Holiday break

Friday was my last day at TJ before holiday break.  I promptly got sick around 10am Saturday morning.  How rude.  I was scheduled to work Sat night but I called out, then today I stayed home from church and tried to go to work this afternoon but left after about 2.5 hours.  So how is my "break" going so far?  Just dandy.  Haha.

I still can't believe that I get to go "home" on Saturday.  That's this week!  I am extremely pumped.  Some friends of our's are leaving the same morning and relatively close to when we are, so we are going to carpool and then hang out and drink coffee while we wait for our flights.  I'm very excited about that too.

Jake is eating peppermint ice cream right now.  He tried to convince me that it's awful, but I know better.  I don't think we have purchased it since I found out about my milk allergy, and I felt like I had to grieve another food all over again.  Oh my gosh that stuff is SO good.

Tomorrow is sleeping in, eating some yummy breakfast food, and attempting to work 3-11:30pm.  But Tuesday, oh Tuesday.... NOTHING!  I love breaks.

You know you work at a sporting goods store when...

Happy Turkey day.  I just told my parents this story, and I told Jake last night, so it's not exactly new to those that read this blog... but oh well.

I worked at Dick's last night until o'butt30 in the morning.  More specifically, 2:30am.  I'm a bit tired now, but we had to get the store ready for black Friday.

Anyway, part of getting ready for black Friday includes lots of balloons.  Tying balloons to fixtures inevitably leads to balloons that get loose and fly up into the rafters.  You know you work at a sporting goods store when your manager gets a BB gun out to shoot down the runaway balloons.  Scared the crap out of me the first time he shot at one because he didn't announce over the radio that he was going to be shooting in the store.  Oh well.

I work from 4:30am-5pm on Friday.  That's going to be fun.  The girl who took my place as lead when I left got promoted to another store as a sales manager, so this week they are relying upon me a lot more.  That basically means that I am working full-time at Dick's.  It is kind of nice to have another job where I can fill in the days when we don't have school though (since I am hourly at school I don't get paid on days we have off).  As much as it sucks to be consistently working around 50 hours a week, I'm very thankful that I have these job opportunities.

So many things for which to be thankful!

Communication skills

I do an after school program (CP) a couple of days of week in which I transport one of the girls from school to the program and work with her for a couple of hours.  The student's mom is very unreliable and I never really know whether I am going to CP until it is late.  Most of the time the not knowing has to do with the girl's mom, but many other times there is simply a poor lack of communication between the office staff at CP and the clinicians.  Drives me nuts.  Here is today's example.

The schedule for the week was sent out on Sunday evening (nice and late, eh?), and it said that I was not working on either Tues or Thurs this week (Thurs since it was Thanksgiving and obviously Tues because the student was going to be out).  I got a text message from one of the directors on Monday saying that he had me off the schedule because he thought the school was closed on Tuesday and the student would therefore not be there.  However, he found out we had school and asked if I could work on Tuesday.  I was not happy about it since we have a ton to do, but said that I could.

Today I sent him a text confirming that the girl was at school (she wasn't yesterday) and checking to make sure that he wanted me to come.  He replied with a "yeah buddy!" so I was planning to go.  During our last period of the day, I had a meeting with a student I work with, her mom, and other people.  I looked down at my watch at one point and realized that I was supposed to leave for CP 8 minutes prior, so I freaked out and excused myself from the meeting.

I went downstairs to find that my student was already gone from the classroom with the other student who goes to CP, so I ran outside to go get her.  As soon as I got to the car, I found out that my student was not going to CP.

You've got to be kidding me.  My ride that was supposed to transport all of us to CP (Jake would pick me up from there) was no longer my ride.  I don't have a car to drive myself home.  No text message or anything saying that I wasn't going to work today.  Luckily I was able to hitch a ride from someone so I could get home, but seriously.

Terrible communication.  TERRIBLE communication.  Glad I'm not stranded right now.

Cooking help for dairy allergies

Over the last couple of years, I have known that I have an allergy to milk and peanuts.  It has been interesting to observe others as they try to prepare dishes that don't involve these ingredients.  Peanuts are obviously a pretty easy thing to steer clear from (don't put peanuts in a dish and don't eat anything with peanut butter).  Milk, on the other hand, is apparently a little more tricky.  I'm not upset nor do I hold any ill will toward those who struggle to know what foods include milk; it is just simply interesting to observe.  There have been times when I have told people that I am allergic to milk, but then they will ask me if it is ok for me to have cheese or sour cream.  It's odd to me but it does take a bit to get used to ingredients that are usually used but no longer can.  I have compiled a list of things that should not be included in food that I consume if I want to have a happier stomach and nose.

Dairy ingredients
Cow's milk
Cheese
Sour cream
Butter
Ice cream
Milk chocolate (including syrup and hot chocolate mixes)
Yogurt
Ranch dressing (and any other creamy dressing)
Creamer
Whipped cream
Cream cheese
Cream of anything soup
Anything with the word "cream" in it
Anything in the dairy aisle :)

There are many foods that typically include these ingredients, and they are not usually noticed by someone not used to dairy-free cooking.

Foods typically including dairy:
Cornbread/rolls/biscuits
Pancakes
Waffles
Most cookies and cakes
Mashed potatoes
Green bean casserole (and many other casseroles)
Pumpkin pie
Pasta with cream sauce (or gravy with cream sauce)
Vegetables with butter

Suggestions for cooking for someone with a dairy allergy
1. Cocoa.  Using cocoa usually is a good substitute for chocolate, so looking for dessert recipes that use cocoa instead is a good bet.
2. Non-dairy margarine.  I generally have a tub of milk-free margarin on hand because I love it and tastes just like the real thing to me.  I will use it in any recipe that calls for margarine.
3. Non-dairy sour cream.  This stuff is pretty expensive but I use it when I am making something that absolutely calls for it- such as my cauliflower mashed potatoes.
4. Chicken broth. I make many soups, pasta sauces, and other casseroles with a chicken broth base instead of creamed soups.
5. Goat's milk cheese, such as feta.  I don't tend to like these kinds of cheeses, but they are out there in case someone wants to make a greek salad or something.
6. Brownies!  I feel as though brownies are about the safest baked dessert.  I don't think I've seen a brownie recipe with milk in it... including those already made at the store.
7. Put the cheese on the side- or on part of the meal.  A lot of times recipes simply call for cheese on top.  In that case, you can have cheese on most of the dish and just leave it off a portion of the dish.

All in all, there are many things that I can still eat as I have learned how to make substitutions.  There are a lot of meals we simply have stopped making, but we are still able to get a pretty good variety in our food.

So... thoughts?  Anything you were surprised about or hadn't thought of already?  Or is none of this surprising to those of you who read my blog?

Running update

Mmmk, Pam suggested that I blog about running.  Well, she suggested many things, but running is the easiest one to blog about and I feel like I should go to sleep really soon, so running it is.

I'm kind of lazy.  I'm thinking about doing another half in April, and one in May, but those are sooo long away.  It's difficult to figure out what I should be doing in the meantime.  My typical training pre-race includes about 10 weeks of training, but obviously April is further than 10 weeks away.  I ran 5 miles on Saturday at just under a 9 min/mile pace which I was happy about though.

I also was planning to run this afternoon.  In fact, I still have my running clothes on since I never went.  I was literally walking out the door when Jake got home... but then it was way more fun to hang out with my husband than it was to go running.  I left my running clothes on thinking that it might motivate me to go at some point.  Instead I just put a blanket on to cover my cold legs/feet and didn't go at all.  Haha.

I just ordered a couple new pairs of running shoes the end of last week because I'm currently wearing what used to be my running shoes as my every-day shoes AND my running shoes.  No bueno.  I've been saving up money from babysitting to go toward my shoes, and I thought I was going to have enough after babysitting on Friday, so I ordered them on Thursday night.  Then I got a call on Friday morning that the woman had to cancel since her kiddo was sick.  So, now I've ordered a couple of pairs of shoes that I technically don't have the money for yet.  Hopefully I will by the end of the week since I'm working like 52 bazillion hours. (ok, technically it's about 53 hours if everything goes through like it should).  Then I need to save up for my race(s), contact lenses, dentist visits, blah, blah.  Ok, I should go to sleep now.  G'night!

Ummmmmmmm

So, I haven't blogged in a while.  In fact, my blogs have become more and more scarce.  I feel like I don't even know what to write about anymore.  Are there any of you out there that still read my blog?  If so, what would you like to hear about?  I suppose I could write a blog about Amy's wedding that we attended this weekend (which was lovely).

Thoughts?

Grossness

2 years ago (our first summer in this apartment), we had some MAJOR issues with spiders.  I wrote about it once here.  I remember that was our first summer and we got up to about 7 spiders/bugs we were killing each day.  It was really gross.  Well, there was one point when I saw the biggest spider I have ever seen in an apartment and I remember telling Jake that I wanted to move.  I was really distraught but was convinced that we were moving at the end of our lease.

We didn't move, but instead were very proactive the next summer, asking the terminex dude to come and spray both inside and outside of our apartment at the beginning of the summer.  It really helped and we definitely did not have as many spiders last summer.

This summer has been awful again.  We have a hard time getting the terminex people to come and to follow our directions, but they finally came.  It got a lot a better.

But this afternoon, I saw it.  The same kind of spider that made me say that we were moving.  I saw it when I was lifting up a shoe and I screamed bloody murder.  Jake got mad at me startling him until he saw the spider.  Luckily he was able to trap it and kill it before it ducked under the desk.  I couldn't even look at it again.

So, SO gross and HUGE (I'm pretty sure the legs are the same length of a daddy long leg, but thicker, and the body is much thicker than a daddy long leg too).  I'm trying to remind myself that we will very likely be moved out of this apartment before summer starts next year, so it's going to be ok.  But if I see another one of those spiders, I'm going to trap it in a jar and bring it to the office staff and see how they like it.  How 'bout them apples?

Advice

Remember this post?  Maybe you do, since it was only two blog posts ago.  But then again, it was over a month ago.

I went for a run outside this past Saturday and looked at the timer on my watch.  It still read 51:14.  Do you remember what that time was?  It was from my last race, as mentioned above.  I hadn't run outside in over a month.  That's pathetic.

So now I'm trying to plan my next race.  I'm seriously considering the Denver Rock & Roll Marathon:  seriously considering whether I want to do another full marathon or just the half.  But remember that I hadn't run outside in over a month, which really means that I haven't run over 3 miles at a time in over a month.  Lazy pants= me. (And I will surely be out of shape for the Bix @ six run next week!)

Thoughts on whether I should do another full or a half?  I won't have Jake with me this time for training, but he could always ride his bike while I ran?  I also have a friend running the full and a friend running the half.

What do you think??  Should I be crazy yet again??

Lost

Drama, drama, drama.

I have been having a rough week with remembering things.  The teenager that I am paired up with for camp has a hard time remembering things (obviously), and I'm not really that good at on my own (ok, I'm horrible).  I need to be able to remind him of things so that we don't have random accidents (whether that be bathroom, sunburn, missed medications, etc.).  We have had a few mishaps along the way, but not too bad.

Then yesterday I lost my sunglasses at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.  I'm pretty sure I know where I left them- and I went back but they weren't there.  That stunk.

Then today we had problems remembering a water bottle.  Then I found out that the kid I am supposed to be with from 3-5p who hasn't been at camp yet was there today, so I was with her today.  She was physically VERY exhausting.  She's a tough kid- but I think I am really going to learn a lot from her (even though she doesn't have any words except sign language for "more.")  I was drained.

Once the day was over I realized that I had lost my cell phone.  I traced my steps, but wasn't able to find it.  I was afraid I had left it somewhere in Boulder and I really didn't want to have to drive back there.

I was so sick of losing things and being tired (I've been working quite a bit between the two jobs), and about lost it.  We came home and I decided I needed a break and was going to stay home from life group.  Then Jake's phone rang... and it was my phone!  Hurray.  We met the person who found my phone, came home with eggrolls and ate macaroni for dinner.  It was fantastic.  We also watched Tangled which I had been very excited to watch since obtaining the movie.   :)

Then tonight I looked on the 3point5 website (a heavily discounted website for retail workers) and found out that the UA sunglasses I had been wanting were finally replenished on the website.  NEW sunglasses for me!  Hurray.  I will definitely not be taking these new ones around with me daily because they are way too nice and expensive to lose at camp.

I think I'm going to go to bed pretty soon too.  I'm pooped.  And I'm sick of losing things.

Bolder Boulder

I haven't blogged in a really long time.  In over two months, in fact.  Oh well.

So today I ran the Boulder Boulder.  It is a fascinating race.  I've never run a 10k before and it weirded me out with all the different ages of people.  There are over 50,000 that participated in it this year, so when you are searching for results you have to look up a specific age and gender if you are just browsing.

I decided to look up 10 year old girls.  There was one girl that beat me.  I felt a little embarrassed by that, but then I looked at 10 year old boys.  You've got to be kidding me.  The fastest 10 year old boy finished 88th overall.  That's 88th out of over 50,000 people.  He ran it at a 5:47 min/mile pace.  That's seriously incredible.  That kid is going to have a cross-country scholarship when he gets to be college age...sheesh.

Anyway, it was a fun day.  I smashed my goal time of finishing in 54 min; finished in 51:14.  Boom baby.  Maybe I should train a bit better for the next race and I could keep doing even better.  Anyway, during a time when I feel very chaotic not knowing where I'm going to be in 6 months and where I will be working next week, it felt good to be able to control my final race time.  Very good.

Here I am pleased with my time. :)

Old farts

It's also Jake's birthday today.  I find him to be the sweetest, most caring, incredible, fun to be around, makes you feel like the coolest person in the world, most funny goofball of a man I have ever met.  I knew very shortly after I met him that I wanted to marry him, and I was SO right about that.

I love you, sweetheart.  These past 8 years of knowing you have been absolutely wonderful! (And now that we're married, we can kiss anytime we want!!!)

:)

Happy birthday, Jake!

Rare finds

We have this friend in our life group that is currently in Israel.  Before he left, he offered to let us use his car while he was gone so that it would make our lives more convenient and Jake wouldn't have to get up at 3:30 am yesterday to take me to work.  It was incredibly sweet of him, and we took him up on it.

In addition, this friend is a teacher at a Christian middle school where a common gift they give him is gift cards.  Except, our friend doesn't really use them.  Seriously.  He joked about how many gift cards he had one time, and we didn't really believe he had very many.

Except... when we went to pick up the car, he told us that all his gift cards were in the car and we are free to use them.  What a sweetheart!  We checked them out... he has over $160 worth of gift cards that we would consider using (there are even more than that).  We obviously won't use them all, but we have definitely taken advantage of the Wendy's gift card, and will probably take advantage of the Starbucks cards he has too (we're pretty sure he doesn't drink coffee, and Jake found out on the website that his Wendy's cards were over 3 years old).

Gift cards are precious treasures.  Our friend is also quite the guy!

Processing

Jake and I just got up from a nap.  A LONG nap.  A 2 hr 45 min nap.  It was only supposed to be 1 hr 45 min (which is, in fact, still long).  But we needed it.  Or at least I know I did.  I have been exhausted lately, and I'm pretty sure that I will be especially exhausted after this week.

Tomorrow I work 7-3, which is fairly normal but I have been closing on Mondays for a while so it is a bit weird.  I was told that I can't leave on Monday until I have a particular project done because Tuesday is.... duh duh duh.... inventory day!  Bah.  I'm really hoping that we have a light day on Monday because I really want to hunker down and just get it all ready.  On Tuesday I work from 4:30am-2pm.  I also think I take my "lunch" at 8:30 in the morning, which kind of cracks me up.  Oh, retail...

Then Wednesday is Jake's birthday and I actually close for work instead.  So we'll be going to Red Robin for lunch instead, and then I'll have to head to work.  I just realized that Thursday is going to be fabulous because I finally don't have any doctor appointments.  Sleeping in- haven't done it in so long!  I also have a long run that day and life group, but those are fun things.  Friday is my normal early shift, then having some friends over for dinner, and Saturday another early shift.

I also just realized that this is my most intense, but last, week of significant training for the half marathon.  I've been struggling lately because I keep cutting my runs short or skipping them altogether because I don't have enough time or energy.  I'm pretty sure I won't ever do this training program again if and when I do another race of some kind.  I did, however, put a tank top on for my run yesterday.  It's been in the 70s for the past few days and I LOVE it.  Jake and I are nervous that April will be fun of tons of snow since it hasn't at all come yet this month, but we'll see.

Ok, enough of all of that.  I think that post was mostly for my own processing, so thanks for listening anyway.

And HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Rachel!

p.s.

It's really weird to try to kiss when you both have a half numb face.  You should try it if you ever get the chance.

Mouth

We went to the dentist today.  It was very NOT pleasant.  They did the "deep cleaning" on the right side of my mouth today and it's still pretty numb and awkward.  Jake looks hysterical since only one half of his mouth is moving normally.  We'll see if he lets me post a picture at some point...

Turns out I don't have to have my wisdom tooth pulled right away, which is good.  I already am going to max out my max benefit from insurance with the cleanings and root canal, so we'll probably do it next year if we still have dental insurance.  Jake has to have two pulled though... poor Jake.  I scheduled my root canal for Monday and my other cleaning on the 17th, so I'll basically just be sore until the 19th and then hopefully should have no more pain in my mouth!  It'll be good to have it all done in one period of time, but it stinks that is all surrounds my birthday.  Maybe I'll eat something really good and soft!  Mmmm.  Yummy birthday food.

Busy

I'm getting kind of bad at blogging.  Whoops.  Life has been pretty busy!  We were blessed to have my health benefits kick in recently so we've been spending a lot of time with catch up doctor appointments.  I had one this morning and I have another one that I will be heading off toward soon.  A lot of them are dental appointments for the both of us (I have to go see the endodontist in a couple minutes because the tooth I previously had a root canal done on is giving me problems.  Boo.).  It also turns out that I only have one wisdom tooth and it has to be pulled.  Jake has all 4; does that really make him more wise than me?  I think it mostly makes me cheaper. :)

We were also blessed to be able to get Jake a bike and the necessary accessories for pretty cheap (with a combination of an old bike that needed to be sold at Dicks, lots of coupons and rewards cards, and babysitting money).  Boom baby.  I think we're doing better about budgeting recently, but that means we spend less money on fun stuff (again- boo.).  We're going to be getting me a new running watch soon because mine keeps dying on me.  I can get it for super cheap too because I got the "ins" as a retail associate.

We've also been busy being intentional about spending time with friends from our life group, church, and a group specific to our church.

And I'm also busily trying to finish up my training for the half marathon next month while having a pulled muscle (probably my hamstring) behind my knee/leg.  You could pray for that!

So all in all, busy stuff, but good stuff.  :)  Now to figure out when I have time to take a nap.....

hoops and yoyo

So I have a friend that posted a link to this hoops and yoyo greeting card and I laughed hysterically.

Poor Jane Seymour.

79%

I just came across some numbers I had written down a couple weeks ago that I had wanted to share.

We had a clearance sale at work that was pretty amazing, which entitled us to get some pretty awesome stuff at pretty awesome prices.

In fact, we purchased items retailed at $259.95, but instead spent only $55.32!!  Just in case you're interested, that is 79% off the retail price.  Score.

My most impressive purchase was a pair of UnderArmour compression shorts for Jake for 50 cents.  I found them as I was going through the pad and they must have been an old style.

Now if only I can get myself motivated to be training for this half marathon that is coming up, that'd be great. :)

One

So I think I'm finally done with my contract job.  I closed out my two final cases this week and will be turning my work phone off probably this weekend.  Phew.  No more paperwork!  I'm pretty excited about that.  I will no longer come home and feel like I still have "homework" to do.  I mean, I know that will happen again whenever I get another counseling job because writing notes is just part of the name of the game.  However, I'm hoping that I never have a job like this one again where there is SO much super excessive paperwork.  I'll let someone else do that part cuz I'm sure there is someone out there that is really good at that stuff and really enjoys it.  Anyway, I'm excited to be down to one job!

Resolutions

Turns out I made a few New Year's Resolutions.  They weren't really intended to be resolutions- in fact, I don't think I've ever actually consciously decided on a new year's resolution- but they were decided right around new year's, so ya know... I guess they're resolutions.

Wanna know what they are?

First, I'm going to read through the Bible this year along with Jake.  He came across a reading plan that takes you through the Bible chronologically, so I'm going to read with him.  I'm thinking that it could be pretty good for me because I haven't been reading my Bible very consistently in the past couple of years.  I really need something to push me.

Second, I've got my next race picked out!  I'm going to run a 1/2 marathon in Littleton in April.  I haven't been running very regularly, but I did run an 8 miler a little while back, so I know that with a bit of longer training I could do another 1/2 with no problems.  I think I'm going to go for time on this one, so I'm in the market for finding a training program that will work on speed.  Anyone know of anything good?  My goal is to run it in less than 2.25 hours, but I'd really love to be under 2 hours.

Since this race is local and has the option of 3 people running a relay, I also challenged people in our life group to run it with me.  I know at least one other person who is going to run the 1/2 by themselves, and at least 3 will do the relay.  Exciting stuff!  And I can buy Gu SUPER cheap, so I'll probably do that at some point for myself and the other 1/2 marathoner.  AND... the after party is going to have some really great food, including a bison burger.  YUM.

I'm just excited.  These are good/fun things, huh?