Tuesday, February 28, 2012

I have the cutest grandbabies ever.

Here's the photo I got today via cell phone (please note: cell phone is two words, not one):


This picture was taken while Button was eating a mixture of oatmeal, butter, and liver. Deb says he loves it. I texted back, "Your kids love the weirdest foods!" and she replied "Haha, it's because they have no other options. Liver or hunger . . . your aversions go away pretty quickly!"

She's such a smart mama.

And she makes beautiful babies.

Be thankful ~

Monday, February 27, 2012

The automatic door that wasn't.

Remember my water bottle? The one I carry with me everywhere? That looks like this when I'm drinking from it?


Today I had just finished a meeting with a woman (a manager at the gym) whose training manual I'm editing, and I was walking out with my computer bag over one shoulder and my bottle in my hand. As I approached the automatic sliding door, I raised the bottle to take a swig, when lo and behold, the door opened about a foot and stopped. I, however, did not. And since the bottle was already positioned at my mouth, the force of the bottle hitting the door was transferred to my lips and teeth. I think that's somebody-or-other's Law Regarding the Transfer of Energy.

I may or may not have said something unsavory to the faulty door, but I slid through the crack sideways and kept going, not wanting to know if the people watching from inside were laughing. I'm sure it looked funny. Thankfully there's no permanent damage.

Also, I figured out how to save a Pages document as a Word document, hallelujah and glory to God. Amen. Pages was driving me crazy, but now that I have this book in Word, I'm excited to work on it.

In other news, today I ran my first sub-9-minute miles. I went 2.4 miles at an 8:54 pace. I amazed even myself. Tomorrow is 4 miles, but I doubt it will be that fast. It's just nice to know I'm not as much of a turtle as I thought.

That's it, that's all. Over and out. Sayonara. Ciao. Auf Wiedersehen. Au revoir.

Be thankful ~

Saturday, February 25, 2012

What I learned this week.

1. I was complaining about the shoe situation to the running guru at the gym the other day and here's what he told me: Go home and look at your old shoes. Get the product number off the inside of the tongue. Go online and search for that product number. So I did, and guess what . . . I found them! I also found out that I am not nearly as smart as I thought. What I had was the Gel-Nimbus 12, and that makes all the difference. It's why I couldn't find them in any stores—because they're last year's shoes and no one wants them anymore (except me). Everybody wants the latest and greatest (except me). Apparently everybody has really narrow feet (except me). So I'm cautiously excited.

2. While I was complaining about the shoe situation, I thought I'd also throw in a few gripes about my legs being so sore from running in four different shoes over the last few weeks, and the guru told me to soak in epsom salts. I said, "Epsom salts?" thinking that was an old-person thing. And he said very seriously, "Epsom salts will change your life." So I am going to the store today to get epsom salts and allow them to change my life.

3. After my whine-fest at the gym, I was doing a short run through a neighborhood nearby where there are sidewalks and wide streets and very little traffic, when I came over a hill and saw a man standing at one corner. There was a woman standing behind him, and he had a long stick with a ball on the end of it in his hand. He had just started moving very tentatively across the street, waving the stick back and forth in front of him, with the woman offering a little encouragement but not touching him. He was angling toward the middle of the intersection rather than going straight across to the other corner. When he got a few feet too far, she said something and he stopped, turned a little to his left, and then kept going.

I was completely humbled and convicted about my complaining. Sister, learning to get around outside with no more navigation tools than a STICK takes some serious guts. I offered a word of encouragement as I passed (I hope that's allowed), and didn't stop thinking about that guy for the rest of my run. Even today I'm still thinking about him.

I've heard it said before that no matter how bad off you think you are, there's always someone who has it worse. I've also heard it said that complaining is just telling God that he's not doing the right thing for you.

Today I'm going to run my six miles in 30-mph winds with gusts up to 40. And no matter how bad it is (and I expect it will be), I'll remember that I have it good, and God knows what he's doing.

BE THANKFUL ~

Friday, February 24, 2012

The winter that wasn't.


Be thankful ~

P52 Week 8: Cabin Fever



What cabin fever?


Taken Thursday, February 23 in Northern Virginia. I'm loving winter this year.

For more Cabin Fever, go here.

Be thankful ~

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Look what I did!

You gotta love Picnik, right? I'm trying to make a few so I can change them occasionally, but I don't know what I'm going to do when Picnik closes in April. Is there another free collage-making service? (Because I'm all about the free.)

Going for a three-mile run this morning, then Pilates, and then home to edit and make PW's famous pot roast. It will be 70° in Virginia today! Come on, spring!

Be thankful ~

PS. Abbey, that's my second post in less than 12 hours. :)

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

A list of random stuff in random order. For Abbey.

1. Went for my first run in the new Nikes today (note there is no apostrophe in Nikes because it's plural, not possessive). Four miles and so far, no pain. But I'm withholding judgment until after my six on Saturday.

2. We had the windows open all day today. (Is this still February? In Virginia?) Tomorrow is supposed to be close to 70°. Right now it's raining, and I love the sound of rain with the windows open.

3. I went to church tonight just to keep the nursery. I only do babies (no toddlers) for my own sanity. Toddlers stress me out. Tonight the babies were pretty happy.

4. Today I went to Yoder's, a little Mennonite-run country store about an hour away. That's where I get my wheat, and since I get it in 50-pound bags, I only go a few times a year. But now that I'm making copious quantities of granola, I wanted to see if I could get some of those ingredients cheaper there. The oats are definitely a better price, and so is the coconut. The nuts (almonds and walnuts) are still cheaper at the commissary, and I haven't yet found a good place to buy organic maple syrup at a reasonable price. Right now I'm paying $5-something for an 8-ounce bottle, which is not good at all. I think I need to check Amazon.

5. I tried to find mustard pretzels for Abbey (her favorite from Yoder's) (and yes, she changed the spelling of her name), but they don't have them anymore. Only honey mustard & onion pretzels, and that just sounds nasty. I did get some good hard-as-rock gingersnaps for Ben, chocolate-covered pretzels for Man-squared and Mike, and the biggest bag of coconut I've ever seen. Oh, and a Richard Scarry book for the grandbabies. It was one of our favorites:



I've been challenged to blog more since Abbey doesn't have a facebook. So now you know about my boring day. :)

Be thankful ~

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

The saga of why they can't just leave well enough alone.

I am now officially on pair of shoes #4. I started with the Saucony Ride4.


They were too narrow. Then switched to Brooks Glycerin 9.


They were also too narrow. Then back to the Sauconys, but in a wide width.


They were wide enough but didn't have enough shock absorption, so my knees and hips hurt. Now I'm in Nike Vomeros.


I kind of like the yellow, but I had to get rid of the yellow laces and replace them with longer white ones because to keep them on my feet, I have to lace them up to the very last hole, and the nifty yellow laces weren't long enough for that. Makes you wonder how much more than $130 you would have to pay to get laces long enough for all the holes they put in the shoes. 

Anyway, I want to be excited, but I'm very close to throwing in the towel and going back to my old Asics. I tried on the new version of my old shoes (Asics Gel-Nimbus 13), but they've made them a LOT narrower, so I can barely get my feet in them. 

So today I was wondering to myself as I'm sure we all do from time to time, "Why must they always change the things I like?" It makes me wonder if the chief engineers' meeting at Asics went like this:


Chief: Fellas, it's a new year and that brings a new opportunity to aggravate the stew out of a few million people. What can we change this year? Marty?


Marty: Well, I don't like last year's colors, so let's definitely change them. The pink was way too Mary Kay. I'd like something a little more Pepto-Bismol.


Chief: Okay, I think we can do that. How about you, Herb?


Herb: You know, I've been thinking. Remember how the laces were offset in last year's shoe? And remember how they got such fantastic reviews and everyone loved them? Well, we can't just leave them that way. It will look like we're stagnating and we won't be able to claim the "new and improved" status we so love. I think we should change the angle of the laces. Make them run right up over the top of the arch where they can dig in and rub the skin raw.


Chief: Great idea, Herb. We'll get our Head of Lace Angles right on that. What else? Bob? (because there's always a Bob)


Bob: Well, there's this woman in Virginia who has a really hard time buying shoes on account of she inherited bunions from her mother and grandmother. A lot of times even the wide-width shoes don't fit her, but last year she wore the old Asics Gel-Nimbus 13 for an entire year with no foot pain and she loved them! We can't have life being too easy for her, you know. If we make them at least an inch narrower, there's no way she'll be able to find running shoes that fit, and she'll spend weeks taking pair after pair back to the running store. That'll give the people at VA Runner something to complain about every time they see her pulling in the parking lot. And it will frustrate the daylights out of Nike, Brooks, and Saucony because she'll keep bringing shoes back. What do you think, boss?


And so it was.

Be thankful ~

Saturday, February 18, 2012

This post is mostly for the benefit of my children, who will be jealous about who I spent the weekend with.

Last night and today, Ben and I took a few of our young adults to what we affectionately call "The Great Annual Spouse Hunt" otherwise known as the singles conference at Fairfax Baptist Temple. If you've never been to one, you don't know the meaning of middle-aged exhaustion. Those people have energy that would make a teenager tired.

Basically a singles conference is where the young adults (about ages 18–27 or so) from a lot of different churches get together for food, fun, and preaching.

Friday night we started with dinner, and then played a great ice-breaker game in which everyone sits in a huge circle and there are one-too-few chairs. (Keep in mind that there are about 100 people involved.) The person in the middle picks someone and says, "Do you love your neighbors?" That person answers, "Yes, I love my neighbors (name) and (name), but I REALLY love people who (some random description, like people who wear pearls, or people who were born in May, or people who wear boots)." Then all those people who fit the random description have to jump up and swap chairs, while the guy in the middle tries to steal one. One person is always left without a chair, and he becomes the guy in the middle. That was exhausting game number one.

Then we had preaching, which was awesome, as we expected. Our speaker for the weekend was Rand Hummel, camp director of The Wilds of New England. If you ever have the chance to hear him speak or go to The Wilds for camp, don't miss it! There's also a Wilds of North Carolina.



All five of my kids have heard Rand preach many times, and he actually remembered us even though he's been preaching to multiple thousands of teens for 25+ years.

Then we sat in ridiculous traffic on I-95 at 10 pm. By the time we got home with two extra people, ate pizza, and fellowshipped, it was midnight. Up Saturday at 6:30, leave the church by 8:30, and we started Day 2 of the conference with muffins, pastries, and coffee. While I was getting coffee, a young lady stopped me and asked if I was Mrs. Sargent. I answered, "Yes. How do you know me?" She told me she was the daughter of a pastor we had years ago. I remember this girl being maybe 11 or 12 years old. She and her sister Jessica (who is married to Caleb Piercey, by the way) had many tea parties with my daughters. Jennifer is now a college graduate and a teacher.



Also during this caffeinating time, Melinda was acting silly.


I just had to throw that out there.

Then preaching time number two and then lunch, because if Baptists do nothing else, they know how to eat. Then back to the chapel, and here's where it gets interesting.

The next item on the agenda was a game. We were split up into groups of 10. Each group was given a bag of six props with these instructions: Make up a three-minute skit using all ten people and all six props. You have 15 minutes to be ready to present it to the group. Our props were a ping-pong ball, a roll of masking tape, a plastic cup-holder for a car, a hand-held barometer, a glue stick, and a compass like the one you used in geometry.

The gist of our skit was that we were filming a movie. One guy was the director. Eight of us were actors on an airplane that crashes on an island. Ben was a crocodile that had the key to our survival: the barometer (we had to know whether it was going to rain). We had to kill him to save ourselves. I won't go into details, but there was a lot of very poor acting during which I threw myself on the croc so Kelce could tape his man-eating jaws shut. He was finally subdued with the switchblade-compass.

We won first place. Fortunately, I have no photos.

Preaching time number three was followed by a few games of volleyball and another block party on I-95 to get home. By the time we dropped everyone where they needed to be, it was after 6 pm and neither Ben nor I wanted to cook, so we waited 35 minutes for an extremely mediocre steak, and then came home to put on stretchy pants.

And here we are. My bed is calling.

Be thankful ~



Friday, February 17, 2012

P52 Week 7: True Love


I'd like to speak to the person who came up with these themes. Really. True Love? How do you photograph that?

In my effort to get the true love idea on film (or SD card), I wound up with two photos that, together, tell the story of a love truer than any other I've seen since Ben and I got married. It's a love full of pure devotion and unselfish caring . . . a completely unconditional love that goes on even when Man-squared forgets to feed him.

Watching his boy pull in the driveway . . .


The joyful reunion.


For more True Love, go here.

Next week is Cabin Fever. It has to get easier.

Be thankful ~

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Tuesday morning in the backyard.

If we ate last year's collards and the bark off twigs, we'd be skinny too.







Be thankful ~

Monday, February 13, 2012

Monday, Monday.

I am happy to report that winter is moving along quite nicely here in Northern Virginia. It's the middle of February (just thought I'd throw that out there in case you haven't looked at a calendar lately), and we just had our first snow, if you can call it that. Saturday afternoon it came down like gangbusters for about 10 minutes and then blessedly stopped. And all the people said Amen.


I'm sorry for all you snow lovers out there, but I'm counting the days until flip-flop weather. My life's philosophy is something along the lines of if God wanted us to wear wool socks, we'd have been born with them on.

In other news, a couple of weeks ago we had a few young people here on a Saturday afternoon, and while they are totally cool with sitting on the floor, we realized we desperately needed more seating in the living room. With tuition bills looming, I thought my best bet would be Craigslist, and I was right. I found these very old but quite awesome chairs:


I feel like we need an old man with a pipe sitting in this one.


In still other news (riveting, I know), I started my 13-week training plan for the half marathon today. Mondays are always easy, Tuesdays are for speed work, Thursdays are just an average run, and Saturdays are for long runs. Week 1, day 1 down. Twelve weeks, 3 days to go.

Be thankful ~

Friday, February 10, 2012

P52 Week 6: Drink Up!



Oh my. I hesitate to even write this post. I feel like I should have some kind of gross-out disclaimer here.

Once again I procrastinated all week because I am nothing if not consistent. Thursday night I sat at my desk winding up an editing project, looking around for some representation of the theme Drink Up that wasn't totally lame.

I spied my water bottle, which I carry with me everywhere I go. I took a few shots of it from different angles, then zoomed in for a close-up of the water drops on the inside. Boring. Then I stood up and shot from the top. Lid closed. Lid open. Then instead of focusing on the view of it I normally see, I focused on the bottom of the bottle through the water and hoped that was different enough to qualify as not-too-lame.


It's less than imaginative, but I've always said creativity isn't my strong suit.

Not able to leave well enough alone, I headed for the kitchen looking for something else to drink up when I spied the container of Oreo cookies just begging for a glass of milk. I took great pains to stack the cookies just so, fiddled with white balance, and came up with this lovely shot of my cookies and milk.

And the stray hair on the bottom two cookies.


Just keeping it real.

For more, hopefully hair-free, Drink Up shots, go here.

Be thankful ~

Monday, February 6, 2012

Little baby Mac.

I'm not telling you anything you don't already know when I say that this life? It is busy.

I was supposed to edit all weekend but instead went grocery shopping, hunted down a Haynes manual for fixing a Volvo S70, bought running shoes, cooked a bunch, went to church, and bought a new computer for Abbie. And there's always the laundry and dog hair, but they're a given on any day.

Abbie called her daddy last week and lamented the sorry state of her Dell laptop, which is a mere three-and-a-half years old. It's been having more and more problems: overheating, picking up every virus that comes along, refusing to run unless it's plugged into the wall, and most recently, refusing to run at all. Basically it's been dying a slow, painful death, gasping and wheezing since about the fourth month she had it.

When I walked into the kitchen, I heard Ben saying to her, "Sweetheart, I'm going to hand the phone to Mom. Here's what you need to say to her: Mom, my computer is a piece of crap and I need a Mac. Okay? Here she is."

I took the phone and said, "Hi, honey," and she immediately started groaning and apologizing for being soooooo expensive. I would reassure her that she's not, but she really is. Her school is twice as expensive as any of the other kids', she drives a pretty sweet little truck, and art students have to buy SO. MUCH. STUFF.

Anyway, we talked a little, I finally got her to say what her daddy told her to say, and we made a plan to get all her music, photos, and documents off the old computer.

So Ben and I walked in Best Buy Sunday afternoon and threw down $1200 for a MacBook Pro that's nicer than the one I use. For just a minute I thought about keeping it and giving her my old one, but that's not what mothers (or fathers) do. We got it all set up for her, installed Microsoft Office on it, and I took it to her today. We met in a city about halfway between us, had a burrito with her friend Cesia, and I gave her the computer and cords and external hard drive with these instructions:

Don't let anyone else carry it. Be very gentle with it. Treat it like a baby.

I gave her and Cesia a hug, got in my car, and drove away. A few minutes later I got this picture from her:


Do they make rear-facing carseats for Macs?
Be thankful ~

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Three things I learned today.

1. Starbucks instant coffee, Via, still tastes like instant coffee, just five times more expensive. Even International Delight French Vanilla Coffee Creamer doesn't help.

2. You know how when you put a tomato-based substance (like chili or spaghetti sauce) in a plastic container, it leaves the container forever orange? Well I heard years ago that if you spray the inside of the container with cooking spray before you put the stuff in, it won't stain. I don't know why it took me until the age of 50 to try it, but I did, and it works. No stain, and no remaining smell of chili. Go forth and save your containers.

3. Now that my children are adults, they are thankful they were homeschooled. Deb has been taking some computer programming classes sponsored by her county, and she's been so frustrated with them. The teacher doesn't answer her questions, he doesn't explain things clearly, he assigns 12 hours of videos to watch (clearly he doesn't have a toddler and a baby), etc.

So today I got this text from her:

I just realized how much of a homeschooler I am. I've been frustrated with my instructors because they're moving us through the course when we haven't even mastered what we were working on. It just occurred to me that HELLO? that's how public schools work! It's not about mastering a subject or helping an individual learn. It's about cramming facts and forcing everyone along at the decided pace. So glad I was homeschooled! It's no wonder kids are brats. They're frustrated all the time!

Also, I'm trying a new focaccia recipe (made with whole wheat flour) from Tasty Kitchen. If you haven't checked out Tasty Kitchen yet, you should. It's pretty amazing. I'll let you know how many mitts I give this recipe.

Be thankful ~

Friday, February 3, 2012

P52 Week 5: Shadows


You know how some people are procrastinators and put things off until the very last minute when they could easily be done ahead of time, sparing those people a lot of stress in the end? I am not one of them.

Only this week I was.

I kept putting this photo off—and why? What's the big deal about taking a picture of a shadow?

I think my problem is that I didn't want to just take a picture of a shadow. I wanted it to mean something. So yes, this week I belonged to the procrastinator-overthinker club. When I finally walked out on the deck with my camera (in 62° sunshine in my bare feet) on Thursday, the first thing I saw was my Adirondack chair making this shadow on the deck, inviting me to dream of summer sunshine. I have always been a fan of summer with its days on the beach, warm breeze blowing, the sound of seagulls overhead, and flip-flops. Even though I live three hours from the nearest beach, I still feel like I've come home as soon as I smell the salty air.

So this shadow made me think of good things to come . . .


For more P52 "Shadow" photos, go here.

Be thankful ~