Backsplash!
Last week was the new water heater, this week was the new kitchen backsplash…
… next up? New kitchen and foyer floor! Muchos improvements en nuestra casa!
I am SO happy with how the backsplash turned out. And relieved. We spent quite a bit of time at Home Depot (three locations), Lowe’s and Menards, and felt like we couldn’t find anything we liked that was in our price range, that didn’t look cheap, and wasn’t too dark/in the right color range. We thought we were going to have to go to a tile shop and custom design something, when we ran across this tile when we were shopping for our new water heater.
It looked good taped against the wall that night, but the real judgement day came this week when it was installed (we contracted out). And… we both love it! Phew!
My uncertainty with finishes makes me laugh, since my title at work is “Interior Designer.” Ugh. What a lie! I had to tell someone my job title the other day, and the conversation didn’t warrant me explaining what I really do, and right away, they responded with comments about how they could use someone like me to help set up their new house, how good I must be with finishes, and so on. That response makes sense given what that title implies!!! But then I feel like a jackarse when I tell them that’s not what I actually do at work. I suppose there is no reason to let on to my lack of interior design skills if it’s not someone I’ll ever see again. Ha ha.
GC Data inspecting the work (before being told to get off the counter!!!)
Super easy cowl
Now that my snister’s birthday has passed, I can tell you what I was working on with that jumbo yarn – a cowl for her!
Doesn’t it go perfectly with the hoodie Mom gave her?!
This is the first time the photo on the yarn label (<— click there for pattern) has attracted me to the skein first, rather than the yarn itself. A project that only requires one skein, and just 17 stitches per row? Sounds easy-peasy!
It was! Easy enough that I got three done in three days, only spending a bit more than an hour on each.
I made another for my friend Dawn, for her birthday.
That’s me, not Dawn, ha ha
Steven liked the way they turned out, so I bought a skein to make him one as well*! I might even make myself one. Can you believe, that with all this knitting, I haven’t made anything for myself, yet?!
*Although he keeps asking when I’m going to knit him the tie he requested months ago, hee hee.
Cat therapy
When I was a senior in high school, I had open lunch* (do kids still get that, these days?) and a friend of mine who’d graduated two years before would come meet me. Which was AWESOME because we were only allocated twenty-five minutes for break, and having a friend come with food meant I actually got to enjoy lunch, instead of rushing around to get food then scarfing it down. (SIDE RANT: I totally blame how fast I eat on this (among other things)).
But what was even better about her visiting was that SHE BROUGHT HER CAT!
Pre lunch cat-ppetizer. His name was Peaches, afterall.
A mutual friend of ours found this cat when he was just a few weeks old. My friend adopted him and had to bottle feed him for several weeks! Craziness!
But the cool thing about adopting him so young was that we had a lot of influence on his behavior (well, as much as you can with a cat). So I told my friend “You should take him on car rides so he’s used to riding in the car and doesn’t mind it!”
An that is exactly what she did. And I got to see him on my lunch break. Some nice cat therapy in the middle of the day!
I randomly remembered this when I was driving to Iowa this weekend. And thought to myself, “Man, it would be so nice to have cat therapy in the middle of the day at work. That would really calm me down.”
Then… duh. I work from home a lot of the time. Steven brings Data over to my desk when he can tell I am stressed, and it DOES calm me.
And sometimes he visits my desk on his own…
Which is surprisingly NOT calming, ha.
But seriously, when is something like this going to pop up by my office?! I think I was on to something back in high school…
*I had it as a junior too, and sometimes took it as a sophomore (shhhh).
Training Week 305
Highlight of the Week: Two runs accompanied by family on their bikes!
Monday | August 17, 2015: 5 m run + teaching strength class
Loc: Millennium Trail, Temp: 81°/84°, Time: 10:42, Pace: 53:31 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: hot, but good
Strength: body bars and boxing bags, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good
Tuesday | August 18, 2015: 5.5 m run (incl. 10×1:00) + 4.1 m run
Loc: Round Lake, Temp: 76°/76°, Time: 54:21, Pace: 9:53 avg, Difficulty: medium, Felt: pissy at work but intervals helped
Loc: to Gerber, Temp: 76°/75°, Time: 42:15, Pace: 10:19 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good
Wednesday | August 19, 2015: rest
Thursday | August 20, 2015: 8 m run
Loc: Millennium Trail, Temp: 61°/60°, Time: 1:20:43, Pace: 10:05 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good
Friday | August 21, 2015: teaching strength class + 14.4 m run + 6.6 ride
Strength: body bars and boxing bags, Difficulty: easy (mostly observing), Felt: okay
Loc: Around Round Lake, Temp: 75°/80°, Time: 2:35:36, Pace: 10:48, Difficulty: easy, Felt: really good
Loc: Millennium Trail, Temp: 80°, Time: 32:17, Pace: 12.3 mph avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: so hungry
Saturday | August 22, 2015: 3 m run (2 w/Dad & Will)
Loc: Guttenberg, Temp: 78°/79°, Time: 30:31, Pace: 10:09 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: okay (bathroom emergency!)
Sunday | August 23, 2015: 10.6 m run (w/Dad on bike)
Loc: Guttenberg, Temp: 63°/60°, Time: 1:57:38, Pace: 11:06 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good
Notes:
- The last two Tuesdays I’ve been lucky enough to run errands… literally. Ha ha. Last week, I ran to the studio to train a personal client, and this week, I ran to the auto repair shop to pick up my car. It feels so purposeful to actually run somewhere to take care of something. And people’s reactions to it can be amusing. I was hoping to run another errand tomorrow, but it sounds like it won’t work out. Bummer!
- The sample cool weather this week has me excited for fall running! Not that I don’t get excited about running now, but not being completely drenched in sweat sounds p-r-e-t-t-y amazing!
- I feel so grateful that my family members are willing to ride their bike with me while I run – it’s a fantastic time to connect without (m)*any distractions. And I feel so grateful, in general, that they support that I workout at all, and don’t mind if I take a bit of time to do it when I am visiting them. It means a lot to me.
*There was that cute cat we stopped to pet today, but that was a welcome distraction.
My first knitted blanket!
I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to give Christina the blanket I knitted her for her birthday – Data was claiming it for himself!
It does bring out the yellow in his eyes!
… which was funny to me, because he’s never shown an interest in any knitting project until this one. And even then, he just liked to paw at the yarn – he seemed intimidated by the blanket itself while I was working on it.
But once I was done? All bets were off. He snuggled right up.
And played a little.
I actually felt kind of guilty giving it away, since he loved it so much. I guess I will have to make him his own. I mean, it’s not like this one is cat sized – it’s a bit bigger!
So, last year, Christina showed me a blanket she liked that had such big yarn you had to use PVC pipe to knit it (similar to this)! Crazy! I’ve had the idea to make her “big yarn” blanket since then, and when I found out I liked working with jumbo yarn so much, I decided to make her one with that (technically though, this yarn is “super bulky”).
The blanket was super easy to make (It’s 76 stitches, 80 rows, all knit) and didn’t take me too long (seven days – started Saturday and finished Friday), but it wasn’t without its issues. The first being that I needed a ton of yarn and couldn’t find any place that could get me enough skeins in the same lot. I didn’t want color variation if I did a solid color, so I decided to do stripes (I used 5 skeins each of Yarn Bee Astounding in Teal, White, Charcoal and Mustard – interesting, there was quite a bit of white and charcoal leftover, but no teal or mustard. Each skein was 43 yards.)
Then I decided the stripes needed to be long and narrow and tried to cast on all four colors, um… big nope, that was a fail. Then I tried a lace pattern to make it more interesting, since I was doing the color blocks the other way, and that took way too much time and was confusing. So finally, I decided to knit all the rows. Ha ha. Nice and easy.
Then there were all the knots in the skeins. GRRRRR! And then I ran out of yarn at the end while I was casting off, so I had to take two rows out and cast off again (this was actually a blessing in disguise because I had one extra row in there, anyway).
But it’s finished. And it actually got cool out the last day I was working on it and it felt nice to have such a cozy, warm blanket on my lap! Christina will get good use out of it in the fall and winter!
I gave it to her today and she loved it! Yay!
Now, back to work on the baby blanket…
Glorious
60°F but feels like 58°F with winds? Overcast and gloomy?!
Feels like fall!
Ahhhhhhhh.
I could run in this all day.
(But not really – I had to get home and take a shower before the installers came to put in a new water heater. Ha ha, I could hear them banging on the old water heater to remove it when I finished my shower… good timing?!)
Knitter’s rage
And rage, in general.
You know what makes me extremely irate when I am knitting? Finding knots like this throughout the skein.
GRRRRRRRRRRRR.
I understand it’s going to happen, but 3-4 knots per skein?! When I am already using 5 skeins and have to weave all those loose ends in?! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! This project will never be finished! Ha ha.
Deep breaths, Kim. You know things are pretty good in life when you’re frustrated by something as trivial as one of your hobbies, right?!
Unfortunately though, it’s not just my hobbies. I was so stressed out when I took my lunch break yesterday that I ended up doing speedwork during my run. It wasn’t planned – I was just that frustrated and needed to get it out. It helped. I was too physically exhausted to be mentally annoyed anymore! Yay, speedwork!
I don’t think that solution is going to help every day though. Hopefully knitting goes back to being my calming activity!
Endless possibilities
A friend of mine is moving her oldest child in to college this week, and of course, it made me think back to when my parents (and snister, and then boyfriend (eek!)) helped me move in to Iowa State University.
This picture is nuts! Dad’s hair is so dark! Christina is playing with a generic version of a PalmPilot! That carpet is crazy! Why did I think it was necessary to bring a giant stuffed turtle to college?! Ha ha ha.
It blows my mind to look at this picture now, and think about how I had no idea what direction my life would take. I had no idea I’d meet my future partner two days after this photo was taken. That I would start this blog and make friends all over the country (and parts of the world!). That I’d get to travel overseas twice in college. That I’d end up moving to Chicagoland. That I would work in private industry for a year and a half after college then move to a public sector job. That I’d get so in to running and exercise and eventually become a personal trainer. Crazy crazy crazy.
I wonder if most people look back and think, “Wow, it’s kind of nuts how I ended up where I am.”
Or maybe most people actually have one of those “life plan” thingys and some idea where they are headed?!
Ha ha. That is SO not me. Life planning* and goal setting do NOT come naturally to me. It’s a struggle. I am more likely to just see where the endless possibilities of life take me. And for me (and maybe a lot of people?) that mostly started when I left the nest.
*I mean long term planning. I am decent with short term. But five-year plan? Ten-year? Twenty? No idea.
Training Week 304
Highlight of the Week: Seeing an amazing rainbow on Monday’s run!
Monday | August 10, 2015: 8 m run + teaching strength class
Loc: Millennium Trail to Nippersink FP, Temp: 71°/73°, Time: 1:20:15 Pace: 10:02 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: great
Strength: Body bars and boxing bags, Difficulty: medium, Felt: good
Tuesday | August 11, 2015: 7.2 m run + 2.9 m run
Loc: to Efit, Temp: 74°/73°, Time: 1:14:08, Pace: 10:18 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: tired
Loc: from Efit, Temp: 72°/72°, Time: 29:39, Pace: 10:13 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: better
Wednesday | August 12, 2015: rest
Thursday | August 13, 2015: 6 m run
Loc: Millennium Trail, Temp: 65°/64°, Time: 1:02:48, Pace: 10:28 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good
Friday | August 14, 2015: teaching strength class + 20 m run
Strength: Body bars and boxing bags, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good
Loc: Round Lake/Grant Woods FP, Temp: 71°/77°, Time: 3:50:45, Pace: 11:32, Difficulty: easy/hard, Felt: steady (first 13)/soaked (last 7)
Saturday | August 15, 2015: 11 m ride
Loc: Round Lake, Temp: 81°/81°, Time: 49:02, Pace: 13.5 mph avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: hot, but good
Sunday | August 16, 2015: 8 m run (virtual w/Kelly, incl. 2×800, 4×400, 1×800) + OWS
Loc: hood, Temp: 71°/71°, Time: 1:23:57, Pace: 10:29 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good!
Loc: Grays Lake, Temp (air): 75°/79°, Time: 22:00, Pace: 2:31 m/100 yd (est), Difficulty: easy, Felt: refreshing
Notes:
- My running pace typically gets much higher in the summer, and it hasn’t increased as much this year, but I’ve noticed I’m taking more pauses and walk breaks toward the ends of my runs than I normally do. Which means I am running too fast. So I slowed down this week, and ran much more consistently. I’d rather have that than a lower average pace (with a crazy huge time gap between elapsed and moving time)!
- We’ve had a streak of oppressive, muggy days here. It was so bad during my long run that all the sweat from my legs dripped in to my socks, so that I was running with slippery bath water toes… which really hurts my Morton’s toe. Wah wah wah, I know. Ha. I think I will start carrying another pair of socks in my pack to see if switching them out helps at all. Can’t wait to see how the pedicure technician reacts to my toes on Tuesday!
- The good thing about my long run is that I ran through some neighborhoods that I hadn’t before (to get to a forest preserve). I have a few long run routes I can take from my house that I really like, but I was just looking for something different, so that was a nice change.
- This week someone commented on how me eating a burrito wasn’t healthy. I said “I’m going to run 12 miles today, I think I’m fine” (full disclosure – I only ended up with 10 because I got a much appreciated ride back on my run commute, but whatever). Sigh. Yeah, I shouldn’t eat a burrito every day (I don’t). I should lose weight (eh). But… people should also keep their mouth shut about what I eat! How about that?! Ha. Don’t worry, it didn’t bother me. I mostly thought it was funny.
The ponytail rule
I was on the track team in junior high. Everyone who wanted to be on the track team… got to be on the track team – you didn’t have to compete for spots (read: I wasn’t very good, but was really in to all the sports in junior high, for some odd reason).
Only a few things stick out to me about junior high track: how scared I was of the hurdles (still true), how I was always in the middle/back of the pack (still true), disliking running on the track in the hot sun (still true), the track itself, the training route we’d run to the high school and back, and… one really weird thing.
The ponytail rule.
Seriously, this is so odd.
When we ran (in training, not at meets), our coach would shout to us from the sidelines, “I don’t want to see those ponytails going side to side! They should be going up and down!”
Um, what?!
Yeah… he didn’t want any lateral ponytail sway. Only a slight up and down vertical bob.
I couldn’t figure it out then. I can’t figure it out, now. Did we have too much lateral movement? Is that what it was about? Were we not holding our heads straight, and looking ahead? Did he want us to be robots?
And isn’t ponytail sway all about how you tie your hair up, anyway?
Ha ha ha. This actually stuck with me so much, that when I started running consistently in 2006, I thought about which way my ponytail was going. Then realized how silly it was, and wore my hair in a bun.
Ahh, the funny things we remember from our youth.
(This story makes this guy sound crazy. He wasn’t. I just don’t think I was grasping whatever he was getting at with this.)
Hi! I’m Kim, a 40-something-year-old living in northeastern Illinois with my husband Steven, and our cats, Khaleesi, Apollo, Starbuck, and Eddard aka Ned. My current main hobbies are running, painting rocks, flying, reading, and eating. I follow a vegan lifestyle and work in an account management role. I write about a variety of topics and consider this a “life” blog – a place I can share anything that’s on my mind. Please visit the “About” page to get a better idea of who I am! 🙂
