I was doing laundry and the washing machine just stopped!  Full of water and everything! ugh.  What do you do?!?  Well, I’ll tell you what Brett does:

He takes it apart.

I was really excited when I heard Brett say he’d figured it out.  I yelled, ” is it the cupplers!?!”.  I had googled, “washing machine won’t drain”…..and that was google’s best guess.  Sadly it wasn’t the cupplers (I only say sadly, because I love shouting out random things and being right and sounding smart).  Brett just continued to tease me and said, “you’ll like this”.  This isn’t a great picture, but it was easily identifiable to us as my missing sock.

My missing sock in some tube thingy that goes in the washing machine.

I was wondering where that thing went!  I think I drove Brett crazy during this process.  He’s definitely more of a jump in the tear it apart kind of guy, where as I’m the let’s-do-it-carefully and look up each step online kind of girl.  At one point Brett wanted to check to see if the motor worked (before we found the sock).  

So he took the motor out…..and was just going to plug it in to see if it ran! WHAT?!? you are standing in puddles of water, with tons of open electrical thingys!!  I couldn’t watch, I had to leave the room.  Long story short, the motor ran, then he found the sock and the mystery was solved.  We even put the washer back together almost perfectly  ;)

This is one of my favorite rides to do, especially during the spring!  All the wildflowers are blooming!  The water is calm and beautiful.  There are rolling fun hills all around the lake, and challenging hills up to and out of the lake.

The first climb out from the lake is a doosey.  It’s only about 1 mile long, but it is very very steep.  The last time I was riding up this hill, I was going about 6 mph, I passed some cows just sitting on the side of the road, I scared a baby cow and the momma took a few steps towards me!  I panicked, what if she charged me!? I was going 6 mph….I felt like I was standing still! Katie and I laughed about this story the whole way up.  When we stopped at the Forrest Service Station at the top we saw this.

He was basking in the sun!  Katie and I cracked up thinking of the possibilities of him charging us.  Then I made Katie ride by again so I could get pictures of her!

Our final climb of the day was up the back of Wildcat.  Wildcat is a well known difficult climb in this area (the front not the back).  We stopped for some fuel, fluid, and photos.

I’m an avid blog reader.  Especially professional triathletes.  It keeps me sooo motivated reading about their training….how they LOVE to “give it to themselves”  to be “smashed” what they are eating.  How they train, eat, nap, eat, train, eat, nap, sleep!  THE LIFE!  I get really bummed if my favorites don’t blog for a while.  So, here it is folks.  Tonight I’m sitting down and posting a few stories of late.

Just so this isn’t the most boring post ever. I’m going to post  a few pictures of a few things that don’t have huge stories:

These are some hair flowers I made for my adorable friend Ky’an.  They are just layers and layers of polyester fabric circles, with burned edges. I sewed on some beads, and hot glue gunned ‘em to some bobby pins!  I love them!

That’s my quilt on the floor in the background.  I was working on it like a mad-woman during my recovery week.  The top is completely done, this is what happened every time I needed to lay the quilt or any quilt pieces on the floor. It’s like a puppy magnet!

We had a puppy birthday party at our house last weekend. The three sisters Clementine (Brett’s parent’s dog), Olive (Brett’s sisters’ dog), and our little Arizona turned a year old last Friday!  I made home made doggy treats (seen in the picture), and a people cake for us to eat!  It was a fun, and funny family day!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Yep, I’m changing my brake pads.  Did you even know you could do that?!  Well, now I can.  It was REALLY easy too, especially after I purchased the C-clamp to reset my calipers (sounds good right?)

Brett and I decided on Saturday that Sunday would finally be brake changing day. I desperately wanted to wear one of those mechanic jumpsuits.  Brett thought he had one, but couldn’t find it. I settled for wearing his John Deer hat and drinking a beer.  That seemed mechanic-y.

I really did this whole brake all by myself.

Mission accomplished!  We estimated I saved like $400.   Look how productive I can be when I’m recovering!

The rest of my weekend was just as exciting and energy filled!!  Saturday’s workout was a DAY OFF.   Yep! I didn’t have to work or workout. WHAT?  Yep, day off off. These happen pretty rarely during IM training because of my 12 hour shifts, I usually get my day off of training on a work day.  Some work days are like marathons themselves, so it’s not always a “day off”.  Saturday was though, so the puppy and I went for a 5 mile walk, and then I spent 2 hours doing yard work in the beautiful sun.  I couldn’t let that sunny day go to waste just because I wasn’t training. (The funny thing about the yard work is how SOOOORE I was the next day!  I must have done 100 squats picking up leaves, etc!)

I spent the rest of the day working on some crafts.  I have this little purse that my brother gave me for Christmas probably 8 years ago, it’s been through a lot to say the least and the ink stains were finally the kicker. I thought I’d have to put the ol’ thing down.  After trying to throw it away several times I finally decided maybe I could just patch it….or save it as a pattern and remake one.  So I started taking it apart, as I took it apart I realized I really just needed to add new front pockets to it. In then end it became a refurbished purse!  (I’ll post pics of the finished project later).

Another project I was diligently working on while recovering was my “project quilt”. Which is a quilt I’m making with squares from all my scraps that are left over from my projects.  I’m about 3/4 of the way done with the top of the quilt.  I think I’m going to put a flannel backing on so it’s SUPER duper cozy!  It has been really really fun getting out old fabrics and remembering what I made with them.  Most of them are from purses and aprons, but I’ve done some other fun things.  I even put the OLD fabric from inside the refurbished purse on there!   Jess (Brett’s sister) and I have been making hair flowers and head bands I’ll post some pictures when I actually finish one.  We had a really fun crafting night the other night with some of her friends.  Jess was on a roll finishing bags she promised her friends for their birthdays’ last year….I kept eyeing her fabrics hoping she’d have leftovers that I could craft with (she has good taste).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now, there is inevitable giggle while running, (I do understand that) but there is also a fine line between the fit person’s skin-giggle and the too-much-cookie-dough-total-belly-giggle.  I have always walked (sometimes very closely) on the side of too-much-cookie-dough-giggle.  I have, been on some really hot long runs where the shirt did infact come off, and I thought, ” who cares if I look fat I’m running 20 miles, I don’t care what anyone thinks!”.  As soon as I was off the desolate mountain trail though, I would immediately put my shirt back on. Not actually wanting anyone to witness the giggle.

The race I’m choosing to BARE MY BELLY at is the See Jane Run 1/2 Marathon in June *gulp*…..so I’ve got lots o’ time right?  I can stop eating cookies, and ice cream right?  When we submit our goals to the club we also submit our “before” pictures and then take our “after” pictures at the event. EEEK.  Trust me it won’t be an action shot, it will be a perfectly posed abs flexed photo that I will definitely practice for days before the event so as to look great in the picture.  So, that is my goal race, but I need to be a little more specific too so here it is:

BBC 2010 GOALS:

• BARE BELLY at SEE JANE RUN 1/2 MARY June 5th (I have my skirts sports outfit picked out already!)
• LOSE THE 2009 10 lbs.
• *(note if this is accomplished by March 1st I get to buy a new cute two piece suit for swim practice….see goal below)
• FEEL COMFY WEARING MY 2 piece suit to swim practice by    March 1st so I can have a tan-giggle-free-bare-belly @ SJR

I am posting my before picture and my after goal picture below.  Just a little side note on the finding of the after-goal-picture.  I’m a realistic girl.  So I was searching for a pic of some fit looking abs that  had a little bit of love handle going on (those suckers are hard to get rid of!!) Apparently,  people with love handles AT ALL  don’t get plastered all over the internet so you are just going to have to  imagine the goal pic…..with a little soft area on either side of their hip bones.

I thought this was a bit much:

Hillary Biscay has my goal abs:

And….this pic is going on my refrigerator and similar ones will be posted throughout the house to remind me of my goals. No one wants me to be embarrassed in June right?

My Before: (you’ve seen this before  in my P90X post and I may be a smidge more fit now, but this photo session was traumatizing enough)

Happy Training…..

It only took about 20 or 30 tries to get a picture of these two where no visible body parts were moving.  I was very determined though, and there may have been a bag of treats involved.  This is my puppy Zona (on the left)  and her sister Clementine.

Saturday’s plan was a 2 hour flat ride with 40 minutes of tempo.  It was cloudy and muggy and gross when I left, but the sun came out when I got near Pine Flat. Making for a beautiful ride.

I stopped to take this picture of the snowy mountains in the background, I love the things I see on my rides. Don’t tell my coach I stop to take pictures, but until I get Oakley thumps with a built in digital camera in the lenses, I will probably keep stopping for beautiful and or funny things.  Just behind me while I was taking a picture, some guy was dusting his oranges…..he stopped when I rode by. I thought that was pretty nice.

I couldn’t resist taking a picture of this baby cow.  It was SOOOO cute. I was so excited that they turned to look at me, and continued to look while I found my camera under my layers and layers of clothes.