Fantasy vs Reality

The fantasy:
I wake up in a clean, quiet room that looks like it just got done with a photo shoot for House and Garden. I spryly bound out of bed, run a brush thru my hair, splash a little water on my face and look like I just got done with a photo shoot for Sport Illustrated. I slip on my size 0, top of the line, matching workout clothes and float out of the room. My children are sitting, dressed, fed, and shod on the couch with their hands busy playing a friendly game of chess, discussing the latest world politics. The kids pile up in the jogging stroller and we make our blissful way to their school. As we get there, we are the envy of all the moms and kids.  I kiss the kids goodbye and make MY blissful way to Starbucks, where the coffee is cheap and the calories don't exist. But, if they did, it wouldn't matter to my size 0 butt.

The reality:
I wake up when a butt lands on my face and shocks me awake in a room that looks like it just got done with a photo shoot for a National Geographic piece on natural disasters that hit the homes of hoarders. I fall out of bed and limp to the bathroom because my back hurts from sleeping around 2 kids who crept like ninjas in to my room in the middle of the night. I splash a little water on the mirror to blur the vision I see in it and look like I just got done with a photo shoot for Celebrity Stalker- What They REALLY Look Like!. I slip on my (we are not discussing sizes here) pants, shoes, and whatever shirt is closest and trip out of the room. My children are shrieking at each other at the top of their lungs, arguing about what color Audrey's pants are. The kids pile up into the jogging stroller, after I knock off a couple of spiders and pry the cat off of it, and we make our breathless way to their school. As we get there, I realize that I have sweat stains the size of dinner plates under my arms and my hair is plastered to my head, soaking wet. I am the envy of the moms there as they look at me and say to each other, "I really wish I could bring myself to leave the house like that.... How liberating it must be... Although, she IS quite pungent...".

A milestone....

Today, during Cardio X (after running 1.5mi this morning, btw!), during the yoga warm up series, you are supposed to do push ups in between some of the moves. I had gradually worked my way from skipping those, to doing some of them on my knees, to doing almost all of them on my knees, and tonight, I did them all the REAL way, no girly push ups. :D That was huge for me and it felt great. By great I of course mean tantamount to having both my arms and abdominal muscles ripped at by rabid wildebeests, but you get my point.

On a side note, as some of you may have heard me mention, we recently got a little bunny. I think Danny figured it would be cheaper than having another baby and less messy that me having a bunch of dogs running around the house... Or, he could just be super sweet and knew that the kids and I would love him. If he is, in fact, a him... Either way, his/her name is Vader (as in Darth) and he/she is a chocolate brown little ball of fur. The co-worker who gave him to Danny raises them for FOOD and so, young as he is, he hasn't had a lot of personal contact, so he's still a bit freaked out, but I am working with him diligently and I hope to soon buy him a little harness (yes, I saw one in the Pet Supermarket and I WILL be getting one- color dependent upon what sex the vet declares) and have a super cool, awesome bunny. He's half way there- I mean, Vader? How can this go wrong...? .............Hey, what was that ominous music...?

Sh*t my kids say, Part 2.

"Captain American doesn't have a gun, so he can't be the Line Leader. He will be the Door Holder."

"Mom, can you go to work? I want to play Marvel Ultimate Alliance."

"Because I did." - Audrey's response to my question as to why she dumped a cup of water on the cat

"I can't go outside and play. My batteries are dead."

"But I can't go to bed; Iron Man needs me!" - (btw, this was Audrey, not Bishop)

"I went to time out because... MOM! LOOK! A SQUIRREL!" - seriously.

"Mom, Dad kicked your butt." (Stupid Words With Friends game. Every time they see me play it, they tell me.)

She's baaaaaaack....

I have been absent for too long, for my own sake. It is so much easier to say, "Eh. I did enough today." when I am not posting on here what strives towards fitness I have made for the day. I have been adding a morning run that clocks in at about 2 miles to my daily dose of endorphins and it is currently kicking my ass. I'm sore and a little tired, but that fresh air in the morning is hard to beat and my reward this morning was getting to see the full moon set over the trees. People probably thought I was a Peeping Tammy, but whatever. This is one of the joys of not knowing your neighbors. Tonight's work out was Shoulders and Arms and it went really well. I love the difference I can feel in my strength and see in my arms. My back is currently a bit tweaked and I haven't had time to go to my chiropractor, so instead of doing Ab Ripper X like I was supposed to, I did a series of plank holds, going from holding myself up on my hands to holding myself up on my forearms. Working those core muscles will help me keep from hurting my back this way in the future. I have added on an extra week to my 90 days to make up for the week I took off/only ran every couple of days, but I will still be done before my birthday. While I was hoping to have some huge, dramatic change in store for ringing in the big 3-2, I think the biggest change is my commitment to my own fitness and getting in better shape every day, while still living the one life I have and enjoying the good tasting stuff that comes along with it. I will still be continuing the process even after the 90 days is up, and my new goal will be to have spent the entire summer wearing shorts. :)

Back in the saddle again...

After a week off doing Disney and staying out at the lake, I am back into the swing of things with my workout. I did a little running and a lot of walking, but I took a week off from my normal program. Now that I'm back, I'm kicking things up a notch and adding a 2 mile run to the mix in the morning. Hopefully that will be the boost I need to shed the fat that is sticking around. I am, once again, on my phone, so this is short, but I am still here, I'm still kicking, and while I have added an extra week on to my timeline to make up, I am still on track. :)

DNA Removal

I can't sit on my furniture currently, so the post is being written on the floor of my living room. I am literally too sweaty to sit on my couch. My current concern, however, is that I will not be able to get back up OFF said floor. Tony Horton calls this "DNA Removal". You don't just get a little "moist" doing Kenpo- you get damn near soaked from head to toe! I am having to ice my knee, so a shower will have to wait and I figured, what better to do than to write a severly overdue blog. This weekend amongst my fun I decided to give running a shot because it has been a while and I wanted to see how my improved leg muscles helped my ability to run. I did 2 miles, running 30 or 60 second intervals, and was able to do the whole thing with minimal discomfort. THAT day, anyways... My legs were barely on speaking terms with me yesterday and were still giving me the cold shoulder today. Last night was Core Synergistics and was not as harsh as it has been in the past, but towards the end, my core was getting a little week and I had to really watch myself so I didn't tweak my back. Today, about 15 minutes in to Kenpo, my right knee started to hurt pretty bad and I almost stopped the workout. SEVERAL times. But, every time I almost did, I thought about how I'd have to say so on here and I kept going. I made sure to modify enough that I could finish and not so much that something else suffered. It was nice to "feel" my body enough to know how to do that and even better to see that clock tick all the way down. :)

Tonight's Motivation

Tonight's re-energized need to "bring it" was brought to me in part tonight by my.... drum roll.... NEW HAIR CUT! :D As my reward to myself for making it half way thru P90X, I decided that I would get the hair cut I have been wanting for YEARS. I called today to make an appointment and she had an opening this afternoon, so I paced around the office for over an hour, full of nervous energy. Usually when you are about to do something drastic with your hair, you have time to adjust yourself to it, but since all the signs pointed to me doing it today, I went with it. I loved it and then hated it for about 5 minutes, then took a shower and washed out all the styling products and re-did it myself and loved it again! :) I almost wish I had gone dark with it, because if I had, it would be the perfect Audrey Hepburn pixie cut. But, the very few blond highlights I had put in make it the perfect spring/summer do for me. As for my workout, tonight was Legs & Back and I really kicked it's ass. Out of all of the changes I have found from this program, the strength of my legs now is pretty amazing to me. I may have, in my youth, had slight areas of firmness after a lot of activity, but now my quads and my calves are rock solid all the time. Now, if it would just conquer the inner thigh, I'd be one happy girl... ;) I wore a shirt today that didn't close all the way when I bought it, so that was awesome. And I wore pants that I bought from American Eagle almost 10 years ago, so that was pretty cool, too. I'm am totally stoked with my new attitude and my new commitment to finishing and kicking ass and changing my body for good. Lol, and while my chiropractic adjustments cost $40, my attitude adjustment cost twice that. :D