Team Gray!

In April and May, I did the unthinkable.

I got on the scale for 40 continuous days. I never get on the scale. I mean, if I go to the Doctor, I put my back to the scale and implore the nurse not to tell me how much I weigh.

Curtis knows I have a problem, and when he looked at my arms looking like basketballs, he was alarmed. He convinced me to weigh myself every day for 40 days and write down the weight. He coaxed me out of hiding.

And the number was not good. It was 195. As in 5 pounds less than I weighed a week before Esteban was born. Call me unique, but I get a little depressed weighing the same as I did with a 9 pound baby on board.

Even though I haven’t gotten on the scale since our 40 days was up, I learned something during that time. You can keep your weight constant if you know what it is. Yeah, it didn’t change much in 40 days.

But I changed.

When I started the challenge, my knees were always creaky, and my hips hurt all the time. I dreaded going up and down the stairs because of my knees, and my left foot constantly tingled from my sciatic nerve injury from Yasha’s birth.

I decided to start working out strong. As in two workouts a day. And a strange thing happened. Yanni, who never wanted to work out with me–the same child that hated every work out tape I owned–started working out. Yanni also stopped cooking and eating fried foods and sweets all the time. Since she’s my main chef these days, that was good news for us all.

I also taught Joy to ride without training wheels, and started taking Imani on longer bike rides.

And I decided to stop dreaming about riding my bike to Lake Michigan and to train for it. I called Lillian, my friend from the church bike team, and asked her how to train for that ride. She’s taken it several times. She told me that if I could ride 10 miles 3 days a week, I could handle the ride to the lake.

So, intelligent person that I am, I tried to make the leap from 7 miles to 13 miles in one day. I rode my bike wearing my broken down leather sandals. I couldn’t walk that night.

I have since pulled back, trying to gradually work my way up to 10 miles. I usually ride between 3 and 6 miles 3-5 days a week. And if I don’t ride, I’ll do my step aerobics tape, or tae bo.

I’ve been taking advantage of daylight savings time and tried to ride in the 9 PM hour. Tuesday night, I rode my track 1 1/2 miles, the last half of the ride on a flat tire. That was so hard, it should count for extra miles. I put air in my tire, and I started to ride around the track one more time.

I saw Amy, from my church, walking, and I stopped to talk to her. While we were talking, my tire went flat again. It was getting dark, so we both walked in the direction of home. I saw her to her turn off, and was about a block from home when I saw Katie coming towards me. She likes to walk and had planned on coming to get me to walk with her when she saw me ride past her house.

Katie told me about Gary, her neighbor who fixes her bikes, and took me to see him. It’s getting darker by the minute, mind you. It’s almost 10 PM by this point. Gary was home, and he was enthusiastic about fixing bikes. We sat in his driveway as a worker sawed wood for a new deck in the last few rays of sunlight. Chattering the whole time, Gary pulled out his tire kit in the ever increasing darkness. He brought out a tub of water and found the leak in the innertube. It was just one, thankfully. In his porch light, he checked tiny tube after tiny tube of dried up glue. He finally conceded that he didn’t have the glue to fix the inner tube.

Katie had called Curtis to tell him I was ok, and offered to keep my bike in her garage overnight. She drove me home, worried about my bike all the time. I love that bike. I bought it with symphony money. (I played in the symphony throughout grad school, and until Yanni was 2). I’ve had my bike for 15 years, and it still runs like new.

I was late getting to the park on Wednesday, because I made sure I picked up my bike! Thanks to Gary’s explanation, I was able to go to Target and get a tube for my bike, and a tire tool kit. He had also suggested I get a little purse to strap to my bike seat to hold all my gear. I passed on that, and didn’t even look for the little tube of Co2. I’m not quite there yet.

But I’m getting there! I followed Gary’s advice, and I put the inflation part of the tube through the hole in the wheel first, after checking it for burrs first, and I fixed my own tire!

I didn’t try the bike out until last night. It’s running better than ever. I took it out for around 10 miles today, split up into three different trips. Hmm, maybe that’s the way I can manage my training.

I have posted my first article at the Soccer Mom Vote. Go over and give it a peek.

We have new neighbors across the street. They have three young children and one on the way. Their oldest are 4 year old boy girl twins, Nate and Ellie, and they have a 2 year old boy, Walter. Nate likes to run around in his Disney princess dress. He also embarrasses his father by playing with one of thousands of little mermaid dolls. One day, we saw Nate, Ellie and Walter outside twirling in their Disney princess dresses.

But yesterday, Jaxon, our next door neighbor came over. He was looking for Xavier, his hero since the huge pirate/Viking birthday party of March. No matter that Jaxon is 5 and Xavier is 12. Jaxon walked in the house looking for Xavier. He also got Imani on a search for all the swords we had leftover from that exciting birthday party. Nate ran home when he saw Xavier, whom Jaxon had nicknamed the ‘big guy.’

I asked Ellie if Nate was a little scared of Xavier. She nodded. She had been shy at first, when she told Joy to go back to her yard. Joy, the most outgoing of my children, had gone over with a big smile and asked the new girl if she wanted to play. She was met with a defensive, ‘you go on back over to your yard!’ Yanni went into mother bear mode after that incident, not wanting anything to do with these new neighbors.

I have a tendency to go there, too, but after talking to Curtis about it, decided to put my feelings aside and be friendly to these new children.

It paid off. Now the children are all friendly to each other, and it is so nice for the little ones to have someone to play with on our street!

After Xavier retired back into the house yesterday, Nate came back. With two swords. Suddenly, the nail polish and dress wearing little boy was in a major sword fight with Esteban and Jaxon. He was hitting Jaxon with his sword, too. Jaxon likes to pretend to fight, and feign glorious death scenes, too.

The incidents of hitting with the sword grew to the point that Nate’s father had to come over and separate blade from handle on Nate’s sword.

I thought it was interesting to note that while the girls wanted in on the sword play, they didn’t try to actually fight; certainly didn’t try to hurt anyone, or feign death. There’s definitely something to ‘boys will be boys.’