the rival school district across the river, was going to resume her suicidal schedule of teaching private violin lessons before and after school. That basically meant that she would be teaching for 14 hours a day, five days a week. Being the sadistic school teacher that she is, she wasn't content to suffer alone. No, she had to drag her friends into it. So in order to continue to exercise with her, Lacie and I had to get up at what my friend Brook refers to as "the butt crack of dawn." And not just a few days a week either. Elizabeth decided we need more variety to our daily workouts, so she added a weight lifting routine to our walk-less days. So now my mornings start like this...

My alarm goes off...and I think mean and nasty thoughts about Elizabeth. Then I pull on warm clothes (our temps still dip below freezing at night) and meet up with Lacie and Elizabeth.

There are a few nice things about walking around town this early. The first is that there aren't many people around to notice our early-morning ugliness.

The second is the totally Zen feeling that comes from starting each school day watching the sun rise. By the time I get home, I have forgiven Elizabeth for dragging my carcass out of bed at such an obscene hour.

Of course, that forgiveness only lasts until my alarm goes off the next morning.