Your (You're) It

I run pretty hard during the week--up early and out fast--so that when a scheduled rest day rolls around, I do what I can to protect it. However, there are three exceptions, three occasions when rest is overruled.

Those three exceptions?

1. A new pair of sneakers
2. A inspirational running story
3. Watching someone else run

Even if running isn't your outlet of choice, I'm sure you can relate. Everyone has that one thing that belongs to them, that one thing that feels as familiar to them as their own two hands. Maybe it's cooking, maybe it's golf, maybe it's fencing. The great thing is, you don't have to be the best at it, heck, you don't even have to be good at it. But it should be three things:

• Enjoyable: you look forward to it or you miss it when you don't do it for a while

• Stress-relieving: it should settle you down, maybe relax you, breathing comes easily and naturally (well, maybe not easily, if it's athletically-induced, but you definitely be breathing)

• Limit-testing: you might start out casually, running a half-mile or baking homemade brownies, but with small successes comes confidence, and with confidence comes risk-taking. Your thing pushes you to expand and to grow within it. Maybe a half-mile turns into a 5K, maybe a homemade brownie turns into a canned peaches or a contest entry at next year's bake off.

And eventually, you don't even mind those instances when you fall short, when you have a bad run or when you burn the biscotti. You accept yourself when you fall short and you accept others when they fall short, too. Because somewhere along the way, as you were working on improving your thing, your thing was improving you, too.

So, you're it. What's your thing?

Smores Splurge

With the left-over marshmallows from the rice krispie event (am I spelling that right?) and the found-chocolate in the cupboard (how does chocolate exist in my house without me knowing it) and the stale graham crackers in the pantry, we made smores yesterday at lunchtime. We even ate them before lunch. We're living on the wild side in this household. My excuse (and I've been using it a lot lately) is that, "It's summer. What the heck."

And with the 55 degree night we had and the low-humidity, low-80 degree days we're having, you bet it is.