The ankle surgeon full-employment run...

Yes, it was mud run day! The "trail" turned out to be through a vineyard, which was as lumpy and uneven a surface as anybody could have wished, and the mud pit was - a huge pit of mud. It was great. Next year, we'll have to go in costume - we saw any number of bridesmaids dresses sacrificed to the cause, plus a dizzying array of other clever costumes - hula girls, a quartet dressed as Wizard of Oz characters (Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Lion, and Glenda the Good Witch, in another now-destroyed ballgown.) There was Elvis, a guy in a vintage 70's tuxedo and wig, someone in a toga and laurels, and a whole family in matching rainbow clown wigs. It was amazing.

The actual running was kind of odd - we started off very slowly, because funneling several hundred people between the rows of grapes in a vineyard takes a while. From there on out, it was nothing but hills (the vineyard was planted on a slope) and then the mud pit and then another huge hill. My time was shockingly good, so good that Mike and I concluded that they must have miscalculated the distance of the course. The only down side to the day was that while Grace was well enough to come, she wasn't well enough after a few days with a fever to run the kids' one-mile. She took it well and was excited to plan her costume for next year.






Afterwards we all showered off under some handy fire hoses, complete with fire truck and fire fighters to assist, and then I changed into dry clothes and we wandered around for a few minutes before heading to Perkin's for breakfast. Apparently the sight of a still-dirty, oddly damp, casually dressed person with filthy shoes is still an oddity at Perkin's among the after-church crowd, but I resisted the urge to explain that I'd been running, and usually I go into public with clean clothes on.

Editing to add: per the post-race email, the run was 2.5 miles, not 5K (which is 3.1 miles.) No wonder I seemed so speedy! Still, it was great fun, and Grace and I each got a cool stainless steel water bottle, which I'd just been debating about buying but couldn't decide if the no-brand Target ones were worth $10, which is not even to consider the fancier Sigg ones that are $20. I'd so much rather have a useful item than an ill-fitting race shirt!

In which we plant a butterfly garden.

It is that magical time of year: when the perennials go on sale. About three minutes after we first saw our house, we decided that the unused raised bed in a corner of the garden could be for plants that attract butterflies: butterfly bush (naturally), bee balm, whatever else we could come up with at the nursery, and, according to Grace's firmly held belief that we needed something monarch caterpillars would love, milkweed.

Yesterday we saw some snazzy butterfly bush at the farmers' market downtown, and decided the time had come. We brought it home, then stopped by a little nursery we like after church to get some more plants. We got bee balm (the pink kind), hyssop, and some hollyhocks (which we tried to grow from seed once and things were going pretty well early in their second summer, just when we could expect some blossoms, and then the weed whip intervened. So sad.)

We had to start by amending some really unhappy soil. We bought some special transplant soil from the nursery, watered our little bed really well, weeded, and then got out the tiller.




Then we started to plant things. We left in place one volunteer purple coneflower, figuring that the butterflies will at the very least not be offended by it, and we carefully placed our other plants just where we wanted them before digging. We have room for another butterfly bush if we want one. The transplanting of the three milkweed plants we found went pretty well - given that they're actual *weeds* I have high hopes for them.



Our finished butterfly garden is very pretty. Up next: we have directions for a DIY birdbath that looks really, really cool, and next week Gracie and I are doing our mud run.

Fall running, and beautiful hikes

We went today to a nature area 20 minutes from our house (like almost everything in Omaha, except for the places that are closer). For a fairly modest fee, we joined, and then we walked some boardwalk trails with very cool environmentally-oriented interactive displays and ended up on the banks of the Missouri River. The kids were awed, Grace especially, and we'll have to plan some canoe trips next year when we've got more time and have sussed out some prospetive put-in sites. (A colleague told me last week that Nebraska gives landowners rights that extend all the way to the bank and include the riverbottom - so you can *float* a river without permission, but not stop or stand up in the water. Said colleague advised getting permission to avoid being shot, and seemed only half-kidding. So, yeah, that.)





In Modest Gains on the Running Front, I heard tell recently that the first runs of fall, where you've got cool air and no humidity and you've run all summer so you're in decent shape, are fabulous. And I'm getting little hints of that - although it's still hot by mid-day, it's less humid here, and cool in the mornings, and I finally did a full four miles with a per-mile speed of under ten minutes, which is still really slow except that I'm in my mid-thirties and have asthma and no especial athletic talents. I'm mentally hedging what I'd like to accomplish with the upcoming 10K - under sixty minutes seems optimistic, but if I make some more gains between now and then and the weather is good, I could maybe swing it.

People are friendly here with the running and it makes a huge difference - faster people often have a nice encouraging comment, bikers ususally have a cheerful "on your left!" and walkers scoot out of your way if they see you coming. I can't quite picture joining one of the several running clubs, but maybe someday when I have more time.

Up next week: the second outing for the fancy graduation gown, which makes the per wearing cost a mere $400! No photos likely since it's opening convocation and not really anything to do with me. But it turns out that my new institution is really title-conscious (the IT people left me a sticky note on my computer addressed to "Dr. Wilder") so I'm going to work the big red gown for all it's worth.

The best euphanism *ever*

So, Mama started work today, and it involved lots of coffee and numerous short meetings all in the same room and a very mediocre lunch. But also, it involved a description of students who are just generally acting out - drinking, I suppose, and maybe some fighting or sleeping past noon or refusing to go to class or other kinds of non-Lutheran behavior - and the Person in Charge of Stuff Like That called this "showing value differences," as in, when students are behaving badly and not fitting in to college and are expressing their general distaste for the way things are done here, they are showing value differences, and we need to be concerned and tell them not to drink so much or they'll flunk out of college. Or something like that.

But I did get my computer, and I got my ID (the picture on which looks more flattering than below, what with the rabbit ears, but still a little dorky, but which entitles me to a free membership at the Y local to the school). And tomorrow involves more meetings, about Important Things no doubt, and I'm going to try to sneak in a run beforehand because there's bound to be a lotta sitting.

First day of school, Round Two

It was Grace's first day today, and she went off eagerly, still minus the one tooth. The opening day featured a brass band (really! but, no uniforms) and a lot of very spiffy new outfits on the kids, plus parents with various kinds of picture-taking gadgetry. Grace, as a cool second-grader, was clearly ready to just head in with her line of kids about ten minutes before it was actually time; we were not quite an embarassment, with all of our hanging around sipping coffee and being excited for her, but by next year she'll be begging to get dropped off around the corner. We biked to her school yesterday evening, which isn't going to be our usual mode of to-school transport because of the dang hills (down is fun! up, not so much.)




Just to round out our week, tomorrow is *my* first day, although New Faculty Orientation is not nearly as impressive as the first day of second grade.

New school! Loose tooth!

Peter's first day went beautifully - he was excited to get to school, happy to stay, and unimpressed when Grace and I went to pick him up just before lunch. We're easing into the week with a few half-days and then his regular schedule, but he seems happy to be there and he's pleased with his teachers and his classmates.



Not to be outdone, Grace lost a top front tooth right before we left for her school's open house. We met her teacher, dropped off her supplies, ordered a t-shirt for her to wear on spirit days, had some ice cream, and saw a dizzying number of parents and kids doing the same. Her class is studying Spain this year, so that promises to be fun.


Aw, cute sibling picture.

Moving in, additional chapter(s)

By showing up and asking nicely, I got keys to my office this week. My primary co-worker and I spent a few hours (assisted by our respective kids) moving furniture from a storage area that used to be an elementary school into a hallway outside our office, in order to make a little student lounge. It was fun: we got to sort through various odd items (tractor parts, Christmas decorations, an old sink, a hospital bed) looking for furniture for our area and we ended up loading a few chairs, a love seat, a sofa, some coffee tables, and one fake ficus onto a truck to transport them across campus and up into the elevator to our offices. I snagged a cool chair - turquoise naugahyde with interesting arms - and we settled and arranged until hunger made the kids snappish and we ended our day.


On Saturday, we went to our local farmers' market (see cute and slightly costumed kids) - we got our usual assortment of veggies from our now-favorite vendors, and generally took in the sights; it's a well-attended and cheery market, with lots of local produce and meat, and various booths devoted to handing out pamphlets about native plants and local interest groups. After the farmers market, Mike and the kids and I took a bunch of books out to my office, and I exchanged a slightly depressing print of a Winslow Homer painting for a couple of pen-and-ink drawings of what seemed to be people visiting the college, although I couldn't quite place the buildings. I still need a few boxes of books, but I'm more or less moved in, and have my email account set up, and the kids charmed the womens' soccer team as we walked through campus after unpacking - they were quite the sight, pushing a doll stroller and staying out of the fountain for once and generally looking appealing and innocent.

Up tomorrow: Peter's first day of school!

Mama needs a new pair of shoes.

Lest you be thinking, "New shoes for Courtney? That's like a coal shortage in Newcastle! It's like not having ice in Alaska! It's like visiting a desert, and special-ordering yourself some sand!" etc. etc. I must point out that these are *running* shoes, which a person must replace every so often or that person's legs fall right off. I swear. Anyway, they're pretty and blue and they fit and feel all cushy and the running shoe store is even closer than the grocery!I could walk there, but that would just be silly.

In legitimate garden news, unexpected blooming happened today. When we moved in, we noticed some largely-neglected vines growing up one side of the fence, and they looked like beans kind of but had no beans on them, so I just ignored them, thinking that they'd either fruit, or not, or die, or not, and I could just wash my hands of them.




It turns out they bloom this pretty pink flower. They look like a more domesticated version of the dreaded Morning Glory, and they're just starting to bloom - I expect we'll get a hundred more flowers, judging from the number of buds. So that was a lovely surprise. If they break loose and take over my garden, that will be a less-lovely surprise, but I'm hoping they're annuals in this climate.

I forged ahead with the weeding today, and finally unpacked poor St. Francis, who has had *quite* the trip, and relocated him to a nice part of the new garden.

Wierd if pretty flowers and the "die hole."

First, I opened up the local paper this morning to discover that we'd had a really near miss yesterday at the fair. After the kids' runs, there was something else organized by age group for kids going on in the stadium, but we didn't investigate because we were busy eating corndogs and being hot. Turns out, per the Omaha World Herald, that it was some kind of a race where children chased after livestock and ended up getting to keep whatever they could catch. Pictured in the paper were a sweet little girl with a bunny and a triumphal little boy with a duck. We came home livestock free, which is probably for the best.

Next, on our way to church this morning (which, you know you're in the "progressive" church in town when the pastor calls Haight-Ashbury 'the promised land' from the pulpit) Peter innocently* asked Mike whether he knew all of the recipes Mommy knew. Mike hedged a bit, said he probably knows most of them, and asked Peter why he wondered. "Because," said my sweet four-year-old guy, "if I push Mommy down a die-hole, we can still eat eggs for breakfast." Too much Star Wars... "die hole" being this, more or less:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjPUVzX-GDU

Luckily, it was Sunday morning, so I chose to focus charitably on the day earlier in the week when he cried out in distress over the illustration of a dinosaur eating another dinosaur in his library book. I *assume* I mean as much to my child as an illustration of a dinosaur...

Finally, we've got some kind of funky tropical-ish flower blooming in the space we've designated for veggies and herbs. We'll transplant it, whatever the hell it is, into some more decorative area, like the front yard.






*not really

The Sarpy County Fair

We headed out to a small county fair today, and although the actual temperature was a modest 95 degrees, with the humidity and in the sun our estimate of the heat index was a little more like 150. But we had a good time; we saw livestock, we made friends with the Democrats and stonewalled the pro-life booth guy (turns out a very pointed and icy "Don't start with me," is pretty effective, especially since I am a good six inches taller than Vocal Prolife Guy.)



For his part, Peter discovered corndogs, of which he wholeheartedly approves, and for the first time I could kind of see the point - it's a hotdog, with bun-like feature, *on a stick* so you don't have to use both hands to eat it. Gracie got a dolphin painted on her arm, which was fun and apparently proves pretty lucrative for the professional clown (!) who ran the booth.



Gracie also ran in a little footrace in the stadium, and she had a good time, and it convinced her that she does want me to sign her up for the one-mile kid run in the upcoming 5K that I'm doing, even though it's a Mud Run which involves a big pit of mud and, apparently, obstacles, and is less for speed than for - fun? Can't wait to post the photos of that.