Time with Brother Bear

alabama christmas

Jeff and Matt making pierogis for Christmas dinner

So far it’s been a nice time with Brother Bear, aka Jeff. We’ve run, played games, cooked pierogis, and had just a swell old time. Just to recap, we’re spending all our time down South with Jeff, Matt’s brother, so he can not only spend his winter break from Wisconsin Grad school somewhere quite a bit warmer, but also knock out 5 states of marathons in his quest to run a marathon or longer in every state.

When I told my mom that it wasn’t just myself and Matt anymore, but that we had a third Urbanski with us, she said, “Oh good, that means there’s another person there to absorb Matt’s energy!” She immediately tried to withdraw the statement, afraid of offending me or Matt, but she really was spot on. For anyone who knows Matt, they know that he is high energy, loves to play games, such as Monopoly and Risk, loves to work on projects, and has a hard time relaxing when there is so much to do in life. This kind of person is certainly admirable, and gets a considerable amount of things done, but from my perspective, can also be quite the treadmill. Matt is downright tiring, and I’m happy to have Jeff to dole out Matt’s energy between the two of us.

Case in point: Since Jeff has a running streak of running at least 27 minutes a day, and has done so for more than 3 years now, he’s up for running with Matt every day of the week. Also, Jeff has already played Monopoly twice with Matt, while I didn’t have to play at all, and Jeff has played tennis with him three times when I either didn’t want to, or couldn’t (I’m nursing a hamstring issue, so let’s not talk about that). Jeff even took over cooking details for last night’s pierogis while I chopped veggies and Matt oversaw the whole meal. Lastly, since Jeff wants to get in better overall shape, he’s doing P90X workouts with Matt, and I’ve since joined in, the guilt of watching them burn calories being just too much to handle.

So thank you, Brother Bear, for being here with us and for sharing this time down South. And most of all, thank you for helping me use up Matt’s never-ending energy.

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