I'm Re-Addicted

As most people who would read this blog already know, I had to stop running to get pregnant. So, it's been about a year since I've run and I really missed it. (Almost as much as water skiing, and putting things in parenthesis.) I got new running shoes a couple weeks ago and my super-awesome running stroller a couple days ago (it was on sale).

After 2 days of running outside, regardless of air quality, I'll cry if I have to get back on my treadmill. The treadmill is nice when it's too cold or icy, but it's boring and feels like exercise. It's drudgery. As opposed to running outside which is exhilarating. When you run outside you work harder due to varying terrain, and your lungs burn for hours afterward from the cold, and your skin gets flushed from the combination of cold air and the heat you expel, then you skin gets exfoliated from the salt sweat when you wash it later, and my hair curls more from the humidity created by sweat. I have sore legs which is fabulous, and a new sensation of sore triceps from pushing a stroller. It also feels magnificent to get into deep stretches after running when your muscles are really warm and pliable.

To sum up: I love running.
(expect something of this nature when I start water skiing again next month)

I love this family

I can't begin to tell you how glad I am that I married into this family, rather than being born into it. (Maybe that's worse because it's by choice instead of genetic.) After a lovely family Sunday dinner and a game of Killer Bunnies, we had OJ spontaneously teaching his brothers the Hawka. The next thing you know all 4 boys have taken their shirts off and are making weird faces. I think Wes was really out for blood, because his chest was really red and his face was mostly terrifying (more so than usual). Later, we had Jacob doing some erotic dancing to Flo-Rida. It was one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen. He can bend down and touch his toes with a stripper style grace that few women can match. Matt is almost as lithe. If only Melissa lived in Utah, then we could hear her laughing and she really would have peed her pants instead of my almost. (Reason #84 of why to move back to Utah)

HERE'S THE VIDEO!!!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZKQfQ4Nf8M

Thanks Laura for always having a camera ready. Sadly though this is the most recent picture I have with the most members of the family in it and 5 people are missing. (Reason #97: an updated family picture.)

The Mommy Factor

Up until the last couple of years I never had much of a desire to be a mother. One of the many reasons would be that when the baby was upset it would be handed back to me. I've never had much skill in baby-whispering, so this was a scary thought. I would just be the one holding a screaming baby all the time and it wouldn't stop. Having been a mom for just over a month now I've realized something...being the mom is the whole trick. I never thought it would be so simple. You do the same calming things that everyone else does, but it works for you because you're the mommy. It's good to know that the charm is inate and not something possessed only by those with great mothering tendancy. I really do love being his favorite person.

I'm aging

This week was my "little" sister's 25th birthday. (Alayna, I put little in quotations because it refers to size and you're taller than me.) My sister's birthday always makes me feel older than my own birthday, simply because she turns the age I think I still am. I then have a couple of months to rev up for my own birthday, and by that point I'm reconsiled to the fact that I'm not whatever age she just turned. This year was a little harder because I'll be 27 which is now the "late 20's", I've been married for way too long (my anniversary was last week), this is the 2nd year of not being in school, and I have a kid. What's the most terrifying is I think I'm coming closer to acting my age!! How lame. Anyway, Happy Birthday, Layn.

Politics, oh, how fickle

It really bothers me that candidates who were once opponents, now support each other. They do this in order to stay in the political field. But really isn't this flip-flopping prove they're as easily bought as when they flip-flop on the issues that they govern. It's just such a stupid game, whether they do it to stay in politics or to block the other poor-choice candidate. It proves how untrustworthy politicians are, as though we needed another reason.

Irrational Impulses

I have strong desires to do very stupid/dangerous things. Luckily, there is a rational side that stops me.

This last summer while almost 5 months pregnant, I was going nuts from not being able to do any water sports. I talked my dad into letting me go on a large, hard-to-flip tube in a straight line so I wouldn't fall off. It would be safe, and my mom wasn't there to prevent it. (She claimed that lifting a wakeboard was endangering my child's life.) My best friend Jenny and I were out there talking because it really was a boring ride, when I asked her if she ever had said irrational impulses. She thought I was pretty odd when I told her I really wanted to stand up and do a backflip off of the tube at the 20mph we were probably going. Again, I didn't do it. I just really wanted to.

The most recent of these impulses is to throw my 6 week old son onto the bed to see if he'll giggle and think it's fun. First if all, he doesn't really giggle yet. Occasioonally we can coax a smile out. Fear not concerned readers, I did say that a rational side stops me.

Probably my most common impulse is to turn left into on coming traffic to see who will stop and if I can get by unscathed.

These impulses seem situational, so while I know I have more, these are just a few examples. I can tell you that the ones I have acted upon do end badly. I think my mom once told me this is a byproduct of ADD, but I wasn't really paying attention.