The last week, the short version

I had a busy week! I haven't updated my blog in about 2 weeks and I have to be at work soon, so here is the short version of some stuff I did.

- I did a 5K. Actually, WE did a 5K. We as in me, Jim, Sydney, Mady, Gwen, Mom and Posse. And Posse won our age category, yay! We all finished without getting hurt, yay!
-We had an Easter party on Tuesday for the kids since not all of them will be with on Easter. We invited the kids from next door over for dinner and cupcake decorating  and an Easter egg hunt. It was actually a lot of fun! And I must say I am relieved that tomorrow I don't have to do it all over again!
- Jim and I signed up for the Big Sur 5K coming up this next weekend. Mom and Posse will be there too. We decided that we are going to camp in Monterey the night before since we have to be at the start so early. Should be interesting because I am not a happy camper, ha. Then Posse and I have to be back at our stores the night of the race to do inventory counts, boo!
- I almost hit a dog in the street at Delta on Wednesday. On Thursday an officer caught the same dog on campus and called the pound. Jim and I didn't want it to go to the pound so we brought it home. It is supposed to be temporary. We named her Chloe. Jim is already attached. The cat is pissed. Did I mention I'm not a dog person?

The word of the week is "pain".

I've been in pain all week! I have been training for the Bay to Breakers 12K the past several weeks and it seems each week brings on a new ache and pain. Last week I hurt my left ankle running. I let it rest for a few days so I would be good to participate in the Red Rhino walk with Sydney (she had a great time and did 17 laps around the track!) and some of my awesome partners. By then it was feeling a lot better. It felt SO good, that after I got home from the walk, I went home and ran 2 miles. Still felt ok. That was Sunday.

The Friday before that I had 4 teeth pulled as part of the whole braces thing. I felt surprisingly good after the surgery. On Monday I went to the orthodontist for an adjustment. But they did more than just tighten the wires: they also attached a silicone "chain" on top of the wire to quickly close the gaps where the 4 teeth once were AND they attached "wire ties" to a few of my teeth to rotate them. The pain of that visit alone was worse than having the teeth pulled. And ever since Monday my mouth has been throbbing as the silicone chains and wire ties move my teeth into the still healing spaces. It has not been fun.

On Tuesday I went out for about a 5 mile run/walk. I changed up my route and got home tired but happy because my ankle wasn't giving my any trouble. I closed at my store that night and about halfway into my shift I realized my knees were swelling. When I woke up Wednesday morning, my knees looked like softballs. Nice. So of course they hurt like hell.

Today my mouth and knees still hurt. I am so damn grouchy when I'm in pain. I took some ibuprofen to take the edge off, but then I had a setback at work that pretty much threw me off the deep end and seemed to amplify all the physical pain I was feeling. I counted down the minutes until 3, praying that I wouldn't get a surprise visit from the boss, because I was not sure I could just stand there calm and reserved like I normally do when he shows up.  I had planned to try a small run after work today, but my then the ibuprofen had long since worn off and was like, screw it. I took advantage of the fact there was no one home and a fell asleep for like 4 hours. Lazy.

America's next top mayor/tutor/runner/manager/whatever

I overthrew the mayor of my local Starbucks this week on Foursquare. This chick Shailese stole my mayorship of the Starbucks on Kettleman and Lower Sac about 4 months ago and I finally got it back. I realized after she stole my mayorship back then that this chick pretty much goes wherever I go. We have traded the mayorship of Hollister and the Beckman Starbucks back and forth a few times, we have been at Chili's at the same time, she has even checked in to MY Starbucks. The funny thing is, I have never actually seen Shailese. We are not even friends on Foursquare, but we apparently live mirror lives.

Sydney has been having some trouble in school lately. The frustrating thing is that its not because she doesn't understand stuff, its because she is being lazy. She half-ass does her homework and pretends to do her daily reading. Its especially hard because when I look over her work, then stuff that isn't getting done is homework that should have been completed at her dad's house. The week I was on vacation she did zero homework. And her dad is completely non-receptive whenever I have concerns. I had to talk to him recently about her eating habits at his house (he lets her eat whatever, whenever and frequently gets fast food for dinner or doughnuts for breakfast) because she has been gaining weight at an alarming rate and he blew me off. I have been trying to get her more active and prepare healthier food for her at home, but its like its for nothing if she is going to go back to her dad's and nothing has changed. Why do I always have to be the mean parent? Next week I'm going to try something a little different here at home for homework time. I'm also signing her up for homework lab on days she has daycare after school so it actually gets done on nights I don't have her.

Sydney and I are doing a 5K in Stockton in a couple of weeks and she is really excited about it. We also have the walk-a-thon next week. We have been running and walking a lot lately to prepare for it. If you ask Sydney, she is training for a marathon. She said she is going to "beat me" at the walk-a-thon (marathon). LOL.

I thought I was having a good week at work this week until my boss came in Friday afternoon and burst my success bubble. Hopefully this week will be better, but he is due at my store Monday afternoon again, so probably not. So I will likely be having cocktail hour for about 3 hours tomorrow after work.

Un-productive Monday

I did not get ANYTHING done today, gezz! I worked on the floor part of the day, went on an Ecosure rampage and spent way too much time covering and re-arranging the schedule for funerals, jury duty and broken ankles (all not mine). I took an hour and a half lunch so I could go to a little skit Sydney was participating in at her school. I couldn't even finish the schedule for next week because I was having to wait for the boss to decided what times we were going to be doing interviews next week for barista trainers (3 days in a row with the boss...god help me). Then there was the 1 hour conference call (ugh). I just didn't get anything done and it was so irritating. My only saving grace was the fact that we were running high after a great promo week: We knocked out over 50% of our whole promo goal for whole bean and VIA, we were all over the area hot sheet for those two categories, petites, and drive transactions growth over last year. Not only that, we were #1 in the district for VIA dollars, average ticket and sales comps. That stuff makes me feel good. And it keeps the boss out of my hair, which makes me feel great!!

After work, I stopped by my orthodontist to score some more silicone for my braces. Silicone is my new best friend. These braces are tearing up the inside of my mouth and the silicone makes it so much more bearable. Then I went to the oral surgeon for a consultation. I have to have 4 teeth pulled as part of my treatment. Apparently, my mouth is too small to accommodate all of my teeth (funny, I always thought I had a big mouth, lol) and in order to correct the issues I have with my jaw, it is a necessary step. So that will be happening on April 1st. And its so not an April Fool's joke.  

Chewing is too much work.

So I've had the braces for just over a week now and I'm still unable to to eat much. I've been surviving on banana protein smoothies from work and mashed potatoes. Most of the stuff I've tried to eat this week (eggs, overcooked veggies, pasta), I gave up chewing and just swallowed whole. Of course I was promptly rewarded with an upset stomach, so it wasn't worth it anyways. Tonight we went to Chilis and I was able to put down a cup of soup and a couple of pieces of  chicken quesadilla. I'm not quite sure is the pain I'm feeling now was worth it though. AND, I had to give up red wine because it will stain my clear brackets. I had to switch back cocktails. What the hell was I thinking getting braces?? The only bonus: I've lost weight and I'm feeling alot thinner. There is almost no better feeling than feeling thinner. Sounds shallow, but you know its true.

Brace Face.

On Tuesday I got something I have been wanting for a very long time. I finally went to the orthodontist and got braces. I have been wanting braces since I was a teenager, but we could never afford them. When I was 22, I almost got braces. I had the appointment set up and everything, but then a few days before my appointment Lewis lost his job. I cancelled it, not wanting to have another expense while he was unemployed. But even after we started doing great financially, I never rescheduled the appointment.

I have always been extremely self-conscious about my teeth. I can't stand to look at myself in pictures because it is the first thing I see, and I think its the first thing every one else sees. During the consultation, I nearly backed out of the whole thing because A) I wasn't a candidate for Invisiline, B) I am going to have to have 4 back teeth pulled to make room for the rest of my teeth to go back and C) its going to take up to 22 months of treatment time. 22 MONTHS? What the hell. But everyone at the office was super nice, and my orthodontist seemed really excited about what the final results would look like. He said it would be really dramatic. So I did it.

My first appointment took 2 and a half hours. When it was all done, I was left with a mouth full of metal and the inability it close my mouth completely. It is actually pretty mortifying. I'm not sure which is worse, my teeth before or with the braces. I know that it is only temporary, but now I know for sure my braces is all anyone notices when they look at me. By the end of first day, my mouth was throbbing. By day 3, the brackets have done a pretty good job of shredding the inside of my mouth and the aching was even worse. Today is day 6, and the pain has subsided but I still haven't been able to eat much. Having the braces is definitely going to curb my snacking habit.  I've been living off of mashed potatoes and mac n'cheese for almost a week...but I'm not really complaining about that. Mashed potatoes are my favorite food anyways.

Last week rocked.

I was on vacation last week and it was awesome. I have decided that I need to start taking vacations more often, because A) maxing out on vacation hours causes me to lose money and that is just dumb, B) putting work before life just isn't working for me anymore and C) sometimes I just need a damn break. My boss drives me crazy and my people are more than capable of holding shit down for a week. Here was my week:

Monday: Admin day at work. I worked hard and counted down the minutes to vacation. Sydney was with her dad this week, so that worked out well. I had scheduled myself to open, so I got off about 1:30p. Jim and I loaded up my car with our stuff and his kids so we could drop them off in Lemoore at their mom's house on our way down south. When we got to her house, I created a Foursquare venue titled "Bitch Ass Freeloaders House". I was way way too excited about it and so was Jim. On the way to Lemoore, I had noticed a casino off the highway, so we stopped there for an hour or so after dropping the kids off. We gambled a little (didn't win anything) and had dinner (worst buffet ever), then continued on our way down south. We got to Redondo Beach about 9pm and decided to stay there for the night.

Tuesday: We got up early because Jim had to be in San Diego by 2pm. Jim had a meeting (he was technically there for work, not for vacation). We headed down to the Strand in Hermosa Beach and had breakfast at Scotty's while looking at the ocean. It was beautiful out, and not even very cold. We walked around and shopped at little and went Starbucks. The barista at Starbucks remembered my drink, which was amazing since I had not been to the Starbucks since last August! We continued on down to San Diego and were able to check in early so Jim could go to his meeting on time. We stayed at a Hilton in La Jolla and all of his meetings were on site. The hotel was really nice (and paid for by P.O.S.T., as well as the mileage it took to get there) but with weird, long hallways that I was really thankful I was sober while walking down them for the first time. While Jim was at his meeting, I worked out at the hotel gym. The treadmills were really cool, super-new with TV's installed with cable on each individual one. It made the cardio go by so fast. After Jim's meeting, we ventured out to the store to stock up on supplies (vodka). I just could not justify paying $12.00 a cocktail for the next 3 nights. We found an interesting vodka that was actually made by Mormans in Utah. What the hell. I can't stand Mormans and their dumb ass pure values, so you know I bought that rebellious Morman booze. And it was good too. After cocktails in our room, we went to the fancy hotel restaurant and had a really fancy expensive dinner that was so worth it. I love food. It was so delicious.

Wednesday: We got up and went to the Starbucks in La Jolla, which to be quite honest was one of the worst Starbucks' I've ever been to. The customer service was just not good. We went back to the hotel and Jim went to his meeting while I went to the gym. This meeting was a long one, so I had some time to relax as well. I love kicking back in the hotel room. I watched the Dr. Oz show and some old re-run of Miami Ink. I never get to watch that kind of stuff. After Jim's meeting, we drove over to the San Diego pier to walk around and look at tide pools. We got there about an hour before sunset, and it was low tide, so we saw some cool stuff. Walking around we realized that basically the entire homeless population in San Diego apparently lives down by the pier. There were tons of young kids setting up camp for the night under the pier, some living in their cars. Kinda sad. We decided to pick up Chipotle and take it back to the hotel for dinner. I love Chipotle and I hadn't had it in a while because of Jim's low-carb diet (on hold for the week).

Thursday: Jim had another meeting in the morning and I once again went to the gym. I had some really good workouts over the last few days. In the hotel lobby, one of Jim's colleagues mistook me for Jim's daughter, which was guaranteed to happen and is always good for a laugh. After his meeting, we headed back up to Redondo Beach. We stopped at the same Starbucks in La Jolla and it was still bar (so not fluke bad customer service, just bad). We took HWY 1 all the way up, which takes a while, but is great because it is beautiful scenery all the way up. We had lunch at Wee-Man's Chronic Tacos. It was surprising good, actually the best fish tacos I had ever had. We had plans to meet up with our friend Dena for drinks at the Redondo pier and the bar she suggested was pretty cool. It was a bar called Naja's and it offered 777 beers with 77 of them on tap. Pretty impressive. I don't remember the beer I had, but it was so good I had 3 mugs of it. And I'm not even a beer drinker. We had a great time with Dena talking and laughing, which was good because I really didn't know her very well before. Jim drank 3 gigantic mugs of Bass, and since he is a lightweight he was pretty keyed. Tacos of course sounded like the best option for dinner, so we stumbled back over to Wee-Man's for more.

Friday: We checked out of our hotel and had breakfast at Hennessy's in Hermosa Beach before heading back to Lemoore to pick up the kids. We had some extra time so we spent it walking the Strand and the pier. It ended up being a long drive home because we were stuck in traffic in Livingston forever due to emergency road construction. We picked up Sydney from my mom's in Stockton on the way and got home super late.

Saturday: I took the weekend off from Starbucks because it sucks to get back from vacation and have to go right back to work. I spent the day with the kids and they were surprisingly well-behaved. I later found out that Jim promised to take them somewhere special after he got off work if they were good, which makes sense because usually they are little turds when I watch them. We took at 4 of the girls to the Justin Bieber movie in 3-D, and it was actually really good. We had dinner at Lodi Feed and Fuel and it was terrible. I had gone there for breakfast and lunch before and it was good, but dinner sucked. And by then the kids were getting tired and were turning back into their little turd-selves.

Sunday: I worked at the restaurant. It was a typical, uneventful workday. I wish I would have taken the day off, but Sunday is the only day I work there now, so I don't take the day off unless I really have to. All in all, it was a good week.

Enough already

Ok, so this nasty weather can stop anytime! It has been raining with crazy wind all day, and I've had enough. I'm never going to get over this cold with the weather being so crappy. My whole store has the same cold. We have all been passing around the same virus it seems. Gross. I've still been going to the gym though and training for the Bay to Breakers race. Sydney has been going to the gym with me. Surprisingly, she is able to stick it out through my whole workout. She gets on the treadmill and listens to her iPod, singing along loudly. It is so funny because there is such an echo in the gym that is gets really loud. I don't ming though because usually it is just her and I in there.

The other day I went in for my first orthrodontic appointment and was less than thrilled to find out that it is going to take 22 months of braces for straighten my teeth. Even worse, they will have to pull 4 of my permanent back teeth to make room for all of my teeth to come back. Yikes. Just the thought of having braces makes me shudder. But I have to do it. The pain in my jaws has gotten worse lately, and if I don't do something about it I might end up locking my jaw again. Yikes again.

Next week I am going on vacation! Jim and I are leaving for Southern California Monday afternoon and I can't wait. I definitely need a break for work. Oh yes, I do.

Running and drinking

I am finally starting to feel better! I've still got the lingering side effects of that nasty cold, but I am actually feeling better. On Sunday, Jim and I registered for the Bay to Breakers race in SF. It is the first race ever for Jim and I'm really excited about it. He is not as excited. He is not a runner (or a walker for that matter). He has not ran such a distance since he was in the police academy. But he said he was going to do it, and I wasted no time registering him. So of course that means we have to start training. I haven't started yet because I want to be 100% well before I start running again. Jim is dreading the training. We went Fleet Feet in Stockton to get him a new pair of running shoes and he decided to count the running he did around the store as his first day of training. Yeah, right.

Yesterday was a draining day at work. I had to help my boss facilitate a 4 hour training session for the other store managers (so not my thing), then sit through a two hours of conference calls. My head was spinning after all of that. So of course we had to have post-training/conference call cocktails. Jim joined us after he got off work. This time it got a little crazy and we ended up moving our group down the street to a cigar lounge and stayed way too late. I drank way way too much. I had to leave my car downtown because there was no way I could drive. Thank god downtown Lodi is not ghetto like Stockton is. My car was actually there this morning, just as I left it.   :)

I'm still sick!

I can't believe I'm still sick! I definitely feel a lot better than I did on Tuesday, so that is at least something. I have been resting all week, and only leaving the house to take Sydney to and from school and to Starbucks. I did go to work yesterday so I could be there during peak on our busiest day, but after 30 minutes on the floor I was already out of breath and wheezing and exhausted. I worked about 3 hours on the floor, got caught up on email/orders/admin and went to P&Y to check on the store for Michelle. I went back to my store to wrap things up and found that I didn't really want to leave, despite that fact that I felt like total crap. My people are just great to be around. They work hard and they care about each other and the customers. I finally left, and several hours later one of shifts text me offering to cover my Saturday shift, so I let him. Like I said, my people are awesome. I just really hope that my new boss is not pissed that I've been out sick most of the week. Its bad enough I missed the district meeting. I also covered my serving shifts this week, so now I have until Monday to rest. Hopefully by then I'll be over this.

Being sick has meant I haven't been able to work out. In all honesty, I haven't been feeling well for the last couple of weeks, so I haven't worked out at all. I have lost a few pounds in the past month, which I'm sure is mostly attributed to Jim's low (no) carb diet. He started a low carb diet on January 1st and has lost about 15 pounds so far. He has been doing a really great job with it and is already looking thinner. I have not been doing the diet (it would be like setting myself up for failure), but I have been cooking no carb dinners for us at home. It has to be having a positive effect on my diet as well because I cook lean meat and huge portions of vegetables every night instead of the pasta or potatoes or rice like I would before. We always had some sort of vegetables before, but not as much. I'm really proud of him for really sticking to this diet.

Sicky and bitchy

Jim has been sick off and on for about 2 months, the kids have traded what seems to be the same cold back and forth and back again in the about the same amount of time. I thought I had gotten away without getting sick, but the inevitable started happening on Sunday: I felt it. Pain in my chest and back. I tried to tell myself I was just tired from the double shift that day. Then on Monday admin proved to be more torture than the norm as I felt my head pound and my eyes cross in front of the computer screen. Tuesday was to be a district meeting, and an important one as it as the first meeting with the realigned team. Even though I spent Monday night hacking and wheezing, I was actually looking forward to it, pink elephants and all. But then at 3am, I woke up having trouble breathing and a FEVER. I as like, really? A fever to top it all off? What the hell. At 5:45am, I came to finally came to terms with the fact that I am indeed sick and called up the boss to let him know I wasn't going to make it to the meeting. I went back to bed, pissed, burning up, miserable and worried that I had upset my new boss.

I missed post-district meeting cocktails. :(   I haven't felt any better today. I am super bitchy when I'm sick. My biggest issue is that I get really bored with laying around "resting". Yes, I know that is the point, but still. I have stuff to do. People to see, business to handle. I don't have time to be sick. I rearranged my schedule this week so I don't have to go back in until Friday. Hopefully I can shake this in the next 36 hours so I can be bright eyed and bushy tailed for when the boss shows up all like, what the fuck. Hopefully.

Third time's a charm

So this is my third attempt at doing a blog. The first one I created solely to document a weight loss challenge I initiated with my co-workers (which I won, yay me. But then I gained it all back, lame). The second one was was to be about anything and everything, but I quickly became bored with it. Actually, it may have been a combination of boredom and laziness. I have gotten very lazy over the past few years. And after reading several of old blog entries, really boring.

Anyhoo, this blog is going to be about the craziness that is my life. I have realized that I am not entirely happy. I'm really not even sure what makes me happy. I have got to figure it out. Hopefully over the next year I'll figure it out. Here we go.