OBABA: Observations

1. Getting strong hurts. But that pain can be great encouragement.

2. Six-year-old boys make great motivators ("Mama, your belly is a little fat." "Mama, your belly looks a little smaller today." "C'mon, Mama! Let's EXERCISE!")

3. Great side benefit of getting strong: It's teaching my kids that working out is good for your body, mind and soul.

4. I already feel stronger. And I am thinking about scary things a lot less. Must be a connection here.

So I know I owe a Part III ... if to no one else but myself. I'll be getting on this by mid-week.

Peace out.

PS. Wilder just came into the office. "Mom? Exercise now??" God I love this kid.

Operation Be a Bad-ass, Part II

As it turns out, I'm going to have to take these life goals one or two at a time, at least in terms of writing about them and sharing them with you. All of them would be too long, you would get too bored, and one of my children would no doubt impale themselves on something while I was typing. No bueno.

So today I'm going to share my first two Operation Be a Bad-ass Objectives.

No. 1, and this is probably the biggest: I need to get strong. 

I'm talking physically (well, mentally too, but that will come in a later post). The thing is, I do pretty much fancy myself a bad-ass. I think I'm capable of anything. And in many ways, when it comes to sheer fortitude and determination, I am right where I wanna be. There is not much that scares me and I can pretty much take on any challenge willingly. I don't know how I came by this, but looking back at my life, I'm pretty sure I was either born with it or acquired it early in life.

But if the events of the last month have taught me anything, it's that I will probably continue to be scared of dying for quite some time to be scared of dying. The only way I know how to combat that is to get strong. I want to have a strong heart, strong muscles. I want to be quick like a cat. I want to be able to pick my kids up again without immediately wanting to put them back down (if you know me, you know my kids are mutantly huge, so this will take some doing).

In essence, I want to feel as bad-ass when it comes to my body as I feel when it comes to my head.

So how will this look in the end? Well, Linda Hamilton in Terminator is probably asking a bit much. Although ...

God damn. Look at her. I would LOVE to look like that. But let's be reasonable. If I did, I would almost certainly always want to carry around a gun like that, too. And wear black. Although no bangs.

So, no ... not Linda Hamilton ripped. For a goal, I go to Pinterest, of course, where this is definitely no shortage of people posting photos of what they wish they looked like. I'll print a few out and put them on my mirrors, but I won't post any images here. I don't want to set unreasonable expectations for myself.

But here's what I'd like, in terms of end-product:

• A strong core (and this is asking a lot give the c-section births of those two previously mentioned mutantly huge children -- 8 lbs. 14 oz. and 9 lbs. 3 oz. at birth, btw)
• Strong legs (I always had them until my knee surgeries and then slowly I've lost them)
• Non-mom mom arms. You know what I'm talking about here. I want my arms to stay reasonably defined. 
• A strong, STRONG heart. I want to be able to run trails up near NCAR in Boulder and not get so winded I fall over in a puddle of my own tears. 

So how do I do this? To be honest with you, I dunno. I'm a busy gal. I have two small kids and I work from home. But I know people who do way more than me who manage to stay pretty damn fit. So I've got no excuses. It's going to involve getting up earlier and taking advantage of what I have at home and around me (elliptical, punching bag, stability ball, trails galore ...).

I want to try spinning. Thoughts? I really want to kickbox and/or just plain box. Thoughts? I want to trail run, but I better start with just some running in general first. Thoughts? And I need some suggestions for getting my core strong — I have some ball exercises that I do, but any other advice is appreciated.

So, there's that. No. 1 objective in a nutshell. OK, I wrote a lot — a coconut shell, then. I will let you all know how it's going periodically. Feel free to send me inspiration, advice, encouragement and mockery, if you think it will help.

No. 2: Volunteering. Specifically, volunteering at a hospice. 

I dunno why, but this has been something I've wanted to do for years. I have become very comfortable in the last 10 years or so being around the grieving, and lord knows I've done my own share of it.

I'm also a huge believer in perspective, and in forcing yourself into situations that provide perspective. That said, I'm a big hypocrite because I've never volunteered — not on any significant and prolonged level.

Anyway, this I've already started on. I contacted my local hospice care provider and have filled out an application. They will call me soon for an interview, they let me know. I might have to start off in some not-very-personal capacity given my own recent loss. It's just the rules, I gather. But that's OK. In fact, it might be better.

Again, I'll let you know how this goes. I hope I'm strong enough — mentally — for it. It scares me, which is probably why I haven't made any attempts at actually doing it before now. I know that I'll deal with all kinds of attitudes and approaches toward death, and I just hope I have the grace to help whoever is facing it through it. That would mean a lot to me, to be able to do that.

That's all for now. I'll touch on Nos. 3 and onward another day.

Peace all.
k.

The Official Slogan of Operation Be a Bad-Ass

Thank you, Maggie Burleson.

Click here for more information on Operation Bad-Ass — please join me in honoring my friend.

Operation Be a Bad-Ass, Part 1

I don't pay attention to platitudes or trite sayings much, but there is one that has always made me think. I saw it again on a friend's Pinterest board today:

This question is of particular interest to me lately. See, when my friend Karen died last month, she had just turned 40. She was talking and laughing with her husband one minute, and dying the next. She was too young. It was too quick.

On top of that, Karen's and I lives had a handful of similarities:

• We both have two kids ages 6 and 3.
• We are both stay-at-home moms who work our tails off on top of parenting. Karen did video and helped helm a holiday-light business. I am an editor/writer/designer. We fit our jobs around our kids, with the end result being that we were/are often exhausted.
• We both probably spend/spent way too much time wondering if we were doing it all right. If we are good enough and doing enough for those around us, especially our families. 

There is another thing that has been haunting me. Karen and I always ended up near each other. We grew up together in Nebraska, but I moved away when were were 12, right after the 6th grade. Somehow, years later, we were both back in Colorado attending CU, living together for many of those college years. After college, I rented my first solo apartment in Denver's Capitol Hill neighborhood. On 14th and Vine, I was in Apt. L. Karen moved into Apt. P. Then Karen bought a house in another neighborhood of Denver, and Jerry and I purchased our first home about a mile from there. We moved back to Denver in 2010 and eventually bought a house in Broomfield. Karen, Eric and their girls were planning to move over here, possibly into our very neighborhood.

See, the thing is: Karen and I somehow always ended up in the same place, in similar circumstances. We joked about how we'd grow to be crotchedy old widows, living together and sharing a car. It was a joke. But then, not really. I could have totally seen it happening.

I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that my life has so closely paralleled Karen's, in both circumstance and proximity, that I am scared. I am scared of my own mortality, not to mention the mortality of those that I love, in a very big way right now. Throw in a healthy (or unhealthy) dose of hypochondria (that I work with every fiber of my being to fight ... it unfortunately runs in the family), and you can imagine how every little ache, every hiccup, every sniffle is, to put it quite plainly, freaking my shit out right now. 

And yet I know enough about the grieving process to know that these kinds of thoughts, be they unreasonable or not, run rampant after the death of someone you love. I clearly remember that after my mom died, I sat in a sushi restaurant with Jerry trying to tell him that "superbugs" were going to kill us all. That we had to have a plan. That I was scared.

And so I know that this is probably what's happening again. I'm just being unreasonable as a result of grieving. The "trying to make sense of it all" brain works in mysterious ways.

And yet ... what if I'm not? What if I die tomorrow or next month or in December (a little inside Scott family joke there ... a lot of us die in that month)?

What would I do? What would I change?

What would I attempt to do if I knew I could not fail? Or, more precisely, if I just didn't give a shit if I failed anymore?

I have been thinking about this a lot lately. I can not italicize those words enough. A LOT. A lot. A lot. You get the point. 

Karen Emily Nalezinek Mraz: 1972-2012

So I'm coming up with a list. A list of 5 or 10 things that I want to accomplish. It won't be hard — unfortunately, I'm embarrassed to admit, I think about doing things I would love to do or that I think I need to do, way too much. And yet I never do them. For someone who approaches the definition of the word "workaholic," I am so very lazy when it comes to my own happiness and fulfillment.

I will publish that list in Part 2 of this post, but here's the thing. I want you to do one, too. Yes, you. The person reading this. And I'd love it if you shared it with me. Put it in the comments below, or post it on your own blog and link to it here.

And then I would very, very much love it if we could support each other — through harassment, peer pressure, friendship and a friendly sense of competition — to get our damn lists done. Yours doesn't have to be five or 10 — it can be one big thing. We all have that OBT, don't we?

I would like to die — whether I'm 40 or 480 and my soul has somehow been uploaded to the internet — knowing that I tried. That I had done my best and been my strongest and not been afraid. Maybe I'll fail, but god dammit, I'm gonna fail with the company of friends.

You do it, too. And please, share this post with your friends. With people you know but I don't. Let's all turn 2012 around and make it count.

And maybe, just maybe, Karen's death will count for something. I know I'll be doing my list in her honor.

PWNED!! (by your old-lady MOM)

Just now the following happened:

Wilder: I can kick yer butt, Mama.

Me, while dusting a table: Oh yeah? I seriously doubt that.

Wilder: I can. I'll use my sword.

Me: And I'll use my superior strength and superior intellect.

Wilder: No way. I don't even need my sword to kick yer butt.

Me: Again ... intellect, strength ... superior.

Wilder: Listen, I'm 6, and you're just an old lady.

Two point five seconds later I was sitting on top of him on the floor, all four of his limbs pinned firmly to the ground while he twisted and turned and tried desperately — and unsuccessfully — to escape my old lady clutches.

And at that very moment, given his expression of surprise (and the HUGE smile on his face), I wished my brain could take pictures. That's the only thing that could've made this post better.

My reason for being

Missing

There are dozens of reminders of Karen around me every day. Places we took the kids (damn near every single park in the North Denver metro area, I believe), restaurants we ate dinner (mostly sushi) at, stuff in my house, etc.

The most heartbreaking of these is her picture on my fridge. In it she's with her two girls, Reagan, 6, and Peyton, 3. It used to be one of those things that was there but that I looked past. Now every time I go to my kitchen, I see it. It hurts to look at, but it also reminds me that I have a lot of responsibility to Karen in terms of those girls.

After I hung up with her sister the morning I learned of K's death, I sat on my bed sobbing and, quite suddenly and very intensely, I felt like she was there, in the room with me somehow, waiting ...

I felt like she needed me to tell her something. I will never believe she wasn't there, and that she had to be there for a specific reason.

I promised her repeatedly that I would be as involved with those girls as I could be. That I would help love them in her absence.

Anyway, that was all a digression — what I wanted to point out was how many reminders of Karen I have in my life. It's probably hard to know someone for 30-plus years and not have that.

The strangest?

My bra. It makes me laugh.

The last time I bought bras, I was with Karen. We had gone for sushi and had a couple of cocktails. We decided to go across the street to shop and let some of the alcohol wear off before driving home. We weren't hammered, mind you ... merely a little giddy with drink.

We tried on some clothes. I lamented the shape my bras were in. She did, too. Not mine. Hers. Both of us are so busy being moms and being moms who work from home that things like our stupid bras get neglected a lot.

"Let's go look at bras," she said. We headed that way, but I knew I wouldn't try any on that night (talk about a buzzkill — you really have to be in a certain mood to try on bras). But Karen, my always-trusted friend, held up a bra and said, "I've bought these before and they're good. Buy a couple and you can always bring them back if you don't like them."

I did. I still have them.

Funny, isn't it, how something like that can evoke memories. Probably even funnier that I sometimes look at myself in the mirror before getting fully dressed in the morning and start crying. If you didn't know better, you'd really think I lacked self-esteem.

But I just miss my friend. And her superior bra knowledge.

(Love you, K. Miss your laughing face.)