Week 5 Couch to 5K!!

Okay, it's really coming along.

Today, even though it was cold and rainy and I have to run by my neighbor's house on my route, and I know she's home, and fully stocked up on chai tea, and all I ever have to do is knock and look pathetically deprived of a good cup of tea, which is easy for me, I didn't.

I ran through the cold misty rain and completed Week 5, Day 1.

The most motivating part of the run was the older woman with pure white hair that sprinted past me with these huge, gazelle-like steps with no noticeable breathing issues while I was hunched up in a ball running and gasping slightly for some air.

I saw her and did that thing where you pretend you're not really about to fall over into the grass and roll into the creek because you have no stamina, and I stretched up real tall, well, for as tall as I could manage, held my breath, and took five long(ish) gazelle-like strides until she was past me.  I figure, if I keep this up, then in 10 years or so, I'll be able to run with gazelle-like strides, too!

The best part is now that I have the stamina to do this, ie., I can walk after I complete the run, I am now eating healthier too. Especially breakfast and lunch.

Lunch I love though, because I just walk on over to my garden, pick some spinach leaves, turnip greens and radishes, and make myself a nice salad topped with an egg. I am a huge fan of eggs lately. Easy protein. My current dream is to have my own urban chicken coop.

Yes. I said turnip greens.
I was meh on them, but check out their nutritional value!

Later this week, I'll have some awesome pics of my garden. To be honest, I haven't been posting pictures because I lost the do-hickey that lets me upload pictures directly from the camera. Sad, I know. But I found it!

So the garden pics are coming!  It's doing really well! The beans, alas, are not doing well. Nor the cucumbers. But everything else! Turnips! Spinach! Radishes! Lettuce! Swiss Chard! Peas! Cilantro! It's crazy good happy spring garden!

I love it when friends visit

We have had a couple of friends drop their bags here now and again, passing through here to somewhere...  and this past couple of days, we got a visit from some Seattle weather and a good friend from Seattle. He left the weather on his way to Wyoming, for which we thank him, because rarely do we get rainy days out here... and a belated apology for sticking him in the 7-year-old boy room with robots on the wall, but hey, it's a full bed...

He's just been laid off along with just about everyone else at SOE (Okay, not EVERYONE) and is taking some time to figure out, really, is games where it's at? Which seems to be the question Husbear and I were faced with. We have already come up with an answer to that, but our friend seems to be still in the exploratory stages of '...maybe I can do something else...'

But while he was here, shooting the shit with Husbear, talking about cars. He spent some time working in Detroit, land of cars. We talked some more about cars, some more cars, and cars, and while all that car yakkity-yak was going on, we introduced him to some of Colorado's finest offerings and he talked about what he could do, might do, should do and wants to do.

Turns out, there just comes a point when you think, wow, there's got to be more than what i just left... there is. There's always more. It's just having the perseverance and the courage to go after the 'more' rather than settling for the 'what i just left.'

So I hope he finds his way into either a brewery, or the automotive industry, because those are, from the brief visit, two real passions of his.

I should send him to her, the brazen careerist, because if anyone is in the place to leap and start their own business, it's him.

But now he's off, exploring Wyoming, life at higher altitudes, and the rest of his life, it's time for us to hunker back down and get on with the business of getting on with our own lives.

Husbear and I are still going after 'something more than what we had' because frankly, what we had was kinda crap, and what we're going after is pretty awesome.

We just need perseverance. And possibly an ocean. That would be nice. It's a stretch, but it would be nice.

The tooth fairy is not dependable

The tooth fairy has been flaky lately.

It's not her fault, really.

What with the dodgy reporting habits of boys who occasionally forget to inform the tooth fairy that they lost a tooth, or forget to put their tooth under their pillow, or worse, put their tooth under their pillow two days after losing it, and neglect to inform the tooth fairy, is it really her fault that occasionally, what with all the tooth losing in this house, that she forgets or doesn't know to replace the tooth?

And then there's the teeth that get lost! How is she supposed to use her magic to, as Turbo Boy explains, wave her wand and turn the tooth into money, if the tooth goes missing?

Why, mom, why did the tooth fairy not come?
Why did she forget?
How come she came so late in the morning? After we were all up?

These are hard questions.
And the answers even more difficult. For the boys didn't know that there were rules with the tooth fairy, that they can't just PUT a tooth under their pillow and MAGICALLY expect a magical creature to magically know it's there.
But she's magic?
Well yes, but there's soooooo many kids losing teeth this time of year.....
(Yes, it sounds weak even to me, but I was desperate)

See, it's not so much me or the tooth fairy. It's the boys. When they first started losing teeth, they thought it was so cool, they didn't want to give the teeth to the tooth fairy. Now, they think money is cool. But I missed the memo on 'what's cool' -- money and 'what's not' -- collections of baby teeth.

But in the end, now that the boys understand the magical rules of the magical tooth fairy, she rarely misses a tooth.

Just some thoughts

So I've been doing this couch to 5K thing. I think it's part of my personality make up. If things seem out of my control, I take stock of things I can control, and then focus a lot of energy on doing that. Oh, and I really want to lose some buh-ooty.

Week 3, Day 1 of this program just about kicked my butt, but I'm glad I did it today instead of postponing it until tomorrow.

My waist is already down a couple of inches, and I can do the full program without cheating! It reminds me how much I enjoy jogging and being physical. Who knows, after this, maybe I'll spring out some kart-wheels...

But it also helps me clear my head, and move forward with other projects and plans that have been put on the back-burner, for far too long. Running, exercising, just being physical has a strong effect on my thinking. Now, I can't fathom missing a run. I have to have my 40 minutes of running and walking! I have to have my outdoor time. If I don't, I get grumpy and restless. If I do it, I am clearer, focused, more set and determined on whatever path I'm following. What became a goal to keep me focused during this unfocused time, is now a necessity.

I'd really like to dictate the time, circumstances and place of my next place of work, but since I can not do that, I can do what I can do, and when I've done that, live my life.

So to that end, I'm practicing agent cover letters for my first unpublished novel. Mostly it's to go through the exercise, but also, because if anyone is a bad judge of their work, surely it's the writer who wrote it! But while I do that, I'll continue on my second novel, of which already has a beginning, middle and an end, it's just not written ;).

I don't know my future, I can't pick up a crystal ball and visualize it in it's entirety, but I do know that I'm headed in the right direction finally, and not just me, but Husbear as well. What we're doing, it's changing our future by making hard decisions now. By refusing to do the easy, well-trodden path. It's scary, it's exhilarating, it's nerve-wracking, it's hard. But the struggles of today pave the success of tomorrow.

So here's to tomorrow!

Thursday before the Friday

Can you feel it?

The frost... it's... gone. For good. And won't be coming back til Fall. I feel it.

Spring is truly here, finally!

For some parts of the country it probably feels like summer, but for us? It's all spring! I can bring my crazy tall green beans outside and plant them. I can put squash in the ground, and hope my loofah growing experiment goes well.

Today I discussed with HusBear the paths we should take. I'lll take the high road, you'll take the low road...

Listen to it, you should, really... I'll be in Scotland afore ye...

Right. So while I'm here on the bonnie bonnie banks of Loch Lomond... we sat out with our iced tea and Azure Blue skies, and just had a nice afternoon in the sunshine, talking.

The conclusion we came to, is, retirement is gonna be a lot of fun.

Lickety Lime or Zombie Green?

I have a nail thing.


I love nails that are polished, and even better, neatly manicured and polished.
Neatly manicured and polished nails do not, and have rarely ever described my nails. I don't have the patience to wait for nail polish to dry, and even if I did, I don't have enough nails for the polish, since I bite them so far down the nail bed I can't even get clippers underneath them.


The only time my nails could be described as manicured and polished was when I was pregnant with my first-born, 20 pounds heavier than I'd ever been in my life, and high on pregnancy supplements that had the lovely effect of giving me strong, fast-growing nails. Such beautiful long nails never before seen on my hands! Then Drama Girl was born, and the brief glory period of my nails ended.


So after my neighbor showed off her shellac'd nails, looking all posh and cute and well, polished, I thought, hmm, neato.


Then I found myself at one of those end shelves at Target staring at Sally Hansen's Insta-Dry nail polish.


And saw a bottle of Lickety Split Lime. The image doesn't do it justice. It's spring! it's lime! It's lime spring! It's lickety split springtime in a bottle! It's happiness incarnate, as far as nail colors go. And who knew, you could buy nail polish on Amazon?

This is the color of my nail polish. 

The refreshing citrus zing is how it makes me feel. Does this look like Zombie food to you?

And it's only one coating needed, insta dry!
Insta-Happy!


Then. Out in the Garden, with Posh Shellac Nail Chic:
Why do you have zombie green nails?
They are not zombie green, they are Lickety Split Lime! A bright, spring, sunshine-y color of joy!
Looks like zombie green to me.
What do you know?


In the house... what do you think of these nails dear Drama Girl?
Reminds me of Zombies.
Zombies? Cool! Oh totally, it's like, zombie green mom, says Turbo.
Zombies?


Yeah. That's so cool... then Turbo starts kinda drooling at the bottle, because zombie green to a 7 year old means something, man...


It's... it's Lickety...
Zombies, Mom, it's Zombie Green.


Fine. I like Zombie Green. Zombie Green reminds me of spring and makes me happy.
I like it too mom! says Bear and Turbo in unision.
It's kinda creepy, says Drama Girl.
It's  braaaainnnnssss....


It's a powerful lesson on perspective really.


One person's lemon is another's lemonade.
One person's junk is another man's treasure.
One gal's Zombie Green is another's Lickety Split Lime of Happy.


It's all in how you see it.