Just call me Dumbo

Not because of my ears, not because of my size. All because of my magic feather.

I have been having horrible problems with my IT bands while running. If you don't know, you have an iliotibial band that attached at the ilium of your pelvis and runs all along the outside of your leg, attaching to your tibia just below the knee. This fibrous band provides stability to the outside of your knee. But many runners have trouble with the IT band actually getting between the patella and the tibia where it gets pinched and causes unbelievable pain while running.

I started having trouble once I got up over 5 miles. I can go anywhere from 3-6 miles without trouble, but most longer runs lately have ended badly. I went to a physical therapist last week who helped me with my running technique, and also noted that if he didn't see both of my hips coming out of the same body, he would have thought they were on 2 different people. They are built differently, with very different ranges of motion. I got a sheet of stretches and strengthening exercises to help me. Supposedly, if you can strengthen certain muscles in your hip area, those muscles will help your IT band stay where it is supposed to. But the PT said that part of my trouble could also be that I might have the wrong shoes and I needed to go to a running store to be properly analyzed and fit.

If you could shop at the Nike employee store and get everything at 50% off, which type of running shoes would you buy? Me too. I knew that I had a normal arch, and also that I had a slight overpronation problem. I did my research and decided on a Nike shoe that seemed the best for me.

I went to the running store yesterday, and the guy working there watched me run for a bit, and he said that my shoes were the best ones Nike made, but that they were all wrong for me. He came out with 2 shoes that he said would be what I needed. I tried them on, and took a little run around the block. It was incredible! Turns out I WAS wearing the wrong type of shoes. I had a good Nike stability shoe, but I needed a "motion control" shoe, because I was really rolling my feet to the inside with each step. My new Saucony shoes became my magic feather. Turns out that even if you can buy Nikes for 50% off, they end up being more expensive in the long run because you have to pay for physical therapy and Saucony shoes after all.

I wore my magic feathers this morning on my run. I made it all 5 miles without even one hint of IT band pain. Do you belive in magic? Time will tell, but I sure enjoyed my run this morning for the first time in weeks.

Waxing poetic

My favorite sign that spring is here is the bright gold forsythia blossoms. They give me hope each year that warm weather is on the way. This year, the forsythia, and everything else, bloomed much later than usual. But I still got the same happy rush when I saw it each day on my morning run. But the blossoms are falling off now, leading to my other spring favorites: magnolia and dogwood blossoms. I love the cup-and-saucer shaped magnolia flowers, and also the plain-but-pretty 4-petal pacific dogwood flower. And just as I love to see the forsythia nothing but a big burst of yellow, I love just as much to see the chinese dogwoods in a big burst of nothing but pink.

Up until this spring, I have had to admire all of these things in other people's yards. But this year we have our own, and it is so fun to walk through the backyard each day and see how things are growing and changing. We had a brutal winter, so it is a relief to see that 99% of our plants survived.

All of this changing of the seasons, and the loss of the forsythia blossoms has reminded me of my favorite Robert Frost poem. So beautiful in its literal sense of the forsythia blossoms being gold and not staying, but so powerful in its symbolic sense of life changing and perfect moments lasting not long enough. It also makes me think of how much my kids have grown--my oldest will get his learner's permit in 2 weeks and my baby doesn't wear diapers any more! Her early leaf's a flower, but only so an hour.....

Thanks to Mrs/Ms. Dustman/Daniels/Star/Star-Hart in 9th grade who made us memorize a billion poems so that I can pull them out of my brain at random moments such as this. That whole story could go on for a very long time. She was a great teacher, she just experienced quite a lifestyle change midway through my 9th grade year, if you know what I mean.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.

Dishwasher saga finale

Remember 2 months ago when my incredible new dishwasher arrived damaged? And how Sears told the installers to go ahead and install it and they would send another one in a few days? And remember how a week later when I called Sears they told me that I was lying and they never would have allowed anyone to install a dented dishwasher? Well, 35 phone calls later, and 35 different answers later, my new non-dented dishwasher was installed today!

It seems that Sears is unbelievably disorganzied and there are several departments that handle similar things. Customer service tells you they don't handle it, so they transfer you to delivery--delivery transfers you to One Source--One Source transfers you to "Rapid Resolution" who in turn cannot help you and transfers you to delivery--that's right. The same place you started.

Sears has a very odd concept of customer service. After telling you that Sears can do nothing to help you because you are clearly making up a story, someone will call your cell phone out of the blue and tell you that your replacment dishwasher has been sitting at the warehouse for 2 weeks and they are wondering if you're coming to get it. More phone calls, more confusion. And then Sears delivery cannot locate your dishwasher anywhere. In fact, they cannot even find an order under your phone number at all. And they cannot see anywhere in their database that the warehouse has your dishwasher, because there isn't even an order for one.

To top it off, if someone had your phone number, say, more than a decade ago and opened up a Sears account way back then, Sears will try to deliver your replacement dishwasher to that person in a totally different city. They are able to deliver the first one to the address you ordered it from, but the replacement for some reason will go to a total stranger.

After all that trouble, finally on Monday I didn't let the guy from Sears transfer me to anyone else--been there, done that. I made him find the dishwasher (which was at the warehouse--shocking, I know), and notify the installer. I guess that when there was the confusion with our home phone number, somebody had changed the order to be under my cell number.

All that matters is it's here, and it does a beautiful job of washing dishes. I'm just really, really glad I made the first installers leave the dented one. Otherwise, I would have been without a dishwasher this whole time!

Running update

Mark and I are both moving toward our goals for the marathon/ 1/2 marathon June 27th. Mark has lost so much weight that he is in need of a new wardrobe. We had to buy him a new suit because the super nice Nordstrom suit we bought for him 2 years ago looked like a big black bubble on him. If anyone out there wants a really, really nice black suit 42 short, 36x30 pants, or if you know where I can donate it, let me know! He sure looked foxy in his new suit on Sunday. We also need to find a new home for 2 very nice pairs of wool dress pants, and some 16 1/2 neck shirts. Mark wears the same size he wore when we got married. I'm working on the same goal. Right now my immediate goal is just to stay smaller than Mark.

Last Saturday Mark ran 18 miles at an 8 1/2-minute-mile pace. In case you don't know, that is butt-kickin' fast. He then came home and worked in the back 40 for about 4 hours. I ran 9.3 miles 2 weeks ago, and really hurt myself, so I took an easy week of 5-milers, and had a good 8 mile run last Saturday. So far this month I have run 47 miles. This morning was a big pay-off. I am not a fast runner, and my biomechanics were totally wrong. I have been reading about and working on my form, and then today I ran my 6 miles in under 60 minutes. That 10-minute-mile seemed impossible to me. I could do 10 1/2 minute miles, but I really wanted to do 6 in under 60 minutes. Today I had 30 seconds to spare.

I keep thinking I should literally be running my butt off, but the scale is not cooperating. My clothes are definitely loose, and my legs are much, much stronger. But I want to slide that dang weight on the scale down a little more. I'm all about rewards. How else can I be motivated to wake up at 5:00 every morning if there is no weight loss? But as long as I have to move it down from Mark's weight, I'm OK. The first 10 weeks brought no visible reward on the scale--but these last 2 weeks it seems that my body is cooperating.

Other great news around here is that Zachary is totally potty trained. Self-taught-no-lessons. It was his idea to give up the diapers cold turkey 2 weeks ago, and he has been doing almost perfectly. He did have an accident at the nursery Sunday, though. In getting 7 kids ready for and to church by myself, I forgot to put a pull-up on him (which I had been doing for times we were away from home for more than a half hour). But he sleeps dry, and he can finally tell me when he needs to go rather than me asking him 40 times a day if he needs to go. Happy days. Abram is turning 15 next month, and from the day he was born until Zacky, we have always had somebody in diapers. So glad to be done with that.

Sports junkie

I'm not one. Nobody in our family really is. But we started a thing a couple of years ago where Abram invited 40 kids from school to watch the NCAA championship game and eat and run around the backyard. It has always been a good group of kids and a fun night. I like to be "in-the-know" with his friends. Luckily, they think I'm cool. I'm not sure how long that will hold out, but I'm using it for all it's worth right now.

If you have read my blog for a while, you know the story of "The Party That Almost Wasn't." We don't watch a lot of sports around here, and really not much TV at all. The other night I woke up at 3 AM with a horrible thought running through my mind--I thought I had done it again, but this wouldn't be solved with a call to Dish.

Like I said, we don't watch TV much--and never the local channels. Somehow in my subconsious mind I remembered that Dish Network was having a dispute with channel 2, one of the local affilitates, and nobody in our area could get that channel on Dish Network. But I honestly did not know if channel 2 was CBS or ABC. As I had no reason to watch either of these channels, I didn't ever pay attention to which one we were missing. I knew the game was on CBS, and I knew we had NBC for sure, but the other pieces of the puzzle I could not figure out. I truly had no idea which of the other 2 networks we did not have. I was frantic--what if CBS was the station we didn't have and 40 kids were planning to show up at my house to watch a game? Why hadn't I learned my lesson last time and actually checked the programming guide to make sure we had the right channel before I made invitations?

So I jumped out of bed and turned on the TV. I was overjoyed to see that it is ABC we do not have, and so we are all set for a big party here tonight to watch the Tarheels win the championship! I'm baking up a storm to get ready. A chocolate fountain, cookies, pizza, and a very nice day outside--it's going to be a great party!

Baby Pants

Zachary has always been a very descriptive boy. He is only 2 1/2, but he started talking very early--and in complete sentences. Yesterday when he was getting dressed, he was telling me that he wanted to wear baby pants. I could not, for the life of me, figure out what he meant by "baby pants."

This last week Zack potty-trained himself, and we had many conversations about big boys wearing undies and babies wearing diapers. Zack told me he was a big boy and wanted to wear undies and not diapers, as he was not a baby anymore. So he started using the potty, and we bought some new undies for him. I was trying to figure out somehow if "baby pants" related to this baby/big boy discussion.

After about 10 minutes of him trying to tell me he wanted baby pants, I took him upstairs to his closet so he could show me. He had me pick him up where he could reach a stack of clothes waiting for warmer weather. He grabbed a pair of shorts. And then it dawned on me: Zack has always described big and little using "baby" and "daddy" as adjectives. For instance, baby trees and daddy trees in the yard, baby rocks and daddy rocks, cars, etc. I just had never heard him talk about clothes this way.

So Zack put on his baby pants and went off to play, happy that his crazy mom had finally figured things out.