My Knee

Warning: this is a mostly whiny blog! :)

About a month ago, I injured both my knees. I have no idea what happened to make them hurt so badly, but after a jog/walk at the Dome with my friend, I noticed that both knees were aching. This disintegrated into full blown pain. I had been increasing the miles I was running on the treadmill, and I suspect that the additional running on the hard ground was the culprit.

Anyway...you may not know it by looking at me ;) but I'm a fairly active girl. Being grounded for the last month with knee pain has really been hard for me. I had no idea how much I relied on exercise for stress relief until this happened, and I am so ready to get back to it.

The trouble is that I have a tendency to jump into things and push too hard. When I've been ill, for example, I don't ease back into things, I jump in head first and often crash hard. I need my knees to work for the rest of my life - I need to be easy on them.

This week marks my first 2 real walks since "the incident" and I hope to get in a couple more walks as the week go by. Hopefully getting in a few walks of 2 or 3 miles will help me manage stress, get outside, get some endorphins pumping and ease me back into my normal workout regime.

My friend's moving...boohoo...

Two of my very close friends are moving this spring/summer. One of the families that John and I have grown very close to are getting out of the military and moving to Ohio. I will miss them and their three little daughters more than I can say. At first I didn't want to be friends with them because they were in the military and I knew they would be moving, so I'm sad that I hesitated, because we have found such friendship with them.

My other friend, Mel, is moving sometime at the end of the summer. She has been part of my life for 12 years now, and has been a big part of my personal cheering team for the last few years. She's my biking/hiking/walking/rollerblading partner and I will miss her. For now I'm totally ignoring that she's moving to Arizona...and I'm focusing all my pity parties on the Resz family moving.

So here's my list of things I like about Christan and her sweet family:

1. Christan is one of the most real people I have ever known. She doesn't pretend she's okay when she's not; she talks about real things she struggles with.

2. She listens when I share my heart and offers encouraging words

3. I can hang out with her for hours and even if we don't do anything it's just good to be with her.

4. She's a great mom - I love watching her with her girls.

5. She understands some of the struggles I have because she too deals with them, I feel like I can say anything to her and she isn't going to judge me.

6. She has great hair!

7. She has a sweet laid back spirit that I find myself longing for, trusting that God has things in his hands and she doesn't need to worry about what He is doing.

I know there are more, but since I'm still pretending they are not moving, I'll leave it at that.

Friday Fun Day

Because of John's weird schedule (he works nights and is off of work W, Th, Fr) and I work days and am off Fr, Sa. Sun., you can see that there is a bit of a conflict for us to find quality time together. This leads us to be extremely protective of our one little day off together.

I try to let John sleep in and then we usually hang out in our PJs until 12:00 or so and ease into the day. Today was no different, and I love that about Fridays. We just hung out all morning, planned vacation time in May and did some cleaning in the house. In the afternoon we went to the dog park with my mother in law and the dogs and then did some shopping.

It's just the best hanging out with John, seriously. I'm thankful we enjoy each others company, I guess I'm just feeling all warm and fuzzy that i get to live with my best friend!

The trouble with Facebook

You know how it goes - you want to have a party, but you only invite a couple of your friends. You have a night of games planned, but can only accommodate five people. You would love to host all of your wonderful friends, but don't have the energy to worry about introducing this group to that group.

Back in the old days - I wasn't aware of when I wasn't being invited to social functions that my other friends were going to - and they weren't aware when I didn't invite them. It's not that I didn't want to hang out with them, or they didn't want to hang out with me, and it's not that I wanted to keep events a secret, but sometimes the situation doesn't call for everyone you know to be invited.

Here's the rub with Facebook - I am now fully aware of when I haven't been invited to a social function that everyone else in my circle attended. Bummer. I see the pictures - and even if I don't happen to see the old "had so much fun at _____'s party last night" status roll on by, I might see someone else get tagged in a photo, a wall post about the food or a more general buzz on good ole FB.

Sure - I'm 33 and shouldn't be too offended when I don't get invited to every little thing. It's true that I have had my share of get togethers that for whatever reason, people miss. And it's also true that John and I tend to glom on to particular friends for a while and other relationships miss out on our awesomeness (I am so gonna miss our dear friends that are moving next month and we took entirely too long to connect with, boo). And our weird schedules (well, John's weird schedule) makes it hard to plan for much time with our friends because we're doing our best to make sure we get time together.

So WHY do my feelings till get hurt when I see that a party happened and I didn't even get the chance to say I couldn't come? I mean, at least give me the chance to make an excuse about why I can't attend! :)

Hey - a day off!

I took today off to stay home with John. yesterday was a very stressful day for him. I'd love to go into details here, but I can't really do that, because of the job that he has...so I'll just say it was high stress. He's doing fine, but I thought it might be nice for him to come home to someone, so I took the day off! YAY us!

I slept in - a rare treat since I'm an early riser - and when John got home we headed to the shooting range with a couple of his buddies who graduated from the Academy with him. One of them brought their wife, so we had a good time shooting and trying to pretend we knew what we were doing.

Then we came home and basically napped all day - how do you like that? we are two lazy people...at least we were today. I tried to talk John into doing something (anything) all day long, but for some reason he was really into sleeping - might have something to do with him working all night, I don't really know! :)

Ladies Day

I just had the most fun day with my friend, Christan. We are busy shoving as much time as possible into the next few weeks since her family will be moving to the lower 48 in May or June. I will miss her terribly, and will really miss watching her sweet little girls grow up, and John will miss her husband - his favorite nerdy home school friend!

In light of them moving away from us so soon, we have been doing as much as we can together. Today we met at the salon (where Christan was getting her hair chopped, btw, it looks GREAT), and it took longer to get there than usual because of Fur Rondy...today was the parade and downtown was a complete zoo. After Christan's beautifying, we headed to the mall for some fun shopping. We got in on some great deals at Pennys (I won't say how much I spent, but I saved $93.95!!) and then headed to Glacier Brewhouse for lunch. I was very disappointed in them today, and they are usually by far my favorite restaurant. They were slow and when we finally got our lunch they brought me the wrong thing...they ended up comping our dessert, but neither of us were very interested in dessert ... bah!

Then after lunch we saw Chicago - the Musical! It was so fun. SO not what you'd want to bring your husband to (oops ending a sentence with a preposition). Seriously. Way too many girls dancing around in their not so covering outfits! But for a girls night, it was fun and the music is hilarious, we had a great time.

Now I'm home and John and I are debating dinner - whether or not I'll even eat (I'm still full) and what he will eat!

John got his first beaver out of his traps yesterday. He set 4 traps and only got his beaver, but at least he got something. he's working away at trying to tan it - and pretty darn proud of himself. I'm proud of him too - where else but Alaska can you trap and tan a beaver!?

Oops-a-Daisy

John left last night to head to Cantwell and check on some traps 'we' set last week. I went along with him to set the traps, but mostly stood around trying not to fall on the ice while he and our friend set the traps. This week I didn't go because of work and other obligations, so John headed up all by his lonesome.

Normally, it's a bit depressing being in the house all by myself, but I was sort of looking forward to the time alone to get some cleaning and crafting done. It's hard to do the noisy cleaning with our schedules - my days off are usually spent doing light cleaning and either trying to stay out of the house or trying to be quiet so John can sleep. So - having the house to myself for these projects was something that I thought I'd enjoy.

I had an industrious morning. I got up and got some laundry moving, cleaned the bedroom, did some of the noisy cleaning, and went over to my in-laws to pick up our half of the Full Circle Farms order.

When I got back to our house around 11:30 with the order, I went in and set it on the bench and then headed back outside to get the latest load of laundry out of the dryer. I came back with the load and - wait - what's this? The door was locked. L O C K E D. WhAT?

Okay, I say to myself, calm down, just call John. Oh yeah, he's out of town. Just call your MIL, okay, right I call her. Wait - where's my cell. Oh right - in my house, locked in my house. Fab.

So I walk next door and use my neighbors phone, his phone smelled gross, and call my MIL. She doesn't answer so I decide I'll walk over there. I am SO glad I had my shoes on, and that I'd thought to wear a sweatshirt, because seriously? it was freezing out. I wogged over to her house and she gave me a ride home and unlocked my little house.

It could have been so much worse, she could have not been home...and then what? I walked over there for nothing? Where would I have gone/ I guess I could have sat in the laundry room and waited for...? John to come home in the middle of the night tonight? Crazy...