Yes, I know what "tomorrow" means.

So, I didn't update "tomorrow" like I said in my last post. But you really should know me better than that by now!

The 5K went pretty well. I walked A LOT of it. There were hills on this course and they were tough. I really am out of shape for this kind of thing. At least the rain stopped just long enough for the event. I looked at my heart rate monitor at one point when I felt particularly winded and it was 189. I figured that maybe that was what the doc meant by not exerting myself, so not wanting to end up in the ER, I took it a little easier. Besides, like I said, I'm REALLY out of shape for this kind of thing!

The boys did well. We separated and did our own thing on this one, so they just waited for me at the end. I went straight from the finish line to the truck to leave, so that's why my face is so red in our group picture. I always turn red as a beet when I pretend to run. I feel fine but I look like I need life support. You can go here to see the results. You can hit Ctrl+F to search for our names instead of reading through the whole list, if it's easier.

There were people with cameras all over the place. As I was rounding a corner, I saw a camera aimed directly at me and begged the lady holding it PLEASE DON'T TAKE MY PICTURE! Well, I begged as well as a person gasping for air can beg. I found these pictures of Andy on the web, though! Luckily, none of me have showed up around teh interwebs. In the first picture below he is talking to the lady who finished just ahead of him - she's 70! Andy said he drafted her the whole race, like a race car!

So, there is my recap - sorry it's a little a lot late!

The Good, The Bad, and the (Not So) Ugly

Here's a recap of the last few weeks.......

1. Jerry and I went away for a weekend for our 30th anniversary.

The Good: We had a GREAT time. We put 1,050 miles on my truck (I'm not kidding - we have proof!) and saw just about every inch of West Virginia and a good portion of Virginia, too. It snowed the night we were driving there. That got a little hairy in the dark in the mountains, but I loved the snow - seeing as how we can't seem to get any here this year.

The Bad: Tom borrowed Jerry's fancy shmancy camera for work and accidentally left the photo setting on a some weird thing that only he has software for - which means I can't upload all the pictures I took until he changes the file format. Which, of course, I didn't know as I was taking ALL THOSE pictures.

The Ugly: There may or may not have been some white-knuckled gripping of the arm rest in the snow, in the dark, with trucks barreling by in the opposite direction.




2. I had a colonoscopy this Wednesday (two days ago).

The Good: The adenomatous polyp is GONE! It didn't grow back. Praise the Lord!

The Bad: It was a colonoscopy, y'all.

The (Not So) Ugly: They did remove two very small polyps and I have to go back in three weeks to find out the pathology of them, but the doc wasn't worried about them and said they didn't seem like anything to worry about, and I won't need another colonoscopy for five years, instead of three years, like it was this time. So, not so ugly.




3. There's a 5K tomorrow that the boys and I are participating in.

The Good: I'm excited and eager to get out there and have fun. I'm slow, but I have a really good time!

The Bad: I started having knee pain and needed new shoes, so lost some training time until I got new running shoes. And also my treadmill broke and getting outdoors to run didn't really happen very much. I finally got new shoes this week, but still lost valuable training time.

The Ugly: They told me after the colonoscopy that I wasn't allowed to run tomorrow because they removed the polyps and I might bleed. I was already signed up for this before they scheduled me. I might try to run anyway because I'm so slow, walkers can pass me! We'll see how things go tomorrow.

Consider yourself caught up until tomorrow!

Catching Up

We had a great time at Mom's in February. Here's a recap in pictures.


This guy showed up (identity masked to protect the innocent guilty).







There was a motley crew in attendance.......









Hilarity ensued........








There was entertainment.......








And family pictures taken - like this one......








And this one..........








And this one.......








And last but not least.....GOOD FOOD!

So True!

There's another 5K that I'd like to try to do in March, but my treadmill broke and I'm forced to go outside to run, which isn't working out too well! We'll see if I'm ready - I may have to walk this one! Anyway, I wanted to share this - a friend sent it to me and it is SO TRUE, and cracks me up every time I see it.

Happy Anniversary to Us!

This week is our 30th anniversary! The post I wrote (in the sidebar about what I have learned in 26 years of marriage) still applies. We are planning to go away but haven't got all the particulars in order, so nothing to write about yet, but Happy Anniversary to us in the meantime and yes, I would do it again, and yes, I pray for an additional 30 years (or more) with this wonderful man.

The Other White Meat

Well, now the freezer is full. For Christmas, Jerry's mom got us a half of a steer (which Jerry's brother raised). That filled the freezer pretty full. Then in December Jerry bought a whole hog and we picked up the meat from that on Saturday. Well, except for the bacon and a couple of the steaks which weren't ready yet. We decided that since we bought the whole thing, we wanted everything but the oink! The only thing we didn't keep were the intestines, feet and head. I didn't want chitlins and pig feet, and we didn't know anyone who ate them. Jerry's friend who keeps us in wonderful produce (and the grower of ALL THOSE SWEET POTATOES!) wanted the heart and liver, so those were for him. Jerry and I are curing the hams ourselves. We are flying by the seat of our pants on this, as we've never done it before. We cut one of the hams in half because they are 20 pounds each, and instead of curing one of the halves, I put a spice rub on it and it is smoking on the grill right now for dinner tonight. I would have put a picture of that on here along with the ones below but, um, my spice rub kind of caught fire and while I'm sure the roast inside will be delicious, it doesn't look too pretty! I told Jerry it just had a protective shell on it while it finished cooking! Maybe I'll be brave and post a picture of the charred protected roast for you when it's done. Maybe.

Here is the half of the ham that we are curing. That's sugar cure on it right now. We'll rinse that off this evening, inject it with liquid cure, and then rub more curing salt on it before wrapping it up and letting it do it's thing.


Same goes for this one, only this is the whole one - the 20-pounder. It doesn't look that large here, but it is!




Here is the fat rendering in my pot for lard. And cracklins. Yum!

Yum!

I made this Gourmet Bean Soup for dinner tonight. Oh. My. Goodness. It's really good. Actually, anything I have ever made from Tammy's site has turned out well. The sweet potato rolls I made at Christmas were Tammy's pumpkin roll recipe; I substituted sweet potato because, well, I have three recycling bins full of sweet potatoes in the garage that Jerry's friend generously gave us (and Jerry helped dig) - and Jerry doesn't even like sweet potatoes! What a guy. And what a run-on sentence! Anyway, give the bean soup a try. I used hot Italian sausage in mine. I'm looking forward to lunch tomorrow!

A Post To Share

I regularly read Lisa Pennington's blog, The Pennington Point. I recently read a Faith Points post called Do Not Compare Yourselves One to Another, and it was so good, that I wanted to share it with you. I hope you enjoy it and that it encourages you as much as it encouraged me. You should also peruse her other blog sections and posts; she is a talented lady!

Welcome, 2012!

Well.....it's 2012...the world didn't end, so I guess I should update my blog! (although some people are predicting it won't end until December 21, 2012).  THAT would certainly save on Christmas shopping next year, wouldn't it?! 

So it's a new year, and as usual, I have made some goals.  I'll call them goals this year instead of resolutions, and maybe I'll stand a better chance of actually sticking to them.  Some of my goals are the usual suspects, including weight loss, but others are new this year.  We'll see if we can make it past February!

I guess it's time to take the tree down.  That makes me sad.  It seems that Christmas came and went so quickly this year, that I didn't have time to enjoy the tree.  It doesn't help that we put it up a week later than we usually do, either.  Next year we'll put it up earlier.  There just won't be presents under it until after December 21.  Assuming we're all still here. 

Well, just wanted to check in and let my loyal readers (all 3 of you) know that I'm still around.  And yes, one of my goals was to post more.  We'll see how that goes! 

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

Bowing to pressure to update my blog, I am wishing everyone (all 3 of you) a very merry Christmas. And please don't forget in the merriment of the day that Jesus was and is the original and best gift on Christmas. 
From our family to yours, Merry Christmas!

Happy Halloween?

No matter what your beliefs are about celebrating Halloween, this picture is funny.

I Did It!

The boys and I just got back from doing a 5K. Yes, I actually did it! I wasn't fast, but still - I DID IT! Tom ran ahead of Andy and I and finished in 34:00; Andy and I finished in 51:02. I'm proud of all of us. It was a lot of fun and we are definitely planning on doing it again.


The boys were telling me to pose for a picture in muscle-man style and were demonstrating, and cracking me up with their poses.


























Are they frightening or what? Or what, is my guess.
























I didn't die. This ol' lady's pretty proud of herself.

O Aunt, Where Art Thou?

I have an aunt whose email
Was hacked with vicious malice.
Instead of happenings in Maine,
I get ads for Cialis.

O aunt in Maine, please write me with a different email address, or leave a comment here so I know y'all are still kickin' !

Earthquake

I didn't post about the 08/23 earthquake yet, but Andy found this and I wanted to give you all a chuckle too.

Welcome and Goodbye, Irene!

We didn't fare too badly in Irene. Our power went out at about 9:45 last night and just came back on a few minutes ago (about 6:00 PM). Darn it. I love it when the power goes out. I'm weird like that.

We had two trees down across our driveway, and one came down across our street by our mailbox. Two came down in our neighbor's yard, cutting across our back yard. One came down on another neighbor's deck, which has a funny story associated with it, which I will share with you another time.

For now, though, I wanted to update that all is well here, and share some pics I got this morning.

The first pic is the back yard. You can see the two trees that fell across our fence from the neighbor's yard - but didn't hurt the fence.

The second pic is what's left of the tree that fell across our driveway.

The third is the other part of the above-mentioned tree.

This is the tree that fell across our street. And that's
our poor mailbox.








This is Jerry's trailer with a tree that fell just behind it, missing it.

I Love Snow

And here's why:



That's the thermometer on our porch. See the time stamp from my picture? 12:41 - it's not even the hottest part of the day yet. Thinking snow thoughts.......

Crickets

Well. I have had quite the hiatus, haven't I?! My readers clicked on my blog and got.......crickets. Nothing there. Every time I start to write, I feel like I need to enclose pictures or something, instead of just writing about it! So I'm not going to worry about that. If I add a picture, well, that's a bonus.

We planted a garden and have onions, green beans, tomatoes and peppers growing. Nothing ready yet, though. We also planted two trash cans of potatoes! We hope to have better luck than last year. This year we actually used seed potatoes, so that should work out a little better. I was gifted with a huge bag of cucumbers yesterday and requested to make pickles, so I'll be doing that shortly. I was given huge amounts of strawberries earlier in the summer and asked to make jam, so I did that. It's a good trade - they provide me with the produce and in exchange ask for some of what I'll make with it. Good deal for all involved. I hope to be getting bunches of grapes soon with which to make jam. When the weather is cooler we will plant cabbage and broccoli. I hope to have enough cabbage to can more sauerkraut this year.

Well, my enchiladas are about ready to come out of the oven. Just wanted to give you a quick update and let you all know that I'm still around, instead of crickets!

I'll leave you with this - my great uncle passed away somewhat recently and Jerry and I are helping to get the house ready to put on the market, and in cleaning it out we came across this:

Nice luggage piece, no?

See the little tag on the bottom right hand corner?





It says "Amelia Earhart luggage". Who thought THAT was a good idea?! Would you want to take that on vacation?

Style, or lack thereof!

First of all, let me state that I have indeed been keeping up with my jogging slogging (slow jogging!) Monday, Wednesday and Friday I'm at it. I just haven't posted my stats.

I made a discovery, though. The first few times I killed myself trying to finish within a decent time. And then crawled off the treadmill and was pretty miserable. Then I noticed the scale wasn't moving - in fact, I gained two pounds! Talk about discouraging! Then I realized that all my huffing and puffing was actually making my exercise anaerobic instead of aerobic, and I was out of any fat burning zone - I was just in survival mode!

So, then I tried not pushing myself quite so hard, discovered I could actually breathe while I was slogging, and guess what - the scale actually is moving downward now. I figured the first couple of weeks of pushing myself too hard, my fat stores said, "This chick is crazy. Better hold on to EVERYTHING!"

Now I can actually function after a run, and the scale is moving too. Good stuff. I didn't post my stats but I will if Mike someone needs proof - it seems Mike certain people might not believe I'm actually keeping up if I don't post!

Secondly, I found this great blog. This man photographs men and women (mostly of New York) of advanced years who show style and individuality. The ladies are gorgeous and inspire me. Yes, it's New York, where people don't look at you sideways for wearing different things, but who says you can't rock your individuality in the boonies if you want to?

I look at the photos on this blog and can't help but wonder what happened to me. Both of my grandmothers were fashionable in their own way. One always had nails painted, wore costume jewelry all the time, never left the house without lipstick, and I have pictures of her back in the 50's looking glamorous in evening wear. The other had more classic style; never wore pants, always believed a lady should wear a dress and stockings and heeled shoes, and did this right up until the time she died, in her 90's. Both of these ladies were always looking fashionable for the most part.

So, my question is how did I end up looking like this?! Part hillbilly, part throw-on-whatever's-close-and-fairly-clean? By genes alone, I should have more fashion sense. I need to work on that. In the meantime I'll enjoy the people on this blog and envy their freedom in being themselves fashion-wise.

Monday Stats

It was a tough walk/jog today. I didn't get in a hurry; my legs weren't cooperating.

Distance: 4 miles
Time for 3.1 miles: 1:02
Total time: 88 minutes
Maximum heart rate: 173 beats per minute
Average heart rate: 140

Happy Monday!

Very Cool

I had to share this with y'all. There is a very cool site, Jogfm.com, where you can enter in the time you want to go a mile and it will find music accordingly. I set up my iPod with music I found there and I have loved it. You can buy the songs from that site, or what I did was use their song suggestions and then bought them from this site, which is where we have been getting our music for a long time now. Much cheaper. Disclaimer #1: I get nothing from these companies by recommending them. They have no idea I even exist. I'm just passing along things I like to my readers (all 3 of you!) Disclaimer #2: If by chance you are not happy with either of these companies, don't blame me. Refer to Disclaimer #1. Happy Sunday, and Happy May!