Dear Mazzy

Have you guys seen this phenomenon known by various names, including “Bull Balls” or “Bumper Nuts”? They’re these fake ball sacks that you hang from the trailer hitch of your truck. They’re very popular out where I live…you know, Backwoods, Texas…but I just don’t get it. I certainly don’t want my four-year-old daughter to ask me what they are.

Why on earth would you want to hang a FAKE SCROTUM from your vehicle? To tell everyone that you’re a total douchebag? Yeah, that must be it.

I maintain that the boys who talk about their junk/sex/etc. are the most are the ones who are getting it the least. Hanging a fake scrotum from your trailer hitch pretty much ensures that you aren’t getting it at all.

I ran my 5K race on Saturday and it was AWESOME! I ran the entire race, only stopping once for water. No walking! I finished in 40:56, which was pretty much right in the middle of the pack. I can’t even tell you how great it felt, I was smiling like a total goofball the entire time (as evidenced in the race pix I saw today).

My friend A had also signed up & been training for the race, and I’m so proud of her because she did great. She’s a full-time nurse and also in school full-time, and she does all of her running outdoors (not on the treadmill like me). She has very limited time to train, but she still pulled it out & kicked some ass, running the whole thing with me. If it weren’t for her, I seriously doubt that I would have felt as good as I did throughout the race. At no time did I feel like I couldn’t go on, or even needed to stop. We kept a pretty slow pace, average was 4.6 mph or 13:11 min mile…but you know what they say about the tortoise…

I’m already planning my next race – I see how people get addicted to this. I haven’t had that much fun doing something in a long, long time and I can now officially call myself…a runner!

Tomorrow I officially graduate from the Couch to 5K program by running my first official 5K race, The Cowtown.

Just last night and this morning, I realized how good I’ve been feeling. I started running in November, and have run on a regular basis since the first of the year. I joined Weight Watchers about a month ago & have really changed my diet. The medication that I started taking for depression is helping. The vacation time I took in December also helped.

I feel like I’m finally back in control of my life. In control of my mind and my body. I’M RUNNING A 5K RACE TOMORROW!! I can’t even begin to tell you what this means to me. I have NEVER been one to exercise. Hell, I’ve never even been one to set a goal and stick with it until I achieve it, especially where exercise is concerned. I really have to thank the creators of the Couch to 5K plan, and all of my Twitter & Daily Mile peeps for their support, encouragement and inspiration. Finding a whole world of people like me who weren’t always runners but were finding so much strength in running was truly what made me realize that I could do it.

I’m so thankful that I’m in a place of peace in my life. I’m taking time for me and trying new things. I’m going to a tweet up tonight for dinner with a bunch of people I’ve never met IRL. For those of you who don’t know me IRL, this is just not something that I do. Scratch that – it’s not something I would have done in the past, but now? I’m not afraid to take some chances, try new things, make new friends.

The new & improved Amy! I think I like her.

We got some serious snow last week. I’m talking over a FOOT of snow. I know, I know, you folks in places other than North Texas are likely rolling your eyes, but seriously, it was a BIG DEAL around here. Check it out:

We even had enough to build a snowman!

The kids and I were stuck in the house together for too many days. Jack was sick, Mazzy was getting cabin fever, and I was just plain worn out. But the snow was awesome!

I’ve been without words this week. I have some things going on at work that are frustrating me, but nothing I can really share here. So I’ll tell you a little story to show you how weird I am.

When I was in high school, I went on a church ski trip. It was the first time I’d ever been skiing, and I had a fantastic time. We were in Breckenridge, Colorado which even back then was not exactly a cheap place to hang out. One evening we went into town and a few of us had dinner at some fancy, very expensive steakhouse.

Now my family wasn’t rich, and the only way I was able to even go on this ski trip was that I’m fortunate enough to have a December birthday, so this trip served as both birthday & Christmas for me that year. I was given some spending money to take along, I don’t recall how much, but dinner at a fancy, very expensive steakhouse didn’t really fit into my budget.

Kindhearted that she was, one of the girls with me offered to loan me some money for the meal. I can’t remember exactly how much, but it was at least $50, and maybe as much as $100. Probably $50. I accepted the loan, knowing even as I did that I was going to have a hard time getting money from my parents to pay her back.

We returned from the trip, and now I owed her $50. But I knew if I told my parents I had borrowed that money, they would be very upset. It’s not that they wouldn’t have the money to give me – we weren’t rich, but we weren’t really hurting for much, either – but the fact that I had borrowed that much money from someone AND spent it on ONE MEAL would have just thrown them into a fury.

So I just never told them. And then I spent the rest of my time in that town (our family moved away a year or two later) avoiding the girl who gave me the loan because I was embarrassed about it. I think she even asked me about it once, which just made me even more cautious about having face-time with her.

Thanks to Facebook, she & I are now back in contact and are actually going to see each other at a little mini-reunion of sorts later this month. For YEARS this whole unpaid debt thing has bothered me, and of course in my mind she remembers me as some horrible mooch who bums money & then doesn’t repay it. So in anticipation of our reunion I sent her a message & told her how much it’s bothered me & asked if I could please pay her back.

Get this? SHE DOESN’T EVEN REMEMBER IT!!! My years of self-torture were completely without merit. I may not have paid her back, but at least I confessed, took responsibility for my actions, and can now move on. I will now consider that debt settled.

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.