Ruff Life.

I missed my calling to be a dog in this life. Sure, some dogs have it rough, but not this one. What I would give to trade places with him just one Monday

Here’s a typical day in his life…

4:30am. Someone’s phone is making so much noise. Could she be any ruder. Do I wake her up in the middle of a nap, no. I’ll just lay here in bed until she is busy doing something else and THEN I will decide I need to wake up and go outside. Serves her right for that obnoxious wake up call.

I woke up once… it was AWFUL!

4:45am: Finally I can go back to sleep but I just can’t seem to get comfortable. Still with the too much noise and too much light in my bedroom. I’ll go sleep in the hall. It’s quiet and dark there. Ahhhh, finally some more zzzzz…..

5:00am: WHAT?! someone else is trying to wake the dead and just took another year off my life. Why do these people in this house make SOMUCHNOISE! I make no noise, never. See how they treat me?

5:15am: Finally peacefully asleeeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzz……..

6:00am: More noise. Great. What now? Wait! Is that breakfast I smell cooking? Ok, I guess I will permit that noise… wait a minute. You forgot to make two plates. What’s going on. Why does no one ever remember to make me breakfast. Grr. That’s OK, I’ll just cook some bacon while they are at work. hehehe

7:30-4:30pm: Sweet glorious sleep. Nap, nap, nap. Maybe I won’t even move a muscle today since I am so exhausted from the morning rukis.

4:45pm: Thing 2 waltzes in the door like she owns the place. Thanks for waking me up, AGAIN! Where is Thing 1? She’s my favorite, I need her! I’ll just watch for her out the window…

5:30pm: I’m not sure why but I get really excited to see my girls when they get home?!  Absence really does make the heart grow fonder. Plus I know the cuter I am, the more likely they are to give me chicken. Live and learn, folks.

6:15pm: Finally feeling awake and ready to face the day now. TIMEFORMYWALK. I don’t understand why those two lazy lumps just sit there watching TV while I stand here by the door, totally ready to go on a walk. Maybe they need me to remind them what time it is. Ruuf! Walk! Moveitfatties!

Later!

6:30pm: OH FINALLY they decide to move and take me for my wander. Gosh I love spring. I hate those stupid coats they make me wear in the Winter. #claustrophobic  So.many.good.smells! Jeez these two weirdo-s are slow. I could totally lap them both. Move it!

6:45pm: So thirsty! and HUNGRY! Where’s my meal! Feed me! Starving… Wasting awaY! paw paw paw, grasping for sustenance…

Wasting… away…

7:00pm: Food! This food is kind of gross, especially the blue chunks. Seriously, food coloring in food? #notok Don’t they know I prefer clean eating?

Dirty!

7:15pm: Isn’t it time for bed now? I’m exhausted. This day was sobusy! I’ll take a nap on the couch/floor/mybed/diningroom/couch/chair/hallway/person. Just can’t get comfortable and again with the noise and the light! No consideration.

9:30pm: Finally it’s time for some real peace and quite! Can’t… keep… my… eyes…open……

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…….

Marathon Monday: 11/26

A day late, a dollar short – whatever!  This holiday/birthday week went way too fast and I had zero interest in blogging this weekend (or doing my NASM apparently – whoops!) so this will just have to be a day late + – I’m sure you’re really broken inside about this – I know I am

Anyways, here’s a recap of my workouts from the past 7 days + whatever else happened while I was out!

Monday (aka my b-day): I stayed home from work and went to check out a class at the gym in the morning – Interval.  Not exactly a class I will be missing attending regularly, that’s for sure… but later in the afternoon, when sister was done with work, we headed back for another class, TRX!  Love, love, loved this workout!  But I refuse to pay $10/time after we use up our joining gift certificates.  Sad.  Also kind of worried this gym is going to be a big fat bust on the classes.  So far, not so good…

Tuesday: Back at work, yuck but I managed to run 3 miles before work!  I don’t think I did anything else in the after work hours but I cannot recall…

Wednesday: Yoga DVD + 15 minute Core + 15 min Arms DVDs.  Yoga was either this day or Tuesday I guess.  #memoryfailure

Thursday: Turkey Day!!!  My favorite holiday!  I cooked dinner/lunch at my house and my parents, grandparents and sis were there to enjoy the food.  I always fail to time turkey cooking correctly though… Wanted to eat at 5pm but the turkey was done by 3:30pm.  I always end up with turkeys cooked way before the normal Xmins/lb says it should be done.  But regardless, it was all really delicious and I ate way too much!

TURKEY!

Man, I want there to still be leftovers in the fridge…

For workout it was a big fat rest day + being on my feet for 5ish hours cooking – ha!

Friday: Sister and I tackled her first ever 20 mile run!  It was terribly windy on Friday and also quite cold.  We didn’t really feel the full effects of the weather on the first 13ish miles but by the time we finished that first portion, we were both so cold + so windblown.  We refilled water bottles and tried to chug along for the final 6.35 miles but those 6+ miles felt like they might as well have been the full 20!  And then to top it all off, my hip started hurt, hurting around mile 17 and I tried to make it go away up to mile 18 but to no avail… so we walked the next 1.5, stopped home for a little pup and walked it to the finish around his “block”.  Hopefully we will get in another 20 miler closer to Christmas because this one was anything but confidence boosting for me!  Plus I want sister to run it home next time  After the run, we parked our butts in bed and watched a Twilight Marathon – ha!

Nap time.

Saturday: I was planning to go to the gym but guess what?  Didn’t happen!  So instead I did the Strength DVD from Insanity Asylum.  Totally love this DVD from the crazier Insanity!  The others have a lot of jumping but someday I want to go through the whole program and actually eat healthy along the way too to see what it can do for me!  Maybe come February…or when I’m 40.

Sunday: Made it to the gym!  And did a 40ish minute weight circuit I made up (must practice chin ups…) and then went to a yoga class at the gym.  After working out, the family attempted to get a Christmas tree for my house and the parents.  It turned into quite the ruckus when we 1) got locked out of the house and 2) had to drive to THREE tree farms to try to find something >4′ tall + <$70.  But somehow we managed… after walking, and walking and walking some more!

All said and done, I ran 23 miles and made it to the gym 3 times so I met all my goals!  I also squeezed yoga in twice so that’s a good thing for me!

For the next week, I am planning 20 miles of running + 3 gym trips again.  Also yoga > 1 time

Peace out, Homies.

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving holiday if you are in the US!  Any good workouts from the past week?

Thirteenager.

Someone in this house is celebrating a birthday  Well, somedog technically!  I can’t believe this little guy is turning 13 years old today!  Knock on wood, he is still a pretty active, healthy little guy and will hopefully stay that way for many, many years.  Here are some pictures of my favorite pup!  You’d never know by looking at him that I was actually worried he would get too big when I first heard about him.  Clearly, I worried for nothing

Clearly someone was hitting the happy hour special a little too hard. And I don’t mean me.

Running marathons is hard work, now where is my medal made out of meat?

Good smoothie. Gonna build me some muscles!

Mooner

I am so embarrassed. Must find something to destroy to pay her back for this humiliation.

Stop putting these stupid little blue pieces in my food. You will not deceive me. I will conquer all.

Good lord women, put me DOWN! You smell worse than the deer crap I like to roll in.

I love mud. Mud is awesome. I would like to live in this mud!

Oh my gawd, this summer heat is ridiculous! Get me in my air conditioned palace!

Someone is home from work with a “hurt” back… but really she’s just interrupting my nap time.

Shut the light off. I am TRYING to SLEEEEEEP! Death glare to you humans.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Love the belly bloat feeling!

My name was Crosby before this football player was famous. He never asked if he could borrow my name to put it on his jersey…

Happy Birthday, Bud!  You’re so stinking spoiled

WIAW: Monday, Monday

Like most of the world, I hate Mondays.  They are equal parts depressing and overwhelming!  But this past Monday, I decided to shake up my foods for the day to help make something for me to look forward to!  Sad, but oh so true!  So for my final installment of Love your Veggies What I Ate Wednesday, hosted by Jenn at Peas and Crayons, here is what I ate Monday that helped me make it through the worst day of the whole entire week…

 

My mornings always start with coffee and a little snack, like a handful of dry cereal or something similar.  I realized I never take a picture of this but I think you can picture it?  Hopefully

Once I am showered and closer to ready to leave for work, it’s time for some breakfast!  I am sure I have said this before but breakfast has always and will always be my FAVORITE meal of the day.  Today’s was fantastic and I want it ever single day…

I used a recipe from Edible Perspective for the wrap portion of this breakfast to which I added some cinnamon and then filled each wrap with blueberry jam and topped the whole thing with a serving of cottage cheese, some nut butter and cinnamon.  Trust me when I say this breakfast is a keeper and also made the house smell heavenly! Yum!

Despite the fact that this breakfast was delicious, it was a little on the light side for me so by the time I got to work, I also needed to snack on a banana.

A few hours later, my stomach was growling again so I drank up on some water but then had two apple cinnamon rice cakes with PB2 on top.  This combo was delicious!  I did not eat that whole packet of rice cakes

A few hours later, it was FINALLY time for lunch.  For some reason, the 15 minutes before noon are always the most painful minutes of my day because I am SO hungry!  I often have to grab a handful of something because my hunger does not understand “Just a few more minutes”… so I had an unpictured handful of raisins.

Lunch was worth the wait though!  I had a ham sandwich on the best ever GF free bread by Udi’s with a little mustard and half an avocado.  On the side of that, I had a cup of tomato soup with quinoa and broccoli added in to bulk it up a bit.  My sandwich was pretty much gone by the time my soup was hot because there was a long line at the microwave because too many people had their frozen meal lunches… 7 minutes is so long to wait

My about 3pm I was hungry AGAIN!  (seriously never ending…) so it was time for snack 1,267 for the day – a yogurt and granola.  This snack is always very satisfying with a little crunch and a little creamy!  I kind of like this new granola I tried by Kind but I am not 100% sold on it yet.  I’ll try it one more time because the bag I have has an off “plastic” taste but maybe this is from an old batch or something?  I don’t know.  I like it, minus this weird aftertaste I sometimes get… and I also love the Blood Orange Chobani.  Yum!

By the time I got home from work, I was STARVING (shocker) so I had to have a little snack to tide me over for dinner because it was going to be awhile and I had 1,000 things to do in the meantime so I had a mug of puffed millet with a few cinnamon chex topped with a little keifer and more cinnamon.  After the picture I mixed this all up and it was good! I first had Keifer on my way to Hawaii back in November and had not bought it since but I’ve been needing some new snack ideas so I picked up a jug and it is a nice change on cereal, for sure!

While dinner was cooking, Sister and I attacked out to-do list that spilled over from the weekend: bake sweet potatoes, make coconut butter (x2), dishwasher, garbage, cut up lettuce for salads, boil eggs, make overnight oats for Tuesday, set up coffee maker for Tuesday and grind up oat flour.  Exciting stuff, no?  By the time all of this was checked off the list, we were more than ready for dinner!  And it turned out to be a really good one!

We cut up potatoes, carrots and some broccoli, placed that in foil and topped with 1/2 T coconut butter and a fish fillet.  Wrapped it up and baked it at 450 for about 45 minutes.  Once it was baked, we topped it with Frank’s Red Hot Sauce and ketchup, the essentials lately!  We kept this dinner a little on the light side because after dinner, some Insanity was on the menu!

Someone else enjoyed his dinner before Insanity took place and left his required 3 pieces of blueberry behind… I don’t think he likes fruit?  But it’s in his dog food so that is just weird to me!

I no like bloobs...

After doing the Max Recovery DVD we were both very stretched out with burning quads… and I knew if I didn’t have a snack, I would wake up in the middle of the night starving so I had a half size mug of oatmeal with freeze dried blueberries mixed in, Cake Batter Cashew butter on top and a little splash of coconut milk!  I then proceeded to attempt to watch Castle and fall asleep after 15 minutes…. #winning

Whenever I type all of these up, it really seems like I never stop eating all day long! But yet I am pretty sure I went to bed just a littlebit hungry… LOL!  The joys of marathon training I suppose… See ya next week!

Snow Schmo.

When I was little, I LOVED snow and got terribly depressed when the temps were ever forecast to be above 30 degrees because that meant the snow would start melting in the sun.

Now, snow makes me bitter.  I own a home and am responsible for shoveling a driveway,  I like running outside (and not with my snow treds on my shoes) and I have a 30 minute freeway commute to work (in good weather).  These three items added together equal me now HATEing snow and I would be perfectly happy never seeing it again.

I thought this year was going to be my year.  The year I would not have to see this white power… but alas… it snowed last night.  And I had a gross drive home from work and back to work this morning.  And I had to shovel.  Excellent.  Welcome to Winter in Wisconsin!!

At least snow looks pretty!

In other news, Crosby had a little visit from his friend from California, Flat Kitty.  Since it does not snow much in CA, Crosby thought it would be fun to take Flat Kitty outside for a bit but Flat Kitty did not seem to much appreciate the snow :S I thought maybe these two could put their boots on and come out and help me shovel the driveway but they both just sat there and glared at me… They also both insisted they would be Better Off Barefoot (but probably still would not help me, they would just stop the glaring).

So I had to shovel this whole thing myself… Thanks guys

But oh well… at least shoveling is good exercise?!

Although it would have been nice if I would have remembered to bring my shoveling boots in the house BEFORE the snow fell.  Just saying…

Already excited about the 40 degree temps forecast for Monday!!  Happy Weekend!

Chilly.

So, signing up for a half marathon in Florida in January seemed like a fine idea.  But somehow I failed to fully comprehend the fact that that means running 7-10 mile runs in the month of December, in Wisconsin… it was 13 degrees this morning.

Needless to say, I could not feel my toes for the first 2 miles.  Once I finally got the blood flowing (or maybe my whole lower body just went numb?) the run actually went pretty quickly and felt like one of my better runs.  After my recent IT Band pain, every run has felt like a bit of a risk but so far it’s been behaving well.  I have had a bit of weird knee things going on though.  Not a pain but it feels like a bubble is in my knee or something?  Sounds weird and gross but I’ll have to see if that keeps occurring and if so, look into it.  I normally do better not doing too much Google Doctoring because then I become convinced of my impending death.

I listened to a little Josh Groban Christmas music this morning which was a nice change from my regular running tunes.  Something about his singing is very easy to run to for me. Maybe not if I was trying to run very fast but for trying to run a nice steady run, it works really well!

I did realize a few positive things that winter running has going for it over summer running…

1. My running tights do not ride up nearly as much as my running shorts
2. If my legs started hurting in the later miles like they sometimes do, I could not feel them because they were numb…
3. My water did not get hot.  Instead it turned to ice.
4. No dripping sweat got in my eyes.
5. No sunburn.  Sure maybe a little frost bite and wind burn but ehhhh, that’s nothing compared to sunburn.
6. No dehydration.  Freezation maybe but not dehydration!

Well, I guess the next three training runs could be kind of cold and interesting but at least I only have a long 9 mile and 10 mile run to go.  Hopefully my 9 mile run in two weeks goes as well as my 8 miler did this morning.  And I can finally break my 9 mile curse!

And on that note, I’ll leave you with another picture of this Christmas elf that we have infecting our house this Christmas…

 

 

The Hunt.

Yesterday we went on our annual Christmas tree hunt.  We have often had to face green grass for our hunt but never rain before.  This year, we got soaked… And mudded…

In years past, we would make a pretty far venture to a place about 30 minutes from home.  Last year we realized their tree selection had kind of gone down hill so this year we decided to try somewhere new.  We picked a place called Trees for Less because we had a $5 off coupon – score!  And it ended up being a pretty cute well taken care of place.  We actually got to drive right out to the trees which was a big improvement over previous years so it helped us maybe avoid a little rain and mud?!?  We wanted balsam’s so that is the section we drove to.

I don’t know if I was being lazy or what but as soon as I got out of the car, I wanted the tree we were parked right next to!

When I see one I like, there is no himming and hawwing. It's just cut down!

It did make it pretty easy to just cut and load though!  Mother dear took a little longer to decide but did finally pick one…

Someone really had a good time though and got completely covered in mud!  He also really did not want to leave to go home and tried to run away with the worker :S

Wow, someone needs a haircut!

Muddy!

After we’d paid for our trees, we got to enjoy a little cup o hot chocolate in a cute little log cabin at the entrance!

Despite the not really winter like temps and the rain, it was a very fun morning!

All done!

I've decided trees do not photograph very well... this looks really hoaky but in real life, it looks really good...

So darn cute!!

 

 

Ouch.

Today my muscles hurt.  You could say I have the DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness).  I pretty much feel like my whole upper body was smashed between two rocks.  Ok, that might be a slight exaggeration but you know, I was just trying to make a point.  Well, really, I was just trying to write a lead in to the third Kinley’s Boot Camp that occurred on Sunday morning and a few other random tidbits… Yes, I devised this little booty kicker for the sister but I decided to join in too.  Who knew a ten mile run could feel easy and painless in comparison with this beast of a workout…

Warm up – Walk .5ish miles to the high school track and then jog 1 lap

Rotation 1 (10 reps of 1-5, repeat rotation 3 times, minimal breaks)

1. Squat Jumps
2. One Legged Squats
3. Side Lunge Jumps
4. Plie Squats
5. Walking Lunges with Side Twists

Cardio Break – Jumping Jacks and Sprinting around the track – 30 seconds of each, 3 repeats, minimal breaks

Walking lap around track for recovery

Rotation 2 – (10 reps of 1-5, repeat rotation 3 times, minimal breaks)

1. 30 seconds of shadow boxing
2. The Wave
3. “Stick Ups”
4. Pushups (your variation)
5. Shoulder Circles

Walking lap around track for recovery

Rotation 3  - for time, repeat 1-5, 3 times

1. Crunches for 30 seconds
2. T-Hold/Side Plank (15 seconds each arm)
3. Plank 30 seconds
4. Knee Crosses (Arms in plank position, twist one knee to the opposite elbow)

Finally for cool down, we walked around the track one more time and then walked home.  Let me tell you, I don’t often “feel” a workout the next day, like pretty much never, but this one made me HURT!  Especially my abs are a burning but that’s a good thing right??

Then it was time to go home a celebrate a special little dog’s 12th birthday!!  (or day before birthday?  apparently he gets a birthday weekend…)

Yes, he even gets dog shaped pancakes on his birthday! Ridiculous I know, but it's our tradition!

In honor of Crosby’s birthday (and just because we like pancakes), I made special breakfast pancakes!  I tried this recipe and was very happy with how they turned out – super tasty!!  I also added some sprinkles to the batter to make funfetti birthday pancakes!  Can you tell he is certainly the most spoiled dog in the world??  I’m thinking not all people get this good of birthday treatment

And the celebrations continued this evening on his real birthday with a special trip to his favorite neighborhood for a walk and then some mashed potato frosted meatloaf cupcakes! (cough*spoiledrottenpuppydog*cough)! Man this weekend went super fast and it’s already the end of Monday!  Time really flies!  But next weekend is a long one so I will not be at work next Monday which will make it even better!!!

Happy Birthday to my best 12 year old PUP Crosby!