A collection….

Just a collection of things Marceline believes should be on the top of her bookcase.

Sam has taken to calling Marceline a little magpie lately. It’s pretty appropriate.

Also just a taste out her amazing wall art.

103 Days

Today marks 103 days of doing push-ups everyday.

The first 99 of those days I did 100 push-ups a day.

On the 100th day, April 10th, I did 1,000 push-ups.

Today the 103rd day of the year marks my 100th day of running so far this year. In the month of March I took off 3 days. One when I wasn’t feeling well and had a fever. One before I ran a half marathon, and one day off for recovery after my half marathon.

Today marks the 13th day in a row I’ve run 5 mi each day. I’ve convinced myself that I’m trying to ‘bank’ miles for the month of April because I’m having another daughter born any day now in my schedule will be a little off or a lot off after she’s born.

But I like that I’ve hit these milestones and that I’ve kept at it. Leaves me feeling accomplished.

Christmas Towel

Christmas 2020 was weird for a lot of reasons. First Christmas not spent in Queensbury, not around my parents or brothers or sisters, no traveling or big gatherings. Covid knocked all that out

Even weirder though is what I got for Christmas from my parents…. A towel.

That’s right. I got a Christmas Towel, not in the sense it was Christmas themed, but rather that was my gift.

I’m not a towel snob or anything, but I do hate super fluffy towels that are so gentle that they don’t actually dry you off.

I’ve written about it before.

But this fancy Christmas Towel, it’s gone to the top of my towel rotation (don’t try to tell me you don’t have a towel rotation).

It’s absorbent, dries quickly and just stiff and starchy enough to have a good feel when drying off.

So it was a good gift. A great gift even.

Goals Met

At the start of the year I set a goal of 50 days in a row of running. This was coming off almost two full months of no exercise at all. Last I had run was the first week of November.

I decided to sign up for a few Garmin badges, uncertain of whether I would meet them or not. One is a badge for running 50 miles each month, which I figured was more than attainable, the other was for running 505 kilometers (313.8 miles) by March 30, which I didn’t think was doable but signed up for regardless.

Towards the end of January I realized I was close to hitting 100 miles a month without much effort. I was running around 3 miles a day, with some shorter runs and longer ones here and there. With a little promoting from a friend, I decided to go for and run a couple longer tunes in the last week to hit 100 miles for the month.

Which felt awesome.

I went a little nuts in February and ran 134 miles. More than I had in any month since college. Calves were perpetually tight. I wore compression sleeves on my calves at night which helped, bought new running shoes mid month, and stretched more. And then on my birthday (Feb 19) ran a 5k at my fastest pace since college.

I decided to dial it back a bit in March, aiming for 100 miles again, but hit some other goals. Garmin had a badge for running a 15k in March, which is just over 9 miles – so I did a 10 mile run in early March. I also want to run a half marathon before the end of March.

But my favorite achievement so far is hitting that 505k badge. Having only hit 100 miles in a month once before in my adult life (October 2020), hitting three times in a row to start 2021, in the midst of turning 42, and with a toddler under 2 years old feels like a big accomplishment.

And to hit 505k by mid-March, feels really great. Suck it middle age! I still got this.

39 Pairs of Socks

I have been meaning to go through my sock drawer for a few months now.  For Christmas I got 5 pairs of new socks and just recently was gifted some Sesame Street socks to match Marceline’s Sesame Street socks, leading to sock drawer overload.

I dumped my sock drawer on the floor and decided to weed out unmatched socks, but that equated to three solo socks, so something more needed to be done.

I switched tactics and started putting socks I would keep back in the drawer and created a giant toss pile.

None of these socks have holes in them, but most have stretched out elastic creating neverending floppy sock, or are really thin and not worth keeping. Even my old favorites like Space Invader socks and robot socks are getting tossed.

But… That still leaves me with 39 Pairs of socks, which seems extreme. This doesn’t count the running socks I have either, those are in another drawer.

How many pairs of socks do adults have? It has to be less than 39 pairs.