Stair Crazy

With my new found interest in bettering myself (aka weight loss), I have been an object of torture by a friend of mine at work. Of course, she means well, helping me keep my eye on the goal, however, she makes me take the stairs up to the 11th floor several times a week. She is evil and I am considering cutting off all ties with her.

Today was the 2nd time I tackled the stairs with her. This is not an easy task, 11 flights of stairs, 23 or so stairs on each flight, I think that is like 3,000 stairs or something. My math has never been good, but it is definitely enough to bring me down to my knees whimpering in agony.

My legs are like gello, my heart is beating thru my chest and I am sure the blood that has been forced thru my body has caused a small hemorrhage in my brain. Despite all this and the shaking arms and labored breathing, I am alive. My lungs burn, and even my fingers hurt, probably because I pull half of my weight up the stairs by using the hand rail. What was I thinking? I knew I should have invested in lipo or some sea kelp wrap that sucks the fat out of your pores in as little as 2 visits.

My fondness for this friend of mine is slowly diminishing, especially after we get to the top and I am close to a coma, and she is hardly breathing. This is no good for me. I may have to add a 20 pound weight to her when she's not looking. Our goal is a least twice a week, and eventually getting to a point where we don't stop. I need to stop on each flight, due to the fact that my body hates me. So we may hit our goal in 2015.

I may need to call in sick tomorrow and Friday so I don't have to do the stairs again this week, and next week I may come in with crutches, just so she can't even suggest we do the stairs. OR I could suck it up and maybe one day buy some skinny jeans. I think the crutches is a better option, I can't afford skinny jeans anyway.

I do know that I am now going to bring my cell phone with me on these torturous journey's, just in case I need to call 911 from the 3rd floor to rescue my butt from the stairwell.

Thanks to Jennifer for making my life a tiny bit more interesting!

Life Lessons in 28 Valentine Cards

Listening to some nice tunes at work, trying to make the time pass. I have a ton of work to be done, but not much motivation to see to it that it gets done.
It's Valentines Day and there have been at least 500 vases in my travels in the office at work, non of which have been for me, but I am ok with that. Not that I would turn down 14 dozen red roses or a bushel of daisies, but I am ok if I don't get them. Either way, I still have a Valentine, and each day I am glad to have him in my life.
The boys' school is having a Valentines Party, a bunch of cute kids running around all day covered in Valentine cards and overloaded on those chalky-candy-heart candies. But fun for them right?
Joey and I prepared 28 lovely Valentine cards, each one he wrote his name on, toward the end, I had to help, because writing his name 28 times was a lot of work, so he said.
Each lovely dog or cat inspired Valentine got a very nice Valentine pencil and baggie of mini M&M's. As Joey and I sat there for almost an hour, he managed to get his name on all 28. He then taped each pencil to each individual Valentine card, then I would tape the bag of M&M's to it. Joey, loves the prospect of using, or being near tape, and was thrilled he got to use the tape dispenser to tape on all 28 pencils. Of course after about 10, Joey says to me, "This looked like it was going to be fun." Of course, anything that has tape and some sort of cutting device has to be fun.
"It's not fun?" I asked. "Yeah, it's fun, it's just a lot of hard work. More work than I thought it would be." He said with a sigh.
I love when my child learns life lessons, I love it more when he learns life lessons from what I would consider a semi-meaningless task. My son doesn't go to work or mow the lawn, yet. He doesn't do laundry or shingle the roof. He hasn't had to get up early to make money to pay the bills or he hasn't yet experienced the real world, or what its like to work really hard on a 30 page paper to have your professor call it crap. His experience is limited to his short pre-school career, what he learns from us, and what he picks up on TV. So hard work for him is something I never would have thought about.
"It's hard work huh? Well you'll have fun tomorrow and all your classmates will love them." I told him.
He made me laugh and smile. It made it much more of a fun activity than the nuisance I thought it was. I was too busy being wrapped up in the day to day, to even have the desire to be helping with a bunch of dumb Valentines. But in the end I again, learned a life lesson too. It's not the activity, its how you look at, and who helps you, that makes it worth while.
Hopefully today, as he is switching Valentines around and he has fun at the party, he'll realize how hard work can pay off. How if you do something nice for someone else, you'll get it back to you 28 fold.
Or he could come home, completely strung out on mini M&M's and the whole lesson is completely wasted by a visit or two to the time out chair!!
HAPPY VALENTINES DAY ALL! Tell the ones you love that you love them, no matter what day it is.

Camels' Milk Doesn't Curdle

I was drinking a diet Snapple today, Peach Tea, to be exact, and on the underside of the caps, Snapple gives you fun facts. As I am finishing off my Snapple, I notice this, and today's fun fact #14 is: Camel's milk doesn't curdle.
My brain is packed with information. Good stuff, bad stuff, important stuff, work stuff, dumb stuff, and now a new fun fact. Camel's mike doesn't curdle. This is info I could use one day right? I may be the life of the party one day if I whip that fact out. Who doesn't want to know about camels milk?
Useless information is always fun to occupy your brain with. Definitely takes away from having to remember important things, like family members' birth dates or anniversaries, or bank account numbers, and your friends phone numbers. Of course with out reliance on cell phones, no one needs to remember a phone number again, you can just remember a speed dial digit, or if you are lucky you have voice dialing.
Other tips that my mind has retained:

• i before e except after c (this is only useful until you reach high school or until you learn about spell check)
• Thunder is God bowling and lightening is Him clapping his hands
• if you die in your dream you die in real life (not true, but I still retained that tid bit)
• use baking soda in your hair to wash out chlorine
• WD40 will take crayon off walls
• of all the info you learn in college, you will only retain 10% of it (or something like that)
• ROYGBIV- colors in the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet)
• Do not drink from the ocean
• if you put your arms straight out and measure from finger tip to finger tip, it is your height
• diesel cars will run on cooking oil
• Mentos will make diet coke explode
• if you stick your lip out far enough, a bird will come along and poop on it (never seen it, but my dad has assured me of this fact)
  

Of course this is a fraction of the almost totally useless info that is compacted into my brain. I am thinking there should be a way to wash away useless facts and fill up your brain with more respectable topics. Like the life cycle of an ameba or what a treasury bill is, or how to perform heart surgery.
That gets me to thinking even more about what really is important, and that is a whole other random thought.

Flat Tire

I am not a big fan of car maintenance. I don't enjoy it, it makes me nervous to think something could go wrong with my vehicle at any time. I don't like to be stranded or rely on anyone, not to mention, paying my friendly mechanic, Ken, a small fortune every time I see him, is not my idea of a good time.
I'm not sure if this is karma, or if I have rotten luck, or I drive by a screw and nail factory, but I have had TWO flat tires in one week. As a matter of fact, in less then 72 hours.
Wednesday, I left work, got to school to pick up the boys, and walk out, two kids in tow with diaper bags, backpacks and homework, and I have a flat tire. Now I don't have a nail in the tire, I have a screw in the tire, and it was rather big. It had to have been made to hold the Hoover Damn together. And yes, this thing is in my tire.
We knew that we were at the end of our life cycle with the tires on the soccer-mom-mini-van, but were hoping to wait until Spring to get new ones. My husband, being the hero he is, rescued the boys and I with a can of Fix-a-Flat. He then took the van to Discount Tire, where he got a smokin' deal on 4 slightly used tires.
I am in heaven! Soccer-mom-mini-van rides better, no slipping and sliding in the snow, it's been really nice! Until today. I go to lunch with a friend and I walk out and I think, hmmm, that tire looks low.
No kidding low, the stupid tire is flat! So as I stand there, looking at this dumb tire, thinking I am having a dream, I pull out the extra can of fix-a-flat only to find that the can is frozen. Of course it's frozen. It's only been negative 100 degrees here, what doesn't freeze?
My lovely friend was nice enough to take me back to work, while my van stays on a long lunch break at Chipotle. So I'll leave work early today, a wonderful co-worker of mine will be my hero and take me back to my wounded vehicle with a new can of fix-a-flat, so I can take the soccer-mom-mini-van back to Discount Tire. Where I may proceed to throw a fit, I can't be sure yet. It's almost too funny to cry, but I may give them a stern talking to....maybe.
I can guarantee one thing, I will be stopping at the liquor store on my way home from the tire store today.