Happy Halloween!

I don't have any pictures of my little black kitten because she did NOT want to wear her costume this morning. Hopefully I can get some this evening, with a little bribery. It's going to be a busy evening of me picking her up from daycare at 4, rushing home to try to get her to eat some dinner, in her costume and then out the door for some trick or treating (praying it doesn't rain). I don't like it when Halloween falls on a weekday, not as much fun and I wish I could take the day off of work to do some fun things. I guess I should save it for when she's older.

I carved my pumpkin yesterday, it's a fish skeleton :) I'm proud of it. I have to admit, and I promise I'm not a weird o, but carving a pumpkin is very therapeutic. If you're stressed or angry, just take some knives and slice into that bad boy!

My husband went to freeze his butt off fishing yesterday and caught a bunch of trout and red fish.

Friday night my father in law shot a big 10 point deer. They already have one deer head mounted on the wall and many skulls, my mother in law is trying to figure out where this big head is going. It's currently in our garage freezer till my father in law can take it somewhere to get mounted. Out of sight out of mind.

There will be a whole lot of deer meat in our future because they like to share.

Actually I'm not a big fan of venison. Sure I'll eat some venison spaghetti and my husband likes the summer sausage but I think the meat is a little too tough for my taste. Although we did have a tenderloin once that turned out really well - we marinated it for like a day. My favorite though is the venison bacon. It's thick and salty (and lean).

My in laws do hunt and to be honest I'm an animal lover so the picture above disturbs me slightly. My husband says it's regulated (so you can't shoot Bambi and the deer has to be a certain size). He also says its population control.

I'm not a vegetarian and I do eat meat. I know that some meat processors in the US do not treat their animals right and therefore I try to get meat that I know the animals have been raised humanely. For me it's out of sight out of mind but I will never hunt and if Sophie or next child wants to go with Daddy when they get older then I won't stop them. It's just not something I would want to do but then again I just grew up differently.

Looking forward to some venison bacon though.

I am sore today. I did a very intense weight training session at the gym yesterday. I didn't run and for that I'm proud of myself because after 17 miles I know I needed to change it up.

So I did 15 minutes on the elliptical and 10 minutes on the stair climber.

Next I concentrated on legs, knowing that today would be a rest day. Then I did a bunch of upper body and some kettle ball.

My legs are not sore. My arms and back are.

Thankful for the rest day.

Happy Halloween!

My Main Problem with Charleston

As much as I love the beach and being near the cost, I'm not a huge fan of living in this area. There are many many reasons why this is but the biggie is where we live in relation to where I work. The traffic, most days, is a nightmare. To anyone who reads my blog, this will be a reoccurring theme. As long as I continue to work I will despise my drive.

Case in point this morning we are out of the house early, doing good on time, going to be early to work and school when I am heading towards the big bridge that I normally cross to get to work and it's jam packed with cars. Then I finally hear a traffic report that tells me left lane is blocked ahead, expect delays. Nice.

To make a long story short it took me 55 minutes to get over that bridge. So in total I spent almost 2 hours in the car this morning. What makes it all the more annoying is that when I passed the wreck all emergency personnel were standing around doing a whole lot of nothing. I think I even saw one of them laughing at something. They could have been working on getting the lane re-opened but apparently that wasn't high priority.

Borrowed picture from Wikipedia. The dreaded Don Holt Bridge. 

I've been doing this drive for the last 4 years and I will be the happiest woman alive the day I don't have to do it anymore which makes me almost ALMOST want to get pregnant like NOW so I can be done with all the nonsense.

OK that rant is done for now.

Woke up at 4:15 and ran 4 miles this morning on the treadmill and a short weight circuit after. 4 miles in 34:15 avg pace about 8:33. Legs were still a little sore from Sunday's weight workout but overall I felt good overall. 

It was hard getting up because we got woken up at 1:30 to a dog regurgitating his dinner on our carpet. That's always a lovely sound to wake up to in the middle of the night isn't it? So my husband cleaned it up and then it was to sleep, only I couldn't get back to sleep right away. Then the snoring started but eventually I nodded back off only to be woken up by my alarm a while later. Would have given anything to go back to sleep but I'm happy that I got out of bed. Of course it's currently 2:30 pm and I'm about to fall asleep at my desk but I'll make it.

Twas the Night Before My Birthday

I have been very obsessed with age since I turned 30 so the fact that I turn 31 tomorrow gives me some anxiety, especially when my husband called me an old woman this morning. Granted I hardly look a day over 25 (which is both good and bad) but just the fact that I'm no longer going to be 30 but in my 30's makes me slightly sad. I mean feel like just yesterday I was 27 (that was 4 years ago - yikes!)

Time flies, especially when you have kids. Sophie is almost 2 1/2 so I guess it's natural to start thinking about having another baby. I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand I'm not getting any younger and these eggs are the age that I am so if we wait another year or two I get nervous that I will have a problem or baby will have a problem. Basically once you turn like 34 I think they consider you "high risk." That just makes me nervous.

At the same time I don't feel like I'm ready to have another baby yet. I'm exhausted just dealing with one kid. Plus factor in that I work full time makes it even more exhausting and stressful. However if and when we do have another baby I will more than likely stay home for a while and then find something part time.

I work about 45 minutes away from my house so the traffic to get from my house to work is a little but of a pain. I take that back, my commute stinks and I can't imagine doing this drive with 2 kids screaming at me. Some days it takes 35 - 40 minutes to get here, if there's no traffic. And then there's days where, like today, there is some sort of incident and it took me hour and a half to get here. Plus the cost of daycare is crazy. We pay $145 a week just for Sophie and I think newborn is something like $170. So for two kids in daycare would be over $1200 a month and I would essentially be working to put kids in daycare. Plus all the gas money to drive to and from work just doesn't seem worth it.

Of course it scares the crap out of me to not be working or bringing in some type of income so I've got to see what I can do from home.

Anyway, getting pregnant sometime after my marathon is still the plan. Sophie would make an awesome big sister so maybe I do sort of do have baby fever again (comes and goes). After no. 2 we're done. I've always said that I would only have two kids and Ricky is in agreement with this.

Changing subjects, I ran 6.79 miles this morning on the treadmill. Time was 50:21, avg pace 7:25. I would just like to point out these numbers came from my Nike plus watch. I don't think this is very accurate and I'm darn sure I did not run this fast.

I know I stopped the treadmill at 6 miles so someone is wrong. As I appreciate Nike plus telling me I ran this fast, I'm going with the treadmill on this one. However, I did do some interval on the treadmill but the fastest I went was like 7.9 for .5 miles.

I do not remember all the intervals I did, sorry. My brain can't handle all these numbers and I didn't have a pad and paper to write it all down, nor would I even think about pausing the treadmill just to write it down.

Either way I ran faster every .5 miles until the last mile I did every .25 miles. Makes sense? Not really? Me either. Helps keep the treadmill runs entertaining though.

After that it was rush home and get ready for work only to sit in traffic and be late anyway.

And yes, even though my husband jokingly called me an old woman, he's no spring chicken either as he's going to be 34 soon. Ha!

It's Hurricane Season

I didn't make it out of bed this morning. Bummer. I got a new book yesterday, The Hunger Games, and was very excited to start reading it. Next thing I know it's like 10:45, yikes! 

I go to sleep and next thing I know my alarm is going off at 4:00. I remember re-setting it for a few more minutes and then when it went off again I must I just turned it off, I think I remember doing this but honestly I was out of it. Next time I wake up it's 6:05.

Oops!!

Must have been really tired so I will cut myself a little slack being that it's been a long (short) week at work. Plus staying up late, yes 10:45 is very late for me, didn't help my chances making it out of bed.

I will try to run my 3 miles tonight after work but I'm usually not very motivated to do anything after a long day at work. We'll see, stranger things have happened.

Looking forward to tomorrow's run and trying out my bike. Weather is going to be really nice this weekend but now there's Tropical Storm Maria lurking out in the Atlantic. 

Not cool seeing as we're headed to the beach for a long weekend next week. Please turn north Maria!! 

At the same time this is the risk you take when you rent a beach house during the heart of hurricane season (my in-laws rented one for the week, we're just going down Thursday after work). 

I'm being optimistic that this one will miss us too, although it's too soon to tell but by the picture above she's turned more north already. Of course it would be ideal if she missed land all together.

This morning was 62 degrees when I left the house....love!! So I'm very excited to run in the morning, even if it's just 6 miles. Actually I'm thinking of doing 7 miles just for the fun of it.

This morning was my kid free ride into work. Since Sophie's daycare is literally 2 minutes away from my office I take and pick her up 99% of the time. I've told my husband that I need one day....just one day where he takes and picks her up. It's out of the way for him but I need that mental break just one day. 

She's not a bad kid by any means but we're in the temper tantrum phase and any little thing can set her off. For example the other day I thought she wanted me to press play on the DVD player in the car. So I did. Apparently that's not what she really wanted and she proceeded to scream and whine the entire. way. home.

A person can only take so much of that when they are sitting in traffic days on end and have about an hour commute to and from work. 

So I get one day to just listen to the radio....or nothing at all. Silence is golden sometimes. 

At the same time I miss her and get sad when she's super excited to ride in daddy's truck and not with mommy. Daddy is the greatest thing since she doesn't see him as much as me so I guess I can't really blame her. 

However hopefully this little tiny break will make her excited to see mommy when we all get home this evening, and it usually does!

Hurricane Irene, here and gone

I left work at noon yesterday becauase they were closing daycare due to the tropical storm conditions we were going to experience. Hurricane Irene brushed past Charleston.

Let me just say that as I understand it's better to be safe than sorry but I've driven in worse storms than what we had yesterday. In my opinion it was a lot of hype and not a whole lot from the Hurricance in our area.




Photo from the Charleston Post and Courier - and let me just point out the boaters in this picture are not smart.

So there goes a half day that I will have to make up, which really stinks but it is what it is I guess.

On the bright side, it was fun to spend an afternoon with my daughter. I was exhausted last night, she ran me ragged! It's times like those I wonder what two kids are going to be like....

I'm flip flopping training days. Today will be cross training and tomorrow will be my 8 mile run. My hubby is at work for a few hours this morning and it's still not 100% out there. It's 80 degrees at 7:00 so even if I wanted to, the humidity would have killed my motivation. Tomorrow is going to be better all around.

So once the hubster gets home I will head to the gym and probably so some eliptical, bike and weights. I am going to sneak in a 2 mile run to try out my new Brooks shoes even though they say not to run the day before your long run.

Hope everyone along the east coast is being safe as Irene heads your way!

Marathon Training Day 2

It was really easy to wake up this morning...why? Because my eyes popped open at 3:30 am. So I snoozed until 4:00 and then got ready and headed to the gym for my 3 mile run. I wanted to do more but I know that I need to follow my plan and be smart! I felt good this morning, makes me happy. 

So after my run I did a circuit train. I used to take Body Pump classes (actually they are called Group Power at my gym, but essentially it's the same thing) but I can't seem to fit a class into my schedule. I know the basic moves so it's my 30 minute weight train, little to no rest, I just move onto the next body part. 

We're still watching Hurricane Irene. She seems to be turning more and more east but we're not out of the woods yet. Charleston will more than likely start getting the wind and rain Friday though Saturday evening. According to the Weather Channel, Sunday it shaping up to be a nice day. So I'm hoping I can still do my 8 miles like originally planned.  

3.26 miles, 26:56, avg pace 8:15

Splits:

SPLITS

MILE	TI	AVG.PACE
1	8:10	8'10"/mi
2	16:27	8'17"/mi
3	24:41	8'14"/mi