Speed Racer mode

My Hub woke up this morning when I came flying into the room, freshly out of the shower, in order to put on the clothing I'd selected and put out the night before. This caused him to sit straight up in bed and say "Oh my GOD, what time is it?", assuming that it was well after seven A.M., since that's usually when this part of my routine occurs.

It was 6:30 A.M., thank you, and he would have known that if he'd rolled out of bed when he said he would, when I woke him up more than an hour earlier. He growled at me when he found out: "Oh, I forgot-- you're in Speed Racer mode."

That I was, because today I was making sure I could get it all done before 6:45-- and by God, I did.

I set everything up last night so that I could roll forward with the minimum amount of impedements to my progress: exercise stuff set up, clothes selected and set out, even most of my pills (except for BC, because I'm paranoid about that one) fished out of their respective bottles and put in a little cup. I woke up, rolled out of bed, put on my exercise togs, and then got back into bed to do the morning ritual of waking El Hubbo. This time, though, I alotted five minutes to the task and kept an eye on the clock. I did get him to wake up, gave him a kiss, told him I was headed to the bathroom, and having elicited a mumbled "I'll be up in a second" from him, I did indeed head off to the bathroom to take pills and whatnot. Fed the cats, because otherwise they would have been so underfoot it's not funny. Rolled into the living room, turned on my PDA and my laptop (with iTunes already cued up), grabbed the weights and began kicking my own ass at my upper-body workout.

(I so wasn't fucking around on that, either. Every time the little chime went off to tell me my rest period was over, I was poised and ready to go for the next set. Even so, it took me more than 50 minutes. Gads.)

After my workout, I shut down all the electronics, put away the gear, and rolled directly to the bathroom for a terribly efficient shower. Hopped out, dried off, brushed my teeth (and tried to do the rest of my Clinique three-part facial treatment while the toothbrush was in my mouth, but that was one howdy-doo over the line and I may have actually wasted time there as a result), brushed my hair, grabbed my clothes, and zipped back into the bedroom to dress.

I spent several minutes cuddling my newly-awake-and-grumpy Hub, then headed to the kitchen to pack lunch and my mid-meals, and by God I got it all done by 6:45 A.M., which is when we'll have to leave for work starting next week. Hooray!

In celebration, I then emptied the dishwasher, tidied the kitchen, emptied the trash cans in the apartment (my Hub, as per his portion of the Spousal Agreement indicates, will be taking out the trash this afternoon), made coffee, and got the mise-en-place together (all ingredients measured out, chopped, etc.) for making turkey sloppy joes tonight. Then I ate breakfast.

I do believe I'm in manic mode. But my GOD, have you seen the sky? How could I not be? Chicago has finally stumbled into summer, and the effect it has had on my mood is truly tremendous. I feel like I can do anything. I want to be outside all the time. Yay yay yay!

Tonight there is a serious amount of cooking to be done at Casa Veres, which should be entertaining. There's the turkey sloppy joes, of course. My Hub was inspired by last night's Good Eats (God bless Alton Brown and all his works), so he wants to make split-pea soup*. I need to throw together another batch of 4-Apple Tuna Salad, make something for work lunches, and poach some chicken breasts so I can shred 'em and therefore not have to spend the ungodly amount of money they're asking for those little cans. I also have to make another batch of those Fortified Fudgecicles, which have really grown on me, and possibly try Amyella's version as well, because with my Hub looking for sweet frozen treats we seem to go through these rather quickly.

*[An aside to BFL folk: oh God, he wants to make split-pea soup, and he makes a really, really good split-pea soup-- de-fatted chicken stock, dried peas, onions, carrots, and a ham hock (and yes, we actually have one in the freezer from a country ham incident earlier this year). What on earth does such soup count as?]

I love cooking. I love love love love cooking. I love cooking with my Hub even more. Both of us in the same kitchen, even if we're working on different projects, is grand and glorious and fun. So yeah, I'm looking forward to tonight.

I'm still not quite over the fact that I ran four miles last night. FOUR. Granted, this is merely little-girl cute in comparison to y'all marathon runners in my bloggery comraderie, but it's mind-blowing for me. No-- I take that back. The distance doesn't surprise me. The fact that I did it with no problems, just as easily as I do a three-mile? THAT surprises me.

I think I need a heart rate monitor, because dude, this is getting ridiculous. Clearly I am not a trustworthy judge of my own exertion levels. I can figure it out pretty easily where weights are concerned (but then, it's fairly obvious), but when it comes to cardio I'm still a big whiner. It's terribly easy for me to talk myself into believing that I'm working too hard. A heart rate monitor would strip away my magical powers of bullshit and give me yet another one of those precious numbers to measure myself with. I ought to bump this purchase up a few levels of importance.

I bought an armband to hold my iPod Shuffle and my money last night. Alas, it will not hold my keys, but those fit nicely in the little pocket of my running shorts, whereas my Shuffle and cash and CTA card do not live in harmony with the keys and, when I try to put all of them in that pocket at the same time, it causes me to look like I have a growth of some kind, or perhaps am a transvestite who hasn't learned to tuck properly and who is hanging a bit to the left. Also, there is the matter of the sweaty cash. Oh dear.

Oh, I almost forgot, I had the funniest thing happen last night. I hit the local supermarket after the run, needing to restock our garlic powder (I can't help it, we use this shit on everything now), cottage cheese (part of the reason for the depletion of garlic powder), Canadian bacon (addicted... can't... stop... eating), EggBeaters (need to make another batch of egg cups this weekend), Dove Promises (I know it's not kosher with BFL, but two of these every night is going a long way toward defusing that damn chocolate binge trigger), my very first jar of all-natural peanut butter (whee!) and oatmeal. A lot of oatmeal, because they had those big tubs of 'em on a two-for-one sale, so I nabbed two and headed for the checkout.

It turned out that I had nabbed the incorrect brand of oatmeal; what was on sale was not the Quaker, but the store brand. I'm a big fan of generic, unbranded products, so I didn't mind this. The funny came when the eensy little girl manning the register came back with the store brand to show it to me. "It's the low-fat, cholesterol-free kind," she explained earnestly. "Is that okay?"

It is a measure of how big a nutrition geek I am these days that I nearly died trying not to laugh at this solemn little thing who had clearly read the big LOW-FAT, CHOLESTEROL FREE! label on the front of the package, not seen anything similar on the front of the Quaker version, and assumed that this meant that the generic brand had superpowers not available to Quaker. "I think all oatmeal is low-fat and cholesterol-free," I explained gently. Her expression didn't change. "Yes," I finally said, "it's just fine, don't worry, ring it up."

I told my Hub about this first thing upon arriving home and he stared at me, waiting for the punchline. Sigh. I am officially a geek now. D'oh.