Feeling Better

My go-live deadline got pushed back to Jan 5 by the client, so there's a lot of pressure off of my back right now. That's a huge relief. And the Christmas concert with Bigun was SOOOOOO CUTE! it instantly put me in a better mood. We all got dressed up for it, and took a family picture before leaving.

Then went to the concert. They put it on like a play with some of the older kids singing first, then bringing in the 3 year olds. Here's one of Bigun in the dead center staring at me and clapping:

Man, that's a lot of kids. I can't believe that many kids were that well behaved for that long. of course we got video of the whole thing too. And we were fighting the Evil Genius to get up there. She wanted to sing with the other kids.

I iced the knee yesterday and did some yoga this morning. Supposed to run 8 miles today. The knee feels better, but not completely healed. I might do more yoga over lunch and get the 8 in tomorrow. And I'm going to ice it more today too. And I'm having some very specific shin pain too. It's just a spot about the width of my finger on the inside of the shin bone. A little too specific to be shin splints, but I'm thinking some more rolling will help.

Also, I remembered that these knee/leg pains started creeping up when I ran out of Calcium supplements last week. I have also been meaining to give the old Glucosamine another try. I already take a multi-vitamin and Vitamin C every day. So I think that's going to take care of it. I still need some new kicks, but couldn't make it to the store yesterday. I'll get out there soon.

Tomorrow is Wifey's birthday! Some of her family is coming into town, it's going to be a blast. She's older than I am so I can't mention her new age. I have learned something in 10 years of marriage. The family is going to keep the kids while we go to Atlanta saturday for the company holiday party saturday night. It's at some hotel, and the company got us a room for the night. So that's going to be a blast. I'm already not looking forward to the hangover sunday morning. nothing like a 2.5 hour drive when you should be sleeping off the scotch. But last year's party was a blast and we had Evil Genius with us. This year with no kids, we should be in rare form. Oh, and we're supposed to run 13 miles before driving down there on saturday. Whew!

So thanks for letting me vent yesterday. It's better than venting with Coors Light (or is it?) One thing that I really hate to see is when your stress reliever becomes stressful. I got that way with golf when I owned the business. When business was small and slow, I could play once a week. I got to be decent, I could go out to any course and shoot in the mid 80's. Then business picked up, and I needed to play golf as my stress outlet. No golf = no relief. Just like how now no running = no nicotine relief = really crabby John. But then I started stressing about how I hadn't been able to play golf for 3 weeks in a row. Not playing had become a source of stress. Once I realized that and mentally made the change to not place the expectation on myself, golf went from a stress source to nothing. And I felt better. When work pressures build, we all mentally displace that stress onto something personal, like snapping at the wife for putting too much salt in the soup or something stupid like that. I'm fairly self perspective, so I will blame a lack of running for why I feel so stressed at work. It's the same personality pattern that makes me try to blame myself for everything, and I have a hard time believing it could be someone else's fault even when it really is. That also means I have a hard time standing up for myself even when I know I'm right and someone else is wrong, like accepting blame for a car wreck that was not my fault. but that's another story for another day.

So don't let your stress reliever become a source of stress! Now I only play golf a couple of times a year if I'm lucky. And I can manage my time still to get in my workouts. I'm going to bike/stretch/yoga/elliptical for as much as I can until the knee/shin feels better. And maybe only run for the long runs over the weekend. RICE and some new shoes I think will help too. Christmas is next week? Then on Jan 3 we're both running our first half marathon. That's only 3 saturday's from now. So that's the most immediate target. Thanks, c ya!