Here is the nose, one week after that knife fight I got into with a female, Mexican biker gang. It is looking much improved from how it did last Friday morning:

I’ve been keeping it coated in Polysporin and covered away from the sun. I think there will be a faint scar at first that will fade over the next few months. Nothing to cry over.

***

I also wanted to thank everyone who voted for me in the Blindy Awards hosted by Blog Indiana. I won best Hoosier Blog! Woot! Sadly, I was in transit to my 5K when the awards were announced and was not able to leap up and down and rub my victory in the losers’ faces, which is probably for the best.

• Continue reading "The nose knows"

I woke up this morning to a cat crawling on my face, as I do many a morning when I am sleepy and the cats are hungry and we battle it out to see whose superlative will win. Today Java Bean’s back leg stepped on my nose and he dug his claw into my skin and left a two-inch long cut under my right eye.

It HURT. It was bleeding. I grabbed some toilet paper from the bathroom and applied pressure for 10 minutes. Then I cleaned it with hydrogen peroxide. Then I Googled “how to prevent scarring” where I learned that I should keep the wound clean, moist and avoid direct sunlight.

I’m not sure how I’m going to get a bandage on this thing, but I’m going to the drug store to see if recent innovations in bandage technology have provided a solution. I’m not that vain of a person, but I’d rather not have a scar on my nose for the rest of my life. If I do, I’m going to have to come [...]

• Continue reading "This is why you should trim your cat’s hind claws"

When I was a baby, I liked to be bounced up and down. That might be why I like running. There’s something rhythmic about bounding down the trail. My left foot has been feeling much better, so I ran for 10 minutes on the treadmill yesterday, and it was indeed awesome. I have missed the running. I’ve missed that rhythm. I finished up the last 20 minutes on the elliptical so as not to overdo it. I can’t afford to injure myself again before the half-marathon.

I was a bit worried on Sunday because my left knee felt weird. At the rate these things were happening, I thought I’d soon be reporting that the left side of my body had fallen off and I was going to rename this blog “A Fourth of Me.” Thankfully the knee feels fine today too, so we’re back in business.

All this means I didn’t go for my training run with my group on Saturday morning, but I’ll hopefully be back out there this Saturday. Just in time for the 1 [...]

• Continue reading "I love it when rest and ice actually work"

Last Sunday my training schedule called for a 90-minute run. The weather was actually above freezing and there were no abominable snowman on the trail. My nose hairs did not form nasal popsicles when I walked outside.

So, of course, this is the week I injure my left foot.

Some days I might be happy to use an injury as an excuse to avoid a long run. Instead, I’d been looking forward to using a long run as an excuse to have a Coco Loco, a chocolate truffle surrounded by coconut cake and glazed with caramel. No 90-minute run for me. No Coco Loco either :(

It’s all been rather tragic. Last Wednesday it was 50 degrees out and I came home 90 minutes before sunset, leaving plenty of time to run on the trail without three layers of insulation. Only I couldn’t, because I’ve developed a sharp pain on the underside of my foot when I walk, not always, just sometimes when I distribute my weight in certain ways. I suspect it’s an overuse injury, a strained [...]

• Continue reading "My left foot"

There has been no 180 on my weight this month because I’m still weighing in at 180. This does not bother me since I’m glad I’ve been maintaining my loss. That’s 32 months straight with no significant gains. I also have to admit that for the past couple of months I’ve been in a maintenance frame of mind. Weight loss is nice, but now that I can buy bras in the stores (Yay, 36A!) and pants in the misses section (Double yay, size 12!), it doesn’t seem quite so urgent.

However, I also have to admit I don’t want to weigh more than 180 ever again. At the most I never want to pop back over 186, which was the point where I officially lost half my weight. If I get bigger than I am now it’s back to plus-sized jeans and ordering bras online. I’d like to have at least a 10 pound buffer area so I have time to correct course if I ever do start gaining back weight. Right now I don’t have [...]

• Continue reading "Weighing in on September"