Category Archives: #projectstimey

Since You’re So Good at Giving Advice

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You guys are the best, most informative peoples ever. I am so glad I asked for your opinion on fresh food! I want to thank every single one of you who responded to my question. I plan on emailing each of you back; I just haven’t had a chance yet. Also, thank you to those of you who offered further help. I’ll be in touch with you guys as well! Right now, I’m busy taking notes on all the wonderful comments and emails from you. Stay tuned for more on #project stimey #subprojectfreshfood!

I have another question for you. This one is aimed at the runners and sports medicine physicians among you.

So. Last Saturday while I was running, I tweaked my hip. I felt it happen and ran home another mile on it. I didn’t want to make it worse, so I stayed off of it and iced it.

(This is what the information I found on the internet led me to believe would fix me. FIXME!FIXME!FIXFIXFIXFIXME!)

By this Saturday (yesterday), I almost couldn’t feel any pain when I was walking around so I went for a very short run. After about a mile it started to hurt again, even worse than before. There was no way I could run on it today.

The whole thing has me extremely depressed.

What do I do? Anybody have this kind of thing in their hip? Will ice and rest help it? Should I go to a doctor? Do I need to amputate? Will someone assure me that I will be running again very soon? Because I am rilly rilly sad about the whole thing.

I need that advice, please! What will make me better?

March Was Project Lazy

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So I am just a big ol’ basket of failure this month. I spent the beginning of March not running because it was cold and I was whiny and then I started running again and almost immediately tweaked my hip to where it even hurt to walk. Then spring break rolled around and I iced my hip and sat around with my kids. My food tracking goal has gone extremely poorly and I’ve completely fallen off the quitting soda wagon.

March has been rough in terms of health goals. On the other hand, March has been tremendous in terms of rodent population growth.

I’m still fighting though. I’m going to go running Saturday and Sunday this weekend and I’m going to try to get my food and water back on track. Along those lines, I am looking to make Team Stimey’s food healthier. I want to get less of our food from boxes and bags and jars. I like the idea of fresh food and think it will be good for everyone, but I’m not quite sure where to start.

Does anyone have any good suggestions for where to get some recipes or meal plans for fresh, simple food from scratch? I have some criteria though:

1. The recipes have to be easy, because I am not a good cook.

2. The recipes have to be simple, because I am a lazy cook.

3. The recipes have to be not fancy, because my kids are extremely picky and won’t eat food that has a lot of ingredients.

4. I’m happy to look at blogs and websites, but actual paper cookbooks tend to work better for me.

Help? Also wishes of good luck for getting back on the health bandwagon are welcome.

Eleven Things

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• So. The Great Quitting of the Soda. I have only had a couple of days when I drank zero soda. BUT! I have not had more than two cans on any day, which I think makes me a normal person in terms of soda drinking. Yay, me! Don’t worry; soon enough there will be far more zero-soda days than two-can days.

• Quinn has started reading chapter books! Of his own free will he has voluntarily read THREE chapter books in two days all on his own after YEARS of only reading them if I begged him. Weird.

• There appears to be some sort of strange sharpened pencil shortage in Quinn’s classroom. I was there today and there was all kinds of creative sharpening happening. I brought all of Quinn’s pencils home to sharpen at my leisure. When he found them after school, he was like a junkie finding a fix.

• I have still not been doing a lot of running. This is mostly because I have stopped wanting to run in the cold weather. I am trying to will warm weather to arrive. Unfortunately, my area is supposed to get five inches of snow tomorrow.

• People here are calling this storm the Snowquester, because no economic crisis is too serious to make a weather-related joke out of.

• Even though I have had two weeks of, shall we say, less than stellar running, I have run more than 100 miles so far this year over the equivalent of more than a 24-hour day.

• Alex is out of town. If the Snowquester knocks my power out, I will die. If the Snowquester knocks my power out while Alex is out of town, I will kill him. I don’t know why. I just will.

• Do you watch The Walking Dead? Did you watch last Sunday’s episode? Because it was so good. Stories like that are why I like zombie fiction. Best. Episode. Ever. Discuss.

• I think that Quinn is starting to get inside my head. Last night I had a dream about a field full of kittens. I wonder if that is what is happening in Quinn’s head all the time. Because it was kind of awesome.

• LympheDIVAs created the most amazing lymphedema sleeves in honor of Susan. Read Marty’s post about them here. They are gorgeous. I love them so much. They are just so perfect. See?

hubble collection

• Aaaaaand, last, I managed to write an entire White Knuckle Parenting column based on a half-hour ride on the Metro with my kids. Happily, it was a fun story, not a “Team Stimey being dorks out and about” story.

Diet Coke Detox

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Last you heard of me, I was having problems being motivated and I was spending the weekend binging. I decided that as long as I was having a hard time getting outside to run because of the weather and my lack of motivation, I might as well take the opportunity to bite the bullet and drop the soda.

Here’s where I stand right now: I decided to quit starting Monday. It has gone well. I can definitely feel my body being sad about the lack of soda and caffeine, but I haven’t had any of the really crazy quitting side effects that you will find if you Google something like “aspartame addiction.” (Don’t do that if you’re going to stop drinking Diet Coke, by the way.)

I haven’t been 100% successful though. I have had two cans of soda each day this week, but that waaaaaay less than I usually drink. There are only three or four cans left in my fridge though, so when those run out, I’ll be carbonation free!

There is no doubt in my mind that I will successfully quit. I’m sad about it—I really like soda—but I know that will fade and I will be healthier. Yay, me! Even if I didn’t do a lot of running, I would say that this was a week well spent.

That said, I will now subject you to an overdramatic, minute-by-minute retelling of the GREAT QUITTING. Because I’m me. And we all know that this is what I do.

photoSunday, 11 pm: I chug a can of Diet Coke—my last Diet Coke ever! I then lie awake in my bed until the caffeine wears off.

*****

Monday, 7:30 am: I wake up and feel sad that I can’t have my morning soda. I already miss the bubbles. I look wistfully at the fridge, but go brush my teeth instead.

7:48 am: Panic ensues. I consider quitting the quitting. I take Advil with water instead. Water is stupid.

8:39 am: I’ve already drunk 30 ounces of water this morning. Huh. So this is what being hydrated feels like.

8:52 am: I reminisce about soda. Remember how delicious it was? I miss it already. I also remember that there are several leftover cans of soda in the fridge. I decide that I will allow myself one EMERGENCY SODA per day until they run out. (We already know that this evolved into two sodas. Let’s just pretend I planned it this way.)

…the morning passes with yoga and a run and some work at my desk…

1:55 pm: I feel awesome! This is a piece of cake!

2:10 pm: Imma take a naaaaappp…zzzzzzzzzzz

5:24 pm: I feel a little fuzzy, but maybe I can make it through the day without the EMERGENCY SODA.

6:02 pm: I scream at the dog for a minor infraction. I decide to have that emergency soda.

6:04 pm: I FEEL SO GOOD!!!!!1!!

7:30 pm: I want to go to bed.

*****

Tuesday 7:09 am: Water is stupid. I hate water. Advil on the other hand…

7:45 am: I am sad. The novelty of this whole thing is wearing off.

10:59 am: I realize after spending the morning volunteering at Quinn’s school that soda was like a nice little treat that I would give myself after completing something—like volunteering at Quinn’s school. WHERE IS MY GODDAMN TREAT?! I sadly drink…wait for it…more fucking water.

11:55 am: I retire to my bed in depression and take a ridiculously long nap.

3:12 pm: I decide to drink my EMERGENCY SODA to prevent me from shrieking at my children for existing.

9:43 pm: I feel kinda…tingly.

*****

Wednesday 8:22 am: I’m figuring out that the very first thing in the morning is the hardest for me. I miss my morning soda. Water just doesn’t have the same kick. And carbonated water is the most disgusting thing on earth, so I can’t even substitute with that. This is the worst thing that ever happened to me.

1:33 pm: I am sitting at my desk thinking, “I feel great! I am not even tired at all. I am going to come through this with flying colors. A++++++!!!” Then I remember that I just drank my EMERGENCY SODA at 1:00. Oh. Right.

1:48 pm: I am starting to feel extremely virtuous for drinking so much water.

1:49 pm: I get tired of taking obsessive notes on my state of mind. I decide to declare success for quitting soda even though I haven’t actually technically quit anything.

*****

And there you have it. I win life.

*****
*****

If you want to read something else I’m great at, I wrote about 10 Things Parents Know (That Kids Don’t Want to Hear) over at White Knuckle Parenting this week. My kids may not agree that I am great at knowing things.

Motivation Dip

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I’m having a hard time with motivation these days. Part of it is my mood and part of it that it is fucking COLD outside and the third half is that my outdoor runs lately have been like slogs and the indoor runs quickly turn into strolls on the treadmill and it is just HARD to maintain running four or five days a week when your natural state is SLOTH.

Also, food is delicious. Especially lemon bars and peanut butter cups. Plus, I keep pushing off my quitting soda plan because I’m, well, I’m scared. And more also, I seem to have lost just enough weight that I have to hitch my pants up all the time, but not enough that I’m ready to go out and buy new clothes or feel better about myself yet.

I’m just a little tired. I understand that sloth and mood are connected and cyclical as well as seasonal, but I also recognize that maybe it’s okay to give into it for a couple of days.

I’m not giving up though.

I repeat: I AM NOT GIVING UP.

I am going to take a weekend and not beat myself up if I don’t run. I might eat some lemon bars. I am going to binge like a motherfucker on soda. I’m also going to write out a training plan for next week.

Then I am going to come back stronger. It is a process, right?

I’m also going to read a lot of motivational posters that I pinned on Pinterest because sometimes that gets me out the door wearing sneakers.

Faster than a Turtle; Slower than Everyone Else

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On Sunday, regardless of my cold and the 25-degree weather when I left my house, I headed out to my 5k race first thing in the morning.

I look more cheerful that I was. I had already jogged twice around the high school track just to keep warm before the race.

Pre-race. I look more cheerful that I was. I had already jogged twice around the high school track just to keep warm.

I’ve done a lot of running since my last road race in September—which was the 8K in which I placed 621st out of 627—so I was looking forward to vastly improving my pace.

My goal this time was to do the 5K in 40 minutes, which isn’t fast, by any means, but is respectable. At least for me. (My standards of respectability are a little different in a lot of areas, including running paces.)

Even though I was sick, this race was fun. You guys, I passed people. I mean, sure, they were children. And walkers. And one or two people running in the opposite direction. But I passed them! I even passed some runners. It was AWESOME.

And I didn’t even feel bad when they passed me right back a little bit later.

They course was kind of hilly, but none of the slopes were too long. Regardless, by mile two I was running holding tissues, sneezing, and feeling sad for myself. All that went away at mile 2.5, however, when I ran down a longish, steepish downhill. Some people were walking down it or running slowly and I blew past them.

I was all, “Gravity, bitches! Get some!” This is where being chubby comes in handy.

Remember my 40 minute goal? Well. I finished in 40 minutes. AND TWO SECONDS. I’m so mad.

But I’m more proud of me. A year ago I couldn’t have run a 5K in an hour. I couldn’t have run more than a couple of minutes. Progress, people. Progress. I am awesome.

I Have Several Things To Tell You…

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1. You guys are great. Thank you.

2. Here’s something. So. You all know that I’ve been running (because I won’t shut up about it). Today I went for a run right after lunch in weather that was unexpectedly much warmer than I expected it to be while I was wearing too many clothes.

Anywho, long story short, I was less than a mile and a half into my run when I decided to give in and turn the run into a walk. That is not the problem.

You may know that I am a slow runner and that I am working on bringing my speed up. My medium-term speed goal is a 12 minute mile. So I was delighted that my speed on that 1.43 miles was an average of a 12:06 minute mile.

Then I walked the rest of the way home at a 13:53 minute mile pace. This is also not the problem. The problem is that I look at my distance log and this is what I see:

Side note: I know it's not really *that* much, but I'm going to have more than 50 miles this month! Yay!

Side note: I know it’s not really *that* much, but I’m going to have more than 50 miles this month! Yay!

If you look at the 23rd and 24th, when I ran slightly longer distances not on the treadmill (on which I do intervals, so a slower average), my pace was more than a 14 minute mile.

WHY DO I WALK FASTER THAN I RUN?

Should I just walk? I know I slow down when I get more tired after a few miles, but COME ON. How slow must I be running those later miles if my average is 14+ minute miles? What is happening?

I mean, I KNOW what is happening is that I keep trying and the longer I run, the faster I will get, but I don’t understand.

I just had to get that off of my chest.

3. I am SO excited about this next thing. I am a new contributing writer over at Autism Women’s Network and my first post went up Tuesday. How cool is that?

I wrote about my autism diagnosis and how I feel like Jack gave me a tremendous gift by helping me see myself in a clearer light. Please go check out my article over there: The Gift of Self-Knowledge.

4. My mom has been in town visiting and is actually leaving Wednesday, much to the chagrin of my children. I wrote about how her visits help me out over at White Knuckle Parenting: When Nana Comes to Town.

5. I would like to reiterate that you all are awesome.