On flying solo

Up until yesterday morning, my fears about Joe leaving the country for a month had all been very selfish.

What if I have a panic attack and he's not there to calm me down?

What if I have an allergic reaction when no one is around?

What if I have to drive anywhere farther than an hour away (because he always does the long drives)?

What if I actually don't miss him every single day -- will that make me a terrible wife?

What if I, what if I, what if I...


And then as we sat in church during the second set of worship, Joe put his arm around me and squeezed harder than usual, resting his head on my head.  I turned to look at him and saw tears in his eyes, and I asked him, "What's wrong?" 

"I'm really scared," he said.

And suddenly I saw this whole situation from his eyes:

A 16-hour flight...

An 11-hour time difference...
 
A place where he may or may not be safe to express his religious beliefs...

Where he doesn't speak their language...

Where it's hot as balls (sorry for the imagery, but seriously)...

And where he will know NO ONE. 


Oh hey, Tabitha...this might actually be harder on Joe than it will be on you.  Get over yourself.


Maybe being apart for a month will help me to realign my focus in our marriage, because the selfish tendencies have wormed their way in pretty deep.  I would like Joe to come home to a wife who didn't just kill time for four weeks, but who prayed for him every day, cleaned the house up a little better than usual, and missed him so badly that she can't wait to jump his bones the second he walks through the door.

Lord, help me become that wife.  
Don't let me waste these next few weeks wallowing in my selfish self-pity.  
Help me to see Joe the way you do, and to learn to love him better during this time apart. Less of me, more of you.

Quick February fitness update, March goal, and a race!

So February came and went in a flash, didn't it?

As I mentioned in my last post, Joe and I set out to do a push-up challenge where we'd build our way up from a few push-ups a day to eventually doing 50 the final day, for a total of 600 push-ups throughout the month.  I wasn't the best partner in the effort and didn't really encourage Joe to join me when I would decide to go out into the living room for my push-ups, so I ended up unintentionally leaving him in the dust...oops!  So, I've got to work on being a better workout partner.  :-)  Anyway, I finished the challenge, although I did most of the push-ups on my knees and never really FELT like I was getting any stronger, but I did see a little more definition in my shoulder and upper arm muscles.  I guess we'll call that a win!  (I still want to work on doing push-ups on my feet instead of knees, though, so the 30 Before 30 video will have to wait a little while longer...and let's not even talk about that list because my birthday is 33 days away and I CAN'T EVEN.)

My goal for March is a leg and core combo that I adapted from a couple different 30-day challenges, and this time Joe is on board again and we've established a better system to help us stay on top of it TOGETHER!  So hopefully we'll both come out of March with some awesome legs and abs, haha.

In addition to the leg & core challenge, I'm also signed up to run a new (to me) 10K in just a few weeks -- the Orchard 2 Ocean run, down in Carpinteria!  I stumbled upon this one while looking for some local races to help motivate me to keep running, and I really love that it's raising money for the Carpinteria and Summerland school districts!  Sometimes I'll pay for a race and feel like, "Why am I spending all this money to run when I could just run for FREE whenever I want?"  But races like this make a lot more sense to me because my money is going toward a good cause. 

This is the 23rd annual O2O run, and I had the privilege of speaking with Patricia, one of the people in charge of organizing the event, to find out what it was all about and what to expect on race day.  There will be a 5K, 10K, and a 1-mile Fun Run, followed by a delicious continental breakfast, complimentary massage from local massage therapists (yes please!), and of course a race T-shirt!  The first place winners of each race will also be given flowers and avocados from local orchards, so if I win (HAHAHA said the slowest runner ever), I'll have to give my avocados to someone who isn't allergic to them.  But I think that's a super cool prize, don't you?  Last year, more than 600 people participated in the event, so I'm sure they're hoping for even more this year!

Patricia and I are working together to have some sort of fun giveaway during the event for a random winner who uses the designated race hashtag on Instagram, so that should be fun, too! 

I'm excited to come back and recap the race here afterward, but in the meantime, WHO WANTS TO RUN IT WITH ME?! It's March 21st, so that gives you almost 3 weeks to dust off those running shoes and train a little bit for any of the three distances!  Click here to sign up on Active.com and then let me know if you're gonna do it.   

Are you planning to run any races in your area this year? 

Tell me all about it in the comments!

2015 Fit Goals - January update

In my last post, I mentioned that I was going to try to run 60 miles in January.

Well. 

Tomorrow is the last day of January, and unless I somehow decided to run 33 miles in the next day and a half (uh, no.), I will not be meeting that goal.  Still, I realized a couple weeks into the month that my 60 mile goal was rather ridiculous, considering it would have meant running an average of 2 miles a day (during a time of year when it gets dark at 5 PM and I am not in a good early-morning-workout habit). 

Add to that the fact that I hadn't run AT ALL (like, not one single time) since last September, and I basically set myself up to fail this goal, because ramping up from zero running to ALL THE RUNNING will inevitably take its toll on a person's body.  (Especially a person who is days away from the dreaded 3-0, but I digress.) 

So sure enough, mid-way through the month, my right foot started to hurt in an ominous way, and although I was so tempted to "power through" and ignore it in the hopes of hitting that 60-mile mark, I was smart enough to take it easy and give my foot a rest.  Fortunately, it seems I avoided a real injury, and I've still been running a couple times a week after taking a few days off -- but very cautiously and always paying extra attention to any potential pains beyond the usual soreness.

All that to say, tomorrow morning I'll run some distance (at least 3 miles), and I will have run about 30 miles in January rather than the planned 60. 

And I am completely okay with that!  That's 30 more miles than I had run in the previous 6 months combined, so it's a great accomplishment in my book. I'm hoping to keep up with running once or twice a week, because I do have some 10Ks (and maybe even a 15K) in mind to sign up for this year.

Plus, I never EVER get tired of seeing this kind of stuff on my beach runs:

But February will bring on a new monthly fitness goal to focus on, and I'm actually pretty excited about this one!  Joe is gonna do it with me, so hopefully we can help motivate each other to stick it out. 

Our plan for February is to work our way up to being able to do 50 push-ups!  I found a 30-day push-up challenge on Pinterest, and I modified it to fit in 28 days (with rest days every third or fourth day).  And this plan keeps it more interesting by having 5 different types of push-ups, so we'll start out doing one or two of each type, and eventually be doing 10 of each type at the end of the month!

(And don't you worry -- I didn't forget that one of my Thirty before 30 goals is to be able to do 30 push-ups!  You can bet I'll be getting it on video when I reach that goal.)

Are you going after any fitness or health goals this year?  

Tell me about it!

Let's pretend this isn't my first post in 3 months...

Welp, so much for 31 days of dedicated blogging helping me get back into a regular routine, huh? I just don’t even know where the last few months went, to be quite honest with you.  

In fact, all of 2014 happened before I had really accepted that 2013 was over. And I suspect that’s kind of how life is going to be for the next 80 years -- after all, the older I get, the smaller a fraction each year is in the grand scheme of my life, right? (Let’s not even talk about the fact that I only have 80 days left of my twenties.)

Here’s what seems to happen in my brain every time I remember that I have a blog:

1. Oh yeah, I wonder how long it’s been since my last post.  
   
   
   {logs in and sees how long it’s been}
   
   
2. Oops, that was a while ago. So much has happened that I could have written about since then!
3. Alright, I’m gonna write something.  
   
   
   {opens up a new post draft}
   
   
4. *Sigh.* How do I explain my absence without saying the same thing I always say (which is basically, “Oops, oh yeah, hi bloggy world!” and, “I promise I’ll be back on here more regularly!”)?
5. I know what I’ll do! I will go on a fun new adventure and then ACTUALLY write about it within a few days so that it’s fresh in my mind and then I can write a really good post. 
   
   
   {goes and does fun thing...}
   
   
6. (Weeks or even months later) Repeat Step 1.

All this to say, I’m not promising anything anymore.

I loved doing my 31 Days of Santa Barbara series. I loved it, I was so dedicated to it, and I feel really proud of pretty much every post I wrote (which cannot always be said about my past attempts to blog every day for a month).

But it didn’t exactly reignite a spark for writing so much as it made me even more excited to go and exist in the “real world” -- especially this little part of the real world that I get to live in. And I'm not sorry for that, because while I do miss having such great blog-world connections, I am so grateful for face to face relationships.

Still, I know how much it helps me to write about things that happen, so that I can look back years later and have a better picture in my mind of that particular moment in time. 

So...somehow I’ve got to find a better way to stick this thing out.

Anyway. Here is a list of a whole bunch of things I would have blogged about in the last few months, if I was a good blogger:

• Going to my first real competition with "Got Country!" and all the fun we had that weekend (plus, Joe surprising me by showing up in San Dimas when I thought he had to stay home)!
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Petting (and falling crazily, unexpectedly in love with) miniature donkeys during a fun fall day with my lady friends. (Also, almost getting lost in my first ever corn maze.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Dressing up as Rosie the Riveter for Halloween.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Finally taking John & Kelly (my brother- and sister-in-law) up to Los Olivos for wine tasting!
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Going to my second competition with "Got Country!" -- IN VEGAS -- and all manner of shenanigans that occurred. (But definitely would not have mentioned the horrific experience of sewing yards and yards of sequins onto our performance skirts, because that is a memory best forgotten.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Embarrassingly (but not so much that I wouldn’t post about it on the internet) confessing that I burst into anxiety-ridden, asthmatic tears right after the Vegas performance, and took a ridiculous teary-eyed selfie while I was trying to calm down in the bathroom. (I don't even know what was going through my brain, honestly.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Getting brand new, super cute, and SUPER discounted cowboy boots! (These last 3 bullets would have all been in one giant Vegas recap post, btw.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Having a lovely time, as always, at our annual weekend in San Francisco for the Dickens Fair and our usual stops at Boudin, Buena Vista Cafe, Ghirardelli Square, Pier 39, etc. (Also shamelessly posting this picture of me looking probably the cutest I have ever looked while being bundled up in cold weather clothing.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Checking one item off my 30 Before 30 list - ice skating outdoors! (And how I selfishly did not even ask my husband if he wanted to go or liked ice skating at all, which he didn’t...but he still amazingly took me ice skating and was a trooper.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Hosting another fun Christmas ladies’ night, complete with a Secret Santa gift exchange, silly games, amazing group photo outtakes, and a ridiculously cheesy Jonathan Taylor Thomas Christmas flick.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Enjoying a fun Christmas celebration with my side of the family, complete with my littlest nephew (Ezra) being his usual adorable self and learning people’s names. (I’m “Tub” and Joe is of course “Joe” because he has the easiest name ever.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Surprising Joe’s parents by showing up a day early to their house for Christmas. And also, Joe’s evil but hilarious gift-giving trick: he sent me on a treasure hunt wherein I opened 7 heinously ugly pieces of jewelry before getting to the 8th and ACTUAL gift, which was a gorgeous pearl and diamond necklace. (Also I managed to take almost zero photos at Joe's parents', so you get this selfie of me in the awesome Christmas fascinator Kelly made me last year.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Getting dressed up in our 1920s costumes for a super fun New Year’s Eve murder mystery party, during which Joe’s character was murdered and mine was basically a horrible person, and how it was kinda fun acting that part, but don’t tell anyone I said that. The most fun was exclaiming to Michelle, “I hate you so much!” and then immediately whispering, “No but I love you, I didn’t mean it!”
  
  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
• And lastly, setting out to achieve a new fitness related goal every month of 2015. January’s is to run 60 miles, and already I’ve gone on several sunset runs during which I have been completely astonished at how beautiful a place I get to live in.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

There. I blogged!