{"id":309,"date":"2013-05-22T15:59:42","date_gmt":"2013-05-22T15:59:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/?p=309"},"modified":"2013-07-18T19:37:04","modified_gmt":"2013-07-18T19:37:04","slug":"fish-out-of-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/?p=309","title":{"rendered":"Fish Out of Water"},"content":{"rendered":"

It seems lately that people are constantly telling me how strong they think I am.\u00a0 And to some degree, I agree with them.\u00a0 I mean, I did remove a fully assembled grill from the back of my Pathfinder on Monday completely by myself.\u00a0 Which was especially challenging with the Thule bike rack on the back of the Nissan. At one point I thought I was permanently stuck as I was wedged immobile between the bike rack and the grill. \u00a0Additionally, I have managed to come out seemingly on top of a fair amount of adversity. However, even the strong girl has days of weakness.<\/p>\n

Yesterday I woke up feeling like a fish out of water.\u00a0 Maybe it was residual from a rough Mother\u2019s Day weekend.\u00a0 Maybe it was in light of the devastation in Oklahoma this week and I was missing my kids.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know, but I was definitely feeling homesick.\u00a0 I\u2019ve always said, you can take the girl out of Chicago, but you can\u2019t take Chicago out of the girl. I was missing having my mom only an hour drive away.\u00a0 I was missing having Britta close by. \u00a0I was resenting living in Missouri, with none of my family around.\u00a0 Don\u2019t get me wrong, I love my friends here, but after all, blood is thicker than water, right?\u00a0 Ok, so maybe Britta isn\u2019t blood, but I can count on her like she is.\u00a0 I was just generally feeling alone in the Show Me State.\u00a0 Like I didn\u2019t belong here.\u00a0 Like a fish out of water.<\/p>\n

So, what did I do?\u00a0 I went to the pool.\u00a0 Where I could ironically feel like a fish out of water IN the water.\u00a0 After one length in the pool, Coach Andy yelled, \u201cWho are you and what did you do with Lindsey?\u201d\u00a0 He wondered what in the world had happened to the stroke we\u2019d been working on so hard.\u00a0 It had been a while since I\u2019d been in the pool and I\u2019d kind of forgotten what I was doing.\u00a0 I\u2019d totally forgotten how to breathe.\u00a0 But I slowed down, relaxed, reminded myself that I COULD do this, and eventually I got my groove back.\u00a0 Sort of.\u00a0 For me anyway.\u00a0 \u00a02500 meters later, I was feeling like I\u2019d made some progress.\u00a0 But this whole multi-sport thing is still a little intimidating to me.\u00a0 I am, after all, the rambling Runner<\/i> girl.<\/p>\n

After a quick change, a snack and a brief sobfest on the phone with my mom, I jumped on my bike to get a few miles in before I had to pick the kids up from school.\u00a0 My pace was lame for the first few miles.\u00a0 I felt sluggish and I kept getting stuck at stoplights but finally I started cruising.\u00a0 I went out Old Manchester, then I went down into Rockwood Reservation and on my way back to Manchester, I had to walk my bike up the hill at the back of the park.\u00a0 I probably could have made it, but I got scared that I would fall so I dismounted.\u00a0 I re-mounted my bike thinking I was ready to go, but somehow after I clipped in I managed to immediately fall right over. Umm, does anyone else see the irony in that? \u00a0It was like it was happening in slow motion and yet there was nothing I could do about it. I still can\u2019t get used to these pedals.\u00a0 Fish out of water, on a bike.\u00a0 But, I got back up and got back on the horse\u2026err, bike.\u00a0 I made it back to my neighborhood without too much trouble.\u00a0 Then, with about a half mile to go\u2026flat tire.\u00a0 Drat.\u00a0 I unclipped, successfully this time.\u00a0 And began the clickity-clack walk home in my cycling shoes.<\/p>\n

So, now I have experienced my first flat.\u00a0 I guess it\u2019s officially time to learn how to tend to that.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been expecting, or dreading rather, that happening, but it wasn\u2019t a huge ordeal this time.\u00a0 The good news is I wasn\u2019t far from home.\u00a0 I\u2019m pretty sure I would have had a complete meltdown if that had happened 9 miles out.\u00a0 Note to self: next time I ride alone, take the phone.\u00a0 And cab fare.<\/p>\n

Last night Silas graduated from Pre-school.\u00a0 His teachers put on a very cute Circus themed Graduation and Silas was an adorable lion tamer, complete with a whip I had made for him out of rope and electrical tape.\u00a0 I was very proud of the whip, considering that I don\u2019t do homemade costumes.\u00a0 Frankly, I stink at homemade costumes.\u00a0 Anyway, Silas was definitely in his element.\u00a0 And being a mom, I was definitely back in my element. \u00a0As we were driving home after the festivities, the kids were chattering in the backseat, playing with balloons and I was singing along with Chris Tomlin on the radio.\u00a0 As I sang the words, \u201cI can say, it is well\u201d I thought, yeah, it is well.\u00a0 I was back with my kiddos and I had survived a tough day of things just being out of sorts.\u00a0 I am the strong girl.\u00a0 But I realized that part of being the strong girl is, once again, admitting my weaknesses, owning them, and accepting them.<\/p>\n

Even the strong girl has struggles.\u00a0 And gets bumps and bruises.\u00a0 And takes ibuprofen. \u00a0And uses an ace bandage to wrap a Spongebob ice pack onto her hand. Sometimes the strong girl even has to skip boxing and spend the morning at Urgent Care getting X-rays to make sure there is no fracture.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m glad to report that the strong girl is not broken, just bruised.\u00a0 Both the hand,\u00a0and the pride.<\/p>\n

\"I<\/a>

I don’t foresee this staying on long. It just makes me feel like I’m being overly dramatic. And dumb. Really, really dumb.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems lately that people are constantly telling me how strong they think I am.\u00a0 And to some degree, I agree with them.\u00a0 I mean, I did remove a fully assembled grill from the back of my Pathfinder on Monday completely by myself.\u00a0 Which was especially challenging with the Thule bike rack on the back […]<\/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":[11,7,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-conquering-fears","category-onbeingasingleparent","category-randomthoughts","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4eO4v-4Z","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309","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=309"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":398,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions\/398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}