Bring on the Snickerdoodles

Last week I ran the Seattle Marathon. I happen to love Seattle very much and enjoy running in the city. The course is beautiful and I encourage anyone who is interested in running a marathon to consider it. My body felt surprisingly good throughout most of the run and I have recovered much faster than I have in the past. That is a good sign for April's event. I was worried that I would run Seattle and at the finish feel like I had made a big mistake by thinking I could run four in four days. Luckily, that was not the case.

So Christmas is here again and it is time to decorate and bake cookies. My favorite are snickerdoodles and I love to come home after a long-or a short run- and have a "few" with hot cider or coffee. For the past couple of years I have had a "baking day" with one of my teachers from high school. She became more than a teacher to me in my junior year of high school when I lived with her family for almost the entire year. A lot of people don't know this about me but I was headed down the wrong path as a teen and might have led a completely different life if it weren't for a number of people who stepped in and helped to change course. This particular family became a major part of my foundation for who I am today. I might not be a runner if it weren't for them.

I would spend the week at their house and go home on the weekends. At first it was like another world and felt as if I was part of a t.v. family. You know the type of family where violence and drugs don't exist and the homes don't have holes in the walls from someone using them as punching bags. They still have problems but they tend to be solved in 30 minutes or less and everyone says "I'm sorry" and "I love you" and blah blah blah. I mean, give me a break, that is so not real. I kept thinking that at any moment everything was just going to blow up and the true family was going to come out. But it never happened. They genuinely loved and respected each other. And it was a home of compassion and laughter. There were rules too which I actually liked. I felt important and wanted-the way all kids should feel.

I can't say that my life has been perfect since that year-I have definitely taken some wrong turns. But if I compare my life to a big stack of cookies, where the crumbly ones sometimes get placed in the middle or fall off the top and cause the stack of cookies to topple over-they are the big cookie-the one that is always there one the bottom-the sturdy cookie that you can always rebuild on.

Hopefully I will write again before Christmas but I wish everyone well in the coming weeks as we are all putting up our trees, decorating and baking- spending time with those that are important to us. In other words, BRING ON THE SNICKERDOODLES!

Cheers!

Patty