1

4000

|

image4000 is the number of miles I have been trying to reach on my Nike+ running app since my last 1/2 marathon in September of 2013. At that time I was only 250 miles away and was sure I would reach it by the end of 2013. And then plantar fascitis reared its ugly head and I have been battling that ever since. I had surgery a year ago in May to fix my right foot and being told that 95% of the time when you fix the worst foot, the other gets better on its own. Well as usual nurse curse reared its ugly head and by October (five months after surgery on my right foot, I was begging for it on my left.) Of course nothing is ever that simple. I had to have my foot injected and do stretching and blah blah blah before hand. So after about two months my foot still felt great so I started walking/running again and started a couch to 1/2 marathon training program. About two months into it and after a six-mile run the injection on my foot wore off and I was back to square one. I decided I was done with it, and went back to Dr. Anderson and said nothing has helped so fix it like my other. He does these surgeries on Fridays and since my birthday is on a Friday this year, I decided that would be the best gift I could give myself. To be able to enjoy my job without wanting to hack my foot off and to be able to get back outside and to my God time.

imageI had noticed on my Nike app that I was about 15 miles away from 4000. Since I am on a prescription anti-inflammatory, I decided I was going to meet my 4000 mile goal before surgery. My friend Theresa had started going to a personal trainer and walking every day so we found a 5K to do and I adjusted the walking schedule so I hit my mile goal by the end of the walk. Hopefully it doesn’t take me another year and a half to do 250 miles. I am hoping after 12 weeks, I can get back to walking three or four times a week. I would really like to see the next color which is yellow. I am currently in the black color which is really boring for a background. It’s all about the little things. A lot of my friends switched to Garmin because it is more accurate. However I am not a professional runner and this does the trick for what I need. Keep track of my distance and how many runs I have done. Plus I have fond memories because in the early days (July 2009 was when I started) when it was my iPod with a little thing I stuck on it with a thing it my shoe that tracked the distance. It’s hard to believe now I can use my iPhone with GPS tracking. And although it may not be total accurate, it’s close enough to keep me motivated to continue running and meeting distance goals.

 

Mole moral~No fancy gadgets required for this simple girl with a desire to spend time with God while out running and or walking!

0

Why being outside sucks!

|

I think I have hated outdoors my entire life. I swear I could live inside and never leave. Well except to run, that’s the only time I like being outside. Anyway yesterday I decided to take the dog on the hike up Mastodon Mountain. For those of you living outside of Jeffco Mastodon state park has a trial that goes up a hill and back down. It’s about 1.75 miles in length. I like it because I can let the dog off her leash and she goofs off and then runs to catch up with me. Only I could be walking along minding my own business and come upon this.

IMG_7604

 

 

 

 

 

 

The dog was unimpressed and walked right on by. It was super humid yesterday and after about a mile I was really wishing I had brought some water along. I think the dog was too because her tongue was hanging out of her mouth. We finally got back down the mountain and across the street and she was acting dead. No way can I carry her back to the car so I notice a creek and I call her over thinking she will take a drink. Oh heck no, she did this instead.

IMG_7607

IMG_7606

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So that required a bath when we got home because she really smelled gross.

This morning I found a tick on me and wanted to vomit! See I really do hate the outdoors. It’s either too hot or too cold or too many bugs!

Mole Moral~Better to stay inside where it’s safe and animal copulation does not happen in plain sight!

 

 

 

 

0

Clean eating the first week.

|

I had been playing with the idea of trying clean eating for a while now. I decided to give up chips, pretzels, crackers and popcorn for Lent. This had to be one of the stupidest ideas I have come up with in a long, long time. This triggered a sweets binge for 40 days and I’m not really much for sweets. You name it, I ate it. I ate a lot of processed stuff like fiber one bars, granola bars etc. Towards the end of Lent I was even eating fries and food from work. I had gone off the deep end and I wasn’t sure if I was coming back. The Thursday before Lent ended I had a really bad day and forgot and ate cheese crackers. I said sorry God and Lent was over. On Easter I ate everything in sight including two deserts and a chocolate bunny. I knew Monday was CE day. (Clean eating). I had spent three hours at the grocery store finding all the stuff I needed for the weeks menu.

I weighed myself on Monday and couldn’t decide if I should vomit, off myself, say screw it and eat what I want or smoke a carton of cigarettes. I did none of these and started the clean eating. Here are my thoughts.

1.  What a pain in the ass. Cooking all my food. Really? I hate cooking.

2. I’m not hung up on clean and nothing processed will ever touch my lips again. Seriously! Processed and junk food is the best and tastes fabulously and takes zero effort or thought to prepare.

3. I lost 6.5 yes SIX AND A HALF POUNDS this week. Of course last Monday’s weight was probably a little inflated from a four-day stress eating binge but who the hell cares! I am back down to weight watcher goal weight so if I went to a meeting, I wouldn’t have to pay.

4. I know understand why ladies didn’t work in the old days. I cannot imagine preparing and cooking food from scratch and trying to work full-time. It’s been a challenge and I only work 24 hours a week. On day 2 work wanted me to come in at 8 and I had an hour of cooking to do before I could leave house so someone else came in and I came in later. I’m glad I skipped a couple of hours than throwing in the towel on day 2.

5. I am beginning to understand the obesity and diabetes epidemic in this country. Given the choice of quick and cheap over time-consuming and priceless I get it.

So I am now onto week two. We shall see how things go.

Mole moral~ cooking still sucks even in light of a nice weight loss

0

Magical Thinking

|

For the longest time I have always come up with the worst case scenario so it wouldn’t happen. For example, a co-worker has a headache so I say they have meningitis and are going to die. Also, if a patient has a symptom I get the situation diagnosed to almost coding and in ICU. Since this rarely, if ever happens, I am convinced thinking the worst makes it not happen. Back when I saw my counselor she asked me if I really thought i had magical thinking. Although I told her no, I sometimes still believe I do. This week I had a couple of patient situations come up in which I did indeed predict the worst case and nothing happened. Everything was fine. So this just furthers my delusion! And Meg said to me “so you are a rainbow unicorn” last night and then sent me this meme today! I loved it.

IMG_7523

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mole moral~ I am a badass unicorn! I will keep the worst case to myself so I don’t freak out the patients. As for my family, friends and co-workers, they are all on their own.

 

0

Music

|

When I was growing up and my mom would listen to the “oldies but goodies” station, i remember thinking to myself I will always enjoy my kids music. I would stay modern and fresh all of my life. And then I had kids and I swear a person’s brain chemistry changes and you cannot stand their music. I tried really hard, I swear. I would let them listen to Z107.7 in the car for a time until I became homicidal and wanted to run everyone off of the road and then I would change it to the music of my youth. Emily and Kayla would always listen to Nellie and he is from St. Louis but it has to be the most awful rap known to man. Especially when their really cool aunt bought them the real version with all the curse words.

This all came back to me yesterday when Allyson was the DJ in the car when we were off to get more fur for her latest fur suit head. (One of these days, when she is finished I will write about her project). Not only did she turn on rap music but it was rap in German. (One of her fur suit buddies is from Germany). If you like me find rap annoying, you should listen to it in German. It’s a totally different experience. I think it’s worse!

Mole moral~ Everything comes back to bite my in the butt!

0

The Moles go to Elephant Rocks

|

IMG_7295At the beginning of the week I asked the girls what they wanted to do on Friday. At first they said the zoo and I said then I am staying home so they asked what I wanted to do. I said well how about Cahokia Mounds and Emily said everyone says it’s boring. I then suggested elephant rocks. I am pretty sure my dad took my sister and I there when we were kids. I had finally went to Johnson Shut In’s back when Emily was about five. So we set out for the rocks today. We took 55 to 67 instead of straight down 21. I had no idea we had so many state parks between our house and there. Anyway we didn’t even make it a mile down the road when I realized we forgot the dog so we turned around and got her. I knew she would love it.

Allyson announced about halfway there that she had been there with her friends Ryan and Trent. We had a great time climbing all over the rocks. Even the dog had a blast but she made me nervous when she would run right up to the edge but she always stopped. Only I could manage to duck under a tree limb and get it jammed into my earhole. Wow did that ever hurt! I didn’t even bleed so I wasn’t allowed to carry on.

IMG_7326The section that looks like elephants was really cool. So were all the names carved into the rock back in the 1800’s. I know none of that would be allowed now. Allyson had an eye doctor appointment so we had to leave earlier than planned. As we were driving out of the park the sun started breaking through the clouds and we had full on sunshine by the time we arrived home.

And for those of you wondering, no there was not a cake there and never had been. It would have been a great place for one though!

Mole Moral~ When walking under trees wear earmuffs!

0

Taxes are a pain

|

I finally finished up my taxes today. I was waiting on the 1098-T form from Rockhust and my stuff from Ameriprise. I finally had to call Rockhurst because someone moved (cough Emily) and did not give Rockhust her new address. Luckily they could email me the form. Prior to adding what we paid in tuition for both kids we were only getting 2000 or so back. Because both Emily and Kayla are over 18 we did not get the child tax credit. To which Brian’s solution was to have another kid. I told him he was out of his mind. That a baby costs way more to raise to the age of 22+ than getting an extra 2 grand back a year. Once I added in the college stuff for Emily and Kayla our refund went way way up and so now we are rich for about three weeks. Hahaha.

I then proceeded to the FASFA so that Jefferson College will get off my back about filling it out. She won’t qualify for financial aid but by filling it out now, it will save me time when she goes to the big expensive college. Ha.

Now that I have wasted three hours of my day off, its time to find something fun to do, like take a nap. HAHAHAHA.

0

Craft projects overload

|

Last week I had five craft projects all going on at the same time.I truly felt I was getting nowhere with any of them when someone from work told me to finish one at a time. Oh this was genius so why couldn’t I think of it. So the first thing I did was finish all four baby bibs I had half started. In my defense I had run out of thread for three of them and was just too lazy to go to the store. Next up was my cake ornaments to finish. (Ok so this is the real reason for todays blog).I finished those the other day so now I am finishing up the t-shirt quilt I am making for Emily’s PT school friend. This weekend I also have to make a fur suit for Allyson (I will post that entire story next week after its debut). And lastly I still have to paint my big real 250 cake. However let’s get back to the cakes I made.

So last October while riding the exercise bike at the rec center I came up with the wild idea to make cakes for all nine people I drug out to see cakes and make one for myself. The first thing I had to do was find wood so I went to Hobby Lobby and they had what I was thinking of. the two round sections of the cake were actually wheels probably to be used to make a wagon or something. However I persuaded Brian to get out his electric sander and sand the tread out of them. I was going to do it by hand but I would probably still be sanding today. I have never painted anything in my life except to stain the fence and the deck. Both of which are located outside and if I messed it up, who cares. Well actually the paint drips bug Brian but not enough for him to stain. Hahaha. So I asked Emily if I should prime the wood and she said yes. So I base coated them all white twice and waited like 2 days between coats. I refused to be in a rush and mess them all up. After that i picked out everyone’s favorite color and painted them and then I was stuck like for a long time. They were suppose to be Christmas ornaments but it was well after Christmas before I finished. It took a while for the ideas to come to me but I think they turned out well. So I am going to post pictures and what all the stuff means. This is mostly for the family but if you are not related to me and not bored to tears feel free to read.

My first cake was Emily’s and her favorite color was mint green. After I painted the icing black we decided it looked like Frankenstein so I went with it. I originally planned for these to be Christmas ornaments but my sisters and mine will be sitting out year round. Each cake has the person’s name and how many cakes they say. Emily’s car is named Frank and Frank is now short for Frankenstein.

IMG_7026 IMG_7027 IMG_7028 IMG_7029

 

 

 

 

 

My second cake was my sisters. Since her cake was purple I got the idea to paint grapes on hers. It made me think of the cake at Washington Historical Society which my bosses boss ended up owning by offering a donation.

IMG_6999 IMG_6998 IMG_6997

Kayla’s cake was next and I got the wise idea to attempt to draw the Piasa Bird her cake as a reminder of the caking day in Alton where we couldn’t find over half the cakes. We really thought we were looking for a bird statue and could not believe it turned out to be painted on a cliff and looked nothing like a bird. She has a jazz shoe because of her jazz solo when she danced. Because she always goes to the movies I decided I could draw the Wehrenberg Theater logo. She at least recognized it when she looked at it.

IMG_7032 IMG_7031 IMG_7030

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I then decided to do Sierra’s. When she was born she had reddish hair and Brian almost immediately started calling her Finster for Chuckie Finster from the Rugrats. Chuckie was afraid of everything and Sierra ran a close second. They had similar personalities and we all blamed Brian because of the nickname. As she got older he started calling her Finstermiester. This past year she went with her father to the G-Eazy concert. He is some singer that i have never heard of. I drew a map of Africa on one side and the Arnold water tower on the other. This was because her father is from South Africa and her mom was from Arnold. Africa did not turn out as well as I had hoped but hey its the thought right?

IMG_6995 IMG_6994 IMG_6993

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next up was Conner and I knew I wanted to do Spiderman. So I googled the Spiderman logo and thought how in the world would I draw that. Well it is the time of the internet so I found a tutorial on how to draw it. I was very excited that when looking down the round part of the candle looks like the round part of the spider. I also put on Superman and his nickname from Brian. Seamus McDonough. After I gave Karen hers she put them on her mantle. Conner has since taken his to his room and put it with his other special things.

IMG_7002 IMG_7003 IMG_7004IMG_7005

Kayla hadn’t been dating Dominic for three weeks before Brian started calling him fry cook. He worked at Steak N Shake so one day it came to me the Golden Spatula from Spongebob. And so his candle is the spatula. I attempted to draw the Steak N Shake hat and bow tie. Dominic also loves to skateboard so I added one on it. My favorite is the spatula!

IMG_7006 IMG_7010 IMG_7009 IMG_7007

 

 

 

 

 

 

It took me a while to do Bridget’s. I have no idea why I had such a hard time. When she first started hanging out at the house she worked at McDonald’s. Her last name is Werner so Brian started calling her McWeenie. Later on he changed it to Weeniesan. She is now teaching at Denoyer Dance so that is also on her. The paint is so dark I couldn’t get the pictures to turn out any better. After I had modge podged it, I noticed an orange dot on the top of the cake. I decided to leave it since orange is my favorite color.

IMG_7020 IMG_7019 IMG_7021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I did Brian’s next. I decided to top of his cake looked like a hockey puck so I made the candle a hockey stick. I then placed his nickname he gave himself at least 20 years ago. We use to watch wrestling and guy was named Valbosky so he started calling himself Mobosky. I drew a golf club and golf ball and wrote Vanilla because his golf friends call him vanilla cause he shoots the ball straight down the middle and never varies. I attempted to draw bowling pins around the top layer. One must use their imagination.

IMG_7014 IMG_7013 IMG_7012 IMG_7011

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mine was easy now that I was on a roll. I put I love cake on the top in X’s to represent my love of cross-stitch. Everyone knows I’m CR and I love to scrapbook. I would save the best for last. Allyson’s.

IMG_7016 IMG_7017 IMG_7015

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Allyson wanted minecraft and gave me this picture to make the candle. She had way more confidence in my artist ability than I did. So I did manage to paint the candle pretty close. I then decided to draw a minecraft guy on the top. I showed it to Allyson and I could tell she hated it. IMG_6984It would take me a bit to get it out of her. But finally she looked at me and said mom would you look where the candle would go. Holy crap, I hadn’t even thought of that.  So needless to say I painted over it. She calls herself Wilson Moehlmann on minecraft and Wilson Wolf is her YouTube name so I had to place that on hers. Her fur costume she is working on she calls Woolzey and she loves soccer. I think her cake turned out the best especially after I painted over it and made the top part PG

IMG_7024 IMG_7025 IMG_7023 IMG_7022

IMG_6978

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mole Moral~When you grow up in an x-rated house and have all guy friends you are the first one to notice improper candle placement. Although I must admit the candles on the real 250 cakes were a little too phallic in my opinion! I know you are going to look at them. Bahahaha

 

 

 

 

 

0

Unable to deal with the general public

|

Yesterday was quite the day. It all started when I decided today was the day I was getting Allyson’s phone to work. For quite some time she could receive text messages but not send them. Two weeks ago I called tech support and they had to submit a ticket.  I then got a text saying issue resolved, yet it wasn’t. So I headed up to my store but my favorite sales guy wasn’t working. The guy waiting on me said he had never seen that (go figure, only a mole) and sent me to olive to the support center. When I arrived I could either make an appointment or wait 2 1/2 hours. I chose to wait because I actually had the phone in my hand and it was charged. I then decided to write a letter to my cousin using email. This was a brilliant idea, except I text one finger (he calls me one finger texter and thinks it’s hilarious.) so by the time I was finished my wrist was on fire. Everyone that walked in was pissed about the wait and copped an attitude. I felt bad for the two guys working although it has to be their calling to deal with this hostile environment every day. A couple of people left and would be texted when it was their turn. They didn’t make it back in time, so I got to go. When they showed up they copped another attitude about their time being valuable. I almost said then you shoulf have made an appointment. It would have been stupid for the tech support guys to wait ten minutes until they showed up. Shortly before I was called up, this guy came in and carried on for ten minutes about how his phone doesn’t work and what would they do for him. The guy patiently repeated over and over three-hour wait and then he could help him. The guy left and the worker said its a tequila night to which I shouted shots for everyone. That made everyone laugh. Allyson’s phone was fixed in 15 minutes. It needed a new SIM card.

My next stop was ugas for coffee  I get home and have a Facebook message. I dropped my debit card in the parking lot. I get behind this guy that says he has gas on 6. Right after the lady next to him says she has had on 6. He cops a giant attitude until he is proved wrong. Then tries to say signage is bad. I almost said you are blind and stupid. Then it becomes a math nightmare before he finally leaves. I come home and shut the garage door. I then announce I’m not leaving the house again unless I have a tranquilizer gun. Needless to say, I stayed in

Mole moral ~ Typing this on my phone while waiting for work to start was a stupid idea. My wrist is on fire again. I need to inject myself with a tranquilizer gun especially after the drive in with the snow

0

Today’s reality check

|

I worked today and now that my foot has been pain-free for almost 4 months I enjoy my job 99.9% of the time. I even enjoyed today even though I was smacked with reality three times in less than four hours.

Today my bosses were interviewing a new nurse for nights. They were showing her around the unit and introduced me as the seasoned nurse. I looked her and said “I bet I’ve been a nurse longer than you have been alive.” I followed that statement up with “let me go check myself into a nursing home”. This May will be 27 years since I graduated from Deaconess College of Nursing.

Next I was chatting with my patient who is my mom’s age. We were discussing the ages of our kids. When she said hers were 47-53 I thought what is she talking about, her kids should be in their 20’s. I then remembered my mom saying she would be disowning me when I am 50 because she is not old enough to have a 50-year-old daughter. And if this lady is my mom’s age then her kids should be my age and I am not in my twenties even though I always think I am in my head.

Lastly, I ran into a respiratory therapist I haven’t seen long enough to chat with since I left the burn unit almost 15 years ago. I asked him if he ever got married and if he ever had kids.Yes was the answer to both and his kids are 15 and 18. Ok how did that happen, he still looked 25 to me and certainly could not have children that old. Later on I kind of remember his first daughter being born but that was so long ago and yet also seems like just yesterday.

Mole moral~ Time keeps on passing by, and I am getting older. However I will always be 20 and all my friends will be the same age as when I met them as well as their kids. No one ever gets older in my head. Perhaps that is what Heaven will be like!