A Perfect Day

Saturday June 27, 2009, was the perfect day. Andrew and I got to share our love with one another in front of some of our closest family and friends...and everything was so beautiful! The weather was stellar, our ceremony was so meaningful and fun, and our "garden party" reception was a blast! I hope that I'll always remember the sheer joy and excitement I felt upon waking up on Saturday morning....joy and excitement that lasted all day. And the look of love in Andrew's eyes as he pledged his love to me :) Lucy, our ring doggie, did her job SO well...she was quiet as a churchmouse during the ceremony and ran up the aisle with our rings right on cue :)

Here are a couple of pics from our friend Mike...check out our attentive ring doggie and the sheer joy on our faces :)

WEDDING!!!

In just over 2 days, I get to marry Andrew. I feel like the luckiest girl in the world :) He is amazing as is our life together, and I can't wait to celebrate with friends and family (furry and less furry)!

A huge goal for me was to make it to the day without being too tired out or stressed. I'm finding that a bit harder than I thought it would be, as it gets a bit hard to turn the brain off sometimes :) The tummy flu and 3 days of not eating this past weekend didn't help either. But all is well, and I can't wait!!!!

The past couple weeks have been really cool...lots of neat moments which have left us feeling very loved. Fun visits with some of our good friends (Emily, Mike S, Andrea, and Mike N - THANK YOU!!!); the chance to spend time with my parents who live so far away (sorry about the tummy flu wrecking our Father's Day dinner plans, Dad!); and some seriously unexpected and wonderful gifts of love from some special clients of mine at work. And there are still 2 days to go!

Some very close friends get here tomorrow...cannot wait to see them :) More follow on Friday, one arriving at 12 am on Friday!

There have been a few unexpected bumps along the way, the biggest besides the flu being that Andrew's road bike (the one that is coming to Spain and France with us for honeymoon riding bliss) decided to break while riding last Sunday. We figured that it would need to go back to the Cervelo dealer (which it did).....and were pretty worried it wouldn't come back in time. But thanks to Paul at Cycles London, all will be dealt with well before we leave. A total blessing in disguise...if it had happened while riding in Europe it would NOT have been good.

So...the dress and suit are ready; the programs are printed; the flowers ordered; the people arriving; the "ring dog" is prepped and pumped....and our hearts are bursting with love and happiness :)

Spotty Dog Meets Stripey Skunk

It was bound to happen sooner or later....two long years had passed since Lucy Goosey encountered her first skunk. She got off pretty lucky that time, as the skunk was in underbrush and she didn't get a "direct hit." A bath in hydrogen peroxide/dish soap/baking soda quickly remedied things.

Enter Stripey Skunk. Yesterday was a gorgeous day here in London, and The Goosey and I were out for a great playtime in the country. Lots of swimming, walking, and a great roll in something dead (the dog, not me!) And then it happened. Stripey Skunk was wandering around, minding his or her own business, when all of a sudden Spotty Dog entered the same airspace. I didn't see the actual incident, but heard a very alarmed bark and looked over to see Spotty Dog in all sorts of bother. Direct nose hit. She immediately started shaking her head and trying to rub it on the ground...what followed next was an amusing mix of trying to comfort her and get her to run back down to the pond to soak her head. About 15 minues of swimming/sticking her head in the pond mud seemed to help greatly...and she didn't even smell too bad by the end of it all!

Methinks that our run on wedding morning should perhaps be in town rather than on the trails...just in case Stripey Skunk happens to be out again. Though a skunky ring doggie would get everyone's attention :)

Remember, all dogs and humans alike...DON'T PLAY WITH THE BLACK AND WHITE KITTY!

An Unexpected Gift

Last Tuesday started like any other Tuesday....wake up; feed the doggle; and go for a swim. But on the way for our morning swim, we noticed a turtle hanging out on a bit of green area near a fairly busy intersection in west London. On our way home, turtle hadn't moved. Andrew had to head off to work and myself to errands, but I thought I'd stop and say hello to the turtle on the way home (as I was late as usual on the way out). 4 hours after we'd first seen said turtle, it was still in the same area and had a bit of an audiance. A lady had been watching it for the past 2 hours! Turns out that "it" was a female snapping turtle, who had just laid 35 eggs! The other woman had tried to bury the eggs some to protect them and was now trying to move the turtle into the woods to point her towards the river (as the turtle kept heading for the road). Not an easy task, moving a snapping turtle!

Between the two of us we tried to distract her with a stick while picking up her back end...didn't work so well. And the poor mom turtle was exhausted after laying all those eggs. Enter the hero of the day...the Canada Post guy! He'd seen us trying to help the critter and u-turned to come help. We managed to move her into an empty plastic letter box and carry her down towards the water. Hopefully those little eggs will do ok...

I scooted home to grab the camera and hopefully track her down again for some photos...but no luck. What I did find was lots of beauty on a short little trail down to the river that I'd never explored before. An hour of hanging out there, listening to the birds and meeting a few smaller "critters" was definitely unexpected and an amazing gift on an otherwise typical Tuesday.

How to Skin a Cat....and Other Randomness

We're back in action after a hard-drive-crash-induced hiatus from blogging. Yay! We thought that we'd start with an instructional lesson on how to properly groom a cat....

Step 1: Locate cat. In this case, a willing K-Pumpsie, who LOVES to be groomed.
Step 2: Pick a grooming tool. We use the "Furminator"...worth its weight in gold (or fur!)
Step 3: Remove all fur.


Step 4: But wait...cat still has a full coat of fur! And a new "friend!" Perhaps the K-Pump should be groomed more frequently....


Tee hee! The things you can find to do on a long weekend when laid up with a cold. A couple of weeks have passed since then and the new pet (aka - the pile of fur) is growing its own tail and is starting to show basic signs of intelligence. Scary!

Lots of other fun randomness to report! It is now easier to "keep up" with Lucy on runs thanks to the "Buddy System" leash. It encircles the waist and saves the left shoulder from being pulled out of its socket upon sight of a squirrel. Brilliant!

We both raced the Milton tri this past weekend and were pretty thrilled with how the day went. A great visit with friends the night before helped to set the tone :) A bit concerning on race morning was the fact that the air temperature was cooler than the water, but a climb up 6th line hill at the 5th km of the bike helped us to warm up quickly. As far as placings went, we were both happy to finish 3rd (Andrew) and 2nd (Heather) in our age groups. Moreover for me (H), I actually enjoyed a triathlon for the first time in a very long time and my body decided to cooperate with me! Sweet! Next up is Muskoka tri in 2 weeks...we'll see if we hold up over twice the distance :)

And on a culinary note....interesting things to munch on in our house lately have included fiddleheads (great in stir fry with tofu and mushrooms) and scallop salad (super easy! Pan fry scallops with some garlic; serve over a bed of spinach, strawberries, pecans, watercress, and asiago cheese; drizzle with balsamic).




Happy eating, training, and living to all...

Just Keep Swimming....

Andrew is definitely the speedy swimmer in our family. There have been a few little breakthroughs to quicker swimming on my end, but they often seem to be short-lived and hard to repeat. This fellow and I would get along well most days....not going anywhere too quickly in the water.

But something REALLY cool happened this Saturday. We were supposed to be out riding lots over the long weekend, but plans changed due to weather and the fact that we'd both been fighting off a head cold since Wednesday. We headed off to the pool with "50 x 100m" being the goal... 10 x 100 free; then 10 pull; 10 free; 10 pull/paddles; 10 fins. The sets with toys would be fun, I knew, as toys are my buddies in the pool. I've been attempting to sever the ties with my buddies a bit more this winter, knowing that "just swimming" would help with both technique and confidence. Still, I was NOT looking forward to the free sets. But then the really, really cool stuff happened. Normally, holding 1:40 pace per 100m is acheivable. 1:35 can happen for a couple of hundreds but not consistently. Today, I swam every 100 of straight free on 1:30 - 1:33 with nicely controlled effort. WHEEEE!

Now the trick is to do it again....and then string them together for 1500 meters or more! But, I've come up with a set of rules to follow that may or may not have contributed to Saturday's success:

1. Don't train for 3 days prior due to a head cold.
2. Wake up at 3:30 am thanks to a thunderstorm and cat fight outside.
3. Don't fall asleep. Instead, get up and write an e-mail.
4. While still awake, watch an hour of Giro d'Italia coverage on the interweb.
5. Go back to bed at 6:30, when everyone else is getting up for the day. Sleep till 10.
6. Wake up. Take Lucy doggle for a rip in the country.
7. Lunch at 2 pm - LOTS of sushi. Mmmm....sushi.
8. Go shopping with Andrew for a really cool tea kettle.
9. Swim! Follow Andrew and try to keep him within 5 - 10 meters. Relax, think "long and smooth," and just DO it!


Maybe I'll stick with the pre-swim sushi part of the plan, anyway. The rest could be hard to replicate! Besides...sushi = fish, and fish are good swimmers...even the little dude in the fishbowl. Faster swimming by meal osmosis? And maybe, just maybe, at some race one day I'll get out of the water a bit more "in the mix" and not have so much work to do on the bike :)

A Snail's Pace

One of the biggest challenges in my life is finding balance. It seems as if it should be easy, but then my tendency to rush here and there; to fit just a little more in; and to feel almost guilty for taking "me" time kicks in. One of the many things I admire about Andrew is his ability to maintain a pretty good balance (well, most of the time!) and not waste energy worrying about things that it doesn't make sense to worry about. For me, this is harder. But, after several years of stressing about this whole "balance" concept rather than acting on it, I think I'm finally learning :) Learning to look after my spirit, because that is the most important part of my being. That work is a part of life but shouldn't dominate it. That there is only so much energy to go around. That it is OK to take an unplanned day off from training if my body needs it. That a cup of tea and a good book are great friends. And that yoga is a really, really, really good idea!

In a world where we can microschedule every moment of our day; can be tracked down by cell phone almost anywhere; and can have so many demands on our time from so many sources, it can be hard to slow down and just "be." But the energy we can gain from those moments is huge! When life starts to get too busy, I try to think of this little dude whom we met while hiking the West Coast Trail last year. Okay, so he's a slug, not a snail ("A Slug's Pace" just didn't work as well for the title!)
I suspect that in his little world, life is more about the journey than the destination...'cause it might take a really long time to get there! This little guy is a great reminder for me to just slow down sometimes; to smell the flowers; to "keep up with Lucy" when she is taking a nap (as that will make for faster running later!); and to enjoy every aspect of the journey.

Racing fast is great :) But sometimes it really is OK to move at a "snail's" pace.