Tomorrow Is Another Day...

30 Before 30 Check-In #3

Oh.  This thing.  30 Before 30.  Remember that?  I can't blame you if you don't, seeing as my last check-in was almost a year ago.

I have been slowly making my way through the list, but I have to be honest, my priorities have shifted significantly since I first compiled it in 2010.  Back then I had no idea how much money and effort it would take for us just to get knocked up.  No clue that I would be dealing with an exciting, but stressful, move to Germany.  Zero intention of going back to work of any sort.  Some of the things that seemed really important or fascinating to 27-year-old Angela, just don't seem as compelling to 29-year-old Angela.  And some things I've just had to accept aren't going to happen in the craziness of the next eight months.

That said, here's the latest update!

2)  Climb to the top of the Eiffel tower, eat macarons at the Laduree on Rue Royale, stroll through the Louvre, see the water lilies at Giverny. In short—go to France. (Complete)
One of my most favorite things to check off of my list, our trip to France was everything I dreamed it would be.  The Eiffel Tower was magical, the macarons melted in my mouth, the Louvre was exhausting and majestic, and the water lilies were a dream.

3)  Travel to at least five new countries. (Complete)
I was actually a bit of an overachiever and added six countries to my passport (well, no, not really since no one ever actually stamps my passport in the proper countries).  December 2010 Mediterranean cruise brought me to Greece, Malta and Spain.  And an August 2011 sojourn back to Europe led us through France, Germany and Austria.

8) Read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. (Complete)

13) Geaux to an LSU football game. (Complete)
LSU vs. Tennessee in Knoxville.  We were so excited to get the chance to see our Tigers play in a season when we made it all the way to the BCS Championship.  Let's just not talk about anything that happened beyond that... 

15) Organize all of our digital photos in scrapbooks or albums. (In Progress)
Still in progress, but I've gotten through a couple of more.  Unfortunately, time keeps passing and I feel like every time I get one done I have two more added to my list!

16) Learn how to sew and make a piece of clothing that I’m proud to wear in public. (In Progress)
I did learn how to sew.  That was the easy part.  Now I just have to make time to attempt sewing a garment.  I really need to just get a Simplicity pattern and go to work on it, but so far I've been a master proscrastinator about it.

18) Read the entire Bible, cover to cover, without skipping the boring bits. (In Progress)
I'm reading a chronological study bible, and it's actually very interesting.  I'm approaching it from the standpoint of learning ancient history more than any sort of praise or worship, and it's amazing how much I've already learned just from Genesis! 

19) Go to the Guggenheim. (Complete)
Very, very sadly, a huge chunk of the Guggenheim was closed when I went in February, but I did get to see lots of gorgeous art and gaze up at the spiraling ramps that make the building so iconic. 

21) Get a second piercing on my ears. (Complete)
I did this in NYC with my mom and sister for emotional support, and I'm so in love with my new bits of sparkle.  It's not terribly rebellious, but it's just enough to make me feel sassy without doing anything remotely risky. 

22) Finish 75% of the books in the top 100 of the Greatest Books List that I haven’t already read. (In Progress)
I kind of hate this item.  I found myself slipping back into my college mindset of "maybe I'll just read a magazine" more and more often.  There are a few left on the list that I actually want to read (Frankenstein, On the Road, and The Sun Also Rises) but I'm not sure I'll finish 75%.

23) Go to a Starbucks drive through and pay for the order for the car behind me. (Complete)
I did this last month, and it felt great!  I spent the whole time I was in line scoping out the car behind me and creating a backstory for the driver.  She looked like a young woman, maybe just a few years older than me and she was driving a big SUV.  So I decided she was a frazzled soccer mom who had just dropped her kids off at school and was running late for an appointment, but in desperate need of a hot cup of coffee, when suddenly she realized she had left her wallet at home.  Probably not entirely true, but I handed an extra five bucks over to the barista at the window and told him the drink for the person next in line was on me, and any extra was a tip.  I hope it made her day a little shinier! 

26) Do a cleanse, maybe this one? (Complete)
I survived a cleanse last summer and documented it here and here.

And here are the items I've accepted simply won't happen before December 20, 2012 and have crossed off the list:

11) Place a bet in Sin City.
Honestly?  I just have no desire to go to Las Vegas.  It seemed like a fun idea at the time, but there are so many other places I'd rather visit instead.

20) Walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.
The last few times I've gone to visit my sister in NYC, this has been on the list, and EVERY time we have been foiled.  The first time, we did a walking tour of Brooklyn and planned to walk back across to Manhattan, but we ran out of time in the day.  Another time, we were going to walk across it to get to dinner, but decided on a super swanky night out and didn't relish the idea of doing it in heels.  Then, when I went last month, I really, really wanted to brave the elements, but it was just too cold and blustery, even when we were protected by skyscrapers.  I'm super sad about this one, but some day!

25) Attempt surfing. Not the net—the waves!
This I really do still want to do some day, but I don't see how I'll get it in before I leave Charleston, and Germany doesn't seem to be a big surf town.  Though there was that surfing wave at the English Garden in Munich...

 

A Resolution Revolution

2012 got off to something of a rocky start.  I was lucky enough to book an amazing babysitting job for a family vacationing on Sullivan's Island, so I spent all of last week playing on the beach and strolling around the island with an adorable 2-year-old all while being paid what I found to be an obscene amount of money considering about 1/3 of my hours involved reading on the sofa while the kids were sleeping.  So, that part was good.

Unfortunately, by the time the 31st rolled around, my immune system decided to take a vacation, and shortly after the parents left and the kids were in bed, I found myself shivering on the couch, every blanket in the house piled over my aching body, completely unable to focus on my book I was so wrapped in sickly misery.  The parents finally returned home at 12:45 and I was released back into the wild, but before I was a mile down the road, I got pulled over for my license plate holder light being out.  This was surprising due to the fact that 1) I had no idea there was such a thing as a license plate holder light and 2) well, no, that's about it.  Fortunately, I got busted by a kindly cop who merely gave me a warning ticket before I could continue on my merry way.  

I immediately deposited my 101.2 degree body in bed beneath a fleecy robe, a sheet, a blanket, and my down comforter.  Then spent the rest of the night drowning in sweat while I shivered ceaselessly until morning.  As of today, my fever has vanished, but I'm left with a barking cough and a phone sex operator voice.  Happy New Year.  

I've decided not to make any resolutions for 2012.  I think I'll have plenty of stress and pressure between trying to make a baby, moving to a new country, and completing what I can of my 30 Before 30 list.  Anyway, resolutions in review:

Resolution #1:  Create a monthly housekeeping chores chart.
I managed to keep up with this pretty well throughout the year.  I got away from actually referring to the chart on a daily basis, but I kept up with most of my chores from day to day and rarely let the clutter and mess of the house get away from me.  I'm calling this one a win and plan to keep up with it. 

Resolution #2: Complete half of my 30 Before 30 List.
I got pretty close on this one.  Some of my items are partially completed, some I've had to accept just won't happen by December 20th of this year.  Life has changed a lot since I made this list a year and a half ago.  Some of the things I thought I wanted to do turned out to be not so important, and others have proved far more difficult than I ever expected--who knew having a baby would be the most expensive and difficult item on the list!  Anyway, I'm still working at it, but I've had to adjust my expectations about finishing it by my 30th birthday.

Resolution #3: Read 50 books.
This was a definite success.  I wanted to make an effort to spend more of my free time getting back to my first love of reading and less time parked in front of the television.  I read 59 books in 2011, and so many of them were amazing that it's going to be hard to pare it down for my top recommendations.

The City of Lights

Before our trip, whenever I would mention that we were planning to go to Paris, I would brace myself for the barrage of negative comments.  The food isn't good.  The people are rude.  It's so overrated.  I rarely heard anyone who had actually been there say a nice thing about the city.  So while my expectations were incredibly high, I was also expecting to be terribly disappointed.  I could not have disagreed more with all of the detractors.  I am absolutely mad about Paris.  It is a breathtakingly beautiful city.  No, the people aren't warm and fuzzy, but absolutely no one made me feel uncomfortable and while I would make an effort to speak French, almost everyone was willing to speak with me in English if they were able.  If not, they found someone who could speak English, or we just made do with "pointy-talky".  A commenter yesterday leveled the accusation of photoshop on our photos, and the only thing I can say to that is no, Paris is just that beautiful.  It is like strolling through a painting.
On Thursday, we got an early start with a quick visit to Notre Dame, before meeting up with a Sandeman's New Europe Paris Walking Tour.  We had a great experience with this "free" tour in both Paris and Munich, gaining a wonderful overview of each city with high energy, well-informed young guides.  I put free in quotes because while technically there is no charge, the guides are working for tips only, so we gave each guide 20 EUR at the end of each tour.  Still, 10 EUR each for 3-4 hour walking tours is still quite a steal!  We covered many of the same points as the night bike tour, but this time in the light of day.  My favorite was the beautiful Tuileries Gardens behind the Louvre, which led to a horde of lounging Parisians and tourists around a pond facing the gold tipped obelisk on Place de la Concorde.
After our walking tour and a quick lunch, we went to L'Orangerie to see their small but extremely high quality collection of Monet's waterlilies and other impressionist and modern painters including Cézanne, Renoir, Picasso, Matisse and more.  This is also where we bought our Paris Museum Pass, which I would highly recommend if you're planning to go to at least four of the sites covered.  We bought a two day pass and from then on were allowed to skip most lines at the other sites (not including security lines, of course), and made for a great time saver.  After L'Orangerie, we walked over to Rue Royal for one of my favorite moments of the trip--macarons at Laduree!  Each of the pastries was perfectly crispy on the outside and melt in your mouth delicious.  It was decadent and classy and just so perfectly Parisian.  Checking things off my 30 Before 30 list right and left!

That evening, we went to a Vivaldi concert inside the stunningly beautiful Sainte-Chapelle church.  It was certainly the smallest church we saw on our trip, but with the walls of stain glass windows and delicately carved stone, it felt like being inside a jeweled music box.  We still had enough energy left in us by the end of the day to head over to the Eiffel Tower for a night time view of the city.  We managed to time it perfectly so that when we exited the elevator, the lights had started twinkling.  So romantic! Friday, we put on our walking shoes, mustered up our courage and made our way to the Louvre.  Everyone from Rick Steves to our tour guides had hammered into our heads the importance of going to the "secret entrance" (that everyone knows about) at the Porte de Lions to avoid the scary line at the Pyramid entrance.  So, being intrepid adventurers, we went against the flow of people walking toward the Pyramid and found the lions.  Unfortunately, we also found that the Porte de Lions entrance is closed on Fridays.  So, consulting Rick once more, we discovered that the second best entrance is from the mall below the Louvre.  That gave us a short ten minute security wait, then with Museum Pass in hand, we were officially in!  My favorite piece was the impressively placed Winged Victory, and we also got a kick out of the massive crowd of camera-wielding tourists crushing in around poor old Mona.

After about 3 hours of tromping through the Louvre, we gave our feet a break, and took the Metro to the Arc de Triomphe, exiting the station right at the massive 12 lane roundabout encircling the arch.  This was another of my favorite experiences as the views of the city were beautiful, the sun was shining, and there were plenty of spots to take a seat and relax over Paris!  I was also excited to find my mother's maiden name listed as one of the French generals who have a place of honor inside the arch.  My people!
  
And not quite done torturing our buns and thighs, we made our way back over to Notre Dame to make the climb up to the bell tower and play Quasimodo.  I loved getting up close and personal with the gargoyles and chimera, and again it was a beautiful aerial view of Paris, though I didn't love that after our hour long wait in line, they limited us to five minutes at the top.  After we descended, we had our best meal in Paris at Orangerie (not to be confused with the Monet museum!) on the Ile St. Louis, finishing our day with a delicious stop at Amorino Gelato--Berthillon's biggest competitor for a reason--and a beautiful sunset stroll along the Seine.

Cleanse: The End, No More, I Promise

Honestly, hand on Bible swear, this will be my last post about the cleanse.  But I just wanted to wrap it up and give my final thoughts.

I ended up eating yesterday, cutting the cleanse short after three days.  I felt that I was as emptied out and "clean" as I could possibly get and since I wasn't having any sort of spiritual breakthroughs, and was feeling pretty bad I decided to call it good.  And yes, I did feel "cleansed", so I guess in that regard the cleanse did it's part, but to be perfectly frank, you can get the exact same outcome by taking a laxative and drinking 12 cups of water in a day.  I assure you, you'll spend just as much time in the bathroom as I did, and a lot less time not eating.

I'm glad I did the cleanse, because I wanted to give it a chance to win me over and there are plenty of people who find them to be beneficial.  But I can say with a fair degree of certainty, I won't be doing another one.  Over the course of writing these posts, I tried to find a reputable source that recommended cleansing as a benefit to your body, but the only information I could find pro-cleansing was from sources that were either trying to sell a cleanse kit, or had copied information directly from other sites who were trying to make a sale.  And all of their claims were very vague, about how you need to clean the "toxins" from your body that it takes in from your food and environment.  Everything I could find from the medical field said the same thing over and over again: your body is MADE to cleanse itself and making healthy eating choices is the best way to keep your body clean.

There is one good result from the cleanse.  I was surprised to find that through the hunger, the things I was most craving were fruits, vegetables, and lean protein.  I spent an embarrassing amount of time thinking about how good a salad would be, or strawberries, or a juicy chicken breast.  It was as if my body knew exactly what it needed to take in to function optimally, and that's what it wanted.

Yesterday, I had plain scrambled eggs for breakfast, a Kashi granola bar as a post-run snack, salad for lunch, a banana and blackberries as a snack, and a brown rice California roll for dinner.  And oh, it was heavenly.

And what everyone always wants to know about a cleanse, did I lose weight?  Well, obviously, yes.  I "lost" five pounds over the course of three days. Since I started eating again, I gained a pound of that back.  It was absolutely not a way that I would recommend to lose weight, and I don't expect the weight to stay off.  And this is another post for another day, but I've made amazing strides in the past couple of months about the shape and size of my body, and I really don't feel that I needed to lose weight.  I did this cleanse because I was hoping that it would make my body feel healthy and clean.

But what made me feel healthy and clean was picking out healthy foods to eat at the grocery store, and then filling my body with the nutrients that it needs.  And hey, if you love cleansing, I'm happy for you that you found what works for you, and I'm not going to judge.  However, I'll just be sitting over here, reveling in the simple pleasure of chewing.  A joy that I will never take for granted again!

The Gory Details

Day 3... it was pretty tough to get out of bed this morning.  But it's hard to tell if that's related to the cleanse or not, because it's pretty tough to get out of bed EVERY morning.  But at least on a normal day I have a creamy cup of English breakfast tea and carbs luring me downstairs.  Apple juice just does not equate.

So, the cleanse deets.  I wish I could tell you the name of it, but I do not know.  I got the instructions from a friend who did it with her neighbor after she completed it and luuuuurved it.  Then another friend tried it and haaaaaated it.  So, I went into this with pretty realistic expectations about the potential benefits and the drawbacks.  Sometimes it feels much harder than I expected, sometimes it's easy.  It truly depends on the moment.

Here is the basic breakdown of what I'm taking in every day:

Breakfast:
1 1/4 C apple juice
1 glass room temperature water with lemon
1 cup of herbal, caffeine free tea
Suck on some slices of lemon
1 tsp honey 

Lunch:
Vegetable broth (2 lb bag of carrots, large onion, bag of celery, garlic, seasonings (I used a poultry blend of herbs), 8 cups of water.  Bring to a boil, simmer for a few hours until vegetables are softs, drain and smoosh liquid out of the veggies.)

Dinner:
1 1/4 C apple juice
1 cup of tea
1 tsp honey
Vegetable broth

Throughout the day:
Drink at least 12 cups of water or tea (combination), when I feel like I'm about to chew my arm off or feel super run down, I have another small spoonful of honey.

Every other day, you have to drink an epsom salt concoction to help flush all of the waste out of your body since you aren't taking in any fiber.  Holy shit.  That stuff is nasty.  It's not the least bit salty and tastes a bit like what I imagine a nice glass of gasoline would taste like.  BLEEEEEEEECH.

As you may remember from my 30B30 list, I was originally thinking about the Blueprint Cleanse.  It appealed to lazy me because everything is provided for you, it is dummyproof as all you have to do is drink the numbered bottles in the order indicated, and there are a variety of flavors to all of the juices.  The major drawback is that the three day cleanse would run me $255 including delivery.  In my opinion, that is an awful lot of money for three days of not eating.  

Furthermore, you don't know where the ingredients come from and they aren't labeled organic.  To me, if the point of doing a cleanse is to clean out your body, I want to know that my ingredients are as clean and high quality as possible.  I doubt that BPC doesn't use high quality ingredients, but preparing and selecting your own ingredients you know exactly what you are putting in your body.

I bought all of my ingredients at Whole Foods, all of my vegetables and lemons are organic, I got the Whole Foods brand Honeycrisp organic apple juice, my honey is locally produced in a field that is uncultivated and uses no fertilizers or pesticides (and is DELICIOUS), the only thing that isn't certified organic is my tea.  Because all of the organic herbal teas sounded disgusting, heh.  I forgot to keep the receipt to tally up the total cost, but looking at my online bank account, the receipt came to $90 and probably about $20 of that was groceries outside of the cleanse ingredients.  I'd probably need to restock on vegetables, and maybe another jar of apple juice, so maybe add on another $10.  So about $80 for a 6-7 day cleanse--quite a savings over BPC.

And how am I feeling?  Well, as I've been moaning to my Twitter followers, I am not loving this experience.  I'm still waiting for the spiritual, zen, reflective part to set in--mostly I just feel like going to sleep.  Maybe that is when I'm supposed to be meditating or something?  However, I have yet to feel faint or dizzy, and other than the first day, no headaches.

I worked out again yesterday--I managed to do 30 minutes of a Jackie Warner DVD and I felt fine after--definitely a bit more tired and I wasn't always able to do the full minute of each move.  Tonight I'm going to a self-defense class, so I think I'll bring some honey to have a spoonful before and after.

Bottom line, unless I have some amazing breakthrough today, I think Wednesday will be the last day of the cleanse.  That will have been four full days, which I feel is perfectly adequate for cleaning out my system.  Beyond that, I worry about muscle breakdown and truly entering starvation mode.  To ease back into the eating world, I'll subsist on salads on Thursday, then Greek yogurt and soup on Friday.  By Saturday, hopefully I'll be back to normal, which will be perfect since Colby will be getting home from a conference then.

I do feel that this has changed how I look at eating--when you feel like you're absolutely "starving" you really aren't, I promise.  But I'll talk more about that when I'm able to reflect back on this from the other side, back amongst the land of the eaters.  For now, I'm going to go drink my apple juice and pretend it's a perfectly adequate breakfast.  Yum!

The Last Supper

When I created my 30 Before 30 list (oh my gosh, almost A YEAR AGO!), my goal was to choose activities that I've either always wanted to do but hadn't gotten around to, or activities that would push me outside of my comfort zone and I probably wouldn't go out of my way to do otherwise.  One of the goals that definitely fell into the latter category was to do a detox cleanse.

As much as the idea of not eating for days on end is the stuff of nightmares, there were a couple of reasons that it appealed to me.  I am a boredom eater.  I would say at least 25-30% of the food that I eat, I don't put in my mouth because I'm hungry or even eating socially, but because I'm sitting around watching tv and mechanically shoveling snacks into my mouth.  I'm also something of a compulsive eater, if that's the right word for it.  If there is something tempting in the house, I'll eat it.  And not one slice or serving, but as much as my stomach can handle.  Hence the house rule of no Cheetos, Oreos, or candy in the house.  Because if it's there, I will eat it.  All.  Within minutes.

So, my hope for the cleanse is that as well as cleaning out my system, I will be teaching myself willpower.  That I can sit in a house full of food and not eat it--even when I'm hungry.  To know the difference between true hunger, boredom hunger, and binge hunger.

On Friday, Colby and I went for dinner at my favorite Mt. Pleasant restaurant, 17 North, and I relished a delicious glass of Writers Block pinot noir, an enormous meal of deviled eggs, a bacon cheeseburger, and a delicious caramel brownie with vanilla ice cream. Saturday I started easing myself in with Greek yogurt for breakfast and soup and bread for lunch and dinner.  Then Sunday was my first day of the cleanse, and I must admit, it was tough.  I still had plenty of energy in the morning, and was able to get in a 3 mile run, no problem.  But what I didn't think about was how many calories I was going to burn early on that I wouldn't be replenishing throughout the day.  So, I hit a major slump around 4 o'clock, and there was nothing for it but to crash on the couch for a few hours.

I'll talk in more detail about exactly what this cleanse entails in my next blog, but what I do like about it is that I'm constantly putting liquids in my stomach and hopefully training myself to be better hydrated throughout the day.  So while I do feel hungry throughout the day, after the "meals" I do have a sense of feeling full.

I want to be very clear--this is NOT a diet.  I'm sure that I will lose water weight, and I weigh myself regularly, so I'll be able to share whether I do lose anything, but I know that as soon as I start eating again, that weight is going to come back.  But I do hope that after cleaning out my system over the next few days, I'll be able to go back into eating with a healthier, stronger mindset.  Am I going to cut out pizza and brownies entirely?  No.  But I want to incorporate more fruits and vegetables, drink more liquids (that aren't fermented or carbonated), and eat only when I'm hungry.

I'm not sure how long I'll do the cleanse.  I'm listening closely to my body and I think I'll know when I hit my limit.  By the end of today, I'll probably be able to set an end date.  Initially I was going to cleanse through Saturday, but I've gotten to the point where I really enjoy my workouts and I don't want to give them up for a week and lose all of the muscle that I've gained.  Yesterday, I was ready to throw in the towel after one day, but this morning I woke up feeling fresh and rejuvenated, so I'll take it a day at a time and try to make it at least four or five days.

And probably nap.  A lot.

30 Before 30 Check-In #2

Time for my second quarterly 30 Before 30 Progress report!  Once again, a whole lot of stuff in progress, not a lot actually completed.  Pretty much the story of my life.  You can see my entire 30 Before 30 list here, and my first report here.  Each check-in will only touch on what has been completed in the last three months and the items that are currently in progress.  Onward!

2)  Climb to the top of the Eiffel tower, eat macarons at the Laduree on Rue Royale, stroll through the Louvre, see the water lilies at Giverny. In short—go to France. (In Progress)
See #3. 

3)  Travel to at least five new countries. (In Progress)
I got to check off three countries in December on our Mediterranean cruise with our stops in Spain, Greece and Malta (we also went to Italy, but I couldn't count it since I'd already been there for our honeymoon in 2008).  Fingers crossed, by my next check in, I'll be able to count the last two as completed!  We're about a month and a half away from our attempt at a military flight over to Germany, France, and Austria.  Please, please, please...

5)  Run a 10K. (Complete)
I was so excited to check this off the list in April when I ran the Cooper River Bridge 10K, and I had so much fun, I'm even thinking about running another one in October!

10) Suck the head. No, not like THAT! Like this. (Complete)
Crawfish in the lowcountry!  We went to the Cajun Fest at the James Island County Park in April, and I finally got the chance to channel my inner Cajun and suck the juices out of the head of the crawfish.  Honestly, I left it a bit late and there wasn't much juice still in there, but you know, I'm counting it because I put a dang crawfish head in my mouth.

14) Volunteer. (Complete)
I haven't been able to do it much lately, but I've been volunteering as a tour guide in a historic home downtown, and I'm hoping to get back into it a bit more regularly next month.

15) Organize all of our digital photos in scrapbooks or albums. (In Progress)
I've gotten through 2006 & 2007, bits of 2008 and 2009 and still have all of 2010 and 2011 to go.

16) Learn how to sew and make a piece of clothing that I’m proud to wear in public. (In Progress)
Well, I know how to sew.  I've given up that horrid "Easy Five Minute Skirt" and I think I'm just going to find an easy pattern for a skirt and give that a go.  Any recommendations for pattern brands or even a specific pattern?  I've never made anything from a pattern, but I figure it has to be easier than making your own.

22) Finish 75% of the books in the top 100 of the Greatest Books List that I haven’t already read. (In Progress)
I really need to pick some shorter books.  Since the last check-in I've finished Lord of the Rings, The Stranger, and The Catcher in the Rye.  Now I'm slogging my way through Ulysses.

25) Attempt surfing. Not the net—the waves! (In Progress)
A couple of weeks ago, I bought a Groupon for Colby and I to take a 2 hour private surfing lesson, now we just have to find a time where Colby is in town and it isn't 400 degrees outside! 

26) Do a cleanse, maybe this one? (In Progress)
I don't think I'm going to do Blueprint just because of the cost, but a friend recently had great success with a lemon juice/broth/tea cleanse so I think I'll give that one a try when Colby is out of town in July.

So, there we go!  18 months left to finish the rest.  I'm not at the panicking stage yet, but um... I still have a lot left to do!

Cooper River Bridge: I Got Over It!

What an amazing weekend.

Colby and I woke up early in the morning on Saturday, and made our way to the starting point of the 10K.  It was pretty chilly before the sun came up, probably in the 40s, and we hung onto our jackets until the last possible moment before dropping them off at the sweat shuttle.  We wandered around the corrals for about an hour, taking in the crazy costumes (Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, some dudes in Baywatch bathing suits, a portly Batman and Robin, just to name a small sampling!), ogling the anorexic-looking elite runners, and attempting to keep our muscles warm.

About a quarter to eight, we headed to our respective corrals, and waited for the waves to start rolling toward the starting line.  This was the first year of wave starts for the race, and it went off beautifully.  Each corral started about 3 minutes apart, and as each group started to run, all the others would walk forward.  I'd signed up for Corral K since I knew I would be walking for some of the run, but I ended up in Corral J for the start as we filled in during the 30 minutes of walking forward.  Since I passed a number of walkers during my run from corrals E through J, I now know that I can sign up for a higher corral next year so I won't be stuck with all of the strollers in Corral K.

Each corral got it's own starting music, and my group took off running to the sounds of the William Tell Overture.  Up to the time I started running, I was still cold, but once I was moving, the weather was absolutely perfect.  The adrenaline definitely kicked in, much to my surprise, and I even found myself getting the teensiest bit verklempt as I thought about the goal that I was achieving and how far I had come in just a couple of months.

Mile one flew by in what felt like a matter of seconds, and mile two was equally smooth sailing.  Then we hit the bridge, and the dreaded incline.  I broke for my first couple of minutes of walking about halfway up the bridge, then pushed on, taking in the beautiful views, pausing my iPod to listen to the bands playing along the route, and focusing on maintaining a steady pace.

Before I knew it, I was over the bridge and running down King street in Charleston, smelling the aromas wafting from the amazing restaurants and surrounded by a wall of people cheering us on.  The adrenaline kicked back in, and I was amazed at how many people I was passing as we made our way toward Marion Square.  Then I saw it: Mile 6.  Only 2/10 of a mile left to go!  I pumped up my music took a deep breath and picked up the pace with the finish line in sight.  I stopped my watch as I crossed under the Finish sign, checked my time and nearly fainted from shock.

Historical Reenactment:

1 hour and 13 minutes.

Two minutes faster than my goal time, which I'd set as a sort of impossible dream, just to keep myself motivated.  An eleven minute and 45 second mile--certainly not setting any land speed records, but for me?  To average anything under a 12 minute mile for more than six miles and a 4% incline over one of those miles?  Incredible.

I am so glad that I pushed my fears and insecurities aside, and signed up for this race.  It was hard work, but it was one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life.  I am officially hooked on the 10K, though I can say with a fair amount of certainty that I won't be training for a half marathon any time soon!  I wasn't the fastest person there, or the strongest, or the best, but I was there.  And I finished what I started.  And it was an amazing feeling.

30 Before 30 Check-In

March is drawing to an end and we're now 1/4 of the way through 2011.  Unbelievable, no?  I feel like I was just saying, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe it's 2009!!!"  Ugh.  Anyway, one of my resolutions for the year was to get halfway through my 30 Before 30 list, and I've been making a little bit of progress, sloooooowly but surely.  Here's what I've been up to:

3)  Travel to at least five new countries. (In Progress)
I got three under my belt with our Mediterranean cruise in December.  (Spain, Malta, Greece)  It should have been four, but alas, Egypt was not meant to be.  So, I'm plotting and planning how to hit at least two more countries in the next year and 9 months.  I'm working on coercing Colby into a trip to Germany and France later this year, so we'll see how that works out!

5)  Run a 10K. (In Progress)
I'm thrilled that I'll be able to check this one off of the list after Saturday.  I've been training for a 10K for a couple of months, and I'm actually feeling pretty excited about the run.  Bring it!

6)  Complete my Masters degree. (Complete)
It was a long and intensely frustrating road, at times, but in October of 2010 I officially wrapped up my final class for my Masters of Elementary Education from Grand Canyon University.  I finished with all As (including two -A) and someday maybe I'll even remember to send in my graduation application!

8)  Read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. (In Progress)
I finished The Fountainhead, and found it very interesting.  Troubling, but interesting.  Which I guess was the point!

16) Learn how to sew and make a piece of clothing that I’m proud to wear in public. (In Progress)
I have indeed learned how to work my sewing machine, and have made a few things including an apron, a kleenex holder, and a small gift bag.  I got together with a friend a couple of weeks ago and started working on this skirt, but hit a bit of a road block.  We think we may have figured it out, so hopefully next week I'll be able to check this one off the list.

22) Finish all of the books in the top 100 of the Greatest Books List that I haven’t already read. (In Progress)
So far, I've finished Anna Karenina, All the Kings Men, and am almost through with Lord of the Rings.

24) Learn to make my mom’s spaghetti sauce so that it actually tastes like my mom’s spaghetti sauce. (Complete)
This one is certainly subjective, but with Colby and my own discerning palate (snort), I'm going to have to say, I've nailed it.  I make a dang good pot of spaghetti now, and think I can officially be inducted into the family spaghetti sauce hall of fame.

27) Take a cooking class. (Complete)
I was lucky enough to knock this one out in one of my favorite cities in the world, Barcelona Spain.  I still have happy dreams about the paella we made.

So, 3 complete out of 30, and only 8 in progress.  Um, that's not so good.  But it's a start, and I must remember, there is still time!  However, I've been looking over my list and I realized that I was a bit overly ambitious in two main areas: Travel and Literature.  I didn't really think about my list as a whole when I was writing it, and it's just a bit unrealistic to expect to complete all of the travel and reading that I have on my list in the next <2 years.  So, these are the amendments I'm making to my list:

Changing: 22) Finish all of the books in the top 100 of the Greatest Books List that I haven’t already read to

22) Finish 75% of the books in the top 100 of the Greatest Books List.

Changing: 12) Go to the Kentucky Derby to 

12) Go fishing!

The more I researched the Kentucky Derby, the more I realized it doesn't sound like as much fun as I thought it would be, and it was MUCH more expensive than I was expecting.  So that was an easy one to cut.  And I've never been fishing, so that seemed like a great South Carolina thing to do!

Also, it's also taking me a LONG time to read each one of these books on the Greatest Books List.  They are looooong and not exactly page turners for the most part.  I do think I could probably still finish them all, but I wouldn't be able to read anything else, and Angela cannot live on classics alone!  So, rather than having to read 68 more of the Greatest Books (as well as Atlas Shrugged and The Bible), I have 43 to read.  Much more realistic!  And I can wrap up the other 25 in my 35 Before 35 list!

19685.0394 Feet

(ETA: I'm such a nerd, but I just can't let this stand--I accidentally converted 6 kilometers into feet for my post title instead of 10.  It should read 32808.399 feet.  Sigh.)

Last year, when I was working out my 30 Before 30 list, one of the items that I included was running a 10K.  The goal of my list was to push myself outside of my comfort zone, and since the longest I'd ever run was four miles, signing up for a 10K seemed like a reasonable enough challenge.

So, a couple of months ago, I decided to take the plunge and sign up for the Cooper River Bridge Run.  It's a pretty big deal in the local area, with the city shutting down the main bridge into Charleston and 30,000 to 40,000 of your closest friends tying on their running shoes and dashing down the highway into the city.  The biggest challenge of the run is that not only are you running a smidge over six miles, but one of those miles is at a 4% incline.  So, that's fun.

Of course, when I first decided that this was my year for the 10K, it had been about 7 or 8 months since the last time my running shoes and I had spent any quality time together.  My first run out, I was gasping and aching, and metaphorically kicking my overly enthusiastic 30B30 creating self in the butt after approximately 3 minutes.  I was not literally kicking myself in the butt, because I lacked the energy and will to raise my foot that high.

Now that I've got about eight weeks of "training" behind me, I'm feeling a little better about my chances of not dying halfway across the bridge, but still not quite where I wanted to be at this point.  I've run six miles twice in the past couple of weeks, and Colby and I went to run the bridge on the past two weekends, so I'm not feeling entirely unprepared, just undertrained.  I've gotten to the point where I can run for about 30 minutes straight, then alternate walking 2-3 minutes and running 10.  Past the one hour mark, I walk 2 and run 5.  And yes, it definitely takes me over an hour to run six miles.

Today, I am venturing out for a seven mile run.  It's my last long run before the race--next week I'll do a five mile run early in the week, then on Saturday, I'm off to the races.  Even though I've survived six miles twice, seven is just really psyching me out big time.  I've been putting this run off since last week, and am not thrilled about the fact that now I'll have to do it in 80 degree weather.  Yay!

So, please, take a minute and think of me today as I wend my way through the wilds of our neighborhood on burning, shaking legs.  My parched tongue and weakened limbs will be grateful for your well-wishes, and if I do not return from my hero's journey, please take heart in the knowledge that I always loved you best.

Where Do I Begin?

Hiiiii!!!  I'm back!!!  What?  You didn't notice I was gone?  Well, hmph.

*****

We whisked ourselves away for a week in Louisiana, driving from one end of the state to the other, visiting both of our parents, various friends, and even squeezing in a wedding.  I'll do a more thorough recap soon, but I just had to write a crap post to get myself back in the habit of blogging.

*****

I've been training (somewhat half-heartedly) for a 10K, working diligently on my 30 Before 30 list, and trying to decide if I want to start doing work in exchange for money on a part time basis.  Running is so boring.

*****

I hate the day after returning home from a vacation.  Piles of laundry are overtaking my front room.  I have a million errands to run and can't do any of them because I have a flat tire.  I've got loads of blogs to catch up on.  My DVR is overwhelming me with options.  I can't even count as high as the scary number on my Google Reader.  So, I think I'm just going to go sit on the porch and stare blankly at birds.

*****

I don't even have any pictures downloaded off of our cameras to attempt making this just moderately engagaging.  Close your eyes, imagine me feeding a giraffe.  Isn't that CHARMING!!!

I Resolve to Stay Resolved

Oh January.  A month of such optimism.  A month when the entire world stands united in our efforts to get fit, get thin, eat better, improve our minds... before the inevitable crash back to reality in February.  When we remember how much we love pizza and how much running truly does suck.  I've almost come to find New Year's Resolutions ridiculous, but there's still a part of me that enjoys the idea of a challenge and a fresh start.

So yes, I have some resolutions.  Though none of them involve food or exercise.  That's just setting myself up for failure.

Resolution #1:  Create a monthly housekeeping chores chart.
I do a fairly good job of keeping the downstairs of our house clean and organized, but the upstairs is a depository of vast amounts of random crap.  I also find that I do all of my cleaning in marathon sessions that leave me grumpy and frustrated.  So, I'm working on making a chart that breaks chores down by week and month and divvies them up so that I'm doing just a little bit every day.  We'll see how this goes.

Resolution #2: Complete half of my 30 Before 30 List.
I need to update the list with some of the things I've already finished.  In an effort to knock the two writing items off of the list, I'm instituting a one hour per day writing rule.  I'm finished with school, so I'll just devote the time that otherwise would have been spent reading textbooks or writing papers to working on my books or short stories.

Resolution #3: Read 50 books.
I thought about aiming for 100 books, but after reviewing the sheer length of many of the books I have on my list to read (many of them over 1000 pages), I've decided 50 is a much more reasonable challenge!

Do you have any resolutions for 2011?

30 Before 30: #22 The Greatest Books List

(Background on my 30 Before 30 list can be found here.)

When you hear about the top 100 books, generally the list being referenced is The Modern Library compendium.  What made me decide against choosing this list is the fact that it was created by a group of ten men.  That's it.  These ten guys got together and decided on the top 100 books according to... them.  Admittedly, they've probably got a better grasp on what makes literature than I do, but still, it was off-putting.  So, I searched around the net for top 100 books lists, and that's how I found the Greatest Books list.

"This list is generated from 43 "best of" book lists from a variety of great sources. An algorithm is used to create a master list based on how many lists a particular book appears on. Some lists count more than others. I generally trust "best of all time" lists voted by authors and experts over user-generated lists. On the lists that are actually ranked, the book that is 1st counts a lot more than the book that's 100th."
~The Greatest Books

The list of books is below, but for those of you who don't feel like scanning through a hundred books, here are some of my thoughts:

• I've already read 30 of the books on the list, giving me 70 more to read by December 20, 2012.
• Dear God, that's a whole lot of Russians...  The only Russian novel I've ever managed to complete was Dr. Zhivago, and as much as I love the movie, that book was a definite slog to the finish line.
• I'm most excited about reading The Catcher in the Rye and Virginia Woolf's books.
• I've started Ulysses twice and never made it more than about 20 pages in--am quite nervous.
• Some of these books, I've never even heard of... Clarissa?  Does she explain it all?  Under the Volcano??  Well, you might want to move.
• If I made a top 100 list, Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, and Little House on the Prairie would absolutely be included.  And I think that's a pretty unbiased opinion.
• Wuthering Heights should be above Jane Eyre.  Just saying!

(Books that I read prior to the start of the challenge are highlighted in red.  Books that are completed as part of the challenge will be highlighted in green and will be tracked in a list found in the sidebar to the left.)

1) Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes

2) Ulysses, James Joyce

3) Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

4) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

5) The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

6) 1984, George Orwell

7) War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

8) In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust

9) Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

10) Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

11) The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

12) Middlemarch, George Eliot

13) One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

14) The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

15) Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

16) The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger

17) To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

18) On the Road, Jack Kerouac

19) Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift

20) The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

21) Moby Dick, Herman Melville

22) Beloved, Toni Morrison

23) The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James

24) The Iliad, Homer

25) Absalom, Absolom!, William Faulkner

26) A Passage to India, E.M. Forster

27) Native Son, Richard Wright

28) Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

29) The Odyssey, Homer

30) Catch-22, Joseph Heller

31) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce

32) Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen

33) The Trial, Franz Kafka

34) As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner

35) Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

36) Emma, Jane Austen

37) Nostromo, Joseph Conrad

38) Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe

39) To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

40) Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

41) The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

42) Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

43) The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri

44) Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

45) Lord of the Flies, William Golding

46) All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren

47) Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell

48) The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton

49) The Aeneid, Virgil

50) Tom Jones, Henry Fielding

51) The Tin Drum, Gunter Grass

52) Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray

53) The Call of the Wild, Jack London

54) The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford

55) Malone Dies, Samuel Beckett

56) Animal Farm, George Orwell

57) Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

58) Oedipus the King, Sophocles

59) Gargantua and Pantagruel, Francois Rabelais

60) U.S.A Trilogy, John Dos Passos

61) The Tale of Genji, Murasaki Shikibu

62) Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne

63) An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser

64) Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston

65) The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer

66) Clarissa, Samuel Richardson

67) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Louis Carroll

68) The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway

69) The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins

70) Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe

71) Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut

72) Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence

73) Finnegans Wake, James Joyce

74) Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

75) Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

76) The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame

77) Women in Love, D.H. Lawrence

78) The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann

79) Charlotte's Web, E.B. White

80) Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry

81) Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan

82) The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne

83) Hamlet, William Shakespeare

84) A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway

85) The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing

86) Light in August, William Faulkner

87) Rabbit, Run, John Updike

88) The Stranger, Albert Camus

89) Herzog, Saul Bellow

90) Go Tell it on the Mountain, James Baldwin

91) The Awakening, Kate Chopin

92) A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess

93) Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison

94) Faust, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

95) King Lear, William Shakespeare

96) Dangerous Liaison, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

97) Journey to the End of the Night, Louis-Ferdinand Celine

98) The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas

99) Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

100) Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

30 Before 30

Age is a funny thing.  I've finally reached that place in my life that I absolutely could not fathom when I was a child.  You know, the one where birthdays are just another day.  Sure, I get excited about presents--WHO DOESN'T?!?--but I just don't get that worked up over parties and adding yet another year to the roster.  That said, I'm also not quite at the place where I'm terribly anxious about getting older.  I think it's safe to say that I'm mostly just apathetic about the whole thing.

There does, however, something seems a bit magical about the year that you turn 30.  I expect everyone goes through some sort of secret initiation into adulthood where they are handed the manual to life and finally understand what they're meant to do with their time here on earth.  If that doesn't happen, just don't make me know it.  But then, I got awfully excited about turning 13, 16, 18 and 21, and to be perfectly honest, nothing very magical happened then, and probably nothing very out of the ordinary is going to happen when I turn 30.

Still, I know an awful lot of people who have stared down the barrel of the big 3-0 over the past couple of years, and as okay as they seem about it on the surface, every now and then I detect a glimmer of sorts in their eye or pick up on a certain tone as they discuss the big day.  I don't know what they're thinking when they look back on their 30 years on this planet and take stock of where they are in their life, but I know that when I get there, I want to look back over the years and think "yeah, that's just about right."

In that spirit, I've done some soul searching and come up with a list.  A list of things that I think in 2 years and 5 months, 30-year-old Angela will be able to look back upon and say, "yeah, that's just about right."  Not because my life is ending, or even because any particular "new phase" is beginning, just because for once in my life, I want to reach a completely personal individual milestone and have it really mean something.

Some of these are long-term goals, some can be taken care of in a weekend.  Some are entirely frivolous, and others have very deep, spiritual meaning.  But all are things that in my heart of hearts, I really want to happen.  Over the next few years, I'll go into more detail on each item of the list, and cross things off as I accomplish them, but for now, here is my list of 30 life events that I will attempt to complete by December 20th, 2012.

1)   Learn to speak French--at least enough for basic conversation.

2)   Climb to the top of the Eiffel tower, eat macarons at the Laduree on Rue Royale, stroll through the Louvre, see the water lilies at Giverny. (In short—go to France.)

3)   Travel to at least five new countries. (Top choices of the moment include Spain, France, Greece, Egypt, and Germany, but these are negotiable.)

4)   Ride in a hot air balloon.

5)   Run a 10K.

6)   Complete my Masters degree.

7)   Have another story or article published.

8)   Read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

9)   Finish writing a novel.

10) Suck the head. No, not like THAT! Like this.

11) Place a bet in Sin City.

12) Go to the Kentucky Derby.

13) Geaux to an LSU football game.

14) Volunteer.

15) Organize all of our digital photos in scrapbooks or albums.

16) Learn how to sew and make a piece of clothing that I’m proud to wear in public.

17) Toast with a glass of Dom Perignon.

18) Read the entire Bible, cover to cover, without skipping the boring bits.

19) Go to the Guggenheim.

20) Walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.

21) Get a second piercing on my ears.

22) Finish all of the books in the top 100 of the Greatest Books List that I haven’t already read. (Will do an additional list tracking these.)

23) Go to a Starbucks drive through and pay for the order for the car behind me.

24) Learn to make my mom’s spaghetti sauce so that it actually tastes like my mom’s spaghetti sauce.

25) Attempt surfing. Not the net—the waves!

26) Do a cleanse, maybe this one?

27) Take a cooking class.

28) Buy a bike and relearn how to ride it.

29) Take a spinning class 3 times a week for at least one month.

30) Have a baby.

I actually find myself shaking a bit and trying to quell the butterflies in my stomach as I prepare to share this list with the world.  But I look forward to seeing where the next few years take me, and sharing my experiences with you all.

Have you ever set a list of goals for yourself to accomplish by a certain age or time in your life?