Sometimes I just have to stop and think about how awesome I am.

I know, the title of this post is the polar opposite of my post from last Monday. But such is the natural ebb and flow of life. In one week you may feel like your life is literally crumbling around your ears and end that same week feeling invincible. It doesn't mean that the bad things that happened are any less important, but just that life marches on and most times you will find a little sunshine mixed in with your doom and gloom (even when you try really, really hard not to).

I have been meaning to start posting a little more about my half marathon training (or the training that I am currently in to get in good enough shape to be ready for the actual half marathon training) and after my run last night, I am motivated to.

Armini is my trainer/workout maker since he did that whole cross country thing in high school, plus the soccer and the fact that he has run a WHOLE marathon. Plus, I don't have to pay him money (waggles eyebrows) so it works out for everyone. For the past three weeks I have been doing a combination of swimming, yoga and treadmill running (yes, I know that it's not the same as running outside but it's still cold here. I don't run outside in the cold) which started at 30 minutes a go and has now increased to at least one 45 minute run a week.

Last night I did my 45 minutes ... and I covered 4.3 miles. That is the longest I have ever run. EVER. PLUS, I warm up and cool down but I don't count it towards the 45 minutes. I'm not sure why exactly except that I feel like such a bad ass when Armini asks me how long I ran and I can say "45 minutes exactly dude, no walking" and then have him be impressed. It gives me a sense of pride. And yesterday I challenged myself to work on my endurance at a faster pace by running at a 5.0 treadmill speed for 25 minutes sandwiched between 10 minutes of running at 4.5 treadmill speed. I didn't die, I didn't walk until I was supposed to AND one time I went almost 10 minutes not staring at the clock waiting for the minutes to tick by (this is a big step for me). AND it was a good run overall and my favorite songs came on during my cool down so I got to dance a little while I was walking, which is AWESOME.

Although, while I was dancing I noticed a guy sitting on a bench outside the window where he could plainly see me flailing my arms on the treadmill. But that didn't stop me. I dance like nobody's watching! All the time! It's awesome!

But I am feeling quite proud of myself and thought I would share. Go Me!

The Pity Party

Sometimes I wonder how any of us manage to maintain a pleasant demeanor in the world. How to make it from one day to the next without losing our minds? Or our faith? Or our humanity?

Not only have I been reading about the loss of some beautiful babies this week, but I just got a phone call from my co-blogger on Master of my Money and she is in a bad state. I won't go into details because it's not my story to tell. But let's just say that it was the straw the broke the camel's back in a string of crappy goings on.

Plus, Hilda is having troubles out on the west coast. It hurts me that my friends are all so sad and that I can't always be there to hug them, feed them chocolate ice cream, and share in their tears. It just doesn't seem fair.

None of it is any fair.

Tonight I am having a pity party with Ash. Hilda will be joining us on skype. There will be chocolate ice cream and tears and general wallowing in our misery. But we will be doing it together. And maybe tomorrow we can move on to something better. Something happier.

You know ... I think I might move forward with my Pity Party idea. Everyone deserves a moment to vent.

Me? Armini going to China. The panic that it creates in me deep, deep down. Not knowing what I am going to do without him around. The fear that if we stay together, it will destroy our relationship. The fear that if we break up, we will never get back together. And the fact that this is going to happen, whether I want it to or not, in about 3 months.

Now it's your turn ... what do you want to cry (or vent) about?

Like sping cleaning, only smellier

While I was in Florida, and Armini was taking care of the puppies, there was an incident. The last two days I was away Tim and Bing thought that it would be a really, awesomely good idea to excrete all over the floor of my room. There was a lot wee and a little poo. And when I got home on that Thursday, I almost threw up when I opened the door to my room. I have worked in a kennel before and I have NEVER smelled anything so foul as my bedroom on that night.

It smelled so bad that you could smell it even when the door was closed. SERIOUSLY. I had a little sit down with the dogs so that I could tell them about how totally not cool it was that they had made my room stink in such an unholy way. They wagged their tails and licked me. That's when I noticed that they smelled pretty bad themselves. They got baths that night. And Armini got a roommate for the next few days.

Last weekend I rented a steam cleaner and steamed the crap out of my carpets. This is what our living room looked like for about two days (because, you have to steam the carpets and then wait for them to dry. Which I'm sure you knew already. I really like to state the obvious):

Everything that was in my bedroom, all in the living room.

And the Rug Doctor Working hard. 1 and 1/2 gallons at a time.

At the end of the day, my back hurt, the apartment was a mess, and the dogs found some new homes for when they are home alone during the day (their kennels). And my stuff is still all over the apartment, just hidden away in nooks and crannies where people who haven't see our apartment before wouldn't really notice that [the thing] is out of place. But Armini knows.

But sometimes when I walk past my open bedroom door I catch a whiff of that smell. That urine stink that makes me want to gag (only now it's worse because I soaked the carpet with Febreze a few times and so now the stink is mixed with that "breath of fresh air" smell. Which is truly a lot worse than you can imagine). So I am turning to you, my reader(s?), to tell me what you think I should do. I have already crawled around on my hands and knees sniffing the legs of everything that was on the floor during "the incident", and really nothing smells. I don't understand where the smell could be coming from ... and the dogs have not marked since I steamed the carpets because they're either following me around like tiny shadows or they are put away in their kennels.

A real time picture: This is what is sitting in my lap right now. They are just SO snuggly!

HALP!

GiST 12/365

1. The first lawn mower of the season making a racket outside my office window

2. SuperMama telling me that Bing is a wonderful dog and that I should let Armini take Tim with him to China (which is NOT going to happen)

3. Not putting off the cleaning

4. In my very immediate future there is a bed frame

5. Planning the perfect Easter dinner


Visit Grace in Small Things

Longing, Wanting and a Pity Party

Sometimes I look around in the world/in my life/on the internet and I see all these people who are doing things that I would love to be doing. I feel this longing in my chest that makes me want to find a way to do these things that I dream about doing. I want to learn how to be so awesomely, awesome at everything. And when I start down the road to being awesome, sometimes I get really frustrated when I'm not awesome at [whatever] right off the bat.

(You might be reading this and thinking that you may have heard this before. Or maybe more than once? Well, this is what has been on my mind lately. Sorry for the broken record posts, I'm trying to write about other stuff too)

I am taking steps, and looking into new things, learning how to do other stuff. Fun stuff. Creative stuff. Practical stuff (which is usually lame, but in this case not so much. Or at least, that's what I think). I think I may have decided that I would like to try and be a blogger and make money off of it. Which is a laugh right now, because you need people that read your stuff regularly AND you need to write well AND you need to write about things that are interesting and different and not keep complaining about your life and how you're frustrated with the state that it's in at the moment (right?).

I would really like to be able to work at home, in my PJs if I wanted to (but I wouldn't really because that is SO unprofessional and I am the very embodiment of professionalism). (Pffffft, I almost managed to say that with a straight face).

And that's really all I wanted to say. I suppose that a blog that is comprised largely of posts where the author (yes, I DO think of myself as an author - so should you! It makes you feel pretty awesome) makes these sorts of "verbal" self proclamations isn't the worst sort of writing.

AND I had an idea for a group post, maybe, it's still evolving. But here is the basic idea of it, let me know what your thoughts on the matter are:

I want to have a pity party. I know a lot of people who have had/are going through some really tough/sad/suckey/frustrating/generally disappointing times right now and I think that we all deserve a moment to pout about it and have other people pat us on the back and say "You poor thing. Here, have another pint of Haagen Dazs". In my experience, an hour or two wallowing in self pity can help a lot in the process of moving on to bigger and better things.

Do you think you, or someone that you know, would be willing to participate? Would you want the post to be anonymous? Is this a super lame idea? Like I said, I would really like to hear your thoughts on the matter.

The Conditional Confession of the Mess Maker

Last night, while Armini was scolding me for being a messy roommate (according to him I had 80 thousand things that belonged to me laying around in the dinning room/living room) he compared me to his old roommate who shall remain nameless. However, this roommate was a total slob and really liked to leave his dishes out on the kitchen counter to collect ants during the summer time (which I do not do; I am a little totally OCD about keeping my kitchen clean).

And, ok, I will admit that I have been a little more messy as of late. But most of it is from the "spring cleaning" I did (post with pictures coming soon!) and the reason that it's going back into my bedroom so slowly is because it must have a home to go back too, otherwise it has been sitting in the same place waiting for a spot to open up. And maybe I have a problem with just dropping my stuff on the couch when I get home after work ...

But when he compared me to his old roommate (and, I might add, I was cleaning the kitchen when he said this) my head almost swiveled all the way around. I looked at him and told him that if he wanted me to start living like [roommate] then I would be more than happy to show him the difference. At least I clean the bathroom!

*sigh* - I will admit that I am a little bit slobby, but since half marathon training training (yes, I am so out of shape that I have to train for the actual training part) started, I see a mess and suddenly get the feeling that my head is going to explode. It's all about the time, as in, I am too busy training [myself - the dogs] to spend any significant amount of time cleaning.

I am torn between wanting to admit that it's my fault and that there is no excuse for the little messes around the apartment, but at the same time I feel like there are things beyond my control that are helping add to the mess. Which, overall, makes me feel bad for being the messy roommate. I mean, honestly, aren't the guys supposed to be the ones that make the messes?

GiST 11/365

1. A clean living room

2. A clean bedroom

3. The fact that I made sure that when I took stuff from the living to put it back into my room, I MADE myself put everything in its place before I brought in more stuff.

4. Self realizations

5. Mom's fabric stash built up over decades, and now ripe for the picking


Visit Grace in Small Things