{"id":146,"date":"2010-11-15T01:47:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-15T01:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aninchofrain.utahcaver.com\/?p=146"},"modified":"2014-05-05T23:15:30","modified_gmt":"2014-05-05T23:15:30","slug":"ahead-of-the-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aroundherelately.com\/?p=146","title":{"rendered":"Ahead of the game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some months you feel like you get ahead&#8230;.others you don&#8217;t. This month I feel like I got way\u00a0WAY ahead! Fall decided to postpone winter slightly, and with Jason&#8217;s help our yard is 98% ready for winter (as Jason knows 98% is an arbitrary number that only gets infinitely close to 100% as I discover more projects). After raking on 3 separate occasions most of the leaves are cleaned up, or at least cleaned up enough that I&#8217;m not motivated to rake again. The garden and flowerbeds are cleaned out, and the fish have been happily swimming in their winter home in the basement for at least a month. Yesterday we went over to Jason&#8217;s aunt Katherine&#8217;s house and dug out a patch of lily of the valley she wanted to rid herself of. They were grown in super-thick so there was plenty to dig out.\u00a0 We\u00a0transplanted\/spread the rhizomes out behind our pond where nothing else will grow&#8211;due to shade and two pine\u00a0trees&#8211;in the hopes that next spring we&#8217;ll have beautiful, fragrant lily of the valley and not such a miserable eye-sore.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve also gotten a head-start on my Christmas cards and gifts this month. You may be rolling your eyes, but when you are trying to make stuff by hand it&#8217;s good to get a really\u00a0REALLY early head start. This year I&#8217;m hoping to learn from last year&#8217;s mistakes, namely being hunched over my craft table the entire week before Christmas. As you may have already seen on my facebook page, Kiki continues to be oh-so-helpful.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/aroundherelately.com\/2010\/11\/15\/ahead-of-the-game\/kiki-helping-craft\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-494\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-494\" title=\"Kiki Helping Craft\" src=\"https:\/\/aroundherelately.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/Kiki-Helping-Craft.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"216\" height=\"288\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"><\/div>\n<p>That being said, I&#8217;m really excited for the holiday season again this year. I caught myself humming along to the Christmas music in a store the other day and was slightly irritated when I realized it was barely Halloween. Today I stopped by one of my favorite craft stores and found that they are clearancing Thanksgiving decorations already! Gah! We&#8217;re not even there yet. Which brings us to holiday pet peeve #384&#8230;why is some of the Christmas stuff already marked 50% off?!! Just tell me the price you want me to buy it for instead of tricking me into thinking I&#8217;m getting a good deal. Do you really expect me to believe this is a great deal when it&#8217;s still a good 6 weeks til Christmas? (Don&#8217;t even get me started on Kohls&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p>Work is still work. I&#8217;m still looking for options and waiting for updates. Some things in life move slower than you hope.<\/p>\n<p>I started running. I&#8217;m not a runner. When I say &#8220;I&#8217;m not a runner&#8221; I mean it will take me upwards of a month to be able to\u00a0run a continuous mile. A girl at work told\u00a0me the other day she is\u00a0&#8220;not a runner&#8221;, and followed it up with &#8220;I ran a mile the other night, and signed up for a half marathon in the spring&#8221;. She had a baby 3 months ago.\u00a0I wanted to smack her. Let&#8217;s emphasize I&#8217;m not a runner. The first couple of times out my lungs burned so bad I thought I&#8217;d have to crawl back to the house. The next couple trips out were better, but they couldn&#8217;t have gotten much worse. Finally I had an occasion where I felt like my lungs were actually participating. I think I&#8217;ve developed upwards of 2 aerobic muscle fibers. Then the weather went bad and I headed to the gym where I was reminded of the crazy gym people. That&#8217;s been going well. I feel like I&#8217;m getting better. It&#8217;s amazing what 10 years will do to your fitness level&#8230;not to mention grad school and spending your summer with a bum wheel in a walking boot. So running is going well. Once I can run my first 10-minute mile I may start working on a second one, and with any luck maybe I can run a 5k in the spring. (1\/2 marathon&#8230;psshhhh). (To all my runner-friends: I love you guys. I am envious&#8230;.always have been, probably always will be.)<\/p>\n<p>Today I earned bonus wife-points by completing a cooking extravaganza. Jason said I will get an honorable mention in his blog this month and I think I may hold him to that. It was one of those days you either needed to nap or bake. Once my nap concluded (shortly after my breakfast cereal was finished) I got started on the cooking and baking. If I was a little more motivated there would still be pumpkin chocolate chip cookies this evening&#8230;but my body says I&#8217;m about worn out with laundry yet to fold. It reminds me again that our upright freezer was one of the best purchases we&#8217;ve made since the wedding, having it stocked with lunches makes my insides happy.<\/p>\n<p>Happy early Turkey-day. I hope you all have many things to be very thankful for this year.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"Thanksgiving Turkey\" src=\"https:\/\/aroundherelately.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/Thanksgiving-Turkey1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"384\" height=\"288\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I think those are my thoughts for the month.<br \/>\nCongrats to Jason and Ashley who welcomed Emma into the world today.<br \/>\nHappy birthday to ex-roomie Leah&#8230;who accidentally received a birthday card from me a month early, but remains my friend. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>I look forward to seeing all of you soon. Maybe wander out to Utah sometime. The weather is looking promising for skiers this year, and we&#8217;re just a short jump from some pretty big mountains. \ud83d\ude42 If you see my folks, ask them if they&#8217;ve bought their plane tickets to come visit at Christmas&#8230;I&#8217;m trying to convince them to make a holiday visit this year, Jason has said he&#8217;d pull out the crying card if need be.<\/p>\n<p>Take Care!<br \/>\nS.~<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">Some months you feel like you get ahead&#8230;.others you don&#8217;t. This month I feel like I got way\u00a0WAY ahead! Fall decided to postpone winter slightly, and with Jason&#8217;s help our yard is 98% ready for winter (as Jason knows 98% is an arbitrary number that only gets infinitely close to 100% as I discover more projects). After raking on 3&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/aroundherelately.com\/?p=146\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","xfolkentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aroundherelately.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aroundherelately.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aroundherelately.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aroundherelately.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aroundherelately.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/aroundherelately.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3362,"href":"https:\/\/aroundherelately.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions\/3362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aroundherelately.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aroundherelately.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aroundherelately.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}