2010: Q & A

I did this questionnaire last year and will carry the tradition forward.   I took out some of the questions that I felt were pretty lame.  It’s still a lot of questions! If you want to complete it too, please do.  You can link your post in the comments.  I’d like to read about your 2010.

1. What did you do in 2010 that you’d never done before?

Ran my first half marathon in March. And then ran a second one in November. I ran my first trail race in November. First son turned 5 and second son turned 3. Watched my first son go off to kindergarten. Had major surgery. Attended a funeral service with military rights.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?



From last year’s post:
• Run a half marathon – Check – twice!
• Incorporate more whole foods into our diet, and less processed junk – Sort of!
• Try to have a garden with more than just a tomato plant – Check - Chili peppers and tomatoes!

For next year I'd like to:

 * Run a full marathon
 * Run a 50K trail race
 * Find a way to volunteer or give back
 * Get the rest of my family involved in regular physical activities

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?



My sister Erica had her second son, Dean, in February.

4. Did anyone close to you die?



My mom’s friend Joe passed away in the summer.  He gave Nicholas model airplanes and taught him the US Navy fight song.

5. What places did you visit?



Lake Ontario, Oswego NY side.  Cooperstown, NY.  Wilmington, NC.   All with family and all fun!

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?

More time in the day because there is so much I’d like to do.

7. What dates from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Completing my first half marathon.  Having my gall bladder removed.  Nicholas’ graduation.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?



Running farther than I ever thought was possible and connecting with a great community of runners.

9. What was your biggest failure?



I really can’t think of anything I’d call a failure.  There’s things I forgot to do like mail graduation cards to my niece and nephew, get the oil changed on my car before it had to be towed out of the driveway, pack juice in the kid’s lunch box.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

My gall bladder went bad, in an acute hemorrhagic cholecystitis kind of way.  It was removed and I got some cool scars and a week off work.

11. What was the best thing you bought?



Membership to the Y was the best decision of the year.  It has been life changing for all of us in such a good way.  I have a good community of runners and access to great fitness classes.  Nicholas is getting a huge benefit from the after school and camp programs.  Travis enjoys the child care and meets new friends.  We loved the pool over the summer and swimming lessons.

12. Where did most of your money go?



Daycare, Y, running gear, race entry fees, car repairs, and groceries.

13. What did you get really excited about?

Seeing my little sister three times this year!  And watching Nicholas venture into the big world of elementary school.

14. Compared to this time last year, are you:


– happier or sadder? Happier, I’m staying more in the present.
– thinner or fatter? The same but more fit, again.


– richer or poorer? The same financially.  Richer in other aspects. 

15. What do you wish you’d done more of?



Snuggling with the boys in my life.

16. What do you wish you’d done less of?



Trying to change people or get them to do what I think is better for them.

17. How did you spend Thanksgiving and Christmas?


Thanksgiving we ate at Jared's house with his sister's family.  Christmas started at home and then to my mom's house to see the rest of the family.  Then we returned home for Christmas dinner.

18. What was your favorite TV program?


I watched a lot less TV this year.  Biggest Loser is still one of my favorites, followed by The Mentalist. 

19. What was the best book you read?
I’ve started to read a few good books this year and are still in process currently.  The only one I finished worth noting is “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running”.

20. What was your greatest musical discovery?


Grooveshark.  I found that I can actually stand listening to current pop music while I’m working.  Maybe it's just the rhythm or the nonsensical lyrics.  It helps pass the time.

21. What did you want and get?
 Acknowledgment of the boring, pain in the rear work I do each day. 

22. What did you want and not get?
A winning lottery ticket.  Still waiting.

23. What was your favorite film of this year?

I did go to the movies a few times this year.  It’s hard to pick a favorite favorite.  Avatar in 3D was pretty cool.

24. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I got an ipod nano preloaded with some tunes.  Multiple cakes – cookie cake, ice cream cake, lemon pound cake, and chocolate peanut butter cake.  I turned 33.

25. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Seeing my husband meet his fitness goals.  He wanted to get more into bike riding and looked at mountain bike races in the area.  I would like to see him meet his goals.  He’s starting to get that it’s not about winning or placing, but about finishing what you set out to do.

26. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010?
I added a few dresses to the work wardrobe for a nice change of pace.  Not much else changed – still a jeans and sneakers style outside of work.  I got some cargo pants to mix things up and that was a bad impulse purchase.

27. What kept you sane?



Running, frozen yogurt, coffee, and happy kids.

28. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Simon Baker is still pretty fantastic.

29. Who did you miss?


My dad.  On Christmas Day my uncle sent a link to an old video from 1983.  There’s footage of my dad that is very special.  And my mom is young and beautiful too.  I look a bit like a ragamuffin but I was very happy.

30. Who was the best new person you met?


I don’t have an answer for that.  How about I reconnected with and became closer with existing people?  

31. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010.



Patience.  There’s no need to rush through life.  Things will settle down and find a way of working themselves out.

It's a White Boxing Day

I awoke in the morning from my food coma.  The weatherman got it right, albeit slightly off in the estimated delivery time.  We had a good blanket of snow everywhere and it was still falling.  The poor shrubs and saplings all crippled under the weight of fresh snow.  The power lines sagging with a couple of inches of snow.
Shortly after we were moving around the house and visions of biscuits with leftover ham were tossed around - the power went out.  Pretty hard to make biscuits without electricity.  Adrian reported the outage (pretty sure they know when it's out with their fancy technology stuff, but this way they call back with estimated times of power restoration).  The boys rocked out with the guitars, fired off the nerf guns, and made a mess with play doh.  I chatted with friends and family via text message.  Adrian surfed the web with his ipad.  You know, all the things people did before electricity was invented.  We ate cereal for breakfast and now we're out of milk.
The power came back on a couple hours later but it was at least another hour before the boys figured it out.  Adrian ventured out to find key survival items like coffee.  A Dunkin Donuts was open, score!
I cooked an omelet with leftover ham and cheese and baked some dinner rolls from the freezer for a late brunch.  And then it was time to check out the snow!  Snowball fight!  (For those keeping track, this is the third snowfall this winter.  I'm sure that's a record.  We really don't get this much snow in NC.  It must be global warming or the President's fault.)

He owns matching hat and gloves, but loses them regularly.

He owns a winter coat and vest, but refuses to wear them.

He starts the snowball fights.

Wrestling in the snow.

On another note, our teenage boy neighbor had a girl over to build a snowman.  Cute.

Merry Christmas

Santa came through this year and fulfilled the boys' wishes.  What a good guy.  The boys were up with the sun and very excited.  Thank you to all of our loved ones.  We had plans to drive to Winston-Salem and stay the night with my mom.  A big honey ham was on the menu.  Unfortunately Jack Frost had snow on the menu.  We got on the road mid-morning.

One of Travis' new guitars.  He's a rock star, you know.

Nicholas' theme for this Christmas: Nerf guns!

Christmas rocks!

 Snow was already sticking by the time we got to Winston-Salem.  We were the first in the family to arrive at my mom's.  Then almost everyone else arrived at the same time.  Mass present unwrapping ensued.  It was a lot of fun to see everyone.  My nieces and nephews keep growing up.  There's talks of college acceptances, dean's lists, graduations, braces, etc.

There was almost an inch by the time we left Winston-Salem.  The side roads were becoming slick.  We decided to go ahead and travel back east to Raleigh and beat the snow.  Halfway back it was just rain and we were safely home.
Since our original plans were thwarted by Jack Frost, we had a big ole honey ham to cook.  And I decided to make macaroni and cheese from scratch.  A friend gave me a recipe off the back of a noodle box and swore it was the best ever.  Every dish was ready at the same time, amazing feat.  Before we ate Adrian paused and said a big thank you for the wonderful meal.  It really was good.  Honey ham is awesome.  And that macaroni and cheese was the next level of awesome.  Sorry mom, you missed out.  Blame the weatherman.
Some lucky stray dog had a good Christmas present too.  We put the ham bone out by the curb.  It was a beauty and if I was dog I would have gone to town on that.

This is Why

we have kids.  So we can put their in pigtails and have a digital image to last forever.  Travis makes a cute little girl, I think.  Nick, not as much.  Also, Travis was quite taken with this style.  Over the past week he has asked for the single ponytail with a headband several times.
I took them for haircuts so these shenanigans have gone to the wayside for now. 


Editor's Note: Adrian does not condone this activity.

Me

I think I've mentioned before that I signed up for the endurance running program at the Y.  The coach set up a Yahoo group and we use it for email distribution purposes.  You can send out invitations for runs, pose questions to the masses, or make casual observations about our sanity or fashion choices.  There's also a shared calendar where you post your upcoming races.  This way we can all support each other with our goals.  I've joined a few group runs, and chatted with some of the runners by email.

Last night was the end of season social at a pizza/bar/grill place near the Y.  There were quite a few people whose names I had seen in emails but hadn't had the opportunity to hook up with for a run yet.  It was a lot of fun seeing people I had met before but this time we weren't all sweaty, stinky and unkempt.  And I got to meet people I only knew by name.  It was a lot of fun.

For the first time in a long time I felt like I was in a community.  I was myself.  Not someone's mother.  Not someone's wife.  Not someone's co-worker.  But just me.  I could be myself.  I'm slowly getting back some of my social skills and learning how to chat and make new friends.  It's not that I've been isolated.  Just going to work, shlepping kids to daycare and their friends' parties, doing family stuff.  I was neglecting to make my own connections outside of all that.  It feels really good to be able to step out on my own.  And with the added benefit of being around people who don't give a second thought to running at 5:30 am when it's 17 degrees out, or running long enough to burn 2300 calories - all for fun and the joy of being outside.  We know we are crazy and we happily accept others to join us.

And So It Begins

Lesson # 1:  The school cafeteria allows students to set up an account or pay by cash.  I created the account and placed some money in it.  At $2.00 per lunch I thought it would last a while.  He went through spurts of wanting to bring lunch everyday, and the occasional school lunch.  Lately he's been buying lunch most days.  It probably depends on what his friends are doing and not what's on the menu.  He doesn't ask me to look it up for him ahead of time. 

I logged into his account last week to see the balance.  I ran a report of the last 7 days, the maximum look back on the site.  That boy was buying cookies and extra snacks almost everyday with his lunch!  And one day he only bought a cookie, meaning he made the extra effort to go stand in line just to buy a cookie to go with his lunch.  And he bought lunch on a day that I know he took lunch with him.  How dare he, we discussed the rules.  We agreed to treats only on Fridays.

When confronted that evening he responded with a "how'd you find out?" and "it's my account".  I explained the website and that I was putting my money into it, and so on.  I set a spending limit of lunch only on his account.  And if he wants to buy a cookie he could plan ahead and take fifty cents with him.  He understood, I think, and has continued to buy lunch this week with no complaints of missing a bag of chips or a cookie.


Lesson #2:  The school PTA fundraiser of the month was some crazy shoelace things called Y Ties.  They're coiled and do not have to be tied.  The order form promised that they would save my life and only cost $4 with some unknown amount going back to the PTA.  What the hey.  I bought two.  Camouflage for Nicholas and black for Travis.

Nicholas came home a week or so later with his camouflage Y ties in his shoes.  A counselor at after-school put them on for him. 

Where's the other pair, the black ones?
I gave them to a friend.
What?! Those were for Travis.  So you could each have some.
Commence the water works and run away.

After we got him to return there was a talk about asking parents before giving things away.  Then a talk about if people are truly your friends it's because they like you and not because you give them things.

What's your friend's name?
I don't know.
Is it a boy or a girl?
A girl.
How old is she?
Nine.
And you don't know her name?
Her name is Evelyn.

No big deal, let's think of a solution.  The game plan - talk to her and let her know that he wasn't supposed to give them away, they were for his brother, he'll be in trouble.  If she's really a friend she will understand.   I don't know the child and who knows if her parents would question how she got them.  I had to hope he wasn't coerced into giving them up by an older child, a girl no less!

I picked him up from school the next day.  He was so proud and happy.  He got the Y ties back.  Evelyn had been very understanding.  She even wrapped them in a piece of purple paper and wrote his name on it so he wouldn't lose them.  We agreed that she was a true friend.  (I think she might have a thing for a kindergartener.)


The real task of parenting is here.  We need our game face on.  And a strategy for teaching him how to be responsible, caring, and independent.  He will make mistakes and we will all learn from them.

Turkey Lurkey

I don't remember exactly what was accomplished on Thanksgiving Day.  We lounged around watching the Macy's parade.  Finally it was captivating enough for both boys.  Score!  Then at some point later we were all dressed and ready to go to someone else's house where they had slaved away all day making dinner.  Score!
Jared was hosting this year after we had fed him in previous years.  His sister was coming to visit with her daughters.  He was very excited about the whole thing.  He suggested we all make banners.  My concept of banners is of the homecoming variety you hang from the top floor classroom windows in high school for the pep rally.  Adrian let Jared know that my banner was of the awesome nature.  Jared's response, "I didn't know this was a competition."  Hello?  Have we met?  Of course mine had to be the best.  He picked up our banner the day before Thanksgiving so it could be hanging on his deck when guests arrived.  Well we rolled up and ours was the lone banner.  No competition, they didn't even attempt to rival my creation.  Check it out:

The kids sitting still for a moment while dinner is still cooking.

The kids thank Jared for a wonderful dinner and a lot of fun - like whipped cream mustaches.