bunchofheather

Author: heather

  • Cat TV

    When you have cats, you always have entertainment at the ready.

    First, you need to know that I live in the middle of nowhere, so hearing gunshots means the neighbors are sighting their guns for hunting, actually hunting, or having target practice, not that there is gang warfare happening.

    Today’s comedy show?  Well, every time the neighbor shoots off his gun, Tippy growls loud enough to hear her across the living room.  It has happened twice in the past few minutes and never fails to make me laugh.

    Sometimes Cat TV is home to heart-wrenching drama as well… the other day China and Tippy got to fighting and China smacked Tippy in the face.  Luckily missing her actual eye but there was blood and much mother panic for a bit.  They must have worked out their differences because the fur flying fighting only lasted the one evening.

    Now it is time for me to go run because I am lazy and have not been following the schedule I set forth for myself.

    TippyTippy

     

  • Friday excitement

    Because it doesn’t get much more exciting than this…

    I went grocery shopping on my way home from work tonight.  I had a list and got as much as I could from Aldi’s then went to Giant Eagle.  While at Giant Eagle I wrote down prices for the things I bought at Aldi’s.  End result?  Aldi’s bill was $40.62.  Had I bought the same items at Giant Eagle? $58.42.

    Needless to say I will be grocery shopping for as many of the basics as possible at Aldi’s from now on.

    Now, from the cheap food products to the expensive… I am having a Tastefully Simple party tomorrow (part of the reason I had to grocery shop today.)  I am not having nearly as good of a turnout as I thought I would…  It’s funny, a couple months ago I had an Undercoverwear party and had a great turnout so I thought, “oh, I’ll get at least that many if I do a food party.”  Nope.

    I don’t think too much of their food products, mainly due to the price, but I like their seasoning and spice mixes.  My new favorite “add to everything” is their Italian Garlic Bread Seasoning.  I have yet to make garlic bread but I use it often, on pizza, on mac-n-cheese, you name it.

    I got home from shopping and mixed up the dips and such for the party tomorrow.  Still have some cleaning to do in the morning…

    So, as you can see, the level of excitement in my house is almost too much to bear.

  • hair addiction

    I have a new addiction, my hair.  I have been actively trying to grow it out healthily.  Not that I had many bad habits before as I used heat on it maybe three times a year if that.  The things that most negatively impacted my hair would be dye, tight ponytails, and combing wet out of the shower. 

    I have switched to henna for dyeing it because I can’t imagine giving up the red.  And I have to say, I am much happier with the henna.  It doesn’t fade at all!  I just took a break between that last sentence and the one before it to go mix up a batch so I can do my hair later… I have roots showing. 

    As for tight ponytails, I try not to, but I am still struggling with any other way to keep my hair up for running.  I can’t stand the feel of sweat soaked hair beating on my back.  But I’ve switched to fabric only hair scrunchies, no more tight bands, so hopefully that is minimizing the breakage.

    For the combing while wet, I have stopped combing my hair after I get out of the shower.  Instead I head out to work and detangle with my fingers as I drive then use a comb after I arrive.  The other day I needed to stop two places on my way so I put a Buff on and let my hair fill out the tube.

    Thanks to the Long Hair Community forums I have been reading the ingredient lists on shampoo and conditioner and paying attention to the after effects of their use.  One thing you hear about often is “cones” meaning silicone variants.  When I don’t use a conditioner with silicones you see much more frizz and when I search my hair I find splits.  The silicones hide the damage better!  Of course, that is why if a conditioner is marketed as “repairs dry and damaged hair,” you can often find high up in the ingredient listing either dimethicone or amodimethicone.   I use both silicone containing and “cone-free” conditioners but it’s good to go without the cones occasionally to get a good idea of the non-hidden condition of your hair…

    And so, here is my hair yesterday.  The pictures are taken after drying.  The first picture is before any combing.  The second is after combing and brushing.  No silicones for three days before this so all the frizzies were flying free.

    uncombedbrushed

    I have this crazy goal of waist length hair.  I’ve been doing some woodworking and making fancy wooden hair forks for updos.  Like I said, new obsession.

    In other news… I did my treadmill 5K yesterday before I washed my hair. LOL!  No land speed records were set but I upped the running vs walking minutes a bit.  Nothing major, just a bit of enough to make me feel like a running goddess warrior princess.

    running

    Today I think I am going to do a bit of sewing.  My brother-in-law dropped a coat off to me a while back to put in a new zipper.  I’m not charging him but he is giving me a new coat that he got from his work as payment so I’m cool with that.  Also, I got some Thanksgiving fabric that I am going to use to make a skirt for work.  Next Wednesday is our residential dorm’s Thanksgiving party and I’ll wear it for that.  Then probably again the Wednesday right before Thanksgiving.  I had one I had made for Halloween a number of years ago (and never wore) that I found and finally did wear this year.  Made me decide I was going to make a theme skirt for all the holidays.  Though the Halloween one was a bit fancy (for some reason when I made it, I put in a waistband and a zipper for a skirt that has a useful season of about one week a year) the rest I plan to make more basic with just elastic for fit.  They will, however, have pockets!

  • still just plodding along

    I feel like I don’t have much to say right now.

    I’m still running but not doing the C25K program at the moment.  I’m just following my own run/walk pattern for 2 miles on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and then for 3.1 miles on either Saturday or Sunday.

    I signed up for the Foodie Penpal at The Lean Green Bean.  I’ve had fun this week shopping for my first penpal.  I think I want to go back though and get some different things than what I’ve already picked up.  It has to be in the mail by Friday at which point I stop obsessing about what I should put in and start second-guessing myself about what I did put in.

    I think I am going to henna my hair again this week.  I am so in love with the henna… there is seriously NO fading!  It doesn’t seem like I’ve grown any additional length this month but it feels pretty incredible.

    Oh, talking about my hair reminded me of a funny story from yesterday.  I’ve been trying to find an alternative on how to keep my hair up off my neck when I run.  Because I always do a ponytail that I then pull through halfway.  But doing the same thing all the time will end up breaking my hair so I decided to try something different.  I put my hair up in a bun with four hair pins for the first time for a run…  So then I started warming up, run, walk, run… everything going fine.

    At a bit over two miles I heard a weird noise that sounded like something hit the treadmill, looked behind me, nothing.  I didn’t make the connection with the new ‘do.  About three minutes later I felt one hit my shoulder and then it bounced off the treadmill.  The hubby happened to come out at the same time so I sent him to get me a ponytail holder while I held my sopping wet hair off my neck.   So new hairstyle?  Fail.

  • calories in, calories out…

    I have tried so many diets in my life. It always comes down to the calories I eat.  Personally I think for everyone it boils down to the calories but some people hold fast to their “oh, but if I eat the magic combination of high-carb/low-fat or low-carb/high-fat or high-protein/high-fat then the weight will melt away faster.”  Uh, no.  Regardless of which book, magazine article, celebrity, or commercial diet you follow it boils down to calories.

    For me, I find it easier to count calories then I do to eat according to someone’s defined plan.  Back when Weight Watchers did “3 protein, 4 bread, etc.” I was successful on that as well.  I didn’t like the switch to points at all.  And I’ve never done well on a plan that says eat “1 slice bread, one grapefruit, one cup of yogurt.”  I might eat that but probably not on the day or time that the diet list says I should.

    So why am I rambling about calories?  It is time to get back to counting them for me.  I’ve been slack about it and it is such a slippery slope back to the fatness.  It’s been twelve weeks since I quit smoking.  I’ve gained nine pounds back during that time.  Time to put a halt on it and just say no to the cravings for caramel corn.

    Yes, caramel corn.  Available everywhere and oh, so good!  I have been on a many weeks binge on caramel corn!  I may investigate recipes for a lower calorie make at home version.  But I am making a public declaration to stop buying bags of it!  In fact, I think it’s a good time to publicly declare that I will stop buying anything to eat in a gas station…

    I think I just came up with the basis for the next best selling diet book “Your Car is Making You Fat.”  The premise is simple:  Don’t eat anything you can buy from your car (no fast food) and don’t eat anything you buy where you can buy fuel for your car (no gas station convenience food).

    Tomorrow morning I’ll weigh in and we’ll go from there.

    Speaking of junk food… I got the Pecan Pie Pringles.  And Cinnamon & Sugar ones.  They were okay, good but nothing special.  I’d not buy them again…  I’d rather have caramel corn.

    And now, I shall end my food/calorie ramblings with this:  I am sooo sick of pumpkin spice this, that, and everything!

  • being neglectful

    Sorry to my two? three? one? readers… I haven’t been blogging much.  Without the Color Run to prepare for I feel like I’ve not much to talk about on the running front.  I can confess that I have been super lazy this week…  Back on track today though, I’m getting ready to go hit the treadmill for a full 5K which in my world of self talk will get me to stop calling myself a loser.

    I didn’t end up working out at all at the hotel last weekend.  Two weekends in a row I packed exercise clothes for my work travels and two weekends in a row I didn’t exercise while traveling a bit…  Good thing I don’t travel a lot since apparently it increases my laziness.

    Last weekend I did do something out of the ordinary.  I put on makeup.  Trust me, this isn’t a common occurrence!  It happens maybe three times a year.  Trying to remember, I know I put on makeup to go get my driver’s license picture taken in July… before that I’m not sure.  It appears I better document the occasion!  So here I am, made up:

    makeup

    Makeup this last weekend was a sad reason though, A coworker and I were accompanying one of my students to her father’s memorial service.  I interpreted for the student at the request of her mother. I did okay with the part where the mom talked about her husband and his life, but oh, non-christian me trying to interpret the lord’s prayer and hymns?  Ouch!  Thankfully, the student was fine with my attempt, weak as it was.  I want to be a certified interpreter some day but am certainly not at that level now.  Even when I am I would likely not accept a religious focused assignment because I recognize that I would not be the best qualified.

    Off to put coconut oil in my hair and get running!

  • still going

    Not at the speed of the energizer bunny though I wish…

    I am doing W2D3 today of the restarted at a higher speed plan.  Then I’m packing for the weekend.  Traveling for work until Sunday…  I am taking my exercise clothes and am going to check out their facilities at least one if not both of the mornings.  My thought is do the elliptical or the exerbike, to try something I don’t normally do.

    I am happy I took up running.  Getting regular exercise has probably been the only thing keeping me from swirling down the drain of depression these last three weeks!  I’ve been amazed that with all that’s been happening that I have also maintained not smoking.  My weight is annoyingly still up at 188 but two out of three ain’t bad (Meat Loaf says so.)

    therapy

    I also feel this applies to sewing.

  • Is it Friday yet???

    I love my job… Really. But, these past couple weeks have been some of the toughest to get through, especially while not smoking.

    To give you an example, yesterday at 3 I was told by a student that if we (about four staff) did not back up then we were all going to die, then a few seconds later a rock was thrown at my head.  At the same time I was on the phone with his mother explaining that he missed his van and once he calmed staff would drive him home. She was crying and explaining he had tried to kill his younger sister over the weekend and also tried starting a fire in the house (about his 6th time). He is not yet ten years old.

    A few minutes later while trying to call the psychiatrist to see if she could get a bed in the children’s psychiatric hospital for him i was arranging for a different staff to do what I originally had planned which was take a new dorm student to therapy. I also needed to call her therapist to fill her in on events, namely the student’s father was killed last week in a car accident but the student hasn’t yet been told because her mother is emotionally destroyed and can’t decide anything… So heads up on some upcoming therapy issues.

    I’d like to say this level of crisis is unusual but it isn’t really.  Some months are better than others.

    Now I am going to go run (I did restart c25k with more incline and a faster pace, today is W1D2) and remind myself of the many reasons I don’t really want to go buy a pack of cigarettes and ten candy bars.

    However, if I see the new Pecan Pie Pringles a can will be mine (but that’s more an “omg I must try those” reaction then a “life is crazy I might as well eat” reaction…)

  • random ramblings on a Sunday…

    So… I did it.  “Ran” my 1st 5k.  Seriously, for what little amount I actually ran, it shouldn’t even count!  I bet I ran more on Week 1, Day 1 of C25K than I did yesterday!!!

    My thoughts:  I’m happy I did it because deciding to do it is what started me on this new path of running.  I won’t do another like that.  I will do more 5Ks in my future, ones that involve less people and less asthma attack inducing substances.  In my pictures from yesterday you can see around my neck a half buff, I pulled it up over my nose and mouth whenever we went through the color areas or if I noticed a bunch of people throwing color near me… I’m sure it helped but I still had breathing issues after and ended up using my inhaler a lot yesterday afternoon and evening and then again first thing this morning.

    asthmaforeverybody

    I am not giving up though!!! My inability to run barely at all outside in the real world has really motivated me to get better at it.  So I found a local 5K on March 23rd, 2014 to aim for, nothing fancy, not too huge, and not expensive.  New Goal.

    I’m going back to the beginning and restarting C25K with my incline set to 2.5 instead of the default 1.5 and I am going to run at 5mph.  I had gotten my running segments up to 5 minutes at 4mph at 1.5 incline.  I’m going to stick with the schedule I’d recently changed to of my runs being Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays with walking being Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays.  Thursday is almost always an early day for work where I need to be there at 7:30 instead of 9 so that’s a good day for a resting day!  Recently I’ve occasionally hit 5mph to see if I could do it and found that, yes, I could sustain it for about 30-45 seconds during a longer run at 4mph so I’m thinking that by going back to W1D1 and knowing I only have to sustain that speed for 60 seconds at a time I will be successful.  I, and you, my couple of readers, shall find out!

    Next up on today’s ramblings… REI is awesome!  I wanted a Buff for yesterday because I thought it would be the easiest way to have something to pull up over my face (and it was.)  I had found them online but had never seen one in person.  I knew that REI carried them but also saw people that said they’d found them at Dick’s Sporting Goods.

    So I stopped at Dick’s this past week on Wednesday on my way home from work.  The person had no clue what I was talking about and said they didn’t carry them because he knew every item in the store and tried to direct me to headbands since I’d described that a one of the gazillion ways you could wear them.  Thursday I went to pick up my race packet and stopped at the Dick’s near there.  Basically a repeat of the day before.  The woman listened to my description and said they didn’t carry anything like that.  I said I had seen online that Dick’s carried them and she also claimed to know every item in the store and that if they had them they’d be in her department.  Scream!  I left.  According to Buff’s website, the first Dick’s was correct, they do not carry them, however, the second one shows that they do.  I know that doesn’t mean absolutely that they do but it makes me doubt Miss “we can’t possibly carry it elsewhere in the store because it isn’t in my department and I don’t know about it.”

    Friday, after work, I stopped at REI.  I admit I went in with a cranky chip on my shoulder!  It has been emotionally rough at work recently and I was pretty sick of stopping at stores and not finding what I wanted.  I walked around the first floor, nobody offered to help me and it reinforced my cranky mood.  I went to the second floor, walked around getting crankier.  Then, a salesperson asked to help.  Not really expecting much at this point (yes, I was being a pessimistic bitch inside) I told her what I was looking for.  I didn’t even have to expound on what a Buff was… she instantly started to tell me where they were, pointing downstairs.  Then she asked if I was familiar with what the packaging and such looked like.  When I said no she walked with me downstairs, took me right to the Buffs, then stood and chatted for a bit.  During the course of it she talked to me about their membership, gave me a little paper slip to get me signed up if I wanted (but it wasn’t a hard sell since my internal pessimistic bitch would have screamed at that).  It was a pleasant sales interaction which I really needed after my earlier experiences of the week.  (Yes, I paid the $20 for a membership… had that been a annual fee I likely wouldn’t have but $20 as a lifetime fee?  Absolutely.)  Oh! And something I found out yesterday when surfing the web.  The other REI in Pittsburgh (we have two) has a climbing wall!  And as a member I can use it on the weekends for free!  I can’t wait to try it sometime.

    End result?  REI gained a new customer and Dick’s lost one.

    These are the buffs I ended up buying, a full one and a half.  My hair is happy:

    fullbuffhalfbuff

    Okay, two more stories related to The Color Run, one of which also is related to my quest for a Buff…  I arrived to pick up my packet including my shirt.  The man asks “what size?” so I asked whether they were men’s or women’s sizes.  He said they were unisex so I said medium.  He then proceeded to do that eyes over body scan and said (in what seemed to me in my pessimistic bitch state to be a sneering tone) that they weren’t preshrunk.)  So I got a large (which based on how it fit yesterday was the better choice but that wasn’t the point!)  I headed out to their store (just in case they had a Buff that would mean I didn’t have to stop at the nearby Dick’s) feeling pretty deflated since I’ve worked really hard to shed weight and get more in shape this year!  I mentioned my Buff quest to the people at the store booth and my stop the day before and my planned stop for right after leaving there since they didn’t have any but one man had the suggestion that “you might need to try a couple different Dick’s”.  My dirty mind started to laugh and I told him “what a double entendre!”  He realized what he said and I left laughing!

    I am done shopping for quite some time now I think!  I have nothing else super pending on my current “urgent want” list.  I have clothes that fit, accessories for exercising, dye and conditioners for my hair, new glasses, and the most recent online order that refilled our households vitamins.

    Prior to yesterday I wanted to get a white sports bra but that’s no longer on my list.  I hang my sweaty sports bra up to dry as soon as I’m done running and then actually wash it about once a week so one is really all I need at the moment.  For walking I can wear my daily bra or even one of those so called sports bras.  I said once before that I could do a whole post on sports bras… it’s true!  I can’t stress enough how important a good bra is for keeping me going.

    During what I refer to as Week 0.5, I followed up my workouts with a whine session on the couch where I held my breasts and whined about how bad they hurt.  I am not a small chested woman…  Before losing weight I wore a 42D, currently I am a 36DD (really hoping that when my band size again decreases that the cup size goes down to a D or else I won’t be able to buy everyday bras at KMart and Walmart… anyhow, back to the current topic.)  As a 36DD those cotton pullover sports bras just don’t cut it… there is no support happening there.  So I did some Internet research and found a few options.  I went to (where else) Dick’s and tried on various bras, jumping up and down in the fitting room.  And I found an awesome bra from Under Armour, the Armour Bra.  Expensive but worth it, fits great and no bounce!  (The next one won’t be from Dick’s though… they’ve gone on my “the list.”)

    “The list” is continually growing and changing in our house.  It is an unwritten list of businesses that we are currently not patronizing for some reason.  It can be various things that land a business on “the list” such as  service, quality of product, pricing, and political views to name a few.   It isn’t a permanent placement usually, political views being the exception… eventually I usually give places a second chance.

    I should probably shut up now.  I am at about 1500 words at the moment.  Oh well, I am feeling chatty today so on to the subject of my weight.

    I started the year at about 230.  By the time my workplace’s biggest loser competition started on January 21st I was down to 225.  I did the competition and placed 3rd among the females earning $100 at the end of April.  I continued losing but then in August stalled and my weight started creeping back up.  So at the beginning of August I hit 180 and this morning was 188.  Time to rein in the bad habits again!!!

    weight

    I am recommitting to focusing on the calories.  With a longer term goal of 150 I can’t stop now.  I also have a short term goal of 175.  Initially I wasn’t going to do my new clothes shopping until 175 and then I just couldn’t wait any longer.  I initially typed that I needed a new reward for 175 but honestly, looking at that graph above, having it go back down and touch that line will be its own reward.

    Okay, I really am going to shut up now.  Time to get off the couch.

  • Happy!

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    Before

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