Saturday Afternoon

After a very busy week for both of us I find myself with some down town and am catching up on the annoying things on my do to list. FIrst of which is to buy tickets home for Easter and to Deep Creek. I always spend WAY TOO Much time researching flights, times, layovers, prices and get frusterated and just choose the easiest way out. NWA used to be our best/favorite option to fly to Pittsburgh. Now, I assuming thanks to the merger with Delta, has that same flight with a stop in Montana, Minneapolis and NYC before arriving in Pittsburgh. TOo much for a travel with a little on. I'm thinking of just booking 2 flights on Southwest one to Chicago and the second to Pittsburgh which so far is the easiest. We are also looking at our options to fly home. Flying to Des Moines is the cheapest option, but we fly through Chicago to do that. However, just flying to Chicago is $50 more expensive, on the same flight that we would be on to continue on the Des Moines. SO this process drives me insane and I normaly give up already. So instead of giving up I'm taking a break.
I'm also resting and nourishing to prepare for my big run today. I'm running with some girls (high shool girls) up Mt Si today. Paul and I spent the day together on Wednesday and he was asking me how to motivate his daughter. She's got natural talent and doesn't listen to him when he tells her how to develop her talent. Mostly he (and her coach and I for what it's worth) thinks she needs some strength training and she could get that doing hills. I agreed to talk to her to tell her my regrets from running at her age and next thing I know I've agreed to run this mountain today with her and then some of her friends are coming a long as well. My instructions from Paul are "make her puke". My dad used to tell me if we didn't throw up, we didn't work hard enough so I guess that's my goal. I will admit I find myself working much less in my "old age" then I did when I was younger. I'm quicker to pull back, slow down, or stop halfway up a hill. Perhaps it's wisdom! It's only a 5 mile round trip run, but the 2.5 up hil has a 1200 ft elevation gain. I'm dreading it and the "make her puke" thing and hope to just make it to the top with out having to look old and out of shape in front of the young kids.

After my run I have a moms night out happy hour that I'm excited but nervous for. It's this mom's group I signed up to join when I moved here and I just got "accepted" last week. SInce then I've had a lot of anxiety about the way they went about the approval process: Interviews, pictures, and a written essay. I think it's overkill for what they are trying to accompolish but I guess, given this crazy world, you can never be too caution with who you allow into your children's lives and I think they are trying to avoid phychos. So tonight is my introduction event we'll see how it goes. Hopefully I can still walk!