Potpourri

Greetings, people of the internet!

[Insert the usual apology for my lengthy blogging absence and typical litany of excuses, followed by a renewed vow to write with more regularity]

Phew. What a busy few weeks it has been. Between preparing to run in a half marathon, organizing the half marathon on base, pondering thanksgiving meal planning so as to optimize the amount of deliciouness I can experience before I have to unbutton my pants, and general care and keeping of house and husbands, I haven't had much room in my noggin for thinking up interesting things to blog about. But, I ran my half marathon (woo! also, hello sports bra chafing.) and for better or worse, have adopted a lackadaisical (10 point word. I didn't even use a thesaurus, so I'm promoting it to a 15 point word) attitude regarding current projects at my place of employment, so let's get this party started.

I have a lot of things I feel like discussing, and they should probably each have their own blog post so as to avoid one overly large and nonsensical post, but I don't feel like it and you're not the boss of my life, so quit yelling at me!
....

Hey, so guess what? My sister had a baby yesterday! I can't wait to meet my sweet little niece! I love her already. Look at this precious girl:

Ellie Jane Blake

I can't wait to hold her and snuggle her and kiss those perfectly round baby cheeks! I'm Colorado bound on Friday, and it can't come fast enough. I already feel so connected to that angelic little baby. A little glimpse into heaven.

I sang "Come Thou Fount" yesterday in church. On a normal day, that song gets me all choked up. Combine that with the fact that I had just looked at pictures of my lovely sister holding her tiny miracle, and I was already feeling like the space between here and heaven was very thin. My knees shook through the entire song with the effort of trying not to cry. But I lost the battle at the end of the song and barely squeaked out the last lines. Music has always been my solace, my outlet of emotion, and my connection to the divine. For anyone who is interested, or for those who were there yesterday, but want to know what the song sounds like without ragged breaths and a shaking voice, I thought I'd post the recording I made for my mom when I left home to go to school. And if you think it's totally lame that I'm posting a recording of myself singing, once again, you aren't the boss of my life! (p.s. I couldn't figure out how to add a song, so I threw on a random picture I found on the internets and made it a video. Technology, why are you so hard??)

Thanksgiving is in 4 days. Oh, I can't wait. I love eating. And, I love the grateful attitude that Thanksgiving inspires. I am so undeniably and undeservedly blessed. I recently read a quote, something along the lines of, "What if one day you woke up, and the only things that remained were the things you were grateful for yesterday?" That quote really inspired me to consciously acknowledge all of things I have to be grateful for. Almost every day, I lay (lie? I just did a google search and I still can't figure it out) in bed and feel overwhelmed with gratitude for the life I am blessed with. I have a wonderful husband. He makes me laugh every day, even if I am grumpy and I don't want to laugh. He is so patient with me and my many idiosyncrasies. I have the most incredible family. They are my best friends, and I am constantly in awe that I am related to such amazing people. We have a cozy, comfortable house and a fridge full of food. I have a cute pooch who wags her tail by the door when I come home. We live in a great community and I'm so grateful for the friends we've made here. We are surrounded by such kind, thoughtful, hilarious, welcoming, and inspiring friends. They constantly act as answers to my prayers. I'm grateful for a healthy body. I'm grateful that I have a job. I'm grateful for my husband's job and his pride in serving our country. For my faithful little Honda that keeps running even though I don't take very good care of her. For phones, e-mails, skype, and texts to keep in touch with my friends and family. For Diet Coke (Don't look at me like that). For best friends who don't care if it's been a month or a year; you pick up exactly where you left off. For music. For beautiful things. For chubby baby legs. For the using a towel that's fresh out of the dryer. For holding hands. For books that take me to a whole new world. For little kids who can't quite say their "R's" yet.  For the gospel of Jesus Christ. For a loving Heavenly Father who knows me, and hears my every prayer.

Life is a beautiful thing. And I am so grateful for mine.

Sick Beats

I just updated my iPod shuffle to get ready for the half marathon Sunday, so I thought I'd share my favorite running songs. I have terrible taste in the music I like to listen to while running, but if these songs can motivate my fat butt to run 13.1 miles, they must have some kind of magical powers:


Jai Ho!   A.R. Rahman & The Pussycat Dolls
Set Fire to the Rain   Adele
What the Hell   Avril Lavigne
God Gave Me You   Blake Shelton
I'm a Slave 4 U   Britney Spears
Circus   Britney Spears
I Wanna Go   Britney Spears
Fighter   Christina Aguilera
Dirrty   Christina Aguilera
Good Girls Go Bad   Cobra Starship
You Make Me Feel   Cobra Starship
Butterfly   Crazy Town
Lose Yourself   Eminem
I Like It   Enrique Iglesias
Like a G6   Far East Movement
Dog Days Are Over   Florence + The Machine
Tonight Tonight   Hot Chelle Rae
Don't You Wanna Stay   Jason Aldean
It Girl   Jason Derulo
In My Head   Jason Derulo
On The Floor    Jennifer Lopez
Stronger   Kanye West
I Kissed a Girl   Katy Perry
E.T.  Katy Perry
Teenage Dream   Katy Perry
I Run to You   Lady Antebellum
Just a Kiss   Lady Antebellum
Bad Romance   Lady GaGa
Party Rock Anthem   LMFAO
4 Minutes   Madonna
Moves Like Jagger   Maroon 5
Everything   Michael Bublé
Feeling Good   Michael Bublé
Get Ur Freak On   Missy Elliott
Lose Control   Missy Elliott
Uprising   Muse
Hot in Herre   Nelly
Grillz   Nelly
Super Bass   Nicki Minaj
Smells Like Teen Spirit   Nirvana
Misery Business   Paramore
Give Me Everything   Pitbull
Disturbia   Rihanna
Only Girl   Rihanna
Rude Boy   Rihanna
Break It Off   Rihanna & Sean Paul
Push It    Salt-n-Pepa
Give It Up to Me   Shakira
Carry Out   Timbaland
DJ Got Us Fallin' In Love   Usher
She's Not There   The Zombies
In da Club   50 Cent

Seriously, every time I hear "Lose Control" I get so pumped I can't even handle it. I'm going to be dancing my way down the course.

Distance runners do it longer

My good friend Makamae posted this on Pinterest today:

I need this water bottle.

Oft times while I am running, I ponder either what I ate that I am now repenting of, or what I get to eat after accomplishing the run.

That didn't sound as pathetic until I typed it out.

I gotta be me.

I'm running a half marathon next weekend. It is probably not going to feel super good, physically. But it is going to feel AWESOME in all other ways. For those not aware of my running history, here is a little run (ha) down:
- I weighed 165 pounds when I was 13 or 14. Chubs, in a major way.
- I got down to 140ish through counting calories slash not eating hot pockets for after school snacks.(I'm 5'7"! I have hips! I'm never going to weigh 115! Don't hate.)
- I got tired of dieting all of the time, and decided to take up some sort of exercise.
- I've always hated running, but decided it was an activity of skinny people, so I should probably take it up.
- I ran to the end of our street and had to stop and catch my breath.
- I kept running and trying and complaining and sweating.
- I cried from happiness the day I ran an entire mile without stopping.
- Ever since that first time that I ran a mile, I've been scared of returning to the state where I couldn't run a mile.
- So I keep running.
- I trained for a half marathon last spring. I was all ready: I trained, I bought new shoes, I ran my 10 mile run, and then I chickened out. The altitude in Utah was killer, and I was scared to run it all by my onesie! I'm still mad at myself to being such a wimp.
- I'm in charge of the half marathon training group on base, but I can't run the base half marathon, because I'm in charge of the dang thing.
- The idea of training for, but not running, 2 different half marathons made me angry.
- I impulsively and possibly a bit foolishly registered for the Rock N Roll Half Marathon this week and ran 10 miles today in preparation. It was fun and not too bad, and I'm not even sore! That is a statement that I never thought I would make in my entire life.
- Word.


Wish me luck! Especially that I don't have any bathroom emergencies during the race (always happens to me).

Treatise on Halloween

Here I present, in no particular order of significance, my thoughts on Halloween (and a few other things):


1. I was a princess for Halloween from ages 3-9. Creativity is not my strong suit.

2. I want to have a bowl full of raisins or toothbrushes to give to anyone who comes trick-or-treating to my house who is above the age of 16. Go buy your own candy, ya bum! Trick-or-treating is for plastic pumpkin toting little kids, and not for greasy teenagers carrying pillowcases for their haul of undeserved candy.

3. I love scary movies, but I almost always have nightmares for a few days afterwards. I mean, not wake-up-screaming and hysterical nightmares, but I dream that some psychopath is trying to kill me, and then right as I'm about to die, I wake up. After my heart palpitations have ceased, and I reach the conclusion that my house is serial-killer free, I doze off; only to have the exact same dream. It is torture.
      Side note to #3: Cary went cross country one night this week, and it was my first time sleeping alone in our house. Just as I was drifting off to dreamland, Abby bolts up and starts barking her head off at the door. For a full minute, I was convinced that I was in the clutches of a mass murderer. It really makes no sense. When Cary is around, I very rarely fear that murderers are going to sneak into our house (unless I'm in the shower; which is a subject for another time.) But the second that he is gone, I interpret every little sound to be the sound of a cold blooded killer making his way into the house.

4. Well, this seems as good a time as any to discuss my irrational fear of showering. Not that showering in and of itself is scary (although you might think that I feel that way, what with the alarming irregularity of my showering habits) but I am always terrified that someone is going to sneak in my house and kill me while I'm sudsing it up. It would really be the perfect time. The water is running, I can't hear anything, and besides threatening to squirt shampoo in their eyes, I am defenseless. Usually at least once per shower, I have to turn off the water for a few seconds and listen to make sure there are no axe wielding psychopaths in my house. And I can't even count the number of times I've gotten shampoo in my eyes beacuse I've felt the need to open my eyes while rinsing because I am positive that death itself is about to pull back the shower curtain.

5. I shouldn't have watched Psycho when I was a little kid.

6. I have mixed feelings on the "fun-sized" candy issue. One the one hand, candy is undeniably fun. And it is always strangely cute when it is in miniature form. And in the moment, it is certainly fun to eat half a bag of mini twix and kit kats and snickers. But afterwards, when none of your pants fit and your teeth hurt and you are full of self loathing, it is decidedly not very fun. Here is what I don't get: As a person who is perpetually trying to eat better, I would never consider eating 2 entire full sized candy bars. That would just be ridiculous. But I can eat 2 candy bars worth of fun sized treats faster than you can say "Type 2 Diabetes."

7. I am 1 of probably about 5 people in the world who like Good N' Plenties. I also sincerely enjoy Peeps. I am thrilled that they are available for all holidays now, instead of just Easter.

8. Speaking of Peeps, but unrelated to Halloween, and slightly inappropriate, but still funny:




9. One year, my friend and I painted cardboard boxes to look like dice and wore them for trick-or-treating. This seemed like an excellent idea, until we realized that the location of the arm holes prevented us from bringing our arms together or putting them down. Much armpit chafing ensued.

10. I had several excellent ideas for costumes this year, but due to laziness and lack of husband cooperation, none of them came to fruition. My first idea was for Cary to be Mario, me to be Princess Peach, and Abby to be Yoshi. Then I decided that we would be the whole Where's Waldo clan, including his dog and girlfriend who I learned through a googlesearch, is named Wendy. And then I decided Cary and I would be cowboys, and Abby would be a cow. All of these costumes revolved around the idea of dressing up Abby. I am one of those people. In the end, we're just going to be grown ups sitting at home and passing out candy. This counts as a costume to me, since I still can hardly believe that I am a married adult with a house in which to pass out candy. Weird.

The last week of my life at work

According to the 4-pictures-in-a-row option I just discovered on photobooth on my computer:

 Left to right, from top: Grrrr. Aww man... Huh? Whatev!

And then I went on a roller coaster. 

Computers are fun.

And I need a hobby. 

More substantial updates to come; pending less "Grr" and more "whatev!" moments at work...

2 more hours of work. Time to blog.

Going on trips to Corpus Christi...

Cary now flying the T-1...

                  

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Chick-Fil-A for dinner!



You know what one the major perks of having a pilot for a husband is?

Having Chick-Fil-A sandwiches and Freebirds burritos flown in to you. Such blessed establishments are absent from our lives here in Del Rio, but now that the husband is flying the T-1 and going on out-and-back trips (or as Cary fondly calls them, out-and-snack), I've enjoyed having Chick-Fil-A delivered to my door by my sexy pilot husband. It is awesome. He flew to Corpus Christi yesterday and brought back 4 sandwiches. Definite win.

I've actually been working, all productive like, up until a few minutes ago, and I am just so over it right now. It's Friday afternoon, and I'm done. I woke up at 6 this morning to lead my running group on a 6 mile run! It was a good time. And we all finished in under an hour. So proud of my runners! I'm loving this running group. Not only am I excited about motivating other people to run, but it's forces me to run too! Plus, if I didn't come, no one would know where to go... So I sort of have to go. My ankles felt like they were make of cooked spaghetti this morning and I was running horribly, and on my own I probably would have called it quits at about 3 miles. But I had to suck it up, pretend to enjoy it, cheer everyone else on and not be a wimp. And there is nothing better than winding up your run before 7:30, knowing that you ran 6 miles while everyone else was probably still sleeping. I decided not to bring Abby the flabby labby because I didn't want to make her too tired, and she's still snubbing me for going running without her. I even put on my shoes on outside, hoping she wouldn't know I was going running without her, but she still figured it out. She's a smart pooch. But then again, she did run full speed into the glass door this morning, so I guess she evens out to about average.

Speaking of Abby, the poor dog can't walk anywhere in our house these days. We woke up one day to find that our floor mysteriously became extremely slippery. She flails around in a manner very reminiscent of Bambi walking on the ice :

 It's a combination of hilarious and pathetic. I am still quite puzzled over why our floor is so slippery. I mopped it, and it's still slick. It is very infuriating to hop out of bed in the middle of the night to go pee and end up nearly doing the splits and banging your head on the sink... or so I hear. The only logical answer would be that the housing people snuck into our house in the middle of the night and waxed our floors. I can't come up with anything else! If anyone can discover why our house turning into an ice skating rink, I will give you $5.

As soon as I get off of work, I'm off to a friend's house to make these bad boys:



Our Best Bites' Mississippi Mud Brownies

The fact that I ran 6 miles this morning gives me permission to eat half a pan of these, right?

Things I am loving right now:

Dear Alexander,

I feel you.

In order to turn this frown upside down, I'm going to make a list of things that are currently getting two thumbs way up from this girl:

1. Friday Night Lights

Oh hello, guy who plays a high schooler but it's not creepy how much I love you.

Or more specifically, Tim Riggins. Meow. I needed a show to watch that Cary wouldn't want to watch so that I could watch it when he's studying and not distract him or tempt him to come watch with me. I chose Friday Night Lights, and to be honest, it took me several episodes to get into it, but I'm officially hooked. And so is Cary. It started with him standing next to the couch, scoffing at me for watching such ridiculousness, but over time it has morphed into him slowly squeezing onto the couch next to me and asking, "Wait, I thought she broke up with him, why are they making out?"

2. S'mores Ice Cream 

Oh, so delicious. Let us not discuss how many days this bad boy lasted in the Reeves' household until it was gone. I've been battling a nagging cold for the last 2 weeks, and on one day my sore throat demanded that I have ice cream for dinner, and who am I to argue with that?

3. Mario Kart

I am getting really good. Come over. I will destroy you on Koopa Cape. But don't even try to play Rainbow Road or freakin' Wario's Goldmine. Not in my house.

4. This hilarious photo of my husband on our honeymoon that I recently re-discovered.

Isn't he so cute? Don't you just want to kiss him? Ok, that part's probably just me. Which is probably for the best.

5. Sharpie Pens

I love to write lists. I love to write in my planner. I love to write everything. And nothing brings me more happiness than a great pen. I have found perfection in the form of these Sharpie pens. Anybody want a letter? I will write you one and you can marvel at how great my handwriting is with these Sharpie pens. I would exhort anyone who enjoys the feel of a good pen to go out and purchase one of these lovelies, with haste.

6. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

I've been re-reading this while on the bike and oh boy do I love it. I usually only ride the bike for 10 or 15 minutes to loosen my legs up after running, but I've been clocking 30 or 40 minute bike sessions lately because I just don't want to stop reading! I'm also reading The Book Theif, but it's not gripping me the way I expected it to. But I'm only a few chapters into it.

7. Frozen Peaches and Smores Luna Bars

Post- Run breakfast of champions right there. I eat this for breakfast probably 5 times a week. Mmm. In the same vein, I am looooving running in the morning these days. The temperature is perfect, and when I'm done running, I don't look like I just jumped in a pool. Delightful.

8. Sonic Vanilla Diet Coke

Don't look at me like that. I don't need your judgment. I'm just telling it like it is. If loving Diet Coke is wrong, I don't want to be right. Diet Coke 4 LYFE. (DC4L, it'll catch on).

9. Modern Family

Cary and I are obsessed. We order it through Nexflix, and the day we get it in the mail is like Christmas. Side note: Dear people of Netflix (who obviously read my blog),

Get your act together. What was that Quikster joke about? And how about you add more movies that actually made it into movie theaters and less weird anime XXX films.

Sincerely,

The Reeves.

10. FALL IS COMING!

The temperatures are more in the 80s and less in the 100s, which is still very far from fall in my opinion, but wearing pants is becoming less disgusting and sweaters and apple cider are just around the corner (humor me, experienced Texans). Halloween candy lines the shelves and carving pumpkins is already written in my planner (with my sharpie pens). The house is decorated with halloween and fall decor and I've been lighting a delicious pumpkin spice candle which always disappoints my husband when he discovers that I am not actually baking a pumpkin pie. My seeeester is having her baby girl at the end of November and I get to go Colorado to hold my new niece and be in the snow and YAY! So many happy occassions are coming upon us! This is my favorite time of year!

Hey look, it worked! I'm happy, and I'm done with work!