Runnnnnn

>>>>My celebrity sister--- Champion of the Women's 5K!


The results are in: I didn't beat my goal of finishing under 30 minutes. I officially got my worst 5k time EVER today --- 30:18. My high school coaches would be painfully disappointed. I beat that time in the 4th grade when my legs were like half the length they are now! But, in reality my goal was to beat a 10 minute mile pace and I did (that would be my ideal marathon pace)-- 9:45 to be exact. It was a rather lonely race. I wasn't by anyone pretty much the entire race. Except for a girl in blue pants that I promised to beat at the starting line. I did, indeed, I beat her.

I felt good the entire race and the weather was perfect. Feeling good is an obvious indicator that I wasn't pushing it. Shame, shame on me. I am the first to admit I don't like pain. With good reason of course. I wanted to want to do this sort of thing again, so I did everything in my power to ensure that I wasn't feeling miserable during the race and asking myself each step "why do I do this to myself?!" After all these years I don't think I feel more at home than I do in a pair of running shoes along a trail or path. It felt great to be back "home." During the race I found myself saying, "Why didn't I do this sooner? This is kind of nice!"

I took 30th place overall and 8th in my age group. And even better, Melody took first! Was I surprised? No way. Sadly Mel walked away with a pretty lame prize-- a visor. Well, she also won free entry into a race series in Utah which is probably worth a pretty penny, so that's cool-- but come on! What's with the outrageous entry fees and the stupid prizes? Remember the golden years at BYU when the entry fees were like 5 bucks and if you won you got a free Turkey and a gift certificate? Okay, I never won that, but that's what I would have won had I won a race there. Again, I live through my sister's experiences.

In any case, I am going to make it a tradition every Memorial Day to run in a race in memory of my Grandpa Rex. We love you G-pa!

Cold Turkey

This is me tomorrow at about 7:30am (except i have longer hair)

My fitness freak sister talked me into running a 5k tomorrow. I haven't run in like 2 months. I hope I finish. My goal is to break 30 minutes. I need to whip my post-partum body into shape, so this is good for me. Thanks to my mom, melody, and rebecca, I am fully equipped to run since I didn't pack any running clothes on this last minute trip.

Good luck to me.

To All You Women Out There:

Time is short, but I HAD to post this! I get a weekly e-mail from my favorite organizational queen, Marie Ricks, who gives great tips that make my life run a little bit smoother. This one really made me think of what we "Home Executives" need to prevent ourselves from getting run ragged while trying to maintain a semblance of order in our homes.

Stop Before You’re Tired

Today I would like to share some insights about fatigue, weariness and the general tiredness I see day after day, week after week as I work with women.

I rarely meet a woman that is really very lazy. On the other hand, I meet many, many women that push themselves way past reasonable limits. When we do this, it takes longer for us to accomplish our tasks and responsiblities. We respond by becoming cranky, we oversleep the next day or sometimes if the demands of life make it impossible for us to stop before we are weary, we really do have long days.

It seems that somewhere along the line we have decided that weariness, fatigue, and the other sleep challenges shouldn't exist in “our” life and we can push ourselves to stay up too late, to work at a project past weariness, to keep up a hectic pace day after day, week after week while at the same time hoping it will not affect our general well-being and our health. It is very, very important to understand that weariness is a great enemy to having an orderly life.

I would like to talk about some reality checks that each of us needs to take for a minute. Probably no one is going to give you a “rest period” for the rest of your life. It is up to you and I to take the rests that we need. This means taking a moment to sit down and play with the baby, or take five minutes and sit on the back steps and drink your afternoon soda, or even taking a half-hour after the baby has gone to sleep, if you're a new mother, and sit down to read.

Also, take notice of when you have your slumps of weariness periods during the day. For myself, I'm pretty good till about 11:30 in the morning and then I have a little slump. In the afternoon, I have a great big drop-off slump right around 4 p.m. It is important during these “weariness” periods each day to stop before you're too tired. Take a short breather, maybe change our activity from up to down, from vigorous to boring, or from stimulating to routine so your body can last through the slum (with or without that much needed nap). This will give you strength and energy to go on. Please know it is up to us to go a little bit slower (i.e. rest for a minute or two) so that we can go a little bit longer. It is up to us to stop and rest.

I have been experimenting and have found that even a five-minute change of routine, yes just a five-minute switch, makes a tremendous difference. You may want to try it yourself. The few minutes, time spent on the back doorstep looking at the mountains, the sky, and the roses, a moment with my nose in a book, a change of routine to slow me down, helps me get past my weariness so I can continue with the projects and people for which I'm responsible.

Take good care now and look at your weariness periods this next week to see what you can do about them. Remember, take charge so you can rest before you're too tired to go on. It is the better way to a more orderly life!

Marie

Oh, the great and many things I've learned this week.

our latest hobby is making Savvanah Smile...

Good evening folks. It's late and I'm too tired to do a full-blown blog, but I do want to give you a preview of upcoming blog posts I will hopefully be in the mood to write about (or have the time to write about) in the near future. It has been a good week, and i would like to share few of the things I have learned in the last 48 hours.....

1. I do NOT have a green thumb

2.The casinos here in the 'burbs of Chicago are not on Indian reservations

3. Classical music is nice, especially violinist I. Perlman, but I prefer to be an attendee to a U2 concert (minus the stinch of marijuana and the like)

4. CHI hair straighteners are great

5. Once the nap and bedtime routines with the chilluns start running like clockwork, something has to happen to screw it all up

6. I love FREE MULCH!

Okay, that's good enough for now. Until next time... G'nite!

Thank Heaven for Girlfriends!

Fascinating study that speaks for itself. Enjoy!

UCLA STUDY ON FRIENDSHIP AMONG WOMEN
By Gale Berkowitz

A landmark UCLA study suggests friendships between women arespecial. They shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe our tumultuous inner world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriage, and help us remember who we really are. By theway, they may do even more.

Scientists now suspect that hanging out with our friends can actually counteract the kind of stomach-quivering stress most of us experience on a daily basis. A landmark UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women.

It's a stunning find that has turned five decades of stress research - most of it on men -upside down. "Until this studywas published, scientists generally believed that when people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade that revs the body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible," explains Laura Cousino Klein, Ph.D., now an Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health at Penn StateUniversity and one of the study's authors. "It's an ancient survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased across the planet by saber-toothed tigers."

Now the researchers suspect that women have a larger behavioral repertoire than just "fight or flight." "In fact,"says Dr. Klein, "it seems that when the hormone oxytocin is released as part of the stress responses in a woman, it buffers the "fight or flight" response and encourages her to tend children and gather with other women instead. When she actually engages in this tending or befriending, studies suggest that more oxytocin is released, which further counters stress and produces a calming effect. This calming response does not occur in men", says Dr. Klein, "because testosterone - which men produce in high levels when they're under stress - seems to reduce the effects of oxytocin. Estrogen", she adds, "seems to enhance it."

The discovery that women respond to stress differently than men was made in a classic "aha!" moment shared by two women scientists who were talking one day in a lab at UCLA. "There was this joke that when the women who worked in the lab were stressed, they came in, cleaned the lab, had coffee, and bonded," says Dr. Klein. "When the men were stressed, they holed up somewhere on their own. I commented one day to fellow researcher Shelley Taylor that nearly 90 percent of the stress research is on males. I showed her the data from my lab, and the two of us knew instantly that we were onto something."

The women cleared their schedules and started meeting with one scientist after another from various research specialties.Very quickly, Drs. Klein and Taylor discovered that by not including women in stress research, scientists had made a huge mistake: The fact that women respond to stress differentlythan men has significant implications for our health.

It may take some time for new studies to reveal all the ways that oxytocin encourages us to care for children and hang outwith other women, but the "tend and befriend" notion developed by Drs. Klein and Taylor may explain why women consistentlyoutlive men. Study after study has found that social ties reduce our riskof disease by lowering blood pressure, heart rate, andcholesterol. "There's no doubt," says Dr. Klein, "that friendsare helping us live." In one study, for example, researchersfound that people who had no friends increased their risk ofdeath over a 6-month period. In another study, those who had the most friends over a 9-year period cut their risk of deathby more than 60 percent. Friends are also helping us live better. The famed Nurses' Health Study from Harvard Medical School found that the more friends women had, the less likelythey were to develop physical impairments as they aged, and the more likely they were to be leading a joyful life.

In fact, the results were so significant, the researchers concluded, that not having close friends or confidantes was as detrimental to your health as smoking or carrying extraweight! And that's not all! When the researchers looked at how well the women functioned after the death of their spouse, they found that even in the face of this biggest stressor ofall, those women who had a close friend confidante were more likely to survive the experience without any new physical impairments or permanent loss of vitality. Those without friends were not always so fortunate. Yet if friends counter the stress that seems to swallow up so much of our life these days, if they keep us healthy and even add years to our life,why is it so hard to find time to be with them? That's a question that also troubles researcher Ruthellen Josselson,Ph.D., co-author of "Best Friends: The Pleasures and Perils ofGirls' and Women's Friendships (Three Rivers Press, 1998)."

Every time we get overly busy with work and family, the first thing we do is let go of friendships with other women,"explains Dr. Josselson."We push them right to the back burner. That's really a mistake because women are such a source ofstrength to each other. We nurture one another. And we need to have unpressured space in which we can do the special kind of talk that women do when they're with other women. It's a veryhealing experience."

Cade says the darndest things

Ironically enough the "pink" from Friday night went to my eyes. Yup. I woke up Saturday morning with an unpleasant case of "pink eye." Can't remember the last time that ailed me--- seems like it has been a good 10 years or so. When I came back from the doctor yesterday afternoon, Cade ran to me squealing, "Mama, you went to the doctor! You laid down and got a sticker, Yah!!!" I'm sure glad he relates positive experiences with going to the doctor.

Last night the phone rang while Cade was eating dinner. Matter of factly he said to me, "Mommy, please get the phone. It's Melody." 9 times out of 10 he'd be right. Melody and I always find a reason to chat with each other during the week. How perceptive of him.

I suppose I'm blogging this not only for personal journaling reasons, but because it seems like yesterday Kyle and I were thrilled he was putting two words together to form a mini-sentence. My how time flies.

Tickled Pink

Ever since Cade received the book, Put Me in the Zoo for his birthday we've read it for practically every naptime and bedtime story session. I just tucked Cade in for the night and I am tickled pink. Sure enough he picked the same book and he proceeded to "read" to me all 50+ pages. This boy memorized the book! Not 100% word for word, but pretty darn close. I knew that when children hear a book often enough that they can recite it and read it back, and Cade has done it with shorter books, or several pages in a book, but he has never read to me each and every page of this many pages until this evening. This was a wonderful and fulfilling way to end my evening.

In other good news, Kyle was a dear and hung up the remaining 5 drapery rods before leaving for work yesterday. Life can't get much better than this. Really, it doesn't take much to make me happy.

Shame on Me

Lately I have been pretty open about my frustrations regarding Cade entering the "horrible threes" stage and have found myself out of patience and energy at the end of the day for the last several days.

He's had a bad cough for the last week and wasn't sleeping well because of it so I decided to take him in to the doctor. Turns out whatever illness he had, it went to his chest AND he has an ear infection. Poor guy. Who knows how long he's had it--- this can all well explain why he's been irritable and whiny.

After the appointment we went on a hunt to find a nebulizer for rent (i swear buying one would have really been easier). We finally found a pharmacy that wasn't out of them and poor Cade was coughing so much he threw up right there on me and the shopping cart. I just wanted to burst into tears. I was tired, frustrated that my day wasn't going the way I wanted, and poor Cade was feeling miserable. I swallowed the lump in my throat and gave him a kiss and cleaned up the mess.

I should have thought to give Cade the benefit of the doubt for his not-so-appealing behavior and figured he probably had a good reason. Shame, shame, shame on me.