Brenna's been going to the dentist a lot lately so we've been talking about flossing and stuff. I absolutely DESPISE flossing. One day after we had been discussing flossing (and bren had shown me proper hand positioning/wrapping technique) I went home to cut coupons and found a sample of the new Crest Glide Deep Clean floss.

My first enjoyable flossing experience ever! The floss was wonderful, not at all stringy and waxy like normal floss, but really wide and smooth and so ever minty. That, mixed with better floss handling technique so I don't cut off all the circulation with my fingers, made so much of a difference. I have now been flossing almost every day.

I haven't been to the dentist in like 10 years, but maybe I'll go soon. Hopefully, I won't have too many cavities and they will be ever impressed by my plaque-free mouth.

its over.

i finished. in the top third of my age division. i ran 3:57:35. my goal was 4 hours. i will never run a marathon again.

it was pretty brutal. i stopped to use the porta-potty once just so I could sit down for a few seconds. My stomach hurt a lot during the race and I felt like I was going so slow. i threw up massive amounts of gatorade near the end (even though I only drank water during the whole course). I threw up a mile from the finish line and i actually threw up a few feet from the finish line and threw up a foot after the finish line. the last 3 miles were the worst. Luckily, I had jared, my mom and brenna there to help me get through it. I'm glad I did it but i don't think I ever want to do it again.

it hurts to move. so much.

I remember that Brenna asked me on Friday what I was going to wear during the marathon. I never answered her for some reason.

The answer:




.

bananas

They are happy food. I ate half of one today. Only half because the other half was black and mushy. I hereby declare that Jared is no longer allowed to pick out bananas.

Seriously though, only a few minutes after I ate the banana I felt the endorphins kick in and I felt instantaneously happy. Its like when I'm running. I had spent all day stewing over the air quality and getting behind on my training schedule. I spent most of the day complaining about the falling ashes and the tightness in my lungs and my burning eyes. Brenna and I discussed at length on me wearing a bandana over my mouth while running or maybe even buying a gas mask.

Turns out all I really needed was a banana.

good news: finished my run this morning and still made it to 9:00 church service 15 minutes early.

bad news: gatorade lid wasn't completely closed on the bottle I put in my purse. orange sticky bible pages = the worst.

i'm turning into a dragon

the weirdest thing just happened. I was at work in front of my laptop, icing my knee (different subject), when I burped. There was a little trace of what appeared to be smoke.

what??

Then I started coughing and this huge puff of, at what first appeared to be smoke, but upon further investigation I think was powder.

yeah, freaky.

At first I thought it might be cinnamon sugar because I just had cinnamon sugar toast, but it definatey was finer than sugar and way more of it than what I put on my toast. It had to have been from the calcium supplement I had taken. Weird.

No joke.

My friend Brian Pew and his wife just had a girl. They named her Henrietta Esmé Gertrude Petunia Pew.

To box canyon and back again.

On saturday I ran 20 miles. For part of the way I ran with a pack of coyotes.

haha, so I sent Dannon a comment on their website about finding the ant and guess what... Dannon called me at work today! Brenna was laughing so hard after she answered the phone.. Tamra, Dannon is on the phone for you! I had to compose myself before talking to them to not laugh. They asked me all sorts of questions and they are sending me a package to collect the "specimen" I threw the yogurt in the trash at work so I had to dig the yogurt out of the package. Alas, I could no longer find the ant. I did, however, find a dead ant, conspicuously close to the spoons. I suppooooooose its possible that the dead ant was somehow connected to the spoon and then I put it in the yogurt and THEN noticed the ant. I can't really remember.

So, should I send them the other ant I found (it would've been an honest mistake) or should I just write them a note that I couldn't find it? I'd hate to return the package empty handed. I wonder who does those tests? That seems like a pretty cool, funny job... testing items found in food ...

They're supposed to send me one coupon for yogurt with the specimen collection package. If I sent the specimen back and then they run tests on them than they might send more coupons. I probably won't be eating yogurt for a while anyways, but the whole process sounds kind of fun..

MORAL OF THE STORY: if you ever find something in your food, don't necessarily throw it away. preserve it if you want free coupons.

I'm over yogurt.

I've been pretty regularly eating yogurt - one package every other day or so. Today I found a dead ant in my yogurt. I have decided I will now be taking a hiatus for a while from yogurt. I once found a dead spider in my mac and cheese and it took me like ten years until I ate mac n cheese again. Its really stupid because I probably eat spiders and ants all the time in my sleep...

oh, and long run running update: I ran 20 miles two saturdays ago (my house to box canyon and back) and this past Saturday I ran 16 miles (up first street, long canyon wood ranch to royal and back). I'm going to flagstaff this weekend - should get some high-altitude training in..yay.

On the verge of my wedding (three months), I have been dedicating a certain amount of time of my week to help ay my moms with odd-and-end jobs in preparation. She is, after all, paying for most of my wedding; it’s the least I can do.

The other Sunday after church, the task was to help with tile work. When I got there, it turned into putting up shelves in the extra bedroom. “Piece of cake”, I say to myself, almost insulted by this so-easy-anybody-can-do-it task.

I really can not begin to say how monumental this task was for me. It might as well had been building the Great Wall of China. Well not really, but you know, kinda.

These shelves really almost defeated me. A shelf dropped, while I was holding up to see if it was even. The shelf got a little beat up and the paint chipped off the side. The screws were so hard to put in, that the wood split on the other wood pieces I was screwing them into. I finally got it on, but then it was uneven, and I had to redo it. I mean, it seemed like everything that could go wrong, went wrong. I finally got one put on, after completely stripping the screw and using every ounce of muscle in my arms (I'm still really sore from it), but then looked at the picture and with a wave of utter defeat, I had put it on upside-down! Not being so easy to take out stripped screws, mind you, it took me about thirty minutes to take the shelf off. Alas, of course.... it turns out I had it in the right way the first time!

The culminating thing was that I also dropped the second shelf when I was trying to see if it was even. I was so convinced the second one would be easier after learning from my previous mistakes. When the second shelf dropped, it ended up landing on a pot. It was broken into probably two dozen or more pieces. “Please, I said to myself, not THAT pot. Please let it not be that pot." Of course it was THAT pot, a Native American (I think Ansai or Acoma) pot that my sister had just given to my Mom for Christmas.

I profusely apologized, to which my Mom replied “Oh, no big deal, its fine. I can glue it. Brenna will never know.”

There was no hint of annoyance in her voice. Nothing but love out of concern out of her clumsy, well-intentioned daughter. She went back to the bathroom to finish her tiling. I left to pick up the broken pieces of pot. At first it was tears of just feeling bad for breaking the pot. She piped up from the bathroom “Don’t worry about it, really. It’s fine.” No annoyance in her voice at all. Surely I would have been slightly annoyed even if I knew it was unintentional. My tears of feeling bad were then completely overcome by tears of overwhelming joy and appreciation for the best mother I could ever ask for. They were then enhanced by feeling so lucky to be getting married in a few months to the man I love.

My joy was so much and so encompassing. I felt spoiled. I felt unworthy of such blessings. Surely these were blessing that were meant for someone else, someone better than me. I went to the bathroom, in tears, and hugged my mom – my mom who has always been there for me, so selflessly.

I came back to the house a couple days later for Brenna’s birthday. Immediately, I went to the bedroom to show off my defeat of the daunting destroyer-of-all-that-is-good shelves to Jared.

Taken aback at first, but to no surprise, there atop a set of drawers was the Native american pot, glued back together – much like the pieces of me that my mother always seems to put together when I have broke.

what are the odds?

the day i finally hire someone to do something about the mouse in my house (two months after the fact) is the day my cat decides to be a 'cat' and finally catches the mouse.

Guess he felt like he had some competition.

so i guess all the animals in the neighborhood met and voted on my place as hangout central of the animals. Woke up to, no, not just Oliver, one cat, but THREE cats just hangin out in the living room. Yeah, I only own ONE Cat. Then right before I go to work I hear some weird noise and Oliver acting all weird. Oh yeah, theres a rat under the couch. Oliver and I team up to try to catch him, but to no avail. I then opted on going for his long hairless tail.

Rule #1 : Never grab a rat by the tip of it's tail. Tails falls off.

Left with a piece of rat's tail in my hand, i give up. I opened the front door and let oliver chase it out.

Rats, mice, spiders, hummingbirds, cats, ants. They all somehow end up in my house. Probaby because they all know I'm too wussy to do anything to them. My house is clean, I don't leave food laying around, why oh why my house..