Running update

Just finished today's run, six four minute runs with one minute of walking between them. Pretty much took me all the way around Greenlake, about the equivalent of a 5k. I'm doing the Runners World 8 week beginner running training program, and so far it's really great - nice slow way to build up your endurance while avoiding injury. A four minute interval is no big deal for me, but by the fifth and sixth repeat I was getting pretty tired. But I can feel my endurance improving, and since I decided earlier this week to just run slower I'm not getting all out of breath, which is a nice feeling.

Up next: repeat this run tomorrow or Saturday, then move on to next week with a series of five and six-minute intervals. Week three isn't too hard, not much time gained over the course of the week, but in week four it picks up again adding lots of minutes. By week eight, you're comfortably running for 30 minutes straight. Which is an awesome goal for me, since I've never in my life run two miles nonstop without gasping for breath and wanting to die.

So far, I'm encouraged by the fact that:

- I've been running four times a week pretty much all month and walking two other days each week, so I'm putting in lots and lots of exercise time!

- I've lost eight pounds without thinking all that hard about dieting. We're definitely eating differently, but I'm not being all hard core about tracking things right now. Focusing on fitness instead helps me want to eat better and it all seems to go easier that way.

- I literally can't WAIT to run again on my off days - I'm really getting hooked. I *love* running outside, and dread the treadmill. Treadmills are boring and hot and there's no sense of progress for me so I end up obsessively watching every second tick by. Outside feels so good, and the blocks go by and make you feel like you're really getting somewhere, and the intervals just fly by. The weather's been so nice that I've been able to do nearly every run outside, which is awesome (and unexpected, for January.)

- Concentrating on time spent running rather than speed or distance is really working out great. I'm such a geek that using a stopwatch totally makes me happy and takes the pressure off - I don't have to worry about how far I'm going to make it before I feel like walking because the stopwatch will tell me. :) I'm a gadget dork.

So yay! Next 5k in 17 days.

Again, the most beautiful fabric I've ever seen

I realize I say this too much, but again I'm blown away by a new fabric.

Just wanted to share this amazing fabric I stumbled upon yesterday at Fabric Crush in Magnolia - which, if you haven't already, you should totally visit. It's the sweetest little fabric store chock full of carefully chosen treasures, and Sarah the owner is a real pleasure to talk to. Plus she doesn't mind that my three year old digs through her ribbon basket. Hard to beat, that.

I don't usually do a lot of work with white-based fabrics, but I just fell in love with this and had to make something of it this morning:



Isn't it gorgeous? Of course I made it into a makeup roll - how could I not? Here's the inside, paired up with a lovely watermelon-pink print I had on hand and an orangey-pink ribbon:


And rolled up ready to be tied:


You can, of course, find several of these listed in my shop - stop on over to take a look!

Early Running

Did I mention that I ran a 5k with my sister-in-law two weeks ago? I don't think I ever got around to blogging about it. She's been running for a while now and suggested we try it when she was in town, and I've been wanting to try a 5k but was a little intimidated to do it alone. So that was perfect! We were slow but we finished and I ran one loop without stopping and about half of the second loop, which felt pretty good to me given that I haven't run since last spring.

And, as my sister-in-law assured me, a 5k is a very low-key thing. People are there of all shapes and sizes and abilities, and we were NOT the only people who did some walking, and it was just fine. The course was beautiful and it was a nice day and I did not feel like an idiot. In fact I can't wait to go back next month!

So now I'm all into this running thing, and the weather here has been exceptional (60 and sunny all last week!) so I've started what is usually my spring running schedule a couple months early.

I've also signed up for a couple of the next Magnuson Park 5ks - the next one is just 20 days away. Just as an added motivator.

Right now my plan is this:

Day one: Run distance
Day two: alternating walk/one-block sprints
Day three: walk
Day four: rest

Repeat forever. One of the runs each week I do over at a local lake that is about the length of a 5k, just to check in. Maybe 10-12 miles a week right now, which I know is pretty low for any serious running. But I'm working on it and being consistent and trying to protect my finicky shins and build my endurance and I think this is a good start.

I usually don't run much in the winter and I'm looking forward to being in much better shape this summer than I usually am and being able to run longer and harder than I usually can at the start of good weather. Maybe by summer I'll be able to do a whole 5k without walking.

Here's a blog entry over at SloRunnerMom that I really liked: Before and After Conversation with my Runner Self. Makes me feel good to hear someone say it took them four months to run their first mile!

What I'm reading

Been on a reading tear lately.

Since Christmas I've been working my way through a whole host of things - several PD James, including her newest (The Private Patient) and an older one (Murder Room), Sue Grafton's latest (U is for Undertow), a young adult book I've fallen in love with and will save for years for Sofie (When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead), the amazing sequel to the even more astonishing Pillars of the Earth - World Without End by Ken Follett, and just now I'm about a chapter from the end of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. This last one I'd avoided for a while - partly because I thought I'd already read it (I hadn't), and partly because I thought it might be too painful to read in light of the last year. It isn't, though - but it's a fascinating and very cerebral look at grief.

Last up is one I started and then put aside for all these others, called Wolf Hall, about Thomas Cromwell. I wasn't in the mood for it when I first started reading it because I had all these other goodies sitting around -- good Christmas for book gifts, this year! But now I'm going to give it another try. I think I've just gotten a little too much Henry-the-VIIIth-ed lately, between The Tudors and various other books I've read on the subject in the last year or two.

Also, I have to mention a blog. Ever heard of Steam Me Up, Kid? I mention it because I only recently discovered it but I end up laughing out loud in nearly every entry. Like today's awesome conversation with her brother. Worth a read, this chica. :)

Yesterday's fabric...

Yesterday's new fabric is today's new goodies! Here's what I've made of it so far.

A cute little zip pouch with pumpkin orange accents and sky blue polka dots:


And a makeup roll - same fabrics and ribbon.


I think this is gonna be one of those fabrics I need to get a lot more of.

Both of these will be listed momentarily in my shop at Bellflower Textiles!

New Fabric

Just got a yard of this gorgeous fabric in the mail today:



...and it's SO much more gorgeous in person. I'm thrilled and have already made two cute little goodies from it, which I'll try to post a picture of tomorrow.

And yes, I do have a new fabric I'm utterly enthralled with at least once a week. So sue me. :)

My latest product line

Just a show and tell on my latest product line. I launched this about a week before Christmas and have sold a third of what I've listed so far, so I'm calling this a good sign. I think that's the quickest positive reaction I've ever had to a new product.

These are my new eyeglass/sunglass cases, which you can see in my shop at Bellflower Textiles:


They're all made of high quality wool felt in a lovely charcoal gray, with a bright cotton accent cuff and lining. And aside from the one in the bottom left corner, my earliest prototype, I'm putting a ribbon finger pull on each of them now too.

I'm really pleased with them - I love the charcoal gray color; it just sets off the bright designer prints I love so well. And they're thick and sturdy and padded and yet completely stylish. I keep meaning to make one for myself but so far I've been listing them as quickly as I can produce them.

My current favorite is the one in the top left corner with the little tulip flowers outlined in red. So cute. Just ordered a bunch more of that fabric yesterday since it's one of those designs I look at and can see a million things I want to make from it.

What do you think?

Poop humor

Sofie has discovered the joys of poop humor. All day long, random conversations are punctuated by her exclaiming "Poopy!" Much hilarity ensues.

Tonight she took it to a new level by making up "a funny game for you" (her words) in which she would lie on the living room chair "being the poopy" and I was supposed to lean over top of her and "be the diaper." Um... yuck. And then? We'd switch!!

This is her ultimate definition of fun.

Yesterday she announced that she'd thought up an especially funny joke to tell her friends at school. During snack time, she said, she was going to say, "Please pass the POOPY!" and then everyone would laugh and laugh! She really did lay out the whole scenario like this, all planned out with everyone's reactions anticipated. So when I picked her up today, I asked her about it. Did she pull it off?

"No. I just hid under the table instead."

Ah, well, ok. You go girl with the planning the perfect hijinks.

Really, these aren't resolutions...

This is not resolution-based, really, but I'm starting to try to exercise again. It's less about New Years than it is about feeling kind of ready for a change right now. I used to run pretty regularly, but that went out the window last year with a combination of dealing with Mom's illness and death in the first half of the year and then having my business take off in the second half and eat up all my free time.

Between the two, my tendency to stress eat went a little crazy - let's just say that both grief and deadlines go well with cookies. I've gained some weight I didn't want to gain. I haven't run in about eight or nine months, after working pretty consistently at it for the last three years. I am no longer wearing my skinny jeans, for shizzle.

So enough. Yesterday Sofie and I took advantage of the rather temperate winter we're having here to dust off the jogging stroller and take it out for a spin. This was actually her idea. She loves the jogging stroller. If I take her out in it and try to just walk, she exhorts me to run.

"Mama, you run!"

The kid, she loves the wind whoosing through her hair. She enjoyed herself for fifteen minutes and then passed out into the world's deepest and most satisfying nap for the remaining 45 minutes we were out.

She had a wonderful time. Me? Not so terrible, certainly not as bad as the first run post-baby several years back, the one that left me laying on the front yard while the neighbors joked about calling the EMTs. I took the easy, slightly-downhill for part of the way route for about a mile, then walked back where I used to try to run every other block back up the hill. But I made it most of that mile and while it was really really hard, it felt kind of good, too.

And I'm back off the brain-cancer juice, Diet Coke, and trying to stay away from Aspartame in all its forms, having finally looked up some stuff in google to try to confirm my theory that Aspartame has significant mood-altering effects on me and ending up reading some stuff that pretty much scared me straight.

Now I just need to try to get away from sugar, I think. The lovely and talented Finslippy had an awesome post on the evils of sugar today that I fully agreed with, and which left me with the sinking realization that I really need to do the same. But it's gonna be really, really hard.

On the first day of 2010...

Day one of 2010 was spent napping, eating leftovers, reading library books, and having a really fun playdate with some of Sofie's closest friends and their moms. Not a bad way to start the year! In spite of having been up until nearly 2 a.m. last night and drinking a little more than was probably good for us at Brett's annual Goodfellas dinner**, we had a really nice and mostly hangover-free day today.

++++++

The only person who appeared to be hung over was actually Sofie, who spent most of the day alternately lying listless on the couch and clutching wildly to me whenever I got so much as an inch away from her. This seems to be her motif, her metier of choice, lately, and she's getting increasingly good at it.

As I told my friends today, it's like having a great big newborn again, in that I'm literally physically attached to her 24/7 right now. Except that a newborn would take three nice naps a day and my 30-pound version never quits. She's on my lap or clinging to my leg or stuffing her hand inside my shirt (ugh) or dangling from my arm every second of the day. She's going through something, feeling anxious or undergoing a cognitive development that's difficult, or fighting off a minor bug, or all three at once.

I feel for her, I do, and I can tell this is genuinely a hard time for her, but does it make me a bad parent to admit that this is driving me FREAKING CRAZY? It's hard to be patient when you can't have even a few minutes alone. I fantasize about five minutes of time without someone touching me and whining. Which probably shows and only makes her feel worse, so then I'll overcompensate by being all lovey dovey and she's probably completely mixed up.

Parenting = kicking my ass again.

Two things make this bearable:

1) Most of my mom friends seem to be going through similar levels of "rip your hair out"-ness with their three year olds, so I assume this is a common phase. Which is why there's a book called Your Three Year Old: Friend or Foe. Amazon, gotta love you. Mom friends, how would I survive without you? Seriously.

2) This will pass. I know enough now to know that a lot of these difficult phases seem to come in 4-6 week increments. And she actually let Brett put her to bed tonight for the first time in a couple weeks. So there's hope.

+++++

Goodfellas dinner - every year Brett goes a little crazy and cooks this massive Italian dinner for a whole set of our nearest and dearest. Some years this has been as big as 18-20 people and some years, like this year, it's been a little smaller, but it's always raucous fun, accompanied by a painstakingly-created IPod playlist that contains every song that is played in the movie.

This year was really great - Sofie went to sleep early, the spaghetti was divine, we had good cannoli and roasted eggplants and tomatoes and lots and lots and lots and lots of wine. Oh, and also some wine.


Picture taken by Michael Murray

As for resolutions, I made none this year, and as far as I can remember, I didn't make any last year either. I think I had some goals for the year for the business, and I do for this year too, but on the personal side I'm just going to let this year develop on its own. 2009 was a tough, moving, sometimes awful, sometimes wonderful, wrenching, growing, intensely alive kind of year and I think I'm just going to be calm now and float along with the tide for a while.

Zen out a bit. Survive the dark days of January, both in terms of weather and in terms of painful anniversaries it holds. Get my mojo back. Breathe.

And hug my little clinging munchkin as much as I can and try to store up these days when all she wants as me in some kind of cosmic bank balance for the years when she's a teenager and doesn't want me around at all.

Year in Pictures

Borrowing a neat meme from Artsy-Crafty Babe - here's one pic per month that sums up the year for me. No commentary, just images.

January:


February:


March:


April:


May:


June:



July:


August:


September:


October:



November:


December: