Definitions

So, I have an ongoing conversation with a friend about the difference (if there is any) between happiness and joy.  For some reason, I can't seem to let this one go.  Probably the lawyer in me just likes having everything neatly defined - that's how we make our living, after all!  Lots and lots AND LOTS of words.  Heh, you'd think I'd be pretty decent at my job, considering how many words I use here... 

But I digress.  One of the things I talked about in an old post was trying to remember how to find the joy in life.  Sometimes the mundane details of life are so overwhelming that I forget to look for it.  I forget that kind of emotion exists and I get lost in low level boredom and tedium.  Perhaps not surprisingly, I've been finding a bit more joy in life as I've been looking for it more.  But when it comes to describing that emotion, I have a hard time knowing what words to use.  I do, however, have a memory that is my definition of that word. 

One night back in high school, my group of friends decided to go ice skating.  No, none of us was very good, but everyone was up for going, so we trekked out to the local skating rink, strapped on some skates, and proceeded to make fools of ourselves.  At some point in the evening, I ended up skating around the rink holding hands with two guy friends of mine.  Holding one hand was my best friend at the time, a guy I talked to for hours nearly every night.  He was also the person on whom I had had a hugemongous crush but had been trying to get over for a long time because he just wasn't interested.  I had finally just about succeeded in getting over it around that time.  Holding my other hand was the guy I was about to start dating.  There was definitely some bantering going on between us, but nothing serious yet. 

The three of us stumbled around the rink, laughing hysterically and nearly killing each other multiple times as we tripped over the awkward blades.  At some point, this feeling of incredible joy came over me.  I was finally free from the annoying crush, I was hanging out with my best friends in the world, and everything - everything - was perfect.  There were no unpleasant undercurrents, no tension, just a great night out with some really good friends.  There was not one thing I would have changed, had I been given that power, and I just felt incredible.  I felt like I could fly, as cliche as that sounds.  It is one of my absolute favorite memories, and I'm not sure why it has stuck with me for so many years, but that is my definition of joy.  That is the emotion I think of when I look for the joy in my life.  I can't imagine 18 year olds have the corner on that market...

Bullet (and Other Assorted) Madness

So, in bullet form, here is the craziness that was this weekend.  If you don't make it through to the end?  I don't blame you. 

• Friday night, work late, can't get back to AR, stayed in Houston.  Made crucial error of having some red wine with my friend M on Friday night.
• Saturday morning, start the drive about 7:30 and realize red wine from the night before is about to cause a migraine.  Great.
• Saturday afternoon, get in about 2:30, eat pizza J has warmed up for me, and crash on the couch with A for the next 4 hours watching movies, hoping headache will eventually give up.
• Saturday night, get up, make dinner, have a nerf war (parents v. kids - I think parents won).  Still trying unsuccessfully to kill the migraine.  Note to self:  shrieking and running around in a nerf war may be fun, but is not good for killing headache.
• Late Saturday night, realize that the weather really is going to get bad on Sunday with much snow, and start to stress about getting back to Houston.  Headache gets exponentially worse.  Write whiny blog post.
• Sometime in the middle of the night:  get up and take medicine for the headache from hell.
• Sunday morning, lie in bed as long as possible, wishing head would just go ahead and explode instead of punishing me for something I didn't do.  Ok, maybe I did do it, but I didn't overdo it!  Stupid red wine...
• Sunday morning, finally get up.  Take more medicine and pound two cups of coffee in rapid succession.  After being awake for an hour or so, headache finally abates and I can actually start thinking clearly again.
• Shit. 
• 11am Sunday Morning, T-minus 2.5 hours until birthday time:  The list of things to do is incredibly long, I don't have time to do them, I'm woefully unprepared for B's birthday party that afternoon, I'm not packed, it's going to snow, we don't have milk, we haven't wrapped any packages, and I can't make up my damned mind about whether to fly or drive.  At least mother nature took care of one of those things for me...
• Sunday afternoon:  party is a success, but everyone beats a hasty exit to avoid the snow that has started.  Everyone except us, of course.  Leave the party at 4:00pm, get caught in the major snow, don't get home until after 6.  Get frightened by the number of idiots on the road who have no business being out there.  Seriously - the group of guys pushing the pickup up the hill at Camp Robinson, using bits of chain wrapped around the tires (not tire chains - just lengths of chain that were tied on the tires) and running around barefoot really took the cake.  Flight that I had booked for 6pm doesn't even come close to happening. 
• Sunday night, stress levels achieve nearly record heights.  Feeling like the slacker of the group for not being in the office all weekend like the rest of the team has, but priority went to my boy's birthday party.  I made the right decision, but that doesn't mean that it didn't cause stress.  Hello rock, meet hard place.
• Realize I'm going to have to take a 6:30am flight out of LR Monday morning, which means leaving the house around 4:30am (roads totally covered in snow, not going to be a fast trip).  Bundle kids up around 9pm, take them to my parent's house to spend the night so they don't have to get up crazy early and make the possibly treacherous drive to the airport with J and I.  Spend several minutes cussing my lack of preparation as I get them packed - one kid has only one glove (J went through the entire entry way closet - where the hell do gloves go to die, anwyay??), there are no scarves, they only have snow boots 'cause my mom bought them some, and they really have no clothing that is great for playing in the snow.  HUGE parenting fail. 
• Sunday morning, get up well before it's light out, get dressed, get out to the airport, wait for the flight that was delayed an hour, and finally get down to Houston around 10:30 this morning.  THANK GOD that weekend is over. 

So, here we are today.  Enough with moaning and complaining of the weekend, right? As one of my coworkers said last week, I just need to put my big girl panties on and suck it up.  I'm in Houston for the week, most of January in fact, and that's just life right now.  So deal.  And I will - this time, without the red wine.

Weary

It's been a long week, and feels like an even longer weekend, even though it's only Saturday night.  I ended up working too late last night to get back to LR, so I drove home this morning.  I need to be back in Houston on Monday, but B's birthday party is tomorrow, so obviously I can't miss that.  The fun part of all this is that we're expecting several inches of snow tomorrow, so driving back is not going to be a good option.  I've got a flight booked tomorrow night, but I'm not thrilled about the flying part.  I'm not a good flyer in great weather, let alone in the middle of a freakin' snowstorm.  I just need to suck it up, right?

Anyway, I'm just in a crappy mood.  These are the days when the traveling gets the best of me, and it doesn't quite seem worth it.  The complications, logistics, and crap that come with it just make me feel tired and out of balance.  I'm sure it'll get better when things slow down, but that somehow doesn't make right now any easier.  Blah. 

Car Talk

My first car was a Honda Civic that I got back in high school in the early 90s.  I was very fortunate to have it, but I'm pretty convinced my parents bought it to preserve my mom's sanity.  I'm sure she was thrilled to get a break from hauling my ass everywhere...

Once I received that car, I made the obligatory promise to myself to keep the thing clean, well preserved, and neat.  That lasted about 8 hours; apparently my normal state is chaos, at least when it comes to a car.  No matter how much I tried, I could not keep that car neat.  There were school papers and books, napkins, tennis rackets, clothes, and all manner of other crap that accumulated in the trunk, back seat, and front seat of that car.  I assumed at the time that once I was a "grown up," I would probably keep my car much nicer and cleaner.  You know, 'cause that's what adults do.

Right. 

I don't think I've kept a car clean for more than a few days in my entire driving life.  It's just not in my makeup.  The people whose cars always are immaculate baffle me - I just don't live like that.  My life is not immaculate, and my car sure as hell isn't.  It would almost be hypocritical for me to have a clean car, really.  My life is hectic, frantic, messy, disorganized, fast moving, a little worn around the edges, and my car reflects that quite nicely.  It's comfortable. 

There are typically several items in my car on any given day:  tennis rackets, a pair of jeans, a pair of tennis shoes, a container of work papers, a diet coke (or several), two car seats (I won't even go into what all is involved in that; half eaten pancakes are usually the least of my worries there), socks (of varying sizes), softball equipment (cleats, bats, or glove, or all three), and the occasional detritus of fast food meals that haven't yet made it out of the car and into the trash can. 

The plus side of this rather messy situation is that I'm usually ready for anything.  Take today, for example.  I've been in Houston since Sunday, and have slept in my normal bed at my friends' M&G's house exactly twice (that's my home base when I travel, and they are rock stars for letting me crash there regularly).  My suitcase, some work clothes, and other assorted stuff are currently residing at their house, although I haven't slept there since Monday night.  As I'm talking on the phone to J this morning, he asks if I really need to stop there on my way out of town tonight.  Well, of course I do - I need to get my stuff, right?  Then I pause and think about it.  J is right.  Everything I could possibly need for the next several days is already IN THE CAR.

I guess it's time to clean the thing out again.  But thinking positive, that's one less stop I'll have to make on the way home.

Days Fly By

So let's see, day #4 of being in Houston.  My average hours of sleep per night has decreased, as have my number of times running.  Sigh.  I don't know why I bothered to even pack running clothes. 

On the flip side, though, it has been a fun week.  I've hung out with friends quite a bit, gotten a lot done at work, but I'm nearly ready for the week to be over.

The week in review, so far:

• Monday, stayed out far too late with a friend, catching up and overindulging slightly.  Well, I overindulged slightly, anyway... 
• Tuesday, watched the Sugar Bowl (ARRGH) with a group of friends.  If only the defense had shown up for the first half, or the receivers had washed the butter off their hands before the game.  But at least they were able to put together a decent second half and make a game out of it, right? 
• Wednesday, stayed the night at the hospital with a good friend who had her baby yesterday. Wow, I had forgotten how tiny tiny they are, and all the faces they make.  So incredibly cute, too.  Chubby cheeks already, and teeny tiny toes.  So sweet.  And NO, it does not make me want another one.  Two is plenty, thankyouverymuch.
• Tonight, unknown as yet.  May hang out with a group of friends, may completely crash. 

So, time to get some work done.  Hoping to put together a more substantive post in the next day or so, but my brain is a little frazzled and not quite clicking on cylinders right now.  Oh well, sometimes there are weeks like, right?  Also, I really do want to try throwing some pictures out here more regularly...we'll see if I can make that happen. 

Sounds Funny to Me

I wanted to post a funny story J told me about the girl the other day.  Apparently she was eating an orange and making shapes with her orange slices; J was trying to guess the shapes.

A:  "What's this, daddy?"
J:  "That's the letter Y."
A:  "Yes!  What's this one, daddy?"
J:  "That's a smiley face."
A:  "And what's this one?"
J:  "Uhhhh..."
A:  "It starts with a whu whu sound."
J:  "Uhhh, the letter W?"
A:  "Nope.
J:  "Ummm ... OK, I don't know."
A:  "You're supposed say you give up, daddy!"
J:  "OK, I give up.  What is it?"
A:  "It's a wainbow!!"

Irresolutely Yours

Or, My Take on New Year Resolutions.

I don't do them.   

Ok, that's not entirely true.  Years ago, I would occasionally throw out the random "wouldn't it be nice if I did this during the next year," and then I'd promptly forget about it a few days later.  But eventually I gave that up (it was pretty useless anyway), and for many years, I refused to even consider resolving anything for the coming year.  Apparently I thought I was perfect and didn't need to improve on anything.  (Obviously not true.)  Or I was too lazy to mess with it.  (Probably closer to the truth.)  Over the last few years or so, though, I've actually had the same goal, and for various reasons, this year I think I managed to accomplish that goal.  No, it wasn't anything discrete or easily measured (lose X pounds, get rid of Y things that clutter my life, etc.).  It was a lot fuzzier than that, which could make you wonder if you've really accomplished anything at all...but it's my goal, and I say it's accomplished.  So it is.  Which is great, and actually a bit of a surprise, but now I'm left wondering whether I should put a few more goals in place for myself, despite my general lack of self discipline.

I've mentioned before that I'm not great on self discipline these days, and I feel like a nice, discrete goal (run a marathon in 2011, read X number of books, quit drinking caffeine, whatever) would just be a setup for failure.  My life is too fluid and unpredictable most of the time to allow for a lot of scheduling, and I don't really have the drive to set anything like that in front of me right now.  Plus, I find that my interests wax and wane over long periods of time - for example, sometimes I'll go through phases where I read 10 books in a month, and then not another book for several months.  My level of enjoyment of the activity depends on the level of interest I have - if there's a feeling of "I should" rather than "I want," it most likely won't end well.  Wait, isn't the definition of self discipline something along the lines of making yourself do the things you don't want to do?  Hmm, and didn't I say something about lacking self discipline above?  

I guess I feel like I need to know what my motivation is before I can transfer something from an "I should" to an "I want."  And that involves more big picture thinking than a discrete resolution sometimes requires.  I guess maybe I'm thinking that if you set a broader goal, some of the smaller things should (will?) take care of themselves.  Maybe that's more of a shotgun approach as opposed to a sharpshooter approach, but it makes more sense to me.  It's also completely counter to what you are supposed to do with goals (break them down into manageable chunks with smaller milestones), but if your broader mindset is where it needs to be, the details should take care of themselves, right?

I know there is certainly room for improvement in my life.  Perhaps some folks would say significant room...but that would be a totally different post.  So while I'm not exactly setting a resolution this year, I do have something I want to focus on, a new goal if you want to call it that.  And, like the last one, it's pretty fuzzy, so I'm not sure how you give it a beginning or an end.  But maybe it's enough to acknowledge it and remind myself of it every now and then, and hope that it will begin to influence my decisions on a regular basis.  I'm good with baby steps here; sometimes the painfully slow, almost unnoticeable changes are the ones that result in the largest, most satisfying results over time. 

So here's the theme for the upcoming year (or however long it takes for me to be satisfied with it):  raising the bar.  Raising my expectations of what I expect out of myself.  I've mentioned before that I feel like I've been sort of lazy for a while - not in the "sit on the couch all day" way - that typically doesn't happen unless I've overindulged a bit the night before.  More in the "I could do a better job at X, but I'm too lazy" kind of way.  We only go around once, and as I get older, that idea comes to my mind a little more often than it used to.  Why not kick some ass and accomplish a few things this time around - assuming I can pull myself out of the The Lazy.  So there you go.  That is the theme or goal or - ok, if you must - resolution for the foreseeable future.  We'll see how it goes...

Not a Morning Person

Holy cow, I thought things would slow down after Christmas and I'd be able to post more, but the crazy kept right on chugging through New Year's Eve and New Year's day.  Between lots of activities going on, kiddos being at home, and lots of cooking to be done, I hardly had time to think, let alone write!

But today is a new day, the first Monday of 2011.  Back to the routine, back to school for the kiddos and work for me.  Well, back to the travel routine anyway.  I drove down to Houston last night and will probably spend most of the week here.  It is shaping up to be a crazy busy week, but what else is new?

I'm working on a post about new year's resolutions, even though I suppose I'm a bit late for that.  Oh well, whatever.  It's still January, right?  I've got some thoughts about the upcoming year, but that'll have to wait while I take care of the business of the day.

Oh, and that whole getting out of bed early this morning because it's Monday and I have to go work?  That?  Seriously sucked. 

Year in Review (Exercise Edition)

Well, let's see.  The year in numbers.

• 123:  the number of days I exercised this year, or right at 34%.  I'm pretty happy with that number.   
• 357.6:  the number of miles I ran this year.  I'm ok with that number, although I wish it had been higher.  However, the four months with the highest total number of miles were January at 63 miles (right before I got injured), November at 44, December with 36, and October with 33.  That's a good trend for the last part of 2010, and explains why the run today was faster than I expected - I've actually been putting some miles on my legs, despite falling off the wagon a few times.
• 1:  Half marathons run (back in March).
• 36:  Days I played tennis in 2010.  That's probably fewer days, generally, than when we lived in Houston, but I think I played better tennis.  Still, I'd like to get that number up a bit more this year.
• 1:  Number of crazy ass folks around here who keep track of their exercise throughout the year.  Guilty as charged. 

Happy New Year!

Trying to start out the new year right, heading out for a run in a few minutes.  Probably won't be very long, but a good 3 or 4 miler ought to feel pretty good after doing nothing  but sitting and eating for the last several days!

Update:
4 miles done, somewhere around a 10:30 average pace, which is pretty good for one of my "easy" runs.  It was a bit chilly today - probably around 40, nice brisk breeze, but once I got into the run, the chill wasn't too bad.  It always feels so good to get back out there after taking some time off, and I was able to clear out some cobwebs that have appeared over the last several days.  And I'm really happy about that pace.  I'm certainly not fast, but a 10:30 pace when I'm running easy tells me that the few runs I've been doing lately have been paying off.  

Second Update:
Apparently I ran a 10:15 pace - sweet!