All I'm Saying there's a joke in here somewhere

Why is it when I think of something good to blog about and am nowhere near a computer, I can never remember it later when I am actually able to write about it? Gah! Drives me crazy, because I know I had something at least moderately interesting to share here, but damned if I know now what it was. I'll probably wake up and remember it at 2 a.m.

I do recall that I was going to give an update of my Couch to 5k program. I have made it up through Week 3, or at least will have done once I get one more workout in this week. I've actually taken 3 weeks to get through Week 3 because the first time around my knee started hurting like a bugger and I rested it a week. Then we went to Colorado and I only got one workout in that week. Now I'm back on track, hopefully.

I need to go get some real running shoes. I have some fairly new New Balance athletic shoes, but I couldn't tell you if they were cross trainers, tennis shoes, running shoes, whatever. There is a shop in town here that has you run across a gel pad of some sort in your bare feet so they can see how your foot hits the ground, and whether you pronate, suppurnate (I think that's the word) or what, and then they match you to the ideal shoe. I also hear it is expensive. I am sure it is worth it, though. As it is, my big toe and the one next to it on my right foot always feel like I need to pop the toe knuckles on them when I am running, and I'm sure that's not a good thing.

So. Six more weeks of steady workouts and I should be up to 5k! How much does that rock, anyway?!

Sigh...I hate that we have an annual 3-day meeting the week after Thanksgiving. But it has to be those days due to other meetings later. So I end up rushing around trying to get my office stuff done before I'm stuck in the meeting most of the week. And all the people who have been off over Thanksgiving are in the same boat and start trying to dump stuff on me so they can be ready for the same meeting.

I'm getting better about drawing my line in the sand and saying, "I can't do that until next week," but my stress levels still get pretty high.

On the plus side, I had the best BLT sandwich of my entire life at lunch today. It had avocado on it, and the whole thing was served on ciabatta bread with a side of fries that were the perfect combination of squooshy inside and crunchy outside. So at least I have that going for me, right?

We have returned from our Thanksgiving trip to see Matt's sister in Denver. We were met there by their eldest brother, who lives in New Jersey, and his wife and kids. We were there for four days and had a really great time.

Thanksgiving dinner was delicious--we forsook the turkey and had pheasant instead. Boy, that was good. Ham completed the meats, and there were lots of good fixins, including a corn casserole that I was prepared to loathe because it contained creamed corn ("Tastes and looks the same in either direction"), but it was actually really good. Matt, who endures the fact that my family doesn't care for pumpkin pie, got his fix in dessert-wise.

We went shopping a little on Black Friday, and I made my first in-person visit to a Hanna Andersson store. I've been hooked on their clothes for kids, mainly buying used via E-bay, or rarely online during a sale. I saved my pennies and bought Freya two great jackets and a snowman shirt, all discounted quite a bit. Woo! She's so snazzy.

We went to the Denver Zoo on Friday and it was great. We got to watch a baby clouded leopard wrestling with its mother. He was playing with a gourd and she'd lay in wait for him. You'd see her eyes peering out from behind a log, and then when the time was right, she'd pounce and roll him around on the ground. You could tell they were both having a really good time. We also got to see giraffes, zebras, lions, a polar bear, hyenas, a seal and a sea lion, otters, bison, takin, elands, kudu, dromedaries and Bactrian camels, kangaroos, hippos, elephants, a tapir, a rhino... They also had a really big tropical exhibit that included aquariums loaded with really cool fish, crocodiles, and an enormous snapping turtle that looked like a dinosaur.

Brief pause here, as I had to go change my pants. Freya was wandering around with her pants and diaper off and I assured Matt there was nothing to worry about, and that she could watch YouTube while sitting on my lap. And she peed on my leg. Oh well.

We returned home this morning, having had no travel difficulties and a great trip. I'll leave you with a photo of Miss Mousie in her Thanksgiving regalia.

How was your holiday?

I'd like to wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving. I know we've all got a lot to be thankful for, and most of you folks are on my list of reasons to be thankful.

I'll leave you with a little Turkey Day gift. One of the local radio stations plays this at noon every Thanksgiving Day, and we'll be missing it this year. Make sure you don't and click here.

Turn up the speakers, groove, and have a smile on me!

We just got back from going out for sushi. Matt and I are really getting into it. Freya was chowing down on the fish eggs. I figure we'll get her indoctrinated early and then when she pitches a fit over some roast beef or something equally innocuous on her dinner plate, we can say, "So you'll eat fish eggs but you don't do roast beef?"

And then we stopped at Sonic on the way home for milkshakes. That's a truly American meal. Who says we don't have a food culture here in the United States?

0God only knows how this entry will turn out, but Freya has been sitting next to me pushing ke ys on the keyboard intermittently, and I figure I'll just le t her keep it up. That can be my schtick for tonight's post, as I don't have a whole lot else to go into. (And if she doesn't start pressing more buttons, then I don't have even that much of a schtick.)

A friend of mine came over with her daughter this afternoon and brought one-half of an eleven pound pumpkin. (Her husband was working on the other half--because who needs eleven pounds of pumpkin this time of year?) So as we visited and the kids played, I roasted it. All told, it ended up making a quart and a half of plain puree and four pints of pumpkin butter. Yum!

Yep, sure enough, The World's Cutest Kid has quit typing. I hope you all had a great weekend!

Here's a picture of the carpet in the conference room I was in today. Nice, isn't it? I see also that there is a guy in black chinos. I have heard, but wouldn't know definitively as I have never tried it, that it can be very difficult to take a sneaky picture of someone in black chinos with your cell phone, especially when that person is moving.

Isn't that some flashy carpet?

I am in a training session this week, and realized that I am in some famous company.

You know in the movie "Legends of the Fall"...that part where Brad Pitt's character is in bed or something and you see his barenaked bottom?

Well. That was a stunt butt. I'm not kidding. And that stunt butt's owner is in my training. He works in one of the departments under my boss' authority.

I'm going to try to surreptitiously take a picture of his tookus with my camera phone. Do any of you have Verizon and the requisite linkup to your computer to e-mail it back to me? And then I can post it here.

I do feel like I should disclose that it will not be naked, as it was in the movie.

Dee had a meme I thought I'd steal, as life is not particularly eventful around my neck o'the woods. So here we go:

“Devise a list of 5-10 courses you would take to fix your life. It’s more fun to be in classes with friends, so include one class from the person who tagged you that you’d also like to take. Tag five.”

1. Swing dance. I used to be really good at this--I'd get flipped, thrown, you name it. But I married a non-dancer and it would be fun to take the class just to remember all of my sweet moves.

2. Roller dance. You remember that Diet Pepsi (or whatever) commercial a while back where there were all the pretty people roller dancing near a beach? God, that commercial fills me with longing. That commercial and the movie "Xanadu." Pretty much anything with roller dancing does that for me.

3. Some kind of Montessori at Home class would be hugely helpful. I'd take Dee with me to this one, as her eldest is in Montessori and I would imagine the youngest is headed that way. Freya gets so much out of her school and I am sure there are great principles I could be incorporating at home, but I'm too lazy to read a book about it.

4. An Italian language class. I'd take my friend Carla, as she recently got back from Italy and loaned me all her travel guides. I'm definitely going to need to take a class before we head off on The Dream Trip in 5-7 years.

5. Wouldn't it be so fun to take some kind of stunt-driving class? You could do four-wheel skids and cookies and jumps and stuff. I'd take Leilani.

6. I really should take a web design course. In person, since that distance learning one I signed up for did not work out so well. Then I could quit bugging Mel with all my totally basic, nuisancy questions.

Okay, who's next? I don't like to be a tagger...

There have been some astonishing headlines in the local paper this week. There have also been some interesting comments on the paper's website. Headlines in bold and comments in italics.

Man, 72, Arrested in the Rape of 20 Year Old Woman
Maybe he took too much Viaga,and became a hardened criminal.

Lawmakers Look for Ways to Keep Moms at Home to Strengthen Families
Rep. Steven Thayn and his wife, Sherry, raised eight children on their family farm. She stayed home, and they home-schooled several of their children before eventually sending them to local schools.
Thayn said more two-parent homes and fewer working mothers could be both a social and economic boon. The Emmett Republican sees the breakdown of the traditional family structure as the root of societal ills such as drug abuse, crime and domestic violence.

That's why, as chairman of the Idaho House of Representatives' Family Task Force, he and others are considering controversial solutions such as repealing no-fault divorce laws and finding ways to encourage mothers to stay home with their children..."Divorce is just terrible," Rep. Dick Harwood, R-St. Maries, said. "It's one of Satan's best tools to kill America."

Of your Jesus

I'm afraid of what you do in the name of your God

Woman Charged for Igniting Ex-Husband's Mounted Bison Head*A southwest Idaho woman accused of setting fire to a mounted bison head at her ex-husband's home is facing arson charges.
Police say they arrested Ryann Jean Stafford, 26, of Meridian, Thursday on a charge of third-degree arson, a felony.

Investigators say Stafford and her former spouse got into an argument at his home early Thursday. But after he left the house, police say Stafford began throwing objects and then used a lighter to ignite the mounted head.

*I really meant to leave a comment to this, but I see it didn't publish. I'm not really sure what the problem was here...

Hello, puddin'. You're sitting next to me again tonight, watching videos on YouTube. I am 85% sure you just picked a booger and ate it, too. Who needs popcorn?

We had your first parent/teacher conference at the Montessori school the other day, and at the risk of nauseating all the other readers, the teachers said that you're one of the very smartest kids they've ever had through there. You can recite the alphabet, count to about 14, identify about 50% of the letters of the alphabet, and sing verses of a LOT of songs. Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and We Are the Dinosaurs (a Laurie Berkner tune) are among your favorites.

The teachers also thanked Matt and I as parents for teaching you such manners! For someone who laughs uproariously every time she passes gas, this is truly a mark of social grace. (We all know you let your hair down a little more when you're at home, is all.) You're great about saying thank you, please, and excuse me.

I had you in to the pediatrician last week because you had a terrible cough, and it turned out you just had a run-of-the-mill cold, but you did get weighed. You're still on the small side--the 10th percentile. But you're growing, and you're eating so much lately that you're clearly in a growth spurt. Last night after we got home from school & work, you nursed (yes, world, she's still nursing), had three sandwich-sized slices of provolone, a kid-size bottle of drinkable yogurt, five Wheat Thins, two strawberries, and a cheddar cheese stick. You're leaning heavily toward the dairy, so I'll bet your little bones are s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g. You're a peanut, but you're definitely doing great.

One million kisses for you, sweetie.
Love,
Mommy

My office has an on-site gym of sorts. The equipment isn't all that new or great, but it all works and it isn't an intimidating environment. So I've been trying for months now to get in there at least once a week. It's tough--I have to try to squeeze it in before I need to go pick Freya up at preschool, so I either eat a short lunch some days to hoard the extra minutes, or on Mondays Matt has Freya in the afternoon and that's one day I know I can go work out for an hour or so.

Anyway, I'm working on a theory that you actually get a better workout on a treadmill than you do on an elliptical because your body actually has to work against gravity on a treadmill, where you've got momentum working for you on the elliptical. (I haven't seen the slightest evidence that this is true anywhere, other than the fact that it feels harder on the treadmill.) Of course, I only ever walk on the treadmill, so I haven't exactly been maximizing the burn.

So on Monday...I ran on the treadmill. I haven't run since junior high--literally it has been about 19 or 20 years since I ran any farther than across the street. I hate running. It has never felt good, though I have beautiful dreams about running and it is so easy and I take these giant, bounding leaps and never fall.

Anyway, I walked three minutes at about 4 mph, then ran for two minutes at 5.5 mph and alternated back and forth for a 25 minute period. I was pretty sore the next day and damned sore today. But you know what I did today? Yep, I went back and did it again. I know the fact that I am sore means that I am working some muscles that badly need it.

So there you have it: I ran, and nothing was even chasing me. I am hoping that I can build up at some point to running in a 5k like Erica, though I know I won't end up being a marathoner like Malia.

My older brother's step-daughter just delivered a baby boy by c-section on Halloween. He was two months early. He had been diagnosed as having Down Syndrome early in the pregnancy, and a heart defect was also identified. My step-niece had been getting weekly ultrasounds because of that, and last week the doctors said that the little guy hadn't grown in two weeks and they were worried about what that could mean. So they decided it was time for him to come out...

...Good thing, because his umbilicus actuall fell off as he was being pulled from the womb. Something had happened to damage it--a twist, or something--and he wasn't getting the circulation and sustenance he needed.

I just talked to the new mother and he's finally able to take some of her breastmilk in a dropper. He had only been given sugar water in the last few days, as his heart was so strained that the proteins in milk or formula could have put too much stress on him. So it is wonderful news that he can actually eat now. He was taken off oxygen yesterday, but got a little of it again today.

There are good things happening slowly for him, health-wise. But I am a firm believer in the good thoughts and well wishes of humanity, and would appreciate it greatly if you all would send thoughts of healing toward he and his family in Albuquerque. Thanks.

...to wish me happy birthday Friday.

Thirty-three years old. I'm sure I would have had something profound to say about that, had I not had two hard ciders at my boss's retirement party tonight. As it is, I'm amazed I am typing. Two plus years of not drinking more than a smallish glass of wine with dinner has made me a hell of a lightweight.

Okay, Freya is yowling about going downstairs where Matt is cooking me some birthday cupcakes, so I must sign off.