My First Ice Bath

This morning after our run, Marisa had some homework for us.

"Everyone go home and ice," she instructed. "I don't care if nothing hurts. Pick an area and ice it. It helps."

Ice is the miracle cure. I've iced before with success (see the infamous "ass peas" incident) but have never taken an ice-bath. Since nothing in particular was hurting me after this run, I decided to literally take the plunge and ice everything.

I arrived home and found Blair. "I need your help," I said. "I want to take an ice-bath."

"Do you need me to get you some ice?" he asked.

"No, I'm thinking I'll more likely need you to hold me down and force me to stay in it."

He declined to help (coward), so I was on my own. We have a claw-foot cast-iron tub that I filled 1/4 full with cold water. Only the water wasn't super cold--probably closer to room temperature. But it dropped a few degrees when I added a bucketful of ice.

I put my feet in the water and sucked in air. Cold. When I knealt in the water, I actually screamed. And kept screaming as I lowered myself to sit in the tub. It took a full minute of deep breathing before I could ease my shoulder blades to rest against the back of the tub. Blair sat downstairs ignoring the yelps coming from the upstairs bathroom. 

Once I was "in" it wasn't so bad. I managed to stay in for about 6-8 minutes and soak my legs and lower back. Did it do any good? Who knows. I probably didn't stay in long enough for it to have any affect.

On the bright side, we did 17 miles today and my back didn't hurt once! I attribute this to my ab work, but Blair wants it noted that another variable in my routine is the dinner he fixed last night and perhaps it was his "magic spaghetti" that did the trick.

Sure, honey. Whatever works.

Twitter Addiction

When I joined Twitter, the social networking application that has you answer the question, "What are you doing?" in 180 characters or less, I swore not to let it become a time-waster in my life. I joined Twitter under the moniker "Lucy_Cat," the idea being that I'd use Twitter as a marketing tool for Kiss My Kitty Butt and Lucy as the book's lazy, sarcastic book spokesperson.

That part worked fine. What I didn't count on was becoming invested in the lives and postings of the 180+ people/animals I now follow on Twitter. My day is no longer complete unless I know what BoogerTheCat and Dingowannabe are up to. (My favorite post of BoogerTheCat is when he said he enjoys hiding in the bushes because it forces his owners to stand in their front door and yell, "BOOGER!")

Darth Vader's posts are hysterical and there are several writers I follow and take comfort from when I read that edits or new writing is/is not going well.

Has it turned into a time-waster? Ummm... okay. Yes. But I scan quickly and limit my time to 5-10 minutes per day on the site. And I frequently walk away chuckling at some saracastic or insightful post. So all in all, I'd say it's worth it.

If you Twitter, follow Lucy_Cat and I'll follow (stalk) you in return.

Beware All Squirrels Who Enter Here

The killer squirrels are back. They spend their days scratching away at the barriers we put in place last year to keep them from getting under the eaves of the house. As usual, "Le Blob" and Olivia take no notice of the scrabblings, cat napping next to the window where the squirrels are engaged in covert house-entry operations.

Blair and I were in the car the other day and a squirrel almost darted out in front of us. "Don't do it!" I yelled at the squirrel, and he retreated to the side of the road, unscathed.

"Too bad," remarked Blair. "We could have taken his squooshed body and put it on a spike outside our house as a warning to other squirrels."

"DON'T LET THIS BE YOU," I said laughing. "I love it!"

It sounds mean, but you don't realize the intensity with which area squirrels try to enter our house. I refer you to the 18 Rabid Squirrel Diary entries on this very blog. In fact, my very first entry, ever, on this blog was about rabid killer squirrels. The squirrels out to get us. Never doubt it.

We've got our spike ready, just in case.

Talking Toastmasters - Today at 1 PM EST

Yakkitty-Yak-Yak. That's the sound of me, doing way too much talking this week. Monday afternoon I did a 5-minute phone interview for a podcast on paranormal pets. (We've had a ghost cat living with us for about 5 years now.) Monday night was a two-hour "local authors night" at our area library, where 7 authors each spoke about our work then hawked our books. =)

Yesterday was the kick-off of my radio show, "How'd You End Up Here?" and today I have a 20 minute phone interview on Talking Toastmasters. Today's interview revolves around an article on goal-setting I wrote for The Toastmaster magazine in their September issue. I'm a little nervous as I'm not a goal-setting expert and I'm not sure what sort of questions to expect. Impromptu speaking at its best, as this is a live interview. I've jotted down a few notes to pull from and will just hope for the best. 

The one good thing I have going for me is I don't lose my personality on radio. I was discussing with a friend the other day how normally outgoing, articulate people will just clam up and become dull the minute they get near a microphone. TV has that effect on me. I tend to stiffen up quite a bit on air, but I'm generally still "me" on radio interviews. 

Given all the blah-blah-blahing this week, I haven't gotten much writing done. That needs to reverse itself, pronto. The goal for today is to finish drafting the article for Purina's Rally to Rescue magazine so I can let it sit for a few days before I go back to do final edits. My word count for the article is 1800 and I believe yesterday I was already at 2300 words with paragraphs still left to write. Can anyone say "hacksaw edits?"

The sun is shining, it's a glorious 58 degrees, and Dave and I saw two deer on our trail run this morning. There simply is no better way to jump start the day then an hour spent jogging in nature followed by steaming mug of coffee for the car ride home. Happy Hump Day.