It's been a long time

I feel like I could actually be writing to someone but I don't think anyone reads this.  I'm going to start blogging again, less about cat rescue, more about life and funny stuff.  I've often wanted to write about things that are silly and funny to me, quirky or something like that but thought people might think I'm nuts.  Well, the people that I care about KNOW that I'm nuts so why worry about the rest of the crowd?  Oh well, here goes on some funny stuff.  And there will be swear words.

Why?

I think there are a lot of people who wonder why I am going to run another marathon.  And I don't plan to just finish.  I plan to finish fast.  As I sit here in a daze after running 11 miles fairly fast in unfavorable conditions, I wonder why I am doing this too!  I mean, I am totally wiped out.  Why am I putting myself through this exhaustion, pain, soreness, frustration?  And today was "only" 11 miles!  I figured that I should provide an answer, so here goes!
One reason is that I purely don't know.  I guess I love to run, I love to be competitive, and I love challenges.  That usually doesn't spell out "run a marathon fast" after you add up those pieces, for normal people anyhow.  But for me, I am competing against myself.  I set a goal and I'm going to do what I need to do to make it happen.  God only knows if it will come to fruition, but I'm going to at least give myself the chance and do it right.
When I was a year out of college, I had a lot of changes come pretty fast and I decided that New Year's Eve that my new theme would be "why not?".  If I wanted to do something and there wasn't a really good reason why I shouldn't do it, then I did it.  That theme led me in some really neat places, a lot of fun, and eventually to my husband.  This is another thing that I feel like there's no really good (or any at all) reason why I shouldn't take this goal on.  It would be a different story if I didn't have a supportive husband, but I do.  That's the key (thanks yet again Andy!).  Support, drive, some natural athletic ability, and a little craziness all equal a lofty goal!  Hey, why not????
The other reason that I'm attempting this goal is to show others what they can do by seeing someone else do something.  If there's one person who sees me attempt this marathon goal (whether I meet my goal or not), and decides that she wants to set a goal for herself and do what she needs to do to accomplish it, then I have met the secondary goal of the first goal. (Still following me?)
So if there's someone (anyone? Bueller? Bueller?) reading this who things there's something she wants to do but may think that it's silly, too hard, out of reach, selfish, think again my friends.  You have one life to live, so go live it!

Happy New Year!

I'm excited for the new year!  What is in store for us all in 2011?  I certainly don't know but I look forward to finding out.  As my computer cat and I think toward January, I know that he is very happy to be here at all!  You see, in July, Daytona was hit by a car and left in a driveway in Sgt. Bluff, IA.  Paw Prints got a call about an injured cat and of course, Beth (my Paw Prints partner) said to take him to the vet.  Several hundred dollars and a surgery later, Daytona was nicely recovering.  I was in Yellowstone on vacation with my family at the time, but was aware of the situation.  When I got back, I went to the vet to take him home for recovery instead of leaving him there.  He stayed in a kennel for a few days, then was very timid and wouldn't even come upstairs for weeks.  Slowly and surely, his leg gained strength and he was soon bounding around with my other three cats.  He's currently "up for adoption", but I like to think that he's already my cat.  He follows me around the house, loves to purr on my lap as we do computer tasks, and he plays well with the others.

Daytona

I appreciate the person calling Beth about him.  I appreciate the vet who repaired his broken leg.  I appreciate my husband for letting me bring him home and letting him still be here.  He's basically part of the family and I really do love him! One little blessing for me, one huge blessing for Daytona.  That leads me to my next venture of the winter/spring.....RUNNING FOR A PAWS.

I'm on Week 1 of my marathon training program.  I started on Monday the 27th and have 18 weeks ahead of me.  It will all come to a head on May 1st in Lincoln, Nebraska.  I'm hoping to run the marathon of a lifetime and also raise money for Paw Prints along the way.  It's a lot to take on, but Sioux City is so much better off having Paw Prints here.  It's the ONLY place in the area in in most of the entire tri-states where you can bring a cat or call about a stray cat and know that if we can help with it, it will never be euthanized.  It's a safe haven for cats where they can just be cats~ no kennels (unless in time out or behavior training).  We can only take in so many cats and we have to have funds to do so.  So my passions come together and I will do my best at raising my goal and running my goal time.  While I hesitate to disclose my goal running time, I will be happy to disclose my fundraising goal.... $5,000.  It's really not that much considering that $100,000 was raised in December alone for toys for kids.  Anyway, if you're reading this, I hope you can be a part of this goal.  Join me in making Sioux City a standout for the way they treat cats.... join me in Running for a Paws!

Running for a Paws II coming in January!

I will be back in January.  I've got a new fundraiser, new goals, and another marathon to train for. This time it's serious.
I ran the Des Moines 1/2 Marathon in October.  I trained relatively hard and was very happy with my race results.  I found my zone and beat my goal time by just over 30 seconds.  Boy, was I happy.  As you can see from my picture, I was hurting at the end, but I had the goal in mind and didn't want to look back and be disappointed or regret not trying harder.  My time was 1 hr 44 min 27 sec.  That's about an 8 minute mile pace.  I was very happy about it!
So I'm taking the next few weeks off blogging, not as if I've really been doing a great job at that anyway.  I need some down time.  I'm jogging about 5 miles max so I can heal and run for fun again.  I got very burned out at the end of this training session.  Right after Christmas, I'll be back at it.  I have lots of ideas, lots of goals, lots of ambition and drive.  We'll see if we can make this Running for a Paws the best ever!

Near the finish at the Des Moines 1/2 Marathon

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Race for Hope...and other things

I really have missed blogging.  I am in the middle of so many projects now that I seem to let the blog time slip by.  Ok, really, I've been reading lots of books lately.  I used to be an avid reader, but with kids and projects that are never fully completed, it always seemed easier to pick up a magazine.  Now that we bought another car to replace the old one that needed a lot of work, the magazines (or mazagine as Ryan calls them) are no longer.  I will have to find a way to NOT get sucked into buying them off the shelf though...maybe bring a strip of leather and bite on it during checkout time?
Today is my son's 8th birthday.  I'm so proud to be his mom and I love the person he is and will become.  What a lucky person I am to have him in my life!
I ran the Race for Hope, a fundraiser for specific things for the June E Nylen Cancer Center here in Sioux City. The race started at 8:30 and because of the nice rain on the roof, I stayed in bed until 7:30.  I got up and checked the radar to see if it should be ending and it looked like it would be relatively clear by race time.  Wrong.  Right before the thing started, and it starts late EVERY year, it poured on us poor souls.  It was cold, puddley (not sure if that's a word but it's appropriate right here) and a mess.  The trail is a really nice fine gravel and perfect when it's dry.  It had a lot of puddles in areas, especially the beginning.  I dodged the puddles as much as I could and my feet stayed dry until the last two miles of the 9.3 mile course.  I felt great throughout the entire run, and was very proud of my 1 hr, 15 minute finish.  And in those conditions!  I assume I ran better due to the cold 43 degrees than anything, but speedwork that I've been doing sure didn't hurt.

Dirty Shoes after the Race for Hope

I took this picture because I felt very humbled by the race experience. As I was driving there, in the pouring rain, I thought that I could just turn back home if it was raining at start time.  Then, as I was walking towards the start line and bathrooms, this thought came to my head "This has GOT to be easier than chemo".  It was decided.  I was going to run this race regardless.  So I did.

We got our countertops tiled last week. Andy took the sink out on Wednesday and he put it back in Sunday.  This has to be one of the reasons why paper products were invented: home improvement projects that take a lot longer than what you though.  Granted, the tile guy worked his rear off, but it's still not the way we think it should look.  Andy has to finish the backsplash too.  The reason I mentioned this is because of the paper that my shoes are sitting on in the above picture.  He put protective paper on the wood floors, thank goodness. 

That brings me to our new car.  It was a hard decision to spend too much on a car.  But with the current one being 12 years old, we knew we could be in for a boatload of repair costs.  Plus, we don't trust the thing, nor do we trust most repair shops.  Yes, there are a few we trust, but when one tells us that there's no leak when we can clearly see the remnants of it on our driveway, we have a good reason not to trust them. So we went to the Billion Auto thing at the event center and ended up doing something we said we wouldn't.  For the first time ever though, we think we actually got a good deal.  One of the best parts is that the new car gets 20 mpg in city driving.  I about flipped when I filled up this morning and it took just under 10 gallons.  WHAT???!!!  Granted, it wasn't empty, but still. I'm used to a Ford Explorer V8 that is doing well at 17 mpg, and that's a lot of highway miles, and I can't fill up for less than $40.  The second best thing is that we got a free trip to Vegas. Here we go again!  And no shows, no tours, no nothing this time, only fun!

Ok, I guess that's it for the catching up.  The 1/2 marathon is coming closer so I will be putting in 2 hour long runs on the weekends. It's really too much to handle at 5am, actually 4:45am.  By 1pm, I'm totally beat.

Off to play legos with the birthday boy and have some fun with their friends after school (mine got out early today).

A new race to train for

After taking several months to heal my leg injury and to not worry about training for any running event, I am now "in training" for the Des Moines 1/2 marathon.  It came about rather strangely and I have to give my friend Rachel all the credit.  She has been running this spring and summer and entered her first race in early August.  I went to run the race so she had someone to be there in the beginning since she hadn't done it before.  Although I've run in dozens of races, it can be nerveracking for me, so I totally understood why she wanted someone there. 
Honestly, I dreaded going to that race.  I didn't want to get up early, I didn't want to be tired, I didn't want to compete and see all these other really fast runners in great shape, I didn't want to at all.....until I got there.  My competitiveness returned from vacation that I never realized it took.  When I got home, I was all energized about racing again, which is the last thing I expected myself to feel like! It didn't hurt that I got first in my age group and 8th overall (ok there were only 50 runners!!).  I decided (with Andy's help of course) to train for and run the race in Des Moines.  Talk about a change of attitude.  The 5k I ran with Rachel went well and I felt good about it.  It's a pretty boring course, but it's flat and there's not very many competitors.  If you want to feel good about your times, I always suggest running in the Pioneer Days 5k!  And speaking of running well, I have to give kudos to Rachel for beating her time goal by 3 minutes!  She rocked it!
I'm still in good shape from torturing myself with the marathon at the end of May, so I picked up the training pretty easily.  I've already had two 90 minute runs and have impressed myself with the speedwork.  I ran hills last week (if anyone here in town is familiar with 33rd St, that's my hill) and before that, I went to the track to run 400's.  I did 8 of them that morning and averaged 1.5 minutes per lap.  Not too shabby.  The goal of this 1/2 marathon is to prove to myself that I can run it in the time I would need to qualify for the Boston full marathon which is 1 hr 52 minutes.  Considering the bad races I've had this year, I certainly expect this to be a challenge, but I'm up for it.  I realized that I have to push myself past the uncomfortable zone and get over the discomfort.  Quit being a pansy and just DO IT!  As usual, we shall see!  And I don't know why I have to have a goal for this.  Why can't I just go out and run and have fun like I used to do? 
As for any other news, I believe Paw Prints is still going to close.  It's really hard to see it happen, but I honestly don't know how we can continue....it's heartbreaking really.
My foster cat, Daytona, is such a sweetheart and I would LOVE to keep him.  It can't happen but I guess I'll just have to keep him until we find the perfect new owner for him!
Well, I'm sure it won't be weeks upon weeks before I write again.  I hope not anyway. Enjoy the 700 mph wind and heat today!

Daytona thinking about his life...

Paw Prints closing

Noodle- currently available for adoption!

Isn't it interesting that it's been EXACTLY a month since my last post?  Complete coincidence for sure!

Changes. Sometimes change is good, sometimes it’s even better. But when this change will come, it’s going to be a sad ending to a great thing. Paw Prints is going to close their cat adoption center. There are a lot of reasons why, but I just don’t feel it necessary to explain the main one, mainly because it isn’t about me. Let’s just say that we suffer from a lack of funding and volunteers….good, reliable volunteers. We need dozens of them and we just don’t have them. We do have some great ones though: Leah, Rachael, Mary, Sharon to name just a few. But it’s not enough. Same as the funding. We do have funds, but it just isn’t enough. So we are going to now concentrate on getting grants to continue our population control issue.


Did you know that a female cat can produce over 4,000 kittens in her lifetime? No, that doesn’t mean she will give birth to that many, but would include her kittens, her kitten’s kitten’s, and so on and so forth. So spaying and neutering is our goal to prevent the thousands of euthanasias per year in Siouxland.

Paw Prints has been the subject of very negative and bad talk from other agencies in the area. These other places go so far as to bash what we do to vets that we use. I just don’t understand. Since when is it bad that we’re taking in homeless cats, getting them vaccinated and fixed a bad thing? We certainly don’t understand where the negativity comes from and we just carry on with it. But it could be so different. Wouldn’t it be nice if when the Humane Society is low on cats, they call Animal Control, who always has a surplus of cats, and take some from them to prevent them from being euthanized? Currently, they ship cats in from Sioux Falls instead of getting them from their own city. Isn’t it called Siouxland Humane Society???? I guess Sioux Falls is close enough. I guess.....

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could send people to each other’s adoption centers if they had a certain cat that we didn’t offer? It will never happen. Ever. And it doesn’t make any sense. These other agencies work so hard to keep to themselves and to put everyone else down. They don’t get the main focus, which really should be the health and welfare of the animals. The cats of Sioux City will pay the ultimate price for the things that go on and I hate that.  I hate that I can’t change people, knock some sense into them.

I wish I could win the lottery. A huge portion of the winnings would be put into a fund and we could provide a very nice adoption center with cleaning staff. We could spay and neuter any cat that we could and we could make a bigger difference faster. I wish a lot of things, but I really wish we could find a way to get people to care more. More people to put in a few hundred bucks, more people to come in once a week to clean. But they aren’t there regularly. So we face turning cats away, which has been done the last few weeks. We face knowing that they may face the ultimate when they get sent somewhere…animal control, humane society, a ditch. It’s a hard decision, but I know that some decisions have to be made.


So if anyone reading this would like to adopt a cat or kitten, now is the time to do it. Once we run out of cats, we will close our doors and concentrate on spaying and neutering and getting more grant money to work with.

Oh, I have more I could bluther on and on about, so I shall save that for another day. I guess I'll start a-singing.  CH-CH-CH-CHANGES....