Twilight's Latest Adventures

Twilight has been quite the busy dog lately and wanted her own blog post today.

While I was on vacation, Twilight spent time at the homes of two of my co-workers.

For the first few days, Twilight hung with Megan Pedersen and her partner Trina and their dogs, cats and other pets. Megan is one of Twilight's favorite people at work and had a blast there.

The last several days, Twilight then moved to Matt Francis' house. Matt has three boys that want a dog, but his wife is not too fond of having a full time pet. However, Twilight was very spoiled by the boys and had a great time at their house.



I must admit it made my heart glow to come in to work on Monday and have Twilight come running to me in joy across the office. I could tell she also adores Matt now and will want to go to the office even more to see her buddies.

Jennifer, Elise and I found this cute Harley Davidson jacket for Twilight on River Street in Savannah. (I need to buy the matching hat at PetsMart). Twilight doesn't like the zippers on her legs yet, but looks awefully cool in her new duds. Where is the Fonz now?

My nephew Jon and his wife Janilee just got a new dachsund puppy, Joey the other week. They are moving from a condo to a house today, so we are babysitting Joey. Kevin had fun with both dogs earlier and they are enjoying teasing each other and playing together.

Grandmother training

After Jeremy and Jennifer got custody of Elise and Brad, I decided to take my remaining vacation time to go to Georgia and visit with them. The trip had two primary purposes: 1) To be a support system to my daughter and 2) To get to know my grandchildren.

When Jenn and Jeremy got married in 2006, I got to meet Brad and Elise, but was worried that I would never get to know them and get them to feel I was their grandmother. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to make some changes with that.

The trip started off a little bit stressful as Savannah, Georgia received it's first snowfall in more than a decade. All the flights out of Atlanta were cancelled and all the hotels were full, so I rented a car and drove 6 white-knuckle hours across the state.

With the kids not yet enrolled in school, there was a lot of time to get to know them and to spoil them. I did my best to do many different things with them and had a great time with my family.

On Sunday, Jennifer, Elise and I drove into historical Savannah, Georgia. Elise admitted she loves taking pictures and seeing old buildings and Jenn was excited to have someone to take trips with in the future to do the tourist and photo bit.

We parked and walked on River Street. Lots of neat stores and we checked out a lot of them. There was a pirate ship parked on the docks and we took a tour of the ship and had some neat pictures taken there.

The best thing about River Street - candy stores! I think we all went crazy in the Savannah Candy Store. Yummy tastes and smells. I can still think and smell the scent of the pralines and pecans.




During the week we made bread, cooked together, blew bubbles, celebrated Valentine's Day, built model cars and rockets, and played video games.

On Friday afternoon, Jeremy came home early from work and Jennifer and I took off for a couple of hours alone together. We went back to River Street and also found some wonderful barbecue at Sticky Fingers restaurant. (It was divine! Finger licking good!).




I had seen this stained glass window in the very first store we stopped at on Sunday. It never left my mind, so went back and bought it. I can't wait to have it delivered and hang it up on my landing over my desk.



Friday night we made homemade pizzas and had our own video games Olympics. Everyone had a blast together and all cooperated and won not only monetary rewards for medals but these delicious candied apples for being good sports.



Saturday night I took my grandkids out on a date to Golden Corral and Jennifer and Jeremy also went out on a date together.

My entire vacation was made when both kids came and hugged me goodnight when they went to bed on Saturday night. I sure grew to love these kids in a short period of time and am thrilled to have actively experienced being a grandma.

Running in Georgia

I took a vacation this month down to visit family in Richmond Hill, Georgia. While there I had some great runs.

Right outside my daughter's subdivision is the Coastal Highway. It has a nice shoulder - include a lot of grassy sections - that I could run on. I took a couple of runs to and from Walmart and had my grandkids riding alongside on bikes at times. Brad really enjoyed riding and talking with me and would push me a little to speed up.

It was nice to run in slightly warmer weather and at lower altitudes. The roads there are very flat, so it made for easier running than out here.

What I enjoyed the most about running out there was the different vegetation and views. Lots of swampy and sandy areas, a bamboo farm, oak trees, palm trees. Even though it was February I was able to enjoy lots of greenery.

I hope to go back either later this year or in 2011 and do a marathon in Georgia or Florida.

The one thing I regret - I didn't get any running in with my daughter.

Tybee Island

I had heard about a half marathon in February on Tybee Island near Savannah, Georgia. Unfortunately, my trip to Georgia was a week too late to run this half marathon.

Jeremy told me that Brad and Elise wanted to go to the beach and I wanted to get some lighthouse pictures for my sister, so on President's Day we loaded up the car and drove out to Tybee Island.

It was a windy, cool day. Not a great day to be at the beach, but a beautiful day. The kids immediately stripped off their shoes, rolled up their pants and headed across the beach to the ocean. That water was freezing! My feet hurt the minute I stepped into the water. Elise seems to have totally impervious feet and spent a lot of time wading. The rest of us were quite wussy in comparison.





Of course, as things go with kids and beaches, even though you don't plan on getting wet, you do. We ended up having to buy some sweat pants for each of the kids since their pants got pretty soaked.

After lunch, we headed over to the other side of the island to check out the Tybee Island Lighthouse. We decided to climb to the top of the lighthouse and got a good leg workout, beautiful views, and some great pictures.

Life Changes

Two weeks ago today I received an excited phone call from my daughter and son-in-law. They had been awarded custody of his daughter (age 13) and son (age 11). I am so excited for them because I know how much they have been hoping this would happen, but I will admit I have mixed emotions because I know how much this will be changing all of their lives and it won't be easy for any of them. However, deep down inside I think this is the best thing that can happen for my grandkids.

I have never been a big fan of labels and people who get associated with labels like 'step', 'ex', 'half', 'former'. I know some people who are not willing to accept others into their lives because they have that label attached. I was excited to become an instant grandmother when my daughter got married 3 ½ years ago. I consider these children to be my grandchildren and not my step-grandchildren. They may not feel the same about me, but I intend to treat them as such.

My son-in-law, Jeremy, adores these children. I could feel it in his words when he first exchanged emails and instant messages with me when he was stationed in Kuwait during his engagement to our daughter. I could see it in his eyes when he was able to have his children with him for the period around their wedding. I can hear it in his voice when I talk to him. In order to support the family he had so young, he needed to stay in the military and various overseas duty posts meant he had to give up custody of his children. When we have talked in the past, I can feel how much it has hurt him to not be able to see and talk to his children as they are growing up. He has missed so much of their lives and from the first time I knew about his children, he and Jennifer talked about trying to get custody or at least significant visitation with them so that he could be an influence in their lives.

Did I want my daughter to have to move overseas at 19? No. Did I want her to have to struggle with being a military wife at a young age? No. Did I want her to have to face the challenges of being a step-mother to children when she was just leaving childhood herself? No. But she was willing and happy to take on these responsibilities and face them with courage. Has married life been as easy as she expected with these challenges? No. But she adores her husband, loves her marriage and is willing to take these children in to her home and love them with all her heart and soul.

From life experiences, I know that the future is going to be hard on their family. I am hoping that with love and patience my grandchildren will be happy in their new home. I hope they will give their father and step-mother a chance. I hope that the words that get said from all will be words that are regretted later.

I am going to Georgia in two weeks to get to know my grandchildren better. I am praying that I can become their friend and that they will accept me in their lives. I hope that their hearts are touched and opened and that they will be one of the blended families that truly becomes a 'family'.

Heart Rate Monitors

At the end of last fall I started working with Steve Ashbaker (an elite runner that lives near me) to try and improve my endurance and reach my running goals. We only worked together for about five weeks before I got injured, but I am continuing down the road that he started me on.

Steve suggested I focus on heart rate training.

1. Measure my resting heart rate (RHR) in the morning to see if my body has recovered from previous training. I use a clip on pulse oximeter that I stick on my finger to check this before I get out of bed. Most days my RHR is between 47-48 beats per minute (BPM). If it above 51, I know my body is still stressed and that I should take a rest day or an easy day.
   
2. On over-distance days, keep my heart rate between 75-80% of my maximum heart rate (MHR). I know that my MHR is around 174-175, so am using 175 as my rate for calculations.
   
3. On easy/rest days, keep my heart rate below 65% of my MHR.
   
4. On long distance days (usually Saturday), keep my heart rate between 60-75% of my MHR.
   

For measuring my training heart rate, I was using a Polar heart rate monitor (HRM). For several years I used a middle of the line HRM from Polar, but after about 4 battery replacements, it seemed to give up the ghost last summer. My sister had a cheap Polar HRM that I had given her as a gift a couple of years back. Since I also gave her a Garmin with a HRM attached for Christmas 2008, she had never used the Polar. I bought it off her and started using it last fall.

When I started measuring my heart rate while running, I felt like I was pathetically out of shape. On my over-distance days, I had to focus to keep my speed down in the correct range. For a slow person, having to slow down just destroyed my poor, fragile ego. There were also a couple of days when the HRM seemed to go crazy and I would have to run for about 10 minutes and turn it back on and then it would work okay.

It got to the point that I no longer wore my Garmin on regular runs because my pace in minutes per mile was embarrassing and frustrating. Last Saturday I was doing an 8 mile long distance run. In order to keep my heart rate in the proper range, I was running 15-16 minute miles. That is a long time to run and think, so I decided that maybe the fault didn't lie in my pathetic shape, but in the cheap HRM.

On Sunday I read the guide for a new, top of the line Polar HRM that my son and ex-husband gave me for Christmas. I adjusted all the settings and decided to use it this morning for my 5 mile run. What a shock! I had to push to keep my heart rate in the correct range (at the bottom of the level) and actually felt like a runner again. Lesson learned – if something seems really wrong, it probably is. I estimate it will take a week or two to get my body used to running faster again, but am much happier doing that than feeling like the tortoise in the Tortoise and the Hare story.

Book Series Review: In Death by JD Robb

Initial Disclaimer: I can't believe that in all my years of reading mysteries, I had not heard of this series or read any of these books.

I actually heard about this series in the fall of 2009 in Good Housekeeping magazine where it did a quick review of some recommended romance books. Since I was in a 'romance book' type of mode right then (must have had something to do with all those nieces and nephews getting married), I tried most of them out and was sorely disappointed. Their review of the In Death series mentioned a futuristic New York City cop and I didn't plan to even try these since it was a series of books.

When my sister and I were up in Seattle after Ryan's wedding, we spent a couple of hours in the Seattle Mystery Bookshop and I noticed a trilogy of shorter books from the In Death series in one paperback. I decided to buy it as a trial and then put it in a pile.

One day in October I started reading the books. Big mistake. I got hooked. Put a combination of a tough female cop together with a gorgeous Irish billionaire with a shady past and present and the obsession started. It took a couple of months to get through all 25+ books in the series, but I did it. Eve Dallas is a serious cop, but has her funny, sarcastic moments and often made me laugh. Put her together with Roarke and you had great mystery combined with great romance.

I highly recommend this series.

Final Disclaimer: If you get hooked on it, don't blame me. Just thank me.