Case of the Mondays

(don't know my weight: haven't weighed in 3 days)

I am mostly over my cold but have some lingering nasal congestion and just cannot shake my cough. It wouldn't be so bad if it were merely an annoying, occasional hack, but I have a tendency to go into a bronchospasm when I cough, especially if I happen to be lying down at the time. Thus my coughing continues to wake me up at night, and it's hard to feel good when you're not getting a good night's sleep. (Yeah, I have friends with newborns who are probably thinking "tell me about it!")

Nearly my whole day yesterday was taken up with a trip to Tucson. M, the little girl for whom I am a CASA through the juvenile court, turned 9 yesterday, so naturally I wanted to take her out for her birthday. I first met M just before her 4th birthday, so our relationship is a long one, especially by the standards of a legally-orphaned 9-year-old in foster care.

M's first choice for her birthday was a trip to Club Libby Lu to have her hair and makeup done. Because Club Libby Lu closed all its North American locations on January 31, I had to come up with a Plan B. M also loves horses, so I had the idea that getting to groom a horse might be a good alternative. (When she was much younger, she would often go to the stables to pet and feed horses with her grandparents.)

Lucky for me, my friend K lives in Tucson, owns a horse, and was willing to let M interact with the lovely 5-year-old "Buttercup." Although M quickly grew bored with brushing Buttercup, she did enjoy it and also enjoyed seeing her and all the other horses at the stable. I let her use my digital camera to photograph the horses, and I think she took 40-50 shots of the various horses there. (I'll have to post a sampling once I get them uploaded from my camera.)

After our trip to the stable, I took M to Chuck E. Cheese's for a while. The place was packed to the gills; we had to wait a while just to get in, and then every available table was occupied. The pizza was icky as usual and, as usual, M ate only one piece. . . . leaving me to wonder (not for the first time) why I even bothered getting a pizza. M (and I) won enough tickets for her to get a few small prizes, and she was happy with her outing.

I was glad to do what I could to give M a happy birthday. She liked her presents from me and had fun. (I got her a stuffed puppy that looks like a Golden but is actually a yellow Lab which she named "Sebastian, Jr." and the first book in the Twilight series.) I dropped her off in time for the family party her foster parents had planned for her. I could see that there were other gifts there for M and a delicious chocolate cake, so I think overall she had a pretty good day.

I returned home exhausted. I hadn't had a good night's sleep (coughing); forgot sunscreen and got a little sunburn from being at the stable; an hour at Chuck E. Cheese's is enough to raise any adult's blood pressure; and there was heavy traffic on the road back to Phoenix. (Did I forget to mention that it is a 5-hour round trip from my house to M's?)

Needless to say, after the day I had yesterday and another poor night's sleep, I didn't exactly wake up "rarin' to go" today. I dragged my lazy a$$ into work around 10:30 and have been sorta kinda working since then.

After working out a lot for a while there--26 out of 30 days, remember?--I now have only exercised ONCE since the 11th. And that was a session in the pool at the gym, not as vigorous as my usual sessions. I am more than a little annoyed that my relatively successful 30-day exercise challenge ended up being followed by nearly two weeks of basically forced inactivity, between the issues with my hip and this awful cold. (On the plus side, I haven't had any hip pain or noticable tightness for over a week.)


I desperately need to get back to the gym and plan to start tonight! I have my gym bag packed and plan to meet MM at the gym at 6:45 tonight. Not quite sure how this is going to go with my cough, but I have an inhaler and will scale back the intensity of my workout if necessary. Surely I can make it through 30 minutes on the treadmill, even with my cough, as long as I don't overdo it. Hell, I'll walk 3 miles per hour if I have to; at least it's exercise.

AND I need to start my 30-day fruit & veggie challenge. Maybe I will shoot to start on Wednesday. It's the first day of Lent, so that could be good.