Running my guts out

Every six months or so, I take up running again, which in this curvy petite body looks like this: For a month, I reappreciate running and all of its benefits, and for at least a couple of those weeks of running, I do not totally feel as though both my lungs are going to collapse and I am not going to have some kind of reverse-intestinal upchuck fiesta on the track. Running is a great outlet for stress but I do not live in a body that can endure running on the regular. My long history of pounding out Irish step dances has netted me ankles that are predictably unpredictable. Also, my lust for change does not a good endurance runner make.

Right now, I am back at track practice. Running my ever-loving guts out. I need running to work for me right now because the stress I am feeling is not the stuff of checklists and bills to pay. I am back on the identity carousel, trying to figure out which pony I want to be riding for this go-round before they start the ride and before the siss-boom-bah of the merry-go-round musicmaker starts playing. Is it this one? This one with the ruby reigns or this one with the long and flowing mane? Or is it that one over there that bobs higher and lower than all the rest? Or this one that just stays put for the entire ride.

I have an enviable career. I get to teach bright people in a resource-rich, spiritually-gifted community, close to where I live and where my children school. And I? Only have a master's degree.

I am oh so lucky and yet I question the stability of this when I feel so unstable. I know God's hand was in every detail of our move here. I just want to feel a touch of the divinity in what I am doing here now.

We all want to do work that matters, right? It's a universal cliche. Teaching has its rewards, but on a day-to-day basis, I see some long faces in the classroom. Teaching is a give, give, give business and the return on investment might not be known for many years henceforth. We prepare and prepare and we teach and jump around the classroom; we run our guts out. Unlike a chef or a hairstylist, our "product" is often not immediately recognizable. The reaction to learning or developing a nascent skill? Is not the same as reacting to a California sushi roll or a new body wave perm. So we teachers wait in hopeful expectation of a reaction, a response to this gift of active learning and oftentimes we get blank stares, a deep and abiding disinterest in favor of a cellphone screen, or an evaluation that says, Errrmmm, yeah, maybe you should get out of this business altogether.

I will not worship at the crumbling altar of the evaluation, but I will look inward and upward and continue to run my guts out and hope that as I make another lap around the track, this now my fourth full year of teaching college writing, that I can know that I am in the right lane, running in a fair heat, that with more training, I'll only improve my time and my stride.

Rather than grow weary, I want to grow more fit for this race and I want to know and see and experience the outcomes of this work that I believe matters.

At the end of track practice, though, I know I'm still okay. If my career dries up tomorrow, I'll still have the love of this little family. Their hugs and affirmations and little teeth to brush and deliveries of coffee when I left my mug at home are pretty amazing. I feel equal parts unworthy and totally whole as their mama/wife person. They are the ones for whom I am running this race. They keep me running strong.

Show Your Real: Kendra

Was that the sound of you just gasping because you had JUST told the lady on the bus (the one with the leopard-print neck brace) that you were DYING to know how Kendra spent her day? I thought that was you!

Well, lucky for all our loyal readers here at kendraspondence, Kendra invited herself to the party going on over at Bowdenisms and will be sharing her real, that is, providing the true itinerary of a typical day in her shoes.

***Morning*** Most mornings I am up by 6:45 a.m. In the months when it is not dark out, I will wake earlier than this and go to the gym and hide behind my ipod, which is not an ipod but it sure beats calling it a walkman which is still, honestly, what I call it. I talk to no one at the gym because speaking before 10 a.m. when I am not being paid to speak and/or one of my children isn't about to accidentally eat glue for breakfast is against my constitution.

But supposing I don't go to the gym in the morning, I hit the shower while Loverpants readies the children. After my shower, I enjoy snuggling for a minute with the Little Man. I put on my clothes that I never ever ever plan the night before, and I apply make-up because if I don't get to eat breakfast, the world will still make its lap around the sun but if Kendra doesn't put on concealer, well, then, all bets are off. I should probably carve out time in the morning to pray, but I am more clearheaded with God at night. This is maybe what I tell myself?

If I do get breakfast, it is instant oatmeal in a bowl while standing and asking for the fourth time for at least one of our children to put on his/her shoes. I also absolutely need to eat a banana and drink a mug of coffee or I write with a palsied hand and drool uncontrollably for the rest of the day.

We all pile into the car together to go to my workplace and my daughter's school and my husby and my son go the gym. Maybe this is your idea of hell, your whole family bumping down the road, sharing in the morning commute together, but this is a thin slice of Heaven for me. Even if someone is usually crying. We say a little prayer for our days and then I go to my office.

I go to my office and scan my e-mails and think about how I should have been better prepared for class.

Then I teach class. In other words, I jump around a room and embarrass my students with my enthusiasm and punny phrases. I laugh. After class, there is a good deal of requisite loitering in halls. Most of higher education actually happens in doorways and hallways I'm convinced.

I then proceed to not use good time management with my office hours. When I finally decide to get something real done, like grading or responding to work e-mails, 8-9 students or co-workers drop by my office. This is very good. Except when it isn't. There are a number of people who don't know how to end conversations. I am admittedly annoyed by this but cannot somehow disabuse myself of --anyway. So that's my morning.

***Afternoon*** In the afternoon, I usually catch lunch on campus. I try to single out one student who might be struggling with life's questions and we try to eat and pray together about stuff. Otherwise, Loverpants and Little Man will join me for lunch at the dining hall. Little Man usually behaves like a muppet on crack and embarrasses us like no parent deserves to be embarrassed. And yet we keep bringing him to lunch in the hopes that he'll learn (?) Most afternoons I teach a class which I really love but still wish I were more adequately prepared. Right after that class, Loverpants picks me up from work. This car ride usually makes me sick and the kids are usually shouting over Loverpants and me.

Then Loverpants goes to work. He sees clients after school and in the evenings, so we kinda have a shift 1 and shift 2 going on in parenting land.

Just about every day I take a 20 minute disco nap after school. I need this. Sometimes it turns into a 1 hour nap. Usually one of the kids joins me on the bed and pulls my hair, which is undeservedly mean but whatevs. They watch TV and I nap, either on the couch next to them or on my bed.

Then we play outside in our big rambling yard and sometimes we accidentally trample the neighbors' flowers. This is a really good time of day and affirms why we moved to Tennessee where it is moderately warm even in the winter.

After that we will wander inside and I will make my kids a dinner that will consist of whatever carb they are not sick of and lots of fruits. They eat in front of the TV. I am okay with this for now because I have chosen not to kill myself over a family dinner that hinges on me alone (see also: co-parent works evenings). I also eat a snack. A snack. Who has time to make themselves dinner? Not this girl. Showing my real here.

***Evening*** As much as it depends on me, my kids are bathed and pajamafied by 7:30 p.m. We read books and someone usually gets clocked in the nose. By reading books you ask? Yes. You'll have to stop by sometime.

Then comes Candle Time where the kids fight over who gets to blow out the candle first. We sing a little song, say what we're thankful for in our days. Then someone accidentally blows out the candle. Little Man always says he's thankful for his Flynn fire truck. We sing a song about Jesus and then someone says a prayer that usually entails an intention for whomever was absent in Baby Girl's school that day. Then they both re-blow out the candle and they get in their beds.

My children are not like your children who, the second their heads hit the pillow, they are out. My children are like I was when I was a child: overstimulated and of the belief that a reasonable bedtime is overrated. My children come out of their rooms 23894028343 times every night. I know I should read a book by Dr. Ferber about this, but I choose to sit in their room and rock them and tuck them in 2389408234 times.

I answer e-mails and work on my book project and by 10 p.m. I am too tired for all that malarkey so I read a book or do some yoga and then I do my devotions. I fall asleep feeling like the luckiest 32 year-old woman, in the body of a 78 year-old woman.

10 Lessons from Ira Glass at the Tivoli, CHA

1.) I missed the memo that hipster glasses + checked shirt were requisite audience uniform. #missedthememo 2.) Beginning a live show in total darkness save for the glow of an iPad and the sound of Ira Glass' voice? Makes my mind go crazy, crazy places. #YESnoYESnoYESisaidNO

3.) Ira Glass did not rock the cliched skinny tie. #radiotakesthestage

4.) Ira Glass' parents wanted him to be a doctor and could barely forgive him for his non-pursuit of med school well into his thirties. #salary=agex1000

5.) Turns out the story structure championed by TAL is the same one Jesus used :) #sermonswork

6.) Media offers so very few chances of surprise. News reports are especially choreographed, restrained. TAL offers moments of genuine surprise on radio. #mediasurprise

7.) Tearing a page out of Terry Gross' playbook, TAL storytelling strives to Name the Universal Thing that is so relatable in each story, even if it's about being bitten by a shark. #namingthething

8.) Ira Glass is both Alice and Lewis Carroll. #difference #iraglass #lookingglass

9.) Choosing to attend this lecture was a great decision in lieu of holding a regular old Interactive Online Journalism class tomorrow. #experientiallearning

10.) Ira Glass speaks fondly and often of Terry Gross. Almost as much as Terry Gross speaks of Judd Apatow. #medialove