Wednesday: Swim and Swim

This morning, Ivan and I managed to make it out the door by a bit before 8 and arrive at the pool at a bit before 8:30.  Heading off to the pool is such a joy and it became doubly a joy this morning, when the YMCA called to let me know that they had miraculously found Ivan's dog and blanket.  I have rarely been so thrilled. And as of today there is a new rule that dog and blanket do not leave the house except for vacations and overnights with Gigi and Rusty.  The day to day risk of losing dog and blanket is just not an option.

I got in 1800 meters before the outdoor pool closed, and then I got in 1400 yards in the indoor pool.  I did my usual alone workout, which was 500 pull, 500 swim, kick when I got bored.  It was lovely, and Ivan was having a great time when I picked him up.

We loaded up for a visit to his great-grandmother where he swam and turned flips in the pool.  We then loaded up and went to a swim lesson, then home for naps and Sesame Street, then we were off to the YMCA as we are getting in every bit of outdoor swim fun before they close the pool for the fall season.  I was able to pop into evening swim practice and get in another 1000 meters before showering and heading home and eating all sorts of terrible food.

In fact, while I have eaten a whole lot of vegetables and such today, I have put down a lot of sugar, in fact ending my day with a good bit of a strawberry milkshake.  It was much too much, and tomorrow I need to tone it down.  Too much sugar never feels great at the end of the day.

Also, potty training went quite well today!!

Tuesday: The YMCA Three Times

So this morning, Ivan had some seriously successful potty training.  It was uplifting and hinted to me that maybe the worst is over, though I will say that every time I think that thought something terrible happens later that dispels my good hopefulness.  Needless to say, that hopefulness was indeed dispelled later in the morning.

Anyway, full of hope, Ivan and I packed up his backpack and doggie and blanket and headed to the gym.  Ivan was thrilled about the YMCA childcare and I was thrilled to swim laps in the outdoor pool.  I got in 2100 meters outside before they closed the outdoor pool, then I went inside for another 1100 meters.  It was great times.

When I arrived at the childcare to retrieve Ivan, he was standing atop the slide and there was fecal matter involved, and he looked not at all fussed.  He seemed fine with it, and in my haste to clean and change and apologize and put clothes in a baggie, ect., ect., ect. we left dog and blanket at the YMCA.  We drove back to the YMCA and they were nowhere to be found, we checked every area of the gym, we checked all the lost and founds and doggie and blanket had disappeared into thin air.  It was as if they had never been.  There is a thought that dog and blanket may have ended up in the YMCA laundry.  There is the possibility that they will be laundered by 8:00 AM tomorrow.  Ivan is minimally concerned about this, but I am a wreck.  Will they resurface???

At 4:00 PM, we drove back to the YMCA for another search for dog and blanket, then stayed for children's play time from 4:30-7:00.  Ivan went down the slides honestly a million times.  He ran in the fountains, he dove into the water  and ended in running into a metal post and clocking his eye so hard I feared he might be blind.  It has all been quite exhausting for me in my confinement, and I am planted firmly on the couch until my bedtime.

Monday: Swim and Yoga

This morning, Ivan and I loaded up in the car after I drank my glowing green smoothie and headed to the pool to swim.  The outdoor pool felt great this morning and I got in a mile swim before the outdoor pool closed at 9:30.  I then hit the indoor pool for the rest of my swim and was able to swim another mile before showering and going to the nursery to pick up Ivan who had had a stellar time as there were lots of kids and he thoroughly enjoyed the toys.

Ivan was at his most potty trained, and I will say that the tiny potty at the YMCA for small children is a big draw for his enjoying the potty and being fully able to go through the whole process by himself.  Or maybe it is the magic of the Maryland Farms YMCA which we are apparently all loving.

Got in a bit of yoga before bed and am hitting the sack with Ann Patchet's State of Wonder. 

Saturday: Run and Yoga

Ivan in his GoGo Babeez Car Seat Adapter

So I am slowly having to come to terms with the fact that my current running status is nothing but a burden when I run with other people.  I am slower than slow, and I need to face and own it and get over it.  This morning, I deemed it ridiculous to get up and run with my running group when I was going to get in one good mile, before I started to fall apart and end up running the last five by myself and secretly walking the last half mile.  Then I stand around at the stretching wall to talk to everyone and someone, who shall remain nameless, thinks it is funny to ask if I am expecting twins and then my morning is ruined.

Last night, I actually slept horribly and then slept late and woke up feeling yucky and my morning at home was just as well.  I drank my glowing green smoothie, snacked on oatmeal, took Ivan for a bike ride on his coaster bike and then laid down for a bit of napping and such.  I needlepointed and tried to work out a difficult new stitch and got in an hour long yoga session.  The state of my confinement does get in the way of my yoga practice at various times, but I am still trucking through.

In the late afternoon, I packed up all my gear and hit the Maryland Farms YMCA for a treadmill run in the media room.   There is a huge media room at the Maryland Farms YMCA, and today they were showing The Little Fockers, which is not the best I have seen of Ben Stiller, and it actually totally embarrassed me after a while.  I did get in six miles, but those miles were pretty slow.  I had a fabulous gym shower and came home to continue my ebaying!!

Friday: Love Affair with the Maryland Farms YMCA

So our new gym membership is totally luxurious and thrilling.  Ivan and I are living the life of people who do not take showers at the county rec center, who have the option of either indoor or outdoor swim and whose childcare services are a comparative Disneyworld.  It really is nice.

Yesterday, Ivan went to childcare and I swam in the indoor pool for an hour and a half and then came back in the afternoon to let Ivan play at the kids' pool, where he was wild with excitement at the slides and swimming and water buckets and fountains.  We did have an issue with someone running away and hiding himself at the top of the kiddie playground tower where I could not get to him in my state of confinement.  For this reason, another mother had to scale the playground equipment in her bathing suit and extricate my child from the top while he howled "no pank" "no pank" the whole way down.  It was the worst, and I had to shut down our YMCA "fun" excursion to take Ivan straight home and administer consequences.  Bleh!!

Today was a new day, however and Ivan behaved like a prince at the YMCA and I was able to swim a couple of miles before heading home for naptime and evening of setting up my ebay auctions.  I am cleaning out my closet!!!!

Wednesday: Swim and We Joined the YMCA

I will just say that Ivan and I left the house for the first time since Monday today, and it felt like we had emerged from a tunnel.  We have both been sick and sleeping like cats, whiling away days without showers and eating at odd times.

So since my pool is closed for the month of August, we decided to join the Maryland farms YMCA in Brentwood, which is just a fabulous place for Ivan to play and for me to swim laps.  I am somewhat concerned about joining, as I think that Ivan will most likely be very disappointed when we return to the Indoor Swim Complex, as it is quite dull in comparison.  Today, there were slides and buckets and a playground and a graduated wave pool and all sorts of merriment that drove Ivan wild.  He was like a man on fire with glee.  The lifeguards called him out every few minutes, and he really just could not stop.  It was fun times, with me in the tail end of my confinement with a hot dog bikini and my child behaving as if he had shot from a cannon.  We looked quite the pair.

Anyway, after Ivan was finally retrieved by his father, I was able to join my swim class and in the course of an hour, I swam 2500 meters, about which I am quite proud.
Workout as follows:

• 6 x 200 @ 4:30
• 4 x 50 @ 1:15
• 6 x 50 @ 1:15
• 4 x 50 @ 1:15
• 6 x 50 @ 1:15
• 2 x 50 @ 1:15
• 100 cool down

It was a great workout and I had a super shower afterwards.  I hit the fresh market for sushi and chocolate covered cherries on the way home!!  Getting in a good swim makes me feel human again!!

Tuesday: Cold, Sciatica, and a Long Day At Home

So Ivan's cold morphed into my own cold bringing me down and then the sciatica, which I am apparently prone to in my confinement, hit so hard that I honestly thought I might have kidney stones.  I had to make an emergency trip to the doctor, and thankfully it was just sciatica, but honestly, how do people with chronic back pain survive?  It would be horrible.

Luckily today, the pain had subsided and I did not have to walk like someone who very well needs a walker.  My cold and sickness had become worse however and was not helped by a night of terrible sleep due to terrible back pain.

I am actually SO BORED with myself while I am writing this and I honestly hope that something exciting happens tomorrow or even that I am able to leave my house so as to have something fun to tell or record.

Bleh

Sunday: Lake Swim

So this morning, I pushed snooze a couple of times and really, getting up at 5:45 AM does not get me to the lake on time.  I need to be up at 5:30 AM, which just seems so terrible.  It is so early and my confinement definitely put me in the spate of waddling.  I am reduced to waddling, no doubt about it. I put a glowing green smoothie on ice and made some oatmeal and headed off to the lake.  We stayed in the cove today, and I would say that I swam 2000ish meters.  I was quite slow; so very slow and I am so tired of being slow.  John Maple, my usual swim partner, did not even LOOK at me when we paired up to swim around the cove.  He has acknowledged my slowness, and I do not like it at all.

After swim, I will say I did not feel great.  I chalked this up to my confinement and a little chocolate covered cherry binge.  When Ivan went down for his nap, I too attempted to nap.  When Ivan woke up, he was so sad and sick with a seal's cough and a sore throat and two mouth sores and a little fever.  It was pitiful.  I continued to chalk my illness up to chocolate covered cherries and new-human percolation, but after briefly popping by a pool party in the afternoon, I had to admit that I had similar symptoms to Ivan, and I too have a sickness.  This postponed my ebay goals and forced me sit on the couch catching up on Project Runway.

It was sad times, and this puts my whole week on hold, as I was planning to join the YMCA tomorrow so that I would have somewhere to swim for the month of August.  I do not know much, but I know that sickness is not welcomed at the YMCA.  Bleh. Sickness.

Saturday: Run and Yoga

So, my Saturday was actually a big success on the feel good and eat right barometer.  I managed to catch up on all of my sleep and Ivan and I had a productive, if not cost effective, trip to Whole Foods.  I started off my day with a glowing green smoothie, which I really missed while in Montana. Once Ivan was down for his nap, I previewed my Vanity Fair (which is the Jennifer Lopez divorce issue, meaning that the crux of the issue is a real snore), and then I got in an hour of yoga.

I am not sure that I have mentioned this before, BUT I have found some great hour long yoga practices on youtube, and I just sit the computer on the floor and downward dog my cares away.  It is super-fabulous and as my confinement gets more and more in the way of my weights workouts and lunges and what not, yoga is a real strengthener and lifesaver.  Also, many yoga practices are uber challenging, and I don't really think I am missing too much of my strength training under the circumstances.

After yoga, I put on my lululemon running skirt and a black tank top (which honestly makes me look like some sort of pregnant roller derby contestant, but what evs).  After having a pretty terrible workout week, I was braced for some serious running misery today, BUT I must say, I think it was the altitude in Montana that made my lungs feel like they were going to explode and my legs feel wobbly like a newborn colt.  I had a really lovely and relatively perky three mile run.  It was good times, and it restored my faith in my athletic ability, such that it is right now.

Then, in a Herculean task of cleansing, I purged all my off-season tupperware tubs of clothing that I may not ever want to wear again and readied myself for some all out ebaying tomorrow as I strive to obtain a pair of Christian Louboutin leopard wedges.  If all goes well, Loubs will be mine for half-price, and I will be knocking your socks off post-baby with my cigarette pants and leopard shoes.

I vaguely remember being consumed with what I can only call CRAZY, after Ivan was born. I thought that I needed 1000 fancy dresses and shoes for a delusional life I was leading on some other planet, when all I really needed were dirty tank tops and yoga pants for my life as a breed cow.  I am not sure where my thought processes lead me that I thought that I needed a whole bunch of chiffon in which to feed from the breast, but I can feel it descending on me again.  Is it a combination of hormones and deadly deadly vanity?  I am not sure, but I can hear the rustle of chiffon and I can see the Loubs in my closet.  It is totally happening.

Friday: Home From Montana

So for the past week, I have been in a fishing lodge outside Livingston, Montana.  There was no television and the internet was spotty at best.  I ingested these fabulous breakfast buffet blueberry french toast casseroles and a whole bunch of red meat, and I am in need of a serious detox.

Working out this week was a bust, as my confinement combined with altitude made running so difficult.  AND, due to biohazard issues at the Livingston City Pool, I was unable to swim.  I did run and there was a good bit of walking and hiking, but overall, it was a week of entertaining my child without the help of technology which makes me wonder how Laura Ingalls Wilder did it.

ALSO, most unfortunate, the fishing lodge did not have cribs, and Ivan had to try his luck sleeping in his own adult bed.  There were multiple incidences of falling out of the bed and head bumps, ect, ect ect. I, however, true to form, turned over all middle of the night issues to my husband.  I greatly dislike sleep disturbances.

Anyway, in a gross oversight of my child's schedule, I booked a flight that arrived in Nashville at midnight.  There was lots of grumpiness and poor sleep, and we all functioned in a blur today until Ivan went down for his nap at which point we all napped.  Sleeping in and not hitting running group tomorrow.  Maybe will be more interesting tomorrow.

Wednesday: Snake Drama and Swim

So last night at midnight, I heard the ominous paper crumpling sound that heralded the arrival of the snake in our bathroom toilet vent.  Now, last night, I felt that the situation warranted the waking of my husband and the encouragement of his investigation.  I hoped, in the futile and foolish recesses of my mind, that he would be spurred to action.  Now, it took a full half hour to rouse him. I will say that my husband is of the sort, that if told, say, that Osama Bin Laden was actually alive and well and sleeping directly under his side of the bed, would most likely groggily insist that even international terrorists need their sleep and we could talk about it in the morning.  He just does not compromise on his sleep: snake or no snake.

Anyway, when finally roused, he irritably stumbled to the bathroom with a flashlight where he viewed the snake swirling malignantly in the vent above the toilet, and then TURNED ON THE FAN.  Now, luckily the snake did not get caught in the fan, because I cannot EVEN FATHOM the gore of that situation.  What happened is that the snakeskin was decimated and blew in fluttery bits out of the vent.  Now at this point,  I personally would like to set our bathroom on fire.  I feel that is the ONLY way that this situation will be solved in such a way that I will feel comfortable.  My husband merely brushed the fluttery snakeskin from his shoulders and hair and WENT BACK TO BED.

Now, the other unfortunate part of the snake situation is that now when the fan is turned on, it is clogged with snakeskin and causes the fan to emit a high pitched whining sound when turned on.  It is terrible.  Terrible for serious.

In other news, Ivan and I had a long day of trip preparing and working away at things that must be finished before I leave on vacation.  It was rather dull, and he was very glad to visit his dad at work and have some ipad time.

I was able to pop in to swim and get in a good 3000ish meters and a shower, before heading home for the night.

Tuesday: Does Anyone Have a Mongoose??

So, I will be honest and let you know that the snake is apparently still living above my toilet, and no one in my household seems even REMOTELY concerned about the situation.  Someone, who shall remain nameless, feels that the snake is great for pest control, and I guess that I will just continue sitting on the toilet while looking straight above at the vent to make sure that I am not about to have any sort of Snakes on a Plane drama.  I have to say that when I am gestating, it seems that having to sit on my own toilet and face concerns about a snake is particularly cruel.  I mean, I am currently urinating about 1000 times per day AND NIGHT.  May I not do that in peace?  May I not have that one thing?  I will probably end up turning feral and going in the yard to avoid the snake, Ivan will never never potty train and we will be like Lord of the Flies together.  Maybe we will be some sort of untoileted cult, ALL BECAUSE SOMEONE THINKS A SNAKE IN THE HOUSE IS A GREAT IDEA.

Anyway, I had a busy day of desperate running about to accomplish work and chores that must be done before we head out for family vacation.  I did get in a really challenging Yoga session and I hope that I  can get out to swim tomorrow evening.

Until then, if you happen to have a particularly adept mongoose, would you swing him by?

Sunday and Monday: Lake Swim and Day Off

So yesterday, I was up early and hit the lake for open water swimming at 6:30 AM.  The water was hot, and I ma just ridiculously slow.  I do really enjoy the lake swims though and hope to keep doing them.  After a long and deep conversation with my doctor, he feels that I can continue lake swims throughout my confinement as long as I swim like a snail and drink at least two huge tervis tumblers full of water before I get in the water.

Now, this massive water consumption makes me waddle upon leaving the car and my stomach looks like it needs it own personal conveyance by the time I arrive at the water's edge.  It is just really ridiculous.

Now, at home, Ivan and I loaded up and headed to church, which went pretty well.  He was well behaved and observed potty training for about 45 minutes, which was a small triumph.  At home, we both took naps and I woke up just in time to make a cherry limeade in the Vitamix and head to a tutoring session.  At home, I attempted to get into bed at a reasonable time, but there was a strange paper crumpling noise.

I went through several possible scenarios of what the noise could be, and I narrowed it down to mice or a psychopath living surreptitiously in our home wadding up the first drafts of his novel.  We live in an old home and the possibility that it would be haunted or that some strange personage would have taken up residence in some part of the house seems not so odd in the face of the strange paper crumpling noise.

Unfortunately, when I figured out what the noise was, it was actually much worse than what I had imagined.  It was a huge snake living in the open vent above the toilet in my bathroom, AND it was swirling about in circles in its old skin.  It sounded a lot like Nigini, Voldemort's snake in the Harry Potter movies.  I have never hopped off a toilet so quickly and the thought that that vile reptile was circling about above my head made my toilet rather unusable today.

Now the snake puts me in an unfortunate position.  It is actually our second snake.  The first snake was killed by a VERY excited workman when we remodeled a bit when I first moved in.  After the death of snake number one, our mouse situation got OUT OF CONTROL.  I got two cats, the problem was solved and there were few other problems.  Now, we are down to one cat, and in all honesty, The Beast has become a bit lazy and from time to time a brazen mouse shows its face.  Do we need the snake?
Does anyone need a snake?

Whether I need a snake or not, the snake thing kept me up, and I crashed after lunch today.  A 20 minute nap perked me up and as the pool is now closed for August, I took today off.  Hopefully a run tomorow!