Five of your favorite blogs and what you love about them. 

It’s hard to chose only five!  I actually only have about 10 in my reader, the rest (which is a ton) I follow on Facebook and read as I see a post that catches my eye.

Where’s the Beach?  Heather is real, honest, and fun.  She blogs about everything.  Food, fitness, running, fashion, pets, etc!

Meals and Moves Janetha says what she thinks about everything under the sun and I love it.  She reminds me alot of Heather.

Cotter Crunch Lindsay is an Austin girl.  She’s active, fun, gluten free, and honest.

Mark’s Daily Apple  I’m a dork and I like the science.  I also like the recipes and the success stories.

Clothes make the Girl Melissa is another Austin girl.   Gluten free, paleo,  has thyroid issues. I can relate to  her.

Things they all have in common are that I can relate to them and they are REAL.  Real food, real life.  Intriguing.

When I was little, my aunts and uncles took turns taking my widowed paternal grandmother to church.  Well, the ones that lived in Texas did.  It was a deal where if you couldn’t go, you had to find a sub.  My grandmother had 9 children, 8 of which were in Texas.  Somehow my dad ended up going every 6 weeks.  We’d often go as a family or just with my dad for the weekend.  Grandma’s farm was about 2 hours away, in the country, where my dad grew up.

For some reason, when we’d go to leave, I was scared to hug my grandmother.  I have no idea why.  She was tall, skinny, and somewhat frail, all 13 years I knew her.  But up until about age 10, my dad had to practically force my sister and I to go hug her.  Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t afraid of her, we’d help her cook, do things in the garden, go feed the goldfish and cows for her, etc.

Later on in life, especially after she passed on, I was ashamed of how I acted as a child.  She was a wonderful woman and I admired her as early as I can even remember.  She was a very devout Catholic, an awesome cook,  still kept an amazing 2 acre garden with flowers and veggies up until the day she died.  In fact, after her funeral, there are photos of the family standing in a sea of poppies that were in the garden that Easter.

I do know that Easter Sunday in 1993, before we left to go home, I gave her a good long hug.  The last hug I ever gave her.  I still remember that hug to this day.

This is the first photo that comes to mind.  This is from October 2012 Cap 2 Coast relay.  My teammate Jose snapped this from the car.  It’s honestly one of the only good photos of me running.  Ever.

I do know this was the first leg on the first day, it was my only leg of the race that was in daylight and it was at noon and SUPER hot.  I am not sure what point this was on that leg, because I don’t really remember many chain link fences.  For the most part it was barbed wire fences on a very windy and hilly Niederwald Farm to Market Road.

I like this photo because while I was having medical issues, I look strong.   Oh and this was 6 days after I got hit by the car on my right side.  I ran strong and maybe a little too hard here, but I felt fine doing it.  This is the last photo I have before I lost much of my visible muscle tone.

I hope that soon I can look and run like this again.  But this time, i’d like the rest of my body to play along

I had to think long and hard on this one.  I general I am happy with my life.  I mean, there is always room for improvement.

One area where I need to grow in my career.  I am complacent right now.  I like what I do on most days and I am happy when I am left to do what I am supposed to do.  I don’t make a lot of money and no, my benefits are ok.  They aren’t stellar like everyone likes to think they are.

There have been many changes in the last year.  I refused to apply for a management position which earned me some negative words.  Sorry, I don’t wish to be management in my current area.

Recently I was contacted to consider a change.   I am still considering.  I’d be doing something I know NOTHING about, working for “the other side” in the same place I work now.  I had a friend cross over to work there earlier this year and she loves it, but then again, she knows exactly what they do over there.

So I am considering growing improving on my career, as uncomfortable as that feels.  I did it a few years back, I should consider it again…

Because it was storming this morning, I resorted to being indoors.

It rained, thank goodness!  I wish it would rain for days!

A good reminder, because I don’t practice this most of the time.  We almost never eat at the table, it’s usually in front of the tv and at work, usually in front of the computer.  I am getting better about it at work, at least for lunch.  Breakfast I often eat standing and on the computer.  

I had a conference call most of the afternoon.  It was a huge time suck and not very applicable to me.  While I stand 90% of every day, I don’t stand for conference calls.  If I do, I stand hunched over or on one leg, and really, that defeats the purpose.  That stack by my feet, those are bills.  12 more days of session. I swear my office is really clean, despite what this angle looks like!  I treated myself to a plain tea from Bill Millers because I needed more food for lunch, to stretch my bbq from home, so I bought a large salad and saved the ham on it for part of my snack.

I had wanted to go see Uncle Lucius and Jason Boland after work, but I really didn’t want to drive all of the way to Buda alone.  Dan is in Canada.  I don’t do well with driving at night, I get tired really easily.  It’s much easier if someone is with me.  I had friends going, but they all leave really far south.

So instead I opted to finally go get a new pedicure.  I only ever want to go on Sundays and they aren’t open Sunday.  Got a red-orange color.  It’s pretty but I am not sure it really goes with my skin tone.  Yes I know I need to take my fish rug home and wash it.  Which reminds me, I haven’t been to IKEA in over a year!

• Vacations
• Being active
• Food.  This was the mother’s day grub.  Roast turkey, spicy bbq beans,  grilled brats, roasted chicken, grilled corn, cabbage, onions.  Oh and salad.  If you’ve never had grilled cabbage, try it!  It’s seriously underrated!

• Love
• Friends
• Family

• Music
• Me time
• Reading
• Kitties.  Chanel is obsessed with the yoga mat if I am no where near it.

Today I apologize to my sister, because I didn’t use the best words to express my feelings to her yesterday.

Next time before I speak, I will try to think about the words more first and be a better communicator.

I miss the days when I could sleep through the night.  When I was in way better shape.  When I didn’t have all types of weird issues.

There used to be a time when I only took a vitamin and allergy meds as needed.  Now I take meds 4 different times of the day.

Granted, even with all of my dumb issues, I am still more fortunate than many in the health department, and for this I am grateful.

An acrostic sounded like a good way to accomplish this and only in SEVEN words

Marvelous

Enthuisiatic

Loving

Insightful

Silly

Supportive

Awesome

The one and only year I have been able to run Texas Independence Relay, I was set to do 4 legs.  My 3rd leg was in a really nice area on the edge of Houston.  It was the shortest leg of the race, it was cold, and I was feeling GOOD.  I took off and I started making “road kills” left and right.  I was booking it.  I was in perfect conditions and I was rocking.

When I got to the intersection where the only turn was, I went left.  I couldn’t really see the markings on the ground, so I kept running and I kept seeing runners.  I thought I was doing well but I began to wonder where the heck the exchange was.

WRONG!

I turned left instead of right and ran over a mile in the wrong direction.  I was so pissed.  Turns out those runners I saw, were just random Sunday morning runners.  I ran like hell back the other way and passed a few people, but in my wrong way turn, i’d been passed by 5 teams.  By time I got to the exchange, I was so mad I was crying.

So I was mad, crying, and looking around for my van.  That particular exchange was manned by an Austin running store (ok it’s a chain, but the people there were from Austin).  One of the guys working it, had sold me shoes a few days before, so he remembered me.  So he got to see me pissed off crying and ranting, as did the rest of my team, which I will mention, were newly introduced to me 2 days before.  I HATE when people cry in public.  I was that girl.  I couldn’t handle a simple turn or dealing with my dumb mistake.

One day I will run TIR again and I want to run that leg and get my redemption.