Killing Time

I'm sitting here in my quiet home (Steve's at work, kids are all healthy and at school) in my robe trying to pass 20 minutes. I have some hair gook (Burt's Bees avocado butter) marinating on my head right now and it needs to sit for 20 minutes before I shower.

I took an hour-long walk this morning and went 3 miles. That means I'm walking a 20-minute mile. In college I took a fitness and conditioning class and actually walked an 8 minute mile for one of the tests. I'm a bit off that pace now, I suppose.

Anyway, it ended up being 6300+ steps. That's 3 points. Go me! It was hard, though. I don't know if you've ever experienced this, but when I don't exercise for a few days (or weeks) I get what I call "the itchies." I *hate* the itchies. I think it's my body making new capillaries to get to my ample fat stores to burn energy, but I'm not positive. But I HATE that feeling. And this time it lasted longer than usual. Butt, thighs, calves, waist, rib cage...all had the itchies. At least it wasn't all at once. The itchies seem to travel. Yuck.

And with every step, I tell myself, "a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips," or "no pain, no gain." Plus I keep thinking about all those contestants on the reality show "The Biggest Loser." I'm sure they deal with the itchies. Those people inspire me. I record that show every week and watch it. I don't care about who gets voted off, I just care about them losing weight.

In fact, it was this show back in the winter of 2006 after Julie was born that got me started on my journey. Moving to England was the perfect opportunity for me to change old habits and start new ones. So, thank you, Biggest Loser.

Uummm...killing time again...

I ran out of yarn for the sweater I'm knitting. It's usually not a big deal to run out of yarn because I can pop down to Wal-Mart or Hobby Lobby to get more, but this yarn has two strikes against it:
1 - it's discontinued
2 - it's from England
I already had to order 2 more balls of it back in September and I did what I thought was a relatively thorough search of eBay listings and shops in the UK. I finally found those 2 balls in Wales and thought they would finish out the sweater.

Sadly, no.

I e-mailed one of the shops from back in September who just had 1 ball and asked if they still had that 1 sad little ball. They said it was still waiting for me in Falkirk (a place in Scotland we actually visited) and I just needed to order it.

So I just paid 6 quid (slang for pounds) for this yarn, including shipping. Not bad, until you use the roughly 2-to-1 ratio for converting pounds to dollars...2 dollars to 1 pound. 12 bucks for a stinking ball of yarn. This better be one GREAT sweater when I'm done. I'm already sick of it - I've been working on it since August, 2006.

Signing off now. It's been almost 20 minutes and by the time I get a cuppa and get my contacts out for my shower, it will be time. My hair is sufficiently oily, it smells really nice (thanks to the rosemary and nettle extracts with the avocado butter and olive oil) and I'm ready to be clean.

Ta.

P.S. Happy to report that spell check is again working.