Weekend Bits & Pieces

Friday was supposed to be my long run, and it didn't go as planned.  As some of you (Dana, Aimee) know, I had to quit at three miles because of the nausea and the crazy pain in my legs.  I was supposed to run eleven miles, and I can't even tell you how disappointed I was in myself that I didn't even make it a third of the way through.  I think ultimately I did the right thing in stopping and forcing myself to come home and rest through the weekend, but I really have just never been so frustrated with myself.  The problem is that I had really bad side cramps, which would have been tough to push through on their own, but then my shins, which have been hurting for months now, were so painful, it was making me more nauseous and bringing tears to my eyes.  My legs were simultaneously shooting with sharp pains and so heavy I could barely lift my feet to take each step.  I'm not sure what causes that, but it felt like I had unbelievably heavy ankle weights on, which was basically gluing my feet to the floor.  After doing a little bit of research, I'm fairly certain that rather than the shin splints I thought I had, I actually have stress fractures in both my legs.  It's not a great situation, since the races is less than a month away.  Oh well.  I've been resting since I bombed on Friday, so hopefully I can run easily tomorrow.  Will all the sisters just do me a favor and not tell Mom about this?  I don't want her lecture about how I need to let myself heal and sit out the race if I'm injured.

Saturday I was extremely bored and frustrated about our football game, so I decided to go to the mall.  Herbergers was having a huge sale, and I found a few purses that I really wanted, but I just ended up buying a pair of MukLuks that I've had my eye on for awhile:

Honestly, I don't even care if anyone thinks they're ugly. They are so amazingly warm, and I really thought about wearing them to bed last night.  I'm 100% expecting a sarcastic comment from Dana about me buying something with a big bold print, but you know what?  I DON'T CARE.  I was feeling really guilty all last night and this morning about spending the $20 on myself for the slippers, and I debated for like 2 hours yesterday about whether I should return them, but ultimately my cold feet decided it was totally worth the money to keep them.  And then today when Jacob and I went to Walmart, he found a Ripstick on clearance and decided to buy it for himself for no particular reason.  So now I feel much less guilty about the MukLuks.

I'm not happy to report there has been basically no progress on the house.  The drywall was finished, and we were told that once the heater got going and warmed up the house, the tape and texture guys could come in and get started on the walls.  Jacob talked to our builder on Tuesday, and he promised us that the guys would be there on Thursday, and that he'd offered to pay them double to work through the weekend.  When I drove by three times on Thursday and never saw workers, I had Jacob call our builder.  Surprise, surprise, he never called Jacob back.  Friday came along and again there was no one at the house, so I called the builder.  SURPRISE FREAKING SURPRISE he hasn't called me back.  If I go by tomorrow and there's no one there, I'm pulling out all the stops in my voicemail.  I'll probably do some sort of rhetorical question that passive-aggressively asks why he won't ever return the phone call of a female customer.  I might even break out the tears.  I mean, seriously, this guy has NEVER returned my phone calls.  Not even one.  That's so annoying, I can't even begin to tell you.  I'm not sure yet how I'm going to play it, but now that everything is resolved with Samsung, I need someone to call and be rude to everyday, and I'm totally fine with that being our builder.  It's probably more advantageous if I go the "being nice" route to get our builder to work, but I'm not good at faking being friendly.  Maybe, much like Liz Lemon, I just need to summon my inner Julia Roberts to charm my way into getting some work done.

Tuesday night is Bunco, and I need to figure out what I'm going to bring as a snack.  I've been trying different baked goods lately, and what I'm learning is that I don't have great baking abilities.  I tried making some homemade Thin Mints, and they were so terrible, it almost makes me never want Thin Mints again.  But not quite.  Thankfully Jacob is a sweet guy (with obviously low standards), and he's been eating the cookies so I didn't have to throw them out.  Tonight I made cinnamon & sugar pretzel bites because when I passed the pretzel stand at the mall yesterday I was so hungry I almost said "Give me everything I can get for $200."  Instead I used this recipe to make my own, and they were pretty good.  The problem is that they were SO sugary, and I made the glaze (of course), and the whole thing was just a little too much.  Don't get me wrong, I'd make them again, but I can only have like 4 bites before I start to worry about if I'll puke when I stand up afterwards. 

This morning Jacob and I went back to the LCMS Lutheran Church here in town.  I'm not really sure what we're going to do about our church in town.  Jacob seems to really like this Lutheran church, but I don't know if I'm sold on it yet.  The Pastor seems nice enough, but he has a very unique way of speaking--he sounds VERY similar to the Rabbi from Seinfeld:

Needless to say, I find myself getting very distracted during the sermon, and I'm not sure how much I'm getting out of it.  I realize that's totally my own issues, but still, it makes it very hard for me to follow.