Month: May 2011

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And I ran

Since I hadn’t run since my 5k last Saturday, I did finally get one in Sunday morning before my dad arrived. It was a longer route that I used to do all the time (well, longer for me right now), and it didn’t feel too bad. I ran 2.86 miles in 26:14, a 9:10 pace. Much slower than my 5k, but I can’t really keep that pace up while I’m just running for exercise.

Now that I no longer have the benefit of the breastfeeding calorie burn, I have to make sure I get back to regular exercise. Especially with all the summer grilling and brat/hamburger consumption, I’m sure that weight will come screaming back if I stay lazy. My goal for the summer is to get at least 3-4 workouts in per week. So if I can keep going to my trainer once a week most weeks, that’ll mean 3 runs. Maybe we’ll start getting out for some weekend bike rides too, now that we have a trailer for D.

Bikini season is not the time to start packing on the pounds, SM. 😉

 

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It was a family affair

Did everyone have a nice long weekend? I certainly did. I LOVE 3-dayers! We usually have an annual Memorial Day party to kick off Summer, but this year we changed things up a bit and decided to push it back to later in the season. So this year we had the whole weekend free, and it was blissful.

Friday night my mom came up to spend the night and get her requisite monthly Grandma time with D. Saturday afternoon R’s mom came down to babysit D while we went up to Kohler for one of their Festival of Beer weekend events, Cheers to Beers. One of our good friends planned a surprise get together for his wife’s upcoming 30th birthday, so we headed up to be a part of it. It was a blast! Cheers to Beers was a 3 hour beer tasting held in the Kohler Design Center, and it was a lot of fun. What’s better than sampling some of the best beers from around the country while moseying through some of the finest toilets in the country?

Sunday my dad came to town for the afternoon, and despite the cold, rainy day, we had a really nice visit. Plus he brought some of my favorite sandwiches up from Peoria, always a bonus. 😉 Yesterday was fantastic. We woke up to blue skies and what turned out to be some blazing sun, so we took advantage. We walked over to a park a few blocks from our house for a round of frisbee golf, which D enjoyed immensely by taking a nap. It’s quite obvious I haven’t played in a couple years, judging by the number of discs for which I had to go foraging in the woods surrounding the course. R trounced me, as usual, but that’s ok – it was fun to be out on a course again and enjoying some finally nice weather. (i usually don’t even keep score during frisbee golf. my lack of aim and arm strength make for a discouraging combo when i do) Afterwards D and I headed out to some friends’ house to see their 2 week old baby boy, K, and he is just about the cutest, tiniest peanut ever. He snoozed the whole time we were there, and he looked so little and scrumptious in his swing. Congrats again, Ds! When we got home R fired up the grill for some outstanding brats, we sat in the driveway and listened to the Brewers on the radio, then enjoyed a fire in the fire pit until it was time to call it a night.

It was the perfect way to ring in the summer. Family, friends, warm weather, ahh… Thank you to all of our servicemen and servicewomen who have allowed us to enjoy these times.

 

I love frisbee golf

 

 

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No words

I’m sorry to post such a sad story, but there’s no way I could not. Jenny over at What the Blog? wrote today about a family’s story she found just by clicking around on the internet last night. It is an absolutely heart-wrenching tale of a family that has had to make one of the worst decisions parents should ever have to face – to let one of their babies go. I can’t even recount the whole thing without bursting into tears, so please go read about them. This is their family blog, and this is little Owen’s very own page.

If you scroll back a few pages on the family blog you can read the dozen or so posts leading up to the newest one and get the whole backstory. Their nightmare has all unfolded over this past week. As I read through everything my mind was made up from the first sentence that I was going to help them. But when I got to the end and saw that they’re right here in our own backyard, I knew there was absolutely no way I could not pass on their story. They have been at Children’s Hospital through all of this, and they were even featured on Dave and Carole’s Miracle Marathon for Children’s Hospital that has been going on these past two days on radio 96.5 WKLH. We listen to this marathon each May (as much as we can, anyway, without sobbing. the stories are incredible), and I have donated the past couple of years. Last year especially, it really hit home that with a child of our own (well, D was still on the way at that time) we are so fortunate to have a facility like this in our area if something would ever happen that we would need it. Just yesterday I actually became a donor member of their Miracle Network. Little did I know that donation would be put to use so soon.

On Owen’s page is a link where you can help with a donation directly to the Bissing Family Relief Fund. I can’t even begin to imagine having to face a seemingly insurmountable pile of hospital bills, not to mention funeral/memorial costs, on top of having my heart and soul ripped out with the loss of a child. I just sent them a donation, and I know every $1 will help immensely. There is also a link on the “How you can help” page of the family’s blog if you are in the area and would like to help with meals for them instead.

Please, please go help the Bissing family. If you can’t help financially, please help them with your prayers. That sun that finally came out today? Maybe that’s little Owen, letting everyone know he’s ok.

 

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FF

TGIF!! And especially an F before a long holiday weekend! Everyone pay a little tribute to our honorable vets for Memorial Day (or even better, a big tribute).

What I have for the FF this week are some long overdue pictures that I promised from D’s first Brewers game a few weeks ago:

My 1st tailgate

 

Miller Park, yippee!

 

Mom, this place is fun!

 

Mmm, strings

 

Thanks for letting me chew on your water bottle, Auntie Stacey

 

Of course I cheered with Daddy too

 

And just because, here are some more artsy nature shots of water droplets in the gardens. This time they were on my bleeding heart plants.

Into the heart of the bleeding heart

 

Just some more droplets

 

Have a wonderful 3 day weekend, everybody. I get to go meet our friends’ brand new baby boy, K, on Monday, yay!!

 

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Things they don’t tell you about pregnancy – #1

There are approximately 7 bajillion books about pregnancy out there, all filled with oodles of facts, figures, and if you’re lucky, photos (oh, the photos!). I got a couple of them while I was pregnant, and actually did find a lot of useful and helpful information. You can easily experience sensory overload though, trying to plow through everything you’re told you just MUST do or have in preparation for that small human that will soon be coming into your life, or everything you MUST NOT do or have so as to make sure said small human’s entry into this world is just absolutely perfect. (fyi, that entry is rarely “perfect”, whatever that means, so just hang loose. if l&d doesn’t go exactly as you had hoped/planned, don’t fret. as long as that baby gets out here safe and sound, that’s what matters most)

But what I was always more interested in during my pregnancy was everything those books weren’t going to tell me. Like all the really weird, gross stuff that you’ll never find in print, yet is fairly common knowledge to almost every woman who has ever given birth. So that’s what I always asked my friends who had children – what do I really need to know about all this?

With all the new babies right now and my increasing thoughts about when we’ll try to give D a sibling, I find myself looking back on those 38 weeks and 6 days last year more and more frequently. I’ve been trying to remember all the weird, gross stuff I experienced that I was totally unaware would happen going into it. Maybe so I’m better prepared next time, maybe to share with anyone else who’s pregnant right now or trying to get pregnant, or maybe just because. No matter the reason, I’ve decided to start this little section of the blog called “Things they don’t tell you about pregnancy” to house all the weird, gross stuff that I encountered.

These tidbits will be in no particular order, neither chronologically through the stages of pregnancy nor of importance. I’ll just share them as I think of them, which = randomly (kind of like everything else i put on here). So if you’re pregnant, trying to get pregnant, have ever been pregnant and can relate, or have no plans to ever get pregnant and just want to see what crazy shit I’m going to come up with now, hopefully I can give you a little insight into what’s really (might probably?) going to happen to your body. If not, then maybe you can get a few laughs out of hearing what happened to me.

Let’s talk about hair. I have long hair, and shed a fair amount when I wash and brush it. I’m constantly sweeping up hair off the bathroom floor and pulling the wads of hair out of the drain after my showers. So I was blown away by the end of my pregnancy when I wouldn’t lose a single hair no matter how many times I brushed or washed it. NOT ONE! This was completely foreign to me, because I’m not kidding when I say thousands of wigs could have been made with the hair I’ve shed during my lifetime. It was awesome. I never had to clean out the drain, I never had to sweep up the floor, I never had to worry if I had stray hairs on my shoulders or back, and I was no longer finding random pieces of hair on the floor around the house. Long, shiny, thick, luxurious hair was the order of the day. And the prenatal vitamins I’d been taking since months before I was even pregnant helped it grow that much faster, too.

Fast forward to about 3 months after I had D, and the party came to a screeching halt. Not only did I go back to shedding, but hair was falling out like there was an evacuation order atop my head. And at a rapid pace! Handfuls upon handfuls would come out in the shower, and the bathroom floor looked like I was standing on a small rug when I got done brushing. And if I used a hair dryer? Oh forget it. The bathroom was covered in a hair sweater. It was disgusting. I hate stray hair, especially hair on the floor, so this annoyed the crap out of me. Plus, I swear I could feel my hair thinning. It was awful! What happened to my lustrous locks? Am I going to be bald soon?? I had heard other women mention that their hair did start to fall out after pregnancy, but I had no idea it was going to be like this! I just figured it’d go back to my normal shedding amount, since I had more hair than most of the people who told me about this. Surely my regular waterfall of loose hairs would equal what they referred to as “hair falling out”. Nope. My hair fell.out. Anywhere, anytime, and all over the place. I hated it. I even had to warn my stylist that the sink was going to be horribly full of hair after she washed it since I’d just had a baby and I apparently needed Rogaine.

Fortunately, there is a light at the end of this hairy tunnel. It does stop. For me it was around the 6 month mark post-delivery. Finally the clumps of hair got smaller and smaller until the shedding was back to a normal, much more manageable level. But I was really worried there for a bit. My pony tail was thinner, and I swore that my hairline had receded. I am happy to report, however, that it all goes back to normal. Too bad the grays that fell out still grew back gray. Ah well, that’s why I pay my stylist. At least now she has a full head of hair to work with again.

 

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Last post on this, I promise

This article was published yesterday about the Bernie Brewer lawn ornament disaster, and it made me feel so much better about the whole thing. I didn’t know there was a “grand prize” Bernie, but I was beyond ridiculously happy to read this story of who found it.

And apparently the hoarder issued an apology too. That’s big of her and all, but saying you didn’t know you were only supposed to take 1 because you just followed what you saw on Twitter and didn’t read the official rules? Nice try, but Bernie tweeted numerous times to share with other Brewers fans if you found many of them and only take 1 for yourself. Try again next time, little Miss Hoardy McHoarderson, and learn to play fair!

Completely unrelated, but equally as heart-warming (or should i say, belly-warming?), check out what we had for dinner last night. I saw these online last week and couldn’t believe we hadn’t had them before! So R, being the absolute gem that he is, grilled them right up for us. You can read his synopsis of them over at TinySausage.

 

The Hamburger Fatty - yes, those are grilled cheeses for the bun

 

Inside the Fatty

 

 

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Backlash

So the “Where’s Bernie?” promotion turned into a huge fiasco yesterday, escalating even more after I posted my little rant about it. It turns out the girl who swiped ~35 of the “stach”-ues from the big lakefront location posted braggart pictures of them all jammed in her trunk on Twitter and Facebook. Then she had the gall to complain that she didn’t get any that had a prize attached!! (the 400 scattered around in the other parks were the ones that had prizes attached. the 1,000 lakefront ones did not) Seriously, the greed on display yesterday was incredible and pretty sickening, what with her and others taking as many Bernies as they could get their grubby hands on just to turn around and try to sell them on eBay for hundreds of dollars. This girl became Milwaukee’s most hated person by 7:30 yesterday morning. I kept reading the comments people were posting about her on Twitter and in response to numerous articles on the debacle that cropped up throughout the day, and it honestly sounded like a lynch mob was going to form to hunt her down.

Now here’s where it got a little out of control. Someone published both her home address and her phone number on Twitter. What?? Sure what she did was shitty and helped ruin the fun for the rest of us, but publicizing her private information? That’s too far. She had to delete her Twitter account and lock down her Facebook page, I’m sure because of all the hate traffic she was getting. Now she has to worry about people storming her house to harass her in person or leaving her steaming voicemails? Wow.

This whole episode presented an interesting study in human behavior. On one end of the spectrum were those of us who followed the rules, played fair, and lost, and on the other end were those who disobeyed the rules, cheated, and won. And then of course there were the resultant angry masses of fair-players releasing their disdain for all of the cheaters through any social media outlet they could find. Throughout the hatefest that ensued once everyone realized people had cheated and gone early to grab the Bernies, I couldn’t help but wonder – if I had gotten there early and seen everyone taking the stach-ues before the designated time, would I have joined in and taken one while I had the opportunity too, or would I have waited until the start time like we had been instructed and watched as my chances of getting anything vanished before my eyes? As much as I wholeheartedly wanted to say I would absolutely 100% have waited like we were supposed to, there was a tiny piece of me that kept thinking, but man, it would have been nice to have a Bernie if I’d had the chance.

And then I got really frustrated with myself for thinking that way. Here I was, joining right in on the bashing of those who disregarded the rules and got the prize at the expense of the rest of us, yet maybe I would have been one of those being bashed if I’d just gotten to the park half an hour earlier. I’d like to think that the simple fact that we did not arrive at the park any earlier than a few minutes before 7:00 yesterday morning, fully expecting to see a lawn full of Bernies waiting for us, proves that I really was one of the fair-players. But what if we’d gotten ready that much faster, dropped D off at daycare 10 minutes earlier or even taken her after we’d gone to the park, and gotten down to the lakefront in time to see the Brewers van guy handing out Bernies to anyone who was already there? Hmm, what if?? Would we really have been able to say nope, we’re waiting until 7:00 like the rules state? Unfortunately, I can’t with a clear conscience say that answer would definitely have been yes. That 18″ tall plastic lawn ornament statue may have just been too damn tempting for the fair-player in me to resist.

This episode has proven to me, however, that I really do want to be a fair-player. Sure I may lose out on stuff sometimes like we did yesterday with the Bernies, but I want to be able to teach D by example. You know, the whole actions speak louder than words thing. And I certainly don’t want her growing up believing the notion that nice guys (or girls!) always finish last and the only way to get what you want in life is to knock others down and out of the way. Yes, she will have to fight for what she believes and wants sometimes, but I want her to learn that can be done without cheating others. Integrity is something I want to instill in her, not greed. (wow has this kid changed me or what? a year ago i probably would’ve said you can take that fair-player stuff and shove it. i want a bernie!)

So I apologize for hating you yesterday, Ms. McHardie (the Bernie hoarder). What you did was not fair or right, and I hope you realize that now (hopefully without too many eggs or too much tp on your house). You and all the other cheaters ruined a really fun event for the rest of us, incensed entire legions of Brewers fans, and received national coverage of your shenanigans. But having your privacy invaded wasn’t fair either – they were just lawn ornaments, after all. I guess my point here is that through all of this I hope both you and I learn to always be fair-players. (and if you don’t, then i at least hope people saw through your eBay greed and you got zero profits from your Bernie haul yesterday. suck it! i can play fair, but that doesn’t mean i have to like you! 😉 )