hey. whoa. where'd i go?

Hey, guys! It's been a while.

I've been keeping myself busy so as to not dwell on the limited exercise of interest thing (this eliminates swimming from the discussion, so don't suggest it...got it?).

I know you all are curious about how the injection is playing out and probably all the awesome things I've been up to since I clearly have NOT been blogging.

Bullets...here you go:

• PRP Injection? Two thumbs way UP. For two days after, I babied the heck out of my hip, then I started bearing more weight and being more active. A bit of pain...it comes and goes when I walk, especially when I have to carry a child. But the most amazing thing to ME is this:
• I saw Life of Pi in 3D. Triple snap in Z formation. Go see it. About two-thirds of the way through the movie I started crying for a reason completely unrelated to the movie (which did make me cry in its own right). I was crying because I realized that for the first time in ten years, I was not uncomfortable AT ALL while watching a movie. TEN YEARS, people, of pain in movies. It was a mind-blowing experience to NOT have that. I'm calling Injection #1 a success. I get #2 in three weeks. I can't wait :)
• A couple of weeks ago I offered to help someone out. I don't know her that well, but our daughters are best friends. I'm watching her daughter before school for 90 minutes for the next three weeks. The child is super polite and sweet and EASY. And makes our mornings easy...which is hard. She came over every morning this week. Today the mom paid me! Whoa. I wasn't expecting that! Woo hooo! Now I have money to:
• Mail out the Jingle Bell Hell prizes! I had NO IDEA how expensive shipping had gotten :( But they ARE coming, people. Hope to get them out by the end of next week. So Christmas in March not February ;-) I may need to go buy Jennifer some more powdered donuts, though. Not sure how rich in preservatives these guys are!
• We enjoyed a lovely day and went on a lovely walk...

Except for this one. She ran...

...and kept running...

...until she found this tree, upon which she stopped and pointed

and loudly proclaimed,

MOM!!! THIS TREE HAS A PENIS!

I do believe that the entire horde of tourists visiting Muir Woods on that beautiful Sunday morning then noticed that, indeed, the tree had a penis. 

She looked up and saw this...

and delightedly shrieked,

(I say 'delighted' because she's my child)

These trees are SO BIG! They're THIS BIG!

and she jumped to show me how big.

That's why the picture is blurry.

This one got mad.

I don't remember why, 

but I remember that he worked it for a good, long time.

Then we let him take our picture.

He was so excited that he tried to grab his own face.

It was beautiful.

And kind of loud because we were there.

• We followed up with lunch at In N Out, which I think was the kids' favorite part of the experience. Even though I made them all share a shake. 

Hope all of you out there have a lovely weekend!

Anyone doing something fun?

– we have soccer and birthday parties and piano tests and housework to look forward to :)

Just so this blog doesn't get SUPER boring and stagnant...

...here's a post...

It will lack cohesion. It will ramble. It might be boring...but it WON'T be stagnant.

Let's tackle the fitness end of things first...

Tonight I ran for the THIRD time this week. Watch the f*ck out. Getting serious, y'all. After my two pain-free runs on my flat, chill loopty-loops, both being 2.25 miles in length, I decided to challenge myself tonight...yep...Moeser...

This is how she looked tonight from the top at around ten minutes after 6.

I started OCD-style at the very bottom...right next to the Golden Gate Adult Superstore ('couples encouraged!'). Ugh. Why did I include that link? Now I will get alllllll sorts of interesting google searches in my analytics :P And I RAN all the way up that puppy. ALL. THE. WAY. UP. And in keeping with the OCD-ness of the workout, instead of stopping at the usual OCD turnaround telephone pole, I continued running until my Garmin showed me "1.5" so that I could ultimately claim a 'long' run of 3.0 miles even.

I felt GREAT. I didn't even want to stop at all. I even ran (sort of) down the hill, too. This proved to be fairly disastrous. No, it didn't hurt my hip...I went super slowly and carefully, with awesome form and a quick, light step. It was more the fact that by the time I got back to my car at the bottom of the hill, my had-4-kids-at-an-advanced-maternal-age bladder control had demonstrated how it is less than stellar. Yes, like a good blogger I took pictures of the enormous mess that was my shorts...I even texted it to a good friend. But given that she hasn't responded to that text, I'm thinking that pissed-in-pants pictures cross the line of not only good taste but perhaps friendship as well. So you are spared.

To keep the AwesomeBall rolling, I jumped into the car, changed my shorts and drove to the gym where I planned to spin out a quick turnover 30 minutes on the elliptical (a somewhat delusional prep plan for the downhill portions of my relay legs). Somehow that easy spin-out contained a new elliptical 5K PR (super meaningful...I know) without me even trying. 19:49 for a 5K...man, still wishing that this machine translated directly into road speed. *sigh*

Throw in a little climbing that is amazingly helping my core and overall strength ... dudes, I even have biceps now... and that was the fitness week that was. It was an easy week. Remember...life is kicking my a** right now and we're taking whatever we can get :)

Now on to kid stuff...

Lots going on.

Friday, no one had camp. We needed to do something fun to keep our minds off the fact that a DVD was jammed in the car's DVD player and was going to probably cost an absurd amount of money to extricate and repair. We started off with pancakes. My kids have pancakes a LOT. They are the norm here. So to make them seem more special, I made Mickey Mouse-head pancakes...

Yes, served up on a Jimmy Neutron plate. 

We then headed across the bay to Sausalito and the Bay Area Discovery Museum...located at the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge in Fort Baker. It was foggy but not cold...

My charming sons attempted to steal the donation money...

...unsuccessfully.

And then we proceeded to this summer's main attraction...Clifford the BIG Red Dog...

He is ... BIG. And red.

Miss C really dug this set up.

While she tried to bring some order to the chaos of a children's museum by stacking the bones...

 I mused at how progressive things are on Birdwell Island...

And then she had to pee. But being 3 years old means that when you have to pee you don't have to pee. Instead, you just hop from one foot to the other, rub your knees together, remain in frenetic motion... God forbid I should scoop her up and simply carry her off to the bathroom...her screeching would summon protective services :(

Almost immediately after this picture of her trying desperately to not pee in her pants was taken, 

she begrudgingly agreed that a visit to the bathroom was a good idea. 

Whew.

After playing on the outside exhibits for a little bit,

she spaced out.

This usually signals a meltdown is imminent and so we headed out...

and had lunch at In 'N' Out...much to everyone's delight!

Big G needed me to photo this very unusual french fry.

I said it looked like a fishbone. He said no.

Whatever...

On Saturday, we picked up the car. The DVD had been extricated, but there are no guarantees that it won't happen again...although the mechanic did observe the unit functioning properly several times post-extrication. If the unit is a goner, they tell me it'll be a grand. Which is not so grand.

And then my son became a cyborg...

Legos taped to the head = cyborg

Did you ever tape stuff to your head when you were a kid?

And no, he wasn't a mean or destructive cyborg. The little gizmo wouldn't stay taped to his head long enough to do any damage to anything but his own hair.

Hope everyone had an equally entertaining weekend! Now it's on to Monday!!!! Yay!!!!

When bad naps happen to good people...

I am not a napper.

Sleeping when it's light out and there are things do, places to go, people to see just goes against my grain. Sure, I may loll about doing nothing, going nowhere, seeing no one during my day, but I would rather be awake just in case.

Today I napped.

What a disaster.

My husband is out of town through the weekend. Yes, that guy does go away a lot. And little Miss C is in preschool today while all the older kids are in regular school. My plan was to use this opportunity to run during the day.... oooooo.... and on terrain that is similar to my upcoming race in Long Beach, California. I was to run for around an hour on a flat, straight road.

This morning, I got home from school drop-offs after performing lice duty and busied myself with busywork of no real consequence. Then I decided to get ready to run. It was a little before noon.

I saw this...

I thought..."hmmmm... I should change the sheets and make the bed." So of course I lay down on top of the comforters and pillows... I don't know... so I could see if they were really dirty? 

I closed my eyes and thought... "hmmmmm... this is nice..." I glanced at one of the two clocks and told myself, "Just 5 minutes."

Fifteen minutes later, at 12:10, I looked at the clock again and said to myself, "Ooooo... I should probably get going if I'm going to fit in a run and lunch and a shower before I go get those kids." And I relaxed back into the pile of softness... that wasn't too smelly.

At five minutes before 1 o'clock, I looked at the clock again. "Wow," I thought. "I really should get going!" 

I rolled over. And next thing I knew...

Ummmm... yeah!

And they both said 2:20... so I know it wasn't some weird time warp deal.

My whole day, spent lying on top of a wad of comforters and pillows. I do not feel relaxed and/or rested. I didn't do my run. I need to race off to pick up my kids to take them to soccer and swimming and listen to the oldest one complain about how he has to be dragged around to all of this when he really has wayyyyyyyyy more important things to do. 

Awesome.

I hate naps.

*******************

And hey, if you want to check out what kind of food I eat, go see Jason at Cook Train Eat Race. I am probably the only athlete to admit dining at In N Out Burger :P