I ran (but not with a flock of sea gulls)

Happy Wednesday my friends. If you need an extra shot of motivation, just visit Steve's Wednesday's Word of the Day over at his blog. Look in the upper right hand corner for today's message!

Yesterday and today were both very busy but I feel a great sense of accomplishment. I spent part of yesterday just running errands. In our town, June is the month that you license your dog and we had let our dog's licenses lapse. (yeah, I know, I know). After that incident Thanksgiving day with the pack of vicious dogs, I want to be prepared and completely "legal" if there is another incident.

So I went to our vet yesterday morning and got copies of our guys rabies shot certificates and brought those down to the town hall to update their licenses. It felt good to get that done. On Thanksgiving when we had that incident, the officer didn't ask if our dogs were licensed, if she had, we would have been sunk.

That taken care of, I went to the army/navy store down the road and bought a big ass can of pepper spray. This can is bigger than what I expected but it shoots a powerful stream up to 8 feet away. I tested it and it really does spray in a powerful stream, not a mist-- so it would probably be very effective.

It also doesn't spray in bursts but has continuous action and will spray as long as you hold down the button. It is made for security people working a crowd. So if that pack attacks again I can sweep it across them as they approach and it should work.

I dug out a fanny pack that I bought to wear during my trip to the rez and I will use that for walking from now on. It can hold the pepper spray, my camera, ipod, and cell phone without a problem.

By the way, speaking of that fanny pack, it was designed for big people so it was extra big to begin with--PLUS, I had to order an extender for it. Now, I took out the extender and had to cinch up the other part too. That sure felt good!

After that, I took Zeke for a walk/run at the Beach. Once again, I would walk for awhile then jog for awhile. Zeke LOVED it! He kept looking up at me as if to say, "Holy crap, mom is running with me." He was a good boy and stayed with the program. When I needed to walk, which was a lot at this point, he would slow down and not pull at the leash. So Zeke and I did two miles of walk/jogwalk/jog yesterday and I was so happy!

Today I got up and immediately did the Denise Austin cardio dvd that I used to do all of the time when I first started. It is only 25 minutes so I put it away when I began to feel like I needed more time.

SO I popped it in and found that I can put a lot more energy into it than I used to be able to do. This is pure cardio, but I wanted to make it more difficult so I held 5 pound dumb bells in my hands the whole time.

This worked, as I really had an elevated pulse through the whole thing, yet 5 pounds is not enough weight to make my arms get tired or sore. I am going to do this work out here and there when I get the chance so that I can take off as much weight as possible before my doctor visit at the end of the month.

THEN, late morning I took a 2 mile walk/jog around the neighborhood and followed that up with the ChaLEAN Extreme Push circuit 1-- which is a lot of arm work. It is only Wednesday and I already surpassed the fitness hours I put in last week and it looks like I will finish this week strong.

I am able to do bicep curls with 25 pounds now and triceps work with 20 pounds. Yes, I feel like my arms are going to fall off, but I CAN do it and I am so proud of how strong I am getting.

Yesterday I received a huge box of crafts from the Lakota kids. I needed to go through the items to see what everything is and what I would try to sell it for. I sat the box in front of my chair while The Biggest Loser was on and went through the crafts during commercials. I was able to get the whole thing done and started photographing them today-- so I'll have new items in the eBay store very soon.

There is a half marathon in my area every September and I am toying with the idea of pre-registering for it after the first of the year -- sort of as a new year's goal. My trip to the rez will be in early July and I hope to be very close to goal by then. But I want something for after that. I don't want to come home from the rez and not already have something else that I need to work on.

If I do sign up for it in January, I will have 9 months to get myself into good enough condition to run 13 miles. I think this is doable. I actually thought of this after seeing the Biggest Loser marathon last night. If they can do that after 5months, I should be able to do a half after 9 months of training, especially since I've been exercising since July.

I went back to being a little stricter with my food for the next few weeks. I really, really, really want to be under 300 when I go back to the doc's at the end of the month. It would be so incredible for me to start the new year in the 200's.

I have heard people talk about "one"-derland. Right now, I'd be happy with Two Town. LOL

I have work to do, just wanted to make sure I posted today. I hope you are all well and back on track now that turkey day is almost a week behind us.