Knocked Up!

Yep...I'm knocked up, preggers! If all things go well, Michael and I will be expecting a little Schwartzy sometime in early/mid July.

For some reason I convinced myself that it was going to take us a while to get pregnant. There is such a thing as too much reading and research for these types of things. I really wasn't expecting it to happen the month that it did because MAS was going out of town for a while, but heck, I guess I was wrong! On Nov 1st I took a test and saw a really faint line. Not wanting to bias MAS, I made him look at the test and he saw something too. Of course I was convinced but he was not. All doubts were gone when I took a digital test the next morning and it said "Pregnant"! Our lives are really about to change and I cannot wait! I'm ready. Or at least I'll be ready by July.

My plan is to stay active throughout the entire pregnancy. I was doing really well until Thanksgiving, doing 1:00 every day, and swimming quite a bit! For a while I even thought I might be one of the lucky people to not get morning sickness. And then it hit! All day Friday, Sat, and Sun after Thanksgiving I laid on the couch sick ALL DAY. I watched more TV in those three days than I care to admit. I'm just now starting to feel a little bit better. I've started running on the treadmill (because it's FREEZING right now) for :30 and then walk for :20. I'm hoping next week to get back to my swim group. I've gone from sleeping 7 hours a night to sleeping 10! It's so hard to explain, but if that's what my body needs right now, that's my #1 priority. I also just learned that I'm anemic again, so getting that under control will also help me feel much better.

So there you have it! There is my 'race plan' for 2010...pop out a healthy and happy baby.

My Scientific Study on Mr. Pitt

OK, this is a little OT, but it's my blog and I just ate a big piece of chocolate cake and now I'm wired! That's what happens when you drastically reduce caffeine and alcohol consumption...I guess your system just grabs on to anything drug-related and runs with it. Perhaps I need to give up chocolate cake too.

So without further banter, I give you my most recent scientific study (men, you may choose to skip this post if you want):

1. Question: Is it possible for Brad Pitt to ever not be super humanly hot?
   
   
2. Do Background Research: Collect pictures of said subject through history and wearing different styles.
   
   
3. Construct a hypothesis: IF said subject stopped shaving, THEN he would still be exceptionally attractive to the female gender
   
   
4. Test your hypothesis by doing an experiment: Unfortunately said subject was not available to participate in my experiment, so I had to use more passive ways. Details are below:
   A) Statement: BP as young, clean-cut yet bad-boy. Findings: Yes.
   B) Statement: long hair, sensitive poet type. Findings: after a few seconds of hesitation, the answer is Yes, he's still extremely appealing to the eye.
   C) Statement: bloody, beat up, smoking, and playing a psycho. Findings: do I even have to ask?
   D) Statement: bleach-blond hair. Findings: the fact that said subject was supposedly going through relationship issues makes this dye job OK and acceptable (who hasn't had a bad post-breakup hair snafu?) .
   E) Statement: slight facial hair. Findings: yes.
   F) Statement: 1980s 'stache. Findings: it takes a special person to pull this off well. Yes.
   G) Statement: This has to be for some role. Findings: results were inconclusive.
   H) And finally, the last experiment. Statement: One bad thing cannot ruin an entire outfit. Findings: well....well...hmmm...."yes" said with some trepidation.
   
   
5. Analyze your data and draw a conclusion: Through extensive experimentation, it has been determined that said subject is unable to do anything to resolve super human hotness. However, if is advisable that said subject reviews attached experiments and reverts back to a more appealing state of facial hairiness.
   
   
6. Communicate your results: done.
   

Peaceful

I'm in a peaceful and quiet place, life is good :-)

Recently I've felt like I don't have much to blog about. Michael and I are hoping to make babies sometime in the near-er future, so I'm only training about half of what I was doing this time last year. My race schedule for 2010 has to consist of races that can be registered for last minute. After a few weeks of random schedules, I finally have consistency back in my workout routine, which includes swimming MWF mornings with the D3 group.

Swimming with the group has me finally facing something I don't like about swimming: pulling with paddles. It's my kryptonyte. I usually lead my swimming lane, but when the paddles come out, I drop back to, oh, the end. When the other guys put them on, they go so much faster. I think it's a triathlete thing, and probably has more to do with the pull-buoy helping people who aren't great at kicking. The coach knows me too well, my swimmer-shoulder excuse is no match for him, he sees straight through the B.S. So now I'm pulling, with paddles, slowly. But I'm doing it. I've decided that I'm going to get fast at it. People love pulling, and I will too. This is my off-season swim focus.

In other news, I'm taking a sewing class on Friday. There are some girlie things about me, and my desire to be really good at sewing is one of them. Right now I can make baby blankets and super-hero capes (think 'straight lines'). I'm hoping to expand that menu to also include aprons, baby clothes and handbags. Oh, and really cute animal costumes!

P.S. Dear Brad Pitt, please shave your beard. Thank you.

Treadmill Dumbing Down

(the pic is actual treadmill involved in this story)
I got a treadmill technology beat down today, and it was not pretty. Now, I consider myself an OK-smart person, one who is embracing of new technology and very math/science/numbers oriented. My highest grade in college was in my Calc III class and I was even a software engineer for a few years. So usually I can figure out how to make electronic things work.

But not today.

At lunch today I ventured to the YMCA for an easy 30 minute run on the treadmill. Ugh. But I was ready, iPod in hand and my new running visor to keep my focus straight (wearing a hat while running inside helps me be less distracted by pretty things in my side vision). As I walk towards the row of treadmills I notice a lack of obnoxious TV screens attached to the machines..yes. I hate staring at a blank TV one foot from my face. I find my treadmill but as I approach, I found out it was too good to be true...these treadmills have TV embedded in the front of them. And I notice they have gross sticky finger prints all over the screens (as in, sticky with Swine Flu germs, people sweat, and probably some snot too).

So I figure out how to turn on the treadmill. I play with the TV and nothing happens. It's a touch screen. I stand there poke...poke...poke...nothing. The menu will not engage. So frustrating. I had to ask the maintenance person, he comes right over, presses the 'button' and the menu comes up. Oh, it's Press not Poke. Ick, that means more time my fingertip has to spend on the germy screen.

So I press. And the TV gets stuck on "A Baby Story" on TLC. Really? The LAST thing I want to watch while I'm hammering hard on a treadmill. So I press some more. It gets stuck on a Soap Opera. I don't even know why I tried....eventually I figured out how to turn off the TV. Thank goodness. At this point it's still at 3 mph walking pace. Time to figure out how to run. I press the big speed-me-up handle and it jumps to 7.5 mph. Ha! Not for 30 minutes. I press again, 5.5. Not going to work. So I decided to try to use the touch screen again to do it 0.1 by 0.1 until I finally reach my desired 6.4 mph speed.

Ugh. In all this playing around, I manage to turn on the "time and miles" section. I spent 7:25 walking and trying to figure out how to use that silly silly treadmill. All I want to do it get on, get my speed, and stare at the blank yellow wall in front of my face. I don't want to watch TV...even if I wanted to I would be motion sick. Do people really run on those things and watch TV at the same time? Without falling off? I'd like to see that.

At one point I stood on the rails to switch my music. I knew to finish the last 5 minutes I would need a great motivating song. In the time it took me to find my other song, I see a message on the screen that says "no person detected" and SHUT OFF! It just plain 'ol turned off and stopped. Seething with frustration, by this time I'm an expert at controlling the speed so I just re-start the workout and go for those last 5 minutes. After 5 minutes was done, I pressed that big red "emergency shut-off" button. At least that's one thing that doesn't ever change.

It took me 40 minutes to run 30 minutes and I left that Y feeling a little stupider than when I arrived. Tomorrow I'm running outside, no questions asked.

Snow Day!

Well, it's here, our first big snow storm of the year, and this one is a REAL Colorado dump. In the past 24 hours we've gotten 2 feet of snow and it should keep snowing until the evening. We usually get two of these a year, so only one more to go! I don't remember even having a storm this early though, before Trick or Treating. There are going to be a lot of really cold people on the Naked Pumpkin run this year.

For those good at logical math problems: Snow + Honda Civic + living in the middle of a hill = Melissa being house bound. Today is day 2 of working from home, and though I did it for a long time in other jobs, I don't like doing it with my current job. I enjoy being in the office, with my co-workers and no matter how hard I try, I just can't get the cats or Sky to talk to me about cycling, coaching, or my relapse back into a Famous Amos Cookies addiction. Not interested.

Have you ever worked from home and watched your animals? This is what they did ALL DAY when they weren't trying to be on my lap:
Feeling the itch to get out, I decided to shovel the driveway. Of course now it has another foot of snow on it, but I've learned it's easier to shovel 1 foot twice than 2 feet once. I tried to engage Sky, but she was not interested. I guess if I had barely any fur on me I wouldn't want to be out in the snow either. I'm starting to wonder if she needs a cute dogie sweater for the winter?

Mission accomplished.
Michael came home for work and I had to snap a shot. This is what he looks like for work in a snow storm (yummy):

This is what I look like:
Under that blanket are my flannel PJ pants, at 4pm. I even put my snow pants OVER them to shovel the driveway. Is this what people who WFH full-time do every day? I can't even imagine. It would really cut-down on wardrobe expense. See how hard I'm working? Two computers AND the phone. Someone has to bring home the bacon! ;-)

Yummy, bacon.

After work I hoped on my bike for an hour and had a good workout. I'll probably do the same again this afternoon since running and swimming are not going to happen.

Or perhpas I'll snowshoe to the grocery store, we are out of coffee and chocolate...

Girls Weekend '09

"Even though we've changed and we're all finding our own places in the world, we all know that when the tears fall or the smiles spread across our face, we'll come to each other because no matter where this crazy world takes us, nothing will ever change so much to the point where we're not all still friends"

Triathlon brought the four of us together years ago, but it's our friendship and love that have kept us together through all the changes that time brings!

The fun has been had, Estes Park survived, and we had a great weekend. Our First Annual (because you know there will be more!) Girls Weekend is in the books. Below are the rated PG pics and descriptions. Oh don't you wonder?! We were very well behaved. After all, we've left our club hopping, dirty dancing, late night skinny dipping years behind us.

I think.

The weekend started on Friday with Sky getting the required de-stinking bath. Michael was out of town on business, meaning I'm on dog duty and therefore Sky gets invited to Girl's weekend. She is special, the other three ladies have female dogs and they did not get to come. I told her she had to be on her BEST behavior. And she was. Friday night we had pizza, drank wine, and stayed up until midnight...way past all of our bedtimes. We really know how to party. Like that graph? Yeah, the smoke detector was going off in the middle of the night. And not the loud "there's a fire!" but that intermittent "the battery is low" beep. I would say it's like sleeping next to someone who snores, and then you think it's going to stop, you hold your breath for a few seconds....and then it starts again. Lucky for me I had my handy ear plugs so I was the only one who missed out on all the late night fire alarm shenanigans.

On Sat morning we got up and took Sky on a walk. The cabin we rented was right downtown. On our way we ran into some locals:
Saturday was also filled with a run, brunch, and horseback riding. Saturday night was filled with more pizza, wine, a new battery for the fire alarm, and another round of late-night "the f*@king alarm is going off!" moments. Once again, I missed that entire event. What am I going to do once we have kids and I actually have to be able to hear important things? One night I even slept through our "Hazardous gasses" detector (part of our Carbon Monoxide detector, which goes off when we cook anything with curry or cumin, it's broken).

In the end, I think we all had a great time. It does not sound like a crazy weekend now that I read what I wrote, but it was just what we were looking for! No matter how busy life may get (medical school, IM training, raising kids), I have a feeling we'll be doing this years to come.

Next year: Vegas Baby! Even if I'm big and fat and 39 weeks pregnant, I'll be there.

Mom, I'm just kidding about that.

T-Minus-32 Hours

Girls weekend starts in less than 32 hours. In fact, IF I make it to hear Chrissie Wellington speak at Fleet Feet tomorrow night (I know...how cool is THAT?) it'll be starting in less than 24 hours! I am so excited I can hardly contain myself.

So here's the scoop:

Friday morning Sharon (assistant coach) and I are doing a hike with the girls from the CU Triathlon team, it's like a "get to know them outside of the pool" type outing. I'm hoping they bring along their swim suits so I can still identify them in real-people clothing, maybe attach them to their hiking backpacks or walking sticks. Here's the catch, it's at 6am and is going to be freezing cold and dark. I like hiking if it's at a running pace or done while sitting atop a mountain bike, but not so much actual hiking. I call that walking slowly up steep stuff.

All that aside, I'm looking forward to the social part of Friday morning!

After that, work, but then the official Girls weekend starts! Four of us, plus one lucky pink Weimaraner dog named Sky-Marie, spend a few good days in Estes Park. We might hike...again...yeah. Or we might not. That's the thing about Girls Weekend...we get to do whatever we want. I'm personally pulling for manicures, trashy magazines, wine, and some chocolate. What we do to fill the space between will be priceless, because whatever it is, we'll be doing it together and having fun.

BREAK

Racing in 2010 has started to creep into my mind because let's face it, I'm completely lost and crabby without something on my calendar, anything. I was working on being patient and not thinking about next year's races quite so soon, but I give up...it's time to mend the problem. I love the idea of doing a Bloggers Camp reunion type race, open to non-campers as well, just a fun group of people getting together!