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.