Leapin Lizards!

Just booked my trip to Mexico can I get a WOOOHOOO!!! I haven't been on a legit vacation in so long, I'm pretty sure this one is going to be awesome! So as I was thinking about the things I didn't do the last time I was in Mexico (for lack of having a pair of balls) my memory has so kindly brought to my attention para sailing and holding an iguana. My friend Sara just got back from Mexico and she survived the whole para sailing thing so maybe I'll give that a try...maybe (once I grow a pair that is). It looks like it would be fun, she said it was relaxing and I'm thinking the view would be spectacular. Every time I go to Mexico I tell myself I'm going to do it, and I never do. I go up to the boat, talk to the guy who straps you in and then I promptly chicken out because land is so much safer. I'm such a weenie! I have no problem diving underwater but flying over it while I'm being pulled behind a boat is another thing, weenie with a capital W. The other thing Ive thought about doing is holding an iguana. Why not do something totally touristy and hold a very large reptile? Kind of like this guy did, and it looks like hes OK right? Just think about how bad ass I would look holding a giant iguana!? Instant street cred, and a potential new FB profile pic.

So I wasn't really scared to do this because well lets be honest, people hold iguanas all the time..Buuut, apparently Iguanas DO bite! Just check out this guys hand! WTF!? Sooo NOW I'm scared of holding one for fear it might bite me. Doh! As if that wasn't enough check this out!!

Yeah that's right, iguanas fart and that video proves it. Soooo, what if I'm holding the little bastard and then all of a sudden it farts and then poos on me!!?? So much for street cred and a cool new profile pic. Any recommendations on things I should do in Mexico that dont involve giant reptiles and or falling into the ocean?

Irrational Fears Part 2

I felt the need to create an Irrational Fears Part 2 because I felt like these two fears needed their own post. So once again last week I was reminded of one of my biggest irrational fears and for some reason I just cant get it out of my head. There was a news video posted online about a woman who was walking in her backyard and fell in a sinkhole. I'm weird I know but I have a fear of sinkholes. I'm worried that somewhere, someday I will just be walking along and bam! Ill be swallowed up by a sinkhole. But in all seriousness you cant deny that these things are scary! I mean look at this picture of a sinkhole that formed in Guatemala last year, can we say SCARY! It just swallowed up some building and a road, no big deal right? Apparently not if you're a sinkhole, they just devour anything that they feel like when they feel like it.

This isn't the only large sinkhole that's out there folks, they're everywhere!! Just google it, then you'll see these things are real and they are dangerous! The other irrational fear I have is of traveling carnivals. I don't know where this one came from but Ive had it for a long time, where as the sinkhole fear is newer, its only about a 5 months old. Traveling carnivals scare me. They scare me because they move around from city to city and then they are set up and you're just supposed to trust your life to some machine that travels around creating fun. Ummm, no thanks! I don't ride on rides that travel around the country, they need to be firmly rooted to the ground in order for me to feel safe. I have no problem riding on a ride at Disneyland but you will not catch me on a ride down at Lakefair. Nope, no thank you Ill pass. They might be safe and I'm sure they go through a lot of inspections and safety tests but that doesn't make me feel any better about going on them. Do you remember that Alanis Morrisette song from back in the day, the song Ironic? Yeah I feel like she wrote that song for me, the one time I go on one of these traveling carnival rides will be my last because I will inevitably (because of the song) plummet to my death and it will be horribly painful. I just know it, and because that's how it works in the song. You're afraid of planes, but you ride on one, and then you die. Yep, no thanks I think Ill pass. Anybody humming that Alanis song yet, I know I am.

Sloth

I have a hard time sitting around. While I like to think of myself as a lazy person, I really dont get to be lazy as often as one might like to. I like to dabble in different things just to keep things interesting and I feel like I am constantly trying to do more than a normal person would do, just because I feel compelled by my inner crazy person to be on the go all the time. For example, I have a great full time job, my job is really fun and I enjoy it a lot. Sometimes it requires me to work nights and the occassional Saturday, which I dont mind because my work seems more like play than work. I often think to myself, wow they are paying me to do this how cool is that!? On a normal week I usually work anywhere between 40 and 45 hours a week. On a busy week it can go up to about 55, those are rare but they do happen and they are exhausting. On top of my regular job I also coach volleyball at the local high school in the fall which is a kick in the pants! I love working as part of a program that gave me a lot of good memories when I was going through high school. I coach c-team and as challenging as it is it isnt very stressfull which I appreciate, and the head coach has been very accomodating with my schedule. In the spring I coach 7th grade volleyball at the local middle school that is close to my work. As frustrated as it is sometimes I appreciate how I have to take a step back and evaluate my coaching ability. Coaching middle school has taught me a lot of patience and it makes me stop to think about fundamentals and what is really important for them to know. Somedays I struggle with this becuase the 7th graders that I am coaching are feeding into a fairly strong rival program of our high school and I sometimes feel like Im cheating on my high school kids because I have coached the enemy if you will, but I quickly get over it and consider it a friendly competitive challenge and test of my coaching ability. Spring and fall are really busy for me, with morning practices before work in the spring and late evening practices in the fall one would think that I dont have much time for anything else. Well I dont really, but I am the type of person that would prefer a jam packed schedule over a slow not much going on schedule. I recently agreed to play on three spring volleyball leagues on top of coaching spring vb at the middle school, Eek what was I thinking? Ok, this is a little crazy even for me but I have this thing about staying busy and I am driven by this insane need to have a full schedule and keep busy all the time. Weekdays for me are mostly all business with work, coaching, and playing ball so you might think that my weekends are my chill time? Meh, not really. Because I enjoy always having something going on I tend to pack my weekends full of fun things to do like hiking, biking, volleyball tournaments (as if i didnt get enoug vb during the week) running, shopping, dinner dates, grocery shopping, cleaning and catching up with the friends and family I have neglected during the week. I generally have my weekends planned so far in advance that last year when my good friend was trying to find a time to hangout with me I realized that I have too much going on. I tried to take a step back and not plan as many things but it was really hard for me. I ended up doing more sitting around than I enjoy and I felt like I was missing out on things because I was trying to have more me time. So Im trying to compromise and include my friends in on my busy weekends, whether or not they have noticed. Instead of doing what I was planning on doing anyway I try to invite a friend so that I can spend some time with them doing something fun, most of the time they are more than happy to oblige. I appreciate my friends and I appreciate that they understand my need to be busy. They support my need for a neverending to do list and they dont give me too much crap for not making as much time for them as I would like to. When I die I want to look back and know that I did everything I wanted to do and lived a full life, I want to have kicked lifes ass if you will. To me living a full life is doing everything you want to do. I feel like there isnt enough time in the day for me to get everything I want to do done so thats why I stay busy, because I feel like theres never enough time. I dont want to look back and think about the amount of time I spent sitting around, I want to think about the things I did, the memories I made and the people I got to experience those things with. Lucky for me my friends like to do a lot of the same stuff I do so that makes doing this easy. But I also dont want to get burnt out, I am concious of the fact that this could be a problem for me in the near future. I dont have a significant other that I have to torture with my lack of attention, the cat fills that role quite nicely. I dont have any children that I have to put first, as long as the cat is fed and her box is clean shes happy and I get to go on my merry way. I am lucky that my work is like play for all three of the jobs that I have and that I wake up wanting to go to work everyday. I have a quote that I repeat in my head quite often, "youll never reget doing it, but youll always regret not doing it." I love this saying because I feel like it sums me up, I keep doing things and I stay busy because I dont want to regret not doing them later and thinking back "man I sure had a lot of time I didnt use, If only I could get it back." I dont want that to be me, so for now Im going to continue being this crazy person who has too much going on because I dont think Id have it any other way.

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Let's Talk Spring...sort of

Sunshine. Mud puddles. Cool breeze. Crisp air. Green. Flowers. Trees. Cherry blossoms. Grass. Rain. Hail. Longer days. Clouds. Blue skies. Car washes. Umbrellas. Bike rides. Walks. Hikes. Gardens. Plants. Dirt. Lawn mowers. Bird feeders. Yard work. Squirrels. Lawn gnomes. Hey, who snuck that last one in there? Oh yeah, hehe, that was me. So I have a confession to make: I am addicted to lawn gnomes. I love them. I love them so much every time I see a cute little, happy, smiling lawn gnome my heart smiles. I purposely go out of my way just to look at these shiny little pieces of lawn art whenever I go into a store. I like to carefully disguise this as just "checking out" the garden section for a "new pot". We all know what I'm really doing, I'm creepin' the lawn gnomes! So I don't have a logical explanation for my love of lawn gnomes other than they are just so stinkin' cute! I would like to clarify that I have not purchased a lawn gnome and do not currently have one in my possession. This is do to the fact that I have not found the perfect lawn gnome, not for lack of searching because I have done my fair share of looking. I just haven't found the perfect one yet, and I'm being really picky about it. Another simple explanation and reason as to why I do not have one is because my mom thinks they are hideous and refuses to indulge my needs and participate in cutesy lawn gnome oogling. Whew! I said it! I blame my mom for my lack of a lawn gnome. She thinks they are hideous, which really we all know makes me want one even more. Another reason I do not have one is because I have a tiny little yard, it is maybe 8x8ft, and is one lawn gnome enough? If you ask some people they might say that one is too much, which brings me to another reason I do not have one; people think they are hideous. I guess deep down I'm afraid of being judged and ridiculed for having a lawn ornament, when we all know that the only ornaments lawns need are clean and shortly trimmed grass and the occasional flower bed. The last reason as to why I do not have a lawn gnome is because I'm scared. I'm scared to own one not because they might be "evil" or "mischievous" but because I'm afraid somebody might take my precious gnome and try to liberate it. I am against garden gnome liberation! I do want one, but I don't know how I will be able to explain to my roommate why there is a little ceramic man wearing a little red hat sitting in the yard, who has no real purpose other than to sit there and look cute. Lets talk about their cuteness for a second. For the record I would just like to state that not all lawn gnomes are cute. There are some very ugly ones out there and they are the exception. I do not like cheaply made gnomes, plastic gnomes simply will not do. I prefer the real thing, terra cotta all the way. I don't like a lot of junk surrounding them for example: signs that say welcome to my garden, benches, excessive mushrooms, etc. should not go on a lawn ornament; it makes them look cheap. A classy cute faced gnome with a big chipper smile and brightly colored paint is cute to me. I cant really explain why they make my heart smile when I see them but I will try to explore this so that I too can understand my infatuation with a lawn ornament. I think one of the reasons is that they always look so darned happy. They are generally always smiling and sometimes they are being a little mischievous and are mooning you, this really makes me giggle. Side note-I would never place a bare assed lawn gnome in my yard, on my porch, etc. they are NOT classy, but they do make me smile a little. Another reason might have to do with the myth that surrounds them. Back in the day garden gnomes were said to watch over your garden and help tend to it at night. Which we all know I need help with, considering my lack of a green thumb, honestly I try SO hard here! I think the main reason I love these little things is because they make me feel like a kid again. They stir up a magical happiness inside that almost always brings a smile to my face when I see a cute one. Is anybody out there as excited as I am that they made a cute little cartoon movie about gnomes? Gnomeo and Juliet, I cant WAIT to see you!

June Fucking Cleaver

Lately I've been doing so much baking that my ass should be close to the size of a Buick by now. I love to bake. It's fun and I have a HUGE sweet tooth. So this is where I share the fruits of my labor and show you pictures of what has been made, and then show you how to find the original recipe so that you too can suffer from a blissed out sugar coma just like I have.
First things first, a little over a week ago my bestie Chelsi came over to teach me how to make superbly cute sugar cookies. Chelsi has been making them for awhile now, and then we decided that we needed to have a girls day so she could show me how to make them, so that I can stop eating hers and make my own. Chelsi is a bit of a blog addict and always manages to find great ideas online. The first of her great ideas would be these magically delicious treats. Oooooooooohhh!!! Now THIS is what I call a pancake!! A cinnamon roll pancake! Thats right, a cinnamon roll pancake, one of natures perfect foods, just like bacon. and these are absolutely fantastic! From their chewy center and slightly crisp sugary edges to the delicious cream cheese frosting, these things will send you into a sugar coma so fast that Homer Simpson will call you his hero. We started the day off with these bad boys and then we started in on the cookies.

If you have ever wanted to learn how to make really cute sugar cookies when check out Bridget at Bake at 350 she will teach you all kinds of tricks so you can make cookies like this....

Whilst browsing her site I came across frosted animal cookies and I knew instantly that I had to make these. My excuse was that they would be perfect for my dads birthday, since he happens to be who I get my insatiable sweet tooth from. And I absolutely love these, because they are so stinkin cute! Don't they just take you back to the days when you would sneak into your dads truck to raid his cookie stash??.....just me? figures.. Anyways, my dad loved these and of the 14 cookies I gave him on Monday there was only 1, I repeat one, cookie left by the time I went over on Friday. Woohoo!! Points for Chelsi and me for making deliciously cute sugar cookies.

After a funfilled day of baking cookies and eating cinnamon rolls, err, I mean pancakes I still had a cake to make for a potluck we were having at work. At the end of every quarter we like to get the students together to celebrate the end and eat. We like to eat....a lot. I asked the students what they would like me to bring and peanut butter frosting cake won by a landslide. This cake is super easy to bake, you simply follow the directions on the box and bake. The hardest part is the frosting which is only slightly more difficult than baking the cake itself, and by harder I mean it needs more mixing.. The frosting consists of peanut butter (big surprise), powdered sugar, butter, milk and a little vanilla extract. Doesn't this sound sooo healthy? Who really cares, this cake is great! My mama is the one who taught me how to make it, and its super easy and delicious, much better than any frosting you buy in a can. Feast your eyes on this bad boy. Mmmmm...when paired with milk it doesnt get much better than this. The students loved it and it didnt last for very long.

The next on my list of things to bake this week was a coca cola cake. Last summer my boss and I went to Kentucky for a conference where we discoverd the wonders of Cracker Barrel. Now for those of you that are familiar with Cracker Barrel you know that this is the mecca of all things Southern Cooking. High in fat, high in salt, high is delicious flavor. We went for dinner one night, and by dinner I really mean we went for dessert because thats just how we roll, and we both had a slice of chocolate fudge coca cola cake and a nice cold tall glass of milk. This cake was SUPER! It was so super that I had to track down a recipe so that I could make it when I got home. After comparing numerous recipes online last week I finally settled with this one for chocolate coca cola cake. Mmmmmm...I decided to make it for my boss' birthday, and it didnt turn out too bad. The only thing that would have made it better would be warming it up and serving it up with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a nice cold tall glass of milk of course.
Well thats it for my kitchen adventures of the week, stay tuned because the next big idea here is turning my peanut butter cake into chocolate covered cake balls. Can we say YUM-O!? Im salivating just thinking about it. Mmmmm.

Irrational Fears

I want to talk about fears today, and how my fears make me seem neurotic. I have many fears and most of them are irrational and hard to understand, but these are my fears and can help explain a little bit of what goes on in my head.
So I have the basics covered snakes, spiders, scorpions,and that kind of thing.  But what happens when your harmless, irrational fear of spidersturns into nightmares? Quite often I am jostled out of a deep sleep at night because of a spider dream that wakes me up and becomes real.  Let me explain this a little more, I have woken up MANY times only to shriek, jump out of bed, throw all of my blankets on the floor and proceed to hit them until the dream spider is squished. Usually by the time I start hitting the blankets I have figured out that it's just a dream and that there isn't really a spider lurking in my blankets waiting to bite me. It never seems to stop me or make the dreams go away because I often wake up feeling like there's a spider hanging over my bed, which then freaks me out, and makes me get out of bed only to then swat at my blankets some more.  I am so freaked out by spiders that I have a spray can of hot shot in my room just in case I ever do see a spider; my house is NOT spider friendly. As if my wierd spider dreams werent enough to get you thinking that Im wierd I have MAAANY more wierd fears. Port a potties for example? They scare the bejeezus out of me! Something about the combination of smell, confined space, lack of sanitation and knowing that you potty on other peoples potty. I happen to be a flush kind of girl, letting it linger is not my style so it really really creeps me out when you see other peoples potty just sitting there being all gross and shit. What if it splashes? What if its full? What kind of bacteria is on the door handle when you touch it? I shudder at the thought. I used to have really bad dreams of people getting stuck if port a potties when I was younger, Im pretty sure thats where my irrational fear of disgusting portable toilets comes from. I have another one which is more recent and quite odd if you ask me. Im not sure how I have come to have this fear but it is here none the less. Lately as I have been driving to practice in the mornings it has still been really dark out. (Silly observation, of course its been dark I leave my house at 5:15am!) I drive under a few bridges on my commute and every time I drive under a bridge lately I have had the wierdest, creepiest thoughts. Every time I drive under them I get worried that somebody is going to commit suicide and jump from the bridge and land in front of or on top of my car. Seriously!!?? Who has these thoughts/fears!? There is one bridge that is near my house that is a really large bridge in our area and a few people have commited the deed and made the jump. I remember reading an article in the paper a couple years ago about a guy who jumped and landed on a ladies car. Talk about scarred for life, I dont know what I would do if that happened to me. Well, to be honest I would probably shit myself, scream my lungs out and start bawling oooor pass out. Passing out seems like the most likely thing to happen knowing my history of passing out and having a weak stomach. I feel like because it is so dark out when I drive under these bridges that I wouldnt know if somebody was even on top of them let alone be able to see them until they were right in front of me. Lets see what else? Not like you need anymore entertainment for the day but Im sure I have more irrational fears...Oh yes, cemetaries!! These are right up there with spiders, scarier than port potties and almost as scary as my bridge fear. Cemetaries freak me out because well, they are the final resting places of dead people. DEAD PEOPLE! There are BODIES, under that soil. BODIES!!! REAL ONES!!! I dont go to them because they freak me out so much, I cannot walk by them and I avoid driving by them at all costs. If I do have to drive by a cemetary I wont look at it at all. I dont know what it is, but there is something seriously creepy and eerie about cemetaries. I cant explain it but Ive always had this wierd fear, but apparently Im not alone there are others out there just like me; possibly worse that also have a fear of cemetaries. This fear is also known as coimetrophobia, just in case you were wondering.
Ok well I think thats all for now, but if I can think of any of my other fears Ill make sure to post them so you can get a good laugh at my expense.

Spring is coming!

Eeeeee!!! Spring is coming! It really sank in today while I was out on a run. As I was running around the neighborhood I couldnt help but enjoy the sweet scents that would tickle my nose. I left my house and my nose was instantly accosted by the sweet smell of somebody barbequeing, mmmmm...what a way to get the fat girl motivated to run, tease her with the sweet smell of bbq. Yum! Ok fine, I wont turn around and go home to eat Ill just keep running. And I did. I ran, I ran through the retirement neighborhood and enjoyed the nice quiet, and peaceful scenery. Surprisingly not many people were out enjoying the weather, lazy bums. If they were they would have smelled the lovely smell of laundry. It must be something about this time of night but I ran by quite a few house that were doing laundry. I must say I rather enjoy the sweet smell of fresh laundry, it has a cozy feeling to it. I ran along the trail which had a nice earthy smell to it. Fresh air, trees, leaves, dirt, ahhh the smells of the outdoors; not quite mountain air freshness but it felt clean and crisp in my lungs. I ran until the trail intersected a road I can't say that I've ever travelled on and I managed to find a cow farm? Really? I can't stand cows, they have a very distinct smell to them which isn't very pleasant when you would like to plug you nose but know it'd be a really bad idea because that's the complete opposite of what your body wants you to do when you are running. As much as I hate the smell of cows, farms have a nostalgic smell that reminds me of my parents place where I grew up at. Cow smell is very different than horse smell but it reminds me of all the time I spent outdoors on the "farm"playing outside in the mud with my imaginary gnome villiages that I used to create. Nothing but rocks, water, grass and expansive cityscapes that I would create out in the horse pasture. I had a very creative imagination when I was younger, still do but nowadays it doesn't include gnome villages. I finally made my way to the main road, which in all honesty I didn't know I had gone that far because I was surprised to see just how far from home I really was, then again I blame my workout mix on my ipod for helping me zone out and enjoy the time. Eventually I made my way home and surprisingly felt really good about what I accomplished. Things have been very busy lately and I would have much rathered gone straight to bed when I got home from work but I didn't so I am proud of myself for not doing that. I also feel like I'm starting to break through an imaginary barrier that I have built up. I've been listening to jillian michaels podcast and I really like it. I listen to it during my commute to and from work, and I can honestly say that it is motivating and very educational. I've learned a lot so far and there have only been 4 podcasts. I really like her no nonsense approach to physical strength and wellbeing. Today while I was out running I had a little bit of jillian yelling at me to keep going. "If you're not puking or dead, then keep going." And I did, I had no real reason to stop. The run wasn't hard and my body felt fine, so I just kept going. By the end of my workout I ended up traveling 3.83 miles, now my ocd really really wanted to kick in and say keep going let's make it an even 4 but as soon as I rounded the corner to go home both of my quads cramped up at the same time. Horrible pain. This was the first time my quads have cramped after/during a run. They usually only cramp when I play a long day of volleyball in a tournament. So maybe running long distances isn't for me after all, but I'm not ready to give it up yet because running is easy to do and you can do it anywhere. If there's one thing I've learned its that your body is a lot stronger than you think it is and its capable of doing a lot more than you think it can. I've been contemplating doing a max run to see how far I can run before I can't go any farther. The thought of this has been really terrifying for some reason but today something happened that made me realize that no matter how much it hurts when I finish my max run I'm going to be glad I know my limit and how far I can push my body. Now that my mind is set on doing this I need to find a time to do it. I think my max is going to be somewhere around 5-6miles, ill be pleasantly surprised if its more because that just means I'm closer to my goal of running a half marathon that I thought I was. I get these great, or not so great depending on how you look at it, ideas in my head and I'm very stubborn. I am a very stubborn person and once I get an idea I feel the need to run with it, no pun intended. I got this grand idea to run a half marathon back in september when I heard about the disneyland princess half marathon and I thought that it would be a lot of fun. Well it probably would be but I don't know why I decided I need to do this when I don't conside myself a runner at all. I feel like its just another thing to check off of my to do list, and I feel like its attainable. I think I could do it, now the tricky part is finding someone to do it with me. I am currently accepting offers for running partners for the disney princess half marathon, you know you want to!! :) I shall welcome spring with wide arms and a big smile, I've missed you spring please get here faster.