Chillaxing

My training plan for last week and this week is empty--it just says "Chillax" across it.  (Because my coach and I are both middle-aged, we think it is funny to co-opt young people's slang.  Because we're middle-aged, we are at least a year behind on the lingo.)  And I have to say, chillaxing is freaking hard.  Or as the kids say, hella hard.  I am really trying not to do anything at all, to give my body a complete and total rest.  The fact that it's the end of the semester and I am behind in my grading and swamped with meetings would seem, in theory, to make it easier to skip working out, since I don't have any free time anyway.  But in practice this is totall bulls***.  I am cranky and out of sorts from not working out, and it feels like the structure is gone from my day.  On the upside, though, my legs feel great.

I did sneak in a couple very low-key bouts of exercise.  Last Wednesday I rode my road bike for 40 minutes outside, mostly just to prove I could--there was ice on the reservoir, and I have never ridden outside in December before.  On Thursday I did a really easy 40-minute run with a friend at work.  I am keeping up my strength class on Mondays, and on Sunday night I hopped on the trainer for an easy spin for about--you got it--40 minutes.  Today I think I spent a total of 40 minutes snacking on the Munchkins that one of my colleagues brought for her class.

Last week I spent well more than 40 minutes drinking beer with some of my triathlon teammates.  We discussed critical topics like which races we are aiming for in 2011 and how it really feels to race in a bathing suit.  (This last issue is critical because we may also have decided, aided by the beer, to all race our favorite local sprint tri in our funniest bathing suits next year.  Possible with Jackie O sunglasses as well.)

This past weekend was my son's 5th birthday.  He is obsessed with Star Wars, despite having never actually seen a Star Wars movie and having no actual clue about any of it.  But I made him Star Wars cupcakes with this awesome kit, and now we have little Princess Leia and Han Solo cupcake toppers making lovey dovey eyes at each other in the Christmas cactus on our kitchen windowsill.  We also got him this, so I had fun making stormtrooper pancakes for his birthday.  And my sister got him this "light saver":

So far he hasn't noticed that we don't have the batteries for it yet.

My daughter had her dress rehearsal for the Nutcracker this weekend.  She is a lamb, and no, there aren't actually lambs in the Nutcracker.  But it was deemed that there were no appropriate roles for her age group this year (already been Polichinelles, too young for party girls), so lambs were invented.  Apparently lambs who must wear black eyeliner and mascara, which I now must buy for her, because a friend of ours wisely put the kibosh on sharing eye makeup among 10 walking pinkeye cases waiting to happen.  I mean no disrespect to those who are really into kids' ballet, and I love Charlotte's ballet teacher, but really--lambs have to wear eye makeup?  Here is my favorite lamb after she kept the braids from dance in all day, which gives her the Hermione look she is dying for:

I know, she's cute, but really, what she needs is black circles around her eyes.  Kind of like this.

And finally, we got our Christmas tree.  It's not decorated yet, but it's up, and my husband and I have sworn a blood oath not to let it stay up too long and dump all its needles on the floor this year.  Here we are riding off in a cloud of gasoline fumes to retrieve our tree:

I would have included a picture once we actually had the tree on the wagon, but at that point it was all I could do to keep Jedi Patrick from lunging off the wagon.  The Force is strong in him.