"Like, YAY! It's the Weekend!"

I’m not usually one to be all, “Like, YAY! It’s the weekend!” But I’m all, “Like, YAY! It’s the weekend!”

Saturday. It was Saturday yesterday and it ended with me tired so I’m once again back-blogged, but that’s okay—the few of you reading this don’t mind, I’m pretty sure.

I had a pretty full day yesterday, and it was a wonderful, fulfilling, and in many ways, relaxing day. The whole house woke up at the same time, which was probably a bit before 7:00am. I drank a pint of OJ while making some steel-cut oats for Liam and I—Angie ate cereal. As usual I sweetened the steel-cut oats with brown sugar because, although I CAN eat them unsweetened, I just prefer not to. I like sweets. That’s one of my motivations to exercise: so I can justify eating sweets. I made my French-pressed while making the oats, again the light-roasted Mexican beans, and I had two cups of that, black. I left Angie and Liam in the house while I went out to pick some beans in the garden, but was joined by the two of them shortly thereafter and Angie helped me with some harvesting. There were a couple tomatoes to be picked, and I know there’s some corn ready but I like to leave the corn until I’m actually gonna cook it because it’s sweeter and more nutritious that way.

~~All fruits and vegetables, of course, are more nutritious when they’re perfectly fresh. The minute you pick something it starts to die and the nutrients within begin to degrade. It’s not necessarily THAT fast, but it happens. And with corn, the sugars quickly begin to convert to starches after being picked (making the sweet corn less sweet), although newer hybrids have resulted in corn that stays sweeter longer. Anyway, this is why it’s not bad to eat frozen fruits and vegetables, although I still prefer them fresh, but grocery store “fresh” is generally going to be less nutrient-dense than frozen because the frozen things are frozen very soon after harvest and, according to most studies I’ve seen, lock the nutrients into the foods. I don’t know. I’m just relaying what I’ve read. Corn, for the record, is also supposed to be more nutritious when grilled versus boiling, although I’m not sure where steaming fits into that equation.~~

Saturday was a day for Liam and I around the house, because Angie left about 9:30am to head into San Fran for a bachelorette party—a trip I’m very glad to avoid. Not that I’d be invited to a bachelorette party, I just mean I hate going to San Francisco. I hate big cities, for the most part, especially one that rarely gets warm, is often covered in fog, and pretty much consistently smells like piss and shit. But people pay big money to live there. I really don’t get it. Keep your San Francisco. I’d rather live in L.A., probably, and I don’t like L.A., either. Ah well. I’m way off topic.

So Liam and I played in the back yard for a while, and the dogs fetched sticks, and it was a good time. We came inside because it was hot and I figured I could get a few things done inside, like straightening the kitchen a bit…doing some dishes…starting loads of laundry…and starting to fold some laundry that was already complete. I don’t really tend to sit down much, if I haven’t made that apparent, except when I’m working or otherwise typing at the computer (like now), or when I’m eating.

The only time we watch TV is when we’re eating (which may stop as Liam gets older because we like the concept of sitting down to a family meal to discuss the day), so it takes us a whole week to get through one episode of Bachelor Pad. That’s right: crap TV. I’d never claim I don’t love it while hating it. I’d never claim I don’t lose IQ points watching it. But that’s the only thing even on during the summer that we’re watching, so judge me. Occasionally we’ll watch an old episode of 30 Rock, because we started on that show way too late and it’s funny, and during the actual “good TV season,” we have some shows we record on the DVR, but we’ve found we just get further and further behind trying to keep up. TV just isn’t a priority in our household, but we’re also not those folks that shun TV. Moderation is important in all aspects of life, really. TV does have some things to offer, even if we miss most of the good things it has in those respects.

Liam banged his head a bit sometime after 10:00 and I was holding him in my arms and played some music videos on the internet with him there and was doing some typing and he fell asleep around 10:30, which was early for a nap, but I went to transfer him to the crib and he woke up, which I was happy about, so we went to Whole Foods to get some things ‘cause I really needed to do that.

We came home and I made us turkey sandwiches, mine with oven-roasted turkey (not peppered, this time), lettuce, swiss, and mustard on the usual double-fiber bread, and I had a craving for some BBQ chips so I’d bought those and had them with my sandwich. I also had a few almonds, ‘cause I bought more of those. I drank a couple o’ pints o’ water. I ate a zucchini muffin or two. (I was hungry.) Liam wasn’t much into what I was offering, except the pretzels (I won’t give him the chips because I know they aren’t great for a person and I’d rather keep him on a better track than me.) He did eat some apple sauce, though, and I’m pretty sure I got a whole sentence out of him when I put the apple sauce away: “I want more!” I’m not one to easily understand baby words or to designate random sounds to be words, so I’m pretty confident he actually said the whole sentence, which really surprised me, so I dished out some more apple sauce and he ate it. He also had zucchini muffin…s.

Liam went down for his nap around 1:00 and I was able to focus a bit more on the laundry, and I got our bed clothes changed and just took care of some miscellaneous things around the house, and I sat and read a bit. I haven’t been reading as much, largely because of the time I’m dedicating to writing this blog (which still puzzles me), and it’s taking me forever to get through such a short book, but I’m okay with that, ultimately.

Liam didn’t nap long—he was up again at 3:30, so I strapped a bike helmet on him and took him out for his first real experience on the strider bike. (It’s a bike with no peddles, intended for the young’uns, and the concept is they first learn to just walk over it and eventually learn they can coast a bit and then learn balance, all without training wheels, and then when they can balance you can throw ‘em on a regular little bike because learning to peddle is easy—it’s the balance that’s difficult.) I won’t try to claim it was some great success and he was real into it, but it was a bit of fun for me no less, and I did get short video clip of him doing essentially nothing on the bike, which I’ll throw in here because I haven’t posted any video clips in my blog yet. Plus it’s real cute to see a toddler in a bike helmet, if you ask me. He got distracted by a passing car.

We’d been invited to some friends’ house for dinner and were due there around 6:00 and I really wanted to get some exercise in, but with Angie gone and my general unwillingness to leave our boy with people I don’t know (technically, we could check him in to the Kid’s Club at our gym while we work out), I decided I’d try to run. My knee has been feeling good, and the photocopied info my doctor gave me about patellofemoral pain syndrome says I can get back to normal activities when I can straighten/bend my knee without pain (easy since there hasn’t really been pain from the start); strength is the same compared to the other knee; and I am able to walk, bend, and squat without pain. Check. Check. Check. I’d intended to wait until Monday, at least, but I decided to just do it, like a Nike ad.

Of course, I planned an easy route for myself (5K, about as flat a course as I could imagine with a mile of that being out/back with another 1.1 mile loop in case I got a mile in and found my knee hurting—I could just turn around and walk home without doing that loop), and I ran really slow. I don’t know how slow because I didn’t time myself, and I was probably faster than some other people run. I don’t think I can run a 10-minute mile—I call that walking. But I have long legs, and we’re all different. It’s okay. I’d imagine I did something like 8–9 minute miles. I pushed Liam in his stroller. I made the whole loop and the knee is fine, so I’m happy.

I stopped sweating, then hopped in the shower to clean up before heading out for dinner. Liam played. I got dressed, packed everything Liam could possibly need except a change of diaper (BAD DAD! BAD!), loaded up his high chair, and we were on our way.

Socializing and dinner were both good. It’s funny: I don’t have many friends, which I’ve mentioned, and every other time I’ve hung out with this couple (the only couple we hang out with—the guy I had drinks with earlier this week), Angie has been with me, so it was a bit different to be completely responsible for Liam and chatting up both of them at the same time. It was really a good time. They have a great little son as well, about 6 months Liam’s junior, and it’s so crazy to pick up and hold such a little guy again. He’s just starting to pull himself to standing. It’s fun to think of all the major changes they have coming in the next few months, because it’s fun to think of how rapidly those changes came for us and how those changes change your life in ways, too. Babies/toddlers are a lot of fun.

They made us a great dinner: chicken tacos on tortillas, guacamole and cheese and I even ate a cherry tomato (which I never eat), and there was yellow rice and I even ate some beans, which I really never eat but have been trying to get myself to dive into bits here and there, and they were good and I actually had seconds of the beans, and three of the tacos. I’d taken a 6-pack of Lagunitas’ Little Sumpin’ Wild over, and I drank two of those.

I had a moment of extreme guilt when Liam had blown out his diaper and was soaking wet and had pooped something that burnt his balls to a flaming swollen red and here I was: no diaper. Luckily our friends had a disposable (they use cloth, too, but not the same cloth [we plan to go their route next time, we think]) and although it was a bit too small for Liam, it was bigger than the one disposable I’d had in my car, so I got him changed up but he was not a happy guy with that big red swollen nutsack. What guy would be?

I’m really not focused in on the health and fitness topic today. Sorry. I know it’s the point of this blog, but I’m sure reading the same essential thing over and over gets boring, and then I get to thinking about it and I can’t imagine why anyone would want to read this, either. I know I keep saying it, but I can’t believe people actually read this. I’m flattered and baffled. I feel like I should start sharing some dirt on myself to make it more interesting, but I don’t have all too much dirt, and there’s a chance someone from my office might read this once in a while.

The boys were getting tired so Liam and I loaded up and headed home, and he fell asleep during the drive.

Putting Liam down for his naps is cake: when I pick him up from daycare and he falls asleep on the short 5-minute drive home, I could pretty much throw him into his crib from the doorway and he wouldn’t wake up. Nighttime, though: that’s a whole different beast. He was asleep when I got him out of the car…asleep on my shoulder walking in (just like coming home from daycare), but when I went to lay him in his crib: roll…”eh…EH…AAAAAHHHHH!” Back up in my arms he went. Right back to sleep he went. We rocked in the glider. We rocked a good 10 or 15 minutes. He was out. I went to lay him down…he rolled…”eh…,” but he was settling…then Nosta came strolling into the room, nails clicking on the ground, a little chirp from her, and immediately Liam sat up and started wailing again. DAMNIT! (Angie usually puts Liam down to bed and doesn’t tend to have such a hard time, and Angie is going to be out of town for several nights in a couple of weeks which means this will be my duty and it’s the one thing I’m most worried about while she’s gone: getting him down to sleep at night. I fear I’ll just cave and have him in bed with me every night. But I’m gonna try real hard.)

Back into my arms, right back to sleep. We rocked about 10 more minutes, and he was mostly out, but then Angie got home from San Fran and when she walked in his eyes cracked sleepily open and she peeked in (as one would expect of a mother who hasn’t seen her baby boy all day) and he was still eye-cracked so she asked me if she wanted her to take over and of course, frustrated (not with her but with the fact that I couldn’t get him to bed on my own), I handed him over and went out to grab a beer. I didn’t even sit at the computer or consider blogging, although I consciously noted I wasn’t planning on blogging. The beer was the last of a 6-pack that’s nothing outstanding, New Belgium’s IPA, which is just a pretty standard, reasonably acceptable IPA, and I sat in the big bean bag in the dark and drank that beer while getting more and more tired. I went to bed. Angie had Liam in the crib sleeping in only 15 minutes. I fell asleep. Angie ate, then joined me in bed some time later. I don’t know when. I slept well, but I’m still tired today.

I don’t know what I’ll do today. I know what I’ve done thus far, but I don’t have plans for future-today.

So good day, future-today. I’ll meet you once I post this blog entry, and since the rest of my family is now napping, maybe I’ll head out to the garden to do essentially nothing, or maybe I’ll go swim, or maybe I’ll just call my mom because I haven’t spoken to her in a while. Whatever you may hold for me, future-today, I’m glad you aren’t tomorrow.