A look into my drawers...

....or one of them at least.

I spent the majority of the day working on about 87 loads of laundry. OK, maybe not 87.....but I did do at least 6-7 loads today, and even put it all away as it got done (a small miracle).

As I was working on a load of my clothes, I realized that I had to fight entirely too much to get all of my t-shirts into my drawer. Granted, I have the smallest dresser ever owned by an adult, but still...I shouldn't have to wrestle with the shirts and the drawer in order to get it to close the whole way. Opening it is even worse, because the top shirts get stuck, and blah blah blah...you get the idea.

I've tried rolling them. I've tried folding them in different ways. The point is - I have entirely too many t-shirts. And I keep getting rid of them, but at the same time, every time I do a race, I get another one - herein lies the problem.

So I sat down tonight and went through my t-shirts. I found 7 from actual races, 4 from walks and other events, and there are 3 more long-sleeved ones from races hanging with my other clothes.

Pile on the left: walks and other events
Pile on the right: races
And a happy drawer that will now close.

Fourteen shirts from runs and walks. That's a lot of shirts.

And I don't want to get rid of them - I busted my butt for those shirts. But I just don't have room for them anymore. So what's the solution?

Duh.

Yep, they're going to get turned into a quilt. It's not going to happen until at least the first of the year - just in case I manage to squeeze another race in before then. That way, if I do, I can make the quilt from all of my "2012 and before" shirts, and then start saving more for the next quilt.

I know I had said at this time last year that I wanted to do one race every month this year - I didn't make that goal, but I did end up doing 9 (I think) different events if I remember correctly. Maybe next year I can actually do 12. I already know that the half-marathon is on May 5 - and I'm going to do it again even if it kills me.

If I keep this up, I wonder how many quilts I'll eventually have.....

What a day...

This has been one of those long, crazy, busy days...but it was a good day.

Started out by getting up before the sun to get the girls to their school by 6:30am so that they could get to their Honor Band thingamajig.

Then back home so that I could get ready to run - I did a 5 mile race this morning - in below-freezing temperatures with single-digit windchills. But it really didn't feel that bad while I was running. Had it been any windier and it would have sucked though. The Dude and Daniel spent the time that I was running out driving around stalking me to get pictures - it was just too cold for them to stand at the finish line and wait for me, and they made it a game to find me and my silly hat!

So my goal was to do the 5 miles in under 1 hour and 15 minutes (without freezing to death in the process).

My final official time was 1:13:27.4 - so I beat my goal by a minute and a half. I came in 50th out of 56 for the individual runners and 7th out of 9 for my age group - so I didn't even come in last! Woot! I'm happy with it - of course, I would like to do better, but for little to no training for this one and not a whole lot of sleep last night, I couldn't complain too much.

So after the race was over, I let The Dude drive and we buzzed across the city to stop and pick up some stuff for his mom. The driveway where we had to go was narrow - really narrow. And it was off of a busy street. And it had these concrete retaining walls along the sides of it. When he tried to back out onto the street, he goofed a little bit and clipped one of the retaining walls with my front bumper. The bumper didn't break, but it popped the clear lens out from over top of the foglight and scraped up the bumper quite a bit. He was mortified...and I laughed about it. I mean really, it's a bumper. Yes, it's the same shiny brand-new bumper that replaced the one that got destroyed in the Great Flying Boulder Incident, and no, it didn't have a scratch on it before today, but it's ok. It's just a bumper.

The Dude broke my van.

Then we continued on our merry little way and went to a friend's house so that I could peel out of the 87 layers of clothes and get a hot shower to warm up a bit. We visited with her and her husband and kids and chatted and drank some wonderful hot coffee and had a good time.

We stopped to get something to eat on the way to the girls' concert. They were taking part in an Honor Band that was made up of something like 24 schools from all over central Kansas. It started at 8am today and ended with concerts that started at 3pm - so it was a long day for them, but it was a fabulous experience. They got to learn from different directors and meet kids from other schools, and they had a great time.

So after the concerts were over, the older 3 went with their father, and The Dude and Daniel and I headed home. We dropped The Dude off at his house, and Daniel went straight to bed as soon as we got back here. I am going to go find some sweats, clean some stuff up around here, and do some laundry and see just how sore my body really is. So far it doesn't seem to be too bad, but I might just cheat and skip church in the morning so that I can try to sleep a little bit.

I still can't believe that The Dude broke my van.

*snicker*