What if

Sometimes I get discouraged.

Sometimes I look at myself and think that I’ll never have a “good” body (whatever that is, which is a whole other post). I’ve had a baby. I have stretch marks. My boobs got a one-way ticket away from Perkyville years ago.

Sometimes, when I’m swimming or running, I think that I’ll never be as fast as I once was.

Sometimes it feels pointless because I feel so stuck inside the current skin I’m in and it is hard to see s future where I’m not like this.

But then I read this blog or this one or this one  and I see how these women, all mothers, all athletes, are all training and are seriously pursuing PRs and athletic goals and I start get a radical notion. What if I won’t ever be as fast or as fit as I once was? What if I was faster and fitter? What if I was in better shape at 35 than 25?

I would say I was at my fittest in high school when I was swimming twice a day and doing weights in PE. Realistically, I’ll probably never again have 5-6 hours to devote to training on daily basis so I can’t compete in terms of volume. But, when I was in high school I had terrible eating habits (loads of junk food, lots of processed stuff, tons of soda, hardly any fruits or veggies) and I did almost no cross training. I could swim for hours but couldn’t run 2 miles. I don’t know if I could ever beat my swim times from then, but what if I could be more fit overall?

If I really believe that this is possible, what would I give up to get there? The peanut butter m&m’s in my desk drawer? The late night ice cream snack? The hours sitting on the couch that could be spent on my bike or in the pool?

If I really believe that it is possible, would I try?

Hell yes.

Suckers

A fact about me: I am the world’s most attractive person.

If by “the world” you mean the mosquito population of where ever I happen to be living at the time.

I once did a study abroad trip in Ghana. There was a risk of malaria, so we all took anti-malarial meds and used repellant judiciously. Soon, however, it became apparent that, as my professor said, the best way to avoid getting bitten was to stand next to me.

Mosquitos love me. Which is how I ended up with this (along with many others) after a trip to the pool on Sunday:

So sexy it hurts

Yes, that vaguely goiterish thing on my forehead is a mosquito bite. Please disregard the red face/wet hair/generally disheveled look and focus on the bad boy. Awesome, yes?

So you would think that tonight before I set out on what ended up being an hour and a half walk at dusk I’d be smart enough to spray on some bug spray to prevent such an occurance.

You’d be wrong.

On the plus side I was walking with a friend, E, who is fabulous and quickly becoming one of my favorite people and she was both an excellent distraction on the walk and supplied me with some good anti-itch stuff so I’m not in quite the agony I could be at the moment.

I’m still in a little agony, which probably serves me right.

A note to myself: Be ye not so stupid next time.

Best search ever

Dear reader who found my blog by searching “Are boobies considered an inanimate object?”,

Welcome!

I don’t know the answer to your question and am trying really, really hard not to think of the context for it.

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To the many, many people who find this blog by searching for “deer mice”,

Yeah, I’m not sure why my blog shows up near the top of the Google searches for that. Thankfully I haven’t had to talk about mice in months. My best tip to solve your mouse problem? Move.

It totally worked for us.

Update on the pre-birthday challenge

1. Walk/run 31 miles (Starting from June 8th) 

5 miles (this will be going up as the I start gearing up for the tri in the fall)

2. Bike 31 miles

8 miles

3. Swim 31 miles (this is a biggie) or about 50,000 meters.

5 miles (8000 meters) so far. I need to swim at least every other day if I am going to make this one.

4. Have 31 days without Diet Coke. Doesn’t have to be in a row.

4 days. This and the writing one are turning out to be the most challenging. The Diet Coke thing is so just about habit.

5. Watch 31 less minutes of TV a night. The easy way to do this: no TV after 9:30pm

On track with this one. Some nights I’ve been up after 9:30pm but those are usually the nights I put the kid to bed (Mr. Monkey and switch back and forth on this) so I still end up watching less.

6. Read 31 minutes a day

Yes, for sure. Everyday so far.

7. Spend 31 minutes a day less on-line

Yes. Have been being better about the surfing the internet while watching TV time suck at nights.

8. Add $31 extra to savings each week

Yes, but it isn’t going to stick. We had to replace a car windshield and we are about to purchase two plane tickets from Arizona so my step-sons can come visit, so we’ll have to hit savings some to take care of those.

9. Spend 31 hours on writing not related to work or blog

1.5 hours. Yikes.

10. 31 days with no fast food (fast food is anything with a drive-through)

10 days, in progress on #11.

$54.26

I’m officially signed-up for another race! After being shut out of the open water swim I really wanted to do, I’ve decided to take no chances and sign-up for this race in September. It is another sprint tri and the race description has the beautiful, beautiful word “flat” mentioned in both the bike and run sections. I love flat.

My goal will be to beat my time from the tri last September, which should be totally doable if this course really is flat.

Scenes from the monkey house (toddler edition)

Ah, two. My child is two. People joke a lot about the “terrible twos” but I have to say I am loving two so far. Sure there are moments like these, where my son has:

- Gotten out of bed to  throw 20 perfectly good, unused diapers into his Diaper Genie. He was supposed to be sleeping, clearly he wasn’t so interested in that plan.

- Woken me up at 6am with pitiful, mournful cries of “Mama! Dada!! Mama! Peeese! Mama!”. I hustle down stairs, intent on reuniting with my obviously sad and despondent child, a child who clearly needs and wants his mama. I open his bedroom door and he pushes past me (no kiss, no hug, no backward glance) declaring “I see digga Mama? I see digga?” as he marches to the windows to stare at the construction equipment on the street below. This equipment may be replacing balls as his reason for living.

- Hit me on the leg with his copy of the book “Hand Are Not For Hitting” when I did something that frustrated him. What it was I don’t recall (perhaps something unthinkably cruel like trying to change his diaper). He got sent to time out and I considered writing a sequel to “Hands Are Not For Hitting” called “Books About Not Hitting Are Also Not For Hitting: The Bobo Monkey Story”.

But there are also moments like these:

- He asks to take a bath and then during the bath leaned over and began to quite expertly blow bubbles and put his face underwater. Afterwards he would sit up proudly, water streaming down his face, and exclaim “I did it!”. And then I would die from the pride.

- He lays his head on my leg and softly, softly sang the ABC song with me at bedtime, clapping at the end and then sighing a happy sigh he whispers “did it mama, did it. Again?”

- Gave me a loud smacking kiss when I dropped him off at daycare and then said “Bye bye! Juve you Mama. ” (that’s obviously “love you”, in case you don’t speak toddler).

He is exhausting and hilarious and opinionated and wonderful and frustrating and delicious and delightful. I am so lucky.

Computer of Lies

Earlier this month, in a burst of cycling related enthusiasm, I both learned how to change a tube and purchased some essential pieces of equipment: a decent pump, some tube changing tools, an extra tube or two and a bike computer. Now, I should say that I did not buy a top of the line computer. I bought a basic wireless one, just something to track distance, average mph and time (it does a few other things, but I don’t care about those things, so I ignore them). My dear husband installed it for me as I get easily frustrated with directions, especially directions that are more pictures than words (I am the same with maps. Don’t show me a map, please, just write out the directions and I am much more likely to get there).

Dear husband installed the computer and I did my best to follow the directions about how to program it. I programmed it and then turned it off and then haven’t touched it in several weeks as it has been far to rainy to ride.

Seriously, with the rain. After an long winter with epic amounts of snowfall we are now having the fifth wettest June in history. We’ve had four days so far this month without rain. Four! It is a miracle this whole city isn’t covered in mold.

So, today was one of those four days so I finally took my bike out. I rolled it out of my office and headed to the trail. The trail is marked with miles so I figured I could check to make sure the computer was programmed correctly.

I headed out the parking lot, quickly covering the .5 miles to the trail. The trail is blissfully flat and, when not covered in debris from rain, nice and smooth. I pedaled and pedaled and pretty quickly arrived at the one mile marker. I looked down. According to the computer I was going 44 miles per hour.

Let me just say that I had no idea a whole winter of ignoring the bike would make me so fast!

I noted the computer also said I had covered 3.5 miles so far, which is not so accurate. I kept riding, soon coming to mile 2. I checked the computer. I had now covered, according to the computer of lies, 5.9 miles.

I rode for about 40 minutes. According to the computer I covered 28 miles and had an average speed of well over 21 mph. Zippy!

So, yeah. Probably not programmed correctly. I still have the directions but am seriously lacking confidence in my ability to program the damn thing. It is times like this that I especially wish my older brother lived near me. He used to work in a bike shop and rode competitively. I want him to take me out and teach me how to change tires and chains and how and when to shift and how to program this damn computer. But, as he stubbornly insists on living far away from me, I am going to have to learn to do this stuff on my own.

Though, he did drop me on my head once when I was a baby. Maybe the guilt of that will convince him that a trip to Iowa is required at some point?

Linky linky

This is how I feel sometimes when it comes to keeping all the aspects of my adult life running smoothly: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html 

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The comments on this post are so mind-boggling to me. I am fascinated by these stories of rudeness. http://www.jonniker.com/2010/06/21/headlights-look-like-diamonds/ 

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I kind of want a panda dog (so cute!) (but, can all the dye be good for the dogs?) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1284646/Meet-Tiger-Dog-Chinese-owners-dye-pets-look-like-wild-animals.html

Awesome or sad?

I did my longest swim of the year (so far) today. Awesome.

It was 1600 long course meters, which is about 1/4 of what my average workouts were in high school and college. Sad.

It occurred to me during the swim that I’ve done more swimming in the past two weeks than I had all year prior to June 8th. Awesome or sad? Not sure.

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We took the kiddo swimming today and he had a great time and is now passed out cold in bed. If you’ve been following my Twitter stream, you’ll note that I have done quite a bit of bitching about the excessive getting out of bed shenanigans my sweet boy has been engaged in since he learned to jump out of his crib and got moved to a big boy bed. He got out of bed twice tonight before the sun and swim induced tired knocked him out. That, my friends, is officially awesome. I’d rather, of course, he not get out of bed at all, but twice isn’t too bad.

How am I doing?

Are you just dying to know how my pre-birthday goals are going? I’m sure you are. Well, die no longer…here is an update:

1. Walk/run 31 miles (Starting from June 8th) 

 2 miles so far

2. Bike 31 miles

0 miles so far. Hopefully I’ll get some in today. We’ve had so much wet weather lately that it has been hard to match my schedule with the available non rainy time.

3. Swim 31 miles (this is a biggie) or about 50,000 meters.

4 miles (6400 meters) so far

4. Have 31 days without Diet Coke. Doesn’t have to be in a row.

3 days. Am on the path to 4 if I can make it through the afternoon slump without a trip to the vending maching.

5. Watch 31 less minutes of TV a night. The easy way to do this: no TV after 9:30pm

On track, mostly. I’ve been making an effort to get to bed earlier and to read more than TV watch.

6. Read 31 minutes a day

Yes, for sure. Everyday so far.

7. Spend 31 minutes a day less on-line

Yes. Have been being better about the surfing the internet while watching TV time suck at nights.

8. Add $31 extra to savings each week

Yep. I had a big car expense this month that we might have to dip into savings to pay off, but I’m hoping not to have to do that.

9. Spend 31 hours on writing not related to work or blog

Yikes. This category is not good. I think I have 35 minutes so far.

10. 31 days with no fast food (fast food is anything with a drive-through)

6 days, in progress on day 7 today.

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Overall, feeling good about this. Need to get the writing thing going a bit more and need to keep swimming whenever the sun/my work schedule will let me.