Missed calls

"I'm freaking out. You gotta blog," one of my friends said today. Which was pretty funny, because she said it while I was freaking out about the deserted park giving me claustrophobia. Or agoraphobia. Or sesquipedalophobia, you know, fear of long words.

I blog to be funny. It's a bleak week for the funny crowd. Even Stepford is shaking in its cookie-cutter boots. The local Facebook group wants to know: who vets the Ay-rabs working at the huge construction project in the middle of Stepford? Stepford sixth graders didn't get trained last year, so they just started crossing-guard duty this week. This week? 

The kindergarten moms on my Facebook feed are fighting to get security guards in their schools, even if it means hiring them privately. But there's a run on guards. They report that even if city hall approves privately-paid guards, the security companies are fresh out of trained personnel.

Tel Aviv parents are mapping building sites in and near schools, asking principals to ensure no construction workers come into the schools that are under construction. And with no fanfare, it seems Tel Aviv has put two cops at almost every elementary school and increased security patrols across town.

These are not normal times and we need a plan for parenting in a pressure cooker.

Plan A: Let's not traumatize our kids by changing their schedule. We'll just tell them to text every time they go anywhere.

Go to school? Text. Go to Sea Scouts? Text. Walk the dog? Text. Oh wait. Don't text while you're on the street. Keep alert. Alert for what? Just alert. I'm not traumatizing you by telling you I think even Stepford is vulnerable.

School-bell-plus-one-minute and no text? Call kid thirteen times. No answer? Determine the reason is a terror attack at the junction of Cabinet Minister Street and Mayor Street.

Reload Internet news sites on three different screens simultaneously. Screens are not reporting events on Mayor Street. Stupid, good-for-nothing screens!

Call kid another thirteen times. Check Internet sites again. Check router to determine all screens are connected to outside world. Give in to slight possibility that screens are not reporting anything because nothing happened.

Kid calls at first recess. "Anything wrong Mom? You called 26 times?"

Phone is turned off during lessons.

Twenty-six unanswered calls from Mom won't traumatize them if they forget to text. Nope. Let's not traumatize kids by changing their schedule.

Plan B: Let's drive them everywhere! 

No bikes, several friends mentioned being pro-bike until yesterday, when a Jerusalem 13-year-old was stabbed while biking. No taxis. The freaking-out friend said over the weekend that a kid would have zero chance of surviving a mad taxi driver. No buses. You've heard of the Second Intifada, right?

Let's ignore the fact that Midget needs to be picked up from school in Stepford at 1:30, which is exactly when BigKid is supposed to get from Stepford High to a citywide physics program downtown.

I'm sure if I defy the laws of physics and Waze, I can take Midget with me in the car to pick up BigKid from the physics lab at 3:45.

MidKid finishes school at 3:00 and would normally make her way through the park by bike to gymnastics practice in Outer Stepford by 4:00. But we'll have her wait at school – in the building, not outside on the street of course – until the Stepford-mobile swings up to the north end of town on one of two major arteries. Waze says that trip is 25 minutes at 4:00, but if I weave in and out of traffic, I'm pretty sure I can cut it down to 20 minutes. Mom driving like a madwoman won't traumatize BigKid and Midget at all.

So it's 4:10 and I have all three in the car. It's a short hop to Sea Scouts. Too bad BigKid was supposed to be there at 4:00 and his crew would already be on the water when we show up at 4:20.

Now we're free to glide up to Outer Stepford and drop off MidKid at her 4:00 gymnastics practice. At 4:40, give or take the margin of Waze error and the car crash after I cut corners and cut someone off on Mayor Street.

After gymnastics, we swing back to grab BigKid who presumably spent the last two hours tying knots and scraping barnacles at Sea Scouts' boathouse, since his cronies were sailing before he got there by Stepford-mobile.

All right, now we have all three Stepford Kids and we can all get home by 8:00 and start to make dinner. A zigzagging Stepford Mommy weaving in and out of traffic to arrive everywhere late won't traumatize them. Nope. Let's not traumatize kids by changing their schedule.

Plan C: Do nothing.

I don't take lightly the mountains of stress on my Facebook feed this week. I am not calmer than most of my cohorts, but I can't solve this problem. I can steep my children in my own anxiety, drown them in what-ifs, wrap them in uncertainty, and maybe cause a car crash between Sea Scouts and gymnastics, but I cannot solve this problem.

The only thing I can do is not traumatize them by changing their schedule.

Or I could homeschool them.

Taxpayers vs ticketholders

So where am I? Week 13, Day 1. #10krunner  @clearskyapps.

Sneakers, phone, dog. Check.

Surprisingly, this post is not about my reasons/excuses for repeating w12d2 a gazillion times.  Today is about a different kind of obstacle to fitness.

With three kids and a dog, Park Hayarkon is my tax shekels working for me. Arnona, Tel Aviv's outrageously high municipal property tax, is paying for playground equipment, acres of grass, a couple artificial ponds, exercise equipment for both people and dogs, and miles and miles and miles of paths for running and biking. This is where I have done weeks 3 through 13.

Today however, I hit a roadblock. A gate across the path and two burly guys in rent-a-cop uniforms telling me "This is a secure area, ma'am."

That's right, all those tax dollars don't buy me the right to get within half a mile of where the Rolling Stones will be tonight, not that they are there right now.

Is this standard practice for bigtime park concerts? As a Tel Aviv taxpayer and sometimes runner, I know the answer.

For instance, I did run through that section of the park four days before the concert. Hill sprints were out because of the amount of equipment and lighting towers already set up on the hill itself, but all the paths to and around the concert area were open.

That is an improvement over the week of Madonna's 2012 concert. Four days ahead of that concert, an entire swathe of Park Hayarkon around the concert area was closed off, so it was impossible to get from the Fairgrounds area to Bereshit Forest. Yep, four days before the concert and tax dollars weren't buying me the shadiest running paths in town.

Maybe they have to do this? Maybe it's the only way to set up for a megaconcert?

The answer is "no." How do I know? Because just ten hours before curtains-up for Justin Timberlake last week, runners could use the paths right up to the concert area. In fact, the security guards rolled back the gates between what would be backstage and what would be the dressing area for the star and his entourage so a running mom and her dog wouldn't even have to slow down.

I bet I'm the only @clearskyapps user to ever repeat w13d1 because of a Rolling Stones roadblock.  

Rain

So where am I? Week 11, Day 2. #10krunner  @clearskyapps.

Sneakers, phone, dog. Check.

So the truth is I was on the fence about whether to do w11d2 today or repeat w11d1. The dealbreaker was, in fact, a fence. My usual route was closed off due to possible river flooding so I had to use my "off road" route.

Trails are always slower but now they would be muddy too. Oh yeah, did I forget to mention it was raining? For part of my run it was actually pouring. Which is not exactly par for the course in Tel Aviv in May. So w11d1 it was.

It was fun to run in the rain. In January, I usually use the rain (and the cold it brings with it) as a good excuse not to run. Today's weather was May, raindrops aside.

So I had iffy running terrain, slippery mud, perfect temps and no company out there. The paths were completely, utterly deserted. Not exactly the usual urban running experience but has its perks. I could belt out my surprise fave Jack and Diane when it popped up.

Surprisingly, for the last run – back on the paved path – I averaged 9.5kph which is pretty good for me. Still not 10kph, but inching up. And someone on Facebook asked if I want to be a last minute replacement relay runner for the M2V ultra. I said no, but does this make me a real runner?

Wet sneakers are deal-able. Wet dog is icky. If you were wondering.

Liberation Day

So where am I? Week 11, Day 1. #10krunner  @clearskyapps.

Sneakers, phone, dog. Check.

Today was Independence Day but it felt more like Liberation Day. It feels good to look a 60-minute run in the eye after that 80-minute bugaboo I barely dragged myself out for last week! Fifteen-minute run, 2 walk, 15 run, 3 walk, 15 run. Plus warm up and cool down, of course. Sixty minutes. Not scary at all.

Of course, it being Independence Day, we also have the barbecues. I did not manage to get out early enough in the day to beat the BBQ-ers (what IS early enough to beat the BBQ-ers?). They were parking on the traffic islands in my neighborhood by the time I got my sneakers on. Runners need to breathe air, which was in short supply.

I don't normally run on city streets; stopping for traffic lights completely throws me out of whack. If I'm doing great, I hate losing the time and screwing up my average pace. If I'm having a sucky run, stopping to gasp for breath at a red light can remind me how miserable I feel. Sometimes when the light turns green I just walk.

But traffic lights aside, it was refreshing not be afraid I could never finish this run. Not before I got out on the pavement and not while I was out there. Liberation Day.

Hands down song of the day was Let's Get it Started (Black Eyed Peas).

#wheredidthemorninggo

So where am I? Week 10, Day 3. #10krunner  @clearskyapps.

Sneakers, phone, dog. Check.

Oh yeah. And that motivation thing. I'd been worrying about this run for a while now and now that it came down to the day to do it, I was still worrying.

Five times 12-minutes running with walk intervals. At 80 minutes, that's a pretty intimidating chunk of time on the pavement, not to mention blocking time for how long it takes me to get out of the house on "slow" days and a recovery yogurt, and wow! This run earns its very own hashtag #wheredidthemorninggo or #schedulingnightmare

However, I did get out there and I did do it. There's still a huge gap between my legs getting back in shape and my lungs getting back in shape. If I run comfortably for my legs, I get out of breath pretty quickly. If I slow down to run without gasping, my legs feel out of sync and I have to concentrate on my feet. Thinking about feet = looking at feet = not a good thing.

The dog did not appear to be having the look-at-feet problem. Check out her blog for how W10D3 feels on four feet.

On a brighter note, this was the first run that added up to more than 10k. But we all know it was 60 minutes running with no small amount of walking to pad it out, and it still only added up to 10k and change. So how exactly do we get to 60min = 10k?

Dear @Clearskyapps,

"Run barefoot on hot coals" is not an answer.

Thanks,

User and Dog

One size fits someone

So where am I? Week 10, Day 2. #10krunner  @clearskyapps.

How did I get here? I did Weeks 3 through 8 pretty faithfully; then life got in the way. I've been a couch potato this year, including a nasty round of pneumonia, but before that I was pretty fit for someone who was a couch potato for most of their life.

I thought Clear Sky Apps 10k runner would get too easy and I would be skipping weeks, but that didn't happen. Except Week 9, which I skipped several times while throwing a bar mitzvah and Passover.

So this week I dove straight into Week 10. This week is the most intimidating, evidenced by how long it takes me to get out of the house to do the workouts. Future weeks, with fewer, longer runs, are not so scary.

W10D1 and W10D2 are five times 10-minutes running with walk intervals. I'm starting to feel like I can tell people I'm going for a run again.

But W10D3 is looming and it is even scarier.  Five times 12-minutes running with walk intervals. That's also going to take up a big chunk of morning.

Overall I'm liking #10krunner. However, #10krunner seems to think that three weeks from now I will run 60 minutes which will also be 10 kilometers.  Today, I did five 10-minute intervals, only three of them were faster than 9kph and none of them were 10kph.

Someone at @clearskyapps, probably someone single, athletic and male, seriously underestimated how slowly a 40-something mom-of-three can run. Fitness apps shouldn't be #onesize 

War.

It's a war. Be real. Admit it. This is war.
Not a battle, not a friendly rivalry, not an interesting anthropological experiment.
It is war.
And all you bilingual households know I'm telling the truth.
The war for whose language will Bilingual Baby speak.
Will he speak his mother's mother tongue or will she adopt her father's lingua franca?
So we speak and we read and we sing and we hope.
And after an interminable wait, Bilingual Baby begins to talk.
And we get a "Mama".
Which is a wonderful first word, but is it a harbinger of a particular language? Probably not.
And we get "Da-da", which is starting to look like more like one language than the other, but is not clear-cut victory.
And we will settle for no less than victory. After all, this is war.
And finally it comes.
The first "real word". The word that will settle this. End the war.
Pluto has a word and that word is...
Wait for it ...
Are you ready?
The Word that will end the War.
Pluto says ...
And she says it clearly.
No doubt what she's saying at all.
Proper pronunciation.
Proper intonation.
Pluto says "Ut-oh".