Race Commitment

I'm putting here to make it official. I've committed to the 13.1 marathon - New York City - Team World Vision on Saturday April 3, 2010.

Reasons for committing:

• Motivation to get off my sorry ass and get back on the pavement on a regular basis
• Someone asked me to

Doesn't take much I guess. Hopefully this will finally pull me out of my rediculously long slump.

It's 5 months out but I'm going to start a plan now so that I can get a schedule going. When I have a schedule and a goal I have a better chance of following through.

It's funny how when I was running 40 miles or so a week I couldn't bare to not run a day and would rearrange my schedule to make time for it. Now I make every excuse in the book not to run - so sad!

where to start

My job has seriously messed up my life outside work. I haven't been running, I haven't been socializing, I haven't been doing anything in ages. I even forget best friends birthdays!

When I am home I'm exhausted and don't want to do anything. I used to wake up so early during the week and weekends, now I am sleeping in and weekends I barely get out of bed!

I'm in the biggest slump ever I guess. Hopefully it should change soon. There are some changes at work that might give me some relief. The coming month should show me if that's the case.

I'm also going to the doctor to get some blood work done next week. I'm assuming the stress of work has impacted my health but I want to be sure. I've been exhausted since April and my immune system has been so bad. I catch everything and each time I catch one of Avery's colds she's fine in a few days and I'm wrecked for 2 weeks.

Well enough of me complaining. I guess I just feel like explaining why I've been MIA for so long. While I hope to try and get online more and out running more I'm not promising anything.

I miss all my friends if you are out there reading.

In Honor of Voodoo

I am dedicating this post to Voodoo. Lori posted a great running poem that I will keep. Each time I read it I will remember Joe fondly:

You’re wide awake in stillness
Pulling laces in the dark
Your aging tendons stretch and strain
To stir the inner spark
You run to greet the morning light
Once more you climb that hill
Your heart responds with warming grace
Your lungs embrace the chill
The radiance of the rising sun
The sweetness of the day
Embrace you like your mother’s voice
The world just falls away

From road to ridge and trails beyond
You trust your inner guide
You find the rhythm to the run
And open up your stride
You glide and roam the gentle trails
Like water over stone
Your body sings a melody
It echoes through your bones
The course descends into the glen
The way it winds and weaves
Your footsteps softly fall upon
Wet musty Autumn leaves

God bless the runner
And God bless the word
The word is flesh in motion
Everywhere it’s heard
God bless the runner
And God bless the word
A meadow lies beyond the trees
Beneath a cloudless sky
Tall grasses rustle in the breeze
You ride the runner’s high
You push yourself until you feel
That old familiar burn
Relax into a gentle pace
Before the final turn
And when you reach that resting place
You’ll stand profoundly spent
You’ll dig your feet into the earth
Your soul will rest content

God bless the runner…

And again

OK, I ran again and I'd love to take about my beautiful weekend and my great run this morning but I have no time. Hopefully soon.

I ran

3.15 miles woohoo!

Dog Behaviorlist information

Observations:

Young adolescent male, older female. You can routinely see that Bella will passively stay out of Boot's range in regards to resources, especially after he has pushed her away or out of an area- off your lap. Remember even moving between you is a communication called "get away from my person". Boots routinely does this to Bella- it's normal, and he may be more willing to push the envelope because he's moving out of adolescence into adulthood.

Points to remember:

• Behavior changes over time

• Dogs are dogs

• Routine, daily or weekly fighting is abnormal and evidence of tension, stress or some unresolved or unmanaged conflict

• Aggression in situational

• Dogs fighting does NOT mean they will begin to attack kids or other dogs

When dogs do fight there isn't anything rational going on. So, you have dogs that are bred for stamina and bull baiting, some bully breeds have very little self control OR when they do fight they wouldn't necessarily puncture, but would do damage. I think the big concern is no only the location of the bites, but the amount of damage. It IS a concern, but there is no major avoidance behavior in the house that would be suggesting...I don't like him/her. There is no overt staring, body blocking or obvious attempts

Recommendations:

1. Don't lose your faith in your dogs. That being said, if you can't handle them being off leash together, they have no business being off leash if you are nervous or unsure.

• Manage- if a BASKET muzzle would have you feeling better or a Gentle Leader- USE IT. Better to manage and reduce the likelihood of fighting.

• Prepare- have Spray, a Shake can (soda can with pennies in it to toss at them if fighting), air horn, etc.

2. Leaders initiate, followers react

• Ask for basic behaviors like sitting to get access to food, to go out, to get toys, chewies, etc.

• Begin to then WAIT for your dogs to offer these behaviors, don't ask for them always

3. Boots

• With Boots outside, practice rewarding his already great recalls. Also practice calling him off if you get a bit uncomfortable rather than a stern "NO" or disrupting play. That way you are actually TRAINING the behavior you'd like to see instead of just interrupting that stuff all the time. Call him back to you- sit or down for 30 seconds- then tell him "okay go play" and release him back to play.

• Acclimate him to the Gentle Leader- put it on, treat him, take it off. Consider having it on him when off leash.

4. Enrichment for Boots: His destructive behavior is abnormal- and likely he's a bit anxious or stressed. A good measure of how stressed a dog is how much energy they are willing to invest in a behavior........ quite a bit of energy he's happy to invest.

• Feed from toys that dispense food- Tricky Treat Ball, Treat Stik, Kibble Nibble, Busy Buddy Toys

• 2-3 stuffed natural bones or kongs a day in the crate

• 3, 3 minute training sessions on the basics- name game, recalls

5. Resources

Continue to manage them around resources, I think it's fair to say that bones, toys, etc are something they will fight over. At this point, I'd prefer to have them chewing when confined than risk that for the time being.

Update on dogs

Bella is doing great, everything is healing up nicely. We had the dog behaviorist over on Sunday. She had good things to say about their relationship. She watched them interact with each other and us and listened to us tell her all about them.

She said neither of them are aggressive but Boots does have some self control issues (he's can be destructive - mainly with Avery's toys but other things as well) and that he's rude and obnoxious to Bella, like a younger brother can be. She said Bella is extremely tolerant. She showed us things we hadn't noticed before, like the fact that when Bella comes up to me he will immediately come over and either groom her or play nip at her to get between us and that he follows her around and gets in her way continually.

She showed us techniques for interrupting them when we are worried play could get escalated into something more serious. Rather than reacting and yelling at them before they are actually doing something wrong we should call them over to interrupt them so they can get distracted without being in trouble.

She had lots of good information for us and thinks that there is no reason to get rid of Boots. We have some work ahead of us but its better than we thought.

Drama

Well my Easter was definitely not boring. I had a busy weekend. Friday night we went to friends for appetizers and cocktails and as we were leaving Mike went to put Avery down on the sidewalk and couldn't get back up. He was literally pulled to his hands and knees on the sidewalk. His back had gone out. He was pretty much on bed rest for the weekend until everyone arrived for Easter dinner.

Saturday Avery and I did a lot of running around, grocery shopping, library, bank, etc then we went to see her Godmother Saturday night and didn't get home until very late which meant I was up at midnight making her Easter basket and filling eggs for her Easter egg hunt.

6:30 am Sunday she runs into our room saying lets go downstairs so she can search for her basket. After a nice sugar breakfast I started cleaning and she was playing and things were great until my Aunt came in at 8:45 and asked me if I was ready for church. Avery is in her footy PJ's and I am in shorts and a sweatshirt with my hair piled in a knot on top of my head mopping the floor. Ummm, no I am not ready! Shit, forgot what time it was. Run upstairs throw Avery's dress on her and brush her hair, while she brushes her teeth, I run into my closet throw on a wrap dress and a shrug sweater and brush my hair. We run out of the door at 8:57. Good thing the church is literally .75 miles from my house. Needless to say I wasn't looking my Easter best!

Spent the rest of the afternoon cooking and everyone came over and it was "eh", something was missing. No one seemed into it. There is a tradition from my grandfather where we crack the colored egg on the persons head next to you at dinner for good luck (Hungarian I guess although when I looked it up the only place I saw that did it was Mexico, go figure). Anyway, no one sat together, some were in the kitchen, some the dining room, some the family room so the egg cracking wasn't a huge success this year. Now, you might say so what but I have been doing this since the year I was born so it was just strange to me that the family wasn't into it.

After we ate we went outside for awhile and hung out then went back in. My cousin comes running in later yelling that the dogs were in a fight outside. I run outside and yes, they were definitely fighting. Bella was all bloody and I ran to break it up but couldn't. I yelled for someone to get Mike, he ran out and was able to stop it. It was a mess. I should say Bella was a mess. Boots didn't look bad at all. No puncture wounds or anything just a bloody nose (internally). Bella looked like she had been hit in a drive by. Holes everywhere, it was awful! I quickly got her inside and into the tub and cleaned up. I had to wrap her front leg for compression because there were blood pockets forming like and edema. We rushed her to the animerge and they flushed the wounds and said she'd be ok but we were beside ourselves. We felt we obviously needed to find Boots a new home. With this in our heads we went out to the lobby to wait for the antibiotics and pain killers. The receptionist told me she had a dog who literally tried to kill her other dog for almost two years. She got a dog behaviorist to come and work with them and the dogs have gotten along great with no incident for the last 10 years. She gave us the name of the place and we headed home.

I contacted them today, while pricey we have decided to give it a chance. Like the vet said, they are dogs and will fight when in groups but my fear is that Boots is really doing damage and I am scared he will kill her. With Tiny and Bella they would get in tiffs (always over food) but there was never any injuries, just a lot of scary noise for a minute or so. Boots and Bella get along great as long as there are no toys involved. If this option doesn't work I have a friend who has a rescue who says she can place Boots for me. He's only a year old though and we've already had a few incidents so if we can't get control of the situation it will become worse.

We got home by around 10:00, got Bella setup in her dog bed next to my side of the bed (she's a mama's girl) and she did well throughout the night. Today Mike stayed home because she needs antibiotics every 6 hours for the next 3 days and her dressing on her leg changed 4 times a day for the same time frame.

So I had a rotten Easter Sunday but I'm staying as positive as a I can in hopes we'll get this resolved. I just feel so bad for my Bella.

What a windy day!

I'm so excited its Saturday. It's been such a hectic week and I have really been looking forward to the weekend. Today we have things to do but not too much. Avery and I are going to her friend Lily's for her 4th birthday party. She was from Avery's old Preschool. We got up early this morning and went to the store to get a gift and I ended up buying a black framed cork board and cool brown leather /tweed 3 drawer table to complete my home office. I love target but I spend soooo much there when I go. I got cool colored folders and this cool Alladin plastic coffee/tea thing that has a little basket that you can put your loose tea or coffee in then there is a lever you lower the basket into the hot water. It was $13 and no I didn't exactly need it but I love loose tea and make my own coffee at work so it will get use (probably more than my french press!)

We are having about 40mph winds today so I am not planning on a run. I don't have time anyway, however, I'm so out there tomorrow. Even if for just a short juant. I'm almost 95% sure I won't be running the Lehigh Valley Half or any race in May. I'm ok with the decision. The stars just weren't aligned. More important is my goal to get back to running on a regular basis. I drove by the high school this morning and looked down at the track and saw the hurdles and remembered how much I enjoyed the track workouts last fall (I'm still amazed I'm saying that!)

Hope everyone has an awesome weekend. I know I intend to.

Trying to get back on track

I'm still trying to get out there! This week will be hard since my coworker is out which leaves a lot of work on my plate. However, this morning I was talking to a friend from the gym and she wants to take up running because her mother was diagnosed with lung cancer and she wants to do a 5k in the fall. I told her I would run with her at lunch so we're planning on meeting up next Monday. I like to run alone but running with someone else motivates you to get out there and not bail.

We shall see.

Not much to say

I've been a bad blogger. But I'm not really in the mood right now. Still transitioning into the new management team and job at my work. Trying to get back into running. Been pretty sick with the flu and bronchitis the past couple of weeks and just trying to lay low. I'm not in a funk just going with the flow and there isn't too much to say about that.

Change

I've always been able to adapt to change very easily but as I grow older I find more obstacles in the way, making transitions more difficult.

Change is surrounding me these past dew months. Change in my routine, change in my job, change in my home and change in my physical appearance.

My routine and physical changes are due to not being able to run and not having time to exercise. Now that I can run I'm searching for the discipline that got me out there on the road daily during marathon training. Hopefully I find it by Monday when I hope to begin a new regime.

The house changes are good and bad. We've been painting and fixing up some rooms, all good, the bad is trying to put all the Christmas stuff away with limited time. I think the snow today will help since we'll be trapped here the whole weekend & all plans have been cancelled.

Job change --- this is both good and bad. Bad because there is a fear of the unkown. I've had it so good for quite a few years under my old management. My new management promises it will be even better with even more oppurtunities to get ahead but the department is rather petty with high school tactics being performed by high level professionals. Bad because at some point I may loose my two days of working from home because they 'just donalt do that here'.

With all this change I'll be fine. I always am but its just not as easy to accept with family and household responsiblities to consider. I prefer to just go with the flow.

Now, a positive change in my finances and the economy would be a very welcome change. Don't you all agree?