Dirty Girls

About 6 or 7 months ago a few of us girls started a running club, the Dirty Girls. It’s an all women’s trail running group. We started it because we wanted to give women who love to run trails, a safe and fun environment. We live in a very safe town, but it seems over the last year their has been too many incidences of female runners being attacked. Mostly in Seattle, but that’s too close to home.

Unfortunately, shortly after we started the group I became injured. (actually the last ‘real’ run I went on, I was with the dirty girls, and I had to cut it short and limp walk home because I was closer to my house than I was to my car. And when your in trails, obviously you can’t just have somebody come pick you up in a car right.)

Anyhoo, I pretty much quit running with them and used that time to do other workouts, yoga, strength training etc.

Last Friday I went back for the first time in months. It was nice.

Run/Walk only, but no pain. Tight IT since I’ve been completely ignoring it and creating space for other areas of my life. I might add a run/walk for the next few weeks. I do feel a little pressure to get back out there because I work at the running store, but overall I miss it. I don’t want to be one of those people that I fit for shoes and listen to say, “Oh yeah – I used to be a runner. I ran marathons (only to find out usually they were usually half marathons btw) but I haven't run in years.”

Hopefully this is a sign of more to come!

I got in a fight with a 6’ blond and lost. Or won considering how much fun it was!

Rug Dilemma

I’m having a rug crisis. there is a huge sale going on at Cost Plus World Market. So I’m being manic about rugs right now.

This is what I’ve bought:

Master Bedroom. One word. WHITE. I absolutely adore this rug.

Is it too small? It’s only 6x9. (Pay no attention to the fact that I have no bed skirt or baseboard around the mattress. That will change soon. We just upgraded to a king shortly before my hubby left.)

While we don’t have kids now, God willing, there will be little feet pitter pattering around here. Is it reasonable to expect to keep the master bedroom relatively unscathed? Please parents, be brutally honest. And more importantly, have I ever mentioned how much I love wine. RED wine. Almost exclusively. And coffee. BLACK coffee. Yes, my dentist loves me. I think I scare me, more than the thought of kids scare me…..

(Edited to add later: Also, I will have a bench at the end of the bed, which for me makes a huge difference on the look of the rug.)

Moving on.

A 5” round rug. Two of them actually. Both similar styles, but different colors. The first, upstairs. (Again, never mind the unfinished stairs and the hole in the wall)

The first. I’m not fond of the color. Too drab. I think this is going back.

The second. Downstairs. Right in front of the entry way in the foyer. Better colors, but it feels too traditional….

Not sure where this one would go, but I LOVE the colors. It’s smaller. 5 x 8. Originally I bought it for the dining room, but I think it’s the wrong size….

Um, yes. Those are moving boxes. Three years old. Thankyouverymuch.

Lastly, a chorcoal and crème rug. I like the pattern, but is gray too dreary? It’s for the future library that will consist of white built in bookshelves. I think that will brighten the room up a lot. Plus there are two skylights, but NO overhead lighting. You can see the color of the wall are a beautiful creamy rich taupe.

What do you guys think? They are of course all 100% wool so very good quality for the price ($299 for the larger ones and $100 for the rounds). Rugs are a big decision. I want a punch of color, but the rugs I really want are in the thousand$ range. That’s a no go. I have a kitchen remodel coming up that will eat my rug budget for a mid morning snack!

p.s. that dresser you see in the left hand corner I bought at a flea market for $45. STEAL! Fix up job, but it’s gorgeous.

old pots become new again

I bought these pots in New Mexico about three years ago. Actually I bought them on our road trip when we moved from Virginia Beach to our new current house in Gig Harbor. I feel they are memorabilia since we stopped there for a few days to visit my aunt and uncle. However, they needed to be spruced up a bit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I used Krylon Cherry Red

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Makes me smile every time I pull into my driveway.

Magic

 

One of my favorite dinners is grilled chicken legs sitting aside any fresh grilled vegetable.

In honor of SPRING, tonight is asparagus!

The Secret Ingredient:

Wash and dry chicken legs.

Spray lightly with Pam.

Season liberally with Poultry Magic.

Grill on 350* heat for about 45 minutes, turning every 5 minutes. You must keep your eye on them or they will burn, but so worth the effort. The result is MAGIC!

garden party

Prepping the beds

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My husband was kind enough to pre mix the compost into the beds before he left. I just needed to churn it up a bit.

I always feel bad for disrupting the unsuspecting worms.


















That was a big job and it’s a weight lifted. Grounds keeping is so much easier with a man around! I love doing it, I just wish I wouldn’t have slacked off for the last month. There is still A TON to do. It’s been one storm after another here. Hopefully we’ll be getting more ‘sunbreaks’ and I can keep up with it more appropriately.

New Direction

I’ve been thinking about taking the blog in another direction. Moving away from a running centric blog to more of a lifestyle blog. My running just isn’t at a very exciting place right now, and as a couple of my commenters pointed out – there is more to life than running and I still have noteworthy stuff happening in my life.

Not sure if I’ll keep the name the same, but I have no other creative ideas at this time so it stays.

Some of the changes I’m  adopting:

• Less words, more pictures!
• More food talk
• Home Renovation

Now that I think about it, I’m not sure why the food and home topics haven't been featured very often. They are both a HUGE part of my life.

I hope you guys enjoy the “new and improved” blog. And I hope I’m consistent! After returning over the last week, I realize how much I missed commenting and being involved!

I’m off to the fabric store.

I was a runner in a former life

I haven’t run pain free since October.

On October 31st I was at mile 21 of a marathon when my leg completely seized up and I had to walk limp to the next aid station, wherein I was driven to the finish. Since then I’ve run several times. Some runs pain free some not. All of them fear driven.

I felt my IT band throughout the later stages of my half ironman last summer. I’m 99% sure that it came from an ill fitting bike. Every brick, it was there. During the race it reared it’s ugly head worse than I’d felt it in a couple of years.

Like many runners, this has been a chronic issue since my first marathon. I learned how to keep it under control. Until now.

I felt it on my last 22 mile run before taper. I cut it short to be safe, but there it was. I ignored it all through taper. It didn’t hurt, but I put it out of my head refusing to acknowledge it. And I barely ran. I was trying for a sub 4:30 marathon. My training was spot on.

At mile 8, it started. It was at a stage 2. By mile 16 it was at a stage 6 and I had already taken a couple of stretch breaks. By mile 18, stage 7. Finally at mile 21 it was full blown code red and I physically could not bend my knee. I walked 1/2 mile to the next aid station with a bum leg and silent tears of defeat.

Over the next several months enter: time off, cortisone injection, physical therapy, fancy sports medicine doctor, more physical therapy, more time off, video gait analysis, podiatrist, casting of my foot, orthotics, and graston.

I finally gave up on running about a month ago. It has become a source of stress and anxiety rather than the loyal head-clearing friend I had grown to love so much. And I’m fine with it. it’s like I hit rock bottom or something. Trying so hard to fix yourself so you can get back out and run yourself into the ground again.

My new approach: If you love something, set it free…….something to that effect.

The marathon eludes me. Maybe I’ll be back to settle on some unfinished business, but once I’m healthy again I’ll be content with racing halves. Hopefully.

Quitting running, albeit temporarily, has proven to be hard in some less obvious ways.

First, you really learn who your friends are. I realized that A LOT of my friends are only running friends. When I wasn’t able to run, I rarely saw most of them. That sucks.

Second, I work at my local running store. You can imagine how lame it is constantly explain your injury to customers. Every day faced with the fact that YOU CAN’T RUN.

Third, blogging. What the hell do I have to blog about? And reading blogs that revolve around running is no fun either.

Soon I will venture out for a run. If it goes well, great. If not, I’m perfectly content perfecting Crow Pose.