Eva Marie and Me

I’m that neighbor. The one just now putting away my Christmas decorations. I usually start the taking down process around Epiphany. Unlike the Wise Men, I don’t find the Baby Jesus. I find that Christmas was over three weeks ago and a brand new year has started.

I’m also a hoarder. I was folding away all those gift bags to use again next year. I discovered one I had forgotten about from a friend. This friend always gives me unusual gifts.  I imagine her moving through a store until she finds something she can weave a good story around. I had already knocked out the Bailey’s Irish Cream that was in the bag at a tailgate a few weeks earlier.

Something else was left in the bag. An Eva Marie action figure. I can’t remember the story my friend had told about the WWE doll, but Eva Marie would go beside the Mr. Potato Head and Underdog bobble heads from Christmases past. I adjusted the figure's movable joints to sit on my shelf. She looked exactly like something out that children’s book, Elf on a Shelf; the story that describes how Santa's "scout elves" hide in people's homes to watch over events and report back to Santa who’s naughty and nice. 

Without knowing it, my friend had given me an accountability partner that would stay up year around. My little action figure reminds me to move every day. Do something whether it's running, strength training, or getting up and away from my work desk. Just move. I may never rock the abs, tatts, or bikini, but Eva Marie reminds me I can be an action figure every day.Underdog just makes me smile.

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It's New Year's But It Feels Like July 1

The upside of cracking open a new notebook each month is there really is no difference from one month to the next. I have the same experience on January 1 as I do July 1. It's like Anne Lamott tweeted earlier this morning, “Another word for New Year's Day is "Thursday." 

My notebooks are a variation on a practice I read about in Natalie Goldberg’s Writing down the Bones. I buy a different notebook each month and fill it up with my thoughts and observations. I also note my runs and tape my race bibs in there; so far, I’m planning for January to hold my Rogue 10K bib, February to hold my Austin Half Marathon bib, and a fall month to hold my tenth marathon bib. Today was supposed to have my Commitment Day 5K bib pinned in, but the outdoor portion was cancelled due to weather; always a good idea to keep Central Texas drivers off the road in a wintry mix.

Last night, I started reading through my notebooks from 2014. I usually pour a glass of red wine and settle in for a few hours. I made it through April. I didn’t want to read any further. Not because it was such a horrible year, although it did include my dad passing away from complications due to Alzheimer’s, but that I was tired of looking back. Most of what I worried and wrote about didn’t happen and if it did, it didn’t happen like I thought it would. A lot of my problems had solutions I never imagined. Wonderful solutions. I was ready to fill new blank notebooks and put 2014 to bed.

If I have a resolution, it’s a continuing one, to consistently keep the commitments I make to myself. I leafed through a 2014 calendar that I unpinned from my wall today. I crossed a line through the date squares and recorded the miles I ran or a strength or cross training sessions I completed in them. Some months and weeks were better than others were. I’m sure if I looked back at my notebooks those squares would correlate to entries that bragged about weight loss and productive workdays. Commitment in one area usually dominoes into other areas. So, I kept my promise to run today despite the weather and eat a bowl of black-eyed peas and greens. It's Thursday and I still have thirty days to go in my Grumpy Cat notebook.