Starring Hilary M.G.T. as herself

Training

Well, I've fallen off the training wagon this weekend due to some really bad sleeps and accidentally locking the jogging stroller in the car and then leaving my car keys elsewhere. But onwards and upwards! We start again.

Just had a neighbour drop by with cake - LOVE my building! But of course I felt a little guilty, so I did what any self-respecting Vancouverite does in that situations - madly ripped the Capers sticker off a bag of cookies and repackaged them in wax paper. Eek! I think having cookies and cake around is far too tempting given my training needs.

Training - 13 Weeks Till 1/2 Marathon

So as I mentioned in my last post, I am running a half-marathon. My goal at this stage is just to finish and to keep a steady pace the whole time; my best time for a 10K was around 55 minutes, but that was quite a while ago. Actually, it wasn't that long ago, but it was pre-pregnancy, childbirth and extreme sleep deprivation, so I am thinking 2.25 to 2.5 hours is a realistic goal for me.

My training strategy is slightly slacker - I am aiming at 3 runs a week, plus yoga as my cross-training. I'll be trying to do a briefer pace run during the week as well as some hill intervals or "fartleks". During these runs I'll have the stroller. Then on the weekend I'll do one longer run, which I'll do solo. This routine roughly coincides with a training schedule I found in a magazine.

So here is what the magazine suggested, and how I modified it for my own needs:

Monday - 1/2 hour "hilly run"
On this run I realised that running with a stroller is a heck of a lot of work. I was running uphill at one point and I realised that I was not actually gaining on the 2 60-year old leisure walkers ahead of me. Oh well, I figure stroller plus baby is about 40lb, give or take, so that's got to mean something, right? I aimed for three tens and ones (ten minutes running, one walking), but I was really tired by the last one, so it got broken up into a four and one and a six and one.

Tuesday - Off

Wednesday- Hill running - 10 minute warm up and then 4 2-minute hill repeats
Should not have eaten that cupcake right before the run. I wasn't able to run straight for 2 minutes on the hills. Instead of 4 2-minute stretches, I did 6 1-minute stretches with breaks in between. In my defence, the hill was really, really steep. And again, pushing a stroller was killin' me. My heart rate was well over 180 at times. Over all I was out for about 40 minutes but probably only 20 minutes of that was running. The rest of the time was raggedly trying to catch my breath. I will probably try hills that are less steep next time.

Thursday - Optional
1.25 hours of yoga - It was a Hatha day, so lots of nice deep stretches - great on those hamstrings. Given that it's been less than six months since I gave birth and I am still full-time breastfeeding, I still have lots of relaxin in my body, so it's very important to stretch. At least that's how I justify yoga over more running.

Plans for the weekend: 1.25 hour Yin/Yang Yoga and 1 hour run

A Goal

I had a great 40 minute run this afternoon on the beach - despite the fact that I have only run one other time in the past three months. I don't do well without a goal. But since I am running the Sun Run in a few weeks, I guess I better get at 'er. So buoyed was I after my run that I registered for this. Egads! What have I done??? I think Peter's going to be logging lots of hours in the B.O.B.

P.S. Oh, and thank you B.O.B. website for reminding me that "I am strong, I am invincible, I am Mom." :-P

Letters

Dear Man Driving A Green Car in the Grocery Store Parking Lot,

It is never okay to roll down your window , gesture aggressively and scream "SUCK MY C*CK!!!" at a mother and her baby EVEN if she did tap her horn at you. That is what is called a disproportionate reaction.

Yours sincerely,
Hilary

Dear Sandra Oh,

Thanks for being so friendly and saying hi to me at the playground. The only reason I walked away and didn't tell you how much I love your character is because I think that celebrities and their kids should be left alone... I realise now they probably weren't your kids, but they were pretty cute.

Oh and sorry for staring,
Hilary

Dear Dude in the Blue Car,

Please do not park in the driveway to my building. And you're right, it's not a BIG deal, but it is inconsiderate, especially when there are multiple free parking spots only metres away.

All the best,
Hilary.

Dear Peter,

Pretty please - do you think you could sleep until about 6 tomorrow? Maybe 6:30? Mama just is not at her best at quarter-to-five, and Daddy isn't either. Remember how you used to sleep until 7 or 8? Those were good days. I can handle the night wakings, but I really, really need a bit more shut-eye in the morning.

Love
Mama

House Hunting

Well, we have started househunting. We absolutely adore our neighbourhood and our sweet little apartment. After all, Peter was born here, we love our neighbours, and we have everything we'd love in a five block radius - yoga, coffee shop, massage therapist, dentist... within 15 blocks are the grocery store, library, the beach and many friends and family members. I will miss this place. But we know that as Peter gets bigger this place will seem smaller. So far we've been to five open houses. I don't think we've seen our ideal yet, but we have come fairly close. I have confidence it is right around the corner. Sadly we will have to leave this wonderful neighbourhood and its enormous park - but I am very excited for next steps.

New Year's Resolutions

1. Live in the present

2. Make time to exercise at least twice a week

3. Try a new recipe on average, once a week

4. Worry (a little) less (relates to #1)

5. Spend more time playing with Peter and less time cleaning my messy house (okay, if you've been over recently you might have noticed I spend very little time doing that anyway; but I spend a lot of time WISHING it were done. So maybe the resolution should be spend less time fretting that your house isn't clean.)

6. Blog more

Buy Something Day

Woops - I violated Buy Nothing Day. I had the best of intentions, but with friends in town, I ended up going out to lunch. And buying Christmas socks. Although I could see a wee exception for food in the Buy-Nothing philosophy, I don't think there's an exception for $15 coffee. It was served in a silver jug, with a small glass of warm water to "cleanse the palette" before tasting. The coffee was supposed to have a hint of "floral" flavours. No milk or sugar to be added, as it affects the flavour.

It did have a nice flavour, sweet, slightly floral, and piquante but without a bitter aftertaste. But I'm not sure it was the best I've ever had... that honour goes to a cup I had in Italy at age 17 at a small cafe that was open to the street. I'm pretty sure it had milk in it - but it was amazing.

So Much for Global Citizenship

Stories like this bother me. There was a terrible plane crash in Thailand, and all the Canadian media is focussed on is whether or not Canadians were injured. In the Vancouver Sun today, in a story apparently published before they found out a Canadian was killed, the focus of the story was on the Canadian survivor's French bulldog, who died in the cargo hold. How sad is that? Apparently Canada.com feels that the dog's death was more worthy of media coverage than say, a citizen of another country.

Sad Shell

I was just reading through some of this old site and realising, hey, it used to be pretty funny! Now, just a sad shell of it's former self, it gets updated maybe monthly, and only a tenacious few family members are still reading. Okay, well maybe there were only ever a tenacious few family members reading, but still. Now it's just the really, really tenacious ones.

As you might imagine, at this stage most of my energy is focussed on my pregnancy, which is why the pregnancy blog is getting updates a little more often. I have officially finished work and am waiting for the government dollars to start flowing in! I managed to make the cut-off for eligibility of 600 hours. Of course the EI web application (aka the fourth circle of hell) then started to tell me if I had worked less than 900 hours I needed to account for the past two years of employment. Egads. Thank God for Julian's filing system as I was able to track down a few ROEs (records of employment for the uninitiated) from eons ago.

Geni

I discovered this great little website called geni.com, which makes it super-easy to make family tree. It's quite addictive! I would link to my tree, except that I don't know how you set it to public, or if you can. However, you can invite your friends and family to join it and then presumably they can view it and add ancestors of their own. Anyway, I have learned a few things - for example I have an ancestor who was a perfumer and one who was a tailor/hatter! The one kinda weird thing is that Geni keeps asking me if I want birthday reminders for people who died circa 1857.

Now I'm off to roll on the birth ball (yes, when you're pregnant, exercise balls become "birth balls") for a while to help baby stay in the best possible position.

Phew!

I passed the PLTC... must say I gained a few gray hairs in the past few weeks stressing about my interview and other ridiculous parts, but I passed! Seems like the best way to celebrate is just to sleep.

Still Alive In Here!

The last four weeks have been tough, and very busy, but I am now in the home stretch. My first bar exam is tomorrow (ach!) and there's another one on Friday. I am definitely freaking out a little bit, but very much looking forward to being done. I have to say, doing the bar course in the summer kind of bites. I've never had to study on a summer weekend before, and it's not very fun. I have not been outside in direct sunlight in several days - only an evening walk. Then again, part of that may be due to uncharacteristically gloomy summer weather we are having. But it was very nice last weekend, and I spent the whole day reading about Personal Property Registries. Boo.

Hilary Exposed to Pop Culture

With Paris in prison and Lindsay in rehab, the starlet scene has been seriously diminished recently. However papparazzi did catch up with Hilary recently on a Saturday night knitting and watching the Notebook.

Overwhelmed with a frantic third trimester burst of energy, she also decided to go through every single CD case in her home looking for a wedding DVD that has been reported missing for over a month. Since the Notebook runs just 120 minutes, the last hour of this (eventually successful) search required that Saturday Night Live be on in the background.

Since Hilary is usually too busy with her starlet friends on Saturdays (read: is asleep by 11), it has been approximately four years since she watched SNL (aside from that version with Matthew Perry.) Know how it really wasn't all that funny four years ago? It's now 90% less funny than it was then.

Graduation

Wow - six semesters, 90-odd credits, at least one all-nighter, and it's all done. Sad, yet happy.

Things That Annoy Me: Gas Price Stories

There are a few journalistic devices that really bother me - one of them is one journalists interview other journalists - don't get me started on that. Another is the "Gas Price Story." I find it very lazy when journalists interview people at the pumps about whether or not they think gas prices are too high. Guess what? If they're buying gas, particularly if they're filling up their SUV, they probably think it's too expensive! But there are many people out there, me included, who drive only occasionally. And guess what? I don't care at all what gas prices are - in fact I see a silver lining in these high prices if it means fewer people driving. So maybe they should stop interviewing the owners of SUV and ask people standing in line at the bus.

Another popular one is the passport story. Yes - passports lines are long. Yes - it's a pain to wait in line for your passport. And those being interviewed at the end of a very long line are even more likely to be irritated. Okay, the government should have been a bit better prepared, but perhaps some of these people should have planned ahead of time and gotten their passports a few months before they were needed - no need to wait in line when you do that - you can do it all by mail.