Building up my karma...

Volunteered at the Daisy Dash 5K (extra points for manning the water station and subsequent pick up of 5000 dixie cups that had been thrown on the ground and trampled over)

Gave blood today

Volunteering at Girl Scout camp this summer

Something fishy's going on...

Animal Control parked outside my house for 20 minutes yesterday morning. Hmmmmm.

The dogs hadn't even been oustide yet.

Triple Play

Back to Sunday... The Mother's Day/Birthday/Anniversary bonanza.

Top philanthropist, Lisa, sponsored me in the triathlon

#1 fan, Mom, cheered me on at the triathlon

Met Dad for lunch

Evening cookout changed to take-out for the Mother's Day at our house due to rain and laziness.

Totally spoiled by my way too generous family and friends. Thanks for all my gifts!!

Called police because there was a group of 19-22 year olds punching each other in the front yard of a neighbor's home**

**Three squad cars came racing down the street and parked in front of my house and walked over to their's. It was quite a show for the dinner-party guests.

So exciting, in fact, that Molly, my very attractive (think Jessica Rabbit) friend of 33 years -though you'd never know it because she looks so young, had an asthma attack. I hit redial on my phone and soon another show of sirens and lights entertained the dinner guests. OK, that part I made up. She is allergic to dogs, started to have an asthma attack, didn't have her inhaler, but calmly and efficiently got herself and her family out of my crazy, dog-infested house in time to avoid a call to EMS. She couldn't have looked more beautiful if she'd spent the day at a dog-free spa. (How'd I do, Molly?)

After the cake was served, the guests had gone home, Lisa's purse had been discovered on the dining room floor, and the kids were nestled in their beds, Bill and I returned to the kitchen to discover that Astro had jumped up on the counter and face planted into my remaining cake. We were not pleased but quickly wiped the chocolate frosting off his eyebrows and buckled up for the inevitable indigestion.

Perhaps his immune system has been built up to fight chocolate toxins because there were no ill effects the first night. In fact, he was so concerned about maintaining his figure that he went for a 30 minute jog the next day.

He escaped when Lisa came to retrieve her forgotten purse. Note to self, lock door so Lisa can't open it herself next time. ha!

During the 30 or so minutes he was racing around the neighborhood completely ignoring my "Astro Come!" calls, an animal control truck rolled down the street and paused in front of my house. Did I mention I had just seen my Fight Club neighbor driving away? Fortunately, the dog catcher never saw Astro and I eventually caught up to his exhausted, muddy, wet body and hauled him into the shower.

He went on to disgorge the contents of his stomach seven times but has since made a full recovery. I highly recommend the Pet Spot Bot.

Trash Talk

My nephew Jeff has a trash fetish. He loves throwing things into the trash can. Taking the trash out is a thrill. Witnessing the trash being hauled away by the glorious trash truck is mesmerizing. So it was only fitting that his third birthday party include a trash truck cake, trash can shaped sippy cups, and trash truck t-shirts in the goodie bags.

Receiving his own personal rolling trash can as a birthday gift from Grandma might have been grounds for a blog post but no -- it doesn't stop there. The driveway was cordoned off for the guest of honor, a full sized, operational trash truck complete with sanitation engineers. Each child was given a plastic bag of trash to throw into the truck. An audible oooh could be heard from the party-goers when the household trash can was auto-lifted and dumped into the truck.

Unfortunately, I was too busy holding my nose to take any pictures.

Wetsuit modeling

I think I was being a bit ambitious when I reserved my wetsuit. I thought I would be much further along in my healthy resolutions. Needless to say, I felt like I was in sixth grade wrestling myself into my Jordache jeans as I shimmied my way into the wetsuit. At first, I put it on backwards. The molded bra cups should have been a big clue but at least I was in the privacy of my own home when I discovered that one. Oh wait! I did it again at the race and had to strip the whole thing off again on the pool deck with everyone watching and then squeeze back into it. I could talk myself into believing that no one noticed, but as I mentioned earlier it was 46 degrees and most people were standing in their speedos greedily eyeing my wetsuit. Who's the bigger dork??

I'm shaking at the keyboard. I have so much bloggable info and so little time to blog. Stay tuned for astro escape details, personal trash truck visits, police calls, ambulance emergencies, retaliatory dog catcher calls, and more news...

46 degrees of fun!

Apparently it was 46 degrees at race time. It was an OUTDOOR swim.
I'd say about 10% of the racers were wearing wetsuits (myself included).
It was well worth the time penalty getting out of it at the transition.

More info to come, but I finished the race and had a great birthday/Mother's Day/anniversary.

P.S. Astro ate my birthday cake. Fortunately, it was the leftover portion. Unfortunately, it had chocolate icing.

Swim-bike-run:





Photos: Jenny Ruley Photography

Flower Power

Sowing the seeds for our flower garden.

Grounded for a year...

Mom checked the blog yesterday and informed me that I am grounded for a year. I quickly rushed over some spelt bread (pumpkin streusel and zucchini) because after all:

Spelt has a positive effect on ones mind, heart and soul and in fact to your entire nature; This is due to the higher levels of L-Tryptophan which in turn promote and aid in the production of serotonin. Spelt is also rich in B and E vitamins. See http://www.berlinnaturalbakery.com/wonder_history.html

And it tastes AWESOME! This comes from a woman who used to pick out the broccoli specks from the Lipton's Cheddar and Broccoli Noodles.

After the "positive effect" took hold, I told her the part of the story that I omitted from my post. She laughed so hard that I decided to share it....

After I popped the brewer's yeast pill, I was instructed to suck on it and blow at the gnats with my brewer's yeast breath to repel them. Yes, I followed my instructions and I'm sure I appeared to be howling at some phantom moon in the middle of the day.

Later, at home, I sprayed my baseball cap with Off! and it was much more effective.

I don't think I'm grounded anymore. ha!