runner? er, ahem, runner. hungry runner!

I just went running. I used to run when I was a boxer, and I never liked it. I still don't like it. I have a total love-hate relationship with running... I'm pretty good at it, but I hate running. Ok, well maybe hate is a little strong, but I am certainly not a big fan. I am proud to say, that after not running even once since last year, I was still able to go 1.2 miles without stopping. It may have taken me about 15 minutes, but whatever.

Lately I have been hungry a lot. That has nothing to do with running, but as I am writing, I can't think of anything but eating. I'm trying to write about excersize, and all I can think of is food! Maybe I should make something to eat...

My appetite is as moody as any PMSy woman. Some weeks I hardly eat. There have been days when I don't put some food into my body for the first time until 3pm. Other weeks I eat without end. Some days I can eat 5 full meals within 18 hours! Not to mention the cravings. If I ever get pregnant, I'm going to be out of control. When I had my nose remade (boxing is great for the ol' honker! If you want to look like a porcelain doll that's fallen on her face.) I ate all sorts of awful things. First, let me say that I couldn't taste a blessed thing! Second, I only craved textures and not flavors. This led me to heat up potato salad (probably not a good idea, with the mayo, and all), melt cheese on top of canned peaches, and all sorts of other weirdness. I can only hope I will someday have a very patient husband (if it is that I ever have a husband. I've kind of given up on that one).

Well, this is definately a boring post. Like I said, the other day I had tons of things to write about... while I was at work. Now I can't remember any of them. Oh well, hopefully something interesting will soon happen to me. And by interesting, I mean like funny or exciting, not tragic or awful.

totally awkward tuesday

I can't believe it's Tuesday already! I'm not ready for TAT (said in my whiniest voice). It's not that I don't have any more awkward situationis to write about. It's just that I wanted to blog about other things this week, and I haven't even gotten to them. Also, when I was totally inspiried to write today, I was working and had no time. Now that I have time, I can't think of any of the things I wanted to write about... But alas, I still have tons of awkward life moments to recount.

This time I'm going way, waaaaay back. This is actually my first memory. I thought I must've been a couple of years old, at least, but my mom says that I was less than two. It was around Easter. We were grocery shopping at the Miracle Mile shopping center. I think it was just my mom and I, but I'm not quite sure. I only remember the two of us... and a stranger. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I was looking at the Easter egg dying kits when Mom said "Come on, Katie." But I was busy. You know, at that particular moment in my life, egg painting with Dudley was far more interesting than finding a good price on frozen corn. I stayed there, my little feet planted in front of the display. When I finally decided it was my time to move on, I turned to join my mom.

She wasn't there. I looked to the left. I looked to the right. I didn't see her. I turned the corner of the aisle and then relief--there stood the lady I was looking for. I ran up to her and latched on to her leg. I was so relieved to have found my mom... or so I thought. Something was wrong. I looked up, and to my horror I was holding on to some other lady's leg. Her jeans looked surprisingly a lot like my mom's! I was so embarrassed I immediately started to cry. I distinctly remember that I cried out of embarrassment, not fear.

Instantly Mom was at my side, scooping me up and away from the strange woman. I do remember her being a nice lady and acting sympathetically toward me. It didn't matter, though. The experience was traumatic enough to etch itself forever on my memory.

Check out Tova's and other awkward stories at Secret Life of Tova Darling.

six word saturday

So here are my six words for the day:

I'm gonna eat some fair food!

I'm takin' a shower, then I'm heading over to the Crazy Days festival for some good ol' fair food! Mini doughnuts and cheese curds, here I come!

totally awkward tuesday

Once again I participate in Totally Awkward Tuesday, the brainchild of Tova, from Secret Life of Tova Darling.

For this awkward moment, I will go back to my college days. It was my sophomore year, and I was working my booty off with two jobs to try to pay tuition. One of my jobs was on the "Campus Environment Team" aka work-study campus cleaners. I had signed up to clean the library. (Did I mention creepy, 100 year old library with gigantuous windows and stacks of books from floor to ceiling?) Usually I cleaned for about an hour a day, from 9 to 10. I don't know when I did homework. I think it was from 7:45 when I got back from Job #1 to 9:00 when I started cleaning. Oh well, that is beside the point.

So anyway, the security staff insisted on taking the young ladies to and from the buildings they cleaned and the dorms (when it was after hours, of course.) I would usually call them when I was done cleaning, so they could come get me, but sometimes they would come early, and having had keys to all the buildings, they would let themselves in and find creative ways to scare the snot out of me.

On one particular occasion, there had been a huge problem with the plumbing backing up in the basement restrooms. Let's just say that a lot of sewage water found its way up through the floor drains and into parts of the bathroom where there should never be sewage water. Maintenance had gotten the problem fixed and the biggest pieces cleaned up (cringe). I then spent the next hours literally scrubbing poo off every lower surface of both women's and men's bathrooms.

Needless to say I wasn't in and out of there in a mere hour. Security started to wonder. I gave them a call around midnight, stating that I was not yet done, but would be sure to call them when I finished. Adam, the gaurd, said ok. He'd be waiting for my call.

And... back to work. Now there is nothing like putting some real elbow grease into scrubbing doody off the men's b-room floor to make a girl get a little roasty-toasty. Actually, I was dying of heat exhaust! Well, maybe not dying, but at least moderatly suffering. I rolled up the ankles of my sweats and hiked the bottom of my shirt up. In order to keep it from sliding back down again, I pulled the bottom of the shirt up through the collar and tucked it in, exposing almost all of my neon green sports bra. My crop top was complete.

At about ten to one, I was just finishing up. I grabbed my mop and wheeled the bucked of water toward the door of the men's room (mind you, I was in the men's bathroom, after hours in the creepiest old library ever). Just as I reached out my hand to push open the door, it swung open! There stood Adam. I did a gasp/triple take/heart flutter/omigoshi'mpracticallynaked/whatareyoudoinghere,i'mgoingtokillyou and the door swung shut. Adam had just stood there with an equally shocked (I'm sure for other reasons) expression on his face.

I fixed my shirt. I'm not quite sure on all the details of the awkwardness that ensued. I only remember that Adam appologized profusely and I railed on him for not waiting for me to call and for trying (successfully) to scare me spitless.

Now if this doesn't seem like a mortifying event to you, it's only because you didn't go to one of the strictest Bible colleges in the midwest. If you had, you would have known that girls don't show almost their midriff, let alone almost their entire neon green sports bra to just about anyone! Especially one of their floor-mate's fiances! Not much was ever said about the incident, and I'm not sure if I ever mentioned to Mel that her future hubby had seen more of me than he had of her (at the time). Let's just say I was glad that Adam had four sisters!

blogging award

I just got my first blogging award, "Honest Scrap," and I'm uber excited (uber is one of my favorite new words to use). There are certain rules that go along with receiving a blogger award. Unfortunately, I don't follow enough blogs! Everybody I watch already has this award. But I promise, I will follow more blogs and find 10 people (or something near that number) to which I will award this prestigious honor.

Honestly, I am super excited about my first blogging award. I have already exclaimed to Athletic Roomie at least 4 times the wonder of my first award!

I am also completely amazed that "laneyandjackson" is following my blog! Thanks for joining up! I'm so glad you're reading my self-published column! Well, it is time that I officially stop using exclamation points and do something productive, like sleep.

Thanks again Raine. I'm so happy to join the coolness club!

confessions, baby aisle, broken hearts and undapants

So I have a confession to make... I am terrified of the baby care aisle at department stores. I should seek counseling, I know, but that's expensive. This is my counseling (and it's far cheaper than the real deal).

Anyway, there are deep reasons causing my baby aisle terror. That whole theme is a subject for another post (or maybe never :). Anyway, I guess it's enough to say that I'm twenty-stinkin'-five with no baby, no husband, no boyfriend and no prospects. (Hence all the time blogging.) And it probably sounds dumb, but I really want a baby. There's something in my biology that calls out to have one. May just have something to do with my age... Or it could have something to do with my ex-whatever-he-was getting his other ex prego less than 2 weeks after we broke up. (I know, I know... dodged a bullet!) I guess there's something in me that wanted that baby. She's seven months old now and I just saw pictures of her today and she's adorable and... there's really nothing more to say.

So yeah, that's all I want to say about that situation... ever. Ok, well, maybe not ever, but for now...

But onto the real topic of this post: me--having to go in the baby aisle without having a panic attack. You see, my brother and sister-in-law are going to have a baby in September. I'm going to be an aunty for the first time and I'm stinkin' excited!!! But that still doesn't make visits to the baby aisle any easier...

I went in... I perused. I breathed into a paper bag. I picked up cute little things. I got outa' there!

I survived.

I can shop in the baby aisle without having an anxiety attack.

That deserved to be rewarded, so I went over to the chica's cuteness aisle (aka undergarments and sleepwear) and looked at the bras, the undapants (saying undapants is 40% funnier than saying underwear), the jammies... everything. It's one of my coping mechanisms--buying undapants. After a long, stressful day at work or a difficult shop in the baby aisle nothing makes me feel better than buying myself some cutie-patutie undies! (Well, buying some darling shoes would, but that's out of my budget.)

I grabbed an adorable pack of Hanes hipster boycut undies in perfect brown and pink. I had to have them! They were $8.49. That is, btw, way out of my price range, especially for undies! I carried them around with me as I tried to convince myself that I could survive baby shopping without wasting almost ten bucks on two tiny garments that nobody will ever see. I must have walked around the cuteness aisle for about 20 minutes deciding that I didn't really need them. Then something amazing happened. I spotted them. The same cut, not perfect brown and pink, but still, the perfect undie. It was less than $2. I peeled the cutie-patutie package out of my hand, reluctantly placed it on the nearest rack, and ran. I managed to spend less than five dollars on self-medicating and it doesn't even come with a bad aftertaste or a headache tomorrow.

SO... for all of you who don't know me personally, laugh at my ridiculousness. For those of you who do know me, pretend you never read this! It was a free confession! Pretend you are a priest and you have taken an oath to not judge me for my crazy weirdness.

totally awkward tuesday

Another Totally Awkward Tuesday brought to you by none other than Tova Darling of Secret Life of Tova Darling.

Well, there is no better ingredient for an awkward situation than language learning. Any number of embarrassing incidents can be immediately created by mispronunciation of a new language. Here are some of my chart-toppers from my first months in Peru.

¿Mi cama es tu cama?

So I constantly feared that I would mix up the word cama, bed, with the word casa, house. Well, it turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy when one night, after youth group, I was walking home with my friends... from church! I turned to one of the guys and asked him if he was coming to my house... but instead of saying the Spanish word for house, I said cama. I, the missionary girl, asked a nice church going teenager if he was coming to my bed! We both died laughing, because I immediately recognized my mistake. I made him swear that he would not tell anybody what I had said. He kept that promise... for a while. When I went back in January to visit, he made sure to recount it for me and all of our friends. Good times and great memories... Thanks Ruben!

Don't bite your nails!

It must have been my second or third week with the host family in Lima. One afternoon at lunch there was a big bowl of grapes on the table. I asked if they would please pass the uñas. I thought that was the word for grapes, but as it turns out, that word means fingernails. You can be sure, though, that I never forgot the word for grapes: uvas!

Tornado support group

Another time I was with my friends who were siblings. A set of male (and also very good looking) twins one year younger than me and their sister who is my age. We were talking about the weather in the United States, and in particular, my state in the midwest. They asked if there were tornados here and I told them that there were. Having never experienced a tornado, they asked if it was scary and what we would do in case of a tornado.

I told them "It wasn't too scary, you just have to go down to the basement, sosten."

Hmmmm... something just didn't seem right about that word. Then I knew it was wrong by the twins awkward silence and Vlady's laughing.

"Sótano", she corrected.

I had said the word for "bra." Apparently all you have to do is hide in your bra to sit out a tornado. Sorry boys, I guess you're out of luck!

Do you have any language learning blunders? Heck, any blunder will to for Totally Awkward Tuesday. Comment and tell me about it, or post the story to your blog and link up to it on Tova's page. Happy Tuesday!