That time we stole the neighbor's pot

"Hello?"

"Yes, Sherilin, I wanted to get in touch with you before the cops get there."

"Umm.... cops?"

"Yeah, the neighbor called and said that they caught you and your mom on the video surveillance. He said you were running away after you stole his pot. You will need to call him to apologize and set up a time to return it."

My face flashed crimson. I started to justify. To explain. I stammered and sputtered, but the truth was, I couldn't deny it. We did take that guy's pot.

Let me back up just a smidge to enlighten you. A week ago, my mom came over so that we could go for a run together. We're training for a couple races that are coming up this spring. The weather was beautiful, there was barely a breath of wind in the air and the sun was so friendly. Nothing like three days earlier when we'd been snowed and iced in for a few days.

We covered a solid 5K and were coming back down my street, the home stretch in front of us. We picked up the pace to finish the run strong. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted it. Just sitting there with the garbage cans and piles of trash that the sanitation workers hadn't picked up due to the snow, was the lovely, appealing pot. I slowed my step for a moment and pointed it out to my mom.

"Ma, that's a nice pot. I wonder why they're throwing it away!"

She looked at it as we ran past, then she stopped, backed up a few steps, reached out and snatched it, then kept running.

We were bolting down the street now, grinning like dopes, but pleased with our find. She held it in her hand as we ran past the last couple houses and down into my driveway where her car was parked. She popped the trunk and tossed it inside, then we did our cool down and stretch.

I didn't think about it again after that. Until I got that phone call.

I dialed my mom. Thankfully she answered.

"Mom, you still have that pot, don't you? You haven't used it yet?"

"Yeah, it's outside. I was waiting to use it til it warmed up some more. Why?"

"We have to give it back to the neighbor. He called and they caught us on their security cameras. They want it, said it was expensive."

"Then why the heck did he throw it out with the trash at the road?!"

That's the real question, isn't it?

I called the neighbor to straighten things out. To smooth any ruffled feathers and avoid a possible warrant for my arrest.

He told me they were cleaning up all the sticks on the ground that fell during the storm. They wanted to keep the pile contained in something while it waited by the road for the garbage men. I guess he set the pot out with the trash, then walked around the back of the house to get the pile of sticks he'd collected. By the time he'd made it back to the front yard, the pot stealers had been by and taken the pot and hidden it in the car.

After spending some time stalking around the yard in frustration, looking for that disappearing pot, he remembered his security cameras out in front of his house. He checked them out and sure enough, the thieves came by, hesitated for a moment, grabbed the pot and sprinted away. He saw them run down into my yard and that's when his camera lost track of the hooligans.

Busted.

The pot has now been returned and I don't think they'll press charges.

Is this thing on?

I wonder if I even remember how to work this thing. Can you guys hear me? Is this thing on? .... Yes? Oh, okay, hi!

Guess what... I'm not dead! I seem to have taken a tumble head first out of the blogosphere, but all is well in my real life world.

I knew at the beginning of this year that something new was on my horizon, I just didn't quite know what it was yet. I felt like I was at a turning point and I had to figure out which way was I was going to turn. As it happens, my life directed me straight into a new thing called coaching. I've never seen myself as a coach. Maybe a cheerleader, but never the one in charge.

However, as I lost so much weight last year, without having surgery or using any fancy pills or fad diets, more and more people started asking me how I did it. I didn't realize how many people were watching the changes in my life until it became clear that whatever I was doing was working and it was working extremely well.

Blah, blah, blah. Fast forward, I was asked to become a coach for Beachbody. That's the parent company of P90X, Hip Hop Abs, and Insanity and a whole bunch of other fitness programs and healthy supplements. It's stuff I believe in and products that I've already seen work. I can work from home on my computer or any time I'm out and about. I chose to become a cheerleader for people who need some help or motivation on their own fitness journey. I was doing it already, but now sometimes I get paid if people decide to try out one of the products that this company sells.

I basically have a semi-job that requires me to workout, be dedicated to fitness and a healthy lifestyle, and play on Facebook. Umm... it sounds like what I was doing already, so it's a perfect fit!

I'm also training for a 10K obstacle/mud run. I'm doing it with my mom, sister, cousin, and a friend. We're all going to wear matching Wonder Woman costumes that include tutus, because everyone needs a great costume for racing and slithering through mud! That's next month, so I've spent the past 3 months trying to learn now to run. I've always been one of those spastic, hand-flapping, lurchy sort of runners on the rare occasions when I found myself attempting to go faster than a slowish walk. I'm not much better now, but I can go further distances and I break for walking segments less often. I expect I'll be ready when the big race comes and I'm really excited about being able to do it with my family. I expect it to be one of the more memorable highlights of my life up to this point. I also expect it won't be the last race I run.

Because a lot of what I do now involves posting in groups online that revolve around weight loss and fitness, I like to be creative with my postings. I take a lot of pictures and I thought I'd share a few of them. I'm still doing yoga weekly and sometimes I even branch out and do my yoga in places outside of the house or studio. Those can be fun moments when I suddenly drop to the ground and pop up into a wheel in a random place while my family rolls their eyes and gets out the camera. Or maybe it's only fun for me. Aw, who cares, I'm having a good time!

Royal Dancer pose

Wheeling with friends is wheely fun.

Angry Bird of Paradise

Once in a while Brooke will join me for some yoga.

We have a weekly Flex Friday pic fest.

These used to be my skinny jeans.

"Mom, don't kick the fan!"

I like to call it Moga.

Pushups while balancing on 4 balls.

Ridiculous costume for the race.

Just discovered I can do a full split again!

My mom and I crack ourselves up.

Flex Friday with legs.

I have no idea what this is.

Stacked plank. Also known as kick Mom in the head.

Cartwheels are fun again.

Ready for a run!

Crane/crow pose

I don't know what this is called, but it felt great on my back.

I'm learning how to do headstands this weekend.

It was my 15th wedding anniversary this week. I love this guy!

I hope you're all doing well! I'd love to catch up with everyone and hear how your lives are going. I'm going to try to make the blog rounds to tell everyone hi. Miss you guys!

mustache fever

have you heard about the new-ish trend? i bet you have if you've got regular contact with tweenage girls and their likes and dislikes. the trend i'm referring to is mustaches. yeah, you read that right. mustaches, as in, the fur that grows on men's upper lips.

i discovered this back a few months ago when i was watching some ridiculous reality show with brooke (aged 9 at the time) and there was one contestant sporting a bushy mullet and a really big, ridiculous mustache. i made some snarky comment about his odd, 80's styling and she said, "i like it." WHAT?! i concluded she must be joking, so i laughed at her great joke. however, one look at her face convinced me that this was no joke. she seriously was digging his look.

she assured me that the mullet wasn't really her thing, but that giant fur-patch on his lip was looking mighty fine. great googlie mooglie, my child is very strange. she's not into goat-t's or beards so much, but that solo lip hair is oddly appealing.

it didn't take me long to discover that this mustache phenomenon isn't unique to my child. i started seeing mustache clothing, mugs, and jewelry.

that's when i remembered seeing photos of several friends of mine at a baby shower/mustache party. i don't understand the infatuation, but i've decided to find it amusing.

before christmas, i was shopping with a friend, looking for mustache paraphernalia at the mall but having little luck. my friend suggested that since i'm handy, i should just buy any shirt and put a mustache onto it. 

that sparked some fun ideas, so i purchased a shirt for brooke with a big giraffe face and then sewed some velcro onto the lip. then i made up six different mustache styles in felt and put velcro onto them as well. it became a much more elaborate project than i'd anticipated, but thankfully i started far enough ahead of christmas so that i had enough nights to finish it before the morning of the big reveal.

here's my strange little child, sporting her giraffe-stache shirt on christmas morning. and her mood-stache necklace that has brought endless fun, but currently needs to be repaired because it's already been loved too much.

what's your take on this wacky trend?

mom rocks

i feel like i'm having a mini epiphany lately. it involves moms.

remember when you were a teenage girl (unless you were a boy, then i hope you don't remember that) and you thought your mom was so freaking annoying and dumb? remember when you looked at her clothes or shoes or hair or car and scoffed at the absurdity that was her? do you remember thinking how massively superior you were to her?

i do. i remember wondering why she had to be so embarrassing and thinking that with myself being so utterly cool, i should have had a much cooler mother so that we could match.

i wrote rude things about her in my diary. some days i was sure that my destiny would take me on a much more epic journey in life than hers had.

i was very foolish.

in the past few years, i've been realizing that my mom looks fantastic. she's fashionable and always fixed and looking good when she goes anywhere. she's thin and in shape and gets hit on by men all the time because, dang, you don't see a woman in her 60's looking like that very often.

my mom does interesting and lively things like climb trees with the grandkids and even hangs upside down from a branch from time to time. she takes mission trips around the globe because her faith is important to her and she lives it out in her life every day. she has girlfriends who she exercises, parties, and lunches with. she takes care of people who are sick or old or injured. she reads and writes and works out while still taking care of her family at home.

when i look at pictures of my mom before she had kids, i see a foxy lady. she wore super short mini skirts and even some crocheted hot pants she made for herself in her early twenties. and she didn't just wear them, she rocked them!

so where did that lady go while i was growing up? how could i not see the hot chick while i was busy considering myself to be a hot chick?

i finally realized that she was still there, but she was too busy taking care of me to take care of herself. she had four kids and a busy life filled with good things, but very few of them involved doing things for herself just because she wanted to do them. she didn't spend money to buy nice clothes for herself because she was spending it all to keep her children dressed and fed. she didn't bother much with makeup because she didn't have enough time for such things with so many other more important things on her plate.

for a few years i've been joking that my mom has a reverse aging gene going on, making her look younger as she ages. maybe that's not it though. maybe my eyes are just learning how to see her finally. maybe i'm just discovering that the phase of a mom's life where she's taking care of her young family isn't who she is. it's just a period of time, a step on her ladder of life.

mom, i'm thankful for you. you've set an amazing example for me all my life. i'm sorry for all the times i made fun of your clothes or shoes. i hope someday brooke will appreciate me as much as i appreciate you.

a ranch filled with bunnies

once again, i'm in the process of figuring out Brooke. she's definitely growing up and showing signs of entering into the next phase of kid-hood. as soon as i think i've got things under control, she up and changes the game and i've got to work out a whole new set of rules.

she had a sleepover recently and the girls who were here brought nail polish. brooke has always shunned nail polish and won't ever cave to my desire to paint her nails, even if i offer her bribes. but guess what - she painted her own nails! granted, it was clear paint that glows in the dark, but still, she painted her nails. that's new territory.

she has decided that i'm no longer free to read her journal. previously she's always welcomed and encouraged me to read it and check out her drawings. no more. i'm pretty sure she's writing mean things about me. that's okay. i wrote mean things about my mom too, and it doesn't at all affect my feelings for her now.

last week i was trying to figure out what top i could wear with a pair of pretty chocolately brown dress pants that i inherited and hemmed so that they fit perfectly. i was struggling because i'm not very good at fashion unless it's really obvious and simple. brooke saw me struggling and decided to help me make an outfit. she went to google and pulled up a picture of a color wheel that included browns and from there decided which colors were most complimentary to my pants. then she went to my closet and made some suggestions, leading me to pick a shirt that looks great with them. who'd have guessed that a clueless fashion girl could help her clueless fashion mom by using the color wheel that i'd taught her about recently during an art class on contrasting colors.

we're also still working on acceptable words. it's hard for me to limit her vocabulary on words that i say. i never swear around her, but the words crap and suck are common place around here. however, some of her friends parents are less than thrilled to have her teaching such words to their own kids. i want to increase her chances of having good friendships, so we're working on that.

i'm also finding myself needing to teach her bad words. she would never use truly bad ones intentionally if she knows they're bad, but she's great at deciphering the right way to say something even if she's not clear on the exact meaning. she told me once, "don't be a pussy, mom." i had to explain that one and she was pretty embarrassed. thankfully she said it only to me and she thought she was just calling me a scaredy cat.

we watched an animal planet show recently that showed some dude who was raising tigers on his property. he was a total dunce who liked to walk them on leashes even when they were too big to be handled and could easily kill him with a quick swipe or bite. he gets famous people who like to live dangerously who come and visit his tigers, including heidi flys (spelled wrong intentionally), the madam who runs the bunny ranch prostitution ring. her name was written on screen and under it the words "Bunny Ranch Owner" and brooke latched right onto that. "ooh, mom, a bunny ranch! that must be such a cool place! i want to work on a bunny ranch someday."

i was left with the dilemma of deciding if i should let it fly right over her head or if i should correct her and set her straight to avoid her possibly telling someone at church (or the grocery store or anywhere else) that someday she wants to work at the bunny ranch. she'd be mortified later if that happened. i don't believe in telling kids not to say or do something without giving them an honest answer for why. i hate the mystery and intrigue that creates and with a kid like Brooke, if i didn't give a satisfactory answer, she's likely to google it and get way more than either of us bargained before.

so of course i told her what the bunny ranch was. yet again i was oversharing with my child in an attempt to save her from potential future embarrassment.

as we cross over into the place in life where there are rarely howling, head-banging, skin-scratching episodes, we've come to a place of too much information and uncomfortable conversations. i don't know if i'm doing it right, but i'm doing the best i can. she made me a christmas present, so i must be doing something right.

Padiddle

"Padiddle!" i yelled excitedly as we drove home tonight. my husband looked at me strangely and smiled slightly, wondering what the heck made me yell out gibberish.

i repeated it again. "padiddle. puh-diddle. don't you know what that means? didn't you see it? don't you want to kiss me?!"

he looked at me even more strangely, no longer smiling, as if i'd lost my mind. obviously he grew up with an incomplete childhood because no one should grow up without the padiddle game.

when you're driving at night and you see a car coming toward you with one head light burned out, you yell "padiddle" at the top of your lungs and then you get to kiss the person of your choice in the car where you're riding.

as a kid, i think i learned this game from my aunts who were young and hip and cool and knew about things like kissing boys. i spent many nights as a young teenager riding in cars where boys were present and hoping that we'd run across one of those lovely padiddles so i'd have a perfect and legitimate opportunity to smooch a boy. i'd see a solo headlight coming our way and i'd hold my breath, hoping it was an elusive single lighted car and not another stupid motorcycle out to trick me and spoil my fun.

years went by and i never saw one of those buggers at the right time. i was always with my parents or maybe my brother when i'd catch a glimpse of one.

finally, one night i was riding in a car with several friends on our way to a youth group activity with our church. i was probably 15 years old. along the road toward us came a padiddle, unmistakable, definitely not a motorcycle. i yelled it out gleefully and then started looking around, thinking of who i was going to kiss.

it wasn't going quite the way i'd imagined in my head. i wasn't crowded into a backseat with several cute boys to choose from. there was one cute boy driving, one not cute boy in the passenger seat and then 3 or 4 girls crammed into the backseat together. i quickly decided the driver wasn't a good option because of the potential crashing factor. i had no interest in kissing the un-cute boy in front of me.

i couldn't bear to let the opportunity pass me by altogether, so i turned to my best friend who was sitting beside me and gave her a big smooch right on the lips.

all the other passengers started squawking and yelling about what had just happened. they couldn't believe i'd kissed her.

in my mind, it wasn't sexual, it was just funny. i'm not sure i'd ever even heard of lesb!ans (trying to trick the naughty google searches) before so i didn't think much of it or understand the dramatic reaction of my friends.

looking back on it now, i guess it shows just how naive i was at that time. i thought i was a lady of the world, but clearly i was wrong. it makes me smile to remember those times and the innocence of hoping for a chance to give someone a quick peck on the mouth. childhood is a wonderful thing.

i like it HOT

i've told you guys that i started doing yoga a few months ago. i was surprised to discover that i like doing it with my little videos at home. i do yoga usually a couple times every week and i've discovered that, in my own estimation, i'm pretty decent at the physical part.

recently, i started wondering if i was any good or if i was butchering the poses and motions. sometimes you feel like you're doing something correctly, but it's hard to see yourself and if no one else is watching to point you in the right direction, it's impossible to know how you're really doing.

i worked out in front of a mirror and sometimes had brooke take my picture when i was in a really awkward pose so that i could see myself and try to gauge my level of accuracy.

my sister started doing hot yoga recently. she's a high stress, high achieving, high intensity kind of person, so this is right up her alley. i, however, am none of those things. when she invited me to join her for a 90 minute class of hot (100+ degrees) power yoga, i reluctantly agreed, but i was sort of terrified. and excited. let me not forget my excitement.

i kept waking up at night with visions of myself falling over with rubbery bones in the middle of a class where everyone else was perfectly posed. i imagined my crotch being exposed to the people behind me as i bent forward in downward dog split. i imagined tears and rivers of sweat and puking straight down onto my mat while trying to get into crow pose.

instead of letting those fears and dreams deter me, i watched a bunch of power yoga videos on youtube. then i went out and bought some tight shorts so that my bits would be adequately covered, no matter my pose. i researched the best way to stay hydrated during an extended super hot strenuous workout and followed all the directions. then i signed up and paid online so i couldn't chicken out.

i showed up early and was very happy to have my sister with me to hold my hand. sometimes i'm a big baby and need my little sister to tell me that i'll be okay.

i was very surprised to find that the heat in the room was delicious. i'm almost constantly cold these days, so it was a wonderful change to be wearing very little clothes and still be toasty warm. i also discovered very quickly that the heat made my muscles extremely flexible. while sitting on the ground with my legs out straight, i could lay my whole face flat down onto my shins.

the teachers came along and made little adjustments on me periodically. one actually gave me a little back massage while i was in forward bend and i almost fell asleep standing up with my palms on the floor. i was able to perform right along with the rest of the class and i didn't feel like i stuck out as a newbie. best of all, i didn't fart once. i've read too many things about the gas passing that goes on during these hot classes and i was resigned to the possibility, but thankfully i was tootless.

all in all, i loved it. i was sad when it ended and didn't feel like it could possibly have been 90 minutes already. i'm glad to have stepped out of my comfort zone and tried something new and i can't wait to go again in three days.