Team Growing, Runners Emerging!

I hope you are enjoying the wind up to Thanksgiving Day.This is our first ever stay-at-home Thanksgiving. That's a bummer because we really enjoy our time with my large, crazy family. (It's been a few years since we did Tufurkey Day with Scott's family because they have been in Florida... we loved spending it on Cape Cod when they lived there, of course!) But, it's also kind of nice to be parked here in the 'Boros of NH without facing an impossibly long car ride to and fro.

I have had the privilege of the whole week off (without pay, of course, but that's life) and have put the time to good use around the house.  I have cleaned out  and rearranged long-neglected junk drawers and cupboards; I gave the boys "life lessons" in house cleaning (bathrooms and dusting join vacuuming, folding and putting away laundry, and windows on their self-care resumes); and because I was able to do baking and cooking a little at a time, there are only a handful of dishes to be created tomorrow for the big meal. If I have learned anything this week it is that I could live very happily if I never had to earn an income and I just got to hang out all the time. I love and appreciate my job, don't get me wrong, but I keep scanning the job postings in search of this:

Help Wanted: Person to hang out at her house and get long overdue crap done and generally enjoy her lot in life and her children. Salary: A gazillion dollars.

I'm sure I'm the first person ever to dream that particular dream. Ya huh....

There have been some very exciting updates in Team Pay It 40-ward. I am not up to Mile 34 so just 6 to go. My latest teammates are:

32. Rebekah from Vermont, who is a very experienced ultra runner and with whom I teamed up for Reach the Beach NH in September.

33. Corrie from Slocomb, AL, my first cousin-once-removed (I think that's what the child of your first cousin is called!) whom I've "known" all my life but I've met in person two, maybe three times.

34. Vicki from Turners Fall, MA, another ultra-gal who was on the RTB NH team in September.

Welcome aboard, Ladies! Thanks to Corrie, the team has added yet another state to the Pay It 40-ward map and we now stand at TEN states! That's pretty cool, I gotta say.

The best part of this is that Vicki and Rebekah (along with Lauren... and potentially other members of my Reach the Beach team) are planning to run with me on March 15th! This is so enormously, wonderfully, outrageously, superlatively great that I am apt to overuse adverbs to describe my feelings about it. I welcome anyone who cares to run for part or all of the journey with me, of course, but I  know these veterans-of-serious-miles will be up for the Full Monty, which will prove vital as the day gets long and my general enthusiasm for the  mission wanes!

More to say but it's time to hang with my people. A teaser for my next post: my amazing older sister's Pay It 40-ward idea has already formed and there is photographic evidence. Don't miss it!

Now, go find out yoga pants and prepare your belly for tomorrow's feast. May each of you enjoy the day and find yourself surrounded by reasons to be thankful. I sure will!