RANDOM FRIDAY THINGS

1.  I do NOT know how I managed to get up in the DARK and RUN in the COLD every day (mostly every day-- I have a few notes that I ran on the elliptical in my work out dungeon during the very coldest months)** because I CANNOT get out of bed these days. My alarm goes off, and I have coffee. And I read. And I have more coffee. And all the sudden the kids are up.

2. To be clear, I am still running-- every day since 9/1, in fact. That's 235 runs in a row. But I have been more creative with working it in lately since for some reason I cannot get up. (Which is weird-- it's not super cold in the house when I wake up. It's light before 6. WHAT THE HECK? Can I still blame the time change?)

3. I was putting Chobani creamer in my coffee-- just a splash!-- along with the Fairlife chocolate milk - another splash!-- I always use, and I realized the creamer was a YUGE calorie trap. Soooo, I have started using a splash of chocolate milk and a splash of Premier Protein chocolate peanut butter. Less sugar! Fewer calories! A bit of protein! It takes me about 4 days to use 1 drink, so that's about 35 calories and 10 grams of protein a day.

4. The end of the semester is so close I can taste it, you guys. And it tastes a lot like course prep for fall while the kids are in school. I LIKE IT. I am also teaching a giant comm theory lecture in the spring which is a class I have not taught since pre-COVID times, so I for sure need to look ahead to that prep as well. Yikes! (But I have S I X  W E E K S of kids in class and me with tons of prep time, so I am CONFIDENT I can for real get my shit together before kid summer.)

5. Finally, apropos of nothing, here are some lewks I've loved lately

Minnie in her KPop spoils

Mask chic at a double kid sick visit 

Dorothy and Cooper twinning a bit

Fresh from ballet to eat pizza and watch the end of dive practice

OMFG it is STILL WINTER WHAT THE HELL

Spring? Is that you? ARE YOU ON THE WAAAAAAY?

** I have been tracking my workouts in my weekly planner, and I love it. I make 4 little boxes for 7 runs, 7 yoga sessions, 5 20-minute weight sessions, and 7 days of walking for 60+ minutes, and then I fill in the date and what I did. I also keep track of my walks in my daily planner, so I can make sure to grab that last 12-16 minutes with Annabel after Minnie goes to bed. I open my Apple Fitness app right before I retire my phone for then night (no phone after about 9 when my alarm to take my progesterone goes off***) and choose a weight workout for the next day so I can have the appropriate equipment ready to go in the morning-- less friction!

***9 is about the time the everyone is home for the night and I can stop waiting for them to text me if they need something at an activity or if there's a carpool hiccup. Ideally, I would retire my phone earlier than 9, but what are you gonna do? (That's rhetorical). (I am going to continue to obbssessively track my middle schoolers on Life360 until they come home. I AM WHO I AM).

Weekend recap

 We had a blast in the Chicago burbs last weekend. The tl;dr is that Dorothy's dance comp went great, and she loved her convention classes, too. And Cooper! Won both his events at USA Diving Regionals and is headed to Zones in June, with the goal of qualifying for USA Diving Junior Nationals in July/August.

(He will also compete in tower at Zones-- USA Diving Regional comps do not have tower).

Minnie and Jack and Ben watched diving and had lots of hot dogs and breakfast pastries because why not.

I sat around the airport Westin and was at Dorothy's beck and call

She loved hanging out with her dance besties and enduring costume and makeup changes before the dressing rooms opened on Saturday ( a weird convention/competition schedule bump).

She didn't even mind a SEVEN AM call time on Sunday

(I minded tho).

There was much pizza

Some shopping

A little hotel pool action

A great weekend!

just a quick note to say I really missed my dad this weekend

 My dad died seven years ago next week (on take your kid to work day, a day that the kids and I had so much fun celebrating on campus while Harry went to the capitol with Ben who worked for the governor at that moment), and Jack has recently started wearing his cologne (not, like, my dad's actual bottle, but Obsession, the scent my dad always wore). We traveled as a whole family this last weekend, and I kept getting little whiffs of Obsession and missing my dad so much. 

(Also Jack wore a windbreaker pullover that zips into a pouch which was classic my dad as well, and he brought a man purse/camera bag full of random chargers. AND HIS CAMERA. Like, seriously, you guys. Jack was 11 when my dad died, so how much of this behavior is just INBORN? He also wears a chain necklace. I MEAN.)

At one point mid dance comp in the hotel lobby after a really hectic hair and makeup  before the dressing rooms officially opened for the day, I was waiting for Ben's folks to get back from the bathroom so I could show them wear to sit for Dorothy's dances, and I was simultaneously so happy they were there to witness the madness of a dance competition up close and also newly bereft that my dad would never find us in a crowded hotel lobby again.

It went on like that all weekend. Being so proud of Coop for his double regional champ status after 2 awesome days of diving at Northwestern and remembering the one time my dad saw him dive during summer league when he was an actual baby whom we were convinced was a phenom.

Or standing in the hour-long (ALWAYS AN HOUR LONG THE WHOLE WEEKEND) lobby Starbucks line and remembering being a freshman in college at a the brand new Peoria Starbucks with my dad and being so embarrassed when he ordered us EXpressos.

Being the slowest member of our party at the mall and being accused of "Gar walking." Buying Dorothy everything she wanted at Aritzia and Minnie all of the KPOP Demon Hunters stuff at Zara Kids because it's fun to be unexpectedly generous. (My dad was reliably generous, but I am not always a soft touch). Ordering the deep dish pizza even though it took 30 extra minutes (my dad was the king of doing this when the  kids were little-- always the the dutch baby pancakes and the prime rib while toddlers lost their ever loving shit).

ANWAY. More weekend dispatches later (we had tons of fun even though we had to leave a bit early the last day because BOTH GIRLS got sick)-- just a quick note to say I really missed my dad this weekend.

Briefly coming up for air

 WOW these past few weeks have been a lot. I have no idea how we survived all those years of travel hockey my goodness. IT IS SO HARD TO BE GONE EVERY WEEKEND.

So far, I am relying on coffee and pattern mixing to get me through.

Also! I am doing TWO buddy reads: Kin with Engie and Yesteryear with another friend, and I LOVE the buddy read! My Yesteryear friend and I are doing Whistler in June, and I really want someone to read Famesick with, too.

(Other than those books, though, it has been hard ot even find time to read. Because all I have is time confetti, and it is hard to not get stuck in the scroll).

Other things lately:

Minnie got a terrible (but quick!) norovirus that wiped her out for nearly 48 hours. Ben was a WAY BETTER caretaker than I was-- I just cleaned her up and put her back to bed every hour between 1-4 am. Seriously, I wiped her face, changed whatever bedding needed it, and handed her a bowl and stumbled back to bed. After 3 rounds, Ben slept on the floor of her room for the the last couple hours (but saved all the clean up for morning, which was gross and involved lots of towels. Dads, amiright.) But! I think Minnie felt more cared for and supported, even if she was less clean. The next day, Ben stole Cooper's TV, and Minnie just laid in her bed and drank water and threw it up. ALL DAY LONG. SO BRUTAL. SO many sheets changes.

Dorothy had another dance comp the same days Cooper had a dive meet (I have no pictures of the dive meet-- this is just bad communication from Ben and me.) Cooper won all 3 events and nearly topped all his PRs. He scored 9.5, 9, 9.5 on this dive and was beyond jazzed (or as the WI governor would say, "jazzed as hell")

Minnie went along to diving on Friday (because Jack was at the state speech tourney, so the choice was either dive or dance, and dive was more sedentary) because she had been puke free for more than 12 hours by that point, but she was still just a puddle of humanity.  Friday night was just trio for Dorothy-- it's super cute (I mean tough-- they are tough, not cute)

Saturday Minnie felt much better-ish, so she came to dance.

Dorothy only had 4 dances on Saturday (very spread out comp), and the day flew by for Minnie and me

And for Dorothy!

Jazz:

Hip hop large group

Hip hop super geoup

(Dorothy definitely lost those glases on stage and then they got trampled. Oops.)

Lyrical (this dance is really pretty and also really fast, so it is hard to get a good pic of anyone)

Everything won. Well, not everything because lyrical and jazz were competing against each other (jazz won overall, and lyrical was 4th). Hip hop won overall in its category, and so did super group. The kids were thrilled.

Meanwhile, in Neenah, WI, Jack finished an excellent high school speech career with another state final round!!!!

Sunday meant MORE DANCE AND DIVING. Also! Harry and his girlfriend were in town for a College Democrats conference, so Ben got to have breakfast with them. Jack slept in (earned it!) and Minnie was LOCKED IN as a dance supporter, even repping her studio on her shirt. She also had a little bit of an appetite.

Dorothy had only 2 dances on Sunday, but that made the day feel longer, if I am being honest.

Commercial:

And tap (she hates the costume but I think it is the cutest ever)

She had a total blast!

Ok-- I am off to do one more 20-minute upper body strength workout for the week, run, get everyone off to school, grade a million essay exams, got to an undergrad research symposium, and drive to the Chicago burbs for MOAR dance and dive. **gulp**