Tag Archives: mother’s day

2 Celebrations and I Ran Anyway

05/18/2015 R.C. Liley 12 Comments

I know what you’re thinking. After my butt issue just a few days ago, why in the world did I run?! I’ll tell you, but first let’s talk about the two celebrations on Saturday.

This past weekend, one of our neighbors had a birthday party for their one year old girl, Seneca. Avery and Seneca are exactly 6 months apart, and I expect they’ll become good friends as they grow up together. I never got any pictures of the two together, or the birthday girl at all, but Avery had a great time with Mommy in the bounce house at the party.

Two beauties smiling bright! Avery was a little shy at first, but she warmed up quickly and even played with her peers. From the looks of it, she’s really good at sharing with one of the neighborhood boys, Connor.

“Sharing”, it’s a loosely defined term, right? But “Cuddles”, now that’s fairly straight-forward, and she’s happy to give them when Mommy or Daddy (and sometimes strangers, yikes!) asks.

We had a great time at the party and made it back home for a family walk and then nap time before heading back out again. We were meeting Kelley’s family as well as my mom and her boyfriend at a restaurant for a belated Mother’s Day celebration and it was great to see everyone.

When we meet up with family, Avery just makes her rounds being held and we get a little “freedom” for half an hour as others get their cute kid fix. It’s a win-win for everyone! We all had a good time talking with each other and Avery was very well-behaved……almost too well.

Before we knew it, we were on our way back home to get Avery to bed and wind down the night with 3 Walking Dead Season 5 episodes. Thank you, internet!

The half-marathon I talked so much about that was cancelled from severe weather last weekend (so I rowed 13.1 instead), was rescheduled for yesterday, the 17th. The venue changed twice from the original location and we had already checked out of even considering trying to go after my ER visit.

“Butt” (ha ha, get it?), I found myself having trouble sleeping and woke up earlier than usual on Sunday morning. This usually means I make my grocery shopping rounds early and be done with it, but this time, I had another perfect idea instead. Go to the race and then to the store!

True, I was specifically told not to run, and I’m still hurting a little down there, but when I pay for something it gets under my skin when I just give it up. That something would be the nice technical shirts and finisher’s medal you get, as well as a surprise Mother’s Day gift the event organizer mentioned. So I told Kelley, as she went to nurse Avery back asleep, I was leaving for the store and would be back soon.

I didn’t officially decide to drive to the race until I got in my car, then I figured why not, and thought it would be cool to bring back the Mother’s Day surprise gift for Kelley. Husband bonus points for me! I arrived right after the race started, so I gave the coordinators my spiel and they happily gave me a shirt for both my wife and I and agreed to give a Mother’s Day gift if I finished the race.

So I raced. But not the half-marathon, just the 5k, and I walked most of it, which was very muddy from the never-ending rain.

The nice thing about walking is you get to see more and take in the nice scenery. For example this really long worm along with dozens of his friends were on the entire course.

Yeah, so it wasn’t that great of scenery. I ended up running the last mile, but I was sorry for that later….stupid butt. At least it looked like I saw some action with a little mud splashed up my leg.

I didn’t wait around for my first place trophy (joke), just took a banana, which happened to be attached to several bananas…

…got my finisher’s medal….

…and Kelley’s Mother’s Day gift.

A freakin Fuel Belt. They are nice, but I was thinking something more motherly. But what could I expect from a runners club? I actually think it will be great when out all day with Avery since it has a hydration pack and some storage.

Overall great weekend and I’m happy to say my ass is hurting less! I go in for check-up (no jokes) on Tuesday, so hopefully I have more good news to report then!

Do you feel like you have to get your money’s worth at events you sign up for?

Ever walk a race before? That was a first for me and it felt weird, but not that bad.

Life

Guess What Ass Won’t Let Me Run A Half-Marathon

05/14/2015 R.C. Liley 8 Comments

I’ve been talking about running the Mother’s Day half-marathon that was delayed to the weekend after Mother’s Day for a while now. You know, the one that got rained/lightninged (word?) out so I indoor rowed the 13.1 miles in our garage before kicking off the Mother’s Day celebration.

Although the forecast is calling for more crappy rain through next Sunday, when the race was rescheduled, I doubt it will be anything severe enough to be cancelled again. But I already know my running in the race is cancelled because of some ass. Can you guess who or what I’m talking about?

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Yeah, it’s MY ass!

Disclosure: Some details (words, not pictures) may be too graphic for those faint of heart. Consider this your warning before you continue reading.

Starting around last weekend, I noticed a little lump on the inner part of my butt (hey, it happens), and waived it off as a result of the sweaty workout I did the other day where I was completely drenched in sweat. I figured it was just little painless infection that I will just keep clean and dry and it will go away, no biggie.

WRONG!

It only got worse and eventually became so painful every step I took made me squint and sitting down just wasn’t happening. Even after Going Mom made a calming epsom salt bath for me the day before, it was no match for the infection that was already at DEFCON 1 status.

By Tuesday night, after tossing and turning with no sleep, I finally caved at 3 am and had to find an urgent care or ER facility immediately. ~~Luckily~~ Sadly, there’s plenty of those all over (just like fast food chains….correlation?) and I only had to drive 5 miles. That, by the way, was the most awkward drive ever since I had my butt lifted off the seat the entire time.

From what I read on Dr. Google, I expected to go in, have a doctor make an incision to drain the pus/fluid, and I’d get back in time for my wife to go to work. Once again, I was wrong. I knew it right after having two people look at my ass and gasp as they said “Oh, that’s bad”. Thanks for the comfort, doctor and nurse. Bam, I was tagged.

One thing was for sure, they had to get the infection drained and under control quickly since staph (especially MRSA which is what we think it is) is a force to be reckoned with. After the nurse stuck me 5 times (not kidding) on my right arm to start an IV, she had to have someone else come and use my left arm instead. He got it after the second time.

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Then I was told to sit and wait a few hours as the surgeon who was on call made it over to operate on my butt. That will never sound right………ever.

They gave me morphine which helped negate the pain a little, but I still couldn’t lay on my back without looking like a deformed squirrel trying to crack open an acorn. I passed time between watching the time and a WPT tournament in Montreal.

I tried sleeping, “butt” that wasn’t happening. Note the time was almost 6:30 am then. It wasn’t until 7:40 until the surgeon finally made it in. I know the world doesn’t revolve around my ass, but I have a right to complain anyway, right?

The guy who showed up had long gray hair in a ponytail and was wearing a Harley-Davidson shirt. That made me grateful I didn’t have a motorcycle to ride home on; OUCH! He was actually very nice and upfront with me, which I appreciated.

All he did was numb the area and worked to drain the infection. Holy hell that was the worst pain ever, and that’s with another dose of morphine! There I was, flat on my stomach and gripping the bed rails as two guys worked on getting crap out of my ass. A new life low had just hit.

Ten painful minutes later I was putting my shorts on over my gauze-stuffed butt and waited for a friend to come pick me up. He drove me home and took Kelley back to my car and she picked up my prescriptions. 2 antibiotics and Tylenol with codeine. I hate pain killers, but after suffering through the day, I did take one last night. I’m not officially a hypocrite. Damn you, ass!

Kelley ended up staying home all day and her work was completely understanding, so that was nice. She helped and tried to get me to stay still, but it was bad enough that the doctor told me to back off of exercise for a few days and definitely NO running.

“So I can’t run 13.1 miles on Sunday, huh?” I asked.

“No.” was the only reply.

And there you have it, I’m typing this with gauze still in my crack (no, not the same from the hospital) and pain radiating there as well. Hopefully the swelling will be down soon and the culture they are running on the drained fluid shows that they gave me the right antibiotics to knock this crap out of my system.

Back in 2011, I had a bad case of MRSA while on vacation in Colorado, so I guess this is the bacteria flaring up in my body again. I’ll keep you updated on my road to a hopeful recovery. I know everyone’s concerned. 🙂

Just be glad I didn’t share any pictures of the thing! I told Kelley I’m still going to run 13.1 miles around our home once I’m better, so we’ll see how that pans out.

Have you ever dealt with staph and/or MRSA?

Did I gross you out at all or as a parent, are you used to gross things? Throwing poop, maybe?

Life, NuttZo, Parenting, Soft Star Shoes

A Half Marathon In My Garage On Mother’s Day

05/11/2015 R.C. Liley 5 Comments

Our original plan to start Mother’s Day off with a half marathon and 5k race followed by coffee and brunch and Brewed never happened. Guess that’s what I get for writing and scheduling a post ahead of time.

Due to inclement weather with tornadoes, heavy rain, and lots of lightning, the even organizers figured running in the stuff may not be the best idea. If only they would’ve called it off before I was half-way there, hydroplaning on the highway, that would’ve been nice.

With the torrential rain and lightning already rearing its ugly head at 5am, we had already nixed the plan of having G-Ma and Avery come watch Going Mom and I run. My wife was sure the race would be canceled, but since I didn’t see anything posted, I said I’d just go alone and come back to celebrate Mother’s Day after the wet run.

As I was driving through nasty weather thinking how much it sucks inside a car and how much more it will suck when running 13.1 miles, Kelley called to tell me they finally called it off. Actually, it’s now going to be next weekend on Sunday, the 17th. So, I turned around and picked up Grande black coffees at Starbucks for the 3 of us. And then I stopped again and made use of my free refills with the Gold Card to make a total of 6 coffees.

This is the only way I can justify paying for coffee since it brings the cost down to only $1 per Grande. Not bad, eh?

When I arrived back home, I found my mom and Kelley asleep on the couch in the living room. We never woke Avery up, thankfully, and I’ve learned to never wake a sleeping lady……especially when they’re pregnant!

Since they went back to sleep, it would only make sense to join them (I only slept 5 hours) and get a little more rest, right? Wrong! When I have a certain thing to do in my head, I have trouble letting it go. Since the rain and lightning wasn’t letting up, I decided to make use of my indoor rower and row the half marathon distance in my garage.

13.1 miles / 21.08 km is a half marathon, and I ended up rowing 90 minutes with a distance of 22.2 km, or 13.8 miles. Talk about a sore butt! I listened to a great Ben Greenfield podcast to help the time pass while staring out at the rain which ended up not being that bad. I know being fueled by NuttZo (as the shirt says) helped keep me going since I had nothing to eat or drink before or during the stint.

All three lovely girls woke up and greeted me just before I was finished, and Going Mom took a few finishing action shots for me. Right after, I stood in the rain to cool off as we all ~~sipped~~ guzzled our coffees. I made Mother’s Day NuttZo Oatmeal for the girls by request which was better than what we would’ve had at Brewed anyway.

The secret, besides the obvious delicious and healthy addition of NuttZo is, add a crap-load of blueberries!

This was the smaller bowl for my mom, but Kelley would send it back for more “bluebs” if I seemingly skimped on tiny tart fruit. Hers looks more like this….

With bellies full of coffee and oatmeal (perfect combo for a rainy day), I gave my Mother’s Day gifts to my wife and mom.

Accompanying the personal letters I typed to each of them, I gave an old photo to my mom of her and me after my high school graduation. She had dyed blonde hair, I had earrings, and we both had 13 years back.

We have more to give my spectacular Mom, but need it to come in the mail first. Although she liked her gifts, she deserves so much more than I could ever give. Raising me alone was not an easy feat, but she did it, and she did it well. I’ll just forget about those times we had fast food. 🙂

For Going Mom, I gave her a new pair of sandals from Soft Star Shoes which was received with great delight. Score one for me!

I got the size right and a color she loves. Not an easy task a style-impaired guy such as myself. They looked great on their website, but even better in person, and absolutely wonderful being worn by my wife.

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Besides the pair of sandals, I also pulled a few strings to get her a pair of these water mugs…

Yep, they’re from the Baylor Health hospital Avery was born in. Kelley has been drinking religiously from the same one ever since Avery was born on 11/15/13, and we aren’t even religious!

After e-mailing and talking to a nurse on the phone, she said she’d give me two new ones for my wife. Avery and I made the trip up there one day as I took a trip down Memory Lane and voila!, we have two new mugs! Good, because the original is cracked and had water collecting inside.

After visiting and playing with Avery a while longer, G-Ma had to leave while there was a break in the storms. We said our farewells and she was on her way.

Avery ran around the house and threw things at our feet until it was nap time. Going Mom nursed her to sleep where, at one point, she was in a flying bird position.

How that’s comfortable, I haven’t a clue, but that’s how she slept for a while. Kelley and I relaxed together to enjoy each other’s company over one of my home brews.

I love her, obviously, and am so happy to share this life with her. Sharing beer with her is just ~~icing on the cake~~ good because, beer and love.

The rest of the day had storms come and go, but we were able to fit in a walk with Avery with only a little be of rain. Now I just need to make it through another week and prepare to run 13.1 miles next Sunday. Hopefully the weather will hold out this time!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Mother’s Day!

Are you stubborn/determined when it comes to having your mind set on something like finishing a race?

Do you like cards or handwritten letters when giving gifts?

How was the weather for you on Mother’s Day?