Feeling chatty ...

Tonight was a four mile run, I love those days. Yesterday I was good and only did five instead of the six. I ended up seeing my coach at the track on the latter half of the run so I could honestly say I was following the rules. Good thing, since the 5 was pretty hard.

I find that if for some reason I'm not going to get to run when I plan, I get really disappointed, even though I know how hard it is while I do it.

We've raised $2140 so far. We're doing great!! I'm going to go to the Boomerang restaurants and see if they'll do a TNT night for me where I get 10% of the proceeds from the sales that day or just dinner sales. I was going to do Johnnies but someone beat me to it. And I'm going to talk to some of the girls this weekend about doing the car hop thing at Sonic one day ... that one should be interesting. Me inside the building where they make Cherry Limeades. I see a quick 10 pounds coming my way.

Anna ... she has her good moments and her difficult and apparently they swing fairly quickly. Yesterday Anna's Mom had a day where she was noticing everything that Anna can't do rather than all the things she still can, and I'm often in awe of her ability to keep the latter perspective. Honestly, it has to come from her faith. She mentioned yesterday though that Anna can't go up and down curbs without help, her legs aren't strong enough. I knew that her legs are now SO thin, but I didn't realize that. But today, I hear she was able to ride her bike around the block. I just don't know how they do it.

Here's a story I definitely wanted to share. Yesterday we had a mass e-mail going around the team in which everyone listed their top 5 reasons for being a member of TNT. One of the members of the walking team listed as her number 1 reason: "The drug that is saving my life was discovered through a grant from TNT. If not for Gleevec, I would probably have had a five year life expectancy. Instead, I'm at 6 1/2 years with CML, in total genetic remission and training for my second marathon with TNT." Like I said, she's a member of the walking team and I'm not as familiar with them yet, but I'm going to be sure to meet her this Saturday when we all meet to stretch before we go off with our teams. So often when you donate, you don't see the direct effects of your generosity and/or hard work. Her story shows that to us.

She also said that when she walked it two years ago, at one point in the course there were two little girls holding a sign that said, "You're helping save my Mommy's life. Thank you." That made me cry.

We're doing so much for people, we can't do everything, but we can do some even though sometimes, maybe always, it doesn't feel like enough. I've had a parent tell me that when people do things like this, even just knowing that people are training this hard for this purpose, it makes them feel just a little less alone in the battle. I have to believe that counts for something. Like I said, it doesn't hand every parent a cure, doesn't take away pain immediately, but it's something. Honestly, the whole experience is as humbling as it is rewarding.