Zinnia <3’s Sunflower; updated 10/09

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The friendship/lovestory continues for the Zinnia and the Sunflower. I found them in my garden down by the bird feeder on July 27. And I’ve been watching every day since.

08/19- Well clearly it hasn’t been every day at this point. The Zinnia is in the making seeds from its cone stage and the Sunflower has grown quite tall and is making blooms presently. This photo journey is starting to look kind of cool.

09/02- The first Zinnia is still make seeds, but there are two more Zinnia friends entwined with the big guy. He is HUGE now and has bloomed on his main head.

10/09- Most of the sunflowers down in that garden fell over in a big storm we had two weeks ago. The big guy is still standing and making seeds with his largest bloom head. Zinnias are still going strong. I actually need to cut some today and bring them in one last time while leaving enough to provide new Zinnias next year. I’m considering leaving the stem carcasses there throughout the winter for additional pics. We shall see if the weather cooperates.

A runnning story during bitch week- 6 weeks till race day

Posted: 2011/07/27 | Author: Lola | Filed under: Running | Tags: Half marathon, half marathon training, Running | Leave a comment

I am entered to run a Half Marathon for Women Only in my state over Labor Day weekend. Like a lot of races, when you sign up and pay your entry fee they offer you a chance to pay even more money to join the training program. Now I don’t know about you lovies, but I seem to work harder and do better on the running front when there are other eyes on me. Plus if I’ve spent money to do something then logic would have it that I should be more invested in seeing that money put to good use.

The Husband and I paid for a training program for our first Half Marathon through our local Y. It was wonderful! Three days a week there was a scheduled run. Mondays were the short day, we started at 2 miles and worked up to never more than 4. Wednesdays was the long run, and Saturday morning was a tempo run. A tempo run is supposed to be run quickly, at Race Pace. I don’t have a race pace so the 45 minute Saturday run was more like another chance for me to put in 3 or 4 miles. I had an injury about 4 weeks into the program and missed a lot of runs, but there were also MANY hours I logged on ellipticals and cross trainers in the wellness center while my husband and other running buddies were outside. In the end I had to run that race with far less training than I should of had, but it was also easier than I thought it would be. That first one was in May, this one is in very early September. What’s the difference you ask.. HEAT and HUMIDITY.

I learned to run outside in winter. In the cold, on the ice and snow, in the spring rain. As a novice runner I was not yet aware of how absolutely powerful running in extreme weather makes you feel..after you’re done. The Y program was a set 3 days a week, one short day, one long day and one tempo day. There were opportunities to stay and listen to speakers and also opportunities for extra strength work after the tempo run, but these things were OPTIONAL. This new program is only on Tuesday nights. And I skipped the first month of sessions because they were meetings only. I don’t need meetings, I need running. And the running was promised to start last night and go every Tuesday from now until November 8. Long enough to get me through 3 local Half Marathons should I choose to run all 3.

Two weeks ago I logged 15 run miles, last week in the heat wave I logged a whopping 4. And even that was indoors on a treadmill. My neighborhood running buddy keeps me motivated and accountable to our weekly long run, a cornerstone to any distance training program. We both agreed we did not have a long run in us in the heat so we skipped the long one at the start of the heat wave. I can run all the days a week I want, but if I don’t get those long ever building distance runs completed I am not going to have as much confidence on race day as I’d like. Guilt and the looming race date pushed us to getting our 6 in this past Sunday. We started at 6am. The moon was still in the sky. It was the morning light of I just got home from the bar and need to fall in bed, not hey let’s go run 6 miles before it gets to hot to breathe. It was hard, we do intervals and there were more than a few that seemed like 30 minutes instead of 3. But we did it, at a decent pace for the heat and I got to run OUT to the moon and BACK to the sunrise, a nice switch. The sunrise was glorious and even though I was exhausted for the rest of the day, I felt mentally and physically strengthened for what was coming on Tuesday.

I’ve been a bit bitchy this week. Partly because it’s bitch week. TMI alert: I don’t have periods b/c I’ve had an ablation and have no uterine lining, but I have all my parts so I still get ALL the symptoms. Yeah I am wondering too why I just felt the need to give you a TMI alert about periods but will switch to details about sex like it’s nothing, shrugs. It is what it is. Anyway, It’s bitch week, The Husband is gone in LA for most of the week, school is quickly approaching, I have a trip to finish planning and packing for next week, I have two kids in two swim lessons a week, in two different pools at two different but overlapping times. Work is getting to the point that I feel like I’m only treading water, my house is a DISASTER, my kitchen literally smells right now. All of this frustrates me because I’m NOT screwing around multiple hours a day and night in chat rooms with boys anymore so I SHOULD be able to get and stay ahead. But this is not happening. I feel sometimes like I am living my life in about 8 hour increments and have no ability to actually get caught up on on my mother, household, work and friend duties. I haven’t had very much alone time in the last week. I KNOW I’m an extravert but I NEED copious amounts of time I can be alone with my thoughts. I am not fun to be around if I don’t get this break. If I’m not getting alone time at home, I steal it in the car or on runs. But that alone is not enough. I HAVE to have alone in the home office time and that is not coming until sweet sweet tomorrow!!!

So I got up yesterday at the crack of dawn, took a shower, packed up my work gear, my running gear and my biscuits for the company fund raiser breakfast. I got to the office by 7:45. I was excited because the training program is downtown. score for being able to have a super long work day in the office every Tuesday and double score for getting to run downtown. I don’t start looking up where I have to be until after the fund raiser breakfast is over. And then I make the discovery. This program is going to hold me captive in a CLASS for the first who knows how long each Tuesday until it lets me out onto the pavement to have my therapy. I have an attitude about having to sit through class, an attitude about the fact there is limited and closely stacked parking at this place, anxiety about do I change at work or there, oh and there is NO SAFE PLACE to store my stuff, other than the trunk of the Lexus, because we are running downtown. And the icing on the cake is that I didn’t fuel well yesterday so I arrive to run almost sick with hunger, and I forgot the body glide. But dammit I am going to suck it up and just do this. So I begin to sit in a pew near the back middle and attempt to listen to this guy speak. It’s brutal. No disrespect to him, he’s been a runner for 60 years. But I can hardly hear, he is talking a different running/training language than I am used to appears to be going all over the place. Dude I am just here to RUN, please release us to RUN, for the LOVE OF GOD let me outside into the heat and humidity so no one has to meet bitchy Lola today. He asks for show of hands who is planning to run today, less than HALF of us raise our hands. There are murmurs of surprise so many people are headed out in this heat. I am running in this heat, I feel like badass. Then he puts the next slide up. According to him I need to be logging 18-22 miles a week, running 4 days a week and my longest run should be 6-8 right now. Um, what? I’m so not there. I’m close, and our long run is ok, but we are 6 weeks to race day and I need to get up to a 10 2 weeks prior to the race. OK we should be ok track for that… but holy crap I feel behind on my RUNNING now. The thing that keeps me sane is just another thorn in my side for the moment.

FINALLY they release us outside to run. The coach divides us up by who is going 2, 3, or 4. I’m going 4. There a lots of things I want to write about running in groups of people you don’t know, the rules of pace and going ahead and etc. But this is getting long and I have a mountain of a list so I will just cut to the recap.

I LOVED running downtown, loved running in a big spread out group again. I learned a new skill called not really stopping at the light unless you have to. This can be accomplished one of two ways. You can either run the light because the street is only 2-4 lanes wide and traffic is light enough, or you can SPRINT to get to the light and across before the light turns red and captures you standing on the wrong side, not running, with your run keeper clock tick ticking away the time and eroding your pace. The heat sucked and made breathing hard, add that to my lack of fuel and I felt like I was going to puke until about mile 3. The heat and humidity screwed with my breathing and stamina and I had to walk just about as much as I ran. But I still finished all 4.34 of that run, I made some new new running friends, I am better prepared for what to do next Tuesday on the logistics of clothes and parking and such. And wait for it….my pace was 12:45. Only :45 per mile more to shave off over the course of 13.1 miles to meet my 2:45 finish goal on the Women’s Half. I’m getting better, even on bad days if you keep training you will get better.

Here is one of my favorite running playlist songs. It’s not super fast but it has a great steady beat and good lyrics. I’ve run many a final sprint to this song.

I once got kidnapped taking out the trash…or not

Posted: 2011/07/25 | Author: Lola | Filed under: Adventures | 4 Comments

I have lots and lots of The Husband stories. I’ve been with him for almost exactly 13 years. In that span of time we have had some great adventures. I met him at work, he fell in like with my business talk and pursued me with dress clothing, chili cheese Fritos, music and poetry. He is 3.5 years younger than me and at the time it was big hurdle for me to overcome. Eventually his eyelashes, fact he was in band and tongue ring won the battle and very quickly after we hooked up the first time we were a couple. We knew we wanted to be together forever 3 months in, got engaged on Good Friday at 5 months, moved into our first house that we built at about 1 year and got married at a year and a half. We had MiniMe 2.5 years later and The Destroyer almost exactly 3 years after that. When we were building our life we built it quickly. Later when we were destroying it we destroyed it just as quickly. We are nothing if not efficiently connected.

I had moved something six times in the years since I’d graduated from college, from one apartment to a better one, and so on. I’d spent 3 or so months with Texas living with me and 9 months living with Mick. I was DONE moving and wanted to build a house. I knew I wanted 2-3 kids depending on how old I was when I had the first 2. This was the late 90’s when zero down programs and low interest rates and builders competing for your dollar made it really easy to get a lot of house for not a ridiculous amount of money. Still we were young and budget constrained and we picked a big house on an amazing lot in a middle of the road starter neighborhood for our county. I still remember visiting the builder model home and walking through it. We hadn’t really planned on buying that big but we landed on a two story 4 bedroom house with about 2300 square feet. I to this day still love and miss that house and yard. The best thing about our first house was the view in the back. It backed up to a common area retention pond and an actual creek. There was the hood walking path that went right along the back of our property. From my deck I could sit and see both woods and water. These woods and that path went all along the back of the hood and up through the woods into another hood. We lived there for 8+ years and then built the home we live in now.

Now when we first moved we were one of the early houses in our section. Some neighbors were already there and more were coming. Not long after across the street from us was a young couple about our age. Now I know this will surprise you, but it took us as neighbors a year or two to become friends. We would wave or say hello while working outside but no one pushed it any further than that. Being friends with your neighbors is a tricky double edged sword. It can work out great or go on to be a nightmare. At some point in time Dr. H and I started going for walks with the babies in strollers on the path. We probably made that walk with some version of babies in strollers or bellies over 100 times. The kids became very close and Dr. H and I were also good friends. But on this night our friendship was young and we were still building it. So no walks yet, but we must of talked about maids at some point because I need to give her the number of ours.

It was trash night, I left the house to take the trash to the curb. I set the big can down and walked across the street to give Dr. H the name and number of the maids we were using. It was fallish weather and almost dark out. I ring the bell and tell her what I have for her and she invites me in. This was the first time I’d been inside her house and we spend about a half an hour talking about the maids, checking out all the options and cool things she has done to her house etc. About 30-45 minutes later I go to leave and step out into the hood. It’s quite dark. There are two police cars in front of my house, there is a cop standing at my door step talking to my husband and there are people EVERYWHERE with flashlights, they seem to be heading back to the path or on the path. It was all kind of surreal. I walk calmly across the street and as I walk up to my door the cop shines a flash light at me and says. “Is that her sir? She isn’t wearing a blue shirt like you said she was.” The Husband had noticed I didn’t come back in from taking out the trash, and had called the cops to report me missing. The husband asks me where I was and I explain I was just across the street giving the maids phone number to Dr. H. No one is bruised or crying or acting scared or shifty so this seems to satisfy the cop and so he calls off whatever posse he had coming and then the neighbors are all alerted that it was a false alarm.

He leaves and we shut the door and I start laughing hysterically. My husband is the MOST laid back guy you may ever meet. He just doesn’t get all riled up and jump to conclusions. He doesn’t over react, he is not the socially outspoken one in the relationship. He is never going to be the one to create or cause a scene, this is just not him. So for him to be upset and scared enough to actually call the cops, and then have it be a simple over reaction. And then have him be embarrassed, and it’s all for love. This is a 6’2″ big dark and hairy man. He is has a goatee and a broad build, he is a bear in looks, but a softy in heart. I’m laughing with him and at him, because it seems the only time he embarrasses himself is over love items for me. Things like his friends finding out he cooks me comfort meals or writes me poetry. I am telling you The Husband has attached his heart and life to mine very concretely. This is the single sweetest and most gone awry show of love he has ever shown.

“What did you do? Did you really think I took out the trash and someone just nabbed me in the driveway?” “Oh it gets worse, he says “They totally thought I did it?” This is just icing on the cake to me and I demand to hear the details of this. Here is the story…

Husband sees I did not come back in from taking trash out. I didn’t tell him I was going across the street because I didn’t plan to be there longer than 30 seconds. He didn’t expect me to be at Dr H’s b/c our friendship was brand new. And I actually did have a not well mental state older brother who I had somewhat reconnected with after my Dad died. My Dad died when I was pregnant with MiniMe. So he thinks his pregnant wife is missing and he is absolutely freaking out.

He alerts the neighbors first, Grandma D and her husband rally the rest of the neighbors to begin a search as Husband calls the cops.

Cop one shows up. In our town they usually come in two’s. How do I know this, well the bomb robot story plus various false security alarm calls have taught me this. Cops one rings doorbell and husband answers. He explains the situation again and the conversation starts to go like this. Meanwhile Cop two shows up and stays down by the cars to organize the search or whatever.

The cope is shining his flashlight in not only my husbands face, but also in and around the portions of our house that he can see. He is obviously looking for signs of a struggle or something else amiss. Then the questions start coming.

” What was she wearing?”

“Is she upset about anything sir?” “Nothing at all huh”

“Is she on any medications?”

” When was the last time you spoke to your wife sir?”

“So she left the house to take out the trash and just vanished huh? She didn’t take her purse or her car, or may not even be wearing shoes?”

The husband is VERY much getting the vibe that he is about to be the one hauled into the car for some further questioning. He is not a stupid man and he knows that his house backs up to a POND and WOODS. He feels like the cop just wants him to tell them where he stashed my bloody body so they can go get it from said pond or woods. And who knows what kind of ropes or duct tape or bungee cords we have in the back of the SUV, great, just great.

This goes on and on for a bit until I show up 3o-45 minutes later walking from across the street and save the day.

What I didn’t know at the time is that he is crap in a crisis. We’ve had a lot of opportunity to handle crisis together in our 13 years and he has gotten so much better. But this is early on and he isn’t there yet because parenthood seems to bring the most opportunity for crisis and we aren’t parents quite yet. So he really truly thought when I just didn’t come back in that yes, something very bad must of happened to me and our baby. I think that big Scott Peterson case was also going on at this time, so it was a current media and social theme. The number one cause of death for a pregnant women is MURDER by the baby Daddy! Statistically he is screwed and of course suspect #1. Poor guy, he was scared that his wife and baby had gone missing and he had to put up with being interrogated AND everyone knowing it was a false alarm.

I had to ask about a few details this morning in order to write this story and he is still embarrassed and I am still giggling. Oh family lore. The time Mommy got kidnapped taking the trash out..or not.

I forgot! I have Roses too!!

Posted: 2011/07/19 | Author: Lola | Filed under: Gardening | Tags: Cut Flower Gardening, Flower Gardening, Garden, Gardening, Midwest Gardening | Leave a comment

Watch the Sky;Goodnight Moon

Posted: 2011/07/17 | Author: Lola | Filed under: Gardening | Tags: Garden, Gardening, Goodnight Moon, Moon, sunrise, sunset | 1 Comment

I took a lot of sky and moon pics over the last year or so. I doubt I have them all represented here, as you can see by the dates my once intense passion for this subject is waning. However, I still love to stop and take a moment to reflect in the majesty of an interesting cloud and light filled sky, or the wonder and beauty provided by the moon. I tossed in a good sky song and a good moon song for your listening pleasure. Enjoy.