irreparable harm?

I don't know what kind of damage we are doing to our daughter with this whole moving business.  I know she's not the first kid to move,  but with all the 'maybes' going on in our life right now it's a very hard concept to explain.  She knows that sometimes people come to look at our house and she comes along to open houses with us.  She LOVES open houses... it's actually kind of odd.  Maybe she's realizing there is more to this great big world outside of her 881SF?   At any rate, she has turned looking at houses into a game. She's a mini real estate agent.   How many years of therapy is this going to cost me?

Here's a question for the universe:  where do you put the toys when you don't have a playroom?  I didn't have a playroom growing up, but my brother and I also had big bedrooms where we kept all our toys.  We kept the bigger sprawling ones (think Lincoln Logs, PlayMobil, Legos, etc) in our unfinished cellar.  Is that okay to do these days, or will someone report us to the Parents Police?  Because let me tell you,  there are no playrooms in our price range.   If we are luck we will get a formal dining room which will double as a playroom since we don't have a formal dining room set and we will have no money to buy one!  Which really is fine... what would I do with a formal dining room right now?   I'd rather throw the toys in there and call it a day!

And just to keep everyone updated:  I still hate the treadmill.  I don't know if I can do this all winter!

plodding along

I got to run outside today, but it wasn't a great run.  I was hoping to get a longish run in since I just can't do more than 40ish minutes on the treadmill,  but I only managed 4 miles.   I have been doing right around 3 miles on the treadmill, so only getting in one extra mile wasn't what I had in mind.   I'm not sure how much longer I can expect to be able to run outside (since I have no cold weather running gear!) but I will try for as long as I can.   An entire winter of the dreadmill is looming ahead of me and I don't like it one bit!  I honestly don't understand how people can do most of their running on a treadmill,  how do you get past the mind numbing monotony?

big doings

Lots of stuff happening in the O'G household.   The 881SF Of Hell is on the market  (did I say 881SF of hell?  I meant Happy Land!  Where unicorns serve you breakfast in bed every day!).   You know what's fun - cleaning out 8 years of crap in order to have an open house.  It took us two weeks and we didn't even touch the attic... except to put some more stuff up there. 

We're sort of in limbo right now.   We can only buy a new place if we sell the current one, and we have to sell this one for a specific amount of money.   We are still very much underwater and there is a limit to how much cash we can muster up to bring to the closing (never mind the down payment on the next house!)  What that all means is we cannot accept any offers below our magic number.   It isn't as though we AREN'T motivated to sell this place,  it's that Wells Fargo isn't letting us walk away without getting their cash.   We aren't willing to ruin our credit with a short sale, so we are still stuck between a rock and a hard place.   Since we do have a hard bottom when it comes to what we can and cannot accept,  we literally don't know if we will be able to sell.   Looking for our next place is kind of hard to do when you really have no idea if or when you would be able to buy it.

Keeping Baby Girl in the dark has been hard too.  I don't want her too confused - she's only 4 and she doesn't need to know details yet, especially when so much is still up in the air.  She knows that something is going on though so I don't know how long I can keep it from her.   She's becoming very attached to her toys these days,  probably because they keep disappearing and reappearing every time the realtor comes over to take pictures or there's an open house.

This would be so much easier if we hadn't bought at the height of the market!  Ah well,  lesson learned.

Between cleaning out our place and the Cold of Death that I'm still fighting off,  I hadn't run at all since the half marathon until today.    I forced myself to run a 5K and it was slow and painful.   I swear it's one step forward and two steps back with this running.   I know I can be better with regular practice and a much healthier diet,  but I seem to lack to motivation to get there.  

TL:DR - house for sale,  haven't run in awhile.

that's done!

First half marathon is in the bag!  My time was ATROCIOUS:   2:43:09.5  That's a 12:28 average pace.   Although my GPS says that the race was actually 13.3 miles and Andrew's said the same thing.  My cousin said his tracked 13.2 miles.   So using the 13.3 miles as the official length, that brings my average pace down to 12:15.   Not that I should be bragging about 12:15 but it's better than 12:28

So I didn't rock the Rockfest.  Eh.  There will be other races.   I didn't train like I should have and I had an awful cold.  Next year I'll do better.  Registration is already open for next year!

a pool of regret

Remember a few months ago when I found out I wasn't selected in the Falmouth Road Race lottery and I was all "HA!  I'll show you FALMOUTH!!!  Who needs you?? I'LL RUN A HALF MARATHON!"  I'm not really sure why I felt that signing up for a 13.1 mile race was an appropriate response to not getting into a 7 mile race.   But the joke is on me anyway because I ended up getting a charity number for Falmouth and ran it anyway!  (holla Lymphoma Research Foundation!!)

That pesky half marathon is in two weeks and to say I am not ready for it is an understatement.   I have no illusions of running the whole thing, there will definitely be a few periods of walking.   Eh, what can you do.   Oh, wait,  yeah you can train for it.   My bad.

Yesterday I went out for an "easy" 4.5 mile run.  

I couldn't do it.  

That's right folks, in a little over 2 weeks I will be running 13.1 miles and yesterday I couldn't run 4.5.   Yesterday's running fail was completely mental.  Once I get into my head I can't get out and all I could think about was how hard it was,  how tired I was, and how much I wanted to stop.   I was really upset about it,  but I'm trying to shake it off as a bad run.   We all have them and I need to be able to just let it roll off my back.   Letting go isn't an easy thing to do when I have the longest race I've ever done looming over me, but if I'm not ready mentally then I'll never be able to physically do it.  

And I have to do it,  I get free lobster and beer when I'm done!

I'm doing another quick run tonight (3 miles) and an 11 mile on Saturday or Sunday.  Let's hope I think only positive thoughts!!

back to the grind!

Baby Girl started her last year of pre-school today.   Unlike last year when I almost cried when dropping her off,  this year was just another day.   My Little Guy was hell bent on destroying her classroom so I really just wanted to get out of there and go food shopping.   She was fine,  gave me a big hug, and off I went.

So much more attitude in the 2013 pictures!

Things are not progressing too well on the half marathon training front.   Yesterday I was supposed to do 10 miles and I did 9.75 miles.... not too bad, but I was hoping to be a little stronger with the mileage by now.   I really don't think there's any way I can finish in 2 hours and 30 minutes at this point.   But I will finish and get my lobster roll and beer!!  On a side note,  my heart rate monitor chest strap is digging into my sides and rubbing the skin raw.  I tried to tape up my sides so it wouldn't irritate the skin,  but that didn't work.   I'm going to be bummed if I can't wear it next weekend when I do my 11 mile run,  I LOVE seeing my calorie count go up and up and up...  I burned 1400 calories this week!  That's double what I eat in a day!   Of course eating those calories back in the form of fried mozzarella and subs doesn't really lend itself to healthy eating and losing weight,  but damn did it taste good.   Food always tastes better after a run! 

I go back and forth on coughing up the money on Shakeology...  what say you healthy people?  Waste of money or no?

done

My second Falmouth Road Race is in the bag.   A few lessons I learned the second time around:

1.  If you don't get selected in the lottery,  don't run around looking for a number.   The universe is telling you that you shouldn't run that year.

2.  You should probably run the Woods Hole hills a few times before the race.  

3.  If you DO decide to run for charity,  check out the Lymphoma Research Foundation.   Their swag bag is really good!

4.  Practice running in hot weather.   When it's 80 and not a cloud in the sky the day of the race you will regret doing everything in your power to avoid running in heat.

5.   Even if you have already gone once,  visit the port-o-potty before you start!

Next up,  Smuttynose half marathon in October!!!

I'm playing around with minor changes to the blog right now,  trying to figure out exactly what I'll be doing in the Great Change Up of 2013. 

I actually can't change that much, as I don't know HTML and I'm stuck with the layouts that Blogger offers.  The real changes will be in the organization of content.   I know, you can barely control your excitement. I'll play with the colors for awhile before I settle on something that I love so bear with me.

In non blog news,  Falmouth Road Race is in a week and I am not ready.   I'm more scared about the half marathon that is coming all too quickly that I really have not even begun to train for.   God help me.  Tomorrow I will be running the course one last time before the race and I will hope for the best!  I most likely will not PR but that's okay.   It's a fun race and I'm just happy to be able to run it.

Speaking of which you have a few more days to throw a couple of dollars my way!  Well, not MY way but if you wanted to give me a few dollars I'd take it.   But you can donate to the Lymphoma Research Foundation.   I've already raised $235 which I'm happy about but to get it to $300 would be awesome!  And then I'll never run for charity again, I promise.   It's stressful trying to raise money!

But since we all know cancer sucks and it should be eradicated from our lives,  this is a good charity to throw some money towards!   As a team we have raised just over $13,000 at the time of this publication.  Fabulous!

Cancer Sucks!


Thank you kindly,  and again I promise this is the last time I ask for money :) Though anytime anyone wants to just hand me a wad of cash for no reason I'll take it.   Dunkin Donuts will thank you.

baby steps

Forget what I said about doing a quick 2 miles yesterday.   I've been having some arch pain in my right foot and I thought another day off would be good for it.   Today I actually started my pre-training for the half.  It was only 3 miles, which is less than I have been averaging lately,  but it was hard.  The first mile kicked my butt mentally and when I'm mentally struggling  I start to physically struggle.   My mind was racing

If I can't do 3,  how can I do 13.1?

Why is the first mile so hard?

Why does every muscle in my body ache after 1.5 miles? 

When can I go home?  

How will I do 5 miles on Sunday if I can't do 3 today?

Not a great run today.   Tomorrow is another day thought, and another 3 miles.   I have to get my head back in the game since this is only going to get harder!

No one has ever called me a genius.   I didn't get accepted into a 7.2 mile race so instead I'm going to do a 13.1 mile race.   Because that makes sense...

I have 17 weeks until the race (which I still haven't signed up for,  natch).   I found a good 12 week training program,  but I need to be able to run the pre training program for "several weeks" before starting the training.   Pre training looks like this: 

	Mon.	Tue.	Wed.	Thu.	Fri.	Sat.	Sun.
Pre- Train	Off	3M	4M	4M	Off	3M	5M

Today is supposed to be an off day as you can see,  but I just took 2 days off so I'm going to go out tonight anyway.  I may just do a quick 2 miles tonight so my legs are fresh for the 3, 4, 4, I have coming up.   Technically I'm supposed to be cross training on my off days,  but I'm not feeling the kettle bell tonight,  I"m feeling a quick 2 mile run.   I'll start cross training on Friday! 

I have 5 weeks before I need to start the actual training program and by then I should know if I'm going to be able to continue with the program.  Fingers crossed!

(clearly not me.  I'm much chubbier.  And shorter.  And I don't have good form.  But you get the idea)

Happy birthday to me!

Yesterday was my birthday.  I treated myself to a bag of Reese's mini peanut butter cups,  let my kids watch too much TV so I could keep the active parenting to a minimum, Andrew made mexican and margaritas for dinner, and I got tickets to see Wicked when it comes to Boston in September!  It was a pretty good day considering it wasn't even a "big" birthday.   For a few hours I thought I had turned 33 and then I realized that I'm only 32!   What a day!

I've wanted to see Wicked for years and years and I'm so excited that we are finally going.   Is it wrong that I'm already thinking about what to wear?  Probably. 

I wasn't accepted in the lottery to run Falmouth, but Andrew was.  That was.... disappointing to say the least.   I've stopped pushing pins into vodoo dolls resembling race officials, but I can't say I wouldn't trip one on purpose if given the opportunity.    Not getting in has pushed me to finally bite the half marathon bullet.   I haven't actually signed up yet,  but plans are in the works. 

Hopefully I'll be in Harwich in the fall!

running man

As I was running today,  I looked down at my fancy running shirt, my fancy armband for my phone, my fancy heart rate monitor,  my fancy running shorts, and my uber fancy running sneakers I realized that I was currently wearing close to $250 worth of running gear.

$250

That's a lot of money that I could have spent on lots of things.  Shoes.  Clothes.  Wine.  A weekend away.  A babysitter and a night out (side note,  when did baby sitters get SO EXPENSIVE?  I made $20 a night when I was in high school).   Organic produce.    But no,  it was all spent on running gear.   And though we severely limit the races we enter due to entry fees,  I've still run two races and Andrew has run one and we're both hoping to run Falmouth.   My point in all this is that running is not cheap.    For the past 18 months birthday,  Mother's/Father's Day and  anniversary presents have all been running related.  It's insane.  I'm not even that good at it,  according to Nike+ my average pace is 11'36".  I feel like I was swept up in a hobby without realizing it and now it's too late to back out.  

For the month of June I'm giving myself a challenge - 60 miles run.    That means I need to up my average mileage per run and up my number of runs per week.    That's a big number and I'm not sure I can hit it,  but it's going to be my goal.   Let's see if I'm still standing on July 1.

I can't win

Once upon a time there was a little family who lived in a little condo.  One Easter Sunday about 2 years ago,  wife/mother/female adult member of the little family had eaten her weight in chips and dip whilst celebrating the Risen Lord and decided to give Couch to 5K a shot.   She went out and huffed and puffed her way through 30 minutes of 30 second intervals.   She came home and the father/husband/male adult member of the family was all "OMG WHY ARE YOU RUNNING,  I CAN'T RUN, RUNNING IS DUMB".   But she kept at it and soon she was huffing and puffing her way through 60 second intervals.   Then one day about two weeks later she came home from her "run" and saw that her husband was wearing workout gear and he said he was going to try too.   So out he went, and came home 30 minutes later with a purple face and sweaty shirt.

Then two years later that same man has lost about 60 pounds and ran a half marathon.

Meanwhile the woman had another baby so had to gain and lose all the pregnancy weight AGAIN and is basically at the same place where she was two years ago.

NOT THAT I'M REMOTELY BITTER

and the beat keeps running and running...

When it became apparent that my Little Guy was not going back to sleep at 6:15 this morning,  I waged an internal war with myself and ultimately decided to go for a run.  I checked my weather.com app and it was 39* which is less than my 40* cut off for running, but I threw caution to the wind.

When I started up my Nike + app which I use to track my runs it yelled at me and told me I hadn't run in 12 days!  Ooops.   Since it was so early and cold and I hadn't run in almost two weeks I decided to go for a timed run instead of going for a specific distance.  I banged out a 30 minute run but since I run very slowly I only managed to go 2.6 miles.   The mileage isn't impressive, but at least I exercised for 30 minutes today.  I've been on a downward spiral of eating crap and not exercising.   But at least I got up this morning and ran, it's better than nothing.   Now let's see if I also run tomorrow!

In my head, this is what I look like when I run

This is what I actually look like when I run

(to be fair, I had just run 7.1 miles in about 100% humidity)

I think in order to get the reality to look like the imaginary I need to run more than 30 minutes every 12 days!

Running is a sickness.   I'm not particularly good at it (at my best I average an 11 minute mile) and I hate every single step I take while I'm running.   But when I woke up this morning and saw that it was sunny and a lot of the snow has melted all I wanted to do was bang out a 5K.   You know, because running 3.11 miles is so easy....

However, that would have left the children home by themselves and it was cold so I stayed inside.   And my legs are protesting the two consecutive days of running I did on Monday and Tuesday.   But I NEED to run!

Craziness aside,  we reserved a minivan for a trip down to Virginia later this spring.   I am so excited to call a minivan my own for 5 days.   We will be picking up the van before Andrew goes to work the day before we leave which means I get to do drop off and pick at preschool with a minivan!!  HA!  No longer will I be the only sedan in a sea of SUVs and minivans!  Okay, for one day I won't be the only sedan in a sea of SUVs and minivans.   But I will cherish that day. 

Happy August!

I cannot believe it's August 4th already.  It makes me sad how quickly the summer flies by.  I really need to live much further south.   Oh well,  we still have another month of warm weather and beach days ahead!

Speaking of the beach,  Baby Girl started her swimming lessons at the beach last week.  The program is more for kids to get used to swimming in the ocean (no child of mine will be a pansy about the ocean!) and less about training kids to be the next Michael Phelps Ryan Lochte  Missy Franklin (and can we take a minute to reflect on the fact that Missy Franklin hasn't even entered her SENIOR YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL?).   I do like that the lessons are forcing me to go to the beach a few times during the week.   My Little Guy even made his first beach trip at 5 weeks.  His older sister was 11 months before she made it to the beach.   I fear if I have a 3rd child (not.happening.)  the kid will be at the beach the day we are discharged from the hospital! 

I gave up on C25K.   I just got sick of it,  so yesterday I just went for a run. I did 2 miles - which I was proud of until I realized that at this time last year I was doing 7 miles.   I need to keep plugging away at my 2 miles and get back up to a 5K and I'll be happy.  I don't have any races on the horizon so I don't need to worry too much about my mileage right now.   I do want to find some race though - I'd love a 10K sometime in the fall but I can't find one that is convenient and not uber expensive!  


I will be doing a Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving though!  I just need to find one...

2 days down

I went out yesterday and did W1D2.  Hopefully I can bang out W1D3 today and be done with it.  I wish I could magically be where I was last August,  but I know that's not going to happen.   It'd be nice to fit into my pre-pregnancy clothes though.

So.  James Holmes.   He looks like he's on some serious drugs in this video.   Seeing as he has been in jail since Friday,  I'm not sure where he could have gotten those drugs though.   Maybe his head bobs around like that on a normal day...  If I were his lawyer (I assume that's his lawyer sitting next to him?)  I'd be scared to sit right next to him,  just on the creepiness factor alone.  Nevermind that he is a mass murdering psychopath.



creepy.

running man

I started up with C25K today.  Apparently when you take 11 months off from running and have a baby in those 11 months,  you can't pick up where you left off.   So back to Week 1 Day 1 for me.   In the program my app uses (which is basically C25K, but I'm guessing for legal reasons it's slightly different) W1D1 is jog 45 seconds, walk 90 seconds, jog 45 seconds,  walk 60 seconds and repeat 5 times. 

The actual running part wasn't so bad - even I can run for 45 seconds at a time!  But I was having so many other issues,  I just wanted to be done.   I was wearing an old pair of yoga pants, and they were NOT designed for running.   They kept falling down, so I was constantly yanking them back up.   I'll give you a minute for the visual -  a woman who gave birth less than 4 weeks ago, so everything is still slight jiggly and I wasn't in great shape before pregnancy - pulling up her pants every 5th step.  Cute. 

If there are any other nursing Mama's starting to run - let me give you a word of advice.  Double up on the sports bra.  Holy hell was that uncomfortable!

So tomorrow I'm going to fix the pants/bra situation and try again.  I know I'm supposed to go every other day, but I think I can handle running for 45 seconds without a day of rest in between!

Trippin'

Editor's Note: By request, Andrew is guest blogging (again), this time with permission.

It wouldn’t be hyperbole to say that I ran three steps and nearly tripped over my own feet as I realized what I was about to do.  But we’ll get to that.

I never ran, not as a kid (except in short, focused bursts down the 1st base line), or a teen (obviously) or anytime thereafter (I’m trying to ignore the fact that I’m practically middle-aged at this point).  I never thought I could run - more than a few steps - or if being chased by a bear or some other large, blood thirsty mammal, and I really had no desire to.  So I suppose it is slightly surprising that for the second spring in a row, I find myself spending 30 or 40 minutes a night, a few nights a week... running.  For fun.
Meghan started Couch to 5k last year (again - you can read about it here all the way back to 2008) and as usual I took it as my solemn duty to completely ignore the activity (hi: it involves RUNNING) - yet for some reason, at the beginning of May, I decided to “try” it as well - it was actually quite humorous - picture someone who can’t run for more than 10 seconds trying to run for 30... and then repeating that over and over again.  Yeah yeah, the definition of insanity, blah blah blah.  I came home a hot sweaty mess that first night, and I had run for a good... 3 minutes total, I’m pretty sure.
For whatever reason, and I can’t think of a good one after that first night, I stuck with it - I “graduated” from C25K a little early (read: I got sick of intervals) and got myself all the way up to 6 miles - in late June.  I had some fairly hot runs in July... and August... and then I suddenly shut it down in September and that was that.  A fun summer of running (protip: it wasn’t and isn’t fun) turned into the usual fall/winter of sloth.

If you’ve been following along with the regularly scheduled programming (and I’m assuming you didn’t just land here for my musings), you’ll know by know that Meghan is... running-averse... this year.  Which is truly quite a shame, because with a mild winter (yay global warming!) and dry conditions, I was able to start running in... wait for it... February this year.  And of course, having been fat and slothful for 6 months, I started with C25K again.
The intervals were easier - I was able to do the 30 seconds and 45 seconds and 90 seconds (wait a second, that’s over a minute! They tricked me!) and even 3 minutes without much of a problem.  And in fact, I “graduated” much sooner this year - I only did a few weeks of C25K before I felt my legs were ready to go - but not without one last reminder of how I don’t run (or, at least didn’t) - on a cold March Saturday morning I headed out for my first run that commenced my 5 minute intervals.  Up until that point, it had all been smooth sailing, but 5 seemed like a lot (never mind the hour-long runs I went on not 8 months prior) and ask I finished the warm up walk and my app told me to “run”  I took a few steps, thought about having to keep going for 5 whole minutes, and nearly got one leg tangled around the other in panic.  It was fairly entertaining at the time, and apparently it’s stuck with me as it’s one of my enduring memories of C25k 2012.
Apparently coming back for seconds this year has paid off - I’ve managed to beat my personal best time for 1 mile and 5 & 10k and also my overall distance record (up to 8.1 miles) and time (90 minutes).  If anything further of note happens you may happen about it here (my more mundane running updates show up on twitter - @ajg818).  Until then, please don’t hit me with your car (one of my secret fears) or yell out your window at me (surprisingly, I find that annoying).
(The views and opinions of the guest blogger are his own, and do not represent those of this blog, its author, or usually anyone else.  Contact Andrew @ajg818) - xsk2sp

less cranky

well, no, I'm not any less cranky, but I am going to try to come across as being less cranky. It's all about perception!

I may be trying to be less cranky, but I am getting a little scared about the road race. My longest run to date is 4.25 miles. I'm still running between an 11.30 and 12 minute mile so time is of some concern too, but as much as the distance is. I have basically 3 more miles to go before I could even feasibly finish the race. And the begging of this race is extremely hilly. Everyone who has previously run it keeps telling me to practice the hills, they are deadly. I'm trying, but there aren't a lot of hills in my area. So I have anxiety over adding in hills to my workout and getting my workout to at least 6 miles.

In other news, my daughter turns 2 tomorrow. There will be a full post dedicated to that, but for right now, Happy 2nd Birthday Baby Girl!!!!

Baby Girl the day she was born. Isn't her little hospital hat cute? It's covering the unnatural amount of hair she was born with.

Baby Girl at her 1st birthday party, completely disinterested in what is happening around her.

Baby Girl about a month and a half ago, not quite 2. I wish I had a better picture of her close up so you could see her adorable blue eyes and curly hair (born to parents with brown and green eyes and straight hair....). But it's impossible to get a 2 year old to sit still!