Monday, November 09, 2009

Pavement?  Meet my Face.  Glad we’re friends now.

So I’ve been jogging lately.  It’s a good form of exercise, a good way to relieve stress, and a good way to push myself into doing something I never thought I was capable of.

See, I’m not a runner.  Actually, I think it’s safe to say that I’m not an ATHLETE.  I can’t think of a single sport in high school P.E. that I remotely excelled in.  Swimming, maybe, but that’s because most of the girls in my class were pretty bad swimmers.

But I’ve always hated running.  In high school, we had to run a mile each week during P.E. It took everything I had to make it around that 1/4-mile track ONE time.  I usually felt that my lungs were going to give out on me afterward, despite the fact that I had walked about 3/4 of the mile.  My personal best time was 12+ minutes, and I remember being pretty near death after that one.

The other thing that has always prevented me from running is the fact that I have bunions, so I can’t use my big toes too much or else it’s hard to walk the next day.

Today, I ran a mile.  An entire one.  Without stopping, even once.  My time was somewhere around 11 minutes, according to the clock on my iPhone.

And when I finished that mile, I continued to run 2 more miles, walking only about 15% of the time.

Now, I know an 11+ minute mile isn’t anything spectacular.  This guy I know just ran a 5K in under half an hour, while pushing 2 kids in a stroller.  But I couldn’t help thinking how at almost 30 years old, and 20 pounds heavier, I’m apparently in better shape (muscle-wise, anyway) than I was in high school.

And how even at this stage in life, I can push myself to accomplish something that I used to believe I would never be capable of.

As always, my moment of glory passed quickly.  Shortly into mile #2, I tripped over a ridge in the sidewalk and totally ATE IT on the pavement.  As in, belly flop onto the ground - my knees never got the chance to catch me.  My hands, thigh and lifeline iPhone paid the price.  As did my pride.

I never did that in high school either.  I guess some things do get worse with age.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Random Tidbits

Tonight we saw Forbidden Kingdom.  That movie was all kinds of bad.  You know in college when you would invite people over for Really Stupid Movie Night?  That was this movie.  Lord of the Rings meets Karate Kid, in the style of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, but with a plot and acting only a 10 year old could appreciate.

Good times.  I guess every once in a while you just have to see a mindless stupid movie. 

* * *

Yesterday, we had Mothers Day Tea at Kaelin’s “Tuesday School” (CLC).  It was fun to meet some of the other moms and see Kaelin in the Tuesday School element.  It’s funny how kids act differently in an environment when they’re not used to you being there.  I’m not really sure how to describe it, but she was sort of hyper and alternated between trying to stand up in her chair, putting her feet on the table, and just falling all over me.  It was weird.  But it was a fun time and sweet of the teachers to put the event together.

Kaelin sort of spilled the beans last week though.  I guess that’s one of the problems with having a kid that likes to talk

She came home and told me she made me a plate and a handprint.  Sure enough, the kids had all decorated plates and made laminated placemats with an outline of their hands. 

* * *

I’ve discovered the best thing since peanut butter sandwiches:  DIGITAL SCRAPBOOKING.

I used to be a big scrapbooker.  Seriously.  I even had my own online store.  My albums were elaborate and complete and I always had an abundant mess on my desk that included scraps of paper, tape, embellishments, and an assortment of cropped photos.

And then I had a kid.  And everything came to a halt.  It’s too messy, too expensive, too time consuming.  And there are too many little pieces that like to find their way into the mouths of toddlers and pets.

Two and a half years later, I’ve discovered this miracle called Digital Scrapbooking, in which I can build my pages on the computer - no mess - in a fraction of the time.  In the last 2.5 years, I’ve completed approximately 3 pages.  I think I left off with the day Kaelin was born.  In the last few days of digital scrapbooking, I’ve completed Kaelin’s first year.  And it’s SO much cheaper, especially since once you “purchase” a paper or embellishment file, you can use it over and over again.

The downside is that it requires a lot of storage space for the files and costs $6/page to print (because I insist on doing 12x12” scrapbooks) - but that’s still less than I would spend on a lot of my pages doing things the 3-dimensional way.

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

It’s Raining, It’s Pouring

4:00PM. It’s totally raining outside the window at work. Hopefully it will let up before I have to walk out the door in thirty minutes. Oh crap, did I shut my sky roof? Yes, apparently I did. Well that was my panic attack for the day.
I found blogs for some people I knew in high school today and it sent me back. I suddenly found myself reminiscing about how messed up things were in high school. And I would wager that I had a pretty good high school experience, as they go. I can’t seem to remember anything particularly warm and fuzzy about it, but I mainly chalk that up to bad memory. There must have been something good about high school.

I think I experienced some sort of selective amnesia after hs graduation. I had to ask friends today to send me pictures of people I knew I should remember, but can’t. I don’t remember very many events, and the ones I do remember seem to always be those that involved my utter mortification...such as - well, we won’t go into that one. This isn’t a diary after all. But the list does include my best friend having seizures, a bomb threat at Prom (though that wasn’t so bad, I was ready to leave), a myriad of speech and theatre tournaments that I hated, one very messed-up relationship, and a never-ending battle with eyebrows that refused to cooperate.

I think most teenagers go through a “finding self” phase sometime around sophomore year of high school. I didn’t hit that phase until my freshman year of college, so I spent the majority of high school with a sense that everybody else knew something I didn’t. I guess that pretty much sums up my high school experience: a (quite possibly accurate) sense of cluelessness.

Perhaps that’s why I can’t bring myself to scrapbook high school. It seems that for me, life began in college.

It’s finished raining now. I love Texas rain. It’s one of the things I missed in the five years I was in the Northwest. It rains, it pours, and it’s done. Bam bam bam. Likewise, I’m done reminiscing about highschool. Soooo many better things to do with my day. Like play video games while I wait to go home.

8:30pm. AAAAGGGGHHHH. Scan scan scan scan stitch stitch stitch crop shrink sharpen save open upload save. Scan scan scan scan stitch stitch stitch crop shrink sharpen save open upload save. Somebody has to invent a better way to get 12x12” scrapbook pages on the internet. I’m done for now. My eyes are crossing and my back feels like it’s made out of Legos.