DNF

I am not going to Disney. Iz is sick again, this time with RSV. I will write again with final thoughts on the year when I get a chance.

Mylanta quest

My parents are coming over with my sister and bring lunch. Slightly better change in plans than us all going out to eat for lunch because I still feel gross. I have to pop into the grocery store and gets some odds and ends before I go to work and while there I need to get some Mylanta.

I was reading backwards in my journals and every holiday I've been something of a grump except for the holiday where the two family celebrations were NOT back to back.

Gee... what does that tell you? We're too overscheduled at Christmas.

Not what I want Julia to be experiencing as she grows up --a cranky ass mom every holiday. :P

Paul came home and brought Julia another present. I told him he's going beserk with it this year and he admits he is. We let her have two presents early so he gave her the pots and pans she just brought in and I gave her some wooden vegetables and right away she started "cooking" us things.

second

I am with you Cat. It always bewilders me how this time of year becomes so sour. Maybe it is because the expectations are high. This year, we have the dog to deal with and we are both stressed about our new jobs. And I always get a little depressed because my friend committed suicide this time 6 years ago. But it always surprises me that I am not happy. I have been crying on and off today, a combination of the surgery for the dog and pms and a fight Mike and I have been dancing around for several days (but not having). My mom and sis should arrive tomorrow, I hope that perks me up.

I am jealous about your massage! I am going to get one as a post-disney treat.

It's dread

Saturday was Paul's office party. No problem. That was fun, easy to deal with other than eating (brought Julia food, but did not pack my own. Duh.)

Sunday was no problem. Did nursery sunday school and it was easy. Got a bite to eat and then went to drumming. Fun.

Monday. My sister flew in. Went to my massage appointment (good) and then went to see my sister at my parents' house and it started that evening. The sick to my stomach feeling. At first I thought it was something I ate. But it's been on and off since then and I recognize it for what it is -- dread. Sheer holiday dread.

dog

I dropped the dog off at the vet this morning for surgery. Poor baby. Tonight we will be setting up her crate which will be her new home for 6 weeks. No exercise to report, just sad. Christmas is getting so close! I am going to make brownies for the neighbors. We are planning a special xmas dinner (not just the same old thing). I am still working on the menu, but we will be doing courses. Should be fun.

devastated

I am so upset this morning. My poor dog is going to have to have surgery on her other knee. It is killing me. Not only is it the expense (which is HUGE) but it is all the pain she is in now without the surgery and all the pain she will be in after the surgery. I was hoping we could make it till after xmas so she wouldn't have to be confined during the holidays (she will have to be confined to a crate for 6 weeks after surgery). But her poor little knee has started making a popping noise every time she takes a step. She must be in a lot of pain because she hasn't been movign around much this weekend. Usually she follows me from room to room, but this weekend she would just sit in the same place. We went for a walk on Sunday and she wanted to go so bad, she sat and watched us from the window. It broke my heart.

I can't believe my little puppy is getting older. She drives me crazy sometimes, but the thought that she might not be here forever kills me.

3 miles

Mike and I went outside and did 3 miles today! The weather was lovely. Then I plodded around the mall with a friend and bought new undies, always a lovely thing to do. Top it off with a trip to market and I have completely described my day.

I am achy and haven't been exercising much. I realized I bought my new shoes a .5 size too small and need to get new ones. The too-small ones have left my feet achy and my knee and hip are joining the chorus.

Nothing else to report, just a lovely day.

5 cocktails

Why do they call them cocktails??? I just had 5 at Mike's work party and had #1 in the dirty santa game which meant I got to go last and choose my gift. I got a great skin care set. Anyway, had a great time, much laughing and cheese and chocolate. Time for bed.

strength and busy

Man, it is busy at my house today! I have already been to the gym to do a great strength workout. It was amazing, I was all sweaty at the end. I know that I have never lifted weights properly before because I never thought they were that hard. And we do a million sit ups. I never knew there were so many ways to sit up. Yikes. I need to make a list of all the different types of sit ups we do so I can tell Mike.

And now I have returned home and there is a chimney sweep cleaning our chimney and the contractors here working on converting the study. Busy, busy! But I can't wait to have a nice fire in our fireplace.

Exericise:

• What: strength training
• Time: 1 hour

rocked the house

I exercised again today! Even while I felt sick! And had to get up in the night with Iz! I came home at 2 to get my 5 miles in, but then had to deal with the contractors because they delivered the wrong french door so I lost 20 minutes. Ended up getting 3.75 miles in before I had to leave and get Iz. I just walked the whole way and my heels were killing me pretty early on. Either my new shoes are too tight or too loose, I can't decide. It feels like they move up and down on my heel, but they feel really tight otherwise.

Exercise:

• What: Walk
• Distance: 3.75 miles

I have gotten a lot of xmas cards these last few days, it is really nice to get them. We sent ours out last week in an attempt to be early, though it really wasn't that early. It was also a change of address notification so I wanted people to get them before sending their own cards. It looks like it worked for some people at least, I have gotten 6-7 cards from people who otherwise wouldn't have our new address. I sent out around 90, but I never get back anywhere near the same number I send out, if I am lucky I will get 30. I am still thought of as the young person in my family, people think that if they send one to my mom, it counts for me, even though I send individual ones to them. I am going to hang our xmas cards over the fireplace this year to increase our decorations (which are scarce).

oh my god

I didn't wog my 8 miles this weekend. I started to exercise on Sunday, but my heart wasn't in it, I was irritable and hungry and planning a shopping trip with a friend so I didn't have a lot of time. Instead, I stayed home this morning, and did ~8 miles. I didn't do maybe .3 of the 8 miles because I ran out of time. It took a LONG time to do 8 miles, I started at about 8:45 (after my cereal finished digesting and a couple nervous trips to the bathroom) and stopped at 11:15 (I had to stretch, shower, and dress for a work xmas party at 12). After warming up, I stopped and did a long stretching session. I did all the walk/jogging on the treadmill with Sense and Sensibility DVD playing. I jogged every other lap. I took two breaks, the first after 4 miles to refill my water bottle and to grab some gummi candy and the second after 6 miles to eat a second helping of the gummi candy. I ended up jogging about 3 of the ~8 miles.

I feel great that I got it done. I am making the reservations at Disney TODAY! It was harder than I thought it would be and I am more tired than I could have imagined. I definitely don't think I could have kept going 5 more miles. Part of the problem is that I didn't do my normal walk/jogs last week so I was just out of practice. My goal this week is to get all the exercise done. Even with the 3 xmas parties we have to go to and the christmas prep that needs to be done (almost all of my xmas presents are bought, thank goodness).

Exercise:

• What: walk/jog
• Distance: 7.7 miles

One More Round

• Planned: Short treadmill walk
• Actual: (not yet)

I feel exhausted. And as soon as I get another preschool paycheck I'm going to look into booking a massage appointment. I hear weird clicky noises in my back when I walk sometimes and I feel all tense.

We took Julia to see Nana yesterday and went to Paul's small hometown's holiday parade. It was cute and about what you expect from small towns. Santa Claus on the town's fire truck. Police car line up blaring sirens. Tractors pulling church floats or scout troops. Horses. The high school band. Small businesses decorating their delivery vans and flinging candy out the windows at the kids.

While I was there I kept thinking about holidays and how the whole season just wears me out and how few things we do, like this little parade, I really enjoy.

More later.

thoughtful

Hi Cat! (waving) It is so nice to see someone else in blog land. :)

I have had a very thoughtful and not active day, but thoughtful is good, it usually preceeds action for me. Mike and I went to BoneFish for dinner, a seafood place. Seafood places are, in my experience, the worst place for vegetarians. They might have a single pasta dish that they will leave the fish out of but will taste fishy no matter what. Tonight, there was a pasta dish, but it was pretty good. Mike likes seafood and we wanted to try something new.

On the way to dinner, we had a long discussion about being a vegetarian and how it appears like eating a healthy diet would be so easy if I ate meat. (Meat eaters around the world probably think the same thing about being veggie.) Because I struggle with protein consumption, it feels like life would be simple if I could force myself to eat a piece of fish or chicken every day. I have gotten to the point now, though, I can;t even eat meat analogs that are too realistic (chik'n doesn't work for me). What I realized is that I need to freeze single servings of tofu that I can defrost and eat. Freezing tofu makes it denser and hold together better when cooking. I need to do single servings because I don't eat it fast enough when I cook a whole lot. Most of the time, I make a lot of a single tofu dish and get tired of it way before we run out.

After the holidays, I am going to start counting points again, but I am also going to count protein grams and aim for 100 a day. My last pregancy, I was low on protein and I need to work it into my diet now before we TTC#2.

I was looking through all my digital pics of 2005 for a calendar for my family. Man, I have CHANGED this year! Check out some new before and after pics on my other site.

Hi

Remember me? The wayward blogger?

Today was a hellish day at preschool. It rained. The kids had cabin fever. They all went beserk. Ten little kids all running around, yelling, acting out, and goodness knows what.

The sweet spot to my day was watching Julia "talk" to her friends. Toddler gibberish interspersed with a few recognizable words. "Hi! ------! ---------? Ok? Yes. ---------!"

She's playful, basically kind, and gentle with the smallest baby. She's learning to assert herself with the rougher toddler boys instead of turning tail and running to me crying.

Evan kissed her on the lips yesterday and she stared at him and smacked him on the forehead. Today she told the same little boy to push her around in the stroller and he did it.

Preschool romance.

Of course, it's not kind to alternate between beating your boyfriend up or bossing him around, even if he is 2 and steals all your Cheerios, and I correct her.

Sometimes she loses control and lashes out. Other times that little hand goes flying up, and I can see the wheels turning in her head and she's thinking it out. She just stands there with her hand in the air trying to decide how she feels about it. Watching her try to master self control fascinates me.

Julia just got over pinkeye. Paul's now sick. My MIL is home from hospital, but has to have an oxygen tank. One thing after another.

strength training

I exercised with a trainer this morning and we had a great workout. We did interval training, so we would do 2 reps of three different exercises, then I would jog a lap. I haven't gotten a walk/jog done in a week so you may be wondering (as am I) if I will even participate in Disney. It is only one month away.

After a long talk with Mike last night, I have decided to let it come down to this weekend. If we get a long wog in this weekend (8 miles is on the schedule) then we will make the hotel reservations. If not, then we will talk again.

The weather doesn't look very promising for an outdoor wog, but I am keeping my fingers crossed. I would love to actually wog WITH MIKE (as opposed to each of us taking very long turns on the treadmill) at least one more time.

We also talked about cooking and household chores. Since moving here, the bulk of the household chores has fallen to me and it is starting to irritate. It takes an enormous amount of mental energy to keep our house running, to keep track of where the laundry is, if Iz has food for tomorrow, what we have in the pantry for supper. I don't think Mike appreciates it. We are further limited because we only have 1 car with a carseat so it makes it difficult for me to pick up Iz and run all the errands because she doesn't really enjoy being lugged around stores anymore. I hope our little talk is going to result in a change, stranger things have happened.

frustrated

I started this journey in January when I started weight watchers. I started walking (slowly) in March, then jogging in August. I have increased the time I can jog from 90 seconds to several miles slowly over the last 5 months. But the move, Isabel and Michael's illnesses, my own congestion, and an end of year slump has put a damper on my spirits and my exercise. I started the 12 week training program 3 weeks late and since I started, I have missed workouts here and there. I haven't done the long workout in the last 2 weeks. And now I am wondering if I can get back into it and compete in Disney at all. I am tired, worn out. I have have so many things to do that I can even begin to formulate a list. I am thinking about exercising, about how I am supposed to do 3 miles tonight, but to be honest, I really want to take a nap, and do laundry, and try to find my xmas tree skirt, and wrap presents. Basically everything except exercise.

So there you have it. I am tired, cranky and not at all sure of the future of my training. I am more than proud of what I accomplished this year, but I would be very unhappy not to participate in Disney. It has been my goal since Day 1 and the driving force that I have used to push myself to this point. That being said, I am still having a devil of a hard time getting miles in.

ouch! That didn't go as planned

I had 5 miles to do today so I came home at 2:00 to knock them out before I picked up Iz. Apparently, sometime today i had given my left leg a good solid twist because when I was getting ready to go out, I noted that it felt "twitchy" from calf to knee to outside thigh. I thought I would get started walking, then stretch a good bit before I started jogging, but after I was on the road, I realized it hurt more than I was giving it credit and the cold air and wind weren't making it feel better. I ended up coming back home, stretching a long while, taking a slow walk on the treadmill, stretching again, then more walking and more stretching to round out a completely non-aerobic workout. It still feels twitchy though, not a good thing.

Mike is at the doc right now, i am on pins and needles waiting to hear back from him.

We are getting our study worked on this week and getting it painted to a new exciting color. We just let "The Townhouse of Yellow" because we knew we were selling it so we just painted everything a neutral shade. Now is our chance for some zing in our lives so I visited the paint store for some samples. We chose a beige (guess who wanted it?), a pewter, a purply-red, and a dark eggplant. I like the eggplant the best, but it sure is dark. I think it will go great with our pecan stained bookshelfs and a light colored chair. The only bad thing about painting the study eggplant is that we can't use it in our bedroom. I will wait to see what Mike thinks, if I were a betting woman, I would say he'll like the beige.

body fat

Today I am supposed to get my body fat measured by the trainer I am working with. Man, that is something I need like a hole in the head. I told her such numbers didn't appeal to me or motivate me, but jesusgay she wouldn't let me out of it.

Mike has an appt today for a specialist. Cross you fingers for us. I have 5 miles on the schedule, maybe or maybe not. The only good news, I finished xmas cards last night.

off plan

Today did not go as planned at all. Mike is so sick, he didn't get out of bed all day and at one point we talked about going to the hospital. If we had someone to watch Iz, we probably would have. But we decided to wait until tomorrow. Anyway, I was on Iz duty all day so no exercise. And we were scrounge eating so I ate like CRAP. I hate days like this. I hope tomorrow is better and the docs can give something Mike to make him feel better. I will check in then.

HH Week 4, Workout 2

Exercise:

• What: walk
• Distance: 5 miles
• Time: 88 min
• Min/Mile: 17.6

I did this walk on the treadmill. I warmed up for .25 miles, walked at 3.6 mph (16:40 min/mile) and a 1% grade for 4.5 miles, then cooled down over another 0.25 miles. I wanted to take it fairly easy since I am still recovering from my sore throat and sinus gunk. Sunday is 7 miles. It is supposed to be warm and rainy, I am hoping for enough of a break in the rain to do the walk/jog outside.

no workout

I had 4.5 miles on the calendar today but it isn't going to happen. We finally took Iz back to the doc this morning (still has an ear infection) and both Mike and I are feeling poorly too. I came home early and laid down. I hope that I can get a good nights sleep tonight and feel well enough tomorrow to do the 4.5 miles.

Some good news, we discovered an AMAZING mexican restaurant close to our house. We dropped by there while we were waiting for the prescription to be filled. It was the best mexican food in recent memory, definitely better than anything we had in VA. I can't think about the calories though, that was a big meal!