Random randomness 5.20.11

What the ...: I ran a 5K two weeks ago. It was a gorgeous morning to run, and the course started and ended at a beachy, water-front park on Anna Maria Island, which is uber cute. Despite the fact that I had only gotten four hours of sleep the night before, I was eager to run and push my time (largely because I needed to get home fast, shower and head off to a bridal shower I was cohosting, but I digress). There were probably 250 runners, and as the pack started to break up a bit, I realized something about a woman running in front of me: She was barefoot. I've never seen it, and I maybe could have understood if it happened on a beach course, but this was road. Asphalt. Florida pavement.

Bizarre.

The view before the race.

She ended up finishing the race, and I really can't imagine that was a comfortable (or healthy) way to run, but maybe she had a purpose or was trying to make a statement. There was another runner who was wearing a veil. I asked her why she was wearing the veil, thinking maybe she was getting married that day, which would be really cool. But apparently she was engaged and planning an August wedding. Her maid of honor was running with her and suggested they run a race the morning of the wedding, too ... Still kinda puzzled why the veil was a key part of this May race, but an interesting people-watching moment regardless.

I'm old AND lame: For my birthday last month, I got some money. And while I'd love to blow it on all sorts of fun stuff or stash all of it in our savings account, I thought carefully about how to designate each dollar. One of my chosen purchases? Electric toothbrushes for Tim and I. They've been on my Amazon wish list for months, and I finally decided that they'd be worth the investment (I mean, if you've got good teeth and gums, surely you're saving on dental care in the long run, right?). Lest you all think that I'm a hopeless cause, please know that I did order a new pair of sandals (they were desperately needed, as sandals are year-round attire in Florida) and buy some makeup. The rest, though, *did* go in to savings.

Because I'm old, I'm loving this: This primer rocks. I saw an ad in a magazine for it a few months ago, had a few coupons and bought it on sale, figuring I didn't have much to lose if I didn't like it. I big pink puffy heart it. It makes my face incredibly smooth, and it feels so soft and silky going on. Sometimes I'll just put my moisturizer, primer and a dust of powder on, and I'm ready to go, sans foundation. It lasts a long time, too - I'm just now starting my second little jar.

Texts you don't expect to receive from your husband while at work: "What are you feeding this child?! Another huge poop just happened."

Birthday bonanza: Happy birthday to my beloved sister Marti and dear friend Meghan! (You can read more about them in a birthday post from two years ago here.) Our friend Kelly is also celebrating her birthday today at work with Tim (with these yummy cookies - one of her favorites, muah hahahaha).

Pear-fectly unacceptable: I have developed quite a love/hate relationship with pears. I'm not a huge fan of the fruit myself, but Elle L-O-V-E-S them. My problem is that they stain cute baby clothes like nobody's business. I've had great success getting all other stains out of Elle's clothes since birth ... except the pears seem to have outsmarted me. (Cantaloupes are problematic as well.) Elle always seems to be wearing cute, white onesies when she eats pear, and the stains are a light brown. Not. Cool. The stains are hard for me to see *before* washing, so by the time the clothes are washed they've been pretty set, but I'm going to try to be a bit more proactive on the pesky buggers.

Best trainer ever: I was playing Zumba for Wii yesterday morning while Tim and Elle were in the other room. Tim brought Elle in and told me I was getting a standing ovation for my performance. I turned around and saw Elle Belle clapping enthusiastically. Quite the encouragement to continue my workout :)

Ch-ch-changes: Just a heads up, abundance of faithful readers: We're going to be changing our blog name, address and design in the next few weeks. I'll give more of a heads up before it's about to happen, because things will likely be kinda wonky for a few days as we make the switch, but typing in the old address should automatically redirect you to the same page, old links should work the same, etc. I *think* the only thing that changes is you might have to update the site if you read through Google Reader, but again, more info as the time approaches. I'm excited :)

Squeaky Sophie: As I mentioned in a previous post, Sophie was missing, so we ordered a replacement Sophie. (Amazon's price on Sophie is the lowest I've found, and free two-day shipping because of Amazon Mom? Thankyouverymuch.) Replacement Sophie's squeaker is in hyper drive. The old Sophie squeaked, but you had to definitely squeeze her to produce noise. If you look at Replacement Sophie the wrong way, she squeaks loudly. If you breathe in her vacinity, SQQQUUEEEEEEAAAAAKKKKKK. Elle finds this amusing. (And judging from the consistent, enthusiastic squeaks I heard from Elle and Tim playing while I was trying to sleep yesterday morning, Tim finds this amusing as well.)

Thoughts and prayers: A little baby girl is in the hospital and facing an uphill battle. The baby is the daughter of two people I work with, and while I don't know them personally, their story has hit me hard. The baby was born when the mom was 23 weeks and 6 days pregnant - viability is 24 weeks. She's teeny tiny and fighting hard but has already had several procedures and surgeries and is being closely monitored for various complications. Her parents are essentially living at the hospital, immersed in the beeps and hums of the monitors and machines keeping their daughter alive. Her mother has only been able to hold her twice - in the more than five weeks since she was born. Twice. If you have any extra thoughts and prayers to spare, please consider sending them to this family.

Race recap

My sister, Marti, and brother-in-law, Jeff, came to visit a few weeks ago. The timing of their visit was planned around a half marathon relay that my sister and I registered to run. My sister has run several races, from 5Ks to half marathons, and I've run a few 5Ks, but no races since several months before I found out I was pregnant. And after I had Elle, recovery from the delivery of Gigantor left me in pain for two months. I thought I might never run without pain again.

Thankfully, that was not the case, and running the half marathon relay with my sister was excellent motivation to get back on the running, um, train, as well as an athletic bonding experience with my sister. It was certainly challenging to find time to train, but in the end, I was comfortable with where I was at: Slow, but not at risk to physically hurt myself by running my 5.5-mile leg.

I took a few days off work for my family's visit. We realized a few weeks before the race that the run was the morning after daylight saving time, meaning we'd be running early in the morning on one less hour of sleep. Whee! I ended up getting about four hours of sleep the night before we ran, but Marti and I got up early and headed to the race site around 5:30 a.m. My leg of the relay was first, but since we were there with plenty of time to spare, we hung out together with other runners until close to the 7 a.m. start time, when Marti headed to the relay area.

It might seem that I had the easier part of the race - after all, a half marathon is 13.1 miles, and my leg was 5.5 miles. Marti was going to run 7.6 miles. The night before the race, though, we were looking at the course map when we realized that there was an incline on the first leg of the course. No problem, I thought. I'd only trained on a flat area in my neighborhood, but it certainly couldn't be *that* much of an incline, could it?

Let's just sum it up this way: One of the other runners said that the relay was divided not evenly in distance, but evenly in difficulty, and I have to agree. The course was an area I've driven on countless times to one of my favorite aquariums, but I'll never look at the bridges that I ran over the same. It was cold at 7 a.m., and there was a breeze. Although it was dark when we started, as the sun came up, the view of the water as we ran over the causeway was amazing. The words "ran uphill both ways" kept going through my head as I battled the wind and incline, but the sun came out around mile 2 and I started to hit my stride. By mile 4, I'd taken off my sweatshirt and thrown on my sunglasses. And right around then, I decided that a faster pace was sustainable for the remaining 1.5 miles and maybe it would be better if I could just power through the last of the bridge. I ended up motoring through the last 1.5 miles and met Marti at the relay exchange, when she took this picture of me approaching:

Then I wandered around for a bit and waited for Marti to run on her flat portion of the course return to the relay exchange area, where we would run in the last tenth of a mile and cross the finish line together.

As we joked about preparing for a perfect picture finish, Marti pointed out a surprise on the left side of the finish line: Jeff, Tim and Elle! We had told our husbands not to bother coming to the race. As nice as it would have been to see them after finishing, I didn't want to disrupt Elle's nap schedule, especially with the time change, and with transportation, traffic and timing issues, we didn't think it was worth the hassle for the boys to battle the crowds and meet us. But I have to admit, it was AMAZING to see them and have them watch us cross the finish line. I was very thankful that Tim had decided to surprise me, called and picked up Jeff at the hotel and battled the crowds to find us.

Elle: Unimpressed. Me: Thrilled!

I had done a lot of people watching while I ran and waited for Marti, and I was inspired by the mother/daughter teams, the kids cheering their fathers on, the babies in strollers guarded by relatives waiting for the babies' parents to complete the race. I kept wishing that Elle could be there to see me finish, that someday we would be able to participate in events like this as a family or even do a relay together. And there she was, with Tim and Jeff, watching her mommy and aunt cross the finish line.

Our "official" race photo.

It was an amazing surprise, and it actually worked out really well with her nap schedule. The boys and Elle joined us for the post-race breakfast, and I let Elle eat some banana and yogurt, so she was in heaven.

I felt good after the race. Tired, but good. The weather ended up being perfect by the end of the race, and I wasn't sore or sick from the run. Marti and I placed 48th out of 68 relay teams (there was also an option to run the straight half marathon with no relay), and we were pleased with that, since we weren't really doing it to break any time records. I was just pleased that I managed to run 5.5 miles and not die. A group of women saw me with Elle as we were eating breakfast, and they congratulated me on running "so soon" after having Elle (I didn't explain to them that she was several months old). I had demanded requested donuts after completing the run, and Marti brought a half-dozen delicious donuts over later that morning. YUM. My basic needs had been met, so I was happy.

Family photo <3

Burning oodles of calories before 9 a.m., taking in the beautiful sunrise, checking out the scenery as I crossed the bridge, getting donuts, experiencing a bonding experience with my sister, being surprised by my family, holding my daughter after finishing the race ... all in all, an excellent Sunday morning :)

Sisterly bonding complete: Post-run, pre-donuts :)

Wordless Wednesday: Auntie Love

This is what happens when Aunt Marti visits:
You go to Kohl's, check out the clearance racks and
buy "I love my auntie" onesies ... in four different sizes :)

Happy birthday, times two!

Today is a special day - it's the birthday of a) my favorite Reds baseball player, Adam Rosales, and b) my matrons of honor!


I picked Meghan and Marti to be my matrons of honor only because they shared the same birthday and had similar initials - Martha Ellen and Meghan Elizabeth (although Meg has since dropped Elizabeth in lieu of her maiden name, although I must say I have strongly disagreed with that choice, but she's aware of that, did it anyway and it's a long story ...)

ANYWAY.

Seeing as how I'm the little sister, I've known Marti my whole life. I did pretty much everything she did - band, German Club, National Honor Society, Girl Scouts, etc. She'd just always been there, and I took her for granted. Until she went away to college. FOUR HOURS AWAY. This was HUGE. Sure, I had my own room (score!), but I'd lost my roommate, and that was jarring. I tried to be all cool in all of my freshman-in-high-school ways, but it was hard having her so far away. Suddenly (and even more so two years later when Mom was pregnant with Doug), I was the oldest. Marti always told me I got everything I had because of her - you know, if Mom and Dad told her she couldn't go to the movies with friends or something like that, fours years later they'd mellowed out and *I* was allowed to do all of those things.

After I went to college and started my world tour of newspaper jobs, Marti's home in Columbus was often a getaway. While in Lima, Columbus was closer than our parents' house. Flights from Tampa to Columbus were often cheaper and more convenient than other Ohio airports. Hours of relentless teasing have been lost because I am so far away now. Alas, I vow to make up for it someday.

When Tim and I got engaged and decided to get married in Ohio, Marti was PRICELESS in our planning. Every time someone asks me where we got married, I say, "We got married in Ohio, but my sister really helped with everything so it wasn't as bad as it sounds." And it wasn't. I don't know how she put up with me and my demands/requests/precious inquiries, but she did, and I'm glad I have a patient, loving and threatened kind sister who helped us out. While it would have been easy for us to grow apart as the geographic distance has increased, I think we've gotten closer, and I hope someday we'll live near each other again.

Happy 32nd birthday, Mart!

Even though I'm older than Meg, I have *not* known her her entire life. (This fact might be the saddest of Meghan's life. So sorry, Meg.) I met her at Kent State in the Stater office during training for our fall 2001 newspaper staff. Meg was taking over the Administration beat, which I had covered that summer. I handed her a pile of crap my notes and told her to let me know if she had any questions. After that, I don't remember the details - somehow she ended up being my very best friend, and those last two years of college were full of memories with Meghan. We used to get up insanely early and work out at the Rec Center. Exercise has never been as much fun - I think we'd be there for at least an hour, talking, sweating, wondering why we were awake, and not even realize we were working out. We'd walk home from classes together, make random runs for Chinese food and Dairy Queen and scheduled trips for gas station cappuccino. We're classy like that.

After Meg graduated, she went to Arizona for a fellowship - and hasn't come back. She met the love of her life out there and has provided me and countless others with a really cool place to vacation. No matter how physically far apart we've been, though, we've been in constant contact - e-mails, phone calls, visits. It hasn't mattered that we see each other once, maybe twice a year (last year, when we both got married, we saw each other a whopping THREE TIMES!). She's been there for me through good and bad, through moves, love, laughter and wedding planning.

Happy 27th birthday, Meg!

Love you both and wish I could be there to celebrate with you guys ... Meg and I could be your DD, Mart :-)

Another great cause!

Many of you have supported me for years in a cause that is near and dear to my heart: breast cancer. My grandmother is a survivor, other family members have had breast cancer scares, friends have had scares, friends of friends are survivors. I've moved a lot in the last few years, but the one thing that has remained the same is that I always participate in the Race for the Cure. Since 2004, I think I've done the race seven times - usually walking, recently running. It's one of the most moving events I have ever seen - the swarms of people walking in memory of loved ones or in honor of a survivor bring tears to my eyes every time.

This year, my sister is participating in her first Race for the Cure. Please consider donating to a cause that affects everyone - with support like yours, breast cancer might someday have a cure. And again, Marti will do the hard part - getting up early, braving race day traffic, fighting back tears and wiping off the sweat of a 5K run. For $10 or $20, you can snuggle deep in to bed on the morning of May 16 and know that you've done your part to help wipe out breast cancer.

To donate, go here.