Hello All!
It's been some time since I've sat down and put fingers to keyboard on here. Not that I haven't thought about it and not that I haven't had time. I just haven't. It's the nature of things. I'm kind of lazy at heart and have had a lot of other things in my life that are changing at a staggering rate...so my writing has suffered.
I own a house now!
To be more specific, my husband and I borrowed a TON of money from a bank and are now living in a house that has our names attached to it. Yay!
Oddly enough, this house of ours is in the very same town I grew up in. In fact, it's not even two miles away from said plot of land I grew up. I'd say 'house I grew up', but that's not exactly true as the house I grew up in no longer exists. I'm less distraught about that than you'd expect and actually celebrated they day they tore it down. The new house is much nicer - and safe!
Even more exciting, the road my house is on abuts the very same woods I grew up exploring! You know that whole article I wrote about the woods and how it was 'home' to me? Well, I live RIGHT NEXT TO IT now! And so do my children (one would hope)! That means my children will grow up exploring the same woods I did! I cannot convey to you the excitement I feel knowing that. We've already gone to the river and looked for blackberries - though they're a little too young to enjoy that bit quite yet. The prickers can be a bit overwhelming...and painful.
I run now!
"What?!" You say. "I thought you swore off running last fall!"
I did. I really did.
I actually took a bit of a break from all healthy activity from September-December last year (right after I ran a 5K). It wasn't my best decision ever and I reasoned it away by excuse after excuse. Some of them very good (ie: I'm looking at a gazillion houses and that's taking up all my time, my treadmill is behind a mountain of boxes, we're moving, my treadmill is in the shed so I can switch it out with the elliptical my dad has a mile away, it's winter and I don't want to work out because it's dark and cold and miserable...etc, etc). It being the winter and holidays, my eating wasn't all that healthy either. Suffice it to say, January rolled around and I tentatively stepped on the scale only to face the bitter truth that I'd put back on 10 of the 50 lbs I'd worked so hard to shed.
I took a good, hard look at myself and decided I really had absolutely no more excuses not to be healthy. True, I'm far away from most gyms, but there are a lot of things one can do to be healthy with no gym in the picture. I had an elliptical, for one. So, I started to use that. I also have an Amazon Prime membership - which has Instant Watch (and some pretty corny workout videos), so I started using that to get moving when the elliptical was too monotonous.
Then, we got cable TV. I was nervous that it would turn me into a couch potato. TV is one of my weaknesses and it sucks me in. That's when I realized there was an entire fitness video section On Demand! What?! Cardio Kickboxing?! Pilates?! Seriously, who needs a gym?
Once I got warmer outside, I started walking around my new neighborhood. It's about a mile and a half loop. Not bad. By June, I was bored. I started to have the urge to run, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Not on my road. Not where all my new neighbors could see me struggling. After a week or so of this, I got fed up with myself enough to stop caring what others might think and gave it a go. I ran until I couldn't and then walked for a bit...then ran...and walked...and ran...and walked. No real rhyme or reason...though hills played into whether I ran or walked a lot (walk up hills, run down...and run as many straight-aways as I could manage). I did this for about a week before I asked for help from a professor I had in college who is a runner. She suggested a book, Running for Mortals. I finally got around to reading it a couple weeks later and it completely changed my outlook on running.
I was actually heading in the right direction (with the running and walking), but now I have it all timed out and I am keeping my energy up through my run instead of killing it in the first ten minutes. Woot!
Now, I find myself looking forward to running and am sad on the days it's not scheduled.
And that's it for now because my kids are waking up from their naps and parental duty calls!
~Sarah
