SMR December Goodies

In case you missed the December seeMOMMYrun e-newsletter, you really should check it out! Free workouts, shopping discounts just for YOU, and more!

www.seeMOMMYrun.com/newsletter/dec_09.htm

Happy reading!

This Evening's Spectacle

This evening's spectacle, down a quiet little neighborhood street:

My 4-year-old boy riding a WAY-TOO-BIG bike recovered from a dumpster whose training wheels screeched like fingernails down a chalkboard; all the while he was growling screaming out car engine sounds and pretending to get blown-out tires.

Next to him: me and my 23 week pregnant belly slogging* along soaked in sweat, chanting "Go Lightning McQueen Go!" or "Peet Stop"** in a really bad Italian accent or "Bring on the confetti!"***

Talk about a circus!

*runningfor3's fabulous term for slow jogging

** Guido anyone?

***Chick...and yes, thanks for asking: We HAVE seen the movie Cars 1084 times.

New! Improved!

The crazy zoning in this town required that my girl change schools. She was really apprehensive about. It seems that some kids had painted a picture of bullying and rampant drug use for her. None of it true. It is an amazing school and she loves it. The best part is that she gets to ride her bike everyday to and from. Daddy took her shopping and she hooked herself up with this really great red retro Huffy with white fenders and white wall tires. It is so rockin, the only bike like it at the bike rack. She has to cross two major streets and, since the cross guards aren't yet on duty, ol' Mom here laces up and runs with her. Not much of a run as far as distance, but the speed...let me tell you, when she feels like she's behind schedule then, hooboy, Mama's got to get some game on.

Also, we have become vegetarians and are on our way to being vegans. Our original reasons were for health, but we now find ourselves settling quite nicely into this wonderful and inspiring lifestyle. Last night I made the most delicious portobello burgers ever. The daughter was not excited in the beginning. She definitely played the part of victim with relish (no pun intended--get it, I'll have a victim with relish--okay, not funny. I've been pushing my brain to put together a plot all day and this fatigue of thought is the result) I'd really like to blog about the whole vegetarian thing and I will as soon as I get this darn book that I've been working on finished. In November I'll have been working on it for four years. It's funny the route a book takes to get written. I am such a slow writer.

I'm babbling.

Children of Heaven

This may not seem like a Mother's Day post. It may not seem like a running post. But it is indeed both.

"Children of Heaven" is a movie my mother repeatedly recommended to me. For years. I didn't resist -- I just never got around to it. She wanted me to watch it for the running. I just watched it -- for Mother's Day. It was amazing.

Two Iranian children -- a boy, around nine years old, and his younger sister, maybe seven -- come from a very poor family. The film opens with the sister's shoes being repaired -- very worn pink mary-janes. The brother loses the shoes on the way home. So the two share his very worn white sneakers and never tell their parents. They could not afford a new pair. The boy's solution to the lost shoes: He enters a road race for school boys -- a 4K -- for which the third place prize is a pair of sneakers, which he promises to trade in for a girl's pair. The road race takes up a scant 5-10 minutes of film time.

The film is visually stunning and captures the nuances well -- like a good novel would: showing, not telling. The race was perfectly captured: quiet, with only some panting and soft music (no "Chariots of Fire" loudness -- though that has its place). The hills! The scrum of runners! The course markings! The race officials! The finish line! My body reacted as if I were running a race. I felt my adrenaline surge, my focus hone in on the runners and the road (though small on the screen). Such an odd feeling, especially since I was lying down with my 11-month-old. The context was completely off.

I loved the movie. Please rent it. Even if you don't often watch foreign films.

But why does this have anything, really, to do with Mother's Day? Well, my mother died last July. This is my first Mother's Day without her. I am her only child. We were very close. I have been reading and gathering books she gave me in one place. The time had come to watch the movie she always wanted me to see. Thank you, Mum. Happy Mother's Day.