Monday: The Longest Monday of All

As I said yesterday, it is always a mistake to think that any plans will actually work out.  Today, I thought that in the afternoon, we might get in an outing.  BUT, the baby was still rather peaked this morning and so sad and sleepy, so we stayed in all day.  We were all bored and busy with household chores.  There was not fun trip to the YMCA and only a 25 minute respite for a run.  There was no going out for groceries, and I literally folded clothes all day.  We NEVER turned on the television.  We ordered out dinner.

I did manage to work steadily at my Bible study and with any luck, I will get to attend for the first time in three weeks.  I am not even quite sure that I have worked to the correct spot in my Bible study as I have been out for so long.

My run from this weekend will not download onto my laptop, so I am unsure of what my mileage looked like.  I am confirming with Boston tomorrow, and this is the dullest blog post in the entire world.  Why oh Why am I am boring anyone with this?

Saturday: Run and Yoga/Pilates Fusion

So, yesterday at 3:00 PMish, I figured out that my running group was going to do a point to point 20 mile run followed by breakfast.  This initially sounded great, BUT the carpooling and driving back to pick up cars and the eating of breakfast was a logistical time suck.  With the breast feeding and the care of children and the trying to get back to the house so that my husband could leave to go biking, there was really no way it could work.

I will just tell you that it is a pretty fearsome thing to be staring down the barrel of an 18 mile run alone.  Honestly, if a vagrant parolee with deep deep misogyny issues had been my only other option besides running alone, I would have gladly run with the parolee.  The only idea I had for 18 miles alone was to run 6 LAPS around my neighborhood loop.  MISERY.

Luckily, I heard of a couple of other people from my swim class who were running long today and we got in 18 miles.  It was actually a great run.  The great crew from my swim class paced me really well, I held 8:15s on most of my miles, and then dropped down to 7:30 for the last couple of miles I think.  I cannot find the computer plug for my Garmin so I haven't see the milage yet.

Back at home, everything was a zoo.  Baby crying, husband trying to get ready to get out the door, older son asking to play with this and that and not eating his breakfast.  The house was as if a cyclone had spun though it.  The sheets on the bed were so twisted that I still have not gotten them right.  I really need to take all the sheets off and rearrange.  How do they do it?

After a bit, I loaded everyone up and headed to the YMCA to take a pilates/yoga fusion class to stretch and strengthen which I think is absolutely integral for marathon training with as little base as I have and as much as my body is contorted with toting about baby carriers and dragging strollers out of the car.  My lower back is wracked on a pretty consistent basis.  The class was very good today and I felt like I really stretched out whatever damage was done on my run today.

Friday: Pilates and a Unique Recipe

So this morning, I woke up at the appropriate hour to get to my Friday morning swim class.  I woke up, however, sharing a bit of my son's cold.  My throat hurt and I noticed the rattle of a cough, and it just seemed unwise to submerge my head underwater in my swim class today.  I have an 18 to 20 mile run on the calendar for tomorrow morning, so a treadmill run at the gym was also not the best thing for my body.  A bike ride was clearly the best option.  SO, I lined all my ducks in a row to get to the Maryland Farms YMCA for a spin class.  However, as I find to be the course of my current existence, there was some toddler drama while trying to get out the door and I missed the start of the class.  SO, I milled about the YMCA with my children until the start of a mat pilates class.

Now these things happen, but it sort of itches at me.  I missed my cardio.  I only got in the core workout.  It was pretty good though, and I do not know if I have mentioned it, BUT I am having a love affair with the Maryland Farms YMCA.  I feel that it is cost efficient, a purveyor of very good services, and a place that my children enjoy as well.

Once back at home, I bundled everyone up and took my oldest son for a swim lesson.  It was generally a nice day.  What made it even nicer was a fabulous recipe that I learned about from Jamie Oliver.  Jamie Oliver is becoming my new thing.  He cooks all these great seasonal meals and has totally helped me clean out my refrigerator with all the superfluous ingredients that pile up from other recipes.

Tonight, I used all the baby carrots that were left over fro a lentil stew (that was fabulous) that I made last week.  I used some cumin, thyme, chile and garlic and mixed it together with some olive oil and vinegar and salt and pepper and roasted the carrots in the mixture for 25 minutes.  Then, when the carrots came out, I added a bit more olive oil and red wine vinegar.  I mixed the carrots in with two chopped avocados, and dumped it all on a bed of spinach.  It was so delicious.  I never would have thought that warm avocados and roasted carrots would be such a great combination.  I wish I had topped it with some vegenaise, but then I always wish I had topped everything with veganaise.

Will let you know about my run!!

Thursday: Run and Mat Pilates

So, I did not blog yesterday, because, honestly, my soul was pressed beyond its bearing point.  Yesterday was bleak.  My son was still sick, we were trapped at the house and by the end of the day, I began to feel that I was not a fit parent and that maybe my children were also unfit.  The week before Christmas, I took both children to have their picture made with Santa Claus.  When I got to the mall, it was freezing outside, both children were dressed to the nines and grumping and complaining, and I had dragged the strolled out of the trunk and had just gotten it all set up and put together.  A friend and inappropriate prankster came up behind me and was going to push the stroller away to scare me, which is not at all funny, but I turned around too soon and he was not able to implement his prank.  However, on that particular day, the prank would actually have been on him.

I had stuffed to resistant children into velvet Christmas outfits, we had all cried, their had been two incidents of pants wetting, and I was in a foul mood.  Had I seen someone I knew relatively well enough to know that they could be a reasonable guardian to my child sneaking away with my stroller full of children, my only words would have been "Via Con Dios".  "I will be at the nearest alcohol serving establishment". "Please call me when you have enrolled them in a good boarding school." "Please let me know when everyone is potty trained."  I sort of felt that way yesterday when my oldest son jumped on a cooking repeatedly until it was a paste on the floor and then, when I went to check on the baby, splashed so much water out of the bathtub that there was a standing pool on the floor.  It was the awfulest.

When my husband came home, I was able to sneak around the corner to get in a swim of 3000 yards But immediately upon stepping out of the pool I received an urgent text that said the baby was inconsolable and  I needed to come home straight quick.  I could hear the baby wailing as I parked the car.

THEN, as I sat down to breast feed, I realized that the something did not feel quite right and I felt achy all over, and suddenly I was painfully in the midst of my THIRD installment of mastitis within a span of two months.  It was brutal.  I dispatched myself to the drug store and picked up antibiotics.  Everything was all around unpleasant.

Today was like an ice cream sundae comparatively.  My antibiotics kicked in, the baby slept 12 hours, and my oldest was well enough to go back to nursery school today.  I went to the gym TWICE.  I ran in the morning, headed in town to have a fun lunch, picked up my oldest from nursery school and dropped him with his favorite sitter before heading back to the gym for a pilates class. I did not have to cook because we had leftovers, and I even accomplished some ironing while watching the republican debates. Things are survivable today!!

Tuesday: A Lost Day and Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Banana Almond Butter Pancakes

So I had a hunch that things were not going to run all that smoothly today when my three year old woke us up crying that his throat hurt at midnight last night.  We gave him a cough drop and popped him into bed with us hopefully, but I feared that today would be a day of milling about the house, boredom, long naps and frustration.

It was indeed a day of milling about and trying to keep the house reasonably clean as my three year old went through feeling really great when his medicine was kicked in to becoming frustrating and peevish when the medicine wore off.  It was a bummer.  I sort of intended to ride the trainer at home and maybe get in an abs workout, but I did neither thing.  It is really OK, as I have not had much of a day off in three weeks.  It was fine to lounge about and do nothing.

My eating habits fell off the wagon a bit, as my son and I made pancakes for lunch.  To entice him to eat, I mixed together queso and black beans.  I then managed to eat most of his dinner.  Then, I meant to have my healthier dinner option later, but instead dumped some chocolate chips into a bag of trail mix and ate that for dessert.  It is really pretty sad and my nutrition icon, Kimberly Snyder would most certainly be disappointed.

My Chocolate Chip Banana Almond Butter Pancakes are as follows:

• 1 cup sorghum flour
• 1/4 cup coconut flour
• 4 tbsp  granulated sugar
• 1/2 tsp xanthan gum
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• about 1 1/2 almond milk
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
• 1 medium sized banana- thinly sliced and a bit mashed
• 1/2 bag milk chocolate chips
• butter or coconut oil for greasing the frying pan

Toss all ingredients into your Kitchenaid, mix and then cook in frying pan.  Fabulous!!

Might swim tomorrow if everyone is well!!  Please everyone be well!!

Monday: Swim and Tracy Anderson and My Dinner was fabulous!!

Me at Hampton Court!!

I rarely watch the weather, and I waltz about ignorantly assuming that it is always cold in the winter and fall and always warm in the spring and summer.  I never anticipate rain or snow or anything else.  This is the reason that whenever there is some weather event, I am stunned.

Last night, for instance, when I went to bed it was drizzling a bit.  I assumed that since it is January, tomorrow would be cold and probably sunny.  For this reason, I was surprised to be woken at 1:00 AM with huge claps of thunder, the house shaking down to its foundations and sheets of rain.  My three year old was afixed to me like a spider monkey, and I heaved myself out of bed to figure out what the problem might be.  Of course, when I sat down to peruse the interwebs (three year old still attached to me), it appeared that a full on tornado situation was about to descend upon our house.  Terrifying.  I had no idea.

My husband never woke up.  He apparently checked the weather before bedtime and steeled himself against the coming uproar and slept straight through.  My son and I were robbed of aproximately 2.5 hours of middle of the night sleep, which meant that we overslept.  This set my morning back, and we really did not make any effort to arrive in a timely fashion for our 8:30 swim class.  I managed to arrive by 9:00.

After getting everyone in the nursery and myself to the pool deck, it was a bit after 9:00 AM, and I was able to swim about 1500 yards with my swim group (maybe more) before class ended and I swam another 1500 yards by myself.  I swam a 1000 pull, a 4 x 100 IM and then a 100 freestyle cool down.  It was not my best effort, but I will say that I usually cut myself a bit more slack on Mondays.  Sundays are usually a pretty tough swim workout, so I feel like Mondays are for recovery and repair.  

At home, everyone took a nap.  On a day when you lost two hours of middle of the night sleep, it is important to get a nap just to cope.  After everyone napped, we loaded up and went to Whole Foods to for a few integral items that we were lacking at home.  I had run out of Veganaise.  Veganaise really deserves its own post, but I will save that for later.  

In the evening, I prepared a dinner that rocked my world and totally bumped up my vegetable intake. I will tell you all about it: 

Butternut squash chopped and roasted for 25 minutes at 350 with olive oil, salt, pepper and thyme.  Then taken from the oven and put into the food processor with goat cheese and sauteed shallots.  Once food processed to the consistency of mashed potatoes, I sauteed some sage, walnuts and cranberries to put on top.  I served in a bowl with some sauteed spinach and some cold raw sauerkraut. (The Sauerkraut is called Bubbies, and it is in the refrigerated section of Whole Foods alongside butters and such. It rocks my world.)

After dinner, I settled down to a mountain of laundry and some Tracy Anderson ab work!!  A reasonable day!

Sunday: Swim

Last night Baby G slept from 8:00 PM until 7:00 AM.  It was quite exciting, except that as per usual in the world of breast feeding my boobs woke me up at 5:30 AM.  SO, I dragged myself from bed, hooked myself up to the trusty Medella, and pumped milk, then stored it in the fridge, then cleaned and rinsed the pump, and dragged myself back to bed just in time to sleep for 10 more minutes, before Baby G woke up.  At this point, I fed the baby and had deranged thoughts of going back to bed, but then my older son woke up with a sore throat and cough, and there was really nothing more to do but start up the coffee maker start my day.

It really was not all that bad, and I was finally able to settle everyone down and waste all sorts of time in front of the internet.  It was a nice morning, and I generally accomplished many household chores before heading out to swim.  

Swim was mixed lanes and about 2700 meters of long course or 2952 yards.  We switched lanes about every 1000 meters.  SO,

First Lane: left paddle and left fin worn while sprint swimming the 1000ish meters

Second Lane: swim 1000ish with bands on legs so pulling hard

Third Lane: swim with fins with the kick board in four different positions

Fingers crossed for a good night's sleep tonight and swim tomorrow!!