MeSoFun Blog

This is about where the pain started Saturday. Why do you run if it sucks so much? This is a very valid question I was asked a month ago. Runners complain. Your hands go numb and you complain. You slip and fall and you complain. You get intestinal cramps during a run and you need a bathroom NOW. It's humbling. I complain a lot. Why bother? There isn't an easy answer to that. It was a question The Devil was asking over and over Saturday morning as I ran through a picturesque half-marathon on the Maine coast. Why bother with this? Like any large race, the Maine Coast Half Marathon started runners in a herd. About 350 of us took off from the Biddeford UNE campus at 8 a.m. Saturday. We headed across a busy road and shuffled ahead in the breakdown lane of a major road for a mile. It was horrendous. We were elbow-to-elbow in a pack of runners, and it was impossible to find a comfortable stride. Just don't fall over. I ran a 10 minute, 30 second starting mile; I had trained to run

Rat and Packie, as they are known in the family.  Mom doesn't like Mother's Day. Scratch that. She hates Mother's Day. She's serious about this. "It's just a way to sell ya a bunch of junk," Ma will tell you. She told me in my teens, long after she stopped receiving hand-drawn cards from her kids: "I'd rather you tell me you love me every other day of the year than on Mother's Day." Here we are, the longest possible period of time to next year's Mother's Day. Other moms got their cards and flowers and moved on to work today. Mom would have thrown her card out by now, probably. Scanning the Florida coast for her youth and vitality, stolen from her at the tender age of 27. By me. She's a pragmatic lady. She came by it honestly. Grandma worked as a vice president in a Florida bank back when women didn't work as vice presidents at banks. And she had four kids at home, which probably explains why she parented in a certain way.

If you can blow up that sign over our sink, you're in for a little laugh. The Wife will celebrate the 10th anniversary of her 29th birthday tomorrow. As such, she requested no jokes be made in her birthday card. This is serious stuff. We're closer to retirement than high school graduation. And TW gets what she wants in general. On her birthday, there isn't a question. No jokes in the card. So we'll air it all out here. My handwriting, like my heart, is terrible. You might think, from reading this blog or just seeing us around town, that I am an adoring husband. You're so wrong. Take, for instance, when TW is looking for a hair tie. The unstoppable thought that runs through my head is "Just look at your feet. There's always a hair tie around." In the past two days, I've found hair ties hanging on our coat rack, buried in a shag rug and in my laundry. Over the course of our marriage, I've probably picked up 7,647 hair ties. I'm confident the

Dial X to exit PA school. This happens every now and then. My phone dings with an alert. Somebody has commented on my blog! I click and read the comment. It's often our old neighbor or a former co-worker or two. We chat. We make jokes. Good times. But every now and then it's somebody making a comment on a blog about how to survive PA school as a spouse . It happened a while ago and I've still been processing the comment because it's so damn sad. Our anonymous reader/commenter sounds like he's at the end of his rope. " I've never been more alone in my life, as the past 6 years has been every day spent with her. She's changed. My hope is she will come back after PA school is done. She's just not there," he wrote. There was more. He tried to be funny, but mostly it was sad. He's worried their marriage won't last. Communication is impossible. They don't see each other much. It's familiar. Every PA school spouse is nodding their head

Ah, the scenes of winter. This kind of thing happens every winter. There's alway a horror story. What else would we do the rest of the year in Maine if not complain about winter? I came out to move my car because there's a parking ban tonight. This is what downtown living is like in winter. No big deal. There's a huge city-owned parking area a block from the house. I'll just amble to the car and pull it down the hill. Today, my car was almost immobilized and unable to make that drive. You could see the flashing blue police lights before you could see anything wrong on Park Street, the road next to my house. There was one police SUV at the bottom of the hill because a woman's car had veered to the left, gone over the sidewalk and taken out a possibly-decorative fire call box. Portland: We're quaint. Higher up the hill, there was a second police cruiser behind my car. I could see a sedan had jumped about halfway across a sidewalk; I just wasn't sure if he'

Quasi-resolution No. 1: Play more games with these guys at the Bear. The Wife does *not* understand me. Gratuitous Daisy picture. This is not breaking news. Do not hold the presses. We knew this. TW, and much of the Western Hemisphere, takes the new year as a time for self-reflection, to further shine and hone the diamond that is life. And to her credit, TW comes up with laudable improvement goals such as volunteering more time and further defining personal aspirations. For me, a new year represents two things: 1. The start of tax return preparation; 2. Orange purchasing season. The naval oranges at Hannaford are amazing. I'm eating two a night at work. They are a glorious break from apples, which I normally eat hand over fist at my desk. I am that guy. Beyond that, a new year doesn't mean much. However, this flies in the face of orthodoxy. How can you possibly want to improve if you don't re-evaluate? There are two styles of change. The first is dramatic. You shave off all