The End of One

I'm officially putting this blog to rest.

It was a decision I struggled with. One that I talked about with D for many hours. You see, I wrote a post or two that people at work read too much into. They made assumptions. Crazy ass assumptions, but assumptions nonetheless. Work is an integral part of my life (I spend so many hours there) but I learned that if you write about it in the veil of vagueness it leaves too much for interpretation.

So I just abandoned this blog. True, earlier in the year I tried to do a few posts, but my heart just wasn't really in it. It still stung from what I felt as betrayal. That people would make assumptions instead of just asking me directly. Oh well. Lesson learned. It was a tough decision and I took the cowards path by just  not writing at all.

But lately, I realized I missed the writing outside of work. I like to write and I need that passion back. So, I've started up a new blog: Run. Eat. Read.. I'm distancing myself from Karma (but I still believe strongly in karma and know what comes around goes around.)

So, the new blog will not touch any part of my professional life, it will stick to my passions: my family, running, eating, wellness. You're welcome to read it, if you like. I'm going to play around with the design, have some fun with writing again.

It's sort of like a mission to re-find myself. Bring it on.

Joy

Life offers us lots of simple pleasures.

• The feeling of accomplishment when you cook a nutritious meal for your children and they actually like it.
• Seeing the goofy smile on your sons' faces when one of their favorite songs starts to play and they dance their hearts out.
• The plea for one more kiss good night (even if it is to delay bedtime just a little longer). 
• Crossing a finish line ... and cutting at least a few seconds from your time.
• The taste of a perfect cup of coffee. 
• The sip of a delectable wine. 
• Laughter shared with friends - especially laughter that can't be held in. 
• Being surrounded by family who love you, who give you small and big gifts because they appreciate who you are.
• Getting a compliment when you work your arse off, so it feels even more fulfilling.
• Reading a really good book, curled up in a blanket. 
• Sitting outside with your boys as they chase bubbles in the wind. 
• Planting a garden and cultivating a healthy approach to life in your children. 

The list goes on and on ... each day I am eternally grateful for the precious gifts that I have to look forward to each and every day. 

The Road Ahead

... it's a 5-miler. Yep, that's the road ahead. As in, D's and my next race. I don't know why I registered us for 5 miles, especially when there was a 5K option available. Crazy I guess. And of course, it's been wicked cold here, so training has been near to non-existent. Except for my cross-training (plank challenge is ridiculous).

So, tomorrow begins 9 days of vacation for me ... and I hope that equates to me getting lots of time to run, yoga and have fun with my boys ... because the race is a week away. At least I have the great green socks in honors of it being a St. Patrick's Day race.

Speaking of 9 days of vacation. I cannot believe it's spring break time. Since O is still really to young for us to go on any crazy trips, we've decided on a nice plan for the week ahead. (Besides the awesome joy of just having mom around the whole week, of course.) Each day one of us gets to choose what we do. So, on O's day he gets to direct the plan. Same for K, and D and me. I can't wait to see what the boys ultimately decide to do on their day. I am thinking it will probably be even more fun than a trip ... at least for now!

Where Socks Go Missing

I'm sure you've had this happen if you ever do laundry. That random sock whose lost it's mate ... never to be found again. Well, yesterday, I learned where those random missing socks go.

I always do laundry on Sundays. I am a bit anal retentive about this. I focus on getting all my laundry done so that we can start the week with all our clothing available. No need to try to do loads during the week. I just work around any other errands and get it done. And I'll admit, folding laundry is "me time" where I get to catch up on a show that I watch by myself ... so not a bad deal. 

Yesterday, as I went in after my second load of laundry ... I discovered the floor had an inch of water. (Real nice to walk in socks and then get sopping wet.) I assumed that maybe I just loaded it wrong and somehow the door didn't seal. So, I put the next load in and started it. Then I was putting the wet load in the dryer. The next thing I know water is gushing out of where the soap dispenser is on the dryer. 

Thank you Google. I did a quick search and, of course, there were some people who had similar issues and provided suggestions on how to fix it. I called in the reinforcements and D and I set off to tackle this big machinery together. He did the heavy lifting, and I did the directing (and the additional research when we had to confirm how to remove certain pieces of the washer.) We couldn't get it done in time before K's lesson. So we knew we'd return to this task afterwards. I was not yet freaking out about not getting my laundry done in a timely manner.

D took K to his lesson as I had some work priorities to tend to. When he returned he quickly tackled the problem (after experiencing how to take everything apart the first time with me.) Within a half hour, he had fixed our washer. I learned that he called a friend during K's lesson and his friend confirmed what we needed to do. 

Now my washer is fixed, laundry was done and still done on Sunday ... and I just have more confirmation that D and I make a great team when we work together to solve a problem. And fortunately, we saved some money by doing it ourselves and not having to make a service call.

Saturday Crazy and New Monthly Challenges

Today was a crazy busy Saturday. K had his last basketball game of the season at 10, then off to a Lego event at noon (where O even won a prize!) and then K had DI at 2. Yes, it was busy, but good. I think we got two days worth of activities crammed in. And now they boys are relaxing by playing Legos ... all over the living room. Oh, well. At least they are entertaining themselves.

I am trying to squash a cold. It hit me Thursday night ... and has just progressively worsened. Unfortunately, I have a lot to get done, so I really can't afford the cold at the moment.  I've actually had to breakdown and take cold medicine. Something I rarely do.

Since today is March 1, it also means the day for new strength training challenges. I did a special cross-training challenge in the morning for February and a squat challenge in the evenings (yesterday, I capped the month with 250 squats ... yep!) But I am starting to actually see a difference in my muscle tone ... so it's motivating enough to keep it going. So this month, my morning challenge is supposed to be 100 push-ups. I am going to break it in half and do 50 in the morning and 50 in the evening. And then in the evening I am also doing the 30-day plank challenge. You start out only doing a 20 second plank and work your way to the end of the month doing a 5 minute plank. Rock hard abs are sure to come, right? We'll see ...

Healthy Eating

Selecting healthy foods for our family has definitely become a job. Every day something else comes out about what you should avoid. Basically, we practically down to completely whole foods eating. The newest book I am reading is all about protecting your brain ... and it talks about how our bodies don't need any aluminum (unlike other metals like copper, iron and zinc that your body does need) but yet there is aluminum in our food. Take for example, baking powder. So went and looked at our baking powder ... and yep. aluminum!

Ack. So a trip to the co-op to get some aluminum-free baking powder and a few other more natural, whole food products. We picked up some kale (it hurts in the winter to buy kale from the grocer, because in the summer we have such an abundance of it from our own garden.) and I made kale chips for the boys. I love that I am fortunate enough to have kids who like things like kale chips. They  haven't quite acquired the taste for almond milk, but at least I can sneak that into the baking and cooking. 

Other things we've eliminated lately that have made it fun for the boys and me ... food coloring. Yep, no food coloring, which means a lot of their favorite candies. Fortunately, we discovered World Market sells the European equivalents of a lot of their favorite candies, and since those don't include food coloring we can enjoy those. We eliminated HFCS and hydrogenated oils a while ago, so those aren't new. (But yes, my son will always ask to read the ingredients when someone else brings a snack and if he sees it listed, he won't eat it. I had to watch this at soccer practice often ... I can only imagine what the other parents thought!)

D is also now no longer buying anything that just lists "natural flavorings" since there is no regulation for what that exactly means. Yes, our cupboards, refrigerator and snack drawer are definitely looking different. But I am hoping that this due diligence is for a good thing. Healthy, happy kids and a long, healthy lives. 

Enough

This winter has been rough. Yes, I probably say that about every winter. However, it's always the current winter that is the hardest. The kids have had school cancelled due to absurdly low temperatures ... and today, school was cancelled to the dumping of nearly a foot of snow. And since the roads were so horrible, there was actually a no-travel advisory ... so I worked from home. (I consider myself fortunate that I have a job and work for a company that is supportive of working from home and provides me the right tools to do so.)

But really. I've had enough. This last dumping of snow was ridiculous. It was a heavy wet snow, D and I had to tag team to get the driveway done. I gave up toward the end due to freezing fingers. D admitted a neighbor came over with a high-powered snow blower to help him with the end of the driveway. (Yay for nice neighbors.)

O's swimming lesson was cancelled. I've never seen the guy so upset. So, I guess he may be my swimmer. (K likes swimming, but I don't think he'd become distraught if his lesson was cancelled.) Unfortunately for K, both his basketball game last night and his practice tonight were cancelled. He was upset about that, poor guy.

The only good thing about a snow day is that it sort of gives you an excuse to chill ... if you were a different family. Since I was working, D held "school" for the boys, and they had to work on school work and do workbook activities. They did get some good outside time though earlier in the day when it was a little warmer and we now have a 4 foot snowman in the front of our yard.

Now, we're sitting by the fire, watching movies and chilling. Finally ... but, I'd like the snow to melt before my next race (or at least the temperature hold steady above 20 degrees.)

Cross Training Fun

This year I've made some new running goals, a couple longer distances ... with the first one coming up in a month. So, I've been incorporating a little bit of weight training exercise in my morning and evening routines. 

In the morning, I am following a regimen a work colleague introduced me to. It's one of those that I am sure you've seen if you are on Facebook. You do X number of X, X number of X and progressively increase the reps throughout the month. I like this one. It's called February Fives and the exercises change every morning, so I don't get bored ... but I will say they are progressively getting tougher. Today, whew, it was definitely a core workout. But that's okay, that's what I need. 

In the evening ... I am tackling Athleta's 30-day squat challenge. Now this has me progressively adding reps to squats ... with a rest day every fourth day. Today, I conquered 155 squats. Now the positive of all this weight training is I am starting to see some new muscle definition. No real weight-loss, but at least I am building strength. 

On a separate note, K scored a basket today at his basketball game. We were so proud. You see, K is awesome at defense and is great at assisting ... but he gets performance anxiety about actually trying to score a basket. So whenever he gets the ball near the basket, he tries to quickly pass it to a teammate. Yesterday, D and I talked to him about confidence, relinquishing his fear of failure and just going for it. Our little pep talk must have had at least a little bit of an effect, because today he played with more confidence, went after the ball and ... scored! Yay. 

Al-in-all, a good day. 

Five Finger Rule Dilemma

Most of us have heard the phrase "five finger discount" as the slang terminology for shoplifting. Today, I learned that K has a "five finger rule" at school for their library ... and that he's been cheating the system. And that is exactly how it was presented to me by D and K. The conversation went like this:

D: Did you see the book K brought home from the school library today ... it's like 500 pages long.

K: Beaming and showing me the book. 

D: But he cheated the system to get the book.

Me: What system? What do you mean cheated?

K: We have a five-finger rule that we have to use to get to pick our book. 

D proceeds to explain that the students have to read a couple paragraphs (about five fingers wide) to determine if a book has an appropriate level of difficulty for the library extracurricular. If they can read the passage perfectly ... the book is not difficult enough. If they get more than five words incorrect, the book is deemed to difficult. (Keep in mind this is an extracurricular book for them, it's not part of their regular curriculum where they use a much more scientific, assessment-based methodology to determine their books.) Because K reads at at least a 6th grade level ... there are few books that would trip him up ... so he's been intentionally messing up his words so that he can get the books he wants.

K and D think this is hilarious. I am at a dilemma. The kid reads so much, and the books he is picking are books that easily fall into the 3 - 5th grade reading levels, so I just want to continue to encourage him to find books he finds interesting. However, I am a bit troubled that at the age of 7 he is already learning there is a system and it can be manipulated. But when he's reading 200 pages plus in a day or so, maybe the system isn't advance enough for him. 

Fortunately, his second grade teacher has been a good partner with us this year in ensuring that we are building good habits and challenging him. It's all about the village, and keeping him enriched and motivated. It won't be long before he's writing some award-winning thesis. 

Running and Cross-Training

The problem of getting out of the habit of posting updates on a blog ... it's really hard to get back into the habit. I fully intended to post about our race on Saturday ... but didn't.

It was cold. I have lots of layers on. I decided to try a run without the glasses to see what it was like. Probably not the smartest move to choose a run where I would need to keep my eyes on the road to watch for ice patches. Lesson learned. 

I actually felt pretty good for the first part of the run. Found a pace I could maintain, my lungs weren't burning. I staked out my secret pace partners. We were in it all together. Other than the ice thing, it was a model race. And then that damn hill right before the two-mile mark. Now, I remember the hill from last year ... but you sort of forget how bad things are. I just don't remember the hill being as steep as it actually was. My favorite was the woman next two me who commented, "that was a long two miles." I responded, "Especially when it ends going up hill." She laughed, we carried on. 

I kept my 11:30 minute pace for most of the race (I totally walked up the hill), and according to my GPS finished in about 37 minutes. Not my fastest time that is for sure ... but considering that I can't really train like I want to in the winter, I'm okay with it. But speaking of training, I am doing some cross-training type activities in the morning and at night. We'll see if that helps. Because, in a month ... I'll be running my first 5-miler. Yikes. 

Hiatus

I took a short hiatus from the whole blogging thing ... for a couple of reasons. But I'm back now (hold back your excitement.)

Since I didn't do the obligatory New Year's post, I'll just sum up how I started the year with this:

Yes, that's me at the end of our first race of 2014. It was -10, my feet didn't thaw out until probably the 2-mile mark. After the race, when we got coffee, my gloves stuck to the door. Running in the winter is hard, because the only time I can run is on the weekends, because I don't run in the dark and I don't belong to a gym. (Let's be honest, this girl couldn't run on a treadmill anyway.)

Tomorrow, D and I will tackle our second race of the year.

The shirts are super cute (much better than last year's.) I've been focused on doing some cross-training this month, so curious to see how it affects my running. I am hoping it changes it for the positive ... but tomorrow will be the test.

We're tackling some new distances this year and adding a trail run in June. It should be a good year of racing ahead!