On playing by the numbers....

I'm not a huge fan of numbers. I deal much better in letters and words. They make much more sense to me. I think that's because I was born largely without a left brain. Despite my unending love of words, there is a singular number that has held a very special place in my heart for more than half my life.

42

I love that number. It has a funny backstory in my life and it also seems that whenever I see the number 42 crop up in life, something good happens. Several months ago, I went to one of my favorite burger places and my order number was 42. That was a damn good day. It's hard to have a bad day when you get to have an amazing burger followed by an even more amazing massage. Then, two weeks later, I went back with one of my best friends to the same burger place and our order number was, you guessed it, 42. Again, it was a magical day! The 42nd day of 2012 also happened to be a really good day for me. And every 42 days, I get to have a manicure (and several additional times in between).

Generally speaking, 42 just makes for a good number for me. It also makes me curious...what will my 42nd birthday hold? What other instances of 42 come up in my life that I don't recognize or just completely miss?

And if you can guess where my original love of the number 42 actually comes from, bonus points to you!

On knowing my pain....

In the grand scheme of things, I'm pretty lucky when it comes to injuries. I've never broken a bone (that I know of...I might have broken a toe before, but it didn't hurt enough to go have it checked out) despite cheerleading and skiing basically my entire life. But there are two injuries I have had that make me cringe just to think about. Because they HURT.

The first was when I was in grade 8 and got into a pretty nasty car accident at church. My friend was pulling her parents van around to the front door, something the regularly let her do. It was a small church with an even smaller parking lot, so this wasn't a big deal. Until that day. She slammed on the gas thinking it was the brake and rammed us head on into a light pole. I bashed my head into the dash board and my glasses shattered. I ended up in the ER with probably a reasonably-sized concussion. I don't think I've had a headache that bad ever since and that includes the time I had to get a CT because my doc thought I might have a tumor and/or  aneurysm (I didn't). The worst of it all was that the accident happened the day before end-of-year finals at school and I forgot almost everything I'd studied in the previous weeks. It was horrible. I barely passed most of my finals that year despite being granted a significant amount of mercy from my teachers.

Then when I was probably in grade 10 or something, I was horsing around on our trampoline with my brother and damn near snapped my femur. Now, I realize it takes quite a bit to do that, but I came very close that summer. He and I used to play this game where one of us would sit in the center of the trampoline while the other would run around and the sitter would try to grab the runner's ankles and trip them. It was actually quite a lot of fun! Except for this one day when we failed to put the mats around the edges. I dodged my brother and in the process, my right leg fell through a set of bars and springs and I tumbled over the edge, leg still stuck in the bars. By the time I was able to right myself (with a little help from my brother), I had already developed a black, green, and purple bruise the size of a volleyball on my thigh. My mom, not knowing what had just happened and reacting solely to my banshee screams, told me to "walk it off." Then she saw that I couldn't exactly walk. That one...well that hurt for a while. Which made cheerleading practice that summer quite challenging.

I'm telling you, both of those injuries hurt way worse than either of the times I stepped on rusty nails.

On the road less traveled....

Running has quickly become something I love. I left my office the other day and walked out into a beautiful day with a slight breeze and actually whined to myself..."UhhhhhhhUH! It would be PERFECT to run tonight!" but I didn't get to (because I was taking a gun class which was equally as fun and empowering as any run I've done recently). I love the feeling I get when I complete a run, knowing that I frickin' did it. It's been a long time coming, this running thing. And each day, I get closer and closer to being okay with calling myself "a runner"...I think I'll do that when I finally hit 5 miles.

When I go for runs outside, I start and end at my house. I run through a great park in my neighborhood and sometimes wander through the neighborhoods themselves. There are gorgeous trees and a pretty creek to run next to...being in nature feels good! There's a more ghetto side of the trail I run and I only really do that with a friend because the one time I ran it alone, it was a bit sketchy. And by "a bit" I mean "almost entirely riddled with sketch characters."

It's interesting to me, the metaphor of running away from and toward my house. I feel like that's something I'm kind of experiencing right now. I'm in a state of heightened emotions and running has given me the opportunity to get some of that out of me. It also allows me an hour or so to just be with my thoughts (and my music) and really evaluate and take stock of things. I guess I'm not entirely sure what I'm running away from, or even toward. At a base level, I'm running toward 13.1 miles. I want to hit that goal so badly I can taste it. Running is allowing me the chance to see how capable I really am. I've given up on dreams of running several times in the past and now? Now I just go for it. I want to be the person that puts her mind to something and does it...and does it well.

Sometimes, running away from and toward things can be terrifying. What's behind me is comfortable and easy; what's in front of me is somewhat unknown and will probably be at least a little challenging. What's an adventure without a little challenge though, right? It means letting go of what I've known for so long and being brave enough to trust myself in the future.