Running on Angry

I have a friend who writes a running blog called Running on Heavy. I like her take on fitness. She describes herself as a "big girl," and encourages others who aren't Skinny Minnies to get out there and exercise and not be intimidated. It's good stuff. In addition to enjoying her posts, I also love the title. So today, I'm going to plagiarize a bit, and tell you about how this morning, I went running on angry.

My husband Tim and I are very good at fighting. We're a very hot-and-cold couple; we're either passionately lovey-dovey or fighting with equal passion. And while the fighting times can be stressful, I always know that we'll figure out how to get through it. I know this because we always do, but also because my husband was married before, and when we got married, he said,

"Divorce is not an option. Homicide is, but divorce is not."

And he laughed his big huge laugh, which is a good thing. I don't want you thinking my husband has homicidal tendencies. He simply didn't want to go through the pain of divorce ever again. Makes sense.

Last night, we got into a pretty good fight, but I was exhausted from a crazy week at work and decided I didn't want to give it 100%, so I went to bed angry. I like to resolve things, and truly believe going to bed angry is a bad thing, but last night it wasn't in the cards to get to a cozy resolution. As a result, I woke up angry. What a terrible way to wake up! I rolled around in bed, mad as a wet hen, and then laughed at myself for thinking that for the first time in my life, I related to John Boehner and Rush Limbaugh. Man, I was angry! Grr!

And this morning, all of that anger motivated the hell out of me. The first thing I did was make a beeline for my new hot pink sports bra. (Did I mention that it's a size smaller than my other ones? And it fits?!) Unable to find it in my workout bag, I stormed topless into the living room, where my husband sat cheerfully on the couch. I should mention that Tim cannot get over a fight quickly. While I'm completely content to fight it out, get super ugly, and then make up directly afterwards, Tim doesn't work this way. While I need to get to a happy place, Tim needs space and time. And for Tim, his definition of time and space has something to do with sleeping. Give that man a few REM cycles, and he wakes up as cheerful as a Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher. It's as if nothing ever happened.

As I entered the living room, topless and angry, Tim bellowed, "Good morning!" This was followed by a wolf whistle. See? It's as if nothing ever happened!

Unaffected by his friendliness and his appreciation for my half-dressed state, I found my sports bra in the pile of clothes waiting to be folded on the dining room table (yeah, we're that kind of family), and waved casually in Tim's direction, as if he were no more than a simple stranger sitting in our living room. I poured some water for the road and went and got dressed to run. Still angry. While dressing, I considered that I could make up with Tim. It wouldn't be hard to do, especially after that wolf whistle. But I wanted to see if this anger would help fuel my morning run. It was already a steamy 80 degrees outside, and I'd slept an hour later than I'd hoped. I needed motivation.

I headed to the front door, earphones already in, sunscreen applied, rocking my new running shorts. I have to document this so my sister can benefit from ten straight minutes of hysterical laughter. I do NOT do shorts. I haven't really worn shorts much at all since 8th grade. They look terrible on me. But lately, I'm a bit of a sporty individual, and at 7:00 on a Saturday morning in a college town, not many people were up to see me anyway.

"I'll be back in a while," I said casually to that common stranger on our couch.

"Enjoy your run!" the man said, in a familiar cheerful Sunday School teacher sing-song voice as I slammed the door.

Normally, my weekend runs are the same for the most part. I either run/walk around the golf course near my house, which is a little over a mile, and I do as many loops as I can before pooping out. It's not exactly consistent jogging; I get lazy and walk a lot. Or I do some variation of that route near my home, figuring if I need to pass out, it should be close to my house so my family can come save me. But this morning, I went on a mission. Fueled by anger and a sudden stubborn streak, I logged on to my two walking/running apps, and said out loud to nobody but myself,

"I'm going to run to the Capitol."

For some, like the mother of one of my daughter's friends who seriously runs like 4,000 miles a week, swims about half that distance, and bikes around 8,000 miles a week, this would be no big thing at all. But I'm not an athlete. I'm just trying to get healthy here. However, it should be noted that the course from my house to the capitol is, in my opinion, quite hilly. The hill by the UT stadium nearly kills me, and that's just when I'm walking. I've never jogged up it before. Because I walk this route nearly every day, I know where the mile markers are. Mile one ends at the base of that killer hill. I got that far without collapsing, and thought about what was coming next. I looked up at the top of the hill, looked down at my legs, and then I thought about Meredith.

Meredith was recently featured on an episode of Extreme Weight Loss. If you haven't seen it, it's Extreme Home Makeover for big bodies. And come on, everybody loves a transformation story, especially if it's extreme. Would you spend an hour of your life watching the story of an average Joe who dropped five pounds? Never! It has to be massive and extreme weight loss to get our attention. As a result, Exteme Weight Loss is completely addictive.

Meredith's story is perfect for this format. She's beautiful (at all sizes in my opinion). Blonde with curly hair and a radiant smile, we love Meredith because she's overweight, but we can see how pretty she'll be once she's thin. I really hate that, but it's how we are. We want that extreme change. And also, we want to see someone get healthy. I have to remind myself that those weight loss shows are also about health, and not just looks.

Of course Meredith was adopted as a baby, and spent her life feeling neglected by her birth mother. Because she was overweight, she never felt fully accepted or part of her adoptive family. Watching, I got annoyed with her for being kind of a sad sack about the whole deal, as her adoptive family seems great, but it makes the story juicer.

I was totally sucked in. What else would we learn about Meredith? How about this: as a kid, Meredith wanted to be on Baywatch. As a child, Meredith's dream was to "run around in a bikini as a lifeguard on the beach." You can't act like you don't love a kid who's biggest dream is to be a mini Pamela Anderson.

The Baywatch dream was enough to keep me watching, but it got even better. Of course Meredith struggled with yo-yo dieting. Of extreme proportions. Meredith got up to nearly 400 pounds at one point, and lost down to the 200s. When she did, she got a tattoo on her belly that reads this:

"Believe it. Be it. 155."

155 is Meredith's goal weight. There are several scenes where she proudly displays her belly tattoo for the entire viewing audience to see. The bravery!

I will not give away all of the awesome details, but I do suggest you watch the episode. It's truly inspirational and super extreme. But this morning, at the base of the hill, I thought about Meredith's journey. I thought about the distances she was able to run, and how hard she worked, and that crazy belly tattoo. And I kept going. And going.

About two tenths of a mile away from the capitol, I nearly quit. There's a hill there that's nice and deceptive, and it was kicking my ass. But I kept going. I jogged through my anger. I jogged for Meredith. I jogged thinking about Charity Miles, and how all of the causes they support are things so difficult to face- getting clean drinking water, fighting cancer, getting an education -- and I powered through that last little segment.

And I made it.

I know two miles is not a big huge deal. I've actually jogged two miles several times this summer while training for this daunting 10K I'm doing in August. But today's route was such a big personal win. I said I was going to jog to the capitol, and I did it. I did some pretty ridiculous Rocky-esque celebrating. I snapped a quick picture of the capitol, turned around, and headed home. I won't lie; I thought briefly about taking a bus back home, but after I caught my breath, I started jogging again, and did another mile before I decided that walking the rest of the way home was completely okay.

By the time I got home, I was no longer angry with Tim. What were we even fighting about? When I came inside, and my terrific husband was standing in the living room, folding clothes on our dining room table, he looked a little amazed.

"How far did you go?" he asked.

"Four and a quarter miles," I said, proudly. "I ran to the capitol."

I can't say that being angry is the only reason I was able to complete my journey today -- I have been working at getting in better shape since the first of the year --  but it did get me going. So from now until I face the daunting 10K coming up in August, I may have to pick a few more fights with Tim. Perhaps if I keep up the angry running, I can run across the beach in a bikini sometime in the future and bust out my best Baywatch move. Surely Tim won't mind that.

Walking Daniel

When I started this blog, the goal was simple: help motivate others to walk for transportation. I also hoped that as interest in the topic grew, I could devote some of my posts to helping others while still focusing on the walking topic. I would get sponsors. I would connect with a really cool organization called Charity Miles, and see how we could work together (I've started using their app and I love it. More on this later). I would write about Walk for the Water, an organization that raises awareness and funds for people in developing countries who walk an average of 3.7 miles one way to get clean water. 

There I go with my big dreams again. Between my stepdaughter's upcoming graduation, the end of the school year, work travel, deadlines and more, it's been nearly a month since I took time to sit and write about anything, much less take time to add a philanthropic touch to my otherwise fluffy blog about walking to work.

So the universe decided to conk me on the head yesterday, as it often does when I need a reminder of what is truly important. I was home, folding laundry, watching back-to-back episodes of House Hunters International on HGTV, when my husband Tim came in from running errands, soaked in sweat (it's suddenly about 117 degrees in Austin), and bounded into the kitchen to pour water, eyes shining. It's a look I know well.

Tim was in helping mode.

For those of you who don't know Tim, he lives in helping mode. He's a modern day Good Samaritan. He is happiest when he is helping someone in need. It's not unusual at all for Tim to be awake before the garbage truck arrives, putting frozen Gatorade on top of the trash can for the garbage men to enjoy as they're doing work that 99% of us would never consider doing. 

In the past week alone, Tim dropped everything to help my parents move, fixed a broken outdoor light at my parent's new house, handled massive amounts of heavy lifting, and helped me escape jail time by negotiating a forgotten speeding ticket in a small Texas town. And this was all done by Tuesday! From there, he helped facilitate the sale of a used car owned by our dear friend from Brazil to a man from India. I didn't witness any of this face to face, but just overhearing the phone conversations was like being a fly on the wall to some pretty complicated United Nations negotiations. There was a lot of loud, slow talking. It was hilarious, but it was Tim in full on helping mode.

And just yesterday morning, I found Tim outside with the man from India in a scene I know too well: Hood up, public radio blaring, crap laying around every which direction, and Tim patiently teaching the driver how to change oil, or put on brake pads, or fix a flywheel. This is how Tim rolls. And I love it.

After helping our new friend from India, Tim went to run errands and was on his way back home when he discovered a young woman with a flat tire a few blocks from our house. He came home for tools, bounded into the kitchen to fetch cold water, and took off. This is a pretty typical Saturday at the Arndt house.

Yesterday, Tim's need to help trickled down to the next generation. While Tim was off changing the flat, my stepson Matthew came home from spending the morning with his girlfriend. As they pulled up to our house, Matthew noticed a man, a woman and a young child standing beside a stroller. The tire on the back of the stroller was broken, and the family stood there in what appeared to be a significant pickle. The man asked Matthew if he spoke Spanish, and Matthew answered yes, and the next thing you know, Matthew was launched into helping mode.

By this time of day, it was seriously pushing 100 degrees outside. Matthew came inside, bounded into the kitchen to fetch water for the family, and immediately asked for Tim, knowing this kind of scene was right up Tim's alley. 

With Tim gone, I felt a little like a triage nurse, so I stepped in to offer help. Except my contribution is typically to interview the people and learn about them while Tim or Matthew do the manly work. I know, it's sexist, but I'm not the handiest lady in the world.

Matthew went to the garage to locate tires to try to fix the stroller (a discussion on the things we have in our garage is a different topic altogether), and I went outside to meet the family. I'm not exactly certain of the relationship between the man and the woman. The woman may be the wife, or she may be the grandmother; it was hard to tell. They were sweaty and appeared tired, yet they were all smiles.

The little boy is named Daniel, and the father introduced him in both the Spanish and English pronunciation. Daniel has a thick head of beautiful dark hair and huge brown eyes, and he hid behind the mother/grandmother's legs, peering out and smiling shyly. I fell in love immediately.

Through broken English and my limited Spanish, which is comprised of a lot of dramatic adjectives -- "Hot! Dangerous! Cold! Beautiful!"  -- I was able to get a basic lowdown of what this family does to get around. 

For starters, they don't own a car. Now, I write about walking for transportation, right? I write about how great it was for me to sell my car so I can walk to my office in the morning.  But I don't have a 3 year-old boy. When I take the bus after work, it's because I can't find a Car2Go nearby, or my Tim is busy and can't pick me up. I have never been in a situation where I had to walk several miles for an errand in 100-degree heat, much less do it with a child in tow.

This family lives in East Austin. They use the stroller to cart Daniel around when his legs tire from walking. The importance of that stroller on their day-to-day lives is significant.  While Matthew tinkered around with the tire, this sweet family drank ice water, expressed gratitude over and over, and the little boy entertained himself by rolling the spare tire around on the street.

There is more to this story than I understand at this point. We are not entirely sure that this family has a place to live. Daniel's father is doing what he can to help his family, and that despite his situation, he clings to a faith where he states that he is "one hundred percent" certain that God exists. I was so moved by this sweet family. They are doing the best that they can in what is likely a somewhat desperate situation. 

This family walks for transportation because they have no other choice. And they do it with as much grace as they can. In no point in our interaction did this family ask us for a handout. They simply broke down on the side of the road - just like the affluent girl in the new Ford that my husband helped - and we happened to be there to offer up a little help.

While Matthew was working on the stroller that ended up being irreparable, Tim came home and suggested that I post a message on Facebook to see if we could get a used stroller from our friends in Austin. In less than 24 hours, help arrived in the form of a jogging stroller, gently used and perfect for this situation. What's really cool about this story is that when I posted the message, several people shared my post, and the family who offered up their stroller is currently living in Brazil (they spend their summers there), so help arrived from thousands of miles away. They happen to have a spare stroller at their house in Austin, so today's we'll coordinate picking up it so Daniel has some new wheels. I'm so proud to have so many friends with huge hearts! 

Today, I'm more aware of how wealthy most of us are, and while life brings all of us certain setbacks, there are always others who can benefit from our help. I can't help but think that when I walk to work next week, I will do it with a raised level of awareness that there are many who walk because they have no other choice. 

It's no wonder that when he's helping, Tim looks his happiest. He often says that when he helps, he's doing it selfishly, because doing something for others makes him feel good. If that's the case, I'm happy I married a selfish man, and that he's teaching his children that the best gift you can give yourself is to help someone in need.