Lingering Halloween Celebrations

I hope everyone had a good Halloween!

After dressing up twice over the weekend, I had no motivation to come up with anything for the office yesterday.

Plus, as I said before, we had a pretty awesome costume-filled weekend. Which is still a relatively new concept for me. Halloween was on my mom’s shit list for a long time.

With both of my parents being notorious teachers in our high school, turns out we were a major target for the good ol’ “let’s to toilet paper a house!” prank.

However, to be fair, maybe we were also asking for it. Growing in our front yard was a 20-year-old tree (or something like that). It surely SCREAMED “decorate me with common household items! Throw food staples at me!”

I still don’t know how people got a trash can up in it one year when we were out of town.

Hats off to you crazy tricksters on that one.

Anyway…

I didn’t really need to celebrate the holiday yesterday in order to throw myself into massive sugar coma.

We had birthday celebrations to take care of around here.

And cupcakes are way better than candy corn. Don’t even try to argue.

Especially when I now know they can be made just two at a time. Mind blown.

Someone give me a reason to make another pair of cupcakes today. Please…

Halloween Weekend Randomness

Not that long ago, the roomie and I had issues trying to figure out what to be for the most important holiday of the year. Well… one of the important ones. Depends who you ask.

But while shopping one afternoon in a desperate last attempt, she pulled out a pair of metallic blue tights and asked, “what can we do with these?”

Challenge accepted.

Sure, neither of us have read Cat in the Hat in the last decade. Minor detail.

Another minor detail? We hope to have no trick-or-treaters as we do not have any candy in the house.

Please don’t think we’re hateful. Our place is sort of off the beaten path and I’m pretty sure we didn’t get one knock last year.

But it’s true- no candy.

Let’s just hope they don’t think I’ll be giving up any of the Tastykakes that Kace, my former blogger bud, sent me.

MINE. DON’T TOUCH.

They were the best surprise ever when I came home on Thursday night.

We’re not going to talk about how many I can consume in the course of an entire Sunday. We’re also not going to talk about the laziness that occurred on said Sunday.

Or maybe we will. The only time I even bothered to leave the house was to walk to Whole Foods to pick up dinner. It was clearly not going to make itself and, at the time, it made total sense to pay over twice as much for the premade stuff instead of just buying a can. I was even too lazy for the microwave. Which ended up getting used anyway because the overpriced soup was cold by the time I got home.

Fail on so many levels. #FirstWorldProblems

Naturally I sulked about it before going to bed an hour and a half early.

T’was a good weekend, though, full of good friends, an excess of good drinks, and a boy who is yet to run for the hills (I’m just as speechless about it as you are).

The weekend exhaustion hangover on Monday was worth it.

Now… if only we could get through the dreaded Tuesday…

Back In The Day

I am older than my brother by approximately a year and a half.  Which doesn’t mean a lot now. But back when we were kids?

I was THE boss.

When butter and peanut butter are the foundation, you know it’s gonna get good…

He was a pretty decent sport about it, though. He’d let me make the executive decision to play beauty parlor or dress up regularly enough. And to show I wasn’t a heartless dictator, sometimes his teenage mutant ninja turtles would be allowed to save the day when it was time to have adventures with Barbie.

I know. I’m such a giver.

Anyway, little did he know, my power was self-appointed. And little did he know that I really had no idea what I was doing. Like ever.

Probably like most political leaders today. (ZING)

My new mixer! This one hopefully won’t attempt to kill me by having parts of beaters fly all about…

But that didn’t matter. So when I had the brilliant idea to recreate sledding in the middle of summer?

He was down to clown.

So how did we do it, you ask?

Rolling dough into balls… and trying not to eat all the dough…

Well. Our house is on top of a hill. A hill just big enough to have a house on it and that’s it.

Anyway, there’s also a retaining wall built into the hill. It’s hard to explain, but basically imagine a steep hill and a wall at the bottom of it. With a tree was hanging out about 10 feet away from said wall.

I started making the cookies pretty like the traditional peanut butter cookie would be. But then I realized it wouldn’t matter in the end… time efficiency is important!

As a 5-year-old, I was pretty confident in my navigating abilities.

Yes. There was great confidence that I would be able to steer my little red wagon down a hill between two obstacles.

Did I mention I was 5 and also thought I could fly if I closed my eyes and wished it really really hard?

As for the “puppy chow” coating… you know I’m not one to make a dessert without chocolate being involved…

Long story short, the glory of flying down the hill in our little red wagon was a wonderful full 10 seconds before slamming directly into the retaining wall.

As the leader who wanted the best view, I was in front. Because I was in front, I also smacked into the retaining wall. Wagons didn’t have airbags back then.

Dipping the tops of cookies into the peanut butter chocolate coating. The original recipe requires you to dip the ENTIRE cookie into it… but that seemed almost excessive…

No brain damage occurred (shut it, I know what you’re thinking), but boy does the head bleed easily.

My brother was unharmed physically, which further strengthens the argument of why children should not sit in the front passenger seat until the age of 12, however, I think he was a little jarred emotionally as I was screaming and crying about ALL THE BLOOD OMG.

I do feel bad if there was any long term harm done. Sorry, brother.

Anyway… all the blood loss came from a teeny tiny cut in my head, and after a few days, my brother and I were back in cahoots together.

The whole reason I even bothered to tell you this long and drawn out story is that we were like two peas in a pod. No matter what the idea or scheme, I could always count on him as a backup. Whether it be flying down a hill like idiots, or most importantly, stealing as many cookies as possible from the kitchen.

The original recipe calls for way more powdered sugar. But I didn’t really find it necessary, either. The cookies are super rich as-is.

My mom used to make massive batches of puppy chow (muddy buddies- whatever) and leave it out to harden. As soon as she left the kitchen? Game on. In and out of the kitchen we’d go… mouths full of puppy chow.

It’s amazing my brother and I didn’t contract diabetes as children. Because when we weren’t stuffing our faces with freshly made cookies/sweets, we were spooning the dough out of the bowl. Or eating whipped cream out of the container.

Yes that happened and no, we’re not ashamed.

The peanut butter makes them healthy. Protein, don’t ya know…

So there ya go. A double throwback to stories of a more innocent age and cookies that everyone in the world seemed to grow up with.

Those were the days…

For those of you who happen to love puppy chow as much as I do, here’s the recipe. Straight from the Betty Crocker website. Although I did actually make Martha Stewart’s peanut butter cookies on my own. Using the mix just wasn’t going to cut it this time. I couldn’t have eaten spoonfuls of peanut butter that way.

*Shoulder shrug*

And I swear I tried to find a picture of said hill/retaining wall. But alas… there isn’t one. So instead, here’s a picture of me bottle feeding a calf.
Close enough.

Happy weekend!

Happy Hour Happenings

I’m not quite sure what it is, but whenever there is a need to share important information, a happy hour seems to be one of the favorite ways to do it.

Who can resist drink specials and bar food?

Anyway, I haven’t been able to join Lauren and her Team Challenge group for their weekly runs recently. And since that’s the time we use to gossip while the rest of the group logs hard-core mileage, we decided maybe we should just call it what it is and sit on our butts to chat instead. And eat pizza. Obvi.

Lauren said she was picky. And then proceeded to list off my favorite toppings as the ones she’d eat. Black olives, mushrooms, and pepperoni. Love.

Storytelling is way easier that way.

Which reminds me, I believe we’d both like to publicly apologize to the people in the booth behind us. You had no warning of the things you’d overhear. It wasn’t fair.

Anyway, after all the pizza and garlic knots (um… yum), it only seemed fair to get physical activity in this morning.

Which, after half-priced bottles, isn’t always the greatest. But then again, if I continue to have dates and happy hours every day of the week, I’m just going to have to suck it up and deal.

Being a social butterfly. It’s like totally super hard. #firstworldproblems

So yes, I had my first run this morning since the half marathon. 4.9 miles outside because this randomly warm weather will never last and I’m determined to take advantage of it as much as possible.

It feels weird to not have a race in the pipeline. But since I’m still seemingly motivated to get up before 5:00 to do something productive, I’m just going to enjoy the lack of stress from not having an end goal.

Freeballin’ it, ya’ll.

We’ll see how long it lasts.

And being as how I can’t seem to connect one thought to another in this post, and figuring out a way to eloquently wrap this up is not going to happen, I should just quit while I’m ahead and consider scheduling in a few nap times over the weekend.

K, bye.

ZOOMA Great Lakes Half Marathon: The Neverending Hill

The most well-deserved after-race medal/award I’ve ever earned.

Truth.

This last weekend, us ZOOMA ambassadors reunited, along with a few more awesome Chicago bloggers/runners in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Our weekend had finally come- The ZOOMA Great Lakes Half Marathon.

We rented a lake house, officially dubbed the party house, and had ourselves a good time.The house was amazing and we easily fit 14 ladies comfortably for the night.

All we had to do was supply the food.

ssshhh… don’t tell the rest of the healthy living bloggers we may have had more candy than vegetables on site…

If only we didn’t have such a rude 5:00 wakeup call.

Twinsies! Or at least until I became a total baby and decided I was too cold to not dress in layers…

I hope you like bagels and peanut butter… because that’s what you’re eating…

Luckily for me, our breakfast was what I normally eat for prerace. Sometimes it’s awesome us bloggers can be so cliché with our peanut butter.

Because it was a point-to-point race, we met up at the Abbey Resort to get shuttled out to the start line.

Kelly was super pumped we were the cool kids on the back of the bus. Or at least we were self-proclaimed to be. Still counts.

Two hours after waking up, the sun finally starts to rise. So many things wrong with that sentence…

The view was lovely, but the temps were not as nice. We all shivered and shuddered until the start. I opted to keep my long sleeves on- something to be thankful for every time there was a brisk breeze.

So how was the race you ask?

Well.

We were warned about the hills. But even the warnings were not enough to prepare me for what was about to happen.

Turn the first corner, oh hey- a hill.
Congrats, you’ve hit mile marker 2.  Go run up a hill.
You’ve been running on a flat surface for a quarter mile. This is too long, so go run up a hill.
You just finished a subtle incline for a mile. Go run a steep hill.

I truthfully believe I was running uphill for 75% of the race.

The worst was near the end- mile 11. At that point, I was just keeping my head down to avoid the soul crushing inclines ahead of me. But at that particular spot, I looked up. Not one person was running up the hill. It was THAT steep. I attempted my arm-pumping, look like I’m running but in all actuality am barely moving, run. For about 20 feet. Screw this, I’m walking.

I would have cried, but it’s dangerous to dehydrate yourself like that in a race.

So after the half mile from hell (I don’t think it was this long, but that’s what it felt like), we ran a little longer and turned around. To go back down it.

Now, I’ll go ahead and say my love of the stair machine at the gym probably saved my life going up those hills (because we all know I wasn’t training for them on the treadmill). But the downhill? It was so steep. And it took so much energy to slow myself down as I was barreling down, that every time my foot hit the road, my body got a shock to the system. Everything vibrated. With every step.

“This is going to hurt sooooo bad tomorrow.”

But that was about the end of it. Which was good. I was taking a beating. My endurance somehow held up. But my joints weren’t going to take much more.

2:00:04.

10th in my age group. A small race, but I feel it important to throw that out there, anyway.

Some of the ambassadors post race. Smiling. Because it was over. Whew!

And with that, I finished my 5th half marathon.

Check out the sweet compression socks. It’s how a lot of us ambassadors were able to see each other in the distance. And they kept us warm. Duh.

Thank goodness there was wine at the post race. That’s all I have to say about that.

And thank goodness my parents were there to take me to lunch afterwards.

Because I wanted to eat EVERYTHING.

A local brew called Spotted Cow to go with my turkey burger. Because I like diversity.

Oh and more food…

Why yes, the tree of broccoli was quite delicious with my mahi mahi. Thanks for asking.

So yeah. That was my ZOOMA experience. Not my best race time. But not my worst. And with all the hills? I’ll take it.

Plus, I got to see my parents and hang with a bunch of pretty awesome girls for the weekend.

Wine. Jewelry. And a solid girls weekend.

Worth it.

Now excuse me as me and my sore thighs limp on out the door to work…

Laters.

Friday Facts About The ZOOMA Half

Facts revolving around my upcoming half marathon weekend:

1. My ZOOMA Women’s half marathon is tomorrow. I have not trained adequately for it. My hopes are that the efforts put into the Chicago Half Marathon in September will at least halfway carry over. Or just a smidge.

But in the meantime, I’m packed and super excited!

Sometimes it pays to raid your mom and dad’s house over holidays for all the good stuff.

That’s where I got my old jenga game from middle school, not the wine. I can buy that myself now…

2. I am riding with the lovely Meghan to Wisconsin for said race. We have met once and ran into each other while running on the lakefront once. If I disappear for an extended number of days, you know what happened. SEND HELP.

Just kidding, Meghan. I totally trust you.

But just in case, guys…

3. My parents are meeting up with me in Wisconsin to watch the race and take their first official trip to Wisconsin. I’m going to introduce them to cheese curds the same way I was almost two years ago. With good beer in a bar. This may be disastrous.

4. The state of my nails are atrocious about 90% of the time. However, for the time being, they are rocking the blue. Not ZOOMA blue, but close enough.

I really love that it’s time to break out the dark polish again. Makes me feel so bad ass for no good reason at all.

Even if I’m really awful at giving myself manicures. Points for trying?

5. Some of us girls are staying together to make it a super fun, estrogen-filled weekend. We decided to potluck it out. I made cookies.

You’ll hear more about those later. But feel free to drool. They are delicious. I should know. I had no less than four last night and intend to have one with my second cup of coffee later on.

I have a sugar addiction problem. Send more help.

6. There are no set goals for the race itself. Just to finish. Which is technically a goal, but stop getting so technical on me. This is mostly due to all that hill training I planned to do never happening (shame), the furthest I’ve ran since my last race was 8 miles (shame), and my cold apparently got a second wind and lingered until about two days ago (not my fault).

This is just not going to be “my race”.

But whatever. The weather seems like it’ll pull through, Wisconsin is supposedly quite pretty at this time of year, a lot of great girls are running it, and I get a necklace at the end.

And wine. Lots of wine.

My parents should probably find me at the finish sooner than later.

Did I mention there’s wine?

Where was I?

Oh yeah… so that’s my projected weekend in a nutshell. I hope you all have an equally fun time. Or at least get to drink equal amounts of wine.

Did I mention there’s going to be wine?

Wait… where was I again…?

Hard Life Decisions

Life decisions have been super hard this week.

We can’t seem to decide on a Halloween costume.

In college, I knew my costume and had it ordered by September 1st. It would hang on my closet door as motivation to stop drinking the keystone and make an attempt at 15 minutes on the elliptical or something of equal worth once or twice a week (I miss you, metabolism). All so I could shimmy my way into the costume to go out and drink more keystone.

Now? We’re under two weeks. My roommate and I want to do something. What? Not a clue. And don’t you dare suggest I pull out the old costumes from college. I have this thing called “dignity” now. Or at least a shred of it. Don’t tell me otherwise.

And don’t even get me started on where we’re even going to wear the supposed costumes. The band we normally celebrate the holiday with is out of town (Guys- I’m upset about this. I’m looking at you, Rod.) and all the venues that have been discussed include live music we’re less than enthusiastic to shake our booties to.

Life is sooooo hard.

And because life decisions such as this are leaving me indecisive and all in a tizzy, I need comfort food.

Ok, fine. I’ve had this extra taco filling sitting in my freezer for way too long and I just  really wanted an excuse to make cornbread. Because apparently having it on two other separate occasions over the last 7 days is not enough.

So I mixed some up. And poured it on top of stuff in a pan. And threw it in the oven, set the timer for 20 minutes, and crossed my fingers.

Cooking without a recipe is dangerous.

But sometimes? It works out.

And when in doubt? Top stuff with salsa.

Ole!

At least I’m not hungry anymore.

However, the search continues…

So… what do you have going on for Halloween this year? And can I come?