My Week

The Race:

I ran in a 10 mile race yesterday. I wasn't blazing fast, but I finished still feeling good. That's all I was going for. I picked a nice comfortable pace, and just kept pegging away. I averaged 9.38 minute miles, or 6.4 mph. This is 2 minutes slower than the only other time I did that race. That was 2 years ago, 9 months after Justice. Last time, I had 4 more months of recovery under my belt, but I was still very new to running long distances, plus I was sickish that day. I felt 100 times better at the finish yesterday than I did 2 years ago. No ice bath, and I'm only a little bit sore. Next year I'll be going for a better time, but for this year, I'm happy.

On a funny note, Brad Wever, a 13 or 14 yr old kid that I give piano lessons to, also the son of 2 of our Godzilla friends ran about the same pace as me. We stayed together for about a mile, in between his vomitings. He pulled off of the road 3 times to puke, and still beat me by one second.

The Princess:


After his shower the other day, Justice had his towel wrapped around his waist like a skirt, and he said "I'm a princess!"
My Toe Nails:

After cutting holes in two new pairs of socks with my toe nails, I decided it was high time to cut the darn things. I have the thickest toenails in creation, I think. I actually broke the clippers. You can't tell it in the picture, but the metal thing that you push down on actually snapped in two.

Also, John and Liz got stranded here. I've gotten to see lots of them over the past week, and that is always a good thing. Good times!

For Mr. Scrooge

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Merry Christmas From Our Blogger Friends!

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booga

The Ultimate Luxury

The Ultimate Luxury would be to sleep in a bed all by myself, with nobody coughing all night, farting, kicking so much it's like trying to sleep with a windmill, rolling on my hair, crying or making my bed so crowded that I have to sleep on my side straight up and down with my arms tucked tightly at my side, "thinking skinny."

The funny thing is that someday it will happen, and I'll probably miss the crowd. For now, I'd just love one good night's sleep!

Torture!

I think there is a conspiracy against me. My friends and loved ones are trying to see how many crazy torturous things they can make me do under the guise of medicinal purposes. I ran 10 miles today. I used to run 13-14 miles on a semi-regular basis, before I had this last baby. The most I'd done post-baby thus far was about 6.5 miles. I wanted to see if I could run 10 miles since there is a 10 mile race in a couple of weeks that I want to do. Well, I made it, rather slowly, but I did run the whole time without quiting. As soon as I stopped, my legs were telling me that they were not happy with me. So, after I stretched, I asked Bruce if there was anyway to prevent (as much as possible) being in severe pain for the next several days. He suggested an ice bath. Yup, I did it. It really was not fun. I filled the bath with nothing but cold water till it just covered my legs and hips. The point was not to lower my core temp. After I'd been in a few minutes, Bruce added some ice to keep the water nice and frigid. I stayed in for about 9 minutes. I survived by reminding myself that it was not so bad as child birth. This is probably the craziest thing I've ever done. Mind over matter, I am a tough chicky, am I not?

Laughing With My Kids

I ask you, is there anything better than a good belly laugh with children? I can't think of anything. Here are a few things that made us laugh tonight:

Ross was making up his Christmas list. (Ross makes me laugh nearly everyday. He has a wacky sense of humor. I should blog about him more. I can't think of them right now. He's always drawing cartoons that make me laugh. About a month ago, he brought home one of his 80 page notebooks that I bought for him at the beginning of school. It was completely full of his silly drawings. I should scan them in, so you can see them. Anyway, I'm digressing.) So, Ross is making up his Christmas list. There are the normal things on there ex: a rip stick -it's on all of my children's lists, well the ones that are old enough to make lists. Benderoos (not sure if I spelled that right. I don't even know what it is, but it's on Mark's list too.) Then there are the impossible things: a Segway. Then he had this: Nationwide Insurance. We laughed about that.

Mark was feeling sad about something. I don't even remember what it was. I told him he should be happy because 1) he got to play with Tyler, 2) he got to have dinner and dessert at his friend Kendal's house, and 3) his mother pinched him - at which point I reached out and gave him a playful pinch. That made him smile in spite of himself. I explained that people like to be pinched. After all when people are so happy, they say "pinch me, I'm dreaming," so it must mean that pinching is a happy thing. ;) We then had a fun pinching war. We'd pinch each other and jump around pretending to be deliriously happy. Justice joined in, and we pinched, laughed, clapped our hands, and squealed like crazy.

At scripture time, Justice kept getting up and running across the room, hitting Mark, and darting back to his side of the room. I kept having to stop reading to tell him to sit down. Which of course, he did not. I was starting to get ticked off. He did it again just as I was reading " '...can you imagine to yourselves that ye hear voice of the Lord , saying unto you...' (here I broke off to yell at Justice, not realizing at the moment how funny it sounded) SIT DOWN!!" The kids all fell out laughing. Well, Justice continued to misbehave, so much so that I eventually sent him to his room for the duration of scriptures. I have to lock him in his room, or else he comes right back out. (No, don't call anyone on me, I don't keep him locked up too long. But I do need a way to discipline that boy.) Anyway, so we were reading scriptures again finally with some semblance of peace. We were ignoring Justice's yells from up in his room, to be let out. All of a sudden, the tone of his yelling changed from anger, to real panic, fright, and an urgent cry for help. I couldn't make out the words of his hysterical cries, but one thing was clear, and that was that the boy was terrified about something. Well, if you know Justice at all, you can only imagine what kinds of trouble this maniac dare-devil boy is capable of getting into. Imagining all kinds of impossibilities from him setting fire to his bed, to him dangling out of the two story window, I pelted up the stairs at top speed, (with all of the other children trailing alarmedly right behind me) unlocked the door and threw it open. I found him sitting on his bed (which was not on fire) and frantically yelling "HELP! The ladybug's trying to kill me!" He was scared of a silly ladybug. We all laughed a lot!

Normal People Don't Do This

I seem to be forming a habit of getting sick at this time every year. I'm a little tired of it frankly. Well as long as it doesn't drag out like last year's fiasco, that'll be okay. I'm actually somewhat nervous about it. My friend, Crystal told me about this method of clearing out the sinuses. I had heard from several sources that it works. In desperation, I sent Bruce out for a NetiPot. Basically you pour salt water up one nostril and let it drain out of the other. It's funky. And for the record: I still feel like absolute crud. Just crud with maybe clearer sinuses. I guess it isn't a cure all.

The Bishop Called Me A Weirdo

That's right, from the pulpit even! He didn't call me by name, but I'm positive it was me he was talking about. No, he didn't say weirdo either. He was talking about the Fall Ball last night, and he said "...some of the younger married couples showed us some interesting moves." (And no, I wasn't insulted. I laughed.)

A Crazy Colliding of Two Worlds

Two of my favorite kinds of books on tape are Harry Potter and the James Herriot books. Christopher Timothy always reads the Herriot books and does it exactly perfectly. Jim Dale always reads the HP books and likewise they are perfect. Imagine my surprise when I got a new James Herriot collection from the library (new to me anyway) and turned it on to hear Jim Dale's voice reading James Herriot (which are always told in first person). I can't describe it. It's just weird. He's reading about finding a little lost kitten as if it were some huge mysterious thing. Then to hear in Hagrid's voice "...Kitten? We haven't got no kitten." It just is cracking me up. You'd probably just have to be into listening to these books on tape, like I am to get how WEIRD it is.

Something I'm Surprised to Find That I Miss a Little

The phone rang. I looked at the caller id. "Another telemarketer" I thought to myself. "HHEEELLLOOOOO!" I answered in a lunatic voice. It was just a recording on the other end. I felt a twinge of disappointment. It was fun to mess with those pestilential live telemarketers. Not that I want them back; on the whole, I wish all types of telemarketers would evaporate. (Not the people themselves, just their calls. My brother and my sister-in-law were both telemarketers in their young college days.) It was entertaining to mess with those poor saps though.

A while later...

I'm feeling better now. A live telemarketer called me just now. I answered the phone something like this: "wegoooishbnalpigpig"

"Hello?" from the TM

"Hello!" me in a strange voice.

"What language do you speak? Spanish, Portuguese?"

"Pig Latin"

"What?"

"Pig Latin... igpay atinlay... igpay atinlay!"

He hung up on me. I giggled.

ILL

I feel like I'm on the Titanic.

Alas For My Practically Naked Bum!

Note all of the holes.

Where are Stacy and Clinton when you need them? I need someone to call and report me to them. Some of you out there can sympathize. It is hard to find pants long enough. Yes, they make long pants, but nobody ever stocks more than about 2 pair. I can't afford to go out and buy a bunch of new pants, but what can I do? Long pants are hard enough to find on the regular racks, but forget trying to find them on a clearance rack! You can find 500 pairs of petite or regular length, but never long. RANT! RANT! RANT!! I've bought regular pants that weren't too bad, till I washed them. Then it's back to dorkdom for me. I have 2 pair of jeans that are long enough, that's it. However, I can't wear either of them currently because they don't quite fit yet. I've got another 5-10 lbs of baby weight to loose before I can wear them comfortably. All of my other pants that I've managed to get back into have decided to wear out all at the same time. *Sigh* If any of you out there know of some store whose pants happen to run long, please let me know! I need to find some on a clearance sale. Okay, I'll shut up now.

Church Attire

Ah, my Mark. He hasn't quite grasped the concept of what goes together. Here's how he came up dressed for church yesterday. Note the pants tucked into his boots. You can't really tell in the picture, but the shirt has a blue checked pattern that clashes with both the pants' green checked pattern, and his red striped tie. Also he has his shirt not only buttoned wrong, but there are two peices of tape holding the shirt closed where the buttons are missing. I hope he will forgive me for posting this!

Pancakes

My quest to make the ultimate pancake continues. It all started over a year ago when we had pancakes at Amy's house. My children remarked that her pancakes were better than mine. I had to agree. Since then, I've been trying different recipes, and experimenting with taking some of one recipe and some of another. Here's how I made the pancakes today (and I have to say, they were pretty dern good):

1 1/4 cup flour
2 TBS sugar *
1 heaping tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

1 1/4 cup buttermilk
1 egg
3 TBS melted butter

Sift the flour, then add all the other dry ingredients and mix in a large bowl. Mix the wet ingredients in a separate bowl. Add the wet ingredients to the dry. Mix just enough to get it together. Don't worry about lumps. Cook on a preheated griddle sprayed with cooking spray.

Here are a few tips about pancakes that I have gathered:

1) Use real buttermilk!!!! It makes a huge difference! I've started keeping it in the house, just so I can make stellar pancakes. I generally use it up before it goes bad.

2) Sift your flour well. (I actually don't own a sifter, so I just fluff it up with a fork really well before I measure it.)

3) Real butter seems to make them better.

4) As always, don't over mix. That's a killer for sure.

* I meant to put in 1/4 cup of sugar, but I think I screwed up and only put in 1/8 cup (which is the same as 2 TBS.) These pancakes were really good, so I wish I could remember how much I actually put in! I'm not really sure, but I think it was the lesser amount. Recipes vary on sugar pretty widely. I'm thinking my screw up might have found the perfect mean. I'll have to try it again, to be sure of what I actually did. Either should make a good pancake, but I prefer what I did today (I think it was 1/8 cup.)