A Smattering of Duehrings

I have had one crazy week.

This last weekend I went away for a weekend to a home school conference with my friend Rachel. It was just up north about 45 minutes, but we made it a weekend vacation. We got a hotel room right by the conference center for 2 nights. We had a great time. Don’t you worry though, we still ran our 9 mile run. We just got to sit in the hotel hot tub when we were done. After searching for 1.5 hours we finally found a nice, ritzy, scenic neighborhood to run in. We mapped out our 9 miles and off we went.

I got home Sunday night just in time to prepare for my Wed garage sale. I priced stuff for 2 full days. The second day we had so much stuff in the garage that we started to price stuff in the driveway. By noon we had a full fledged garage sale going without even planning to start it. We made over $700 from the people that just happened to drop by while we were pricing. (I am selling stuff for 5 other people, too) I got to bed by 1AM last night and we were dragging stuff out of the garage by 7am this morning. I just got done dragging it all back into the garage at 8:00 tonight. We will be dragging it all back out on Sat for our city wide garage sale. We had 14 tables full, about 30 tubs full, about a million boxes, plus stuff all over the ground. Unbelievable! I am finally selling all of my baby clothes/stuff that has been taking up way too much storage space.

I have neglected my family big time these past 6 days and I am sure Damon is tired of it. Hopefully I can catch back up on home life during these next 2 days before our next garage sale. I also have to find time to run a 10 MILE RUN this weekend. This is just getting crazy. I am sick of running.

Oh yeah, last weekend my computer died on me. I no longer have a warranty on it so I am computer free now. I am going through a bit of withdrawal, but it is good for me. We have a desktop that is usually occupied by someone, but I will have to use it when I am desperate.

Can you believe that standing at a garage sale all day is much harder on your body than running 9 miles? My legs and back are killing me. Goodnight!

No, this is not an exposé on the rigors, trials, and tribulations of being a single parent. Instead, this is a written word of thankfulness that I am not in that camp, nor should I ever be. This will explain it all: June’s gone for the weekend.

Doing it all when you are extremely dependent on your wife for help is definitely cause for being stretched. Yeah, I do alright, but it is more difficult than I will ever let on. The weekends are my time to be with the kids, get stuff done around the house, go biking, etc. When June’s gone, all I can manage to do is take care of the kids. I try and do everything else, but it never quite works out.

Consider just a few excerpts of my day:

• I saw Molly briefly with a huge sucker while I was helping Eli get his shoes on. By the time I remembered to check on Molly and her sucker, the sucker was gone. Nobody seems to know what happened to it, or where it might be sticking.
• The kitchen rug is missing. No kidding–it’s just gone! Missing!
• When I went downstairs to help Micah on the computer Eli and Molly were in the kitchen playing with trains. When I came back up, Eli and Molly had disappeared, and in place of the trains was an entire bag of Fruity O’s covering the kitchen floor, many of which had already been ground to fruity dust. I was only downstairs for like 5 minutes!
• While I was giving Micah his hair cut, he kept jerking his head around. Now he looks like he has rabies. Eli just screamed bloody murder during his hair cut, and wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. I’m pretty certain it’s because he tried wiping some hair off his nose with the hair-covered cape, and got a hair in his mouth, though I honestly could not see anything.
• I put a new roll of toilet paper in the kids bathroom this morning. I was plunging the toilet in that same bathroom just 15 minutes ago, because, what do you know, somehow the entire roll of toilet paper had somehow gotten in the toilet all by itself.
• The scariest thing happened to me, too. Molly had somehow fallen backwards off her little trike-bike (I believe with Eli’s help). When I got to her she was just laying there, frozen, staring at me wide-eyed with her mouth open. She was choking on something, and obviously couldn’t breathe. I leaned her over, patted her back, but nothing was happening, so I quickly tried swiping her mouth with my finger. To my horror I felt a large piece of something lodged right in the back of her throat, and I couldn’t just scoop it out. I leaned her over more, and dug. It was a Chuck-E-Cheese coin, just a hair larger than a quarter. It took her a while to catch her breath, and she coughed up some blood. I basically had to hold her for the next 5 hours until I put her down for bed. I wouldn’t mind if I never had to experience that again.

So, good times. I keep hoping that they’ll all sleep in tomorrow until like 10, take 4-hour naps, and then go to bed at 6:30. June, how long are you going to be gone?

Where there is a will there is a way…let me tell ya!

Since I have forbidden the use of the water hose in the backyard until it gets warmer– the boys took it upon themselves to figure out a way to make cement in the cement truck. Eli told me this morning that he needed help getting his cement out of the truck because it was stuck. Then he informed me that he and Evan filled the truck with dirt yesterday and then both went pee into the dirt so that they could mix some cement. Duh! What are they supposed to do if I don’t let them use the hose?

fountain head

group pictures are so much fun

I want to be just like my big brother

group pictures are so much fun

We are still a runnin’. We are getting closer and closer to our 13.1 mile race. Yikes!

We are following our handy dandy training schedule that is going to turn us into marathon material, supposedly. Last Sunday we ran our 8 mile run which is the longest run we have done so far. We ran all the way across Gardner and back. It really wasn’t too bad. My little niece, Meredith, waited at her front door to bring us water on our way by her house.

Today’s run was supposed to be 6 miles so we signed up for a 10K race. These races are a little addicting and we figured we could use some more race day practice. We tried a new strategy today and started in the back of the pack. The hugest lesson I have learned in these races is not to start with and try to keep up with the guys that run 7 minute miles. That will wear you out really fast.

Anyway, We found a really cool race called “Run for Mercy” which is a fund raiser for Oceans of Mercy which is a nonprofit organization that helps out the orphans and children in Africa. It was a really neat experience. I am so glad we did it.

Next week we run a 9 mile route. Yippee! This is getting exciting. It is funny how your perspective changes on running as you run longer and longer distances. I used to think 3 miles was a long run and now we are calling our 6 miles runs our easy runs. During the week our runs are usually about 4 miles a day right now.

OK, I found something that makes me really happy. My biggest problem with running is my hypoglycemia. When my blood sugar drops I get light headed and have a hard time running. There is this nasty stuff called GU that is a thick nasty texture that makes me about throw up when I try to eat it. You squirt it in your mouth and it is like pure glucose and you get your energy back. It works great, but I can’t handle the texture. I told Damon they have to have something that works like it that isn’t so nasty. Yesterday he found me Sports Beans by Jelly Bellies which taste just like orange jelly beans and does the same thing as the nasty GU. I ate the whole bag this morning and was on a sugar high the whole run.

Our next race is the May 18 duathlon. Oh yeah, we came home from our run today and went on a 14 mile hilly bike ride. I am pretty tired tonight. I have no idea why I am sitting here writing on my blog. Goodnight.