Oh, the weather outside's been frightful

I've hardly left my house the past few days. It's been bitterly cold, unusually cold for November in southern West Virginia. Friday was, in fact, a pajama day – I didn't even get dressed, the whole. damned. day.

We went out yesterday afternoon, to a funeral service, and then returned home to hunker down and watch football. Too cold – still – to walk.

I felt a little sorry for myself yesterday morning, as I saw that three of my Facebook friends were running the Richmond (VA) half-marathon. I remember doing that race. A long time ago. In another lifetime. But I'm happy for all of them. They all finished and one had a PR. So YAY for her!

I'm also feeling sorry for myself because of the weight I've gained this year. I was the thinnest I've been in years last year at Thanksgiving. The weight has been coming back on all. year. long. I haven't been 100 percent faithful to the paleo plan. Nor even 80 percent, clearly. The holidays are fast approaching and I wonder if I should begin anew TODAY or just wait until January, when I will surely have even more weight to lose.

So discouraged.

Of course I'm beginning today. I'm too uncomfortable to wait.

My previous daily walking minimum of five miles has, this year, been cut to four. I quit walking on Indian Creek Road after the same dog bit me twice, and have been doing a two-mile out-and-back route on my road. That last half-mile – the one that would get me to five total miles – is a steep uphill climb and I just haven't wanted to tackle it.

But the weather has warmed up considerably – it's 33 this morning; yesterday it was 19 at this time – and I'll be walking alone, so today's the day to start doing five-milers again.

You can't increase your food consumption AND decrease your exercise at the same time and not expect to gain weight. You just can't.

So. Here I go. Again. I promise I won't bore you with all the gory details. You've heard it all before. But I DO promise that when I get back to where I was a year ago, you'll be the first to know.

Moving backwards

I guess I've officially taken a paleo break. I'm not happy about it. Paleo worked for me in so many ways. And it will work again, I'm sure of it.

This horrible winter and the dead refrigerator have conspired against me, sending me to the easiest and most comforting sustenance available: saltines and either butter or peanut butter.

Pretty much the opposite of a clean diet.

I'm dizzy this morning, lightheaded and shaky. I've had a banana and the aforementioned crackers. And, probably, too much coffee.

I'm back up a pound this week. At the beginning of the year I needed to lose 12 pounds to reach that magical "normal" BMI. Now it's 17. And that's definitely discouraging.

I'm the only one who can turn it around, though. And I will. I'm confident that lack of daily exercise + not-so-clean eating = crappy mood, extra pounds and, yes, a return of that nagging hip pain.

ALSO moving backwards: the state of West Virginia, where a bill passed the House of Delegates last night that would make it a felony to perform an abortion after 20 weeks. The bill now goes to the state Senate. I've written my Senators, urging them to keep the government out of women's health care.

It's not going to have a big impact on the number of procedures performed here in the Mountain State. It's pretty hard to have an abortion at any time, since we have just two clinics and West Virginia isn't the easiest state in which to get from place to place.

More importantly, women who learn at 20 weeks that there is something wrong with their health or the health of the fetus need to have the option. Women who's carried a fetus that long WANT that baby. They and their families are looking forward to the new addition to the family. They are making a heartbreaking and agonizing decision. It's not the state's business to interfere.

Imagine learning, on the 20th week plus third day, that the child you're carrying has died in utero. Should this bill become law, you would be required to deliver your stillborn child at term.

I've said all this before. I think. Sorry to repeat myself.

Today the House of Delegates will be voting on a bill that will allow security personnel in schools to carry weapons.

Gun rights: AYE!

Women's rights: NAY!

Nowhere to run

A friend texted me yesterday afternoon: Did you hear about the explosions in Boston?

For someone who has run distance races in the distant past (not a marathon … yet), I'm ashamed to say I'd forgotten yesterday was the Boston Marathon.

[Aside: Runner's World is now delivered silently to my Nook and I have not read a word of any issue in a couple of months. Nor have I read any printed magazines in a couple of months. Perhaps I should stop subscribing to magazines. The reason I mention this is because they always have a big run-up-to-Boston issue. Which I missed.]

I stayed glued to the news until mid-evening, when I just couldn't take the senselessness of it any longer.

It wasn't just the senselessness of setting off bombs at the finish line of a marathon in Boston on Patriot's Day. It also was the senselessness of parsing the President's remarks, the guessing and second-guessing who might be responsible, the inaccurate reporting, the conjecture.

My last thought last night, and my first this morning, is of the – irony isn't the right word, but I can't think of one right now – of a situation in which athletes and families who support them and cheer them on and help them train, are cut down at the end, missing limbs, maimed, injured, dead.

If this were Syria or Lebanon or Israel or Palestine or Jordan or Iran or Iraq or Afghanistan or [insert name of Middle Eastern country here], they wouldn't have cut into regular programming to follow a breaking news story of a couple of bombs going off in a major city. That happens almost daily in [insert name of Middle Eastern country here]. It would be like stopping the normal broadcast line-up to follow a car wreck here in North America.

But this is North America, the United States of America, where setting off bombs in cities rarely happens. The 24/7 news cycle dictates that the networks will fill the air with something. The sponsors are paying for it, after all. One reporter said all those thousands of runners "signed up" to run the Boston Marathon. Well, I guess technically she's right. But if they didn't qualify for it by finishing a previous marathon in a specified time, then they raised a bunch of money for charity. That's how you get into Boston. You don't just pay your fee and pick up your number.

I'm feeling cynical this morning. And angry. And incredibly, awfully sad. Kind of like I did only a few short months ago, watching the news from Connecticut. I'm feeling helpless, discouraged, disheartened.

I'm feeling like there's nowhere to run to. Nowhere to hide.