First, a conversation with Isak:

“Mamma, say something over and over and over.”

“Banana banana banana banana.”

“You sound like a broken record!”

“Isak. Do you know what a record is?”

“Ummm, no?”

Anja’s quote, upon arriving to the grocery store off base:

“Whoa! It smells like llama poop!”

Tonight is the annual father-daughter dance on base. It’s semi-formal, and so tonight Anja had to be looking her best. It started with a bath and ended in a fog of hairspray, and when she was done, she was the cutest little girl I’ve ever laid eyes on, cut-up nose (from the pinata stick) and all. The dress came from a vendor at a market in Kuwait and is the first - and perhaps only, huh - opportunity she’s had to wear it.

I’ve surprised myself with how well I’ve stuck to my working out. I took off one day this week because of my work schedule, but every other day I’ve done at least 30 minutes of cardio; yesterday, I did 35 minutes on the elliptical plus ran a mile and a half.

I found a great website thanks to LoriAnn where you can keep track of what you’re eating and how much exercise you’re getting. This will be good because I will be able to see how I’m eating during the day.  I love that all you do is enter in what you ate and how much you had, and it calculates all the calories, fat, carbs and protein.  I’ve already spotted my problem with eating and it makes it really easy to identify your eating habits so you can change them quickly.  For example, I had a spinach salad with broccoli, strawberries, shallots, raspberry vinagrette dressing, and I threw on 1/4 cup of walnuts.  The entire salad without the walnuts came to 116 calories, but those itty bitty walnuts alone added 196 calories and 20 grams of fat! In the end, were the walnuts really that good?  Nah, not really.

I surpassed my exercise goals this week - my calculated goal was 150 minutes; I did 207.  My goal for calories was 1120; I did 2219 - not including the full circuit on the Nautilus equipment I did yesterday.  And the best part?  I weighed in today and lost more weight, so I’ve now lost 6 pounds since I started working out!  My back still hurts, but it’s less of the sharp pain where I can’t move and more of a constant, dull aching.  At least now I can do stuff again.

Tonight is the father & daughter dance, so Isak and I have a date with a bowl of popcorn and Ice Age 2.   I worked out today, my first weekend workout, so I think I’ll take tomorrow off from the gym.  Maybe we’ll bike to the beach again, about a mile?  two miles?  and I’ll try upgrading my leg color to “death warmed over”.

Last night during dinner, I asked Isak what he did in school that day.  He said, “We didn’t have reading this morning.  Instead, we had science questions!”  Isak has commented several times to me that they don’t have science in school and he really wishes they did, so I knew this would be a lot of fun for him.  Science.  I hated science.

“My question was, ‘Is Antarctica colder than Iceland?’”

“And?  What did you find out?”

“Antarctica IS colder than Iceland.”

“Well, how do you know that?”

“Because Iceland is kept warm by the Gulf Stream from the Gulf of Mexico.”

Blink blink.

“Uhhh.  Wow!  Did you read that in a book?”

“No, I Googled it.”

Back when I was a kid, we had to go to the library! And look up our answers in encyclopedias!  Using the Dewey Decimal System!  And walk backward, uphill, both ways in the snow!  With no shoes!

I now present to you a conversation illustrating some of the differences of my very wild and illogical daughter and my very serious and thoughtful son.

Anja hands me the above letter and declares she is going to Iceland.

Mom: How are you going to get to Iceland?
Anja: Probably an airplane, though.
Mom: How are you going to pay for it?
Anja: I’m going to get all my money and I’m going to go pay for it on the boat.
Isak: How are you going to get to the ocean without a car?
Anja: I’ll ride my bike and take it on the boat.
Isak: And what if you don’t have enough money?
Anja: I will. I’m going to bring all my money. Member? I want to go back to Iceland. Member? Cause me and you went to the store all by ourself, and we bought those things that light up? Member? That’s why I want to go back to Iceland. You want to go back with me, Isak?
Me: How long are you going to be gone?
Anja: I’m going to come back home, don’t worry. I’m going to come back home in 15 days.
Isak: Where will we live?
Anja: At Amma and Afi’s.
Isak: Well, how will they find us?
Anja: We’ll go to their house, because I remember. I remember their kitchen and their yard.
Isak: And how will you get so far from the airport?
Anja: I’m not going to the airport. I’m going at the boat, and I’m going to ride my bicycle. [duh!]
Isak: What if it falls off the boat?
Anja: I’m going to go inside the boat. And I’m going to hold my bike.
Isak: What if it’s not a regular boat? What if it’s a speedboat? Without a top?
Anja: I’m going to take it, then I’m going to the airport.
Isak: And what if you don’t have enough money? Cause it’s usually, like, 100. [no currency specified, just "100".]
Anja: I’m going to spend all my money because I’m going to bring my piggy bank. You wanna come with me? To buy those lightup things?
Isak: Nah, because how will we even know which house is Amma’s?
Anja: I know which house is Amma’s.
Isak: But how will you know what street she’s on?
Anja: Because remember that playground that’s just across the street?
Isak: But what if we can’t find the playground?
Anja: We will.
Isak: But what if we can’t?
Anja: We’re taking our bikes.
Isak: But what if we can’t get there on our bikes?

And to that, Anja had no answer but moved just as quickly onto the next conversation involving what structure they would build with their Tinkertoys next.

Well, I finally broke my weight. Not by much, just 2 pounds, but hey, I will take it! I’ve been continuing to work out 3-5 (usually 4) times a week and have upped my cardio time (on the elliptical machine only lately) to 35-45 minutes and actually lowered my exertion level so my heartrate doesn’t go up so high, while still throwing in a workout here and there where I push it to get my heartrate up so I can be ready to start running again soon.

I think I wrote a few posts ago about my back getting hurt for the second time and how I went to the doctor and got Percocet and Flexiril and tons of Motrin. I took off 4 days from working out and then started back in slowly, just doing the elliptical machine. Last weekend - 2 weekends after injuring my back - I was finally feeling good enough to get on my bike, so we all jumped on our bikes and biked to the community center and then off base down to the beach. To get down to the beach, you have to go down a very steep flight of a whole lotta stairs. It was a perfect day and the kids played with shells and rocks and B watched the fishermen and I attempted to upgrade my skin color from “corpse” to “alive”.

On our way back to our bikes while climbing back up the bazillion steps, I turned halfway to look down to the beach and I wrenched my back AGAIN. I don’t even know how it happens; I don’t do anything like fast, jerky movements or bending over with my back or anything like that. It hurt so bad that I could hardly walk up the steps, and when I got back there, I had to bike the 2 miles back home? Yeah, that sucked. However, my back somewhat recovered very quickly - I now hurt very little in the day-to-day (just when I’ve been sitting for a long time) BUT now it hurts even worse to do certain things like try to lift my legs while laying down or rolling over in bed or on the couch - those things hurt so bad it takes my breath away. But at least the day-to-day is fine now.

Enough about my back. I’ve continued working out, taking off on the weekends and maybe one day during the week. I’ve continued watching my portion sizes and what I eat, though I wouldn’t say I’m dieting. And finally, I got on the scale and had several days in a row of dropping weight. I took off yesterday because of my work schedule and today went to work much later in the day right after lunch out in town, and I had put on one of the pounds I lost, but I’m not too stressed about it (yet). Probably because I had a kick-butt workout and worked off 500 calories during my workout and noticed a definite improvement in how I felt while I was working out. I’m trying to increase my workouts so I workout twice a day so I can fit in something besides cardio and hopefully I can add in one day a weekend to work out.

So all in all, things are going a little, tiny bit better with working out. And in case you were wondering, the upgrade didn’t work. I am still corpse.