Disneyland Half Week 8 Training

Tuesday: 6:15 am wakeup, 3 mile run

Thursday: 6 am wakeup, 3.5 ish mile run
I decided to swap the 3 and 4 mile runs so that in the very likely event that we don't go on Saturday while on vacation, we would miss less miles. But it was not to be. First, my Garmin died less than a mile in. Whoops. Then it started raining. Oh well, we thought, it's refreshing. It started raining harder around 2.5 miles, so I figured we could quit after 3. But then it lightened up, so we kept going. Around 3.3, it started just POURING. (Of course all distances are estimates since the garmin was dead!) We sprinted back to my house, but were already soaking wet. All I could think was that we had to pack our running shoes tonight (you know, just in case we actually do go running this weekend) and they wouldn't be dry.
Luckily the linen closet is by the front door so I grabbed a few towels before we soaked the house. We stripped our soaking clothes off and left them in a heap by the front door.

When I got home from work I tossed the clothes and towels in the washer and the shoes in the dryer on low. Then they temporarily broke the dryer! It stopped spinning and wouldn't start again. Of course I panicked because I had clothes in the washer! But I pulled the shoes out, left it alone for a few minutes and when I went back to test it was working fine. No more shoes in the dryer!!

Saturday: 6 am wakeup call, 3.5 mile run
Did this happen? No. I was doubtful anyways, but when our nice early evening flight (supposed to land at 7:15) turned into a several hour ordeal (landed at 10, but didnt get off the plane until after 11), we decided to sleep in and enjoy our weekend. Oh well.

Meal of the week:
Can it be cookies? Because I basically nibbled so much cookie dough and muffin batter that I didn't really eat dinner on Thursday night. Yum!

The cookies were: Blueberry, Lemon, and white chocolate chip
The muffins were: Oat mini muffins with chocolate mini-chips and peanut butter chips that I coarsely chopped because they didn't have minis. I love mini-muffins and find they're much better for sharing.

Goodies for the birthday girl (Dan's aunt), the office, our hosts for the weekend (Dan's cousin and her hsuband), and Dan's parents (for their road trip). Yummy!

Sunday Setup:
Workouts
Tuesday: 4 miles
Thursday: 4 miles tempo
Saturday: 8 miles

Meals
Coming back from vacation, I don't have a really good plan for when, but here's a couple recipes I'd like to make:
Grilled Chicken Sliders
Brown Rice Walnut Burgers (hoping this tastes like my favorite veggie burger, the Beaver Nut Burger)
Scallops and mashed beans

Shitake and pea risotto

Wedding Planning Troubles

As indicated in the title, this will not be a happy post. Sorry. It could alternately be titled "That time I cried my eyes out over wedding planning. No, that other time. No, that other time. Forget it. One of those times that I cried my eyes out over wedding planning."

Yeah, it's like that. Of course, I'm sure a lot of people cry their eyes out over wedding planning, some for silly reasons and some for serious ones. Heck, I've cried over silly ones too. But that's for a different story.

So it all started a few weeks ago when Dan hatched the idea to have a rabbi at our wedding. Yes, my Catholic fiancé suggested that it would be nice to have a rabbi perform our marriage. I had kinda written the idea off before we discussed it, for a few reasons:
(1) Actually it doesn't say anywhere that you need a rabbi to make it a Jewish wedding. All you need are witnesses to sign a document called a ketubah (like the Jewish version of a marriage license). Well, a couple other things, but it's not encased in canon law the way Catholic weddings are.
(2) I can't have a really Jewish wedding per the strictest of guidelines because Dan isn't Jewish, anyways. And because I scheduled the wedding before sundown on Saturday, on the sabbath, and that's not allowed for a true Jewish wedding. But I don't keep shabbat so it seemed hypocritical to suddenly pretend to care for the sake of my wedding.
(3) My own rabbis, who I know and have a relationship with, are very religious and will not perform an interfaith ceremony. So rather than find a random rabbi who would do it, I let it go.

Anyways, Dan thought that since the deacon could attend but not perform the ceremony, it would be nice to have a rabbi do the rest of it. Equal representation. So I went to interfaithfamily.com,which is a Jewish interfaith support website and filled out their rabbi request form.  I'm sure that would have worked wonderfully in many places (like South Florida), but it returned 5 recommendations to me... only one in the Houston area (the others were in Dallas). I emailed that one, who unfortunately already had a wedding planned that night. He recommended another rabbi in the area, who is out of town that weekend. And she recommended a synagogue that doesn't do ceremonies for non-members. I emailed a couple others. The last one I emailed replied with this:
"I am not comfortable with the scenario you have described for your wedding.  If you would like to meet with me and dig a little deeper about why the deacon's blessing is a must at your Jewish wedding ceremony, I would be happy to help."

Yikes.  She has the right to be uncomfortable with it, but the accusation there was too much for me. That I shouldn't allow a deacon at "my Jewish wedding?" No. "Our Interfaith wedding." This really upsets me about the Jews. Their numbers are dwindling. They all talk about how sad it is that people intermarry and don't raise their kids Jewish and we're breeding ourselves out. (I could link to 20 articles talking about this topic with a 2 second Google search, but I don't want to support them in any way.) I do understand why my ultra-religious rabbis are not able to. They do everything by the book, and I respect that. But the conservative movement follows the midline between very religious and very permissive and in it's official literature it claims to welcome interfaith families and the non-Jewish partner to be involved in the synagogue.
Yet here we are, trying to incorporate Judaism into our wedding and our future... and they won't let us. They're pushing us away. They're insulting my wonderful fiancé who is willing to help me raise Jewish children, saying that's not good enough, we need more. We need you to give up your own faith.

Of course it's not all rabbis or all Jews that feel this way. After all there were those rabbis who would have officiated if they weren't busy, or if we attended their synagogue. But too many are flat against it.

So after I cried on Dan's shoulder for awhile (he's wonderful, and always says the right things even when I'm soaking his shirt in tears), we decided not to look for rabbis anymore. I'm sure if I kept trying I could find one. Another smaller congregation where the rabbi would be willing to do a wedding for nonmembers or a rabbi without a congregation. But after how many more rejections? How much more judgment? Forget it. We can do this without their help.

So we have solved part of the problem. But that still leaves the question... who will officiate? This also makes me wonder if we will find a congregation to belong to. The more religious congregations where I am most comfortable from a religious standpoint are not welcoming to our family. So what do we trade? Observance or belonging, if we can't have both?

Disneyland Half Week 7 Training

Halfway through our training, but summer is just getting started. I shouldn't complain, I guess, because it's been 100 degrees the last week everywhere BUT Houston. Lucky us.

Tuesday: 5:45am wakeup call, 4 mile run

Thursday: 6am wakeup call, 4 mile Tempo run
Oof. Honestly, I was not the least bit interested in getting up. The alarm went off and Dan asked "do you want to run?" "No!!!" screamed my mind. "Yes," I mumbled. Then I rationalized, while the clock ticked down. "What's the harm in skipping one run?" said the devil on my left. "You already skipped runs last week," said the angel on my right. "But I'm TIRED!" "But you won't really get anything out of 40 more minutes in bed." And so, up we got. To say that my whole attitude changed by the end of the run would be a lie. But I was not regretting that I got up and did it. So that's a start.  It was a pretty decent run too, 2 tempo miles in 11:38. Zoom! (Or something like that.)

Thursday night: Random stretching and leg exercises to work out some stiff leg kinks. Also did a few girly pushups... maybe one day I'll be able to do a real one. I hate that I have no upper body strength.


Sunday: 5:15 am 5:40am wakeup call, 6 mile run
I had one of those Saturdays where things didn't go right, so Sunday had to be awesome to make up for it. But Sunday started out just as crappy as Saturday! Alarm was set for 5:15. Fiancé thought he snoozed it but actually dismissed it. Luckily he woke up 25 minutes later and we got up. We got ready for our run and went to make breakfast- we usually have a freezer waffle with almond butter before long runs. But there were no waffles.  I found a smushed Larabar in my purse so we shared that on the drive to the park.
Ew. Lemon Larabar is a huge no-no. I like lemony things and bought it to try awhile back. The lemon flavor was fine (sometimes it can be fake and overpowering), but there was another weird flavor underneath it that was just wrong. Definitely prefer some of the other flavors I've tried.
From there the day got better. No pain in my knees this time, and the run went pretty smoothly despite the humidity. Thankfully we had overcast skies so it didn't get too hot after our late start. And we finished it off with a delicious breakfast at a nearby Jewish deli. Dan ordered Bagel Eggs Benedict- on a bagel and with smoked salmon on top. I ordered the corned beef hash.

We shared, but the portions were HUGE.  We decided to finish the eggs Benedict, since it wouldn't keep, and take a lot of hash home. Hello lunch tomorrow. For both of us!


Meal of the Week:
Actually I picked a bunch of really delicious meals this week.  I tried tempeh for the first time, and while the tempeh itself wasn't very remarkable (maybe that's the point?) the recipe was excellent. It would also probably be great with chicken- cut chicken into pieces, marinate in lemon juice, skip the water.
The Thai basil chicken was also great- spicy but not too much. So delicious! Fitnessista sangria, amazing (but really strong!). On fourth of July we slept in, had a big breakfast so had a snacky lunch:
Veggie dip (with bread, cucumber, and celery for dipping) and smoked chicken wings made by Dan, accompanied by his homemade blueberry beer!

 

But the winner was dinner that night: we made steak and potato salad. Amazing potato salad! She's right that its pretty tedious to grill all those potato slices, but it sure was delicious!

Sunday Set-up
Workouts: step back week
Tuesday: 3 miles
Thursday: 3 miles
Saturday: 4 miles
We're heading to Chicago for the weekend to visit some of Dan's family. It's been hotter there than Houston this past week, hopefully it'll cool down in time for our visit!

Meals:
Monday: Fancy burgers on the grill. Perhaps these?
Tuesday: Leftovers, grocery store sushi, or frozen something. And packing for the weekend!
Wednesday: Taco night!
Thursday: Pasta
Friday: Something from the airport, to eat on the plane. We're flying during dinner.

Wedding Planning Update- 7 months to go!

Today, July 2nd, is exactly 7 months from our wedding. Eep!

So what did I do in Month 8? Not much.

• I found my maid of honor (my sister) a dress. Doesn't she look beautiful!?
  

  

  Not it's actual color.

• And we started planning my bachelorette party. Come October, we are taking Las Vegas by storm!
  

  

  Source

• The last of the save the dates went out- after being so quick to get 80+ addressed and sent to our out-of-town guests, the last 20 or so for the local people just sat there for weeks... until I finally buckled on the "addressing by hand" thing and bought some printer labels. Way easier!
• Update on the officiant saga: We met with the other deacon at Dan's church. He is a lot more accepting and helpful. He helped us find the right forms needed to get the dispensation to have both a church officiant (him) attend the wedding to say a blessing over the marriage AND for us to have it not at the church and it can still count.  Also we're working on pre-marital counseling with him and he's been really nice and helpful so far! Now we're working on finding another officiant (maybe a reform rabbi, but that is complicated too) to perform the ceremony. We're not out of the woods, but we are definitely headed in the right direction!

Wedding related nightmares?

• Well there was the one where suddenly it was the wedding (and even in the dream I felt like it was earlier than planned and I should have more time) and I hadn't ever called the cake baker so there was no cake. This apparently upset a lot of dream-people who in real life probably don't give a damn about cake, including Dan, and I just kept saying "Do we really NEED cake?" and "What's the cake for anyways? It's not my birthday."

Major to-do-list items for July:

• Find an officiant (still)
• Look for a Florist, bus for the family from hotel to wedding and back, and hairdresser
• Honeymoon planning!

Disneyland Half Week 6 Training

Monday- last week's 6 mile run. Skipped this week's easy run.

Wednesday night/Thursday morning I went to bed around 12:30 after getting off work at midnight, but did set the alarm for 6am thinking I might be able to get up, do some speedwork, and then go back to bed, like I did Monday.
Nope, when the alarm went off I couldn't even open my eyes. I did do some yoga that day when I did get up. But no running. That's my 2 skipped runs for the month of June right there.

Sunday- 5am wakeup call, 7 mile run
Back to running at the park, because it has shade and water fountains and bathrooms along the trail, so we got up at 5, ate a little breakfast, and drove to the park. We actually got lucky with an overcast day, 78 degrees or so.  Humid, but not our worst weather to date. Our long run/walk pattern has been pretty consistent- today was 3.5 miles run, 0.5 miles walk, 3 miles run. If we can do 3 miles/0.5miles on half marathon day, I'll be happy.

Meal of the week:
No pictures because I basically ate cereal and out of tupperware for a week straight while on console. However, the best meal was hands-down a Jimmy Johns sub with my fiancé. I had a meeting from 1-2, then console at 3, so in the middle Dan met me at JJs near work for a late lunch. Good sub, better company!

Sunday Set-up
Workouts:
Tuesday: 5 miles
Thursday: Tempo, 4 miles
Sunday: 6 miles

Meals:
Monday-Spicy Basil Chicken and stir fry veggies
Tuesday- Going away party for my friend. Someone's bringing burgers and hotdogs, I'm bringing chips, dip, and Fitnessista's Sangria.
Wednesday- July 4th, so probably steaks on the grill!
Thursday- Tempeh Greek wrap
Friday- I demand that I get to go out for sushi!