What does it take to push me to my emotional limit?

A LOT!

What does it take you?

Could you make a list if you were asked to? Would you want to make that list if someone asked you to?

Probably not, so let’s start where we left off:

This blog is about balancing human interaction with technology-overload and parenting teens while standing on a beach ball, spinning plates and juggling Waterford Crystal. Simple Right?!

• My youngest has lost all electronic device privileges for two weeks and every time she is caught cheating the two week clock resets itself, she is on day two for the 4th time.
• All electronic devices must be turned in to my bedroom at bedtime or 10 pm which ever is earlier.
• Tech Free Sunday is the day where our family takes a break; no texting, no cell phones, no computers, no TV, no iPods, no PSP or DS’s and we prepare our Sunday meal together
• My Son and I are still on day 3 of the Couch to 5k Program
• No internet use unless you are in a common area, this means not in your bedroom with the door closed.

For those of you who are missing or have missed the past techfreeteen posts I will do my best over time to re-enter some of the useful information that I think might be helpful.

For those of you who are not parents of teens, not a friend of mine, easily offended, or just enjoy ruining someone’s day please don’t read my blog because it isn’t about you, or for you. It’s about my family and my time with them and how crazy that can be sometimes.

Use of the cellular device to keep us fit: training day 2 ‘couch to 5k’

My favorite Part: being done!

“Change is the essence of life. Be willing to surrender what you are for what you could become.”

New Husband says that I should give you an update on our use of the tech device (known as the cellular telephone) to keep us fit via the  Couch to 25 k Application known by Droid users as the “C25K Pro”

Last night at dinner we discussed getting up and doing our training again this morning and one daughter said, “I’m not getting up”, the other one complained that she wanted to go too as did my 12 year old step son…. Well this morning sleeping beauty and her little step brother were ‘NO SHOWS’… they stayed in bed, lazy bums! (I wanted to stay in bed too…. but this was my bright idea!) So my little trouper, new hubby and I hit the road sans the rest of the ‘dwarves’.

My son and I (team: Piglet and Pooh) completed ‘day 2’ this morning and you can share in our success by viewing the Flickr photos if you wish. As you can see in the photos, my son is faster than his old mom, which I mentioned in an earlier post, but he does do a jog in place thing while he waits for me to catch up… sweet boy! After only 2 days of this ‘training’ I have come to love, and I mean LOVE the sound of the “diiiiiiing”, which can mean one of two things: 1. it’s time to start running or 2. it’s time to stop… I am in favor of the the latter, the stop running ‘ding’ is the one I soooooooo enjoy!

Team: Piglet & Pooh, the perfect pair.

My mom actually downloaded the app her iPod and is going to try it because I keep trying to sell it by saying ANYONE can run for 60 seconds in a row… well for some reason day 1 was a bit easier than day 2, but shhhhhh, because I do believe the couch potatoes would rather believe that there is no progression that happens to get you trained to run for the full 30 minutes in 9 weeks. It is my assumption that a real Couch Tater would rather believe that the entire thing happens by magical transformation or something, however if I’m being honest I believe it is designed to get a bit more challenging as the days progress. I also talked to a friend in  PA, one in AZ, and one in FL…. I am trying to get them all to do it with their families so we can GO GLOBAL!!! Wouldn’t that be fun?!

“Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless.”~Jamie Paolinetti

Setting goals for fitness using our tech devices???

Setting goals for fitness using our tech devices???.

Setting goals for fitness using our tech devices???

Couch to 5k: Day 1

“Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.”~ Mark Victor Hansen

Remember in an earlier post I mentioned something about using our electronic devices for good and not evil?! LOL  (I am painfully resisting a Star Wars reference here)

Today was the day! This morning my son and I began our ‘Couch to 5k’ challenge. (More like bed to barrel) I downloaded the “C25K Pro” to my Droid (um like  2 weeks ago) and finally we ran, well mostly we walked, but it was ONLY day 1.

It was very difficult to talk myself out of  my cozy, comfy, warm bed , and I tried to rationalize why doing it later would be better, but New Husband said, “you should do it now to get your metabolism goin” …. and so being over 40, the word ‘metabolism’ did the trick; I stumbled out of bed, woke up my son and out the door, and across the yard to the road we slogged. After about halfway through our session we set and agreed upon the additional goal that WHEN we cross the finish line (running the whole way) we decided that we will reward ourselves with surf lessons…( I wonder who is going to pay for those? LOL) My son’s face lit right up when I made that our reward ( I have always wanted to learn to surf and he wants to get better), otherwise he was less than thrilled about being selected as my partner. To say nothing of being dragged from his cozy warm nest too. But I need him and I want him to be my partner for several reasons:

• First he is the most patient person in the world, so I knew he wouldn’t get annoyed if I were to be a little sluggish for example. (His twin runs around in circles while she waits for you, which I find demoralizing, to say nothing of taunting in that she is beautiful and a natural runner -annoying)
• Two neither one of us really WANTS to run unless a large dog with big teeth is chasing us and/or our lives depend on it.
• Three, we both like good food and are probably the slowest members of our clan or at least the jiggliest. (That must be jelly cuz jam don’t shake like that!)
• Four, as mentioned previously my daughters are natural runners, and one has the energy of the ‘Tasmanian Devil’, or ‘Tigger’ from Pooh, or ‘The Road Runner’, or well you get the idea….
• Five, New Husband is an ACC football official so he runs backwards faster than most us us do forwards.

So it only stands to reason that we are, like Pooh and Piglet, natural partners -although I learned this morning that he  runs faster than I do (DUH, he’s 13 and I’m erm, um OLD) and that he sweats more…. when I run (we’ll call it a jog, but its really like old people walking by raising their knees slightly higher). Anyway, I count ‘one, two, one, two’ to set my pace while he counts four to my two, but as I said he is patient and VERY SWEET, so he waited for me.

It really wasn’t bad, although I am not a fan of my chins in the photo above you can see that we were not dead after day one, so we will do it again three times a week for about nine weeks We might even take to cycling on our in between days, because it’s good for us (and both of us need the next size up in pants!) With tech devices in hand, we are taking to the streets and saying no to bigger waist bands!  Then we’ll show what we’re made of in the ‘Race for the Planet‘ at Fort Fisher in mid April.

If you are local and would like to join Team:” Tech-Free-Teen”, for the Wrightsville Beach Farmer’s Market Eat Healthy, Eat Local 5K and 10K we’re going to be sponsored by Black Hat Sports (think free t-shirt) and so at the very least we should look good, and THAT IS IMPORTANT! Ask his twin sister, she has already done 5k (s) so she can’t be my partner, as I mentioned her running those circles around me, but she can help me with the wardrobe! LOL Our whole family is going get up the courage to take to the road whether we walk it or run it our mantra will be:

“Courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose.”

I have lost my mind! Just be quiet and go watch a movie or something!

I hate Tech-Free Sunday’s – There I said it!

It can be the most excruciating experience of my week and sometimes I think the kids drive me to a new level of insanity on purpose just so I will call the whole thing off! Tonight we made tacos for dinner (just to tone down the clean up factor)  then played Pictionary and one of my daughters (I will not say which one) talked, chattered, prattled, babbled, any word that you can think of where someone makes noise incessantly, well that was what she did. During the entire game new husband kept looking at me anxiously and asking if I needed a cocktail… I kept saying, no, although I really wanted to say yes, but I had to remind myself that my family-time should not require me to consume more alcohol……so why does it feel like it does? After our game my son (who unbeknownst to me  had just farted) and then proceeded to give me a hug, which required that I linger there hug-length time in his anal stench, meanwhile I say, ‘what is that smell?’ and he starts giggling. To which I reply ‘ughghghghg blech’. Then he said, “mom you aren’t excited”, and I admitted to him that I hate TFS, and he said, “then mom why are we doing it? We are finally getting used to it”, and my reply, “because it’s good for us, like eating our vegetables (cauliflower or brussel sprouts – not my favs).” I keep trying to remind myself about the part in the book, Eat, Pray, Love where she hates a particular mantra/prayer and then discovers that she must discover why she struggles with this prayer before she can get beyond it…I have not reached that level of enlightenment yet, obviously…

I know that on a some deep level it is good for us and maybe today I’m just cranky, I have had the flu all week, (which is why you haven’t heard from me) so maybe I am still not quite myself, but it feels like more than that… I took them all to “The Fuzzy Peach” http://www.thefuzzypeachnc.com/where you buy yogurt by the pound in a very ‘mod’ setting…. why do I feel like such a curmudgeon when I say that $20, for frozen yogurt is a bit much…and while I’m on my rant let me also mention that I ran into the grocery store to grab a  few things for dinner; my bill came to $50.28, so I gave the prepubescent clerk 3 twenty dollar bills (that’s $60), a nickel and a quarter (30 cents)…. Guess what I got back in change????? $9. 97….. WTF…..  Yes, I gave you a nickel and a quarter so you could give me 57 more coins, ( I know this is not PC, but you …. retard!) (New Husband tells me I should not say ‘retard’, but I ask you what else do you call it? – I WOULD NEVER use that term for someone who was actually mentally or physically challenged/impaired/handicapped (pick your term), but this kid wasn’t, he was just an idiot and I called him a retard -in my head!) I didn’t even bother; I stood there for a moment paralyzed and confused as though I had made the mistake and maybe just gave him a quarter, but then realized that he was probably still hearing voices in his headset (which he was obviously no longer wearing)  from his most recent game of Modern Warfare. And in his defense it could have just been an honest mistake, but after that game of Pictionary I am not feeling generous, sorry kid…get some math skills or go stock green beans or something that doesn’t require basic math skills!

As cranky as I sound, it really was a good day, the girls rode their bicycles for the first time in decades ( no exaggeration) without me telling them to do it, and my oldest daughter even complained that I didn’t spend enough time with her on “family day”…. who’d a thunk it? They are embracing it and I am lacking simple appreciation of that precious fact. Tomorrow morning I will start my day with day one of couch to 5K with my son, so hopefully I will have  a more positive attitude when I report to you tomorrow.

Good Night and thanks for tuning in to TFS#6 and I will try to be less itchy tomorrow, I promise!

ANOTHER BRILLIANT IDEA; use our iPods to acheive a family goal!

I mentioned being tired in my last post it could have something to do with the fact that I awake at times such as these (2:34 AM) with “brilliant” ideas… Tech-Free Sunday was conceived this way I’m sure, but I can’t recall exactly, LOL I’m sure many people can relate to this type of conception, oh I digress.

As you know I am always thinking of ways to bring my family together, but to also get them away from the TV (including Xbox, Wii and Playstation) and to get them away from the computer (sketchfu-ter), and I’m sure to many of you I sound like a nut with with my Sunday ban of tech toys in my home just to create some balance…. uh huh, yeah I’ll get to the point, but remember it’s 0:darkthirty and the ole brain might be a tad slow…. I have decided that since my kids LOVE their iPods and phones so much that they can’t live without them, that we are going to USE THEM to do something together….. we are going to use our phones/iPods for good not evil…..woooooo.

Is the anticipation just killing you? I just (seriously at  2 am) downloaded the C25k app to my Droid (this is the couch to 5k app). YES, I am going to download this app on all iPod touches in my home and I, like the Pied Piper, am going to start running with my kids… I have already looked it up there is a local 5k on April 23rd and one on April 30th. We will have to decide which one we want to run, but together we can go into our own little tech worlds, with our ear buds in, while achieving a common goal. This running thing will not be a problem for one of my daughters, but for myself, my son and maybe a few others there might be some resistance, but my other daughter loves music, and her iPod which is often restricted from use that she might not complain (who am I kidding!?) just to have her iPod in her hand…. the only other potential  problem  I foresee is that we are probably going to have to get up earlier to do this before school/work…. so rallying the troops might also prove difficult, but I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…

Okay, so I am going to propose this to the fam in the morning (it is not optional), and I’ll let you know how it goes… I have a feeling that it might go as well as my idea for teen book club (like a lead balloon), but maybe not, maybe they’ll surprise me and embrace the idea…who knows….anyway I’m excited. Okay back to sleep. 🙂 Wish me luck. Oh and hey if you’re local and you’re interested in doing this with your family let me know and maybe we can band together.