Becky Castle Miller

Estel is almost six months old (she will be on April 4, the same day I have to go to traffic court to plead out of a speeding ticket — Cranston must be hurting for cash, because they were speed-trapping the entire city that day).

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I think the Ryan Gosling “Hey Girl” meme is hilarious. In brief: someone takes a picture of actor Ryan Gosling and adds a caption that starts with, “Hey, girl.” Then “Ryan” says some pickup line that appeals to a particular niche of women (librarians, homeschoolers, crafters, etc.). My favorite I’ve seen so far is this one:

As I’ve looked at a bazillion and a half of these, I realized that I actually already have a fantastic man in my life who knows how to say just the right thing. So as a surprise/joke for Matthew, I created a Tumblr called “Who Needs Ryan Gosling?” with pictures and quotes from my husband. Like such as:

Let’s share the love…if you have a boyfriend/fiance/husband who knows just what to say to you, make an image and email it to me at miller dot schloss at gmail dot com. I’ll share the best ones on Tumblr.

(I’m also pinning these on Pinterest as I post them…you can follow my boards on Pinterest here.)

So, today is “Black Friday,” which retailers attempt to make the Biggest Shopping Day of the Year. (Online retailers have been grabbing for a piece of that pie as well with the relatively recently dubbed “Cyber Monday.”)

If today gets a color name, I think yesterday should too. I’m going with “Orange Thursday,” because really, aren’t most of the traditional Thanksgiving foods in the 590–620 nanometer range? Pumpkin pie, sweet potatoes, turkey, gravy, stuffing…

We hosted Matthew’s family (including his sister in Texas via Skype!) and their significant others at our house. Everyone contributed to cooking for the meal or selecting wines. My favorite parts of the day were Dan (Matthew’s brother) explaining to Ricky (Joanna’s boyfriend) the entire plot of “While You Were Sleeping” (I got it on video!) and spinning the laptop around the table on our Lazy Susan so Amy could say hi to everyone. My favorite foods actually came after the mail meal, when we had a late supper of appetizers: cheese ball, stuffed mushrooms, and bacon-wrapped dates.

What (if anything) did you score at a sale today? What was on your plate yesterday?

Joshua is our self-declared “morning guy.” He’s the only one in the Miller household who is an early riser, who wakes up cheerful and bounding with energy. The morning routine involves three-year-old J padding into the master bedroom, bouncing onto Mommy and Daddy, and asking, “Wiw you make me bwefast now?” Over and over until we crawl out of bed, Matthew to make coffee and me to cook breakfast.

Yesterday, Joshua badgered Daddy for breakfast and was told, “There is NO FOOD in this house!”

So J laughed at his father. “Silly Daddy! Dere is food in da fwigeawatow an da fweezow!”

And then J came to me, still laughing, and told me Daddy had forgotten that we have food.

It’s true that I was overdue for grocery shopping, and there weren’t many options. (Matthew’s definition of “no food” is “if I open the fridge and see nothing easy to grab and consume we are ALL GOING TO STARVE let’s go to Subway.”) But we did have cold cereal, hot cereal, and salad fixings.

After I finished grumbling that there was, too, food, and I got up to feed everyone, I realized that in J’s three years of life, he has never experienced truly no food. While the pantry’s contents may dwindle, and the spaces between Pyrex storage containers in the fridge may increase, we’ve never actually had an empty kitchen.

That’s why the idea of “no food” is laughable to my son.

I’m glad! I’m glad that the only reason he’s had to go to bed hungry is because he refused to eat his vegetables, or because he threw his plate on the floor and got sent to his room.

I’m also sad, because there are so many kids who have no food, and I don’t really know what to do about it. I feel like I should have some kind of powerful conclusion here, with a call to action, but I’m not sure what that should be.

I’m proud of my husband–he supports the Providence Rescue Mission and took K and J out on Saturday morning to help our church deliver Thanksgiving baskets. Those are small drops in the bucket, but they do help. I feel compelled to do something too…

What is your favorite organization/charity that fights hunger, locally, nationally, or globally?

Thank you, CakeWrecks. (But no thanks for the cake idea my sister-in-law threatened to order for me.)

Introducing Estel Anneke Miller, born Tuesday, October 4, 2011, at 10:57 p.m., three weeks early and after 28 hours of labor, weighing 6 lbs., 14 oz.

“You want to name a baby boy WHAT?” My new husband was incredulous, when, in our first year of marriage, I shared with him my list of baby names. The boy column included:

• Ransom

and

• Lion

Lion was especially heinous to him, notwithstanding the popularity of similarly named Tiger Woods. “Can you imagine the jokes?” Matthew continued. “‘Are you tellin’ me the truth, kid, or are you Lion?’”

So my revelation, combined with Matthew’s fears regarding the perceived un-creativity of my parents in naming boys (Douglas Allen named his sons Zachariah Allen and Daniel Allen) plus my disagreement with his family tradition of naming children after dead relatives, led us to the compromise that he would name our sons, and I would name our daughters, no questions asked.

I got a Katherine Anne, and he got a Joshua David, and now we’re expecting our third child.

“You want to name a baby boy WHAT?” It was my turn to be shocked when Matthew came home from a men’s conference and told me the name he’d picked if this baby is a boy:

• Ephraim Manassah

“How do you nickname that?” I wondered. “How do you even PRONOUNCE it?”

He didn’t have an answer for either question, but he did have good reasons for picking the names. Voddie Baucham had preached about Joseph at the conference, and Matthew had tears by the end of the sermon. (You can listen to Voddie’s entire message about Joseph here.) The names of Joseph’s sons and their meanings stood out to both of us. Manasseh because “I have forgotten all my trouble and all my father’s household,” or “I have left the pain of the past behind me.” Ephraim because “God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.” (Genesis 41)

This baby is a blessing coming out of a difficult time for us, dealing with past and present issues, living in a place that feels a bit like captivity; the fruit of the womb is truly a reward.

If she’s a girl, I’ve picked names along the same theme:

• Estel Anneke

Estel means “hope” in Sindarin (low-Elvish). It was Aragorn’s mother’s name for him in The Lord of the Rings. Anneke is the Dutch form of Hannah, my sister-in-law’s name, and it means “grace.”

Of course, Matthew’s reaction was, “You want to name a girl baby WHAT?” But he’s already ceded the right to object to my naming our child in a made-up language. : )

Water. Hydrate before you go and when you get back, and if you’re running more than a few miles, carry a water bottle. Chocolate milk is also a good recovery beverage, with 87% fewer added chemicals and artificial colors (I made that number up, but seriously, milk is way better for you than Gatorade. I mean, have you ever seen glowing-green milk?).

Synthetic Socks. When I started running three years ago, I got wicked blisters in my cotton socks till someone told me to switch to synthetic. I also use…

…Body Glide. The way my little toes curve inward, I get bad blisters unless I put Body Glide between my toes. Body Glide also nicely cushions the tops of your toes where you’ve lost toenails. Wheeee. It’s also (so I hear) useful for men prone to under-shirt-chaffage.

Comfortable clothes. That link goes to a sweet little tool that factors in your current location’s temperature and weather conditions and your clothing preferences to help you figure out what to wear. Different people prefer different types of running clothes: My little brother runs in shorts in blizzards. I think he’s crazy, and I prefer to wear legwarmers under pants when running in the snow.

A reasonable training plan. Don’t hurt yourself. Start slowly, and increase your mileage incrementally. I’ve heard it’s wise to only increase your weekly mileage by 10% at a time.

Sunscreen. Unless you’re a dude and your swimming trunks are longer than your running shorts, wear sunscreen when you run. Because thigh-high tan lines aren’t cool. Neither is skin cancer.

Happy running! What are your favorite running (or preferred sport) tools?

1. Fancy shoes

2. Special clothes

3. Hydration belt

4. Gu

5. iPod

6. GPS/Heart rate monitor/Go-Go-Gadget Watch

Total cost required for you to become a runner: $613

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I am definitely a selective cheapskate.

I “met” Bryan Allain through Stuff Christians Like a couple years ago, and I’ve enjoyed his humor blog. When I heard about his blog coaching last year, I knew it would be valuable. But I didn’t want to pay for it. : )

I lost my “blogging mojo” somewhere in the sleep deprivation haze after Joshua was born in late 2008 when I could never get him and Katherine to nap at the same time. (Saying I lost my mojo totally makes me feel like Toodles from Hook.) I’ve wanted to recover the discipline and focus of writing a blog, but felt overwhelmed.

So when Bryan offered review copies of 31 Days to Finding Your Blogging Mojo, I grabbed a copy, knowing it would have the best bits of his blog coaching…and I wouldn’t have to pay for it. (Sorry, Bryan, but the internet has conditioned me to want, nay, expect FREE CONTENT ALL THE TIME! Actually, I think that’s why so many people are griping about the Netflix pricing change–because it’s on The Internet and we’re used to getting stuff free there.)

Turns out the e-book is worth way more than its $5 price. I went through the first six “days” in two hours, and immediately made some good changes to my blog. In the next couple days, I went through 10 more lessons. (Note the More Posting going on around here this week.) I don’t think it will actually take you 31 days to go through the book. You may set out to spend 5 minutes a day on it, setting aside November (or another month with 31 days), for example, to do one chapter a day, but I think you’ll enjoy reading it so much that you’ll do it all much more quickly.

My favorite thing about the book is that the lessons are SHORT, focused, and easy to implement. It’s a total blog overhaul, but it hasn’t felt overwhelming. It made me feel like I really could re-focus my writing, post more consistently, and develop a better blog. Stay tuned to see if that’s the case…

You can get 31 Days on Amazon for $4.99.

Many of the women in my book club are runners, and several are marathoners. They gave me great advice and encouragement as I started distance running. The only thing surprising about the fact that we just read Born to Run together is that we didn’t do it sooner.

I loved that even the non-runners enjoyed the book and abstracted principles for their own lives. Like them, I found that the book inspired me beyond just running…I’ve actually made some lifestyle changes as a result, especially in eating, which deserves its own post.

If you’d asked me two and a half years ago if I thought I’d ever run a marathon (26.2 miles), I would have said, “No way. I hate running.” Then I started training for a half marathon in 2009. After my first, I trained for a second. THEN I knew I wanted to run a full marathon. Somewhere in the middle of my marathon training last summer, I began to fancy the idea of someday running an ultramarathon. Finishing the Newport Marathon last October cemented my desire to someday run an ultra.

(I thought it would have to be later in life when my children are older, and I can devote proper time to training, but reading about Emily Baer, who finished Hardrock 8th overall WHILE NURSING HER SON AT THE AID STATIONS, has caused me to challenge that notion.)

Anyway, the idea of running an ultra is out of the ordinary and more than a little daunting. But a paragraph in Born to Run convinced me that I have what it takes to finish an ultra:

(Takes place at mile 60 of the Leadville 100) …as Ken watched Juan and Martimano exit the firehouse, he was struck by something else: when they hit the dirt ramp, they hit it laughing. “Everybody else walks that hill,” Chlouber thought, as Juan and Martimano churned up the slope like kids playing… page 90

And a spark of joy and excitement ignited in my chest as I remembered my Newport race pictures, because I’m smiling in almost every single one.

I heard one of the race photographers, well after the halfway point, remark to her coworker, “There’s one of those smilers again.” And I grinned and gave the camera a thumbs up.

That’s how I know I’ll run an ultramarathon. Because it will be fun.

What “hard” thing do you do, just for the love of it?