Puppy Prayers

I am leaving today to go to the Hotter N Hell 100 in Wichita Falls TX. It has been a hell of a week and I have thought about not going. My sweet puppy came down with parvo and it has been a long drawn out ordeal with bad vet advice and I feel like we wasted three days when he could have been getting the right treatment. Luckily, he is now in very good hands, but it could still go either way. Since I am only going to be gone about 24 hours, I have decided to go ahead and go to the race and leave Sam in the capable hands of the vet and of his many friends and family. While I hate to ask for prayers for my puppy with so many other serious things going on, I am going to do it anyways. If you are of the praying sort, please say a few words for my courageous and kind puppy. I have told him numerous times since this began that he was the one that made me take him home and love him so he is not allowed to leave me now.

Pet Photo Friday

Ok, I could pretend I take pictures of things other than my pets, but even if I actually did, there is no way that anything else could be this cute.


One day, Greg was changing clothes so we could go out. I did not realize that Sam was in there with him until he came out wearing Greg's shirt. He was very proud of his shirt!

Sam has a very long tongue. This kind of reminds me of a scene from Beetlejuice.

My old roommate got this pillow specifically with Sally in mind. It fits her personality perfectly and she sleeps with it so often it really makes me believe that she can read.

We had two foals born at my parents farm recently and their German Shepard was so excited because she thought she finally had playmates her size.

The bengal kitty stare down.

Tuesday Blues

The only bad thing about having Monday off of work? Tuesday turns into Monday and now you are a day behind to boot!

The weight loss has been up and down. I hit my all time high weight a few days ago, but now am luckily down several pounds. I am sure it would have been down more, but I spent several days in the car traveling to meetings and that is the worst diet sabotage time for me. Now I am back home and eating more whole foods and lots of veggies and I am seeing a real difference in weight and overall feeling great. Grease has such a nasty way of being addicting but it just makes you feel like crap at the same time. I have started tracking with the Daily Plate at http://livestrong.com and I think that helps a lot too. I loved Weight Watchers, but this is free and the database is HUGE for foods.

I did get in some running miles this weekend and that was good. I had planned on doing a short out and back one day, but ended going further and doing a big loop because the dogs on the out and back path were really aggressive and not anything I wanted to face twice. Good motivation to go further! My pup was not quite so impressed and we walked the last mile partly because he was pooped and also because I had a huge nasty blister on the back of my heel.

I have the Hotter N Hell 100 coming up in less than two weeks that I am getting excited about. I am not trained for a ton of bike miles, but I am still going to do the 100K. I am in no hurry this year and just want to enjoy the race, the incredible rest stops, and the fantastic people. And maybe a little bit of shopping and/or drooling at the Expo. :)

Hot Dam 2009

Last weekend I had my 16 year old niece visiting me. I am sure that she thought the weekend would be full of girly shopping and getting manicures and relaxing. Silly girl! I woke her up at 6:45 on Saturday morning to run a 2 miles race I had signed us both up for. My niece is adorable and skinny, but athletic? We would see.

We met up with a few of my friends and were amazed at the number of people there. I was pretty sure that the number had doubled since last year which was great for the running club that sponsored it. My friends and I started off very slowly because, well, we are slow. My niece looked our pace in utter horror and took off. I was impressed with her gazelle like stride, but was also wondering how long she could keep it up. I kept up a decent pace for me and just went on with my plan to just keep moving.

One cool thing about these two mile runs is that there are more and more children doing them. One little boy in particular was running close to me and he had me cracking up because everytime I would get close to him, he would sprint ahead and then walk. This went on for most of the first mile and then I finally passed him. I could hear him muttering something several times but had no idea what it was. He ended up close to my friends and was doing the same sprint and walk thing and was determined not to let two more girls pass him. I asked my friend if she heard was he was muttering and she said that he was chanting "This sucks. This really sucks" the whole time. I laughed pretty hard at that. We have all thought that so many times!

Even though my niece was not able to keep up her leggy run for long, she was still able to beat me by several minutes. She did admit that she nearly threw up and was fairly bitter and dramatic about the whole thing in the way only a teenager can pull off. The whinning tapered off until that evening when after sitting still at the movies for a few hours....she stood up. I felt much better about her beating me that night and the whole next day as she hobbled around. I also got an angry text when she got home saying, "My house has STAIRS!!!". Guess her quads were a little tight. :)

Even with the whinning, I know she was proud of herself because she carefully packed her race number away and wanted the pictures so she could frame it when she got home. Pretty cute!! Maybe one of these days I can talk her into another one, although I think I might have a better chance of talking her into a bike ride.

Talk about back of the packers! We started out in the very back of the race in order to not get run over by the speedsters!

I love this picture with my niece's hair flying in the wind! It makes her look like she is just flying on the course!

I am so not impressed by this picture. I HATE the glasses but my eyes have started to revolt against the contacts. I look like I am very confused here. I am only posting it because it did not seem fair to post my niece's picture and not mine.

POM Wonderful

Recently I was sent a case of POM Wonderful pomegranate juice to try out. I have seen this in stores for awhile but have never tried it until now. I love pomegranates, but they are kind of a pain to eat enough to get health benefits from so I was interested to try this out.

First of all, the little bottles are adorable. Not enough reason to buy it of course, but I think they are super cute. Second of all, and the most important…it tastes incredible. It is like a better tasting grape juice and it has a nice twang. I was afraid it would be a little bitter or sour, but it is really good, which is the first step to drinking anything that is supposed to be good for you! If it tastes gross, you are not going to want it to take it. To reaffirm my taste buds were not the only ones that liked this, I gave it to an 11 year old, my boyfriend, and my boss to try and they all were impressed.

After trying it, I started looking at the material they sent and also looking at the website. There are a lot of health benefits to drinking POM juice including prostate health, erectile function, and it is antioxidant powers. The one that impacts me the most is cardiovascular health though. In a family that has a history of heart disease and high cholesterol, I want ever advantage I can in order to prevent having problems later on. The information they have on the website is clear and is also very convincing and worth checking out.

One thing that I am going to post on here from the website is a recipe I found on there for an Athlete’s Post-Workout POM Smoothie. This just looks incredible and I can’t wait to
try it.

Athlete's Post-Workout POM Smoothie
• Ice (to taste or texture)
• POM Wonderful 100% Pomegranate Juice
• Fresh blackberries
• Frozen cranberries
• Fresh bananas
• Fresh blueberries
• Fresh kiwi
• Fresh strawberries
• Spinach leaves
• Carrots
• Tomatoes
• Heaping tablespoon of ground flax seed
• Orange juice

Directions:

Put all ingredients into a blender. Use the freshest fruit you can get for the season and you may need to adjust ice or other ingredients to taste.

Blend ingredients until smooth and enjoy.

There are other good recipes on the website that are worth taking a look at. If you are looking to try this, at my local stores I have found it in the refrigerated sections and not in the regular juice aisle.

Impatient Person's Foto Friday

I finally have some pictures to post and I am just too impatient to wait and do it on Friday.

My horse Czecher grazing and drying off while a friend from the barn and I have our "beer and bath day". We give our horses baths and drink beer while they dry! It is so pretty and green now and Czecher loves helping keep the mowing to a minimum!

Poor Sam gets so embarrassed when his mother flips his ears back so he looks like Princess Leia.

A much happier puppy who is very quickly outgrowing my lap! He is growing so fast that I am having a hard time getting enough food in him so he does not look skinny! The vet said he will probably end up weighing around 90lbs so he is going to be BIG!



They finally got the pictures up from the bike ride my brother and I did back in July. My brother is one to normally cover his face when people are trying to take pictures so I am glad to have these where he can't hide!