Slowly, surely. Making my way back. So much to write. So much to ponder and cry over.
But…
Making my way back…
I’m BACK…
Yeppers- it’s that time again-training time- for the 2019 TCS New York City Marathon and most importantly raising funds for a charity I respect and bow down to-ST JUDE CHILDREN’S RESEARCH HOSPITAL!!
St Jude Children’s Research Hospital is an organization that strives to end childhood cancer. Families never receive a bill from St Jude for treatment, travel, housing or food, allowing parents to only worry about their child.Treatments invented at St Jude have helped pushed the overall childhood cancer survival rate to more than 80% since it opened 50 years ago. The goal of St Jude’s is to drive the overall survival rate for childhood cancer to 100%! St. Jude also freely shares the discoveries made through research, and every child saved at St. Jude means doctors and scientists worldwide can use that knowledge to save thousands more children.
Please donate and help me give a bit back to St Jude in appreciation for the wonderful support I received through my first Brooklyn Rock n Roll Half Marathon to my first 2018 TCS New York City Marathon but MOST importantly for the kids and families this organization helps.
For more information on St Jude please check out their website: http://www.stjude.org.
-On a side note:
2018 was the year I ran my first TCS New York City Marathon and the year I lost my mom to complications from surgery related to pancreatic cancer. My mom, Margarita, encouraged me to run the marathon years ago but I waited until 2018 to seriously train for it not knowing what was to come with her health. Mom pushed me to get in the training mileage runs throughout her stay and painful procedures in the hospital. Upon her return home for hospice care she continued to push and encourage me with training. I crossed that finish line on November 4th, 2018 and although my mom was not there to see it as she had passed the month before, her spirit was with me from the starting line to getting my medal at the finish. Cancer truly sucks!
Love you Butterfly
Please visit my fundraising page and thank you!
Acceptance and Resignation, stronger than a hammer but not weaker than the nail or…Sometimes they come back.
Mom, my mom, would often quote a verse to me during my moments of frustration intolerance with life not going according to my plan.
“Accept the things you cannot change…”
Oh lordy how those words bugged the crap out of me.
This is MY life, MY destiny, MY footprint on existing, MY, MY, and definitely MY!
I refused to accept, concede to, acknowledge or resign to her advice. Everything, absolutely everything can be changed with perseverance, determination and straight up ghetto refusal.
Naw man. Everything.
I have the power and ability to change, the perseverance to guide and shape while steering the helm of the wheel, the sole master of my world.
This is MY life, MY destiny, MY footprint on existing, MY, MY, and definitely MY!
Well…
HIM, yes, the one Noah built an ark for, the same one Moses climbed the mountain for and also the one whom Mary became pregnant for, put me in my place, disrupted my inner peace, laid down the law and let me know destiny belongs to no one but HIM.
Pancreatic cancer latched on to my mom and won’t let go.
Like a soft whisper, a gentle wind caressing a cheek,
A touch of cotton soaked in cold witch hazel against the face on a hot summer day,
Ice cream in a cone, silky like velvet, on the tongue
Satisfying that sweet tooth…
Pancreatic cancer latched on to my mom and won’t let go.
I’ve cried the same thousand tears that bent my lashes inward when I cried for Pi Patel.
Pi Patel passed into shadow…suddenly. No whisper no warning. No ice cream or witch hazel on a hot summer day. 
My mom is dying…
slowly in front of my being that longs to have her like I did back in the day when I was a baby and she was my mother taking care of me and working so hard to support a family that society deemed should be supported by a man but family’s man had long gone back to his country to find solace, peace and acceptance that didn’t exist in the new world he hoped to call home.
Enough.
Love my dad but this isn’t about him.
It’s about my mom
She thought at first it was a return of the stage 4 colon cancer of the past, because sometimes they come back. 
Which it did.
In another form, in another place
where it intends to stay
till death do us part.
Mom ACCEPTS the cancer.
Mom ACCEPTS the diagnosis.
Mom ACCEPTS…
And RESIGNS to let what will be, be.
And I resign to accept there are things that cannot be changed.
I so love you mom, my mom! 
St. Jude or Running a Marathon to Raise Donations…
Hello Followers,
If you remember, last year I trained like a Banshee to run in the Brooklyn Rock n Roll Half Marathon. My first half and my intro in fundraising for St Jude.
I had hoped to do the same for 2018 but unfortunately the Brooklyn Rock n Roll Half Marathon was cancelled!!!
Ok. What to do now? 
Tie St Jude into my first ever TCS NYC Marathon!!!!
Long runs and tapering have begun along with the sweat and tears of wtheck am I doing?
I’m gonna run a marathon and with the help of the one and only HIM (yes the Episcopalian in me is speaking), I’ll make my way across that finish line.
I remembered griping about that ‘registration fee’ for the TCS Marathon and although I knew it was coming, it was hard to lay out the money when it was due. That being said, I would like to raise the entry fee (plus a bit more) for St Jude Hospital. 
My initial modest goal of $300 was reached and surpassed today by two very generous co workers! Thank you Peeps! Although the goal was reached, I’d like to continue to raise funds until November 4th- the day of the Marathon! I would gladly appreciate any amount donated, no matter how big or small for I believe in the work this hospital does.
Here are some of their highlights:
- Families never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing or food — because all a family should worry about is helping their child live.
- Treatments invented at St. Jude have helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20% to more than 80% since it opened more than 50 years ago. St. Jude is working to drive the overall survival rate for childhood cancer to 90%, and they won’t stop until no child dies from cancer.
Please donate and help me give a bit back to St Jude in appreciation for being a wonderful support through my first 2018 Brooklyn Rock n Roll Half Marathon and most importantly for the kids and their families! 
Please use this link for donations: http://fundraising.stjude.org/site/TR?px=4395453&pg=personal&fr_id=90465
FUNDRAISING.STJUDE.ORG
Sometimes…or have a lot of time on hand.
‘Sometimes you need bad things to happen to inspire you to change and grow’
Sometimes…
Growth has no end or beginning.
Sometimes…
Change is constant with no restrictions, boundaries or cut offs.
Sometimes…
Inspiration comes from places least expected.
Sometimes…
Things happen for a reason.
Sometimes…
There’s no logic to why things happen.
Sometimes…
Bad things happen to good people.
Sometimes…
Bad things happen to bad people.
Sometimes…
Good things happen to good people.
Sometimes…
Nothing happens at all to anyone.
Sometimes…
The way to win a battle is to walk away.
Sometimes…
Walking away leads to the battle.
Sometimes…
Dark, rainy grey clouds bring a smile.
Sometimes…
White cotton candied clouds make you sick.
Sometimes…
Silence is golden.
Sometimes…
Screaming profanities at high volume is bliss.
Sometimes…
Bliss.
Sometimes…
Disruption.
Sometimes
“I may not be rich…but I have GOD”
Work, or the place I make money to sit in front of a desk, banging away at computer keys is not the place to be right now.
Diversity, cultural sensitivity, pay inequality, upward mobility-SQUASHED-like a bug meeting it’s maker in a leather shoe.
The people of colour are the worker bees. 
The people who have no colour are management.
The company we work for is plump and tasty on the outside with brand colours sashaying in the wind of possible funders, grants and donations.
The company we work for is sour, vinegar and rot on the inside sashaying our token employees in the wind of possible funders, grants and donations.
The company we believe in doesn’t give a crap about us.
Thirty five hour work weeks are just illusions on paper, for the thirty five is actually forty five and beyound.
Overtime hours only exists in hours we hope will be collected and applied to pseudo vacation time instead of paying actual overtime hours. O/T is too expensive for the worker bees and management must preserve their own salaries.
So, the worker bees press forward, out of ignorance, desperation, some content with their salaries while others strive forward through low moral, depression, separation, divorce, as management continues to sit on their thrones of comfort, affordability and feeling so blessed and thankful that their salaries afford them lavish vacations around the world while growing so fat of the backs of the worker bees.
“I may not be rich, but I have GOD”
He will set things right
right the wrongs
wrong the rights
Send a flood or fire to wash and burn the world of dirt, greed, and those who have everything while those who have nothing coexist right beside them.
-Enough. I am so tired.
I may not be rich…but I have GOD!
Smiling faces…or Reality Bites
I work with them and so do you…there’s no getting around it, no putting it on the side…you know who they are. 
They smile in your face, play the extrovert full of empathy that’s really apathy meanwhile you see the fakeness, the fake emotions while they shove you under the bus.
“Play the game” close confidents whisper in your ear. Nod your head, say yes and pamper their whimsical hysterical demands. Hey, they make more than you so suck it up.
When the time comes when enough is enough, do you go postal, cursing with eloquent profanity, blazing high pitched and on target as you sashay out the door?
Or do you smile, weakly, tuck the tail up where the sun can’t shine, walk backwards out the door, bowing and saying, “Oh so sorry. Me quit”.
Who has the answers to dealing with those ‘smiling faces’ 35 plus hours a week?
I don’t.
Actually, I do. 
From those packs of smiling hyenas there are those who shine through.
They are sincere…
They are supportive…
They are encouraging…
They are…
the coworkers you love to work with!
But always remember:
Work, werk, Work
I work on the weekends without a lunch break
Werk 
I work from the moment I get up till I close my eyes at night
Werk
I don’t get overtime hours but at times you’d think I do
Work
I work for something I believe in while others don’t
Work 
My salary does not correspond to the work I do
Work
Actually, my salary is the lowest on the workplace totem pole
Work.
Education titles don’t mean a thang if you don’t have that kiss ass swing
Work
Still waiting on the LORD to buy me that Mercedes benz
Werk 
I guess I’ll keep working till I’m in my grave
Work
Or from working, I’ll end up in my grave
Work
*** pictures from the World Wide Web
*pictures are not representative of the work I do BUT in my mind-Hell yeah.
Running in the rain…or Bling desperation
So…
I ran a half marathon-13.1 miles on Saturday.
I ran it on the mean streets, oops, the gentrified streets of Brooklyn.
The race started on the sidewalk of the cosmetically altered Botox on concrete gone wrong Brooklyn Museum and ended on the newly reinstalled wood weather treated planks of the boardwalk in the now Russian enclave of Coney Island.
So…
It was raining.
Not the drizzly refreshing kinda rain but the giant pouring rain drops slapping your head and oozing down your face kinda rain. The drizzly refreshing came towards the end but as soon as I crossed that finish line the slapping drops returned! My glorious finish was photographed in the arms of Peter Ciaccia, president of NYRR running events and a big supporter of those who are referred to as the ‘back of the packers’. In other words, back of the packers are the ones who finish the race long after the after post-race party has ended and the disgruntled looks from volunteers who had been out in the elements since 4am want to go home to a hot shower but are stuck out there waiting for your ass to cross the line, so they can break it down and cart the shit back to storage and finally…go home. 
So…
My first time running in the rain.
A brutal lesson in feeling downright accomplished at making it through the course then feeling soaking wet cold and miserable enough to forgo that Nathan’s hot dog and beer. All week leading up to running the half visions of hotdogs in buns slathered in sauerkraut and mustard danced in my head. Twirling round and round the hotdogs danced moving towards my mouth where slowly, they would be decimated, eaten and conquered.
So…
The vision of hot dogs was fleeting.
It was replaced by my yearning to get my soaking, wet butt home to stay under a hot shower until eternity or the hot water heater gave out.
So…
I ate pizza.
It wasn’t the same satisfaction of eating a dancing hot dog but it had to do. Two slices, plain, nothing fancy and it landed in my gut with a thud and stayed for two days. 
So much for running in the rain…or Bling desperation.
Feeling blue…or not feeling groovy
Sometimes feeling blue is ok
blue is ambiguous, hazy, vague and unclear 
feeling sad is not
sadness is pretty much clear, singled out with pity parties thrown but not in your honour
Sometimes feeling blue is ok
feeling blue its totally acceptable-look how many songs about being blue are out there
feeling sad is not 
people run away as if you’ve contracted the plague -sadness, we all know is highly contagious
Sometimes feeling blue is ok
blue is an acceptable colour, blue skies, blue eyes, blueberries even playing the blues has colour
feeling sad is not
sad is gloomy and dark, no colour hues like blue just tears, frowns and being down 
Sometimes feeling blue is ok
like when long standing relationships end because the glitter that kept them going has been thrown and scattered so many times there’s just nothing left
feeling sad is not
especially when you go around trying to pick up those specks of glitter and end up with dust bunnies attached
Sometimes feeling blue is ok 
when it rains on your parade and then, behold, the sun comes through bringing fairies and yellow rays of sun
feeling sad is not
when you try to open an umbrella to starve off the rain on your parade and the wind turns the umbrella inside out and you’re too busy cursing and fighting with the wind and you accidentally knock a fairy upside the head along with the single yellow ray of sun that was guiding it
Sometimes feeling blue is ok
When you buy a hot dog to make you feel better cause the stress at work is bringing you down
Feeling sad is not
you forgot to order sauerkraut with that hotdog and once you take a bite, the bun is stale and you already walked too far from the vendor to run back and curse him out
Sometimes feeling blue is ok
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