Marching to the Beat

My how the tides have turned. Are turning. Being turned? Right. Whatever.

As I begin to order leotards and make plans to purchase ballet shoes, I realize it’s definitely happening. Where has the time gone? The writing was always on the wall. Mini has had an interest in dance and performing arts since she exited the womb. Ok, maybe that’s a little dramatic, Kel. Close enough. Her little body moves and sings of its own accord – her joy is nearly palpable.

(I own no rights or credit to the music)

Who knows where it came from, but we all try to encourage it. I’m not tone deaf, I can follow – everything else is 50/50 – and I know nearly every Frozen/Moana/Brave/other mainstream Disney movie song. Sounds like success to me!

The toughest part, in my opinion, is nurturing her love for a sport (activity) I didn’t experience as a child. We’ve had the discussion about commitment aka if I pay for this, then you’re going to have to commit to it for the duration of the lessons. I was met with an “Ok, Mommy” knowing full well there will inevitably be a struggle somewhere down the line; I’m prepared. I remember playing softball as a kid (I sucked, btw) and begged to quit halfway through the season but my parents encouraged (explained harshly) I would finish the season. It was a good lesson to learn.

“Start and end with a positive and encouraging note; but have the courage to deal with the issues.” Much like any conversation: if we firmly, yet gently, encourage our children then the bumps in the middle are just par for the course.

Where’s that parent manual I was promised?!

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I ask you –

Did you catch my (few) sport references?

What’s your advice for encouraging an active child? Dan, I know you’re reading this!

Best guess on how many pairs of shoes she’ll run – no pun intended – through in a season! 4!

RoF – Caffeine Injected!

Lately, I’ve had the privilege of exploring new (to me) coffee shops in the surrounding area. From South Padre Island (Cafe Karma) to my favorite food truck (Chicka D’s) to our local coffee house (Smash House), the best coffee can be found in locally-owned businesses. My goal is to make this a Friday special feature; please give me your feedback as we get started!

As part of my new series, Caffeine Injected, I’m paying homage to and featuring small coffee shops with the best customer service and coffee, of course!

217 Coffee

Meet Addie and Cailyn, the sweetest young women I met while passing through Nocona, TX. Both ladies provided conversation, excellent customer service, and barista knowledge in helping us order exactly what we wanted. Located at 217 Clay St in downtown Nocona, 217 Coffee opened in summer 2020 and I can’t imagine it was quiet for long! They are conveniently located near the Classic Car Museum, too!

Tons of seating

I ordered an Iced Latte made with heavy cream and sugar free brown sugar cinnamon syrup. Mini had a Iced Chai Latte and my other half ordered 2 fancy pigs in a blanket, which 217 Coffee calls “Pig Oh’s”. Every item had rave reviews, including mini who said it was the best chai latte she’d ever had. I was given the option of my iced latte being made with either cold brew coffee or shots of espresso, but I vetoed the latter in anticipation of cake later in the day.

You can find our more about 217 Coffee on Facebook or Instagram. If you’re ever in the area, please stop by and tell them Running on Fumes sent you!

Want to See More?

If you or someone you know owns or frequents a favorite coffee establishment and you’d like to be featured (or nominate them to be featured), please comment below!

Cheers to the Caffeine Injected series!

Is this the…Tipping Point?

Podcast debut! The Modern Idiot (affectionately acronym’ed TMI) graciously invited me as a guest onto their pod. What a fun night! Spoiler alert: one half of the dynamic duo who hosts this podcast was a US Navy classmate. We have history, you could say.

In the same weekend, an old article I wrote for a different blog, Pregnant and Perfect, was reposted by a surgeon in Beverly Hills, California. This may not sound like a celebratory moment for anyone else, but the fact it’s still relevant information is astounding. When I mentioned this article to my sister, even she said she didn’t remember anyone using or sharing info on maternity belts when she was pregnant with her children, 16 and 14 years ago, respectively. Don’t ask me how I they’re so old. I don’t know. Granted it may not help with all pregnancy-related issues, but my personal belief is using a maternity belt regularly during the workday and when I expected to be on my feet for prolonged periods of time was key to a lack of stretch marks and ligament pain during my own pregnancy because it lifted my belly up and back which helps with posture and pain. Much like a girdle, it’s not sexy by any means but it gets the job done!

“It was not the perspective of the painting that had been wrong all these years, it was the perspective of the people looking at it.” I fully realize this post is behind in the publishing process because the above events happened nearly a month ago. For those that don’t know, I make it a practice to wait a few weeks to post, if possible, to protect mine and my family’s privacy. And it helps me to disconnect. So I waited on this post for one reason: I needed to step back in order to not get consumed with doing too much at once. Granted, it took me how many weeks to get a merchandise page going (nearly 2 years of weeks). But anyway…

About the painting? I don’t know. I don’t paint. I can barely walk and chew gum. You get the idea.

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I ask you –

Have you listened to my podcast episode yet? Your thoughts?

Do you paint? Draw? Chew gum?

Other bloggers: tell me how much time typically passes between writing and publishing your posts.

How to Vacation and Why People Suck at it

Alternative title option: How to try to vacation and why most people generally suck at it. But, I once read something about how concise titles draw more attention.

Briefly I considered the 1,000+ emails that were surely awaiting me upon return from my beach vacation. So I drowned out the thought with ice cream sandwiches and the like.

Circa 2020, when I took a similar beach vacation, I fielded no less than 4 phone calls and did some “telework”. I’d like to think it was because my job really needed me, but it was probably more like I didn’t set any boundaries. Lesson learned.

This year I ensured work was where I left it, approximately 12 hours away. With the instructions: don’t call me, I’ll call you. And I never called. If my coworker can go away for 2 weeks and leave incompetent me to hold down the fort, then she definitely doesn’t need me to help her. As my sister chatted away on another work call, I rolled my eyes and packed for another day oceanside.

(I’m only sort of sorry these posts sometimes seem out of order because I jump around a lot.) I write like I talk – with many ideas swirling around at once. You should see what I deal with at work. Geez.

Anyway…people suck. I mean…suck at vacationing, getting away, unplugging, being around people. I love to fly. Because airplane mode is expected. Turning my phone off was my favorite part of being out to sea. And the battery lasts forever when only used as an alarm clock! Occasionally we’d get computer access to check email but optimal hours were midnight to 2am so choices had to be made. Sleep / no sleep.

Focus, Kel. How many cups of coffee have I had today? I can’t remember. Must be the lack of blood in my sugar stream. We found the cutest coffee shop, Cafe Karma, on the island. Apparently they got the memo for a book nook meets ice cream shop meets coffee house. And the chai tea latte was amazing! Good thing my small, local town also has a great coffee shop. And they’re super inexpensive!

Really, I don’t know “how” to vacation; I just wing it. Eat all the food, drink all the drinks, and avoid any work-related thoughts. It can be tough to step away, but we all need time and space to recharge.

Next time, I’m leaving my phone at home.

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I ask you –

Do you think you know how to unplug?

On average, how much coffee do you drink daily?

Name one coffee shop requirement (not coffee)!

Day in Photos, pt 8

While I bask in the post-vacation glow and sort through approximately 1.2 million photos and baskets of laundry, pleas feel free to live vicariously through the phone photos I took prior to vacation. When I was sick and on death’s door.

We played lots of games.

We painted for about 3 mins.

We took fancy photos. Would totally be ok with my head being cut off here.

Credit: Instagram

And somehow we survived nearly 2 weeks of sinus everything. But we made it!

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I ask you –

What’s your favorite childhood game?

Have you been feeling under the weather, too?

I Love Lucy is iconic. That’s all.

24 hrs Post-Island Life

Something about run streaking is so much fun to me. Maybe it’s the confidence builder qualities or the satisfaction of having a daily goal? Maybe all of it. I feel accomplished! Running is a huge leap of faith for me. Day 1 is tough – getting restarted, developing a habit, and believing somehow I’ll go from a nearly 12 min/mile to a 9:30 min/mile. This body is pretty amazing.

Photo credit: my sister

After my unscheduled running hiatus – thanks a lot – I’d only missed three weeks of the Garmin 10k training plan. So I’ve put it back on rotation and decided to start an August streak…which means I will (at the time of this posting) be running and “training” at the same time.

Granted it’s only a 10k but if you’ll recall there are hills in there. Cringe. Then I remembered the new DoD guidance concerning indoor mask wear and it’s still summer in Texas. Double cringe. You’d think after the super high humidity I’d be acclimated by now…alas, my trusty home treadmill is always available until it begins to cool down.

I did loosely plan to run while on the island. Instead I drank. And swam daily. Vacation, after all. Watched some Olympics, too, so that definitely counts as inspiration! Then I ate more fish, dessert, and attempted to sleep in. Damn internal alarm clock.

Back to work, I guess. And by work I really mean eating donuts with my office peoples.

dead battery = watch still on

Before I forget, I have a watch rave. The Garmin Forerunner battery life could be the best in its class: 8 days without charging. When I got home, it showed 0% but the watch face was still on. Check out my full review here.

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I ask you –

Am I the only one who keeps getting confused when I see Tokyo 2020? What year is this? Oh yeahhhhh.

How often do you take a vacation? Yearly? I would prefer quarterly!

Time to dust off my running shoes again!

It’s My Anniversaries!

Credit: Patrick Tomasso via unsplash

Part 1 – Blog

Bloggiversary! 2 whole years of twice weekly, often times random, definitely funny blog posts. I’d like to thank you all. Seriously. Thank you for following, commenting, liking, sharing, and encouraging me.

And, on that note, with everyone’s advice considered, I will soon be moving past the IG handle “mindbodyshameless”. If I had to guess, she’s who I am when I write in italics. She’s the fun one! But this small change is necessary to keep growing and I’m looking forward to the next 2, 5, 10 years of sharing everything with you all here.

Credit: Finn via unsplash

Part 2 – Therapy

I’ve been in a happy relationship with my therapist/counselor/muse/life coach for 2 wild years! It took a very long time, but I’m no longer afraid to disclose I work with an amazing person who has opened my eyes and mind to the poor state of my mental health. Thank you!

What a world we live in when we can’t (or don’t) feel comfortable enough to share something is wrong. I don’t have it together; I doubt I ever will. But I’m the strongest, most capable me I’ve ever been. She’s amazing, if I do say so myself.

Keeping it short and sweet this week due to vacationing! Hopefully – surely? – I can come back with more interesting topics to discuss, as well as a renewed mind. Hope you all are having a great day!

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I ask you –

For other bloggers, how long have you been doing this?

Do you think society is embracing counselor culture more so now than before?

Tell me about a previous or upcoming vacation!

Buckets of Lists!

(pt 2 of my bucket series)

I could have my very own Cool Runnings experience. Check it out!

Always wanted to learn how to curl. Curling is like shuffleboard meets bowling. Since I’m not too bad at bowling and shuffleboard is fun, too, then I think I’d be a natural. Who knows. Maybe I missed my Olympic calling!

Volleyball season is….errrr, was…upon us; specifically, mud volleyball. In true Texas fashion. But I kind of got my feelings hurt when I went to sign up and the lady I’ve been communicating with for over a year suddenly forgot who I was and told me if a team was looking for a player, she’d call me. Rather dismissively. I was supposed to be her teammate. Sigh. What can you do? Spectatorship is my new position.

Winner, winner!

Spoiler alert…I killed the first game. The second game killed me. Way to be humble, Kel. I also golfed a few days prior to the bowling excursion! It did not go well at all. And the bugs kept attacking us. I don’t like bugs. The good news is I didn’t break any clubs, windows, or body parts. Never mind that one time my golf ball hit the golf cart. Minor.

Then I found myself at a change of command ceremony humming “Anchors Aweigh”. Whoopsies! What do you mean the Air Force doesn’t sing Anchors Aweigh?! Couldn’t have been as bad as everyone looking at each other, lips moving, no sound coming forth. Pretty sure they didn’t know the words. Calamity of errors!

Weirdly, I haven’t heard one Navy song yet on this base. Troubling. And where’s the reveille tunes? What about Sailors in their dress whites? You know, the little things. P.S. while you’re reading this, I am on vacation enjoying the sun and sounds of the ocean. Scheduling programs really are lifesavers!

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I ask you –

Have you seen the movie Cool Runnings? If not, why not?

Have you been bowling lately?

Tell me your favorite winter sport! Drinking coffee haHA

As It Goes

“We’re not depressed, we’re discouraged.”

How often do we – the collective – find ourselves down, tired to the point of exhaustion, sad, or unmotivated? Pot, Kettle.

Credit: word porn via Instagram

I manage to find small ways to “fill my bucket”, so to speak. Seasons in life require us to take from one bucket to pour into another just to stay afloat. Anyone want to juggle?! At the end of the day, after filling countless buckets that may not even be mine, recharging my batteries – aka filling my bucket – is top priority. This isn’t relegated to end of day either!

Taking Care of You!

What do you enjoy doing? How do you fill your bucket? It’s easy to find myself saying I’ll go see them (insert whomever) soon or I’ll call them tomorrow or, my personal favorite, I’ll add it to my list! Which list, Kel? Then I never get around to it and my bucket is filled with other things and what-do-you-know it never happens. Supplies!!

Bucket filling can be as simple as taking a walk around a bookstore and indulging in expensive coffee. For me, I visit my children’s shelter coworkers. Those women know how to make me laugh. And they remind me where I came from…a 19 yr old girl missing pieces of her heart. She was a mess. They know more about what I believe in than any words could convey. We laugh, cry, and share what it means to be a true friend. They fill a bucket within me.

Taking Care of Others!

Perhaps you fill a bucket for someone else; you probably don’t even realize what you’re doing. It can be a kind word, a text, a joke, even a smile. You know the feeling you get when someone says they saw something the other day that reminded them of you? Unless it involves cops. It only takes a second for you to give the gift of water into an empty pail.

Speak good things into another’s life! How convenient we find it to blame, ridicule, or negate someone else’s happiness when it really shows how empty our bucket truly is. The “you never”s are a reflection of our own insecurities. You know that saying about ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’? Start being it.

As far as discouragement goes, I firmly acknowledge depression is real. It manifests physically, mentally, and spiritually. However, I believe, more often than not, we are more discouraged than depressed. Life lets us down. We get in our own way. Discouragement + empty buckets = sadness, loss of hope, etc.

Taking It All In!

Recognize your buckets! Share your struggles! Feel free to juggle, but don’t live on the Merry Go Round of Paul & Peter. You know, robbing Peter to pay Paul or however it goes. Stop occasionally. Ask for help!

If all else fails, do you know how much wine a bucket can hold?! Probably a lot…I’m willing to find out!

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I ask you –

Was this helpful at all? Do you understand the concept of buckets?

How often do you unexpectedly reach out to someone to say you’re thinking about them? You don’t remember? Then do it right now!

Please share what works for you when it’s time to refill your bucket!

This one? + She’s Home!

Holiday Half Marathon, circa 10 December, Portland, Oregon.

Oh elevation

It’s just an option. I’m really enjoying “training” during my “off season”. Sounds so professional! This is the time of year where I refuse to run a mile or commit to anything because it’s hot and I don’t fancy dying outdoors under the blazing sun. You really can’t blame me. So the fact I am actually committed to a training plan and – most importantly – STILL RUNNING should be celebrated. Preferably with ice cream!

Right now, I’m a few weeks in to a 10k plan feat. by Garmin. It includes hills and speed runs. Those are now dirty words in my vocabulary and I loathe them. BUT! Those hills and speed (cringe) workouts are going to come in handy when I run at elevation this winter. Provided I don’t freeze to death first.

Better get started on buying for real cold weather running gear. However, I did survive a few sub-zero runs during the February 2021 Texas Blizzard. I’ll be fine!

Speaking of weather acclimation, I stumbled across this great article about heat training, specifically in regards to the Olympic trials postponement the other day. You can read it here. There really are a lot of factors that make up our ability to either acclimate or suffer in hot weather. My fancy new watch tells me I’m now 18% acclimated! If I reach 20%, we’ll all be shocked.

my little love bug

Since mini got home, I haven’t had a ton of time…to myself, to run, to do much except focus on her. I’m not worried. Remember, I’m not training yet.

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I ask you –

What’s next on your race calendar? Anyone running RnR VA Beach next month? My nemesis.

How does running in the heat affect you?

Favorite hot weather treat? Ice cream, hands down!