Some Things About Running

There are some things about running that have not changed for me since 7th grade. I think it was in 7th grade that I started running, like for fun/exercise, not away from a bear or scary person. My sister was a running fanatic by that point, and I tried to do everything she did because she was older than me and therefore, cooler.

Since the end of the school year, I've been trying to get back into the swing of things with being a runner. This past year was a bit insane in terms of my schedule, so running had to take a little bit of a back seat. I just wasn't consistent enough. So every morning for the last 2 weeks I've rolled out of bed and gone for a run. I've noticed some things about myself that have changed since 7th grade, but some that haven't.

1. When I run up a hill, I curse the cars that go speeding by me. I've done this forever. If you pass me in your speedy car while I'm hauling myself up a hill at a snail's pace, I'll mumble some ugly words your way and probably give you a glare.

2. When I get tired, I put my head back, like I'm too tired to hold it up. This is stupid as it doesn't provide me with any renewed energy. I remember in high school overhearing some other team's coach tell one of their girls to watch for when I put my head back because it meant I was tired and she could pass me. So apparently it was a dead giveaway.

3. My knee hurts. It hurt then and still hurts now, though now it's worse and blows up to the size of a cantaloupe on a regular basis. Nice, right? Ice and advil are my runnig BFFs.

4. I still hate running in muggy weather. Who doesn't? Right now, if I get out the door between 7-8:30, I'm good because though it's muggy, there is a breeze. In the next couple of weeks though, Columbia will be so hot and muggy and the air won't be moving at all. I'm dreading that.

5. I still can't keep up with boys and get annoyed that they can be all silly while running and not die. When I ran cross country a million years ago, there was this boy who I ran with sometimes. He would run through people's front yards, hurdle over for sale signs, shrubs, dance around stop signs. It was funny, but I remember thinking that if I tried to do all that, I would die. Now, when I go run with Will, he does the same thing. We run on some trails at a park nearby. I'm already a klutz on bumpy trail ground, but to top it off I have to watch him act all crazy, running in front of me, jumping over the dog, swinging on branches, all while I'm trying to not fall over, twist my ankle, or lie down and cry in general.

6. I still really like to listen to music while I run. Back in the day, it was all about the radio. Now, it's all about Pandora. I really think it's dangerous though because I get so into the music, I forget to look both ways and have almost gotten creamed by a car on a couple of occasions. Therefore, I've been running sans music, which is sad.

7. Since forever, I give myself pep talks while I run. Not about running, but about life stuff. Whatever it is. I also give other people imaginary lectures. Especially if they are being really stupid and need a lecture, but for whatever reason, no one can really give them one. In retrospect, this seems lame, but it's what I do and have forever.

8. My biggest motivation to run is still because my sister does it. I still want to do everything she does. Here we are, and for some reason I have a giant, fake grin on my face. That must be my "I want to fall over but there's a camera" face.



9. And here's what's different about running as a 30 year old vs. running as a 13-18 year old: I'm slower, I require food/water before a run and sometimes in the middle depending on length, I do it in an effort to be healthy (and not die of heart disease)rather than to get faster or participate in a race.

It's good to know the majority of things stay the same.

Today is the Day

Today is the day that I'm supposed to start writing comps. I now have 2 of my 3 questions and have more than enough to keep me busy.


So far today, I've done the following:

1. Watched the Today Show
2. Drank 3 cups of coffee
3. Watched Live with Regis & Kelly (Betty White is in place of Kelly today)
4. Hung a picture.
5. Took pictures of dogs and texted them to Will
6. Iced my knee because it is swollen. Boo!
7. Shredded some old bills, receipts, etc.
8. Emailed a couple people
9. Googled some stuff
10. Texted my mom and sister


That's ten whole things, none of which have anything to do with comps. Hmmm...it's not looking good folks!

Pesto

We have a ton of basil right outside the backdoor. Last year, we had just as much, but I was bad about using it, so it ended up overgrown. I felt guilty. This summer, I'm on a mission to use it. I put it on pizzas, in pasta sauce, in marinades, and as of yesterday, in homemade pesto. Why have I never made pesto before? Because I can buy it in a jar, and I used to love things in a jar. But not so much anymore. Homemade is better. WHAT is happening to me!? Pesto is easy though, and worth the 5 minutes of effort!

I used Pioneer Woman's recent recipe. I didn't actually make the whole recipe because it has heavy cream in it (ahhhhh!) but just the pesto part. Here's the how-to:

Pesto
¾ cups Fresh Basil Leaves
½ cups Grated Parmesan Cheese
3 Tablespoons Pine Nuts
2 cloves Garlic, Peeled
Salt And Pepper, to taste
⅓ cups Extra Virgin Olive Oil

*I also squeezed in a little lemon juice to keep the basil looking bright green.

Add basil leaves, 1/2 cup Parmesan, pine nuts, and salt and pepper to a food processor or blender. Turn machine on, then drizzle in olive oil while it mixes. Continue blending until combined, adding additional olive oil if needed.


This pesto is so good, you definitely don't need the heavy cream to turn this into dinner. Instead, cook some noodles (they need to be some kind that have nooks and crannies for the pesto to squeeze into. Yum!), drain them, melt 2 Tbs. butter in the noodles, then add 3/4 of the pesto to the noodles and toss. You could probably leave the butter out too, but I didn't. Grill some chicken in olive oil, salt and pepper, lemon juice, and the other 1/4 of the pesto. Stop there, or also make a batch of 5-minute tomato sauce to add one more layer of flavor.

Decisions, Decisions

In the last few days, weeks, months, there have been quite a few tricky decisions needing to be made. Thankfully not just by me, but by some of my closest family and friends. "Tricky" is a nice way of saying Oh-My-God-What-Should-I-Do!!!??? Most of the decisions have been made, at least for now. Now we're all at the point when we just sit back and wait to see how it all unfolds. We'll call this period the unfolding part. This part can be just as tricky as the part when you have to actually make the decision, but it's also kind of exciting.

For the last several years, my parents have talked about moving. On Monday, they finally are. This was a tough decision because they live in a great house where we have all shared a million memories. They aren't moving because of a job change or anything like that, but they just feel like it's time to do something different. I think that just wanting to do something different can be one of the harder decisions to make, mainly because other people just don't get it. Their new house is super nice and in a great neighborhood. They can get to Target in 3 minutes flat, which is really different than the 30-minute drive it has always taken. I know it's silly that Target is what I mention in a post about my parents moving to a new house, but my sister and I have created a sort of tradition of going to Target and for coffee on weekend nights whenever we are both home, so it matters. I'm trying to figure out whether or not I'm sad that they are moving out of a house that I grew up in. Tons of stuff happened in that house, and if I stop and mull over it, I would probably get all nostalgic and sad. I'm choosing not to do that though, and instead I'm really excited about all of the stuff that will happen in this new house.

One of my best pals had to make a decision about moving across the country recently. I'm not sad at all about this one because she's going to be our new roomie, but I'm sure that deciding to move away from home has been more than tricky for her. But it also has the potential to be a huge, life-changing adventure which probably outweighs the trickiness, though it's still scary. I just read this post recently about moving across the country. Even if it was a scary decision to make, it will most likely turn into something exciting.

And then there are the decisions I've been making that include all kinds of things like whether or not to apply for different jobs (and not getting them even when I do), what kind of timeline to map out for my dissertation study and writing, what to cook for dinner (ha!), and a couple of other things that are actually unbelievably tricky. For me, making decisions is a process that involves a long period of freaking out about what to do. The most ridiculous part of this process is that from the very beginning, I know the decision that I'll make in the end. However, I still have to go through the motions of freaking out, making lists, asking people their opinions, freaking out some more, calling my mom, calling my sister, driving Will crazy, talking to strangers, crying in front of people I didn't expect to cry in front of, and then, miraculously, I accept the fact that I made a decision already, months earlier. Really, the only thing this doesn't apply to is what to cook for dinner. That's not such a process, though maybe if it were I'd weigh less, which would be neat.

Here's my lesson about making decisions that are tricky and life-changing: Most likely, you already know what you want to do, which is also most likely the right thing to do or you wouldn't be wanting to do it in the first place. Hmmm, not sure that makes sense. Let me try again: Trust yourself.

And here's the thing about taking risks: If the risk is to do something different, even if it does change your life forever and isn't the most predictable or expected thing you could do, do it anyway. Because really, what's the worst that can happen? You have fun, you learn something, and you have a whole new story to tell.

Watch This!

In my real life, I am a literacy coach. Along with my other literacy coach pals, I used this video in some teacher training a few years ago when we were trying to convince teachers to stop doing round robin or popcorn reading. You know, where every kid has to read a paragraph? It's painful for all involved. This is the best proof of that and SO funny.

I had to post it because with all of the honey-related talk in my house, I keep making this joke and no one (Will or the dogs) gets it. I keep saying "the be-ar lick-ed-a the ho-nee" over and over though and cracking myself up.

Give it a watch.

Honey

In the last couple of weeks, the bees have started to earn their keep: honey from my backyard. It's seriously tasty and light compared to store-bought honey, and I really think it tastes like apple juice, but that might just be me.

Last weekend, Will realized that a few frames in one hive were full of honey but something was going on (insert beekeeping jargon here) that caused the bees to swarm and leave the hive (but they came back later), and if he didn't get the honey out, the hive would probably get robbed by other bees. Yep, they really do that. Thieves. So he lugged this heavy thing of frames into the kitchen and started harvesting (Is that the right terminology? No clue.)the honey. I sat at the table and chewed on my nails because in my imagination this was going to result in the kitchen being covered in honey. I mean, can you even imagine cleaning honey off of faux brick? (We've really got to renovate the kitchen soon. I'm obsessing about those fake bricks.)Surprisingly though, the process was not that messy and we ended up with several jars of honey.

Before the next batch, Will got a honey extractor which makes the job much easier. First, you have to uncap the hives (I think that's what it's called.) It looks like this:


Then you put the frames in the extractor and spin it. The honey is extracted and drips out the bottom into a bucket. Then, you let it sit for a day in the heat, all the leftover wax floats up, and you fill jars by pouring off the bottom. Here are a couple of snaps.





Will has been selling the jars, but I get dibs on as much as I want, so this afternoon, I made honey cupcakes. (OF COURSE!) I did some googling and apparently back in 2009 the executive pastry chef at the White House made some honey cupcakes too. I used his recipe:

Bill Yosses's White House Honey Cupcakes

Ingredients
1/4 cup softened butter
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup honey
2 eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 tsp. vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt

For the Icing
2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup honey
3 Tbsp. lemon juice

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 350°. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with cupcake papers.

2. In a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, on high speed. Mix in honey, eggs, buttermilk and vanilla until blended, on medium speed.

3. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt, then mix into the batter until just blended. Scoop the batter into the cupcake cups evenly.

4. Bake for about 20 minutes; cupcakes are done when tops spring back lightly to the touch.

To prepare icing
In a small sauce pan, whisk ingredients over medium heat until sugars dissolve together; keep whisking to avoid clumps. Using a spoon, drizzle over the tops of cupcakes, or carefully pour over cupcakes.

Makes one dozen cupcakes.


I did not use this icing recipe though because I didn't want a glaze. I clearly wanted major frosting. I decided that peanut butter icing made the most sense, so I used this recipe which I kind of made up after looking at a bunch of recipes online:

1/4 cup butter
1 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup honey
1-2 cups powdered sugar
1-2 T milk

You kind of have to play with the amount of the sugar and milk until you get the consistency you want. Then I chopped up some peanuts to sprinkle on top.

The picture I took of them was lame so you'll have to picture it in your mind. I will say though that the cupcakes poofed the perfect amount so they had a nice rounded top. I hate a flat cupcake, but these turned out just right. They were pretty tasty and would be good plain sans icing as a muffin, so that's an option too.

Jimmy Buffett Knows What's Up

Why hello, new friend...



This is our newest roommate, a Margaritaville Margarita Maker. (Please excuse the canister of oatmeal and faux brick of my kitchen. Love it! Not.) It's maybe the coolest thing we've ever purchased. Ever. I do know that Jimmy Buffett most likely did not invent this machine, though I wish he did. He has people who do that for him I'm sure, but he probably would appreciate that we now believe it's five o'clock all day long.

After a couple of years at the beach of watching me and our other new roommate, Amanda, use cheap plastic blenders to make daquiris and pina coladas (which last year turned into a burned out blender that smelled so bad we had to air out the house), Will decided this should be our summer purchase. It has been worth every penny. It's smarter than a regular bartender (well, maybe not, but it's smarter than any of the annual beach trip attendees when it comes to making a drink at least). It has two very important switches. The first is how many servings you want--1, 2, or 3. The second is the type of drink--ritas, daquiris, slides, or smoothies. (Yep, I can even make smoothies. This machine doesn't require alcohol, though it seems like it should.) Then you put whatever you want in the blender and flip the switch. The machine knows how much ice to shave and blends it up to perfection.

I should go on QVC or something and promote this thing. If you want me to bring it to your house for a party, just call me. I'll be there!