Reasons it's great to be me (well at least for today anyway! :)

1) I woke up & stepped on the scale where I was finally rewarded with seeing the number that means I have lost 10lbs!!! (since I first started 'trying' again in October)
This felt really good, especially since I wasn't quite expecting it to be this morning & because I had been hanging around the same pound or two for the last 2 weeks. The combination of calorie counting & running are finally starting to show their results-Thank Goodness! :)

2) I can easily say too that I'm confident that the changes I have been making are for good this time around & I have developed a phenomenal 'will power' as a result. Yes, that was me last week at the ALL DAY meeting (with the donut holes, M&M's, some sort of delicious looking homemade Mississippi Mud Cake brownie things, & other candies sitting on our tables the entire time) who didn't even have one little nibble of any of these things-ALL DAY LONG.

3) I was reading & discussing a book about the Pilgrims' First Thanksgiving with a group of 2nd graders today. The book mentioned how the Pilgrim children did not "go to school" during their first year in Plymouth, but that the children did learn things like manners. These manners included standing at the table to eat, wearing their hats while eating & not speaking unless an adult had spoken to them first. As one can imagine, my students found all of these quite preposterous ;) I singled out the one who I know has the hardest time "not speaking" & asked him if he would have liked being a Pilgrim child...he said "No, I don't think I would handle that very well. I like to talk!" then he proceeds to say..."But I would like to adopt a child someday so that I could teach it to be a Pilgrim child!" ;)

4) I was walking a kindergartener (who had gotten in trouble during lunch recess) inside to the cafeteria & on our walk (which he wasn't very happy about as you may gather) we had the following conversation...
Me: "Was yelling at the other kid a good choice?"
Kndgter: "No! I'm going to get some fertilizer and spread it all over you!"
Me (thinking how I had never yet been threatened with fertilizer): "Fertilizer, huh? Well what good would that do-fertilizer wouldn't help me any."
Kndgter: "I'm going to get some fertilizer and spread it all over you. You won't like it and it will be bad!"
Me: "Well, I just don't see what good that would do. I don't need any fertilizer & doing that won't help you out any...so that just doesn't seem like a very good idea now does it! Maybe we can come up with a better idea."
-Not sure that he cared about any different/new ideas, but at least he made it into lunch & I was still clean as a whistle! ;)

#16 Best Friends

I have had several "best friends" through the years. All of these friends were (& still are) good people. Some of them I still see somewhat on a regular basis & others I see hardly at all or have lost almost complete contact with them. Only one of these friendships ended on a 'sour' note, but even then God decided to teach me a lesson in irony when this friend ended up marrying one of my cousins several years later. Being family (in my mind anyway) means being friends or at the very least being friendly, so although that friendship is definitely not to the degree it once was-it has at least become a friendly friendship once again (which I can say does make me glad :) The other "best" friendships changed in status to more regular friendships or just mere aquaintances mostly due to growing apart/different circumstances in life or for the most part because I have finally realized as an adult (hindsight is such a good teacher, I definitely did not learn these lessons at the times the friendships were "changing") that, for the most part, these friends were always way more important to me than I was to them. Now don't get me wrong, they definitely viewed me as their "friend" and would even agree with me at the times of those "best" friendships on the opinion that we were "best friends", but it was never completely a two-way street.

How do I know this now you might be asking yourself?

In all of these friendships, I was the one doing most of the work to "keep in touch" with the other person...probably an 80/20 (meaning I made 80% of the contact/phone calls/arrangements for hanging out, etc). This is not completely all their fault-I now realize that I also tended to be a "needier" friend than they were too. I needed to be in contact more...I needed to hang out together more...I needed to have a "best friend" like I'd always seen in the movies/TV/read about in books (you know the ones-we've known each other most of our lives, we know each other better than anyone else knows us, friends are more important than any guy!) Which leads me to my next point...

Once a guy (or even a "better" person to hang out with in the moment) came into the picture, it was "Sayanora" for me-at least, until that guy or "better" person was out of the picture again. This was always very frustrating for me because I always held the friendship in such high regard & yet this was never quite reciprocated towards me. Inevitabley, this would be the factor that lead to the decline in all of these friendships. I would realize that I would never quite be a priority to them unless I wanted to exert 100% of the effort to keep in touch with them. And once I stopped trying so hard, you guessed it? The friendships pretty well came to standstills.

Looking back on the first 20+ years of my life & some of these friendships always makes me a little bit sad, but I am still, oh so grateful, for the many fun times/memories I have had with these folks. I am also grateful for the lessons I have learned from all of these friendships & the appreciation that I do have now for the two "best friends" I do have.

I have learned from them how wonderful it is to have friendships that aren't "one-way streets" & always enjoy when the phone rings & it's one of their names on the caller ID (even if it is just a phone call to bitch or moan about something ;) I love my 2 sisters dearly & wouldn't trade them for anything in the world, but I'm pretty sure that my current "best friends" are just "sisters" who had been misplaced for years & I'm so glad to have finally 'found' them! ;)

The Key to Running is...

knowing that you are just about going to die when you start each time...

and will never make it through to your goal for the day...

and that you will need to stop at any moment or you will fall down to die...

and then realizing that you've already put in this much effort...

and that you are so close to your goal that you will be utterly disappointed in yourself if you don't finish...

and then realizing at the end of the run that you have reached that goal so now you can start walking again...

and then being filled with one of the best senses of accomplishment you could ever have imagined because YOU DID IT!

This has been a big part of my life for the last month and I am very proud to say that I am now running 2 MILES at a time!!! :) (It's a slow 2 miles, but still it's 2 miles!!!)

My ultimate goal is 3 miles & with the plan I've been following, that means about 3 more weeks of training! My only setback has been the past week with the lack of evening daylight hours, but as always my brain is always strategizing for different ways to fit in some 'training' time so I have no doubt that I'll get it figured out soon I'm also not too big of a fan of trying to run while pushing a stroller uphill with a 35+lb kid in it, but can manage when it's necessary, luckily for me though that hasn't happened super often yet, but I guess it does make for a better workout! ;)