This is What I Do When I'm Avoiding Sleep

So living with 2 adult men gets the house dirty pretty darn quick.  Unfortunately I can't blame it all on them because Skylar and Tristan were gone half of last week working the Home and Garden Show in Sandy.  Nevertheless, our house was really dirty and needed a cleaning so I figured tonight was a good night to tackle it.

The boys headed up north early this afternoon for some appointments and are staying the night up there for more appointments tomorrow.  I took a nap this afternoon after they left (yes, you can be jealous) and while I was asleep I dreamed that I asked Skylar and Tristan to search the house before they left to make sure there weren't any creepers hiding out waiting to kidnap me.  THEN, when I woke up I went into the living room and the front door (that is pretty hard to open) was sitting 6 inches open!  Odd much?  I think so.  Well, that got me a little creeped out so I checked the house (like a good paranoid person does) and it was all clear.  But then when I laughingly told Skylar about it tonight on the phone, he told me to get his roofing hatchet and keep it by the bed.  Ha ha needless to say, I didn't feel like going to bed any time soon.  So I decided to clean!

Before:

 

Poor Sir Francis Drake.  His home is so gross.

Beware: we're now entering the man section of the house.  Pretty much the only time I'm ever in these parts is when I'm going to and from the back door.  I changed my mind about trying to tackle this!

My cleaning attire.  I know, I know, all black?  I'm SO chic.

And AFTER!

Aaaahhhh, much better.

Oh the joys of not having a dishwasher.  Don't worry, there were more dishes, but I had already put them up.

Done!

P.S. Can you tell I'm out of things to blog about?  My life is so exciting.

Romeo, Romeo, Wherefore Art Thou, Romeo?

On Saturday, Skylar and I had the privilege of attending my nieces' ballet recital.  They attend this "fancy shmancy" school that teaches from around 3 yrs up through high school age students.  They put on a pretty darn impressive performance!  They performed Romeo and Juliet and most of it was the older girls (obviously), but they had small scenes for the little ones.  It was so funny to hear all the "Aaawwww"s from the audience when the little girls came out for their piece.  The Jimmy (Hailey) and the Chudda (Lauren) were so cute up there.  Hailey was very serious and really tried to do a good job.  Lauren just twirled around and did her own thing.

Fun night, complete with coordinating outfits for my husband and me.  We're so unified.

Reason #3478 Why I Like Him

Not many people know this about me (probably because I haven't regularly shared a bathroom with too many people), but one of my greatest annoyances in life is not replacing the toilet paper when the roll runs out.  For some reason, I find it even more irritating when the person before DOES get out a new roll, but fails to take a few extra seconds to put it in its proper place - like BACK on the toilet paper holder thingy.

Living with Skylar, I find myself in this predicament nearly every other day.  Lately, I've given up and just ignore the fact that the TP isn't on the holder and leave it where it is.  He could do far worse things in life.  However, the other day I walked into the bathroom to find this:

I don't know why, but this cracked me up for the rest of the day.  Seriously boy?  Not only did he NOT finish one entire roll and throw it away, but he pulled out ANOTHER roll and set it on the counter because clearly there wasn't any more room on the holder.  He's crazy.  I like him.

Dear Tony, You Rock

So I was certain that the shin splints would be no big deal and would quickly recover as I continued to run.  I was wrong.  They only got worse and worse.  2 nights ago I finished my run and did really well, but as soon as I stopped my lower legs started throbbing and my legs kept trying to buckle under me.  I came inside and iced right away, but the pain persisted.  I started to realize that maybe I needed to back off the running for a bit, even though I really didn't want to.  I'm afraid that the progress I've made (though not monumental to most, is a pretty big deal for me) will be lost if I even miss a day that I shouldn't.  But I started researching and all the websites I found said to change your exercising to something of different/lower impact.

So last night I returned to my faithful friend, Tony.  This genius created P90X and boy howdy, is it good.  I did it off and on for a while last summer.  I'm only going to be doing the cardio portion of it for the next week or so until my legs heal, but surprisingly it's lower impact so it should work.  After my workout last night, my legs didn't hurt at all (which was a great sign!), but I felt like I had worked harder than I do during my runs (also a good thing)!  So here's to you Tony.  You Rock.

Medial Tibial Stress Syndrome

I've been doing so well running 6 days a week for the last several weeks, but about a week ago, it started.  I was plagued with it when I played sports in high school, and it's only gotten worse now that I'm out of shape.  Ah yes, the villain responsible for 13% of all running injuries.  Stupid shin splints.

(Anyone up for some zucchini and squash tonight?)

Sad Tooth

For the last 2 years I've gotten this strange pain around my upper left 2 molars.  The pain usually last just a few days and it comes and goes without any rhyme or reason to.  For the last week and a half the pain has lasted though and last night as I was flossing I did something that caused excruciating pain to spread throughout the whole left side of my mouth.  It about knocked me out it was so bad.  So I did what any good kid does and I called my mom.  She's a pharmacist, but seems to be the smartest woman alive when it comes to ANYTHING health-related.  She thought it might be an abscess and made sure I set up a dentist appointment for the next day.

Well this morning was quite the adventure trying to not just get an appointment, but get APPROVED to go in somewhere.  When I got married, I was taken off of my parents insurance, but then at the beginning of this year, the policy changed so that I could be put back on.  Apparently, not all the t's were crossed, however because after I finally got an appointment and got the info to the dental office, they called me back later to tell me that I wasn't actually on the insurance so I had to pay everything right then and there if I wanted to be seen.

Dejected, I called my mom back and she came to the rescue, of course.  Moms are so good like that.  So I went in and found out that my two back molars are spread farther apart than normal so even though I floss regularly, small particles of food easily work their way up into the gums and start to irritate it, leading to a small infection.  I can't even begin to tell you how bad it hurt when the dentist was just poking around to find out what was going on.  They did a heavy-duty-deep cleaning to get EVERYTHING out that wasn't supposed to be there and inserted an antibiotic up under the gum that releases it's stuff over the course of a month.  They had to numb me twice for it all because it was so intense.

Interestingly, this was a rather humbling experience for me today.  When I got home from my mission, I tried so hard to be an independent adult.  I wouldn't accept my parents help on much of anything, though they were more than willing to give it.  I've learned a lot from that, but have learned things in a harder way than I needed to.  Then when I got married, I seriously stopped accepting things from them except for gifts for birthdays or Christmas.  Again, didn't really need to, I was just trying to prove to myself that I could do this whole adult thing.  This morning though, I think my hard head softened a little bit because I was forced to see that I couldn't do everything by myself.  Sure I'm an adult in many ways, but I'll always need my parents for different things.  I'm just so grateful to have parents who, even though I rejected what they were trying to offer me, are still willing to give to me lovingly.

So thanks Mom and Dad.  Y'all are pretty darn great.

Return of the Healthy

Recently, I've discovered a sickness of mine.  I've had this sickness my whole life, but only in the last 4 or 5 years has it become a problem as my metabolism changed.  My sickness?  I love food.  Too much.  I feel a strong connection to Hurley, from Lost.  Yes, I know, I'm obsessed with that show.

I've been trying to convince myself that it won't be a problem if I can just make myself start exercising regularly.  So, for the last couple of weeks I've actually been doing really well with running every night.  But in the back of my mind, I know that running alone won't get me back to the type of healthy I want to be.

Last night, Skylar and I were watching Lost, of course, when one of the characters said the words "Strawberry" and "Shortcake" within a few minutes of each other.  Naturally, this made the cravings begin and we decided that after our runs, we would make a quick trip to the store to get the fixin's for such a dessert as lovely as this:

The runs took place, and after showering I asked the husband if he was REALLY sure he still wanted this.  He said yes, I threw all self control out the window, and we were on our way to Smith's.

Once there, however, we elected to go with something ready made, but still as delicious.  We chose something similar to this:

With a bit of this on top:

Too many sweets can really make you feel sick though, so we decided to balance it out with some saltiness in the form of this piece of heaven:

Accompanied, of course, by these:

Upon our return home, we enjoyed our fabulous snacks, feeling only slightly (physically) disgusting afterwards.  The emotionally/mentally disgusting feelings for me came later that night.  I marched into our room where the husband was sitting and what started out as a begging of Skylar, turned into a threatening of Skylar not to let me do this anymore.  He crossed his heart and hoped to die.  He would help me kick this damaging habit.

Today, I got home from class and found myself faced with the overwhelming temptation of gorging some more on what was left from last night.  After informing the husband of my temptations and being told by both him and his brother that they wouldn't eat it all today, I was dejected.  But then, just a short while later, a miracle happened.  This stud took care of it all, nearly by himself:

Yup, I have a pretty dang good Bro-In-Law.  Even though he's trying to get back into shape too, he sacrificed his health today for me.  So here's a shout out to the stud of the house today.  Thanks Tristan!

I'm determined to do this.  A return to healthiness.