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Showing posts from December, 2009

Quiet Around Here

With the kids away for the week, the house is very quiet. And very clean. Along with the quiet and clean, my husband and I marvel at how little food we actually go through when the three are away. It's weird, a bit of a glimpse at what it'll be like when they are grown and out on their own for real. I'm missing them terribly, so I have a hunch I'm going to go through some rough times when the time for them to make their own way comes. Thank goodness I have a few years yet before this happens. I can take these years to prepare myself. A good workout day today. We bought a contraption that turns a regular bike into a stationary bike, so rather than sink several hundred dollars into an exercise bike, we turned my husband's ten-speed into a stationary bike for under a hundred bucks. Now we have a treadmill and the bike to workout on. In addition to these, we have the thing-a-ma-jig that we can do pull-ups on, leg lifts on, dips, and an assorted other exercises on. We ha

Year Ending, Year Beginning

Another year is almost over, and for the most part, 2009 has been a good year. I really have no complaints. Even my husband being laid off effective January 1, 2010 cannot put a damper on my memories from the past year. If anything, he being laid off has been the incentive I've been needing to get a start on some projects I've been thinking about doing but haven't taken the time to put into action. It's kind of strange--he's losing his job and the quite nice salary that went along with it, and I'm the one who feels like I need to find a way to replace his salary. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but part of me feels like this is the chance for me to write my book, the chance for me to prove to myself that I can write and can make money doing it. I still have to go to my day job, I still have three kids to take care of, and I still have a mini-tri training schedule I've committed to. Can I really take on writing a book (actually I'm working on two b

Christmas 2009

The festivities are now over, and the itch to take down the tree, the decorations, the lights adorning the porch has struck. I'm determined to get through one more day of leaving everything alone, though, and have decided to do the tedious task tomorrow. In the process, the whole house will get a good cleaning, a winter cleaning, and maybe stay pristeen for a day, perhaps two, like the several inches of snow that has fallen since yesterday. We really did get a white Christmas. A beautiful white Christmas. While I didn't take a picture of the inside of the mincemeat pie, the filling turned out very tasty. My dad loved it. I could tell by the closing of his eyes as he took his first bite, by the way his face took on a look of pure pleasure as he savored the flavors. He then gave a bite to my brother-in-law who doesn't like mincemeat pie at all, but after one bite of mine, my brother-in-law turned to me and said, "That's not mincemeat." The doctoring of the filli

Toasty Warm House

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I baked my very first mincemeat pie. Though I didn't actually do the whole thing from scratch, I did add in some special ingredients to enhance the flavor. I wish I could cut it to get a picture of the inside, but I can't as it is supposed to make its way over to my parents' home for Christmas Eve dinner tomorrow. Mincemeat is one of my dad's favorite pies, and since he's always saying he doesn't want anything for Christmas unless he can eat it or drink it, this is his gift from me. Along with what I hope turns out to be a good bottle of wine. Because of the baking, the house is nice and warm today. Outside the weather is miserable: rain, rain, and more rain. All of the snow is gone after turning to mushy slush then dissolving altogether. Tomorrow more rain is to fall, and on Christmas more rain is to fall. I'm good with staying in, lounging in my pj's all day, reading, eating, and just relaxing.

Sore Bum

The bike was brutal today. I had been using the recumbant bike until today. The seat on each, to say the least, is as different as sandpaper and cotton. My bum has been speaking to me ever since, and what it's been saying isn't fit for my mother to hear. How do cyclists do it? Do they wear padded shorts? I'm going to have to figure something out in order to get through the bike training. The swim yesterday went well. I did the 400 meters like I would for the mini-tri, only taking very short breaks at the end of each lap. I was able to finish the 400 in fifteen minutes. I'd say that's not too shabby. My goal is to get down to ten minutes. That might be a bit lofty, and I'll settle for twelve or thirteen minutes, but I do think I can shave off quite a bit of time by not stopping at the end of each lap. After doing the initial 400 meters, I used a paddle board and did another 400 meters. At about the 300 meters mark, fatigue set in on my left side, making me vere t

A Year of Eating Healthfully

I've always had a hate relationship with the scale. Ever since sixth grade, when we had to be weighed in front of everyone, and I weighed in at a beefy 106 pounds, I've avoided scales and weighing myself. I didn't know it then, but I was five feet tall as a sixth grader, and according to the charts, I was only six pounds heavier than the chart said was normal. But even the chart didn't take into account the type of body one might have. Over the years, I've learned a lot about body types and how a person's body type affects what that person will weigh. Also, each individual has a weight that his/her body is most comfortable at, making it difficult for that person to get to a lower weight. All through high school, from freshman year through my senior year, I couldn't get under 150 pounds. I played volleyball, basketball, and ran track, but I could not budge the scale to 149 or less. Today, almost thirty years beyond high school, my weight still likes to edge u
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With my husband's impending layoff just around the corner, actually what we will wake up to on New Year's day, I've been feeling less than filled with holiday spirit. In fact, I've been on the edge of anger for a couple of weeks now. I know the layoff isn't because of anything he did/did not do while he was working this contract. In fact, we've known all along the contract would only last five years, and those five years have come and gone. The anger comes from my urging my husband to save as much as possible during the five years only to have him tell me saving isn't important. Now. . .now he's fretting about money. A lot of good the fretting will do at this point. On top of his refusal to save, he went out and bought a new truck last year. A brand new truck. Not a used one like I encouraged him to buy. A big, spankin' new truck. His reasoning? Because he wanted a new truck. So now I have to take an overload at work to earn a little more money each

Training Day 2

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No swim yesterday. My training partner had some dental work done and wasn't feeling up to swimming, so we did some bike time instead. I went 13.6 miles in just under 50 minutes. I don't know if this is good or bad, but I'm going to try to do the 13.6 miles several times a week, working to bring the time down. I kind of surprised myself yesterday in completing the mileage without stopping or slowing down. I maintained a 16-18 mph speed the entire time. Another surprise is I'm not sore today. I guess all the running I've been doing is paying off. Who knew? One idea I had is to take a day in a couple of weeks to do a run-through of a mini tri at the gym. I can do the swim, change and get on a bike, then go to the treadmill for the run. A mock trial would give me an indication of what I'm facing come April 2010. I just might find I'm in no shape at all to do something like this, which would be helpful in establishing a training schedule. I kind of what to test m

Swim Day Tomorrow

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Tomorrow is the beginning of the mini-tri training. Swimming. I've always been a strong swimmer, so I'm hoping this is the area where I can do well since I have a tough time with the running. I've been running three to four miles most days of the week, but I just cannot get myself to increase the pace. Twelve-minute miles seem to suit me just fine. Maybe with the swimming and the biking I'll see a change in the running. Maybe. I've been training alone for most of the year. My husband started out with me, both of us working out, keeping track of what we ate, weighing in each Friday, and recording everything for the first 90 days of this year. When the 90 days ended, he stopped. He was doing so well, but now it's like he doesn't even care. He eats what seems like is constantly. He hasn't worked out or walked for months. The progress he made those 90 days is gone, and I'm incredibly disappointed that he has allowed himself to totally negate all the posi

And the Semester is Over

Every semester I always marvel at how quickly it seems the sixteen weeks go by. Sixteen weeks ago I was getting ready to hand out all the required paperwork and go through my usual this-is-how-the-class-will-work spiel. Now I'm returning the portfolios that demonstrate each student's successful or maybe not-so-successful semester. The portfolios mean a lot to me, maybe even more than they mean to the students who write the papers, the journal entries, the reflection essays that make up the final collection of work. As I go through them, I see the improvement made by those who want to do more than just slide by. I remember the days we worked on certain papers, the exercises I had the students do to improve their writing. I always wonder what I could have done differently to help those who are borderline; they completed all the work, but their writing shows they either didn't put in the effort needed or they just don't get the concepts that make up the course. These situa