the hulk does the hula

renovation has invaded my work life and my entire building will be closed for the next two weeks--prompting me to work from home; where we are between renovation projects while we try to refinance out of our weird construction loan and into something normal (the bank told us we would have no luck at all if any part of the place looked like a construction zone). there is still plenty to be done, just not right at the current moment.
my running has been pretty sporadic lately: also pretty short. i have been experimenting with weight lifting. following the livefit (google it) plan and really liking it. i'm in week six. my scale says i am only down maybe two pounds, but everything i own fits better and i definitely feel stronger. likely my results would be better if i were carefully following the nutrition portion of the plan, but it was not designed for vegetarians, so i am just eating like normal, but with more attempts to stuff protein into everything, without putting peanut butter on everything. oh peanut butter how i love you.   

tackled the pillow beast

So,

Older isn't always wiser, I am living proof of that. I've been taking this return to running slowly out of care, at least partly and out of laziness almost definitely.

I recognize that I feel better / sleep better / have clothes that fit better when I run regularly...

but I've gotten so used to *not*

not getting up early

not shucking work clothes and immediately heading out after a long day

not devoting a major part of my weekend to increasing mileage

its become a little hard to get myself out the door with any regularity.

I started out giving myself a day of rest after a day of running. and sometimes two.

and those periods of inactivity are so seductive.

at least, at this point I recognize the problem? Its me. all me.

Today I woke up around 5, and wondered what time it was and if I ought to get up

but I hadn't put out clothes the night before

so I stayed in bed, wondering until my alarm went off at 6:15

and went out to walk the dog

and it was 45 degrees out

and I could have kicked myself for not getting my butt out the door earlier

so. maybe tomorrow I will fight that battle a little harder.

maybe.

entering the woods of the discontented

Oh, my.

So: house has heat, I have running...though my "long" runs are still 5miles long tops(but mostly pain free!! though, my hips seem a lot tighter than they used to be), and my pace has suffered horribly. I do a fair bit of "Maine aerobics" because our method of heating is wood (...so nice it warms you twice, once when you haul it in and next when you burn it). and...hah! my aerobics instructor (cardio weightlifting) just came in to see me, possibly because its been a month since I've been to class <-- totally the best kind of instructor ever, huh, one who will hunt you down if you don't show up for long enough. she's awesome.

house: we finished the rear unit, rented that sucker and are currently having all of the cash sucked out of our pockets by the front unit, as we try to make it livable for us. its been kind of intense. but hopefully will be worth it sometime in the near-ish future.

we're at the tail end of renovating the kitchen, which is the second to last project we've got, given how expensive we've been told that kind of renovation is.

I'd say a rough estimate of cost so far would be in the $5k range. low for a kitchen renovation, but high for an amount of money to spend on a single room (if you ask me). my e-fund is still a shadow of its former self, and for the first time since my first year out of graduate school i am carrying a balance on my credit card (psychologically i can't let go of the efund to get rid of that. i know i am an idiot). it will, i hope, be gone next month, but I find it kind of sickening that its stuck around this long. getting rid of it is at the top of my priority list. above redoing the bathroom (our last money sucking project, I hope).

stand up straight

Went for a one-and-a-half-ish mile run just now as a sort of lunch break. it was good. so far no ache.
yesterday i began the hunt / investigation/ phase three eradication of the ache, by going and getting some gait analysis.
it was good, too. interesting and perhaps pseudo-scientific (depending on who you talk to) but good anyway.
saucony did it at a local running store. as it turned out i've been running in saucony shoes (cheapest available when i had a sudden need for new shoes as part one of ache eradication) and supposedly they plus the support insert i've been wearing are doing a good job at: get this
correcting my pronation
because i pronate now.
i have always had neutral medium-arch feet, but now apparently i am a pronator. and that could have been what started the whole mess anyway.
revelation. huh?
though saucony suggests that its a foot thing and to fix it with more supportive shoes (though they had only good things to say about my current set up) ...and nothing about alignment.
and other evidence suggests without proper alignment who the hell cares what you are wearing on your feet.
so.
take it all with a grain of maybe-but-maybe-not. for what that is worth.

heat it up

I just joined the conversation on this post: http://tinyurl.com/3rt4t7v and it occurred to me that it isn't something I've mentioned: we're without heat right now @ the house.
At first I was embarrassed--I haven't told any of my co-workers and didn't tell my mom until she offered to come help paint, and then I had to tell her to wear her long underwear because you need it in here...but its really not so bad, and the closer we get to spring the better it gets.
When we bought the house it was going through close to ten gallons of oil a day . And the internal temp was set at 60. We thought it was mostly heating hot water, so we disconnected the hot water tank and JLB brought an electric one home from work ...and it was still burning it up, so we shut it down completely with about 30 gallons left in the tank for emergencies. That was in early March.
It stayed cold for awhile, and we turned it on for several nights and then back off once we got up, to keep the pipes from freezing (we also left the tap in the kitchen just-so-slightly-on, just in case). We wore long underwear pretty much continuously and luckily both have those super-puffy down slippers (that we usually only use winter camping)...I suppose it helps that we both like winter camping and hiking too--cold is no fun, but its really not bad once you get moving. Once you get moving you get warm, no problem. If I want to sit still (to read a book, say, or type a bit on the computer) I grab a blanket, otherwise there are a bunch of putter-ing type projects that will keep me moving and busy and warm and need to be done anyway. Although I have been staying away from peeling wallpaper until it gets warmer out: I did that a couple of weekends ago and got soaked--and even though I used warm water to start, I did get really cold and since I was wet I had a very hard time warming up again. But sweeping and sanding and unpacking boxes are all excellent warm-up tasks. And moving bricks is the best--no way to be warmer, short of lugging firewood, for sure!
But really, I can't wait for spring!!

Tulip two step

wore my brooks (old old running shoes) yesterday for the first time in awhile: may have shooting pain in my calf at the moment...or maybe I am imagining it?
Anyway back to the Asics for now, and waiting a day or so before I try to run again.
Did a bit of yard work yesterday since enough of the snow has melted to see most of the yard: the people we bought this house from made some weird choices. Inside it is things like sponge-painting trim and wallpapering the front of the bathtub, outside things like decorative stones all over the flower bed that gets the most light: the one I want to put my veggies in. Seriously, lots of polished rocks--the kind you might find in an aquarium. And ivy everywhere. Not growing up the house, but somehow along the edge of the porch and invasively into the front bed. Probably about half the time I spent cleaning up was just ripping up ivy. We tossed most of the small statuary as it started to poke through the snow. Hopefully they don't come by wanting it back, their little tennis playing angel and ugly looking cat-thing are down in the depths of the dumpster at this point and I have no interest in diving in there.

croakies

We bought the house: crazy pants. We've been living there for two weeks and it is still a little surreal --decide at 10pm that you're going to see what the chimney in the living room wall looks like: get a crow bar and take it down, right then and there...
The chimney looks great, by the way; but the lath and plaster all over the living room floor still needs to get cleaned up.
Took the Newf running this morning.
Have I mentioned the Newf here? Before the house-buying, we went and got ourselves a Newfoundland puppy. She is 6 months old and not a natural runner.
We have that in common I think.
But she's pretty good, and comes when called upwards of 50% of the time, so that is always a pleasant surprise.
We did maybe just over a mile, down to the beach and around and then about half way back and she got tired and didn't want to run any more. Calf a little achy but not terrible, really about normal all things considered.
But yeah: House. Its a duplex. So we're operating under the hypothesis that it will lower our living costs significantly. Once we finish it. Because, yeah--the reason we could afford it at all is that half of it was gutted when we bought it. So I do a fair amount of house-related exercise: lift those bricks! Paint that wall! Or knock it down! Throw it all in the dumpster!
I can't wait for the day the renovation on the back half is done--we're living in the front half, and there are a lot of things we would like to do with it, but they're all waiting until the back half is done.