Surprises Are Fun

Good Afternoon. We're about to head out for my cousin Gabe's wedding, but just had to write a quick note. David and I went for a run this morning. He pushed me and I made it around our entire route (2.11 miles) with only a stop long enough for him to say "No Baby, keep going." And there we went. Whoo. Tough on me. Especially when the sun is up and it's not 5am. On another note, my poor body doesn't know what to do when I don't get up at 5am. It was ready to go while my mind had to keep saying, "go to sleep. go to sleep...." After the run we went to for a bike ride. We had hoped to go longer but David's front tire started to go flat. So, we're going to have to get that fixed. But we still met my goal of today which was to run our route and also go biking.

As for our surprise.....We came home from doing some bumming around and had a note from my mom saying, "Happy Anniversary....check the top of your microwave." I was thinking, "what the heck, a box?" And then to my very happy surprise I found out what it was and hollered, "It's an Aunt Tonya cake!!!!!!" Oh, you just don't understand. Tonya cake is better than ice cream. And that's saying a lot coming from me. I had hoped to have a Tonya cake for my birthday but she's TOTALLY booked for the next few months. Which is good for her, not for me =( But I understood and just planned to get one in the off season. Well, she said she had some extra batter yesterday and thought about us, knowing that our anniversary is coming up, and knowing that I'd LOVE to have a cake. So she surprised us. According to her, "It's the the prettiest or best decorated." But it my opinion it's one of the most beautiful cakes ever because it was made and given with love. Thank you bunches Aunt Tonya. It hit the spot! And what a wonderful reward after a decent week of workouts. Now, if I could just keep the dogs away from the cake....they keep getting whiffs, and whining. Ah, they have good taste, and no big surprise considering their momma's a cake lover.

OROC

Hello Everyone! Just wanted to share with you some exciting news. After speaking with David we've decided to register for our first 5k. So I registered us last night and we're good to go. I'm so very excited. It's the OROC (OutRun Ovarian Cancer) 5k that's held in Cleveland on August 25th. So, we're on our way. This is a first for me. Now David on the other hand, has raced in the Crescent City Classic 10k that was an annual race in New Orleans. The cool thing about this 5k is that it starts and ends at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and you run through downtown Cleveland. And according to the website there's music pre-race, post-race, and even along the route. We'll see. This should be fun. I may not be thinking that when I'm running but that's okay.

In looking for a race I saw that the Honolulu Marathon is being held the day after we leave Hawaii. Darn, we'll miss it. Yah, right. Like we would've been able to run that. Someday. But anyway, the week before they're going to have an Expo and stuff, so that's something we'll be able to check out while we're there. At this time I'd like to hope to run while on vacation. What would be better than running while enjoying the ocean at the same time? At least we'll be in good company while there, with all the other runners. Better get going. It's Thursday....surgery day at work for me.

Getting There

It's been a long past few days. But thankfully I'm more ahead than I thought I'd be with my schooling. I now have all my weekly assignments done for all 3 classes. My radiograph project is done, now all I have to do is organized and send it off. As for my videos, thanks to the gracious help of my mom I'm 99.9% done videotaping.

On Monday and Tuesday I met the 'rents for dinner and then came immediately back to work and spent about 1 hour per night here at work documenting all my assignment parts. Mom helped by coming with me performing the videotaping. It made it a lot easier because I wasn't so nervous in front of her (how could you be embarrassed in front of mom?) and I didn't feel rushed to get it done because I know she'd be patient (which she was). Not that my coworkers aren't patient, but I just feel as though I put them out by having to do it on work time and then if I have to do it over and possibly over again, I could see them getting frustrated. So thanks Mom, once again!

Also, I wanted to thank the 'rents for helping out this week with the kids. Having to work 11+ hours, then coming back to do the videos, and not having David home, the kids have been put on the back burner. The 'rents have helped by stopping over to check on them, letting them out to get some energy out of their system so they're not raring to go when I get home, and by feeding them. Thank you, thank you, thank you. By the way, Viking and Lily's issues are fine now. All is well...at least for the time being, knock on wood.

In addition to getting all my school work accomplished I'm still trucking away at my "training schedule" and am making small steps. So as you can see, it's been an exhausting beginning to the week and when my head hits the pillow I'm out! Hopefully the rest of the week won't be so full.

Now, it's off to work....Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to work I go (whistling.....)

2 Miles

Ah, Monday morning. Don't you just love it? I can hear the moans and groans right now. I feel ya. Last night was probably one of the most horrible sleeping nights ever. I just couldn't sleep. It could've been a multitude of things. Viking tossing and turning from having his paw wrapped (I ended up taking it off only to have him continuously lick it...he got kicked out of the room at midnight), having run too late, thinking about David leaving on his business trip today, thinking about school, thinking about whether I was to run or bike today, and the anxiety of knowing I was to wake up at 4:30am and it was going to be Monday. So out of all of those I'm sure my body had a reason why it wanted to stay up. But I still got up at 4:30am with David to see him off and then I immediately went out for a run. I feel good but I know by 7pm this evening I will be done. To add onto that I was planning on staying after work to do some videotaping for school. That may just have to wait until tomorrow. Not only will I be tired but the kids will have been home all day by themselves and I'm sure they'll be hungry.

I have to share some good news with you. I ran 2 miles this morning...my furthest thus far. Woot! Thanks to David pushing me last night, I made some significant steps within the past 24 hours. He didn't let me stop when I wanted to and kept encouraging me when I felt I couldn't go any further. But this morning I did the same thing as last night then some and felt better. Basically my entire route is the same but I'm running more of it with less, if any, breaks. I am thrilled about it.

Hope everyone has a Marvelous Monday!

Monday's Thought For The Day

Dog Fiasco

I guess I should fill you in on Viking. All was going well until this evening. His nail cracked open again while out playing so I had to do a little "surgery". I decided that basically it had to come off. Considering it was 7:30pm on Sunday night I had to do it here. With the help of David I took the toenail clippers and got that nail off. Ouch! I'm a mean mama. I felt so bad. As the blood kept coming I managed to get it stopped and get a bandage back on his leg. Now, once again he's laying on the couch not knowing what to do. Don't worry though, I already got some pain medication in him and hopefully it took the edge off. I'll be sure to get him some antibiotics at work tomorrow.

Then, while this is happening, I look over to Lily to see that she's gimping around. Sounding like my dad, I say, "Now what!" So while I have the pain medication out for Viking, I slipped her a dose too. She must have pulled something while out on our walk a half hour previously. So basically what I'm saying is that we have a house full of injured animals and people.

Other than this stuff it was a good weekend. On Saturday David and I went for a morning bike ride. Then we bummed around and got our grocery shopping done. In addition, we had to do some clothes shopping for David. I love the guy but I think he's the only person I know who's weight fluctuates so much. It's a good thing because we're going down in size, but of course we couldn't still have his clothes from over a year ago that would still fit. Or when he adds a few pounds, we don't seem to have the right size. Where do they all go? I always tell him to put the clothes in storage but the only thing I'm guessing is that they end up in the pile for Salvation Army. Dunno. Anyway, I figured we need to get things now because at this rate he's only going to lose weight and since we're going to Hawaii in the middle of winter it's best for us to get them now instead of searching in November for shorts. We're also looking for some swim trunks for him too. No luck with the swim trunks but he did get 3 pairs of shorts. Good to go.

We spent the afternoon at Cedar Point walking around and taking some picture shots. We decided to finally get David's elephant ear and my funnel cake. Of course these can't be sold at the same places so we get his first and as we're walking to get mine we keep hearing, "what's that?" "Look! he's got an elephant ear." or "Where'd you get that?" It was kind of funny. Then once we got to the line for funnel cakes it kept happening and I think the funnel cake stand lost half their business to the elephant ear stand. David was pretty popular. Too funny. So I get my funnel cake and what a buzzkill! Man, it was thin and hard. Nothing like they used to be. I could've gotten a better one at the county fair. So I sat there and ate it because I didn't want to waste our $5 all at the same time thinking, "this is horrible" and that I was eating empty calories. Bummer.

That night we went to Friday's to meet up with the 'rents, J and Cass, and Cass's sister Rachel. We had a good time and even ran into my cousin Jillian.

Today started out with the guys going golfing and us girls getting soup and salad from the Olive Garden then of course heading to the mall. Nothing all that exciting. I took a short nap this afternoon, then we all met up for dinner at Cedar Villa. We came home, I took the dogs for a walk, the dog fiasco occured, then we took a run, and now I'm here.

Oh yeah, I got a lot of school work done this weekend and am done with 2 of my classes' assignments. Yay! So I'm in Week 6 out of 12 and have a significant chunk done. Now, just got to make my videos and I'm all set.

Injured Bubba

Poor Bubba. We were playing ball outside this morning after getting back from a bike ride. He was doing his usual thing when I looked down to get the ball and saw that his right front dewclaw was red. Upon closer examination I saw that it must have caught on something and broken near the quick.

I took him inside to have David give me a hand so I could take a closer look to see what we needed to do. I guess I was a bad mommy and let his nails get too long. I'm pretty religious about cutting them but of course the one time that I let them go 1 week too long this would happen. Vike was a trooper throughout the whole thing. He let me look at it and trimmed the excess nail off. If I did what I probably really needed to do, which would be cut the nail off where the crack was, then we'd have to sedate him. At this point though the nail is still pretty attached and not loose so I don't think that's the route we need to take. So we got some triple antibiotic cream on it, a little gauze, and some vetwrap and now he's unsure of what to do. Kinda doing the whole pouting thing. But David says, "Ah, let him pout and get all the attention he wants." So he's getting the attention and soaking it all up. I even went into my puppy pharmacy that I have in our medicine cabinet and found him some pain medication. So he's all hooked up and hopefully good to go. I'm not sure if he's glad to have a mommy that's a vet tech or not. If it would've been up to him he would've kept playing but oh well.

Injured List?

I had something bum me out today. For the past few days my right hamstring has been aching. I just figured it was because of normal discomfort from running. Not thinking much of it I went to bed last night thinking that I was going to go biking this morning. In doing a little reading I've found that I need to add some cross training to my workouts. Who would've knew. I thought that with my discomfort and needing to add cross training, today would be the perfect day to do so.

Well, I woke up this morning with a little too much discomfort and decided that even though I took a rest day on Wednesday, maybe I needed one more day of rest. What a bummer. I think I need to change some of my running days out for cross training at this time. Just a guess but I don't think I'm allowing my body to recuperate in between days, which may have lead to this problem. It could also be that it's my "bad leg" meaning the one I broke years ago. I still have aching pain in it from time to time. With the weather changing for the past few days it could be the problem. Dunno. As with everything, there's something to be learned. But at this point I've seen such a positive result from running that it's hard for me to consider changing my schedule. Actually, I don't have a set schedule. And I feel that I have done a very good job at listening to my body.

So this leaves me with, "What am I going to do tomorrow?" I don't know. But I can tell you that I'm just going to go with the flow and see what happens. I'd love to be able to do something tomorrow but I'm also going to have a realistic outlook. We'll just have to see...

Mental MP3

Rise and shine! Only 2 more work days this week. As of yesterday Sue has decided to run in the evenings due to her schedule. That leaves me in the morning with Ironman David. It's all good though because he pushes me harder and doesn't even know it. He always starts with me and keeps a good pace then when I have to stop for a moment he's gone. That just pushes me to catch up...which will never happen. I must say it's harder for me to run alone due to the sound factor. I like to hear a little more than just myself breathing and feet hitting the ground. So I busted out the mental MP3 player today. Yes, you read right. I just sing to myself in my mind. People may think I'm crazy for doing this but no one knows what I'm thinking or doing in my mind. And trust me, it kept me going. A little Scissor Sisters (I don't feel like dancing....), Kanye West (God show me the way because the Devil trying to break me down.....The only thing that I pray is that me feet don't fail me now), Israel Kamakawiwo'ole (Somewhere over the rainbow...), then back to Scissor Sisters (She's my man...) Hmmm...wonder what my mind will have in store for tomorrow. We'll have to see.

I had a realization the other day. Maybe not a realization but more an observation. When we lived on base I would try to go swim laps in the morning. And for some reason it just didn't go all that well. I just figured it was because I was out of shape. Which was probably true to a certain extent. However, I was taking a shower the other day and put my face under the water and found that I had to move my face immediately out of the water. It's almost as though I was claustrophobic or scared of being under water, like when I was real young. Oh, maybe this is why swimming didn't go so well. I guess this has been going on for awhile, but I never thought about it before. The thing is that this is totally weird to me because I was basically a fish when I was a kid. If there was a pool, I was in it. And then I was even on the swim team. What happened? I didn't have anything traumatic happen. Actually, I did, but that was way long ago, even before I was an avid swimmer. Someone tried to hold me under water and I couldn't get out. Maybe it does just come down to being out of shape with my lungs no longer up to par. But I don't know about attempting to make them back up to par...I don't really like that suffocation feeling, if you know what I mean. I guess I'm not really making a point here but like I said, it's just an observation I had...my how things change as you age.

Make A Pearl

Most of us can afford to take a lesson from an oyster.

The most extraordinary thing about the oyster is this. Irritations get unto his shell. He does not like them; he tries to get rid of them. But when he cannot get rid of them he settles down to make one of the most beautiful things in the world. He uses the irritation to do the loveliest thing that an oyster has a chance to do. If there are irritations in our lives today, there is only one prescription-make a pearl.

It may have to be a pearl of patience, but, anyhow, make a pearl. And it takes faith and love to do it.

~Harry E Fosdick