Blog Readers’ Bill Of Rights (Blogging Tips For Beginners)

Posted on July 3, 2012 by Coco

A Bill Of Rights With Blogging Tips For Beginners

File:Bill of Rights Pg1of1 AC.jpg We, the blog readers of the blogosphere, hold these truths to be self-evident:

  • That our time is valuable, so we should not be held captive by blog pages that are obstructed with pop-up ads that float across the page.
  • That our comments are worthy, so they should not be subject to the whims of the evil captcha empire.
  • That our reading time may be stolen while children nap, bosses blather, or family members watch t.v., so it should not be broadcast with background music.

What rights do you want bloggers to respect?

Share you other blogging tips for beginners! 

Posted in Life | Tagged | 16 Comments

Fitting It All In

Posted on July 2, 2012 by Coco

The good news is that my physical therapist has cleared me for some short runs (up to 4 miles). 🙂 The bad news is that I still have about 45 minutes of physical therapy exercises I need to do every day. It was one thing to get up at 5:00 am to fit in a walk and some strengthening exercises, but figuring out how to work in a run and still get to work at a reasonable hour presents a real challenge.

I am not supposed to do my physical therapy exercises on a day that I have physical therapy, so one option is to run on those days.  My appointments are at 7:30 am, so I will have to be very efficient to fit in a run and a shower and get all my stuff together for the day before I have to leave the house at 7:15.

On Friday, I did it all before work, including walking the dog.

I had to sacrifice my morning Twitter/Facebook/Blog time and get breakfast at Starbucks, so it’s not an ideal schedule, but I did get to work on time.

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/218683104418725888

One option would be to do my exercises in the evenings, but I know myself too well to even consider that as a realistic option. By the time I get home from work and fix dinner I am ready to collapse. I certainly don’t have the energy for 45 minutes of planks and glute bridges. 😉I am pretty sure that my best option is to get out of bed with my first alarm (no snooze-button!) and cut down on dilly-dallying.

I also am figuring out how to work in my FitFluential time. I am loving the FitFluential community (if you are interested in becoming a FitFluential Ambassador, you can find information and the application here) and am discovering great new blogs, but I could easily spend all day trying to keep up (which I learned the hard way when I was “working at home last week”–oops!). I have decided to read/comment on three new FitFluential blog posts a day, and only read more after my own work and blogging is done.

Do you have a new routine for the summer?

Do you have to impose limits on your blogging and social media time?

Posted in Fitness | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments

Sheltering From The Summer Storm

Posted on June 30, 2012 by Coco

I’m writing this post from the basement of my Mom’s house, because she has power and we don’t. The record-breaking heat we had on friday (106F and it was not a dry heat!) led to severe storms that caused major damage. According to the outage information on our electric company’s website, nearly 1/2 the people in my city are without power (28,000 customers). My mom is lucky enough to live in a pocket of the city that was spared, and generous enough to invite us over.

While a summer power outage is not as much fun as a winter snow day, it feels the same in some ways. Neighbors are out talking to each other, sharing information, commiserating, and offering help with removing large downed branches. What was going to be a normal Saturday filled with household chores turned into a day of “adventures”: finding the closest Starbucks with power for our morning coffee, going to the office long enough to recharge phones and laptops, and using the facilities at the gym to dry my hair. As the day wore on with no electricity in sight, my husband’s passing mention that “Moonrise Kingdom” looked like a good move turned into an impromptu date.

We weren’t the only ones hoping to stay cool at the movies!

After the movie, we had to face the reality of another night without power. When we got home we checked the temperature inside the refrigerator.

Ugh!

We poured out the milk, half-and-half, and Eggbeaters, and packed up a cooler with the unopened sandwich meat and cheeses.

I guess I will be filling up the trash can tomorrow. 🙁

We grabbed a few overnight essentials, and headed to my Mom’s house. We showed Tiger Lilly around her house, and let her play in my Mom’s sprinkler. We cooked our hamburgers for dinner, and added tomatoes and green peppers from my Mom’s garden to our dinner salad. When my son headed out to the movies, we took Tiger Lilly for a walk–it was nice to have a new neighborhood to explore, and especially nice to be able to take a long walk without having to trudge up any hills!

I’m sure I’ll be antsy tomorrow–it will get harder and harder to avoid thinking about all of the things I’m not getting done–but for now I’m enjoying the forced down time and the unavoidable family time.

What is the longest you’ve been out of power?

Did you see any movies this weekend?

Posted in Life | Tagged | 8 Comments

Book Review: Let’s Pretend This Never Happened By Jenny Lawson

Posted on June 29, 2012 by Coco

I guess if Carla won’t start a book club, I will have to start her book club for her, because this is another book that I bought and enjoyed after she mentioned enjoying it herself.

Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson

The author, Jenny Lawson, is a blogger (or should I say, she is The Bloggess?), but this book is not about blogging or life as a blogger. As described on Amazon:

Jenny Lawson realized that the most mortifying moments of our lives—the ones we’d like to pretend never happened—are in fact the ones that define us. In Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Lawson takes readers on a hilarious journey recalling her bizarre upbringing in rural Texas, her devastatingly awkward high school years, and her relationship with her long-suffering husband, Victor. Chapters include: “Stanley the Magical, Talking Squirrel”; “A Series of Angry Post-It Notes to My Husband”; “My Vagina Is Fine. Thanks for Asking”; “And Then I Snuck a Dead Cuban Alligator on an Airplane.” Pictures with captions (no one would believe these things without proof) accompany the text.

Despite this description, it is important to note the subtitle:

(A Mostly True Memoir)

Or does that matter? I’ve seen several book reviews wondering just how much of the book is “true” and if the subtitle/disclaimer should shield the book from those types of questions, but I honestly don’t care. (I also enjoyed James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces and did not get wrapped up in the “controversy” about the veracity of that “memoir” either.)

I am adding Let’s Pretend This Never Happened to my short list of books that truly make me laugh out loud–so far the only other book on that list is Tina Fey’s Bossypants. Some of the stories in this book are more “inappropriate” than Bossypants, so I’m a bit hesitant to recommend it to all of my friends, but I’m pretty sure that they all would enjoy it, even if we wouldn’t laugh over the vagina chapter until we’d finished off at least one bottle of wine together.

What are you reading now?

Do you mind if a “memoir” is not 100% true?

Posted in Book Reviews, Life | Tagged , | 9 Comments

My ITB Is A B*TCH

Posted on June 28, 2012 by Coco

I am about halfway through my scheduled physical therapy for my ITB/piriformis/SI issue and my condition is improving.  With each visit, my physical therapist finds less and less to work on–although I don’t mind when she finds a tight spot in my back because then I get a mini-massage. 🙂

I have been working hard on my recovery. I stopped running for two weeks. (My beach run was after I took two full weeks off, although it was before I was officially cleared to run again.) I’ve done all of my physical therapy exercises every day – even though that means 45 minutes of core work. I’ve been focusing on tightening my core throughout my daily activities, sitting up straight, and standing evenly on both feet instead of putting all of my weight on one leg like I tend to do.

On Tuesday, my physical therapist thought I was ready to start running again. She watched me run on the treadmill for a few minutes, and confirmed that my gait and motion looked good. We agreed on a 4 mile test run, which I did today. All in all, it was a great run. The weather was amazing for late June (in the upper 60s with low humidity and a nice breeze!) and Tiger Lilly was a good companion–until she nearly dragged me into a water sprinkler that was too tempting for her to resist at the top of a hill!

I started off slowly (at a 10+ min/mile pace) and didn’t notice any twinges until about one mile into my route. It was then that my ITB spoke up, with the same nagging that has been plaguing me for months now. 🙁 It never hurt and it may have gotten better as I continued, but it never completely went away. The good news is that the pain is gone now, but that’s how it was before I started physical therapy–my ITB would ache during a run, but not otherwise. Hopefully my physical therapist will let me keep running, and will have some suggestions for my ITB.

In the meantime, I will continue plugging away with my exercises. My current routine includes:

fitball glute bridges (3 sets of 10)
fitball roll-outs (3 sets of 15)
front planks on elbows ( 3 sets of 8)
prone heel/glute squeezes (3 sets of 8)
side planks with feet elevated (3 sets of 8)

I hold each rep for 10 seconds, so each set of 8 takes about 2 minutes, while each set of 10 takes about 2.5 minutes. Adding a bit of rest between sets and exercises, it all adds up to about 45 minutes. 

Tonight I was jealous of Linsey when I saw this tweet:

https://twitter.com/wordpressdotcom/status/218131128316461057

Hopefully I will be saying that soon.

Have you ever had problems with your ITB?

What worked for you?

Posted in Fitness | Tagged , , | 16 Comments