Week 11 - So Far From Heaven

But the journey is all the fun!!

I've been working hard trying to get school work done and I plan to complete the paper (hopefully the final draft) this weekend to hand in on Monday. Then April 8th I have my first written exam covering themes from 15 different books concerning Colonial America and the American Revolution. To me, this is the fun test.

However, some interesting news has come up at work. Apparently, under the terms I was hired, I would have 120 days from the time of my graduation before completing my student hire program and having to move to a permanent position. However, there is no permanent position offered at the Library, so instead, I would just be let go. No one knew this until a month or so ago and just notified my co-worker and I about this on Thursday. So they advised me to put off graduation until the end of the summer so that I would be able to finish the term. Needless to say, it's been a crazy couple of days.

So now I'm debating. If I were to finish in time to graduate in May, the 120 day limit would leave me only one month shy of completing the term, but I would have my degree and immediately start applying for jobs. On the other hand, if I were to postpone graduation I would finish my degree requirements by early may, but would not actually graduate until July 31. I'm not really sure how to put that in a resume I've completed my requirements or if it would hurt my chances of getting another job or not (any advice on this from ANYONE would be extremely helpful!). It would also give me an extra month at my job to keep looking for others and, well, have a paycheck in general.

I'm going back and forth a little, but right now I want to try and get it done in time for May graduation. If it doesn't work out, I'll just fall back on the later graduation.

Now for the real question: what is all of this doing to my quest for a more healthy life? Will I escape the perils of stressfull academia and emerge victorious on the side of righteous chiseldry and clear arteries? Will I stop making up words to make this sound more epic and exciting?

To the last one: Yes. Yes I will.

To the others: I have attempted to take the advice of some of y'all last week. I was really excited to get the advice (and the encouragement always helps, too!). I went to work out early at the gym on Tuesday morning. I got there at 5:20am. They are supposed to open at 5:00am. But for some reason, that morning someone hit the snooze too many times or didn't set their alarm at all because the building was definitely closed when I got there and didn't open for the 10-15 minutes I waited around. There were lots of people outside trying to get in. This messed up my schedule for getting ready and going to work. Since then I've been having a hard time making myself wake up again because I don't want to be stuck in the same situation. I still think it's a good idea and I will still try to start next week off on the same note.

I ran the weekend before on Saturday (because it was an absolutely BEAUTIFUL day!) and then did nothing else until today, Friday, when I ran 2 miles with my co-worker, Carla, which was a lot of fun. She showed me a little half-mile track at a park just a few miles away. That was really cool. I can't wait to explore that place more. I might need to bring some other fun activities out to play with one day. Or when it gets warmer, just grab a beach towel and book. I bet it's a wonderful feeling to read a book for fun while soaking up some rays. It's been so long, I have a hard time imagining it.

It must also be a good feeling to look good in a bathing suit. How comfortable would that be. The irony is that my paper I've been working on for my professors has been a material culture paper on the history of bathing suits. It's made me jealous from day one! Ahh well. Here's a picture of one really hot bathing suit I came across that I wish I could wear today:




Check out those hot leggings! Heck yeah! They were called the Westchester Water Witches, but were actually a group of women divers in 1880. Men weren't allowed on their area of the beach, but a guy from a magazine was able to catch a glimpse and make a sketch for the National Police Gazette. Unfortunately, The National Police Gazette is not such a reputable magazine, as the name would imply. It was a magazine that men would buy for a tease. This was something that was brought to my attention during my meeting the other week and unfortunately leaves me scrambling trying to find more reputable sources that say the same thing. However, other articles condemned women for wearing other bathing suits that were less scandalous than the ones above. Anyways, enough history before I bore everyone to death. On to other sources....

So exercise hasn't been fantastic, but it hasn't fallen completely by the wayside. I've definitely missed it and love running every chance I get.

The diet has been fairly good. There have only been a couple of transgressions this week. One occurred when I ran out of food. I know I told everyone on facebook I ate a can of tomatoes. I was exaggerating and being a drama queen because I wanted Subway, but couldn't afford it at the moment, so I ended up making spaghetti with veggi maranara sauce and ground turkey meat. Started off as a well-meaning meal, but I'm not that fond of spaghetti, so to make it a little more enticing, I put the noodles and meat in the bowl and then covered them with spaghetti sauce and topped it all with an overly generous portion of fat free mozerella cheese then stuck it in the oven. Baked Spaghetti....so much better than the other kind, but so many carbs.....delcious, well-missed carbs.

The only other bad diet decision I made was my Friday lunch. It was a comfort food sort of deal after finding out this conundrum at work. My co-worker of whose name I will not speak, and I went to the Flying Biscuit at which I got the special, eggs scrambled with link sausage, goat cheese, sundried tomatoes, and green peppers with a side of cheesy grits and a biscuit. And I ate it. All of it. In my belly right now as I type this. And it is soooo happy. However, I'm not happy with myself for making that bad decision, but my friend and I made a deal to go running if we were going to indulge in our sins, which we have followed through on.

Now for some good things! Tonight I grabbed some POLENTA to finally try. I blogged about seeing this at the grocery store a while ago, but never tried it! I finally bought it and will keep you posted on how it goes! Also grabbed some 70 calorie swiss miss pudding (better deal than Jello this week at Publix). It's really exciting for some reason. AND, apparently the Cracker Barrel brand of cheese (the love of my life) has a reduced fat cheese in small packages you (or I) can bring to lunch! 130 calories and 4 grams of fat. I'll take it!

Ok, back to work on the paper. The updates might be a little crazy in timing in the next month and a half, but I will do my best to keep everyone posted!

Week 10 - Downhill Slide

Alright. So it's been an up-and-down 2 weeks past the big run and I've been trying my hardest to stay active. This week's blog is titled "Downhill Slide" for 2 reasons.
#1. I'm on the downhill slide with getting my schoolwork done.
#2. I'm sliding backwards downhill in my workout and weightloss plan.

Anyone who wants to be my shrink after reading all this and analyzing and understand exactly what the hell I'm talking about is more than welcome to. Capiche?

The exciting thing is that by April 23, I should have all of my work turned in for me to graduate with my master's in the beginning of May. However, the work includes finishing a draft of an academic article-worthy paper between 20 and 25 pages long (still working on it so I don't know what it will be yet), 2 written exams based on 15 books of information each, and an oral exam based on those original 30 books plus 10 more for my second minor field in history. All of that within 5-6 weeks!! I'm about to go out of my mind! So I have cleared my schedule of all things fun in order to complete this in a timely fashion. There is a backup plan should things fall slightly behind which would just push me graduating at the end of May instead of the beginning, but who the hell wants to put this off??? I just want to be done with it and move on and for once in my life NOT be in school I've never had that feeling and probably won't know what to do with myself when it's all over, but for the love of God, I'm tired of having these things expected of me when I don't even give a CRUD about it anymore. Just tired of the constant stressor in my life. Ready for the job and real life thing.

So yay for being on the downhill side of that!!

HOWEVER, being in the middle of this school crunch has definitely pushed me back into my old habits when my life was consumed by school work. Now I have no time and am willing to just buy food (never as healthy) instead of cook it for myself (don't feel so bad about leftovers). I have learned about myself that I can only handle so many priorities and certain priorities absorb more effort than others. With schoolwork being my #1 priority, diet and exercise have begun to "slide downhill" (see what I did there...all comes back to the title). I have noticed that when I do go and workout a little, it clears my head and sets me straight for doing better schoolwork, but I've always had this mentality of "you shouldn't be doing anything else until this is done," so I feel guilty when I leave schoolwork to go do other things, which means I can't even really enjoy the breaks I do take. Like right now, I'm thinking this will definitely be the shortest blog to date just because there is sooooo much I need to be doing right now.

I did run on Saturday morning on an absolutely BEAUTIFUL day and it was soooo worth it. I also went to a class last monday that was a full body workout step thing (very similar to bodypump that they have at Gold's Gym). And there have been several times I attempted to eat healthy this past week. My weakest points are dinners. Breakfasts and lunches have always been somewhat set, but dinners are the biggest trouble for me. I know I should be able to be satisfied with a microwave dinner and all that, but I think I've just rewarded myself with food for such a long time when I've been working on schoolwork, that I'm quickly falling back into that again. I've kept from buying anything really bad to have around, which has been helpful, because should I want something really bad, I wouldn't be able to have it and my guilt kicks in and keeps me from running out to buy anything else, however, weightwatcher cakes were not meant to be eaten in groups of 3-4 at one sitting. Know what I mean?

So I'm kind of stuck in between not wanting to fall off the deep end after coming this far, but also wondering if letting myself go just a little bit during all this would really kill me if I definitely make up for it when it's all over. I know I shouldn't think like that, but that's what's going on! It's keeping me from going off the deep end with my diet and it's also keeping me working hard at school. So who knows, maybe this is more of a compromise than anything? I hate compromising my health, though.

Such a conundrum! Any words of wisdom or advice would be helpful, especially if you've been through something like this before. I'm tired of craving oreos because I finished another paragraph. Oh those silly habits! Why did I do that to myself?!

Running Like a GIRL!

The Disney Princess 5K and Half-Marathon

So it finally came! Last weekend was the Disney Princess 5K and 1/2 Marathon and it was AWESOME! My mom, sister, and I all had a great time just hanging out together, along with some long lost cousins that were HILARIOUS! Oh yeah, and the runs went really well, too!

First, we got to Disney world on Thursday night which we just kind of hung out and ate at Wolfgang's in Downtown Disney. - Funny story: we get there and mom, Shelly (my sister) and I have all been dieting and working out to get ready for this weekend and we're looking over the menu and trying to decide on what to get. We were debating splitting something and Shelly asked "Do we want something like a salad?" to which mom responded, "NOOOOO." - We shopped some around Downtown Disney and then flaked out at the hotel room and went to bed.

Woke up the next morning in time for the expo where they sold some official merchandise and other fun helpful running stuff.


I got a few things including a running skirt, sweat absorbing visor, princess crown, earbud covers (I'll talk some more about that later), and fog-proof sunglasses. There were lots of fun headbands, skirts, and t-shirts all over the place that said stuff like "will run for beer/wine", "it's not fat, it's fuel", and "run like a mother." I thought that would've been awesome for sis or mom, but alas, they did not get one. The earbud covers I got were for the ear buds I got that came with the new ipod shuffle. The shuffle is about the size of a piece of chewing gum, but has no buttons. Instead, Apple decided to put the controls on the earbud wire. This would be fine if the earbuds would stay in my ear, but they don't. Luckily, at the expo, they sold these silicone covers you put over your earbuds that hold them in your ear and even funnel the sound down your ear canal so you don't have to turn the volume up so loud either. Thank God for those, because without them I wouldn't have been able to listen to any music on either run!

We also picked up our registration packets with our bibs, t-shirts, and free socks among other samples and brochures. And when you run in the half-marathon, you get a purple mesh bag filled with all these things. Well, mom wasn't too happy that she didn't get to have one of those bags and we never heard the end of it. "I don't know. I guess that's something only someone with a purple bag would know." or "Since you have a purple bag I guess you can/know that blah blah blah..." It was so funny! So I let her carry mine around for a little bit:

After the expo we started cruising around Magic Kingdom and eventually met up with Tracy and Susie who are two of the most hysterical people I've ever met in my life! So that spiced things up as well. It was just fantastic all around. We grabbed some dinner at the hotel's food court and tried to go to bed early. Did not happen like we planned because we were so excited that we spent more time getting our stuff set out and ready and trying on everything that it was kinda late before we finally hit the sack. That night were trying to find a way to keep mom's crown on when we came up on the idea of rocket sprouts. We tried it out and thought they were adorable, but mom didn't want them even though Shelly defined the look as "Diesel." So Shelly tried to make them a little more aerodynamic and put the sprouts coming out of the back more so than the top (like real rockets) and that was truly "Diesel," and even though mom didn't wear her hair like that to the race, her nickname stuck. Here is a picture of the awesomeness:






The 5K

The race started at 7:00am (aka butt-crack of dawn), but we had to be there by something like 6:15am when it's still dark and cold outside. So we got up early and froze our asses off waiting for the bus, getting on the bus, walking to the start line, and waiting for the race to begin. Disney did have an awesome DJ blaring some good music so I couldn't help but dance, especially when my tutu made it look like I've got a tail-feather to shake! It was lots of fun and helped warm me up. Mom stepped in and started dancing with me, too, which made it even more fun. We saw some awesome costumes and some crazy people, and it was all just great!

We ran and within the first 1/4 mile my shoe came untied (while I was screwing around trying to get my ipod to play with those STUPID earbud controls) and I had to break from the group. I eventually caught up sometime after the 1 mile and finally around the same time got my ipod to play the right playlist. This was also about the time that we entered Epcot's World Showcase which was where the real fun began! We stopped at different countries to take pictures with the cast members who were associated with that country. For instance, Aladdin and Jasmine were in Morocco, Mary Poppins, Alice, and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger were in England, Marie (the girl cat from Aristocats) was in France, Mulan and Mooshu were in China, and so on. It was so cool! Mom kept getting antsy with us when we pulled her off the track to run in and get a picture with us and the characters, but it all turned out great. Tracy beat us all, and Shelly and I finished together after her, and mom was close behind us. It was great! They had photographers throughout the course and at the finish line. (That's my sister in the pink tutu next to me!)

We came back to the hotel room afterwards and stretched, showered, and went back out to walk all over disney world again with some park-hoppers. We spent most of our time at Epcot that day going all around the world (eating lunch on the patio in Italy with some hot Italian waiters) and to Nemo's ride. Then we went on to MGM to catch the Rockn' Roller Coaster and the Tower of Terror. I wish I could have seen the picture of my sister and Tracy looking at each screaming when the elevator dropped! Then we grabbed a bite to eat back at the hotel, Shelly and I laid out our clothes, and we went to bed...eventually.

The Half-Marathon

Since this race was significantly longer, it started quite a bit earlier. We had to be in line by 5:15am to start the race by 6:00am. Still dark when we started! It was cold as all get out, too, and since we were running such a long ways, my sister and I minimized the amount of clothes we wore and things we took with us. We wore a trashbag while we waited in our corral and we were the second group to start at 6:07 with with fairy godmother and fireworks at the starting line! To shorten the experience, I'm going to break down the my thought process and mottos mile by mile of the course:

Mile 1 - We're doing it! After a month and half of training, we're doing it! SHIT, it's cold! Ooo a Timberland jacket! Mine now!

Mile 2 - The sun is up! I'm still running! This skirt keeps falling down. Did I lose inches from the 5K yesterday? What's wrong with my calf?

Mile 3 - YES, thank you, Biofreeze. Going to walk a little more. Getting close to Magic Kingdom!

Mile 4 - OMG! We're almost at the castle! I think I'm keeping up. Man, my leg's not making this easy.

Mile 5 - Wow, everyone is waving..and there's Japanese girls drumming and princesses everwhere! I'll have to bring a camera next time!

Mile 6 - Maybe if I pretend to not feel the pain in my leg, it won't hurt so bad. What leg? What leg? What leg?

Mile 7 - THAT leg!!!!!! They said there's a calorie booster at mile 8. Will run for food...

Mile 8 - That was not food and it took everything I had to muscle it down...suck it up. I'm just going to have to walk as fast as I can for the rest of this.

Mile 9 - 2 doses of Biofreeze, please! Dear God, make it stop hurting!

Mile 10 - I think I know who the 8th dwarf is...LIMPY! Have I done a 20 minute mile yet? Aren't you people supposed to pick me up! Take me away!!!!!

And there it ended. They let me make it to the 10 mile marker, loaded me up in a "carriage" (a 12 passenger van) and drove us slow and injured people to the finish line. I was upset at first that I didn't make it the whole way, but after limping over to my sister and crying for a second (amazing how little self-control you have over your emotions after 10 miles) I got over it and talking to my dad and brother helped a lot, too. After thinking about it, 10 miles was a lot and I hadn't been training long and was lugging around a lot of extra weight I didn't burn off in time for this event. Next year will be a COMPLETELY different story! I wish I could do it next month!

Shelly finished strong and got an awesome medal for it! I'm so proud of her! She rocks!

Mom brought us back to health at the hotel and we tried to make our way around the parks for our final day, but none of us were getting anywhere fast! We walked around Epcot a little longer and ate at a buffet in Germany. I had the best beer I've ever had in my life. The smallest size they came in was half a liter. Yummmm.

The next day Shelly left early and mom and I grabbed a quick lunch at downtown Disney and did a little last minute souvenir shopping and left for Douglasville.

I cannot describe the sadness that ensues when you leave a place like Disney World. One day you're having the best time of your life and the next you're back to what is now a dull and boring existence. As the week has gone by and my legs have become less sore and my ankles less swollen, I've slowly gotten over leaving.

There is another run in Disney World in October, the Food and Wine Festival run which I'm trying to strategize how to get there. I think I've become addicted and will be training for the next one! Lots of work to do, but by God I will finish next time!!!

Anyone who wants to join either the next Disney Princess Weekend or the Food and Wine Festival are more than welcome to join me!!!