"April Showers"

I feel like I might be starting to understand more about how to manipulate the placement of sound in my mouth while singing, and remembering open my mouth wider. It might be a long time before any of this seems natural, but I can tell it's working when the sound changes to something different, easier, wider-sounding. And I don't feel so much change when I come to my break point.

I love rain, weather of all kinds. Wind is pretty fabulously wonderful, too. Not that weather doesn't scare me from time to time, but I'm always in awe of it: weather is the easiest way to tell that we live on a planet, spinning its way through space, and we are not in control, here. Earthquakes, volcanoes, and hurricanes are more dramatic representations of this, but it doesn't take much more than a good rain storm to bring it to my mind.

I love the whole sensuality of weather. Visually, the fast movement of clouds against the sky is amazing. White clouds against a dark night sky even more so. The taste of wind and rain on my face, in my mouth, the sounds of thunder, rain on the roof or tent above my head. The smell before the rain, and during the rain, fresh or bitter or electric. And the feel of rain on skin is magical, especially a summer rain. When I was younger, and less employed, you could not keep me away from running through the summer rain for anything else. Except perhaps the sound of drumming.

Once, in that magical once upon a time I mentioned, I had it all. A storm was coming, and the sky was weirdly, amazingly, green. Lightning had begun, dramatic and beautiful, and the power went out in the building where we were all dancing to live music. The drummers never stopped pounding out the heart beat and the dance beat on the congas and djembes and talking drum inside, the doors were wide open in the early summer warmth, and we ran out into the parking lot, to dance barefoot on the blacktop while the lightning flashed around us. It was my birthday week, and I can't remember any presents I got that beat the gift of that night.

This past summer I've tried to get out in the rain more. Running has certainly helped that resolve. And if I have to run in the rain to get my exercise, it's a handy by-product to remember once again that being in the rain is another way to just feel good.

"Bye Bye Blackbird"

Hands down my favorite of the 'Reader's Digest' songs, and not just because the key is comfortable for me. It's a song that I'll just start to sing for no reason, because it's fun and bouncy. And it's got this illustration that I like for some reason, a man waving from the back of the train, very 'Music Man' feel to it. 1926.

Last weekend I ran my first 10K. My husband's been running for a few years, doing marathons for the most part, but last year he ran Pittsburgh's Great Race. I suddenly had this idea that *I* could do this, could run a race, this race. And so, around Thanksgiving last year, I started running on a regular basis, following a training schedule from an online running site.

My family isn't very athletic. I did swim team, and rode horses for a little while. My sister played lacrosse, did some cheerleading. One of my brothers ran track, I think. Overall, nothing very impressive. But I've always been active, dancing some, doing yoga off and on, exercising of the fitness video type fairly regularly in recent years. I never thought that I would run, or even could run. My mom always talked about her bad knees, and how she couldn't run, and I just assumed that if I ran, my knees would somehow fail me. Not that I had any evidence to support that, but you know, family history asserts itself in ways, here in imagined ways just as strongly.

Still, I had always liked the action of running, if I did a brief sprint: the feel of my legs moving under me, the extension and exertion of it, the movement through space. When I began running officially, all this was still true, still good. Moreover, I was reminded that I hadn't gotten outside much in my recent life. How good it was to be out in the weather, to hear the birds, to see trees, to feel the air. And once I was out there, I had to finish, to come home--but not until I was finished. I was alone with my thoughts and my breath and my body, and that felt really good as well.

My husband says that 'feeling good' is not the point of running, and implies that I'm not doing something right if I'm enjoying myself at all. But I still like it, a year later. Not every run has been a barrel of laughs, but the sensation is still good, and I'm stretching my body and mind in ways that I never thought I would, which is good for me all on its own. Years ago I did a firewalk--actually walked on hot coals, without injury--and it helped me to believe that I was capable of a lot more than I could conceive in the normal scheme of things. Beginning running, running 5-5Ks, and now my first 10K, is less dramatic of an event, perhaps, but it reminds me again of that truth.