Archive for June 2013

Funday Friday #14

This was supposed to be last Friday’s post, but it didn’t even get started. That’s how I roll. 😉

What was supposed to be a cake/skate week for me was anything but. So this will be a rambling recap.

1. The hubster got back Wednesday after nearly a week working in the boonies of TN.

2. My youngest teen finished up one of the steps of his diversion plan. I may or may not have posted about him pulling the fire alarm a school about a month before school ended for the summer. It wasn’t entirely an accident, but not entirely on purpose. And because it happened before school started for the day, and he immediately told the principal he did it, he got off easy with a 5 day rather than 10 day suspension, and given a diversion plan rather than going to court. Fun times.

3. Tuesday, the youngest went to spend the night at his friend’s house. Wasn’t long before I get a call from him where he says, “Um, the police are on their way and they are going to want to talk to you.” So I went down there and he and his friend filled me in on the details which essentially amounted to them along with friend F2 (who due to this incident wasn’t at friend F1’s house) being accused of stealing stuff from someone’s car Saturday night. Mine was at home all day and night Saturday with me, F1 was with his mom all day and night and not even in the county, and F2 is as unlikely to be involved in that sort of thing as the other 2. F1 did say to my son “You do have a record…” That was the only humorous part of the whole situation. Anyway, police never showed, F1’s mom offered me wine that I almost took. For a brief moment I considered bumming a cigarette from her too. 😉 Like how I used no names in that? F1 & F2 were originally #1 & #2, but then I started giggling over that naming convention and decided it probably isn’t an appropriate method for referring to my son’s friends.

4. Planks. They still look easy. They are still ridiculously hard.

5. Sat on the front porch with the hubby while a big line of severe thunderstorms headed for us. Of course they split and went around us like they do. It made for a nice peaceful time though. And a couple of good pictures. The sky above . As the storm rolls in…

6. Karyn and I ran the EspirtdeShe 5k in Cary last night. Rather she ran the 5k, and I ran until the first hill, and with the humidity being so stinking high, I couldn’t breathe any more that I could see the top of the hill. The was a lot of walking and wheezing done the last half of that 5k.

Sweat running before we even started running.

Sweat running before we even started running.

That's a lot of women...

That’s a lot of women…

We were going to meet Eva (who ran the 10k) after we all finished, but there was an emergency that popped up and we had to leave right away. Nothing like a situation like that to make it seem like it is taking forever to drive from Cary to Sanford. And everything is fine. 🙂

Oh, and Karyn came in 65th overall out of 471. How cool is that! I finished in less time (even walking up the hills) that the Rabbit Run that I ran entirely. Go figure.

7. I have a card just like this posted up on my desk at work:

TwilightSparkle

I don’t think my son believed I would do it. And no one has pointed out that I have a My Little Pony card displayed on my desk.

8. I have nothing else, and this is hilarious!

Maniacal Monday #18

I had such a fun weekend. I mean, it did warrant the rarely seen weekend post. There is a lot that I don’t really remember because I think I spent a ridiculous amount of time playing minesweeper. Don’t judge me. I did play another game, but I’ll get to that.

So after that run, I was determined to do nothing and go no where the rest of the day. But that didn’t happen as I had to get some more quinoa and I couldn’t find the leather wipes that I got for my car so I had to get some more of them. Told the guy about “losing” the other ones and followed up with “I bet you I find them now!” Anyway, I couldn’t get out of the house without Chad noticing so he sent a Food Lion order with me. I set out, and I wasn’t a half a mile up the road before it started sprinkling. It lightly rained off and on until I got to Pittsboro, and as I came down the hill by Horton Middle School, I could see that it was raining heavily at the bottom of the hill just past the light. And yeah, it was pouring at every stop but the last one. So, the forecast for Saturday was 100% chance of rain every time I went somewhere. Pretty sure it didn’t rain at all at home on Saturday.

Sunday was the day we scheduled our girls night out that hasn’t happened in a while. We were all craving Ethiopian, and we had to get it in around vacations before Karyn moves. We agreed to meet at my house at 4:30 because I volunteered to drive. I needed that incentive to clean out my car which is why I needed the wipes. It did not (apparently) mean vacuuming my car since that didn’t happen. But the seats were clean. lol Anyway, so knowing they were coming, rather than pick up around the house, I spent the afternoon playing Sim City. That’s how I roll and that is why my house is a pig sty. That and I am on strike again. Like that ever works. Anyway, turned out we needed to pick up Karyn on the way, so I really didn’t let Petra and Brittany in the house. Really that was more of a dog issue since Gizmo was trying to use that opportunity to get out.

We were hungry when we got there due to saving ourselves for it, and demolished the food in like 15 minutes. After dinner we went around the corner to take pictures in front of this big mural, and, oh, my goodness. Comedy gold. But then a mall cop ran us off. Again, comedy gold. A couple of us are accustomed to security guards/real cops running us off. It does make for entertaining stories. Like getting arrested. 😉 “good friends | good food | good times” Also comedy gold: the bug that flew in Petra’s eye that Brittany had to get out. Because for some reason this year we have gnat swarms and they swarmed us.

So then I get home, and immediately Chad told me we had to go to Food Lion because “we have no food.” We did, but it was all stuff he won’t eat or stuff that would have to be thawed before cooking. I made sure that was a quick trip, and as I paid for it, I got a text, but I didn’t bother to look at it until we were walking out. It was Jamie. “Get me tuna.” My response? “Too late. Will get u some tomorrow.” Yeah, I wasn’t going back. Mother of the year.

And then, as I was changing into my jammies I remembered the plank. Ugh. That was a painful 60.8 seconds. It took me a while to get up off the floor from that one. Suffice to say, I was so exhausted by the time I got in bed, I didn’t need any sleepy dust. lol I also didn’t want to get up this morning. One of my co-workers said to me “Yeah, no make up this morning.” I replied, “Please, I didn’t even brush my hair.” Because really, once it’s in a pony tail, you can’t tell. Stop judging me! 😉

Speaking of comedy gold:

“Good luck getting out of your car.”

Here’s a rarely seen weekend post.

I just had another one of my brilliant ideas. Ok, I didn’t just have it, but I couldn’t say that without the correct quote. Anyway, so 5 miles was on the schedule for today, and since the marathon we’re running is a trail, we thought we should do some trail running. Campbell Creek Trail at Raven Rock is 5 miles. Perfect. So I proposed it to Karyn, who was up for it, and we took off to Raven Rock this morning to get our trail running on.

My 8am start time didn’t happen because 1) Evie and Precious decided to disappear right around the time I was set to leave and 2) I forgot to get chocolate milk the night before. It was closer to 8:30 when we got there, and then we had to figure out where the Campbell Creek trail was relative to where we parked. And then make pre-run photos which I shamelessly stole from Karyn’s Instagram via Facebook. :cheesy:

Karyn-preRun
Me-preRun

We decided it would be a good idea to run together. Karyn said she would slow down and I would have to speed up. LOL! Now I should note that the trail is listed as “moderate.” We weren’t too far into the trail when I said “Moderate my ass!” We got a light sprinkle, and it was welcome because we were hot. And then a little farther in I realized the rain sounded a lot louder than a sprinkle.

By this time I had also said “Screw this!” to running up the hills, and just tried not to fall too far behind Karyn. She also stopped running up the hills which made me feel way better. We stopped and took pictures when we reached the river.

photo
photo (4)

The loop was blocked there so we had to go back the way we came in. Oh, man. It was a lot worse with mud and puddles and slick roots and rocks. But this was cool.

photo (1)

And then it quit raining, and some kind of horsefly-bee attacked me for like a quarter of a mile or so before we finally made it back to a parking lot. Throughout the entire trek we made accusing comments at the voice of her app that was telling us our time, distance, and pace due to the distance she kept telling us.

Will-Ferrell-Elf-You-Sit-on-a-Throne-of-Lies

On the other hand, when it said at the end we had done 5.8 miles, I chose to believe. 😉

Overall the run was no joke hard as crap, but we had a blast! Going downhill (with gravity dictating our speed) was like being a kid again running around in the woods. It called for a celebratory trip to Starbucks of which the nearest one was in Fuquay Varina. As Karyn said, “Why does Fuquay have a Starbucks and Sanford doesn’t?” The title of this post is the last thing she said to me when I got her back to her house. Surprisingly, I really didn’t hurt that bad when I got home, though I wince every time I walk down the stairs.

And I leave you with this:

The best laid plans…

…and goals. And who gets a cold on the eve of the beginning of summer? Oh, me. But I’m getting better (said in a bad English accent attempting to quote The Holy Grail). Anyway, I’m going to do a quick recap of the previous linked goals from January.

1. It took a couple of months, but I figured out what my lack of rest problem was. It wasn’t so much a work issue, but a stress issue. I got out of the one stressful situation I could, and it’s been easier to deal with the others. Way easier. And no, I will not go public with what that thing was.

2. I have done 7 races so far. I am registered for a half next month, and a full in October, and plan on doing the CARA 10k in August. I may even do the labor day 8k I did last year just to redeem myself from all the wrong things I did last year before that race. Bottom line, I am still on track with this one.

3. I decided I liked knitting better. Go figure.

4. :sigh: I did do a couple of pushups a couple months ago. I may not have broken the plane, but whatever. It was better than falling on my face on the way down. 😉

5. This has been so tough. That’s all I have to say about that.

6. Yeah, this hasn’t happened since like March.

7. I’ve had a lot of hotdogs and tater tots the last couple of months. And cider. And wine. And Starbucks. :-/

Speaking of Starbucks, this is kind of an aside, but I got about a half mile from the front gate and realized I left my purse at home. And this is the first morning I have deliberately speeded to work in forever because I pittle-farted around the house for way too long and wanted to limit how late I was going to be. First, I was both thankful and sad that I had enough change in the car to pay for a tall blonde. Sad because I wanted a triple venti vanilla latte and my Starbucks card is in my purse. However, in the parking lot I remembered that I have the Starbucks app on my phone. SCORE! So I was able to use that to pay for my fru-fru coffee.

Also, I gave up my semi-anonymity on Twitter and put my real name up on it. Figured I would make it less of an effort for NSA. 😉 The DragonLady pseudonym/alter-ego still stands in the blogsphere though. That said, I was forced to use my real name commenting on some blog last week because I had to use my Google profile. Eh.

I ran across this by accident on Twitter yesterday morning and decided I’m going to give the 21-Day Plank Challenge #plankwithbex & Delta Labs a go. Did my first plank last night, and shook like crazy for the last 15 or 30 seconds or so of my 36 second plank. I’m feeling it today. Just sayin’.

Maniacal Monday #17

It’s been a while. I put off writing something I wanted to write about, and now I’ve decided that if I do write about it, it will be all snarky and end up with me being exactly what I want to rail against. So now you get a list post of catch up material. You know, for the 2 or 3 of you who still keep up. 😉

1. Rather than doing a recap (way after the fact), you will get the Reader’s Digest version of the last race. The Wednesday (I think) following the Ninja Challenge, Karyn dropped a link to a race on my Facebook wall for that Saturday. Thinking “It’s only a 5K,” I signed up for it (and the hubby too). Who knew that on May 25 we would wake up to temp in the low/mid-40s(F)?

972364_587372364637110_532879231_n

It was a trail, not real rough, but not real smooth and way more hills than I wanted to do. I struggled. Bad. Then as we were coming in to the finish line, a chick who had walked much of the course (ok, maybe she didn’t, but every time I had seen her prior she was walking) passed us running to the finish. I decided that she was NOT going to beat me, and busted out into a sprint to the finish line. Karyn was shocked to see that kind of speed come out of me though I am sure I wasn’t going near as fast as I felt. LOL

2. The first weekend in June, the hubby went to a small music festival that a friend of his hosts every year. He came back and told me “I brought you something.” I got all excited thinking he got me some of that fantastic homemade wine, but it was a small (roughly half-pint) jar of moonshine. :-/ If you like sourmash, it was good. I don’t, but I drank it anyway ’cause that’s how I roll. And not in one day either.

Then 2 or 3 days after the festival I come home, and he opens up the front door, and this ran out:

photo(6)

Yes, he brought home another dog under the reasoning that someone else wanted a dog like that. Her name is Precious, and yes, we still have her. :sigh:

KitKat is not amused.

photo(7)

3. Tiger and Sushi are doing really well. They got totally eaten up with fleas, and we undertook chemical warfare this weekend to rid them and the dogs of the flea menace. KitKat kept herself well hidden and managed to (so far) escape bath time and/or dusting. She isn’t likely to get a bath because despite her fat, she is quite nimble and not afraid to sink her claws to the bone.

4. Friday night I sent Karyn a text asking her if she was up for 10 miles on the American Tobacco Trail (ATT) in the morning. She said no, but that she needed to. So I asked her if it would help that we only had to run 7. 🙂 So we go out there, and if she hadn’t been going, I would have gone back to bed. But, it turned out to be a much better run than I was expecting. Just after the 3 mile marker I met Karyn on her way back, and told her I had improved my 3 mile time. I was feeling great and kicking it. And then I hit a stretch of trail that wasn’t shaded and nearly died. And had to run back through that stretch after the turnaround. But I got my third wind around mile 5, and even after sprinting the last tenth of a mile, I felt like I could keep going. However, I was very glad I didn’t have to! Twice during the run I had to stop and rake pea gravel out of my shoes, only the second time when I did the rake, I nearly cried when I realized that was NOT a rock, but was a blister. Evidently I can no longer wear the really short running socks.

5. Father’s Day was rough this year. For me. I might write specifically about why at some point.

6. June 9 I had to take Chad to pick up a game we preordered on his birthday. This year his birthday gift was one that just keeps on taking, and I’ll have some more pain in August or September when the other one comes in that I preordered for him. Anyway, since Starbucks was right there I “needed” to stop. Now Saturday morning when I picked up Karyn, I told her that we would be going to Starbucks after the run. And when I ordered (at the drive through) the dude who took my order was very friendly and Karyn made note of it. So I then told her about the stop with Chad because that dude was just as wacky friendly. Which is fine. It’s entertaining. What wasn’t entertaining on the 9th was when the dude handed me my coffee and hesitated over the handoff as our hands were (awkwardly) touching.

aOqoxMr_700b

7. Heh

“Run the only race worth running!”

I still have a love/hate relationship with running. It still takes a lot to get out there and do it, and I still usually hate it while I am running. Especially for the first 2 miles. Yet I still sign up for races knowing full well that I run slower than most and so won’t even place, let alone win. But I like the shirts and cups, and love getting finisher’s medals. And I love the feeling of actually finishing.

I’ve run 2 half marathons so far. 13.1 miles is a long way to run when you want to quit before finishing the first mile. I am planning on running a full marathon in October. By planning, I mean I have registered. I want to put a 26.2 sticker on my car along with the 13.1 sticker. And Karyn says I am a machine for being able to finish runs I haven’t properly trained for. That would really be both halfs. I did better training for the first half, but I went straight from not being able to run past 9 miles to the 12 mile run. That was also the half that I asked Karyn for an epidural about a half mile from the finish. The second half I should not have been able to finish due to lack of training. I have also gotten through 2 10Ks by reminding myself of that 13.1 sticker on my car. “You’ve run 13.1 miles; you can run 6.2!”

So, yeah. I’m ready to make the 26.2 leap. Once anyway. 😉 It will be different, for sure. I can run 13.1 without having to refuel, but I know I will need to eat something during a full to replenish. I know I will have to be diligent about training. Not just the runs themselves, but running with “supplies” for refueling. With proper training, there is no reason short of injury or illness that I shouldn’t be able to finish – even if I have to walk (or crawl).

Funny thing is, sometimes I think I have been learning more about my walk with Christ from running than I managed to pick up otherwise. I have not fallen during a run (yet), but I know it is a matter of time. I saw a lady go down right in front of me during the last half, and she got right back up and proceeded to pass me again. 🙂 This would correspond pretty directly to what Paul says about looking forward and forgetting what is behind. I’m going to trip and fall on my face, repeatedly, but that is not where I am to stay.

13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13-14, ESV)

Training for a long run involves a lot of running with gradually adding distance to build up the muscle and endurance. Properly hydrating is also necessary as well as eating foods that provide energy and promote healing. Even with all the training, and even training hills, sometimes you find yourself in a race with a hill from hell. This is a hill that may or may not be steep, but it seems to just go on forever and ever as if you are never going to reach the top. Sometimes trials feel like the never-ending hill, and just wear you down no matter how you try to be diligent in prayer and bible study.

Sometimes, rather than a “traditional trial,” it can be a struggle with overcoming a particular sin that can feel like that never-ending hill. I have found myself here lately. I know much of what is going on is spiritual warfare, but I also know I alone am responsible for my actions and/or inaction. I’ve been tripping and falling repeatedly, but kept getting back up and running. But then I hit the wall. And when I hit the wall, I realized that when I thought I should share what was going on with my close friends that I should have actually done it. But then I still waited before I did it. And it’s still a problem like a never ending hill. :sigh:

Update: I meant to credit the title before publishing. I “stole” the title from the sermon notes I took during a sermon preached at newhope church. And because I didn’t have the notes in front of me when I finally finished this post (after about 4 weeks), I don’t even remember what sermon series it was (pretty sure it was Joyride) or if it was Pastor Benji or Pastor Chad that preached it.