Dear Mazzy

Wow, I guess I jinxed my poor Hambone. He had surgery yesterday to have a growth removed from under his tail. Fortunately, everything went well and the vet doesn’t expect the growth to return. Unfortunately, he has to sport the lovely cone o’ shame for two weeks until the stitches dissolve.

For the last 6 weeks or so, I’ve been doing the Couch to 5K program. It’s a training guide that basically alternates walking/jogging for 9 weeks of 3 x week workouts so that you gradually build up to jogging for the full 5K (approx. 3.1 miles).

I haven’t wanted to blog about it before, because it seems like as soon as I announce to the world that I’m undertaking some new fitness/weight loss plan, I immediately fall off the wagon. But this time’s different. I did slack a little over the holidays, but I didn’t let some small setbacks stop me. I haven’t been beating myself up if I miss a day; I simply do it the next day. And the cool thing is, I’ve been actually enjoying it. I can feel my body responding to the workouts, my muscles are stretching and getting stronger.

The benefits aren’t just physical, though. I love the confidence I’m building by seeing that I can, in fact, be a runner. I have NEVER run in my life. I always avoided it in school, I always thought, “I can’t do that. I’m too weak. I don’t have endurance. I can’t.” I decided to change my mind, decided that, “I can.” Plus, I love getting some time to myself a few times a week.

I’m only on Week 6 of the program, but I’m signed up for my first 5K race, The Cowtown, on Feb. 27. And you know what? If I don’t end up being able to run the whole thing, that’s ok. I’ll just keep working at it until I can.

Hambone has such a tough life.

Especially when I try to dry out his dog bed from the soaking rain.

What, you expected him to wait until I put it back on the ground?

Over the weekend, we were all hanging out at my parents’ house with my brother & his daughter. My dad dips tobacco (GROSS!) and generally has various spit cups lying around the house. Most of the time these cups are empty water bottles, and when the kids are over he tries to make sure he keeps the lids on them.

Only this past weekend, he must have forgotten to put the lid on one. You see where this is going, right?

Brett, my mom, my brother & I were all in the computer room watching some fascinating YouTube videos of lizards eating rats (my brother has a lizard or two in his house (no, I don’t know why) (yes, he’s a grown-ass man)) when Jack came into the room and tossed a nearly empty tobacco-spit-bottle into my brother’s lap.

As first my mom, then the rest of us, slowly realized what happened, a bit of chaos ensued. My mom took Jack to the bathroom to wash his mouth out and I walked into the living room to find the majority of the bottle’s contents poured all over the very-light-beige colored carpet in the living room.

We weren’t really sure if he actually ingested any of the tobacco spit (TOBACCO SPIT!! How vile!) or not. We kept an eye on him & he didn’t seem to be acting weird, so we figured he got a taste of it but then spit (heh-heh) it out. Later on at home, he was cuddling with Brett on the couch when suddenly he vomited. And it smelled like tobacco. Fortunately he only threw up once, and he seemed fine afterward.

Fast-forward to the next morning. Brett got up with Jack & I was still lazing around in bed playing Uno on my phone when I heard Brett cry out, “Jack! NO!!” with more than the usual urgency.

Jack got hold of a nearly-empty beer bottle and took a swig. Luckily he didn’t like the taste & spit (most of) it out.

This boy is on a path of self-destruction. Either that or he’s learned that stuff is nasty & he’ll have such strong associations with it that when he’s old enough to actually experiment with it, he won’t be interested.

Mazzy had her 4 year-old check-up at the pediatrician’s office yesterday. Her doctor is a woman, but the nurse we see most of the time happens to be male. Yes, a male nurse at a pediatrician’s office might seem a little strange, and I admit that I was maybe a little…I don’t know…confused by it at first, but he’s great and now that I’ve gotten used to him, I really like him. I guess the only thing that bothered me was the fact that I specifically wanted a woman doctor and then suddenly there’s this dude taking care of my daughter, but he’s good so whatever.

He also happens to be a pretty good-looking guy, not that I usually even notice. He’s friendly & good with the kids, even though Jack screams every time he looks at him.

Mazzy, it turns out, might like him a little more than she let on in the office yesterday. He kept trying & trying to get her to talk to him, but she’s shy sometimes & would never speak a word to him.

When Brett got home yesterday & was asking her about the visit, he asked her if she liked Drew*. She got the funniest look on her face, a sort of embarrassed smile, and said, “Forget about it!” When he asked again, she got even more flustered and more adamant that he “Just FORGET ABOUT IT!”  (I’ve never heard her use that phrase before.)

I think it’s safe to say that she’s got her first little crush. Yikes!

*Name changed to protect the innocent.

One of the things Brett & I did over the holidays is watch a few movies, including the most recent Star Trek movie. I’ve never watched a single episode of Star Trek with Captain Kirk – I know, I know! I’m so weird. I did watch The Next Generation for a while, mostly because I didn’t have cable in my room & it was the only thing on. And maybe a little bit because I though Captain Picard was kind of hot in a ‘mature’ sort of way. But I digress.

Anyway, the movie was ok, but since I really didn’t get the whole back story/front story/relationships, etc. that probably make the whole thing a little more interesting, I had to find ways to entertain myself during the movie. The best thing I found was to simply add the word “bitches” to the end of just about every sentence the characters said.

Just try it, it’s great.

“My name is James Tiberius Kirk, bitches!”

“Hey! Watch your Vulcan language, bitches!”

“Fire up those thrusters, bitches!”

It makes it so much more fun!

I have had the most wonderful nearly-two-week vacation over the holidays. I admit that prior to vacation, I was secretly nervous about so. much. time. alone. with my family.

But it was great! We did a whole lot of nothing for the most part. Cooked. Cleaned. Ate. Drank. Slept late. Took naps. Watched movies. Played with the kids. A little laundry.

Oh yeah, Christmas was in there, and we did some family stuff on some days. But mostly? We just hung out together in our pj’s and it was great.

I love my family. How’s that for starting out 2010 on a good note?

Last weekend, Brett & I ventured out to our old ‘hood in the city to do some Christmas shopping. Anytime we do this, we always discuss living there vs. living in the sticks. We always think about all of the *cool* stuff we could do, the great places we could shop & eat, go have a drink.

But then reality gave us a little slap in the face when we were driving around, trying to come up with somewhere to go for dinner. And we couldn’t think of a single place we wanted to go. The places we used to go were fine when we lived there, but they just didn’t seem fitting for a destination dinner.  For my birthday, no less.  So we drove around aimlessly for a while and finally decided to head south, where we ate dinner in B-town, the closest suburb with restaurants that don’t have drive-thru windows.

I guess it’s true that you just can’t go back.  I think I’m starting to realize that while we may not always live where we do, it’s not very likely that we’ll ever move back to that city.  And I think I’m ok with that.