My Normal.

In case y’all were wondering what I was really up to while we were at the cabin last week, the answer is a whole lot of writing.  Besides the guest post I wrote, I’ve got a new collab/project/gig going on with the Minnesota Beer Activists.  It’s called You’re Bringing What to My Party?! and it’s a bi-weekly column where Marcus and I taste beer.  You should probably read the first one.

Scene.

Last week I ran a total of nine miles, spread out over three runs.

Before you start dancing in the streets on my behalf (and I so love that you would do that for me), don’t and know that I am not 100% healed yet.

In fact, I wouldn’t even say that I’m at 90% healed.  80% would probably fall into the category of “ambitious.”

But I can run for three miles and my foot will not threaten to explode.  Actually it will feel pretty much…okay.  And then for the 6-8 hours after that, it will sulk and give me hell.  But when I wake up in the morning, it feels pain-free once more.

This is apparently an appropriate and natural cycle, so it counts as success in my book right now.

I almost cried on Saturday.  No, not when I was running.  Marcus and I were driving to Indeed’s tap room to enjoy a pre-wedding beer in the sun and as we were winding through the streets of Northeast Minneapolis, I was actioning a mental slideshow of the day’s events.

And then it hit me.

This is normal.

God, I’m crying right now typing this because it sounds so trivial and stupid.  But as I was ticking through the day’s events: Running, breakfast, shower, blogging…” a wave of recognition broadsided me like a tsunami and threw me flat on my back.

This is what normal feels like.  This is what has been so conspicuously absent from my life for the last two months.

Except really, it has been much longer than that.  For convenience, I usually count from Grandma’s when I’m talking about my injury because I Hurt A Different Foot.  But if you include the time I spent off of my right foot for That Other Tendonitis, I’ve been completely off of it for closer to three months.  With a special intermission from mid-May to June where I was mostly running but sometimes not.

So if we’re going that route, for the past four months I have been mostly Not Running with Some Running scattered in here and there when my body could handle it.

All the while, I’ve been living in this post-Grandma’s DNF world, trying to figure out whether or not I need to have a quarter-life crisis in eight days.  The answer is pretty damn simple.  I’m not having a crisis.  I don’t even need a crisis.

I just desperately need Normal back.

And we can’t tell if it’s The Magic Light, the addition of a second Cyborg Band-Aid or the leg massage, but it seems that something is finally starting to stick.  Two months later.

Today at physical therapy, Eric cheerfully informed me (during what was truly the massage from hell) that he had the highest grip strength of everyone in his physical therapy class including the body builder.

And now that you have that visual, imagine him telling me that in the middle of the leg massage from hell.

It was that horrifying.

My reward.  Look.

Obviously.  Just can’t get enough of those things.  Quite possibly the adult version of a sticker at the doctor’s office.