Insanity, Tomatoes, and Happy Endings

So how was your weekend? I had a really busy weekend, between my run, my workout, and all the prep work for school, which started for my kids yesterday. (Boo hoo, summer, I hardly knew ya…)

I started the weekend at 6:30 Saturday morning with a 10-mile run.  I had made plans to meet my friend Toddra (I used to say she was Ann’s friend, but now that we’ve run together so much, I’m claiming her as mine, lol!).  She conned me into signing up for the Detroit Women’s Half with her, and so therefore, we’re pretty much on the same schedule. Ann is signed up for it too, but she hurt her ankle (in ballet class—holy cow!), so she’s currently trying to recuperate.  Shout out to Ann—feel better, my hard-core ballet friend!

Toddra had warned me on Friday that she would be recuperating from a late night at the Tigers game. She said she might be a bit late, but she promised me, “Neither beer, nor wine, nor vodka will keep me from a planned run!” LOL, I like the way she thinks. 😉 True to her word, she arrived at the park at 6:30am, looking surprisingly alert for a woman who’d had 5 hours of sleep after a night that included an alcoholic beverage or two (or more…?).

We met at a park in Flat Rock that has a connector trail to Oakwoods Metropark, which then connects to Willow.  The plan was a simple out-and-back, 5 miles each way.  The weather was finally cool, and we had some great views.

I was amazed that Toddra was able to run despite the lack of sleep and how she must have been feeling. We talked the whole way, and I was really surprised at how quickly the first five went by. I didn’t even look at our paces, and it turns out we actually did pretty good for the first 6 or 7 (included a stop for a picture), just below an 11-minute pace. We stopped at 5 to let her tie her shoes, and then turned around.  She started to fade a bit around mile 7, so we took another walk break. The last two were a bit more challenging for her, and we walked again at 8.5, but she pulled it out at the end with a little encouragement from me and we had a strong finish!

I think we look pretty damn good for two ladies who had just run 10 miles!

I had two items on my to-do list for Saturday: run 10 miles, and hem five pairs of Jamie’s new uniform pants for school.  And which one do you think caused me more misery?

That’s Jamie and me, working on the first pair of pants.  I do NOT sew, by any stretch, but I have this little travel sewing machine I inherited from a friend who only needed it for a single project, and I’ve used it about 5 times in the 15 years since she gave it to me.  After doing all the cutting and pinning (ugh!), I pulled it out on Saturday, painstakingly read the directions, and then proceeded to do the first pair.  Success!!  I did it!  And then…

The sewing machine died. :/

Technically, it didn’t die. It still works, the timing is just off. This caused me two hours of frustration and misery before I figured it out, and I was one unhappy girl when I was done. I checked with my neighbor to see if I could use her machine (it was in the shop), then my mom (she was out of town), so I went to bed cranky, knowing I would have to hand sew them on Sunday. Grrrr…

However, I had something else to do on Sunday, too: my first “real” Insanity workout.  I’d done the “fit test” as my first foray into the program on Thursday, but Sunday was the first actual workout.  I knew it would be tough to find the time (or enthusiasm) to do it later in the day, so I woke up early and did it before church.  JJ heard me downstairs and came down to keep me company/cheer me on/pretend to do it with me. 😉  It was the “plyometric cardio circuit,” and in doing it, I discovered once again that I lack all grace and coordination. It was as hard for me to try to just figure out the moves as it was to do them. :p  But I did it!  I won’t say I did them all perfectly, but I definitely got a workout, right or wrong. I was sweating like crazy!  It took about 45 minutes total, which is kind of long for me to fit into my already busy schedule, but we’ll see how I can juggle it as the school and hockey season ramp up.  I definitely felt accomplished when I was done, and I could even feel the endorphins when I was sitting in the pew at church later. 😉

Sunday afternoon was the back-to-school picnic, and I grudgingly took the four pairs of pants with me and worked on hand-stitching them while I sat around, talking to other parents and watching my kids hang out with their friends.  They all asked me what I was doing, and when I explained, they were all very sympathetic.  But then one of the moms looked at me and said, “You know, my 17-year-old daughter has a really nice sewing machine and she loves to sew. She could probably whip those off for you in five minutes.”

And a choir of angels sang…

I happily handed off all the pants to her (including the pair I had just horribly stitched) and later, her mom actually thanked me, because the daughter has been having some “teenage angst” issues lately, and she was grateful to give her something to do that made her feel needed and gave her a sense of pride.  That made me teary when she told me, and I was so glad that God had blessed me with the opportunity to give the young lady a chance to do something good and earn a little money for it.  (Because of course I was going to pay her!)  The next morning, her little sister brought them into school, all nicely done…

How awesome was that!?

And to round out my busy weekend, it was time to start processing tomatoes!

I asked JJ to model the first crop of tomatoes from our garden, since he did such a good job doing strawberry modeling a few years ago. I do believe he’s the cutest tomato model ever. 😉 (Jamie was pretending to throw pears at him to get him to smile.)

Unfortunately, due to all the rain we had in June, I won’t be able to get enough tomatoes from my garden for my canning project, so I went ahead and bought a bushel at the local farm market and spent Sunday night processing 30 pounds of tomatoes. They are peeled, cored, and frozen, ready to be thawed and cooked in a couple of weeks.

I was up later than I had expected to be Sunday night, and I ended up over sleeping Monday morning. But I still managed to get in my 5 mile run, and actually I did it pretty quickly. Once I got home, I weighed myself to see what the results of my changes for the week were. Here is a list of the things that I have changed:

1. I increased my points by three, from 26 per day to 29 per day.
2. I changed my work out from a 12 minute ab routine to the more intense Insanity work out twice per week.
3. I stopped eating mixed berries every day. I eat a lot of mixed berries, and although I know they’re “free” on Weight Watchers, I think I was overdoing it. I do still eat a banana every day. I like bananas!

So those were the changes, and the result was…

I lost the .8 I had gained the previous week, taking me back down to 125. At first I was really mad, because I’m so sick of being above 125…it’s been 12 weeks since I’ve been below that number! But then I realized that I had actually eat more food this week, and I still lost weight, so I decided that maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing after all. I’ll just keep trying, and maybe my changes will continue to make a difference!

The end to our weekend was also the unofficial end of summer in our house: the first day of school.

This is the last “first day of school” picture my boys will share, because next year Jamie will be in high school, and they won’t ever be in school together again. * sniff*

I hope you have a great week…thank you for reading!