Friday, April 27, 2012

34 miles

I went 34 miles this week. I say "went", because I didn't run them all. I ran, walked, and cycled 34 miles this week. I'm pretty pleased!  With the marathon training, I ran a 5K on Monday, another on Wednesday, and then ran 5.5 miles today (as I didn't quite make it to a 10K, I'm honestly not sure how many "k's" I ran). As I said, I'm pleased with my progress. After running the 5.5 miles today, my knees don't feel anything like they did after my 10K race earlier this month. So, hopefully that means they are getting stronger. I am about to go out and mow the lawn though, so we'll see how peppy they are after that! :)

Have I mentioned how when I run I'm absolutely famished afterward?  Honestly, right now I think I could eat a full meal. However, I'm going to go out and mow the lawn instead. And, as I haven't taken a shower yet from my run, I'll be extra nasty after mowing the lawn, so the first thought in my head will be to get in the shower...which will hopefully delay my stomach until lunch time! :) Or at least, that's the theory right now.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Day Off!

We're taking the day off today and headed to the baseball game! Tomorrow will prove to be busy, and maybe some of the things on the agenda for tomorrow could have been done today,b ut I'm not going to worry about it. We've been going full throttle for a while now and I need a day. to update you on this week's craziness:

1. Credit Report - I called and was on the phone for 45 minutes with the credit agency. My credit report had been merged with someone else's. So, it isn't identity theft. In fact, it will be fixed within 72 hours. 28 items will be removed from my credit report as they "unmerge" the two. I'm so thankful that it wasn't anything more!

2. Moving Company - We had two estimates yesterday and after Nate and I discussed it, we have chosen which one to go with. So now I'm in the process of notifying the others and basically saying, don't contact me again.

Things are moving right along and I'm so grateful for this day off!

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Deep Tissue Mouth Masseuse?

It took Nate and I about 4 years to find a dentist we like. And now that I have one, I want her to move with me. Yesterday I had my six month cleaning appointment and I left with 4 sealed teeth due to oversensitivity and a card for a masseuse. She is a deep tissue masseuse that will "massage both inside and out." This comment from the hygienist stopped me. I tried to make her comment fit with my mouth. I looked at her questioningly and said, "she'll massage the inside of my mouth?" And the hygienist confirmed that yes, that is indeed what the therapist would do. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how not only that would be possible, but how that would feel. When the dentist came in and saw that even with the lovely mouth guard they fitted me for 4 months ago, my grinding teeth were causing me increased pain she concurred that I should  contact this amazing "miracle worker." She did warn me that it would be painful because I have "years worth" of stress that would need to be worked out. Hmmmm...... I'm going to have to give this one some thought.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

The Curse of the Threes

You've heard of this right?  All bad things come in threes?  Yesterday was that day for us. As we continue to deal with the high stress fiasco of moving, I've been coordinating the mover assessment, the house inspection, the house appraisal, etc.  Last week the mover that the school recommended came, did an in-home estimate of our belongings and yesterday we received a quote that sent me into a sort of daze due to sticker shock. The school has given us an allowance toward moving and the quote we received was over double the allowance. While I paused to let the news digest, the phone rang. Our realtor started by saying, "I owe you an apology...." What a bad way to start a conversation! She had given us a wrong deadline date for the buyer to get back to us with an addendum to the sale contract with repairs they want completed before the closing date. There are now three things we have to fix, when last week we had been told by our realtor that they had waived having anything fixed because the deadline passed. As Nate and I wrote emails and instant messages back and forth regarding these issues and what we needed to do, he asked why does it always seem like bad things happen all at once? And the cute little comeback I gave was "bad things come in threes!" And of course, we had only had the opportunity to experience two of them at that point. While we were eating dinner (and internally I'm breathing a sigh of relief thinking that we've almost made it through the day without a third issue) Nate's phone rang and it was the bank in Connecticut that is pre-approving us for a home loan. The loan officer was calling to  see if we were aware of the "odd" items they found on our credit report: a second mortgage, three home-equity loans, etc. and so on. We then spent the evening pulling our credit reports from each of the major agencies and low and behold, one of the agencies has combined someone else's information onto my credit report. It doesn't show up on any of the other reports, so I don't believe it is a case of identity theft. The person hasn't changed their name, etc.... but their information is on my report.

To deal with the mover assessment, I googled Two Men and a Truck. Several people I know have used them and seemed to like them a lot. So, I clicked on what I thought was their website and put in the necessary information to receive a quote and since hitting send, literally before I could push away from the computer, or look away from the computer screen, my phone was ringing. As I listened to this woman from National movers, I kept thinking I was talking to Two Men and a Truck. At one point I said, "and you're connected to Two Men and a Truck?" And she proceeded to inform me that the site I had visited sent my information to basically any and all moving companies. She said, "you're going to be getting a lot of phone calls."  She was right. In fact, my phone went dead in the middle of the afternoon yesterday from me fielding all of these calls. I've decided it's a blessing in a HUGE disguise because I can now get a variety of quotes and I can see if they will "outbid" one another. So far, I have received two quotes that are right around the allowance provided for us. I have two in home estimates scheduled for tomorrow and then another on Friday.

On the home repair side of things, I have an electrician coming early in May to fix his part, and a handyman coming to do a minor repair on the roof and we're asking my father in law to switch out the dryer vent.

On the credit report side of things, I felt like one of the people in those commercials who begins to bang their heads against the wall because even though they are carefully following all instructions given on the phone or online, it doesn't work. On the agency site it clearly says that you can dispute an item (s) listed on your credit report. It gives step by step instructions on how to do it. For the first erroneous item, I clicked on dispute and it said that for that specific item I had to call and talk to someone. I thought, ok, let's go to the next one. I go to the next one, I get the same message. I go to the third, I get the same message. I scroll down tot he ones that lists the other person's name and that is actually one of the options given for the dispute: "name listed is not my own"...or something like that. So, I click on that. The message that pops up says, "Is it possible that someone in your family has used your social security number. If so, click ok. If not, click cancel." I clicked cancel and it took me back to the very beginning - not having registered my dispute at all. So, tomorrow, my day consists of calling the credit agency, having two moving assessments, and running off all this stress!

Monday, April 23, 2012

Major Disconnect

I'm running every other day and I'm strength training the other days and taking one day off each week. However, you'd never know it by looking at the scale. With all of the working out I'm doing,  to say I'm starving is an understatement. To say that I am not making wise choices in the food I'm eating is also an understatement. There's a huge disconnect going on between my stomach and my mind. Somewhere I come to a justification that I need to eat with all the exercise that I'm doing. And why doesn't the other voice pipe up and say, "Really? Why are you doing all the exercise in the first place?" So, here we are at the beginning of another week. I have good food choices for every meal sitting in the fridge. I have Weight Watchers Vegetable soup, which is actually quite tasty. I have black beans that I add to it for additional protein. I have enough lettuce to make salads each and every day. I usually start the week out with such good intentions and by 11AM on Monday, they are all for naught. So, although it is my habit to make blanket decisions for weeks on end, I'm reminding myself that today is all I'm promised. Today is what I'm responsible for. I'm telling myself to stop thinking about tomorrow or the next day or what you could weigh in _____ days if I ate ______. That obviously doesn't work. So, for Monday, April 23, I'm making a decision. For breakfast I'm having oatmeal with berries. For lunch I'm having Weight Watchers Soup with 1/2 cup black beans in it and a side salad. And for dinner I'm having a turkey burger, one serving of sweet potato fries and a salad with a no pudge brownie for dessert. I also am going to the gym after taking Nate to work and I'm going to run 5 miles, or 40 minutes, whichever comes first. I have been running outside, however, it's been so windy that I just can't do it. Some people may say that those are the conditions I may face in October and I should face them in training. What I say in response? Baby steps people.....baby steps. After Nate gets off work, we will go back to the gym and I'll either ride the bike or briskly walk on the treadmill for another 35-40 minutes.

We leave for New Haven on Saturday morning to look for a new home. We will be gone a week. I know that it will be difficult to make wise choices where food is concerned during the week. However, I'm preparing snacks for us to take along - baby carrots, celery sticks, grapes, low fat/high fiber snack bars/cereal bars, bottled water... Although in the first paragraph I mention thinking about today only, I realize that the failure to plan is planning to fail. And so, I will be taking each day as it comes and also encouraging wiser choices in terms of snacks which, will hopefully lead to wiser (ie. not as desperate) choices for meals.

In the housing department, we're actually leaning toward a townhouse/condo. To not be responsible for exterior maintenance and a yard does have strong appeal! However, we're keeping our options open. Our realtor in New Haven says that she doesn't think we'll make an offer while we're there. However, we plan to make a decision of some kind - either finding the place for us and making an offer or finding an apartment to live in short term while we continue the house hunt.

I hope your Monday is a great one!


Saturday, April 14, 2012

Martian Meteor 10K



I did it!  I ran the Martian Meteor 10K in Dearborn this morning (8 AM start time, to be exact. We can discuss the insanely early start times in another post) in 1 hour and 10 minutes. I was pretty impressed with my time as I had originally thought it would take me a LOT longer due to the pain in my right foot that I've been nursing for over a week. I honestly thought that I'd end up walking most of it and running short bits. Instead, it was exactly the other way around. I ran most of it, and walked a few snippets to catch my breath and recoup some energy. This was a first for me in a couple of areas:
1. First 10K - in fact - first 10K ever - due to the injury, I hadn't even run a 10K in training yet.
2. First race where it rained - Honestly, the rain was somewhat refreshing and kept me cool throughout the race.
3. First race where I wore the World Vision jersey.

I must admit, I almost didn't wear the jersey. With moving, I don't necessarily feel very much a part of the team from Northridge anymore. Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely running the marathon. But, I guess I don't feel the camaraderie with the "RidgeRunners" that I did at the beginning, knowing that I won't be training with them for most of the time. Along with my belief that I wouldn't do well in this race, I really debated on whether I should wear the jersey or not. But, I realized that with the lack of training the last week and a half, I have begun to retreat into a dark place where I hear my negative self that tell me I can't do it, I'll never succeed, etc. When I start listening to that internal dialog and not just listening, but believing it, I begin to retreat. As I stood there looking at the jersey this morning, I realized I needed to wear it. I needed to bond with these people and feel a part of this group. I need to have the encouragement and support from these runners even if I don't end up training with them here, I am still a member of the team.

Friday, April 13, 2012

Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy!

It is with great joy and relief that I can announce that we've accepted an offer on the house. It isn't totally what we wanted, it isn't totally what they wanted - didn't I hear somewhere that if both parties leave the table a little dissatisfied that means it's a fair compromise?  So, I guess we've had a fair compromise. We're happy that we will be able to go to CT in a few weeks and look for homes knowing that the weight of selling our home first is not holding us here. We're ecstatic that we can move on with our lives and not feel tied to this place. We're thrilled that we can look at homes in CT knowing that "yes, we can give you a down payment for that."

It truly feels quite surreal to me right now. Everything has been so overwhelming that I can't truly get my head around the fact that we will actually be moving and will be calling a new place "home" in a month and a half. The moving company is coming Tuesday to do an estimate on how much it will cost to move us. I think it will be fairly simple - as we are taking no appliances, only taking one bed out of a 3 bedroom house, we are leaving our IKEA bookshelves pictured here:
Isn't it pretty?  Well, as you may know, anything from IKEA doesn't come looking like that. You do end up putting it together yourself.  And, if you are us and IKEA, you know that the company is obviously owned by a sadistic monster who has decided that the hardware for one bookshelf should be completely different than the hardware for the other bookshelf. (oh yeah, we have two of these suckers sitting in our living room....side by side). And, what further supports the whole sadistic monster theory is that these are not easy things to put together. It's not like they are Legos that just click and lock into place. AND, you put them together flat and then you have to figure out a way to stand them up. So, as I stood staring at them skeptically the other day wondering how in the world we would move them across the country without taking them apart (I do believe we'd go on a crazed rampage if we had to put these things together again) without them breaking (the hardware is a tad on the unsatisfactorily flimsy side). The buyers asked to have them remain in the house. We eagerly accepted - shoving our nightmare onto someone else.

As you may see, I haven't mentioned running in a while... I've been resting my toes, as the ball/upper part of my right foot was hurt last week (see previous post). It is improving - we have walked most nights and I can tell that the pain is diminishing, so that's good. My April race, a 10K is Saturday. I'm totally and completely not prepared. But, I'll do the Jeff Galloway run/walk method and make it through....if I end up walking more than running, so be it. The other side of Saturday's race is that it is supposed to rain the entire time. Won't that be lovely? My hope is that I will be able to get back to training in earnest next week, believing that my foot will be better.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

I Hate Moving



Sometimes, doesn't it feel like life is just like this picture? Where you are moving a gazillion miles an hour and can't make sense of which way to go? May I just say that moving stinks? There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. It stinks to high heaven.  Right now we are in the throes of negotiations on an offer for the house. And we have come to realize that basically we're having to fight tooth and nail to get any sort of net profit out of the deal. It's frustrating and irritating. I just want it to be over. And that's probably one of the hopes of the buyer, that in our desire to sell fast, we'll just give in. However, what makes this more difficult is that there are two of us involved in this decision. One of us (aka: ME) wants to sell immediately - get it over with, who cares about net profit, just get out from under the weight of this albatross. Then there's someone else, who will remain unnamed (coughcoughNatecoughcough) who doesn't want to be taken advantage of and wants to turn down the offer because maybe the next one will be better.....of course my argument is, maybe there ISN'T a next one???!!!! And yet, I understand his point of view as well.

While we negotiate a sale on this end and feel tied down....no, that's not accurate...it's more like, weighted down with cement blocks tied around our ankles and sinking in the bottom of the Huron River.... I also am in major talks with our representatives in New Haven as well. I am exchanging several emails a day with the realtor we've connected with there and I am also in discussions with the moving company and the Yale Moving Office on planning/preparing to move all of our belongings. It is quite difficult to move from one email conversation that consists of, "they want us to give them what with that price??" to "um.... that's way out of our price range..is there anything that is cheaper that isn't a fixer-upper?" to "No I'm sorry, I can't schedule a date for the moving truck because we don't know our moving date yet, or a closing date, or..."

I'm learning a lesson, which I've probably learned before, and which I'll probably be granted more wondrous opportunities to learn in the future, that I don't deal well with uncertainty. I like everything all neatly wrapped up and tied with a bow and presented/dealt with in a timely (aka: IMMEDIATE) manner.

We'll see how it goes!  At this moment we are awaiting the counter -counter offer from the potential buyer. Oy!  I need a drink...no... more like a PITCHER of margaritas!

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Injury

I've hurt myself....somehow. I can't pinpoint to any specific instance, I didn't trip and fall face first into the cement.  If I had to guess, it probably happened when I mowed the lawn on Thursday. I had the brilliant idea to mow up hill because that would burn more calories and be a better workout. I think I may have hyper-extended my toe region or the ball of my foot. When I got my pedicure on Friday, I thought maybe the foot massage would help, and I was able to walk a little better afterward. In fact, it has gotten some better. I can walk without pain now, but I cannot run. It hurts too much. I went out to run yesterday and got about 5 feet before I realized there was no way I would be running 6 miles. I got to the end of the cul-de-sac and decided that I at least needed to cross the street for appearances sake.  I basically walked around our neighborhood a bit and within 10 minutes was back home. Nate looked at me somewhat skeptically and my training has now become a part of our prayers. I think that's the only way he thinks I'm going to do this. I've got a newsflash for him:  I KNOW that the only way I'm going to be able to train for and run this marathon is with God leading me each and every step. For now, I rest; hoping my foot heals enough that I can run some this week as my 10K race is Saturday.

On the home front, we had an offer on the house which was incredibly low. I think they interpreted "motivated seller" as someone who was willing to give the house away. They interpreted incorrectly. We've had a lot of showings and our realtor believes that the people coming today to look at the house for the 3rd time will make an offer. We'll see!

As we attend a very large church, they ask members/regular attenders to go to an Easter service either on Friday or Saturday so that more visitors may be accommodated on Sunday. So, we went to church Friday night and today we are going to the Tigers game! Goooooooooooooooooooo Tigers!

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Marathon Training Day 3

Good morning! Day 3 has arrived and I will once again run the 3.3 mi (5.1 km) in the neighborhood today. I also may end up mowing the lawn and then walking the same path I run this evening with Nate. So, it should be a day full of aerobic activity!  My hope is that it will start to show in the scale. I'm having some issue with the scale. Well, to be more accurate, I should be taking issue with myself, not the scale. Did the scale go through Target yesterday and believe it was a "great idea" to buy candy and create an Easter Basket "for Nate" and then proceed to eat 1/2 the candy?  Did the scale cause me to put the full tub of dressing on your Greek salad at the restaurant, or eat 3 breadsticks with the salad?  None of that was the scale... So, this morning, a new day, a new opportunity has the left over Easter candy going to work with Nate to add to the office candy jar, and I have logged my food for the day into myfitnesspal.com. So, next Wednesday, AKA weigh-in day, should display a different number. I just need to remain consistent and focused on my goal. I want to be fit and trim and run the Chicago marathon injury free and unencumbered.

Monday, April 2, 2012

Marathon Training Day 1

hmmm... I think I may have used that title before.... but, with taking a 1/2 month hiatus to work on the house and get the house in "show mode" and finish working, day 1 is here again. I think...no, I KNOW that starting training today is mui importante to start setting a pattern and precedent for this new job of mine. Even though I have the window people and the carpet cleaners coming today, I must make sure that I run today. Day 1 can't turn into "Day 1 Delayed", or "Day 1 Revisited." So here I am facing "day 1" determined to make it a Great day!

On the house selling front, we had an open house yesterday that was quite encouraging and we have, so far, one showing scheduled for this evening.

UPDATE:  I ran 5.1 km. Feeling good!