A rat, hiding in the long grass, scurried in the opposite direction as I ran by. And for a minute, I forgot how much my knees hurt. A few days earlier I explained to my friends - a handsome couple that runs marathons - that my knees hurt. Robert pursed his lips lightly as if he’d just read my chart and understood my entire situation. “It’s your shoes,” he said, as his wife Anne nodded in agreement. “What kind do you have?”

“Adidas,” I said, knowing they were a good brand but not a “real” runner’s shoe.

“Those are good shoes,” he said with a touch of sympathy in his voice.

“You should go to my friend’s shop. She sells Brooks,” said Anne.  I knew this would eventually start: the purchase of stuff. And not just any stuff; the good stuff. Back when hiking and canoeing was my passion (before kids),  I would go to outfitters just to take in the smell.  Rubber and plastic gadgets hung on the wall, promising me adventure and fitness if I’d just throw them in my cart. The hottest clothes in the trendiest blends hung on racks, assuring me that urban yet wilderness look. Even the socks were cool. Over the years, I’ve bought enough items to furnish a second home: a miniature espresso machine; a flashlight I could wear on my forehead; a solar shower; water filters; laminated maps; and backpacks full of things I could collapse and reassemble while sitting outside my tent swatting away the mosquitoes and beam in glorious pride: Look! It’s just like the real thing, but tiny. And it weighs nothing!

One of the reasons I chose running was because all it required was a pair of shoes. I can toss them in the car, drop the kids off to a class, and run. I can travel and run. Visit relatives and escape for a run. I can run anywhere. I don’t have to go to a gym, and if I walk quickly past the Nike and Puma store, I save money.

The Adidas I purchased one afternoon in a hurry while my daughter griped by my side at how long it was taking to get the ice cream I promised her. Yet I knew if I didn’t buy a pair of shoes now, it would be another week  before I could get back to the mall. I entered the store and asked a man who was younger than my car for a pair of running shoes. He walked to the front desk and got a key. He opened the case and pulled out a pair of white tennis with those three stripes down each side. I slipped them on.

“When are we going for ice cream?” my daughter asked again as she flipped upside down on the bench next to me. I told the sales person I’d take the shoes. The next morning I was on the road. I ran on for two months and faced only sore calf muscles and an aching gluteus maximus, which I knew was normal when beginning any sport. Then one day I noticed a pain in the left knee. A few days later, it began in the right knee. Both joints ached in exactly the same spot. Even I knew, without the help of my good friends, it was the shoes.

The Brooks shop was high up on a cement wall above all the other stores around it. I buzzed the doorbell and entered. It smelled like the inside of a new car. I looked around at all the things I could buy. But I promised myself the old t-shirts in the closet were fine. The shorts too. I was here for shoes. I told the sales person I was a friend of Anne’s.

“You’re going to want to talk to Michelle,” she said. The store was small and round racks  separated the space into men’s and women’s. Boxes of shoes lined the wall. Michelle appeared from a back room. She wore a faded red running shirt and black running tights that stopped at her knees. A pony tail bounced behind her as she walked.

Michelle is one of those really passionate, really good runners. We exchanged brief stories: kids, divorces, careers, and running. After forty minutes, we got to the shoes. I wore the Adidas on my feet because Anne said Michelle liked to look at the tread. I pointed to the floor. “Those are court shoes,” said Michelle. “They’re for walking.” I felt like I’d just discovered my skirt was bundled up in my underwear for the last half hour and no one told me. “Don’t get me wrong,” she said with as much enthusiasm as she had forty minutes ago. “It’s a good shoe. It’s just not a running shoe.”  Michelle began scanning the boxes for a size eight and one-half or a nine. There weren’t any. She began talking to her associate about getting a distributor to send a pair over. The next shipment of shoes for her store wasn’t coming for six weeks, and she wanted to get me on the road.

Brooks shoes have all these benefits like they are somehow eco-friendly, and there’s a little bag of water in the soul to absorb my shock. They look flashy too. Michelle gave me a pair of Saucony’s to wear. She said she was going to give them to me for free. She seemed truly disappointed as if her team just lost in the finals. The Saucony’s fit, and I honestly couldn’t tell the difference between these and the Adidas.

As I walked around the racks of designer shirts and shorts, Michelle’s sales associate remembered that Anne bought a half size smaller in Brooks.  Michelle’s face lit up. She was back in the game. The associate found an eight. I put them on, but was weary. Even the slightest tightness around my left toes can cause unbelievable pain in my foot. I stepped up on the treadmill and began walking. “You are going to feel like you are running on cushions. This will be so different for you. You wait and see,” she said as I began to sweat. “You just wait. This will make all the difference in the world.” To my surprise, the Brooks fit. The free pair of Saucony’s were a distant memory as I placed my money on the counter. Michelle asked me if I needed any clothes. I shook my head. “Aren’t these great?” she said pulling a purple shirt from the rack. “Every thing is only ten dollars on this rack.”

“Ten dollars? I said taking a few steps towards the display. “Well I could use some shorts.”

“You definitely wear a small,” Michelle said, putting the purple shirt back and showing me a green one. As I put more money on the counter, I eyed the water belt in the glass case. This would be great for those long runs. I began justifying the purchase and quickly deciding where I could cut out a few things to be able to afford this like eating out less, reading by candlelight, foregoing the hairdryer, and cutting paper towels in half.

I took two days off as Michelle suggested. After a week of slowly getting back into the game, the pain in my knees lessened and after a month, eventually disappeared. The Brooks haven’t made me any faster though, and I don’t feel like I am running on air. Perhaps I jump a little higher when a rat rustles past, but nothing changes the fact that it’s me and the road taking it one step at a time.

Another sign Christmas is just around the corner in Costa Rica is blond, miniature reindeer appear in the backs of trucks and along the roadside. Their splendor for sale to enhance the holiday experience.

These reindeer are made out of wood shavings glued over a cotton, or I don’t know, some sort of fabric base. I suppose it’s like the inside of a baseball or a stuffed bird in taxidermy. Then for a final touch, the entire body is wound up with fishing line.

My attempts to get to the bottom of this tradition have been fruitless. As far as I can guess, some guy one day had extra wood shavings and well….you can imagine the rest of the story.

I happen to have one of these beauties. We got it when Coco was one. It had a tail then and didn’t smell like it does now. The horns have frayed and over the years; Coco has added features like eyes and a bow. (We’ve long lost the tail.)

Every year I leave Chippy, or Woody, or Dasher, or whatever it is Coco’s named it, until the last thing to put out at Christmas. I actually leave it in the closet, hoping she’ll forget. But the kid’s got a memory like steal trap.

We don’t dare put it in the rain. Imagine the things that would grow inside. It already sheds, and I hate to think what we’re breathing in every year. It just has that kind of creepy look like it’s going to chew out the back of ankles when I’m not looking. I’m pretty sure Addison sides with me on this one. For Coco though, this little dear is just another sign of holiday bliss.

Coco woke up this morning and the first thing she said is:

It’s sugar day!

Her French class is planning to make crepes. Each child needed to bring their filling of choice. I tried offering the healthier choices, and she wrinkled her nose at me.

Jelly? Honey? Maple Syrup?

I never buy white sugar. Though I cave into the bags of candy she gets from parties and let her store them in a little shelf in the refrigerator and pick a few out here and there. I refuse to buy white sugar. It’s my last stand against the wild winds of the sweets world. Coco knew we had a bag in the refrigerator left over from making the bloody fingers for Halloween. I even caught her a few times opening the door and just checking to see if it was still there.

My nannies have to bring their own. I provide all their food and even buy them bread when I don’t eat it the stuff. Gives me a stomach ache and is the one product that will simply reform in the shape of cinnamon toast and apply itself directly to my outer thighs.

Coco sat at the breakfast table and sprinkled two huge helpings of tapa dulce - it’s sugar in the raw form and actually has a few minerals left in it unlike white sugar, which has been cooked 37 times and all nutritional value thus shot to hell - over the “all-natural” millet rice cereal. Who can blame her? The cereal tastes like the box it came in.

She bounced to the kitchen and asked:

Where’s the sugar? Not the brown sugar - the white sugar.

I had put it in a little plastic container and then wrapped it in sugar. Ants will find it in three minutes if they sniff even the smallest openings. As I put it in her backpack, I do believe I saw Coco drool, just a bit, like a dog sitting at the feet of someone who’s just flipped them a charred burger and hopes for more.

I’m not sure if I’ve lost or won this sugar battle. One of Coco’s favorite snacks when she was little was avocado/date bocas. I’d cut avocados, which are really inexpensive in Costa Rica, and add a slice of date on top and spike them onto a toothpick. She loved it. Now she hates avocados and tolerates dates.

One day our kids will go off and eat any-old-darned thing they please. I was just remembering a few late college evenings when my friends and I would whip up batches of cheese kurds. Deep fried of course. My hope is she’ll get off to a bit better start than me and when she’s about to fry up her second batch of those greasy blobs of lactose, she just might have an apple instead.

I spent a lot of time in parkas. And in those really chilly months of deep snow and freezing temperatures, I jammed my legs into ski pants and bundled from head to toe in scarfs, mittens, and sweaters inside that parka. As soon as we began spending more time indoors, we all got colds. When I moved to Costa Rica, colds - resfriados - colds came right along with us.*

Coco has a cough that won’t leave her five minutes of peace. Last night, she got up at one o’clock and searched me out with the flashlight. The cough woke her up. I applied a few things to her nose and throat and got her to sleep sitting up. Finally, she drifted off.

Addison’s eyes have been glued shut for the last two mornings. His cold has attacked his eyes, which makes it a less dramatic event and lessenes the stuffy nose, (which is reallly hard on him because of his smaller airways from the Down Syndrome).

The funny thing is the reasons we get colds seem to be the same whether we have snow or rain or wind; palm trees or oaks; tank tops or parkas:

“This time of year everyone gets a cold.”

“Oh, you’re all wet, now you’ll catch a cold.”

“All the kids in school have it.”

The cold virus knows no boundaries or limits. It crossed borders and cultures at ease, and in it’s own annoying way, makes me feel right at home.

*La gripe is often interchanged when someone has a cough or cold, but it actually means the flu.

As the rain pours and pours in the middle of the thickest part of the rainy season in the Central Valley, I thought I’d dust off all my awards and trophies. There’s the “Most Improved Softball Player Award” from 1977. I’ve got the first place ribbon from stuffing a chucker partridge in sixth grade (never did capture the sparkle in the little foul’s eye).

On of my favorite awards will always be the plaque that a girl’s team I coached a few years ago gave me. They never had time to get the engraving, so they handed me on a slip of paper what they would have put on it: To the best coach ever. We love you! I still have the slip of paper.

And today I add to my collection an honor I am more than proud to put on my shelf. Tamara gave me this award. Thanks Tamara. Thanks mom. Thanks dad. Thanks to all you readers who click on motherjungle. Thanks to my bus driver and the bag boy. Without every one, I’d be someone else, and I’d like to that’s a shame.

I can only hope to live up to this honor and offer up more than the average bear. Thanks again Tamara. And everyone who gives a damn.

(In case you have trouble loading the award, click over to Tamara’s site. You’ll also find out some other great blog sites you might like too.)

Running and walking around the streets of San Jose are a delicate yet crazy combination like scaling a tightrope and mud wrestling all at once. Downtown San José ranks a bit higher on quantity of sidewalks - as there actually is some sort of concrete acera along almost every street. The large gaping holes and buckled walk ways are a challenge, but I consider the capital easier to get around than most suburbs. Downtown traffic is more manageable on foot than by car. In the town of Escazu where I live, sidewalks are neither here and rarely there.

I’ve found a loop that I can run or walk for exercise that has some concrete sidewalk or a dirt path along the road. What you see in this photo is not an unusual obstacle. Once you get past the trash, there’s gooey puddles, barro, boulders, and no where to go except right up there with the 2000 pound hunks of metal being driven to work by tense and cranky drivers (remember these people are amazing pleasant when they get out of those cars…anyway…).

Most Costa Ricans just get right up on that 1/2 foot of asphalt between the mud and cars and walk. I stop and wait. Soon after this obstacle, there’s more piles of mud. It increases with depth and width with each rainfall.

The suburbs here are growing so fast that speeding cars and construction vehicles seem to be pushing and pushing our simple pleasures to the wayside where in the long run, we just end up being covered in mud.

This squirrel and I have a lot in common. No, I don’t have a cute little furry tail, but I do love coconuts (as I’ve mentioned a few times before.) And when people ask me why I live in Costa Rica, fresh coconuts - for about 40 cents a nut - rank high on the pro side of my list.

When I traveled in the States, finding a green coconut was a challenge. Actually, I never did. I did find a older, brown seed and when the natural food co-op guy told me the price - $5.00!! - I passed. Besides I might have lost a digit trying to open it. I did find the sweet coconut juice boxed in the same store, at about the same wild price.

The other day, I opened a coconut with two swings of my butcher knife (I’m still skittish around machetes). Quite proud of myself I was. This squirrel is no dummy. She gets them pre-chopped by the guy who sells the pipa water at the soda next to her. People stop to admire the little rodent - almost like seeing an animal in the wild here - and the vendor might get a sale or two. The squirrel no dummy.? I can relate to the squirrel and her joy. She’d scoop her little paw into the meat and get a sweet, white piece and nibble away.

Sometimes in my kitchen when I’m all alone, I sit there almost in an unconscious daze scooping little bits of coconut out of the shell. I think if someone took a photo, the resemblance to my squirrel friend here would be so obvious it might be scary.

Some people think of squirrels as a nuisance. I saw a story the other day where grey squirrels faced a “massive cull” in England as the brutish grey squirrel was overpowering the native red squirrel population. Long time ago, someone brought a few grey squirrels (well, at least two) over to England, and now they’ve taken to it. Now they are being killed for just being themselves. On the other hand, the red squirrels is doomed without help. Even in the land of squirrels, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Breast Cancer awareness rolled into San Jose with a walk and festival culminating at la Sabana. Harley’s lined up; families walked a few miles; and school bands marched. Women in booths passed around those little pink ribbons.

As I watched one of those bands pass by, I noticed this colorful clown fiddling with his rubber balloons and a baseball on a string. Children approached the clown, but his white face wasn’t all that interested in jesting with them. Some kids expected balloons and stood there for a bit. Bored, they finally moved on. How is it possible to wear a ridiculous clown suit and be so unapproachable?

Perhaps cancer, and all illnesses, can be attacked way, way, way before they start. As I watched my father die from prostate cancer, I couldn’t help but wonder about all that angst and worry he carried around with him for so many years. Did it have something to do with it? I fell deeply in love with my father as he suffered so - even though he almost drove me to the brink of actually using all that duct tape he stored in the closet to adhere myself to the ceiling. I don’t want to wait that long with those still around me. I don’t want to carry my angst; my worry until it makes me sick. I want to get on a Harley and ride (or at least admire one).

I plan on starting my own cancer/illness prevention program: Don’t worry, be happy.*

Wait a minute - did somebody already say that?

PS - In case that didn’t work…..give this a shot.

Going out for a walk or run in Costa Rica is a challenge, as I’ve mentioned many times before. There’s rarely a park to sneak out to - except for the la Sabana - and sidewalks are as rare as jellybeans at Christmas. In lieu of a good place to pound my feet and shake my tail feathers, I sometimes end up at the mall. Guess what? Even that is ripped apart and a mess. The tried and true pavement I could depend on is now mud, re-bar, and trucks. Lots and lots of trucks. (And don’t forget the construction guys….more on them another day.)

I used to be able to circle the mall early in the morning because there were no cars and it was pretty safe - a kind of suburban-gentrified-Central American, hiking trail. I trotted over to the mecca of commerce and forgot how refreshing it can be to be running without drivers pretending you don’t exist.

As I approached the mall, I forgot also how entertaining the scenery can be. Besides getting in a bit of work out, I found new and exciting uses for the plethora of sequenced scarves I have hanging in the back of my closet. (I’m just kidding, I only have two sequenced scarves.) What mother of the jungle would ever want to live without one?

My nephew and I are running a bet: Who can do the most pulls ups? My nephew is a strong, bright, athletic, and slender thirteen year old. Me? As we skirt around the age and weight issue (and maybe the athletic issue), I do like to think of myself as brighter than the average light bulb; however, the kid has a few up on me, so I got a handicap. The next time we see each other, he has to do six pull-the-body-all-the-way-up-so-the-head-is-peaking-over-the-bar. I have to do four.

I started a pull-up bar routine, which takes only 15 minutes or less a few times a week, on my bathroom shower rung. Yes, I checked that the screws were properly secured into the wall. After mastering one full pull-up, the bar broke. The screws hadn’t come out of the wall, no, the bar was rotten on the inside. Though the shower bar looked like a piece of steel, it was piece of poor quality metal with wood cork on the inside. I replaced the shower curtain and tried again on Addy’s therapy machine. That was about as stupid as trying the shower curtain because I ripped a tendon in my elbow.

Six months later while I’m in the States, I see my nephew’s bar hanging in his bedroom door frame. I inquire as to the cost and cannot believe the thing was only $11.99. I didn’t even bother looking in Costa Rica since electronic and exercise equipment seem to be at least double or three times the price that for 1/2 the value. I bought it and pitched it in the suitcase. I moved it to the top of the stairs, and there it sat in that corner that gathers all the junk that moves from first floor to second floor and back again (good argument for a rambler).

Three weeks later, I moved the bar to another corner near the door frame I was going to screw it into. Two weeks later, I hauled up the tool box with the drill in it. Another two weeks go by and on a rainy afternoon, I read the instructions and begin installing it. I marked the Xs and pushed the spinning drill bit into the wood. I could imagine that underarm flop melting away. That flop we all know we have.

With the brackets in place, I slipped the bar in and hung there. It’s a long, long way up. This is going to be a lot harder than it looks. But it’s got to be easier than the gym and all those weights. I’ve done all that. Goodness, I barely have time to brush my teeth three times a day. But the flop stops at nothing, so I’ll give it a go.

How many can I do? None. I stood on my tippy toes and figured I better go slow because I don’t want that elbow pain again. I always did take more to the tortoise than the hare anyway.