skip to main |
skip to sidebar
I intended to write more on that last post, I really did. Somehow, it got published right after I wrote the title, and I didn't really have the interest in going back and editing it. Oops.
I was really frustrated that day because I wanted to play with scrapbooking stuff and I couldn't print any new pictures. I just couldn't get interested in other stuff around the house (especially not the mopping I really need to do), and I felt weird most of the day. I did have a great conversation with my friend Brianna from high school. (Hi, Brianna! Now I know that you are reading my super-nerdy blog.)
Yesterday was a good day to kind of "reboot" things. I worked most of the day, then came home for a run before dinner. I had some really bad stomach cramps about halfway through. I had to walk it out for 7-ish minutes, but I was able to finish pretty strong. :) Then, I made a nice dinner (pizza and roasted tomatoes) and watched tennis/basketball with my puggles. Tennis is definitely their favorite sport; tennis balls are their favorite balls. :)
Today is another day off, and I'm finally getting around to mopping that floor. With a few breaks for tennis and blogging, of course. Adam will be very pleased to learn that Safina lost in her first round match yesterday; she looked straight AWFUL. It's all payback for the smug attitude she had last year when she was #1 over Serena. She's just a whiny little Russian who chokes when it really matters. On the flip side, I totally have a little tennis crush on Jo-Wilfried Tsonga this year. A.) He's French B.) He's cuddly-looking C.) Instead of signing his name on the TV camera after his win in the 2nd round, he wrote "Love you, Mom!" How adorable is that?
Finally, I bought a card reader for my camera! Yay! This post is not lame! Here are some pictures of my flowers/garden that I took a couple weeks ago. Now, I guess I should go take some new ones to see how everything has grown.
Wandering Jew hanging basket
My raised bed vegetable garden
Close-up on the bell pepper plants in the corner
I want to keep this quick, so I'll post it rundown style:
- I'm off today, hooray! I got in a (relatively) quick run this morning, and now I'm getting ready to pack a lunch and take the puggles to the dog beach in Pensacola. It's been a long time since Skeletor last went and Willow has never been. It should be interesting trying to wrangle them and all of our stuff by myself.
- It is HOT in Florida.
- Still no card reader, therefore no pictures, but I did make this short little video for my Mom. That's totally not lame. :)
Hooray for the weekend!
p.s. Dad, your video is one second longer than Mom's. I believe that is a statistically insignificant amount of variation, so scientifically, they are the same. :)
No shopping trip = no new card reader = no pictures = another lame post
Today was far from uneventful, however.
It was gloomy this morning, so I had to shorten my walk with the dogs and we still got a little sprinkled on. Soon after we got home, it started to rain for real. Rain like I have never seen anywhere but Florida. So much for cutting the grass. (I was obviously really bummed about that.) Skelly got a little worried about the thunder, but other than that, the dogs were fine and chill all morning even though they had to stay cooped up inside.
At about 3, I took them over to Lauren's house so they could play with her dog Jack while we were out. We went to a baby shower for one of the CSOs in our squadron. It was kind of small, but still lots of fun. We didn't play any games; we just had some finger foods and chatted. It was nice, and I was grateful to know I wasn't leaving my dogs alone on my first day off since Monday.
Until I found out what they had been up to while I was gone.
Mike went to the store to pick up some supplies for a project he was working on in the house, and found TWO giant piles of poop and an ENORMOUS PEE PUDDLE IN THE MIDDLE OF HIS ROOMMATE CHRIS' BED. He doesn't know for sure who did what, but I know that my dogs were involved, if not totally responsible. I feel so embarrassed. It's like getting a call that your kid bit another kid in preschool. Obviously, I hate it when they make messes here or destroy my stuff, but it's so much worse when they do it to someone else.
It's a good thing they're so cute.
In other news, I was pessimistic all day that I would be able to squeeze a run in because of the rain, but the skies brightened just enough as we were driving home. It was already 6:30 when I got home so I had to run right out. (I made sure the dogs had PLENTY of time outside while I changed my clothes. I didn't want any repeat accidents while I was gone.) I made up a 25 minute playlist not very confident that I would be able to run the whole thing. It was seven songs long, and I was contemplating taking a short walking break after 4 songs. Something made me keep going, though, and I powered through the whole playlist. Yay! It was a good pick-me-up after feeling like somewhat of a failure as a puppy mommy.
My appetite is kind of off from the snacks and cake at the shower, so I'll probably just have something light for dinner and watch a new movie I got from Netflix. Hooray for no work (an hopefully better weather) tomorrow!
I'm not very good at writing blog posts and emails to Adam in the same day. Three years out of college and I'm out of practice typing so much. (p.s. It's been three years since I graduated? Madness.) This is especially difficult right now because I cut my left index finger while I was making a dog treat grab bag earlier today and it's currently wrapped in a large band-aid. Of course, those are not really good excuses, so I'm here tonight to post anway.I've had two really awesome runs this week, even though I had to take two days off in between each. I did do some video exercises on my off days, so it wasn't a complete waste. I've got a full day planned for tomorrow, but I hope to try for a 25 minute run before dinner. My run on Thursday was a big part of pulling me out of my funk that day. It felt so good to accomplish that task I'd set out just for myself. It was so tempting to just blow it off and lounge around the house to make up for my rough morning, but ultimately I felt so much better doing something positive for myself. I still don't know if I'll ever love running itself, but the feeling I get after a run is absolutely worth every second.On a completely unrelated note, I feel like these recent blog posts have been kind of lame without pictures. I think I need to bite the bullet and buy a card reader for my camera's SD card. Until then, I might as well end this lame post while it's short and manageable. It's about all my index finger can handle right now. :) Hopefully, I'll be back soon with some pictures. Maybe of my finger. :)
Sorry. Somehow the last post published before my video had finished processing. Here we go again:
I told Mom & Dad I was going to post this last night, and I almost forgot.
I don't really have time for a real update because I want to do some sort of workout before I leave for work at 3:30. I had a bad day yesterday, but talking to my parents, making a delicious dinner and seeing my friends Mike and Lauren for a bit made me feel lots better. Even if things get rough and I feel kind of lonely sometimes, I feel really lucky to be living the life that I have.
Without further ado, here's your video, Dad:
(I feel like pretty soon there's going to have to be one for Mom so she doesn't feel left out either :)
My fastest 5K ever! Yay!
There's no other explanation for why I'm in such a good mood when I woke up at 6:30 on a Saturday. :)
Now I realize I've been more than a little behind in updating this blog, so in case you were wondering how I got to this point, here's the back story:
After our 5K with the dogs, I started to get the itch to run again. Between moving into the new house, trips, visitors, and Adam's deployment, running (and any other attempt at being healthy and active) kind of went out the window. Being outside on a beautiful day in the fun race atmosphere made me want to get back into the shape I'd been in last summer. So I set my sights on running another 5K. Soon enough, we found one that was being run on May 1st (5 or 6 weeks after the dog 5K). It was perfect because it was the last weekend Adam would be home before his deployment (fun family time) and because it was a "Sunset Stampede" at 6pm. Adam is NOT a morning person by any stretch of the imagination, so the fact that it was later in the day made him much more willing to come along with me.
When I started running, I went all the way back to Day 1 of the Couch-to-5K program. And I needed it. It was tough to think that I had lost a lot of the ability that I had built up last year, but I always felt so good after a run. As much as I might dread a run or think I had something better to be doing beforehand, I never regretted a run afterwords.
When the race came up last weekend, I wasn't all the way through the program. I also knew there was no way I was going to make the leap from week 5 to running the whole thing. I knew I would need to take some walking breaks. But I felt fine about that going in. I would have plenty of time later to keep training and get faster. I'd probably be a few minutes slower than last year, but whatever. I just wanted to do something fun with Adam, be outside and score a free T-shirt. :) I felt awesome during the race. I didn't really have a plan; I just ran when I could and walked when I needed a break. (p.s. Walking through the water stations is KEY. Walking and drinking is hard enough. Running is way too bumpy to hydrate properly. Because of this, when I get back to wanting to run the whole thing, I'll definitely wear a CamelBak for water since that's way easier.) To my complete surprise, I crossed the finish line in about 41 minutes. About 4 minutes faster than I did in July. How cool is that?
As we crossed the finish line, the handed everyone a flier for a race the very next weekend. Following my personal record performance, I was very interested. When I found out the race started at Navarre High School and the route went directly past my house I was in. I signed up this Wednesday. Even though Adam was gone and I wished he could be there with me, it gave me something fun and exciting to look forward to this weekend. (Instead of just work and hanging out at home with the puggles - which is also awesome, don't get me wrong.)
Anyway, today (after working until 9:30 last night), I got up at 6:30 to be ready for the race at 7:30. I did feel kind of lonely without Adam beforehand (and they were all out of t-shirts by the time I went to pick up my number :( ) The race was smaller than any others I had been in (I think they do the numbers alphabetically and I was #10.) I felt good through the whole race again. My mini-goal within the race was to run for the whole first mile. Unfortunately, there were no mile-markers on the course! (The streets were also NOT closed to traffic, which I thought was kind of weird.) So, I ran until the first water station, which felt like about a mile. :) Because there were no markers or people with watches on the course, I had no idea how I was doing time-wise. Believe me, I was quite surprised when I rolled up on the last straight-away and saw that the time was about 38 minutes. I booked it as best I could for the last stretch and made it around 38:50 (I don't have an official time, yet, but that's about what it looked like to me.)
What's funny is about an hour after the race, I had gotten home and showered and I took the dogs out for their walk. All throughout the neighborhood you could still hear the announcer on the loudspeakers from the school stadium as he was giving out awards to the winners. I busted out laughing in the middle of the street when I heard him announce that Mary Dunn had come in 4th place in the 25-29 female division. I wouldn't be surprised when we get emailed the official results if there were only 4 runners in that division. :) Either way, I had a fun morning and I'm super proud of myself.
Ok, that's more than enough gushing for one day. I still have to run to Walmart for some things and get ready for work. I hope this runner's high will help get me through the mad crowds at the Hallmark store tonight doing their last-minute Mother's Day shopping. :)
p.s. There is ANOTHER local 5K next Saturday morning, but I think I'll pass on this one. There's a farmer's market in Pensacola that just opened for the season that I think I want to check out instead. I will definitely be repeating my appearance in the Firecracker 5K, but I'm not sure about anything else until then.
Also, I'm attempting to post a video here that I took right after the race today (well, as soon as I got home) as a message for Adam. I'm curious to see if it works!
You know, there were a lot of times in the past month when I really thought about blogging. But then I got busy doing other things. I was working, I was getting into a new book, I was being more diligent about my running, I was spending time with my family. For awhile I thought that was OK. I was living my life instead of just blogging about that. And that's great. But after awhile, I was just kind of avoiding it. I hadn't done it in awhile so it wasn't as easy to pick back up again. I'm finally here today to cut the crap and get back into it. In the moment, I might like doing something else more than writing, but looking back, I'm sad I didn't record thoughts and memories that happened last month. Now that Adam is gone, I'm more motivated to use my blog to communicate with him, my family and with myself in the future. I'm about to head into work, and I can't find my camera cord to share some pictures I took today, but I'm not going to let that stop me from posting this right away. Seize the moment. :)
I'll be back again soon. Probably. :)
Wandering Jew hanging basket
My raised bed vegetable garden
Close-up on the bell pepper plants in the corner
