Emilie: Just finished my week at 3.5 miles

So I know I can run 3.5 miles now.  And let me state that I use the term “running” loosely.  I’m more of a jogger.  It’s a slow run.  Nice slow pace.  Slow and steady FINISHES the race!  So I always feel great after the run, but I’m still needing to pump myself up before the run.  My sister was in town for the Thanksgiving week and it was nice to have a running partner!  Next week it will be 3.9 miles!  YIKES!

The marathon feels like a long time away in normal life, but in training days it’s coming soon! It’s in mid Januaray…I can’t remember the actual date right now…

Here’s a quote from my 5 year old nephew…”Mimi…why do you run so much???”  I don’t know kid.  I really don’t know!

Sam-The F-Word, Part 2

A few weeks back Jack and I went round and round about the “F word”. He being an inquisitive 5 year old wanted to know what the secret word is and of course I don’t think it’s something he needs to know right now…even though he promised not to say it. Read the blog about this…a few blogs ago.

Well now the cat’s out of the bag.

Tonite I pulled into the Wal Mart parking lot and found a sweet spot near the front. A complete shocker on Black Friday. I expressed my jubilation about my good fortune. Jack apparently heard something else. He said “ooh daddy, you’re not supposed to say that word”. I was confused since all I did was say a simple “all right” or something boring like that. I asked what he meant and he said that I said f***. I was caught off guard by this. I asked him to repeat himself and he said f*** again.

Now I’m not a Saint…I have been known to use the word in anger or jubilation or just because. But I know for a fact it didn’t come out just because I got a good parking spot.

I assured him again that I hadn’t said that…in fact my exact words to him were that “I did not say the F word”.

Well that was it.

There was about 10 seconds of silence and then Jack said “well now I know what the F word is.” (jaw drop)

I mean if he said the actual word in trying to correct me I figured he knew the word…right? Guess I was wrong. I guess I foolishly fell into that one.

Odd thing is that was the last I heard of it. He now knew the word that is the F-word and I guess for now that’s enough. He never questioned me anymore or tried using it again or brought it up again. Although I suspect it’s now a well planted time bomb just waiting for the right moment in school or elsewhere to rear its ugly head. “Hey, I know what the F-word is…it’s f***”!

Twilight series: a bit of irony

Is it a vampire ? Or is it a boxer ?

Depends on how you look at it. Jodi has been “bitten” by the vampire since Twilight came out. If it has Stephanie Meyer’s name on it, we have it.

Problem is we also have a four legged “vampire” in the house….Ashley…And she loves to chew EVERYTHING ! Even books that have no scent ( so we think) and are carefully stashed out of reach ( so we think) on the counter.

Last night it was a few game pieces from Candyland, a small artificial Christmas tree, and Phoebe’s lunchbox.

Over the weekend it was a box of Cheese-Its and a Snoopy doll.

Other unsuspecting victims included: a roll of paper towels, matching Princess cups, an antenna, and a pair of Crocs.

SO how do we train Ashley to resist her urge to chew like the Cullens in Twilight ? Not sure yet….Hey, at least SHE sleeps at night.

Murphy@murphysamandjodi.com

jodi – time to get serious (1/2 marathon looming)

Confession time. 

1 – I HAVE done all of the miles I’m supposed to.  I’m doing the running. (and pretty impressed with what I’m able to do)

2 - I have not done the strengh training, the abs work, etc.  Not even the foam roller stretches.

3 – I am ashamed of this.

4 – I have not been eating great either.  I know I should start.  This could only help.

5 – All of this changes – right now.

It is about 10 pm, Monday night, November 24th.  And from this point on – I have to promise to myself to do the additonal training exercises, and eat better.  Also – lots of water.  Being hydrated is very important for this kind of training. 

These are my confessions. 

jodi@murphysamandjodi.com

Sam-the old man and the coumarin

Friday my parents came up to spend the morning with Jack at Grandparents’ Day at his school. At least that was the plan. At some point the plan went awry and my 75 year old dad found himself bloodied and in the hospital emergency room.

There was no violence involved, no wild pack of bully kindergarteners who prey upon the elderly. No, this was brought on by my dad’s health condition. He has diabetes, high blood pressure, gout, five bad disks in his back and Parkinson’s. The latter has him shuffling his feet rather than normal walking. And that shuffling did him in on an uneven sidewalk surface during grandparents’ day.

I met them at the hospital emergency room. Dad’s face looked like he’d been on the losing end of a beating. His forehead had a bump swollen to larger than a golf ball and he was bleeding from the bump. His nose was also bloodied as was his lip, arms and right knee.

We passed the time by taking a picture of dad to use for Christmas cards, we considered taking a box of rubber surgical gloves for my mom to use for gardening and even wondered about the school naming the bloody sidewalk in honor of my dad (to avoid a lawsuit)

The emergency room doc finally came. He said a tetanus shot was in order as were three stitches on the bridge of the nose. Forehead stitches weren’t possible because as he put it “the forehead had been chewed up too much in the fall”. Only way to stop that blood would be Neosporin and bandages.

The doc also asked my dad if he’d been on certain meds, and he rattled off a few. For some reason my dad thought he heard the word Coumarin among those medications. He and the doc then went round and round about this: the doc saying the name of the drug that had sounded like Coumarin and of course my dad explaining Coumarin.

Dad tells the doc that he thought it would have been odd that Coumarin was a drug because it’s an ingredient that is found in bad, poisonous vanilla that is sold in Mexico.

Now to know my dad is to know he is master of the trivial and insignificant facts…much like me. He’s a walking Cliff Clavin of useless knowledge. Many times in my life he’s blurted out facts and knowledge that I have never doubted because I could never prove otherwise and many times didn’t really care that it was true or false…the kind of statements to which you reply “oh really” while shaking your head in agreement.

So at this point the doc is just patting my dad’s hand and I know he’s thinking “poor old guy got a nasty bump on the head and he’s rambling on about bad vanilla from Mexico”. I could tell the doc wanted to beat a hasty retreat from the nut room here. I mean after all, here’s a 75 year old feeble looking guy, bleeding from the face and head and shaking with Parkinson’s and going on about nasty Mexican vanilla ingredients.

Time to stop here and say I am my dad’s son and to this point in life his random facts, especially when it comes to culinary matters, have never proven to be wrong. So, having my Blackberry handy I Googled “Bad Mexican Vanilla”. I grabbed the first result and started reading. About halfway down the article explained that the pure vanilla extract from Mexico is among the finest in the world (something my dad had told me years ago), however shady dealers have been known to add an ingredient to artificial vanilla to trick unsuspecting tourists into thinking it was the top of the line stuff…sigh…here it is verbatim:

“…they disguised the artificial taste by adding coumarin, an extract of the tonka bean. Coumarin tastes and smells just like vanilla, only more so. One whiff and your rube tourist is likely to say, “Whoa, that’s good!” No, that’s bad. Coumarin has been shown to cause liver damage. The Food and Drug Administration restricted it starting in 1940 and banned it outright from all foods and food additives sold in the U.S. in 1954. Many other countries have done likewise.”

The crazy old guy was right once again. I shouldn’t have been surprised…I mean I’d heard the good vanilla/bad vanilla story from my dad a million times before. In fact, every time he goes to any part of Mexico on a cruise or other trip, he brings back a large jar of “good” vanilla. For me, the cheap Great Value vanilla extract does the trick…I’m not that much of a vanilla bean connoisseur.

Here’s where the moral of the story usually goes, but I really don’t have one. I could say “never discount the ramblings of an old guy” but I kinda knew he was right to begin with…I just had to um…double check it. I could throw in that no matter how old or feeble a person appears, the mind still works just fine. He may have trouble getting his thoughts organized and said, but I guess since I’ve been around him forever, I know what he means and what he means is usually right. Maybe that’s my moral: it took forever but after all these years I finally realized what I knew all along…dad was right.