I am a tri-athlete!

Here is my quick race report – I was so nervous at the swim start and walking down to the beach. It didn’t help that we were delayed 40+ minutes, except that I got to talk to some of the other survivors which is always so inspiring. I was lucky going into the swim to be in the front of the pack, after the first buoy I found a good groove and was able to actually do some crawl. I was so happy with my swim time and felt good when I got out of the water. The transition was a little bumpy, I had forgotten to adjust my bike seat so I had to stop a few times and get it in the correct position. I have the least experience on the bike (I had to borrow one for the race) but with that in mind I just put my head down and kept pedaling. I did not get off that bike – went into granny gear for the hills and kept repeating “I am a gorgeous athlete”. The mantra worked and although lots of people passed me on the left I felt good about my ride. The ride to run was the hardest and my calves were stiff for the first mile. I am a very slow runner, but really enjoyed this part of the race. I was finally able to look around and feel the love from the crowd. Again, my goal was “do not stop”. I was able to run my slow pace the entire way up and down those little hills and by the last ½ mile was feeling so good that I even kicked it up a little! I am so smiling today!

Triathalon in seven days

I think that I will give in and officially admit that I am on summer vacation. The amount of driving this summer is quite horrible, esspecially given the $$ of gas. The kids are back and forth at different camps and the beach and the pool... and no time to blog!

The triathalon is on Sunday ... eeks! Ready or not...

Vacation post - The hike

We thought that we had a reservation to go kayaking on Monday except that upon arrival at the kayak store we found that we did not... hmmm... I am not very happy when events do not go according to my expectations... I got grumpy, Josh got grumpy, Teddy got grumpy, Lee walked us down the street to get ice cream.. all in that order.
During the ice cream ordering the idea occured to Lee to let the boys order whatever they wanted, adding up the miles which each "piece" of their order. Josh's went something like this;
Waffle cone = 2 miles, scoop of coffee ice cream = 1 mile, toppings = 1mile. Josh "owed" Lee a 4 mile hike and the biggest catch was - NO COMPLAINING would be allowed!
We consulted the map of the park and Lee immedialty chose the 7 mile hike to the top of Cadillac Mountain. I was uncertain of his choice but we all agreed. The boys of course only hearing "3.5 miles to the top" and not quite understanding that it also meant 3.5 miles back down.
We filled our water bottles and left a hot and sunny parking lot for the "death march" - with NO COMPLAINING!
It was a truly wonderful event. We marched and laughed and joked the entire time. There truly was NO COMPLAINING! It is hard for me to remember - it is just outside of my imagination, but I know that it happened. It became the highlight of the trip, here are the pictures. Note - although it was quite sunny at the bottom, most of the hike was in the wind and the fog. Definetly Maine weather,







The veiw from the top is quite spectacular!

Vacation post - Maine-ly flowers

I love taking pictures of flowers. In my next life I would like to be a landscape designer or own a flower shop, but in this life I can't seem to keep up with the weeds. Here are my pictures from vacation,

still at work....vacation begins in 4 hours. For the first time I have left Lee at home to pack the kids and the dogs and the boys while I have gone to work. It is hard to give up control but I am so glad not to be in charge of the packing this year!.

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It's been a long time

I had gotten so used to blogging nearly every day that I woke up in the middle of the night in a panic – I had forgotten about my beloved Teddy’s house blog! It seems that the end of school was so dramatic for us at Teddy’s house, with recitals and graduations and school plays and baseball baseball baseball that I had forgotten to keep my on-line thoughts updated. Well, I’m back. I am sure you are wondering what brought me back – it’s all bc of Grandma. Thanks G’ma! The boys are spending 2 nights and 2+ days with G’ma and G’pa.

What a treat for everyone – but mostly for me.

I won’t tell G’ma that Josh discovered the phone in the guest room and has been calling me every few hours to tell me that he is homesick but does not want to come home. I can completely agree with him! I miss him, but I do not want him to come home!
Normally Lee and I would be off to a hotel in Boston or a B&B in Vermont, however this weekend we find ourselves with no dog sitter and no gas money and the desire to hang out at our own house. We did a lot of bike riding and some running and napping and movie watching and out to dinner and trips to the bookstore. So it was a real weekend of doing what we wanted. And now I am ready to see my kids J

Saving gas

I rode my the company bike to work today!  I do not actually own a working bike and I did not win the free bike from my favorite  blog, crankyfitness.com.  However, for reasons still unknown to me, one of my partners here at work bought 2 bikes last summer (with the company cash).  I think he wanted a new bike and justified his purchase by buying some extras.  So, anyway I have adopted one of the bikes. After much consultation with Lee as to the route that I should take and also much packing and repacking of my backpack (it feels so heavy – and yet has nothing in it!) I rode the 4+ miles to work.  Ok, so not a very long distance.  In fact it took me barely 20 minutes.  I haven’t been this early to work in a years.  The hardest part was negotiating the traffic and the train tracks.  There are a few potentially fatal intersections between home and work, and even in a car they can be suicidal.  I tried to be smart and still look “cool”.. ie.. not ride the entire way on the sidewalk.  I wanted to be a real rider… hmm… except that my helmet is completely broken and sits on my head sideways…J  Now, I just need to get me and the bike home.

 

Sunday lunch on the boat

It is really hard to keep up with the save the environment talk when we have so much fun out on the boat. At the same moment that I disparaged anyone who would drive a Hummer, my husband mutters comments about our twin 150's, hmmm. It is hard to be a consumer loving American and still preach to my kids about turning out the lights and recycling. I am sure that there are many families that would make the choice not to own a powerboat, especially with the high gas prices. Is it enough that we are willing to forgo our "tear arounds"? These are basically Lee driving the boat really fast out around the islands off the North Shore while the kids hang out in the front of the boat and laugh into the wind at the high speeds.

We have some of our best days out on the boat. Would we really be able to give that up?

For example, yesterday during a lull in the fishing, while Lee was working on the fishing gear, Teddy complained to me that he was sooo bored. I agreed, that I was also kinda' bored. But then I reviewed the alternative with him - we could be home doing homework, laundry, dishes, fighting with your brother. Instead we were out here together - trapped with your family. Although I know that the boys are still young, I also know that they each increasingly want to call their friends and be away from me. The time when they won't spend the day on the boat with their parents is coming, so we are going to enjoy a little boredom together until then.

Why is it that I can start with this?

Why is that I can spend hundreds of dollars on cookbooks AND cooking magazines at the grocery store and still have nothing to cook?? I watch the food network nearly every night. I love cooking challenge shows - my favorites being Food network Challenge and Top Chef. I can sit on the couch for hours every night and page through pictures and post-it note recipes and discuss ingredients. I can surf the Internet for hours and email recipes home to myself and print out long discussions of how to prepare.

I have even gone so far as to plan menus and add ingredients to the shopping list. I can imagine the dinners that will be served to my family every night. I have occasionally convinced Lee to cook for us and agreed to do the planning and buying...

Except that if you know me for 5 minutes you know that I do not like to cook and then if you know me for 4 more minutes you know that I do not like to shop. Life at Teddy's house is best when I leave the grocery store to Lee. I get impatient at the store.. I had to spend that much money all at once, only to go home and feel like I didn't get what I really needed, or that there is still nothing for dinner.

One reason is that I am so cheap that I often don't buy all the stuff. For example, do you really need fish sauce to make Pad Thai? Do you really need expensive smelly cheese to make fettuccine? Because I think you can get by with stir fry and mozzarella.

hmm... so after all that energy and imagination on gourmet food... this is what Teddy gets for dinner tonight... scrambled eggs and toast... and he had to make it himself....

Teddy's Star Wars Recital

Oversharing

There is a new vocabulary word bouncing around the blogosphere, oversharing.  Oversharing is a blogger that reveals so much of themselves and their loved ones that it causes dysfunction and breakup in their personal life… which of course, leads to more midnight blogging of family secrets.

Some bloggers document their daily life and mundane routines in such a way that there is no need to change the names of the innocent.  For example, the many cute family/workout/diet blogs that I love to read.  Some bloggers change their names and the names of everyone in the blog, my personal favorites are Crabby and Merry from crankyfitness.com.  They reveal only a little of themselves.  Although this year with their move across the country I have learned so much more about them.

My blog really started with Carolyn’s Cure, where I was basically copying my daily journal online.  This worked because my topic was so very focused each day and each experience was new and “newsworthy”.  These days Teddy’s house is just my friendly little quips of stupid suburban family life.   I have thought of actually putting my journal entries up there for all to see (haha – joke’s on me).. except that documenting the painful aspects of raising two boys and working on an 18 year old marriage just seems to be out of place with the best interest of my family.  Maybe my blog is just my space to keep it light and anonymous and merely to document that a boring life is still a life. J

The good, the bad and the ugly

So, because I know that it is healthier to view life from the positive side, I will begin with the good. Good that I made it through a 13.1 mile half marathon road race. Good that I trained and was prepared and good for me that I have achieved a milestone. It feels good to be able to tell people that "I did it".
It feels bad to think about how totally slow and miserable I was. I really have never considered myself a complainer, but omg! - that was really hard. It was hard to be out there alone for so long and it was hard to keep running... I didn't always keep running either... I sometimes walked and that is bad. I am trying to stay focused on the good, on the accomplishment and on having it over with. However, sadly I know that I will have to try this again, because my time was really bad and really slow, even for a slow mama like me.
The race was hot and I have been nervous for days... it was long! I stayed with Suzanne, my fabulous running partner until about mile 7, and then we had to break up. I just couldn't keep up with her. She is insisting that my issues are all in my head and my body was completely prepared to run with her.
The ugly is my toes. Especially ugly is my big toe on my right foot. Interesting because my toes on my left foot have been blistering for a few weeks. I have been keeping my shoes tied fairly loosely so that my toes don't cramp or get stiff and I think that my toe got bruised or something from so much trauma (yes, trauma!)
It has been a few days since the race, and the complete pain of it is fading.. I even went spinning last night. I am not quite ready to put another 13.1 miles on the calendar.. hmm.. but I might.

13.1 Miles - Finished!

My fab hubby ran the last 1/2 mile with me..I was so ready to be done with running - actually I was ready to be done at mile 6 but couldn't find anyone to give me a ride home. He met me at the top of the bridge that is the edge of Boston and leads into the south end - waterfront area. It was nice that all the runners that had finished and were walking to their cars were cheering me on, not for a minute to any make me feel bad about being so slow. Someday when I am faster I will have to make sure that I stay at the race and cheer all those people finishing behind me.. a girl can have a fantasy, right?

So Lee was great, except that he started asking me questions and then I had to gasp at him "I can't talk right now"... so then he kept talking and babbling and then I had to gasp at him again "please no more talking". At this point I really just needed to get to the finish line, which kept getting farther away...

Josh caught a fish at the canal!

 

Have you ever felt this tired?

This couldn't be me!

What the rest of us were doing

when Lee was being the human tractor... well, actually Josh was helping, I just didn't get a chance to take a picture. I was moving dirt from the endless dirt pile at the end of the driveway and Teddy was... well, you can see what Teddy was doing.

Need I say more?

He doesn't need a tractor... this is cross training. I should let everyone know that he did just get back from a 10-miler and it is hot outside..

Tractor fantasy

My dh, Lee is quite a great worker bee around the house. Give him an unscheduled morning and the right tools, and most importantly no access to his boat and he can accomplish much around the house.

It all started last week, when the water cooler talk at work turned to lawn care. I was lamenting the poor state of our grass. Although Lee and I would be thrilled to have a beautiful lawn many thing keep us from that.. time, having no idea what to do, and the hesitation to use chemicals where our kids and dogs play..also - we do not have the proper equipment. Not having the proper equipment is a frequent complaint from Lee at our house. So, we were discussing our lawn woes at work and I mentioned to my friend Bill, that he had two aerators in his garage. My husband had spotted them on a drive by his house earlier in the week...

Friday afternoon when no one was home, Bill dropped off his extra aerator at our house. We not only do not have the proper equipment we also do not have alot of "lawn care knowledge". But, given the aerator was delivered, I figured we should use it. hhhmmm... I study the aerator and I consult with Bill. It turns out that the aerator requires a tractor! what! We do not have a tractor despite my husbands desire to own a large John Deere and many acres. What the heck do we do with this piece of farm equipment??

The final coutdown

10 days left until the big race…my legs are tired today and my 5 miles last night was not great. In fact, I am not sure that I actually made it 5 miles. I ended up at the track at the middle school and there was some sort of running club practicing their sprints. So, I would plod around the track and pretend that I didn’t notice the large group that would engulf me on all sides as they sprinted past. It was a little depressing to be moving so slow and and to feel like an elephant plodding through a dance recital. I stayed focused on my breathing and I had a good podcast on my ipod and I was grateful that I was able to be out running at all.

I am anxious about the next 10 days but very impatient to have this behind me so I can run for fun – OMG – I cannot believe that I actually just said fun and run in the same sentence with “I”….what is happening??