My brain thinks it's Friday.... and I make a crappy girl...

....or Wednesday. It's definitely confused. And I've included a couple random photos from my collection because I haven't been putting enough photos on here lately. Including some duckies!!! (These are my Mom's ducks - she raises Rouens and Calls as a hobby.... they're more like dogs than my dogs).

I screwed up my training schedule this week. I take Wednesdays off. But I have a dog show this weekend, and want to use tonight to get Xavier ready, clean out the car, get packed, etc., so I'm not trying to do it tomorrow after my training session. Plus, I run at least once a week, and didn't want to be trying to manage a dog show with a sore ass from running. So, I decided to try swapping up Wednesday for Thursday. Only my brain has completely swapped the two, and is now totally confused. It can't get anything straight. This is why I have routines.

My workout went great last night. I realized that, after being so excited and enthusiastic about my new program I basically just went over it until I psyched myself out. And then I remembered something. There is nothing forcing me to do everything on that sheet. I am to work as hard as my body says I can, and I'm pretty good at telling when my body says "no more." That doesn't mean there aren't frustrating moments - pushups are an eternal source of frustration, because while my upper body is apparently getting so much stronger, I still can't even get to ten before my hands give out. But I'll improve. When I started, I couldn't do one. And if the workout was easy right from the get-go - well, then it would have been rather useless to have Shawn design a new program, wouldn't it? So, I didn't get through everything last night, but I got through a lot of it. And then I did another interval run, and added one minute to the first three intervals, which brought my total running time up to 33 minutes - everything I've read says to increase your runs by 10% per week, and I was doing 30 minutes last week, so it seemed to make sense. I'll double check it with Shawn. It seemed a lot harder than my last run, but I think my mind was just playing the whole "Can you? Can you really?" game with me.

In other news, I think I should be ashamed to call myself a girl. Since I've been sucessfully losing weight, I've been venturing more and more into fashion areas I always considered off-limits. Yesterday, I bought my first "dress." Like, a real dress, not a skirt, and meant to be worn just for casual wear, not as an event cocktail dress or that sort of thing (I've owned a couple of those by necessity). Shawn has been teasing me a bit about my complete lack of shoe acumen (and the disaster that my natural clumsiness would be when combined with heels), so with my dress success well in hand, I even decided I would get really brave and go buy myself a real pair of heels - after all, I do hate that I'm rather short (I'm 5'6") and heels are pretty and supposed to make your legs look great.

I suck. I can't figure out this shoe thing. I read all these magazine articles about what's in style and what you're supposed to wear and so on, and I'm completely lost. Everything I like seems to be the wrong style, but what looks like the right style is just ugly and boring. And what freaking colour am I supposed to be wearing (I like black, but everything I read says neutral or nude)?

Are there any shoe aficionados out there? Help!!

This is the dress I bought if it helps (for 50% off, no less!). It's the blue/green one (the store I was at didn't have the pink!)

I should tell you that the first time I bought makeup for myself, I was in my twenties, I walked into The Body Shop, found a salesperson (a guy, no less), and told him "I have no idea what I'm doing, but I know I should be wearing makeup by my age. If you can tell me what I need and how to put it on, I will be eternally grateful." And then tried not to feel stupid that this guy knew more about makeup than I did. I left looking great though.

I make a crappy girl. But I'm willing to learn. Teach me, oh more knowledgeable girls out there(or guys - I'm not going to discriminate - I think Shawn knows more about fashion than I do)!

And I included another random picture because I can. And because I love my dog.