Chicken is meat?

Ry and I ventured home to College Station this past weekend to visit with my mom and dad. Our trip coincided with their homeowner’s association’s annual pool party, so Ry and I got to tag along. (Ry never misses a chance to get in a pool - hence we swam 4 times in 2.5 days) The pool party was a potluck, so we got to taste many wonderful dishes prepared by Mom and Dad’s neighbors. Now, although I don’t eat meat, the rest of the family does (well, they eat chicken, I don’t generally allow them to eat beef at all... except for B, who can eat beef if he wants - but only if he can choke it down between pointed glares and frightening statistics from me). Anyway, I got her a little fried chicken drumstick and lots of fruit and veggies. Ry ate up all the other food on her plate, but eyed the chicken leg warily. Finally, she gingerly picked it up and said
“Mommy, what’s this?”
“ah, it’s chicken.”
“Chicken?” Ry queried and started to nibble... on the small bony end
“No, no Ry, you eat the middle part - that’s where all the meat is.”
“Meat? But we don’t eat meat.”
“Well, no, Ry, I don’t eat meat, but you like chicken meat”
“Chicken is meat?”
She warily held the leg aloft for me to snap a photo, then it remained on her plate until I threw it away. Later I asked her why she didn’t eat it.
“Mom, it was on a BONE!”
As my dad laughingly observed - she’s no country girl! And maybe she is a bit too sheltered - when she gobbles up tofu, sashimi and flax seed but balks at chicken on a bone...

Tapering

I went out for a short mid-week run - a week and a half until RNR Marathon. This tapering phase gets really hard on me. It sounds weird, I know, and during that last week of a LOT of really hard miles (and one really long 20 miler) I am so looking forward to the taper. But then it gets here and it just sucks. I go from 55 miles a week to 36 to 28 miles this week. I get all grumpy and snappy. I can’t sleep and worry about how much I’m eating (I looked it up online, and each pound adds like 3o seconds to your marathon time... darn that Amish Friendship bread! I really must just throw that starter away, but it seems almost like abandoning a pet. Still, there is just NO NEED to consume that many calories every 10 days!) It’s so strange, I love those long runs. I keep saying that I’ll just do this and that marathon and then stop training and just go back to running.... so now I’m just going to do San Diego, and then Marine Corp Marathon in DC.... then Tallahasse Marathon next Feb (it’s so close to home, how can I pass it up?), then maybe somewhere along the line I’ll qualify for Boston in April 09... then there’s that Nike Women’s Marathon next fall, and maybe the Country Music Marathon in Tennessee...
It’s been a stressful week, and so I was looking forward to my run. I ran 6 miles at pace (ah, well, maybe a little bit faster...it was only 6!) the day before, and hadn’t been out on the trails for a while, so I got up and got Skoshi and set off.
I really do love running on the trails - although they get a bit buggy this time of year. I get lulled into a false sense of no-bug security during the winter and allow myself to watch the trail in front of me and zone off into my deep running reverie, and then FWAP! full frontal spiderweb to my face. And although I generally consider myself somewhat calm and reserved, just the thought that the spider is still lurking somewhere about my face or hair or torso or extremeties is enough to send me shrieking like a girl while trying to wipe off the web and/or spider from my face/hair/torso/extremeties. Of course, then I get so fanatic about looking for spiders that I forget about the roots and wind up tripping and scraping the back of my right shoulder on the ground. Always the back of my right shoulder. Not sure how I do that, but I think there’s some fancy twist/flail involved. Whoever I’m running with always seems impressed (even the dog comes back to check on me).
I had my cell phone with me for this run - I was supposed to do this run slow (it’s a “rest” day - only four miles). One of my favorite spots is this old dead tree - it looks like some sort of creature with arm extended up. It’s also the “one-mile” marker. My other favorite spot is about 2 miles farther down the trail, at the tail end of Rocky Bayou. I’ve got out there on quiet foggy mornings when it was like looking into the end of the world - absolutely blank. Skoshi loves it, too. There’s the bayou, and then there’s a couple of big perpetual mud puddles...

Strange Bird

B went out to get food for Skoshi last week, and found an egg sitting in amongst the rest of the dog food. We frequently have birds come into the garage, and thought they were just resting before flying up to the nest that is in the vent just above the garage (yes, it’s unsightly, but we can’t bring ourselves to knock it down).
Apparently this bird thought our dog food bin was cozy enough to call home - and heck, there’s plenty of food (and it’s the good, all natural herring and sweet potato stuff - this bird has taste). Either that, or she thought we’d make good adoptive parents. Well, she’s lucky we didn’t blindly scoop her progeny up for Skoshi’s breakfast - although I doubt Skoshi would mind much.
As it was, I merely plopped the egg out amongst the shrubbery where I suspect it will come to a grim fate... but not sure I can do much about that. Maybe it’s best that a bird who will lay her egg on top of a preditor’s food stash not reproduce.

Jx and the camera

This morning as I was making my coffee, Jx brought me the camera and said “CHEEZ? CHEEZ?”.
“Do you want me to take your picture?”
“Yeah”
“Okay, say cheese”
and then the above series of photos ensued. At first he just wanted to stand there and smile, then I suggested he jump. The he suggested “Shoes tap!” and began a pretty good series of foot stomping that he’s picked up from watching Riley at her tap class. He’s a riot! Not sure about that last picture, though. I think it was during one of his landings...

Swimming lessons

After a dismal series of swim lessons at the “Y”, we were skeptical about Ry’s prospects in learning to swim. We enviously listened to tales of other children who fearlessly leapt into the water and paddled back to shore. Then one of Ry’s friends found the Destin Dive Center. This girl is as cautious and unadventurous as Ry, and yet by the end of the first lesson was fully submerging herself - while Ry had not once willingly put her face in the water in 2 months of lessons (although she did accidentally go under when the teenager who was “teaching” was making googley-eyes at one of the other “teachers” Needless to say, I was NOT thrilled.)
So this summer we enrolled Ry in the lessons in Destin, and have noticed an amazing transformation. She jumps in, she swims back to the wall, she retrieves objects from the bottom of the pool. Her swimming stroke is a bit chaotic at best (if anyone has witnessed Ry on the dance floor, imagine THAT underwater. There is minimal forward movement. It’s the aquatic equivalent of “All heat and no light”. It is getting better each week, though!

Restaurant Antics

For Mother’s Day we went down to Destin to eat at a local bakery/cafe. We were a bit pressed for time and still also had to run to Target. So, B ran to Target and I waited in line with the kids for a table. When we were finally seated, I was quickly running out of things to amuse the kids. We’d already pulled all the books out of my purse and read them. Then we started working on the toy cars - but those quickly became projectiles (not much appreciated by the nearby diners). After making faces with the old raisins that were scattered around the bottom of my purse, I turned to the new and therefore novel props left on the table - Hey - how about towers of Half and Half? Actually, Jx just called them yogurt, and was a little annoyed that I wouldn’t open one for him to eat (“Mommy, Yogu! Hongi! Yogi Hongi!” Translated: “Oh please, dear mother, remove the lid from this tiny container of yogurt so that I may consume it, as I am presently quite famished.” )
Fortunately, B returned, and Jx and I went to explore the bathroom and it’s changing table prior to the arrival of our food. That Ry, she can put away a serious quantity of food. She’d already eaten breakfast at home, and had another serving (not a kid’s one, an adult one) of cinamon-raisin-apple-walnut-french toast and most of my hash browns. Then immediately after brunch, went to a birthday party and had pizza, cake and ice cream.

20 miles in a skirt

Today was my last long run before the San Diego RNR Marathon. It was hot and humid - even at 6am. But still, I made it. Many thanks to Kristen for riding along with me for a good hour and a half! But still, it was very long and hard. I did a 10 mile pace run yesterday, so I was tired even before I started.
On the up side - I finally went over to the dark side and bought a running skirt! Up ‘til now I looked upon those as freakish aberations of TRUE running attire - only to be worn by “girly-girls”. However, after about 4 hours of internet research, trying to find the perfect pair of shorts... I finally broke down and bought one. Actually, the tidbit that won me over was a review of a running skirt (a bright pink one) by a man - and he found it remarkably comfortable.
So, it finally arrived on Friday, and I ran with it on Saturday morning... and it WAS really comfortable. Surprisingly so. So, I washed it Saturday night and ran with it again this morning - 20 miles. Ugh.
And as if that wasn’t enough activity for one day, we then went out for brunch, went to a birthday party at a mini-carnival-like-place, then came home and walked with Jackson in the stroller to the store. So when Brian suggested a family walk in the woods after dinner, I (probably not so politely) declined. I’m kinda sore.

On one recent weekend morning, I had gotten up bright and early to run with Hilary and Lisa. We met up at the nearby gymn and were just starting back across the parking lot when I hollered “HEY! Look at that!” And pointed to a stripe on the parking lot. Both Hil and Lisa were not so impressed - “Uh, what?” I got up real close to the stipe and pointed again “See - it’s camouflage! Look how well this moth has adapted to its environment - taking on a color scheme that allows it to hide from predators! Isn’t that cool?”
To which Hilary or Lisa responded (don’t remember which one it was) “Yeah, but how effective is THAT - you had to stop us from stepping on it and squishing it into oblivion.”
True. It’s hard to contribute to the gene pool when you’re smeared on the parking lot. But still, that would sure make a cool science project, assessing the color scheme of the moths that reside near this parking lot with those that live in the nearby woods...
And then I whipped out my cell phone and took a couple of pictures. I really must get out more...

Frosting... good

I made cupcakes for the kids this weekend. Well, chocolate zucchini cupcakes, but they were really not healthy at all... except for the errant vegetables. Jx, however managed to circumvent any attempt at increasing the nutritional value of his cake... he just ate the frosting... without touching the cupcake with his hands at all. Not sure why. Maybe he didn’t want to get messy - for some reason he truly hates getting his fingers messy. He will tromp through any available mud puddle, but goo on the fingers just won’t do.