Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Wogging it out!

So at the beginning of my healthy lifestyle journey I started walking, you may remember the description of my experiences with the first year of this journey in this blog http://happydance-dancinghappy.blogspot.com/2011/04/working-out-isnt-working-out.html.

I didn’t jog for most of my life.  I had a bad injury in high school when I fell down some stairs and in that process moved my pelvic bone up, and now it moves back and forth and creaks (yes, my hips sometimes make old lady hip noises).  After the injury I didn’t walk fast (so no way could I jog) for about 4 years.  I started jogging after Bebe and I moved into our house and I had been walking at a very fast pace 5 miles quite a few days a week.  My pelvic bone seemed to be doing ok, it still creaked but it didn’t hurt all the time.  I would go around a block at night in the Fall and come back exhausted and not really liking it.  So when I went back to a healthy lifestyle of eating and working out to keep my heart healthy, due to heart problems on both sides of my family and not wanting that to happen to me, I just walked and did the other extreme workouts described in “Working Out Isn’t Working Out” blog.




Now a year in of this new lifestyle and I have decided to pick up the jog again.  I know it’s the middle of July…and I know it’s hotter then all get out outside.  But I’m jogging at night.  Well I don’t call it Jogging I call it “Wogging”.  A wog is a mix between a jog and a walk.  If you remember from my bicycle blog, I live in a VERY hilly area.  I can’t bike up a hill, nor can I jog up a hill (as of right now).  So I have been jogging down the hills and walking up the hills.  The hills, when you are at the bottom, look like Mt. Everest.  I just can't do that!





I thought I would hate wogging.  I thought the wog would become the new workout that I would do for a few days and then set aside because I would make an excuse and sit on the couch instead of getting up off my big butt and doing something.  There isn’t a set program and the opportunity for me to skip a day or do the whole “oh, a wog, I’ll get to it tomorrow,” and then never really get to it, EVER, is really high.  But because I have named it “a wog” and it just sounds too cool not to do, I have wogged almost every night for the past week, except for the weekend when I was having some rest days. 



My wogs have become an adventure of sorts.  I start off doing some odd stretches in our driveway.  I know my neighbors are probably sticking there noses through their window drapes thinking, “What in the world is she doing now, walking around doing lunges and pulling her leg back like that?  Does she want to be a ballerina? Did she forget how to walk straight? Oh no! Did she almost fall over?!?!” (Not the most graceful walking lunge person around, I’ve got to admit.)



Then I start off on my wog.  At first I am at a slow but gradually steady pace of walking, then I hit the comer and start into a fast paced jog down hill.  Once I reach a marker that I have set up in my mind, I start walking again.  Then once I reach the top of the hill I start jogging again.  This continues for a full mile until I reach back around to our house.  

Now the wogs aren’t easy.  But I do it because I know it is one of the best things to do to be able to run and it’s really good for your heart.  I know I’m jogging downhill and walking uphill, and that I should probably switch them, but for the beginning I’m going to do it like this.  It is still really difficult and the only way I get through the jogging part is by telling myself that I must get to the marker I have set up in my mind to meet.  So I jog about three – four blocks downhill until I stop at a light post.  In my head once I see the light post I hear my fitness friends telling me to “go for it girl”, “keep jogging”, “don’t you dare stop”, “ Just reach the light post.”  The girls aren’t really with me, but I hear their encouragements in my head pushing me along, especially when all I want to do is stop.  This helps motivate me enough to get to the light post.  Every time I wog I make the point to stop jogging and start walking a little further, so past the light post, and then the next day past the light post by three steps. 



My experiences with wogging have been interesting.  First off I started this wogging craze when the Midwest was going through a heat wave of biblical proportions.  Second off I look like an idiot when I run so I probably don’t look so cute wogging.  Third off I get cat calls, bitten by bugs, and I sweat like a pig throughout it all.  Not to mention the wild animals and people whom I pass all the time.

I do my wogs really late at night, thinking it will be cooler and no one will really see me in my yoga pants, sports bra/t-shirt.  WRONG! Every time I go out wogging I get a whistle or a call from some dude or a car of dudes.  Ok, cool, you like girls that run, that’s fine and dandy, but you cat called at the wrong girl.  I look like an idiot running, I am sweating beyond a normal person, and the cat calls make me feel uncomfortable and makes me not want to wog (though I continue to wog) since I am alone at night.  I wish they would stop.  Note to guys who like to cat call at girls at any point, sometimes it is flattering, but when a girl is sweaty, red in the face, and breathing like she is having an asthmatic attack it is not the time or place to cat call, wait until they are at a club or something and have done their hair. I have at least 10 new bug bites every evening after my wog so I have welts on my arms and legs. 



Also the wild animals that run amuck at night you wouldn’t believe.  I have seen raccoons, possums, snakes, frogs, and rabbits.  The raccoons usually scurry away or just sit on the other side of the road and watch.  The possum I saw actually played dead and I had to run around it, when I looked back it was gone.  The snakes are always in the grass, never near me (THANK GOODNESS!), the frogs right now are baby frogs and I have actually stepped on one (sorry froggy who is now probably in froggy heaven, I started to tear up when this happened and couldn’t look back to see if I had killed it or not I just felt a squishy feeling beneath my shoe and it was when I saw a bunch of frogs I was trying to jump over…leap frog really didn’t work in this instance) and the rabbits have run along side me and then take off to the side of the grassy areas in the parks to get away from me. 


Overall, though, my wogging experiences have been great.  My favorite part, though, has got to be coming home, drinking a big bottle of water, going over to Bebe and giving him a big old sweaty hug before heading off to go to get ready for bed.  His face is hilarious and it makes the wog totally worth it!

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Bug in the Bread Box

I wake up, during the week, at 6:15 everyday.  I get out of bed, stretch, use the restroom, take a shower, and then move into the kitchen to make my lunch pail up and make my breakfast.  Sometimes after the shower I am fully awake, sometimes I am still not quite ready to face the day, but not matter what I keep trudging to the kitchen to prepare my lunch/breakfast for the day. 



I am a pretty simple girl and I eat the same breakfast everyday, during the week.  I always make myself a peanut butter sandwich on wheat bread, one slice folded over, and sometimes I throw in a glass of milk just to spice up and add more protein to my breakfast.  It's kind of a curse, really.  I always make it and if I don't, during the week, I feel ill...it must be the Devil!  A few mornings ago I shuffled from the bathroom to the kitchen, not fully awake, and really wanting to head back to bed, to make my lunch and breakfast.  Bebe is never awake this early in the morning.  It is just Bella and me, and most of the time Bella “grrs” or gives me the look of “do you know what time it is?” when I walk by her in the morning.  So I try to be as quiet as I can every morning.



I quickly threw everything needed for lunch in my lunch pail and moved on to the breakfast portion of my morning routine.  We had run out of bread a few days before, so when I was at a store the night before I bought us some bread. The bread hadn’t made it into the bread box, but it was laying in front of the bread box on the counter top.  I put the bread on top of the plastic sandwich baggy and opened up the bread box to get the peanut butter; we store it next to the bread since I reach for it every morning with the bread.  I grabbed the jar and then jumped!  I almost screamed...OK, OK, I did scream...it was just quietly.  Something in the bread box moved!  It was all shadowy in the bread box so it was hard to see exactly what it was...was I seeing things maybe? 


I looked again and there was this feathery creature in the back corner of the bread box trying to climb up the wall (having great difficulty achieving that) and hiding in the corner.  I quickly took out the peanut butter jar and shut the lid. 


I know what you are thinking…why didn’t you just kill it?  Well you get startled by a bug at 6:30 in the morning, half awake, and the other person in your house is asleep and your dog growled out you earlier and rolled over to face away from you to get more shut eye and you know if you tried to kill it, in the process, you would scream and wake up Bebe and then Bella would probably jump up to see what was wrong ready to charge at whatever I was screaming at and when she would see that it was nothing she would probably grumble, her dog grumble, and walk away back to her bed.  See! What would you do with that.  I bet you would have chosen to close the bread box too! 


I inspected the peanut butter jar to see if this bug had major teethers and if it bit a hole in the jar, it didn’t bit a hole in the jar, so it must not have teeth (or at least big ones) so that was good.  I quickly made my sandwich, put it in the bag, and headed back to the bathroom to brush my teeth and dry my hair and get ready for the day.  Once I had made it to work I got on an internet social networking site that Bebe and I both use.  I wrote one sentence, “There is a bug in the bread box, please kill it.”



When I got home that evening I walked in the door, and asked, “Did you kill the bug?”  He had, Thank you Bebe!  What is it with bugs trying to scare me all the time.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

"Water Babies"

It’s a common thing among my friends and me. We have had multiple water babies…sometimes up to 10 in a day.  They happen when you drink a lot of water for weight loss or due to working out a lot and you just gulp down your water.  You become full with a water baby.  Depending on how your day is going you might have water baby after water baby after water baby. 



I personally try and drink two gallons of water a day.  With this causes quite a few water babies a day.  I think my office thinks I am crazy always getting up and running to the bathroom.  But if you drink a lot of water that is what happens, you’ve gotta go gotta go gotta go.  When I workout a lot, burning over 600 cals in a day is my “a lot” workout days…maybe once or twice a week, I could drink a little under 3 gallons of water that day.  When I have a great workout I gulp down bottles of water like it is nothing to replenish myself and try to get the water back in me that I sweated out.  It could take me 2 minutes and I would have a bottle of water gone.  I LOVE me some water, though water babies, not so much.  Water babies can make you feel like your head is going to explode with water or that your insides are just floating on water.



The name water baby was derived from my workout friends and I discussing what our stomach looks like when we drink so much water in one sitting.  When you gulp down two bottles of water like it is nothing your stomach grows outward and kind of looks like a “food baby” (which for those of you who don’t know is what happens when you eat so much food your stomach protrudes outward and usually you have to unbutton your pants so you don’t feel all uncomfortable being squeezed in…i.e. Thanksgiving dinner), minus the food part.  Since it isn’t food that is involved we call it a water baby, you still have that uncomfortable feeling with the water too.



Water babies have got to be one of the quickest and easiest pregnancies ever.  If only real labor was like this.  I’ve never experienced a pregnancy  but I’ve heard stories of what pregnancy and childbirth is like, and it sound painful and long.  If it was like having a water baby it would take only a few minutes, under an hour for the whole thing, to grow and be put into labor, you wouldn’t have to go to the hospital (just your nearest restroom), and it is a quick and fast delivery.  Though sometimes the water babies keep hold and you could have quadruplets from the one water baby if it doesn’t all want to come out at one time which means more trips running to the restroom.  After the water baby (or babies) have been delivered your stomach is back to being flat and defined instantly and you no longer feel uncomfortable. 



I’m off to finish my first 32oz bottle of water for the day…how much water have you drank today?

Friday, July 8, 2011

Happy Dance = Bridezilla?

Yes, that’s right ladies and gentlemen, I, Happy Dance, have had a few Bridezilla moments.  You’ve probably seen the tv show that shoes Brides just blowing up and going off on people and having those Bridezilla moments, well I haven’t been as bad as they have, but I did have one moment that probably could have landed me a star part in the show.

Most of my moments were moments that I just said I was being a “Bridezilla” but mostly I was just playing around.  One of those moments was when I talked to one of the groomsman and told him that he had to go and get fitted for his tux tomorrow (or sometime this week) and I told him throughout that conversation, about ten times, this is a Bridezilla moment, are you ready?  Throughout the whole thing I was serious but had fun with it…and at the end just told him to get it done soon so it would be done.  See not so bad of a moment.  Most of the time I am just joking or I tell people around me doing wedding stuff I am done for the day, it’s been too much for me and I’m not feeling like doing wedding stuff anymore.



I’ve only had one major Bridezilla moment and it was a doosey!  Usually I can keep my temper under control.  I usually quietly leave the room, keep my thoughts inside until I can work through them so I won’t be screaming and yelling at everyone and their children.  I don’t like yelling and I don’t like fighting, I’d rather be rational and calm.  But sometimes that whole plan up there doesn’t work, I’m human people I have my moments! 

My biggest and worst Bridezilla moment was over….postage stamps.  That’s right the stamps put me over the edge and I just went crazy.  If I had seen it instead of being it, I would say I probably grew like 10 feet, my eyes turned red, fire came out of my mouth and steam was shooting out of my ears, while my hair turned to snakes, and I became something between Godzilla and a mythical Greek demon.  Yeah…it wasn’t pretty.



I know, looking back on it, stamps are not anything to really get worked up about, but I did.  I couldn’t stop myself until I pulled myself away from the project to just chill.  I felt bad for Bebe, listening to me go on and on and on about stamps.

The reason for the Stamp Explosion of 2011 was due to me trying to send thank you notes and some invitations out.  I had written all the thank you notes I needed to write and was planning sending out the invites too.  Do make the invitations it was a process, not to terribly long, but the printer always gave me issues for everything, and I didn’t want to have to deal with that anymore.  Plus I am a person who once I start on a project I do it all in a night, no stopping, no breaking them up in pieces to complete over a week, NO if I have a project to do I do it in one sitting and complete it fully.  It’s a bad habit I have. 



My mom had bought Bebe and me a lot of packs of stamps both the forever stamps, and the 64 cent stamps needed for the invitations.  I sat down where the stamps were kept and couldn’t find a one.  Where were the stamps?  I kept looking for them and finally had enough.  I was near tears because without the stamps, it was useless for me to work on the invitations because I couldn’t finish them and then the project wouldn’t be complete.  I asked Bebe to help, thinking after he had revamped (which really made the office so much better) the office the stamps were moved and he would know where they were.  He didn’t.  He helped me look for a little while, all the while I am freaking out because we don’t have stamps.  The ugly creature above was me.  “How can we not have stamps?  Do you know how many my mom bought us?  There is no way we could have run out?  Are you sure you didn’t throw them out? How can you not know where they are?” Oh yeah, I was a blaming horrible creature to Bebe.  I’m surprised Bebe didn’t just leave the house to get away from the Bridezilla me, or that he didn’t try to use the fire extinguisher to put out the fire that was blazing out of my mouth.  He was calm though and helped me look, even though we had probably used up the stamps already, or I had left them at my moms.



Finally he calmed me down and told me to just finish my project and he would buy more stamps in the morning.  I still wasn’t happy about this, but my creature side was slowly diminishing.  I became a normal Happy Dance again…you know more happy then outrageously horrible.  I finished my project and watched television with Bebe.  Bebe went out the next day, bought the stamps, and that night the invites and thank you notes went out without a problem.  I apologized a lot to Bebe, for my actions, there was no reason for me to be a Bridezilla about misplaced or lost stamps…they are just stamps!

At the end of the day we got a huge laugh out of it, and still now, every once in awhile we will joke and laugh about not having any stamps.  It was probably the worst I have ever been and it was over postage stamps.  Who does that?  Bridezillas do that.  It was my goal, throughout this whole wedding planning thing, to not be a Bridezilla ever, but I had my one horrible moment.  I still feel awful for acting in such a foolish way about stamps, but at least Bebe and I can laugh about it.  We only have 29 more days before the wedding, and I know we still have a few little stresses on us, but I am hoping that I got the worst of my Bridezilla moments out of my system and it will be more smooth sailing from now on.  I can’t believe I acted like that and honestly hope I never do again…it was over stamps for goodness sake!   At least I had Bebe and he was calm and collected and brought me down to reality.  If I turn into a horrible Bridezilla beast again anyone around me is allowed to smack me back down to reality! 

Friday, July 1, 2011

Tanning is Suppose to be Relaxing….Right?

I am pale.  As stated in previous posts, you know that I am almost as pale as the Twilight Vampires and that if you look at me too long you might go blind from how pale my skin is, it’s abnormally pale.  But in any event, I am use to it and I have embraced my paleness...not an easy feat in the society we live in.  Supermodels are tan, movie stars are tan, heck even those Twilight Vampires are Tan (they put make up on, and a lot of it, to look pale…and usually the make up artiest do a bad job of it because it always looks globbed on their skin).  I am the total opposite of tan. 



Well Bebe and I have decided to go to Jamaica on our honeymoon…YAY!  I was uber excited for this trip, because I haven’t had a real vacation since starting college 6 years ago.  And I haven’t been out of the country is almost 4 years!  I say “was” because it then hit Bebe and I that we need to be kind of tan to be able to go to the islands and not burn to a crisp our first day.  I would go from being so pale it hurts your eyes to lobster red in a few short moments.  Bebe is tanner then I am, but he is still pretty fair, so he would only get like a little red, but still it would probably be uncomfortable.  I didn’t want to go on our honeymoon and only spend a few minutes in the wonderful world on that island only to have the next 6 days spent inside in pain and agony, with my skin pealing away with the curtains closed.  I want to go out and be on the beach, see the tropical areas around, and hang out in the pool. 



The only way to remedy this, would be to go tanning.  And because I don’t like outside much, also talked about in previous posts (remember there are bugs and stuff outside!), it is harder for me to get a tan at all.  So we, Bebe and I, had to sign up to get a base tan at a tanning salon.  We went after church one day, thinking it wouldn’t be as busy, and that we (meaning I) would be much calmer considering we just got out of church.  I have never tanned in a tanning bed before in my life.  I am horribly claustrophobic and even being in an elevator can freak me out.  (Side note: I didn’t ride in elevators until I reached high school, and that was only because I would try and make a game out of it to get my mind off of the closed space and the walls getting closer and closer) So going tanning in a small space that closes in on top of you isn’t my cup of joe! 



When we got to the salon the lady showed us around and told us about the packages that we could do, after looking at me, though she told me I would need to come in a lot and that they would start me in a bed that tans the layers underneath your skin and that they had a special bed that was wide open for people like me who were really pale and really claustrophobic. 

I looked at the bed and it looked like a four poster bed without the canopy and instead of a bed it was glass with lights all around it.  I could do that, surely!  We bought out package and we went tanning.  She gave us 5 minutes to get undressed and slobber the lotion all over ourselves.  In my room I was freaking out that I wouldn’t have enough time and I know the lotion probably wasn’t rubbed in all the way.  I quickly put on my goggles to protect my precious vision and then laid on the bed. 


This bed, unlike most tanning beds, is open so when it starts up it sounds like an airplane taking off!  I freaked out! Oh my goodness what have I gotten myself into.  I was so worried that something bad was going to happen while I was laying there with my eyes closed that I opened them.  OH MY GOODNESS everything was purple!  That made me freak out even more. 



I started to hyperventilate a little. I squeezed my eyes shut.  All I could think about was he room was smaller, the contraption was open, but the room was small.  I could feel those walls come closer and closer to me, and I almost couldn’t take it.  I had to do this though, I had to get a stupid tan so I won’t stupidly boil when we go on our honeymoon!  I had to get through this!  So I started to pray that I could finish the full 8 minutes that I was given and started to sing Ava Maria (no one could hear me, the tanning bed was SO loud, well at least I hope no one could hear me…) and that seemed to help get me through it.  Once the bed shut off, I was kind of scared to open my eyes.  The room was quite and the lights were off.  I quickly got off the bed and put my clothes back on.  I looked at my hands, and they were shaking.  I had done it!  I had laid through the full 8 minutes of tanning without freaking out so badly that I would need to have shut off the bed early.  I had tanned for the first time!  That’s when it hit me…I would have to go and do this over and over until the first week of Aug…I started to shake more!