Unselfish Thyself

Now that Baby Girl is six months old, I've finally moved beyond the "dear god, please just let me keep this tiny creature alive" stage to the "ohmigod, I am totally responsible for making this person a decent human being" stage.

I've been thinking a lot lately about this awesome responsibility. I am actually going to be Baby Girl's moral compass. If I'd ever thought that anyone would be looking to me for moral guidance, I might have done a few things differently in my misspent youth.

I've been carefully reviewing my list of things that I need to teach Baby Girl. I think we all want our children to learn to share, to be patient, to be kind, to help others.

But have I been practicing what I plan to preach? I thought about that as I sighed about the long line at the grocery store, mumbled under my breath about the people taking too long to cross the street, cursed the driver who cut in front of me to save himself 30 seconds...

Shit. I'm a terrible role model.

So I signed up to run the Honolulu Marathon.

Wait...wha?

Ok, I didn't just sign up to run the marathon. The whole family signed up to train as part of the National AIDS Marathon Program. That's right, even Baby Girl is working it in her jogging stroller to raise money for people living with HIV/AIDS.

Have I ever run a marathon before? Nope. Have I even run more than 3 miles at one time? Nope. Have I lost my mind? Possibly.

But did you know that more than one million Americans, and 40 million others around the world, are living with HIV -- the virus that causes AIDS? With more than 20 million deaths so far, AIDS is now the leading cause of death among all people aged 15 to 59 worldwide. That's pretty shocking.

Even though we'll be getting up at the butt crack of dawn, punishing our bodies for several hours and dealing with aches and pains, it will be worth it because we won't be doing this just for ourselves.

We'll be working together with our fellow runners to raise money for the fight to end AIDS.

Because Baby Girl deserves to grow up in a world that is free of HIV/AIDS. Because we want her to learn that helping others is the right thing to do. And because we can't imagine losing her and want to make sure that no parent ever has to experience that pain again.

So I've decided to take off the secret blogger veil in hopes of raising more money for AIDS Project Los Angeles. Now you can put a face to all those embarrassing stories...about my husband.

If you want to help us (and discover my top secret true identity ;-), visit here.