Bikes

I guess I'm finally serious about getting the extra weight off me... Ron and I got new bikes last week. We've been on two rides so far, and after each ride, my butt is SORE! :) They're really nice cruiser-type bikes-- LandRiders, to be exact. I picked them up at an auction for $80 each. Killer deal!

We rode around in the rain today. It was fun!

Grandma Update

We went to go see grandma in the hospital today. She looks a LOT better than she did last Wednesday. Lots.

She admitted to me that she thought there were a couple of times she was about to die (yeah, we were there for at least one of them!). Now, she's on a lot less oxygen, and her sats are up, so I'm thinking we might have her a little while longer.

Grandma will need to go to a nursing home type place to rehab for awhile, until she's stable enough to undergo surgery of her broken/shattered artificial hip. Not fun, no matter how you look at it.

Grumble

Kayla had her big soccer to-do at the Rice Eccles Stadium tonight before the Real Salt Lake game. We scrounged to come up with the $80 it took to come see her play on the big field... and then her coach didn't play her at all.

I'm pissed off ROYALLY. Not only did we really not have the money to do this, neither did my parents, or my brother and sis-in-law, or the nice gentleman who rides the bus with Kayla every day. I am really upset about the whole thing. Instead of having Kayla play, they let the freshman keeper play for awhile, since she had sold more tickets to the game.

Give me a freaking break. There was enough time to allow ALL three goalies some time.

Phew! Day 2

The strength training kicked my butt. Ugh.

In December, when the doctor was removing the screws from my back, he noticed something that wasn't very good-- my back muscles had turned into fatty tissue because of non-use. Having titanium hold you up for 6 years makes for non-working back muscles, apparently.

So now I'm trying to do yoga-type poses with practically no back muscles to speak of.

I have a LONG way to go, baby...

Phew!

So, I signed up for this "fat burner" class my work offered. Last night was the first class, and we did the baseline measurements. I weighed in at 178 pounds and 30.2% body fat. It's time to get that body fat down, and my lean body mass up!

The exercise portion will be 15 minutes a day of interval training. I tried it out this morning, doing 45 seconds of walking, and then 15 seconds of jogging, cycled for a total of 15 minutes.

I'm SO out of shape! Having a bad back means you aren't able to move as much as you used to. It's hard. The physical therapist gave me special exercises to do because of my December back surgery, so we'll see how that goes.

You alternate the interval training with strength training the opposite day (3 days for interval, 3 for strength). One day off a week. The strength training is done using just your own body, and the exercises look very similar to yoga poses. (I would like to be strong enough to be able to do yoga again!)

The class lasts 12 weeks. Maybe by then, I'll have dropped down a pants size. :)

Grandma

The kids' grandma (Pierre's mom) is in the hospital with a broken hip. We went to see her last night, and she does NOT look good. In fact, I'm getting death vibes all over the place from her. :(

Kayla did not want to go to the hospital. I just had the feeling they'd better go see grandma. She complained all the way in about the smell of the hospital. Just before bed, she sent me a text that said, "I figured out why I can not be affected by the smell of hospitals one time and be affected another time. I can smell and feel death."

I can understand that perfectly. Sometimes you just know.

Almost Famous

Kayla's name has been in the paper twice this week. She had two shutouts (i.e. no goals scored on her) for her high school soccer team. It's been a good opportunity for her to be able to play varsity as a sophomore while the senior keeper is out with mono.

Her ankle is slowly healing-- she managed a pretty bad sprain on the last day of tryouts earlier this month. It inhibits her best playing, but she is working through it.

This Friday, she gets to play in the huge stadium against another high school, right before the Real Salt Lake game. Exciting!

School Shopping

I hate school shopping. Next to Christmas, it's the worst time of the year to have to go into stores. I try to get most of it done in July, before the hordes of people start swarming every retail establishment known...

Kayla is pretty verbal about what she likes and doesn't like in fashion. Lately, she's been on a "I hate all 80's clothes" kick. Then, she'll point to something and squeal with delight and say how cute it is... I don't have the heart to tell her that what she just spied was, like, totally 80's man.

My favorite comment this year while school shopping: Kayla saw some racks of fluorescent tie-dye style shirts. She said, "I think tie-dye is SO ugly... I hate that it's coming back into style. It looks like someone threw up rainbows all over the shirts."

:)

That's My Girl!

A young family recently moved into our neighborhood. The father is very recently widowed (his wife was killed in a tragic car accident on the way to their house closing), and has three young boys, age 5 and under.

Last night, he calls Lu and asks if she could come over and watch the boys while he ran to Wal-Mart. She dropped everything, and went over for about an hour and a half. She played with them, got them baths, and tucked them into bed.

When he returned, Lu refused to let him pay her.

What an amazing kid I've got!

Olympic Fever

Sorry for not updating my blog lately, but I'm using what little free time I have to be obsessed with the Olympics. So in honor of the Summer Olympics, I give you this:

Life Lesson for the Day

I just came back from talking to a secretary about her computer woes. She was very upset that, once a month, the computer does it's automatic updates and forces a reboot after a certain period of time (after warning them lots of times that the machine needs to reboot).

I listened to her for a good 10 minutes, figuring she probably needed to vent. Then I got a little tired of it, and offered her a couple useful suggestions that have worked in other departments.

She did NOT want to hear it. She wanted to keep complaining to the phone support people, she wants to talk to their supervisor, wants to talk to the head person at corporate who made this decision, etc.

I came away from this encounter today with the realization that I have to be careful about my attitude and how I approach change. Either you fight against what has happened, or you get yourself an attitude adjustment. Looking for solutions, rather than focusing on the problem, seems to make the difference between productive behavior vs. being stuck in the same place.

African Children's Choir

I had to make a quick stop at Costco to pick up a prescription, but never made it in. Just inside the entry area, a children's choir from Africa was singing. They were wonderful! It was the best surprise of my day (well, of many days...).

The acoustics weren't super great, but at least I had my trusty camera with me and was able to film a few songs. (If you'd like to hear the others, please go to my YouTube channel.)

The group is a charity fundraiser for Kenyan children. You can learn more about them at: http://www.singingchildrenofafrica.org.uk.

Simon's Cat

And if you like this one, go to the Simon's Cat YouTube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/simonscat

As the owners of two kitties, we've been laughing our heads off over here. :)

Breaking Dawn

I just finished the fourth (and final) book in the Twilight saga by Stephenie Meyers. And I'm asking myself this question right now...

Why on earth did I waste my time on this?

Ok, I know the answer. It's because I like to read what my kids are reading.

But still-- this has got to be some of the worst drivel I've read in a long time. By the end of the book, I didn't care about the characters. They were all just so... depth-less. I was hoping the Evil Vampires would eat all the main characters just so something would happen.

And the whole romance/marriage/newborn (x2) saga is the stuff eye rolls are made out of.

I think I'll go back to Harry Potter.

Score!

Ron called me on his break this morning to tell me he got lucky and grabbed a Wii Fit this morning. They only had about 20 left, and were allowing one per person.

So I hurried over to Costco and got me one, too. We're gonna sell it on eBay to try to cover at least half the cost of the one we want.

Sweet!

Dad

My parents decided to go on a bike ride this morning. As they were pedaling along, my dad hit some gravel, and crashed pretty spectacularly.

He broke his temporal bone (skull), his collarbone, and fractured his pelvis in three places.

He'll be going into surgery sometime today to get screws put into his pelvis. My dad is only 67-- that's pretty young to be starting with the hip fractures. :(

I Spy... Something Red

We saw this while driving on the highway today:


Kayla was getting in driving practice today, so I pulled out the camera. :) As we drove past them, the girls in the back rolled down their window and yelled out, "HEY! SEXY UNDERWEAR!!!" As we watched them turn off at an intersection, she was seen pushing her panties back into her jeans.

I loved the fact she was wearing pumps on a motorcycle, too. LOL!

Check Your Tires!

I just watched this today. Please take the time to watch the report, and then go check your tires!

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4826897

I just went out and checked mine in the parking lot-- the numbers were printed on the outside of the tires (so no crawling under the car... yay!). I've got good tires, it seems... they say "2507", which means that they were only a couple months old when I bought them. Gotta love Costco Tire Center. :)