Day 21

It has been a week, lemme tell you. No pictures again since all my pictures rn are "progress pics" that you don't need to see. (You're welcome). 

SO to Lauren, my BFF, Queen of Church History, and Master of Dancing on Tables for doing hard things and surviving one awkward date after another. Can't wait to see the movie they make about your life. 

I'm not playing city league volleyball since they didn't have enough teams for A league - so they combined all the levels together. I did sub for a team this week (in exchange for some Girl Scout cookies) and we crushed both teams easily. With Logan & I helping out, it's really no competition. 

It snowed real good. And I hate that my work won't officially cancel us for the day - the office just officially works from home and tells us "be safe". So we all texted each other "this is crazy, right? you're not going either, right?" And we all stayed home. Because it was crazy. Did UPS still make Roger drive down to Verde? Yes. Counting down the days until he quits. 

At some point that day, I came down with either a really sudden virus or a really lingering bout of food poisoning that left me feverish and on the verge of losing any food left in me. I managed to hold it in. At least from that end ;) AND I still did 75 hard during it. And those "workouts" had me sweating more than any other. 

Anyhow, I took another day off for that. 

Friday we cancelled our icebreaker activity since half the girls were gone and none of the leaders planned to show up. Instead, I met with our youth in charge of planning the ward dance and we searched the closets and did some shopping. Then I showed up early on Saturday to help facilitate setting up, but got shot down on a couple suggestions, so I just let them run with it. We had a small turnout and blew up a speaker set, but otherwise it was pretty ok. 

Then Roger and I watched Uncharted in theaters with some really yummy sour Twizzlers. I spent my whole life at church meetings and then the rest of it at Carol's for the quarterly birthday party. It was a good time as well as a long time. And I was introduced to Mint Moose Tracks Ice Cream and Paislee went on a whole 45 min Sunday walk with me. 

Day 14

The news you've all been waiting for: I am still doing 75 hard. Does Becky have any plans to rejoin? No, no she does not. Basically, my life is a lot of yoga, running in the snow, and peeing every 5 minutes. But I did have my boxing class and volleyball this week to spice it up. We also had our 3v3 tournament, which cost us a fair penny out of pocket for food. And, as predicted, we did not have a great turnout. 

Apparently all the youth were supposed to meet this last Wednesday to record skits for Quest, but nobody told me until it was too late. So then they planned it for Sunday afternoon, when 100% of the Quest-age YW were absent. Vonetta and I tried to drop some books off at our group members' houses, but they weren't home. So a good week for church stuff.

I finished my vestibular study guides and am scripting up some YT vids. I'm up to like 43 subscribers, so that's cool I guess. Only thousands to go before this is lucrative. But it was a good refresher since I've had some interesting cases at work lately. 

We had a little bday party for Rog's uncle, Ryan. Roger got to hold a baby and I learned about buying foreclosed properties at bank auctions, so it was a win-win. Maybe one day we can have a house. Probably not, but we can hope. 

Day 7

75 hard is the worst. Thanks, Becky (who, incidentally, got covid and quit after 1 day). SO to my friend Brock for bringing his buds to play volleyball so we could have a decent squad. And SO to my knees for making it through almost a full day of basketball without wimping out. 

The YW had an ice skating activity this week, but the girl in charge maybe was a bit unclear on our reservation (which is necessary with the new covid regulations). So we paid for 3 girls to skate and they traded shoes until they let the rest of them in. It ended up working out ok, and one girl even brought a friend, so that was cool to see. 

The stake YW had a training meeting this week with a psychologist to chat about problems the youth face today. I was struck by how out of touch most of the leaders were - and how much younger our presidency is in comparison. (Which was done expressly). The overarching theme was that leaders need to stop trying to change the world - don't tell them to put the phones down, help them figure out how to use them right. 

We also had our stake conference this week and it was nice to have the stake leaders take over with a great lesson. I was impressed that Robyn knew (or figured out) everyone's names. They were impressed that we have the YW be in charge of activities and lessons, because apparently there's a lot of push-back from the other wards to do that. I don't really have a secret other than we made that the expectation and the girls have done it.

Rog and I had an impromptu date to watch the Sun's game at BW's. It was also a BOGO sale on boneless wings, so we had leftovers. And got home very late. 

Naked Stu came down to visit, so I introduced him to Nikita Gill and ate some of Grandma's bread. We all went and did sealings in the temple on Saturday which was really nice. Then we drove Stu around for a while looking for a part to his truck. The truck is older than me and I'd say it's time to give up on it since it breaks down on every trip. He borrowed a truck to get home. But before that, we had pizza with Grandma and watched the Suns game (noticing a trend?). 

Collin had us and some other buddies over for the Superbowl. The food was a 10. The halftime lineup was a 10, with mics that were subpar for vocals. And the game looked good until after that quick TD in the second half. After that, things were just a little slow. But Rog chased some kids around and changed no diapers, so that's apparently a win.  

The 355

Our schedule of cooking twice a week each (for an army) is going well. I tried out the cast iron cookbook the Chins got us for Christmas - featuring fancy grilled cheese with homemade pesto (and a dying basil plant) as well as a killer pasta ft. a semi-cheap pinot grigio (thanks for the tip, dad!). Rog made the classic milanesa napolitana and a stew with a green chili kicker. I also experimented with a cast iron cookie and lemon poppyseed instapot recipe. 

The sports front was less successful. After weeks of people bugging me to reserve the gym for VB, I finally did and 2 people showed up. Thanks, guys. Hopefully we have a better turnout tomorrow. Boxing was good and we even broke a heavy bag! (It was our new classmate, Lauren). My oly class was really good, especially since I was the only one there, so Chris and I got to have a 1-on-1 session and bond over some mutual amis and mine/his wife's mutual dislike for other humans. I'm getting a little better. 

Becky called me to ask me to join her in 75 hard to prepare for our Ragnar. I know all about this challenge and had previously decided it wasn't really worth it to do it because it's not sustainable. For those who aren't familiar, it's 75 days straight of 4L of water, 2 nonconsecutive 45-min of exercise with at least one session outside, 10 pages of a self-improvement book, some kind of diet (you pick), and a progress picture every single day. If you mess up, you start over. I agreed to join in with the following stipulations: I will do 2 sessions of exercise totaling at least 90min and one session has to be either outside or with other people. Since I already have my own exercise goals and classes, this seemed like a reasonable compromise. I am not excited.

Roger was in Woodruff for a funeral Saturday, but was back in time for a date. We went to check out some running shoes at the mall since he'll be doing the Ragnar as well. Then we saw the 355 in theaters - it had lots of twists and turns which made it really good and very obvious girl power plot points which I appreciated I guess. Then we used our gift card at Chili's for some killer drinks, cajun shrimp pasta, and bacon chicken quesadillas, and a cast iron cookie/ice cream.