Blogging 2015: 200 down, 1815 to go (the vacation post)

We're finally back from vacation.  We were technically back on Sunday night, but since our stuff wasn't back and there was quite a bit of running around to do on Monday I didn't feel like life was getting back to normal until today.  I just finished making the monthly menu and a shopping list and doing a load of laundry, so I guess now I'm officially back in the game.

First things first.  Last Saturday was the Ice Bowl at CFGB and I went straight there after working all night. I got a nifty t-shirt to wear...that I vanity sized and ended up with an overly tight fit.  oops.

It was alarming. I'm sorry people had to see this.

The format was a bit different this year and we had a lot more space to stage stuff.  The day went by insanely fast, and by 5pm when I was hitting that "I've been awake for 30+ hours" state things were wrapping up.  I made it home and managed to stay awake until about 7pm, but that's all I had.  I was asleep right away, so the 4am wakeup call was no big deal.

The trip to Puerto Rico was completely uneventful, which is unusual.  We almost always have some kind of bizarre travel issue.  Mechanical problems, weather delays, lost luggage, bad turbulence (fantastic husband gets motion sick), missed connections etc.  This time we landed exactly on time, got our shuttle, and were on the ship with minimal fuss.  We had a balcony room, which is pretty nice, and our luggage even made it up to us without anything missing.  Woot.

We went up to the Lido deck to meet up with the rest of our group.  I had an umbrella drink, because vacation.

Drinks taste better with umbrellas. It's science.

We'd had breakfast in Chicago, but really nothing to eat after that so we hit the buffet when we got on the ship.  Unfortunately, the group wanted to go to dinner not too long after that so I was faced with 2 meals in rapid succession.  I didn't eat all that much at the second go, but holy shit was I overly full and ready to explode afterwards.  Add to this the residual sleepiness from being up so long the previous day and I called it a fairly early night.

A little tidbit about me.  I'm a constipated traveler.  I'm like Amy Farrah Fowler-the ideal hotel roommate. My guts know I'm about to travel and they shut the fuck down.  I've combated this in the past by taking docusate beginning a few days before travelling. Last cruise that worked pretty handily.  This time...not. My 2 meals-in-three-hours hit a brick wall in my colon.  For the next few days I wasn't able to eat more than a few bites at a time without feeling sick.  I ultimately resorted to purchasing bisacodyl in the ship's store on Tuesday.  By the time it took effect I'd been at an ummm....standstill for 8 days.  After I got the "result" eveything went back to not functioning again until Monday.  At which point I made 4 trips to the bathroom in 4 hours.  Am I the only person this happens to?  I can't be, or the cruise line wouldn't put prunes on the buffet every morning.  Incidentally, I ate about a million prunes and nothing.  

Monday we anchored in St. Thomas and our group went to a place called Honeymoon Beach on Water Island.  We checked out an abandoned WWII bunker and then got drunk on the beach for a while.  The beach was gorgeous and had a great swimming area.  I swam, I drank, I swam and drank some more.

Bunker.  Dark and creepy.

Top of the bunker selfie.  

The old fashioned way-blindly with arm extended.

This drink is called a Painkiller.  It was highly effective.

This place was a pretty good painkiller as well.

Look how not in pain I am.

I took a little nap on the ferry dock.  We had to wait for a while and I was drunk.  See this white swim suit top?  I love it.  It makes my tits look fantastic.  It became extremely stained from sunscreen.  I have no idea how to get this out.  I just took it out of the laundry and it looks like shit...all yellowy-brown at the edges where it came into contact with my skin/sunblock.  I am beyond sad.

Tuesday was a day at sea.  Fantastic husband spent a lot of it down with seasickness.  I napped, read a book, got some sun.  You know.  Cruise ship shit.  

Wednesday was Barbados.  Our surfing excursion!  I don't have any pictures of the actual surfing, because we went down the beach a ways and it wasn't camera conducive.  Fantastic husband actually surfed.  He was able to stand up and ride waves in on several occasions.  I was able to get up into a crouch several times and stood up twice.  Then I became so surprised at my success that I freaked out and fell over.  We went to a place called Barry's Surf School.

See?

They picked us up at the cruise terminal in the oldest truck I've ever seen.  The kid who picked us up (Jordan) was island raised by an English army brat father and an American army brat mother.  He was super friendly and managed to not kill us driving the world's oldest truck over the world's narrowest, shittiest roads.

A note about the Caribbean?  The roads are atrocious. The cars are either these space aged looking models you never see in the states or the oldest, shittiest, rustiest cars ever.  There are car husks and random parts everywhere and tire (or tyre if it's a British island) shops every 60 feet.  That is not an exaggeration.  I'm assuming there's just a) nowhere to go with old cars and b) a huge need for tires/tyres because of the craptastic roads.  The beaches are beautiful.  Everything else is....peeling.

The surfing was really fun and pretty strenuous.  Afterwards we walked down the street a bit for some lunch and a couple of local beers.

I always try to drink the local beer.

Then we went back to the beach and crashed for a bit.

Motherfucking palm trees.

When you take a cruise and get off in port, they tell you when you need to be back on board.  In Barbados there were 5 people that were late.  The cruise terminal is huge, and it's a major hike from the outside to the gangway.  The last people walked the 400m or so along the ship with a crowd of screaming, jeering drunks hanging off their balconies.  If ever I needed a reminder to not be late back to the ship, I got it in Barbados.

I'd like to see other parts of Barbados than just Bridgetown.  Bridgetown was, well, kind of ugly.  The beaches were pink sand covered impossible blue watered sea turtle spotting beautiful.  The town was crappy house surrounded empty storefront peeling paint and potholes.  Port towns in my experience are pretty ugly, especially around the port itself (abandoned warehouses anyone?) and I expect it, but it's still a little disappointing.

Thursday we were in St. Lucia.  We booked a private tour to Gros Piton for a hike to the top.  The drive from Castries to the mountain is long, even though it's not very far, but we got to see a lot of the island.  The roads are nicer on St. Lucia, and I bet they'd be a scream to drive as they are up and down windy awesome. The hike up and down the mountain is supposed to take about 4-5 hours.  We didn't start until about 10am and it was HOT.  The trail was straight up and more like a rock staircase than a trail.  The scenery was beautiful, but I called it at halfway up.

That's Petite Piton behind me.

Fantastic husband tried to press on, but the next section of trail was just too much in the heat.  We'll go back one day and start at sunrise so we can be on the way down before the heat of the day.  The guide said that about 30% of people who start up the trail turn back right outside the village once they realize what they're up against.  Here's a few shots of the "easy" section of the trail.

Do you see the trail?

How about now?

I will hike to the top of that bitch one day.

When we left St. Lucia the ship did some "maneuvers" before we headed out to sea.  This means basically that the damn thing spun circles for a couple of hours.  Literally spun in circles.  Our dining room was way in the back of the boat and full of windows.  The engines are right under it, which means that the dining room was not only vibrating but spinning.  I don't get motion sick, so I didn't care aside from the noise, which was irritating and not exactly dinner conversation inducing...but fantastic husband had to leave dinner.  Not cool, Carnival.

Friday we were in St. Kitt's (ie St. Christoper and Nevis).  Apparently Alexander Hamilton was born on Nevis and Thomas Jefferson's great, great, great grandfather owned a plantation on St. Kitt's.  History and shit.

Nevis from our balcony as we came into port.

We did 3 things on St. Kitt's.  We went to Caribelle Batik on Romney Plantation, then to Brimstone Fortress, then to the beach for a flap in the ocean.  The tour was run by a man who looked and sounded like a thinner Morgan Freeman.  If you're going to run a tour company, you should definitely sound like Morgan Freeman.

Brimstone fortress.

Batik fabric drying on the line.

The belltower at Romney Plantation.

I like to know the history of places. I read all sorts of random histories for fun, because I am lame. So when tours combine scenery with history I like them better.  The fortress on St. Kitt's dates back more than 300 years and a lot of the original stonework remains.  There are some exhibits there that outline the history of the fort and it's construction.  That combined with seeing the old sugar works at Romney house and the bell tower...they made me feel slightly uncomfortable.  All that stuff was built on the backs of slaves.  In fact, pretty much everything in the Caribbean was built by forced/captured labor.  The Arawaks and the Kalinago are pretty much gone-in fact the Kalinago (Caribs) are on a reservation. Colonialism completely altered the face of the Caribbean.  I'm not sure why that makes me feel so shitty.  After all, my ancestors weren't slavers. I'm not British, Dutch, French, Spanish, or Portuguese.  If anything my forebears were indentured servants and shopkeepers, but I still feel yucky when I think about how all that stuff came to be. White guilt, anyone?

We made one last stop on our tour before heading back to the ship.  The tour guide had us all tell him where we're from and something about ourselves.  I mentioned that fantastic husband is a firefighter/paramedic, so we got to stop at the firehouse on the way "home".

Look at the tiny ambulance!

Kittian firefighters.

Lucky us, the ship spun circles again off St. Kitt's.  At least the second night they warned us.  They also didn't start the spinning until about halfway through dinner so fantastic husband at least got to eat.  I don't get the spinning.  I'm sure it serves some training purpose, but every cruise I've ever taken is peopled with men and women sporting Trans-Scop patches (scopolamine for motion sickness).  I heard plenty of people discussing taking Dramamine to combat motion sickness each night.  If you have 3,000 people aboard and say 50% of them get at least a little sea sick...should you be spinning the fucking ship at dinnertime?

The final stop was St. Maarten/St. Martin.  We docked on the Dutch side and spent a large part of the day on the French side.  First we went to Orient Beach.  Orient Beach is beautiful.  Turquoise water, white sand, the works.  It's also topless on one side of a rock jette and nude on the other.  I didn't go topless with the group, because frankly some of our party were Judgy McJudgersons and I didn't feel like dealing with that for the remainder of the trip.  However, being Judgy McJudgersons they weren't going to go to the nude side.  When fantastic husband teasingly said "Wanna go check out the rest of the beach?" I said "Hell yes" so we walked over the rock wall, stripped down and swam naked in the ocean.  We saw a bunch of yellow and black striped fish...the water was so clear that no snorkel was required!

It was fucking fantastic. There were people of all ages, shapes, and sizes just letting it all hang out.  Sitting in beach chairs reading books, sleeping, eating sandwiches, snorkeling, swimming...like it was completely normal.  And it was.  Completely normal.  No adjustment period at all.  I didn't give a rats ass what any of them looked like, and once I was out of my suit I was completely comfortable in my own body.  Maybe because I didn't know anyone?  I don't know.  I just know that it wasn't a big deal at all and I'm so glad I did it.  I even got to sleep in the sun.  Best part of nude swimming?  No yucky wet swimsuit to deal with afterwards.  It was also really fucking funny to watch a tour bus vomit big white Midwesterners onto the nude side of the beach.  They all did the same thing.  Walk down the beach gawking and blushing then hustle back onto the bus.  

Can you imagine a nude beach in the Midwest?  People's heads would explode.  

After Orient Beach we went to the Marigot French market and had a little lunch and bought a souvenir or two, then headed over to Maho Bay which is right at the end of the airport runway.  All that separates you from the planes is a short fence and a narrow road.  The surf is crazy at Maho.  I got tossed around and my suit filled with so much sand that I'm still washing it out of places.

Before I got my ass tossed by a wave.

After the toss with a plane.  

There is no way to describe the amount of sand in my hair.

The person in the water on the far left is fantastic husband.

When a plane takes off, people hold onto the fence and get blown back.  If you're on the top of the beach you get blasted with so much sand it feels like your skin is being peeled off.  Bizarre.  I'd recommend going once, but I don't need to go again!

When we left St. Maarten the sea was rough so fantastic husband had another difficult night at dinner.  Here we are before dinner-matchy match for Valentine's Day.  I even carried a Valentine card all the way from home because I am a great wife. 

Still a shitload of sand in my hair here.

He did rally after dinner for a few rounds of Cards Against Humanity and the stand up comedy show.  

Sunday we got off the ship as planned, to the airport as planned, then spent TWO FUCKING HOURS in line to hand over our bags and print boarding passes.  I had checked in and paid online.  It took us less than a minute to complete our transaction at the kiosk after standing in line for TWO HOURS.  I have a few airport peeves.  A couple are on the airline.  Have enough goddamn counter agents to deal with the flights you have scheduled. If there's a few big ass planes going from San Juan to Chicago?  Maybe have more than 2 people at the counter while they're all checking in.  Also maybe make sure all your kiosks are in working order and have someone directing the line to the next available kiosk. It can be hard to see them when you're way the fuck down at the end and there's a see of people and luggage in the way.  A couple are on the travelers.  For the love of little baby dolphins learn to use a kiosk. It is 20fucking15 how are you still holding a sheaf of paper and insisting on a person to print your boarding passes.  See that computer screen that is at your eye level?  The one that stays PRESS HERE TO START in all caps?  Maybe you could, I don't know, PRESS THERE TO MOTHERFUCKING START.  You don't even need to know your reservation number anymore!  Just your goddamn name!  You know your goddamn name, right?  No?  BACK OF THE LINE.

I'm also peeved at wheelchair cutters.  I'm not talking about people that are legitimately handicapped and require assistance beyond what their spouses/kids can provide.  I'm talking about people who are just old so use a chair to take the pressure off old hips and knees.  By all means, use the chair, seriously I have no issue there.  The issue I have is you going to the front of the line while I wait even longer because invariably these passengers also fall into the "Kiosk? What is this kiosk?" category.  Get in line.  YOU ARE ALREADY SITTING DOWN.  

I actually did a very good job of not becoming agitated while in line until we were right up on the counter and there were four open kiosks and a bunch of fucking people standing in line completely ignoring them.  Go to the kiosk, idiot.  You can do all your shit from the kiosk.  Go to the kiosk before I cut you.

Our flight was overbooked (of course it was) so we wasted a bunch of time while they looked for volunteers with ever increasing voucher numbers plus free hotel and transportation.  They got them, then we left.  In O'Hare everything was going swimmingly until they cancelled our flight to GB.  Because the wind changed. So we said fuck it and rented a car and drove home.

Monday I had to return the rental, retrieve our bags, get fantastic husband's car and play car shuffle.  Imagine my delight at being home again.

Sigh.

At least the bags showed up and everything made it intact.  Oh, the parking thingy broke as I was leaving the airport which was the final "fuck you" of our trip home.  I'm glad we drove home, though, because the flight they rebooked us on didn't actually land in GB until after noon on Monday and I had to volunteer at the boys' school at 1:30pm.  

So that's our vacation in a nutshell.  It was very relaxing until the last 12 hours or so.  We got to see and do some neat stuff, got some sun, and a much needed break from the daily grind.  Tonight I'll go to yoga and probably the box tomorrow to try to get back in the swing of things.  For all that we were quite active and I didn't feel like I went overboard with food, I'm up a few pounds (plenty of which is water) and that's frustrating.  Whatever.  It is what it is.  Whenever I feel shitty about myself I'm going to remember how great I felt on that nude beach and try to recapture that sense of peace with my body.  Maybe it'll work.

Back in the studio, back to the box, then back to work on Thursday.  I'm already losing my buzz. 

Blast.

Blogging 2015: Some mileage down, significantly more to go

Holy shit I've been busy the last couple of days.  Working, packing, cleaning, laundry, etc etc etc.  I did sleep, but not very much, so today is going to be interesting to say the least.

Look out, Ice Bowl!  I'm overtired and caffeinated!

If this thing actually wraps up at 4:30pm (HA!  HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!) I might make it home into bed by 8.  That would be a goddamn miracle.

Flight out at 0600 on Sunday.

Depending on the cost of wifi on board ship, I may be MIA until 2/16.  I can feel your disappointment.  Try not to miss me too much.

Blogging 2015: 165 down, 1850 to go

My mileage has slowed down a bit, but it's cool, there's a lot of year left and racing season hasn't started yet. Today was another crazy run here and run there kind of day, you know the kind you have before you travel. When you're desperately afraid you're going to forget something critical like a toothbrush or pajamas.

No, I still haven't packed.

Yes, we found our (in date) passports.

This morning I considered just staying home and cleaning, but instead I went to the box because the workout was comprised of some of my favorite things.  Light deadlifts, box jumps, and running.  I did the workout RX, which is a BFD in the CrossFit world because it means I didn't have to modify or scale anything. On any given day I have to scale something in the workout.  Maybe it's a lighter weight on the bar, or using abmats under my head to shorten the traverse on a handstand push-up, or a band for pull-ups, etc.  Today I could do every movement as indicated, and I did.  I was a happy camper.  I took a picture of the whiteboard, but my pictures didn't load to Google drive so too bad for you.

Breakfast was a bowl of oatmeal with applesauce and honey.  On the way to the box I had the remainder of yesterday's chocolate cherry smoothie.

Then I came home and slept for a bit, then went to Aveda for a bikini wax.  I've never found the process to be particularly painful, but the wax lady kept telling me that it would be.  I was tempted to glare at her from narrowed eyes and hiss "You don't know pain" but I resisted.  Seriously, I broke my goddamn leg running across a rugby pitch and walked around on that motherfucker for a day and a half thinking it was just a sprain.  Wax does not frighten me.

After my appointment I came home and gave myself a manicure, then went to a work related social event with my husband.  He has to trot me out at social functions every few years so that people believe I exist. I hate parties.  Especially parties where everyone is basically a stranger.  I just sort of want to sink into the floor.  I never know what to say to people, and small talk feels unbelievably stilted and fake coming out of my face.  I couldn't even drink to soften the blow because I had to work.  At least now I'm paid up for a bit and I can avoid future soirees for at least another 2 years.

So that was today.  Exciting stuff, yes?

I can't wait to go home and sleep.

Blogging 2015: 164 down, 1851 to go

I turned down an OT shift tonight.  I felt a little guilty, but I had a legit reason.  It's fantastic husband's workday and CPS frowns on leaving small children alone overnight.

I got everyone up and squared away this morning, lunch made for the girl child etc and fortunately that went reasonably well.  There was the requisite 60 minutes of random bitching, but it didn't make me want to leap off a bridge today.  Probably because I got 11 hours of sleep last night, with only one interruption.  Now, that interruption scared the shit out of me, but it was only one.

Have you ever been dead asleep when your kid started wailing?  I mean you're sleeping like a stone cold corpse when a small child begins shrieking like he's being murdered by a clown? I came to in a five alarm panic.  I'd been asleep for about 3 hours and was deep in delta-wave land.  I think I was out of bed and running down the hall before my eyes were open.  When I reached the boys room, there was a small human sitting in the doorway in full on lotus position.  I swear I thought I was hallucinating.  I was completely disoriented, heart racing, and I may have shouted at him "What is happening right now?!? What is going on?" To which the small yogi replied "My foot hurts."

My foot hurts. This was the thing that caused him to keen from the bowels of hell.  You know why his foot hurts?  Because he sleeps in bed with 107 stuffed toys and ends up contorted into a pretzel which puts his foot or leg to sleep.  Then he shifts position and the pins and needles wake him up.

I've been through this drill often enough not to argue.  I usually give him some kind of bullshit placebo and put him back to bed.  Last night I said "Ok, I'll get you some medicine." Then I ran into the baby gate at the top of the stairs, tripped and fell to the landing, stumbled through the kitchen and knocked about six things out of the medicine cabinet, poured him a dose of Tylenol because I didn't have the wherewithal to give him gripe water or simethicone or what have you, almost spilled it on the way back up the stairs and handed it to the small yogi who decided that Tylenol is best enjoyed sipped like a fine cognac.  Then he handed me the medicine cup, popped up from the floor, hugged my knees and got back into bed.

What the everliving fuck.  

I was so jacked up that I ended up watching TV for a half hour before I could fall back to sleep.  I should mention that through all of this, the wailing, the shouting, the stumbling, lights on, lights off...my other son did not wake up.  He did not so much as stir.  That has to be a twin thing.

So once the spawn were off to school, I came home to have breakfast with the dog.  I finished up a loaf of Ezekiel bread from the freezer with a little sunbutter and honey.  Good stuff.

Mmmm.  Carby.

I went to the box for 9:15.  More double unders.  I'm kind of proud of myself for doing 2 DU workouts this week, ordinarily I'd cherry pick the shit out of DU workouts.  Today is was 3 rounds of 25 DUs and some other stuff. Scaled to 1 minute DU practice.  I got 5 each round.  The first round they were even consecutive.  Woo!  I had intended to go to yoga afterwards, but unfortunately I'd misremembered the timing of my haircut so I didn't yoga today.  I got my hair cut and colored so that operation grow-out can continue without my looking like a damn slob.  Luckily my hair person is a CrossFit friend so she wasn't grossed out by my sweaty-ass hair.  I did bring her coffee as an apology.  I then went to Dick's Sporting Goods in my ongoing quest for a sweatpants based wardrobe.  Tons of stuff on sale there, I could've done some serious damage.  

Oh, after CF I had a chocolate cherry oatmeal smoothie.  The other half is still in the fridge. I'll probably have it for breakfast tomorrow.

It's a damn shake!

After all that I came home and grabbed the dog.  We went out for 3 miles...she dragged me I mean.  It's amazing how much force a 40 pound dog can generate.  I swear she could pull my car.  I didn't really have much for lunch, just a little ham 'n cheese.

This Kirkland ham is fantastic. I will totally buy it again.

I made a Target run for Valentine's Day cards for the kids.  The boys had to make a card box and cards which all have to be at school no later than Monday.  Since we're going to be gone, I had them do it tonight so we can take them tomorrow.  They got a big kick out of making the boxes, and they wrote their names so nicely.  It took about 20 minutes from start to finish.  I was impressed.  We had breakfast for dinner since it's easy and quick.

Gotta have bacon at least once a day, right?

I've been seeing ads for red velvet Oreos for the last week or so.  Fantastic husband expressed interest in trying them, so I bought a little package at Target today.  The kids tried them for dessert since they ate their dinners nicely.  They all liked them.  I refuse to try them.  For one thing, what is the big deal about red velvet?  It's seriously chocolate cake with red dye.  I know.  I've made red velvet from scratch.  Is it the cream cheese frosting?  Is that what the draw is?  Because you can put that shit on anything...it doesn't have to be red.  Anyway, here's what they look like.

Yuck.

They are fucking brown.  They look like what I imagine regular Oreos would look like if they got rusty. There is no way I'm putting that in my mouth.  

So much to do in the next few days before vacation.  Like packing.  At some point I'm going to have to do that.  Actually, I should find my passport first, because if I can't find that there's no point in packing.

I am a responsible adult.  No really, I am.  

Blogging 2015: 158 down, 1857 to go

That's right, I didn't do a goddamn thing today.  Well, I did stuff, but not exercise stuff. Because I was stupid tired and didn't wanna.

I didn't get much of a nap before work last night, and since I wasn't anticipating working I'd been up since 5:30ish and did 3 workouts.  This pretty much means my energy tanked out around 2am.  And not just tanked...crashed and burned.  Compounding this was some nausea related to re-starting OC.  I used to take my pill before going to sleep, so I forgot about the nausea.  It'll pass, but last night I was queasy which was just exacerbated by the tired. Plus my stomach kind of hates coffee when it's unsettled, so I was relying on tea to perk me up.  Not the same.  I spent some time drinking chicken broth and eating saltines to settle my guts.  It worked, so there's that.

Mmmm.  Hospital broth.

It was a very uneventful night, which is good and bad.  Good because no one was getting sicker, bad because I was already fighting the Sandman.  If there's activity in the hospital it's fairly easy to stay alert all night.  Last night I was trying to watch training videos for a new software update.  Yaaawwwnnn. 

I was never so happy to see the morning crew.  I took myself to the cafeteria for a donut.  Yup.  A donut.  My favorite custard filled chocolate frosted long john.  It was so fucking delicious. I also picked up a breakfast sandwich that I took 2 bites of and tossed.  Just wasn't feeling it.  Fantastic husband and I had an appointment for pedicures at 9am, but I had to close my eyes, so I laid down for a little while and fell asleep. 

When I woke up I realized that I was short on time, so I hopped in the shower and in my stupid tired disoriented state attempted to wash my eyeballs with Dove soap.  I stabbed myself right in the eye with a soapy finger.  Pretty sure I scratched my cornea because it felt like getting stabbed in the brain. Of course I scratched my fucking cornea a few days before leaving the country.  On the upside?  Drugs are my thing, yo. I keep everything, and we happily had a bottle each of antibiotic, steroid, and anti-itch drops right in the house.  2 of the 3 are even in date.  I win.  The eye looked and felt like shit for a couple of hours, but the drops helped pretty significantly so I'll use them for the next couple of days and hope for the best.

Post pedicure fantastic husband dropped me off while he went for a haircut.  I was going to sleep, but I couldn't. Of course I couldn't.  Instead I watched the Daily Show and the Nightly Show and waited for him to pick me up for lunch.  We went to Cranky Pat's for the lunch buffet.  It's easily been 2 years since we ate there (in fact it was still Frank and Pat's at that point) but the pizza is still fucking delicious and the salad bar has improved pretty substantially.  

There's always mushroom and black olive pizza.  

That's my fucking favorite.

Everyone who knows Cranky Pat's knows you get an ice cream with the buffet.  I had a cherry twin pop.  It tasted like my wasted youth.

We came home and instituted phase 2 of habitat unfucking.  Fantastic husband cleared out the laundry room while I denastified the upstairs bathroom.  It took about an hour.  We are pigs.  All shiny clean now, though!

Then I had a snack.

The Costco raspberries are awesome.

We had leftovers for dinner.

Nutritiony.

So my overtime and ineptitude in the shower cost me a day of workouts, but it's not that big a deal.  Tomorrow is a planned 3 workout day plus I get a haircut which is awesome.  I'll also do some laundry and decluttering upstairs.  Kids need to make Valentine boxes and cards so that's squared away when my MIL arrives on Saturday.  The dog's boarding is arranged, I've located most of my vacation clothes, and the week is ticking down to the Ice Bowl on Saturday.

I'm going to be a goddamn zombie on Sunday.  Praise cheeses for long flights.

I'm so tired my eyes are burning.  Or maybe they're burning because I don't understand that washing one's face is less ouchy if one closes one's eyes first. 

Please excuse me while I bump into a wall and fall up the stairs on the way to my room to get my sweats.

Blogging 2015: 158 down, 1857 to go

Today was a good day, but it's far from over. My third shift partner (in that we alternate weeks and never ever see each other) is sick so I'm headed to work tonight for some OT.

I really wanted to post a gif of Ickey Woods doing the Geico cold cut dance, but I'm full of fail.  Sad.

Last week at Costco I bought a bag of avocados.  They were hard as rocks, but this morning they were soft so I took a chance and cut one open. It was perfection. I was so excited.

Yay!  Avocado!

I figured I was going to want something after CF so I wouldn't pass out at yoga, so I broke out the Vitamix and made this super awesome oatmeal pumpkin chocolate smoothie.  1/2c pumpkin, 2c almond milk, 2 tbsp cocoa powder, 1/2c. oatmeal, 2tbsp honey, and a little bit of cinnamon.  It was pretty damn good.  Makes 2 servings. I took this one along to the gym and the other one is in the refrigerator so I can have it later at work.

So pumpkiny, so chocolatey, like a muffin in a jar.

Fantastic husband was patrolling last night, so he was stupid tired when he got home.  He took a bit of a nap while I entertained the smalls, then I headed off to CrossFit.  When I got there I discovered we would be doing double unders.  I'm not very good at double unders, but the worst bit is that jumping rope makes me pee.  I took a couple of potty breaks during the WOD.  We also 3RM our thrusters and over head squats.  So basically it was a WOD full of shit I'm kind of bad at.  But you know what? It was okay.  I got up to 85# on the bar for the thrusters and failed the third of three reps.  That's the heaviest I've ever attempted, so I'm okay with it.  I actually strung 3 DUs together (shut the fuck up, that's a huge deal for me) and got lots of one-in-a-rows.  I also got to see some folks I hardly ever see, so overall it was a pretty cool morning.  I had to rush the HBBS at the end because class was on the edge of over and I had to be at yoga for 10:30.

I busted out of the box and hustled over to Jenstar for my hot yoga session (core focused...holy shit core focused).  I made it with just a minute or two to spare.  I flew in there with no warm ups, no gloves or hat, coat flapping.  I never actually cooled off, so I was sweating buckets by the time we were really rolling in class.  My hair is always really entertaining after the final corpse pose-sticking out at improbable angles.  After yoga I had to take a run by the pharmacy to pick up a prescription (for birth control so I don't have to pack $100 worth of feminine hygiene supplies on my vacation).  I put a hat on before going inside because I looked insane.  When I got home I went outside for a few miles, but only got 2 because it was deceptively cold out there.  The remaining 3 were on the treadmill where I could watch TV and not have my sweaty shirt freeze to my back.

Lunch was leftover rotisserie chicken, sprouts, brown rice and quinoa blend plus more avocado...because avocado.  Pretty tasty.  I haven't been doing a very good job of making a complete meal at mid-day.  I was so very hungry today that not much else would do.

Can you feel the nutrition?

Then I had a little dessert.

Sweet crunchy perfection.

Oh, here's me after all my workouts and my lunch. I love these sweatpants.  I got them for $8 at Sports Authority.  They're just Champion brand, and I need more of them.  MORE SWEATPANTS.  As a side note, this CFGB shirt is oddly sized and was noticeable smaller than the green one I got from the same run. When I first got it I could barely wear the shirt because it was tight and made me feel really self conscious. These days I wear it all the time and it fits great, even after going through the washer (and dryer!) multiple times.  For all that the numbers on the scale don't budge, something positive is happening.

I'm feeling pretty body-positive right now, which means I'm not going anywhere near a scale.  I even have a (gasp!) two piece bathing suit that I don't hate! It's actually (dare I say it?) kind of cute.  At least that's how I feel today.  I'm sure tomorrow I'll be a troll again, because women are dumb.

Do you even 3-a-day, bro?

I managed to get a shower before going to Scouts with the girl child.  The cookies went over pretty well, I think.  I also managed to volunteer to take over the troop next school year.  We're totally making wallets. Scouts have to make wallets.  It's like the law or something.

Fantastic husband took steaks out of the freezer this morning, so I've been looking forward to this all day. Filet on the grill, medium rare the way steak is meant to be eaten.  Plus sweet potato and leftover broccoli. This meal was exactly right.  I was hungry, I ate it and was satisfied.  Not stuffed, but full and happy.

Caveman cuisine.

Now I'm debating taking a nap.  I probably should as I've been up since 5:30 and I don't want to have to sleep much tomorrow since I'm off.  Working tonight fucks up my plan to go to 0515 tomorrow, but I can probably work a later WOD in there.  I'll be forfeiting my evening yoga session so fantastic husband can go to rugby practice, but again, I can work something else out.  

Nap.  Yep.  Nappy nap time.  Then off to make that money!

Blogging 2015: 153 down, 1862 to go

I did not change out of my pajamas today.  No real reason to as I had no plans to leave the house and nothing but cooking and cleaning to do.  So I did three loads of laundry, some heavy cleaning, some cooking, and some knitting, with a little treadmilling in there for good measure.

Last night was a fairly early night for me.  I stayed up until just before 8:30pm, then went to sleep.  I woke up this morning around ten of five and realized pretty quickly that I wasn't going to fall back to sleep.  So I got up, made myself a cup of coffee, and enjoyed a little quiet time.  Fantastic husband got up at 5:30, so I got to sit and talk with him while he ate breakfast before heading off to work.  We rarely get to do that, and it was really nice.  He also shared his bacon with me.  That was extra nice.  You know how you know someone really loves you?  Shared bacon.  No one shares bacon with people they aren't super into.

The kids requested cereal this morning, and it's been a little while so I let them have it.  I fired up the Vitamix to make a chocolate cherry oatmeal smoothie.  Holy shit it was delicious. 1/2c oats, chocolate protein powder of your choice (I used Advocare), 10oz unsweetened almond milk, 1c Kirkland frozen triple cherry blend.  Made 2 big glasses.  I'm really digging oats in these smoothies.  They give a nice thick texture.  I might try with chia seeds, though those need to soak for a bit to really gel up.

Chocolate cherry breakfast shake!  Yay!

We're going on vacation a week from today, and my MIL has volunteered to mind the spawn while we're gone.  Since the house is CPS worthy I decided to break it down into 7 areas and tackle one each day until we leave so that everything is clean and nice and I won't have to worry about anyone contracting any diseases while we're gone.  Today my goal was to unfuck the bathroom the kids use and get the lego-and-doll-infested tornado that is their bedrooms under control.  I spent about an hour scrubbing toothpaste off the countertop and sinks in addition to soap scum off the tub surround.  I even laundered the rugs.  I then had a very emphatic discussion of how to properly clean up after oneself in the bathroom.  I have to admit it may have crossed into the "NO WIRE HANGERS EVAR!!!" realm of emphasis.  There was so much toothpaste.  For fuck's sake there was toothpaste dried onto the underside of the toilet bowl.  THE TOILET BOWL.  What the fuck kind of ninja toothbrushing is going on in there?

After that I folded some serious laundry and shelved it while lunch was cooking.  The kids had pizza (I know, I'm totally batting a thousand on the kid nutrition front today) and pineapple.  I trotted out the Vitamix again.  DID YOU HEAR THAT BECKY?!?  I USED THE VITAMIX AGAIN!  This time to use the heating function for a recipe from the book that came with the machine.  Gingered carrot and orange soup. This was super easy and really only took about 15 minutes total to put together.  It processes on high for 5ish minutes in the blender until steam pours out of the top vent and it's ready to rumble.  I added some bacon.  Also some Rockin' Moroccan Wildtree spice blend.  Just a bit.  This was so fluffy and nice.  Got about three 1.5 cup servings.  

Everything's better with bacon.

I did 3 quick miles on the treader while the kids "napped".  I maybe could've done more, but I just didn't want to.  I did do some planks and superman/hollow holds.  I also did some knitting.  L has snack for her GS troop tomorrow so I made chocolate chip cookies and will pick up a gallon of milk.  The kids were allowed to taste test at snack time.  I got the thumbs up.

Dinner was a freezer meal that I sort of forgot about.  It was surf and turf skewers.  I got the surf, they got the turf.  I wasn't about to waste scallops on kids who would no doubt begin bitching immediately upon seeing them.  They snarfed the sausage right down, and even ate their broccoli.  I roasted the broccoli in smokey bacon grapeseed oil.  I adore the broccoli florets from Costco.  Already washed and chopped and ready to be roasted with just a little toss in oil.  Roasted broccoli is such a pretty color.

Scallops are so fucking fancy.

I have no real desire to watch the SuperBowl, so we're watching Planes Fire and Rescue instead.  I'm starting to feel sleepy, which means I'm going to be tempted to go to bed at 8pm again.  I should probably at least try to stay up until a normal adult time (like 9pm-that's legit, right?) so that I'm not up at 4:50 again.  Especially since I can't go to CF at 0515 because there won't be anyone home to mind the spawn.  9:15 is looking pretty good, though.  And I'm NOT taking the kids with me this time.  

I'm a little proud of myself for getting the kids all showered and pajamad up right away.  This way their hair will be good and dry before sleep (less crazy homeless hair in the morning) and there's less pissing and moaning before bedtime.  I even oversaw the brushing of teeth to make sure none ended up on the fucking toilet bowl. 

And now if you'll excuse me I need to discuss tomorrow's menu with my Vitamix.