Sometimes you start writing not sure where you are heading, but you just need to put out there. That you are picking up laundry and emptying the never ending dishwasher loads and taking kids to the dentist. And how that is fine, it really is. But also how in December, when it is dark both when you wake up and when you exit the grocery store at 4:15, and when there are five totally overcast days to every one kind of sunny one, that it also isn't. It just isn't totally fine. And one of the kids is sick again, in our family where we hardly get sick, but this fall has been one sickness after another. Now I am my 87 year old grandmother because I am less than one paragraph in and writing about how sick someone is. I'm feeling tired at the thought of three more meals to be made and fed and cleaned up tomorrow and at how I will most certainly be up multiple times with someone who is sick tonight. And how it is too cold to swing outside and look at the stars with anyone who might wake up. Life in the 30's has been described by Madeleine L'Engle as 'the tired thirties' an idea which has much been explored and agreed with by following writers. To me, yes, I see it, I see the tired, I feel the tired. Us mom's with several small children, we all do I think, no matter how we balance this mothering gig with everything else we need to do. But I also feel there is something more, something lurking in these mid thirties, that could shadow slowly like octopus ink.

It can start with the daily monotony, with your own shortcomings, as another day passes with too much TV and too much bickering. Too much caffeine and too little sleep. Too much to do and too little time to do it. Too much work, too little results.

But that isn't where it really blots out the light.

It blots in the friend having a double mastectomy and chemotherapy with two little girls at home. In the news of another family who lost their own little love, gone way too soon. In the poverty and the mental health issues and in the babies who have no one who makes them their priority and in the excess. I could go on.

Because this is where the thirties trump the twenties every time. The world is wider and our worlds are more vulnerable and we just see more bad things happening.

The thirties can threaten to be a godless dark pit.

So I call my husband to say I have to do this, then I text a friend to come with me, or I don't. But either way I grab my running shoes and head to the track. Thank you sweet baby Jesus for the indoor track, because we have a lot of snow, and it gets dark early and it is very cold outside. And thank you for kindred spirits who like to run too. The talking about not much but anything you want, is one of the best kind of freedom. My feet take me around the track over and over, and I'm not a marathoner, I still can't run too far or too fast but with each step I feel lighter. So I do it again the next night. Because right now, this is what is saving me.

It seems I was just welcoming the fall leaves under the stars with my baby and now we have already had another full moon come that is beginning to wane. I am looking out the window at our forest, bathed in white. We have had snow already, several batches and are solidly into winter, thankful for yesterday and today when the sun came out and it was warm enough to venture outside without multiple layers of winter gear. Winter lasts a long time here in our Alberta city, usually through most of fall and well into spring.

October where did you go? You spun by with too many meetings and conferences and obligations and issues and kids being sick, quite frankly, and October 2012 right now is remembered as a month where I did nothing well. Myself, husband, kids, friends, projects I'm passionate about all were attended to, but still suffered slightly like wrinkled laundry I washed but left in the basket unfolded and now is slightly disheveled, rather than clean and crisp.

But thankfully new months come and I learn and I grow and a new balance of what is good and healthy for me and my loved ones will be attempted. In the midst of all the too much, the yelling, the nagging, the dirty house, the just two more minutes, we found goodness - we watched our moose, read books in front of the fire, walked through our snowy woods, celebrated thanksgiving and Halloween, started indoor soccer and piano, stayed up late and snuggled often.

I tried to be present because what I really want to remember about October is how Liam is so helpful and kind and gracious, so much like me when I was the oldest, trying to help out my parents as I could. How when I take five minutes and snuggle with him at the end of the day on his top bunk, he tells me more than he does all the rest of the day. How he is a head taller than most kids on his soccer team and how at his game this weekend, he stopped to help the other player up and make sure he was okay when there was a size difference mismatch (and resulting unintended knock over) in an attempt to take the ball away. How he started piano lessons and he can do it and how his most favourite thing in the world is still to be altogether, just our family (followed closely by playing Lego.)

And Raine how she is either pure joy or pure sadness, she wears her emotions out there for all to see this girl. It is either dancing and skipping and singing, making pictures of rainbows, playing with her kitties or full out crying, inconsolable until she is ready but she will take a hug while she is suffering, thank you very much. Our fridge it is filled with her art and she calls herself an artist and a gymnast because those much agonised over gymnastics lessons - she loved them and will be going back for more.

Haven-Kate, how she runs, but it is one speed, she starts running and doesn't get faster and when she stops it is just immediate, no slow down period required. And how she can be so sweet, please mama, I love you mama and how she can be so honest and unsweet, when friends come over she says 'My no want them at my house' because she doesn't want any other two-year old touching any of her two-year old things. How when I was working too many nights in a row, and she missed me, she asked for Liam to come and lie with her and was asleep in two minutes. Oh and yes, how she went down a full-sized, grown up water slide (just a simple one at our local pool, nothing theme park fancy) all by herself six times in a row.

The doldrums of October made me pray that please by the grace of Jesus, let me not screw up too badly with my kids, and my marriage and those others I love, which on most days is really is all I can hope for I think.

Now November is here and I am ready. I feel fresh and clear. Delving through those October depths have brought me that.