On July 4th, 1998, I found out I was pregnant. My period was a couple of days late and there was a huge jug of vodka and cranberry waiting at a party with my name on it. Late periods and vodka don’t mix, so I took a test. Don’t worry, friends don’t let friends’ liquor go to waste.

My husband and I had closed on, and began to renovate, our first house in February, 1998. We got a puppy in May and the pregnancy news came just before our first anniversary that August.

At the time, we both had great jobs. We both worked together for a successful local business. It was a mom and pop corporation…big responsibilities with a family atmosphere. It was intense work, but I enjoyed it.

Just before Christmas that year, my pregnant self said goodbye to my co-workers for an extended holiday vacation. I never came back to work. Our daughter was born 10 weeks early on December 29th.

One preemie led to two and that second one? Well, he came complete with problems galore. I stopped working in the corporate world and, instead, became a nurse, physical therapist, occupational therapist and occasional Heimlich provider. I walked around with a phone attached to my ear listening to a permanent loop of health insurance voice systems.

Two years ago, when my son was in Kindergarten, I was offered a unique opportunity to work at the school as a teacher’s aide during the hours he attended. It worked out great. And last year, when he was at school all day and eating in the cafeteria for the first time, I became a lunch lady. That Heimlich thing? Well, it doesn’t always work if you’re not there to do it.

But, now my son is going into the second grade. He has made advances we never thought possible, one of which is clearing food from his mouth before he chokes on it. My daughter will be in middle school and my mom recently moved back to our neighborhood after many years away. Clearly, I’m running out of reasons to hang out with my children all day.

As much as I would love to be a housewife, take care of my home and laundry, plan meals and otherwise be organized instead of chaotic all the time, those things don’t pay the bills.

We have been struggling for a long time. My car is 13 years old and sometimes the doors don’t open and the horn doesn’t work, which totally gets in the way of me telling people what bad drivers they are.

Our washer and dryer are not long for this world, our computers are starting to implode and the stove is like a hormonal woman and only cooks when it wants to.

I have committed to the school until 2011. Basically, I have a year. I have a year to decide what I want to be when I grow up. I am almost 40 and though I’m not afraid to go back to school, I just don’t know what I want to do when I get there.

I want to write, I want to design, I want to be creative. I want to be passionate about something in the way I have been passionate about my children. I want to be fulfilled.

I also want to pay the bills and I just don’t know if the two go hand in hand.

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Five cans of green, spray paint: $24.00.

Two gallons of white, ceiling paint: $38.00.

One box of sand for texturizing: $4.00.

Ending up with one white toe and permanent flip-flops: Priceless.

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One of the best things about being a blogger is that I am my own editor. Some people may cringe (Hi, Amie!) when they see my run-on sentences, my poor punctuation and my-over-use-of-hyphens, but I don’t have to type right if I don’t want to. I realize this makes me sound like a child, but whatever. Nanny-nanny-boo-boo.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t cringe when I read other blogs (come on, people, use your spell-check) or hear people say things like, “a-whole-nother”. Seriously. Kill me now.

Now, I need my readers to settle a dispute between me and two of my friends about a statement people frequently make. Here goes…

I say, “All of a sudden”. Keep in mind, the “a” does not come out like a Canadian, “eh”, but more of a Midwestern, “uh”. One of my friends says this makes me sound not Canadian, and not Midwestern, but rather West Virgina holler-like.

My friend Bean, says, “All the sudden”. I think this sounds Midwestern. We tend to leave out “of” and “to be”. Instead we say, “The car needs washed”. I am proud to be a corn-fed, Midwestern, but this just doesn’t sound right to me.

My friend Amy, says, “All of the sudden”. I still think it’s wrong, but I will give her extra credit for putting an “of” in there.

We have spent hours debating this. Please, people, settle this for me.

Tell them I’m right!

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I like to run.

Don’t get the wrong idea, I am not an athlete. I don’t run long distance races or have anything that remotely resembles a runner’s body. I have been away from running for many months and I look more like a blob than something long and lean. I want to get back to it.

But, in recent years I have dealt with a lot of pain in my feet when I take to the streets (or the treadmill, for that matter). I have spent many mornings hobbling out of bed, reaching for my dresser to lean on so I can stretch my calf to alleviate some of the tightness.

The best solution was to ice it, but if you have never rolled a frozen water bottle around under the arch of your foot, you don’t know what uncomfortable really is.

A couple of months ago I read an article in the newspaper about running barefoot. It intrigued me. The proponents of barefoot running say that it’s how humans were meant to run, which makes perfect sense to me.

When you run barefoot, you are forced to stop slamming your heel into the pavement because it hurts too much. You compensate for the pain and shift your landing to the forefoot. While researching it further, I read that the technology in today’s running shoes simply hides the pain of a shoe-wearer’s heel-strike.

I thought about it more. All of my friends who are distance runners have had injuries. Plantar Fasciitis, Achilles pain and aching knees are the norm. I even know someone who lost all of his toenails. Back in the 70’s, when shoes were minimal, I never heard of those things happening.

So, I tried it. Not on the open road, but on my treadmill. My foot fell at a completely different spot, my stride was altered and I had a lot more endurance. After a while I began to feel blisters forming on the balls of my feet, so I stopped and put shoes on. And with shoes on feet, just like that, I went back to firmly landing on my heel.

After my barefoot run I was sore…in a totally good way. My calves hurt because I actually used them, but other than the blisters, my feet were in pretty good shape.

Now my husband would probably rather die than look like a barefoot hippie running down the road, but I don’t care about what people think if it means I won’t be in pain anymore. Unfortunately, I can’t imagine running without shoes on outside. It’s not the rocks that scare me, it’s the roadkill. For real.

So I started looking into barefoot, or minimalist, running shoes. Something without the shock absorbing heel so I will be forced to land the way a human should. From what I read, the best shoe for this is called the Vibram Five Finger.

Only, it’s not five fingers, it’s five toes. Remember how I said that I don’t care what I look like? Yeah. Scratch that. I just don’t know if I have enough self-confidence for these.

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