Best. Run. Ever.

OMG Today's Zombie, RUN! was knitting themed!!! That's right, the secret mission was to go loot a yarn store. I love it. My face hurts from all the laughing.

Nothing else to report toady. I went running a second day in a row because in a few seconds I'm heading out for a day of playing board games with friends. I like to get my 10,000 steps in and I can accomplish it in less time if some of it is running.

So, here is some more stupid fun. My play list. Every time I graduate to the next level I allow myself a few more songs. All of them are picked for the running beat and they make me laugh. Mostly because they are so cliche, after all, what else would would be used in a Zombie sound track?


Eye of the Tiger, Survivor
Dog Days Are Over, Florence and the Machine
Runnin' Down A Dream, Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers
Thunderstruck, AC/DC
I Will Survive, Gloria Gaynor
We're Not Gonna Take it, Twisted Sister
Stayin' Alive, Bee Gees
I Won't Back Down, Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers
Radioactive, Imagine Dragons
Another One Bites the Dust, Queen
Pumped up Kicks, Foster The People
I Need a Hero, Bonnie Tyler
O Fortuna ~ Carmina Burana, Carl Orff
Zombie, The Cranberries
Sandstorm, Darude
Such Great Heights, The Postal Service
Don’t stop me now, Queen
Why Don´t You Get A Job, Offspring
Sunshine (Go Away Today), Jonathan Edwards

 

Sadly today's run was glitchy and it had a hard time switching from the story to the music and back so I think I will do it again tomorrow, if I don't hurt too much.

And I'm still knitting too. My current project is some long fingerless mitts from some of my oldest yarn. I spun it almost 16 years ago, a beautiful blend of angora and heathered wool.

Resource Management

The voice in my ear in Zombie, RUN!5K always tells me to take a day off after the easy runs and to take two days off when they are harder. Everything I know about exercising came from my three college exercise and health classes and they all said to work out 5-6 days a week.

I wondered about the days off and looked it up online. It took some searching but I came across a running site that gave the answer and also stated that the couch to 5k programs are horrible for loosing weight because running in burst makes people ravenous and they end up over eating. Yikes! I wasn't trying to lose weight but I sure didn't want to gain.

I quickly signed up for a free food diary calorie counting app on my phone. As I was setting it up it asked me if I wanted to gain weight, maintain, or lose. I thought "what the hell" and selected the lose option.

Now Zombie,RUN feeds a pedometer that counts my steps with the goal of 10,000 a day. That loads into Myfitnesspal where it calculates how much more I can eat that day. I enter the food, watch the numbers, macros, and the graphs and hoard calories for the weekend. Brilliant! And very satisfying.

3.5 weeks in and today my weight has fallen from obese to overweight on the old height/weight charts of my youth and from overweight to a healthy weight on the new.

In all the years that people tried to tempt me into upgrading my phone they would show me the games, dexterity games, puzzles, mind games, all fun but not anything that appealed to me enough to want it. Nobody told me it could be used to turn my life into a Euro Game.. And I've just lapped the board!

Running does not make me ravenous. Instead it makes me queasy and puts me off food for hours.


 Finn's update, since he is my personal trainer extraordinaire.

 

ebony antelope statue from when I liven in Africa

 

The flatten squirrels are gone now that warm weather is here and they have been replaced by a deer carcass at the Far park (Near park is across the street and Far park is almost two miles away). His only goal is get me to Far park so he can check on it. I feel like I'm living a combination of the epic quest of"Stand by Me" and the ick-fascinating "Bones"

Ending on a happier note, crocuses are in bloom today.

Visceral

Every book on decluttering that I've read always make two points.

1. You are discarding the thing not the memory
2. Once the thing is gone you won't remember owning it

That second point is true and in all that I've gotten rid of I can only remember a handful of them. Because of that, I think the first point is a lie and it's the root of why getting rid of possessions is so very hard for me. Every time I look at something memories flood over me,

This stuff hedgehog is an example. It and a mate was to be a Christmas gift eleven years ago. This one turned out well but the other melted in the felting process and I didn't want to make a replacement. It was important to me for the gift to be a pair so I held onto this one once it had nowhere to go.

Every time I saw it I  would remember the walking to the yarn store on my lunch break and buying the yarn to make it. I would remember knitting it at the park in the cold April sunshine with Joey at my side watching the nesting geese attack joggers as they ran past. The feel of the yarn, the crinkling of the pattern in its plastic sleeve, and the way I struggled making the short rows with that crazy fun fur yarn all would come flooding back as if it was something I made just this morning. I would even remember the Chicago apartment with the washer and dryer set and the pink and rainbow hedgehog that failed to come into existence.  

None of those memories were bad or good but of a handful of average days. The kind of average days that a life is built out of and are so hard to remember. I didn't particularly want to keep the hedgehog but I couldn't imagine getting rid of it either, it, along with everything else I own, is my memory talisman. When Finn shredded it I had a pang and thought about repairing it before breathing deep and throwing it out.

And with that, I'm starting the process again. I just finished reading Marie Kondo new book on making a joy filled home. My Mom spent the weekend here and we went to IKEA so she could buy a chest of drawers. All of the silly cute display rooms are so inviting and fun and I want my house to be warm and inviting and filled with life and not weighted down with every single possession from the past. So I'm going to take a deep breath and start again.