Eh

I'm over the romance title titles.

Well, what have I been up to? Runnings lots and eating not lots, pretty much. I weighed in again last week, losing 1.2 lbs. Good times.

The running is going well, my half marathon training. I just love running. Sometimes I get distracted and do other activities, then I go back to running and I'm all like "Why would I stop this?" Here's the thing with running. You either love it or hate it. No one "kind of likes" running.

I love it. It's unexplainable to the haters. Basically with running, you can just completely detach the physical from the mental. A lot of exercise wants to connect the mind and body. Not running. You can completely turn off any sort of body awareness and just let your body go on autopilot and be alone inside your head with your thoughts. It's relaxing and meditative to me.

So anyway, yeah, I'm all excited about running. But my excitement about running has diminished my excitement about yoga. The two interests really don't mesh together well, so I've kind of backed off on the yoga front.

The thing with yoga is that it is amazing for increasing your flexibility. The thing with running is that flexibility is kind of a hindrance. For example, I did a lot of yoga this winter and really felt my knees open up and have a lot more flexibiity. But when I started back up with running, my flexible knees would be too loose sometimes, almost giving out. So with the running, I've increased the strength in my legs (good for running) but with that strength comes a decrease in flexibility (bad for yoga) It's frustrating that they don't work better together but whatever. I'm using yoga poses as a stretching routine after running and that's probably the extent of that for a while.

I'm signed up for the half marathon, a few 5ks and the Bix. I LOVE races. I never once got a trophy for anything in all my childhood, but a few years ago when I started running a lot, I got lots of trophies for placing in my age group. I know they are just chintzy pieces of plastic, but they mean a lot to me. So yeah, I want to add to that collection this year. We'll see. I have a 5k coming up this weekend, so it will be interesting to see my time. My best time ever was 24:23 and I know there is no way I'll be close to that, but I will definitely be competing with myself this year to beat that time.

Okay so there we go!

Butterfly of Birth

Retro blogging! I was reading through my old notebook diaries. This entry cracked me up.The more things change, the more they stay the same!

August 19, 1992

I have gotton no school shopping done. I love school shopping though. New supplies, new clothes...except I don't like my clothes size--size 12. and I weigh 145-150 lbs. The worst thing is I'm only 5'4"!

I do try to excercise a little everyday. Also I'm on a diet. Kind off. I'm afraid I haven't much willpower. Mainly my diet is trying to cut back on fats and meats. The trouble is Pattiey always makes really fatty foods and I can't say no, I'm on a diet because ever since I was a little girl Daddys been telling me to not diet until I REALLY need it. I don't think that he REALLY thinks I'm fat but I do and since he's not me I'm the one who really counts. Tonight we had Polish sausage. I had one sausage, half a glass of whole milk about 6 celery sticks and 2 cucumber slices.

So here I am, with this blog, and all the technology we now have, doing the exact same thing that I was doing 17 years ago...writing about how I want to lose weight. Too funny.

Also kind of sad. Kind of. I know the PC thing to say is that 13 year old girls (and 31 year old women) shouldn't feel the need to dwell on their bodies and obsess about their weights, and we should all be happy and accepting of our bodies Um, yeah, except...no. I'm not buying it. A little bit of body obsession is a good thing. In the times in my life when I haven't made weight loss and health a priority, I blew up like a zeppelin.

Whatever. I just thought this was pretty funny. And I totally love the fact that I weigh 8-13 lbs more than I did at 13 (my being 3 inches taller kind of cancels it out. What is a 1992 size 12 equivalent to in today's sizing? Maybe a 8? 6? Yes, I think I'm safe in saying I'm the same size I was at age 13. That is freaking fantastic. 13 year old Emilene would be very proud of 31 year old Emilene.

The Flame of the Hustler

Do you like that title? I like it a lot. I found a great website of random book title generators. I will be using that from now on for my blog titles.

"The Flame of the Hustler" blog entry starts....now!

Okay so I said I would report my weight watchers weigh ins. Yeah, I totally put that off. Anyway, at my initial weigh in, I was at 164. I followed the Weight Watchers plan all week, all ready to weigh in and bask in the glories of weight loss. But the problem was, I got hungry.

On my weigh in day, I skipped breakfast because I didn't want breakfast weight weighing me down. Then I went to the gym and worked out for an hour to sweat off some water. Then I was totally thirsty but deprived myself water because I didn't want water to weigh me down.

This kind of mentality usually worked okay when my meeting was at 9 am, but I was planning on going to a noon meeting. Oh.My.God. Big time blood sugar issues and deydration going on. I took the kids out to lunch and totally pigged out on Mexican food 30 minutes before weigh in.

So after a bellyful of tortilla chips, taco salad and two big glasses of water, I weighed in and was up .6 lbs.

Totally a fake "weight" gain, but it still thoroughly depressed me.

This is one of the reasons I hate Weight Watchers...it makes me crazy. I act like a 14-year old high school wrestler when it comes to weighing in. It's completely illogical and totally disordered eating, but it is what it is.

The next week, I did the 9 am meeting and didn't pig out beforehand and was down 4 lbs. So that was really 4 lbs in two weeks, because of that messed up second weigh in. I'll take it.

So there we go.

That had nothing to do with flames or hustlers. Shoot. Maybe tomorrow's title generator will give a better result?

Rod Serling, rapper

Okay, now that song is totally the best Michael Jackson song you've never heard. It's from the 2001 Invincible album. It looks like he was going to perform it in his This Is It concerts, because the This Is It documentary shows him dancing to this song for a little bit., and it is fantastic, especially because Rod Serling raps in it (2:16...they mashed together clips of him talking on The Twilight Zone into a rap). You can't get Rod Serling rapping anywhere else, so there you go. It's a fine song.

The reason I'm mentioning it right now is because it is possibly the best song on earth to do squats to. Yesterday, at the gym, I had this song on repeat. I started doing some squats and realized it had possibly the best beat ever for squats. I'm such a girl. It makes me so happy when I can choreograph my strength training to music. I realize I look like a complete dork around these big muscle guys who lift maybe 7 reps of some monster heavy weight, while I'm basically doing a squat dance for 5 minutes, but whatever. This song is perfect for squats. I totlaly went to town on the squats.

Oh.my.God. I have not been this sore in a LOOOOONNNNNGGGGG time. I'm walking around like a little old lady today. I'm not complaining. Delayed onset muscle soreness is seriously one of my favorite feelings in the world. My legs and butt are on fire today. Good times.

It's time like these, when I find a perfect workout song that I wish I was still teaching classes. But anyway, I just wanted to share this great song as a good squat track for anyone looking for a nice sore butt (if you're looking for a squat track, and a sore butt anyway)

13.1

I signed up for a half-marathon.

I'm so not excited about it, but I need a goal to work towards. I had a goal last year of running a half marathon, but then I hurt my foot and slacked off on the running for a while. Also, I notice that when I'm doing a lot of running, my yoga practices sucks a lot, which is kind of annoying.

But screw yoga. I'm willing to be extra sucky in that arena for a while, because I want to earn myself a bumper sticker.

I so want to do a real marathon just so I can get one of the "26.2" braggy bumperstickers. I'm so envious anytime I see a car sporting one of those. So I'm going to do the half-marathon to earn the 13.1 bumper sticker, then cover that up (I hope) with a 26.2 at some point down the line.

I also need to freaking lose some weight, and I'm hoping half-marathon training will help with that. I lost a lot of weight a few years ago, and at my lowest weight, I got down to 149.6, but that weight was after about a day of starving, lots of exercising, and dehydration to "make weight" for Weight Watchers. I went up to about 155 again within a few days. But I'm up to 164 now, damn it, damn it, damn it. I know it's common to gain some weight back (if not all) after a big, fast weight loss, but I was hoping I'd be one of the lucky ones who didn't regain anything. So I'm back on the hardcore Weight Watchers-ing again. I have such a love/hate relationship with Weight Watchers. Ugh. I'm also planning on being accountable on here, so look forward to weekly weight loss (possibly gain) stats. I need public humiliation to lose weight, I really do.

So that's what I'm working on for the next few months. Running lots, and eating not lots. Wish me luck.

My husband is doing the babysitter

Oh my god, no he's not really. We don't even have a babysitter.

Yesterday at about 1 pm, a guy came to to my front door. He was selling coupon books for his kid's school fundraiser. I didn't buy any because there is no way I will buy coupon books from a kid who sends his dad out to do his fundraising. Or a dad who is fine with doing his son's fundraising, either. Geez.

The boys were standing with me when I was talking to him. I told the guy "Oh, I think these guys' school is doing the same thing".

And that was that.

Then about 5 hours later, the same guy came to the door. Kind of creeped me out (I'm jumpy these days due to weirdo problems, including one weirdo who walked into my house unannounced and had no explanation for why she came in my house. Weird)

Anyway, this guy said to me "Hey again. Are the parents home now?" I said "What parents?" He said "The people you're babysititng for. Do they want to buy a coupon book? Can you ask them?"

Now THAT's a compliment. Nothing makes me happier than having people think I am just way too young to possibly have three kids. I love it. I'm not even that young of a mom, really, because in evolutionary history, a woman having her first child at 25 is actually a pretty late bloomer.

I explained that I was the parent and no, I didn't to buy anything. Then I romped into the kitchen to brag to Mario about the guy's confusion over my age. Mario thought it was pretty funny. I told him "Wow, Mario! You are the creepy dad who's doing the babysitter!"

Funny, eh? Not so much when immediately I hear Heath repeating me. "Daddy's doing the babysitter!" If Heath hears an expression that is new an interesting, he likes using it. I was laughing so hard, but I told him to stop. Fortunately he has no idea what "doing the babysitter" means, I need to censor what I say more (I say "more" because I already had censored my sentence. At least he was only saying "doing".)

I'm very afraid Heath is going to tell some random person "Daddy's doing the babysitter!" That should definitely make for some awkwardness.

"Death is just nature's way of telling you to slow down."

So we had an incident today.

The kids and I were innocently hanging out in the living room. All of a sudden, I heard the sound of a ball being thrown into the window. That is a sound that makes total sense in my house, so immediately I reacted with mom-rage with "Who is throwing balls? Who hit that window!"

Quinn said "That bird hit it!" said "What bird?" and went to look out the window. Quinn goes "That bird being dead there."

Poor birdie. There was indeed a little bird corpse on the ground in front of our window. I don't know what compelled him to try and fly through our window. Carelessness? Suicide? Flying while under the influence?

It was my favorite kind of bird too, a cardinal (wait, no, my favorite is a bald eagle. A bald eagle did not commit suicide in my picture window) What a way to end your life Full speed into my picture window and there you go. The end. So depressing!

We watched him for a little bit, to make sure he wasn't just stunned and passed out. I used the opportunity to give the kids a good lecture about how that bird should have been more careful, and that he should have been looking where he was going. I did make sure to throw in a cautionary tale about how people/birds who aren't careful might break their necks (wonder where I got that from?)

He did not awaken from his accident.

So I went to scoop him up a shovel and toss him in the ravine. Poor guy. But the whole time I had him on my shovel, I was very terrified that he was actually just knocked out or possibly was just fucking with me and planned to jump up and peck my eyes out. He didn't.

He had a burial at sea, in that he landed in the creek behind my house. Poor guy.

Anyway, you're probably like "Who cares? Dead bird. Ooh, exciting" Yeah, I'd probably see it that way except with kids, you see things through kids' eyes. The theme of the day today in terms of questions from the kids has definitely been death. They've been so sad all day for this poor bird. They kept bringing it up all day and talking about "Is the bird a Mommy? Where are her babies?" and "Do wolves like to eat dead birds?" and "Can we put him in the graveyard?" It was a kind of traumatic day for the guys.

Sweet, sweet revenge

I have discovered a wonderful perk of my taking up piano.

For the first time in the histories of my children's lives, I'm the one annoying them with loud noises while they are trying to watch TV.

I used to be a hardcore TV addict. Now I barely watch an hour a week, for the sole reason that the kids are just too freaking loud that I can't hear anything and/or pay attention without being distracted.

But sweet, sweet revenge...my piano is in the den, which also happens to be the kids' tv room. They have their easy to work tv and dvd player and movies so it's a nice little setup for them. Until I got the piano.

When I practice, I hear little squeals of "Hey, I can't hear my show! Can you be quiet! Can you stop that! I'm trying to watch TV." And this, my friends, only makes me hit the keys harder. I might be a little bit evil, but it's funny.

Anyway, they could find something else to do besides watch TV, so I don't really feel bad for them. (Hold on, wait...I just want to say I'm not one of those annoying "I don't let my kids watch TV" parents. Not.at.all. I have no problem with TV, generally speaking. I watched a ton of TV growing up and I turned out this side of awesome (and modest too, huh?). Mario is the same way. And of my kids, the one who wants to watch the most TV, and would watch it all day long if I'd let him is also the one that has pretty much taught himself how to read at 3, so whatever.) I really don't feel bad for ruining their tv viewing. They can occupy themselves otherwise.

(Hey, maybe that was their plan all along with me? Babies and toddlers are so loud because they want to change their parents' time-wasting TV habits? Maybe?)

Anyway, I realize the joy I get from ruining their TV watching is slightly diabolical, but what goes around comes around, eh?

Weirdo magnet

I'm having some issues with weirdos lately. I can't really get into the particulars, but I keep finding myself in uncomfortable situations with creepy old men.

Another creepiness happened today with a new creepy old man. Again, not going to get into the details of the situation, but I would just like to put a public service announcement out there:

Attention creepy old men of the world:
The fact that a happily married mother of three---who also happens to be 30 years your junior----does not respond to your romantic advances does not make her a bitch.
The End.

Icemen

I'm totally impressed by my son Dax and wanted to share.

We were driving in the car today and I was listening to John Legend's "Slow Dance"


The very first part of the song is a little guitar solo. Dax said "That's Jimi Hendrix!" He loves himself some Jimi. I'm not so much a fan, but he is crazy about the guy. Dax is my little tripping-out hippie, I swear.

Anyway, I said "No, it's not Jimi Hendrix. It's John Legend" and he just kind of sat back unconvinced.

Anyway, tonight---completely unrelated to Dax's thinking Jimi was playing guitar with John Legend on vocals---I googled "Slow Dance" because it has a very similar backing track to Amy Winehouse's "He Can Only Hold Her" I wanted to compare.



I was curious about who ripped who off (or is it "whom off"? Whatever. Who cares? Or "whom" cares?)So in my research, I found that both songs were a rip off of a 1960s obscure tune by a group called the Icemen

And who was the lead guitarist of the Icemen? Jimi Hendrix.



How impressive is it that a 5-year old can pick out a Jimi Hendrix guitar lick out of a completely unrelated song? Very. Dax is the man. Maybe he is Jimi Hendrix reincarnated.

Edit: okay, I wasn't going to say anything out of propriety, but I can't resist. When I was searching youtube for John Legend "Slow Dance", I had a very interesting result. I won't post it here, but you can go look for yourself.

You're so money, baby, and you don't even know it!

I haven't taken a shower in a few days. I've just been sitting around the house in my pajamas, so what's the point, eh? Maybe I should though. My son Quinn was sitting next to me and told me "You smell bad. You smell like money."

I'm not sure if he meant paper money, or coinage. Either way, it's probably not good.

Edit: so it's about 6 hours later. I still smell like money. On top of my already stankosity, I went running so now I smell like smelly money and sweat. I really don't have any plans to change that anytime soon either. I'll shower sometimes between now and yoga class tomorrow morning. Probably.

Boogie On Reggae Woman

I just bought a (used) piano. I never knew how to play the piano, but I'm taking lessons. I've always wanted to know how to play, and I want the kids to learn, so I went ahead and got one and have been having a lot of fun messing around with it.

This song is totally my goal song. I want to freaking learn how to play this song. Mozart, Bach and Beethoven can shove it. I really don't like songs that don't have lyrics. Maybe if Mozart wrote songs with lyrics like "I want to do it to you, til you holler for more" I'd be more into him. He didn't (that I know of, anyway!) so I'm not. I don't like classical music. At.All. I realize this makes me very musically ignorant and all that blah blah blah. I'm not fancy. I don't want to play fancy music. I want to play 70s funk music on my piano. ESPECIALLY this song.

Stevie Wonder rocks my world.

Why?

This is the kind of thing I would usually post on Facebook, but I've banned myself so I'll post it here.

I went to google to search "Why learn piano scales" (I'm learning piano and I have no idea what the point of scales are. I'm musically ignorant)

Google likes to guess what you're going to ask before you ask it. As soon as I typed "Why", google tried to fill in the rest of the sentence with "do men have nipples?"

Google, way off there. Why don't you just let a girl finish her sentence? I feel like google is trying to make fun of me.

The next suggestions to my "why" question were:
1. ..."is the sky blue?"
2. ..."is my poop green?"
3...."are black people so loud?"
4...."did I get married too?"
5..."can't I own a Canadian?"
6...."do dogs eat poop?"

Google is weird.

I've been traumatized by the picture on my driver's license

You are looking at the worst picture of me that's ever been taken, ever. And I have been forced by the state of Illinois to carry it around with me for the last four years.

I'm not lying here...there have been times when I've shown my ID to store clerks/bouncers what have you and they have physically recoiled. This picture is scary. I've gotten a lot of "Wow, you lost a lot of weight! This doesn't look like you at all." Which should be nice, because I did lose a lot of weight. This picture was pretty much taken at my biggest non-pregnant state. I don't look like that, but their disgust is a little embarassing because for quite a while I did go around looking like that. So they're insulting me,just like 4 years later.

To my credit, my skin tone was not actually the shade of ripe banana in real life. That's totally the DMVs fault.

The hair is all weird because I totally didn't think I'd have to take a new picture that day. I just wanted to change my address. My hair was all crazy and sweaty and I thought---foolishly---that pulling it back in the front would be a better look. I thought wrong. I'm smiling way too much because while they were taking the picture, a little 2-year old Dax was running off wildly in the opposite direction. That clenched teeth smile is saying "Please take this picture so I can go chase down my child before he is abducted by a kidnapper."

But finally, after 4 years, I'm done with it. I renewed yesterday, and I no longer have to carry that around anymore. My new picture isn't great, but at least my hair looks good, my skin is a human flesh-tone, and I'm not obese. That's enough for me. I do look super stoned, and very irritated---it kind of reminds me of a 1950s prostitute's mugshot--- but I'll take that over fat oompa loompa.

Edit: so my husband saw that I put my picture up on my laptop while I was working on it. He asked me why I had it on there. I said "Because it's funny how horrible it is?" He got mad at me and was all like "You were beautiful there. I don't like you making fun of how you used to look. That's insulting". That's very sweet of him, but I asked him if he liked me being all yellow with sweat head and he admitted I did not actually look like that all the time, and that it wasn't a good picture, but I was still very pretty to him when I was bigger. He's an awesome guy, that guy of mine.

Edit #2: As requested, the new and improved picture. It's not good either. But an improvement, so I'm not complaining. I look a bit soul-less, but at least my hair looks good.

Up-side down. Boy, you got me feeling in-side out. Round..and...round

I like to do headstands. And every time---I mean EVERY---time I do a headstand, this song runs through my head. It's totally not related to yoga or headstands at all. It's mostly about how Diana Ross totally likes the way her man (Berry Gordy? Gene Simmons? Michael Jackson?) gives her some good lovin' and makes her feel all kinds of sideways. She's not really talking about inversions. But still, sexual themes notwithstanding, it's a good headstand theme song. Up-side down. Boy, you got me feeling in-side out. And round...and...round.

By request, I'm going to chat a bit about my quest to do a perfect headstand

I never, ever, ever stood on my head until I was 30 years old. My mother taught me to be weary of breaking my neck and therefore paralyzing myself, so I avoided anything that my cause quadripeligia (that's can't be a real word, can it?) "Do you want to break your neck?" I heard that any time some roughhousing/gymnasticsy stuff was going on. No, I do not want to break my neck.

But now I guess I don't care about being paralyzed. I've been making up for lost time. I love me some upside-down.

When I first starting get deeper into yoga than the occasional Rodney Yee dvd, I was going to a very basic class at a gym. There was no sort of upside-downedness in this class. But I started reading more and saw lots of upsidedownedness in books so I decided to give it a shot. I taught myself how to do a headstand by a wall by kicking my legs up violently. It worked. I got up there and I was pleased with myself.

This is one of my first successful attempts, I think:

http://i.imgur.com/NJCOS.jpg

I was just so proud of myself that I could do it that I had to capture the moment. Capturing the moment was kind of difficult though because my husband refused to take the picture because he hates all things yoga-ey (I know, probably grounds for divorce) and didn't want any part of it. So I had to set the self timer on the camera, run over to the headstand spot, kick up, then get my balance all in 10 seconds. So anyway, for the last year, I've pretty much been doing all of my headstands in that manner...rushing to get up there as fast as I possibly could, then trying not to fall over.

But I got a lot of lectures about my frantic headstand style, lectures that were reminiscent of my mom saying "Do you want to break your neck!'. So I've been working on doing it the "right" way.There's no kicking up fast as you can the proper way. It's all careful and safe and crap like that, and it all comes from ab strength..

This is where I definitely notice that I've had three kids, including a set of twins that weighed almost 15 lbs of baby at the time of delivery.. My abs are pretty much shot. I'm not even talking about the flabby skin over it that I can do NOTHING about (believe me, I've tried.) I'm talking about the abdominal muscles underneath. The way it was explained to me by a plastic surgeon was that the abdominal muscles are like a rubber band. If you take a rubber band and stretch it all the way out (like, say, put a 6.5 lb and 8 lb baby in it at the same time), even after you stop stretching it, it will retract some, but it's never going to go back to the original strength and tautness that the rubber band/belly was at before the stretching out. (A plastic surgeon told me this when I got a consult about a tummy tuck. You can judge me. I'm okay with that. I have no problem with cosmetic surgery. I've had a nose job. I like Michael Jackson. The only reason I didn't get a tummy tuck is because it's freaking expensive.)

So anyway, my overstretched rubber band abs aren't really doing the job they are supposed to do in doing a proper headstand. So I'm working on it. Every freaking day I try to do a headstand the real way and it's getting a little better.

The deal I made with myself was that when I could do a real headstand, I could treat myself to the most gluttonous meal available in the Quad Cities, the Ross' Magic Mountain. I've never had one because they are definitely a heart attack on a plate, but they do look delicious. A giant plate of fries with cheese and meat and onions. Drool...(then die of a heart attack)

I think I might have earned my Magic Mountain.

One night I was kind of drunk and I decided to work on my headstands. Because I was kind of drunk, I didn't think to myself "Wow, you're drunk! You shouldn't be doing headstands! Do you want to break your neck?" So I did a headstand and it. was. perfect. I have yet to recreate it in a sober state, but hey, I did it once, so it counts (or maybe I was just so drunk that I imagined I did it? That's an option too)

So anyway, that's what I'm working on these days. I should probably get drunk again so I can try to notice how I do headstands differently (and better) while intoxicated.

Uh, I'm very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say.

The title is a fantastic quote from Annie Hall, and if you already knew that before I told you, then you are also fantastic.

That title pretty much sums up how I'm feeling today.

I have absolutely nothing interesting to relate to anyone about anything. How awful is that? The highlight of my day today was that I saw a guy running today in a tank top and shorts and it made me laugh. I'm excited about spring coming and running outside again, but not excited enough to run in shorts and a tank top in 34 degrees.

Seriously, that's the most notable thing that happened today. I'll try to have a more interesting day tomorrow, so I have something to share. I do plan on renewing my driver's license...Good times! Stay tuned for that!

What's the opposite of "bear"?

My husband likes to try and teach our kids things. One method he uses is the "Bribe with candy until you spit out the answer I'm looking for" method. He'll have a bag of jelly beans or something and ask the kids random questions to get them using their little brains a little.

Anyway, the kids like this game and the best thing is sometimes they quiz each other. The questions they ask each other are pretty hilarious, and 99% of the time, they don't know the answer themselves.

Today, the best question asked was "What's the opposite of bear?" Now that's an excellent question. What IS the opposite of bear? That's deep, man...

Anyway, in case you don't know the answer, the answer is apparently "Polar bear."

I've given up Facebook for lent

So I'll be doing this more often. I like the fact that with a blog, you can post something and if no one responds to it, you can assume that no one actually read it. The thing I'm HATING about facebook is if you post something, and no one responds, you have the displeasure of knowing that people actually did read it and dismissed it as not worthy of commenting upon. Then you just feel like a real goober nerd with a messed up sense of humor. Or maybe that's just me. whatever. I'm needy when it comes to positive affirmation. It's how I roll.

I don't like feeling like I'm talking to myself on Facebook. I'm okay with it over here.