Too much of a good thing

It pains me to admit this.

Believe me.

But I may need to cut down on my caffeine intake if I ever plan to run a half marathon and NOT wear Depends while doing so.

A three mile jog/walk after work tonight met the collective damage of my two cups of coffee, triple shot latte, and one can of Diet Coke in an epic pants-wetting meltdown.  It wasn't pretty.  And I can blame a rough day in the Recovery Room all I want for that excessive (even for me) amount of caffeinated units...but the bottom line is that I'd really love to run a few miles without immediately needing to change my pants afterwards.

Training for a half marathon sounds easy compared to the daunting task of cutting back on caffeine.  Sad, no?

Still got it

I love it when Zoey completely botches the English language.  No, seriously.  I think it's adorable and proves to me that she still has a bit of baby-girl in her.  Just when I start to lament the fact that she is getting so grown up, she will inevitably throw me a few curve balls that prove to me she's still learning and, even better, she has no filters.  Whatever pops in to her little brain comes straight out her mouth.  LOVE IT.

Me:  Zoey, eat your cereal.  (How long can you market cereal-for-dinner night as fun and exciting?  Can I make that stretch in to the pre-teen years?  God knows I'm going to try.)

Zoey:  Yeah.  I don't want it to get foggy.

Me:  Soggy.  I think you mean soggy.

Zoey:  Yup.  Foggy cereal is gwoss. 

Me:  Okay, sure.

***

Zoey:  Mommy, what is a whine-o?  (She hits me with this completely out of the blue at 6:40 a.m. as we are pulling in to daycare.)

Me:  Um...what?  Where did you hear that?  (Thinking: how could she possibly have seen or heard the term for a homeless drunken person?)

Zoey:  I saw it on Super Why.

Me:  *cursing PBS, still struggling for an age-appropriate description of drinking out of a paper bag*

Zoey:  You know, Mommy!  From Super Why!

Me:  Um, well... (*light bulb*)  Wait.  Whine-o?  Or RHINO?

Zoey:  YEAH!  A whine-o!

Me:  Oh, oh, oh!  Right!  An animal with a big horn on his nose!  (I redeem myself by producing the sign for rhino from somewhere in the depths of my underly-caffeinated mind.  We proceed to act like rhinos all the way to the gym.  Problem solved.)

And now, if you'll excuse me, I need a coffee refill and Sesame Street is featuring Abby's Fwying Feh-wy School this morning.  Feel free to interpret in the comments section.

Slow start

So, I broke down last week and added basic cable to our Comcast package.  I did this solely at the request of my grandmother, who spends a fair amount of her time here babysitting Zoey and has requested Matt Lauer and Oprah on more than one occasion.  But I am finding there are a few perks for Mommy in this basic cable addition as well.

Like, Saturday and Sunday mornings. 

PBS has a wide array of cartoons available each morning that Zoey loves and are not, in my underly-caffeinated opinion, a complete waste of time.  Yesterday we watched a fascinating Cat in the Hat episode where the featured topic was hibernation.  And by 'we watched' I mean 'Zoey watched while I read the New Yorker' and by fascinating I mean 'who knew they could come up with so many irritating song lyrics centered on bears sleeping through the winter'. 

I have logged 10 miles this week in my slow attempt at training for a half marathon, and have woken up sore and sluggish each day.  I am ready to crash each night by 8 p.m.  It is pathetic.  But I am grateful for the hour (okay...two) of cartoon programming that allows each of us a slow entry in to the day. 

And now, I need a coffee refill.  And an ice pack.

Committed

I feel like I dabbled in running way back in 2010, the year that was Life's Greatest Experiment.  I tried all sorts of things I had previously felt were beyond my realm of possibility.  Once single parenthood became not an option but alarmingly necessary, my entire world crumbled before my very eyes.  But then!  Possibilities opened everywhere I looked, because seriously, if I could manage this life all on my own, who's to say running is off the table?  And if I could run a 5k, why not refinish my dining room set and learn how to fix things with a screwdriver?  Ditch cable TV in favor of NPR?  See if I can make it through a hot yoga class without suffering immediate death?  Feature cereal and yogurt as a regular dinner menu option?

It was easy to make NPR and cereal and regular use of a screwdriver part of my new, strange life.  Sanding furniture and hot yoga were checked off the list and I moved on to something else.  But running was different.  It kept pulling me back.  The novelty has long since worn off, I possess an impressive collection of 5k race t-shirts, and still it whispers to me.  The whisper sounds something like this:

'Pssst.  Hey, Amy.  Yeah, you.  Frazzled one.  Come with me.  Plug yourself in to your loud, 160 BPM music and focus on some point in the distance.  Put one foot in front of the other.  Keep moving and I promise you, I will clear your mind.' 

Running.  You win.  I will buy the sports bras and program my fancy watch with it's pedometer and heart rate monitor.  I will download podcasts and read the blogs of runners far more advanced than I.  I will log my daily miles and I will follow a 12-week training course to get me ready for a half-marathon in May.  I will use an Albuterol inhaler when I run outside because, wow, the absence of fire in my lungs allows me to focus all the more on...nothing. 

Thank you, Running, for clearing my mind.  You have brought focus to what has otherwise been a cluttered and chaotic existence. 

But thank you, mostly, for reminding me to literally just put one foot in front of the other.  Move.  Keep moving and all will be well.

Big girl

There has been some exciting talk at preschool lately.  Class rosters must be shifting, because rumor has it that Zoey's good friends DJ and Maddie are moving up to the Owl room on Monday.  Zoey is thrilled and has printed 'DJ' painstakingly in the square for January 10 on her brand new Dora calendar.  I am also excited, as I know both DJ and Maddie's parents and actually like them.  It's been a long four months of listening to back-and-forth 'I love Alix and played with her all day!' at one pick-up to 'Alix doesn't want to be my friend and I told her to go away' the next.  It's a tricky business, cultivating friendships for your children.  While Zoey is still young and I have some say in the matter, I definitely don't want to encourage relationships with kids who have odd or annoying parents.  But daycare is a crapshoot because sometimes you don't meet the parents until it's too late.  Then you're stuck on a play date with a mom who believes in extreme couponing or wants to discuss the size of her third child's placenta ad nauseum. 

I'm just saying.  We're both happy DJ and Maddie are moving up.  But that means someone in Zoey's current class must be moving out.  To the big class...Pre-K.  The major leagues of daycare.  The final class before kindergarten.  The children and the their teacher, Ms. Cheryl, who inspire awe amongst all the other kids in the younger classes.

Zoey:  Mom.  I don't think Dan and David are in my class any more.

Me:  Oh.  Maybe they moved to the next class?  I heard Kelly is moving up, too.

Zoey:  Yeah!  To Pre-K, she's going to Ms. Cheryl's class.

Me:  She must be a little bit older than you.

Zoey:  (wistfully)  I think so.  She can swing across all the monkey bars on the playground, so I think she must be five.  I can only swing on three of the bars.  But when I'm five, I think I will do all of them.

Zoey delivered this news as though length of monkey bars crossed is the defining factor in whether you make it to Pre-K or not.  And who knows?  Maybe she's right.

Tally

In my futile protest against this year's version of the Pediatric Stomach Flu, here is how my day went down:

Loads of laundry:  Three
Change of pajamas (Zoey):  Four
Change of clothing (Mommy):  One (Miracle!)
Number of baths (Zoey):  Three
Number of showers (Mommy):  One (!)
Brutal vomit attacks on livingroom carpet:  Multiple
Counter-strikes with jumbo can of Resolve:  Two
Books read:  At least 12
Movies viewed:  Probably another 12
Caffeine units for Mommy:  Not nearly enough
Scent of vomit still present throughout the house:  Check

And a happy cold and flu season to all of you.

Back to the grind

Ahhhh.  Here it is, 5:40 a.m. on a Monday morning.  I am sitting in my scrubs, coffee on the table next to me, NPR on the radio, Zoey sleeping soundly in my bed. 

Time to go back to life as usual.

I feel so blessed to have had my sister here for two whole weeks.  Abby willingly slept on my couch night after night, dragged herself up at ungodly hours to drive me to work, and took Zoey to daycare at a far more pleasant hour of 8:00 (or 10:00, depending on the leisure of their morning).  She did my grocery shopping, ran my errands, brought me lattes at work.  She did the dishes after dinner while I gave Zoey a bath.  She made tea while I went through the motions of a bedtime routine.  And then she stayed up with me for grown-up talk until I crawled in to bed at a much-too-late hour every night, completely happy and satisfied.

I keep asking her to marry me, but she keeps turning me down.

But yesterday Abby flew back to her life in Colorado, and Zoey and I are resuming our normal routines.  It is relief mixed with a little homesickness for my sister.  Christmas has been cleared from our house.  I am thrilled because this Christmas holiday was not stellar.  Zoey is thrilled because now we can move on to celebrating the TRULY important holiday...Valentine's Day.  Foam hearts and gel stickers decorate all our windows now.  It's been two weeks since I've listened to the Early Edition on NPR.  Moving on.

I am going in to this new year hoping for calm.  Peace.  Certainly more calm than Zoey and I saw last year.  I know that part of this calm and peacefulness will come with routine.  And so, I will refill my coffee cup and get ready for my grandma to arrive to watch Zoey.  I will dig out a library card so the two of them can have a field trip today.  I will go to work and take care of people and come home to fix dinner and probably deal with some whining.  I will likely be in bed by 9:00.

Moving on!