Some of you may already know this, but Nancy and I have a history long before ballwalkpark. She is my best friend’s mom. I was a 3rd teenager for her to worry about living in the basement in high school. She was my crew coach. I was the photographer at her wedding. These days, I am writing her paycheck, but she is still my fr-om (friend + mom).
With all these different roles over the years, it’s only natural that my life would be influenced by Nancy in some (i.e. many) ways. I remember one of my first Nancy memories (before I moved in the basement, before Hilary and I were even friends) when she was my crew coach. I was trying to tell her that I was sick and couldn’t go out in the boat. If you’re familiar with crew, you know that you need 8 people to go out in the boat and while you can go out with 7, it’s definitely not ideal, so Nancy was doing her good coach role and convincing me to go in the boat. I remember her telling me that when she has a cold she likes to work out because it gets you breathing hard helps clear out the congestion, gets the blood flowing, etc. She said you just have to make yourself do it and you will almost always feel better after. I don’t think I was buying it at the time, but I realized I had no way out, so I went out for our workout and, just as Nancy said, came back feeling a lot better.
For whatever reason, her “sweating out the cold” advice really stuck with me and it has come to me countless times over the years. I’ve replayed this conversation in my head to motivate myself to not call in sick to my restaurant shift, to take Bailey for a walk even if I don’t feel like it, and these days, to make the most of my park trips even if everything in me is saying to go home and go to bed. Once you get there and get busy doing whatever it is you went there to do, you will always feel better.
Today as I pulled up to the park I was feeling pretty miserable. As I was picking up dogs I got hit with that wave of drowsiness that tells you a cold is most likely on it’s way. A blanket and couch were sounding pretty amazing, but I had 7 amped up dogs in my truck so there was no turning back. I was sure that I would be a walking zombie potentially getting trampled by my own dogs.
When I got the dogs into the park we met up with Nancy and her pack a few minutes later. Once I got busy playing with the dogs I realized how much better I was feeling. It was another one of those moments where the “Nancy crew coach” conversation came to mind and I couldn’t help but think how ironic it was that there I was standing right next to her, at our “office”, as my friend + mom + employee. Fr-om-ee?
ballwalkparkseattledogwalker 
What a cool motivating post. Way to go Kel & Nancy!