Respect the Run: I have running blue balls

Posted: 2012/04/26 | Author: | Filed under: Running | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

 

I had to/chose to bail 5 minutes into my 8 mile run last night.  My left foot hurt from the first step, and even though it does it sometimes at the beginning of every run it usually goes away, doesn’t bother me for the rest of the run and I have minimal pain afterward.   This is in fact the same foot injury that I swore many weeks ago I would go see Dr. hate for, but never did.  It is also the same foot that hurt for a few days after last week’s 12 miles.  I’m babying it while we are in taper.  I have also not gone to a sports doc about my chronic muscle weakness.  I have a race to run in less than 10 days; forecast is 73 and possible rain, I don’t want to miss.  The next race isn’t until July 22 and if I have a boot or other some such nonsense I will have the luxury of the time to do that and still train for the Rock N Roll.   I managed to get through all of Monday’s very windy 4.0 with no pain and no walking.  My muscles actually felt pretty good yesterday. I ate well, I stretched, I hydrated. I drank my Herbalife Prolong and I packed my cherry extreme sport beans.  I felt emotionally great and ready to run.  I bailed 2 miles into the last 8.0 b/c of muscle and joint soreness. I was going to conquer this 8.0.  In spite of the rain and potential for thunderstorms I was ready and excited for this run.  I needed to enjoy this run.  When I got hyper-focused on my foot pain and made the must be very careful so close to race day and bail decision I had a pretty steady heart rate going.  I wasn’t pissed at myself or disappointed in myself so much as let down that yet another run didn’t pan out.  I was dressed, I was lubed, I put in my part of the  deal why couldn’t my foot cooperate.  As I drove home  not sweaty, spent and proud I had this sort of epiphany that it was like getting all of the foreplay and none of the fun.  I haven’t had a high fiver at the end running high endorphin rush badass pace run in a while.  My confidence is waning because I’m not enjoying running as much this year. Not being able to enjoy it is causing frustration and that frustration further erodes my  mental state on runs.   I have running blue balls! I need a  good hard running O!

You may be wondering why the hell anyone would ever use running and O in the same sentence.  Running is actually not just enjoyable when it is over.  It is often enjoyable during if you can achieve the runner high.  The Runner’s high is a wonderful release of endorphins into your body that trick it into thinking it feels no pain.  It’s hard to explain but I  got them on the treadmill all the time and quite often during last running season.  This year not so much, and maybe that is why I’m not enjoying this year as much, but I am digressing.  It’s when you mind and body take to you this beautiful badass running place.  You can breathe, your heart is steady but pushing it, your body feels loose and everything is at the perfect temperature,  It takes a while to get the running high.  It depends on how it takes your body and mind to release and settle into the running, to connect with it.  Oh once I do I first notice it is a pretty great day for running, then I notice everything on my body seems to be cooperating, then I notice that my splits are steady, then  I start to feel it, it’s like this little ball of achy tension starting to become focused on by my body, It’s almost like all the other parts are strong and start to send their energy up to the spot at the middle of my shoulders, it’s a good ache and it signals the imminent nature of the impending release. This sweet state of running nirvana or my runner’s O  carries me through a few more miles before the  fatigue of running for hours at a time sets in.  On a longer run the high can carry me through miles 5,6 and 7, maybe 8 and 9 with Extreme Cherry Sport Bean  consumption.  On the shorter  runs I hope to get it before mile 2 but it often eludes me until mile 3 or 4. The most I have hoped for lately is to find my knees and just get started into the syncing process when the run is almost over and I’m not going to get through the full O.  I’m not getting to,  foxtrot uniform charlie kilo yeah that was awesome we rocked that high  five after O.  I finally found the source of my frustration!

Unfortunately running isn’t Babu so the responsibility to get my run O on and have the high five moment at the end of my runs is solely resting on me.  It is my job to get myself off while running. I will not make any; good at fapping, jokes, promise. I have ability to control/affect my physical state but the rest is always a crap shoot.  The brain is the most powerful sex organ our bodies possess.  I’m probably still going to run feisty, grumpy, pissed, and stubborn because motivation springs from many places. Where my head is at is more than half the battle so I need to find a way to ease this frustration and re-align my confidence.   So I put on the BGP and listed out some logical points, nothing like logic to get a girl going.

  • It is still early in running season, there are many more highs to come.
  • It could be that my body has adjusted to the running and the highs are coming later, if I’m that desperate for it I can start putting in longer short runs after May
  • I can and will finish next Saturday, in the end my motivation for any race outside of the bragging rights and pride is the bling and I’ll get that medal
  • Sport doc for check up after Mini, still plenty of time to train for Jul 22 if there are 4 weeks of recovery, will make appointment now in prep
  • Massage and chiro on Monday to stretch well before Saturday
  • Massage and chiro on Monday after race for reward
  • Just Breathe!!!

 

 

Respect the Run: Kicked the 15k’s a$$, BTW I chafed my gooch & I <3 female runners, and Babu

Posted: 2012/04/07 | Author: | Filed under: Running | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The SIL asked what “HAM”  was, it’s “Hard as a Mofo” from this..

We are going to start today’s post out with some TMI. We haven’t nearly enough TMI since the AD story finished and I for one, think we are WAY past due.  This morning, while I was kicking the ass of a 15k I was afraid of less than 12 hours ago, I chafed my gooch.  Yes, my  gooch, my taint, that very tender narrow pass between your honey boo boo and where your dude is always trying to put it.   I know you are asking “how do you know?”. I know because when I went to lower myself gingerly without any cussing and settle demurely in the ice bath my brain promised my muscles at mile 8.0 if  they would just go “HAM” for the next 20 minutes it would reward them with a luxurious 20 minutes in freezing  cold water.  You laugh at this run on  of all run on sentences, but I’m  not done with this run on thought so the joke is on you…Ha!  The kind of freezing cold water that starts to give you hypothermia, the kind of freezing cold water that I must sometimes  scooch my toes all the way out as far as I can, but only as far as to still be covering my big toe knuckle thingy where it joins my foot, which BTW always leaves my pinkie toe still mostly submerged. I worry about what this says of the freakishness of my feet and toes, as my feet and toes are in my opinion fat, pudgy and ugly, and I feel yucky about them only slightly more so than my ankles.  They are the yin to the yang of my narcissistic obsession with my glorious naturally curly hair and light greenish/brownish but mostly green eyes.  Oh crap,  we are back to my eyes and hair and off my gooch.  Back to my gooch.  I know I chafed my gooch because as I was lowering myself into previously mentioned ice bath i felt that horrible awful stinging of water on chafed skin.  You may also recognize this as what it felt like when you nursed and got a chafed nipple and didn’t figure it out until you went to get your once every 3-4 days shower for 5 minutes of the baby isn’t crying time.  It’s.. i kind even describe it.  Remember those Indian Sissy Burns  we used to give ourselves with pencil erasers as kids? It Feels like that only multiplied by a factor of  some sort of equation of the size of the burn times the area the burn is in.  Oh? You never did that as a kid? Well then I feel badly for you because now you don’t know  what  chafing feels like.  IT SUCKS!!!!!!!!!  Unfortunately chafing is also one of those runner injury badass mofo thing that no one tells you about until you get one for the first time and wonder WTF do I have cancer? For the record,  this did not happen to my but to a runner buddy in our Y training group.  When I got my first chafing injury I knew EXACTLY what it was. I nursed two children on one boob.   That is why one is about a full cup size bigger than the other one. It’s one of those weird quirks of my breast besides their size that made them so “popular” on the internet. Oh look it’s the trifecta, I have now mentioned my hair, eyes and boobs. Let me throw in that I am putting bling jeans on my ass and shaking it tonight t o close out the four horsemen of the Lolapocalypse and then I promise to stick to mundane running parts from now on.  As soon as I am done talking about my gooch,  I am almost done I promise.  Chafing happens to men and women runners and can crop up in the oddest of places. I get it often on the underside of my arm or arms where t-shirt or my running band rub. It can crop up on your inner thighs when you wear a running skirt, unless you have factory air/hardwood floors, and if you do I salute you and covet your well shaped legs and ass.  I don’t think I had factory air when I was 17 and weighed 121 pounds.  The good news is they make a great product called Body Glide that you can rub on all of those tender vulnerable areas and voila, no chafing.  I go through about a stick a season. I pick them up for about $6-10 at the Dick’s or local running store.  If you, like me, forget to use the Body Glide and wear a pair of newer pants you have only previously put 4 miles in, just put Aquaphor on the affected area until it heals. DO NOT RUB LOTION ON IT!!!!!!!!!!   And that Lovies, ends the first TMI portion of my running post today.

I woke up  over and hour early for the 15K race today. 4;45 am, on the dot.  I do it before almost every single big event  morning of my life.  It seems to be my body clock’s panic alarm clock base time.  I stayed calm and followed my ritual for when this happens.  I kept my eyes closed, worked on relaxing and stretching my legs. I tried to breath deeply and just rest, not obsess about going back to sleep.  I trained myself to do this when the kids were babies. I should say I  MiniMe trained me to be this way she she was a horrific not ever sleepy always pissed off infant.  I think some parents call that colic, In our house we called it 2 hour shifts so the baby doesn’t die and/or the parent literally loses sanity.  I also used this time to have a BGP talk with myself about the Race. It was only a race. I will be running 10,0 on Wednesday. I get to earn an ice bath. Hey maybe my legs aren’t as tight as they have been. I will run the whole thing. i am not sick so it can’t be as bad as the 10K.  etc…  It must of worked because when I got up I felt pretty alert and not too stumbly.  I made my waffle,  drank about 16oz of water, got dressed and started to stretch. Babu and I picked up bibs on Thursday so we weren’t leaving until about 1:15 before the race. I drank my Herbalife Prolong pre workout drink thing, another 16 ounces on the way there and about 30 minutes before the race I ate a packet of Cherry Beans with Caffeine.  I stretched more right in the garage and before the race as we lined up, When we started  I felt pretty good. I  would say I felt great, but I was hypersensitive to my legs and probably cost myself a good 20% in confidence.   On this course we always get a point within a mile or so in where one of the loops has the  race leaders running. As soon I see them I get goose bumps every time.  They are easily on mile 4ish. the race time was 17:xx in. Seventeen minutes and they have completed the first loop.  As soon as I see them I start looking for the first girl. because sooner than some jack hole around me every time thinks, there is going to be one soon.  And she is going to be in front of plenty of men who are also seriously fast.  As soon as I see her i get  overwhelmed with emotion, every single time.  As soon as I see one I start to look for more, as the packs come racing past my  barely sub 12:00 pace each one will be filled with more and more girls.  There are some seriously committed athletes in those packs.  I’m not saying I’m a running slouch, but you don’t get to that pace without dedicating yourself to the training required to make your body, your heart, and your lungs obtain and maintain that  speed over distance.  Each time I see those glorious role models of this sport I am so absolutely insanely in love with I get so filled with emotion I start to cry a little bit.  I might have tears just writing about it now. I start to tear up and my pace starts to pick up. I start to run faster and faster and my will, which is 70% of the running battler, is buoyed by their mere presence.  I’m the crazy curly haired chubby older lady screaming “GET IT GIRL” at that first female runner every single time.  I want her to know what she and every one of those ladies behind her do for me.  They help me run faster and stick it  to that one due in every race, without fail, you gets all offended when I am outrunning him and suddenly starts pumping up his game to keep up or catch up.  Every time without fail we leave him in the dust.  Babu gets the biggest kick out of it and has started pointing them out to me when he finds them. He found today’s dude and started laughing. “he’s worried about you”, he told me.

Today’s Mantra was “Get This”, ” I Got This” and a lot of ” It’s just a little hill, it will all be over soon”. We ran well and hard mile after mile. I had to pee at Mile 2,  we got water and did the swish and spit. I allow myself to walk for water and I just kept pretending I only had to run to the next check point and I could get a little break.  I wanted to run well today.  I wanted a sub 12:00 race.  within 4-5 miles it looked very  possible.  When I was able to hold to mile 8 I just knew I could put in the  work to get 20 more minutes out of my body and get to the 9.6 before 2 hours.  Babu was an amazing runny partner this morning. No spats and he did a good job of keeping an eye on my pace. He is always the one who snaps me out of my first female runner crazy emotion driven super fast pace.  You’re running way outside your pace is his cue for that one.  He was pushing me today and I knew it. I didn’t mind because he has to downgrade his pace  to stay with me and that is actually more work for him than running at his naturally faster pace.   My internal goal has always been that I would grow and strengthen as a runner to get to a 9 minute mile over a 13.1.  That would be nirvana for me.  At mile 8.o I promised my muscles an ice bath if they went “HAM” for me  for the next 20 minutes and helped us to finish with a pace under 12:00.   They did.   We  rocked that run.  That is the longest I have ever run without doing any walking.  I’m no longer afraid of the 10.0 on Wednesday.

I Hope you all enjoy your Easter weekend  Lovies. I’m going to take a nap and go listen to a band play with SIL, Baker and Fun Size later.

Random musings on running and beating myself up

Posted: 2012/01/24 | Author: | Filed under: Running | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

Running season started again for me last week.  I signed up for my 2nd Indianapolis 500 Mini Marathon and the lengthy  training program at our local Y.  I haven’t run much since I finished the inaugural Women’s  Half Marathon over Labor Day weekend.  It started out innocently enough, taking a break to rest and bask in the glory of completing two halfs within a year.  Initially I had plans in my head to run a third half in either October or November. But as the weeks progressed I found that i just wasn’t doing any training to get the job done.   I hadn’t  registered for either, so there was no immediacy to the situation and i just chose not to train.  I ran a  5k Turkey Trot over Thanksgiving and hoped it would motivate me to to at the very least start a regular work out schedule of running 3 times a week and add in some cross and strength training.  But it was the holidays and I was busy and full of excuses. I had also started smoking regularly again and the next I knew it was Christmas. I knew training would start on the 16th of January and that become I’ll just enjoy and slack off until running season gets here.  I put about ten pounds back on during that time, not to mention  the hard earned muscles I’d garnered from earlier training had turned to mush.  I began last week very excited but knowing I am terribly out of shape.

The thing is, I am excited to be training again, and even though that first run last week in the cold and wind was brutal, I enjoyed it.  Mentally this time is different. I’m not getting that runners’ high from these limited runs because at this point they are a struggle to finish without walking.   I also sort of feel like I’m in a don’t really belong anywhere no man’s land.   This year they are offering two levels of training, beginner and advanced.  I didn’t want to mentally put myself in either of those places. I don’t feel like a beginner, I’ve done this before. I know what I’m doing and how my body will respond.  The advanced program calls for higher mileage, and I am woefully out of shape. At first I was like, It’s no big deal, it is just more miles, I know I can do this so I signed both of us up for the advanced knowing it was all the same group and we could talk to the coaches and make the right  choices on a run by run basis.  Except for I don’t like living in case by case basis world, I like to have a set plan and stick to it.  The Husband recently suffered a back injury that revealed he has disc problems in 3 places.  He has gone through rest, has had one epidural injection to ease his pain and he agreed to  sign up for the race and training program so we could do it together again. He probably shouldn’t be doing extra mileage and so far has declined to do so.   His pace could be much faster than mine, when left  to his own devices he runs about a ten minute or slightly less pace and I am still in the 12+ range, that is a pretty slow pace for a runner.   None of the other runners in our advanced group are that slow. No no one is telling me I shouldn’t be in the advanced group, the advanced coach is one of my personal hero’s. He always comes back to the end for me and helps me finish my run, doesn’t admonish me when I have to walk for a bit and always gently coaches me to the end and pushes me further than I planned to push myself.   But in spite of that I found myself choosing the 2 mile options vs the 3 mile advanced option last night.  I  made this decision mid run for reasons I will outline in a moment, but he was expecting to see me do 3, and had to go back and look for me when I didn’t do it. I inconvenienced him and caused him concern, I felt really badly about this.   Though it only re-iterated what I already  knew.  If I choose to pursue the advanced path, if I choose to declare myself and advanced runner in this training group, I am always going to finish last on probably every training run.

Then there is the stubborn and injury factor.  Last year I started out of shape and by mid February had run myself into a stress fracture on my right foot.  I was in a boot, dealt with the mental and physical set backs and went on to run  my very first half  marathon with no problems.  One of our coaches is very familiar with my stubbornness and it has been a topic already this year, spoken out loud in front of everyone.  I don’t mind it, I know it is true and for me it is sort of a badge of honor. A lot can be overcome with stubbornness, but it can also cause a lot of problems.  When I was training for the  Women’s half I started to notice a familiar feeling in my left foot.  I simply ignored it.  I wear heels a LOT, my appetite for shoes and especially heels is not secret to those that know me.  I wear them to work, I wear them  on GNO.  I like them high, the higher the better and most of my heels I wear on a regular basis are 4″ or taller.  I’m already 5’8″ and I like being even taller in heels.  I notice when I wear them that sometimes by left foot does not like this, especially  in the part of my foot where the big toe meets the foot.   This  same spot started talking to me almost immediately last week after that first run.  I’ve been ignoring it. Thinking maybe I will try to solve the problem with new shoes and the inserts I  already wear to help prevent further stress fracture injuries.   last nigh when I headed out for the 3, it started in the first half mile. I made the decision at the turn to do the 2  because it would be better for my foot. Maybe my foot would reward my scaled  back effort by not hurting after.   Bad news, my foot is unaware or unwilling to accept this plan.

So here I sit, not even two full weeks into another running season, wrestling  emotionally with what all this means. I KNOW it means I should make an appointment to go see Dr.  Hate, that I should start mentally planning to be in that damn boot on another foot for 4+ weeks and find a way to NOT repeat the mental pit party and slacking I indulged in last year.  I’m already in  a much better place. There isn’t a lot I’m wrestling with emotionally this year. I’m not hiding a 3rd chat career from my husband, I’m over PJ and all of the Almost Divorce shenanigans.  All in all things in my life are quite good. So why don’t I feel more  empowered and strong and badass right now?   I’ve quit smoking all things, and I feel so much better having done so.  There is limited nicotine and  THC working itself out of my body. I’m mentally and physically healthier than I have been in the last 3+ years.   I’m getting my brain back as each week passes and my mental acuity and focus continues to climb. I’m more focused and plugged in at work and home.  By all accounts I should be feeling pretty good about myself right now.  I don’t have anything mental to wrestle on runs other than daily life and work stressors. By all accounts I should be setup to push my body to even higher limits and bring  my pace time down closer to the sub 11 minute mark.   I  should be in super runner ninja kick-ass mode, but I’m just not.   Instead I just feel sort of meh about the whole thing.  I sit here hiding from the pain in my foot, the feeling that I don’t really belong in that advanced group and  wondering why on earth at almost 41 years old after everything I have   triumphed over that I still feel the need to beat myself up as harshly as possible when  things don’t go just like I expected.

I don’t have an answer.  But I do know what needs to be done, it’s the same basic answer to all problems, put on my BGP and  own it.   So tomorrow I will call Dr. Hate and  make an appointment, but I will also complete my scheduled 3 mile pace time trial and push myself as hard as my body and lungs will go. I’m going to downgrade myself to the beginner category and if later in training I feel like I can and should take on more mileage I will. There isn’t anything wrong with me if I choose to be smart instead of stubborn for once.   If he says it’s boot time again I will do it without the pity party that accompanied last year.  I can do upper body strength work outs while The Husband runs and I can pick up mileage as soon as he clears me.  Rather than hide from the problem I can face it and make my contingency plan.  Maybe it won’t be a new stress fracture and everything  can continue as planned. In the meantime  I will simply choose to BREATHE and not wallow in the meh.   I’ll probably still be wearing 5″  heels on Saturday night though, a girl has to hold on to some stubbornness.

Dude Besties: Vin Diesel and Sunshine ” I love you man”

Posted: 2011/09/14 | Author: | Filed under: Lovies | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

I think it is important for every girl to have friends of the  opposite gender.  I love the guys in my life just as much , though very differently, as my Bad Gurls and Besties.     At a core level everyone gets the same Lola as a friend.  Part of the reason I embrace the “fearlessly be yourself” mantra is because I’ve never been very good at being anything different.    All my life I’ve always felt comfortable in the company of guy friends.   I also prefer male bosses ( even ones that let the drunken customer call me), but that is another story.  In my school system they  started a Gifted and Talented class,  with my 4th Grade year.  There was a whole class of us that met and stayed together from 4th grade on through High School.   We spent 4-6th grades together with precious few new kids coming or people leaving. By the time the insults of 7th grade rolled around we SOLIDLY had each others back, boys and girls alike.   My very first best guy friend was also my very first kiss, and went on to marry one of my very best friends from that same class.

Always having at least one best guy friend was easy to do in  college and early adulthood before I got married.   Then in similar fashion to the way little boys and girls can be best friends until about the age of oh 6-8 before their gender gets in the way; life circumstances get in the way of  keeping those relationships close.   Significant others, jobs, kids etc…  Guys just don’t put as much stock in the whole keeping in touch thing.   With a dude you can pick up and put down a friendship without “I’m no longer feeding and watering that friendship if she’s isn’t going to”.  Close girl bonding takes time because girls can be vicious, best guy friend bonding can be started quickly and put down no hard feelings.  With a dude you can talk to someone that actually  has a penis about whatever penis you’re in need of discussing.   And they can give you the penis  POV, which you can in kind return with your womanly wisdom of vaginas and what his date/girlfriend/wife really means when she says he can do what he wants.   With a dude you can play Tonk and talk shit and make them play Rummy 500 until you win just so you can say you did.   With  my dude friends it’s  a treat to just be Lola at my core. I can leave the heavy  badass armor at the door with the guys and not feel vulnerable.   It’s hard to explain really so I’ll take it out of the dude vs. girl label and just tell you about two of  my besties that just happen to be  dudes, Sunshine and Vin D.

I  genuinely love both of these guys in a  very platonic way.  Sunshine and I met in college and shared a Business major. Mr. Smartypants apparently exited with 2 majors. I was one class away from a double major in not only Business, but also Finance.  The one  remaining finance class I needed to make that happen was the next Spring semester and I didn’t want to do 5 years.  So I exited with a B+ average toting a Business/ Marketing degree.  We graduated, went on with life, hooked up on FB and in the middle of my AD I noticed him posting something about being 1 year post Divorce and  starting to be happy again.   So Sunshine (my real nickname for him) and  I start talking.  I’m all about being me but you don’t just tell some dude you made out with in college but also have  mutual respect for that you’re getting your boobs out on the internet and having an emotional/you’d like to make it physical internet affair with a 25  year old Greek  God of sociopaths.   Sunshine had no idea what the hell was going on in my 2nd life.  He knew I was going through a divorce and what he saw on FB.  Sunshine and I were old  college acquaintances who happened to swap spit once in the bricked basement of the fraternity house.   By all accounts he should of been working the hell out of the can I fuck you angle, but he wasn’t.    Oh and Sunshine lives far away in another part of the country with a football team we don’t like here. (Stifling urge to break out my Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal’s version of “Piggers are going all the way this year”)   We started with emails and then moved to texts and phone.  We spent the summer catching up on our lives since college and settling into the friendship we have today.  I have given the why I love Sunshine speech to multiple people, including The Husband and Sunshine himself.

It goes something like this.  I love Sunshine because he, as a man, was treating me better and with more care and respect than any other man in my life.  I was talking to him and getting to know him again during  the time that The Husband had moved out; I was still hoping to be with PJ; I was talking to, meeting, and dating new guys.   Sunshine  wasn’t trying to get in my pants, and he was the man who was treating me best.    He  is a very overworked, over achieving business man with a team of direct reports.  He travels all the time and is rarely home. When he is home he has a gigantic social life, as you can imagine Sunshine does not struggle with the ladies fawning over him.    Sunshine, in spite of his busy schedule, would plan ahead to call me based on our scheduled that week,  call when he said he would and actually spend time listening and talking with me when he did.   Sunshine treats all women in his life this way, I am not special. But Sunshine reminded me what it’s like to have a real man in your life, and how that should make you feel.

Sunshine had post traumatic my ex wife was an evil shrew (my words) who had to be texted back immediately syndrome. I had most of the texts coming in are all about how someone wants me to smurf on his smurf for a smurfy long time.  Or smurf my smurfy smurfiness until smurfdome comes.   Or hi can I take you to dinner and then maybe smurf with you after.  ( oh the Match.com stories are so funny)  Why yes  I DID see The Smurfs last weekend and I must say it was a fabulous trip down memory lane.  Texting proved to be therapy for both of us.   I don’t know how you text with your friends but with my friends texting works as sort of a pick up and put down running conversation.  The next response could come in seconds or weeks after the last one.   But it didn’t become that all encompassing I’m doing it all day long BS like it was prone to with the new guys in rotation.  Cuff link and food porn was about as racy as it got. Sunshine now knows all of my secrets from that time,  is one of my loudest “I’m proud of you”  supporters and is going to be my yearly date for Carb Day.   Some day I hope to watch him get married again to a girl I can stand and who will understand that  he is a gift to his friends and let him keep us around.

Vin D  I’ve known for over ten years.   We met at a job through a mutual friend, spent  a while carpooling and eating lunch together every day, then drifted  apart as life took us in different directions.  Vin D was my safety call when I was interviewing the Craig’s List guys. I sure the heck couldn’t call any of my girl friends and say “Hey, I’m going to meet this random dude and I just need you to know where I am so if I end up in a pit you can find my body” ” Oh yeah, everything is fine I just thought it was a good idea if I start fucking guys from Craig’s list”  .  Vin D has the fortitude to handle that and enough intimate knowledge of my inner brain working to know we’ll talk about why the fuck I’m doing something that crazy and stupid when I’m ready to talk about.  I was ready to talk about roughly 5 months later standing outside some random abandoned gas station. Wait, that sounds bad, Vin D and I  used to work for the same place. We couldn’t exactly have these conversations at work so we would take drives, smoke and  vent about work or life or whatever.  On that particular day I decided it was time to share and seek his advice, so I dumped it all on him. Reddit, PJ, The  Husband, all of it.  From that day on Vin D became my sounding board on the subject of my sanity and life.  Vin D  and I are not literally exactly alike.  We have many personality and character differences.  Buy our minds works almost exactly the same.   And through hundreds of hours of  having intellectual adult conversations about all manner of topics and our often divergent opinions of them, we have the uncanny ability to  provide quality self awareness therapy/BGP/know when to shut up and just listen to each other.  He is like a male version of me and vice versa.  We do not always agree, but we always respect the others POV.    It was Vin D who kept  telling me that is was absolutely inexcusable for PJ to not be standing present physically in my life.  It was Vin D who listened every Tuesday after  I had my counseling  session to my revelations  of new insight and my next steps are far as taking my life and myself back.  It was Vin D who was  holding fast to  his line in the sand of this is NOT OK to be happening to you.   It was Vin D who came over, plugged his laptop in and  worked from my Kitchen to help me stay the hell off the internet.  It was Vin D who listened to many many tear filled rants of frustration. And it was Vin D who never treated me as weak, or crazy or unsettled or anything else but me.  I love that man like a brother.

I have a new potential best guy friend.  We are in the friend stage where we have just enough inside jokes ( we work at the same place)  to make us close but don’t know each other moods well enough to shut the hell up when we should yet.