"I want you to move to California for yourself"

Well that was a nice little break wasn't it? :) Things have been weird, but I want to start writing again so, here I am.

They all look so happy pre-squirrel attacks

So on a lighter note, we've been quite the outdoorsy set lately! Really sprucing up our back patio and this past weekend we had our Wilderness Survival Class. I wanted this to be a picture heavy post but as I'm coming to realize more and more, iPhones are the WORST. They seem really cool and awesome. Until they cost a million dollars and you can't do something as simple as rotate a picture on your computer because Apple and PC's refuse to get alone. Of course. So I'll just post the handful of pictures my iPhone has deemed acceptable. Son of a.... (EDIT - Using Ed's Mac, I'm attempting to post what seem to be rightly oriented pictures... Success! So I'll also update my post on my 10k with a couple other pictures if you are interested!)

My happy place

Anyways. The patio (and upstairs study) gardening has been more amazing than we could've imagined. The potato box is exploding in general. We had to pull up one plant that wasn't performing very well and up came the CUTEST baby potato you have ever seen. It was about the size of my thumb nail. I have picture but I couldn't rotate it... grrr... The rosemary and basil are fighting to hang on, and I'm not sure why they are struggling so much. The other herbs are going gangbusters. Ed also finished making me a beautiful new table so I can sit and have coffee or read during the day by all the lovely plants. We moved our indoor tomato plants out next to it as well and I looooove the smell of tomatos. With my lovely colored lights it reminds me of Mom's, which is a very good feeling indeed.

Our adorable baby potato!

We've been waging a war against the squirrels here. I'm partly to blame because I refuse to give up my wonderful bird feeders, thereby disposing of the cats day-long entertainment. But that means that all the little seeds that drop down from the feeders scatter everywhere and attract everything onto the patio and also into all the plants on the patio. Several of the herbs have met a grisly end, uprooted by these chubby grey squirrels who are truly very UN-afraid of us. If I had any reservations about getting a BB gun before, those reservations were gone with the last murdered parsley plant. We're trying a less violent option of chicken wire first so think happy thoughts for it or these squirrels are going to have a lot more than poor defenseless plants to contend with... In fact, we have been training Rosie pretty intensely lately... Hmmmm.....

Awesome path up to the training area... left everyone pretty winded

Now about the Wilderness Training! We had to drive up into the Santa Cruz Mountains, always terrifying for me in any car because the roads are so tiny and the drops are straight down and extremely far. I highly recommend anyone who wants to visit California that they must make a trip into the woods. It's stunning. The trees go on for ages. Everything is just so much bigger than on the East coast. Too bad I'm too terrified to drive the truck up those tiny roads or I'd visit more often! The training took place on a boy scout reservation high up this windy, woodsy trail following Boulder Creek. Our teacher Jack, who was the real deal, was my sister's age and had spent many a night out in the wild. He said he lived outdoors for a year, and was very familiar with spending the night in a debris hut. What is a debris hut you might ask? It's exactly what you think it is. And we got to make them during our shelter training. (You can see Ed enjoying our group's shelter at the bottom of this post)

We also learned how to make spoons and bowls out of pieces of wood, and then how to boil water using rocks. One of the sillier, but still fun and useful parts of class was learning how to stalk prey in the woods (they do offer a traps class but they had to separate it from their usual stuff because people kept trapping and injuring house pets - yikes) But my favorite part was making fire with the Bow Drill technique! Muahahaha! Let's be up front and honest here. Ed did all the hard work.We tandem whittled a spindle and a fireboard and a handhold, and notched a bow. Ed did the manual labor after that in terms of burning holes and creating the dust coal and I made a beautiful tinder ball (blame iphone for the lack of pictures) that nurtured that coal until it burst into flames! I learned two things from this experience. One, Ed and I will not die during the Zombie Apocalypse or Hunger Games situations of the future. Two, people do not know nearly enough about survival or basic respect for nature. It was really good to get out there and learn things that as Jack and his co-teacher Mark put it, are skills that our ancestors have used and passed on for thousands upon thousands of years. 

This was the insanely hard part, using the bow to make the spindle rotate until wood dust collected and then smoked itself into a tiny coal

My beautiful tinder bundle :)

Finally! After a lot of sweat and a little blood, no tears, we got a coal!

Nurturing the coal in the tinder like a crazy person

FIRE!

And Ed decided he could live here happily ever after :)

"I'm running through the fire"

I survived!!! :) 

(Updated with new pictures!) It was such a cool experience! So many people, all shapes and sizes and ages (thank god), and it was a really nice course. Starting with a kind of intense hill up to the golden gate bridge, then across the bridge and back, then back down to the path along Crissy Field and back to the start.

Foggy, chilly morning

The runners were all nice and considerate, we were in the back with the other run/walk/slow-pacers so there was no real pressure.

The 10-milers taking off! The guy in front was running 5min miles

Prepared to carry me thru it :)

Nerdy lookin and ready!

You can soooorta see the starting line by the American flag

About 5 miles in I thought I was done for and was having some real troubling left hip flexor pain... but by then you could see the finish line and it was just ridiculous to not try and push through.

Crossing the bridge

Impromptu photo session - thank you Ed :)

The end is soooo cloooose you could see the little white tents of salvation in the distance!

SUCCESS!

Chillin cause he runs this distance every day....

With a couple bouts of walking during mile 5, I was able to run the last mile and ran through the VERY LOUD finish line right during the bridge of Foo Fighter's "Walk" which was SO AMAZING. I use that song to push myself hard in the gym and so running across the finish line to 'I'm dancing on my grave, and running through the fire...' was just so perfect. I got the chills from the music and everyone cheering. They even announced my name saying 'Great job Carly!' over the loud speakers. I wanted to cry I was so happy :) Ed was really sweet and ran my pace the whole time and even took time to take a picture of me on the bridge. I asked him how he was a couple times, projecting my struggle onto him, and then I would immediately remember he runs about 10 miles every Sunday now so this 6.2 was a walk in the park. We finished in 1hr20mins or so and I had guessed based on some charts I found online that it would take me about 1hr45m based on decreasing speed per mile, so I'm very pleased I beat my assumed time.

Thanks guys! :)

We had parked about 1.5 miles away, so including our 3mi walk to and fro, yesterday was a total of 9.2 miles. Longest time on foot to date, and longest run for sure. I'm just so happy I did it and that it was really enjoyable. Like I've told people before, Ed did not have to carry me across the finish line and that's pretty much all I can ask for! Thank you to everyone, and there were so many of you, that said such wonderful kind supportive things on here and Facebook about the race. It means the world to me and really makes me feel amazing! (I had other pictures but I can't figure out this iPhone. Stupid thing.)

Post-run... a pain like you would not believe. I just have to laugh about it now, but I was essentially walking like a robot because I could not get my muscles and joints to function after the hour long drive home from the race. Sleep jerks overnight were like little gunshots of pain to my ankles. My knees refused to ascend the stairs after feeding the cats this morning and I debated just sleeping on the couch to avoid the pain. That hip flexor issue I ran through has made it really difficult to lift my left leg for anything. Steps, walking, putting on pants, turning over in bed. I don't regret any of it and I know it'll hurt less each time I run. But I must say this is the most crippled I've been in ages. Tomorrow's a 3.5 mi run which sounds down right pleasant thinking about how much less sore I'll be!

In other news, I went back to the dentist and for those of you that don't know, apparently all of my teeth are falling out of my head. At least that's how I felt after my visit. 7 fillings on Saturday which left me shaking with anxiety and drooling (attractive, I know), with a sheet recommending a possible: 3 root canals if the fillings didn't go over well on some of those same teeth, 2 more fillings needed on the right side, and a crown on that same side. Good lord almighty. The best part of the post-race pain is the distraction from the mouth pain. But that is what I get for avoiding the dentist for about a decade. Yes. About a decade. He asked when was the last time I had work done, like my last fillings for example? And I literally had to say before the turn of the century. (EDIT: Ed would like me to also add that I could have said the turn of the millenium. oy!) Sad but true. Well, 7 fillings later with a huge rap sheet of future work, I've decided to forever keep my dentist appointments and floss like it's my favorite activity in the world.

I'd also like to take a minute to thank all of my friends and friends of my family who have expressed their sentiments about my Dad and Debbie and their troubles lately. He appreciates the support and regardless of what anyone thinks about all the things going on, it's no fun being the one under fire, and it is incredibly hard.

Rosie appreciating our t-shirts :)

"Keeps me walking when I'm falling down"

Hoooo boy. The day after tomorrow is the big race! I'm gonna keep this entry brief because I'm sure I'll be back next week to recap the craziness of Sunday. Training is... going. Slowly and painfully. This past week it's been ridiculously rainy and dreary and that combined with my growing fear of Sunday have made it challenging to get out and stick to things. I'm proud to say I forced myself out every day and surpassed my required number of miles every day, but I sure didn't enjoy it. It was a battle every step of the way. I'm most motivated when I have a funny podcast on like NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me or Alec Baldwin's Here's the Thing (his recent interview with Kristen Wiig is fantastic), but now that I'm running about 45-60mins a day, I'm plowing through all the episodes available. Anyone have any suggestions for funny podcasts I can tune-in to?

I've been feeling very nostalgic and... I'm not sure the right word, but maybe aspirational? Is that even a word? I'm reading a book titled This Life is in Your Hands by Melissa Coleman and she discusses her parents irrepressible work ethic and ability to make everything on the farm work (granted they would have faced some form of starvation if they didn't). I also watched Dancing with the Stars this past week when they sent Sherri Shepherd home and she advised the viewing audience to 'find the things that you fear and run toward them as fast as you can because it's so much better on the other side.' Thinking back on things in high school and college and wondering at how often I've held myself back from things because I prejudged my ability to perform... what a waste! And it's not something I've conquered by any means. I still haven't set foot in a class at the YMCA for fear of performing poorly. And even this Sunday, I've repeatedly told Ed I'm worried about my performance even though as he's reminded me, there isn't even a performance goal here. So in my quiet moments I've been contemplating how to address this... Like mothers who are afraid of passing on their body related insecurities to their children, I do NOT want to pass on this crippling self-doubt to my kids in the future. It's bad enough there are so many people in the world saying you can't do something, (whether they are right or not), no one needs that extra inner critic jumping on the bandwagon. To address it I've started meditation, trying to quiet that inner voice, and I'm making a point of trying out all of the things I love but have felt I wasn't good enough with: writing, German, psychology, physical activity, singing... there are many other things but I think those are the areas that give me the most pleasure and yet I've shied away from for fear of failure. Failure and judgement.

And another way I've tried to address this? To stop being a such a critic with my friends and family. It's hard, I'm a huge downer most of the time, always playing devil's advocate to my loved one's dreams, giving them a 'reality check.' But seriously who needs that? No one. You want to go speak in tongues and be a famous snake charmer and become a professor of Zumba? Go for it. Why the hell not? I'm hoping that by encouraging my friends and family, showing them that they have one supporter for whatever they want to do, I can get my own little inner Debbie-downer to shut the hell up and let my little cheery Carly take over.

So on that note... yay 10k? :)

"This is a game and you are going to win it."

Ahhhh frustration! I finally hit my first roadblock with running. I had my first 5 mile run this past weekend and I really hit a wall at about 4.25 miles. Now I would like to chalk this up to the hole I had run into my sock, creating a blister, altering my gait and creating some debilitating hip flexor pain, combined with a long visit from Ed's friend during which we may have dehydrated ourselves more than usual.... But it was probably just me reaching a limit I need to re-adjust to. It's always so frustrating to find that place where you know you aren't really strong enough to pass yet. Over this next week I'll be able to work up to it and past it, I just need to get used to running 4 miles I think...

Ed ran with me this weekend (he was very kind to run at about 1/4 speed to keep pace with me) and I realized that for the first time I don't need music to workout to because I'm not so out of shape that I have to tell myself 'just make it through this one song and then you can change your pace on the next song.' What a huge accomplishment, and I never even acknowledged it! I've gone from being able to run for 1 minute at a time, to 3-5 mins at a time, to now, where I can run for an hour! That's just so huge I can hardly fathom I'm actually doing that. Of course I want to run faster and further, but in terms of accomplishments, my endurance levels have never been so amazing. And with 2 weeks until my first 10k, I think I'm in a decent place. :)

I finished reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, which is a really insightful book. I think one of the biggest take aways from the book for me was that you really have to be yourself, and know what makes you happy. That there are all of these things in the world that you would like to make you happy, but they really don't. For example, I really, REALLY wish I liked fashion and high heels. I love the way nice clothes look and I own all of these heels I think look amazing. But... I never wear them. I don't wear fancy clothes or heels, I find it expensive and uncomfortable. I feel pressure to like them, I feel like I should like heels and nice clothes and  that dressing up should be something that makes me happy. But it doesn't. I avoid it like the plague, even as I'm saying 'Oh that outfit is so cute! I love those shoes! I bet that would make me feel content and beautiful' I'll be pulling my hair into a 'Meredith Grey' (see here) and throwing on my gap jeans and old navy hoodie and Adidas sneakers. It's a viscous cycle... I believe that if I dress up I'll be happy, but I never dress up because I find it uncomfortable, and then I'm down on myself for not doing something I don't like in the first place! It's so silly, it's a great deal of energy spent on something crazy. I just have to remember to 'Be Carly.' That sneakers, jeans, a t-shirt, and a "flaccid mound of hair" are perfectly fine because that is what makes me happy and comfortable.

Wedding stuff is coming together. Joe is working away at the invites, hotels booked, wedding website almost finished-up, have materials prepped for the guestbook, have a new idea for favors.... I'm truly just dragging my feet about dealing with reception details. I've started looking, and that seems to be the best way for me to get things done, to just start researching. So many details to juggle.

And you know what else I've found? I think I'm really okay with my body as it is. I could stand to lose weight, in general I would like to, and I will at some point. But I feel absolutely no pressure to lose weight to be in my dress. It fits just right as I am now and no image of a skinny me in a wedding dress for a day feels better than my homemade ice cream tastes. :-P I'll get healthier, but it won't be for some single event, it'll be for me and for a much longer period than a wedding day or honeymoon.

Last thought in regards to my title, I was listening to Jillian Michaels' podcast with Bob Harper guest staring and one of Bob's mottos is: "This is a game and I am going to win it." He even told Jillian to think of adoption in that light. Whatever the challenge, it is a game, and you are going to win it. So excuse me while I go win at running 5 miles :)