Monkeys and Swirls

Usually my children act like crazy hooligans on Fridays. Now, yesterday being Friday the 13th, they definitely had the crazy going for them. Today, however, they decided that it would be fun to roll it on over into Saturday. We started the day by meeting friends at Ruby Tuesday for a belated birthday lunch for me. My daughter decided not to eat ANY of her food, which is unusual, and to run around the table acting like an ill-mannered monkey. Then, we went to the froyo place in the shopping plaza with Kroger.

I make out a 2 week menu for our dinners and we buy groceries accordingly from it. We actually didn't buy any extras this time and we came in about 25 dollars under our norm, so I call that a win!!

Once we were home, the kids started acting like fools again and I knew I had limited time to mow the grass before hubby would have to go to work. I prefer to use the push mower when I have the time because it is a great calorie burn, but I knew I needed to finish quickly, so I opted for the riding mower. I was mowing the "hill of death" when I noticed the next door neighbor standing on her front porch, staring at me. I thought that was pretty odd and I don't really like for people to stare at me, so I drove the mower into the back yard to kill some time before finishing the hill. I'm about halfway through with the back when I look up and the woman next door has followed me into my back yard. I turn off my MP3 and the lawnmower and take off my sunglasses wondering why in the world she is in my yard. Apparently, for the past year, I have been mowing "swirls" into their grass. She tells me that they are awful to look at and she didn't know if I knew I was doing it and in the future could I mow straight down. I tell her that I do mow straight down where I can, but it is impossible to mow through all of the trees we have on that hill to provide a property boarder. These are freakin Leiland Cyprus trees for crying out loud and they are HUGE! She made me SO mad furious. The more I got to thinking about it, I don't think those bozos next door realize that 2 feet on their side of that treeline is still MY property!!!! I try really hard not to cut their grass at all because they are so hateful about the "property lines." I'm not sure yet what I am going to do, but I don't think I should give them the satisfaction of doing it their way.

Now that that fiasco was over, I came inside and started the finishing touches on dinner. I had put a pork loin in the crock pot earlier that morning before heading out. I drained it and pulled it with a fork and added some BBQ sauce to it. Then, I made some corn and "southern" green beans as sides.

After dinner and kids to bed, on to the treadmill. Tonight I managed to push through my mental barrier and, using the training guide provided by Hal Higdon, I ran 2.5 miles in 33 minutes. I really, really, REALLY wanted to keep going the full 3.1 because once I hit that 2.5, I knew the whole thing was right there. I made myself stop, however, and I'll be going only 2.1 miles on Tuesday evening.

Tomorrow is a work day and then I'll do a 30ish minute walk on the treadmill when I get home. I truly hope people are a little more tolerable tomorrow than they have been these past couple of days!!