We are the mundane
Two weeks ago Steve’s 90 year old mother fell in the nursing home and broke her hip. Off to the hospital we were for surgery. Then, last Wednesday at 7:30 AMÂ Dawn called doubled over in pain. I went over to take care of the kids and after a mis-diagnosis at a clinic (sent home with pain-killers), Dawn went to the emergency room. By 11:00 PM she was having her appendix removed.
It’s been a crazy few weeks, but everyone is home and recuperating!
It happened on Monday at the park. I took Reid and Blake for a walk. I had decided the week before that I can’t handle Blake at the park while trying to keep an eye on Reid, so we walked in the opposite direction than we normally do. After a few blocks, Blake started pointing and saying “this, this” (meaning he wanted me to turn this way. Thinking I was no where near the park, I followed his directions. Well, before long, Blake had directed me to another park. It was much smaller, only a few kids. I thought, OK I can handle this and still keep Reid in sight while he sits in his stroller. Unfortunately, within two minutes Blake was bored with the baby swings and slides (keep in mind he’s only 20 months old). After picking him up four times and carrying him away from the older kids’ slides, I decided he could go down one of the slides as long as he sat on GrandMar’s lap. Big mistake! Halfway down, Blake stuck his foot out. Obviously our momentum coupled with my weight didn’t stop us and his tiny little leg just snapped. I won’t go into any more details, but it was pretty traumatic…for me as well as Blake. He’s OK now, with a cast from the tip of his toes to the middle of his thigh.
Gary, his recovery reminds me of you as a child after surgery…how we had to find ways to occupy you on your tummy. It’s amazing how resilient children are. You never seemed frustrated and neither does Blake. I haven’t taken any pictures yet…maybe I’ll get one this weekend when Uncle Gary visits!
Over the past month or so, I’ve been trying to get back into shape by running on a regular basis. It was actually quite timely, because my first day of running was actually July 4th. It was the following day that Larry posted his entry about getting serious about doing something about his weight. BTW, Larry, let’s see some updated figures!
 I had decided I had to get serious too because a few weeks prior when I was packing for our Battle Creek golf trip I tried on some of my golf shorts, and most of them didn’t fit because I had gotten too fat. I didn’t start running at that time because back in mid-May, I was playing basketball in our driveway with Eric and was attempting to save a ball going out of bounds. I was right on the edge of the driveway and rolled my right ankle and went down like a pile of bricks. I was in maybe more pain then I’ve ever felt in my life. I didn’t see stars, but I did see one bright sun. Eric was to later say that that was probably the stupidest thing he’s ever seen me do. The kids are at the age where they show us no sympathy.
 It ends up that I not only sprained my ankle, but several days later I realized that I had strained my achilles. So due to that injury I wasn’t able to start running until it had healed significantly. It still is a little tender, but it actually gives me no problems when I’m running. It’s more bothersome in the morning when I wake up and everything has tightened up.
After a few weeks of running, I decided to start a log of my runs, so I’ve posted it here. Sorry, no time to make any graphs, but maybe on my next update.
| Date | Distance | Time | Min/Mile | Comment |
I usually run at Moraine Hills State Park a few miles from home. They’ve got 3 interconnected loops of cinder trails that are great for running. I usually do the 3.73 mile loop, but have occasionally added a second for a 6.2 mile run.
I haven’t lost much weight, maybe 4 pounds, but my clothes are fitting much better. My goal is to first run the 6.2 mile run in under an hour. I should be able to do that relatively soon. As soon as the weather cools down a bit, I’ll give it a go. My other goal is to see if I can do the 3.73 mile loop in under 30 minutes. That’s going to be the tough one, but hopefully with another couple of months of serious running and some 50 degree weather and low humidity (as opposed to the 80’s and high humidity I’ve been running in, I just may have a shot of doing it.
 I’ll work on getting my stats to publish a little better, but right now I’ve got to run. Not literally, I already ran today and it was tough. I hate running in the morning. My times are always slower because my body just isn’t ready to perform and I think it goes into shock.
In an effort to continue with the truly mundane postings, I’d thought I’d let everyone know of my recent weight loss. It’ll also help to keep me motivated in continuing to lose weight.
Every year from Thanksgiving through New Year’s, I just pig out way too much. I just go nuts at all the big meals and with the holiday cookies. So I was at home New Year’s day, having just had steak and lobster tail (actually two and a half lobster tails) the night before, feeling uncomfortable because my pants were too tight. The kids were watching “The Biggest Loser” on some cable channel where these people were losing 40% or more of their body weight over many months. So I felt a little guilty and figured, “If these people can lose over a hundred pounds, I could show a little will power and knock off twenty pounds or so.”
So Eric challenged me to lose twenty pounds by the Ides of March. (He just read “Julius Ceasar” at school.) So I decided too take him up on the challange!
I got on the scale and I’m was 190 pounds. I’m not really sure how accurate our scale is, so I’ll re-phrase that and say it indicated 190 pounds. I thought it was going to be more than that! When I graduated college 25 years ago, I was 155, just to give you an idea.
So I pretty much just stopped pigging out. Didn’t really starve myself, just ate more sensibly. Veronica has limited me to only one box of Peanut Butter Tandy Takes a week (six packs of two in each box). Mary Ann got me a case of 24 for Christmas, so I still have a lot of those I can eat. Veronica has hidden the case somewhere in the house, I’m not sure where!
So after one week, I lost 6 pounds. Sunday morning is my official weigh-in time.
Yesterday, another 3 pounds. 9 out of 20 pounds in two weeks is making me feel pretty good about things with another 2 months until the Ides of March!
I haven’t even begun exercising yet. I hope to throw that into the mix this week.
I’ll update the blog on a weekly basis to let you know how it’s going. I hope everyone finds this mundane enough.