I’m still here–bet you thought I’d dropped off the planet, didn’t you?  Nope, I’m just in circle-the-wagons mode.  Turns out Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever really sucks.  I’m well–all symptoms have subsided–but the lingering fatigue and joint aches are no fun.  It’s particularly difficult, I think, knowing that I was in really good shape before I got sick; I had been steadily building all summer, and was feeling confident and strong.  Now I feel like I’m back to square one, but I’m trying not to panic when I look at the calendar.  I’m just trying to trust that I’ll turn a corner at some point and it’ll come back quickly.

I’ve been out on my bike a few times–I’m up to 15 miles, at an average speed of 15.3 mph.  Ugh.  I guess I still have a ways to go.  The alarming part was how my legs felt at the end of that hour.  I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it home, and in the evening, every time I stood up my legs quivered like they were about to cramp.

Anyway, enough about that.  I’ve been trying to catch up on other things in the meantime.  Today I got back to the house-painting project.  I scrubbed the back stairwell, so that I can start putting primer on tomorrow.  It was a mess; it’s where everyone kicks off their shoes when they come in the door.  I had to spackle a lot of dents and dings.  I think I’m going to paint it a bright, sunny yellow.  I’ll probably regret that when it’s covered with mud and dust and soccer ball prints, but it’ll make me happy for the first few (clean) minutes.

I’ve been reading.  My bookclub (which meets in about half an hour; I need to go soon) read a Wallace Stegner novel this month, Crossing to Safety.  It was pleasantly enjoyable; not my favorite book of all time or anything, but a nice enough character study.  I finished Bill Buford’s book, Heat, which was engrossing, but which went on a bit long.  I also just finished Stephen King’s book about being a writer, called On Writing.  All aspiring writers should read it; it’s an easily digestible book of advice about the craft of writing.  Plus it’s a really good read.  It’s got me all fired up about digging into a second draft of my novel.  Now I just need to make myself sit down and do it while it’s on my mind.  More easily said than done . . .

Last Friday night we took our son and a large handful of his friends to Kanki for dinner.  This Friday is his 13th birthday, and the Kanki dinner was what he wanted to do to celebrate.  Lee and Delaney and I sat at a different table, out of sight of Toby and his cohorts.  It seemed to be exactly what he wanted it to be, so I suppose that’s a successful birthday party.  But I don’t need to go to Kanki again for quite a while.  Not sure how I feel about being the mother of a teenager, but I don’t suppose I have any choice in the matter at this point.

Here’s an amusing tidbit:  So Dean Karnazes ran his 50 marathons in 50 days, culminating with the NYC marathon, right?  The next day he went for a recovery run, then the next, and the next, and by the Wednesday, he had decided that he couldn’t just pack up and go home.  So he sent his family home on a plane, piled his stuff into a baby jogger, and headed out to RUN home.  To San Francisco.  From New York.  My husband seems to think this is bordering on insane.  Can’t imagine why.  You can track his progress at the Runner’s World website.

That same day (of the New York marathon, which I ran in 2004, and every step of which I HATED–I had a truly horrible day) I watched Lance break 3 hours (barely!) in his first ever marathon.  The marathon website had a feature that enabled us to pay $5 to watch the “LanceCam”–a motorcycle followed the course in front of Lance, with a camera trained on him the entire way.  It was highly entertaining, in a really bizarre sort of way.

And the day before that (which was my first day post-fever, so I was really just hanging out in bed, doing as little as possible) we tracked my friend Amelia, who was doing her 2nd Ironman in Panama City, Florida.  We met doing IM Coeur d’Alene in 2004; it turned out we had graduated from college together, having never known each other.  Quite bizarre.  Anyway, I was kind of jealous of her doing her 2nd IM; while she was tapering, I kept wishing that I was getting ready to race, too.  I guess it turned out for the best–there’s no way I could’ve done an Ironman (or anything else, for that matter) with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.  Oh well.  I’ll do another Ironman sometime.  In the meantime–congratulations Amelia!

All right.  Gotta go to bookclub now.