Spending today doing my two favorite things, crocheting a blanket and watching Leonardo DiCaprio movies. From Romeo and Juliet to Shutter Island, to The Wolf of Wallstreet. I love Leonardo, and sometimes pretend he is waiting for me at the end of a race, just like that meme. 😊

I love the tunisain stitch for crochet blankets. I lean towards either a granny square blanket or the tunisain stitch when I crochet blankets. 😍

https://www.yarnhookneedles.com/crochet-bobble-blanket/

I have a cousin in France, Kelly, she has her phd in psychology, I wonder what she thinks of Shutter Island or if her and her sisters are picking lavender in Provence and drinking fine french wine right now….

I was supposed to see my three French cousins who are like me and my sisters, studying abroad, but it never happened. If I ever run the Berlin or Paris marathon, I would like to make the effort to see them because it would be fun. We all speak English and French, except it’s the opposite. There are actually a lot of tech work options over there too, you never know where I’ll end up!

It may surprise you that I have been bullied in my adult life, but I have been. I was not willing to do a mediation session with this person, and their parents became involved trying to convince me to have mediation amongst ourselves. I am such a cold person in some instances, I need time to come around to willy nilly mediations, because in serious matters I am very serious. So, what his dad came up with was trying to accomplish the two hardest things that I had at that particular point in my life. With the pressure of him feeling like it was the difference between having a mediation amongst ourselves or not, he had to try to pass the Physics GRE without a calculator, and try to run a marathon in under three hours in hilly Maine. They had to really try to have a weekend in my shoes, and take it very seriously. In the end, he felt so bad about bullying me, regretting their actions that disrupted my life, I actually let his experiences be the mediation session. I think that person learned a lesson, became serious about the issue at hand, as well as gaining insight into having sympathy and empathy for other people as an adult. I forgave someone with a willy nilly mediation session, which was big of me…

Being serious can mean you have discipline and are probably really good at things, but I am not always serious I am fun too but there is no in-between with me… After being bullied I asked the person, ‘Do you know what you just did to me? Do you know what you just did to my life?!’ He did not, until he did, and then they were apologetic. For me to move on without spending a year in court worst case scenario, they really needed to understand how serious it was for them to disrupt my life and mean their apology. I sat in the bleachers while they were on the track trying run a marathon like me, and they got almost every question wrong on that test five hours later. They could not wing those difficult feats on a whim. However, they learned how serious my life is and not to bully me.

Some people are insanely jealous of professional runners and people smart enough to get stem phd's somehwere nice, like they would put glass in your shoes or tear the pages out of a text book because of competitivness. Others can make fun of you. I always had to be responsible being my grandmother’s caregiver, running professionally, having a job in software, being a professional marathon runner the past ten years. You would think being responsible pays off, making the responsible choices. Being my grandmother’s predominant care made running marathons well and school look like a fun pleasure, as is working in my industry using my brain in a way unnecessary whilst grammasitting. Nevertheless, I cherish the gramma responsibility and would not have wanted anyone else with her but me, my gramma turned into my baby. I really picked gramma over boyfriend and going right into grad school after undergrad, she is like my baby. However, I have had more responsibility than fun, and I do not know how there could have possibly been more responsibility in my life of 26 years…

Never mess up someone’s easy school or world major marathon, you’ll have to do what my bully did somewhere in the statute of limitations. It’s so bad that I was already in my safety net of life desires, and this bully found a way to make things even worse. There was nothing competitive or controversial about my marathon of choice in the spring or school of choice for grad classes in the summer, and the last thing I needed was an obnoxious bully. I could have dragged out my bully's consequence ten years, no dollar amount could make them get away with bullying me which they must not have realized, but I believed their sincere apology and let it go so we could have our lives. Yeah, I have been in a situation where an adult realized they did not have the luxury of disrupting my life without major consequence.

A way I enjoyed my daily life after having a bully was putting my hand over the bullying and staying on task. Yeah, my agenda is full with something for every hour of every day, but that’s not what I mean. Luckily my bully was never in my professional or academic circle, so I could drive to class and drive to work and drive home and not see them. However, I took a break from Facebook and other media like that. I also do not say where I am running on the blog before it happenes or while I am in a specific place. So it was helpful for me to know that I go to school and work with very specific types of people, and not my bully. Also, my bully sort of knew after negotiating not to really approach me, because it would be inappropriate. In the end, we both found a way to move on with our lives. Being organized and staying on task helped me move on from being bullied, it could have been worse even though it was quite horrible. I would never have to worry about seeing them at school or work or home, and that was the big thing for me. There are ways to live your life despite enduring bullying, at times I had to put my race blinders up but it all worked out.

I’m not a machine who can keep running hundred mile weeks for years on end to do the marathon well, but there is always something positive from the sport.

Masks were important for me to sew. My best friend's mom used to sew my friend surgical caps to wear under her lacrosse goalie helmet, and it gave me the idea to make masks with fun fabrics too.

When I was very sick in highschool, I had to wear a medical mask out to protect my body because of my heart condition, and sometimes I wore a medical mask over my oxygen so the wires would not move. There’s lots of reasons that I wore masks when I was sick. It is always appropriate to have a mask if you or a family member is sick, and sometimes fabric masks work in lieu of medical masks. Around the house, it can make your family feel more at home than in a hospital to wear homemade masks, you can wear homemade and medical grade at once, it worked for me back in the day. If I did not have outpatient telemetry, I would have been in a hospital, so I am always grateful to have been home and not in a hospital for a long time. My family really helped me feel comfortable, and not clinical.

Nowadays, we wear masks around our little nephew with asthma, it should be normalized to have masks available everywhere all the time. I would never want my baby nephew to feel weird about all of us going out in masks together! There should not be a mask stigma in public, because the necessity of a mask is so prominent to a huge population. I remember one time, after flying into DC to see my cousin with her husband and my nephew, I needed to shower and change my clothes right away and have a mask on around the baby with asthma. We have a huge effort for his breathing machines and devices for his lungs, and wear masks around the house to be with him, so of course as a family going out on the town we keep the masks on too. We tell my baby nephew it is a fashion statement, as we are protecting his lungs and overall health.

In later years, I also wear masks working construction with Habitat for Humanity projects, and similar projects. I really wanted to sew masks and make name tags for my alma mater’s mission trip groups, because it was a cute idea. There is nothing wrong with masks.

Being crafty and donating 3,000 masks was a pleasure for me for personal reasons. I am a lucky lady to have the luxury of volunteer work. Home made medical products are something I care about, in a way I wish there could have been designer electrodes for me when I was sick too, or a cool home sewn heart monitor case. Maybe someone will distribute more ducky or bear electrodes, because I am bringing it up on my blog. Designer masks first, my next thing is designer electrodes.

I have also made knitted knockers and baby blankets and baby hats for donation too, through the years. Crafts are fun donation projects. Never feel silly making crafts to donate, because someone will want them! 😻

All those little donations fill in the gap between supply and demand. It’s always nice to have a special project for the community. Special projects can be a nice break from work or school. On a Sunday night, I used to just knit something like a baby hat or blanket or knitted knockers to donate, it is like coloring to relax. Senior citizens like baby blankets as lap blankets too. You can contact a local hospital or nursing home and see what crafts they would like donated.

My dad loves these hats so much, his best friend has given him one in every color, but I started knitting him hats to wear to my races to mix up life a little bit. He wears these hats everywhere, so I had to knit him a bunch of hats to compete with his friend. My dad’s best friend’s son is always so jealous that my dad gets the hat every year, he needed to get his own hat club membership, it was really funny. The best thing that ever happened to him… One year I got to pick between the blue hat and the black hat, and I picked the blue hat, because it reminded me of Barbie's car. I wonder if someone's son wanted me to pick black instead of blue, but I really wanted the blue that year…Purple is always a favorite, because it’s the Holy Cross color, everyone was really jealous of the purple. We also have orange like SU, and beige to match everything. All the good colors from the past ten years are mine.

Hats always look nice paired with an Irish knit cardigan sweater or swarovski tennis bracelet, and puppies love Irish knit sweaters even when they are sandy from playing on the beach. It reminds me of how I miss playing lacrosse on the beach in the sand, maybe sandy puppies like lacrosse too. 😊🍀

This race was freezing, but I become so hot when I run, I did most of the marathon in a sports-bra. I always put my race bib on my sports-bra. Then, I can take my race t-shirt off and it’s not a big deal, maybe eight miles into the event.

Things I do to keep in touch

I really broke away from home, first for higher education and then having a nice career. My family is full of different personalities, both of my sisters have different careers and educational paths or backgrounds, and we just do not mix business and pleasure. Math, science, and fashion being so different, we all have common interests in cooking and special passions or talking about fun things. There is just such a huge difference between all of us in our serious lives. I never made my sisters listen to me talk about my work or academic life, we never talk about money either. When we have time with each other it is for pleasure, it really needs to strictly be for pleasure. Once I left home, I never really felt myself returning to the area, but there are such awesome ways to keep in touch with my family when I am gone. Even though we are all separate, I hope five years from now we still talk for ten minutes a week and visit each other once in a blue moon.

My favorite ways to keep in touch are,

• Calling everyone on a Saturday.

• Cooking together, virtually with google nest.

• Having a planned weekend together.

• Running races together or virtually.

• Sending greeting cards, and hats I knitted in the mail.

• Gifting crafts and poetry.

It really is possible to go completely separate ways from your family, and maintain a healthy relationship. If I know my sister is running a race, I can send her encouraging texts the entire race, even if we are in two different places. Being off living my life and calling them ten minutes a week keeps me happy, I loved having my own apartment and being off as soon as that happened for me.

I wrote this poem for my sisters, and they liked it a lot.

“Sister, sister
If you need to dance, go dance, pretty girl.
I want to see you, leap, plié, and whirl.
Perhaps, put on your power suit with heels.
Science super woman ruling world, feels.

We can run together or run apart.
We either connect or need a fresh start.
We are so smart; we are on different paths.
Sisters both love lots, and sometimes have wraths.

You are the incessant lights of my life.
When we fight, we all go straight for the knife.
Prodigious and abysmal is our love.
We set each other free, just like a dove.

Energy comes off you with just a look.
In-between lines, I read you like a book.
The sixth sense that we can never ignore.
I know when you are there, at the door.

Sister, sister, in different places.
Thoughts in our brains fill up the same spaces.
We cannot disconnect from each other.
All animosity, love will smother.
”

Being home schooled when I was sick made me passionate about my extra job for after the software day job, which is tutoring. Homeschool is very expensive, so I like to make my files and tools available to make someone’s life easier. Specific doctors and schools have me on a list as a tutor or having files for helpful learning in certain subjects. Predominantly, I have learning tools such as printable flash cards that are requested a lot. My geometry flash cards are famous, and have helped a lot of high schoolers pass the class. I made flash cards for physics too. There is also a nice outline of how to write an essay for standardized tests, for college admission. If you want a side passion for a few hours a week you could tutor and share your education with someone who would love some extra help, schools will put you on a list. I never wanted to be a teacher, I always envisioned working for a company like I do, but tutoring on the side is a positive thing in my life. Technically, I could be a teacher in NYS, but I fit better with the software company not over a financial preference it’s just a better fit. I am really glad that I got out of Syracuse, and then came back with a different perspective. There are so many people who tutor, but have different jobs than teaching, and it is a positive thing.

I took some time to be with my grandmother, because that was the best option for the family. While in Florida with her, I started running a lot of races down there, driving her car too. I loved going to Cape Canaveral and bird watching, while down there. I was always by myself in Florida, with my grandma. All traveling and running events were just me always. I drove two hours to my race, ran well, and had to drive all the way back alone. I have always been an independent traveler, and figured out how to travel and run a lot by myself too. I am just a way.

I’m pretty good at solo travel, because I always stick to an agenda or on task. One year, I was supposed to run the Miami Marathon, but missed my flight from NY and did not have time to reschedule that weekend. So, I ended up doing NOLA the next weekend instead. What difference does it make where you are, if you're traveling anyway? Plus I was still mad about not doing NYC the fall before, after altitude training all summer, so I needed an ASAP race event.

Just like traveling for work, airport to hotel to office is swapped with, airport to hotel to marathon. A lot of races down south are flat, fast and at sea level which is nice. If you are organized, traveling for running is just as safe and productive as traveling for work. A lot of work, I can do remotely too, which was great when I needed to go far away from the 'office’ to hang out with gramma. Making gramma cohesive with my life, made me figure out remote work in the software industry, which a lot of family people do. Being brainy and remotely working is a thing, to combine with business trips. Luckily, I never had to pick between being valid in the workplace and being with my gramma, if I had to choose I have no idea who would have been with her all of that time. If it was going to ruin my entire life I worked really hard to have, I would have had to turn gramma down and never talk to my family again, but I made balancing everything happen. It is actually nice to have all that work experience, and then going back to grad school so it compliments the career that I have already started.

Hopefully, I am still a spring chicken, I never planned on gramma being my baby and changing my plans around. Gramma ended up being the married with children by 25 idea in reality, it’s funny. I literally could have gone right into my PhD program, and not broken up with my boyfriend I had a long time, but I chose gramma and now I get to circle back around to the doctorate idea while not throwing away my work life. We were both on a work grind in different places, and it just would not have worked at the time unless I moved in with him instead of my grandmother of course. It seemed like the end of the world to break up with my long term relationship and choose gramma back then, and continuously since, but after working and looking around I don’t really care. Being more mature and in the same general location could make us get back together, or I’ll just start over with someone else, it’s an ambivalent issue in my mind. There are a lot of successful people at work who are still single, so there must be someone in this world I could end up with besides the on and off for ten years individual. I respected that they deserved to have a life wherever they were located for work and such, so instead of long-distance I just sort of called it a break or maybe breaking up. Between them being in the northeast and having business trips in Europe, and me down south it was too much to drag through the mud at the time. Sometimes, flying to major cities from a major city is not a big deal, like Boston to DC has some inexpensive day trip options, $50 options. I’m being funny, but gramma made the most sense at the time in terms of life decisions, and she is why I am so good at traveling alone or wicked self-disciplined. Yeah, in a way I lived with gramma and went out to dinner with her everyday, I did not do that with someone else, which was a sacrifice for me.

No one really has a cookie cutter life, but I am so looking forward to predominantly having school as my job, not taking care of anyone, being away calling the fam on a Saturday, dating again, maybe I need to buy a new laptop. It is ironic that I have no place in healthcare, even if I chose MD over PhD it would have been for research purposes, and my aunt is a retired nurse and I took care of my grandmother day in and day out for everything instead of her. I do have ACLS and CPR and BLS for advanced lifeguarding from Upstate Medical University, but like I am not really in hands-on healthcare, unless I am volunteering in spare time, I can volunteer with EMS if I want to but have not since college. I still have the EMS uniform in my closet, it’s a blast from the past of volunteering in college, my lifeguard uniform is better looking from my athletic college days than my old thick oversized emblemed male shirt for EMS. A lot of times in running or hiking, it comes in handy to have first-aid skills that I have learned with Upstate Medical University. After lifeguarding, I can bring my nieces and nephews open water swimming during the summer when we go to a state park or the St. Lawrence River, those extra medical certifications make that difference between them having their own personal lifeguard or not. Usually, in any serious situation there is always an older large male lifeguard or EMS volunteer with upper body strength and I just sort of am helpful, but I could step up to the plate on a good day and really be in control. I think anyone around children should know first-aid, at least CPR, it is very practical especially watching my nephew with asthma swim, band-aids are also practical to always have. There have been times hiking that I have helped with popped knees going down a mountain or I have helped someone with a heart or breathing difficulty, but luckily it all works out in those situations where I have been in with a more hands-on case. Something I could do for my gramma that would have been expensive to hire out is using those extra certifications to take her blood pressure or oxygen, temperature, read a basic monitor and know if something was significantly wrong or not. I am a math mind and business mind, I am not like my aunt who was a nurse, but nevertheless I suppose I managed caring skills with gramma. I am a much colder person than my aunt and have a very different professional path than she did, it’s not a bad thing just different things I studied and worked towards made me colder than caring like she was for her job everyday. Being with gramma was fine, but it took a lot of adjusting and I have no idea how my aunt was the way I was with a family member for her job, it just would not be natural for me. For instance my aunt can consolingly touch someone's arm at work as a nurse, but if I did that in my office then HR would have a meeting with me and a video so it would not happen again, it is completely different.

Being the granddaughter and enjoying time together is every granddaughter’s goal. Maybe to some of my family I am free labor, but I love my gramma and evidently would do anything for her and have the luxury of being with her. I love when I can see my grandmother for pleasure and she looks healthy, versus being called over when she is sick. Who else wants to sit in a quiet room with me reading, other than gramma? Wherever I go, I need to get one of those emergency weather radios, that always goes off for no reason, like gramma’s. Goodness gracious. You never want a stranger taking care of your family, even for physical therapy appointments, and remote work could be an option for me so I made it happen to the best of my ability. Am I cold or more compassionate for thinking that way? Everything works out eventually. I have flown so much for work, or driven long, I don't care where I go. Either way, I always order pizza delivery from a room. 🍕 ✈ 🏃 🚕

It was fun trying a new city for a race, I loved running all around New Orleans. Such a thrill. Traveling on my own expense and time, calling the family for ten minutes after the run. I feel like I am always happier, being away and talking to the family for ten minutes a week, than being home with them. If I had run Miami, my parents would not have cared I made the trip, but they were surprised I went somewhere new.

Running really is the best metaphor for life. During a race, if I feel dead 18 miles in, seeing my sisters or family keeps me running to the end. Their positivity and presence bring me into a new chapter, next life, or second half of the race. It is so important to have a support system to help you into new chapters and horizons in competitive running and life. We keep each other going into the new chapters on fresh legs.