It's been a little over a year since I was medically benched from running because of complications discovered during my 20-week ultrasound when I was pregnant.

I remember how hard and disheartening it was at the time to get scary news about a pregnancy complication and in the same breath find out that all my favorite ways to manage stress (running, working out in general) were largely wiped off the table. 

I cried a lot, but eventually with a few weeks of space from the news, got to a place mentally of knowing this was just a temporary setback. I started plotting my postpartum running comeback. 

But that comeback has been so humbling and not at all what I imagined it would be. 

Originally, I had a target half marathon in mind for March. I figured I had all summer to heal and then in the fall could slowly start building up my mileage and by winter, I'd be back to my normal training volume. 

Then I had all those postpartum health issues and needed surgery again in September, and I threw the idea of a March 2024 half marathon right out the window. 

I set my sights on a five miler in December 2023 instead, thinking maybe I could do a run-walk situation, under the impression from my doctor's initial thoughts that this recovery would be quicker. It wasn't quicker, and that race got thrown out the window too. 

Ever since then, I feel like it's been one step forward and a bunch of steps back trying to get back to regular running. 

I got an initial clearance to slowly work some running into my walks around six to eight weeks after that second surgery. I proceeded cautiously, introducing running in 1 minute increments. Then bumping to 1:30 and 2 minute increments. 

And then I had some more surgery setbacks and more doctor follow ups, and finally, finally in December, I think I was really cleared. 

All that time healing meant, I was unable to run for almost my entire maternity leave, and that was rough. But I told myself that once I was back to work, I'd be able to get back into a running groove. 

Pre-baby, I either worked out before work or over my lunch break. I knew before work was largely going to be out of the question, at least for running, while I'm still breastfeeding. That's a level of discomfort I'm not really into. So I was ready to really embrace lunch time runs. 

And then I went back to work and was so overwhelmed by trying to catch up that for the first three weeks, I don't think I took a single break of more than five minutes. 

As I've settled in more, I've managed to run about once a week, sometimes twice. It's not what I envisioned, but it's better than nothing. 

And I'm finding a new problem cropping up with my toes, that I think is related to perhaps some slight foot growth I had during pregnancy. I got it checked out by a podiatrist and he told me I didn't need to stop running as long as I've adjusted my shoe size.

Now the only other main barrier to getting into a really good running routine is the constant daycare sicknesses that seem to be cycling through our house. Every time I get in a string of consistent runs I feel like we knocked out with another illness. As of now, it's been about two weeks since I've run last because I've had some combo of strep throat, some other upper respiratory virus, maybe bronchitis, and who even knows what else. 

The baby has been home sick from daycare for over a week too now so that's been rough to juggle. 

I'm hoping we're coming out of this phase soon. I'm so antsy to get back to running, especially as the weather is getting nicer. I'm eyeing races for the fall, and I'm hoping I'll get this huge part of my life back soon. 

It's been a minute since we've had a home improvement post to share. But this one has been sitting in the drafts folder for a while now, and it seems time to share. 

Once we got through the scariest parts of my pregnancy and were pretty confident we'd be bringing home a baby in the summer, we got to work converting the room that had been our home office into a room for the baby. 

The room is the smallest of the three in our house, and I knew since it wasn't huge, I wanted to do some sort of wall feature. We debated a bit between board and batten or picture frame moulding, but before we could do anything to add some character to the room, we had to do some basic repairs. 

The floor in this room squeaked horribly from the house settling over the years. We tried a couple of simpler solutions that ended up not solving the problem, so we had to open the wall and add a bunch of screws into the wall framing to tighten things up. 

Once the squeaking was eliminated we patched the wall back up.

(I promise I didn't just take the pictures. I did work too). 

Once we had the wall repaired, we had our blank slate to work with. We settled on board and batten for our wall feature, and started using painters tape to visualize the height and width of our potential battens. I will not tell you how long we spent on getting all the measurements right and trying to figure out how to make sure no battens overlapped outlets or created awkward spacing in corners or by doors. The prep work and the math took a lot of time, but it was worth it because once this was done, it was a matter of getting the supplies and diving right into the work. 

I also went a bit overboard on the paint samples in my quest to find a green that would feeling calming and soothing. 

Since this was a small room, I wanted to make sure our battens were very thin and wouldn't make the furniture sit off the wall too much. We priced out quarter inch thick wood boards and realized it would cost us a lot of money to buy all the battens individually. Instead, we bought a single piece of quarter inch thick plywood and used my dad's table saw to rip it down to 3 inch wide pieces for the battens and 4 inch wide pieces for the horizontal boards at the top. 

Once we got all the wood home, it was time to start nailing it to the walls. We worked section by section, hanging our horizontal pieces first to ensure they were level and then fitting our vertical battens in as we went. Since our walls aren't perfectly level, we had to get creative at some points and add some filler at the bottom of some of the battens so everything would line up nicely between the baseboard and the top board. 

Oh look, a picture of me actually doing work. 

After we got the wood all hung, it was time for my least favorite part of any project -- the caulking and the wood filing. There were tons of small nail holes that needed to be filled in, though that part went fairly quickly. The caulking always takes me forever. I knocked it out in an afternoon though, and let it sit to dry overnight so that I could dive into the priming and painting. 

The wood all got a coat of primer and so did the areas of the wall that we had patched.

Then we hit everything with two coats of Benjamin Moore's Jack and the Beanstalk. The painting took some time as we had to alternate between brushes and rollers to get clean edges around the wood and smooth finishes on the walls. 

To brighten the room a bit, we also painted the top half of the walls Benjamin Moore's Chantilly Lace. 

For safety, we changed all the outlets, replacing them with childproof ones. We also rehung one of the closet doors to make it easier to open after we had the crib in the room. 

We built the furniture, hung the bookshelves, and then just waited for our little guy to be ready to move in. 

I spend a lot of time in this room now, and I love the way it turned out.

I didn't read a lot of books in January, but the ones I read were so good. Three five star books in one month, not a bad way to start the year. 

Five stars

The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I cannot stop thinking about this book, and I really want to talk about it with people (good thing it was my book club read for the month). It reminded me a bit of The Displacements in that Florida gets hit with devastating hurricanes. I liked how this book imagined what could happen if the storms became too much that it was impossible to repair critical infrastructure. I loved many of the characters in this book and despised others. All around a great thought provoking book.

A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is so wild it’s hard to believe it’s nonfiction. It tells the story of the KKK’s resurgence in the 1920s, and the woman who brought them down. The way the author wrote some of the court scenes made it feel like a thriller and I just kept reading to find out what happened next. It’s hard to make a story that compelling when people already know the outcome. But this was so good. Highly recommend.

Gone Missing by Linda Castillo
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I tore through this book in like a day and a half. It’s another great mystery thriller featuring Detective Kate Burkholder trying to find three Amish girls that have gone missing. This book is five stars despite the fact that I hated the ending and that I felt one of the characters ended up with an unresolved storyline.

Four Stars

Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a fun and fast read about about a mother, daughter and grandmother that unwittingly get sucked into a murder investigation when a body is found at the daughter's work. When the police question the daughter, the grandmother is determined to find out who really killed the victim and clear her granddaughter's name.

Three Stars

Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars: The Story of the First American Woman to Command a Space Mission by Eileen M. Collins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I always enjoy a good astronaut memoir, though I wish at times this book would have given some deeper details about various aspects of the life of an astronaut. At times I felt it just bounced from one event to the next without some deeper insight that only Eileen could have shared. But despite that, I still enjoyed hearing Eileen tell the story of how she became the first woman to command a space shuttle mission.

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