They’re done!!

I started my new job last week. So far, it’s going well. I have three projects already assigned to me, but it’s work that I know I can do (though I’ll need to learn some new software), so I’m happy about that. It’s also been much less stressful than my past job, and I’ve really enjoyed getting to know everyone, or re-getting to know them, since I used to work there before. Everyone seems to get along very well, and we’ve been having a lot of fun, in addition to getting work done.

About the only downside I can see so far is that food is a big component of this job. :/ It seems like someone is bringing in snacks or other goodies every single day. :O On the other hand, the bright side (?) is that it’s a much larger company, and with the building being so large, there is a tremendous amount of walking involved in my job every day!  So hopefully I’m burning off some of these extra calories with all the snacks. :p I am TRYING to control myself, though.

I mentioned in my last post that I had to do the two end of season videos from my son’s hockey teams. It’s not that I “have to,” it’s just that I feel compelled to. :p I know that my kids love it, as do their teammates and their families from my experience, so I drive myself almost to the brink of insanity for a week or so, but I always get them done.

I started out doing these “highlight reels” five years ago, when Jamie’s team won their league championship game. It was just such a great time, it felt wrong NOT to have some of way to be able to capture the memories of the season. One of the moms on that team happened to videotape most of the games, and of course I had all the pictures, plus what we purchased from tournament photographers, so I spent a week putting together this 20-minute video that showcased all the high points (and a few low points) of the season. It was incredibly well-received, better than I ever expected. Many of those same families were on our team the next year, and they kept joking about all the pictures I was taking, asking “So, is that going to end up on the end of season DVD?” And thus, a tradition was born. I don’t have any of those kids on my sons’ team anymore, but I still do it every year, and now I do two, because of course I have two boys playing hockey. 🙂

The last couple of years, I’ve actually taken a day or two off work so that I could work on the videos and and maybe get some sleep. This year, however, I started my new job the same week as both kids’ team parties. Your first week on the job is not exactly prime time to be taking days off. :p  So, I soldiered on throughout the week, going to bed a little later each night. I ran Monday and Tuesday mornings according to the schedule, but on Wednesday I skipped my run, because I knew I needed some sleep.

The first day of my new job, the boys school bus wasn’t running, so I had to scramble to find a way to get them to school and still make it to my new-hire orientation at 7:45 AM. Wednesday morning when I woke up, I discovered that the boys’ school was on a two-hour fog delay. Now I had to figure out how to get them to school two hours later. :/  As I was waiting for my husband to get home from work, JJ, my younger son, complained that he didn’t feel well.  Now, I won’t lie: I’m a tough mom when it comes to my kids being sick. My first response was to skeptically ask, “Do you have a test today?” He answered no, and he really did look pretty unhappy, so I debated it for a little while before deciding that he had only missed one day of school all year, and even if he was kind of faking it, it would probably be okay for him to miss another day. After my husband got home and I left for work, I called JJ when I got to my desk, just to see how he was doing. I was horrified to find out that he had thrown up right after I left! And I felt really guilty. 🙁

He stayed home with my husband, who had to work that night and therefore slept on the other couch while JJ stayed up. Poor guy. I called him about every hour, and he just sounded terrible. He threw up several times, but he was able to eat some soup for lunch.

At about 1:15 that afternoon, I was sitting at my desk when I got a phone call from a number that I unfortunately recognized very well: the school. Sure enough, Jamie, who had shown no signs of feeling unwell when I left in the morning, had thrown up during Spanish class. Seriously?! So now it’s my third day of work and I have to ask my boss to reschedule a meeting with HER boss because I had to rush out the door to get my son from school!  Thankfully, she was very understanding.

So now, it was Wednesday afternoon. Jamie’s party was Thursday night, and I had barely even started the video. Once I got home and cleaned up after Jamie, I started on the video, but I kept having to stop to help poor Jamie, who alternately slept and threw up until about midnight. He finally started feeling better after midnight, and then he was wide awake! I continued to work on the video, and occasionally check on him. I finally made him go to bed at 1 AM, and somehow, I was able to get it all done by 2:30 AM. At least Thursdays are my rest days, so I didn’t have to get up earlier than 6 AM. :p

Thursday night was Jamie’s team party, and the video was once again a big hit. The party was fun, though I did eat a few too many cookies with my salad.  But I worked hard on that video, so I deserved them, right? 😉 Anyway, all was well…for that team. The problem was, I hadn’t even started the one for JJ’s team, and it was due Saturday afternoon at 1 PM. I left Jamie’s party and headed home, but I was so tired I could only do a little bit of work before I crawled into bed at 8:30. I was so tired!

I had this great idea that I was going to get up and run my scheduled 5 miles Friday morning, but, yeah… that didn’t happen. If you’re counting, that’s two runs I skipped!  I got home from work that night, knowing I had only about 19 hours before this video had to be done…and I hadn’t even finished processing the pictures yet, much less going through the video and finding a highlight for each of the 14 players. But, I was still feeling so guilty about not running in the morning that I felt compelled to go out and run right after I got home. I figured I could knock out 5 miles in an hour and be done. But then, for some strange reason, I actually went and looked at my training plan…and discovered that it wasn’t supposed to be a 5 mile run, it was supposed to have been an 8 mile run–at pace! Well, that wasn’t going to happen. I settled for doing six at pace, and I was able to do a pretty damn good job of it if I do say so myself.

Considering “pace” is supposed to be 11:04, that’s pretty damn good!

In case you didn’t read about it last year, “hockey video week” is one of the rare times that I have a really hard time staying on track with my food.  Making these videos is extremely stressful, and when I’m up in the wee hours of the morning, food is about the only thing that keeps me going.  I decided about two in the morning on Saturday that I needed to just forget about tracking my food and allow myself to go off plan some in order to keep me awake so that I could get the stupid video done.  And then at that point, I just started eating stuff.  And not good stuff, either. There was bread, there were cookies, and I think I had homemade nachos at about 4:30 in the morning. At 6:30, I realized that there would be no going to bed for me before this party, so  I laid down on the couch for a 10-minute rest, and then I got up and made myself some coffee. I finished the video at 12:30pm, and managed to get it there to the party by 1pm. It had a few glitches when I showed it, but no one noticed but me. 😉 It was a huge hit, as I had hoped, but after about an hour, I was ready to go home.

At this point, I was feeling guilty about skipping my 13-miler, so what do you think I did? Hell, no, I didn’t go out and run 13 miles! But I did go out and run six, and considering that I had been awake for over 30 hours at that point, and that the winds were about 20 miles an hour for half my route, I think that’s pretty damn impressive. Or pretty damn stupid, depending on how you look at it. 😉

I ended up not going to bed until about 9:30 that night, which meant I was up for 39 1/2 hours straight. And I had run 12 miles in that time! I just get crazier every week, don’t I? 😉

Although I was pretty lax in my food choices over the weekend, I did actually track it all, and the two runs, plus a third run on Sunday, helped. Still, with the bad eating and the lower activity, I had to dip pretty far into my weeklies, which I normally never use.  I felt a little guilty, but I decided that one weekend a year isn’t going to kill me, and so when I weighed in on Monday, I was prepared for whatever the scale decided to do.

Uh…that’s a 2.6 pound LOSS from the prior week! What the…!? It just goes to show you that you never know how your body will react to your food and exercise choices in any given week. The week I cut back on exercise and eat MORE food…I have a huge loss! This loss is especially significant, because it’s the first time I have been below 120 in TEN MONTHS. I honestly didn’t think I would ever get there again. This has been my only goal for many weeks, and it feels great to be there. Now I just need to figure out how to sustain it!

That’s it for now…this is way long enough! But I’ll have another report soon, because I have a race recap!! Meanwhile, I don’t have many pictures for this post, but I do have a ton of hockey pictures that I processed last week, so how about one picture for each of my favorite hockey players? 🙂

Thanks for reading!!