i feel like these two photos sum up my philosophy on excercise

I opened my email today to find this, an email from the Map My Run app congratulating me on having the app for four years.  

Well, the promise of seeing all that I've accomplished was too great a temptation to ignore.  So I kept scrolling down to see my stats.  Get ready...

8 workouts.

In four years.

An average of 2.5 miles once every six months.

And I know the app is called Map My Run but I most certainly assure you that I did not run one time during any of those many workouts.  If they had an app called Map My Neighborhood Stroll, I would have downloaded that.

I can't wait to see where I'll be in four more years!  For now, I'm off to make a bowl of ice cream.  I think the walk to the kitchen is at least 45 steps.  I should map that run.

when nature calls in the middle of petsmart. alternately titled: i am never getting a dog

It's been a while since I've mentioned my mom and dad's dog, Pearl. 

Pearl is two now. She is like a dog from a movie with a personality I really cannot accurately describe in words, but let's just say that when I imagine what goes on in Pearl's mind, it is ALL IN CAPITAL LETTERS WITH LOTS OF EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!!

Pearl is an English Springer Spaniel.  She's a beautiful dog, super smart and very strong.

I feel like I'm writing her profile for a dating website.  She likes long walks on the beach and romantic comedies.

Pearl also has anxiety and when I fed her dinner tonight I had to squeeze five drops of hemp oil onto her Purina.  She loves to find treasures.  She almost always brings a treasure home from a walk.  She's not picky.  It could be a napkin, a glove, a plastic bag, a rock.  Whatever she can find on the sidewalk.  One time my parents let her out into the backyard and she proudly pranced back to the door with a frozen rabbit in her mouth.  

Pearl is crazy about my mom.  But she is OBSESSED with my dad.  He works from home so the two of them spend a lot of time together, and she wants to be on top of him at all times.  Literally.  I was at their house one time and he couldn't even tie his shoes because she was sitting on his feet.  

She isn't supposed to go upstairs, but if she knows someone is up there and she is downstairs, her heart breaks and she lets you know it.  There was a time when my mom, in order to go upstairs in peace, put Pearl in the kitchen and then walked out the garage door so Pearl would think she was leaving the house.  And then she walked around the house, came back in the front door, which was out of Pearl's line of vision, and snuck upstairs.  

My mom is sick today, and my dad was out of town for work.  My mom dropped Pearl off at doggy day camp this morning and I offered to go pick her up this afternoon.  Pearl LOVES doggy day camp.  She loves it so much that she was banned from puppy playtime for about a year because, get this, TOO FRIENDLY.  She didn't pick up on the social cues the other dogs gave when they didn't want to play with her anymore.  They would try to send the message that they weren't interested in playing but NEVERTHELESS, SHE PERSISTED.  And then nevertheless she got sent to solitary confinement until she could mature.

She was recently allowed to rejoin puppy playtime and so far she's managed to control herself.

When I got to Petsmart to pick Pearl up, the woman working said "Have you ever seen her in action during playtime?"  I told I hadn't and she said, "She's really matured a lot.  We had to pull her out for a while but she's gotten a lot better.  Although she does get time outs eventually."  

And at that moment I heard the sound of a dog slamming itself against the door, and turns out it was Pearl.  She was ALL CAPS SO EXCITED!!!!

I don't know if she thinks she's going on some grand adventure as opposed to home, but she gets so excited to go anywhere.  She practically strangles herself on her leash.  One time my dad dropped her off at doggy daycamp and they didn't want to let her in because they said it sounded like she had kennel cough.  My dad tried to tell them it was just that she was straining herself on her leash, and then took her to the vet for the official diagnosis of  strained larynx due to excessive leash excitement.

Anyway, the man escorting Pearl handed over the reins (or leash, but really, she needs reins) and said, "She had a great day.  No time outs.  Three urinations.  No bowel movements."

For a second I thought I time traveled ahead a year and was picking my actual child up from daycare as opposed to old Pearl from Petsmart.

As I led her to the door, she smelled every single shelf we passed, jumped on two people, and then.

Then.

Then we got about fifteen feet from the front door. Right in front of the registers, where there were two lines of people staring straight at us.

And nature called.

Pearl squatted right down to do her business.  And by business, I mean we could now put the bowel movement count for the day at one.  Also, I don't want to get too graphic here, but she's not a stationary squatter. No.  She walks and goes, leaving a smelly trail in her wake.  

I. Was. Mortified.  

I had to ask the cashier if she had anything I could use to clean up and she handed me a plastic bag and roll of paper towels.  While I knelt down to clean it up, Pearl was back to her normal looney toon self, running circles around me and bouncing amongst her many piles of...evidence.  

I got it cleaned up, and one of us had our tail between our legs as we walked out of that store and here's a hint, IT WASN'T PEARL.

So, the moral of the story is that I hope Pearl's new family finds her as charming as we did.

Just kidding.  I brought her home, fed her dinner, squeezed her hemp oil on her dinner to help with her stress and anxiety and really considered taking some for myself.

A small glimpse of guilt.

I really could have used it because I drove to my own house expecting peace and calmness, only to find Matt on the back stoop with a chicken submerged in a five gallon bucket of warm water as he tried to alleviate her situation of being egg bound.

Please don't ask me for details on that.  I can't even talk about it.

And guess what's coming to our house tomorrow?  Four baby chicks.

Just call me the reluctant Dr. Doolittle.

show us your books - march

Well since I've finally returned from falling off the face of the earth, I'm excited to share book posts with Steph and Jana again!

The first book I read was Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult.  I've been on the waiting list for a long time and it was finally my turn.  I was hooked immediately and this was most definitely a page-turner, and extremely thought-provoking.  As a paralegal I find stories about trials and courtrooms fascinating, so I loved this book for that aspect as well.

Ruth Jefferson is a labor and delivery nurse at a Connecticut hospital with more than twenty years’ experience. During her shift, Ruth begins a routine checkup on a newborn, only to be told a few minutes later that she’s been reassigned to another patient. The parents are white supremacists and don’t want Ruth, who is African American, to touch their child. The hospital complies with their request, but the next day, the baby goes into cardiac distress while Ruth is alone in the nursery. Does she obey orders or does she intervene?

Ruth hesitates before performing CPR and, as a result, is charged with a serious crime. Kennedy McQuarrie, a white public defender, takes her case but gives unexpected advice: Kennedy insists that mentioning race in the courtroom is not a winning strategy. Conflicted by Kennedy’s counsel, Ruth tries to keep life as normal as possible for her family—especially her teenage son—as the case becomes a media sensation. As the trial moves forward, Ruth and Kennedy must gain each other’s trust, and come to see that what they’ve been taught their whole lives about others—and themselves—might be wrong.

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Next up was another library wait list book, Where the Crawdads Sing.  I think I'm the last person in the world to read it and I loved it just as much as I hoped it would.  Thanks to a snow day and a late night I read this one in 48 hours.  First of all, the writing was absolutely beautiful. It was almost poetic.  The descriptions of the back bays and marshes where the story is set were so vivid that it was almost like the setting was it's very own character in the story.  And the story was fantastic.  I had a few theories bout the ending but the actual ending threw me for a loop!  This book also also features a trial, which my legal mind loved.

For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life--until the unthinkable happens.

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I also read The Woman in Cabin 10.  Sometimes I'm in the mood for a good thriller, and this hit the spot.  Although I went into it thinking it was going to be about a cabin in the woods, and it was about a cabin on a cruise ship, I still enjoyed it.  It didn't hold a candle to the writing in Crawdads, but it passed time on a rainy weekend just fine.  Again, I was SHOCKED at the ending.  I need to just stop trying to guess how books will end.

Lo Blacklock, a journalist who writes for a travel magazine, has just been given the assignment of a lifetime: a week on a luxury cruise with only a handful of cabins. The sky is clear, the waters calm, and the veneered, select guests jovial as the exclusive cruise ship, the Aurora, begins her voyage in the picturesque North Sea. At first, Lo’s stay is nothing but pleasant: the cabins are plush, the dinner parties are sparkling, and the guests are elegant. But as the week wears on, frigid winds whip the deck, gray skies fall, and Lo witnesses what she can only describe as a dark and terrifying nightmare: a woman being thrown overboard. The problem? All passengers remain accounted for—and so, the ship sails on as if nothing has happened, despite Lo’s desperate attempts to convey that something (or someone) has gone terribly, terribly wrong…

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And because the first three books I read were on the more intense side of things, I decided to even things out a bit with an Elin Hilderbrand.  If you're looking to read a fantastic book that will change your life, don't pick this up.  If you're looking to read a light novel set on Nantucket (of course) with several love stories, a wedding that almost isn't, a widower, a secret relationship, an affair, high school sweethearts, a perfect couple, and a groomsman going into anaphalctic shock at the rehearsal dinner from a previously undiscovered shellfish allergy (don't worry he's fine) then this is the book for you.

The Carmichaels and the Grahams have gathered on Nantucket for a happy occasion: a wedding that will unite their two families. Plans are being made according to the wishes of the bride's late mother, who left behind The Notebook: specific instructions for every detail of her youngest daughter's future nuptials. Everything should be falling into place for the beautiful event -- but in reality, things are falling apart.

While the couple-to-be are quite happy, their loved ones find their lives crumbling. In the days leading up to the wedding, love will be questioned, scandals will arise, and hearts will be broken and healed. Elin Hilderbrand takes readers on a touching journey in Beautiful Day -- into the heart of marriage, what it means to be faithful, and how we choose to honor our commitments.

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What did your read this month?  I'm always looking for suggestions to add to my library request list!

all i'm saying is, the dining room better be finished by august

For eight years, I've written hundreds of posts on this blog about absolutely nothing.  I thought maybe I'd finally run out of ways to make my mundane life seems humorous and worth writing and reading about, and that it might be time to hanging up the proverbial blogging hat.

And then things got interesting around here and I finally have some material again.

We are in the midst of another home renovation, this time the dining room.  The progress is, not fast.  Matt and I are one week away from our fifth wedding anniversary, and if we don't make it, it will be because of this dining room.

We have four baby chicks arriving on March 26th.

And oh yeah, I'm having a baby.

Oh baby Darling is set to arrive on or about August 17th.  I know you're not supposed to share your birthday wishes, but when I blew out my 30th birthday candles on August 18th, I wished this would be the year, and now I'm due the day before I turn 31.

So that's really been the main thing that been keeping me preoccupied and/or asleep for the last three months.  I'm easing back into this blogging thing, so instead of paragraphs and a narrative structure, let's go with bullet points:

- For the better part of December, and all of January, the smell, thought, or sight of most food made me nauseous.  I don't think I will ever eat the following foods again: chicken breast, fried onions, stir-fry, cranberry juice, and eggs.  Which is unfortunate because did you read that part above about how we are getting four new chickens?  The MVP of those weeks was toast with peanut butter and banana.  Sometimes it was the only thing I ate for days.  Since thinking about eating made me sick, I wouldn't eat, and then being hungry would make me feel sick.  Reading made me sick, showering made me sick, sewing made me sick, even driving sometimes made me sick and if a truck that smelled strongly of exhaust passed by me, FORGET IT.  There were lots of mornings that I got out of bed, showered, and got right back in bed thinking WHY WOULD ANYONE EVER WANT A SECOND CHILD?

I think that part is beyond me now because with the exception of the aforementioned list, here is my current motto about food: BRING IT ON. 

Also, it's hard to believe that I only felt crummy for maybe two months tops, because it felt like years.  Longest two months of my life.  To women who are sick for nine whole months, I don't know how you survive.

- I still take a nap almost every evening.  This is how my Fitbit looks.

- I went to the doctor last week and she asked if I had any questions.  I had two, but I only asked one (which was how dangerous is lunch meat REALLY?).  I don't want her to think I am vain so I skipped my second question, which was, "When does the pregnancy glow arrive?" because I have never looked worse in my entire life.  One day my hair is coarse and wiry, and the next it looks like I've doused it with olive oil.  My lips are dry and cracking no matter how much water I drink and Aquaphor I use.  And my skin.  Oh Lord, my skin.  My complexion would never have won any awards, but it's never been worse than it has recently.  Last weekend my three year old niece asked me why I have so many boo boos on my face.  I've heard girls steal your beauty and if that's the case, this baby is a girl and she's going to be Miss America, because I look like nine miles of bad road.

- Is there an old wives tale about which gender steals your brain?  Because mine has teamed up with my beauty and taken a hike.  The other day I went to the Dunkin' Donuts drive thru, ordered my food, got to the window, and when the man told me my total I realized I had nothing with me.  No purse.  No wallet.  No change in my pockets.  All I had was my good looks and as I've mentioned, THOSE AREN'T SO GOOD ANYMORE.  Other things I've forgotten to do: turn of the gas stove burner, turn off the space heater, pay my Macy's bill, take my insurance card with me when I left the pharmacy, and turn my car off before I walk away from it.  More than once.

- I've also been slacking on the household chores, and God bless Matt for not even saying anything when I went to put away laundry and realized he had been fresh out of clean undies for who knows how long, and he said, "It's no problem, I just turned my old pairs inside out and wore them again."  I wish I could say that's the first time in our married life that's happened, but it's not.  But at least this time I have an excuse.

- The other day I googled "how do you care for a newborn?" because it occurred to me that's something we are going to have to do in a few months. Does someone tell you how often to feed them? And bathe them? And change them? And what temperature should their bedroom be?  And how you're supposed to leave the house amidst the whole feeding/napping schedule? I got overwhelmed with the results and figure I'll just call my mom.

- Matt's been googling too, but his searches are far more scientific and not really about things I want to spend lots of time discussing.  Don't talk to me about a water birth.  I want to be on a bed pumped up with as many drugs as they'll give me.  Matt also asks me questions as if I am a baby expert.  I immediately google the question and then nonchalantly respond like OF COURSE I have the knowledge stored in my head of when babies can start eating applesauce, and why they can breathe in fluid right now, but once they're born, can't breathe underwater.

- So far I'm still wearing all my normal clothes, but I'll be honest, I wrestled myself into a pair of dress pants today and I didn't think the buttons were going to hang on until 4:00, but they soldiered on.  Matt said he hoped the hydraulic pressure didn't affect the shape of the baby's head.  THANKS FOR GIVING ME SOMETHING ELSE TO WORRY ABOUT MATT.

- In all honesty, we don't feel that worried or anxious about this whole thing.  Which is unusual because normally, if there's something to worry about, I'll worry.  And even if there's not something to worry about, I'll worry.  We're just happy.  I read the baby's little ears can start to hear this week.  I am glad that what he or she has probably heard so far has been a lot of laughter.  I hope it makes him or her funny, because I love funny people.  And they've also heard some bad singing (I swear I sound just like Carrie Underwood in my head).  I'll just have to make sure that from now on, I whisper when I nag about the speed of the dining room progress.