Marjie's resort



Thanks Jordanna for this  cute picture taken this past weekend! Here I am, with Jordanna, Rachel and Karishma, enjoying wine and Late July organic tortilla chips during our girls' weekend in Happy Valley. I took the girls to the new winery in our backyard, which is where we spent the afternoon just chatting and relaxing.



My green juice! I make one batch (about 1-3 servings) every week, though I'm trying to do more. My greens are usually kale, cucumber, celery, dandelion root and other leafy greens and green vegetables. I'm working to expand my variety but I LOVE my usual combination!

Between my LFS clinic starting next month and us embarking on the path of adoption (we’re going to an informational session with an agency in Philadelphia tomorrow – yes, tomorrow! – night), things have been pretty hectic. This past weekend was so much fun! Three of my best friends came into town to visit me and see the new place, and we had a weekend full of laughing, gossiping, wining and dining! Plus, I ran a 5K Saturday morning in 24:21, which is my fastest 5K (competitive or by myself) to date! Next step: me and Sean registering for that 10-miler in March I mentioned, and START TRAINING!

I can’t adequately describe my love for running. Well, I can try in a few words: freeing, cathartic, emotional.

I enjoy having another race on the calendar, another goal set, another reason to improve, another milestone to reach, another way to better myself.

So, our next life steps are busy. Not like it was at all planned, but it just so happens I’m getting all of my super intense super comprehensive cancer screenings literally within weeks of making big decisions about how we’re going to start a family and then actually doing things to make decisions, all within weeks of the LFS conference all within two-ish months of one of the biggest, most challenging three days of my life. (Tour de Pink, you are STILL rocking my world.)

All this is meshed in with our regular lives and schedules of work, football weekends, visiting and having friends visit and adding furniture to the house and meeting Gabby Giffords. I’ve always found I enjoy being busy and having plans, and for a while now I’ve successfully figured out how to be not too busy, aka: finding a balance between the craziness and peace. Even now that Tour de Pink is over I am still finding myself very jittery and very I-need-to-be-moving. I don’t know if it’s the stress of LFS clinic coming up or the huge life change approaching of starting the adoption process, but I’m very antsy, even after a good run. Not that I need more things to do, but that I am having trouble not thinking too much, which, as I type it, really seems pretty normal and OK. I’ve always thought a lot. I worry, I stress. And the things I’m worried about today are pretty much the same things I’ve been worrying about for years, just with different levels. And of course you can lower that level a lot now that the breast cancer surgeries are over. I’m just antsy and anxious. And sure, there is a lot going on in our lives right now. But it almost seems the more I try to find my peace the more I’m looking for it. I could talk all day about how I’m so green and earthy and how that goes along with finding my center and living in the now, and meditation and yoga, but I am SO not that person. I mean, I want to be. I would LOVE to live in the now. And sometimes I do. Sometimes I stop and stare at the sunset or take a picture of my rose bushes blooming. Sometimes when I take Campbell out for his nighttime piddle I stop to look at the sky, look at the stars and take a deep breath of fresh air and take in the night sky. Sometimes I force myself to sit quietly in a room with no cell phone and no TV on, and even no magazine to read. I make myself eat dinner without distractions, also called mindful eating: when I’m eating I’m not doing anything but eating. I’m not reading anything or watching anything; I’m paying attention to my chewing, how the food tastes and when to recognize when I’ve had enough. And when I’m done eating I sit quietly, give myself time to digest, and then go onto the next thing.

I’m all about trying to practice mindfulness to reduce stress. But I am so NOT a peaceful person, internally speaking. I’m a peaceful PERSON to others and to the world, but I am not peaceful within myself. And I always thought I could change that. And maybe I am working on it. but it is SO not me. I am a vata, after all. Instead of being neither here nor there, I’m EVERYWHERE. ALL THE TIME. I’m Google calendar. I’m scheduling runs by the mile, scheduling when I’m going to juice vegetables, when to paint my nails. I have a growing list on my iPhone of natural/organic supplements and herbs I have yet to try. I want to be a naturally-healing person for myself. I want to be calm and zen. But I am now realizing my calm and zen IS my scheduling. It IS knowing I have a 3 mile run on Monday after work. It IS knowing, down to every last detail, every item on our grocery shopping list and not veering off course, even for a pack of pre-cut mangoes. My calm, if you can even call it that, is knowing my details, knowing my plans, having a plan, doing my plan.

Ever since around my first breast cancer surgery in 2011 I have an imaginary place in my mind I think of when trying to fall asleep. Originally it started as a massage parlor and chiropractor’s office with candles and incense, because my back and neck were so sore from all my surgeries. For years of my life, between those surgeries and because of my expanders, I couldn’t sleep on my sides or stomach. I couldn’t stretch. My neck and back were in constant knots. They would throb. And the worst was when I was trying to fall asleep. I couldn’t get comfortable. All I wanted was to stretch my back. What I wanted so badly was something I couldn’t have, and that was to MOVE.

So I would envision being face down on a massage table and having someone massage and crack the hell out of my neck and back. That was my fantasy. Some people dream about people or food or places or shopping. My fantasy was having someone knead my back like dough, removing the muscle knots, opening me up and finally, finally relaxing me.

Over time that massage parlor slash chiropractor’s office developed. It soon became a resort. Today it’s a little house in the middle of the woods. There is a pool on one side of the house. On the other side, in the back, is a garden where I do yoga. Around the house is marked running trails which tell you your mileage at each mile.

As I began developing this dream place in my mind before bed, and as I increasingly gave it more detail I realized something very obvious: my relaxation is planning. Because soon, in my fantasy place, my massages were scheduled. My yoga sessions were scheduled. My runs, followed by my pedicures, followed by my facials, followed by my afternoon nap, were all scheduled. Dinner was at 5, like I like. Bed time at 10 p.m. or before. Coffee in the morning but not after 12 noon. All the grapes are washed, organic and ready to eat. Green juice every day, sometimes twice a day. My choice of leafy greens. Fresh figs, fresh mango. All of my favorite foods prepared just the way I like by professional chefs. But the rule is: everything is organic. All raw foods.

As my imaginary resort kept getting more detailed I realized if this is MY fantasy, and I can have anything I want in my resort, and I am choosing SCHEDULED tasks, then this must really, really, really be my idea of a good time.

Because I soon learned I could only truly “relax” at the pool at my resort if I’d had a good run in the morning. I could only feel good if I was eating my usual amount of fresh fruits and vegetables.

I would envision myself at my secret fantasy resort lying at the pool in the shade eating fresh fruit and doing nothing. Or maybe Insta-gramming. And in my fantasy I couldn’t relax until I’d known I’d run that morning. And that’s how my special resort got its scheduling. Run at this time, massage at this time, fresh fruit all day. Bed early. Rise early. Do it again.

And what have I discovered: I LOVE scheduling. I can’t “relax” until my “things” get done. So now, all of a sudden, my definition of relaxing is different than what I always perceived it to be. It’s not in doing nothing and being Ok with that; it’s doing everything and being OK with that.

Omigoodness. Some people wait a lifetime until they figure out some very weird and defining characteristics of their personalities. Me? I guess I’m lucky that I figured out now what MY idea of living fully is. It’s not what I kept pulling and pushing it to be. For me, it IS doing this and scheduling that. And when I’ve done all that and my cucumbers are juiced and the laundry is folded, then, and only then can I sit on the couch and watch Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman with no care in the world.

My fantasy resort keeps getting more and more detailed. It first started as a place where I’d do all those things by myself, or with the help of the hired staff: yoga, massages, cooking, etc. And then I realized I wanted Sean and my friends and family there. And then I realized I need a resort dog. And then I realized Campbell would do just fine.

Besides the obvious tropical location and knowing my running mileage without Runkeeper, my special resort is not too different from real life. I buy and prepare most of my own food, juice my own vegetables, schedule my jogs and yoga, and if I really wanted to, I could take a nap in the middle of the day (on Saturday or Sunday) with the windows open (but not in November, December, January, February or March).

I think I’ll stick with my very rigidly-scheduled relaxation resort in my mind. The perfection of it all is that I schedule everything I want to do, because there’s so much I want to do. The perfection is fitting it all in. And it being effortless. The perfection is in the nature and in the weather. And the fresh fruit and the sunsets. All that surrounds us in life is perfect, even the imperfect things.

And maybe one reason I love my schedules so much isn’t because I can’t just “enjoy now” and “live in the moment”; maybe it’s because there’s so much reason to live in the moment and so much I want to enjoy. It’s true, I can still have an enjoyable day when not everything gets done, and there is a huge part of me that likes flying by the seat of my leggings. Half the time I love plans and the other half I don’t mind being spontaneous. But I think the best lesson I learned, one that came from my fantasy resort, is that I can’t and shouldn’t try to change such a huge part of me. I shouldn’t question what makes me happy. I should just let it. I shouldn’t always be working to find “my peace” and meditate when that clearly isn’t me right now. My fantasy resort, for goodness sake, has a schedule. My FANTASY RESORT. The one I made up, IN MY MIND, has a schedule. That tells me something.

It tells me I just love life a lot.

And it tells me I should stop trying to be something I’m not. Who I am works for me. No need to fight it. And like Pink and Pearls knows very well at this point from all my blogging and “figuring out” from the past two and a half years: there isn’t always an answer, there isn’t always a solution, and that is A-OK.