Let the head games begin, and nuts are for squirrels

This past week was nutty. We basically had no one to watch M-man, our 4-year-old, a problem which largely fell on my husband to do as he attempted to work. C-girl, our little 2-year-old, finally seemed to settle in at her new "big-girl" school and wore undies at school all week. With only two accidents, I might add. What a little rockstar. She also got sick, throwing up one night earlier this week and diarrhea yesterday. I got sick mid-week in the middle of the night and as of this morning still feel slightly queasy, four days later. We got ready for M-man to begin pre-K this Monday and finally got a sitter hired to watch him in the afternoon. I forgot to pay daycare on Friday and forgot an appointment to get the brakes fixed in my car. And who knows what else.

I also missed two training runs last week, but figured, OK, I'll be back on track for this coming week, the final week of training ahead of a 3-week taper that precedes the Omaha marathon on Sept. 22.

I did my long run yesterday of 14 miles. I thought I'd be fatigued from being sick, but I was fine. But sometime during the run the area where the hamstring and the calf meet behind my knee began to grumble. At first it was a niggle, like things were tight, and then a full-on moderate ache by the time I was done with the run.

In the following 24 hours I've done the stuff you're supposed to do, gently trying to stretch really tight muscles, icing the hurt spot, etc. But this morning that spot is pretty sore. Argh.

I don't know what this means for running this week, argh argh argh. I figure it's day-to-day and I'll just keep doing what I'm doing and hope it's just a few days of letting the running shoes rest.

I'm trying to not let it get me down, but I'm bummed. I've had such a good training season. Hopefully by the time I post again this will seem silly that I worried about this.

So I leave you with this, I'll share a story my husband told me about a recent exchange with M-man.

The little guy asked for ice cream, which he loves probably even more than his lovey, Darth Vader and Candyland -- which are pretty hot tickets for him right now. His dad gave him some, and decided to scoop up some ice cream for himself, too. My husband likes to add things to food. He never just eats something as it, but needs to add seasoning, hot pepper flakes, hot sauce, extra veggies on his salad, whatever. The condiment count in our fridge is staggering.

Same goes for ice cream -- no plain ol' scoop for Daddy. M-man saw his dad fixing up his ice cream with some topping, prompting M-man to ask what those were and why he put those on his ice cream.

When my husband explained they were nuts, M-man wrinkled his face and said "Daddy, nuts are for squirrels."

Everytime I saw a squirrel yesterday, I had to smile.