9 miles! Subhanallah!!

(just 4 more miles to go! EEEEEEEEE!)

*collapses*

You know you’re blessed when you have people who are willing to resort to violence for you.

In the past few weeks I’ve been asked by three separate friends if I needed them to beat up someone on my behalf. Aw, shucks. Thanks guys but the only person in my life causing me harm is me. And somehow I think beating me up to fix that would be counterproductive. Just maybe. ;) (though if things don't get better in a few weeks, I may reconsider)

That said, I think I should dedicate this blog to my present-day heroes – the ones who keep trying to save me from myself.

The Big Bro: The one member of my family who understands my need to push myself as far as I can humanly go. Some people have sympathy pains, bro has sympathy scars –jagged edges that happen to crisscross the same limbs that are currently giving me so much grief. While everyone else in the family keeps trying to browbeat, guilt trip and threaten me out of my half-marathon endeavor, the bro only does damage control. In the past couple days he’s bequeathed me a knee wrap, ice packs, a Camelbak, and lots of stern advice. Thanks bro. I appreciate the support. Even if you do think I’m crazy. Even if you know that I’ll never get far away enough from the demons that I’m running from. Even if you know I cause myself pain with each step. You let me do what I need to do and I appreciate it.

The J-man: As much as I was in a total haze in Philly, I was alive enough to notice how doggedly you tried to make me smile. With lemon popsicles, Scrabble games, bean pies (!), forest hikes and laughing at the top of your lungs, yours was a valiant effort to cheer up a friend. And though I defied your best efforts (sorry yo, I’m a stubborn girl) I did appreciate how hard you tried.

My Nadia: I love how you feel the emotions that I don’t let myself feel. How you are angry for me when I can’t be bothered to be angry. Sad for me when I refuse to be sad. And happy for me when I’m too jaded to be happy. You really are the most generous and selfless soul I know and I love you for it.

My Fan Club: Hahaha, no there isn’t an official one. Just random people strung out across the globe who lovingly infuse me with optimism when I’ve bled out. They include, but are not limited to: Abez, T, Hem, Knicq, A, Shalu, Peter, Brian, Rema, F, Maria, Ibs, Fizzy, and the list goes on. I love that you keep rooting for me even though I’m the mangiest underdog around.

Thank you all, from the orneriest damsel in distress you'll ever have the displeasure of rescuing. ;)

Today is a low morale day. I’ve gotten snagged on the 8 mile mark. This is the second time I’ve headed out to run it and not succeeded for one reason or another. I’m cutting it pretty close with my half-marathon training as it is, ramping up over 25% per week when you’re supposed to only do 10%, so I don’t have time to work through this roadblock slowly.

Three days back, I was still on schedule for the 8 mile run. I woke up early, but instead of running, I ended up spending most of my day helping my elder brother with some home repairs. But rather than miss another day, I decided to wait till it was cooler in the evening and run then. At around 7:30 I kitted up and headed out.

It wasn’t a bad run, especially considering the fact that I forgot my MP3 player and had to listen to my own breathing for the duration. But I forgot that The Boonies – the latest city I’m staying in – is NOT Chicago. I’m not even actually in The Boonies proper, I’m in Unincorporated Boonies. This is practically The Country. It’s single lane roads, spotty sidewalks, lots of forest, and… as I soon figured out – NO STREET LIGHTS.

Now, I’m no scaredy cat. I kinda lean the other way with a slightly problematic disregard of danger and personal welfare. But a lone female Muzlum, running on dark country roads, when your neighbors are, for lack of a better word, rednecks with hunting dogs, just didn’t seem all that smart. So after one 4 mile lap, I headed in. And just in time too, as my elder brother had decided he had humored my insanity enough and was driving out to find me.

So much for the 8 miler. Then today:

First, I woke up late. My rare and amusing stress-induced narcolepsy is gone and I’m back to being an insomniac. That means I got about four hours of patchy sleep last night before I woke late and sluggishly got ready for my run. After giving myself an hour to digest my breakfast of tea, banana and piece of toast – as whatever I eat before I run, no matter how light, comes back to haunt me once I hit a certain fatigue level - I got myself together and stumbled out the door. What time was this? Oh, just dead noon, when the sun is at its highest point.

This was a BAD run. I had a stitch in my side way too early. That my legs will ache and my lungs will burn right from the get-go is a given, but I don’t expect core pain until I’ve passed the 6 mile mark. Today I had a sharp stabbing sensation above my pelvis bone from the second mile, plus immediate heartburn. And shortly after, I realized I had a killer blister on my right foot. I had to slow to a walk many times, and that is backsliding for me when I need to be at the point where it’s all running, and no walking.

And to make it worse, I got lost on the tail end of the first lap. Damn these confusing country roads. I was focusing so hard on putting one foot in front of the next and tuning out the hot sun and pain that I ran right past my turn. I ended up going a mile out of my way (uphill!) before I realized I had never seen any of the farms I was now running past and had to turn around.

With the heat, pain and now shattered morale, I decided to curb this run as well and ducked back home after only 5 miles.

Sigh.

This is a total bummer. And with the pain in my right knee (fractured cartilage) and my left thigh (ruptured adductor) only getting more pressing as I add on the miles, I realize it’s only going to get harder. But I’m not giving in yet. I’ve come this far, and I’m not going to stop till they have to take me off the track on a stretcher. That’s not ideal though so I’ve got to make sure that I’m doing everything I can to lessen the difficulty. That means being much more diligent about icing the swelling out of my knee and leg, taking regular anti-inflammatory meds, and following a runner’s diet instead of my usual ‘whatever’s around’ grazing.

Pray I make it. I’ve only got two more weeks to go!

I think it’s time for me to pull a Britney Spears. Before you get any weird ideas and stage an underwear-flavored intervention, let me specify which of the singer’s antics I’m referring to - her drastic and self-destructive hair changes.

See, for the past year I was possessed by some strange desire to quit using my hair to communicate to my parents exactly HOW hopeless I am. My father, bless him, is rather an old fashioned sort. He thinks girls are supposed to have long hair. It’s only children and horrible bra-less feminists who have ‘cut their wings’ – to translate his Urdu metaphor for short hair. All decent and sane women should have long hair, preferably worn in a modest braid. Maturing from a bald headed little toddler to a bob-cut child, to a marriageable woman (as this is the goal of female existence?) involves growing your hair out. By the time a girl hits her proper ripeness, she should have enough hair to style into that ridiculous updo that serves as a load bearing structure on her wedding day.

So, of course, me, being the nonconformist brat that I am, have regularly taken a scissors to any such hopes. My hair has morphing predilections that rival Harry Potter’s Tonks, and in a given year will cover a range of colors and has never been the same cut twice. And as blasphemous as my behavior may be in desi cultural terms, religiously, it’s not actually a problem. My poor old dad can’t say much. Or rather, he can say all he likes, but I don’t have to toe it. :P Sometimes wearing hijab has its perks, as it puts me above hirsutical reproach. “As long as I cover it, you can’t complain.” ;)

But lack of hijab friendly salons, poverty and mild filial remorse had kept me from my regular chop jobs this year. I had one proper cut long ago, and have since just let it grow in. Now that I’m looking ... respectable ... *GAG* I feel like the time has come to give it a serious revamp. You see, my dad is beginning to look rather wistful. He's got a goofy smile on his face when he sees me and has been randomly sneaking young bachelors into conversation. Even my mom, usually the refreshingly ambitionless of the two, yesterday tried very seriously to get me to go to Pakistan at the end of the summer. Why? To have my wedding clothes made. “Just in case!” And before you guys shoot off some congratulatory comments, let me clarify, no I am NOT getting married. As far as I know anyways. *suspicious look* I don’t think I’ve pushed my parents to the point where they’d punk me with shotgun wedding … yet. The only thing I can think that’s put the crazy idea into my parents’ heads is my hair. It looks … marriageable. Bah!

So, the time has come to take a weedwhacker and some dye to the marriageable mane – and the hope that grows with it. And for this, I am taking suggestions. What shall I do with my hair? Send me suggestions by way of pictures. It doesn’t matter if most of you have no idea what I look like. I’ve got a boringly generic face and unexceptional features. Most styles work fine on me. And if it doesn't, well, that's what hijab's for ;)

When I was a kid, there were a lot of things I was resentful about. That I had to be a girl – big bummer. That I had to brush my hair – totally wrong. And one of the crowning injustices – that I was born in the modern era.

You see, little Owl (picture the girl from Monsters Inc) wanted to live in the Olde Days. I would have none of this modern foppery. Nintendos appealed to me not. I wanted a tin soldiers! And an ingeniously fashioned corn-cob dollie that could also, in a pinch, serve as a door jamb and a boomerang. And I wanted funny clothes, an accent, and to LIVE in black and white.

Er, yeah, did I mention, it wasn’t until I was about 10 when that I figured out that um, there WAS color, back in the olde days. My pea brain had decided that the reason why movies and photos from the olde days were black and white was cuz color hadn’t been invented then. And I don’t mean color photography. I mean color FULL STOP. The world was black and white. And that just seemed SO cool!

And as far as the clothes go, well, I think back then I had forgotten that I was A. a kid, and B. A girl kid, because I think I imagined my Olde Days costume would be a jerkin, a sword, pantaloons, leather boots and a neato hat. Because everyone was a pirate back then, donchaknow. And I’d also have a British accent. Because America used to be Britain, as I’d figured out, so me 300 years ago would be a little British pirate midget person. Who wouldn’t be charmed by that!

I hadn’t heard anything about school in the Olde Days (governments also weren’t invented yet), so I figured there wasn’t any. Score! I’d spend my days rambling in the forests like an Indian, baking bread and fashioning cannons from peat moss or somesuch. It would be GRAND! And if I got bored, I’d go to war.

I don’t know when I let go of this worthy dream. Though I do remember the sad and SHOCKING day someone explained to me why movies and photos from the past were in black and white (limited technology, how boring). But I think I must have kept some part of it, because to this day I have a strong inclination for speaking in olde timey English and using turn of phrases that were retired long ago.

Just today, I told my mother that I had a gentleman’s agreement with the cockroaches in the kitchen. They wouldn’t run onto me and try and get in my nose and I wouldn’t smash them with a shoe. Forsooth! (more on my roach arrangement in a later blog)

And I often am mistaken for a Canadian (EH!) because of my use of aye. “You’ll be wanting this later, aye?” Pishtosh. I amn’t Canadian in the slightest. I haven’t got a toque and I don’t like bacon.

And then there are all sorts of outdated words and metaphors that my antique-loving subconscious has picked up along the way. Laborious for hardworking, betwixt for between and the odd zounds! Not to mention, Abez and I strangely refer to each other as thee. We speak with a strange tongue, methinks, and yet nought can persuade me from this predilection.

And the end result. Folks don’t understand what I’m on about. Or they think me off my rocker. Which is a likelier case. Alas that I have no nepenthe to ease my sorrow. If only everyone spoke in Olde Timey English, and I got to wear pantaloons, and didn’t have to brush my hair. What a happy world it would be. Od’s bodkin!

I finally feel like I’m back to normal. I’d been sleep walking through the metaphoric equivalent of jello mixed with rubber cement, flavored with fear, sprinkled with self doubt, and infused with sadness. And now I am DONE.

Seriously, I feel like I’ve popped out of the goop with a great corking POP and now I’m back on land, in the sun, and the fresh air. How do I know this? Well, my brain is back to spinning confections of comical cynicism of the kind you all once knew and loved. Aw yeaaaaaaaa. Watch out now kids. ;)

But alas, I shant write about my beef. I’m not going to bore you all with the gory details. Firstly, it’s all very humdrum once you put it in words. Not half so dramatic as when you’re drowning in the thick of it. It’ll be far more awe inspiring if I just leave it all vague and mysterious like. Neeenoooneeenooneenooo. Ya dig. And then, you know, it’s just not worth any more of my time. I got way better things to do.

Like contemplate how to write a whizbang of a CV. A CV, for those of you who aren’t as cosmopolitan as I *nose in air* is a fancy resume. So I’ve been told. Cuz I joined the professional world abroad, that’s my default term for the piece of paper where I try to list my coolness. And apparently, fail miserably.

See, I think I’ve finally outgrown my CV. The lovely unchanged document that got me my first four jobs is no longer passing muster (or is it mustard? Do you pass mustard or cut it? Strangely, both seem kind of noxious when I think about it. On a side, side-note, you know your writing is rusty when you can’t get your metaphors right). I’ve been applying for jobs with my shiny new status as a FELLOW (if I put it in all caps, you will understand that I mean FELLOW as in of a Fellowship of the Rings, not fellow – a post-op female gone male. Cuz, for all my tomboyishness, I don’t wanna be a boy, thankee kindly). Yes, so after finishing my fancy year at the Ivy League fellowship, I thought I’d be a shoe-in for some high class work. You know, president of the world type stuff. And if not that, maybe Queen of Effortless Snarkitude, or I guess, maybe, science desk editor. But no such luck. No one wants me. Boo.

So I must, of course, blame it on my CV. Cuz it’s not like I’m not awesome. Clearly, I am. (Btw, if I say this often enough, while swinging a pendulum before you, you will believe it, no?) So it is this document’s fault, and the document must be fixed!

But you know what that entails… self aggrandizing. GROSS. I know. I would NEVER do anything like that, awesome as I am. It is TOTALLY beneath me and an insult to my stated awesomeness. I would never DEIGN to toot my own horn, that is so arrogant and I am but a humble soul.

Ok, fine, maybe not. Yes, this blog really is just a glorified platform for my personality and the place where I can live out all my middle-child fantasies of finally being the center of attention. Yes, my awesomeness does include this high level of painful but again, humble, self actualization. *takes a gentle bow*

But… and you knew there was a but coming… as much as I can apparently posture and put myself on the stage here, and occasionally there, for the most part, I’m actually VERY ... Shy? I don’t know if that’s the word. I don’t like talking about my supposed accomplishments. Not because I possess Dali Lama-like humility. But because I’m afraid that if I try and describe them in writing, they’ll actually appear as crappy as I fear they might be.

Take for instance, listing your skills. Saying that I can operate a bunch of software, write, research and edit is pretty unimpressive. I mean, doesn’t every journalist do that? Would I be applying for the job if I couldn’t? What I feel like I need to do in this section is list something some startlingly awesome, like a super hero ability, that they won’t even need to read the rest of my CV and hire me on the spot. But alas, I have none - if you don't count my superhero ability to harm myself in harmless situations. In lieu of that though, maybe I should just list my skillz instead. Like the following:

Master Sarcaster – I am a joy to have in any office cuz I keep it fun. Seriously. You want me.

InTERnetS – I can internet like no body’s business. If it's on the net, I can find it.

Bull****ing – If I don’t know about something, I can do a fairly passable go at convincing you that I do. And I can put in writing so glossily that no one will know that five minutes prior to starting work on the piece, I hadn’t even heard of the technology/country/event etc. Scary, no? As a full fledged member of the media, I exhort you, NEVER TRUST THE MEDIA!

Morphing – I’m disturbingly adaptable. I can go from playing the buffoon to whacking you upside the head with my take-no-prisoners office management ability in seconds. Oh, and I blend into the furniture. And I pass for a whole messload of nationalities and ethnicities, so I'm handy when you need a token person of ethnic extraction around to prove your diversity. I contain multitudes!

Impersonations – I’m not the best with languages, but I can imitate people I know pretty well. It’s always a handy parlor trick when things get slow at the office.

But somehow, methinks this violates CV formatting. Firstly, if it's spelled wrong, as skillz is, it probably shouldn't be shown to prospective employers of whom you are trying to convince of your language skills. Secondly, it's just not done. You know.

So if I can’t just tell the truth for what I’m really good at, then that leaves me the other option – fluffing things up. And I am deathly afraid of being called out for exaggerating. So much of CV and resume writing is really just making pretty ordinary things sound ever so fancy.

“Part of my responsibilities included serving as a crucial structural element in the architecture of our corporate headquarters. Through my very presence alone I lent security and stability to the office environment, not only at the one desk I operated at, but metaphorically, to all desks in all places. Sure, some may say I was just a glorified paperweight, but in actuality, I was the lodestone for the company, if not, may I say, the world.”

You get my drift? And how do you explain that you are really good being able to absorb just enough information from a quick immersion to spin off a story that will bamboozle the layman and only slightly offend the insider, in record time? I am basically, a human sponge. I quickly digest, process, and if this metaphoric line wasn’t gross enough for you, regurgitate vast quantities of information with absolutely no residual benefit. I can learn things extremely quickly, and keep them in my brain as long as it takes for me to hammer out a piece or edit with a degree of scrutiny, before returning back to vacuous goofball in sheer minutes. It’s not something I’m particularly proud of, hence my reticence to putting it on paper.

And then, most of the stuff one does or has done at work is pretty blah. I read. I write. I research. I do whatever needs done. Sometimes that may mean swooping in at the last minute to save our newspaper from a frontpage science journalism catastrophe so great it would rival that of Bat Boy Meets Big Foot For Drinks At Fountain Of Youth. But mostly, it means just a regular stream of news writing that isn’t Pulitzer Prize Winning stuff, but nor is it Immediate Deportation Material. That’s actually a pretty good accomplishment for a journalist – I’ve yet to get any of my publications sued or myself arrested – and its not from lack of trying. Is being reliably boring ok?

I dunno. I may not be getting jobs with my current CV, but methinks that if I rewrite it according to the abovementioned mischievous thoughts, I may actually be one of the three big Ins – institutionalized, incarcerated or incinerated.

Not so good.

I think I’ve forgotten how to write. Everything paragraph I wrestle into words comes out garbled and childish. I lose my focus half way and can’t pin down a train of thought. The literary style I follow can only be described as schizophrenic, morphing mid sentence across genres. So you will all please pardon that this blog hasn’t had an entry worth reading in weeks.

But I am working on fixing it. I’m marooning myself for a little while and maybe some intelligible writing will come out of it, if not a little peace of mind. If you hang in there with me, Inshallah this blog and it's problematic author, will be back to normal soon. God willing.

Thank God for good friends.

For the friend who messaged me one stifling afternoon when I was totally lost with the words: “I had a bad feeling. Are you alright?”. How did you know to ask?

For the friend who held up the mirror so aptly with her statement of “It’s easier to be angry because it saves you from being what you really are - sad.”

For the brotherfriend who grabbed me in a bear-hug that in seconds reduced me to a small, snuffling little girl again – though this time, I welcomed it.

For the friend who whisked me away for a weekend of kayaking and communing. Thank you love, you’re always an island of serenity when I’m floundering in deep dark waters.

For the friend who saw through my metronomic - “I’m fine” and answered – “No you aren’t, but Inshallah you soon will be.”

For the sisterfriend who knew the very words to say – “Be better, for me, because I know what you won’t do for yourself, you’ll do if I ask.”

For the friend who always sees what I can’t – the good in me. Bhai, if I could only see myself with your eyes, I would be set.

For the friends who expect better when all I want to be is small and ugly.

Alhamdulillah.