Adventures of a Running Monkey

Back after a two week hiatus

2007-10-15T11:01:00.000-05:00

I've been a little too busy to blog lately. With the husband out of town and a baby to take care of on my own, things have been a little crazy here to say the least. But husband is back as of last night, so blogging shall resume. I've been running pretty regularly over the past two weeks. I'm still only doing two miles a day, as that's about all I've got time for, but I'm increasing my speed and I'm now down to nine minute miles comfortably. I've not yet ventured outside, as the baby is too young for the jogging stroller and there hasn't been anyone to watch her.
I've also started my core strenghtening program back up, and although I'm back to my pre-pregnancy weight, the muscle tone is still sorely lacking. My belly is still "jelly -like" hopefully that's not a permanent change...
I have to go back to week in two weeks...I just finished buying all of the supplies that Shannon needs to start daycare when I go back to work. I thought that I was okay with leaving her at daycare, but now that I've actually purchased everything that she needs, it's starting to really sink in, and it's getting a little more difficult. I'm sure she'll do wonderfully there, and I feel really god about the place that she will be going, but I still am going to have a dreadfully hard time leaving my sweetie with someone all day.
I was supposed to have another week after these two weeks, but the girl who's been covering my maternity leave just turned in her resignation, so my boss and I played let's make a deal and he made me an offer that I really couldn't pass up...so I'm going back a week earlier. Boo for work.

Whew

2007-09-29T12:31:00.000-05:00

It's finally getting easier...the running that is. I've been consistent with my runs this week. I've managed to crank out six two mile runs since last Sunday. Now, while this is not a lot compared to the distance I was running last year at this time, it's a releif to finally be back into the swing of things. My hamstrings don't hurt after running anymore, and my breathing is starting to find it's normal running rythm. I cannot even begin to describe how much better today's run was than those runs earlier this week.
In other news, we took my husband to the airport yesterday morning. He'll be working and doing some training in Atlanta for the next two weks, so I'm going to be getting a taste of what single parenting is like while he's gone. Thank god I don't have to work and take care of the baby on my own. I think I'd lose my mind if I had to do all of my normal duties while he was goone on top of what I'm already doing.

Take that, evil neighbor fiend

2007-09-26T19:44:00.000-05:00

We have a neighbor who completely sucks. No doubt about it, the man just doesn't have a clue as to how to be a decent neighbor. He's the yokel who planted eight really large pine trees between his yard and ours, (good fences make good neighbors, but since our city has a restriction against fences, trees are the next best thing). Genius planted these trees a year ago and he placed them in four inch holes (the root balls were at least sixteen inches in diameter) and then just mounded dirt up around the portion of the root ball that stuck out of the ground still. He's the same idiot who only stained part of his deck and left the rest unfinished. He's also the same guy who dug a four inch deep trench from the corner of his house where the drainspout empties to the corner of his lot were the sewer is (which borders our yard also). That trench sat there open for at least eight or nine months until the city finally noticed and made him fill it in, at which point he had to pay for a truckload of dirt to fill in the hole. Anyway, I digress.
Yesterday I noticed that his wife was out in the yard with their little boy, who's maybe three or four years old. He was riding a small four-wheeler around their yard and into some of the neighboring yards. I waited until he rode into our yard, at which point I politely asked her to not allow him to ride his four-wheeler in our yard.
Now, before you all go thinking I'm a big meanie, let me just add that I have no problem with the kids in the neighborhood playing in our back yard, as long as we're not using it. I do however have a problem with motorized vehicles that could potentially destroy my grass, leaving a mud hole for my dog to do his business in.
Anyway, I thought that would be the end of the whole situation, oh how naive am I?!?! Today I was taking the dog out to do his business and she came out on their deck and started yelling at me about how I had better make sure I cleaned up after him, as her son had ridden through dog waste yesterday and she was not pleased about this. I apologized and asked if she knew where the waste was, as I would make sure to clean it up and I would try to keep him out of their yard in the future. Imagine my surprise when she told me that the waste in question was in my own yard!
I should have just let things go, but then she started spouting off about how I needed to come clean up his four-wheeler and then the husband came out and started telling me how my failure to clean up the animal waste in my own yard more diligently was bringing their property values down.
I lost it. I unloaded on this man about how he was the last one in the entire neighborhood who should be talking about anyone else bringing down his property values, as his house is the biggest eyesore in the neighborhood and how all the neighbors think he's a lazy turd who needs to get a clue when it comes to finishing projects that he's started. Needless to say, he'll probably try to burn my house down tonight.
In my defense, I'd had a really bad day with a baby who just wouldn't stop crying and refused to nap despite utter exhaustion. Hopefully he'll be embarassed enough to do something about all the half finished shit around his house. If so, it was a rant well directed.

Okay, so my college roomie's plan is this...

2007-09-24T08:46:00.000-05:00

She and her husband just completed the Ironman Wisconsin (they are super studs, for real) and have decided that they would like to try to motivate their friends and families to live healthier lifestyles and be more active. So, they're coordinating what they're calling Go Family and Friends (to play off the new St. Louis Marathon name of Go St. Louis). They've challenged their friends and families to run or walk the half or full marathon here in St. Louis the first weekend of April. Angie (former college roomie) has offered to reimburse the entry fee to any member of her family or friends who actually sign up for and complete the race, if they've never done a marathon or half before.
So, while I don't qualify for the reimbursement of my entry fee, as I've done too many races, I am going to do the race to show support for what I think is a totally cool idea. I'm also trying to recruit my own friends and family to join our little gang for the race. While I won't be offering the financial incentive that she's offering, I will offer training support and advice to "my team" and we'll have a totally fun time doing this. So far, two of my closest friends from college are comitted, and I've got to try to talk the third into it. Her excuse for not participating is that "she's a fat, lazy turd" but I'm not buying what she's selling.

Well, that was interesting...

2007-09-23T15:07:00.000-05:00

I did my first run since having Shannon this morning. It was a lot tougher than I anticipated it would be. I'm not really sure why I thought it would be easy, I mean after all, it's been almost a full eight weeks since I've ran and it's been at least four since I've done any even slightly fast paced walking. Anyway, long story short, I ran two measly miles on the treadmill, and they kicked my ass. I managed to keep a decent ten minute mile pace, but I was most definitely sucking wind. Five hours later, my legs are slightly sore, and my abs are very uncomfortable. (That's probably a byproduct of the fact that according to my husband, my abs feel like bread dough) Believe or not, this statement did not piss me off, because it's 100% accurate right now. My stomach is gross.
Things I learned during and immediately before my run today:
1. I need a new sports bra, my usual one is less than supportive now.
2. A surefire way to empty your colon is to lace on your running shoes. Normally this effect occurs during the run, today all I had to do was put my shoes on. I know, way TMI, but what the hell, runners share all the gory details.
3. I never realized before how hot my torso gets when I run, I seriously felt like my entire trunk was on fire after the first mile.
4. Running is not, not, not fun when you're this out of shape. Thank god I didn't take the whole forty weeks of pregnancy off.

Anyway, at least I'm running again. I'm going to stick to the two mile distance this week and hopefully next week I'll be able to up it to three and then start building a base again. I've decided that I'm staying close to home this spring racing season (mainly because I won't have any vacation time left to travel after my maternity leave.) I haven't decided on a 1/2 or full event, but I have managed to get two of my girlfriends from college to commit to running the 1/2 marathon in St. Louis this coming April, so I'm pretty excited about that. My college roomie has this great plan to get people in her life to take responsibility for their health, it's called Get Fit weekend and she concocted it on her own...but more about that at a later date.

It's rare that I find forwarded email useful...

2007-09-22T12:35:00.000-05:00

The History of the Middle Finger: Well, now......here's something I never knew before, and now that I know it, I feel compelled to share it with my more intelligent friends in the hope that they, too, will feel edified. Isn't history more fun when you know something about it?
Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore they would be incapable of fighting in the future. This famous English longbow was made of the native English Yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking the yew" (or "pluck yew").
Much to the bewilderment of the French, the English won a major upset and began mocking the French by waving their middle fingers at the defeated French, saying, See, we can still pluck yew! Since 'pluck yew' is rather difficult to say, the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to a labiodentals fricative F', and thus the words often used in conjunction with the one-finger-salute! It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows used with the longbow that the symbolic gesture is known as "giving the bird."
IT IS STILL AN APPROPRIATE SALUTE TO THE FRENCH TODAY!
And yew thought yew knew every plucking thing

Today is my husband's first day back to work

2007-09-17T12:21:00.000-05:00

Since Shannon was born. I was dreading being here by myself with the baby all day long, especially since it's been a little chilly outside the past two days and I've been a little reluctant to take the baby out in the cooler weather for any period of time. So far things seem to be going well though. I just got her to lay down for a nap, so with any luck, she'll sleep for another hour or so and I can get some stuff done around here. She's had a busy morning, what with playing and singing, and reading books. She's also been incredibly hungry, and doesn't seem to be falling right asleep after eating today. This made getting her to take a nap somewhat difficult. This afternoon, since it's warmer out today we'll be taking a walk and I'll hopefully get to ride the stationary bike this afternoon as well.
Only six days until I get to run again!

So the game plan is...

2007-09-13T10:42:00.000-05:00

To fix my incredibly bad eating habits and slowly ease myself back into the running game. I've only got about three puonds to go until I'm back at my pre-baby weight, but in all honesty I could have lost about ten pounds from what I was prior to getting pregnant and still been okay...So the goal is to lose thirteen pounds between now and the beginning of December, which is when spring marathon training should commence. I've not yet decided if I'll be doing a full or half mari this spring, mostly I'm waiting to see how much actual "free" time I have after going back to work at the beginning of November. If the last three weeks are any indication, I'll be doing a half marathon instead of a full. Boston may have to wait another couple of years.
I've got the green light from the doctor to start ramping up my exercise routine. And thus far I've taken the baby on a thirty minute walk every day this weeek and I've also ridden the stationarty bike for an hour during her early eavening naps every day since Sunday. So far I'm feeling pretty good without any soreness or problems resulting from the increase in activity. I'm not allowed to sstart jogging until a week from this coming Sunday, but I'm so looking forward to it that it's kind of pathetic. it's been almost seven weeks since I've actually ran at all. I'm going through just a smidge of withdrawal.

Could I possibly get any less sleep?

2007-09-05T17:28:00.000-05:00

I was totally spoiled by the first five or seven days of Shannon's life...she slept so well and so did I. Now that she's a little older (my sweet baboo is two weeks old already today) she's starting to want to spend a little less time napping. Which is cool, but she's really too little to entertain herself, which means that if she's awake, she's wanting to be held and have someone entertain her. She was up until one in the morning last night...not a good thing at all. (But on the plus side, once I got her to go to sleep, she slept until almost six)
So, needless to say, we're trying to keep her up a lot more during the day. This afternoon she did a pretty good job of staying awake, and she's taking her last nap right now as I blog (otherwise I wouldn't be blogging). I figure she'll wake up again around six or seven and be hungry again and then I'll try to keep her up until around eight or nine so she'll sleep a bit more. I know she'll get her sleep schedule sorted out sooner or later, but I'm going to continue being tired until she gets it straightened out.

Having kids is no joke man...

2007-08-25T17:58:00.000-05:00

My days are totally consumed by that little girl. She doesn't do much other than eat, sleep, and poop...but it seems like every minute of the day (almost) is spent meeting her basic needs. Now don't get me wrong, she's a sweetie, and by far the best thing that I've ever done, but she's a ton of work.
We're finally getting to the place where we can start taking her on short little errand running trips, so yesterday we went to lunch and Kohl's to make some returns and today we're going to go to the library, so at least we're not stuck in the house all day long every day. It's kind of a pain though, as I'm not allowed to drive again until next Wednesday, so dear husband is having to take us everywhere...thank God he's not going back to work until after my no driving ban has been lifted.
I actually feel pretty good...the only pain I still have is on the left side of my incision, and I noticed earlier today that one of my dissolvable stitches is starting to poke through the skin, thus accounting for my left sided incision pain. I've lost almost all of the baby weight already (knock on wood). I'm only eight pounds above my prepregnancy weight as of this morning. I'm hoping that I can drop a few more besides my baby weight, apparently breastfeeding burns up to 800 calories a day! What an awesome way to burn calories without breaking a sweat.
I'm not allowed to run for another three and a half weeks, but after that I'm to "let your body be your guide" I'm hoping to start walking short distances in another week or so, and then be ready to run a mile here and there two weeks after that so that by December I'll be reconditioned enough to train for a spring race. I'm thinking 1/2 marathon at this point, but we'll see how things go.

It's a....

2007-08-23T12:08:00.000-05:00

GIRL!!!! Our baby girl was born last night at 4:33pm. She weighed 7 pounds, 12 ounces and was 21.25 inches long.
She was born via C section after nineteen hours of contractions and an hour and a half of pushing. She's nowhere near as large as they thought she would be, and we're still not sure why she didn't want to make her appearance in the traditional manner. Either way, she's here and she's healthy and she's been an angel so far.
She's eating well and sleeping in three or four hour blocks of time.
I'm feeling decent too. I'm extremely sore across my incision, and in my ribs from the manipulations that were required to get her unstuck from my pelvis after they decided to deliver her via c-section.

It's totally settled

2007-08-16T19:50:00.000-05:00

The baby's birthday is next Wednesday, barring that he or she doesn't decide to make an appearance on his or her own between now and then. That's right kids....I'm getting induced next Wednesday!!!!! yeah for us. I'm actually going in on Tuesday night to start the process, but they don't expect the actual birth to occur until sometime on Wednesday morning or early afternoon.
They decided to induce because here we are a full week later, and I've made zero more progress towards having this child. The doctor is concerned that if we let it go too far past my due date (which is next Friday anyway) that I won't be able to push the kid out cause he or she will be just too ginormous. So, we're getting induced. It's not exactly what I had planned, but whatever works.

No progress on the baby front

2007-08-09T21:24:00.000-05:00

Things are exactly as they were last week, although the baby does seem to have dropped a little. I'm really kind of pissed off about today's appointment, as I waited for almost a full hour to see the nurse practicioner who was filling in for my doctor today. And then, she was in a hurry and was so rough during my exam that almost five hours later I'm still having horrible shooting pain in my pelvis. This cannot be good. I'm thinking that I need to go take some Tyelonol and try to go to bed. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Big home improvement project is almost done

2007-08-07T18:32:00.000-05:00

So we've been talking about ripping the linoleum out of our bathrooms and installing ceramic tile for a really long time now. We finally went and picked out some tile that we liked, and last week husband of mine started the project. I'll admit, I wasn't thrilled with his choice of when to complete this project, but now that it's almost done, and it really looks nice, I'm pretty glad that he decided to do it now. It turned out to be a bit more expensive than we had planned, and a whole lot more time consuming than we had originally thought that it would be, but it looks nice at least. All that is left to do on it is finish cleaning the tile, reinstall the trim, rehang the door, and reseat the toilet. (Yep, you have to pull all that crap up in order to lay a tile floor. Who'd have thought that.) Hopefully we can get most of this done tonight which will just leave minor stuff, like cleaning that bathroom to do later this week or next weekend.
I'm going to be so glad to have this baby and be off of work for awhile. I've got one patient who is really pissing me off lately. I had a student until about two weeks ago, and she was providing most of this guy's care. (He's an older man who is very set in his ways and probably is suffering from the onset of some mild dementia.) He was also one of the patients that I had to move last week due to my grandma's funeral. (which he never even acknowledged). Apparently he was very confused as to what time he was supposed to show up last Tuesday for this rescheduled appointment and when he showed up at the wrong time we very politely corrected him and asked him to come back at the correct time (normally I'll see people whenever they show up, but I was on my way out of the office to an appointment which couldn't be rescheduled. So he was pissed about that. Then Friday of last week, he came in and was complaining about how I "gave him poor quality of care" on Tuesday, even though I did the exact same treatment with him that we've always done and he said that he felt great leaving the clinic. So I asked him what specifically he felt was lacking and how I could have made the treatment better in his mind. His only response was that I was "too busy" (He was one of two patients in the clinic during his hour long treatment session.) Obviously I was just way too busy.
So anyway, long story short, yesterday he called before his appointment and wanted to know if he should come in, as there had been a problem with his appointment time last week and he wanted to discuss how I was going to treat him before the session so that we would be on the same page. Apparently, I have a major attitude problem because I won't massage his feet (totally not indicated for his condition).
The sad part is that he doesn't even remember what he complained about last week nor does he remember being rude and telling me that I was a terrible therapist last week. Although every other patient who was in the clinic when he went off on his tirade last Friday made it a point to tell me yesterday how rude they thought he had been and how well I had handled him. So now he's writing a letter complaining about me to my employer (I'm not too worried about this, as I already explained the situation to my employer and this particular patient has a history of writing nasty letters about his therapists in the past).
I'm to the point now where if he calls to schedule additional appointments I'm going to refuse to see him anymore. I really think that we've exhausted our relationship and I'm not willing to work with someone who refuses to be civil. Besides, why would I open myself up to a potential problem situation by seeing someone who obviously has it out for me? That kind of seems like a lawsuit looking for a place to happen.
It just sucks that people have to be mean.

No time left to blog

2007-08-01T19:15:00.000-05:00

Time is really starting to be a hot commodity around my house lately. Which is why blogger is pissing me off so badly right now. It's seriously taking at least five seconds for each letter that I type to show up on the screen. Who's got time for this shit?
We've been busy lately. Sunday was our baby shower. It was not your traditional baby shower. No cheesy favors or dumb games. Instead it was a coed family type bbq. It was pretty much fun and we got some great gifts. Now I just have to finish the thank you notes. I'm about a third of the way through with these. I'm hoping to get another third of them done tonight while watching some much anticipated Shark Week programming on the Discovery channel. I love Shark Week. it's pretty much my favorite week of the summer.
Monday morning was my Grandma's funeral. Supremely sad, but we're all glad that this is over with. The low point of the experience was my cousins circling vulture-like around the remains of Grandma's estate before we could even get her into the ground. They were already talking about who got what before her body even left the hospital last Thursday. Pathetic.
In baby news, the doc thinks it will be a minimum of two more weeks before the littlest Johnson makes it's appearance. I'm not due for another three weeks technically, but I was kind of hoping to go a little early. But depending on what day you ask me, I change my opinion about going early. Some days I'm incredibly anxious for him or her to get here and other days I'm completely overwhelmed by the idea of having a kid.
I was going to post more today, but I'm really pissed off at this delay of the letters I type appearing onscreen, so I'm done for tonight.

What a supremely stressful few weeks

2007-07-26T12:12:00.000-05:00

It's been a long time since I've posted. Mainly because I've been busy, but also because I've been a little overwhelmed as of late. For those of you who remember my posting about grandma being hospitalized a few weeks ago the update is as follows: She was discharged from the hospital to a skilled nursing facility earlier this week. She was only in the skilled nursing facility for twelve hours and her PEG tube (a feeding tube placed through the abdominal wall) started leaking. Come to find out, after ten or so hours in the ER on Tuesday, that she had pneumonia, and a staph infection. I had just done her advanced medical directive with her last week, so essentially we all knew this was the end of the road.
She passed this morning just after sunrise. I think she was ready to go. She told the minister Tuesday night that it was time to get this show on the road. Tuesday was her 85th birthday, and she was just so excited that she still got to have a birthday party. Apparently in 85 years of having birthdays, no one had ever thrown her a party. Granted, it wasn't the big party with her friends like she had originally been looking forward to, but at least she got to have one with her family.
There of course, has been more drama, but I don't have the energy to post now about any of it. Suffice to say, I'll be glad when this week is finally over.

Baby gifts already

2007-07-10T18:28:00.000-05:00

Today two of my coworkers brought gifts for our baby to the meeting that we had over lunchtime. I just love baby stuff. They bought us toys from out registry, including the plush blocks, a prone activity mat, and two toys that attach to the stroller or car seat and kind of "jitter" and make noise when you pull on them. So cute. So I decided that as I unpackaged the stuff after work today, this would be a good day to start teaching the Max dog the difference between his toys and the baby's toys.
We'll see how it works out. He didn't really seem too interested in most of the baby's toys so far. He gave them the obligatory sniff and then walked away. The only one that held his attention was the yellow plush block, which when you squeeze it makes a quacking noise like a duck. This one he most certainly took issue with. I think he's grasped (for now) that this is not his toy thought, as he got scolded each time he tried to pick it up with his slobbery dog mouth. I'll just have to remember to wash that one before giving it to the baby. So now I'm off to write thank you notes. I figure the best defense in this case is a good offense and if I write the notes as the gifts come in, it's one less chore to deal with later on.

This may be the last week

2007-07-08T19:56:00.000-05:00

for running prior to baby's arrival. I've been noticing after my last few runs on the treadmill that I've been having a lot of pelvic pressure and aching. I'm pretty sure that the baby has dropped down a bit over the past few weeks, as I've been feeling pain much more in my pelvis and lower back than in my ribs as I was initially. I'm going to see how I do with the remaining four runs this week and if the soreness post run continues I'll be dropping down to a walk for the remainder of the pregnancy. I'm figuring that it's almost time to stop running anyway, as I'll be thirty four weeks this Friday though...
Today we went and bought outfits for the baby to wear when we bring it home. I bought both a girls and a boys outfit since we won't know what we're having until it actually makes it's appearance. I figure I'll wash both outfits once it gets a little closer to the actual date of delivery, and whichever one we don't end up using will get given as a gift to one of the people that we know who are also having a kid in the next few months or so.
I also bought the book Baby Signs for Dummies. I've really been interested in some of the things I've heard about how teaching your infant sign language at a very young age makes it much easier to deal with them overall. It seems pretty basic stuff, and of course you're not looking to have a fluent conversation with them, but it allows then to communicate basic needs such as sleep, diaper change, milk, and more without becomming frustrated. According to the little bit of the book I read, it really doesn't kick in that they can communicate via this method until around six months, but they suggest that it's helpful to start signing with them around three months of age. I'll let you know how this works out for us.

I have an addiction

2007-07-07T08:54:00.000-05:00

It's a big one...I simply cannot stop chewing ice. It's driving my husband crazy. I think he might kill me if I can't find a way to stop. Even knowing this, I still cannot stop chomping on ice cubes. Is there such a thing as Ice Eaters Annoymous?

Seriously late

2007-07-03T21:17:00.000-05:00

But better late than never. It's the movie review of the new Die Hard...in a word, awesome. Bruce Willis is such a complete stud. The movie itself was pretty good, but I don't think I would have enjoyed it nearly as much if it wasn't for Bruce Willis. But then again, things blowing up, people getting shot at, and a random bad guy getting knocked out of a helicopter that was pursuing Bruce Willis' character by a huge spout of water from a broken fire hydrant, what's not to love?
I've been staying busy, work is crazy...I'm really looking forward to the extra day off tomorrow, even though it does kind of suck that it's in the middle of the week. I really think that Independence Day should be a holiday like Thanksgiving and they should make it the first Friday or Monday of July every year. Who do you think I need to petition to get this changed?
I've been trying to stay caught up on the work stuff, which is tough, as it's already time to do midterm grades for the student who's interning at my clinic. Plus I've been busy with my grandma. My mom's mom has been in the hospital for about a week and a half now. Apparently she had a small bowel obstruction, which did not respond to non-invasive care. So, long story short, she had surgery last Friday and is now out of the ICU and back into a regular med/surg room. She looks much better, but is extremely confused. They're hoping to get her started on a regular diet later this week and hopefully get her transferrred to a rehab facility by the end of the weekend.
One of the major problems with this situation is that that my mom and dad are supposed to be leaving on Sunday to go to New York for five days...and my dad pretty much refuses to cancel the trip even though grandma is not really doing all that great yet and could potentially slide downhill pretty quickly. (what do you expect when an almost 85 year old has major surgery?) I personally think he's being kind of an ass about the whole thing, and that my mom needs to put her foot down and refuse to go, but then again I'm a lot more assertive than my mother ever has been.
So, needless to say, next week will be more of the same craziness around here, except I'll be expected to visit the hospital daily instead of every other day, as "there won't be anyone else to check on her". Plus there's the added fun of watching my parents' dog (who has a whole host of "nevous stomach" type issues) and working, and this little thing called being eight plus months pregnant....fun stuff.

Last ultrasound today...

2007-06-26T12:39:00.000-05:00

Everything looks good. Development is right on schedule, almost to the day in fact when they measure the baby's abdominal cavity and femur length. The head however, is a different story. As of today, my kid's head is measuring almost two full weeks ahead of the rest of the development. It's not a problem, and doesn't indicate any type of dysfunction, as it appears to have a normal, proportional brain inside of it, but it's gonna be hell delivering this kid.
They were concerned that I was going to have to plan a C section or be induced early, as my abdomen has been measuring on the large side for the last two visits and I'm not exactly a large person to begin with, but it appears that the baby is right on track. Right now, it weighs about 4 pounds, 3 ounces per the calcuations, and the best gestimate at this time is that it's going to be about seven or eight pounds at birth.
So, everything looks good. I'm expecting based on today's calcuations to not have an activity restrictions if I want to keep running until the day I deliver. I'm not sure how much longer I'll keep it up though, as I'm starting to fatigue pretty quickly and I'm having some minor hip issues when I run. We'll see how it goes after I slow down a little more tomorrow.

Conspicously absent

2007-06-21T19:03:00.000-05:00

that's me. I've been less than stellar about blogging lately...it probably has something to do with the fact that I'm a mere nine weeks away from evicting this kid from my body...or perhaps to do with the fact that I've been really, really busy (like crazy busy) with my J-O-B.
This week has been pretty much the week from hell. I've been helping to provide vacation coverage for another therapist all week, and thus have had to condense all of my own work into less than half of the time that it normally takes me. Monday morning I had a new student start at my clinic (thank God she's on the ball for the most part) and I saw fifteeen or sixteen patients in a five hour time span. Insane. Then I went to vacation dude's office. Tuesday was expanded hours at the other clinic to cover the vacationing guy's patients, Wednesday was normal (but packed) at my office, today was normal hours at the other clinic and tomorrow is split again between my own office (sixteen patients in four and a half hours) and vacation slacker's office. Insane again. I'll be so glad when tomorrow night rolls around.
Baby wise I'm doing pretty good. I'm still not sleeping well, I guess it's good practice for when the kid gets here...I just cannot get comfortable at all. I'm still running, but slower than dirt. We've got our last ultrasound scheduled for next Tuesday. Normally they only do two ultrasounds in my doctor's practice unless you have problems at some point, but they're doing a third for us since I've managed to stay active this far into it. They're going to be checking on fetal growth and as long as everything is still on track size wise I'll be given the green light to keep running as long as I'm comfortable. If the bambino is showing a slowdown in growth I'll be told to stop running.
My husband keeps teasing me that I'll be one of those people who waits till the last minute to go to the hospital once I'm in labor because I'll still have to get my run in for the day. I'm thinking that I'll go ahead to the hospital once labor starts, but if it's not moving along quick enough I'll head down to the PT gym to take a run on the treadmill...in reality this probably won't happen, but I think I'll mention it to my doc just to see his reaction.
In other news, our cousin just announced that she's also expecting. She's due three months after me, so that's pretty exciting that our kids will be almost the same age. Also, one of my coworkers (probably the one I like the most) just matched with a birth mother and is going to be moving forward with their adoption next month. Her baby's birth mom is due a month before me...this will create some scheduling conflicts at the office, but it a totally fantastic thing for her.
Lots of little people showing up in our lives in the next six months!

Biggest load of crap ever...

2007-06-16T16:31:00.000-05:00

lives right here.
This is without a doubt the biggest load of garbage I've ever read. So what if I like to run with my ipod sometimes? Or if I'm going to load my kid into a tricked out jogging stroller the second it's old enough for one and hit the road? Yes, I log some of my weekly mileage on a treadmill (okay, I log it all on a treadmill now), I'm still a runner damnit.
Let it be known that I'm never buying any type of Pearl Izumi shoes or athletic gear...for the rest of my life. I'm not quite sure what they hoped to accomplish with this ad, other than pissing real runners off. I'm thinking that it's kind of ironic that so many people that I would definitely consider real runners fall into the "jogger" cateogory by this ad's standards.
I'm also finding it kind of interesting that I don't see too many elite runners wearing Pearl Izumi stuff...in fact, I only ever see it on high school girls who run track...and most of them that I've met I've met during the course of my job...meaning that they have some kind of orthopedic issue, which miraculously enough, goes away as soon as they stop wearing the Izumis. How's that for coincidence.
I'm off to compose an irate email to their advertising department.

Movie review...

2007-06-10T17:16:00.000-05:00

It's been a long time since I've posted a movie review. It's not been that I haven't seen anything recently, it's just that I haven't felt much like posting recently. We saw Ocean's Thirteen yesterday. It rocked. Of course, I'm biased, because I do love George Clooney, but even so, it was a clever movie.
We didn't do much this weekend outside of the movie. We had to help my grandma get her television set up yesterday morning, we rented All the Kings Men (which I don't recommend) and today we just lounged around the house and did some chores.
We did go to Barnes and Noble today to look for a few classic children's books for the baby. I have a major shopping jones right now. I just want to go buy stuff, but am trying to hold back. We're not sure if either side of our families are throwing this baby a shower, but figure if we go buy stuff now and then they throw us one, we'll just have to take a ton of stuff back later. I found four of the ones that I loved when I was a kid, but am still looking for about five or six more.
I picked up Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel, the Little Engine That Could, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, and Goodnight Moon. I was really surprised to see that the bookstore didn't carry the Little Golden Book line anymore. I thought that these books were staples of every little kid's library. I'm wondering if I might have more success looking for this line of books at Target or Walmart.

Wouldn't you think I'd have learned my lesson the first time?

2007-06-07T19:42:00.000-05:00

I went to the lab this morning. Routine blood work, actually a gestational diabetes test, which are standard in the early third trimester. I was supposed to drink this small bottle of orange stuff that kind of tasted like sno cone syrup. This was supposed to be the worst part of the whole experience, as I don't like orange anything and it was early morning.
My story starts off at slightly after seven this morning, when I figured the lab would be almost empty...not so much. There must have been twenty people waiting to have work done. So thirty minutes after my arrival, they finally call my name. I go into the treatment room, and hand the girl my paperwork only to hear her say "oh good, just a simple glucose fast blood draw." She starts getting her blood draw stuff ready, at which point I decide it's in my best interest to ask some questions, such as "don't I have to drink the sugar syrup first?"
She proceeds to tell me that I'd already drank it, which I was pretty sure that I hadn't done, so we spent a few minutes discussing why I hadn't drank the syrup yet (uhm, how 'bout cause they didn't give it to me at the doctor's office and I can't buy it at the store?) After several minutes of discussion they figured out that the nurse at my doctor's office hadn't checked the right box on the lab requisition.
Sound familiar anyone? The same thing happened when I had my quad screen ten weeks ago.
So, long story short, I called the exchange, because of course the doctor's office was still closed, forty five long minutes later, they called me back. I drank the goo, which was pretty gross, and then had to sit in the waiting room for another hour while my body processed the sugar solution. Hopefully I passed so that I don't have to take the three hour test later this month. How much would that suck?

Moving day

2007-06-02T15:04:00.000-05:00

for my Grandma. She's moving from the house that she's lived in for over fifty years to a senior citizen's retirement community. My mother has been organizing/coordinating the move. For those of you who've never met my mother, she's not exactly the most organized person in the free world. In fact, my dad often tells her that she would not be very successful at organizing a one car funeral. This is a pretty accurate statement. So it was no surprise when we showed up today to help move Grandma and pretty much nothing was packed.
The boxes where there, but they were all empty. The closets were still completely full, the cabinets were full, the basement was still jam packed, and pretty much nothing was ready to go. We were told to be at Grandma's old house around eleven. (I told my mom that I didn't want to get started really early...meaning nine o'clock or later would be fine...she told everyone to show up late morning.) Then she and my dad were over thirty minutes late to the whole thing anyway. Then my dad decided that the lawn needed to be mowed...right then. That had to take priority over what we were actually there to do. Fine. So we loaded my car full of stuff and got ready to leave. I think my mom actually wanted us to wait until they were done and ready to go to the new house too...but I really don't see the point in sitting around wasting time while my dad does a chore that could be done tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day....
My aunt, uncle and two cousins were suppposed to be helping...when we left at eleven forty five with a carload of crap they still hadn't shown up. We stopped for lunch on our way to the new house, by the time we got to the new house, there still was no sign of my aunt, uncle, or cousins. We unloaded our car and got to work hanging blinds, and my aunt finally showed up. So we helped her unload her car and put stuff away in the bathroom and kitchen. My parents still had not left Grandma's old house when we were finished at the new house.
All in all, the entire day was pretty much a cluster. I'm pretty sure that by the time everything is done, my mom and her sister won't be talking, my grandma and my mom won't be talking, and everyone will just be totally pissed at everyone else. Good times, eh?

I love long weekends

2007-05-28T15:59:00.000-05:00

But I don't get nearly enough of them. I love that going to bed on Sunday night knowing that you get one more day to sleep in and not have to work. Even though we didn't do too much this weekend, it was still nice and relaxing. We rented a bunch of movies on Friday night. I highly recommend Deja Vu with Denzel Washington. The rest of the movies weren't quite as memorable (and included the Justin Timberlake film debut ...Alpha Dog). Saturday we lounged around, barbequed with the neighbors, and just generally did nothing much. Yesterday I got up early, but felt like ass, so went back to bed until almost eleven. This never happens, so to say I was shocked at what time the clock read when I finally woke back up is an understatement.
We caught the late morning showing of the new Pirates of the Caribbean, which I was pretty disappointed in. Part of my disappointment comes from the fact that the kid behind me kept kicking my chair, but the largest part of it was that the movie just really wasn't that good.
Today we slept in, then took the dog to a new park near the house. We thought the park would be really crowded since it's a holiday weekend, but there were only about a half dozen other people there. It was a pretty nice park, kind of off the beaten path. Most of the park is still under construction, and the rain from last night had closed the main trail. The poor dog was exhausted after visiting the park. He was so tired he actually slept in the car on the way home. Normally he's a barking, whining spaz in the car, so this was a rare treat. We took the long way home, down these little two lane country roads, instead of taking the highway. We found some really nice pieces of property...if only we could afford to buy.

Thank God for this

2007-05-21T19:49:00.000-05:00

The rib pain that I've been experiencing pretty much nonstop for the past week seems better today. Now granted, today is only the first day that it's been better, but it was so much better today that I can't help but be encouraged by this. I actually didn't have any soreness until around five this evening. Usually it kicks in by lunch time.
I'm a little more sore now, but I also just got done with my three miles on the treadmill and have been sitting here at the computer for the last thirty minutes or so...using less than stellar posture. Huh, maybe there's a connection? Nah.

A different experience

2007-05-20T13:25:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we were searching for something to do. That is, we had a ton of stuff that we needed to do around the house, but wanted to find something kind of fun and definitely outside since it was only about seventy degrees here yesterday.
I'm not sure which one of us came up with the idea, but we decided to check out the Renaissance Fair in the local town. My husband had been to one of these as a kid, but I'd never gone. From the way he described the one he went to as a child, it sounded pretty cool.
The woods of the county fairground have all of these wooden "huts" in them. Permenent structures built specifically for the six weekends of the year that this fair is here. All of these structures house merchants, crafters, and food vendors during the weekends of the fair. We thought that they'd also have blacksmith strations, sword making demos, and all kinds of other "medival" crafts.
Instead, it was like a giant craft show, with entertainment dispersed in between. Some of the entertainment was pretty cool.
We caught a juggling act, a belly dancing troupe and the high joust. Which is exactly what it sounds like. Two men, in armour on horses trying to knock the crap out of each other. Pretty good stuff. Especially considering that it was a "joust until the " and the losing knight had bladders concealed in his clothing which he popped open as he was "stabbed".
So, although the booths and vendors were disappointing, the entertainment was pretty interesting. The crowds in attendance were also interesting, as apparently there is a huge subset of the population that likes to get dressed up in period clothing and pretend that they're in medival France. There were definitely some unusual characters there.
Oh well, I've been now, and don't ever really need to go back.

That pretty much sucks

2007-05-17T10:46:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I got a letter at work stating that the VA had been using my employer identifier number (which is also my SSN) and my birthdate in connection with Medicare services to do some type of research regarding how veteran's seek healthcare. Wouldn't you know it, the doofus supervising the project used an external harddrive to back up his or her work and then proceeded to lose the harddrive. So...they're not sure, but they felt obligated to tell me that they'd misplaced enough information about me to potentially allow someone else to steal my identity and potentially ruin my credit. Happy Wednesday to me.
So last night we had to run off a copy of my current credit report, which looks fine. Then this morning I spent about twenty mintues on the phone trying to place a fraud alert on my accounts. Fun stuff. Once I figured out exactly who I was supposed to call, it was pretty easy, but it took me at least fifteen of those twenty minutes to figure out who to call.

I can't seem to keep up with the whole blog thing...

2007-05-15T10:04:00.000-05:00

In fact, it's been so long since I've blogged that I actually had to really search my brain to figure out what my login name and password were to write this post. That's sad. In my defense, I've been busy.
We've been trying to get some last minute projects finished up around the house before this baby shows up. So this past weekend we got started on the cedar chest that we've been talking about refinishing for oh, seven or so years now. I wasn't able to do much of the work, as I couldn't be around the chemicals that my husband used to strip the old finish off, nor could I be around the stain that he used to finish the chest. I did get to help with the sanding though. I love that power sander! The chest is finished now, and it looks great. We're just waiting for it to finish drying and then I can put everything away in it. Now we've just got a china cabinet to refinish and replace the glass in, and then pretty much all of our projects will be done.
My student intern is starting to get the hang of things. She's still kind of hesitant to push patients aggressively, and her documentation needs some serious work, but I see improvement from last week, and it's been helpful to have an extra set of hands and eyes in the office, especially since the pregnant chick aches and pains have started in earnest. I swear, my ribs feel like they're broken. Apparently, I've got some instability in my right rib cage due to cartilage softening and ligaments loosening all over my body. Let me just share how painful this is. It feels like I'm being stabbed over and over again just below my shoulderblade. No bueno. I can't get comfortable to sleep so I'm cranky most of the time.
The only thing that really seems to alleviate my pain is a short run. I'm slowing the pace down again, as I've been a little short of breath lately, yeah, even walking up the stairs can take my breath away if I try to go too fast...but at least I'm staying active.
Last week some doofus at our corporate office told me that my kid was going to have shaken baby syndrome from my running while pregnant. I love the random comments that people make now. I was actually so stunned by this one that I didn't even have a snappy comeback.

Busy weekend

2007-05-06T18:05:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was the Girls on the Run 5k at Tower Grove Park in South St. Louis. It was a great race. The girl I ran with was actually able to run the whole way...she's one of our kids who's never run much before and we'd not seen any glimmers of this running ability in any of our practice sessions. I was really surprised and pleased by her performance. She was pretty cute, the kids know that I'm expecting, and my belly is starting to be the first thing you notice about me when I walk into a room, so she kept asking me if I was doing okay or if I needed to slow down...we averaged just over a ten minute per mile pace, which is still well within my comfort zone.
All in all, we had sixteen of our twenty four girls run/walk the race and every single one of them was able to finish it!
Yesterday evening we went to see The Invisible. This looked like a great movie in the previews, but actually was pretty disappointing in reality. This is the movie where the kid gets jumped on his way home from a party and his assailants think they've killed him, so they hide the body...but he's not really dead. The whole movie is about him being stuck in this "in between place" and trying to convince people to go find him before he actually does die. It didn't have any big name actors or actresses in it, which was fine by me, but it wasn't nearly as well scripted as it potentially could have been. In summary, wait for the DVD, it wasn't worth the price of admission.
Today we just worked around the house, did the grocery shopping, slept in, and went to the library. Have I mentioned lately how much I love the library? I put in a reserve/request for a book I read a review of in Runner's World or the Running Times (I can't remember which one). It's a semi-factual account of a kid who was on his way back from a track meet when a bus accident took the lives of all of his teammates and coaches. Sounds pretty interesting.
On the work front, things are starting to pick up a bit...knock on wood. Tomorrow looks decent, as does every other day this coming week except for Friday, but that's a long way away still...
I have a student intern who's first day will be tomorrow. Let's hope she's good. This will be her first internship ever, as in, she's never touched or spoken to a patient ever...hopefully she'll learn the ropes quickly and we'll have a good six weeks together.

Just when you thought it couldn't get weirder

2007-05-02T19:18:00.000-05:00

My mother in law shared our neice's new baby's middle name with us today. The first name now spelled differently (Amidy versus Amnity) which is totally a made-up name that isn't in the books...but at least it's not the Amnityville Horror anymore, even though it's pronounced the same way. The middle name is almost as bad. This poor baby's middle name is Jolee...yep, as in Angelina, only spelled differently. They're going to call her AJ for short. I repeat, poor kid.
On the upside, she is an awfully cute baby, so maybe she'll get past this dreadful name.

Anthony Hopkins = one scary dude

2007-04-29T14:45:00.000-05:00

Yep, there's a reason I love this guy. He is quite possibly the scariest actor in Hollywood. Every movie he's in creeps me out. We saw his latest, Fracture, this morning. It was creepy, but completely entertaining. I loved the ending, but will refrain from saying much more about it due to not wanting to ruin it for anyone else.
In other news, work is still slow...really, really slow. Hopefully it picks up soon, as I have a student intern who starts a week from tomorrow and it would be kind of nice to have some work for her to do.
Running continues, albeit at a slow, slow pace. I'm finding it difficult to get myself psyched up for my regular runs, even though they're short and painless. I'm still exhausted by the end of every day, so this whole running in the evening thing is really taking a toll on me, but I can't seem to motivate myself to get up and run in the mornings.
My husband's niece (the one who's fifteen) had her baby yesterday. It's a long, complicated story, that pretty much belongs on Jerry Springer or at the very least the Maury show, but she and the baby are doing fine. Unfortunately, she named the baby the most good awful name I've ever heard...Amity. Yep, like the Amnityville Horror. Apparently it means friendship in Latin, and in the niece's defense, she's probably too young to have even heard of this movie...but that poor kid. As if her life wasn't already going to be hard enough.
So, that's the weekend update in a very condensed form.

High maintenance much?

2007-04-26T18:37:00.000-05:00

Yes, I think so. My first week of Tuesday/Thursday afternoons at the other office is complete. It went fine. It was kind of like a homecoming of sorts, as this is the office that I was originally in when I first started working for this company.
The low point of the afternoons is the office manager. How can I phrase this nicely? She's an OCD control freak...in the worst way. Today I had my charts and charge sheets (those little forms that we fill out that says what we did with each patient so that they know what to bill them for) all organized and sitting on my desk...neatly in a pile. She proceeded to come along while I was away from my desk and "unorganize" them. I like all my charts in one pile in the order the patients are scheduled, and all my charge sheets in a corresponding pile. She separated them all out, so that all of the charts were with the appropriate charge sheet and they were lined up in a row along the entire length of my desk...thus preventing from using my desk for pretty much anything else.
I didn't say anything, but put everything back the way that I like it. Then it happened again...so I was forced to say something to her about liking it the other way. The response I got was "well, that's not how we do things here." Seriously? Does it really matter? I'm the one doing the work, it's my desk, so let's just leave it the way I like it.
I won that battle by the way.
Then, as she was leaving, there was the whole discussion about turning off the lights, locking the doors, turning off the radio, etc...Uhmmm, I'm almost thirty years old. I think I can handle flipping a few switches and locking a couple of doors. I'm pretty sure I don't need step by step instructions with a drawn out diagram...Ugh.

Baby birds and slumber parties

2007-04-21T11:52:00.000-05:00

This morning as dear hubby was cutting the grass he stumbled across three baby birds. Brand ing new baby birds, as in, didn't have feathers and their eyes were still closed baby birds. Two had died already, but the third was still alive. We didn't have any idea what to do with this baby bird. We discussed putting it in a shoebox and trying to take care of it, but didn't really know what we would feed it, or if it would even survive if we tried, so we just had to leave it alone. I'm sure that it will die eventually, probably sooner rather than later, but it was still kind of sad.
Last night I went with a friend to a slumber party. Not an actual sleepover, but a "Slumber Party". Yep, I went to one of those ladies toy parties. You would not believe the stuff that they had at this party...you name it, they had it. Swings for your bedroom, lubricants, s, and all kinds of other interesting stuff. Needless to say, I got quite an education. It was fun though.

The work saga continues

2007-04-18T19:48:00.000-05:00

I'm sure you're all tired of reading about my work woes, I know I'm sure tired of writing about them. But what can I say, I sometimes feel better after airing all of my concerns...so bear with me. Today I was supposed to have a meeting at 4:30. Instead, my boss decided that I needed to head to a different office to help with patient care, as they've been really busy there lately. Fine, no problem.
Then they decide that in order to alleviate some of the scheduling concerns at this other office, I will now be working my two short days in this office. So now, starting next week I'm supposed to be working Monday, Wednesday, and Friday long days at my office, and Tuesday and Thursday afternoons I'll be working my short days at this other office.
I'm not opposed to this, as I am getting a tad bit tired of feeling like I'm getting paid to do virtually nothing, but I'm a little peeved that this company basically assumes that I have no life outside of my job. One of the immediate casualties of the schedule change is going to be my participation in Girls on the Run. Obviously I can't continue to coach this group if I'm supposed to be at work. My other concern is that I have a lot of shadowing/surgery observation/chamber of commerce meetings/other assorted crap that takes place only in the morning on Tuesday and Thursday, so I am going to be putting in what seems to be a lot of extra hours. We'll see how well that works for me.
The biggest concern that I have is that this move is not going to be temporary. I told my boss that I don't have a problem being flexible now, but that once I come back from maternity leave, I'm not going to have that luxury. Since my husband has school two or three nights every week I'm going to have to have some cooperation on the part of my employer with getting out of the office by 5:30 if I'm at this other office or by 5:45 if I'm at my office on nights dear hubby has school so that I can pick the baby up. Supposadly they're "going to cross that bridge when we get there" and "it shouldn't be a problem". We'll just see. Oh well, I guess if it doesn't work out I can always find a new job.

What do you mean I can't eat that?!?!

2007-04-17T08:14:00.000-05:00

In response to the good Doc's reply to one of my recent posts...I have decided to share with you my current dietary restrictions. Now, keep in mind that food is one of my great joys in life, and you'll have a pretty good picture of how this whole pregnancy thing is working out for me. The list includes:
1. Hotdogs. Apparently hotdogs contain nitrates. Nitrates are bad for you, or so they tell me. Now, I've been eating hotdogs my whole life and have yet to notice any ill effects from it, and I figure that if I cover my hotdog with relish, sport peppers, onions, ketchup and musturd I'm cancelling out the bad effects right? Not so much.
2. Lunch meat. Lunch meat=listeria=bad ass bacteria= a child who looks like William Shatner, has bad breath, and/or other equally hideous deformities. Who'd want that (unless you were William Shatner's mother)? Word on the street is that you can eat lunch meat if, and only if, you heat it to steaming first...which completely wilts the lettuce and makes the mayonaise disgusting...yummy.
3. Caffeine. Caffeine will give your fetus ADHD or cause it to have a grossly misshapen head according to the nosy/ignorant woman in QuikTrip this morning. How is what I'm drinking any of your business beyotch? A disclaimer to this is that you can have some caffeine, but only in moderation. Praise Jesus, they don't expect me to go cold turkey. (Cause we've already seen that I can't have that.) Let me just add here that you would just not believe the number of foods that have caffeine in them, including my beloved chocolate...
4. Raw anything. Including medium cooked steaks, sushi, and that entire Raw Foods diet. This one's pretty self explanatory and I don't miss any of this crap anyway. It's awful hard to miss something you didn't eat before.
5. Booze. Margaritas, mai tais, rum runners, pina coladas, beer, wine...It's all gone. My liquor cabinet is getting really dusty. Oh well, just think how strong all that stuff will be after it ages for another five months.
6. Aspartame. Yep, the artificial sweetner is bad for your fetus. It causes cancer in laboratory rats, but then again so does anything when you mainline enough of it. This shit is in EVERYTHING, including sweet, sweet sugar free Kool-Aid, fat free yougurt, diet soda, and pretty much the entire aisle of low fat goodies at the grocery store.
7. Ibuprofen. My wonder drug of choice causes birth defects. Not a good thing considering I have almost daily headaches that the Tylenol that I am allowed to take barely touches.

Yep, that pretty much sums up the don't eat this list for now. I'm sure that as I progress I'll learn even more things that I'm not allowed to ingest. So tonight, when you're drinking your after work glass of wine and cooking your medium rare steak while smoking your cigarette and telling your significant other to be sure to add coffee beans to the grocery list, think of me.

Uh, where are all the patients at?

2007-04-16T14:23:00.000-05:00

This is quickly becoming ridiculous. I once again have fewer than ten patients scheduled on a Monday. Normally I have twice that scheduled. I'm really starting to get anxious over my low patient volume. There are only so many things that you can do to build a practice, and I'm quickly running out of ideas. I'm getting to that point where I'm starting to really worry about whether or not I'll still have a job in a month. This is so not a good time to be worrying about this type of thing...
Onto a different, lighter subject: the anti-theft devices that they put on clothing in the department stores. Why talk about these? Well, funny story. Dear hubby bought some shorts about a month ago. He cut the tags off, but didn't realize that the anti-theft device was still firmly attached to the shorts. Yesterday he went to put this pair of shorts on and realized that the exploding ink theft tag was still attached. So he was going to take them out to the garage and attempt to remove the tag by basically beating the crap out of it until it came off. Such a bad idea in so many ways.
I figured if he did this, the shorts would be ruined thus equalling a big waste of money. So I volunteered to try to take them to the store and get the tag removed. Of course we don't have a recipt for these shorts, as they were purchased so long ago...so tomorrow's blog post might be coming to you courtesy of the county lock up. Let's hope hubby of mine answers his phone when I call to have him bail me out!

Weekends seem so short

2007-04-15T15:36:00.000-05:00

Maybe the weekends go so fast because I truly dread Mondays. Maybe it's because I'm fearful that tonight will be a repeat performance of last Sunday night and I'll have trouble falling asleep/staying asleep. Or maybe we really enter into a time warp on Friday night and the weekends really do go faster. Any way you slice it, time flies.
This weekend found us checking out Disturbia. Awesome movie, by the way. I could completely see this movie happening in my neighborhood...I've even got the pyschotic killer already cast.
I felt the need to do some shopping yesterday...this almost never happens, as I really don't like to shop under normal circumstances. I finally decided that I needed some spring clothes that would accomodate my ever-enlarging abdomen, I'm tired of feeling fat every day. So, I had gift cards to a couple of stores at the mall and was able to get a couple of cute tops. I also picked up a couple more things on sale at the maternity store...so many cute things in that store, but I have such a hard time justifying spending a ton of cash on stuff I'm only going to wear until the end of the summer.
I've still got a few more gift cards, so later this week or next week I may be needing to take myself on another shopping spree. I really need to pace myself.
I did not run yesterday. I had a splitting headache most of the day, which I woke up with again today. Fortunatly I was able to take something early enough today to keep it from getting really bad. I felt well enough this afternoon to take my treadmill for a quick three mile spin. Even though I just slowed down last week to 9.5 minute miles, I'm feeling like I need to slow it down a bit more again. I just get so tired so quick, and I got winded walking up the stairs earlier today...goodbye cardiovascular endurance.

How appropriate

2007-04-13T07:58:00.000-05:00

I took the "What Finger Are You" quiz on Firefly's blog. It was amusing. I'm too lazy to look up the link and post it, so just follow my sidebar link to Firefly's blog and take the quiz from there if you're so inclined...interestingly enough I am the middle finger. If that's not fitting I don't know what is.
I really don't have much to report today. I'm still slogging through this slow time at work. I'm trying to stay busy by "making" work. I've been doing some marketing, going to meetings and working on some community outreach stuff. None of these things are fun, and I'd much rather be treating patients, so hopefully things pick up soon.
On the good news front, we're finally getting a Jimmy John's sub shop. I personally have never eaten here, but apparently they're very good. Hubby ate there almost every day when he was in Chicago last fall for business for a week...hopefully they're as good as he says. I've finally decided to say to hell with the no lunch meat clause of my pregnancy books. I'm eating that stuff, in moderation of course, but I think I'll take my chances with it.

Why can't I sleep?

2007-04-09T07:25:00.000-05:00

Last night was the worst night I have ever had as far as trying to sleep goes. I went to bed a nine, figuring that way I could get up early this morning and get my run in before I went to work, which is something I used to do daily but haven't done in at least four or five months. At midnight last night I was still awake. And per my husband, when I can't sleep, he doesn't sleep. Apparently, every time I turn over in bed I literally pick my entire body up and "fling" it to the other side, and all of this is accompanied by some extremely heavy sighing.
I finally fell asleep just after midnight, only to wake back up at 1:30. I wasn't awake for too long then, but at 4:00am the damn clock in the kitchen...which chimes the hour started going off. Normally this clock is only active between 6am and 9pm and then it's silent all night, but dear husband was "trying to adjust the volume" and got the clock all confused. So I was awoken again, and again at five. What a disaster.
I think most of the reason I can't sleep is because I'm stressed about work. It seems entirely too coincidental that the most difficult nights I have are Sunday nights. My caseload is way slow right now. I've only got seven patients scheduled today, and four of those will be finished by the end of the week. So far, I have no new patients on my schedule for the rest of this week to replace these people with. I can't remember ever having been so slow before in my life. I'm stressing a lot over this. I've been doing everything I need to do including getting good results, going out and visiting doctors, and trying to keep my hands into other things (ie:chamber of commerce/non-profits/etc.) but nothing seems to be paying off at this time.
My only consulation at this time is knowing that we're short a therapist in one of our other offices, and that same office has someone else who is leaving at the end of the month. So hopefully, should they decide to close my office I'll still have a job. The only drawback to maybe switching offices is that the office that needs help is about forty minutes from my house instead of the five I drive now...and there's no way I'd be able to get from that office to the daycare we chose by the time that the daycare closes. But I guess there's no use worrying about that just yet, I'll have to wait to cross that bridge if and when I get there.

I'm on a roll now

2007-04-08T18:44:00.000-05:00

A blogging roll that is. Hopefully I didn't just jinx myself, but you never know. Today we got up fairly early. I was able to get some easy, non-difficult stationary biking in while I read the latest issue of People, which I pilfered from my office. I'm in charge damnit, I can do these things.
Then we figured that since we were already up, we'd go see The Reaping, with Hilary Swank. She's awesome, but this movie blew. I did not like it even a little. I had a tough time buying what they were selling, but the special effects (ie: the plagues) were pretty damn cool.
We then came home, collected the Max-inator and went to my mom and dad's for lunch. We had a pretty good time there. My parents are going to buy us our carseat and stroller as a welcome baby gift, so that's pretty cool. Knowing my mom, we'll probably have it in hand by next weekend. I was really surprised, as it was just my husband and I invited for lunch. I kind of thought my dad's mom would be there, and was prepared for a full sermon on how I'm too young to have a kid, (even though I'm older now than she was when she had my dad) or how terrible it is that I'm going back to work after I've taken my maternity leave (yeah, try raising anything other than your credit card debt on just one salary now days.)
We left after spending a couple of hours there (during which the dog barked pretty much nonstop) and came home to clean the house, mow the lawn, do laundry, pay bills, and a three mile run. I am now thouroughly exhausted, but I feel like I got a lot done.

Sunday movie review a day early

2007-04-07T17:03:00.000-05:00

Since tomorrow is Easter, and that brings with it the obligatory family get together appearances, we bumped our movie viewing up a day. Although if I drag my butt out of bed early enough tomorrow morning we might be able to catch another one anyway...have I mentioned how much I love this discounted tickets for morning movies?
We saw The Lookout this morning. It was pretty good. Not as good as Shooter last week, but the premise behind this movie was different, and different usually equals good in my book. The basic idea is that there's a guy who's had a serious head injury, he works in a bank as a janitor. He falls in with the wrong crowd, you know, the one's who want to rob said bank. Much violence insues and in the end...well, we'll just leave that a surprise. It was entertaining though.
We then went to Baby's R Us to finish registering for the kiddo. I picked out a sweet ass Jeep jogging stroller (in addition to a regular stroller for everyday use). I so hope someone buys me this, as it totally rocks. Although the baby won't be old enough for this cool ride until next spring, so I can always buy it later...
Now I'm contemplating a run, a short run, on the treadmill, but a run nonetheless...

Busy baby day...

2007-04-05T16:56:00.000-05:00

Today is one of my normal half days of work (I work three ten hour days and two five hour days) and my husband was off work today. We had an ultrasound scheduled for this afternoon, so we decided that we would spend the time before our ultrasound visiting daycares to figure out which one we wanted to enroll the shrimp at.
Daycares seem to fill up pretty quickly in this area, especially since most of them only have eight infant spots available at any given time. We were able to come to a pretty quick agreement over which one we liked best, and picked up the paperwork/paid our registration fee/did all the pre-enrollment junk so that we're set for next fall. The director of the facility that we selected assured us that there would most definitely be a spot for us next fall so we're prtty confident that this is one more thing that we can cross off our list of things to do between now and the day the baby gets here.
The ultrasound went very well. The baby doesn't exhibit any problems or reasons to be concerned that anything short of normal development is occurring at this point. In fact, it's actually measuring a bit larger than it should at this point, which moves the due date up about five days. We were able to see all of it's major organs, both arms and legs, and that it had the hiccups. We (well I) chose not to find out the gender, as I would really like to be surprised, but I'm still firmly convinced that this baby is female. They said that it measures about seventeen ounces already...It's amazing that this little thing is so big already! Hopefully it'll be a compromise between my husband's weight at birth and mine. He was huge, (9.5 pounds) and I was on the small side (5 pounds and some ounces.)

We were hoping it wouldn't come to this

2007-04-04T07:22:00.000-05:00

Our kids at GOTR continue to be disrespectful to the coaches, mean to each other, and just don't listen. We (the other coaches and I) kept trying to tell ourselves that it was just the age range, but lately the rudeness seems to have gotten so much worse. So it's time to have a come to Jesus talk with them, and unfortunately start doling out some consequences for failure to listen and show respect. Crazily enough, that's one of the premises of GOTR. To listen to each member and show respect for themselves as well as each other.
I think the problem is that we are too nice to these kids. There are really only two or three instigators, so maybe this is a case of cut off the dragon's head and the rest will fall into line? I'm certainly hoping so. So far we've talked about making kids who don't show respect or are mean to other members sit out of some of the fun stuff or maybe lose their snack at the end of practice. I'm not really sure how well either of these will work out. We're not to the point yet where we need to physically remove kids from the practices, but I could see it getting to that point fairly quickly.
The biggest problem at this point is that we send home emails telling the parents how we've had problems with lack of respect and that the parents need to discuss with their daughters how important it is to listen and be nice to each other...but the parents either don't want to believe that their daughter is part of the problem or don't fully understand the magnitude of the problem. Either way, something has to give...I so don't want to be the pissed off angry coach who has to yell to get her point across.

He's a good dog

2007-04-02T07:30:00.000-05:00

Now, at least. The Max-inator has been having some, uhmmm, issues for the past month or so. And by issues I mean that every time we leave the house, he craps on the living room floor. We finally got tired of disciplining him and cleaning up his mess, so we decided to try something different with him.
He's always had the run of the house when we're gone, so we decided to take this priveledge away from him. We purchased two of those child safety gates and make it a point to pen him up in the kitchen every day when we leave now. Now, before you go thinking I'm all mean, let me just add that the kitchen is unarguably the largest room in the house and he's got his food, water, and bed in there, so it's not like he's hurting for anything he needs.
So far, confining him to the kitchen seems to have worked. I haven't had to clean up dog mess in over two weeks. Such a nice thing to come home to. I think it's working out to everyone's advantage, because I know I'm much happier to see him now that I know that I don't have to clean up after him every night. He's happier because I'm so much nicer to him when I'm not all pissed off at him for making a big mess. Everyone wins.

How does the weekend go so fast?

2007-04-01T14:30:00.000-05:00

I can't believe it's already mid afternoon on Sunday. It seems like it was just Friday a minute ago. I've done a lot this weekend. We got the entire house cleaned, the yard mowed, the landscaping beds weeded, and tons of other stuff done. We went to Target last night and did half of the registering for the baby. We still have Baby's R' Us left to register at, but at least we got some of it done. I was so glad to tackle this task, as the shear volume of stuff kids need is somewhat overwhelming. It's nice to have a list of sorts of stuff we still need.
We also went and saw the new Mark Wahlberg movie yesterday. For those of you who don't remember the early nineties, Mark Wahlberg has come a long way since his days of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. He's actually a pretty good actor now. This movie was one of the best I've seen, I enjoyed it so much that I even told my husband as we were leaving the theater that I would go see this one again. I so want to be a Marine sniper now.
I just got finished running an easy three miles on the treadmill. I was really dreading this, as my hip and pelvis have really been hurting for the last three day, but I think I almost feel a little better now after having run. I'm finding that although my legs don't get tired, I'm getting winded much more easily now. I'm pretty sure that the next week or so will see me dropping my pace down a little more.
So chores are almost done, we still have grocery shopping, which I dread, left on the list of things to do, and I still need to balance my checkbook, which I also don't enjoy. I guess the sooner I tackle these tasks though, the sooner I can collapse on the couch...

Oh no they din't...

2007-03-31T18:10:00.000-05:00

I really have no tolerance for bullshit anymore. We went to dinner with some friends last night. We actually had a really good time until we got ready to leave the resturant, at which point the husband of the couple called me a fatso and told me that "you're really starting to pack on the pounds now." Uhmmm, yeah, I've gained weight, but not that much (only 9.5 pounds so far) and it's really all belly. My response to him was that I should hope I've gained weight since I'm almost halfway through my pregnancy. I chalked it up to him being an insensitive jerk and let it go.
Then, once we got home, his wife wanted to see what we'd done with the nursery, so I took her up to look at it. She noticed that I had two shirts hanging from the door jamb in the hall bathroom (they were from a load of laundry that I did on Thursday and they needed to be ironed). She commented that she hadn't seen them before and they were cute. Then she asked if they were maternity and I said no, that they were from last summer, as I'm still able to wear a lot of my pre-prego shirts. She replied "well, you won't be able to do that much longer since you're only going to get bigger." Fine, no big deal if she had left it at that, but she continued the statement by adding that I should just give them to her, because "let's face it, you're never going to be that size again."
Yep, I'm totally planning on gaining forty or fifty more pounds in the next twenty weeks and then staying the size of the Goodyear blimp for the rest of my life. What the hell do people think sometimes?

Where'd you get your driver's license?

2007-03-30T07:28:00.000-05:00

Funny story. Last night, I went to a Girls Night Out at a local business with one of my friends. It was really more of a business opening, but we wanted to check out what kind of stuff they had, so we decided to drop in...plus there was free food, which if you haven't learned by now, is a powerful motivator in my world. Anyway, I digress. My friend insisted on driving us to this event. Now, I usually drive when I go anywhere with this friend, because she is not the world's best driver...in fact she's an awful driver. I've ridden with said friend only one other time, and that time she nearly got us killed by running a stop sign that she claimed she "forgot" was there.
Why I let her drive last night I'm still trying to figure out. Everything was fine going to the business, but on the way home, she took a "different" route than the one we used to go there. This route was not unfamiliar to her, as she's lived in this area for almost four years, and drives the streets of this small town almost every day; and in her defense, they are doing major construction on the overpass to the highway, but still.
She was talking and not really paying attention when we got to the stop light at the overpass in question. The light turned red, which she noticed, and she did stop at it (thank goodness) but she pulled up so close to the intersection that you could not see the light, at all. In order to see the light, you had to lean way forward and cran your neck upward through the very top of the windshield. So not good.
We sat there for a minute and she kept telling me she couldn't see the light, but she was going to just go when the oncoming traffic went, surely her light was green as well. So yeah, she totally blew through that red light.
I'm pretty sure I'll never ride with her again. That's two trips and two blatant traffic violations...maybe they should retest her for her driver's license.

I am beyond pissed off...

2007-03-22T14:56:00.000-05:00

I'm so irritated right now that I'm thinking about pig farms, really thinking about pig farms. Why am I thinking of pig farms? Well...apparently pigs eat anything, thus pig farms are really good places to dispose of a body. And right now, I'm just about pissed off enough to kill or seriously maim someone.
The person in question (ie: the pissee, if you will) is someone that I work with. Not in the same office, but she workds for the same company in one of our other offices. She and I used to be very good friends before we stopped working in the same office, now we're not as close, as we don't see each other every day and no longer share the same experiences day after day.
Anyway, long story short, we have a mutual friend, who is a former patient (my patient first, her's later on) who called to say hello to me this morning. She was calling to tell me that she'd had some more surgery. I only had a few minutes to talk to her, so I told her I'd call her back when I got a bit more free time to catch her up on my life.
Mutual friend/former patient then called the girl that I used to work with and had a similar conversation with her. She (coworker) also didn't have much time to talk, but somehow managed to find time to tell the former patient my big news.
Seriously?!? Are you f'ing kidding me?!?! Who does that? In what world is this anyone's news to share other than the prosepective parents? I bugs the hell out of me that some of our friends have nothing else to talk about and must use things that happen in my life as fodder for the gossip mill.
Find something else to talk about already, and leave me out of it!

Running in the rain

2007-03-20T17:40:00.000-05:00

Today it was pouring down rain during the first half of our Girls on the Run meeting, then fortunately it lightened up a little bit so we were able to take the kids outside to do the actually running portion of the workout. Most of the kids were already able to complete a 5k, although we do have a few who prefer to walk instead of running (which is fine) that never have quite enough time to finish the distance that they're shooting for. Hopefully by the time May 5th (race day) rolls around, they'll be able to get the distance done. Most of the kids are able to run the distance in 30 to 40 minutes already!
I'd forgotten how much I like running in the rain. There's just something soothing and very rewarding about coming home soaked to the skin from a run. I seemed to be a bit less winded when running this week as well. I can totally tell a difference between running outside and running on my treadmill, and to tell the truth, I really miss running outside. I'll be so glad next fall when I'm able to get back outside on a more regular basis. I've been afraid to run outside while pregnant, as I'm quite possibly the least graceful person on the face of the earth...I'm afraid I'll repeat the tripping over a crack in the sidewalk thing that I do every couple of months and end up falling. So for now at least, I just feel safer on the treadmill. My poor lungs feel out of shape though...

Random schtuff

2007-03-19T18:00:00.000-05:00

First quickly let me just share that my lilac bushes and trees are all blooming, but it freakin' snowed here on Saturday. What the hell is up with that? Very confusing to my poor brain. I just can't tell what season it's trying to be.
Second, I am way, way far behind on my movie reviews for you...my faithful blogger readers. So without further adieu: Two weekends ago we saw 300. Go see this if: 1. You love/like gratuitous violence. (which I do, so I dug this movie) 2. You like porn. (it almost was at some points). 3. I think reasons one and two pretty much sum up this movie. It was pretty good though.
This weekend's movie was the new Sandra Bullock one, Premonition. It was only so-so. I was really kind of disappointed in this movie, as it did not live up to the expectations that I had for it. It was slightly hard to follow, as it jumped from day to day without any set order, and the ending was disappointing. It was different, but not necessarily that great.
My third point for today, is for those of you keeping score in the morning sickness department. My puke-free streak is over. I managed to make it seven whole days without vomit, but ruined my streak in that way. I'm now on a streak in the opposite direction, which I'm hoping to break today. So keep you fingers crossed, this whole thing is starting to really suck badly.

Happy birthday to me...

2007-03-15T18:48:00.000-05:00

Yep, that's right campers, the running monkey has officially entered the last year of her twenties. I'm not worried though, Grandma always says you're only as old as you feel.
It's been a lowkey birthday for me this year. My husband's parents called early this morning before I went to work to wish me a happy birthday, my mom called at lunch time, my mother in law called earlier this evening and left a message...which may or may not have included a birthday wish. (honestly I can't remember). Dear husband took me to lunch at a new pizza buffet, which was awesome. My gift from the hubby is in transit via UPS and should arrive tomorrow, and I've got a giant cookie cake sitting on my kitchen counter, which I'm totally tearing into later tonight. Sugar high here I come.
In other news, my March Madness pool is going so-so. I picked four teams out of eight (I think) right, but got screwed on one of my brackets already...damn you Stanford for getting knocked out early. Four right still puts me at the bottome of my bracket. That's okay though.
I managed to churn out three slow miles on the treadmill today. My running is staying pretty consistent. I'm managing to get in three miles at least five days a week, I hesitate to do more than that as my heartrate starts to climb a little the longer I run. I'm feeling pretty good about the running overall though. No real aches or pains after I'm finished with it, and I'm not too terribly tired either.
We also had an appointment with my doctor today. We got to hear the baby's heart beating again. That thing is a machine! Apparently everything looks good. My weight gain is on target (7 pounds so far, but it looks a lot more like fifteen to me) and the nausea is starting to subside. I've almost gone a whole week without puking! Knock on wood. We finally managed to come to an agreement on names. I'm sorry to say though, we'll not be naming the shrimp after any of the RBF crew though).
Woo Hoo, I'm setting some kind of record. This is three posts in one week!

March Madness

2007-03-14T18:33:00.000-05:00

Just to let all of you who are participating in the Jayhawk's RBF March Madness know: I'm planning, but I don't expect to do well. I know next to nothing about college basketball, and the only way I'll do well is by being very lucky. That said, I'm not to proud to admit that I picked my teams based on several key criteria. Said criteria included: Uniform colors, mascot cool quotient, whether I know anyone who is an alumnus of the university, and in one case really liking the name of the school.
So...maybe my system will work for me, most likely it won't, but it'll be fun either way.

Sometimes things just get away from me...

2007-03-13T17:36:00.000-05:00

Like updating my blog. I was so insanely busy last week, I barely felt like the week had started and it was already over. I had no less than three meetings last week for work, one of which was a dinner/speaker series with a bunch of case managers (that lasted until almost nine at night) and was a total snooze-fest. I also had CPR recertification. Two and a half hours later, I think I can save your life if you stop breathing in my clinic, but I'm only giving you rescue breathing if I like you. I only feel it's fair to warn you that waht will most likely happen if you do stop breathing in my clinic, is that I will cheerfully drag your still warm carcass to the parking lot...you're not my responsibility once you're out the door. I will however, in the interest of playing fair, call the paramedics for you.
We also had some family drama. Grandma broke her tailbone two weeks ago...no, she didn't fall, but rather experienced a compression fracture when she bent over to pick up her newspaper from the yard. This ended up being a major issue, as three or four days later, she couldn't get out of bed and had to have EMS called to take her to the ER. She was obviously not able to go home by herself after her brief stay in the hospital, so skilled nursing was really the only option. My mother, who normally deals with all of Grandma's issues, did not handle this well. Grandma ended up in a really nice facility, and seemed to be in good spirits when I visited this afternoon. It helps that she's feeling well enough and is mobile enough to go home on Friday. Although it was a short stay, it was long enough to convince her that she hopes she'll never have to go back there.
Today was a GOTR day. This was the lesson on being thankful and taking time out of each day for yourself. It was a good lesson for the girls to participate in, but I'm not sure how much they really got out of it. The running workout today was supposed to be done silently and each girl was supposed to run two miles. Most girls got the two miles accomplished, and a few even got three or four miles done. That's a huge accomplishment, considering some of them had really never run before. The running "quietly" did not get done though. This age group loves, loves, loves to talk and just couldn't spend the two miles "looking inside themselves" I can't say I blame them!
So that's the recap of the last nine days in a greatly condensed version. Hopefully my posting will become more regular again.

Another great weekend....

2007-03-04T16:05:00.000-06:00

This weekend was another one that was jam packed with stuff. Yesterday we slept in and then tried to get a bunch of stuff done around the house. I managed to get the entire house cleaned (except for one load of laundry, which I still have to do) and the hubby put the baby's furniture together. We went to a trivia night to benefit my alma mater last night with two of my college girlfriends, their husbands, and our cousin and her husband. It was a good time. The only problem was that we didn't do so great with the trivia. Apparently, the questions either got harder as the night went on, or our table got dumber as the beer was drunk. (Not by me of course, but my table still drank their monies worth.)
We ended up finishing second from last. An extremely poor showing. But in our defense, they did have a cateogory that was nothing but pasta. As in: identify the pasta in this baggie with it's correct Italian name. Yep, we sucked it up on that round...and pretty much every other round.
Today we slept in again, and then went to see Zodiac. I've been looking forward to seeing this movie ever since I first saw the previews last December. It was worth the wait. It was an awesome movie. I was a little disappointed in the ending, but I guess when you're doing a movie based on fact, you're not really allowed much creative license with it. Next on our adgenda is my husband's pick. He really wants to see that movie about the Romans (300) so we'll see how it is next weekend.
The best part about this weekend is that it's not over yet. I've still got at least five or six hours before heading to bed...just enough time to grow some roots into my couch. I've been thinking about maybe running today, but so far haven't mustered up the energy. We'll see.

Who knew 5th graders had so much energy?

2007-02-27T18:01:00.000-06:00

Not me, that's for sure. Today was the first Girls on the Run that I was able to attend. We have twenty girls participating in the program at our school. They are really cool kids, but after an hour, I was so tired it wasn't even funny. I'd forgotten how excited kids that age get about the little stuff. It was fun to watch.
Today's lesson talked about keeping promises and being true to yourself and your word. A very good lesson to learn, although I think that it went right over some of the kids' heads...especially the part about respecting others and listening attentively. They could all repeat the GOTR Promises back, but as soon as they were done reciting them, they were immediately filed away in some dusty corner of the brain. Maybe as they get used to the program they'll remember some of these Promises and do a better job of following them?!!?
The running portion of the program consisted of two miles with a partner around the track at the school. Most of the girls ran, but some of them didn't quite make the two miles, as they were more interested in picking grass and catching up on the socializing. That's okay though, as long as they had fun. It looks like we've got a couple of real runners in the group though, including one kid who's planning on doing a children's triatholon this spring.
It was an interesting afternoon, and I'm glad I've decided to get involved with it.

This week has just flown by

2007-02-22T16:08:00.000-06:00

So, first things first...how the heck did it get to be Thursday already? Not that I'm complaining, I'd love all of my work weeks to go by so quickly, but I really have no idea where this week has gone.
I've had quite a few good runs this week. Namely, yesterday's and today's. Granted they were only three miles apiece, but they really went well. For the past several weeks I've been so incredibly tired by the time I get halfway through my run that I've really had to struggle to finish them. But the past two runs have gone very well. I'm tired afterwards, but not exhausted. That's a good thing. It must be the new shoes. I saw that Sports Authority had my Asics GT2110s on sale for fifty percent off. So I bought a much needed new pair. That's probably the only good thing about model changeouts, is that the pair I've been using gets drastically marked down. I only bought one pair even though they had several because I figured my feet might widen out with the pregnancy and then the extra shoes would be worthless. I wanted them in lime green, but somehow they only had one lime green shoe out of the pair they had. I'm not really sure how that happens.
We told my parents about the baby on Sunday. They were over the moon to say the least. My mom is already talking about the shopping spree she's going to be going on. This is gonna be one spoiled baby. I told my godmother and grandma's on Monday. My godmother and mom's mom were psyched. My dad's mom, not so much. I really think that she thinks I'm too young. I don't think she realizes that I'm going to be thirty in just over a year. (I'm pretty sure there's some undiagnosed dementia there somewhere.) Her exact response to the question how would you like to have a great grandbaby was: That's nice, how's Max (the dog)? Yeah, you're totally thrilled, I can tell.
I told my boss today, and he was suprisingly nice about it. I even managed to convince him that it would be much more economically feasible for him to allow me to roll the remaining fourteen days of vacation that I have coming to me this year into next year (my hire date is August 1st) and use them as part of my maternity leave. So it looks like I'll be getting seven weeks PTO and three weeks non-paid. What a relief. I thought this was going to be a huge battle!

What a busy weekend

2007-02-18T16:46:00.000-06:00

This weekend has been a whirlwind of activity. Friday was my husband's birthday, so after work we went out to dinner. Friday while I was at work, he had been at the car dealership talking to them about trading in his car for the Mazda Speed 3. It just so happened that they were pulling the exact car he wanted off the freight truck when he got there. Since there will only be 5,000 of these cars shipped to the US this year, we decided that he should go ahead and do the deal. So Saturday morning, we spent two and a half hours at the car dealership. I have no idea why buying a new car takes such a long awful process, but I've really come to loathe doing it. But now we've both traded in our old rides for new ones in the past twelve months, so we shouldn't have to do this again anytime soon.
Then Saturday afternoon we went down to the Fox Theatre to see Stomp. It was awesome. I'd seen it before, but this was the first time my husband had seen it. It was definitely money well spent, and our seats were awesome. My only complaint was the fucker next to me, who although he was a tall guy, was not a fat or muscular guy...he spent the majority of the production sprawled into my leg space, my arm space, and just generally being a little too close for comfort to me. We then went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner. I had the mahi mahi, hubby had the cashew chicken and we took home some coconut creme cheesecake. Yum!
Today he got up early and painted the room that we're turning into a nursery. It's a pretty shade of yellow, almost goldenrod. He had the paint custom mixed to match the border. It turned out very nice, now we just have to put furniture together (the crib and changing table arrived Friday afternoon). Then we went to our favorite deal an AM movie for four dollars a ticket. We saw Breach, about Robert Hanssen and the FBI. It was okay. Nowhere near as entertaining as last week's Hannibal Rising. But for a total of eight dollars you can't hardly go wrong.
The afternoon was spent running, cleaning house, paying bills, organizing crap, and various other assorted chores. We're supposed to head over to my parent's house for dinner in a few minutes. It's supposed to be the celebration of hubby's and my mom's birthday and we're planning on sharing the news with them. I'm sure they'll be excited, but I can also see my mom getting really pissed off that we waited this long to tell them. Oh well, you can't please everyone.

Ughhh and yeaaaa

2007-02-15T19:01:00.000-06:00

First the ughhh part of this post. I am violently ill...still. I feel as though I'm never going to stop puking. I actually had a streak of about four days where I went without puking, but today is the third day in a row that I'm back on the throwing up every two or three hours train. This sucks. I have to keep telling myself it'll be worth it in the end...
On to the yeaaa portion of the post. Valentine's Day was pretty awesome, even though dear husband had class and we didn't really get to celebrate. He did send me some pretty flowers to work though, and all of the baby's bedding arrived on my doorstep yesterday. Baby shit is so freakin' cute. We picked a green and yellow set (since we-or at least I, want the gender to be a surprise)with a circus theme, I love the little monkeys (of course). My inlaws, who live out of town sent us a really cool gift as well. They sent a very sweet card saying how excited they are for us and a monitor to listen to the heartbeat at home. I've been playing with it, but so far haven't been able to find the shrimp's heartbeat. I'm not concerned though, as the instruction manual states that you should be a bit farther along than we are before attempting to use the monitor.
On the running front, we got four to six inches of the white powdery crap (no, not that white powdery crap) on Tuesday morning, so our first GOTR meeting was cancelled. We tried to reschedule for tomorrow, but the kids are off school, then next Tuesday half of our girls have a mandatory orchestra practice, so that's a no go as well. At this point it looks like we'll be getting things rolling a week from tomorrow, so I'll be missing the first session. I'm disappointed with that, but what are you gonna do?
I've been running a bit, only three miles five or six days a week, but that's plenty. I'm still having some plantar fascitis like symptoms in my right foot. Some days it feels normal and other days it hurts like hell. I keep trying to convince myself that I just need to treat it already, but I keep finding excuses why not to do it. Enough already, right?

Best movie ever...

2007-02-11T18:58:00.000-06:00

Well, that might be a slight exaggeration, but it's certainly one of the best movies I've seen in many, many months. And considering that there was a time during which we saw at least one movie a week, I should say that there was some stiff competition.
The movie in question is Hannibal Rising, the story of Hanibal Lecter's boyhood. It rocked. That's really all I can say about it. It was by far the most entertaining movie we've seen in the recent past.
We were pleasantly surprised to find out that the AMC theater at Chesterfield Mall, which we normally don't go to, because we have to drive past three other theaters to get there, does a really cool deal. If you buy tickets for a movie that starts before noon on any Friday, Saturday, Sunday or holiday, it only costs four bucks a ticket. You really can't beat that...now, if they would just cut us a deal on the popcorn...

Not nearly as much fun as I thought it would be...

2007-02-09T18:44:00.000-06:00

Damn you smart bloggers. Yeah, I thought this would be a fun way to tell my secret...but the Good Doc managed to out me in just under ten minutes. What a freakin' record. Either I'm not as stealth as I thought I was, or you guys are way to intuitive.
For the record everyone guessed right. The newest member of the family will be joining us in August. We're stoked. Now if I could just get past this feeling like I'm going to rolf every five minutes thing...
Needless to say, not only is my spring race been wiped from the slate, but so has any chance at a repeat appearance in the Windy City this fall. I'm okay with that though, I really was feeling burnt out on competition, and I really did get a big ouchy on my foot when I attempted to up the mileage in December before finding out that we were expecting.
I wanted to tell weeks ago, but thought that it would suck if something not so stellar happened. Now that we're past the first trimester (as of today...go me!) and we've heard/seen the heartbeat I'm feeling much more confident. So, there you have it.
I think I'm going to name the baby Stepnesonaner....after my so smart blogger buddies. Think I can convince Dear Hubby of that?

Wanna play a game?

2007-02-08T10:48:00.000-06:00

You know you want to. There's no prize for winning, unless you count the satisfaction which comes from gloating about your supremacy over the other players. (Which is always my favorite part of any game anyway.) This game is called I've Got a Secret.
We've all got secrets, and I've been sitting on a huge one. I don't think I've given away any clues in my recent blog posts, but then again, a very astute reader may beg to differ with me.
Some of you already know my secret, and you are not allowed to play...just up and telling is not allowed, and will earn you the unrivaled wrath of K-Jo, so if I already let you in...keep your outh-may ut-shay! (I love Pig Latin...I think we should all use it more regularly.)
Guessing may commence...

NOW!

I am so sick of snow

2007-02-01T16:40:00.000-06:00

Just when the old stuff gets just about all the way melted, in comes another load. Last night I was watching television...live not Tivo'd, and the weather guy came on saying that there were flurries in portions of the western viewing areas. I thought he was making stuff up. Then I took the dog out, yep, color me stupid, apparently it'd been snowing for quite awhile, as there was about a half inch of powder on my deck.
I wouldn't mind snow if I didn't have to go to work. I just don't like driving in it, even though I'm only four or five miles from work, and I have four wheel drive. You can never tell what the other clowns on the road are going to do.
I've had a busy week, but I've managed to get all of my runs in thus far. I've only been doing little three mile jaunts on the treadmill, and I seem to have ruined my ability to get out of bed and get my run in before going to work, but at least I'm geting it done. I've been having additional problems with my right foot, again. This is different than the pain I had early though. Different location, different type of pain. I think I might just need new shoes.
I'm enjoying my time on the treadmill so far. It's amazing how quick those miles fly by. I don't really have to focus on them, and I've not been finding as many excuses to not run as I was when I was trying to run higher mileage.
I recieved my school assignment for my Girls on the Run team today. It looks like I'll be coaching 3rd through 5th grade at an elementary school in Chesterfield. There are two other women coaching with me. So far we've got ten girls signed up, we're hoping for fifteen total. I'm excited. Hopefully it'll be a fun experience, and who knows, maybe next year I'll try to get a school started out in my neighborhood. How cool would that be?

Something that needs to be said

2007-01-28T10:32:00.001-06:00

Because every single one of us needs to hear it/read it/type it. Here it is: Running is not the only thing that defines us. We are not just Runners. We're husbands, wives, great friends, sisters, brothers, daughters, sons, parents, and coworkers. We have a myraid of different talents, many strengths, and weaknesses (even if we don't admit it).
We're so much more than just ordinary runners...we're people who run.
My life, for the past year or so has been exclusively defined by my training schedule. I stressed over missed runs, I constantly calculated how much faster I needed to go to set a new PR, and I agonized over bad runs. I've forgotten why I loved to run before I "got serious" about it.
This post has been triggered by things that I've seen in various assorted RBF'ers blogs over the past several weeks. I've seen really good runners, who love to run, forget about the joy that they feel when they're pounding the pavement. I've had my own meltdown and read about the results of at least three others. This concerns me.
Running, for me, hasn't always been about winning my age division and getting faster. It used to be a healthy way to manage my weight, blood pressure, and deal with stress. Lately though, it's become something that, although it's still managing my health, it's causing me some undue stress. This is bad, cause we all knows I already gots enough stress in my world.
So, I'm revisiting the issue of running for fun. I'm going to try to make it a lower stress activity. Having said that, I'm not going to be racing at all this spring...not even a 5k here and there. This is going to be tough for me, as my competitive nature tends to rule my life, and I really love race shirts. I'm going to try to reconnect with the fun side of the sport and not get swept up in how fast I can get where I'm going. The joy is in the journey right? I'm going to focus on being grateful that I can run and try to share that with others through volunteer work with groups like GOTR and the local marathons (who always need aid station volunteers).
If I'm lucky and play my cards right, maybe next year at this time I'll be ready to run a big race again...and maybe next time it won't run my entire life.
Oh, and for those of you who've changed your priorities for this race season, there's no shame in that...good for you for having the courage to do what's right for you. You're not letting any of us down, but rather setting a great example of how to do the right thing. You're all runners in my book.

Anybody miss me?

2007-01-27T17:38:00.000-06:00

I've been a lazy, lazy blogger lately. I find that my daily life isn't really blog worthy when I'm not running...somehow I feel unfulfilled to blog about things other than long runs, LT paces, and race times...
But today I have a story. I've talked in the past about getting involved with the local chapter of Girls on the Run. I went to a coaches' training session today. Let me just tell you, if you've ever thought about volunteering with this group, you should totally do it. Today's session was about forty coaches/assistant coaches from the St. Louis area. The local chapter brought Molly Barker, (hi Molly-apparently she's read my blog before, I feel so special)the founder of the program, in to talk to us. She is an amazing human being, and this program is one of the most fantastic programs I've ever been involved in.
I'll get off my soap box in a minute, but if you've ever been a young girl, especially one who suffered from self esteem issues or caved to peer pressure, this is your chance to make a difference in a young girl's life. Seriously, check the program out. I cannot say enough good stuff about them. I can't wait to see how I can make a difference for a girl who might be just like I was then.
Even if you can't commit two days a week to practice, think about volunteering to be a race buddy (a one hour comittment). This is going to be a rewarding experience for a lot of people, and not just the girls you're helping.
Okay, on to the other stuff. I've been running a little lately. I've been feeling okay, but I'm definitely out for the spring season races. I'm taking it slow. I'm doing about three miles five or six times a week, and I've dropped back down to nine minute miles. Who am I trying to kid by saying that I liked those eight minute miles? The only good thing about those was getting my run done faster. I'm going to try to step back and try to remember how to run for fun. I'm done for a little time with the worrying about my personal records and getting faster. Let's just have fun again. How awesome will that be?
My rant for this week is Subway...the sandwich shop. I really think there should be a rule that you can't order more than one sandwich per person between the hours of noon and one in the afternoon. No kidding, I stood in line for thirty minutes yesterday waiting for my sandwich...the jokester in front of me had an order for his whole damn office. Patience is not one of my virtues. It was all I could do to keep from pimp slappin' his ass. 'Nuff said.

I'm back...with a real post no less

2007-01-18T18:12:00.000-06:00

I've been pretty preoccupied with my other life (outside of blogging) lately. I've been trying to get some medical stuff sorted out, which we'll discuss shortly, and I've been trying to decide if I really want to commit to working with Girls on the Run this spring, and I've been trying to get my shit together at work.
Let's address the medical issue first: I have had a plethora of regular doctor appointments lately, nothing exciting, just run of the mill crap. I was supposed to have a test done on Tuesday. I left work at my regularlly scheduled time (gotta love half day Tuesdays) and drove down to the doc's office. Where I promptly found out that the tech who was to do my test (who happened to be the only person in the office trained in this procedure) was sick.
Supposedly they tried to call me...at nine in the morning. Doesn't it stand to reason that a relatively young, generally healthy individual like myself might not be home at nine on a weekday morning? That I might, I don't know, be working?!?! They didn't have a good answer as to why they didn't try to reach me on my cell. So I rescheduled for today, I was really fine with rescheduling...right up until the point that the receptionist got snotty with me and told me that "It was really important that I was on time, as they were doing me a favor, and squeezing me in between two other patients." I wanted to ask her if that was really necessary, since I obviously respect other people's time as I was fifteen minutes early for the appointment that they cancelled on me, but I bit my tongue. Don't want to get a reputation as one of those patients.
Topic number two is Girls on the Run. I really want to get involved with this group, but I'm kind of scared of the time comittment involved in it. The training session is next weekend, so I figure I'll go to that and see what it's all about and then decide from there what I'm going to do. They're supposed to be bringing in the lady that developed the entire program to do the training, so that should be kind of cool.
Lastly, I really need to get my work shit together. We hired a new marketing genius to take some of the pressure off of the clinic directors, but I have a tough time relinquishing any control to anyone else...however qualified he or she might be. I'm really going to have to learn to back up and let her drive the bus. I did a good thing earlier this week. I went to a chamber of commerce meeting last week (read really big snooze fest-but I won the 38 dollar door prize so not all was wasted) and I met this woman who does community relations for a local retirement community. She and I figured that we might be able to develop a mutually beneficial relationship in that I could recommend her facility to the geezers I treat, and she could allow me to come in and do "educational programs" for their residents, thus increasing my name recognition. I actually passed this info on to the marketing guru to set it up for me...yeah for me for giving up control! Hopefully she doesn't screw it up.

How many of you?

2007-01-14T17:46:00.001-06:00

According to this website there are 667 other people in the United States with my name. How f'ed up is that? I knew this last name was too common when I married my hubby(-:
This weekend was a nice relaxing weekend for us. The weather forecast called for several inches of ice to fall between Friday night and tomorrow morning. It started icing while we were at dinner on Friday night and I'd say that we got about 1/4 of an inch of ice...just enough to cause some major damage to some of the older trees in the area, and of course to bring down some power lines. We were only without power for about two or three hours late last night, others in the area have been without power most of the weekend.
This afternoon it started raining while we were out at the grocery store, and I'm certain that this rain will be turning into freezing crap as it gets colder later today, it could make for an interesting Monday morning.
I'm planning on taking it easy for the remainder of today and probably going to head to bed early so that I can try to get a bit of cross training in before heading to work tomorrow morning. One can only hope...

For those JT fans who missed the SNL sketch...

2007-01-11T18:54:00.000-06:00

It's hysterical, but not at all safe for work. No need to thank me.

Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit

2007-01-09T15:10:00.000-06:00

I'm going to have withdrawal trying to get into Rabbit's blog. I'm always amused by her life, but unfortunately, every time I try to go there today I get this site for knee exercises instead. Huh. Where should I visit instead?

Just another manic Monday

2007-01-08T17:30:00.000-06:00

Monday, Monday...let me count the ways that I hate you.
1. I could not sleep worth crap last night. I spent so much freakin time awake during the night that I was tired all day, thus one bad night negates all the good sleeping I got done over this past weekend.
2. Creepy walk in patient. I'm pretty sure he's an axe murderer...or maybe just that guy from the second Silence of the Lambs book(Red Dragon). Fun fact for the day: That book (and movie) was actually based in St. Louis, thus making this theory totally possible.
3. Irritatingly annoying office staff lady. Why is today of all days the day that you decided to get your tuberculosis test done? They're open all week....Monday is a madhouse here. I really can't answer the phones, schedule patients, and treat patients all by my lonesome. That's why you're here freakazoid.
4. That's actually it I think.
Hope everyone else's day was better than mine. I'm headed to the couch to vegetate!

So much for that idea

2007-01-07T14:45:00.000-06:00

Yeah, that New Year's resolution...the one to be a more consistent blogger? Not going so well, as you can probably tell. I've been really feeling like the back end of an old dog lately. By the time I get done working every day, all I really have energy for is coming home and laying on the couch. I'm hoping that I'm going to start to turn the corner here pretty soon.
I've been trying to find a little time for cross training, and so far I've managed to force myself onto the stationary bike about five or six times this week. (That doesn't sound so good does it? Oh well, you know what I mean.)
I'm firmly convinced that my feeling ass-like has something to do with being unable to run. This weekend I was in bed by nine thirty both nights and I slept until nine thirty both mornings. You would think that this much sleep would top off the tanks and put me back to feeling 100%, but you'd be wrong for thinking that. As I sit here typing now, I'm really contemplating a nap. I suck.
On other fronts, let me just save you all some time...don't go see the Good Shepherd. You'd think this movie would rock, and the previews certainly made it look like it rocked...but it didn't. In my world, this movie is tied with Syriana as biggest waste of film ever imagined.
I sat down to watch it thinking that I was in for a real treat. Three hours later, I walked out of the theater asking my husband "what the hell was that?" I pride myself on being a fairly intelligent person, and I seriously could not follow this damn movie. Plus, Angelina Jolie is not believable as a fifties housewife. Dirty homewrecker, why don't you go adopt a third world country?

Okay, I know I said no to New Year's resolutions...

2007-01-02T17:43:00.000-06:00

but I'm making one anyway. It's going to be one that all of you, my faithful readers (all six of you) will thoroughly enjoy. I'm resolving to blog more days than I don't blog. That means at least four days a week, every week, for the next fifty two weeks. Oh yeah, I can tell you're excited!
And since I'm not running, you'll have to satisfy your crazy selves with brief glimpses into my rather mundane life (monkey sightings excluded from the mundane list).
I do not yet have an update, no monkey sightings were made today, even though the Max was on MonkeyWatch all day today. It's going to be tough to spot that booger when I'm at work all day...hmmmm, this is a whole new dilemma. Must brainstorm. Is it too obvious (or creepy) if I set a video camera up to record their house all day?
In other news, my patients were completely amused by my alleged monkey sighting, although more than one patient did draw the conclusion that I must have seen a dwarf in a fur coat and not a primate. Ask yourself, is a dwarf in a fur coat really that far removed from a small chimp anyway? Both would be amusing, although the chimp would be far less disturbing....
Speaking of patients, I received a cool thank you today from one of my patients. This patient is a sweet old man (albeit an old man who sounds disturbingly enough like the dirty old man from Family Guy who is always hitting on Peter). Anyway, I digress. He had some gift cards to a local bookstore and insisted that he never bought from this store, as he likes the little mom and pop shops and feels like this behemoth of a bookstore is slowly driving mom and pop out of business, so he gave me the gift cards. Which totalled over fifty dollars. How nice is that? I've got my eye on a couple of things including one or two items for patient education in my office, but you can bet your sweet ass I'm gonna be buying myself a treat as well. Nice people rock!

Is that a monkey in your front yard?

2007-01-01T17:40:00.000-06:00

Or is your toddler just really hairy? I was not hallucinating or high yesterday morning when I thought I saw my across the street neighbor helping a chimp into the front door of her house...even though I haven't seen it again since then.
I haven't had the chance to ask her what the deal was, but I think I know what a monkey looks like, and I'm pretty sure that she has one. So all day today, I've been watching for another glimpse of the monkey. Every time I pass a window that looks out onto the front yard, I'm searching for the monkey. Thus commences MonkeyWatch 2007.
I'm going to see that damn thing again, this I promise you. And when I do, I'm taking pictures. I've got to have some kind of proof that there really is a monkey living across the street from me.

Happy New Year!

2006-12-31T18:34:00.000-06:00

We just got back from our New Year's Eve dinner. We went to the Melting Pot, which is a fondue restaurant. We go almost every New Year's Eve to this restaurant, and even though we love it, this is the only night of the year that we go there. It's such a production to eat a meal there.
They bring all of the food to the table raw, and there's a little hot plate like thing in the center of the table that they put a pot of boiling beef stock based liquid onto. You skewer and cook all of the meat in this pot of stock before you can eat it.
We had lobster, fillet mignon, chicken, beef tenderloin, shrimp and a couple of kinds of ravioli. They also bring a cheese fondue to start the meal and finish it with a chocolate fondue for desert. We gorged ourselves to the point of feeling like we're going to explode.
As for the rest of the night...who knows? Some of our neighbors are planning a get together, but that probably won't start until around nine...and the way I feel now, I may be sleeping by then. I know, how lame am I?
We're not to keen on going over there anyway, as the men hang out in the garage playing darts and the women sit around the kitchen gossiping. I like good scoop as much as the next gal, but after a while it gets old. Can't the conversation have some substance already?
So, if we make it to midnight, great, but if not oh well, it'll still be 2007 tomorrow morning either way. Although if we stay home, I'll probably feel a lot better the first morning of 2007 than I would if I went out anyway, right?
Hope everyone has a great evening!

Bad blogging monkey...

2006-12-30T18:32:00.000-06:00

So I've been AWOL for the last week or so. Between work, dentist and doctor appointments, and trying to get my house back in order; I've just not had time. Every night I think "Self, you need to blog today" and every night I manage to convince myself that sleeping is more important. Who'd thunk it? I've been exhausted all week. But after an early to bed on Friday and late to rise on Saturday morning, I'm feeling a bit better. A repeat performance tonight and all should be well in my world, I hope.
The short version is:
1. I haven't been running. Doc's orders. I either have a ruptured spring ligament or a stress fracture. Nothing shows up on x-ray, but that's not necessarily conclusive. The Rx: Rest, immobilization, and revisit the issue in six weeks. Ughhhh, that throws a spring marathon and probably a spring half marathon out the window. So perhaps we'll be looking at a summer race? Or just waiting until fall. On one hand I'm disappointed, but on the other I'm okay with it. Do you know how much more time I'm going to have?!?!? I'm sure extra time will lose it's novelty in a week or so.
2. I'm finally getting to where I feel like I've recovered from Christmas. I took the tree down today, and dear husband helped get the outside stuff down and put away. I was particularly glad to get this done, as it's slated to start raining here and continue for something like a week (which really means two or three weeks) and I hate to be one of those fuckers that still has Christmas shit up at Valentines day.
3. I've sufficiently gorged myself on cookies, candies, and cake that I think I've cured myself of my sweet tooth. Just typing those sweet delights out makes me a little nauseous. This is a good thing, as I weighed in just over four pounds heavier this morning than I weighed last Saturday before Christmas. God knows, I gotta get on the clean eating bandwagon if I'm not running, those extra calories aren't going to burn themselves.
So, that's the summary in a few short paragraphs. I'm getting myself back on track with the blogging business, effective now.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming

2006-12-25T19:16:00.000-06:00

Christmas is over...finally. I cannot possibly begin to describe how glad I am to have this holiday over with. My husband's family spent the weekend with us, which actually went better than I had expected it to go. I sometimes hook horns with my father in law, as he subscribes to the school of thought that women should be seen and not heard and I, of course am extremely outspoken. I managed to bite my tongue though, and he was actually on pretty good behavior so it went okay.
The only dull spot in the weekend was my husband's mother (his parents are divorced). The background is that she has been somewhat wrapped up in the drama which is my sister-in-law's life as of late. So much so that she never asks how we are, but immediately jumps into the latest update on his sister's story. I'll spare the gory details, but it would not be remiss to say that we choose not to be around his sister because of the bad decisions she routinely makes.
So anyway, fast forward to this weekend. We had two options open for her to see us. She knew that Saturday early afternoon or today afternoon were the two options. She waited until late Saturday afternoon to call us and see "what we were up to" and then chose not to call today until almost seven...and then it was to tell us that "she was sick, but we could still come over".
Uhmmm, thanks but no thanks.
It's kind of lame that she was so focused on his sister and her kids that she couldn't make any time for us at all this holiday, but I guess that this is one of those things that we should just get used to.
Anyway, at least it's over with, so on to the next holiday. Have I mentioned that I love New Year's Eve?

Uh oh

2006-12-23T12:01:00.000-06:00

Small catastrophe, or maybe it's a large one. Today I was scheduled for thirteen miles. Want to guess how many I made?
Try three. Then my right foot started screaming at me. I'm a pretty tough cookie. I usually have to be bleeding, puking or otherwise almost dying not to finish a run. I just could not finish though.
I've been having foot pain on and off ever since Chicago, but figured that I'd be okay, as I usually am able to run through it. Long story short, my foot has been hurting along the medial (inside) aspect, right near my navicular (that sharp pointy bone on the inside of your foot. I figured I had either sprained my spring ligament or developed a little posterior tibialis tendonitis. It hurt like hell when I curled my toes, and let's not even talk about curling my toes and plantarflexing (pointing my ankle down).
This morning I started out with medial foot pain and about a mile in started having lateral foot pain and anterior calf pain...no bueno (to quote Little Miss Runner Pants.)
I couldn't figure out a way to push through this...which is probably a good thing, so I cut my run short, will take tomorrow and Monday off and hopefully be able to sweet talk my orthopod into squeezing me in on Tuesday. Let's keep our fingers crossed that this is nothing serious.

I love me some ranch dressing

2006-12-22T21:42:00.000-06:00

Best condiment ever. Red Robin has the best ranch in the world. Hands down, this stuff is the best. Tonight we headed there for dinner and somehow managed to get the waiter started talking about their ranch and how much I loved it.
He sent me home with a big ol' vat of the stuff. Gotta love that.

Why are my Thursday runs so much slower than my Tuesday runs?

2006-12-21T18:49:00.000-06:00

Is it because I'm so much more tired by the time the end of the week rolls around? Or just cause I'm a lame-o? My ten miles today went well, although the pace was a full 32 seconds per mile slower than it was on Tuesday. I try to run my Tuesday and Thursday runs at the same pace, and I run in the same area, I just can't seem to pick up the pace at all on Thursdays though. Oh well, at least I got it done.
I was exhausted when I got done though. I've decided that part of the reason I didn't do so well in Chicago this past fall was because I wasn't really prepared well enough. I can tell a huge difference between my last training plan and this one, and I'm only two weeks (not even two full weeks) into this plan. I think it's going to make a big difference running fewer days but more mileage, I hope.
I kind of think that maybe I got a smidge dehydrated on the run today too, as I've felt like ass pretty much all afternoon since I got back. I didn't carry my fuel belt and it was fairly close to sixty degrees today. I know, what's up with that? You've gotta love these warmer winters. I've got it on good authority though that the niceness won't last forever though, so I've got to enjoy it while I can.
On a different note, I tried to make my coconut creme pie for Christmas Eve today. It's cooking as I type. I'm less than convinced that it will turn out well, so I may be making an emergency trip to the grocery store tomorrow for a store bought one that I can pass off as my own. I know, that's cheating, but trust me, it's worth it.

Can it be?

2006-12-20T19:38:00.000-06:00

That my catchphrase...that I've been using all freakin' year came from Grey's Anatomy...which I've never watched. Damn you People magazine's year end recap, for pointing this out to me! So seriously, this is the last post during which I will use the word "seriously" as a transition. So be seriously prepared, as I'm seriously going to use the hell out of this word to take away the shiny attraction that it holds over me.
I swear I've never watched the show, I may be the only adult in the nation who has seriously never seen Grey's Anatomy, so I seriously did not jack the phrase from them...but seriously, why must they use my vernacular? That blows some serious goats.
Today is the official middle of the work week for me. Unlike some of you lucky ducks, I seriously have to work all damn week. Makes me mad. I seriously hope that many of my Friday afternoon patients wake up and realize that it's the day before a holiday weekend and that they are seriously too busy to come to therapy. Sad, huh?
I've got a light day scheduled tomorrow, and I'm planning on trying to hit the library and the grocery store at some point tomorrow. I'm also planning on trying my handing a baking the coconut creme pie for our big dinner on Sunday tomorrow. We'll see how that goes. I may find myself making another serious trip to the grocery store for a backup dessert if this one goes seriously wrong tomorrow.
Okay, I think I've broken myself of the "seriously" habit. Notice I only used it twice in the above paragraph and then I really had to try to get it in. You all now have permission to whip me if I use the word again. Seriously. (Okay, last one...I promise)

What a great run

2006-12-19T19:48:00.000-06:00

Today I did 8 miles with 10 x 100 meter strides. It went well. Much better than the workout last Tuesday went. I completed the mileage in just under 72 minutes, which put me right in my target pace zone at a 9:00/mile pace. I ran the same course that I ran for my two weekday runs last week. I never realized exactly how many hills there are in my neighborhood until I started running them regularly.
My only complaint was that it was slightly colder out this week than it was last week. My face still feels chapped from running into the wind during the first half of today's run. I'm always shocked when I go outside and I get cold while running, as I've been completely spoiled by the higher temperatures so far this winter. It's got to end sometime, so why am I so surprised when it does?
Doctor Stephanie tagged me today, so with no further adieu: The game is this. Go to the closest book, type it's title and author into your blog entry. Then turn to page 123 and find the fifth sentence on that page. Type the next three sentences. Tag three more people.
What is the point of the game? Got me. But I'm a sucker for a chain letter game, so here goes:
The book is Mary Mary, by James Patterson. My lines are as follows: Late that same day, the Storyteller was driving north on the 405, the San Diego Freeway, which was moving okay at about forty or so, and he was working over his "hate list" in his mind. Who did he want to do next, or if not next, before this thing wound down and he had to stop killing or be caught? Stop! Just as suddenly as it had begun.
Yes, I love me some serial killer fiction. The more gruesome the better. I'm a sick puppy. But the book is very well written and extremely entertaining. I highly recommend it. Thanks to the good Doc for the tag.
I'm tagging Firefly, Sonia, and Arcaner. Come on, you know you want to play!

Fastest way to end an argument

2006-12-18T07:47:00.000-06:00

Call your significant other the devil. As in: "You are the devil, woman." Guarenteed end of the argument right there. Possibly because your significant other will be laughing so hard that he or she will not be able to fabricate a snappy retort.
The holiday stress is catching up with us at my house, we spent most of the weekend at each other's throats. Hopefully after next weekend things will get back to normal.
Today was a cross training day. I got up early and rode the stationary bike. I don't have patients until nine today, based on that I thought this week would be pretty light, but the rest of the day looks like a mad rush and most of the rest of the week looks busy too. Even Friday. Damn that 5:30pm patient...don't you realize it's the day before a holiday weekend and I don't want to stay late. Curse me for being so flexible with my schedule.

Who knew?

2006-12-17T11:38:00.000-06:00

That recovery runs would almost be harder to pace then regular long runs and aerobic runs? I sure didn't. I did a four mile recovery run, and I thought that I'd just run on the treadmill this morning. It was sprinkling a little when I thought about getting started this morning, and I wasn't really feeling the outside run anyway.
I figured it'd be easier to pace on the treadmill, as you can just set the speed and go...but I kept feeling the urge to turn the speed up, as the 10:00/mile pace that I'm supposed to run for recovery runs felt really, really slow to me. I forced myself to stay at the pace, but I really struggled to not go any faster. That's a good thing, right?
Last night's neighborhood Christmas party went well. We had great food and a pretty good time. It's nice to get to see that crowd, but after spending a few hours with them I'm pretty much done for a few months. They sure know how to party. Every time they get together it's a drunken lovefest full of smack talkin' and dirty joke telling. There's one guy who ends up taking at least some portion of his clothing off every time he gets drunk...fortunately we left before this took place yesterday. It's an interesting crowd.

A quick recap of the weekend thus far

2006-12-16T18:10:00.000-06:00

This morning I got up at five thirty...yes, that's five thirty in the AM, on a weekend. I wanted to get some things arranged for the family Christmas dinner that I was hosting this afternoon before I headed out for my twelve mile run. I got a few things done, went out and had a great run. Met up with a group of six regular runners on my way back and had a nice time talking to them for about a mile...until we hit the mother of all hills. (I need to take my camera with me sometime and take a picture of this hill for you all. Words do not do it justice) I was keeping up with them very well until this hill, at which point they proceeded to completely school me. I got my ass kicked, and then some.
Then I came home, got cleaned up, ate a quick something (string cheese, powerade, and gummy bears...three of the four major food groups, right?) and headed out the run Kristi's taxi. I had to pick up my two grandmothers and my godmother. None of whom really get along, so you can imagine how much fun this trip was. I brought them back to my house and then scrambled to finish dinner. Fortunately I left detailed instructions for my husband and he follows directions very, very well. He got the meat started. I had done most of the prep work last night, so really all that needed to be done was potatoes boiled and casseroles/stuffing warmed up.
We managed to get dinner on the table by one, and then sat around letting food digest for awhile. We then opened some gifts, had dessert and I made the rounds taking old ladies home again. Overall, it was a pretty good time, and by doing it this weekend it will take some of the stress out of next weekend. Next weekend we'll have my husband's dad and stepmom in town and we'll have to find time to go see his mother at some point.
In about twenty minutes we'll be heading out to one of our neighbor's homes for the neighborhood potluck. With any luck, we'll be home soon from that, as I'm dragging already. The holiday's just wear me out.

I am so tired...again.

2006-12-14T19:19:00.000-06:00

Today was nine miles per the Pfitz plan, a nice steady pace around 9:00/mile was my goal. I managed the first half at that pace, but slowed down to almost 10:00 miles on the way back home. That wind was brutal...even though it was almost sixty degrees here today! I ran in shorts! How awesome is that?
I am totally and completely beat right now though. My legs feel good, although I do have some shoulder soreness, leading me to the conclusion that I must have been shrugging towards the end of my run.
So far, I'm loving the Pfitz plan. The whole idea of only running four or five days a week is really appealling to me. I've been finding a lot more time in my mornings this week. I'm used to getting up early and running every morning before work, but with the longer runs I'm having to do them in the afternoons on my shorter days, which gives me that much more time in the mornings...which I'm loving so far. We'll see if I still feel the same about it in three or four weeks.
Tomorrow is a rest day, followed by 12 miles on Saturday and Christmas with my side of the family...at my house. I'm currently baking pies and cakes for this weekend, and tomorrow I'll do all the prep work for the dinner. It's going to be a busy weekend.

First Real Running Day

2006-12-12T19:01:00.001-06:00

Today was the first "real" day of the Pfitz plan. I had seven miles with 10 x 100meter strides on the schedule. It actually went great. I was a little fuzzy on what exactly my pace should be because I hadn't yet managed to ask for some serious help from those in the know. I ran the seven miles at a 9:00/mile pace, which after emailing back and forth with Leah, I think is pretty much right on target.
Let me just add how much Leah rocks to this post. I was so incredibly confused and she managed to get my paces all squared away and making perfect sense for me! I am amazed at the talents of my fellow RBF'ers every day.
I'm feeling much more confident after today's run. I ran a good course, it was an out and back of 3.4 miles and then I finished with my striders in the street in front of my house. I actually ended up doing just over seven miles, because I miscalculated how far 100meters translated into in tenths of a mile. I'm so not good with numbers.
I thought that I was going to have a beautiful day for running outside, as I had been out running around all morning while doing some marketing to physician offices with one of my coworkers. Alas, by the time I got home and scarfed down a smidge of lunch, the temperature had dropped. I was cold at first in my shorts and a long sleeve tech shirt, but I quickly warmed up. I was not counting on the wind though. I'd forgotten how much more work it is to run in cold weather with wind than it is in warm weather with wind.
Tomorrow is a cross training day, and then Thursday has 9 miles general aerobic on the schedule. Hopefully that will go as well as today went.

Day One: Pfitz plan

2006-12-11T20:03:00.000-06:00

Day one was cake. All the schedule called for was some cross training. It's weird not to run on a Monday. The only times I've not run on a Monday were the two Monday's after my last two marathons.
I did some light stationary cycling today. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Tomorrow's schedule calls for seven miles at a comfortable pace. I'm thinking this means at lactate threshold, which if I'm interpreting my charts correctly means should be around my 1/2 marathon pace...which would put me just under a 9:00 mile. That's what I'm going to shoot for at least. Hopefully this will go well.
I'm still just a little sore from my long run on Saturday and my race yesterday. My hamstrings were screaming last night. I'm hoping if I stretch a bit tonight that'll loosen 'em up a bit.

A much better outing

2006-12-10T11:28:00.000-06:00

Today's run went fantastic. Now granted, it was only a 5k race, but it still felt good to have a decent run despite the cold weather.
I ran a 24:22, which won me a third in my age group. I was the fourth female to finish overall, and the 31st finisher out of the entire field of 100 or so. I'm so comfortable with the shorter distances now, hopefully in eighteen weeks I'll be as comfortable with my marathon as I am with the 5ks...and hopefully, this time around, I'll actually be able to do as well as I think I'll do. (Unlike Chicago, where my physical preparation did not measure up to my mental preparation.)
Last night was my work Christmas party. Lame-o. I work in a small office which is part of a larger company. Although I know everyone who works in the other offices, because I don't interact with them daily I'm very much on the outside of their inside jokes. There's definitely a clique of "cool" kids and I kind of feel like the band geek out of the group...not that there's anything wrong with being a band geek.
At the end of the night, I was just glad to go home. I made my necessary appearance to keep the gossip-mongers at bay. We all know how those folks work...the second you don't show up somewhere that they think you should be they come up with some fantastic rumor about you. Gotta love that junior high behavior. I'm just glad it's over with for another year.

Uhmmm, I thought I was ready

2006-12-09T17:29:00.000-06:00

To start training again. Today's run just proved to me how severely my running skills have diminished over the past six weeks of three miles a day, six days a week and no long runs. Not good.
I went for a ten miler today, although I did not meet my goal of getting back out at seven on every Saturday morning. I was really on a roll there for the past two marathons. Today, I rolled over and looked at the temperature gauge...it said 24 degrees and I said no thank you to running that early. This is a very bad habit to cave into.
I was going to blow off the run entirely, but managed to give myself such an amazingly heavy guilt trip that I went out this afternoon. It did not go well.
I ran five outside and five on the treadmill. I just flat out gave up after the first five outside. I managed to convince myself that five was enough for the day. Then I gave myself another massive guilt trip and forced myself to finish the last five on the treadmill. Yet I'm still not happy with myself.
Although my pace was good (around an 8:40 average) I just didn't feel good about it. My lungs hurt, my face felt totally windburnt, and I just felt sluggish. Not very good for building up my confidence regarding tackling a higher mileage training plan than I've used in the past.
I'm going to still try it (I think) but I'm very uneasy about it. I'm not sure if it's the ambitious plan that's got me spooked or if I'm just burnt out. There were a couple of times today when I actually thought about not doing a spring marathon, and maybe just aiming for a half instead. That sounds so weak to me though.
I'm hoping that I get my head in the game a little bit more in the next couple of weeks. I'm ready to physically I think, but mentally I'm just not there yet.

Dear Insurance Company:

2006-12-08T18:02:00.000-06:00

I follow your instructions, I complete your mindnumbing, idiotic busy work to get my patients' visits paid for, and you repay me by sticking your head so far up your ass that you won't ever be able to pry it out again. Thanks a lot.
I love that I need preauthorization to treat your patient because their group number isn't on your magic "exemption list" that includes all of three companies in the country, including one that only has one employee, another that employs trained gorillas, and a third located in the beautiful backcountry of Alaska. Seeing as how my practice is located in Missouri, that list really does me a lot of good...but I appreciate how generous you are to have offered an exemption list.
I also love that I faxed paperwork to continue my patient's care on the 22nd of November and here it is on the 8th of December and you still haven't authorized additional visits. What, you're not sure if the visits are medically necessary? Of course they are, I'm telling you they are and so did the doctor who wrote the damn prescription. What, your degree in marketing or accounting qualifies you to make decisions about what is "reasonable and necessary"? Exactly how long is that program? I see, four months of business school means you must know more than me about how I should do my job. Fuckers.
So, now I've faxed my paperwork to you no less than five times. You were supposed to call me when you recieved it...yes, I'm speaking to you Robert...as this time I was smart enough to ask for you name and "direct fax number". I'm going straight up the chain when I don't get satisfaction from you, and I'm naming names when I do.
How silly of me to assume that when you said "I'll call when I get it" that you would be calling me right back. How convienent of you to wait until five minutes before you left for the day to call and tell me that you "never received my fax". And how insane of me not to understand why you couldn't possible walk over to the fax machine and stand there for the thirty seconds that it took me to refax my paperwork...for the tenth time. Your excuse of "it's in a part of the building I don't have access to" tells me why your system doesn't work.
You might want to send out a search and rescue party, as I'm pretty sure that the backlog of paperwork that you all have steadfastedly been ignoring for the past two plus weeks has finally overtaken your "fax receiving department" and they're either buried under a pile of faxes desperately trying to claw their way out, or they've given up all hope of ever catching up and are now cheerfully filing my paperwork in their shredder.
Perhaps this is where your "system breakdown" is occurring. Fuckers.
So now that I've decided that either a bunch of poorly trained circus animals or extremely slow fourth graders is running your company, I'd like to know what time you'd prefer for me to have the patient that you denying care to's surgeon call and ream you a new one. Because rest assured that I'm not going to be the only one getting bitched at...if I'm going down, you all are going with me.
Here's a tip...if you do what I need you to do, which isn't unreasonable (it's only your crappy job) than perhaps "that bitch from Missouri" will stop calling and interupting your valuable nap time. Psst...for those of you that are slow (which is everyone employed at your fine establishment) that means that I'll stop bothering you.
Have a nice day.

The disgruntled therapist

It's decided

2006-12-05T16:51:00.000-06:00

I've decided that I'm going to train for the St. Louis marathon. Even though I've run St. Louis twice already, I can't pass up the home court advantage, nor can I pass up the chance to train on the actual course. Plus, it's a financial decision at this point as well. I'd like to take a nice vacation at some point this year, and unfortunately Nashville, Louisville, and Cincy don't really fit my definition of nice too well.
Training starts the week of the tenth...Holy Crap, that's next week. I'm going to use the Pfitz plan, which is kind of scary, as it's singificantly more mileage than I'm used to running during training. I'm going to have to fine tune/adjust the schedule a bit though, as there is no freakin' way I'm running eight or more miles on the dreadmill during the week.
I like to get my training runs done before I go to work, and since I work from seven to six three days each week, I'd pretty much have to get up at four every morning to get some of those midweek longer runs done. I've got Tuesday and Thursday afternoons open right now, so I'll probably try to shift the schedule so that my longer runs fall on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
I'm a little concerned that tweaking the schedule is going to make me more prone to injury, but I guess that's one of those things that only time will tell.

This is the part I don't like

2006-12-01T10:05:00.000-06:00

The sitting around waiting part. Of course it was nice that it snowed a ton last night. What wasn't so nice was that there was at least two or three inches of ice underneath the snow. Of course, since I only live a few miles from my office, I really didn't have any excuse for not making it into work.
I loaded my crap into the car and headed out. It took me almost thirty minutes to drive the less than five miles to my office. And now that I'm here, I'm just sitting, and waiting...and waiting. Apparently people aren't really sure if they're going to make it into their appointments today, so they're waiting until ten minutes before they're supposed to be here to call and cancel.
In three hours, I've seen one whole patient. I have however talked to eighteen of the twenty patients that were scheduled. Twelve of them have cancelled, and several of the others have decided that if they come in, they'll come in early.
There is no freakin' way that I'm going to sit here until six o'clock this evening waiting on people to come in.
Okay, the first half of this post was written while I was sitting around waiting for something to do. As it turned out, I only ended up seeing four of my twenty patients today. I was home by one this afternoon. Not such a bad deal.
As I was driving home I met the world's biggest jackass. I was driving along, at a nice slow fifteen miles per hour when out of nowhere, this dumb bastard in a suburban gets right on my ass. And by right on my ass, I mean so close to my rear bumper that I could not see anything other than his windshield and about an inch of his hood. We were driving down the highway access road, which is one lane in either direction, covered in ice, and goes up and down two or three big hills. Apparently, I was driving too slow for his liking, as the first gap in oncoming traffic that he found, he floored it around me...and promptly spun out into the ditch. Serves you right, genius. Perhaps you've learned that just because you have four wheel drive, doesn't mean you're a winning Indy driver.

Winter is officially here

2006-11-30T17:32:00.000-06:00

I'm not quite sure how it can go from a high of 70 degrees on Wednesday afternoon to a high of 32 degrees today with freezing rain and snow. It was less than 24 hours people! Amazing.
I had a very uneventful day. I went in to work this morning, as I only live about four miles from the clinic. It was just raining when I got to work, but I'd only been there for about fifteen minutes when the freezing rain started.
Needless to say, all of my patients cancelled. So I went home. Unfortunately, my secretary was not able to get into work this morning, so there wasn't anyone in the office to answer the phones, so I had to forward the phones to my cell phone so that I could answer calls all day. I only got about twelve or so calls. Even though I was in my comfy clothes and at home, I felt like I was still working.
So the original forecast for today and tomorrow called for an inch of ice followed by 8 to 12 inches of snow. That's a lot of freakin' snow man. Last I checked, the forecast has now been revised to only 1 to 3 inches of snow. How can there be that much variation? I'm stumped.
I was planning to start my long runs up again this week, but if there's several inches of snow and ice on the ground, I'll probably be delaying it for another week. Formal training doesn't start until the week of the 10th, but I would really like to get two longer runs in before starting to ramp up my mileage.
I've got a 5k race on Sunday, which I'll still probably run, even if there's snow on the ground, as I'm already registered and I'd hate to back out after I've paid my entry fee. I know, how cheap am I?

Ha, ha...funny

2006-11-28T15:35:00.000-06:00

I'll admit it: I 'heart' JT.

So I like the new layout with Google...

2006-11-27T21:16:00.000-06:00

But I really don't like this having to sign in through a different home page, which I can never find bullshit. Really, is it that necessary to add a whole nother step to my log in process? I think not. I do like that the sidebar tracks how many posts I've done over the past several months, and gives the month by month breakdown for me. While it's nice to see exactly how much I've blogged this month, it kind of is a slightly bad thing for uber-competitive me.
I really enjoy seeing that total posts this month number climb higher every day. It's almost as good as the warm fuzzy "they like me, they really, really like me" feeling that I get after a particularly popular post generates massive amounts of monkeys jumping on the bed feedback.
Back to my regularly scheduled programing...I bought the Advanced Marathoning guide over this past weekend. It looks like it's got a lot of good information in it. And seeing as how I'm going to have to start training pretty soon, I'm going to have to actually be reading it pretty soon, like tomorrow maybe.
I'm going to restart my long runs this weekend I think. I'm planning on joining up with the usual suspects down in St. Charles for the five out and back course that I trained for Chicago on. I love that course so much, it's kind of ridiculous. I'm not really sure why I love it, other than the fact that it's so hard going out, it makes going in that much better. Anyway.

Deck the halls...

2006-11-26T15:30:00.000-06:00

I am officially ready for Christmas. I put my Christmas tree up today and decorated the house. I'm glad that I've got it done, but am not looking forward to having to barricade it off from my dog. He gets so excited when we put the tree up, it's like a doggie smorgasbord. Every year we put the tree up, and every year while we're hard at work earning money to pay for the lavish doggie lifestyle that he leads, he repays us by selecting a few tasty ornaments off the tree and chewing the crap out of them.
I have multiple ornaments that are missing parts. I have a three legged camel, a handless Curious George and a tailless Scooby Doo. Then there are the ornaments that are MIA at the end of the holiday season. I'm pretty sure those have gone to wherever it is that ornaments go to die.
So, let the chewing commence!

It's decided.

2006-11-25T20:22:00.000-06:00

I've chosen a training plan. I'm using the plan that so many of my fellow RBF'ers spoke so highly of following the Chicago marathon. I'm going to use the low mileage Pfitzinger plan (55 miles a week for 18 weeks). Now if I could just decide which race to run. I'm leaning towards St. Louis again, even though I've done it twice already.
It's really a financial decision for me at this point, as there are several things in the works over the next year or so that are going to require a bit more saving in the budget (like a nice trip or two) and unfortunately travelling for a marathon doesn't really fit with that budget too well. I've also considered the benefit to knowing the course and having hometown support available as I make yet another try for a BQ time. Of course, I may change my mind between now and next week...my own self imposed deadline for choosing a race.

Thanksgiving recap

2006-11-24T18:58:00.000-06:00

Yesterday went by way too quickly. I started the morning out with a 5k race. I did not set a new PR, but that's okay. I only missed my 5k time from last week by 35 seconds, and the course was hell'a hillier. It was a beautiful morning. The sky's were clear and the sun was shining brightly. The temperatures were in the upper forties to lower fifties by race time, and the crowd was well behaved. There was no pushing and shoving like there often is in our local races.
I finished in 24:33, which placed me at 7th in my age bracket. There were 101 women in my age bracket for those of you who might be interested. I had fun, despite the almost full blown asthma attack at the half way point, which I kept running through. I do not walk, unless I'm dying. As those of you who have gotten to know me know: perseverance is my greatest attribute, but it is also my Achilles heel. I just don't know when to quit.
Anyway, the almost full blown asthma attack was the first breathing difficulty I've had in about a year and a half...the last was triggered by fine granular dust from hanging a drop ceiling in my basement without a mask on. Smart, I know. What can I say? I managed to get myself under control without too much difficulty, but it was still kind of scary.
The rest of the day was spent relaxing, going to see a movie, and at the family dinner. Let's tackle the family dinner first. It wasn't too bad. Most people know that my family doesn't really get along that well. We are the ultimate in dysfunction, what with a manipulative matriarch, a verbally abusive sibling, his mail order bride, and parents who believe in "biting your tongue for the sake of keeping the peace". And this is just my side of the family. Surprisingly, everyone was on their best behaviour yesterday and we escaped at the end of the meal unscathed, for once.
We went to see a somewhat lousy movie yesterday as well. We saw Borat. It blew. Even though this movie got stellar reviews in People and the newspaper and people were raving about it, I wouldn't recommend it. In fact, this is one of the few movies that I think might have been better had I been completely intoxicated while viewing it. Now granted, there were a few parts that I thought were hysterical, but there were so many more scenes that made me cringe and kind of sink down into my seat with sheer embarrassment that we'd paid to see this garbage.
At the end of the day though, we thought we'd had a nice time overall. It was only spoiled by having to go back to work today.