"I'm Late, I'm Late, For A Very Important Date!"

I'm feeling a little like the Mad Hatter (pun intended) from Alice In Wonderland lately. Rushing, rushing, always rushing. Kinda like a rabbit on roller skates.....my feet are going in all different directions but getting absolutely no where.

Last week I only managed to get 6 miles walking in and no trips to the gym. I had to work Tuesday and Thursday, I went out to dinner with friends on Wednesday, I don't remember Friday at all, and Saturday I went up to Stan Hywet Hall, in Akron, with The Chicks for our June event. I did do a lot of walking there, and walked up and down steps every chance I got. Then 40 minutes after I got home, I had to go to work, and I was there until 11:45 p.m. And all during the week I was going back and forth to Lowe's to set up my bathroom remodel. I slept most of Sunday.

This week has been much better. I've already ready walked 10.5 miles so far. My goal was 16, so I'm really close. But in order to get enough training in, I'm seriously thinking about cutting down to two days at the bookstore. I'm not sure about that.....it's hard to give up the money, even though it's not a lot.

I hit a milestone this week with my fund raising; I'm at the 25% mark. Not bad for the first four weeks. Sunday I plan to start printing my letters so I can have a mass mailing go out by Wednesday. And I have my first corporate sponsor: Happy Tails Pet Sitting Service. Lee, you're A #1!

"I don't pretend to be captain weird. I just do what I do.".......Johnny Depp

There is rarely a week that goes by that someone doesn't tell me I'm weird. A lot of the time it's my boss, Nikki E. who, though she loves me dearly, doesn't really "get" me. My love of words, reading, going to office supply stores for no reason at all, taking my first ballet class at 51, joining the Red Hat Society and purposely going out into public in purple clothes and exotic red hats so people will look at me....it all mystifies her, as I might say, it does a lot of the people I know.

I can't tell you how much it used to bother me to be told I was weird, or different. As much as I tried to be a cookie-cutter girl, that just never worked for me. It started when I was a kid. A case in point was my favorite toy, my stuffed mouse, Retina. You read correctly....my stuffed mouse, Retina. Yes, he was, at one time over 45 years ago, a real live rodent, scampering happily through the rice fields in China. Retina had a family; a little mousie wife, many small mice children, a nice tiny home with an itty-bitty mortgage. Then, one day on his way to work, he suffered a heart attacked and died. His family, being of a charitable nature, donated his body so that even in death he could continue to bring joy to others. He was stuffed, given red bead eyes, placed in a tiny gilded bird cage, sold in a Chinese marketplace to the grandmother of one of the little girls in my neighborhood and brought to America.

I can still vividly recall the first time I ever saw Retina. It was late on a sunny summer afternoon, and my sister and I were playing on the sidewalk in front of our house. Jonjee, who lived two doors down and was a couple of years younger than Debbie and me, called us over. She held in her hand the little gilded cage her grandmother had just brought back as a souvenir of her trip to mainland China. A beam of sunlight bounced off of one of the golden bars of the cage as I laid my eyes on the most perfect little white mouse I had even seen. His little red eyes twinkled at me, and I knew I must have him for my own. But how?

I needn't have worried. Jonjee was quite astute for a girl of 6; she knew right away she had something I wanted, and I had something she wanted. She laid it out quite simply: I could have Retina (whom she had given the unimaginative name of Squeaky) if I would give her my life-sized baby doll with all her clothes. Now, this doll, Baby Ruth, was special because of her clothes. BR had been a Christmas present from my Aunt Velda. Every piece of her clothing had been sewn by hand by my aunt, who was a seamstress of unequaled talent. She had stitched every seam and hem herself. There was no sewing machine involved at all. Tiny stitches barely visible to the naked eye. Absolutely magnificent.

It was a no brainer; I ran to get BR, and handed her over straight-away to Jonjee. And into my trembling hands was placed my beloved Retina. No, the tiny gilded cage was not part of the bargain, as Jonjee really liked that. I felt like I had made the best deal in the world and took my new acquisition home to show my mom. Boy! did Mom hit the roof! She was furious that I had given the doll away for a stuffed rodent. After all, my aunt had spent months making those outfits. But no amount of threats or cajoling would make me take Retina back to Jonjee. He was mine. Forever. And I still have him to this very day. All of his snowy white fur has rubbed off, his red bead eyes dropped out, and his ears are gone. But he's my prized possession and I love him dearly. Heck, even my own kids were never allowed to play with him when they were little.

So, you ask, what has all this got to do with anything? Well, I went to Staples Office Supply and got to buy tons of stuff today! (Please refer to paragraph one, sentence three above). I bought new ink for my printer, nifty new paper, pink envelopes, pens, a day planner, a paper cutter, notebooks.....so much stuff! I'm all ready to begin my letter campaign for donations! Oh, how I love the smell of an office supply store in the morning!

I told you I was weird.

May Round-Up

It’s June 1st! What happened to May, and to spring, by the way? It’s been up into the 90’s and it’s all humid and sticky. Yuk. Anyway, May shout-outs go to: Cousin Frank, you’re the best! Friends: Nikki, Renee, Suellen, Steve, Anna, and Michele, thank you, thank you!

Well, we’re at the 23 week mark until the race. There hasn’t been a change in my weight since I started training, but I can tell I’m feeling better from eating more wholesome foods, and less fats and sugar, and my sleep has improved. Suellen and I are going to Antrim Lake for our first walk together after work, and I’ve scheduled training days for next week all ready. So much is going on that I will have to get my butt out of bed early and do some walking in the early morning hours. At least it will be cooler then!

p.s: And to all the people who have given me such positive feedback on my blog, it’s so nice to hear all the great comments. I’m having a lot of fun.

Just Plain Silliness

Sometimes you just get so tired after a lonnnnnngg day, you just need to have fun with cardboard cutouts.

“I still have my feet on the ground, I just wear better shoes.” ....Oprah Winfrey

....so, there I was, half way around Sharon Woods Friday evening, and my feet went all crazy on me. Have you ever had a toe spasm? Believe me, not fun. I knew I was eventually going to have to get really good shoes to train, and then, later, to do the walk, in (two pairs are recommended), but I wanted to get some use out of the shoes I had. They were brand new, as of the beginning of April. The first couple of weeks they were fine. But then one Sunday, once again in Sharon Woods, I developed a blister the size of Rhode Island. It took two weeks for it to heal. And since then my feet have ached every time I wore those shoes for an extended period of time, like anything over 10 minutes. Anyway, I guess my feet finally had had enough and went on strike. The rest of the evening they would go into spasms, looking like hideous curled talons. ---hmmmmm, note to self: clip toenails tonight....

I got up early Saturday and headed out to Dublin to the Columbus Running Company. There I met Matt who evaluated my feet (yes, my arches are high enough for a VW Bug to drive under, and they roll to the side so much they could cause a small tsunami) and stride, to determine what shoe would be good for me. Matt's good....the first pair I tried on felt like heaven. My little tootsies audibly sighed in relief. Just to make sure, I tried on a second pair and they just weren't the same.

Yes, these shoes are a little flashy, all chartreuse and silvery, but they feel divine. And, again yes, they are 'way more expensive than I usually spend on athletic shoes, but if I'm going to make this thing work, and finish the 60 miles on foot and not carried in on a stretcher, I have to invest in good shoes. That's it! I'm investing in my feet.

So, the lesson for the weekend is to always wear good shoes to protect your feet. And not to eat White Castles on a training day. 'Nough said.

Woo Hoo, My Training Kit Came!

I love it when I get packages! My official 3 Day training kit came. As you can see, Katie was thoroughly inspecting the products for quality. There's a shirt, a nifty blue visor, very cool socks, a water bottle, a two-bottle fanny pack (hydration is very important), one water bottle, and something called "Glide". It's supposed to help keep me from chafing. The only thing I'm disappointed about is the shirt....I got an XL, but it looks small. Very small. But maybe it just looks smaller than it actually is. I hope so. Tomorrow is a gym day. I haven't been in a while so I'll probably be very sore.

Training Day vs Sleeping Day?

The votes are in, and sleeping won over training.

I had fully planned on getting out to Hoover and "walk the steps" today. Hoover is one of the area's reservoirs, and there are a series of steps on either side of the spill way....157 steps on one side, and 123 on the other. One "circuit" is down and up one set of steps, across the spill way, down and up the second set, back across the spill way to my starting point. Last week I was able to do two full circuits before I dropped from exhaustion.

Anyway, with yesterday's Walk for the Cure, and then working 5 hours at my part time job, I logged in 21,309 steps on my pedometer. That's 8.076 miles! By the time I got home at 11:30 p.m., I wasn't even able to stay up and watch my favorite show replay, The Real Deal on TLC. I think I passed out as soon as my head hit the pillow. And today, I just needed to sleep.

All this tells me I have a lot of work to do over the next 5 1/2 months if I'm this tired after only 8 miles! But the good news is that I have two workout buddies lined up. My friends, Suellen and Hester, both want to lose some weight and get in shape. I'm confident that we can inspire each other to reach our goals.