1 Year ago, Monday.

One year ago Monday we had a clogged toilet. It was Sunday, we weren't sure what we were going to do. Stephen took the toilet off the floor and we found someone-boy #1- had flushed about half a box of diaper wipes down the toilet. I don't think it was all a once, but they just kinda caught and it built up. Well, we decided that since our toilet was off and we'd have to go to Home Depot to get a new sealant ring for the toilet, we also decided to take the old, yucky, the-"gray"water-seeped-underneath, linoleum off the cement floor. We had to remove all the floor boards and the moulding around the door. We did it that very night. We didn't go to the store, don't you all worry, we didn't really do any work at all. Stephen did patch up some holes, one of which Jake made. Apparently, if you're a puppy that's potty training, you don't like be locked in the bathroom that much. You get very bored.

Fast forward to the following Friday night and Saturday morning. Stephen didn't attend any of the soccer games in the a.m. because he had put the new linoleum, that our good friends had given us, the night before. He then put the new sealant ring on and was able to get the toilet on before we celebrated girl #2's birthday with her friends. BTW, only one-ONE, friend showed up. Oh well, she and her mom got to go roller skating with us. It was a blast!

Fast Forward to Saturday the 20Th, 2010.

Stephen put the moulding around the door, put the floor boards up, had already finished any mudding that needed to be done, and he and girl #1 put the first coat of paint on. I was delirious with joy! It was getting done! Finally! I finished painting the walls on Monday, pulled off the tape and I painted all the moulding and floor boards Tuesday a.m and p.m. I also decided that the ceiling needed new paint, so we taped it some paper so I wouldn't get the new walls with white and I went at the ceiling that night. I decided it needed another coat of paint, so Wednesday morning, I painted it again.

On Tuesday while the floor boards were drying in between paint jobs, I took a re-finisher liquid, applied it to super fine (0000) steel wool, and refinished the wooden cabinet. It looks wonderful. It still shows the scratches and dents, but hey, at least they are all the same shade. (That was my favorite part.) Wednesday night we pulled off all the tape and paper from the walls and floor. I looks wonderful. I love it. I could just sit in there for a long time. It feels nice to have it finally-F.I.N.A.L.L.Y.-finished. After one year.And a couple of days.

Next step- store a ton of our stuff somewhere by the end of next week, so I can start ripping out the carpet! I'm so gonna love it. Really, I am.

These pictures don't do it justice, you should come visit!

What a good morning!

It's 10 a.m. and my dishes are done, front room cleaned, hair done, I'm dressed, my boy#2 is dressed (has been since 7:30), beds are made-sheets washed and put back on, and my laundry is half done-only one more load to dry. I think I'm havin' one of those days again. It's been a looong time comin', yes, yes it has.
I think it's due to me waking up at O'Dark 30 and working out with the hubby. Nothing really hard on the legs-only 10 squats and almost 5 lunges before the IT Band started in. Lots of upper body and 15 min. of yoga. I think I can get used to doing this for a month until I can run again. Yep, it'll work for me.

Don't forget, in case I don't write until after the 14th, it's daylight savings time. Spring forward. We lose a precious hour. Start practicing now and it'll help you later. Ha ha ha.

Pizza and the family

Isn't it fun to do things home made. Saturday morning, Stephen went with me to get the boys new shoes and then to do the grocery shopping. He hates to shop, but he willingly went. He helped the boys pick out some shoes. They were a little more than I liked and I probably would have made them choose from the cheapest ones available. It's alright. I'm glad he came.

We went to the grocery store. While I'm pushing the cart and looking at the list knowing where I'm going and what I'm doing, he is following and talking with me. It was pretty nice. He saw some pizza dough and said, "we should make pizza some time." I said how 'bout tonight. So we purchased all we would need to make the pizza and finished shopping.

We went to the park and played and generally had a great day. When we got home we set right to work on getting the pizza made and in the oven 'cuz girl#1 has to go babysitting. I didn't get pics of the kids rolling out the dough, but my hubby finished that part. We put on the sauce and the kids did the rest. They put all the toppings we had on the pizza. WOW! that is a lot of stuff. The best part of this is that I didn't stress or freak out about how they were doing it. This was their creation. I'm quite pleased I didn't freak. Oh, but it tasted so good. I loved it. Two slices to fill ya up with some veggies and all. What a great day. We had us a good time.

What month is it again?

Oh, it's March? Already? What do you mean? Time flies when you can't go workout I guess. Oh, I remember one reason March is so important. Three words. Girl.Scout.Cookies. Oh yeah!!! Samoa's and Thin Mints. You know, these are really helping me with my whole weight loss plan. You know the one, the one I can't do for a whole stupid month thanks to my lame leg. I know, every January or February we buy 'em. We pay for 'em in March and eat them that same day! At least, that is how it used to work for me. I could eat one box of Samoa's in 20 minutes. No joke. Yeah, make ya sick right? Well it didn't then, but now, it hurts my stomach to have too much sugar or to be too full. Do you know how many calories are in a serving size of Samoa's? 150 calories. How many cookies do you get to eat? only 2! yes my friends only 2 cookies for that many calories. Do you know how many I ate yesterday? 6 friggin cookies! But that was throughout the whole day. Nice huh!? I was very pleased with myself. I did very well, not the whole box. Wahoo! Yes I'm very pleased with myself learning to control my desire for these cookies. Don't they just look yummy! I know you want some. You should get some. I just know you should. I'm sure you will find girl scouts out in front of grocery stores or on the sidewalk along Riverdale road. Just one is all you need.

Green Eggs and Ham

Last night was Boy #1's first literacy and math night at school. It was a lot of fun! He colored a Dr. Seuss hat red and white, cut it out, then we stapled a strip of paper to fit his head to the hat. He also showed me how to tell time and they made a game with a clock. It was fun. There was a program. A teacher read parts of "Green Eggs and Ham" while the students recited the not-Sam-I-am parts. I didn't have my camera with me, of course, but we enjoyed having Green Eggs, Ham, a roll and hashbrown for dinner. I didn't know if I could stomach it.

The reason being? Stephen and Girl #1 made green eggs and ham once. While I was in my first trimester of pregnancy with both Girl #2 and Boy #1. I couldn't do it. Stephen has even made green and red eggs for Christmas. I still have a hard time seeing them.

I ate my Green Eggs and Ham meal with my son. It wasn't bad if you can seperate your eyes from your fork as your bringing it to your mouth. They tasted okay too. with ketchup. One more way to make them look gross right? Yeah, that's how it goes. After dinner, Stephen and I took Boy #1 for an ice cream cone. It was fun to have a little us and him time.

I'm Grounded.

Wednesday, in the a.m., I ran up my stairs and started switching the laundry from washer to dryer. I stood in front of the washer and was turning towards the dryer. Ow! what the heck? My knee felt like it needed to be popped and twisted back into place. Oh. My. (@. (curse word) I tried so hard not to cry. I worked out my knee so I could at least walk on it. Later in the afternoon, I went for a nice and easy bike ride at my mom's. When I went to bed, my knee had a very dull pain, so I took some ibuprofen and went to sleep.
Fast forward to Thursday morning.
I went for a run on Thursday morning with Amanda and Lesa. We walked out about a 1/2 mile then started to run. Sharp, shooting pain from the knee up. OW! OW! OW! I didn't even get half a block before I started limping/running. I called out to Amanda and Lesa, they waited. I told them I couldn't go further. (Side note: If I did go on, I would have had to run down a hill, then back up. That would have hurt me more.) I wanted to cry so bad, but held it in. I was so frustrated that my body is sabotaging my efforts to run and to do that well. I was so mad I almost said some very extreme choice words, but I held my tongue in front of these two friends of mine. They didn't need to hear it, and I'm pretty sure they understand how I'm feeling about now.
I told them to keep going and I was going to walk back to Amanda's place. I was very watchful and careful and nothing happened. By the time I got back to Amanda's, my knee had a dull pain sort of in-the center-of-it-but-more-on-the-outside-of-my-knee. I got my keys and phone from the house and started to drive to my mom's to ride the bike. I called Stephen on the way and he said to just come home. "Your body is telling you to take a break and get better." CRAP!!!!! For real?!?!?!?!
My mind was so not having this. I wanted to run. It felt good to run. I miss it! So, I go home, crawl back into bed by Stephen, he holds me and I cry. I can't understand why this is happening. He tells me it's because my body is trying to strengthen itself and sometimes it has to be torn down to build back up the muscle and strength. Double Crap! We talked about the location of the pain and he has decided that it's my IT Band that is hurting and that it hurts because I have favored my foot for too long. "We" decided that I needed to take off a month from running. I should just do some walking after a week of rest, and do a lot more upper body and abs stuff. I can do that, right? I hope so, because running or riding the bike is the only true way I have felt I get any exercise.
Good thing I had a doctor's appointment that day.
I went in and visited with the doc. He agreed that I needed a month to completely heal my leg. He still tells me I haven't lost enough weight to truly run like I want to but by the beginning of April I should have lost enough and my leg should be healed up by then that I can start really training for my runs I have in May and June. Lets.hope.so. He said that if I kept going and re-injuring myself, I'd keep getting discouraged. (Side note- I have lost about 10 lbs. since I started taking the phentermine. That's not bad. I don't think I could have done it without the pill.)
So, for now, I am able to go on brief walks. Once my tendons start to heat up and hurt I have to slow down and take it easy. I haven't like to relax more than usual. I don't really like to just not use my legs for exercise. It's so not right. Gurrrrrr! How many ways can you say or describe "Frustration." I'd like to see what you comment with. Tell me how many there are. Maybe I'll make a whole post of the different ways to describe frustration.
Well that is why I'm grounded. Maybe someone can post a good exercise that won't hurt and I feel like I've exercised.

My stupid lame foot.

So it's been awhile. I haven't forgotten about my blog, just too lazy to post anything until now. At the beginning of January, I hurt my foot somehow while I was running (for the first time in a month.) I hurt it on a Tues., did nothing Wed., did a boot camp on Thurs. (due to red air day), did nothing on Fri., and tried to do a 4 mile run with Amanda. We got about 1/2 mile out and I was ready to limp back. By the way, I limped 1/2 of that 1/2 mile. I went to the doctor later that day. I was in luck, the doctor that saw me is a huge runner; big into marathons, especially in Alaska. I told him I was training with my friends to run a 1/2 marathon and I needed to be getting back on my feet for training. The x-rays came back clean-no breaks, bone spurs or calcium deposits or anything that he could see that would be causing me pain. He determined that a tendon in my foot became inflamed. Or in another word Tendonitis. (For real!? I have been running pretty consistently since March of last year. I'm too young for this to happen. Stephen told me I probably stepped wrong when I was running and didn't realize it until it was too late. YUCK!) We were discussing this and I asked him "so, as I lose more weight, my foot will be able to do better right?" That was all he needed. He said my weight is probably one of the bigger reasons as to why my foot hurt. In another few words, I was to fat to try something like this and unless I lose the weight, I'll keep hurting myself. He put me on a pill-as small a dose he could give me that would help me (something to help increase my metabolism a tiny bit and to help curb my appetite,) told me to ride a bike and do low-impact exercises. He said if I could walk 3 miles without hurting my foot, then I could start running again.

I have been riding a bike with my friends as they run and I have been going to use my parents stationary bike the other days of the week. I am losing the weight a little bit at a time, but I'm finally seeing results of my hard work. Because I have been riding a bike, Stephen wants to go for rides. Problem is, he doesn't get home until it's dark and I don't want to go that late in the day. I'm a morning person and I like to workout in the morning, not at night. We did go for a ride a couple of Saturdays ago. We left our house and rode the parkway trail to I-15. A 8.5 mile round trip. The ride was great, I kept up with Stephen the whole way until we were almost home. That is when I noticed the flat tire I was trying to use to get me places. It sucked. Stephen is my hero. He traded me bikes. I didn't realize how nice the ride home was until we traded. We got home freezing because it got dark, after a beautiful sunny day I was used to the warmth. Ah, such is life. We haven't had a chance to go out again, but I continued riding with my friends and riding the other bike.

Last week I finally ran for 3 miles. Of course I had to walk a bit of it, but that was totally okay with me. I haven't run for over a month, I needed this. The next day, my foot hurt. Thankfully not as bad as it did before. I ran again, and my foot hurt more the next day. All I can say is Ibuprofin is good stuff. I took Saturday off. I rode the stationary bike on the off run days. I feel good, I feel like no matter what I do, I have to exercise somehow. My doc said to do it 6 days a week, but so far I can only get 4 days in, 5 if I'm lucky. I just know that I have been praying for a very long time for a way to help me lose weight. I have absolutely no self control, but now I'm learning to recognize when I'm hungry and when I'm not. The little pill that he gave me is, in short, an answer to my prayer. Some may disagree, such as my husband and a couple of friends, but I needed something more than just me. I'm grateful for those friends who either agree with it or disagree, you all have helped me to know you care. I am also thankful for your support either way. I love my friends and family and I'm to thankful your in my life. I know I'm not going to be on this pill forever. I should be able to hit my goal before the end of the year. It will take lots of work and I'm willing to put in the hours. I feel guilty for taking the pill, like I'm cheating or something, but I also know that I needed something to help me. Sorry for the novel, but this is my turmoil from the last couple of months. More to come later.