Diary

We rose and shone extra early this morning to run through the bubbles at the annual Bubble Run 5k.  I have to say, of all the fun runs we do, this is the one I love as much as the kids!  I’m not sure why I like bubbles as much as I do, but there’s something about walking through those bubble bogs that is mighty motivating.  I’m not alone, either.  Jude was crazy about the bubble run! He told me that he wants to do every year, even if it’s a 10k.  I thought that was pretty cute.  Of course we will.  Afterwards he went haywire at the bubble stage, making bubble snow angels and standing in the line of bubble cannon fire while Gigi and I danced to earn a little prize.  We will return!

We made our yearly pilgrimage to Disneyland.  We were there during the eclipse, the Pokémon World competition and for the local annual pass holder’s first day to use their passes again.  The result was that the first few days were pretty awesome and vacant while the last two days were absolutely nuts!  We found ourselves choosing the walk to and from the park over waiting for the busses, this time, and wracked up over 20,000 steps per day.  I’m always surprised by how easy Disneyland is, now that I’ve lost so much weight.  It used to be that Disneyland was a killer.  My feet, back and legs would just ache after a day in the park.  The bus was a necessity, not a luxury.  This time I picked gigi up and carried her on my back for half a block.  Her weight plus my weight adds up to my heaviest weight, and it was painful to walk!  My hips and knees hurt so bad, I couldn’t believe I walked around like that all of the time.  I’m so glad I don’t have to do that anymore.   It was a pretty incredible experiment!  We had a fabulous time, as always, and bought the annual passes so we can return next summer for the cost of airfare and hotel.  

Can’t pass these guys by!

Phew!  We got back from the Idaho trip and I pretty much have whiplash with how quickly the rest of the month hustled by!  I was feeling a lot of pressure to get miles in for Guinevere with the half marathon coming on August 27th, so we really trained hard in the interim between reunion and Disneyland.  I decided that the ten miles per day walking through Disneyland could count as our taper.  Lol.  We managed to train up to 11.5, so that felt like a pretty solid dent in our plan.  Our first 13.1 will have to be at the actual Iron Horse Half Marathon on Sunday!

My goal for training hasn’t been speed at all.  It’s all about the distance, so this time I’ve been training with a little walking in between.  Because we trained up so fast, I wanted to make sure and build in some rest points so my body has some recovery.  Just because I can run 13 miles doesn’t mean I can do it without a consequence from not training well enough.

With August’s hot sun and brown grass also came my return to the classroom.  We had to rally, this year, in order to get a contract that is more balanced than our previous one.  I know I intimated how challenging my class was last year, but I don’t think even I realized how much of an impact it made on me.  I tried to step back in during the first week in August, just to get the lay of the land and wrap my mind around the job in front of me, but I ended up having a full blown anxiety attack and had to turn the car around to come back home.  That was tough, to realize how bogged down I still am by that impactive year.  At the rally, Bradley spoke to the school board about how much of an impact my unique class had on my family and me, much less the students in my room.  He pleaded to the board for more resources, more time and more support for the at risk kids who we serve every day and for his at risk wife who is quickly becoming a burnout statistic.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed.  We will find out next week what our contract holds.  

We’ve been told we should be able to agree fairly happily with our contract, but just in case I went to my doctor and am now on the path of medication to help control my anxiety.  I avoided it for as long as possible, using food, exercise and meditation, but I can’t have a repeat of what happened in my car once the school year starts.  My doctor first suggested I take some time off, but that’s just not my reality, so it’s meds for me.  So far it’s been effective and very helpful.  All of the major anxious moments that I anticipate seem to be placated and I’m not worrying overly much.  I still have anxiety, but for what time of year it is, I’m alarmingly calm and collected.  I’ll use this crutch for now and hopefully will exit the medication zone next spring after my brain develops some better habits.  For now, though, it’s helping and I’m happy about that.  Hard to talk about, but it’s my new reality.

We made our annual trek to Idaho to rub elbows with my family last week.  It started out early with Jude leaving with my mom for a few one to one days, then we joined a few days later to spend some time at the lake and squeeze my parents.  I have a feeling that I’ll only be able to visit the property for a few more years as my parents can’t keep up with it forever and no one else wants to move out to the sticks.  It’s a strange feeling, knowing something that is part of my blood will be let go, but I’m learning that life is just one long sequence of learning to love then learning to let go. In the end, we have to let it all go, anyhow, so I suppose that waving goodbye to the Idaho property will be one more opportunity to practice.  

I took advantage of our time there, exploring as much as I wanted, dipping into the lake, watching the sunset, sitting quietly on the bluff, reading in the grass, all of the things.  I piled my family into the golf cart at one point and gave a historical tour of important points of interest, from my perspective.  I showed them where I learned to swim, where my brothers and cousins sealed me into an igloo full of fresh farts,  where we tried to catch a snipe, where the old house and garbage pile used to be, where I got the scars on my shin from a water fight.  It was a good trip.

Unlike other years, this one also included our every-third-year Baumert Family reunion.  We convened in Salmon Idaho to catch up on hugs and see how tall our kids got.  It was strange, this year, as I’m part of the grown up population now.  There are younger families than mine and our elders are aging.  Looking around, I realized that the crowd has changed from all of my aunts and uncles to very few elders and almost all cousins so far removed now that we could marry one another and no one would blink an eye.  That made me think of what family is.  Despite the thinning of our shared blood DNA, we are what defines family for me, there.  I had a blast visiting, dancing, bidding on auction items, making slime and everything else.  I feel lucky that we still meet up and still call one another cousin.

(To the rhythm of the 1980’s classic DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince’s Parents Just Don’t Understand)

You know swimsuits are the same, no matter time nor place,
They don’t understand that us gals are going to make some mistakes,
So to you, all the women all across the land, there’s no need to argue,
Swimsuits just don’t understand.

Early this spring I went swimsuit shopping,
Tryin’ to get something to keep my belly from flopping,
It tries to sneak out from the bottom of my suit,
I wanted modesty along with something kinda cute.

I started bugging with the swimsuits I saw:
There’s no room for all my skin in that thong!
This woman’s lost 150 pounds!
I need something to hold that skin down!

Bikini, monokini, french cut, skirted-
One piece, rouched, built in bra and girdled.
One suit arose, the belle of the ball,
A little bit of skin but not showing it all.

[chorus]
You know swimsuits are the same, no matter time nor place
They don’t understand that us gals are going to make some mistakes
So to you, all the women all across the land There’s no need to argue
Swimsuits just don’t understand.

Ok, here’s the situation:
My family went away on a week’s vacation.
I packed the pieces of my brand new suit,
Black and white stripes, looking pretty cute.

I’ll just take it for a little splash,
Maybe show it off to Mr. Mustache,
I’ll put it on for the family lake,
I had no idea the perfect mistake I would make!

Pay attention, here’s the thick of the plot,
I pulled up my bottoms, they fit better than I thought,
That’s when I saw in front of me,
The tag hanging out where none should be.

You should see my bodily dimensions,
I yelled to Bradley to get his attention,
He said, “Was that for me?”
I said, “Yeah!”
He said, “Why?”
I said, “Come on and take a look at my behind!”

I said “These bottoms cover better when they’re turned around,”
The right way makes my tummy slip toward the ground,
The front is tiny while my belly is not, 
The back covers better, who would have thought?”

We agreed and we were on our way
He was looking very good and so was I, I must say – word
We hit the lake, waded into the water
with our handsome son and beautiful daughter.

[chorus]
You know swimsuits are the same, no matter time nor place
They don’t understand that us gals are going to make some mistakes
So to you, all the women all across the land There’s no need to argue
Swimsuits just don’t understand.

(Long story short? My swimsuit bottoms fit better when they’re backwards. When I turn the bottoms around backwards, they look a lot like those new swimsuits with the narrow back that shows a lot of booty, but frankly I’d rather have my expected large ass hanging out than my unexpected belly skin drooping out of the bottom of my swimsuit. I think I need to invent a line of bathing suits for people who have massive weightloss issues. I have dangly skin that likes to pop out unattractively at my armpits, making lovely armpit flab, my lower belly has ‘corners’ that sneak out of the legs of my bathing suits (like, the sides of my hips that used to be and plump and now hang like a deflated balloon) and my upper belly (above my belly button) that just likes to swing around obnoxiously and needs to be held down!)

After my ‘rest day’ on Saturday (rest day that included a 3 mile run) I took an actual rest day on Sunday.  As Sunday progressed into Monday, I found myself falling deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of depression.  I said to Bradley that he needs to remind me to get physical when I complain of the blues and I haven’t worked out because on Monday evening I went to cycle and weights boot camp and felt instantly better.  Working out is such a great release of depression and anxiety for me.  Sheesh.  The endorphins start flowing and my brain seems to click in and I smile.  Working out is my favorite, I’m telling you.  Keeps me solid and happy in more ways than one.

On Tuesday I had my meeting with Jessica, the personal trainer who is also my body pump instructor.  We started out with a lot of chit chat about my history.  Essentially is was a patient intake sheet, past injuries, health history etc.  We did a BMI anaylsis which put me at 37.1 body fat.  Not digging that but I’m also ok since I know I’m working at it.  After that, we hit the floor.  I was all excited to get on the equipment and do some big moves…  but instead we did just a few simple things.  She was focused on my injuries and places I need to strengthen, so that’s where we worked.  She had me practice a big one legged step, up and down off a platform.  Then we did a row on the row machine, I practiced squats and she showed me how to do a push-up on a bar.  That’s it.  After the session she let me know she was interested in continuing to train, but the cost is prohibitive for me at this point.  But boy, she knew what she was doing becasue it was like a slow release of muscles complaining all the rest of the day.  I came home and almost went for a run, I felt so fine, but the gradual release meant that two hours post training session my butt was suddenly like HELLO!  Then about two hours after that my armpits were like WE ARE HERE, TOO!  Then right before bedtime my ribs said DONT FORGET ABOUT US!  Who knew you could make your ribs sore??  Where there’s a muscle group there’s a way, I suppose. 😂

Today I woke up feeling better than yesterday so Gigi and I headed out to do a long run of seven to eight miles.  We planned on taking our longest 4-5 mile route then adding a three mile trail loop from St. Ed’s to it, too.  There was construction right before the park, though, which threw Gigi for a loop then literally threw her on the ground when she tripped over a rock and hit her knee on a sprinkler.  There was blood, tears, and a long walk home.  We were all sad since we didn’t get our long run, but then we remembered that we still hit over three miles.  There’s no shame in that.  Besides, my butt started singing like REMEMBER WHAT YOU DID YESTERDAY!  Yeah, my booty was telling me to stop, anyhow, so it was for the best.

I’m glad to be still hitting the workouts like a gym rat.  TONIGHT IS NEIL DIAMOND WITH MY MOM!  I’m pretty excited.  

Remember my ambitious exercise plan that I made last weekend?  I actually did it all!  I know it’s not that big of a deal to work out that many days in a row, but I think it’s my general practice to work out so many days in a row and then feel like I earned a break.  So I take a day or two off and then hit it again when I’m feeling a little more healed, or I halfway work out for a day in between days off to make myself feel better.  I had planned on pilates Friday, but by Thursday I was starting to feel pretty tired.  On Friday morning I woke up and cried.  I didn’t want to go at all, and had Janice not been there, I would have skipped.  By the time the class was over, followed by a thirty minute balance and stretching. Class, my body felt loose and open.  That was the exact effect I was going for!  After spending the week lifting, it was lovely to open up my body again and stretch out all the tightness.  When I got home, I felt glorious!  I was so proud to have comlpeted the work.  And not just complete it, but to know I brought my a game to every class.  That I squeezed the muscle groups I was supposed to squeeze with every rep, felt the burn and left it on the gym floor.  It was a great week and I feel accomplished.  Silly, I know, but I went hard!  For me, at least.😉

I feel like this song:

Today I woke up feeling satisfied about enjoyin my rest day.  I had big ideas of doing nothing, but something was gnawing at me.  I didn’t want to go on my long run tomorrow without waking up my muscles today with a short run.  It was supposed to be hot, so off we went, bright and early, for a nice three miles.  Bradley just got a Microsoft exercise band to he’s new to data tracking and all that goodness.  Today’s run was his innagural run with the band so we were super excited about tracking data.  My eleven minute mile has my heart at an anaerobic 165 beats per minute.  Bradley, on the other hand, was at 140, cruising along aerobically.  I found it really interesting that we were so different and how I get to run much slower for the kind of workout that I want.  👍😆

I want to add weight onto my bar like nobody’s business.  The instructors always say to find your weight, what feels good, what pushes back just a little…  So I try to, but of course I assume I’m always going to take the easy route so I want to add weight.  Then more weight.  I want o make sure I get my maximum workout and don’t look like a wimp!  It’s not too heavy!  Grin and bear it!  Or groan and bear it.  Grrrrrr!  Except I’m trying to be smart.  In the same way that I’m trying to think about food as fuel in a much more cause/effect kind of concrete way, I’m also trying to be smart about lifting.  When I started running, I had nothing to lose.  I was not my full 340 when I started running, but I was about 270.  I literally said that I could live without my knees if I smashed them to dust, but my heart would benefit from their sacrifice.  I can’t live without a heart, but knees?  Yeah.  That’s a pretty dark and desperate place to be.  Now is different, though.  Now I know the glory of a deliciously long run, the joy of a fun Zumba class, the beauty of hiking to alpine lakes, the confessions of my daughter as we run.  I enjoy the endorphins and the lovely side effect of my fitness based health changes- weight loss has been nice and a more typical body style that, while not necessary to leading a full, happy life, is admittedly kind of fun to take shopping.

Wow.  That was a lot of wordiness to get to the point that I talked to my instructor about adding weight to my bar today.  I’ve gone from the smallest weights on my bar possible to 3x that amount now in just about two weeks.  Today I wanted to add more weight, but unlike days of yore, I want to be stronger, healthier and undamaged WITH functional knees, elbows, shoulders, back and everything else.  I’m straight up greedy, now.  First she suggested just adding weight to one or two routines per step up.  Shifting all of my weights or many routines in one go could really damage me.  She suggested keeping a lot of my weight right where I’m at while I work on my form and then suggested that I set up my free personal trainer session with her!  I was being a bit lazy about setting that up, so it felt really good to take advantage of that, with an instructor that I really respect and like a lot.    Prior to today, I didn’t think I got to choose who I work with.  The free training session went from feeling like a sales pitch to a legitimate opportunity.  So, next Tuesday, I’ll be hanging with Jessica.  🙂

After I got home, I gardened a bit before Bradley and I headed out to a walk to finish out our steps for the day.  My daughter ended up hosting a sleepover, Jude was knee deep in building the Starship Enterprise and we found ourselves in the evermore common and unnerving position of having privacy and time away from our kids without having prearranged it.  We manufactured a cute little date night on the back patio, but we both commented on how true it is what we’ve heard: parents go from not having any privacy or time to themselves to having way more of it than they ever realized they even wanted.  I’m glad we still have many salad days ahead of us, but I have to admit that times in Lj House are a’changing.

I have to confess: lately when I spend an hour writing and publishing a post it gets deleted by WordPress!  I’m not sure what’s up, so I’m going to play catchup today with a picture post so I can keep track of what I have going on:

7/10 took me to a new gym at Ballinger and a new class. Spinning ain’t my thing- in that it intimidates me- so I made sure to nestle in between two wonderful ladies, Drea and Macky. I’m adding this class to my short list of MUST ATTEND EVERY WEEK. While there I noticed they offer a couple of 5:45 AM classes every week. I’m thinking of going to the spin boot camp class and a 5:45 AM class when the school year starts. Maybe if I preplan a couple of non negotiable gym workouts into my week it will be easier to meet my fitness needs during the school year. 

7/11 was one of those weird days.  Like, we just couldn’t get it together and figure anything out.  I ended up being kind of depressed until the rally that nihght.  I made a few signs to share my message with the school board as they made their way into meeting.  See, our union and district came to the bargaining table and when the union made a request, the district just said no without offering up other options.  The reps and teachers were all baffled by this response as we teach our students to never say no without coming up with an alternative.  Just saying no is unacceptable.  I was pleased when one of the board members asked Bradley specifically about his sign, and he told them that he sees inequity in class size, teacher support and special education services as markedly different in the two districts that he works closely with, and in his observation, one is not even close to equal with the other.  He also shared a bit of my story of imbalance in my classroom of 29 second graders, nine with special education needs, nine enrolled in our English language learners program and skeletal support.  I was so proud of him.  Afterwards we walked around, held hands and felt all romantic before we hit the Trader Joe’s.  😉



7/12 was finally birthday celebration day for Bradley!  He chooses a random summer day to celebrate as he hates his December birthday.  It’s between Christmas and the New Year and has always felt forgettable to him, so we wait and celebrate in the sunshine!  We had a huge breakfast then headed to the zoo.  Bradley acted like it was his last time with littles, as suddenly they’re seeming so old, so we did it all.  We rode the carousel, ate ice cream and popcorn, picnicked and, of course, saw everything.  Afterwards we had grilled vegetables and a Legend of Zelda marathon.  We are LOVING the new game.  There’s so much to do and our kids are astute enough gamers now that they can beat the bad guys.  This was definitely a day of seeing how big our kids are all of the sudden.

I met Drea for Body Pump class on 7/13, Thursday morning.  The instructor was new to me and whoa.  I got one of the best workouts for Body Pump!  Ballinger has it going on!  This is another class I’m excited to return to.  I was so sore I didn’t work out on Friday!  LOL!  I love that.  It will only get better.  

On this day I felt so fat.  Like, irritatingly so.  I try not to focus on appearance, but I can’t help but see my stomach jutting out.  I kinda decided I am going to diet some of the unhealthy fat off.  It will be hard in summer, but oh my gosh.  I’m hating the way my shirts fit me this summer compared to last.  My oh my.

On 7/14, Friday, I skipped working out because of my jelly arms, legs, back, fingers, toes, arches, neck…  did I miss anything???  Yeah.  Sore.  So I did a little craft therapy.  I love behaving like an artist.  Like, I love creating, I love making and I had the best time making that altoid tin diorama for Drea that night!  The party was nice.  It was lovely to put the Facebook profile with the people, if that makes sense.  The picture of the ladies was taken at the party, and I was alarmed at how beautiful we all are.  No one has a half closed eye or partial word coming out of her mouth, but more than that, we look happy.  Happiness is beauty.  It’s one of my favorite pictures ever.  Those are some brilliant, compassionate, gorgeous women I get to share a school with.❤️

Guinevere and I hit the road on Saturday with good intentions but gassed out before we could make our goal of six miles.  We were about to turn to add the final two and she suddenly turned and pleaded with me to go home.  I was hot, tired and had residual jelly legs.  I was more than happy to stop.  After that we headed to Michales and spent the remainder of the afternoon crafting to our heart’s content.  I made bracelets, she made flower crowns.  Both of us were so happy.


Today we were legend!  Well, not really.  But we did get our miles done in decent time.  To commemorate our first big push, we got medals! I bought them ages ago on clearance for exactly this purpose.  When we were about to hit five miles today, I told Gigi that we could be done, but if we hit six we’d get the pi medal.  She wanted the pi.  She got the pi!  Lol!  We have a few more medals to earn for our ninth mile- which is a bff pbj linking medal, for the eleventh mile we get a Dr. Who medal, and there may be more in store for us.  Who knows what else might happen?  After the excitement of medals, Gigi and I settled back into Makersville. I experimented with dioramas in jars while she made a show flower crown.  A great day AGAIN!