Marathon Update

Alan just finished 21 miles in 3:09:47. He left around 4:55 this morning. The race is three weeks from tomorrow and he's right on target!

By the way, if you're looking at my posted time and thinking that doesn't jive, that's the time I clicked "new post" and not the time I published. Good ole Blogger...

TotaLEE cool

Bailey made the freshman volleyball team this week, and they're wasting no time. The first scrimmages are today, followed by a couple more tomorrow. I'm trying to curb my enthusiasm, but it's pretty cool to me that she's playing for the Lee Rebels.

The headaches are getting out of control. I've had to make sure that I get as much accomplished in the mornings because I know I'll have a headache shortly after lunch. At least it's predictable and therefore I can plan. But seriously, what is up? I don't want to pay for a comprehensive doctor's exam - I simply don't believe they'd be able to figure anything out or worse, that they'd tell me I'm allergic to EVERYTHING. Mostly though I just don't have faith in doctors around here. I guess I've become cynical, maybe unfairly, but I only have to look at my mother and her years of procedures, surgeries, and prescription drugs to believe that some doctors appear to be figuring things out as they go. I want them to know their business.

I could also skip the whole exam and just go for the pain pills. But if the solution is to take a pill every time, then I'd have taken a good 30 pills in the last 40 days and that's just not for me. Something tells me the problem all these years has been food allergies...I'm not sure I want to have that confirmed. So stop complaining then, right? NOPE. It's my blog and I'll cry if I want to. :-)

DeeBee surprised us with this sign she found in Oklahoma, so I placed it in the kitchen where it accurately points to the direction of our guest house, a.k.a. "the cottage." It sounds uppety, but all it would take is one visit to our home to know there is no such thing here. Just a simple home and a rustic little guest house.

It appears I won't have a teaching position by start of the school year, so I'm going to reinstate to substitute and hope that something comes up later in the semester. I didn't bust my butt looking for a job, meaning I didn't show up unannounced on campuses and call principals every day. I also didn't apply for kindergarten jobs (for which there were a few openings) or at magnet schools (longer school days). And I didn't check out the private schools and have no interest in going that route. I'm aware it sounds ugly, but I don't want to teach primarily white students from privileged backgrounds. Something will come up eventually, and I have to believe there's a reason for the delay.

Time to get up

Just catching up on some "Freakonomics:"

Actually now that Alan's through reading it, I think I'll check it out. But right now I'm deep into a murder mystery called "Monkeewrench" that DeeBee recommended, and it's AWESOME. I may have a new murder/mystery/detective series to read. That's mostly what I've been doing the past couple of days, since I've been lacking the motivation to do much more than breathe. Can't explain it, it's not a big deal, and it will pass.

I've decided a mean spirit is doing whatever possible to keep me from walking and running. It wants me to be lazy and get fat. First it was tendonitis, now it's a lingering case of shin splints. But yesterday was the last day I had to take the "fat pills," so I have motivation to keep going and see if this exercise will finally result in a leaner body.

Me

I keep messing with my profile pic. I had to remove the one of and me and Junior (which is still on my Myspace) because I couldn't get over the resemblance of myself to Dick Van Dyke. Nice chin. So then I filled space with a flower, boring. And now here's a half picture of my face. A little better, but luckily it's a thumbnail and you can't see those canines.

Afternoon getaway

It's 3:30 and I'm having a glass of wine. :-) That's right. I'm resorting to alcohol to relax, settle my nerves that are bundled from an assortment of things the past few days. What is it Willie Nelson says in "Whiskey River?" Something about letting that soft amber burn flow through his mind? Yeah, this is something like that. Except it's not amber and it doesn't burn. But I get your drift, Willie.

A photo of a photo of Willie and Dale on Willie's bus:

Stuff from the weekend I can talk about

I'm starting to mourn the end of my summer, and I don't even have a job yet. But hopefully the job situation will change soon, since principals are due back from vacation on Wednesday. If I do what I should today, several of them will have my resume on their desk when they return. And several of them will have my resume for the second time. It just always sucks to be in job searching mode....it seems you can never really relax because you know it's hanging over you...and the interviews...such joy. BUT, the end result is teaching, and that's very cool.

Saturday we had a minor scare. Alan had left for an 18-mile run and came back an hour later, clearly not having run 18 miles. He walked in and with very short breaths said "I - need - help." To make a long story short he stepped on an ant bed while running, maybe a fire ant bed, and had a bad reaction. We've all been bitten before and just dealt with the typical itching and irritation, but apparently because he had been running, the venom ran quickly through his whole body. His hands were swollen, his face was puffy, his skin was red and blotchy literally from head to toe, and anywhere you touched him he would wince from the severe itching. We called a 24-hour nurse hotline and began treating his systems for both dehydration and an allergic reaction to the ant bites. It took several hours for the swelling to leave his hands, but good old Benadryl took care of the itching pretty quickly. The ant bites slowly started surfacing that afternoon and evening, and I'm guessing we couldn't see them right away because of the redness that covered his whole body.

It sucked that he wasn't able to finish his run, be he made it up yesterday. And I ran a whole 3 miles today. :-)

American Graffiti

The last two mornings we've woken up to a sur-prise out front. Friday morning it was an impressive TP'ing of our house. (We called it "wrapping houses" when I was growing up, and it was normally done to someone you liked.) However, along with the toilet paper, there were broken eggs all over the front porch, the driveway, and Alan's car. Not exactly a friendly gesture.




This morning the culprits got a little more creative with food. In addition to more eggs (not on Alan's car again - this was from yesterday), there were pasta shells with mac & cheese sauce, shallots, a sandwich bag filled with a doll's head in red liquid, and what I think was a frozen bag of creamed spinach. Talk about raiding your parents' fridge. There were also a lot of shoe polished windows, all over MY SISTER'S CAR (which was packed and ready for their trip back to Oklahoma today) and our house.

Apparently we weren't the only ones privy to such gifts. I had an upset mom calling me who had similar surprises at her house this morning, thinking it was Bailey who did it, because HER daughter was the one who TP'd and egged our house the previous night. She (the mom) was very embarrassed and apologetic, and I think it took some nerve to call and admit what happened. And then the kids responsible for last night called and fessed up to Bailey. They meant it to be funny. Oh yes, I was laughing HYSTERICALLY while Bailey and I were scrubbing more egg off the concrete.

Kids are stupid. Two mornings spent cleaning up this mess means I've reached my limit. I can take things in good fun as much as the next person, but I'm ready to take Alan's suggestion and hide on the side of the house tonight with the water hose and nozzle set to "jet blast."

The Kids (that includes Alan)

What we do for fun

So far we've being doing a little of this:





























And a little of this:














And besides tennis and birthdays and eating a lot of Whataburger and Rosa's, we've gone shopping, played hours of Guitar Hero, and have plans to go swimming today. We need them to stay several more days to get everything in!

Catching up

This week....let's see. A/C broke again. Water heater had to be replaced (ouch). Bailey had oral surgery to have six teeth pulled. So it's been kinda busy. But everything's good and fixed and Bailey recovered easily. Only took one pain pill. The reason that's important (okay, besides the fact that she didn't have much discomfort) is because now we have good drugs in the house. And since I've had a headache every friggin day for the past three weeks, this is exciting stuff!

DeeBee and the kids will be here this afternoon, so we're pumped. Finally Alan won't be the only boy around here. And Bailey's birthday is Sunday, so it'll be really cool to celebrate it with lots of family around. She wants a trampoline by the way. She's 14, so I'm thinking it'll be used for about a year or so.

I have a few things to do before everyone gets here, part of which is making some sweets to fatten us all up over the next week.

Pictures proving my niece and nephews are the coolest are soon to be posted. :-)

To regret or not regret

There are two clear philosophies here. Live life with regrets or not so much? I see a lot of "no regrets" comments on teenage myspace pages, and although I've seen similar comments on my own daughters' pages, I'm not using them as an example here. All walks of life and ages seem to favor a side on this issue.

For me, I'd feel a little arrogant to say I have no regrets. There are plenty of things I have done or words I have said from my teen years until now that I wish I hadn't, or at least wish I would have handled in a different/better manner. And although the main "no regrets" argument is that had you not done or said those things, the circumstances or consequences that followed wouldn't have happened, you therefore wouldn't have learned from them, and maybe life wouldn't have played out the way it did. I understand that argument, but saying I don't regret anything just seems callous. Let's say you can think of several instances where you probably hurt someone's feelings or damaged a relationship or lost someone's trust. I just can't look at situations like that and say, "nope, I sure don't regret treating people like that!"

That being said, there are some cases in which you are part of the cause of someone's grief but you still don't regret it. For instance, I don't regret getting a divorce.

But I do regret not staying in touch with friends, for not always having my priorities in life right, for not putting my girlfriends first in highschool, for not wanting to play more when the girls were little, and definitely for griping out that woman in the Albertson's parking lot. That's the one that'll come back and bite me when I least expect it someday. :-)

There's no right or wrong, just different views. I'm just curious how others feel.

The Gay Desert Queen

That's what Alan calls the passion vine. A few weeks ago I was complaining that caterpillars destroyed our beloved and obnoxious vine, but with a couple treatments of rose bush insecticide, it bounced back in all its prissy glory. Now it's splattered with dozens of these gaudy purple blooms. They are a bit "out there" and appear to be quite proud of their reproductive parts!

Those crazy marathoners

It's been cool lately (finally) to be able to go for a run, and as long as I've done my stretching beforehand and afterwards, not spend the rest of the day wishing I could cut my legs off at the knees. And then there was today. Ouch. This morning's jog has left me with the knees of an 80-year old. Not sure what's going on, but I'm not going to let it stop me either. Not yet anyway.

Alan is about 8-weeks away from his marathon in Albuquerque. Tomorrow he has a 10 or 11 mile run, and every Saturday from now until the race he'll be increasing that amount, with shorter runs on the days in between. Living in Midland, he doesn't have the luxury of having a running group to train with, so this is something he's doing completely on his own. Personally I think that makes this accomplishment all the more impressive. Luckily though, Alan has a couple people he knows that have done this and can offer great advice, particularly Heather who just completed hers in April and won 1st place (I think) in her grouping.

I'm going to tag along to the marathon and do the 5K portion at the end. I can't wait to be standing at the finish line when he crosses. How cool!

D means Done!

Guess I should post a couple pictures of the finished painting. The first one's the entry, and the second one's a corner where the kitchen, den and living room intersect. Sort of proves my obsession with colored walls. Note the plant stand that hasn't had a plant on it for two years. It's no coincidence that that's also how long we've had Hellcat.

I picked up the phrase "D means Done" from Alan. During college if I had a particularly hard project or test, Alan would always say this to remind me that finishing (passing) something is sometimes more important than the grade. And am I glad this is done!

I've been coloring

When we first got this house, just about every wall was white. After living in an apartment for several years with white walls, I couldn't wait to have color splashed everywhere. Maybe I went a little crazy with the red and gold and green, but I liked it. I decided to change it though, mostly because I grew tired of all the bold and wanted colors a little more subdued and soothing. So I primed and painted over the gold and some of the green in the den with a light neutral and then painted the white walls in the entry, hall, and open pantry the same neutral. Needless to say, I did a lot of painting the last two days. The point was to have a little more continuity throughout the house with the same color on many walls. The end result? The color looks different on every wall.

Almost forgot....this is Junior being helpful as I was rearranging pictures on the floor before deciding where to put them on the wall.

Food: the center of my universe

Sometimes you come across a recipe that you must share with the world. This is macaroni and cheese from HEAVEN by Giada De Laurentiis (Food Network chef and hottie). This is one of those recipes that you should follow exactly and not try to make more healthy. Your family and friends will love you.

By the way, we're back from vacation and I just can't get into blogging mode yet. I'm in a talking slump. Help.

I Spy

While hanging out at the pool yesterday (still in Oklahoma at Joe and Heather's), we saw this:

Back to Oklahoma!

I'm not going to talk about the swimsuit shopping yesterday that would have brought me to tears had I been hormonal. I sucked it up, patted the buddha, and moved on. And I bought workout clothes instead. ;-)

Anyway, there are more fun things to think about right now like VA-CA-SHEE-OWN. Alan and I are leaving this afternoon for Oklahoma to see Joe and Heather for a few days. Frisbee golf, swimming, and maybe a party on Friday - woohoo! Plus, I might get to watch my niece play soccer in the regional finals on Wednesday.

I better start packing.

It's all relative

I had a couple good runs in the past week and had decided that today I was trying for three miles. I know - doesn't sound like much (the most I've ever run IN MY LIFE is two miles). I really hadn't let my muscles rest enough from the last run, and I had the hardest time finding my pace. But I got to two miles and told myself, "just do this one time and you never have to do it again." That kept me going, and I was able to finish! I really only wanted to do it this one time, but just maybe....four miles some day? Hey, I know - four miles when I turn 40!