So with the fatigue of traveling and then all the chores that seem to pile up while on vacation, I really didn’t have the energy to do much at first. But then I took Jade The Boxer out for a run on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday mornings. (a 2 miler, 2 miler and 3 miler) Success!

I was also able to get back right into schedule of doing spurts of movement throughout my work day.  All the tips and tricks you hear about making sure you’re not sedentary during the day (walk to your co-workers desk instead of emailing/calling, schedule walking meetings, etc.) don’t really work when you telecommute. Unless I wanted to walk over 200 miles to my colleagues desk… or invite them to my house to take a walk in 100 degrees with me (something my pregnant body can’t handle).  So I’ve downloaded an app (FREE!) called  ”Alarmed” and programmed in repeating alarms throughout my work day.

My alarms are titled with my instruction for that mini-break:

• Stretch
• Lunges
• Biceps/Triceps
• Stretch
• Squats
• Arms
• Stretch

It’s a good way to make sure I don’t stay glued to my desk.

I have a set of prenatal workout DVDs and I realized that I never once did the 2nd trimester video. Oops! I guess I should try to do that this week. I have no idea if I am official third trimester or not since every website seems to conflict a little… so I’ll do the 2nd trimester video this week and then make the switch to the 3rd trimester video. Honestly though, when I feel up to exercise I prefer to get in a run right now, since the 1st trimester was soooooo miserable!

Remember to enter the iFitness belt giveaway!

So… feel free to comment on here to test it out and if you saw this post linked in via FB or Twitter, send a reply via those too… just so I can see how this system works and if it truly delivers on the promises!

They have a line of posters for the movie that feature the female leads. Let’s ignore the fact that the posters are overly airbrushed and the women are not gaining any ounces or spreading inches in any area besides their belly bumps right now. It’s more the quirky sayings on them. A couple of them didn’t really prompt much reaction from me. These two definitely did though:

The first one says: “I just have all this extra energy. Plus I’m like crazy horny.”
Big fat nope on both accounts there. I had zero energy during the first trimester, the second trimester was a little better but it definitely wasn’t even on part with my normal energy levels… absolutely no extra energy. And I’ve never felt more homely in my life, thus I don’t feel particularly amorous.

The second one says: “If I knew I’d have a rack like this, I would’ve gotten knocked up years ago.”
Hell No! Sorry, but I find pregnancy boobs annoying. I had to buy all new bras, all I wear are sports bras now. When I did purchase new regular everyday bras I outgrew them in a week which was highly annoying. I just want to go back to the way I was… but I don’t know if that will ever happen.

The poster I identified with the most was this one.
It says: “I’m calling bull$#!%. Pregnancy sucks.”

I know this may not be a popular opinion… but that’s totally how I feel. I truly never ever ever ever ever want to be pregnant again. I can’t say 100% that I will never ever ever ever ever be pregnant again, who knows how I will feel when my baby is actually here. Maybe I’ll decide I want a minivan full of kids. (That sounds horrifying to me.) The hubby is adamant we can’t have just an only child. I used to think that you needed at least two kids, but pregnancy has SUCKED.

Part way through our vacation I started to feel the kid really moving, so much that I can see it from the outside. I don’t love that feeling… it kind of creeps me out. It also kind of feels like my stomach is churning as if I’m going to be sick. It’s kind of fascinating and interesting that there is a human being that is a split of my DNA and my hubby’s DNA in there, that doesn’t mean that I like it in there. Just like every parent wants their kid to move out of the home at some point, I want the kid to move out of this current home!

Obviously I don’t want my baby to be born at 27 weeks… but I’m ready to not be pregnant anymore. (Well, I’ve felt that way since day one.)

I’ve just started to get really uncomfortable and I only imagine it will get more so over the next 13 weeks. Bending over is harder due to a small beach ball on my stomach.  I have had horrible back pain, all upper back which I think is due to the pregnancy chest, and I don’t know how to relieve it. Massages help for a day or two, but then it comes back. Lifting heavy things (that aren’t truly that heavy) is getting harder. My breathing difficulty was greatly relieved while on vacation, but it’s back with a vengeance now.

Oh… and I need to create a real baby registry. I don’t know what things to register for. I told my husband we needed to go to Babies R Us to make a registry. His reply, “We have a car seat and a few onesies people have given us, we don’t need much else.”

I replied “I don’t know what we need, but I know we need stuff like snot suckers and thermometers.”

His reply was that snot suckers aren’t really needed and you just feel the baby’s head to decide if it’s sick and needs to go to the doctor.

So if you’ve got any ideas (especially those of you who have been through this) leave me suggestions on what kind of items are REALLY TRULY needed at the beginning, please share them.

To illustrate my trip, I put together a Storify story. I’ve been wanting to make something in Storify, but hadn’t felt that I had a story that warranted it yet.

A recap of the places we stayed, dined and visited while in Maui – May 2012

A recap of the places we stayed, dined and visited while in Maui – May 2012

Several years back I picked up an iFitness belt at a race expo.  I had tried some other slim waist packs and was never satisfied, they just didn’t seem to fit right. So I decided I would give yet another belt a try.

I chose to buy the double pouch belt, thinking I would be able to stash my phone in it during a race, as well as fuel, lip balm, whatever. There is a handy little inner pocket as well so I can stash my ID, a credit card or some cash and have it be a little more secure.

The thing that impressed me the most about the belt is how adjustable it is. You can really tighten or loosen the belt to get a very customized fit. I know that some people like to wear belts on their natural waist and some liked to wear them down on the hips… this belt accommodates both options. I usually have trouble wearing belts on my hips, it seems my curves always push the belt back up to my waist. But this belt does allow the option of really cinching it in so it remains on my hips.

My mom has the single pouch belt, which I borrow to take on my runs when I visit her. It comes in handy that she has one, just one less item to pack!

I’ve taken to recommending this belt to a lot of people. A lot of my past Team Challenge participants have picked up this belt and find it handy.

After I bought my belt, they released a version with hydration built-in, as well as bottles you can add on to existing belts. That’s the option I went with. So I put it on my list and my husband got me 2 of the hydration add-on bottles for Christmas. They come in 4, 6 and 8 oz. sizes, so you could use one as a gel flask or mix/match water & sports drink if you wanted various sizes.  They slide on easily so it’s easy to set up your belt however you need for the distance/conditions you are running in on any given day.

Another great thing about the company is how friendly they are. They will work with you at their booths to help you figure out the best fit for you. You can talk to them via social media (iFitness on Twitter – iFitness on Facebook) and they’ll answer questions or address concerns. They are truly focused on customer service.

Because I’ve been an advocate for them, they are offering to give away a belt to one of my readers! YAY! Read on to find out how you can win.

• Choose the belt you’d like to try by visiting the iFitness site.
• Like iFitness on Facebook
• Follow iFitness on Twitter
• Enter via the Rafflecopter widget below

a Rafflecopter giveaway

“But how will you plan and know what to buy?”
Easy… we’ll get gender-neutral stuff. We haven’t really bought much for the kid yet, as that is rather intimidating and overwhelming. (Also, my husband has been really busy with work the past several months and I don’t want to do all of this myself.) But we did actually buy a carseat. And look… it’s a nice gender-neutral red. And I kind of love it.

“But how am I supposed to know what to buy for you?”
Sheesh… if it causes you that much anxiety and stress, don’t get me anything. I’m sooooooo sorry that MY choice about how I will welcome MY child into this world causes you distress. YOU don’t actually have to do much planning for this kid, so chill out!

“But why?”
Um… because we chose to do that. And being the parents, that’s our choice.

“How can you plan?”
We can’t. I don’t think there is any way to really plan for parenthood. But buying pink things vs. sports-themed items doesn’t really constitute planning to me. Alright… that’s kind of a half-assed answer. So for the planning things I assume people are meaning: gender-neutral gear and clothes. If we ever have a name discussion (which, no… we have not discussed names or even come up with a short-list yet) we’ll come up with both boy and girl names. Basically… kind of like people used to plan in the past. Did you know that I was born in the dark ages where there were no ultrasounds and my parents didn’t know what I was? True, they assumed I was a boy the whole time… but they adapted and thankfully did not name me Gertrude. “Gertrude Will Run” just doesn’t have the same ring to it!

Both of us have leanings toward wanting and thinking this baby is a girl. But I don’t know that I trust that whole “parent intuition” thing in regard to that. (See previous paragraph where my parents assumed I was a boy.)  I want a girl for the following reasons:

• Boys = WTF?! We used to have neighbors with 12-year-old twin boys and I would watch them from the porch as they built ramps/jumps out of various items of trash they found and then proceeded to ride their bikes/scooters/rollerblades/skateboards/etc. off these things. The whole time I would be thinking, “Don’t do it, that’s going to hurt.” Once they tried it my thought pattern always changed to, “That had to hurt.” I just don’t get it. (However, my hubby thought their ramps looked like fun.)
• I want to see a girl wrap my hubby around her little finger.
• My husband comes from a big family and all of his siblings have big families.  (Especially since I come from a family of two kids.) So we have a TON of nieces and nephews on his side. Well…. we have a TON of nephews and a few nieces. We need to add another girl to the mix.

Common wisdom says that the man determines the gender, as the woman only contributes an X chromosome and the man can contribute an X or a Y.  In the book Do Chocolate Lovers Have Sweeter Babies?: The Surprising Science of Pregnancy it talks about how it can actually run in families to be more male or female dominant. However… the woman does actually have a part in this too.  Not like either party is making a conscious decision one way or the other… but sometimes the environment inside the woman favors X’s and sometimes it favors Y’s. So either way it is a matter of survival of the fittest for the existing circumstances.

And if you are one of those people who thinks I’m terrible for saying I’m leaning toward wanting a girl… obviously I just want the baby to be healthy.  :-)

• Raw meat grosses me out… seriously, I HATE handling raw meat. And that makes cooking it really hard to deal with.
• Fatty pieces of meat are disgusting to me. Ever since I was small I could dissect a piece of meat and discard every discernible molecule of fat. I hate the texture. Usually the pile of my discards are larger than the actual amount deemed worthy of consumption. And that’s just wasteful.
• It just doesn’t appeal to me most of the time.

As I’ve grown, I’ve learned more about how meat is produced for the consumer in this country and honestly, it disgusts me.  I do feel that human beings are designed to eat meat… but not the way we consume it now.  We eat far more meat than ancient humans did and we eat meat that is… well, a bastardized form of meat.  My grandparents did not grow up eating chicken meat where the bird was injected so full of hormones that it was so breast-heavy it couldn’t walk, where it is shoved in a tiny cage with tons of other animals in very close proximity to all the others. (My parents probably didn’t have meat like that when they were growing up either! It’s gotten a lot more industrialized as modern technology allows for that.) And other animals are treated just as unfairly.  Dairy cows are kept pregnant almost constantly, which has got to be miserable. And their calves are thrown away as they are considered a byproduct.

Animal farming has a massive carbon footprint, causing more pollution than all of our planes, trains and automobiles.  ”Animal farming is a huge drain on resources like water and grain. It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of meat, compared to only 25 gallons to produce a pound of grain. 70% of the grain grown in the US is used for producing meat. If that grain were being fed directly to people, no one would have to go hungry.” [Source]

I also recently watched the movie Vegucated, which promotes a vegan lifestyle. I am not sure that I could (or would) go completely vegan… eggs are an important part of my diet. I eat one every day. But actually seeing the way they chopped off animal’s beaks so they don’t peck each other to death in their cages, sorted through baby animals and tossed them aside like garbage, the living conditions for animals… it really bothered me. (BTW – If you have Amazon Prime, you can watch this movie for free online.

However, things that would prevent me from going completely vegetarian or vegan:

• I am in recovery from an eating disorder. Removing an entire food group could be dangerous. A lot of my ED eating habits started by eliminating refined grains and sugars due to recommendations in the South Beach Diet. And when that worked, I just kept expanding it… eliminating more and more and more.
• Pregnancy does not seem like the time to make big changes like this, especially since I’ve heard that making the switch can have a detoxifying effect on the body, and that can be rough on mom and fetus at a time when the body is already in a very altered state.
• Family. Plain and simple. My husband is not open to the idea of cutting out meat.  He is in favor of finding more responsible options though. And nobody else in my family is vegetarian, I think it would make family gatherings a little difficult at best and flat-out awkward or insulting at worse if I had to decline meal staples.

Living in the desert, there aren’t tons of local farm options, but there is the Las Vegas Farm… I could get fresh eggs through them.  Sadly it seems as though The Farm is in trouble due to the need for more space so the animals can live more healthfully and comfortably while county ordinances want to keep the land from being agricultural.

There is also the Gilcrease Orchard where I could get some fresh, locally grown produce.  The seasons are limited due to our extreme temperature swings. And it does seem like local farmer’s market options have been expanding over the past couple years.  I did attend the Las Vegas Farmer’s Market a couple of years ago and to be perfectly blunt, it was sad.  There were only two booths and only one of those sold produce. (The other had some kind of baked goods.)  I never went back… it deserves another chance.

I was raised to be frugal, which somehow turned into being a total cheapskate.  So looking at the prices of cage-free, organic eggs or free-range meat or whatnot is a little cringe-worthy to me.

But I need to start speaking with my dollars and trying to purchase the animal products that I do consume in as cruelty-free and healthful forms that I can. It may not seem like I’m making any kind of difference (kind of like voting in elections seems pointless most of the time) but it’s what I can do. Baby steps, right?

Not catching it? Dogs would be medicated for FLEAs not FLEEs!

When an email offer like this comes to my email, it’s so hard to resist!

The deal was really for "Licensed Electrician Work", but when it gets cut off... man! I know lots of people get lice for free... but when you can get it for only $99, how can you resist?

I know that lots of products go through all kinds of advances, but I never dreamed toothpaste would have features like this.

It's small, you can click to view the full size, but the features listed are: Honey colored pine frame with contrasting green micromesh.

I don’t have colitis, but I’ve always had digestive trouble.  Now that I’m pregnant that trouble is exacerbated… and I’m sure stress doesn’t help.  The trouble is, I don’t know how to get relief from my stress.  EVERYTHING is stress to me.

• Daily life is stressful with work, maintaining a home, trying to prep meals for a husband who doesn’t like anything…
• Work is stressful for me because I kind of hate not having any co-workers around.*
• Being pregnant is stressful, because my feelings toward this are all over the place all day long.
• Taking a vacation is stressful because I have to plan it all
• Going on a vacation is stressful because there are deadlines for travel, planning activities that I hope my husband** will enjoy and then when he doesn’t seem to respond I freak out and assume I’ve ruined it all
• Going on trips where there are large amounts of family around are even more stressful for me.
• Doing a “staycation” is stressful because I feel like a failure if we don’t have things planned or if we’re just bumming around the house.

Somehow, I make it very hard to be me. Some of it is just hard-wired in my brain (nature). Some of it comes from how I was raised (nurture) and the way chemicals in my brain interpreted those lessons.

But this week, I’m going to try to relax. No over-planning (just the bare minimum, so we can actually make our connections) and no real agenda. My brain and body need to de-stress BIG TIME.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

*Don’t get me wrong, being able to telecommute is a gift… but it’s also very hard.

** My husband used to give me more feedback on activities he thought were fun, but I swear… his job has sucked that life out of him. Being a CPA in a public firm is no joke people… especially January-May.

Image via CrunchBase

I watched an interview with Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos.

Tony Hsieh on Zappos’ Unique Company Culture

I find a lot of stuff that Zappos is doing in their business culture fascinating, so it was an interesting view.  I’m not so sure about the whole “valley girl” show concept and the host, but whatever… she did ask a question that made me think. She asked Tony where he saw Zappos in 15 years, because “5-10 is easily imaginable”.

I do not find 5-10 years easily imaginable. A part of me wants to say that if my life mirrors the one I have right now in 5-10 years, I don’t want that life… it’s kind of boring. Sitting in my home office, day-in/day-out working on a job where I rarely see other people and feel like I’m kind of stifled… well, that sounds like misery.

But then again, considering that I’m pregnant right now, life most definitely won’t be the same as it is now.

What do I want from life in 5-10 years? Another thing I can’t answer… I know what I don’t want. I don’t want to be stressed every day over my husband’s well-being and if his job stress is shortening his lifespan. I don’t want to have a self-imposed feeling that I have to be chained to my desk/email/IM out of worry that if I’m too “out of sight, out of mind” my job will be in jeopardy. I don’t want to be pregnant. I don’t want to drive a minivan.

I wrote a life-list a while ago… I should revisit that and migrate it over to this site so I’m actually working toward items on it. What I do know is that in 5-10 years I want my family and me to be happy and healthy.

What do you want from your life in 5-10 (or even 15) years?