Weekly Mileage #126 and the 4 Mile Race

Monday Ocean had his 4 year old check up. Everything looks good this year, so no further action needed at this time :)

Wednesday we were supposed to go to nature group, but we didn't go. I've been so tired lately. Too many carbs and sugars are taking their toll, as is a less-than-optimal sleep schedule. I got off track while we were traveling and two months of eating carbs and sugars and late bed times have not been good for me. It's past time to get back on track.

We also discovered lice, but we have no idea where it came from. I only remember having it in 2nd grade, when we moved across the country and stayed with our cousin and his family for a couple weeks. I've never dealt with it as an adult, so it was a learning experience for all of us. The boys had a few eggs, River more than Ocean. Sunshine got it the worst and she's the one who alerted me to it. I ran out and bought chemicals and combs and spent the evening combing out hair and doing laundry. Lots of fun.

I'm soo itchy twitchy now.

Having to continue to comb out hair does not make me feel any less twitchy, either. Hopefully we'll get rid of them quickly.

Wednesday and Thursday Ocean had speech therapy. I'm really not loving the 8am time slot. We have to leave about 7:30, which means I have to start waking up at 6:30. Parking is a nightmare between buses blocking the visitor parking and the drop off line blocking the other parking lot. I'm also not loving having to get up so early, and having to do it two days in a row.

I had hoped the early mornings would help me get back on track with my sleep schedule (ie, getting to bed earlier), but so far I'm just getting less sleep than I need and am super tired. Wednesay I told the therapist it wasn't going to work and Thursday we talked about an alternative time slot, but she has to make sure Ocean's IEP will support the change (a 1 hour slot once a week rather than 2 half hour slots).

I can't express enough how glad I am that we don't have to get up and do the get-to-school thing every day. Unfortunately, that will change next year when Sunshine starts seminary. The class she's supposed to attend based on school district starts at 6:05, but the other class (in the other school district) starts at 7, so I'm thinking that's the class she'll be attending. We'll see. Maybe I'll have things better under control and it won't be such an issue.

I discovered that listbots found one of my sites and spammed my email newsletter form. My newsletter subscribers more than doubled in 2 days, which sounds good, until you look at the emails and realize 500 or so were easily fake and a bunch of the real-looking ones may just be addresses that were scraped and used. I had to go through and delete all the fake looking ones by hand from my email list and my membership site, which took forever and was a pain in the rear. Naturally, there is a much easier way to do it, but I couldn't get it to work with my list.

Then I had to email everyone on my list and ask them if they really want to receive my emails. There's no point having uninterested people on my list, as they won't buy anything or click links in my emails. After a bit of research, I realized that the bots took advantage of the fact that I didn't have my settings set to double opt-in, which should prevent bots from taking over. Fake subscribers are problematic on several levels. I pay my membership site host and my email list host by the number of subscribers I have for each, regardless of the quality of those subscribers. Fake emails that don't go anywhere never get opened or links clicked, which brings down my open rate and my click rate, which are important stats when dealing with companies for sponsored posts.

Definitely not a fun thing to deal with, but important to resolve as soon as possible.

it was cool and cloudy before the race started

Saturday River and I ran a 4 mile race. This was my 5th time running it and his first time. It was a beautiful day, though a bit chilly at first. Neither of us trained for the race so we only ran about a mile total and we walked the rest. This is the longest race River has finished!

pre-race selfie

I love the fact that we run past fields of cows and corn

Sunshine needed service hours for advancement, so after lunch the kids and I helped at an Eagle Scout project (Mr M was at work). I had half-planned on just dropping her off, but the day before I was asked to stick around and be the trained female leader. With three girls planning on helping, there had to be at least one trained female leader present. The prospective Eagle Scout's mom was there, but she's not a trained leader, so she didn't count.

Ocean, Sunshine, me, and River weeding

We helped clear out some garden beds (apparently on the first work day the weeds were 6' tall, so while it wasn't nearly that bad, they'd started growing again) and then helped build and fill raised beds.

River helping shovel dirt, Ocean building a mulch mountain

This week was definitely an autoimmune week/narcolepsy week. I'm debating what to call it when I feel like crap like I did for a good portion of this week. Not everyone knows I have narcolepsy, and I'm not sure I want to tell everyone, which is why I'm leaning towards saying I'm having autoimmune issues rather than narcolepsy issues.

Weekly Mileage
Wednesday- 1.12 miles walked on the treadmill
Saturday- 4.03 mile race
Saturday- .5 mile walked - race warmup and cooldown
total- 6.63 miles

16 hikes towards #52hikechallenge
2.56 kayak miles towards #365milechallenge

80.29 outdoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
41.16 indoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
80.0 bike miles towards #365milechallenge
204.01 miles total