Run Log: July 2012

Yeah, Really.  I should title this the NON-run log: July 2012.  6½ miles for the month of July.  UGH.  My foot just started to hurt all the time & I decided I better wait it out.  I read a LOT about foot pain & kinda figured I had plantar fasciitis ~ and I really didn't WANT it.  All the literature says the same thing...Don't Run.  Hard to treat.  REST.  May last YEARS.  UGH.  Horrible.  It still only HURT when I ran, but it was tight & uncomfortable & not getting better.  So I quit running the first week of the month.  I tried a week later & it was pound pound pound on that heel.  I rested & I rode my bike & my pants got tighter.  I like to ride my bike, but it's just not the same as running.  I have to go at least an hour to get a good workout in.  Even then, I don't get that, "oh this feels good for me" feeling that running gives me.  I HAVE seen some cool things.  I rode all the way out to route 45 along the lake one day.  I rode past the entrance to the Perry Nuclear Power Plant & I SWEAR I could see the snipers on top of the towers.  
As I've already blogged, I did finally go to the doctor.  Despite my unwillingness to accept the diagnosis, she told me I had plantar fasciitis.  I think the prednisone she gave me worked.  My foot has felt really good for the past weekend.  I bought new {more expensive} shoes & we walked while at UPGW ~ I had ZERO pain or tightness.  SOOOO {even though I read that even when the pain stops, it's important to continue resting because it's not yet HEALED} I ran a mile yesterday.  I could feel it tightening while I ran...and it was tight all day yesterday.  I was KICKING myself...but this morning it felt MUCH BETTER.  I don't think I'll run again for another week...& then I'm keeping it short.  It will be good to run with the kids @ Stig, on the softer ground.  I'm praying I'm doing the right things.  I will also take my Aleve...which I can't take until after my surgery on Friday.  I know that's way more than anyone wants to know about my running-thought-process! ~ but there you have it.  I will try again & I will run again.
I MISS it.  It felt so good to be running yesterday.  I NEED to run.  


June's totals:
6.5 miles for the month 
429.5 miles for the year
163 biking miles for the month
266 biking miles for the year
255 miles in my now retired red & blue Asics
1 mile in my NEW SHINY $150 VERY WHITE turquoise Asics
Some interesting facts:
Longest run this month: 3 miles
Favorite place to run this month: the first 1/2 mile out to Dimo's house & back.  As it was that first run after not running for two + weeks.
# of bags of Candy Cane Kisses left in my cabinet: Still that ONE bag...I think the only reason I'm not eating it is because I don't want this count to go to zero!  {and my pants are getting tighter}
# of books I read this month: Four  

Monthly mileage record: 80.5 miles March 2012 
Highest mileage ever-at-one-time:  13.1 miles ~ May 16, 2010 (Cleveland 1/2) 


PR's:
5K: 22:45 (Rabbit Run 10/30/11~ but I think it was a short course)
10K: 52:02 (Cleveland 5/15/11)
10-miler: 1:21:29 (Hermes Cleveland 10-miler 4/28/12)
half-marathon: 1:55:04 (Cleveland 5/16/10)
marathon: 3:50:05 (Akron relay {team run} 9/24/11)

UPGW

UPGW {Union Pier Girls' Weekend} 2012 is in the books.  Walking, shopping, eating, drinking, laughing, swimming, Euchre{ing}, not much sleeping...
A few highlights:

1. The Chicken Thief:  As we were unpacking Kirsten hands me the chicken, still a little frozen, and says, "Put this out there {pointing to the new enclosed porch} and I'll cut it after we've unpacked."  So I do.  Fast forward to EARLY {like 5:00} Friday morning...Anita and I are awakened by Kirsten's laughing/crying.  I can't figure out is she's in the middle of a melt-down or can't catch her breath from laughing too hard.  And she says, "Someone stole the chicken."  And she can't stop laughing.  And then I remember, the chicken, it's out on the porch...But she really thought someone had come in and stolen just the chicken. {Why this happened at 5 am is beyond my understanding}
2. Someone DID steal Kirsten's flip flops.  She had to walk home over the rocks, "Just like Mary Magdalene" and she made a sign to express her feelings.
3. Anita and I did not win very much at Euchre.  I did win at Pounce.
4. Anita & I went to Oinks for the first time ~ YUMMY Chocolate Covered Pretzel Ice Cream in a Sugar Cone.

5. We found a wonderful store...Frecklefarm.  I bought a GREAT metal sunflower for my garden.
6. The Burger King we stopped at was out of sweet potato fries & ice.

the C word

so...I went to the doctor & indeed I do have plantar fasciitis...which just kind of makes me feel sad & wonder when I'll ever run again.
But I also had her look at a unhealing zit on my face...and she referred me to a plastic surgeon who told me yesterday that it's skin cancer.
Not the most surprising news for a redhead who grew up at the pool ~ in Kansas ~ before sunscreen ~ but shocking nonetheless. I have surgery scheduled for August 3rd to remove it.
Here was our conversation:
"Oh, that's a basal cell skin cancer."
"Cancer?  Should I cry now?"
"No, no, no..." and he went on to tell me that it is located, doesn't spread, but needs to be removed & checked to see if it's benign or not & now, since my body had developed one I have to stay out of the sun, wear sunblock & long sleeves...
I did not mention that I'm heading to the beach today for my UP weekend with the girls ~ but I did buy 100+ face sunblock & 70 sunscreen for the rest of me & I packed my hat & I'll sit under the umbrella with Bean.

Reaction:
Mentally I know I'm ok.
But it's still FREAKY.  Cancer is such a ScArY word.  And it's really life changing...no hanging out by the pool or the beach.  Wearing sunscreen when I run. {if I run}  Wearing hats.  Certainly not hard, but different.

And I have to consider this stupid foot to be a blessing.

#19

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown is book #19.  The hardest thing about reading this book {besides my total ignorance of Shakespeare,  was that one sister's name is Bean.  I have a dear friend named Bean.  {not really her real name, as you probably already figured out}  My Bean is not a thief, a liar, or a whore.  Hard to differentiate the name in my head as I was reading.  Interesting look at sibling relationships and family dynamics.  What makes us who we are?  No matter how old we get, we're still 10 when we are with our siblings & fall into the same roles...over and over and over.  I know this is true for me and my family!  The narrator of this story was the sisters.  Not individually, but the collective, we.  Interesting way to write it, and I enjoyed it.  The dynamic of the sisterhood telling their stories ~
I still haven't found that great summer, no-brainer read...but this was a good book ~ and it ended happily-ever-after...maybe!
Good Quotes:
p24 ~ But it is worth noting, especially now that 'weird' has evolved from its delicious original meaning of supernatural strangeness into something depressingly critical and pedestrian, as in, " 'Don't you think Rose's outfit looks weird?' Bean asked," that Shakespeare didn't really mean the sisters were weird at all.  The word he originally used was much closer to "wyrd," and that has an entirely different meaning.  "Wyrd" means fate.  And we might argue that we are not fated to do anything, that we have chosen everything in our lives, that there is no such thing as destiny.  And we would be lying.  {interesting how words can become so different from their original meaning...gay...awesome...weird}
p71 ~ This conversation, you will not be surprised to know, was the impetus for their breakup, given that it caused her to realize the emotion she had thought was her not liking him very much was, in fact, her not liking him at all.  Because despite hi money and his looks and all the good-on-paper attributes he possessed, he was not a reader, and, well, let's just say that is the sort of nonsense up with which we will not put.  {love the sentiment...love the word order...I had to read it a few times to have it make sense! but it so works}
p164 ~ {loved this alliterative description of blueberry pancakes}...their delicate bodies splitting against the wooden spoon, staining the batter with violent violet.
p202 ~  {GREAT METAPHOR}  Cordy ripped the dress off, stuffed it in the garbage can, mourned it bitterly for years afterward, lime on chapped lips.

fl: We came home because we were failures.  lp: Inside, the tree, surrounded with presents, the people we love.  Inside, our beds, our memories, our history, our fates, our destinies.  Inside, we three.  The Weird Sisters.  Hand in hand.

Life: bad, good & funny

Life is all full of ups & downs, as we all know.  It's learning to dance through the downs...So let me start with my BIG BAD.  I haven't been able to run for over two weeks.  It's hurt to run for a month & a half.  I talked about it in my last run log...since then I've only run twice (well, three times if I count the 1/2 mile I tried to run after taking a week off.)  And it's not better.  My stupid foot hurts.  It hurts with each pounding step when I run.  It's tight when I walk.  I ice & stretch & roll it on a tennis ball ~ but it's not improving.  I don't go to the doctor when I'm hurt, because the doctor will tell me to REST.  I don't like to rest...but since I'm resting already...I made an appointment & I will find out if I'll ever run again at 3:30 this afternoon.
That sounds so dramatic.  I look around at other things in the world and realize that not running is not the end of the world...but it's amazing how it's really casting a shadow over everything.  I look longingly at my cute running skirts...I look at my fancy Garmon that would let me run where ever the desire took me and feel so SAD...I saw a very large girl running on the bike path the other day and I wanted to CRY!  I was JEALOUS!  JEALOUS! Such a strange emotion to have when looking at a runner!  
But there is still good ~ as always.  It all depends on where we look.


Saturday Mike & I celebrated our TWENTY-SECOND wedding anniversary.  22 years.  Amazing.  I am really so incredibly, amazingly, wonderfully blessed by a hard working, thoughtful, talented, handsome man.  To celebrate we went to the new "fancy-pants" (but we wore shorts) restaurant in Downtown Madison, The Vault.   We sat outside & the view from their patio, looking out over the square, made Madison look like a cute little town.  Mike was in HEAVEN.  They brought out a board with their different cuts of meat so you could see what you were ordering.  Mike got a really big Porterhouse & I got a sirloin.  They were both REALLY good.  It was a little pricey, but it's a million times better than Outback or Longhorn, and not that much more expensive.  And it's right in Madison.  Mike was so excited he even took pictures.  {if you know Mike, you know how big a deal that is!}

Before...Mike's HUGE steak & my girly size one

After

As you can see, he really enjoyed his meal.  He already called going there for his birthday!

Today I cleaned off my magnet wall...it had gotten pretty full of stuff.  I retired a few pieces & wanted to note my favorite two:

 

1.  A card from my friend, Bean.  It says, "If you don' have anything nice to say, come and sit by me."  Made me laugh!

2.  A comic that Mike cut out of the paper many many many years ago. I think it even made to move from our Moseley Road house, and that was in 2003.

I really like how he crossed out the name & wrote me in.  The story of my life.

#18

A book fair find ~ #18 is Middle School The Worst Years of My Life by James Patterson (and Chris Tebbetts ~ in much smaller font ~ even though he probably wrote more that Mr. Patterson).  The cover is really interesting ~ and since I work in a middle school...some days it does seem like the worst years of my life!   I really liked the art work throughout the book.  Very creative & kids will really like it too.  I thought this would be a good book to have in the classroom because I think it will appeal to both boys and girls.  It was a little 'odder' than I anticipated.  Leo the Silent is a main character...I won't spoil it for you, but I found that whole thing really strange.  Funny story line, in that Rafe (our main character) makes life more interesting at school by making it a game where he scores points for breaking the rules.  I enjoyed the badness of the idea.  I can't say I'd recommend this book to an adult, but a middle schooler would probably enjoy.
fl: It feels as honest as the day is crummy that I begin this tale of total desperation and woe with me, my pukey sister, Georgia, and Leonardo the Silent sitting like rotting sardines in the back of a Hills Village Police Department cruiser.  ll: You just finished reading it.

#17

Finished #17 on the hammock enjoying the perfect temperature ~ a little sun, a little breeze {and Jacob burning rolls of cap tape...pop, pop, pop}.
A good summer read, Carl Hiaasen's Skinny Dip.  I had read Carl Hiaasen's Hoot a few years ago, but didn't know that he has written a ton of fiction books.  Like Hoot, Skinny Dip is rooted in environmentalism & the problems humans cause.  A little hard to believe that a man would off his wife because she may have found out about his part in a scam to pollute the Everglades, but once you bought that story the rest followed.  A little mystery ~ a little romance ~ a few 'life lessons'.
fl: At the stoke of eleven on a cool April night, a woman named Joey Perrone went overboard from a luxury deck of the cruise liner M.V. Sun Duchess. ll: "No, Dr. Perrone, you are not."

Firsts

I always look at the ending instead of the beginning ~ I have to remember to focus on the beginning, because they are so much more exciting.
Patrick & I got up EEEEEEAAAARLY yesterday morning and drove all the way down 71 to the end of the state...(well, almost...exit 3 to be accurate).  We had our FIRST college visit @ the University of Cincinnati. I was very impressed with their campus ~ compact, pedestrian, easy to get around.  Patrick also liked it, but as he has nothing to compare it to it's hard to make any firm decisions.  A solid 'maybe'.  Time to get more visits organized.
It was so darn HOT yesterday.  When we left campus the car said it was 103°.  That's HOT.  As we were battling traffic in Columbus it said 107°.  I've never seen that car register that kind of heat.  (another FIRST)
On our way home we saw yet another FIRST (for me anyway).  A CAR WAS ON FIRE.  Like really burning up...flames everywhere...no emergency response there yet, so it had just happened.  There was a guy stopped and the driver was out of the car ~ so I don't think anyone was hurt.  But it was SCARY...we had to drive pretty darn close to it to get around...I'm sure it was ready to explode ~ That happens you know.  I've seen it on TV.

And today I ate my FIRST tomato from my garden.  It was a cherry tomato ~ but it was yellow and not red.  I don't ever recall a tomato going from green to yellow and then to red.  I wonder if I got a mislabled tomato plant?!  It was very yummy tho'!

#16

First off, I have to say that I couldn't leave this book cover-side up.  It grosses me out.  Those arms just make my skin crawl when they are on Tina Fey's body.  I don't know if it's the arms or just in conjunction with Tina...but it's so gross.
Fancy deduction may have let you know that book #16 is Tina Fey's Bossypants.  Overall, I enjoyed this book.  There were times when I was like, "I don't care."  But I loved her smarty-artie, in-your-face humor, so even the "I don't care" parts were entertaining to read.  What really struck me is just how normal famous people are.  How we all react in very human ways ~ I never really thought about the personal back-lash Tina felt when she was portraying Sarah Palin.  Let me just share some of my favorite quotes:
pp 84-85 The Rules of Improvisation ~ (I am just listing...not typing out the whole two pages)
1.  AGREE
2. say YES, AND.  You are supposed to agree and then ADD SOMETHING of your own. To me YES, AND means don't be afraid to contribute.  It's your responsibility to contribute.  Always make sure you're adding something to the discussions. Your initiations are worthwhile.
3. MAKE STATEMENTS.  Whatever the problem, be part of the solution.  Don't just sit around raising questions and pointing out obstacles.
4.  THERE ARE NO MISTAKES, only opportunities.  many of the world's greatest discoveries have been by accident.  I mean, look at the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, or Botox.
p96-97  {when talking about the fire on the cruise ship during their honeymoon ~ kinda familiar story...} About thirty minutes later Dan Dan the Death Man comes back on, saying that thanks to the excellent work of the firefighters on the crew, the fire is out...He says the heat from the fire sent off every fire alarm on the ship and so every chamber must be checked...Most people take this as good news.  But I'm too smart for that.  I know that extreme heat plus a burst fuel pipe means that the ship is going to explode now.  While people around me start to relax, I keep my eyes on the sea, waiting to be rocketed into it on a wave of fire.  I'll be ready for it to happen and that way it won't happen.  It's a burden, being able to control situations with my hyper-vigilance, but it's my lot in life. {Tina and I have so much in common}
 p 183 *Actually that only happened to me once that I know about.  A coworker at SNL dropped an angry C-bomb on me and I had the weirdest reaction.  To my surprise, I blurted, "No.  You don't get to call me that.  My parents love me; I'm not some Adult Child of an Alcoholic that's going to take that shit."  And it never happened again...that I know of.
p187 new favorite word:

p194 "The Days Are Long and the Years Are Short"  {no kidding}
p234 One of the worst parts of all of this was that I learned what it felt like to be a lightning rod.  I got some hate mail, and there are definitely people out there who will dislike me for the rest of my life because of "what I did" to Sarah Palin.  On an intellectual level, this doesn't bother me at all.  On a human level, I would prefer to be liked. {Certainly, I can relate!}

fl: Welcome Friend, Congratulations on your purchase of this American-made genuine book.  ll: Either way, everything will be fine.  But if you have an opinion, please feel free to offer it to me through the gap in the door of a public restroom.  Everyone else does.

Mr. Fix-its

Last night...the 4 year old, HD, flat screen, hooked to the PS3 TV buzzed, popped and shone the 'orange light of death.'

The boys wanted to head to Wal-Mart to buy a new one...well @ $400 Mike decided to see what Mr. Google had to say.  Mr. Google said that it was probably a 'blown capacitor'  {seriously, there really are capacitors? as in the flux kind?!} So the boys took off the back of the TV {all 400 screws} and, sure enough, there were two 'blown capacitors'.  Online they went to try and order the replacements...only to be overwhelmed by the choices.  

This morning I went off to our friendly Madison Radio Shack {shout out to Nicole!} and bought two capacitors...they had three drawers full of choices, where the shout out to Nicole comes in.  $3.68 later I have the replacement parts and a 'good luck' from the ladies of the Shack.

Mike came home from work and they replaced the pieces...prying off the old, soldering the new...plugging it in..."no orange light...no orange light" chant.

WHOOO HOOOO ~ success!

This is the amazingness with which I live.