{"id":301,"date":"2013-05-14T13:19:16","date_gmt":"2013-05-14T13:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/?p=301"},"modified":"2013-07-18T19:39:47","modified_gmt":"2013-07-18T19:39:47","slug":"have-you-hugged-a-sweaty-runner-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/?p=301","title":{"rendered":"Have You Hugged a Sweaty Runner Today?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was a bumper sticker I saw on a car once that I loved.\u00a0 It read: Have you hugged a wet swimmer today? \u00a0I have vowed to buy that for Britta if I ever have the opportunity. \u00a0In the running world, we get wet too, but in a sweaty kind of way.\u00a0 When I found Steve after the Vancouver marathon last weekend, he hugged me and then announced how disgustingly sweaty I was.\u00a0 It was true. I was drenched.\u00a0 And I stunk. \u00a0To my Ragnar “Hot Mess” team, Be warned: After running 3 times in the June Midwest humidity, I won\u2019t be pleasant. I will be rank. I promise to bring a large supply of Nathan Power Shower wipes, but I am fully prepared for Wes to douse me with Febreze at some point.<\/p>\n

For many years I was a self-declared non-crier, non-hugger.\u00a0 Well, we all know how the crying thing has turned out.\u00a0 And somewhere along the way, I became a hugger too.\u00a0 I hug people all the time.\u00a0 I hug hello, I hug goodbye.\u00a0 I hug because something is funny and I desperately need hugs when I\u2019m sad.\u00a0 I hug to say Thank you.\u00a0 Sometimes, I hug just because.<\/p>\n

Yesterday was Mother\u2019s Day.\u00a0 It was my first Mother\u2019s Day as a single mom.\u00a0 My mom is in Italy so I didn\u2019t even get to talk to her.\u00a0 It was also one of those years that my middle baby\u2019s birthday falls on Mother\u2019s Day.\u00a0 Ethan is my kiddo that was born on his grandpa\u2019s birthday. \u00a0My dad would have turned 71 yesterday, but he is eternally stuck at 59 in my mind. Talk about a variety of emotions swirling around and crashing into each other all day long. \u00a0The day was full of highs and lows. \u00a0I woke up to a smiling Ally saying, \u201cHappy Mother\u2019s Day!\u201d and then we ate chocolate birthday cake for breakfast.\u00a0 \u00a0After Ethan\u2019s baseball game, he chose IHOP as our lunch destination, second to Chik-Fil-A which is closed on Sunday.\u00a0 I hope my kids didn\u2019t notice how often my eyes brimmed with tears as I looked around at all the families enjoying Mother\u2019s Day together.\u00a0 Kids and dads sitting together with moms wearing corsages.\u00a0 And there we sat, the four of us, in the middle of it. \u00a0My boys eating as much as they could off my plate, so I ended up with half of what I ordered, while Silas\u2019s chocolate pancake went almost untouched and Ethan\u2019s mac and cheese ended up partially on the floor.\u00a0 Yesterday I read post after post of guys declaring how their wife is the best mother in the world.\u00a0 I read posts by moms who had been given flowers, spa days, taken out to dinner, basically just being appreciated.<\/p>\n

Being a single parent is about the\u00a0most un-glorious job in the world.\u00a0 Not only are you tasked with all the usual difficulties of parenting, there is no one there to say, \u201cHey, I know how hard you\u2019re working and I appreciate it.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s true, in our custody schedules we get built in breaks when the kids are with the other parent, but we are each required to be the mom and the dad at the same time, working, laundry, paying bills, cooking, fixing broken fishing polls, kissing scraped knees, we do it all.\u00a0 I did everything I could to hold it together yesterday for my kids, for Ethan on his birthday.\u00a0 We had a beautiful day together, but my emotions were constantly threatening to tip in the other direction.<\/p>\n

I got all kinds of texts yesterday wishing me a Happy Mother\u2019s Day.\u00a0 So many of them seemed to come right at the exact moment that I found myself thinking I just don\u2019t know if I can keep it together anymore<\/i>\u2026\u00a0 As we were sitting down at the kitchen table for dinner, I got a text from Lloyd, one of my brother\u2019s best friends.\u00a0 Lloyd\u2019s text said: I know you\u2019ve gotten a thousand of these by now, but\u2026happy mother\u2019s day!\u00a0 Yep, I had gotten several throughout the day, and I needed every single one of them.\u00a0 Each one was like a hug coming through the phone.\u00a0 So, to all of you who sent me hugs on my first official single mother\u2019s day\u2026thank you!\u00a0 To me it was so much more than just a text.<\/p>\n

After an incredibly difficult weekend, running today felt like a giant hug. \u00a0This morning I dropped the kids at school, promptly burst into tears and then went for a 7 mile run, which was like an hour long hug.\u00a0 I needed it.\u00a0 I went to Rockwood Reservation and ran from the little parking lot on 109, through the underpass, along the little creek, past the visitor\u2019s center, up the big hill near the back and all the way to Manchester.\u00a0 And then I turned around and ran back to the parking lot.\u00a0 The last time I ran at Rockwood, the trees were almost bare, the sky was a threatening gray color, the last of the leaves were snowing down on me, and my shoes made that satisfying crunching sound as I tromped through the ones that had already met their annual demise.\u00a0 Today, the sky was blue, the air was clean, the trees were green and full, there were little purple flowers blooming.\u00a0 And that made me think about how everything in life has to go through that dead period of cold and gray.\u00a0 Then the rain comes.\u00a0 And finally everything starts growing again.\u00a0 Rebirth.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think it means that everything will be sunny and flowery and perfect from now on, and I know that seasons come and go, but I\u2019d like to at least believe that maybe now I\u2019m on the other side of the dead zone. \u00a0If nothing else, I know I\u2019ve at least made it to the rainy season, especially given all the tears that landed on the steering wheel of my Pathfinder this morning.<\/p>\n

Last night when I put the kids to bed, after an utterly exhausting day with all of my emotions threatening to expose me at any moment, I was concerned I hadn\u2019t done enough to honor my special birthday boy.\u00a0 As I tucked Ethan in on the top bunk, over an already sleeping Silas, I said, \u201cHey bud, I hope you had a good birthday.\u201d\u00a0 He responded, \u201cIt was an AWESOME birthday.\u201d\u00a0 And he hugged me.<\/p>\n

Being a single mom can sometimes feel like all guts and no glory.\u00a0 But it\u2019s moments like that, that give me strength to keep going and they make it totally worth it.<\/p>\n

\"Hanging<\/a>

Hanging with my kiddos on Mother’s Day<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was a bumper sticker I saw on a car once that I loved.\u00a0 It read: Have you hugged a wet swimmer today? \u00a0I have vowed to buy that for Britta if I ever have the opportunity. \u00a0In the running world, we get wet too, but in a sweaty kind of way.\u00a0 When I found […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-onbeingasingleparent","category-randomthoughts","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4eO4v-4R","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=301"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":401,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions\/401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}