pinteresting (running inspiration found and not found)

I hit a brick wall in my running yesterday.
A hard brick wall.
A brick wall that had me off and on the treadmill four times, trying to finish one run.  


A brick wall that I kept hitting, and that I used to justify crabby behavior and comments towards my husband.  


It's tough being a perfectionist all-or-nothing-at-all person and trying to keep some balance in the healthy eating/exercising department.  And yesterday was my first day failing miserably. 


Oh dear.


It's troubling.
There may have been tears, a pout session, and excuses involved.


After I got off my duff and made myself finish with the thought that "I will NOT allow my crabbiness to continue, and I CAN physically do this, I just need proper mental motivation", Michael kindly allowed me to clean up.


I realized, as I was cleaning up, that... (brilliant thought, here, just wait) the Bible verse Colossians 3:23 (Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men,) applied to me. 

I wasn't running for praise from anyone else, to lose weight, or any outward motivation.  (In all honesty, I was running to be a good example for my son someday, and I truly desire to learn to love to run.) But the verse still applied to me.

It could just as well read:

"Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for your perfectionist self-approval."

Convicting?

So I haven't done much with that thought yet.  I'm still letting it stew. 

However, I did obsessively research on pinterest after one of my four attempts at my run.

I wanted motivation. 

Do you realize how many boards are out there entitled "motivation"?

Scads.

Scores.

I was looking for pins that would inspire me to keep going mentally.  

I wasn't looking for "the perfect abs and tush" pictures to motivate me. 

(It's surprising how many of those are out there, actually.) 

I wasn't looking for angry "I need to beat out my emotions and heartache on the pavement" kind of inspiration either.

I was just looking for emotionally stable persuasive words that would inspire me to stay running at mile howevermany.  

It's shocking how few emotionally stable running words there are. 

Many of the "quotes" are "look at all the fat non-exercising people. you're doing so much better than them."  (Admittedly, I repinned a few of these.)

or:

"Remember how miserable you were without exercising.  You'll be somebody someday if you're physically fit."

or:

"Do you really want to eat that biscuit?" (Yes. I do.) 

I was acutely disturbed at the obsessive mentality on these "motivation" boards.  Some of the advice was downright medically unhealthy.  But...I was able to find some "inspiration"/"motivation" what have you in the mire and muck of public opinions on healthy "ideals." We'll see how inspirational my research truly was when Michael comes home today and I go on my run.  

Food And Teething

I haven't left the house much this week, for a variety of reasons/excuses.

Primarily:

1) Million is cutting four teeth at once.  Behaviorally it's not wise to leave the house.

2) Michael's set a goal/plan to pay off our college debt in a very hardcore fashion this year.  If I don't go out of the house, I don't spend money on gas.  If I don't go out of the house, with teething toddler, I don't spend money on a "sympathy" coffee beverage for myself or caesar chicken wrap from a fast food joint.  We save money.

3) I don't want to go to the effort to scrape the ice off of the van's windshield.

So, I haven't been out of the house much this week.
It's been refreshing.

Since I've been home more and focusing on stretching our budget while still remaining health conscious, I've been searching for recipes in my spare time.

Here are a few I found and tried from Pinterest this week.

One-ingredient ice cream. 
Lemon bar cookie cups (This does not fall in the "health conscious" category.  It falls in the "we ate the whole recipe in two days" category.)
And one I didn't find on Pinterest, but I ended up pinning because we liked it so much. 

Tomorrow or Saturday I'm going to try to post a recipe I created for spinach chicken alfredo pizza (an effort to copy Papa Murphy's while remaining at home).  Michael rated it a 9.99, or 11.  He will never give me a "perfect ten" but said this time (for the first time ever) he could justify giving me an "11".  So I need to remember how I made it so I can make it again---hence the recipe forthcoming tomorrow.  No pictures involved.  We ate without a camera.  just a recipe.

Thursdays In Real Life

The above picture was taken two days ago.  In Minnesota.  In January.  Tuesday's high was 53.  We've since had snow.  Last year it was around -20 with piles of snow at least waist high.  

I know this because a year ago yesterday, Michael was involved in a truck rollover.  And we were leaving to Ethiopia very shortly afterwards.  

(Speaking of which, you'll be getting posts about meeting our son a year ago, etc. coming up.)

On a pinteresting note: I made a failure recipe (a crockpot orange chicken that neither Michael nor I liked...It's since been removed from my pin boards.)  So there.  Not even worth posting, but I felt the obsessive need to keep up with this.

And real-life has been so real-life lately that I really don't have anything share-able to post.  

Other than this sign designed by Emily Ley.

It speaks to me in very profound ways. 

Pinteresting: My Visual Garden

"I, who cannot see, find hundreds of things to interest me through mere touch. I feel the delicate symmetry of a leaf. I pass my hands lovingly about the smooth skin of a silver birch, or the rough shaggy bark of a pine.... I feel the delightful, velvety texture of a flower, and discover its remarkable convolutions; and something of the miracle of Nature is revealed to me.

Occasionally, if I am very fortunate, I place my hand gently on a small tree and feel the happy quiver of a bird in full song.... At times my heart cries out with longing to see these things. If I can get so much pleasure from mere touch, how much more beauty must be revealed by sight.

Yet, those who have eyes apparently see little. The panorama of color and action which fills the world is taken for granted.... It is a great pity that, in the world of light, the gift of sight is used only as a mere convenience rather than as a means of adding fullness to life."

Helen Keller

This week I decided to do something I hadn't seen yet on Pinterest (although I'm making no claims to brilliance, I just haven't searched for any other people who might have had the same idea.)  I decided to go through my Gurney's and Henry Fields catalogs and make a "visual garden" of what I want to plant in our garden (which will also be different this year, thanks to the abundance of raised bed information on Pinterest).

It was beautiful and inspirint to see the greens, oranges, reds, and golds all in one space.  It almost made me think spring.  Except we have three more months of winter here.  Sometimes four or five.

I'm certain that in the spring, the visual promise of fruit for our labor will be fuel to keep on building those raised beds, hoisting the dirt, shoveling the manure, and planting the seeds. 

Pinteresting: Recipes Tried

Ahem.
I almost forgot about posting my pinterest discoveries for this week.
We're preparing for a minor surgery for Million tomorrow, amidst our family celebration of Christmas.
If I'm already forgetting by the first week, I'm likely doomed to fail at some point.
But I'm here.
I made it.

I may or may not feel like my sixth grade self who forgot to turn in a piece of homework, and then the teacher made me sit in the hall, and then she forgot to call me back in, and then she scolded me when I didn't let myself back in the class.  And I cried.  During 6th grade.  And I still hold it against her.  So much so that even run-on sentences and fragments can't express my rage/shame.

Okay.  It's not that bad.
I'm just feeling a little sheepish I have no actual photos to share.

This being the first post and all, I suppose I could catch you all up to speed.  This week I'll catch you up on recipes.  Next week, I'll catch you up on crafty ideas, for which I will ACTUALLY have pictures.


Because of Pinterest, I've made the following recipes.
Onion soup mix.  No thoughts to report yet, as I haven't actually used it.
Buffalo Chicken Strips that were out of this world.  I might have thought about making them twice in one day.
Homemade Graham crackers. Mine were a little thicker than they should have been, but they tasted wonderful.  It was nice thinking to myself that Million wasn't consuming high fructose corn syrup in every bite.
Apple Cider caramels.  I liked them, and Michael liked them.  My dad and some others didn't, mainly because they couldn't get their brains used to thinking "apple cider" when they saw caramels.
Homemade Wheat Thins.  The first pan was good.  I accidentally burned the second pan.  More trials needed.
Caramel and Sea Salt on Shortbread.  These were amazing.  When Michael is home more to save me from consuming the whole pan, I will make them again.
Oreos inside chocolate chip cookies.  I died after eating one.  Unfortunately, they don't make fair-trade Oreos that I'm aware of, and I wasn't extraordinarily impressed with the recipes for "make your own oreos" that I've tried--so this one is mostly for your benefit.
Crockpot chicken taco chili.   I just made this yesterday.  Ask me when there aren't leftovers in the fridge.
Homemade tater tots.  These worked the time I made them with red potatoes but not with russet potatoes.
Little delightful crescent roll jalapeno poppers.  I've only made these about six or seven times.

I've tried and deleted two or three recipes (a blueberry lemon breakfast cake and one other thing I can't remember) that just didn't work for us.  Oh, it was egg-roll wrapped mozzarella sticks.  My mind kept on smelling Chinese, and the mozzarella just didn't mingle well, in my opinion.

I've also pinned about four cream of chicken and wild rice recipes that claim to taste like Panera's.  I've tried two of them (and stupidly forgot to mark which ones---gah!) that didn't taste like Panera's.  I'm on a mission from God and will find that soup someday.


Finally brethren, in the spirit of Christmas, I'm about to be extraordinarily kind to you.
So kind.
I'm about to post a link to a recipe that has literally taken me three (nearly four) years to find.
And thanks to someone posting a link to an Ethiopian crock-pot recipe on Pinterest... my curiosity got the best of me, and I once again started up my hunt. (And the reason I couldn't find it for three years is because of a variation in the spelling and a shortening of the name.  Wonderful.)   I now need to just remember to pin some of my old recipes.

It's here.
It's beautiful.
We made it today along with this recipe and some home-made injera.