{struggling}

I'd be lying with my answer if you asked me lately how I'm doing. I'd sit and tell you that I'm going good.

But lately I've been struggling.

Life lately has honestly been great, but I've just felt down.

I'm graduating in just over two weeks.

I have a job lined up for right after graduation.

I passed my licensing exam.

I have an amazing family.

I recently ran a kick ass half marathon.

And yet, here I sit, down in the dumps.

I'm struggling with feelings of jealousy of others. I know I shouldn't want for what others have. I know that my life is different and will continue to be different from others. I know that we each forge our own paths and things work out in due time for everyone, but just lately I can't help it.

As quick as graduation is approaching, it still seems so far away. It doesn't seem real yet. I have been waiting for this for the last four years and it has felt like it will never get here. As much as I want graduation, I want what comes after it even more... getting married, buying a house, having babies. I can't even begin to count the number of people I know who are doing all three... and oh how I want to be in that group.

Yes, I know it will get here in time. I mean, we are under six months until wedding time! I know that it seems like it will never get here because I have been waiting YEARS for these things. Most people find 'the one' and get married in just a few years, then comes a house and kids right away. I've been waiting to marry my 'one' for almost five years now! I've been waiting to have another kid for OVER five years. It is SO hard to continue to wait for something like these things when you want them SO bad and see almost everyone around you getting it.

Yes, I know. Do not covet what thy neighbor has. So sue me. Tell me you've never wanted what someone else has. Yeah, thought so!

Not going to lie, I've stopped using my wedding countdown as a wedding countdown. I've switched it to a countdown to when I can try and get pregnant. And it cannot come soon enough!

What else is causing my moodiness. PMS? Nope.

The inability to run. I want to run SO bad. I can't. I won't. Still recovering from knee pain.

Two weeks since my half marathon this weekend. Doing a 5K Dream in Color walk with little man on Saturday. Then it's balls to the wall with working out again. Maybe not running or full force running, but definitely getting back into my groove.

My willpower to stay away from the good food lately has been nonexistent. I mean come on, how can turn down Arby's curly fries? Or deep fried fish? Um, not me! Especially when someone else is cooking it for me. Thanks honeykins! And my lack of cardio and strength training means my extra calories are no longer getting worked off. I've been making an awesome effort at keeping my water intake on the up and up though, so that is a plus!

I'm getting married in September and I am making a promise right here and now that I will be a rocking hot bride! So, it's best to get my summer workout routine going before summer hits! Plus, I'm going to have off Monday's and Wednesday's this summer so that will give me plenty of extra time to get my sweat on! Yeah, that's right!

P.S. I mentioned I passed my license exam, right?! That's a whole lot of awesome! A whole lot of awesome because although I may have sounded confident about it to others when I talked about it, I was secretly kind of freaking about whether or not I passed. I thought there was probably a 50% chance of it going either way. Found out today my scores and they were plenty high enough to pass! That's right! And I totally celebrated with ice cream for supper at a local ice cream shop in town. If you know me in real life and know of Scoops... um, yeah, yummy! Best ice cream and they puts lot of cookie dough in my avalanche! SO good! SO worth it!

Okay. I'm feeling better now. I knew I just needed to get some words out of my fingers to make me feel better.

Tomorrow is Friday. It will be a good day!

CIAO! LOVE ME!

{thank you mother nature}

I have a couple of other posts that I have up my sleeve, but they include adding pictures and I am not on my computer right now (working with the tablet) and that requires turning on the computer and these days that takes a good ten minutes, plus it also involves getting off the couch and right now I'm pretty comfortable, hehe!

The posts up my sleeves included one about a new squirrel friend, Ayden's first soccer game of the season, and our first trip down to the lake for the spring/summer season. Those will come... in due time!

I've had the last four days off and it has been mighty nice... not going to lie! My boss was at a convention in Las Vegas at the end of last week and since I'm technically still a student for the next few weeks, I am unable to see patients without a licensed audiologist on the premise... no audiologist, no work for the student.

I've kept pretty busy these last four days, not going to lie! The little man only had a half day of school on Thursday, so it worked out kind of nice. I picked him and Alexis up after school and they spent the afternoon playing together. During the morning I worked on quite a few wedding things, cleaning, doing laundry... kept myself busy. I didn't sit down and turn the TV on until after the kids got home from school. The weather was pretty awesome these last four days and I was totally bumming that I couldn't get outside and do some running. I'm being the good athlete and still resting it. Don't want to make something worse than it already is.

Friday. Another busy day. More cleaning, organizing, wedding stuff. Kept myself busy and the TV turned off. I've also been guzzling water like crazy these last couple of days. At least three to four large cups of water a day because I knew that if I kept myself hydrated I was less likely to snack on stuff while I was at home. That is my downfall. I love food too much and since I haven't been working out like crazy this last month, I need to start watching my food better. I think I was halfway decent with that these last couple of days. Although, the peanut butter M&Ms that I gave in to today were SO good! Does it help that I went swimming for a good 40 minutes?! Haha!

Anyways, Thursday and Friday were highly productive.

Saturday and Sunday, semi productive. Ayden had a soccer game yesterday morning and he did great. Pictures and recap to come in a following post. Afterwards, him and I went out to my grandparent's house and chilled out there for a little while. He ended up spending the majority of the day there playing with a cousin and Alexis. I ended up coming home after a few hours and then going on an impromptu 3.33 mile walk with Victoria. We finished in just over an hour... not walking too fast. After the walk, Jay had let me know that he rented a thatcher for the lawn. Because I was bored, the weather was great, and I didn't want to sit inside on my bum, I helped him outside with the lawn. I must have been really bored, haha! I never help with the landscaping!

I even operated the thatcher for the front half of the lawn. After that, I raked the entire front half of the lawn to get the dead grass up. I needed some sort of workout and the legs weren't going to allow anything too high impact for lower body, so instead, I did upper body with the rake. Took me probably a good 45 minutes. After raking, I vegged for the rest of the night. Enjoyed the nice night weather and hit the bed earlier than normal for a Saturday night.

Today was alright. Not as productive cleaning or house wise, but Jay, his dad, and brother helped put the pier in the lake by his grandparent's house while his mom and I 'supervised' and Ayden caught minnows. I really wanted to go to High Cliff State Park afterwards, but Jay and Ayden wanted to go fishing, so my idea was out. I came home and sat outside for a bit. I couldn't be inside. Just couldn't. I wanted to start a new book, but didn't have one on hand to start, so I didn't. That was okay though, because shortly after I sat down, a friend from down the road text me and let me know that she was going to go swimming. Um... great idea! I was home alone and desperately looking for something to do! Oh how I wanted to go rollerblading or running, but once again... didn't. So swimming it was! It was GREAT! I was swimming laps with a goofy grin on my face, fist pumping wildly in my head... all because I was moving and grooving and kicking my legs and my knee DIDN'T HURT! Oh how it felt good! Will need to keep the swimming up, at least for the next couple of weeks! Also, I've been missing me some hot yoga something fierce lately! Need to get back into the groove of going to that too!

And now here I sit, with a full stomach of good food ready for another week! Jay made honey barbeque ribs on the grill tonight and dang they were yummy! I topped one off with some french fries and a pile of fresh strawberries! Oh yummy! It's a good thing I went swimming today, needed some sort of calorie deficit for the ribs, haha!

I am SO not ready to go back to work tomorrow. This weather has been great and I am in full on good weather mode right now. Wanting, needing, have to be outside!

CIAO! LOVE ME!

{tattoos}

I might have posted something about my tattoos when I first started blogging, but I thought it was time for an update and/or new post in case anyone reading this now wasn’t a reader back then (anyone? anyone? haha!) and doesn’t feel like going back through any of my old posts. I mean, come next week I will have been blogging for… 5 YEARS! O.M.G.!!! Where HAS the time gone?!

Anyways, yesterday I added to my tattoo collection, so I thought I would do a post about all of my tattoos…

I got my first tattoo shortly after Ayden was born. It is a little baby angel sitting on an cloud with Ayden’s name above it. It is on my back, but not quite low enough to be what I consider the typical ‘tramp stamp’. Ugh, I hate that connotation. This picture doesn’t really do it justice because I was taking it from a reflection in a mirror and believe you me, it’s hard to take a picture of your back, haha! I often forget I even have this tattoo because I don’t ever see it. I loved it when I got it and I still love it.!I got my second tattoo on my right wrist probably a year or so after the first one. They (whoever they actually are) aren’t kidding when they say that tattoos are addicting! This one means persistence (or at least I hope it does, lol!). I had someone who spoke Chinese as her native language double check it for me. And even if it’s slightly wrong, 99.9% of the people that I run into and see it wouldn’t know whether that is what it actually said anyways. I got a little bit of flack for getting a wrist tattoo from some people, especially since I was so young. Some people thought it might hinder me being able to get a job in the future. I deal with people EVERY day for my profession and I have yet to run into someone who says something bad about it. Honestly, once again, 99.9% of people don’t say anything about it. And honestly, if I were to not get a job based on a tattoo on my wrist, then I probably didn’t really want to work at that place anyways. I love this tattoo simply for the meaning. I have had to be damn persistent to get through everything that I have. Having a kid at 18, going through college, graduating with my bachelor’s degree, going back for my doctorate, and now graduating with that! Hell yeah!I honestly don’t know how long after number 2 it was before I got number 3… probably another year or so. “Believe” has always been my mantra, hence the meaning of that. All through life I have been big on ‘don’t just hope for something to happen, believe that it will’. The footprints are Ayden’s from his birth certificate (shrunk down)… that is why one of the feet only has four toes. I wanted it to be just like his certificate (even though the child does have all five toes on both feet).There was quite some time between number 3 and number 4. I think, thus far, number 4 is my favorite. It doesn’t hold any specific special meaning to me, other than I really love lilies. Like obsessively love them! I could take pictures and stare at them for hours! They are so pretty, especially the star gazers! This tattoo hurt like a mother, but I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out! And just yesterday I got tattoo numbers 5 and 6! Number 5 is in commemoration of my half marathon. I think it is just too cute! There is enough room under the 13.1 to put a 26.2 if I were to ever decide to run a full marathon. To some people running a half marathon may not seem like a big deal, but it definitely was for me, so I wanted something permanent to remember it by!And here is number 6! I think it speaks for itself. Simple and sweet… just what I was looking for!My need for tattoos has been satiated for awhile. I doubt that I am done getting them, but that is just me. They aren’t for everyone and I full respect that, but they are for me!

CIAO! LOVE ME!

{oshkosh half marathon: part 3}

Post Race

If I thought I knew what pain was after my 17k, I was wrong!

I could tell immediately after the race that I was going to be in some kind of pain for the rest of the day. I think it was probably less than I had imagined because I drugged up even before the race started. By the time I got back to my house afterwards, I was very tight. So much for really stretching it out after the race, haha! The one thing I really need to work on.

Instead of being smart and taking an ice bath or shower or even icing my knees, I hopped into a regular shower and then as a family we headed off for some bowling afterwards. I bowled one game with Jay and the little man and then watched them bowl two more. I was sore for the game that I bowled, but I dealt.

For the rest of the day I laid on the couch and watched some good old boob tube. I was surprised that I did zonk out at all and take a good nap considering I was up even before the crack of dawn!

What I was prepared for was the amount of pain that I would be in the following day! O.M.G.!!! I should have iced on Sunday! My knees, particularly my right one, hurt like a bitch with any movement yesterday. Stairs were my nemesis!

I got smart, well Jay made me get smart, last night and I iced my knee for a couple of hours yesterday. I was gone all day and on my feet, so I know that that didn't help any.

I have to say that Day 2 post race, my left knee is pretty much back at normal... my right knee though is still pretty tender even to the touch. More icing tonight.

I really messed up not getting new shoes before the 17k. Ugh! I know that given the amount of pain that I am in right now that I should not run for a good three to four weeks. I will give my knee two weeks off from running, concentrate on some upper body work and then maybe see how the knees are feeling after that. Start out slow with a mile or two.

Was the medal worth the pain... HELL YEAH! Pain is temporary... pride is FOREVER! I am SO proud of myself! I earned it baby, I earned it!

CIAO! LOVE ME!

{oshkosh half marathon: part 2}

Race Day

My day for the Oshkosh Half Marathon started at 4:40am. I can’t even begin to tell you when the last time was that my eyes had see that number on the clock and I was getting out of bed. I didn’t even know there was morning time before 5am, haha!

But I rolled out of bed, just not feeling the run. I mean, it was WAY early! I had set everything out the night before so I knew I wouldn’t forget anything. I still forgot two things… sunglasses and chapstick. Luckily it wasn’t sunny out, so didn’t miss the sunglasses, but did miss the chapstick!Victoria picked me up by 5:15am and we were on our way! I don’t think either of us was too excited to begin with because it was just so darn early. We chatted it up per usual on our way to the run. We ended up getting a good parking spot and didn’t arrive too early before the start of the race. We got our bibs and then chilled for a bit inside the building before heading out to the start line. We were going to use the bathrooms before the race started, but the woman’s line was super long and neither of us really had to go. Just precautionary, haha!

We took our before run picture and then headed out the doors!Yeah, we rock some awesome shoes too!And today Victoria even rocked some even awesomer (yes I made that a word) leggings that I must try and get some of!The 5k path and the half marathon path split from each other pretty early on in the race so Victoria and I didn’t even get to run together at all. Prior to the race I had set myself up behind the 2:20 pace guy (finish the race in 2 hours 20 minutes). I had a goal of finishing under 2:30, but also knew that with my current knee issues, it might take me longer.

I started out nice and slow and steady and kept the 2:20 pace guy in my sights for about the first five miles. I was feeling pretty good. I saw Jay’s grandparents and mom around the three mile mark and that made me smile! Also around that time I had started to get that familiar knee pain that I’ve been talking about. I was a little worried about it then because I knew I had another 10 miles to go, but I kept my pace slow and steady and just continued to put one foot in front of the other. The miles continued to pass and I continued to tell myself that I could do this… for me… and for Boston. I would finish!

Around the seven mile mark I saw my honey, little man, my mom, and Jay’s grandparents and mom again. I handed off my gloves to Jay because I was getting pretty warm by then. I was continuing to push through the knee pain and just kept going! I figured that at least by that point I was over halfway through!

I hit mile 9 and started to doubt myself. I knew at that point I only had four miles to go, but I was starting to feel the fatigue in my legs. My breathing was still pretty good, no huffing and puffing, but the legs were getting tired. It didn’t help that I must have missed the mile 10 marker because I was thinking that mile 9 was the longest ever!

I saw my family again shortly before mile 11 and that gave me just the push that I needed to continue. It also helped that shortly after seeing them, I saw the mile 11 marker and knew that I only had two miles left. I started to think that I really could finish!

I also have to add that somewhere between mile five and six I passed the 2:20 pacesetter and knew I could probably push myself to finish in under 2:20. I hadn’t really set a goal out for myself when starting, other than to finish. I had a time I would have liked to beat, but wasn’t going to push myself. After passing the pacesetter… it was then that I set a goal for myself to get under 2:20.After mile 11, I saw my family two more times before crossing the finish line and seeing them so much at the end of the race really kept me going! As I was approaching the finish line I took my earbuds out so I could hear all of the cheering from everyone! It was really kind of awesome and exciting!

It was so exciting to cross the finish line and seeing that it was under 2:20! The official results have not been posting online yet for the chip timing, but here is what my watch said after I crossed the finish line! I CANNOT BELIEVE IT! I am in utter awe at myself, especially since my training this last month has been pretty lack luster. I KILLED my original goal for my first half marathon!And of course we needed our after race picture! Victoria rocked her 5k! We told ourselves at the beginning of the race that we were not going to let our heads get to us during the run and that we were going to finish happy and I think we both had great runs! Just what we needed!I am DAMN proud of that medal! Damn proud!

Jay keeps saying that I should think about doing a full marathon. I don’t know about that yet. Right now I have no ambition to do one, but that may change!

Half marathon finisher! Can’t believe I just ran 13.1 miles without stopping!

CIAO! LOVE ME!