What's Cookin'

That'd be a couple pics of my kitchen. I just did the dishes so they're piled up in the sink, I hate a cluttered counter...which it always is (I have three slobby kids!)

Ok, so I've been tagged a couple times (or more) to revel things about me recently. Which I'm not really very good at, but I understand how we all like to get to know more about those we frequently support, encourage and stalk. I know a couple months ago I was tagged to reveal 7 things about me, which I totally avoided and made my friends write 7 one-word adjectives to describe me. I still do not consider "emotionally needy" ONE-word so we can just eliminate that one from the list. Yay.

Anyway, MsZippy tagged me to show what was in my fridge. Really. I thought this was excellent - I've been meaning to clean and purge all thing with fungus growing on top in my fridge for months. Man, the jars of pasta sauce and black beans I threw out with mold! Ewwww! So no more mold, not more spots of ketchup (how does ketchup get on the inside of a fridge is beyond me), no more sun tea drips everywhere.

There she is, the outside. What a beauty, huh? Black. A few pictures of some special races, one with my kids and a 5000 gallon container of Cheetos (don't ask), a pink 26.2 magnet (of course!), 3 yellow duckie magnets (for the 3 kiddos), and 3 Christmas card examples my daughter painted....which we never sent out cuz I couldn't get my act together after the Tucson Marathon. But I like the paintings so there they stay. And a calendar of Rockies games (duh!).

And here we are inside. This is after a major clean-up - you'd never know, huh?? Still a mess, but oh so much better than it was. Here's a few highlights of what's lurking inside, top to bottom: sun tea (make it practically every other day), Almond Butter (yum!), peaches, Parmesan cheese sprinkles (a staple for any pasta I eat, since I really don't like pasta - this helps), BBQ Sauce (a must-have for my almost daily grilled chicken breast), eggs, yogurt (Dannon Lite and Fit, or CarbMaster from King Soopers), light cream cheese (not mine, I don't care for cream cheese, unless it's loaded with sugar and made into cheesecake :) ), cat food (I also don't eat this, but I bet it's high in protein!), salsa, tortilla shells, turkey lunch meat, and various cheeses and bread in the crisper (does one need to keep bread in the crisper? I always have...just cuz I hate it on my counter cluttering it up), and tons of fruits and broccoli and spinach (I'm not a huge veggie eater, but I love fruit. Fruit in Colorado isn't the best either :( ).

And now the inside door. I cleaned every single one of those shelves just for this picture; you're welcome! Highlights: Chocolate syrup....duh!! How else would I have chocolate milk after my long runs? Ketchup, of course. Salad dressing. Orange juice. Mustard (yuck!!!). Turkey hot dogs (my kids. I swear!!). Notice anything missing? Yea, I'm out of milk. Anyone on their way to the store and could pick me some up?

So there ya go. Hungry yet? Well, nothing exciting like red velvet cupcakes or anything...but I manage to keep my weight escalating regardless.

Now PLEASE don't anyone ask me to take a picture of my basement!!

And remember the disastrous cake I attempted a couple weeks ago? I'm proud to say I made my first-ever strawberry-rhubarb pie!! Yessiree! And it was sooooo good. And 911 wasn't not even called to put out the flames! I even managed to put my pickle slicer, which I've never used but have owned for a good 5 years, to good use by giving it a cute little lattice look. Yeah, I have skills! The daughter's boyfriend's mom gave me some rhubarb from her garden. What the heck do I do with it??? PIE, of course. It was devoured in about 10 minutes. And I wonder why my weight won't go down??!!

Running:

Running's been going okay this week. Weight training's been nil. I don't know why, I just am in a little bit of a motivation slump this week.

I've been running with an autistic boy from school for a cross country running camp, though. How cool to get paid to run, huh?? It's just a couple days a week. A first I was really stressed because the cc coach told me he was running faster then my legs currently want to run these days. But turns out, he's really not so speedy yet, so it's just a nice, easy run for me. I should be doing double workouts since these ones haven't exactly doing much for me, but I haven't. Oh well. It's just one of those "ugh" weeks and hopefully I can pick back up next week.

Having run for like 10 days straight (maybe why I'm in a bit of a motivation slump this week???), Monday my legs didn't want to move so I just did 6 easy. Tuesday, my legs were really stiff again so I have no idea what I'd do. I plopped on my treadmill, ran a couple easy miles to shake out the stiffness, felt pretty good so I set the treadmill to a 2% incline and a 7:24 pace and decided to just run and stop when I got tired. Beings my last 5K in May was way slower than that, I had no expectations but hoped to last a mile. Ran 3.5 miles and picked up the last .5 to a 7:00 pace. Are you kidding me??? Wowzie...that's faster than the pace I ran last fall with the autistic boy in the track meets. Later that day, while on cloud 9, I went to the gym and did my only weight training for the week, and it was about half of what I normally do. I have GOT to get back on the weight training track, I know it makes a HUGE difference in my performance.

I can't believe 2010 is half over. What happened to June, btw??? Here's my mileage for the first half of the year: 983.21 miles. Thanks to Mr. Lung Fungus and Ms. Heel Pain, this is not half of my 2010 miles, which was a goal for the year 2010. Oh well, that's how it goes. We'll see if the heel lets me pick up the mileage when I return from SF and can get that number up. The past two weeks, I've hit 50+ mpw...which I hope I can keep up with. We'll see.

Tomorrow I'm going to get up early and head to the high country to do a little mountain long-run. No real reason to go up there other than I want a change of pace, and I want the coolness of the mountains. I am zapped by the heat here, I do not tolerate running in it well, and cc camp is in prime heat hours. I'm hoping for 21 miles tomorrow, we'll see. I'll be sure to take some pictures, though, and let ya all know.

Oh, and I was tagged by Anne at Asthma and the Gift of running, to write where I hoped to be in 10 years. Here goes: I will have run my 40th marathon and at least one ultra, and I'll be done with those. I'll have run marathons which are my bucket list such as The Great Wall of China, Greece, Dublin, and London, to name a few. I'll also have run Big Sur over and nailed it this time!! I'll be 15 lbs lighter and stop being an emotional eater. My allergies will have mysteriously vanished. My kiddos will all have graduated from college and have landed big-time money-making jobs so they can support me and I no longer have to work. But mostly, we'll all be happy! Oh, and I'll have bought a little beach cottage overlooking the vast blue ocean where it doesn't snow. AHHH!! Bought, of course, by those highly-successfuly, happy, children of mine!

Tag, you're it. If you haven't been tagged to show off your fridge, time to do so. And I'd love to hear where y'all will be in 10 years. You all are welcome to my cottage by the sea for a little run anytime, of course!