stress baker

I know that I love to bake, but I didn't realize that I was a stress baker until last week. During my time off from running and recovering from the disaster race that was the Delaware Marathon, I baked like it was my job. I made crazy amounts of breads and muffins. I gave a lot of it away, but Mike and I ate most of it. One of the best things I made were banana bread streusel muffins.

Obviously, I used the jumbo sized muffin tin. Normal sized muffins are so boring. I plan to run today, but I'm not out of the baking woods, yet. I already have a loaf of raisin bread in the oven as of 7am this morning. I have issues.

Saturday morning, since I wasn't planning on running, I scheduled an appointment with the Red Cross vampires. I used to give blood all the time when I wasn't endurance running. Running three miles the day after donating blood isn't a big deal. Trying to run 10 might kill you, though.

I showed up at 9am and was by far the youngest person in the place. I was also one of the only women there. I got a lot of strange looks. Apparently, if you're younger than 75, you aren't expected to show up to a blood drive until afternoon.

After donating, I grocery shopped and then headed to get my hair high lighted and cut. I asked my hair stylist about cutting it super short. I've been seeing the same stylist since college. She has helped me out with some emergency hair issues (like when I dyed my hair brown and then wanted to go back to my natural color and it turned orange...I'm not allowed to dye my hair on my own anymore), so I pretty much let her make all of my hair decisions.

SO pretty!

She told me that curly hair should stay long in the summer to avoid becoming huge and frizzy with the humidity, but that she'll cut it all off for me in the fall. I'm excited and terrified.

Apparently, that was all of the excitement I could take for the day. When I came home, I immediately fell asleep on the couch and then dozed on and off for the rest of the day. I guess I'm not used to donating blood anymore because it completely wiped me out. Mike went to a friend's bbq while I slept. When I finally woke up and he was still gone, I took the opportunity to rent a chick flick (Safe Haven) and have a girly night with Bungee. It was glorious.


Sunday, Mike and I were up early and there were forecasts for rain later in the day, so we decided to have an early morning hike at the nearby trails.

The trails were deserted, so we had the place to ourselves and had a nice hike. Either I was still exhausted from giving away 1/8th of my blood or I'm incredibly out of hiking shape, because it was SO tough!! My legs were burning from the first assent and I felt like I was working hard the entire time. Afterwards, I had the genius idea to do a half an hour on the bike trainer to round out my workout. At the 29 minute mark, my heart went crazy and I felt like I was going to pass out. Then, I remember that I had donated blood the day before and I was an idiot to try a tough workout. I laid on the basement floor for a few minutes and then managed to make it upstairs and spent the rest of the day in non-athletic activities like catching up on Doctor Who and shopping for presents for a friend's baby shower.


How do you deal with stress?

5 very brief things

1. It's Friday! That means, I have to get through today and the weekend and I can try to run again! Woo! I haven't had any ITBS pain since Monday, so I think that's a good sign.


2. The other day I was emailing back and forth with someone and they kept calling me Mrs. Ricigliano. It'd be one thing if this kid was like 8 years old (but then why would she be emailing me?), but I'm less than 10 years older than her. It's like being ma'amed at the grocery store for the first time. After the first couple of emails, I told her to stick to Kari.


3. Mike and I took our no HFCS policy a little further. We cut out cow's milk (don't worry, we are keeping all forms of cheese. We aren't insane). I've been reading a bunch of articles about how most adults can't actually process milk and how pasteurization pretty much makes nutrient absorption impossible, so we decided to switch. We've been drinking almond milk for the past couple weeks and it is freaking delicious. I don't know why I didn't switch before. It tastes WAY better than milk.

4. I've read a lot of books by Jennifer Weiner and I really like her as an author. I recently downloaded her book, Best Friends Forever, in an audiobook to listen to on the drive to and from Delaware last weekend. I was all psyched to listen to an light-hearted chick lit book and ended up with a crime novel. Apparently, I should read the summaries a little better and not judge a book by it's cover. It was good, but a little darker than what I was in the mood for.


5. This weekend is my first weekend since last summer than I'm not getting up early to run. It feels weird, but I am psyched to lounge around in bed and not worry about pounding out 19 miles. I don't even have to worry about fueling properly tonight...not that eating pizza for dinner is ever really a hardship.


Does it make you uncomfortable when people call you by your "title" (Mr., Ms., Mrs.)?