I didn't run last week with my team. I was sad and missed my friend Shannon. She's very inspiring to me. Her ex was very not-nice but she picked up and moved on with her life. She's taking classes to become a speech-language therapist at NMSU. When my ex dumped me, all I could do was cry and shut the world out for about four years. But I digress. I didn't run last week because the week before, after our weekly run of 10 miles ( a personal milestone!), Eric and I went riding our bikes the following day and I nearly got spiked (gored) by some cut bamboo when I fell off my bike going uphill on a trail. I don't know what I did to my side but it was extremely painful to the extent than I couldn't run for a week and only ran this week under the influence of a lot of drugs (ibuprofen). My left side turned a lovely array of colors. First purple, a lovely shade of blue followed by morning rose and finally, yellow with red streaks. I also have this funny, odd flat space in my side. Something jiggles a little over there and I wonder if something broke off. Still, if I'd hit the bamboo stump one inch over, I would have been gored. That would have been more than painful but gross too! I mean, it's unlikely it would have killed me but it would have been gross with potentially guts spilling out everywhere. Gross! Honestly, what really scared me wasn't the injury I ended up with but the one I could have had. Boy, that would have been ugly and nasty. One does not imagine being gored on the trail running by the irrigation ditch. The long and short of it was I spent a week fretting whether this injury was going to put me out of the running for awhile. All kidding aside, it was quite painful and Eric felt culpable. He'd lead the charge up the hill thinking I'd follow him readily and easily. Readily I did. Easily, not so well.  Poor thing. I feel bad that he feels bad. Normally we ride our bikes nightly at least three or four times during the work week but we havent' done that since I got the injury.

I am planning on going out tomorrow with the team (7:00 AM, La Llorona Park). I think we're doing 8 miles. Maybe 8 miles. Supposedly 8 miles. Our TNT trainer Kristine is in charge of mileage but she (like my husband) lies a whole whole lot about distance. I think they are in collusion. When it comes to miles run  or cycled, both she and my husband lie lie lie lie lie lie lie. Honest. Either that or numbers aren't her forte. I mean, she runs you until what lung you haven't choked or coughed up in exhaustion -practically into her lap- and cheerfully chirps you've done the equivalent of half a block. She tries to convince me, pointing out that the pavement has been paced and painted with mileage markings but I know she is in on it. It? You know, the great mileage conspiracy.

If you, lost soul that you must be to have read this far, please do consider making a donation to the Leukemia Foundation and sponsor me in the upcoming PF Chang marathon in Phoenix AZ this January. Thanks. I'll appreciate it a lot as will people with blood cancers.  I'll put your name in my sidebar and sing your praises for a very very long time.

On my team are several people. I'm bad with names. I usually run with Shannon who is 37 but looks like she's 25 (photo above). She is pretty with beautiful skin. Three team mates are young adult siblings. Two girls and a boy. They're cute and all have braces on their teeth but I don't remember any of their names except one is called Betsy. Lynn is my age or older (?) and a head nurse. Lynn is a veteran having done five TiT marathons; she walks them. Another woman (I forget her name just now) -tall and large framed- is a nurse with two small kids; her husband is in Iraq. Nancy is an accountant and I know she has at least one ten year old. Shannon is recently divorced with a 14 year old. I don't know if she likes me or has to put up with me chattering at her the whole way because she can't run fast enough (for long enough) to get away from me. Kris, our coach has three well behaved, helpful children and she also teaches piano. All told, everybody is very nice.

My son is sick. A cold. Atypically, he's been high maintenance. Or rather, he's impatient about being ill and is demanding that I do something about it.

Last weekend, we had to put our little dog to sleep. Here's a picture of Sasha with Eric.

I have to go now. My husband brought movies. I'll finish later.  

I went to a class at the community college for adobe in-design to see if I should take it. That was a major big deal. Me, being out in public, interacting with people and not having a major melt down. I get a gold star.

I was really really lousy at the class. I know people loooovvveee adobe but let me tell you, it is NOT intuitive. Much of the interface sucks. You have to know where things are. I've tried to teach myself illustrator and pagemaker before but I always bailed over usability. Abby (the teacher) says that once you learn basic navigational stuff and tools in one program, those convey to the other programs in the creative suite. So hopefully I only have to do the steep learning curve thing once.

Anyway, I was really lousy. I'm surprised she let me in. I did not tell her about being autistic. No reason to needlessly worry the 'normal' folks. I never know how people are going to take it. I usually don't tell people unless the relationship obligates a lot of eye contact. If I have to tell them, some of them look at me funny, as tho I were going to turn purple or sprout horns right in front of them. Some people start speaking very s...l...o...w...l...y, some talk louder as tho I were deaf. Still others treat me as tho I were retarded. My husband's ex-girlfriend always treated me like a kindergärtner. She was hateful anyway, also she wasn't his girlfriend, she just wanted to be. As it is, she was never interested in him until he became a vegetarian and he only became a vegetarian after he met me. She'd say, "are you sure you're a vegetarian?" because I smoked. Who knew? I'd always thought vegetarianism had to do with eating, not smoking. In return, I was tempted to ask her "you're fat, are you sure you're a vegetarian" but I didn't. I think I should get bonus points for knowingly not being rude to counterbalance all of the times I am unknowingly and unintentionally rude. But I digress. I didn't tell Abby. I was doing well enough to just get approved on a closed class. MUAHHH Abby.

Spousal unit and I went down to the High Desert (their website is awful but their beer is great) to celebrate. That's our regular place if we have one. We spent our first date there. We went to celebrate that I managed to get admitted, enrolled, buy the software -I already had one of the books, one of which I'd gotten directly from the author years ago- and not entirely lose it. He thinks it's funny that I can do a lot of "advanced" things like authoring a popular book, traveling all over the world, learn whatever and fall apart at having to deal with the average person in daily life. Whatever. We rode our bikes down. On the way, I wanted to take a picture of the cotton in the fields. It's so pretty right now; it's blooming. The buds are big thick and fat. The flowers -before they burst open- are practically purple but when they bloom, they're pink. Anyway, we went to High Desert via the cotton fields but as luck would have it, the battery of my digital camera said "outa juice". Not really of course but you know what I mean. Bummer. I plugged in the battery at HD tho and ended up taking a picture of the bartender named Daniel. Daniel has been working there for seven years. This is Daniel's last week. Next week, he goes full time at the lab he's been working at. His job is to assay the hotness of chile. No lie.

I have always wanted to run a marathon. Strike that. I have always wanted to be able to say that I ran a marathon. I am not athletic. I have never been athletic. Part of the reason that I make a priority of staying in shape is that I know that I'm in better shape than most of the people I went to high school with. And I was fat then. They were all thin. And athletic. They looked good, I didn't. But I'm sure I look a lot better than most of them today. I lost weight. I got into shape. Still, athleticism does not come naturally to me. I'm a klutz. I run like a dork. I'm slow. I plod. I haven't run since the early 90's and I wasn't any good back then either.

So I'm kind of excited about this marathon. I have to raise a lot of money in donations, about $4,000. A lot of people say they appreciate my support, let's see how many support me. If I'm getting around 3,000 visitors a day over at Fashion-Incubator, I should be able to get the money. I could always do an event or something. People always want to meet me. Maybe I could do a meet up in Phoenix for people who donate $100 or more. I could stay an extra day and do a class for people who donated $1,000 or more. I haven't done a class in forever. I haven't been able to handle being around people in years...at least for the last three or four years I've gotten bad. I'm never around people at all anymore. I'm doing the running thing to try to get reintegrated. I have no contact with people other than my husband.  I worry that autism narrows my world more each year. I've heard that running is really good for autistic people. Supposedly it helps with the executive functioning stuff. That is really my down fall.

I quit smoking 63 days ago. Overall, today was a pretty good day. There are many days that I wouldn't mind smoking. Most days in fact. I'm finally off the patch. I did that for 60 days. I am running because I hope it'll reinforce the nonsmoking.  

On the registration form, there was the list of sentences you had to rank in order, which of the following reasons is why you decided to sign up. They did not list my reasons which were:

1. I don't want to smoke.
2. I want to be hot. The hottest 45 yr old babe around. Why not? I was ugly when everybody was beautiful. I figure it's my turn if I'm willing to work for it. That seems more honest than being beautiful only because you are young.
   
3. I want a butt. I forgot to tell you about that part. I'm slender but as I've aged, my butt has done a disappearing act. I'm too young to not have a butt. Now I'm all tits, a stick with tits. I want a butt.

Today was the first day I "trained". Wowee. I ran and walked for 45 minutes. That does not sound like training. Later, I rode my bike to the farmer's market. That was 5 miles round trip. In the early evening, husband and I rode our bikes to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription and the grocery store to get some beer; that was 3.2 miles roundtrip but it works out that both ways are uphill. Or certainly felt that way.

My husband is sitting across from me on the bed as I write this. He's looking at me just now and insists I'm up to no good. I deny it but between us, we need another blog like we need more holes in the head (s). 

 Rats. about 45 minutes worth of stuff just disappeared from this spot.

 I had been saying you can sign up to do this too. You don't have to run the whole thing. You can do a half marathon and you can walk it. Here's some info from the Team in Training website:

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team In Training^® is the world's largest endurance sports training program. The program provides training to run or walk a whole or half marathon or participate in a triathlon or century (100-mile) bike ride. Since 1988, more than 295,000 volunteer participants have helped raise more than $660 million.

By helping to raise funds for leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma research and patient services, you'll receive:

• Personalized fitness training by certified coaches for a period of four to five months
• Training clinics
• Your own personal Web site for online fundraising
• A supportive group of teammates
• Lodging and airfare to more than 60 accredited events in the United States and abroad.