Changing my life

I'm coming to you today from a Starbucks in Pomona California, 418 miles from my home in Sacramento. The hubby and I are deep in the process of trying to change our lives, our future, and that of our four children. And let me tell you, it has been rough going. Hubby was accepted to Cal Poly Pomona, which has a bachelor's degree in hospitality management, specifically restaurants and hotels. He is currently the manager of a restaurant back home, but is somewhat stuck where he is no matter where he goes unless he gets a degree. His acceptance to this high rated program came while he was lying in a hospital bed two days after his heart surgery, and we've been working to make it happen ever since. This program can lead to his dream, and to a better life for our children, one in which we aren't always struggling for money and the answer isn't always "no." Today he is at orientation and I am seeking housing, and in this area finding something we can afford that can house 6 people is nearly impossible. I am trying to trust that there is a plan for my family, and that if I make my best effort it will work out...but it is so hard. Did you know there is a law in California that you can't have more than 5 people in a two bedroom apartment? How ridiculous is it that the state can tell me I can't squeeze my four kids into one room? Argh. I've been consumed by the stress of this endeavor for months now, which in part is why I've been so quiet around here. I am a worrier, I have fear and I succumb to it easily...my husband is the staunchly faithful one who believes that it will all work out. It has been a difficult few months, and we are coming down to the wire and still seeking employment and a home. We can live simply, we can struggle for a purpose, we can make anything work. Someone just has to take a chance on us. Now I'll fold up my computer and vacate my table at the local Starbucks I found (aren't they all local - they are everywhere!) and head out to make phone calls and try to find a way. Changing your life isn't easy.

Short and sweet

Been MIA for awhile. Having some trouble finding my blogging groove again. But I'm still working on eating healthy and working out. I just finished my second workout of the day - 40 minutes on the stair machine at the gym. Everything is wet and sweaty, and it feels good.

Happenings

I've been absent for over a month now, and keep meaning to come back but haven't made it. We've been busy dealing with Hubby's recovery from heart surgery, and then just as he was really starting to get over the hump and feel a bit like his old self again, my oldest daughter was admitted to the hospital for three days. She has type 1 diabetes, and had gotten sick, with vomiting, which with diabetes is never simple. She ended up extremely dehydrated with really high blood sugar (you know it's bad when the hospital meter can't read the number!) and tons of ketones. Nothing scary really, just an immediate need to be on iv fluids and insulin. Got her home, and almost a week went by before her younger sister got angry with her and slammed the bedroom door, right on Anna's thumb. Nearly completely took off the nail (it will be falling off soon) and fractured the tip. It wouldn't stop bleeding, so 4 hours in the ER later (it was 10 at night before we got her over there) she came home with stitches and a splint. And a zombie thumb. Soon I believe they will dedicate a wing of that hospital to us. (It's bad when you have a nurse and you think "yeah, we had you two years ago when she was first admitted, and I didn't like you then either.) At any rate, we are just pushing along. Good things happen too - I joined a super cheap gym and am enjoying working my butt off in the mornings. There are all sorts of things to talk about, I just have trouble finding the time and the calm to do it. But I'll try to be back soon, and with more regularity, if there is anyone still reading! And just for fun, here is the zombie thumb, 2 days post-trauma and looking WAY better than it did.

Yesterday

Your heart belongs to me, or at least that's what you've said time and time again. And so, when you turned it over to the surgeons today, it felt like a part of me was pulled away. All day I sat in different spaces with the same feeling, willing myself to be distracted by conversation while secretly my mind struggled to remind me to breathe. I caught tears at the back of my eyes and sobs in my throat, tucking them away from the strangers around me.

I was patient through the hours, feeding on each report the nurse brought me but never feeling full, knowing I'd be hungry until I could feast my eyes on you again. As the clock ticked on I became restless, pacing the hallway at the hour I knew you should be done. I caught sight of your head as they wheeled you into the ICU and my breath quickened and I was revived.

The surgeon came to talk of aortas and grafts, walk me through the mending of the heart I own, drawing pictures with hands that performed amazing feats today, hands that have given you more of a life than you had this morning.

In the ICU my own inferior hands found your skin, touched you so that my mind could believe what my eyes were seeing - the man I love, safe and sound.

Miracles were wrought for you today, miracles of God and science. Care for this heart that you are housing for me as it heals that I may not have to watch it wheeled away from me again.

Check in

I just wanted to do a quick check-in since I haven't been able to this week and there are big things on the horizon for my family. Last night I went out with my girlfriends to celebrate my birthday (which is tomorrow - St. Patrick's Day) and didn't get home until 2 this morning - just to confirm, I am way too old for that! 4 1/2 hours of sleep later, here I sit making my to-do list for the day, and it's a monster.

You see, my hubby is having open-heart surgery on Wednesday. Which I really do want to tell you all about. As soon as I have a moment to sit down and really write. Maybe while I am waiting out the 6-8 hours in the hospital. And the surgery is at Stanford, which is two hours away from home and means that I will be leaving my house for approximately 10 days to stay down there. Which also meant finding care for my four children who will be left here. And we have to be down there early early Monday morning for pre-op stuff, so we leave Sunday night. And in the midst of all this, we decided (crazy people that we are) that we wanted to have a double-birthday (mine tomorrow and Jon's next Friday - happy birthday! You get a new aorta!) slash pre-surgery party. Tomorrow.

Doesn't sound so crazy until I tell you that I also have a 7k Lucky Run tomorrow morning. And My 8 year old son's opening day of baseball. And first baseball game (if it ever stops raining.) So I've been running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get everything ready for, well, everything. And any time I pause for a few moments, I notice that my heart rate is elevated, and I feel kind of nauseous. Because even if I am avoiding really thinking about the surgery, my body knows what is going on. And it doesn't like it.

Anyhow, I plan on filling in details soon. Really soon. And telling you about the puppy we got. (We have excellent timing, don't we?)  But today there are race tutus to make, cookies to frost, cupcakes to bake, food trays to prepare, dog kennels and race packets to pick up, cleaning to do, packing to start, and on and on and on. I will come back soon.

Three Things Thursday

I've never done one of these, but I haven't posted in forever and thanks to #1 on the following list, I don't have a longer post in me today, so without further ado, here is my post for

Three Things Thursday

1. I am sick. Soooo sick. Monday after bootcamp I had a headache all day, and it took me until late afternoon to realize that I had a cold coming on. So I dosed up on zinc and the hubby brought me orange juice and Airborne, and I I took a hot shower and just tried to think healthy thoughts. Tuesday it had sort of migrated to my throat, but I was still doing pretty good, so I kept taking the pills and drinking juice and water, trying to flush it out. Then my son had a 1 1/2 hour baseball practice in the freezing cold. And hubby was working, so I had to go and sit out there. And I honestly think that was what did me in. I picked up some soup from the hubby's restaurant, came home, dosed myself up again and ate my soup and went to bed. Healthy thoughts, healthy thoughts...no such luck. I woke up yesterday completely sick, and have spent the last two days in bed. Tomorrow is my last day of bootcamp and I really want to go, but it is highly unlikely that I'll be able to do any of it. We'll see. 

2. My youngest son, age 5, had surgery last Friday morning on his umbilical hernia. No big deal. He was in the hospital for about 4 hours, and he did have to be put under for it, but honestly at this point I think that if it isn't spinal surgery or open heart surgery, in this family, I just have to write it off as not a big thing. He came through it just fine, the hardest moment for me being when we first walked into the hospital (the first time I've been in there since my daughter's spinal surgery a year ago last December) and all those feelings from that time just hit me. The best part was when Jonathan woke up from the anesthesia, lifted his head (he was sleeping on his side/stomach) and said "Hi Mom." And then promptly laid his head back down and went back to sleep.

Apparently his belly button is now a defender of justice

3. My husband is having open heart surgery in less than 3 weeks. I haven't posted anything about this, at first because we hadn't told anyone in our lives here, and then because I just didn't have a post about it in me with all the stress I've been under. But there is a post coming about it very soon. 

Those are my three for today. I'm headed back to the couch to die now.

New 2 U Cross Training Challenge - February

I apologize in advance for the length of this post - apparently I am not succinct in describing the torture that is bootcamp.

As of Monday I am officially over halfway through my bootcamp, and there have been many mornings on the drive home that I think "I'm going home to write a post about this," but then inevitably I got lost (only the first two days,) or had to take a record-time shower and get out of the house to meet a friend for bagels and thrift-store shopping, or had to high-tail it to get the 12 year old to school relatively on time (after homeroom but before the tardy bell for 1st period totally counts as "on time",) or got swept out on a spur-of-the-moment trip to San Francisco with my husband and kids. And by the time I've been back by a computer with time to write, it has just eluded me. But I am bound and determined to have this post written before the end of the month, as I am not going to be a New 2 U Cross Training Challenge slacker in February.

The bootcamp I am attending was chosen based mostly on the fact that it was on Deal Chicken for $25 for 12 classes - three each week for a month. It is a little bit further away than I would like, but when I first looked at the map of the location it seemed closer - I've lived in the city of Sacramento for almost a year now, and yet the proximity and position of things still eludes me. I am somewhat directionally challenged when it comes to location. What can you do? So I drive about 25 minutes to get to class, which starts at 6. I leave my house at 5:30 to be sure I get there in time, and I wake up around 5 to get up and get dressed and get myself awake enough to drive (I was waking up at 4:50, but after the first week I gave that up and realized I don't need quite that much time, when I need the extra 10-15 minutes of sleep more!) 

When we get to class, it is still dark. Pitch black kind of dark. Can't see anyone else's face kind of dark. And it is freezing. It has gradually begun to get light earlier, but the temperature on average is still freaking cold. One morning it was drizzling. Oh yeah, we're hardcore. Or at least the instructor is.

The class is on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the workout is new each Monday. We always start with a short warm up walk together, then do abs, then some strength, and then cardio, sometimes with more strength mixed in. I will not attempt to describe the ab work to you all because I can't remember what the exercises are called or exactly which ones we've done - suffice to say they are horrible and I wipe them from my mind each day in order to convince myself to go back the next time. One of my favorite parts of bootcamp is probably the 30 seconds of rest I get between each ab set, during which I lay on my back on my mat and look up at the stars. Up until he says "next set."

Strength has included lunges and squats with shoulder presses and lateral lifts, lying face down and doing T, Y, and I raises with the dumbbells, and other such things. My arms are getting toned, which is nice. I like strength training in general, and like it better when someone who knows what they are doing is telling me what to do. 

That leaves cardio. Cardio in this class is normally either pairing off/facing off with someone and/or running drills. And it always involves cones. And usually pain. The first week, Terence (our instructor) set up four cones in a field in a large square shape. A fifth cone was set some distance off from the square, and that was where we started. We did high knees to the middle of the two cones on one side of the square, and then ran around the perimeter of the cones, bending to touch each one as we rounded the corners. We did it several times, increasing in reps each day of class. After that exercise, we ran sprints against another person - terence lined us up in two teams. Again, the number of times we did that increased throughout the week, but it started out with several anyway. The class is comprised of 9 people and then Terence. When we pair off and it is uneven, someone has to run against him. One girl in the class has been going for five months and is undeniably in the best shape in our group, so it is usually her who runs against Terence. I fall somewhere in the upper-middle stamina and agility wise, and I am happy with that. I may not be near the fastest, but I'm not the slowest. 

Anyhow, the more people who attend the class, the more of a break you get in between your set, which is nice. Conversely, the fewer people that show up, the less of a break you get, if any. 

Last Monday, Terence announced that as the first part of our cardio we would be doing "suicide line drills." Does that inspire confidence in anybody? It didn't in me. And with good reason. There were four cones at varying distances away from the starting line, and you ran from the start to each one, touching the ground, then turning around and going back to the start. So the first time you went to the closest cone, touched, then ran back, then turned right around and ran to the second cone, touched, and ran back, so on and so forth. The squat that you were doing when you touched the ground seemed like no big deal at first, but after a couple times and combined with the sprinting in between, I thought it might kill me. Those were followed by more line drills, these ones with side stepping. 

Tuesday I attempted to go for a 3 mile run - my legs were so sore and tired that it was mostly walking with some running. Tuesday night I had gotten to bed really late, and only got 5 hours of sleep. I felt crappy, and didn't even set my alarm, figuring I would skip class. But at 4:56, my body woke up on its own, and 20 minutes later I had talked myself into going to class. It was AWFUL. My body couldn't perform, my quads hurt the whole time, and I was SLOW. I have not stayed up late again since then.

Monday of this week, we switched it up again. Now we are doing a drill that starts with 10 push ups, from which you go directly into sprinting down and back, before doing 9 push ups, and then sprinting again, all the way down until you do 1 push up. So it is a total of 55 push ups and 10 sprints. We were paired off again. Only three of us regulars came to class that morning, thankfully two more came from another class to make up one they missed. Still, with only 5 of us, there wasn't much breathing time in between. And someone had to run with Terence. Guess who the lucky one was?

After the 4th set, I honestly thought I was either going to throw up or pass out. Each time I finished my sprint my stomach would seize up and I'd get a little dizzy. I barely recovered before it was my turn to go again. And I couldn't slow down my running, because Terence was right there with me, telling me to keep pushing. The thought ran through my mind that at least if I passed out, I wouldn't have to finish. In the end, I didn't pass out or puke, and I was pretty proud of myself. But my whole body is sore, and even thinking about going back tomorrow morning has me in a state of dread. 

Overall, with only one week left in bootcamp, despite all the pain I've felt, I will really miss it when it's over. I wish I could afford to keep taking it, and that it was closer to my house. Each time I survive the class, I feel a huge sense of accomplishment and am really proud of myself. And sometimes I feel a little bit like I rock. I am a little worried about the weigh-in and re-measure at the end of class (oh yes - I forgot to mention that we did those things at the beginning) as I know I haven't lost much (or any) weight, although I am sure I am toning so maybe the inches will be good. With only one week left in February, I'd better start looking around for my next cross training experience - hopefully another deal will pop up!