lazytown

Brian and I just got back from a trip to Greensboro for Christmas. His sister and her family (husband, 4 year old girl, 9 month old boy) live there and my parents live about an hour from them. We drove up Tuesday and dropped Emmie off to stay with my parents for a few days. Emmie is my 11-ish year old coonhound/ridgeback/chow mix/love of my life who is not known for her good manners, to say the least. She is pretty bossy, as much as a dog can be, and has been described by Brian as the “hater of the living” for her enthusiastic participation in the demise of many a small animal (and inanimate objects as well). Emmie has already started trubs with Brian’s sister’s dog Ben (a very huge and loveable Newfoundland mix- Emmie has a special passion for long haired black dogs for some reason) and they have three cats, so she was off to single dog-land at my parents’ house for a few days while our other two came along. We stopped there on our way home yesterday, stayed over, and made it home sweet home this afternoon. Our hundred year old house was still standing (not something to be taken for granted, frankly), not burglarized, etc which was a big relief.

This was our first trip (in five and a half years) where we actually went somewhere together and brought all of the dogs. There is a reason you don’t see people driving on the highway with three big dogs in their car and that’s because they are a pain in the butt. The weather was kind of junk while we are up there (ice, leftover snow, rain) and we stayed indoors most of the time; I ran a grueling 2.4 miles (no sarcasm) on Thursday and that was it. Sorry, not interested. This week followed up a weekend of brutal cookie baking and subsequent eating (gingerbread men, pumpkin, black and whites, and whole wheat chocolate chip which were delicious and all were from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar). I pretty much had zero motivation to do anything all week and I have still been sleeping horribly and waking up a ton. I call that week two of recovery and this week I am getting back on track. I haven’t even written down my runs for a couple of weeks so I am going to have to rely on my feeble memory and my Garmin to help me out and figure out my remaining miles for the year. Time to lay off the cookies and taters! I am definitely going to have to step it up in the exercise department because Brian gave me a promising book on bread making (bread being my favorite 60 or so degrees in a food pyramid/triangle) and my parents gave me a pasta maker; cooking/baking/making anything from scratch is my weakness for sure. Well, that and Sour Patch Kids. Classes start back in a week and a half and I don’t have any transcribing work right now (huge bummer), so I really have no excuse but to get back on it. Resolutions for the new year are coming up as well; there will be some new ones and some repeat offenders. I am feeling the need for some structure.

Also, I believe I might have some kind of undiagnosed mental defect where I have the song from George’s answering machine running through my head at least once a day, often in the kitchen when I am putting something in the trashcan. Happy Festivus!