The Crack of Dawn

The organization of my time pretty much revolves around the children. Olivia at 12 is not so much a problem on a day to day basis, but of course Evan at 2 is my main worry. I know by now you all think I have a one track mind with running, it really isn't that way. I've organised my life in such a way that I'm pretty self sufficient except for when I have to go running. That's the only real time daily that I need someone to watch Evan. Since in order to keep my sanity I need to go running at least four days a week, whenever Hubby leaves for the week to go work somewhere, I have to find a babysitter or friend who can come and watch the baby for an hour. This last weekend Hubby went to Sicily to speak at a convention. He flew home sunday night and then monday he was to take off for a four day training session with his top athletes on the coast of Tuscany.

"What time are you going to leave on Monday?" I asked him this in hopes of getting in a run before he left.

"At the crack of dawn."

Now, I get up at 6.15 a.m. every morning to bring Olivia to school and quite frankly, I have never seen him up and dressed at that hour. But of course I wanted to believe that he had this urgent need to leave at "the crack of dawn". I came back home at 8.20 and he was still puttering around at the computer. At 10.00 he decided to have breakfast. Finally at about 12.00 pm I said "I need to go to the post office and on the way back I'll take a quick forty minute run in the park". He looked at me like that was completely normal and fine. So I did.
Men truly have their own time schedule.

I ran 40' and then went on the track and did a "run 'til you drop" 1km in 4'40". I was a little disappointed in the time 'cause I thought that I could run it about ten seconds better, but maybe it just wasn't my day.

Hubby finally left at 3.30 pm.
The crack of dawn...

Weight lost so far: 1,2 kg
Calories yesterday: 1601
Water: 1.2lts
exercise: running - 40' + 1km @ 4'40" - about 8km
Days left: 22

I've subscribed again to Fly Lady. I'm not quite yet into doing the entire routine, it would be too much for me to handle right now. What I am doing is just "Cleaning the Zones". You concentrate on one or two rooms per week and do a thorough cleaning of each. This week for example was the kitchen. On the list was defrosting and cleaning the fridge (done!), cleaning the oven (done!). All things that I hadn't done in over six months - yikes!


Weight lost so far: 1,2 kg
Calories today: 1605
Water: 1.2lts
exercise: running - 10' + 5 x (1km/walk 3') + 10' = 9km
Days left: 24

Half a Gorgeous Day

The days here have been absolutely beautiful. Clear skies, very blue, lots of sun...and freezing. Like - 4 c° in the morning and not past 6c° during the day. It's really frustrating to look outside and think that it's a gorgeous day until I actually do go outside and freeze my butt off. I'm aching to get working in my garden, which like all winter gardens looks horrible right now. I'll probably have to wait another seven weeks or so before I can even think about it. Oh well, I probably don't have the time anyway.
Hubby went away for the week and Evan still has a cough so he'll have to stay home from day care. I'm trying to set up a schedule with my babysitter, but to no avail so far. Tomorrow my friend Lucia is coming over to watch Evan while I go running. I'll have to see what happens with the rest of the week.

Weight lost so far: 1,2 kg
Calories yesterday: 1589
Water: 1.5 lts
exercise: running - 20' + 10 x 1' fast/1' slow + 15' - approx. 10km
Days left: 25

The New Cure

garlic
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.

My husband's sister and mother are always coming up with new cures that we have to do to get healthy. Cures that, by the way, they rarely follow through on their own. Sometimes I'll follow them on something, sometimes I won't. A lot of that has to do with the fact that I grew up in the Hippy Dippy area of Marin County, California so I already SAW all of this way back in the 70's. Nothing new, yawn. So yesterday they sent a bottle of this "Ancient Tibetan Homeopathic Remedy" that is supposed to be a cure all for everything. It's basically a garlic concentrate. Three hundred grams of garlic marinated in alcohol and kept in the dark for I-don't-know-how-many-days. You're supposed to take it like a regular homeopathic remedy. Before each meal starting with one, two and three drops which then increase over a ten day span until you're taking twenty-five drops thrice a day. I was going to chuck it down the toilet when I saw on the paper that it promised to straighten out slow metabolisms. WOW! I'm goin' give it a try. The only thing I'm really afraid of is masking the garlic odour that might result from the cure. I've been to China and the Middle East. Garlic breath can be deadly. Believe me. On the other hand if the results is a speeded up metabolism, it just might be worth it!

Post number ONE, Two zero zero six

Did you see that my last post was on the 22nd of december? The next day we were supposed to all jump in car after the kids got out of school and head south one thousand kilometres. A eight hour drive for us. Well, the next day Olivia woke up feeling awful and by the afternoon had a 102 degree fever. Hubby woke up with no voice. Evan was still hacking away with the cough. So much to my dismay :-) we cancelled the trip and decided to stay home. This of course meant that with me being the only healthy one of the group, I played Florence Nightengale for a solid week. Everybody ended up happy (sort of...) and healthy after about eight days. Illnesses and viruses nothwithstanding, I had a nice week.
I did eat anything I wanted though I did try and practice a little restraint when I felt full (as opposed to continueing stuffing myself 'til I felt sick). All this ended in a one pound weight gain for the holidays. ONE POUND. I'm so jazzed. I've been exercising every day, mostly running, sometimes swimming or biking, and I think this really helped in keeping the pounds off. The other nice side effect is that I've been in excellent moods. Never depressed, never down, actually quite happy. I'm pretty sure that I can attribute the exercise to this, which makes me want to keep it up the new year. A depressionless 2006!

More Marathon

More Marathon
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.

I just got the "Okay" from the running magazine that I write for to go to New York to cover the "More Marathon". I AM SO EXCITED! It's a women's only event. I've never run an entire marathon with only women. Most of all I'm excited to be going to New York City in the springtime. Wow, now I REALLY have incentive to get in shape for the spring. If you're interested in coming, please drop me a line. Here's the site for additional information:
http://www.nyrr.org/more/home.php

Strength (or weakness)

Affondi
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.

See this hot fitness model in the photo? She's performing an exercise called the lunge. At the beginning of every training cycle I always start out with strengthening exercises. They keep your muscle tone up and I try and work on specific exercise that'll help me with my running. The lunges are great because they work right on that 'ole gluteus maximus and whips it right into shape. Last monday I decided that I needed to do a few...come to think of it I couldn't remember when the last time was that I'd done any. So after a 30 minute warmup run I did 10 x (20 walking lunges/100mt uphill sprints). Walking lunges are easier for me to do. When you get back up, instead of taking the step backward to go to your original point of origin, you go forward. Well, it must have been awhile since the last time I did this specific exercise. I could feel every-single-muscle in my thighs and butt for the next four days. I did them again yesterday and it felt fine. No pain. Which means next week I have to increase the intensity...

Mr.Virus Sponge

Dreamy Evan
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.

I was all excited in September when I saw that Evan had been given a spot in day care. In my town the day care is partially city funded so for a relatively small amount of money you can have your child attend from 8.00 am until 12.30 pm. The school is fantastic and the teachers are wonderful and I was finally going to be able to get back into a nice work routine. We had just finished what they call the "insertion" where he goes first for an hour a day, then two, and then the whole four hours, when he got sick. A little fever, a cough that wouldn't go away, I kept him home for three weeks until he was better. He went back and after a mere two days he was sick again. It was a fever again but this time it stuck around for a week and then he got a cough and then an ear infection which required antibiotics. He stayed home a full month. Last monday he went back to day care again. It's really difficult when he doesn't attend for awhile because then it takes him a few days to get back into the routine and get used to the enviroment. I remember one day (maybe wednesday) I told him "say goodbye to everyone". He went straight up to this little girl, took her face in his hands and gave her a kiss on the mouth. It was so sweet, but the first thing I thought to myself was "let's hope she was germ free..." Ugh. Saturday he woke up coughing and hacking. Then he vomited twice during the morning, and to make things worse he has a case of pinkeye in his right eye which I had to beg the pharmacist to give me an antibiotic for. I don't know whether to insist with the day care because if it's not this year it's next year that his little immune system will have to get used to processing germs OR whether I should just wait another year. This would mean I'd have to get another babysitter and pay out mucho dinero which I really really don't want to have to do. Sigh. A mother's dilemma.

What's your strategy?

Christmas Cookies
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.

Every Christmas I gain a few pounds, not a lot but probably three or four. Too many Christmas cookies, too many bites of chocolate. There's a certain point where I just say "what the heck..." and eat whatever passes by me. This year I am in a really good place mentally because I feel very very good about myself, but I have to find a way to not gain any weight because from past experience it is really difficult to take off. My first strategy plan has been to sign up for an important race right after the holidays. January 15th I've signed up for a half marathon where I want to try and go under two hours. But then what? Realistically I AM going to be eating, and I certainly don't want to deny myself my favorite christmas cookies so how do I work it out to a zero weight gain? I'm thinking that maybe I could allow myself "free" occasions to eat whatever I want, like one cookie baking day, Christmas day and New Year's Eve, but nothing else in between. After all they always say that it's not the one day but the entire ongoing two weeks that makes people gain weight. Please notice that I talk a lot about christmas cookies. I love cookies and they just remind me of my Mom and my sister and yes, there's a lot of emotion tied up there if you consider that my Mom passed away thirty years ago and my sister lives on the other side of the world. I have a specific set of recipes that I get out that my Mom used to use plus I like to make cookies with my own children.

Also, I'm commited to exercising every single day from the 23rd of december until the 6th of January (still a holiday here in Europe). I'll have plenty of relatives that want to stay with the kids so I won't have to worry about finding a babysitter. I'll have plenty of time to sleep if I need to recoup from workouts. Any other suggestions? What are you going to do?

Marathon nr.23 in the books!

It's only the 1st km!
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.

People have asked me several times this year how many marathons I've run. I would always shoot off a number, but in reality I had no idea because I'd never bothered to count them. So as I put away my Milan City Marathon Medal from last Sunday in my running book I took out all the medals and certificates and photos and counted. Milan was number twenty-three. Before you're too impressed you should know that I've been running for fifteen years now so that's actually not a big number. On the other hand it's not shabby either...
I had a really great time at the race. My friend Lucy (on the right in the photo) ran the first 12km with me and then conveniently took a subway to the finish area. It was freezing a** cold outside and for the first 30km they only had icy cold water at the refreshment stations. Then I hit the 35km station and they had hot tea! Gosh, that was delicious. I had three cups and then took off again. My ending time of four hours, thirty minutes and forty seven seconds was nothing special, but as usual I learned a few things about myself along the way:
- No matter what the time is, I still enjoy the run. I've just learned not to get all bugged out about the final time and just enjoy myself.
- I really really enjoy the training process and can't WAIT to get training again for the next.
- Before I run another marathon I want to go under two hours for the half marathon (right now I have a timing of about 2h02', so it shouldn't be difficult to improve).
- I still have to work on my stamina for the last half 'cause I just did too much walking in the end. I do have to say that I always felt good running though.

My next marathon will depend on working circumstances but should either be in Rome or New York, both on March 26, 2006

I'm lighter!

So I was finally able to cross off the number "1" item on my lightness list: I now have an italian driver's license! This has been weighing on my for y-e-a-r-s. Short story: I have a california driver's license that I obtained when I was sixteen. I moved permanently to Italy when I was twenty-one and they have a law here that if you stay for longer than one year, you have to get an italian license. But I always found a way around this. I renewed my foreign license for about ten years, I lied about how long I had been in Italy. I was stopped every once in awhile (in Italy they can make random checks on cars for no reason) but even though they always told me that it would be better to get an Italian license, they always let me go. Until four years ago. That's when they slapped me with a huge fine and told me I had to get one. Please note that in my twenty-nine years of driving I have never gotten a ticket and I have never had an accident.
You're probably wondering why I didn't just go get the dang license. Well, for one thing the test is really difficult. The written test has lots of trick questions and most Italians can't pass it. Second, the whole thing is costly. From start to finish I probably ended up spending about a thousand dollars. Lastly, it just takes a lot of time to do. Time that you probably have when you're sixteen and can't wait to get behind the wheel, but when you're forty-five and have two kids and a husband and a full time job, the last thing you want to do at night after you've put everybody to bed is study to pass a driving exam. But I did. Especially when I figured out that the written exam was more like a grammatical test, that I had to be really careful to read the question and understand what I was answering. Once I passed the written exam I had to go back to driving school and re-learn how to drive the way that they wanted to see me drive during the test. This was really hard because after you've been driving for nearly thirty years you have little habits that you just don't notice anymore. Like not keeping your hands on the wheel all the time, shifting down without braking, going just a little over the speed limit...I'm proud to say that on the day I took the driving test I was the only one of five candidates that passed that afternoon. See, it was hard!
I can tell you that getting the license has made a huge change in my life. I don't think about it anymore (whereas before I thought about it day and night, literally) and when I DO think about it I'm just really proud of myself. A little ashamed too. I could have done this years ago and I didn't because I thought I wouldn't be able to do it. But I was. Now I have to think about how many other things I don't do because I think that I can't. But I can.

Creative Energy

I think in a previous post I already spoke about my love for self help books. The nice thing about me is that if they tickle my fancy, I do follow through with the books' advice and actually get something out of it. I don't follow every single thing, but there is usually something that strikes a cord and I go with it. Take "Coach Yourself to Success". The only thing so far that I've zeroed in on is page 3, entitled "Eliminate all those petty annoyances". Anything that you've put off, anything that you think about all the time should be dealt with. I made my list of about forty items and I update it every month. Next week we'll see if I'm successful with the number one item...

So last week I ordered "Getting Things Done". I didn't really like the way it's written. Mostly because he's more of a businessman trying to make other businessmen productive so the linguistics stricter and more rigid. My eyes grazed over a lot of stuff, but what I did get out of the book was a system for dealing with my office clutter. My office room is now beautifully clean and coordinated and I have an "in" box that I check out once a day. I had 120 emails in my incoming mail that just sat there. Whenever I would close the computer I always felt that my work was incomplete, which it probably was, every other day. So now I have just two messages in my incoming mail, I'm waiting on an answer for them and then I can deal with them. I closed my work computer at 6.30 pm and felt like I had done a nice days work.
This is all aimed at freeing up your creative energy and to give you more productivity so that you can work easier. In both books they talked about things just "coming to you" when you've done the exercises correctly.

Today as I was sitting there gloating about what a nice clean desk I had when an old client of mine called on my cell phone. It's a really really important client that starts with an "N" and ends with an "E" and is one of the biggest sport manufacturers on the planet. They wanted to know if I could coordinate a convention that they'll be having at a half marathon race in March. "Of course, no problem!" Now, I've never done this before, but I don't see it as being that difficult. The triumph for me is that this is the same client that four years ago told me that I would never set foot in their offices again. Why? I had worked heavily and almost exclusively for them for three years. I had just finished a big project and was supposed to maybe start a new one when they just stopped answering my telephone calls, emails and phone messages. At that point I understood that they weren't interested in further work for that season, but since we had seen each other every single week for three years, couldn't they bother to give me a call and say thanks but no thanks? Apparently not, because they're the biggest manufacturer on the planet and they don't need to do that. I did something that I do not regret even though it probably cost me a lot of money: I called they're bosses in Holland. I told them what happened and said that all I wanted was for a phone call from the Italian office saying that they no longer needed my services. I wanted closier. They'd be seeing me all the time anyway, why not be on a friendly basis? I am at every friggin major running event in this country, my husband has several athletes that are sponsored by them, so why not be nice? Holland said they would get back to me.
The next day I instead got a call from the Italian boss. I'll spare you the details but his parting words were: "You'll never set foot in this office again".
Oh yes I will. Next tuesday, in fact.
The creative energy flows...

I'm in white with bad posture

Carpi 2005
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.

If you don't see any posts it's usually because I'm either too busy or think I have nothing interesting to say. Or both. What I've been doing:

- Evan went to two weeks of day care and then got sick. Really sick. The poor babe burst an eardrum and we wouldn't have known because he doesn't cry about these things. But when we saw blood coming out of his ear we knew things were bad. We rushed him to the pediatric emergency where he was pumped with antibiotics and told to not to send him back to school for three weeks. He's better now, but I have to go through the whole introductory to school with him again. Ugh...

- I ran my marathon. I did not do well. I did finish it. I decided to run another one in november, in Firenze.

- After a few week of unsupervised and careless eating (but no weight gain!) I have been reinspired and am now back to another eating regime. THIS time I dusted off the diet my dietician gave me four years ago and am having a go at that. The one catch is that I'm using Fred's idea (www.onephatman.com) of taking one day off per week from dieting and having a "free" day. I did this in 1993 during my first post pregnancy diet and it was not only efficient, but fun. I'll tell you about it in a soon-to-be written entry.

- Do you remember my "lightening" list? Well, I almost have the number one heavy burden crossed off of it. Don't want to jinx it though, so I'll only let you know when it happens. Until then...

Once upon a time...

This last winter I got a call from a new client. Actually, three new clients since it was three women that wanted to train together. I met them at the local park the next day so that I could see what shape they were in and start them off on a running programme. LEAD-girl was the one that had made the call. She was the obvious group leader because she talked about seventy percent of the time and answered for the others even when she wasn’t called upon. Very pretty, by the way. FAST-girl was the fastest in the group. She mentioned that she’d been running for awhile, but she seemed fine about coming along for the ride and slowing down to run at the other’s speed. SHY-girl was the most soft spoken. She didn’t really say much and sort of looked like she wasn’t comfortable about doing this whole thing with me. She was also overweight by about thirty pounds, which doesn’t sound like much except that she is five foot six inches and it all sat on her rear. I watched them run, showed them some exercises, timed a kilometre where FAST-girl came in first, LEAD-girl came in second and SHY-girl came in third by over a minute. I explained the programme for the first month and gave them an appointment for the next. They trained with me the whole winter, through cold and wet and snow. Nothing seemed to stop them. Each time we met I saw that they had a little more enthusiasm and that most of all they were improving. Surprising, the one who was improving the most was SHY-girl. She was a little less out of breathe and she was asking a few more questions each time. I also saw her small hidden talent: she moved her feet really well. What most runners don’t understand is that in running, your feet are what make you move. Most people concentrate on getting an aerobic base (very important), or getting strong legs (also very important), but the area where you can make the most improvement is in using your feet the proper way. If you have a strong heart and legs and then shuffle your feet, you “X” out the first two factors. SHY-girl moved her feet. Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick she’d run by me, still red in the face and still a little out of breathe, but faster and more at ease every time. LEAD-girl started to have trouble because, on the other hand, she had a really long gait. CLOMP-CLOMP-CLOMP-CLOMP she’d run past me as I timed her.

Sometime around february it became inevitable that I’d have to start giving them individualized running programmes if they wanted to further improve. I knew that they were running faster, but since I needed to put some numbers on the amount of improvement they’d had I asked them to run 1km on the track so that I could get a better perspective of their speed. I started FAST-girl off first ‘cause I knew that she was still going to be the leader here as far as pace was concerned. LEAD-girl went next followed by SHY-girl twenty seconds later. After one lap around the track something strange happened: SHY-girl was gaining on LEAD-girl. As they rounded the corner SHY-girl picked up the pace and just went flying by her. At the same time LEAD-girl, as soon as she got passed, immediately stopped in her tracks and started to walk. She wasn’t even going to finish the last lap. She came over to me and started to talk about feeling tired lately and that something was wrong. I asked her a few questions (are you eating nutritious foods, do you have your period, are you working a lot?) and then asked her the final one: “I noticed you stopped just as SHY-girl passed you...” Suddenly LEAD-girl turned into this venom spitting, green tailed psychopath. She started yelling about how she was always first in everything she did, that she couldn’t lose, that she wasn’t going to stand for having SHY-girl pass her. I tried to explain to her that this wasn’t a race it was just to see where they all stood and that it would help me to calibrate the running load so that I could give her a programme to help her improve. But at that point there was no way to reason with her so I just let it go. SHY-girl looked shyer than ever and FAST-girl just looked the other way trying to pretend that nothing was happening.
A month went past and I didn’t hear from them so I wrote a group email asking how things were going. LEAD-girl said that she was injured and wasn’t running as much. She talked about some sort of inguinal pull...then a month later talked about a hernia in her neck (very rare, and I assume that she got it from her job as an estetician since she leans over a lot for most of her operations). FAST-girl was vague about everything, but I sent her a programme anyway. SHY-girl said things were going great, had I heard from the others? And when did I think that they would be up and running together again? I told her that it was hard to tell since I didn’t really know what LEAD-girl was doing. I started to send SHY-girl her programme again. This time I knew how fast she was running so it was easy to write and even easier to see fast results. Since I knew that she would now be running alone I invited her to come running with me and some of my friends, which she did. It’s on one of these runs that she told me about how the whole drama behind this group started to unravel. After the track episode, LEAD-girl had started to speak badly of me. She said that I didn’t pay enough attention to her and that she was going to be looking for someone else to train her. We all knew what had really happened: she was used to being the center of attention and all of the sudden, with SHY-girl passing her, she was now the last in the group. A position that she obviously wasn’t used to and refused to be in. From this one single episode I know that the threesome is no longer running together. They still speak to each other, but it’s become tabu for them to even talk about running. LEAD-girl is still running but is being trained by someone else. I know she’s had various injuries that she still hasn’t healed from. FAST-girl is also injured and looks like she’s gained a few. SHY-girl is still training with me and she completed her first half marathon last month with a time of 2h13’. I am trying to have her meet as many “nice” runners as I can. It is now my mission to get her to become as efficient a runner as she can. We have a plan, we will follow it...me, vendictive? Maybe, but at least one nice runner will benefit from it.

Early Winter

No, I haven't slipped away...still here...just went through a hormonal induced two week depression bonanza that seems to have finally left my body. Whew! I only have two more weeks until my marathon, two weeks more of training, but I seem to have lost a little focus. This always happens to me a few weeks away from the event. I think it just comes from being ready to do it NOW and not wanting to wait anymore. But I do need to taper and I do need the extra time to get it together mentally for that 42km trip.
I'm pretty sure I won't be able to run a BQ time of four hours, but I probably be able to trim some time off my 4 hour 21 minute springtime marathon. I have a lot of friends that are coming to run with me, supporting me the whole way, and that is a nice thought.
My biggest problem right now is the weather. It started raining this last week and it literally hasn't stopped. Yesterday I went for an 80 minute run and it poured three times during the session. Today I was supposed to run for two hours but it just won't let up and I'm going to have to come up with plan "B". I'll go meditate on that now...

Be. Here. Now.

Katrina over Florida
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.

Be Here Now. That was the title of a popular esoteric, funky, spirtual book from the 70's. I remember I used to see it on the coffee tables of people's houses, next to the joints (hey, I grew up in California during the 60's and 70's!). It always stuck with me because sometimes I forget to be in the moment. I am always yearning for the past (sadness) or worrying about what will come in the future, whereas I have a really difficult time with what I am doing right in this moment. I have a really short attention span, I am constantly juggling doing three or four things at once and I often start doing something before I've even finished with the last thing I was doing.

Last night I had a really difficult workout:

15' warmup run + 4 x (1km fast/1km slow) + 20' + 4 x 1km fast, rec. 3'.

While I was warming up I was worrying about the eight km after and then while I did the 8km I was thinking about the faster 4 x 1km that I had to do. Why can't I Be.Here.Now? Think about the moment, concentrate on what is going on NOW instead of constantly having my mind somewhere else. I wasn't really super happy about the 8km that I did, but then the 4 x 1km went super. I was able to run them all at 4'57"/km. This is like a 35 second improvement for me from this last spring and that is a lot! Four more weeks to go on this marathon training but I really have to concentrate on each single day and not worry about what is to come.

Fitday!

I just bought the PC version of Fitday. It is fantastic! If you are trying to keep track of what you eat, this is the software that you MUST buy now. Over the years I've tried loads of dietary software and internet based trackers but have never been satisfied with them. I wasn't even that crazy about the fitday.com site. Then they sent me a message that if I wanted to download it, I could for just $ 19.95. I thought for that price it might be worth a try. It was, it is...go here if you want to check it out. Too bad I don't get commission on this!

Funky new glasses

Glasses 2
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.

I am back! I survived two weeks down at the dreaded Mother-in-laws house at the beach. I think the change in my mental attitude helped a lot. I don't care about how she/they treat me anymore (well, sometimes it does bother me...) so I'm not offended anymore when they get in weird moods. I averaged three runs per week and tried as best as I could not to gain too much. I got away with only gaining one kg, which is a miracle if you could have seen all the food that passed in front of my face: pizza, foccaccia, tons of fresh watermelon, grapes, great wine, delicious fried calimari fish...the list goes on and on but I used a lot of control and am very happy with that. Please note that when I go down south for vacation I have ALWAYS gained at least 4kg, so this was a victory.
Evan was accepted for part time day care. Yesterday I went to the preliminary meeting. I love the school and really liked the teachers. The building itself is airy and has lots of space and fun toys and activities. I think it's going to be a good thing for him. If you don't know it, the area that I live in has the world's best day care centers. People come to study them all the time to see what they're doing right. So, he starts next tuesday for just two hours a day with me present the whole time. Then we'll slowy take it up from there until he's able to stay at the school from 8.00am to 1.00pm without me. Olivia starts school on Wednesday also and I can't WAIT for that to happen. Spoken like a true mother!

I bought some funky new glasses last week. I don't know if they make me all that attractive, but they are so comfortable that I just can't take them off. A good thing too since I can't see clearly without them!

(Not) Another Challenge

I belong to an online list called "Triathletes of the Dead Runners Society " aka TRI DRS. I joined it in 1995 , the year that I raced my first triathlon. I wanted to talk to people that had actually done triathlons and get more information for myself on what the heck I was doing. For any of you out there that participate in triathlons or are contemplating doing so, join us! So this week they started a weight loss challenge. At first I wasn't going to join, but then I went here to check out my Body Fat and it gave me a 29% reading! Hmmff! I think it's the wide hips compared to the bird-like wrists facto that gives me such an off reading (wrist = 6.5 inches, hips = 41 inches). In any case, I decided to join them in yet another desperate attempt to blast off my last pounds. I used to HATE the challenges that people would launch when I was on the WW lists. So dull, so boring...but this one has MONEY riding on it. Twenty bucks per participant, winner takes all. I already know that I'm not going to win because I just don't have that much weight to lose, but it does make it a bit more interesting. You can check out the Challenge Page to see how it goes. By the way, if any of you are overweight and putting off exercise until you lose enough, a few of the people on this list have quite a few pounds to lose and yet have no problem in participating in Ironman distance races. Like they say: just do it!

Hot in oh so many ways...

Garden
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.

Yesterday one of my neighbors stopped me while I was taking out the garbage. She lives two stories above us and has a terrace that overlooks our garden. She stopped me to tell me that we have the most beautiful garden in all the condominium and that it was a joy to look at. That made me so happy! I just wanted to make it even prettier for everybody to enjoy. It's not even close to how I want it to be, but do y'all remember those seeds that I planted? All the flowers blossomed and I have a ton of tomatoes and lettuce coming up every day. Goes to show you, anybody can have a green thumb.

It's now confirmed that I'm in the middle of a very early menopause. I know because now I'm having hot flashes. When they first started in the middle of June I wasn't feeling them as much because it was already a hundred degrees out anyway. But when we went up to Switzerland in July, THEN I could really feel them. It starts out with a heat that radiates from my chest and spreads out to my arms and face. I start taking off any excess clothing I have on instantly and try to get cool. The peak only lasts for about twenty seconds but the hot feeling stays for at least five more minutes. Yesterday during the day I counted ten of them. At night it's the worst 'cause it wakes me up, plus I tend to sweat a lot and I'm having to change the sheets more often. I looked up some literature on it to see how long this will go on: up to ten years! Oh, the joy of being a woman...