Accountability

A very quick post to thank my friend Robyn for keeping me accountable. I somehow talked her into signing up for the Susan G. Komen 5K, then talked myself out of it! With just a bit of encouragement (and a little dash of guilt) she convinced me to go ahead and run the race anyway. Way back in October I had started what was going to be a 6 month run-training program. I started strong, for about 2 weeks! Then I got all distracted with P90X for about 8 weeks. When the wedding planning kicked off, I totally fell off the workout wagon. Which means that for the last 2 months I haven't done much more than walk Harley! I was a bit concerned that I'd be totally out of shape and disappointed with my race performance. So I Sunday I decided to try one lap around the park to see where I stood (which, conveniently, is one mile). I was able to jog the whole way without stopping and finished in 12:27. Not too shabby! Yesterday after work I gave it another go and finished in 12:29. Granted, it was two seconds slower than Sunday, but it was also a lot warmer and was at the end of the day instead of the beginning, so I was still happy. For the next two weeks I'm going to slowly increase the distance that I'm jogging. Hopefully by April 16 I'll be in a good place for the 5K. And even if I don't finish with a great time, at least I'll have done it!

Week 6 of P90X

Well, I've been working on this P90X thing for 6 weeks now, and I'm proud to say that I've only missed a few workouts. This week I did some MAD push ups, including one-armed and clap! Granted, it's not all that pretty, but I did it. I even used Brian's pull up bar a few weeks ago (with a chair for assistance, but still...). I love the way that the schedule mixes things up so the don't get boring or overwork any one area. I also dusted off the punching bag and used it for the Kenpo workout last Friday. It was AWESOME to beat the heck out of something for 60 minutes!!

While the P90X plan is going well, the plan to run the Susan G. Komen 5K in April is not going nearly so well. With P90X taking up anywhere from an hour to 90 minutes 6 days a week, I haven't made the time to stick to my run training. And when this last cold snap hit, my knee went on strike again. So I'm thinking that I need to re-define my goal. Maybe instead of saying "I will run a whole 5K" I need to focus on some broader goals. Like "I will be active every day" or "I will continually challenge myself physically." I know that in order for a goal to be realistic I have to actually believe that I can achieve it. And honestly, at the moment, I don't really believe that I can be a Runner. I can walk for hours like nobody's business, and kickbox like a madwoman. But running... not so much.

Yes, it was a Happy Birthday!

I'm not really a big fan of birthdays. It's not that I have a problem with getting older, I just don't particularly like all the attention that goes along with my birthday. Ironically, I LOVE making a big deal out of other people's birthdays...but that's because the focus is not on me!

This weekend I turned 31 and had a nice, relaxing, low-key time of it. Joy came to spend the weekend with me and we had a great visit! She went with me to my workshop for the awesome folks from the Statesboro Habitat for Humanity, we had yummy food, went to see the new Sex and the City movie, laughed and cut up as sisters should, and even went for a stroll on the beach. I think the walk on Tybee was my favorite part of the whole weekend (until it got too hot to think and I nearly melted into the sand).


The last time that Joy and I took a leisurely stroll on the beach like this was probably our trip to Block Island (which I think was back in 2006). We've been to the beach since then, of course, but not solely for beach walking. I prefer walking, while she's happy to roast in the sand...


Two very nice ladies offered to take a picture of us together, and asked if we were twins! It seems like Joy and I are the only ones who don't see the family resemblance (we must be in denial).


So, there are several things that I loved about this little beach trip:
1. I love to honor special moments by spending time in nature (my last stroll on the beach was on New Year's Day).
2. I loved spending time with Joy, just walking and talking and being outside on a beautiful day.
3. I love the way my new tankini top from Land's End fits (and I really love the fact that I got it on clearance!).
4. I loved to see what 8 months of Pilates has done for my health! Seriously, not to brag or anything, but I feel great!
When Joy and I got back from the beach, my new roomie had left these beautiful roses on the counter for me! Jessie is going to be my roommate for the summer and I'm so excited to have a crafter around to keep me motivated!

Care Package 27 & 28: Slacker....

I have to say, I'm somewhat disappointed in my performance for the last two care packages. They lacked my usual creativity and flare. However, in my defense, I do have fairly reasonable excuses.

On Saturday, May 8 my sister came up to visit me. We had a great time hanging out and catching up Saturday night. On Sunday my back was feeling much better after two chiropractic adjustments and I decided that Harley was in need of her usual Sunday morning bath. Unfortunately, lifting a 65 pound reluctant dog into a bathtub and spending 20 minutes hunched over bathing said dog effectively killed my back.

Now, I have a fairly high tolerance for pain, but I have never felt pain like this. Ripping all the soft muscle tissue in my foot while jumping off a 50 foot bridge and cannon-balling into nearly-freezing water was a mild discomfort compared to this (hey, it was college, what can I say?). Having a wisdom tooth cracked out of my skull before the Novocaine kicked in was nothing compared to this. Spending over an hour with a tattoo gun grinding on my spine would be considered tickling next to this.

My wonderful, awesome and totally amazing chiropractor actually came into his office on Mother's Day for an emergency adjustment that knocked the pain down from "excruciating" to "just about bearable" and I was able to spend the rest of the night flat on my back without crying constantly. As such, putting around the kitchen to whip up some goodies was out of the question. Not to be discouraged, I did manage to pack up a handful of Nature Valley granola bars into a box and get it in the mail on Monday after another round of chiropractic care. As they say, it's the thought that counts, right?

As for this weeks care package, I was in Connecticut this weekend and didn't have access to my kitchen until late Monday evening. I did have lofty plans to try a new oatmeal cookie recipe, but was short a few key ingredients. So another trusty package of Trail Mix is on its way to Brian as I type. This batch of trail mix, however, has a very special addition: chocolate covered sunflower seeds!! These are one of my all-time FAVORITE snacks and it took an amazing amount of self control not to eat every last one of them. Seriously, I would make myself sick on these things if I had just a wee bit less self-control.

So there you have it: my somewhat reasonable excuses for being a slacker in the creative care package department. Brian will be heading home soon for two weeks R&R, so I may be taking a bit of a hiatus in the baking arena. But stay tuned, I have a really great idea for what to send him when he ships back out!

Second 5K in one month... what was I thinking?

I may have mentioned before that I'm not a fan of making New Year's resolutions. To me, it implies that I am somehow lacking and need to "fix" something about myself. I don't like this idea. I am hyper-self-critical most of the time anyway, so why develop a plan that will do little more than beat myself up even more?

Instead, I favor the idea of having positive intentions in my life. The concept of living my life with intent is very appealing to me. It means that I make positive choices to steer my life in a healthy direction. One of the intentions that I started working on last year was to make my physical health a priority. I started doing Pilates 6 days a week back in October and have, with only a few exceptions, stuck to that schedule. I picked up a punching bag to increase my cardio and build more upper-body strength (still working on incorporating that into the schedule on a regular basis). And I walk Harley 3 miles a day most days.

All in all, I've pretty happy with the progress I've been making. Most days I have an incredible amount of energy. However, last week I was dragging a bit. The biggest problem is that I didn't get to bed on time but once in the last 2 weeks. Granted, I only lost about an hour or so each night, but that adds up for me.

So I was a little disappointed that I was slow in the Preservation 5K today, but I can't say that it was unexpected. I finished in 40:30ish, and I know that I didn't push myself as hard as I could have. I'm okay with that, because I still finished and I'm at least out there trying. But I did realize that walking my dog 1.5 miles twice a day is not enough training for jogging 3.1 miles. Time to take a closer look at my schedule and see where I can fit in both some extra bag work and a few additional laps around the park. The Turtle Trot on Tybee is coming up in April, so I have a few weeks to prepare...

Two New Challenges

It is a well known fact that I have entirely too much free time. I am always just sitting around wondering "Hmmmm, what should I do? I'm so bored! There must be something I can do to keep busy..."

It's also a well know fact that I am a sarcastic smart-ass...

So, in the interest of staying ever-more busy, I have given myself two new challenges!

The first has to do with my kitchen pantry. I used to tease my Mom about having a soup kitchen's worth of food in her house. Over the holidays I opened my cupboards and, lo and behold, I found a soup kitchen! Not really, but considering the fact that I live alone and don't really entertain often, I seemed to have an inordinately large quantity of food.

So my first challenge is: Use up all the staples in my cupboard before buying anything new. There will still be some shopping required, for perishables and such. But I will attempt not to buy a single non-perishable item until I have used up all that I stored (including the 9 cans of pumpkin that I bought because I heard there a was shortage due to bad weather. Really, who needs 9 cans of pumpkin?).



To reward myself for sticking to a Pilates schedule (6 days a week since October, with just a few days missed when I was sick) I finally bought myself a punching bag!!! I've been wanting one since I lived in CT, but it just didn't seem practical to have a punching bag in a third floor apartment (nor very friendly towards downstairs neighbors).

My second challenge is going to be a lot more fun than the first: Use my punching bag for a minimum of 30 minutes at least twice a week. I signed up for a 5K in February and hopefully this will help build my endurance. Not only will this increase my cardio for the week, but I'm pretty sure it's going to reduce my stress levels, too. There's nothing quite like hitting and kicking something until your arms twitch and your legs quiver to give you that peaceful, relaxed feeling...
I'll keep you posted on the status of both challenges. And if you have any good recipes for canned pumpkin or pearled barley, please feel free to pass those along...

Learning from Bacteria

So, I was enjoying making yogurt...right up to the point where I ended up with a runny, bitter milk-type-substance.

At first I thought, hmmm, what could have gone wrong? I succeeded at this once already. But when I actually dug a little deeper, I realized that any number of things could have caused the failed culture.

Perhaps I didn't heat the milk properly: too little heat and the proteins don't alter, too much and who knows what happens! Maybe I didn't let the milk cool enough before I added the culture and killed the little bacteria before they ever had a chance to reproduce. Or maybe the jars didn't stay warm enough during the "growth" stage. It couldn't possibly have been the fact that I cut the "growth" stage time in half, could it?

All this yogurt analysis lead me to realize something more important: I've been cutting corners trying to get everything done. As a perfect example, here is a list of what I am doing this very moment:
1. writing on this blog
2. thinking about my sister and her MRI
3. checking email (ok, I have to tab back and forth with the blog to do this)
4. ripping a reference CD to my lappy
5. waiting for the next batch of milk to cool to 120 degrees
6. thinking about the knitted starfish that I really want to finish tonight
7. balancing my budget and checkbook
8. trying to decide when I'm going to eat dinner
9. trying to remember if I have everything I need to teach my class tomorrow
10. hoping I have time to squeeze in a shower before I fall asleep

The jist of this post is that I realized that my life is getting a little out of balance the past few weeks. I tried telling myself that when this series of workshops is over in mid-June, things will settle down. But I know that's not true: something else will come up to take its place. Like my little yogurt bacteria, I need to create an environment that favors growth, then give myself time to do what needs to be done. Short cuts only work in the short run.

Insurance

So, when I said I was debt-free, I didn't realize that I would still be fighting with my insurance company about a $1100 lab work bill from December.

After Mom passed away due to blood clots, I took myself off of birth control pills (which can cause blood clots and should not be used by people with a family history of clots) and made an appointment with my doctor. Since the hospital was not able to tell us the exact reason for Mom's clots, my doctor ordered an extensive round of testing to check for most known clotting factors. This is important because if I have any of the known clotting factors it could affect anything from having dental work to having a baby and just about everything in between.

So the lab pulls fifteen vials of blood and runs a gazillion tests. All come back clean except one, so I have that one re-done and that comes back clean as well. Yea! No known clotting factors.

My insurance company had no qualms about paying the $100 re-test lab fee. However, they don't seem to think that it was "medically necessary" for me to know if I had any of the many other clotting factors and denied payment for the round of a gazillion tests. Even after my doctor has sent in several letters explaining to them how it would affect just about every medical decision from now until I die. Even after explaining to them that my mother died unexpectedly due to blood clots (hence the term "family history"). Now, I've been a pretty healthy person, and had been paying for this insurance for about 3 years and rarely used anything more than the standard preventative office visits. And they're squabbling with me over $1100.

Thankfully the lab has been very understanding and, even though they keep sending me reminders, are not sending the bill to collections yet. But really, who are these insurance review people that get to decide arbitrarily what is medically necessary? If my doctor, who I trust with my life, deems it necessary, who are they to argue? At this point, it's a matter of principal that I will not pay this bill: I paid for insurance to cover things like this.

Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure

In light of all the other changes in my life, I decided now was a great time to make good on a promise to myself: to take part in more 5K races.

So I signed up for the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. It will be held on Saturday, April 18 in Savannah (if anyone wants to come cheer me on). If you want to make a donation, feel free but not obligated: http://www.active.com/donate/komencoastalgeorgia/STyler14

I do personally know a few women who have fought breast cancer, and I believe in the importance of research and support for this cause. I have also had two little scares where I had to get breast ultrasounds for suspicious lumps, so I feel really motivated to join this race.

I haven't been exercising as regularly as I had in the past, and this is as good a reason as any to get back into it. The route goes through historic downtown and unlike Mystic, CT is virtually flat! For now, I'm easing myself back into shape by walking/jogging around beautiful Forsyth Park (pictures coming soon, I promise!).

Also, keep an eye out for upcoming St. Patrick's Day postings! Joy is coming down for the weekend and parade, so it promises to be fun.

Thanksgiving update: delayed.

So, I had hoped that the next entry I wrote would be all about wonderful Thanksgiving vacation. While visiting Alana and Xander in Montreal was great, it is not the thing foremost in my mind and I'd be hard pressed to gush about it at the moment. I will post pictures and gush at a later date...

Right now, I'm very, very anxious. My mom went into the hospital last week. The doctors originally thought she might have a blocked artery and she was going to have a heart catheter. However, when she had a seizure on the way to her appointment it prompted a CAT scan that revealed lots of blood clots in her lungs. She spent almost a week in the hospital and was slowly recovering when she was discharged on Monday. Her positive progress took a bit of a turn when her blood oxygen levels dropped on Tuesday (apparently she was sent home without any oxygen, which she still needs until the remnants of the clots are completely out of her lungs).

It has been a stressful and tense week for the whole family. My dad and sister are doing their best to take care of mom, but there are going to have to be a LOT of changes and I don't think they will happen easily. I've been on edge because I'm so far away that getting home quickly isn't really an option. Also, being a bit of a control freak, it's hard for me to deal with getting all my information second hand. I want to be in the office asking the doctors questions in person. I don't know if it would make any difference in the outcome, but it would make me feel more useful. Instead, I nag over the phone.

On top of all that, I will probably be unemployed by the end of the month. For most of 2008 the department has been in flux and no one seems to know where I'm going to fit in the new structure. Now I have about 21 days left until my contract expires and I still have no idea what is going to happen. This has been incredibly frustrating for me because I really do enjoy what I do, I am kinda limited in other possible technical job opportunities because many of my technical skills are specific to this one system, and I seem to have noticed that the economy is not in the best of shape and there are not a whole lot of great jobs floating around out there.

While my general outlook about being unemployed has been fairly negative up till now, I'm trying to see one silver lining: I can go home for a few weeks to help my mom. But even that is a tarnished lining because it will make searching/interviewing for new jobs difficult, I'll be away from Ian and my friends in CT and will miss my Pumpkin. Ian says I've been focusing too much on the negative things in my life, but it feels like there are very few positive things to distract me right now. It's hard to stop and smell the roses when the garden is heaped with manure...

Enough whining, stay tuned for Thanksgiving photos!