In exactly four hours, my wave of the 2012 Maryland Warrior Dash will begin. I’m not gonna lie, I’m terrified. I’m determined to finish every obstacle, but I’m so scared I’ll come across one I can’t manage.

I’m especially worried about the climbing, which I know there’s a lot of. I’m bringing gloves to protect my hands, and a lot of hope that I can just finish.

See you on the other side, viking helmet in hand…

E: Why does your card have a crab on it?

Me: Because I work in Annapolis, and that’s where a lot of people go to eat crabs.

E: I would NOT want to eat a crab.

Me: Why not?

E: It would ouch my mouth with its pinchers.

Me: Oh honey, no! You cook it first and then it can’t ouch you.

E: Why not?

Me: Well, once you cook it, it’s not alive anymore.

E: Why?

<Insert several rounds of “why” in which she breaks it down into understanding that cooking food is good to do, makes it tastes better, and renders the food no longer alive.>

E: But I like eating food that’s alive.

Me: Like what?

E: Chicken nuggets!

Me: Chicken nuggets are definitely not alive. In fact, they’re several stages removed from alive.

A: Chicken nuggets come from chickens.

E: Chickens bring them to the store?

Me: Not quite.

A (to me): We’re about to have a vegetarian…

A: Chicken nuggets are made out of chickens.

E: Why?

Me: Because they taste good. Do you think nuggets taste good?

E: YES! (thoughtful pause…) So you have to cook the chickens so that they’re not alive anymore?

Me: Yes, you have to cook them before you eat them.

E: Okay. Chicken nuggets are yummy. I would like to yum them up.

So… yeah. She took that oddly well. Although, as is her style, we’re still expecting her to suddenly process that conversation in a week or so and declare herself incapable of eating meat.

Window Light by Thomas Saliot

It’s 4:30am. In a few minutes I’ll be in my car, warming up the engine, driving to the gym.

Getting up this early to go to the gym does not come easily, and so far I’ve only made it four out of five days for the last three weeks. Between one odd work commitment and weird combinations of poor sleep and late nights, I’ve managed to miss one early morning every week.

Still, getting up at 4:30 even four mornings a week and getting to the gym makes me feel pretty awesome. I’m proud of the effort I’m putting in. I feel good, and no more tired than I ever have.

I’ve also stopped weighing myself. I’m still tracking my calories on MyFitnessPal, but I haven’t been on the scale since I started at the gym. Frankly, I just don’t want to know. I know I’m making the right choices at the gym, and while my eating isn’t perfect, I’m working hard at it and mostly doing well there. So I figure I’ll get to the weight I want to be at, whatever that is, eventually if I just keep things up…

Now if only this could turn me into a morning person! Even after my workouts I’m sleepy. I’ve always wanted to be the sort of person who bounds out of bed, smiling and ready for the day. Instead I’m foggy and cranky until I get to the gym, and even once I’m there I’m thankful that the morning crowd is on the quiet side.

Friday was a work event that meant getting up super early, but also spending hours in the sun, hanging out and enjoying a cocktail. It was great as work days go.

We spent Saturday at a local wine festival with Aaron’s mom and stepdad. I had lots of great wine and brought home two bottles, one I bought and one Aaron’s mom bought for me. So sweet. Evi had a great time dancing to the live music.

Today was just a run-around, errands & groceries sort of day, but was still great. The weekend was relaxed. I ate too much food but enjoyed every bite of it. I went to the gym. I walked for hours. It was the perfect Mothers Day weekend.

We’re also less than a week out from Warrior Dash… which I’m sort of ignoring…

Aaron, on the other hand, had higher than ideal cholesterol. So? He’s taken to drinking the green smoothies I have most mornings, since the screener suggested more spinach. I’m trying to vary the flavors a little, and add in the Activia that seems to really be working for my cranky tummy, so here’s what we’ve done so far.

Monday: 2 Activia Light vanilla, 1 scoop vanilla protein powder, 1 medium banana, 3-4 cups baby spinach –> We both loved this one. Great flavor.

Tuesday: 2 Activia Light (one strawberry, one blueberry), 1 scoop vanilla protein powder, half a medium banana, 1/4 cup frozen cherry berry blend, 3-4 cups baby spinach –> The color of this one is awful, but it tasted good. Not quite as good as Monday’s smoothie.

Wednesday: 2 Activia Light vanilla, 1 scoop vanilla protein powder, half a medium banana, 1-2 tbsp cookie butter, 1/4 cup pureed pure pumpkin, 3-4 cups baby spinach –> This sounds great in my head. We’ll see how it turns out.

Thursday: 2 Activia Light berry, 1 scoop vanilla protein powder, 1 medium banana, 1-2 tbsp peanut butter, 3-4 cups spinach –> I’ve made this one for myself before and really like it.

Friday: Monday again…

In other smoothie news, we got a new Ninja. Our old blender drove me insane. I had to stop every five seconds, open it, shove everything back down, blend again… over and over. Each smoothie took me like a half hour. After hearing recommendations from a few people, we saw the Ninja (the smaller, white one) at the wholesale club this weekend and picked it up. It’s awesome. It comes with travel cups that you can blend in, so no dirtying two containers. The travel lids leak if the cup gets tipped or flipped, but having to keep them upright isn’t a big deal. I’m super happy with the blender. It’s so much easier, so much faster, so much easier to clean, and everything is dishwasher safe. Love.

from tumblr.

It’s been brought to my attention that my blog has not only been sparse lately, but a bit gloomy too.

The truth is that I’m doing pretty well right now. I’m just super busy between work and commute and home and social stuff now that the weather is nicer, so I tend to come to the blog only when things are going wrong and I need a place to vent and find advice.

There are some things I’m struggling with right now, like maintaining healthy habits and dealing with a stressful work environment, but overall I’m doing really well. I love my job, have found friends among my coworkers, and am doing a relatively good job of staying steady with my weight loss and health efforts even if I’m not making a lot of progress.

Aaron and I are doing SO well. We just celebrated our 8 year wedding anniversary, which was just another chance for us to remember how much we adore each other.

Evi. Is. Fabulous. Her 3rd birthday party at the zoo was absolutely wonderful, and everyone had a great time. She’s smarter every day, more fun, and although she’s pushing her limits more than ever she remains (overall) a sweet, easygoing kid.

In short, my life overall is great. I’m scared about my upcoming Warrior Dash, but comforted that a friend will be right beside me on the course. I’m interested to see how things will go at work in the next few weeks since we’ve got SO much going on at the office with events and everything else.

I was just dealing with it, but it’s been getting worse lately. I thought about elimination diets and all sorts of other things, but I honestly don’t believe that the food is to blame. All of the normal triggers like gluten or wheat or certain oils are things I eat a lot MORE of when I’m making bad food choices, and that’s when the symptoms get better, not worse.

So… thanks to a well-timed coupon and a suggestion from my mother, I bought a megaton of Activia. I had two small cups in my smoothie this morning (my mom says two a day until I feel a difference) and we’ll see what happens from here.

I really, really hope it helps… I’m tired of my stomach hurting all the time.

EXERCISE/HEALTH – Last weekend I was feeling pretty desperate in terms of my health. I’d been watching my exercise habits slip and slide for weeks, and my eating was headed downward too. I was holding on, but barely. So I called a gym on Monday morning and got a three day pass to try it out. I’d thought about (and dismissed) joining the gym several times. There was always a reason not to – price, distance, time – but I could feel myself slipping off of this hard won path and I was just not ready to let it go. So… on Tuesday I got up at 4:30 and went to the gym. I did it Wednesday and Thursday too, so Thursday night I joined the gym and got up again Friday. We’re finally at a place where the relatively low cost is doable, and the gym is two minutes from our house, so I get up, go workout, and can still come home and ride in to work (halfway, like always) with Aaron and Evi. It makes me really happy, because it’s a setup that means not missing any time with Evi/Aaron and also doesn’t require me to put extra miles on the car. So, we’ll see how it goes. I love going, and it doesn’t seem to be making me any more tired than normal. Now that I’ve signed a one year contract, I’m in for the long haul of 4:30 weekday mornings.

WORK – Speaking of work, it’s going pretty well. There are some small snags, the sort that happen with every job, but I love the people I work with, generally enjoy what I do all day, and think our events are fun. Not a bad setup. I just hope I get a raise soon!

(Ahem… I just totally got distracted while writing this and wandered off…)

FAMILY – Aaron and I celebrated our eight year wedding anniversary last week. We didn’t actually do anything, but it was still a good day. We’re not necessarily the sort to celebrate anniversaries anymore, so we just talked about how cool it is that we still like each other.

Evi is days away from turning three, and she’s definitely pushing her boundaries these days. Everything that we expected (and never had happen) at two is starting up now at three. She’s crankier, harder to reason with, and purposefully defiant. She hits/kicks when she’s mad instead of talking it out, and she makes blatant choices not to listen. To clarify though, she’s still an incredible kid. She’s sweet and fun and funny 98% of the time. When she’s good, and she usually is, she’s fantastic. She’s just bad in a new and more challenging way than usual. We’re learning to deal with it as it happens. Always an adventure.

Yesterday we went back to Maryland Day at the University of Maryland. We went for the first time last year and had a wonderful time. There are hundreds of things to do there, tons of stuff for kids. Admission, parking, and most of the tables/shows/etc are free. Evi got her face painted, crafted a paper horse, made a bacteria button, won tickets at the kids carnival, painted a picture, played bean bag toss, got animal tattoos… and we tried the unforgettably good ice cream from the campus creamery. We participated in a couples study on charity giving. We walked for six hours, watched a liquid nitrogen demonstration, and had a perfect day. We’re definitely going back every year. There is SO much to see and do, tons of stuff we wanted to do but just didn’t have time for.

I spent 40 minutes on the treadmill and another ten on the elliptical. I feel awesome. I was the second person there, but quite a few other people came in as I was getting my workout finished. By 5:45 there were five or six of us. It was sort of cool, like a little club of early morning exercisers who are either crazy, hardcore, or crazy hardcore. Either way, it was great. The gym is close enough that I can do 50 minutes or so, then still get back to the house in time to quickly get ready for work and ride in with Aaron and Evi in the mornings, thus still giving me the car time with them. It’s the perfect solution and I love it. It’s an express gym, so there are no classes or anything, but there are a ton of cardio and weight machines, so I should be fine. My plan is to go every day during the work week. I’m sure things will get in the way sometimes, but for now I think it works.

In other news, my itty bitty baby girl turns three one week from tomorrow. THREE. I’m still processing, since as far as I’m concerned she was born five seconds ago.

Today, we’re also celebrating our eight year wedding anniversary. I’m not going to lie, I forgot until my mother emailed me. I’m so not girly about that sort of thing. The truth is that we like each other a little more every day, so remembering a special one doesn’t seem like a big deal. Still, it’s cool. Eight years, man! We must be doing something right…

It was, of course, a ridiculous choice. I feel sick, just after finally kicking whatever ridiculous gastro distress I’d just gotten over midday yesterday. I’ve nearly entirely abandoned exercise.

I feel defeated. Some of it is hormonal, I recognize that. And still…