It's SO Winter

You know how I know?  EVERYONE IS SICK.

It started with Margot.  Just a cold with all of its annoying symptoms.  The most annoying of all was certainly the lingering cough.

It moved onto Charlotte, although her was mild compared to big sister's.  Then Gabe got it, fierce.  Then me.  And finally J.

I kid you not.  We are going on week three now, and the coughing has not stopped.  We have our own little choir going on, with morning and evening coughs of varying pitches and timbres, sopranos, altos, and tenors and baritones all represented.  I'm here to tell you that after having three kids. those muscles that control the bladder are not as strong as they used to be.  Don't mind me, I'll just be over here just trying not to pee while I'm hacking my lungs up.

We've been in various degrees of disrepair for somewhere around a month now, but the light was visible at the end of the tunnel.  All of us had our turn, and had either gotten over it, or at least weren't totally miserable anymore (for me and Gabe, this was more than annoying- we just felt BAD for several days). 

Then Margot came home from school on Friday coughing again.  And she just couldn't stop.  And then the fever hit.

Here I am, thinking the flu had hit.  Yes, we got flu shots as we do every year.  But they are no guarantee.  Poor Margot had the flu last year, and I was pretty sure she had it again.  Her fever hit 104 and she was down for the count.

How does this happen to my poor kid?  Oh, right- it was only a few months ago that I had to ask her to stop licking the soles of her shoe.  BARF.

I am happy to report that several hours in urgent care and a chest x-ray later, she was negative for both flu and pneumonia.  It's just another ugly virus that will probably make its rounds through my house.  And luckily Margot is a BEAST and is already back up and running.

But still coughing.

If you need me, I'll just be coating the house with Lysol and praying for Spring.

See what I did there?

Happy Birthday, Honey Badger

Miss Margot is 6!

(I know I'm a few days late with this, but I've had the cold from hell.  Forgive me.)

This year has been such a fun one with my dearest middle child.  She started kindergarten this year, and is suddenly even more independent than before- which I did not know was possible.  She took to school like a fish takes to water.  She got on that bus the first day of school- yes, the VERY FIRST day of school- and hasn't looked back since.  She loves it, which makes me so very happy.

Although she loves school and is very bright, it is not all smooth sailing.  Her work habits leave something to be desired.  That's the nice way of saying that girlfriend is a disorganized slob.  She constantly forgets to bring home her water bottle, her papers are a crumpled mess, her bedroom is a certified disaster area.  SHE SPILLS HER DRINK EVERY SINGLE DAY.  But she is a happy-go-lucky kinda gal, and neatness just isn't something she concerns herself with.

I feel confident saying that her best friend is her sister.  Charlotte and Margot play together so well.  I think they'd be lost without each other.  They play school, they play dress-up, they pretend that they're kitties or unicorns (or better yet, uni-kitties).  They have "sister sleepovers" on the weekends.  They are truly BFF's.  Nothing could possibly make me happier.

Margot has lost some of her sass and gained some sweetness this year.  Guys, I think she likes me more than she used to.  She tells me that she misses me when she's at school!  Sometimes she cuddles with me on the couch.  I get random hugs.  She asks to do things together, just the two of us.  It's hard to carve out one-on-one time with the kids, and especially the middle child.  But when she asks to do something together, I make it happen.

Margot is funny.  She's strong.  She's smart.  She's still a beast (and if looks could kill, she'd destroy you with a glance).  She's unique.  And she's still not out to please anyone but herself.  And that's my favorite thing about her.

I can't wait to see what this next year brings for my Margot Claire, whom I adore with every ounce of my being.    

It's 2019, Yo

It's a new year.  Let's catch up!

We spent a wonderful holiday season together.  The kids were home, Jason had some time off of work, we had a revolving door of family members here to visit.  It was a lovely end to a CUH-RAZY month.  Guys, I mommed so hard, trying to prepare the perfect Christmas for all of my loved ones.  I am not complaining- I love Christmas, and all of the magic that comes along with it.  But it's a lot of work.  Shopping, wrapping, baking, gifting, planning activities, class parties, watching ALL OF THE CHRISTMAS MOVIES.  (J is a real hard ass when it comes to the Christmas movies.  There can be NO Christmas programming on the TV before we have finished the Thanksgiving turkey, and really, I want to watch Elf once a week.  So in December, I do.  Also, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.)  It was a great time full of food, drink, family, and love.

Meanwhile, I've kept up running as much as my knee will allow (which honestly, isn't that much- BOO.)  But before my knee started to crap out, I did a couple of things.  I ran my first beer mile.  Chug a beer, run a quarter of a mile, repeat x 4.  It was super amazing fun.  I was a little nervous coming into it, because it had been somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 years since I've chugged a beer.  But as it turns out, it's just like riding a bike!  Y'all, this girl can CHUG.  I was the third place female finisher.  I could have maybe come in second, but I was too nervous to look down at my watch to check my pace.  Next year, I'm moving up the ranks.

I also won my first age group award!  I was initially feeling a little sad and left out that I wasn't able to run my beloved Holly Springs Half Marathon.  But when race day came and I was gearing up to run the 5k, I realized there was a benefit to being one of those running the short race- all of the fast, distance runners were running the half, leaving not that many people behind for the shorter race.  I considered for the first time that maybe I could place in the top three ladies in my age group.  And I did it!  I came in FIRST.  It felt great, and for the first time I considered some new running goals that don't involve long distances.

Technically, J beat me by 2 seconds.  But official race results list me before him, so basically I win.

There have been activities galore.  We went to the state fair and a pumpkin farm, I saw Hamilton (AMAZING!), it snowed for a hot minute and the kiddos got soaked, we had a girls day at The Nutcracker, we moved a bunch of stuff from one home to another...

That's right!  We have a new roommate.  My sister moved in a few weeks ago.  She'll be staying with us while she finishes grad school.  My kids are pretty much obsessed with her, which is fine, because she's obsessed with them right back.  We're excited to have a built-in babysitter.  Also, watch out world, because our Wonder Twin powers are activating.  We have serious twin telepathy going on since becoming roomies.  Yes, I know we are ten years apart, but twinsies nonetheless.

That's a tiny nutshell of all of our goings-on, but maybe now that life is getting back to normal (kids in school, yay!), I'll have spare time in an amount longer than 1.4 seconds.

Happy new year and love to all in 2019! 

The Princess and the Pea

You know what my favorite is?  My bed.  It's my happy place.  I love to sleep.  J and I hang out in bed.  As soon as the kids are in bed, J and I are in bed.  We'll watch TV, play on our phones, have a beer, eat dessert.

No, seriously.

So it was really a bummer when my back started bothering me.  I tossed and turned all night, woke up a little hunched over, and started to feel not so great about my bed.

I remember buying our mattress.  We really had to scrimp and save to afford it.  We chose a Stearns & Foster, which of course was the most expensive mattress in the store.  But it was soft and cushy and pillow-toppy and felt like laying on a cloud.  I was a new mom at the time, and I needed a comfy place to nurse and cuddle my boy, and crash when the exhaustion took over.

Back then, I was young and spry, and cushy was my jam.  Fast forward seven years, and I'm old and withered.  I needed a firmer mattress.  (Not to mention one that didn't have a giant mountain in the middle.  It was obvious that the newlywed phase had ended by the trenches on opposite sides of the bed where J and I slept.)

If you know anything about J, you know that he will most certainly never run out and buy anything on an impulse.  When we decided to replace the mattress, the research began.  We knew we would NOT be buying a Stearns & Foster, and were intrigued by the "Bed in a Box" movement.  We researched...and researched...and researched.  Every time I came up with a short list, J came up with a different one.

BUT...we FINALLY agreed on a mattress, and ordered a Leesa.  One day it was delivered in the mail, we unboxed it,  and watched it inflate.  Weird.

But man, was I happy to get rid of the trenches.  The memory foam was an instant improvement over my old innerspring piece of crap.  I felt good.

For awhile.

Then my back started bothering me again.  In hindsight, I think it probably wasn't great the entire time, but it wasn't as bad as our previous mattress, so I didn't immediately notice.  The best thing about these internet delivery mattresses is that they all offer a trial.  Whoever heard of such a thing??  Sleep on a mattress for 100 NIGHTS, and if you don't like it, they'll refund your money.  Just like that.

So that's what we did.

And then, more research, of course.

J found another internet foam mattress.  This one had three levels of firmness.  You could flip different layers around, each side independent of the other (!), to suit your needs.  This is great for us, because J really prefers a softer mattress than I do.  We slept on it for awhile, and I thought all was going well.  Until one day I realized that it wasn't.

I woke up one morning and decided that I was over it.  I asked J when our trial period ended...

He looked up the date, and answered...YESTERDAY.

SHIT.

So I suffered through it.  I sent J to Home Depot to get a big ole' sheet of plywood to put in between the foam layers.  Again, it bought me some time, but in the end, this mattress just wasn't going to cut it.  No more foam mattresses.

More research.

We found the one traditional mattress store that also allowed sleep trials.  After all, if my experience had taught us anything, it's that I clearly needed some time to determine if a mattress was going to work for me, and the price of a mattress was one expensive gamble.

Sidenote: we also looked at Sleep Number.  HOLY SHITBALLS.  To get the features that we wanted, it was going to cost us $10,000.  I am not even kidding.  TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS.

But I digress.

We walked into the store, told the salesman that we wanted a firm mattress, inner spring, no pillow top, no foam, no muss, no fuss.  He showed us the one mattress that fit the bill, and threw in an adjustable base because it was some holiday sale.  (Seriously, this saga has been ongoing for long enough that I don't even remember what the holiday was.)

Another side note: how old am I that I was ridiculously excited about an adjustable base?  Remember those commercials for the Craftmatic Adjustable Bed?  With the oldsters laying in their beds, heads and feet elevated?  Reading their oldster books with big smiles on their faces?  I am one of them now!

How much do you want this oldster bed?

We received our firm, innerspring, no muss no fuss mattress.  It was a little bit like sleeping on a bed of stone firmer than it had felt in the store.  What would one do in this position?  You can't trade in a mattress for at least 30 nights.  And we can't really be looking at trading in ANOTHER mattress anyway, right?

So we added foam.  If you're doing the facepalm thing right now, you'd be right on.

The foam helped.  The bed was firm, but not unbearable.  I didn't exactly have back pain each morning, but there sure was some stiffness when I got out bed.  Apparently, I am a delicate flower.   

During our 30 night trial, we did some traveling.  J noticed that after sleeping in a couple of different hotel beds, I woke up feeling great.  I joked that this was probably because I was ultra relaxed since I was traveling without my children, but he had a point.  I checked out the tags on the hotel mattress to see what it was that I had been sleeping so blissfully on, and the research commenced.

And then we went back to the mattress store.

I only wish this were a big joke.

We traded in one more time, for the medium-firm version of the most recent mattress.     

I am happy to report that at press time, my back feels great.  I am sleeping super great, I am happy to be feeling happy in my happy place once again.

Now if only I could find the perfect pillow...

  

Don't Call It a Comeback

Just kidding, that's exactly what you should call it.  Although I have been here for years, I keep running into these annoying obstacles (aka surgeries).  But every time I get knocked down, I get back up again.  (Did everybody catch my clever LL Cool J references there?)

So, my knees aren't great.  Spending most of my life at an unhealthy weight wasn't great for them.  But I lost the weight- good! yay!  And I started running- good! yay!  Except for my knees weren't as enthusiastic as the rest of me.  Actually, they moved way past unenthusiastic all the way to straight pissed.  So in an effort to calm them down, surgery.  I wrote all about that here.

Recovery was lengthy.  There were a lot of baby steps.  Two baby steps forward, followed by one baby step back.  I spent hour after hour either in PT or doing my assigned PT exercises (or in water aerobics with my oldster pals).  Waiting, waiting, waiting for the "all clear" to get back to my normal activity level (which is obviously code for running).

I finally got the go-ahead around Memorial Day.  More baby steps, but the strides were a little longer and a little quicker.  Running for one minute then walking for two, then running for two minutes followed by three minutes of walking.  Working my way up to a full mile of running, then two, then three.

For the entirety of the summer, I struggled through the oppressive heat and humidity to put miles in.  Slow miles, to be sure.  But I was running.  The summer was filled with these slow, miserable miles.  Every weekend I'd add a quarter of a mile onto my "long run", which had been 10 miles prior to surgery.  Slowly, slowly, slowly, I was trying to make my way back to six (which is the max I'm allowed now).

My pace was similar to a snail's when I started, but I didn't care.  I knew that once the heat and humidity of the summer had passed, my pace would pick up.  A few weeks ago I ran my first 5k of the fall.  When I felt the buzz of my watch at the end of the first mile, I looked down and saw 9:05.  I literally thought that my watch was broken.  When it buzzed after the second mile and the screen read 8:51, I realized that all that of the pep talks I'd been giving myself through the hot and miserable summer miles were true, and that the hard work was indeed paying off.  I was getting my speed back.

A couple of weeks later, I added the final quarter mile onto my long run.  I plotted a course and set off for a run all around my town.   I thanked my lucky stars every time I came to a red light and had to wait for the crossing signal because it meant that I had a moment to catch my breath.  But I finished those six miles.  I felt exhausted, and also like a million bucks.

This past weekend, feeling confident in my comeback, I organized my first group run.  My beloved "Sleep In Saturday", six late morning miles followed by beer, because let's be honest- sleeping in, running, and drinking are three of my most favorite things.  I was positively giddy in the days leading up to the weekend, because organizing my first Sleep In Saturday meant that my comeback was complete, and that for the fist time in almost a year, I was just going out for a normal run, and not working toward getting back to where I used to be.

I used to be a runner.  I am a runner again.  I've come full circle.  Life is good.   

 

The LONGEST Summer

I live in a weird place.

I realize that this is a classic "back in my day" scenario, but I'm old now, so I suppose this phrase applies.

Our county has one big ole' school district.  With around 160,000 students attending 183 schools, it's not small.  I graduated from a district that had a handful of neighborhood elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school.  You went to school with your neighbors in a building that was close to home, and then you all moved on together.

Not so much here.

Here we are building new schools at a rate that attempts (and fails) to keep up with the growth of the area.  Years ago, many elementary schools here transitioned to a year-round calendar to increase capacity in the buildings as groups of kids tracked in and out throughout the weeks.  As a teacher, I hard core feared that change.  But I rolled with the punches, and discovered that year round schools are AMAZEBALLS.  I was super excited to send my kids to our nearby elementary school that happened to operate on the year-round calendar.

We had a good thing going for kindergarten and first grade, but then the inevitable growth in our area caught us.  A new school was built, just as close to us as our current assignment, and I just knew that we'd be sent there.  And I was correct.  I'm all for a new school, with the shiny new halls and the latest technology, but I'm not all about a traditional calendar.

Too bad, so sad.  We were reassigned, and were forced to roll with the punches again.

This meant that when our last "track out" came at the end of first grade in the year-round school, it actually became the start of our family's first summer vacation. 

SO, I would have all three kids at home for three long months.  Cool, cool.

Around that same time, trouble starting brewing at J's office.  His company wasn't doing particularly well, and had made some announcements that caused the natives to become restless.  The writing was on the wall, and even before upcoming layoffs were announced, everyone knew they were looming.  Job hunt: commence.

J has always told me that he's good at what he does, and that he wouldn't have trouble finding another job if that ever became necessary.  He was right.  Great offers came from great companies- crisis averted.  In the meantime, the layoffs came to be.  Since he already had another job lined up, J volunteered to be let go.  His last day in the office was mid-June.  His new job wouldn't begin until mid-August.  

SO, I would also have a husband at home for the majority of the summer.  Cool, cool.

I will be the first to admit, I was excited nervous terrified of having this extended family time.  All day, every day.  FOR MONTHS.  But really, it would probably be fun tolerable a shit show. 

All jokes aside, J and I were both unsure of how things would go.  We were all used to our routines, and it was clear that routine had been tossed out the window.  But we decided that we could focus on not killing each other, or focus on making the best of a once in a lifetime situation.

So that's what we did.

Guys, we had an awesome summer.  We played putt putt.  We splashed in the pool.  We drove go karts, went to the beach, rode on a ferris wheel, visited every park we could, ate a lot of ice cream, played a lot of games.  Every week was something new and exciting.  We stayed super busy, and super happy.

I am so thankful that the stars aligned, and we were handed this crazy opportunity.

And lest you think that this family is all sunshine and rainbows...J started his new job and went back to work right about the time that my kids turned into miserable creatures who desperately needed to get their whiny ungrateful little behinds back to school.

Alas, back to routine.  We made it.  

For My One Fan

I have one loyal fan.

Just kidding- I know there are more of you out there that enjoy reading this blog.  And some of you read it because you are related to me and you have to.  But one person has hassled me repeatedly, both online and in person, to get back to writing in this space.  So for you, my biggest fan, I am going to try and make (yet another) comeback!

Since it has apparently been eight months since I've gotten my ass onto the computer, I guess I'll begin with a general update on life before I get to the nitty gritty specifics (that makes things sound super interesting, right?).

Since we last spoke, life has marched on.  At least none of my children have celebrated another birthday!  But Gabe managed to finish out first grade, Charlotte completed her first dance season, Margot graduated from Pre-K, I got to start running again, Jason started a new job, and we made it through the LONGEST SUMMER EVER after being reassigned to a brand new school that follows a traditional calendar (I miss year-round something fierce).  

While I'd love to bore you fill you in on all of the day-to-day that's gone on, alas, I've been away too long for that.  But over the next few posts, I'll back up in time and give you the deets on some of the more major moments of the past, and fill you in on some current happenings, as well.

I promise that I'll try and be more regular with my posting!  Life somehow always gets in the way, and this is the easiest thing to let slide.  But I'll work on it, promise.  For YOU, my drove of adoring readers lone reader.