New Life Goals

The earlybird 5:30am wake-up may have slowly turned into 5:40am...and 5:45am today. But I'm still going strong! Well, I'm still going, which I consider pretty good, if I do say so myself. Can't really say the same for Nick yesterday, when he was basically just doing this (no, we do not have our Christmas tree up in June, nor do we live in this lovely house; I didn't take this picture):

Stole this picture from Katelyn! Thanks for having a high-quality pic of Nick sleeping.

Yes, he failed to get up on a scheduled morning of exercise. I gloated. Just a little bit. Point for me.

Today, a friend of mine at work told me about an American Mastiff that her aunt has. I didn't know about this breed until today, and after looking it up on Wikipedia, I want this dog. Are you kidding, it is calm, quiet, loyal, and protective? AND it does well living in apartments? AND all it needs is basically a walk a day as exercise? Uh, hello? This is my DREAM PET.

It does get a little big...like, potentially 200 pounds or something. That's okay. I like big dogs (although this one is probably the size of a small lion). And okay, maybe Bailey was scared of Nick's parents' 60-pound golden retriever, and yeah, maybe that was the only dog of the 3 there that she was still scared of after an entire week, but she'd totally get used to a 200-pound American Mastiff, right? They'd be best buds after awhile.

And yes, that is exactly how I imagine Bailey would react to this gigantic puppy, although she would probably in reality look even smaller on the back of an American Mastiff.

An American Mastiff who will be a boy puppy. And whose name will be Charlie. I haven't given this a lot of thought or anything.

Sadly Nick refuses to get a puppy until one or both of us can work from home (or at least will have a job that allows us to run home every hour...does anyone know if this kind of job exists? If so, can you refer me?) so the puppy won't be sad and lonely. I want a puppy. So I have come up with some new life goals.

Yayan's New Life Goals

1. Convince Nick we should get a puppy. Like, by tomorrow. An American Mastiff, possibly. Although I'm going to adopt when (yes, when, not if) I get a puppy so it will most likely be a mix. But that's okay. Maybe someone somewhere gave up a purebred American Mastiff for adoption.
   
   We can hire a dog walker, right?
   
   
2. Convince my current job to let me work from home. Or, find a new job where I can work from home. All the time. This way I will be home all the time and there is no excuse for Nick to deny me a puppy.
   
   
3. Make this blog so insanely popular that I can live off it (I don't even know how that works, can I get like a penny for every visitor to the blog or something?). But I know there are people who basically blog as their job (professional bloggers?), and that sounds great. If I could do that, then I'd have both Bailey and Charlie as sources of entertainment. More animals = more fun = more stories to blog about. Everyone wins!

So, dear reader, help me out. I deserve a puppy, right?!

(Right.)

Monday.

That's pretty much it. Monday. Snoozed twice this morning before finally getting out of bed to do some stretching and strengthening, according to my schedule. It must have been in a state of delusion that I decided my "strength" portion would be a series of at-home exercises involving tuck jumps, squat jumps, lunges, burpees, ... the list goes on and it doesn't get better. It was not a good time and since I live on the second floor and didn't want to make it sound like the world was ending to my downstairs neighbor, I did everything in my backyard where anyone on the block could see me be out of shape if they wanted to.

I'm not sure Bailey approved of my workout either, after I went back inside and collapsed on the floor ("stretching"...).

But breakfast was delicious! As always.

Random question of the day: how is it that the weather forecast is so inaccurate? How can they not predict these things a bit better? When I woke up this morning, it was dark and gloomy outside, and when I checked the forecast, it was all like "RAIN! 500% CHANCE!!! YOU WILL DEFINITELY GET RAINED ON!" and there were red boxes all over the place saying "SEVERE STORMS!!!! STAY INSIDE!"

It was actually raining when we left for work, so I decided that since it was already raining and the forecast said the world was going to drown in rain that afternoon, I would wear my rain boots. It looked silly, because I was wearing this pink dress with flowers on it and my rain boots are a decently bright blue. But whatever, my feet and legs stayed dry on my walk to work.

And then 4pm came around, and was there rain? No. Was the earth ending in massive floods? No. Was there a cloud in the sky? Hardly. So I had to wear my rain boots on the way home, looking really cool as I walked down the street in my pink dress and blue boots under the blazing sun.

And apparently everyone else got the memo that the weather report was going to lie today, because no one else was wearing anything to suggest that there had even been rain earlier that day. Which just made me feel that much cooler as I trudged along.

So, weather forecasters. Get your acts together.

Days 3 & 4 & Weekend

First things first. Bailey was sleeping like this just now:

Really? I'm not sure I can relate to the comfort level there. But she looks pretty happy.

End of first week of getting up at an ungodly hour. Thursday's 2-mile run did NOT feel better than Tuesday's 2.5-mile run, BUT...Friday was rest day! I am really good at resting. I am quite fantastic at it, in fact. I still got up at 5:30am (no cheating), but had a huge breakfast instead of running. Food in place of exercise? Yes please.

I did NOT get up at 5:30am on Saturday. I got up when normal people get up (around 9:30am) and had a 3-mile run which felt okay, I didn't feel awesome but it didn't feel much worse than the 2-mile run, which is encouraging I guess. Today was just 40 minutes of cross training, so I biked after getting up at a normal hour again.

Really looking forward to Monday 5:30am wake-up tomorrow...

Earlybird Lifestyle: Days 1 & 2

Yesterday was day 1 of this "get up early" thing we're trying. I woke up 20 minutes before my alarm went off due to a certain furry critter jumping on me (I think accidentally, but who knows).

So I got up. I was actually excited to run 2.5 miles (starting the work-my-way-up-to-10k training). That is, until I actually started running. I think it must have been about 3845% humidity (because that's what it felt like) and almost 80 degrees already. I managed to run the entire 2.5 miles (if you can call it that, I would say it turned into more of a lumber towards the end -- but I didn't walk!), but I pretty much thought I was going to die the entire time (I'm sure I also looked mighty attractive as I chugged along).

Bailey was super happy though. She was quite intrigued by my water bottle that I was guzzling from as I sat gasping for air when I got home.

It did feel pretty great once I'd recovered and showered. I liked having tons of extra time before I left for work (usually we're running out the door to catch the train and then I get paranoid that I've done something silly like leave the refrigerator door open even if I didn't go into the refrigerator that morning). I liked showering in the morning. So overall, I was actually pretty psyched to wake up early again today.

Until I actually woke up today. I woke up to my alarm this time, and I felt exhausted and heavy, even though I went to bed at 10pm last night.

I didn't mind too much that I felt so tired, because I just had 30 minutes of cross training today which I decided to cycle for. I had to get my bike from my parents' place about 2 blocks away, and after feeling extra enthusiastic about the fact that I even managed to get up early again, I decided to jog over. Is it sad that I was tired after the 2 blocks of jogging? I'm going to tell myself it was because I went extra fast since it was a such short distance. The bike ride at least felt nice, although my legs are sore now...I didn't think I was this out of shape!

So overall aside from the boatload of time I now have in the morning before I go to work, I can't say I'm enjoying dragging myself out of bed at the crack of dawn too much yet, but hopefully it'll start feeling joyous and refreshing soon.

Earlybirds

Nick and I are planning to try out this new "get your exercise done in the morning before work so you can come home from work and sit like a lump for the rest of the night" thing. I suggested trying this for a few reasons:

1. I want to exercise. But every day after I get home from work, I have no desire to move after I have sat down on my couch, which is immediately after I walk into the apartment. This is when I tell myself that my total slightly-over-1.5-mile walk to and from work is adequate exercise. And then I proceed to eat half a (family-size) bag of Kettle Chips as an appetizer before dinner. So if I can get my exercise out of the way early in the day, I might actually do it.
   
   
2. It's almost summer. It's going to start getting warmer (yes it will Chicago, yes it will), which makes exercising after work even less appealing when compared to eating Kettle Chips on my couch, because exercising after work in this case means moving around (outrageous!) in over 85-degree weather. Maybe doing it early in the morning will be slightly more pleasant since it will be cooler outside.
   
   
3. I hate showering. I like being clean, but I just hate the process of showering. I always shower at night, and I always put it off for as long as possible until Nick basically pushes me into the bathroom. I should note here that I am the master of puttering around, so even after that, it might be a good 30 minutes before I'm actually showering. But then my hair doesn't have enough time to dry before bedtime, but by then I don't care and I go to sleep with wet hair, and then I get a headache from it. If I exercise in the morning, I will definitely feel compelled enough to shower and be clean afterwards, and then I'll have guaranteed dry hair by the time I go to bed.
   
   
4. Let's be honest. Bailey starts getting tired at 10pm and wakes up at 4am. Since she wakes me up anyway, I might as well get up and do something instead of grumpily try to get a couple more hours of sleep. Hopefully there will be less of this:
   
   
   
   
   And more of this:
   
   

   

   Taken with Nick's phone so it's a small picture. Enjoy the blue border.

   And yes, that is super cute and I like it even though it is equivalent to wearing a fur scarf in the middle of summer.
   
   I just hope Bailey doesn't shift her sleeping schedule to 8pm-2am. Knock on wood.

In order to distract myself from the fact that I'm now going to be exercising at the crack of dawn, I've decided to train to run a 10k. I have no intention of actually running in an organized 10k race, but I just want to see if I can run a 10k because I have never run more than 3.5 miles in one go in my life. Hope my lungs are up to the challenge.

First day of 5:30am exercising is tomorrow. We'll see how this goes...

Ants.

Not in my pants.

But in my kitchen, all around Bailey's food and water bowls. It is gross. I woke up last night to some heavy clunking from Bailey around her food and water bowls, and I was annoyed because I thought she was making too much noise while eating and drinking. But this morning when I went to feed her breakfast, I noticed not just a few, but a swarm of ants. And we know how Bailey is about bugs.

Okay, maybe not a swarm as bad as this one:

Thanks Jeni for taking this picture! ... 5 years ago!

But it was pretty bad. Just crawling all around her bowls. Poor kitten :-(

She probably tried battling them at night but failed. Miserably. I can't blame her though, she was outnumbered about 1 to 50.

So, I went on a rampage. I killed every single ant I could see (call me an animal killer, but I hate ants. They should stay out of my apartment if they want to live). But more just kept appearing.

Also, I was too busy killing the ants to take a picture. But it was something like this.

So then...I took it up a notch, and my rampage became a RAID RAMPAGE.

And that is why I got into work 30 minutes later than I'd planned to today.

It is also why my perfume of the day was Scent O' Raid.

Thanks to Google, I now know I should try either a) floating the bowls in a moat-like structure (drowning ants!) or b) sprinkling cinnamon or cayenne pepper (BOTH!) around the bowls (irritating ants? killing ants? irritating kitten? hopefully not that last one).

There aren't any ants at the moment (I scared/killed them off with my RAID RAMPAGE, I'm sure), but I'm ready for them if they ever come back.

Return & Bugs

We just got back from a 6-day cruise.

1. It was awesome. Totally got sunburned, although not as badly as Nick.
2. Week off work? Yes, please. Anytime.
3. Caught a cold on last day of cruise (in average 85-degree F temperatures in the Western Caribbean). How does that even work?
4. Going back to work tomorrow. :-(

My parents took care of Bailey while we were gone, and even though they spent at least 4 hours with her at our apartment everyday, she was super happy (read: had bouts of hyperactive craziness) when we got back.

I also found definite signs of kitten misbehavior. One, all her little catnip toys were missing. We dug the purple one she got on her birthday out from under the couch, but there are two more that are nowhere to be seen. Two, part of our tablespoon measure was in the living room when we got back. Hmm...don't think I left it there.

Anyway. It's almost summer, which means soon our apartment will have a slightly higher population of various bugs. Not enough that it gets too gross for me and I go on a Raid rampage (although this did happen one summer), but enough that Bailey becomes obsessed with hunting for them. And then eating them (if she catches one, which doesn't happen much).

It starts with her finding a single bug somewhere just one time.

Then she tries to catch it simply by putting her paw on it. Which, unsurprisingly, doesn't work very well seeing as the bug just crawls out.

She'll do this for about 20 minutes, during which time she is convinced that the bug definitely could not have escaped and is still in the starting place she found it in. And she will sit there for hours on end, waiting for a bug to magically appear again.

At least she's patient. I would say "at least our apartment is bug-free," but seeing as she catches 1 of every 10 bugs she finds, this isn't exactly true.