Thoughts on life.

{This picture was taken at the La Jolla 5k}

I started running in seventh grade. I started running because I joined the track team. I joined the track team because I wanted to fit in. All of my friends (we were the cool-dorks) were on sports teams. Much to my dismay, I was not even talented enough to make the A or B team of volleyball or basketball. Well, the track team was in such dyer need for participants that anyone that wanted to made it. So I made it.

We ran. We ran, we ran and we ran some more. I hated it. Every step was like agony, but I so wanted to right to say I was in "Athletics" and not just PE. So I ran. And I just kept on doing it.

Years passed and I would run during tennis or cheer practice (I did make those teams...thank goodness).

I ran in college, because I often liked boys that liked to run. So I did.

I ran when RT and I first started dating because it impressed him.

I started running again after Gia was born. I started running to shed those 70+ pounds I had packed on. I started running to find that body again.

Then it just continued. Sometimes I would run because my post partum hormones were making me crazy. Sometimes I would run because I felt bad about myself. Sometimes I would run because I felt good about myself. Sometimes I would run to escape.

But I just kept on running.

This past weekend I ran the Parkway Half Marathon. At mile four my groin went out. The pain was pretty bad. And yet, I finished.

Running: I started to fit in. I continued because it was cool. I finished for me.

I am pretty sure this makes me a bad Catholic.

Lent. —The Teutonic word Lent, which we employ to denote the forty days' fast preceding Easter, originally meant no more than the spring season. Still it has been used from the Anglo-Saxon period to translate the more significant Latin term quadragesima (Fr. careme, It. quaresima, Span. cuaresma), meaning the "forty days", or more literally the "fortieth day". This in turn imitated the Greek name for Lent, tessarakostē (fortieth), a word formed on the analogy of Pentecost (pentēkostē), which last was in use for the Jewish festival before New-Testament times. This etymology, as we shall see, is of some little importance in explaining the early developments of the Easter fast. Well Ralph and I decided that this year we would not be "giving up" a worldly vice for lent. Seriously, other than caffeine they are all gone. We are two working parents. Caffeine. Is. Going. No. Where. And really, how does caffeine take you away from God?

In Post Vatican II days, Catholics believe that you should not eat meat on Fridays. We try to strictly adhere to this. So, for the past three years every Friday night of Lent I make Cioppino. My struggle? I think that I am supposed to view this as some sort of sacrifice....instead there is nothing that graces my table with more glory than the lovely said Cioppino.

Bad Catholic? a) Did not give up anything for Lent b) see said sacrifice (no meat on Fridays) as a treat. Oh, and after we ate Cioppino, we left Ms. G with a babysitter and went to go see Doubt....which again I think would add c) went to see Doubt as another sin.

Any thoughts?