Days 222-228…everything is falling into place!

 

Once again, I have fallen almost a week behind on updates, but life has been hectic lately!  It’s like everything is falling into place at once the last few days!

Our new center beam is finally finished!  The living room is still in disarray, but it’s just good to know that the house is now safe! A fresh coat of paint and some creative furniture rearranging and we’ll be as good as new!

On a side note, our little monster dog ate the cage off of my spin bike pedal!  Evil! Her master plan for my workouts to all revolve around walking her…

My new obsession is looking up crazy awesome yoga poses I want to learn on tumblr and pinterest….some of my new favorite obsessions…

 

 

The pups love having their couch back!  Giant snuggle party as soon as the living room was free and clear!

I had a great weekend full of teaching yoga and meeting up with old friends!  And on Sunday I was able to meet up with an awesome yoga student/friend of mine for coffee to discuss an interview she had helped me set up at her workplace!  It was great and I’m really looking forward to it!

While at Whole Foods, I picked up some herbs that I’ve been reading about for helping with chronic allergies/autoimmune issues…I’ve only been taking them about a week, but wow, they really do seem to be helping!  I have read some awesome articles lately on how inflamation is the root cause of so many issues, especially in those with immune system problems!  (Kris Carr wrote another great article on this just this week you should check it out!)  The quercetin and tumeric are great antiinflammatories and the ashwagandha is an adaptogen, meaning it helps your immune system react to stress.

I’ve also started a new book by the Dalai Llama…I love books on Buddhist meditation if you cant tell…

Now, realistically I shouldn’t finish this book until the summer because I have about 6 other books I SHOULD be reading for school…..

Hubby sent an awesome handmade rug home and the dogs ADORE it….so of course we had a photo shoot…

I had such a puppy-tastic week!  The weather is finally getting nicer and we took full advantage with many fun yard play dates and hikes!

Chloe don’t take no trouble from no body!

Jack biting Chloe’s head…no big deal…

A wonderful view!

Posing with monster dog!

Yesterday was my first big interview of the week!  I am kind of torn because in an hour I will have my second big interview.  Both jobs are really similar…clinician jobs in the human services field.  One is dealing with foster kids and foster families, which has always been my area of focus and most interest…but it has a higher caseload and lots of responsibilties.  Job two is much more therapy focused and I would be specializing in MST therapy in home, which deals with kids at severe risk for placements.  It seems like parts of it would be more intense and clinical, however its a smaller caseload.  Both jobs pay the same and both have really interesting aspects to them.  Obviously I don’t know if I’ll get offered one or both or neither so I’m trying not to over-stress.  However, in the event I was offered both I really don’t know which one I’d take!

Anyway, here’s my pretty dress…I feel so professional!  I never get to dress up with my usual jobs so I felt super pretty and fancy the last two days!

And finally…my best friend sent me this hysterical ‘reasons to eat healthy’ picture last night….EPIC.

Days 215-221…yogafit level 4 and getting cleared to run again!

Do I always start off my posts with pictures of the dogs?  ….yes, yes, I do…

Nothing beats sunny days and puppy kisses!

And cute puppy naps!

I am SO excited to run our yoga mala 108 sun salutations event tomorrow!  We are going to bring in the spring and hopefully get the warm weather back since we had a freak snow storm Monday night!

I made a quick whole foods stop on my way home before yoga Wednesday night…needed to buy lots of yummy food to prepare me for my 4-day YogaFit Level 4 training in Boston!!!

Day 1:

A beautiful view from our conference room…

Love me some free shirts:)

The training was at the Boston Hyatt Harborside and the views were amazing!

I really really enjoyed learning basic Sanskrit for the pose names.  I forgot how much I LOVE and excel at learning languages.  I would really love to learn even more Sanskrit and am once again dedicated to relearning Spanish and at least one other language in my life.  I am having so much fun going over the pose names in my head and learning the unique pronounciations.  I am excited to bring some of them to my classes as well!

My dog sitter sent me this funny series of photos that totally sum up the pups…

Chloe’s stick…

Jack’s stick…

I got home from the 2 hour drive around 830, made lunch for the next day, then slept and woke up once more at 5am to beat the traffic and get there by 7…

Another lovely day!

Delving into the Bhagavad Gita and Yoga Sutras…LOVE love love the yoga philosophy part of teacher training.  I have always been drawn to sutra 1:33, “MAITRI KARUNA MUDITOPEKSANAM SUKHA DUHKHA PUNYAPUNYA VISAYANAM BHAVANATAS CITTA PRASADANAM.
By cultivating attitudes of friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and disregard toward the wicked, the mind-stuff retains its undisturbed calmness.”  Now that I can pronounce the Sanskrit, I am really considering getting the script for this as a tattoo…I feel like it is such an important lesson to remember every day…

I absolutely loved the vinyasa classes each day!  Day two was the day of backbends…my specialty!!!  I may not be able to do handstands or headstands or crazy hip openers, but give me a chance to drop from standing into wheel or flip a downward dog to wild thing and I’m there!

Day three brought another 5am wakeup, and I made it to the 7am bonus class!  Day 3 also brought the need for some extra caffeine…

I’ve had these malas hanging up in my room for I dont know how many years…I dont even remember where I got them from!  Sadly they are somehow missing one bead, so they are a 107 mala!  Oh well, I still think they are pretty and I love the mysterious aspect that I have no idea where they came from!

Watching the sailboats on the harbor took up my afternoon…

More Sanskrit!  So much fun!

During break we took a little walk on the water…so gorgeous out, even though it was pretty cold…

I have a problem with taking too many pictures!

Of course I needed to do some crazy yoga poses while we were outside…who doesn’t do yoga in the 30 degree weather?

Onto day 4!  It was amazing how fast the weekend went by.  A 4 day training seemed so daunting, but it was the last day before we even knew it!  This had a lot to do with our instructors, Tracy and Lisa…they were truly amazing and inspirational each step of the way!

Day 4 is inversion day…and with orthostatic hypotension, I can’t really go upside down.  But I totally love this halfway up modification we learned in level 3, so I stuck with this for the practice.  All the benefits of an inversion without the passing out lol.

Another photo shoot followed lunch…my friend Ashley and I had way too much fun coming up with crazy poses to do in front of the city skyline…

Fun partnering poses!

….annndddd TADA!  My Level 4 certification!  Now I just have Level 5, retrain level 1, Yoga for Seniors, Yoga Back , and I think one other one-day workshop and I will have my 200!  I’m getting there!  It will happen:)

Now onto other random things from this week…

Runner’s World sent me this great article on strengthening exercises…this one for shin splints looks awesome and I definitely need to build more lower leg strength so I can’t wait to try it!

First day back after Level 4….I was planning on an easy day with some cardio, but my friend needed a last minute Pilates sub, so I jumped in!  With some green tea, I was ready to go and it was fun to incorporate some new moves into the class I had learned this weekend!

I had such a good idea on carrying multiple yoga mats for our event on Monday night…I felt like a genius…

I don’t know why I got such a laugh out of this, but I paused the Biggest Loser finale at a random moment when Allison Sweeney looked like a zombie and texted it to my friend Katie and we laughed about it for a good ten minutes….

Freak snowstorm …really?!?!?!

I’m trying to make an effort to eat REAL dinners most nights of the week.  Usually I just eat a snack for dinner, but I am trying to incorporate more healthy proteins into my dinner now.

 

This picture summed up my entire day…

Wednesday came with a trip to the orthopedist to make sure I wasn’t developing a new stress fracture in my leg (yay I wasn’t!)  The doc helped me to figure out how to change my gait to avoid putting pressure on the outside of my leg and how to stregthen around my knees to avoid the pain I’ve been getting.  I’m hoping I get through the half in April with no injuries!

Days 207-214…life is busy, life is good!

I’ve been away from the blog for one whole week!  Everything has been happening all at once and life has been crazy!  But no complaints here (mainly because I have been complaining too much the past week to everyone else and I’m tired of it!)…I am taking a look at the positive side of everything and enjoying my life one day at a time!  To start off with, all these crazy happenings have just made the last week fly by, and that means it is that much sooner until hubby comes home!  Another plus is that dealing with household emergencies and a crazy work and internship and school schedule just reassures me that I am totally competent and in charge of my life right now, and that feels great!

A nice surprise pick me up came in the mail last week….cute gifts from E!  I love the random teddy bear with greetings from Afghanistan…matched my Kuwaitit camel from last deployment!  Also, I am a huge sucker for precious stones…forget gold and diamonds and bling, give this hippie girl lapis and jade and turquoise and I’m good to go!  I really loved my gifts and it felt nice to be thought of.  Good job, husband!

And now, a picture that totally sums up our two pups…Jack running for his life and Chloe with a crazy open mouth “im coming for you!” grin!

The past two weeks have been a total running party…speed workouts and all types of fun stuff (until my old injuries started acting up which I’ll talk about later…)

This was my first sub 30 5k in I don’t know how long!

Rocking my new necklace and loving my hippie hair getting longer and longer!

We got a surprise random blizzard on Friday…the dogs were NOT impressed.  “Mom…wtf???  Why is that white stuff back?!?!”

…guess we’ll just have to hide under the blankets all day!

Ok…everyone in the world is going to either judge me or secretly are also hiding their bad habit, but….

After giving it up almost all winter, minus going once or twice , I caved and went tanning again… the blizzard totally threw me and my SAD was like “oh HELL no, winter is supposed to be gone, this is horrible and the world is ending!” …so I jumped in the fake bake bed for 10 minutes…let the judging begin.  I wanted to share only because I know there are still closet tanners out there and I am doing so good at beating my tanning addiction, but as long as I live in New England there are going to be those winter days here and there that I just can’t get away from it!

I saw this on pinterest and about died laughing…this is SO me every deployment…but hey, let’s be honest, I’m not exactly in the smooth legs club all the time when hubby is home either.

Another sub 30 5k!!!!!!!  Yay!!!!!!!  And a blurry picture because I was still running haha….mad skills at life.

Vicious pit bulls that have to sleep with their head directly on your chest so they can feel your heart beat….preciousness overload!

My friend sent me this and it is SO true.  I am totally that girl and proud of it….as evidenced by today’s completely random and in no way sporadic post haha!  Common themes that run through a post?  Who DOES that?

AAAaaaaannnndddddd…..SPRING IS BACK!  Let’s celebrate by laying in the grass happily!

I think I see a discrepancy in toy size to dog size ratio…

Somewhere in between all of these things was spring break…which wasn’t really a break for me, but I did have no class and there were no students on campus which made work a lot easier haha!

Then came the weekend…

I SOOOOO wish Eric was home to see the gem I discovered on SyFy network this weekend….a movie about military engineered camel spiders?!?!  Oh hell yes.

Sunday morning yoga was fun, and one of my friends came so it was great to have her come to her first Theresa-led yoga class.  Afterwards, her husband and our other friend helped me with some things around the house that I couldn’t figure out on my own.  Did I tell you in addition to all the structural problems we had last week, that our septic almost overflowed?  Yay…crazy murphy’s law of deployments…  So we drained the washer out to the garden and now there will be that many less gallons of water to cause sewage chaos in our back yard…aren’t you excited to read about sewage?  I know I sure am…lies…all lies…

Sunday afternoon it was time for a nice relaxing hike!

We found a random teepee in the woods so I of COURSE had to go inside!  Who wouldn’t?

And when you find a rusty old tire swing in the middle of no where who DOESNT swing on it?

…same with rusty old gates…

I was SO happy that the surprise baby shower I threw my boss on Monday went well!  It is SO hard to surprise her and we NAILED it.  She was almost mad that we got one over on her haha!  Everyone had a blast and she was so happy.  I made her two paintings…one for the baby’s room with inspirational quotes and one for her other daughter’s room with a cute quote about sisters on it since she will be a first time sister soon!

With Monday came structural repair week!

So….turns out I wasn’t paranoid and that big center beam that was sagging so bad?? …Yep…..it’s resting on  a TWO BY FOUR….someone TOOK OUT A WALL and rested the CENTER BEAM on a TWO BY FOUR…are you kidding?????

Totally safe….not.

To escape from the $7000 disaster that is my house, I took the pups for a nice hike…so much fun.

And at night I went for a lovely run!

I had to share my conversation with my best friend from home as she was trying to motivate me to go out for my run…I love that even 1000 miles apart we are still best friends.  By the way go check out her blog…. Eat well, Run hard, Love yourself…

Sadly, after my run, the old injuries I’ve been ignoring all started to rear their ugly heads again…old fractures, old achilles, old knees, and old ankles… all at once!  Not sure if it was the hills, the speedwork, the distance…or maybe everything combined, but crap…not good!  I am taking a few days off and I got a referral today to go see an orthopedist.  I have a sneaking suspicion that my horrible running form and really weird gate are the root cause of my injuries.  Running is the only thing that causes my injuries to flare up, which sucks because running is my favorite thing….but I’ve had a few people tell me, in the nicest way they could, that I run like a total weirdo.  This is the same reason I teach dance instead of perform…I have tibial torsion so my feet point outwards, which means to run normally, my feet either have to go out like I’m in first position in dance to keep my knees facing forward, which then torques my ankles and hips, OR my knees have to bow inward to keep my feet straight.  Yes, I’m aware I am a giant trainwreck…I’m just hoping that the doctors can figure it out…I don’t care if I have to wear Forrest Gump leg braces, I just want to be able to run again!!!!

My new favorite cold drink…honestly it is AMAZING go try it!  And no, they aren’t paying me to say this…although I wish they were…with a lifetime supply of these drinks haha!

I love taking the dogs with my to run errands…can you spot the pit bulls?

Since we cant go in our living room, I drug a recliner to our dining room to relax and watch tv.  The doggies of course KNEW it was for them too and decided we should all pile on there together…this was such a comfortable set up for all involved.  Just look at how snuggly we all look?  Five minutes later the recliner collapsed and scared us all half to death…fun night.

Days 203-206…running and other spring adventures!

 

Ahhhh it’s spring!  Everyone roll around happily in the grass!

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and I’m once again happily sitting in the sun with my pups by my side, drinking tea…perfect morning!

Springtime means wrestling matches are again a common occurence!

I was feeling inspired to get back into music this week, so I busted out the keyboard.  I really want to get good at piano and flute and guitar and singing again. I’d love to find a local choir or orchestra next year.  I used to be SO musical…it was my whole life in high school and I really miss it!

So the big crazy story this weekend was on Saturday…my routine oil change turned into a $600 repair with some issues they found…so I caught a cab home…and then realized I had left my house key on my keychain at the car repair place…wonderful.

Luckily our house is super hard to break into….but I remembered that the third floor windows don’t have locks on them…because honestly, who would climb three stories to break into the house?

…..oh that’s right…this girl would.

I somehow managed to climb the completely vertical ladder and get inside in one piece.  I was a little stressed after this whole occurrence and I felt bad for venting about it to my husband on our weekly phone call.  Looking back it’s actually kind of funny….but when you spend your entire paycheck in two days and go through this fiasco on top of all the other things going on around here I guess it can get a little overwhelming.  Oops.  I really need to get back on that ‘no complaining’ kick I had started a few weeks ago…

I’ll take a hint from the pups…just bask in the sunshine and relax!  No worries here!

Sunday was a great day for yoga and for the first long run outside of the spring…I looped a local park and then ran a new long road down to a beach I hadn’t been to before…really fun!

Me showing off my frizzy running hair and fancy running jacket I forgot I had stashed in my closet!  Also note that I finally replaced the armband monster dog destroyed months ago…it was nice to not be clutching my iphone for dear life the entire run…

5.64 miles in an hour…definitely need to work on getting my speed back, but it was a solid run and no pain in my hip, so I didn’t mind the slower pace!

After my run, I was exhausted!  I did some yoga around 6 and was ready for bed by 730!  12 hours later and I finally felt my energy come back…but it was nice to have a real genuine exhausted type of sleep….oh how I’ve missed long runs outside!

Gotta love when cute puppies fall asleep in the middle of chewing on their toys…

Even with my long run, I was proud of staying under my calorie budget for the day…I’m sticking to 1400 or less on days I work out, and other days I am aiming for 1200.  Today I was almost at 1400 again, but I know that my muscles need to repair after the long run yesterday…

This morning I stared in an episode of Hoarders!!!

….just kidding…but I did clean out the basement and garage.

SO much crap still down there from the previous owners.  I hate to be wasteful but the basement is moldy and I have decided to just trash everything down there….power tools and such can stay, but old furtniture, mattresses, lamps, etc are going to the dump…

Speaking of the dump, let’s check out my white trash outfit I wore for my junk-hauling trip…ratty old sweatpants and an oversized Budweiser tshirt…perrfecccttt….no one will bother me looking like this…

This afternoon brought indecisiveness in the little monster…which stick do I want?  CANT DECIDE, MUST HAVE BOTH.

After a long day, it was nice to come home to my lovely cabinet of TEA…yeah with my husband gone, I have taken over an entire cabinet for my tea…so what?  It’s GOOD FOR YOU….don’t judge.

Random job search update…I have applied to at least 50 jobs in the last few months…it seems all the good counseling jobs require experience…which you need to get hired to get, but can’t get hired without…kind of a catch-22, no?  So I decided to start searching in the fitness sector.  In all honesty, fitness is my real passion, and I only want to work in counseling if it allows me to bring fitness and wellness into the job anyway.  So tonight I applied for a health and wellness coordinator job…parttime to start in the summer…I think it could work really well with what I want to do and I could possibly work some counseling hours as well.  We will see what happens!