No Time

No time to write... though last week I did get an interesting bellydancing workout. Have another later this week. Def. harder than it looks! Yow, abs! Very fun.

I got new sports bras and fitness shorts. Those feel good. Need to hunt down new sneakers.

Julia's still having trouble adjusting to napping at school so she's a crab on my long day but she's doing decent when I leave her to go to gym. Doesn't wig out or anything. The only downer is that I only get one hour at gym, and this has to include driving to and fro time.

Realistically... it's not happening for half marathon. I may have to switch over to the 5K. I'm trying to cope with how I feel about all that.

I'm also trying to cope with how I feel about the holidays and trying to meet the needs of the extended family.

Paul and I are doing better. But now I'm being attacked by wooden turtles so can't go there... that's a lengthy one. A little person around here wants me to help her put then to sleep with a blanket because they are "sleeping."

Oh, and I didn't even mention the "dinosaur" who sleeps in the garage. Friday night our neighbor called us and Paul ended up rescuing a Savanah monitor out of her bushes. I hoep the pet just escaped their cage. Because what cruel person would abandon a monitor in this chilly weather?! It would die! He can't live with us... I have to try to lcoate the owner or find him a new home.

But Julia thinks it's great that we have a new "dinosaur" however temporarily.

Hurricane

And here I thought we'd make it to November (and the end of hurricane season) with no action. Argh.

Ugly weather today and we're under tornado watch. My poor tabebuia tree may have had it -- it's bent at the bottom and posibly snapping and the top is scratching at my office windows. I don't want to go outside to try to restake it and I can't really see the bottom from the window well. Too much rain.

If that's the only thing we lose, I'll be grateful. I can always get another sapling and start over.

Excited

Well... looks like I got my child care problem worked out at long last!

I just have to pop down to school tomorrow to confirm my timesheet with the director. The idea is that I'll be teaching preschool on Tuesdays and be there all day. I'll pick up one of the hours with pay, then give the other 4.5 hours without pay. In return I get to leave Julia in school for 4.5 hours over Wed, Thurs, and Fri so I can hit the gym with peace of mind.

The rest of the time is on the weekend and then Paul can take her so I can go to the other gym close to my house.

Been giving it a whirl this week to see how Julia copes with being at school without me on site. Today I left her and and I went to visit the gym by work today. Brand spanking new, clean, pretty and uncrowded. Woot! I'm totally psyched.

Now that all my crazy fundraiser stuff is over for the year, Paul and I have been hashing out our home life and schedules so getting that squared away helps.

I have to confess that I'm worried about actually making it to the race but race or no I must train. We start TTC next year and I need to get ready for that. Also need to make an appt. with the midwife I want to use for a VBAC. That gives me a chance to map out my second pregnancy and find the people I want to support me through it and make changes if I end up not liking them.

Busy, busy.

Welcome to HH!

• Plan: Stretch + Strength
• Reality: yoga for 20 min. before bed

I feel a little bit behind considering that I have to get on with the Hal Higdon schedule today.

The house is a mess, there's booth things and posters all over, I have to clean the fridge because produce delivery is tomorrow, I have a lot of paperwork to do, I want to sew my curtains, I want to move on my lesson plans... just busy.

Saturday? Was a lot of fun and thankfully, we made a profit on the festival of $300 ish. Last year the school lost $1000 putting it on so certainly an improvement. All the other parents are thrilled, but I'm a little on the bummed out side beause I would have liked to see a profit of a few grand. But everyone's on a different learning curve for fundraising and of course, I've got a different personal benchmark in my head for what "successful" is for a festival. I happen think a few hundred is great for a bake sale, but a festival that size ought to be scoring in the low thousands.

(Sunday I went to a quarterly meeting and got the real numbers from the fundraising auction I was pushing along all summer. It was over $14,000! )

Gretchen and I are getting along well and as I get to know her better I'm excited about all our ideas for playgroup and a small business down the road.

Our arts and crafts booth went over well at the festival and it was better than the booth we did at VegFest. This weekend we're going to a natural family expo not just because the topics interest us, but because we want to study booths and keep improving our booth for promoting attachment parenting and our playgroup.

I rediscovered a casual friend I used to work with years ago in college at the festival. She left because she was pregnant and I remember her farewell baby shower. It was a shock to see that baby be a 10 year old girl and two other kids besides.

Paul also saw some other kid at the festival and later told me he arrived at the same conclusion. That it was a shock to see the time of our relationship summed up in the lifespan of some other human being. Weird.

But Erica is in the cloth diaper biz now so I bought a mess of Bummi and Mother of Eden training pants from her for Julia. Gerber is up to it's usual standard in craposity -- the gerber training pants I bought for kicks performed like I expected. May as well use panties!

So Julia's in panties and home and training pants out and about and Paul and I are enjoying the trimmer diaper bag.

Sunday evening we went to a pet blessing service and it was very enjoyable to have pets in the sanctuary and have a pet theme. I was moved to tears and Paul asked me if I was ok later. I wasn't expecting it but I got sentimental remembering pets in the past.

There's a series of body + spirituality things I want to attend and have to register for.

So I'm good... but busy... and after I finish cleaning house and get Julia to sleep I need to exercise so ... lunch and carry on....

Yargh

Paul and I just finished making posters for our tables at the preschool fundraiser. In five hours we have to get up and pack up and get over there to start helping to pitch tents for booths.

Yargh.

I'm mostly looking forward to it, but it's going to be a looooong day.

No, thanks.

Somebody asked me yesterday if I wanted to do a short fundraiser (6 weeks) and I delined. I don't mind helping one Sunday to babysit a table, but I don't want to be organizing anything. I'm done with major volunteering for the year!

Two more days til Julia's preschool fundraising festival thing and I have oodles to Xerox, bake sale things to bake, posters to make, yargh.

And next week... I move on to half marathon junk. That's all I want to do.

Vegan Lunchbox

http://veganlunchbox.blogspot.com

Totally rocks!

Esp. for a lunchbox making newbie like me. (C'mon, my kid's only 20 mos old!)

Stoked

Left Julia at preschool today since I had an 11 AM appointment.

Appointment went great -- I'm really stoked about working with this teahouse... even if I WASN'T trying to develop a professional relationship there, I would totally be at this teahouse anyway to give them my business. Organic, veg food, eco-friendly -- what else could I want?

Gretchen also left her eldest at school and she and Julia both did well. Julia had NO problem -- she was fresh from a nap and knows everybody and felt totally fine. I've been leaving her there and running short errands to Target and back this week already. So next week I'm going to see about trying to leave her there and hitting the new LA Fitness.

Parents came over and overall it went well.

Prep, prep and more prep

Thanks, Amy! No, I didn't get to eat out... we ate in and had people over instead.

I'm trying to get the last of the auction paperwork done.

Julia's preschool thing is in another week, so there's a lot of prep for the craft area. I have to get something to string beads on for the jewelry craft, Xerox the puppet craft and find some rings and jumbo popsicle sticks, make some display posters, and figure out how to set up tables. I'm starting to wonder if I don't need to rent a tent because it will be a PITA if it rains and all the crafts get rained on!

I take a meeting tomorrow (arranging things for playgroup) and there's another one Monday (problem at preschool with aggressive child and how to cope with it).

I have to order another sports bra and new sneaks and while the bra is no problem, the sneakers I'm having issues with. I've recently started focussing on veganizing/greening our personal products and clothing and not just food. On the one hand -- just the next step in my personal path for how I want to be living.

On the other hand, scary bananas and damn inconvinient.

New Balance shoes aren't totally PVC free and while Asics are, I never got them in wide enough so I had to keep returning them. Yargh.

So now I have to revisit my underpronator shoe problem where I thought NB's had solved it.

When everything is aligned

Today before I went to work at school I had to stop at OfficeMax to xerox junk for playgroup work. And there were people in fornt holding signs about the LA Fitness open house. They open on Thurs or Friday this week!

And Liz will take Julia for me sop I can hit gym before I hit work.

And I got callbacks on some things I was trying to arrange.

And my business cards came in.

And my produice was here when I got home.

You know, a lot of things in my life lately have been lining up just so... one thing leading to another so neatly.

Love it. Love it. Love it.

Call it chi, call it flow, call it being in touch with the pulse of the planet -- totally intoxicating.

Schmoozing

Today I was at our local vegfest doing the playgroup booth and passing out playgroup junk, preschool fundraiser junk, environment junk, and pet junk. Yep -- that's me.

Meet and greet and walk the street... the one woman, promoting four groups show.

I really hope it becomes an annual event -- totally psyched about the growing veg scene here.

Paul and Julia fooled around while I was working and once I got done I got a chance to hit some of the booths that interest me and I ran into people I knew already.

Which tells me two things.

a) I've finally found my community locally

b) I'm getting out and about building contacts like I wanted to this year

c) I'm feeling really ramped up spiritually and lifestyle-wise. We're still talking about moving and buying a house that is closer to Paul's work, our church, and our points of interest in town so maybe... just maybe... I can give up the car and hit the bike commute thing a bit more. It all depends on what kind of house we can find and ... at what price.

There was an evening 5K at the end of the festival but Julia and Paul were zonking out, and I have to admit I was knackered too. Add the drizzle and it was esp. appealing to wait for although it WAS "at your own pace" and seemed stroller friendly.

We didn't have time to make a "Save Roe" rally and I don't think we'll hit the local places doing www.dineforamerica.org on wednesday since we're getting together with friends and our budgets this week won't fit in dining out and I don't want Julia grouchy after preschool because she's staying up too late. Likely I'll get her to bed and they'll come over to hang out.

Y'all try to go out to eat on Wed. for me.

Tomorrow I have to do some business and get the house back in order. Saving the world is going to have to take a backseat to doing some laundry.

Haloscan

Ok... changed over to Haloscan comments and dropped the blogger ones. So hopefully that ought to cut on the comment spam.

More later... late and I have errands to run in the morning....