Feed me your protein and fitting it in.

Trying to fit these extra miles into my busy schedule feels a little like me getting into my high school jeans...I can do it, but it feels like I really shouldn't.
I know I shouldn't complain, since I have no kids to worry about, but I work between 45 and 50 hours a week and have a very inflexible schedule, so it still feels tough. Four days a week I'm at work 9 to 6; Sundays I have church; Wednesdays my schedule is dictated by meetings and conference calls, and I have obligations on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights. So it's actually not that easy to fit extra running in.
I realized Wednesday night that I had 14 miles on the schedule for the next morning. That's a lot to fit in and still make it to work at 9:00 am. The first step to fitting it in was to shorten it, duh. That approach won't hurt my fitness at all. But I reasoned if I cut it to 13 miles I could get up at 5:45, leave at 6:15, and still easily complete 13 by 8 am. That mostly worked. I ended up snoozing the alarm once (9 minutes - we have the world's longest snooze on our alarm) and getting out of the house a little late, but I still made it back before 8 am. But so did David, and he had the shower, so that was a set back...by the time I rehydrated (please, please, please God, take the humidity away!!!), packed a lunch, showered, dressed, and put on just enough make up for it to look like I hadn't given up entirely, it was 8:33 and I had to GO. Notice anything missing? Yes, it's my breakfast. Luckily I packed a very substantial lunch, which in fact should not be called a lunch at all since it includes copious snackage as well, but I still came home starving.

I had a delicious dinner planned - chick pea and vegetable curry on brown rice. But I wanted nothing to do with it. I just wanted a big piece of protein, and the idea of vegetarian fare was nowhere near as appealing as a hamburger. However, I stuck to the menu since we're going out of town and all my produce needs to get eaten. It was a good dinner, but it didn't hit the spot. I sat around all night considering making a pork chop, but luckily snack mix came to the rescue. Lots of protein, and the chocolate isn't half bad, either.

One way to fit all my running in and still get breakfast would be to get up earlier. Somehow, this just isn't happening. I normally get up at 6:00, only setting my alarm earlier if I have over 10 miles to run. It takes me so long to wake up when I'm tired that getting up early doesn't always work for me. I might set my alarm for 5:30 but still be groggy by 6:30. Part of the problem is my bedtime: I am supposed to go to bed by ten, but I usually end up in bed at eleven instead, and even then I spend about a half hour reading. I do know I really need to start getting some sleep, though, so this has to change!

I'll leave you with a quick crazy pharmacy story from yesterday. I have a customer who insists that "her stalker" - no one she knows, just a stalker she assumes she has - sneaks into her house, opens all her capsules, fills them with poison, then sneaks back out. She told me that she knows this phantom stalker has keys to her house since he locks up after he leaves. This woman routinely discards perfectly good medication because she believes it is tampered with and buys a whole new bottle. The best part of this story is that this crazy lady is a manager at the hospital. She is all kinds of cuckoo and is in charge of a rather large department. Hilarious.