Jaybird Takes Flight

This weekend, we went to the Spartan Sprint.  I had been nervous and worried about the race for a while, so I was pretty happy to be there and finally doing the thing.  It was a nice day – around 60 degrees – and overcast.  The sunscreen I conscientiously brought was not needed.

Will and I were supposed to travel with a couple of our friends who canceled last minute, so it was just the two of us en route, but at the hotel prior to the race we met up with our fellow Crossfit Simple teammates.  A lot of people from Crossfit had turned out for the race so it was great to see so many friendly faces.  We all started together since we were on the same team, and after the first mud pit, I didn’t see any of them again until that night at our next hotel.

The fit mud pit happens right away, i figured instead of skirting around it, I would just embrace the idea that this is a mud run, and get muddy.  I don’t like mud, and I like being muddy, so I figured the best approach was to just deal with being muddy from the get go.  This was really a good idea on my part, unfortunately, it was also when a glop of mud went into my right eye.

Getting mud OUT of your eye, when your hands, shirt, and pretty much your everything was muddy proved challenging.  Will – who had promised to stick with me for the entirety of the run, even if it became a walk – used a non muddy portion of his shoulder to get some of the mud out of my eye.  However, I spent a good ten minutes trying to blink mud out of my eye.  Will called me Blinky for a while “You doing ok there, Blinky?”  Eventually, he comes over – and this may gross out readers who are not part cat – grabs my head, and licks the corner of my eye.

Me: Did you just LICK my EYE?

Will: There was a glob of it in the corner of your eye.

Me: Ew

Will:  You aren’t blinking as much (Will spits a few times).  Gritty.

Me:  I do seem to be able to see out of this eye now…

After that the first few obstacles were pretty easy, go under this thing, go over that thing, go down a hill, go up a hill.  That type of thing.

My first injury came at the tall wall.  In the center, there was a triangular piece of wood the jutted out a bit.  I used this piece of wood to trying to help get over the wall, slipped, and smashed my right leg into the wedges pointy end.  That hurt, but with help from Will I made it over the wall.

Will was simply amazing for this race.  There wasn’t an obstacle he couldn’t handle.  If you cannot do an obstacle, you have to do 30 burpees.  I did 155 burpees, Will only had to do 35 burpees.  There was a javelin throw and if you don’t managed to get the javelin stuck in the hay bale, then you have to do the burpees.  You get one try.  The extra 5 burpees came from one of the obstacles.  You lift a round thing of concrete, walk a ways, drop the concrete, do 5 burpees, pick up the heavy thing and then walk back.  I’d done about 120 burpees by this point so I was pretty unhappy with the idea of doing even 5 more, but I did them and we moved on.

The hilly terrain was close to traumatic at points.  It was so muddy that there were hills you basically had to just crawl up.  Will would find a stick for some of these places, jabbed the stick into the mud to pull upwards, then grab my hand, and pull me upwards.  He was serious about helping me and the course was rough enough that I had no problem with pride getting in the way of me being ridiculously grateful for the help.  I needed it, so I took it.

My second injury came when we reached the cargo netting obstacle.  You climb up cargo netting and when you reach the top of the platform, you walk across using the cargo netting, then go back down the same way.  When I reached the top platform and pulled myself up, I put down my knee and a nail was jutting out, so right below my knee I have a puncture bruise – it didn’t pierce the flesh but really hurt like the Dickens at the time of the injury and for the rest of the day.  My poor right side really took a beating.

At the second water station at 3.25, I cried.  I had warned Will before the race that I might reach a point of tired, hungry, and frustrated and I would cry and not to worry about it.  I know me, I will cry, get over it, and move on.  Will had us rest for a while at this water station and let me cry about how I was NOT doing another ^&%$#*@ hill.  Then we went and did so many more hills it was stupid and somewhat mean spirited.

There was a muddy hilly that you had to belly crawl up as there was barbed wire covering it.  This hill went on for a long time.  People helped each other through rough spots, and I had a blast with it, although I did have to worry about slipping backwards – as did everyone else.  When I was about 3/4′s of the way up the hill, I noticed Will sitting and pulling people up.  I kept trying to catch his eye and I crawled up, but it was until I was on his level that he finally saw me.

Me: Are you done and now just pulling people for fun?

Will:  I am looking for you in case you need my help!

Me:  Oh.  Here I am!

Will:  You don’t seem to need my help.

Then we both went back to pretending we were mud snakes slithering up the hill.

We reached a 7 foot wall and Will, who I knew was great but had no idea was AMAZING and AWE-inspiring, looked at the wall, backed up, and ran full out at the wall, launched himself up like freaking superman, got a grip on the top of the wall and simultaneously threw his foot over, then he was on the other side.  The volunteers and spectators here were impressed, so I know it was not just me.  One of them actually said, “Did you just see that guy?!”  The volunteer running the thing started telling people to tackle the wall the way Will did it.  It was impressive as all get out!

We finally made it through to the end.  Will help me over the last obstacle.  I failed in my first attempt and was resigned to more burpees, but Will just devised a different plan of attack for the obstacle then said, “See?  You didn’t even need my help!”  Which is not true as without his revised plan I would not have tried a second time.  I jumped over the fire, got hit with a foam thing wielded by volunteers and then I was done.  I got my t-shirt, and my medal, as did Will.  I have never been so thrilled to eat a banana or drink water in my life.

We are going next year.  Will wants us to get all signed up as early as possible.  The earlier you sign up the cheaper it is, so I am board with it.  Before next year’s race, I need to lose MINIMUM of 30 pounds, but hope for 50 (a pound a week is a safe amount to lose and not unrealistic unless I try to eat moronically).  I also need to really work on my trail running.  I am worried about twisting an ankle with roots and mud and rocks, but I think this race was trail running for the majority of the thing.  It took us 4 hours and 7 minutes to finish the Spartan Sprint – which was about what we expected.  Next year both Will and our trainer think we can cut that time in half.  Honestly, if Will hadn’t been helping me through it, he probably would have had a time of 2 hours or less.

There is a difference between a 5K and a 5K trail run. Learned that this weekend when Will and I ran the very first Rocky Ledges Trail Run at Touch of Nature. I had pretty much decided that I was just going to walk, but once I realized that a trail run means Areas Where You Could Break Your Ankles That Go 90 Degrees Up, I was even more decided that running was out of the question.

I came in last, but I didn’t really care about that too much. I took a look at the other people running and pretty much all of them were either runners, people who ran 5K’s, and people who did Crossfit. I kind of figured with the small crowd I was going to be the last person as I was the only one who chose to walk.

So, note to self, look for the words “trail run” on fliers.

That said, it could not have been in a prettier location or on a nicer day. Will, per usual, had a great time and his dad was there, too. I had a great time because I got to hike a trail by myself in an area that you usually cannot simply gain access to.

However, after the race I was tired and my knees hurt. My fitbit, which tracks how many flights of stairs you climb, said that I climbed 50 flights of stairs, so it is safe to say it was hilly. They gave you tickets and I traded my tickets for a gatorade, but after the first drink it was like drinking sugar. TOO SWEET. So, I hoofed it to the car and back again simply so I could drink some water.

I jokingly said to Will during the last part of the trail run (Will came back to get me, he did that with the 5K as well – it is such a sweet thing for him to continue to walk just find me after he runs a 5K) that I didn’t want to do the Spartan Sprint anymore. I said, “I hate mud. Why did I even sign us what? What was I thinking?” Will said that we were doing the Spartan Sprint thing as a team and he didn’t really have plans on leaving my side during that. I was moved. He is really a nice guy. He also likes us operating as a team in some things, I just didn’t know until then that he meant for us to do that at the Spartan Sprint.

We are hoping to run a 5K that is NOT a trail run on this Saturday, but so far I haven’t heard back from the contact people about pre-registration.

Anyway, one 5K down and one trail run down! Yay!

I think our trainer has discovered that I am crazy.  We were setting up for today’s WoD and I had two 8″ box jump stacked on top of each other (they were designed to be stackable) and they seemed too tall and scary.  What I have been doing is a 12″ box jump with a 45 pound plate on top of it.  I decided to go back to that, when our trainer informed me that they were the same height.  Both are 16″.

Me: Really?

Scott the Trainer: Yes, really.

Me, from the top of the boxes: But if feels like it is much higher.

Scott the Trainer:  It isn’t.

I am sure I looked dubiously at him and he looked at me with that look men have where they think you are being crazy but they are trying to be patient and feed you facts so you will realize you are being crazy, too.  Will gives me this look a lot so I am familiar with it.

He offered to let me go back to doing 12″ box jumps, but I hate to move backward.  Box jumps have always freaked me out, so I figure this is a mental hurdle and I would push through.

Therefore, I did the WoD with the 16″ box jump.  The first round was the most difficult.  I pretty much had to psych myself into jumping each of the 9 times that first round.  Our trainer knew it, too.  He reminded me that when I started I was only doing a 4″ box jump.  How cool is that?  I’ve gone from jumping on a 45 pound plate on the floor to actually jumping up on boxes.  For some reason, this little piece of progress information really helped me with the rest of my jumps.

This was the first WoD I’ve done where I jumped all of the box jumps without doing any step ups.  I also did all of the burpees with a full push-up instead of a scaled one.  Normally, I get about halfway through them and have to start scaling them because my arms don’t want to work any more.  Granted, there were only 3 reps per round, but there were 7 rounds.

Anyway, I am really happy with all of the progress.  Hooray for overcoming my mental box jump blocks!

We are signed up and going to the Spartan Sprint at the end of April and I am JUST NOW getting out of my holiday bad food slump.  I gained weight over the holidays, and I am hoping I can drop that weight prior to the Spartan Sprint and some of the obstacles include climbing things.  I would like to have less weight to hoist over obstacles.  I have managed to lose a few pounds since being more strict with my diet and telling wine that we can only hang out on special occasions.

I’ve kept up with the 100 push-ups a day and running around the block every day, although I do have to admit I missed three days last week because I didn’t want to run on ice.  I figured that was the safer course to take.  The problem is when you miss three days in a row, it becomes easier to miss more days.  I ran on Saturday and Sunday, skipped Monday and Tuesday.  This is why our trainer had us run mile today as our Crossfit warm-up.

Will, who hasn’t been running every day like I have, kicked my butt in running, as usual.  As we were leaving Crossfit after the workout, Will told our trainer that if he wanted to have us run a mile more often as we are getting ready for the Spartan Sprint, that would be good.  Our trainer said that we could always be running on our own, and Will agreed but said that he wasn’t really.  I am behind Will mouthing the words “I am!” while pointing to myself.

We get in the car and I tell Will that I am running every day and he still kicked my butt running the mile.

“Well, you are just not the natural athlete that I am,” he said.

Which made me laugh.  Because he is right AND because today we did 6 exercises, with breaks in between, but the goal was to go as fast as we could for each one.  I beat Will 4 out of 6 times, 4 out of 7 if you count the mile warm-up.  This is over half.  I win! 

In addition to the Spartan Sprint, Will wanted us to sign up for a 5K the first weekend of April out at Touch of Nature, so I did that on Monday.  Another friend wants to do the Dirty Girl Mud Run in September, and a bunch of friends decided it sounded like fun so a group of us are doing that in St. Louis.

I still cannot run a mile without stopping and walking, so I have no idea what I think I am doing in these races.  I think that they will all be good motivation to keep me running everyday and working hard on the diet and exercise thing.  Because they make me nervous.  I never get nervous speaking in front of a group of people, I never got nervous trying out for plays in high school or performing them, never got nervous singing a solo, and generally don’t get nervous very often because I am hard to embarrass.   I do get nervous before these runs.  I am hoping the nerves can be translated into motivation.

(Warning, at least two f-bombs occur in this post.  If you are offended by the f-word, you will be offended twice)

Yesterday, I watched Jeff, Who Lives At Home on Netflix.  I wish I could tell if this movie was brilliant and awesome, or if it was the right movie at the right time.  I honestly don’t know.  There are some movies that just hit you the right way at the right time.  Waking Ned Devine was one of those movies.  The first time Will and I saw we loved it.  Thought it was brilliant and fantastic.  The second time we saw it, we thought it cute, but nothing special.  Some movies are the right movies at the right time.  Other movies (Pan’s Labyrinth) are the wrong movies at the wrong time, but that discussion is for a different time.

I am not going to say much about the movie, because I do not want to spoil it for those who have not seen it.  I will say that if you are expecting a quirky, funny little indie film, you will be disappointed.  It is quirky and definitely has moments of humor, but this is a drama.  Straight up drama.  I liked this movie as much as I liked Dan in Real Life but because the cast has Jason Segel and Ed Helms as the two main characters I think many people go into it thinking comedy and they will be disappointed.  It is not a comedy.  Very much a drama.  Very very very very.  For me enjoyment of movies is about expectation.  If I expect a comedy and it is a drama, I am disappointed more often than not.

That said it was a good drama and it was interesting and it held my attention.  I normally play video games on my iPad when watching movies, but not with Jeff, Who Lives At Home.  I was riveted watching this movie because I wanted to see where the path was leading.  I was also riveted because this was the right movie at the right time.

The past month has been a particularly difficult one for me.  I have been unhappy.  I have spoken here before about the death of my dad, but one of the surprising things about grief is that it just never goes away completely and sometimes, it just kicks your ass for a month, or two, or three.  This past month it has been kicking my ass.  Depression and grief are both very isolating emotions.  Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone.  I mean, people can ask, “What is wrong?”

I can say, “My dad is dead.”

“Didn’t he die a couple of years ago?”

“Yeah, but he is still dead, so I am still, periodically, fucked up by it.”

Then the conversation is pretty much over.  No one can really help make you feel better when someone you love dies.  Can you resurrect the dead?  No?  Well, thanks anyway.

My entire life my birthday and my father’s birthday were linked.  His birthday is exactly one week before mine, January 26 and I am on February 2.  When I grew up and moved away from my home town, I would go back to visit on his birthday and we would celebrate both birthdays together.  Out of my entire family, Dad understood me best and I often thought it was because we were both Aquarians and we both had that slightly skewed view of the world.  When I was a kid he would take me with him to run errands and we would just talk and talk and talk.  Before his lung cancer made talking on the phone a trial, he and I would talk for an hour or two almost every week on the phone.  We’d talk about books and animals and guns and politics and all kinds of things.  We read the same books and liked the same movies and generally speaking, got along pretty well.  I am a good mixture of my parents’ DNA, I look like my mother and I have her smarts, but I think like my dad, both for better and for worse in some instances.

This year my birthday kind of sucked.  I had a wonderful, lovely dinner with my in-laws that really was the highlight of my day and saw a movie with two of our friends, but for the most part it was uneventful in a deeply depressing way.  My mom was supposed to come down to visit but couldn’t due to a migraine.  Normally, I spend my birthday with two of my close friends who live a couple hours away – one two hours east the other two hours west – but I didn’t do that this year because my mom was coming down instead.  Those friends who live in the area that I invited to go see a movie were completely unavailable for various reasons.  The overall effect was feeling old and alone.  Guess who is 38 and has no friends?  This girl.  Is this the reality?  No, but sometimes emotions are not based remotely in reality.  During a time when I needed a distraction from my own head, I had none.

I am great at projecting.  Instead of dealing with whatever the core issue is that I am having, I project my upset onto other things.  After my birthday, I projected a lot.  The weekend after my birthday, a friend canceled plans on us two days in a row and I just kind of lost it.  My feelings were hurt and I was insanely upset.  It was at this point I realized that something else must be going on.  The amount of upset I felt did not match the action prompting it – hurt feelings?  Yeah, that is acceptable when someone invites you to do something, thinks better of it, and cancels last minute, twice.  Hurt feelings and irritation?  Sure.  Tears?  Not so much.

Will, who was pretty frustrated by me making a big deal out of what was essentially nothing, went to work and when he came home I told him that I realized what I was really upset about and it wasn’t the friend who canceled.  I was really upset because hey, dad is still dead.  Will looks at the sobbing crazy mess that was me, and offers to go kick the ass of the friend who canceled.  He always knows how to make me laugh.  He defended the friend earlier, so it was particularly funny – Will can’t fix death, but he can go off on an irrational journey for me if it will make me feel better, or at the very least threaten it to make me laugh.  Love that man.

Discussing why I am upset does NOT help and promotes wallowing, thus I have eschewed discussing this with a few exceptions – some people just know you too well to let you get away with saying “I’m fine.”  Since my depressing epiphany, I have been using my arsenal of tricks to defeat depression.  Working out helps, walking outside anywhere helps, reading helps, writing helps, Music helps, stand up comedy helps, cleaning the house helps (environment does have a big impact on mood, I’ve discovered), shiny distractions and even minor accomplishments helps.  My Nightlife editor is probably in shock that I have had stories in either right on deadline or early for the past month.  I’ve done these things but in the back of mind a little voice occasionally pipes up with “Yeah, but dad is still dead.”

Good job on that workout today!  Don’t you feel great?  Yeah, but dad is still dead.

You got both Nightlife articles finished a day ahead of time!  Awesome!  Yeah, but dad is still dead.

The kitchen looks super clean and you even got the floors really well!  Good job!  Yeah, but dad is still dead.

I am really enjoying the hell out of the book John Dies at the End.  Dad would have liked it and dad is still dead.

So, when I tell you that Jeff, Who Lives at Home is a good movie, you have to keep in mind that I am not in a normal (whatever the fuck normal is supposed to be) mindset.  The two characters lost their dad an undisclosed amount of time in the past.  This past informs the present action of the movie.  What I liked about the movie is it made me feel like my grief wasn’t special to me.  Other people feel this, too.  Other people have these very real and very specific emotions that I also have.  The best stories, the timeless stories have what my high school English teacher called a universal appeal.  Love and loss are two universal emotions we all feel, and Jeff, Who Lives at Home taps into both of these emotions rather well.

I cannot necessarily recommend this movie.  I would not recommend it to my mom or sisters who are pretty much where I am this time of year.  I can say it was the right movie at the right time.  It made me cry, but it made me feel better, too.  It was a good movie yesterday and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I work somewhere around 5 or 6 different jobs.  I am a tarot reader for half of my jobs and I am a freelance writer for the other half of my jobs.  I have the luxury of being able to work from home more often than not, and this is something I really enjoy.  I have never been able to get the hang of office politics.  It never makes sense to me that we are all supposed to be mad at someone calling in sick – really, morons?  You think it is better for a sick person to come into work and snot all over us instead?  Is answer the phone a couple more times throughout the day, or doing a bit more work really worth being sick?

I never got the hang of who was on the outside that particular week or why.  I always thought it was petty.  Oh, Joanie got ten cents more than you an hour because she’s been here fifteen years longer?  So, we’re mad?  Ok, crazy.  Wait, you have to actually do your job while someone else has a vacation day?  You poor thing. 

I just never really understood the pettiness of many of my office and retail jobs.  When you spend all of your time at work worried about how much you are doing in comparison to someone else, yeah, you are going to spend the day in a state of pissed off pettiness.  However, even after I learned to keep my head down and my mouth shut I found out that NOT being petty can make people dislike you, too.

Therefore, working from home works best for me.  My bosses email me assignments, I complete them, I send the back, and they send me money – on the freelance writing side of things.  For the tarot side of things, I have festivals I attend in person, in person clients, and then the psychic phone line job.  The phone job is my real bread and butter as I get paid weekly for it, however, I only get paid when someone actually calls in to talk to me.  Sometimes you have to be signed into the the site for hours before this happens.  This works because I can get research and writing done while I am waiting, so it is really a good combination, writing and the phone line.  I also can pretty much make my own schedule and it is flexible as long as I get my hours in.

That said, there are times where you get more calls than others.  If I am signed in for 5 hours on a Saturday, I can make as much money as if I am signed in for 20 hours during the week.  Every time I make plans on a Saturday, I have to work tons more hours during the week just break even, and even then, I usually don’t.

People often tell me how nice it must be to have a flexible schedule, and yes, it is, but it is costly.  A flexible schedule gives me more freedom, but often that freedom comes with a lower paycheck for that week.  It is often worth it for me to spend time with people outside of my house.  While I do not have the pettiness of co-workers and the weirdness of office politics that I simply cannot get the hang of, I also have no one but cats, clients, and interview contacts to talk to.  So I can have weeks where I feel like the book I am reading is my friend, or that the cats truly understand what I am saying because they respond in trills and mers that sound like they are having a conversation with me.

This past year, I stopped going out of my way to change my schedule around to accommodate people.  I used to bend over backwards simply to hang out with friends, and with a couple of exceptions, I have stopped doing that.  I would work 20 extra hours during the week to make the plans I had on Saturday, only to have those plans canceled.  While I could then work that Saturday and make extra money, the exhaustion from working so much extra during the week for someone who just canceled anyway irked me.  It would happen again and then it would piss me off.  Then when the same people who canceled plans couldn’t be budged for seemingly silly reasons to accommodate my schedule needs, I would be pretty much done bothering to make plans that did not fit in with my schedule without effort on my part.

Will says this confuses people.  I would go from being completely available anytime someone needed it – although it was hugely inconvenient for me – to not being around at all.  Will says I go from being totally over accommodating to dropping off the face of the planet and people never know why. 

What I’ve started to do instead is simply tell people that I have to work.  I can see that people don’t really believe this is viable – you work from home, you make your own schedule, you can do stuff if you want.  Not really.  I can do whatever I want, if I don’t intend on making enough money to live on.  However, a person doesn’t work 5-6 jobs if they don’t want to make enough money to live on.  Unless they are just stupid or bored or have some serious ADD issues.

In person tarot clients are always first priority and I will move heaven and earth in my schedule to accommodate them – usually I can’t only if I am out of town or have other tarot clients booked for that time. 

Interviews get second place in the my time priority and those times depends solely on when the interview subject has time.  You cannot write without material to write about and interviews provide that material for most of my writing.  Even though the writing I do is almost entirely promotional – meaning the people I interview benefit directly from what I write – getting people to talk to me is almost always a challenge.  Scheduling interviews is a big deal and if you have someone who will talk to you at a certain time prior to your deadline (so many people will call me weeks after my deadline, confused that they are no longer getting interviewed) you make that time and you talk to them.  This one is particularly frustrating because there are a large number of people who really seem to only have time during my yoga classes, but so be it.

Third priority is the phone gig – I can flex this schedule but clients call in when they think you will be there.  If I am normally in every Saturday, people get upset if you are not there for them to talk to on a Saturday if you are doing something else.  When they get mad, you then don’t hear from them for a couple of months, and that is money down the drain.  If people cannot find you, if you are not reliably available for when they need you, they simply call someone else.  Repeat customers are the life blood of this part of my work, so reliability has to be a big part of it, too.

The last thing I will say about working freelance is that you do not have days off.  I get work primarily from email and secondarily through phone calls.  I can get emails for work at midnight on Friday, and many of them are time sensitive.  I don’t check my email compulsively because I love spam, but because I try to be the first to respond to an offer for work.  I want to be the go-to person when they need someone to do something quickly, as one of the talents I was blessed with was the ability to write quickly, so I excel at the fast turn around times when I have the actual time available to do those types of projects.

I am not writing all of this out to say, “Poor me.  I get to work at home in my pajamas all day and my schedule is flexible and I write for a living.”  I am writing this out because I think people feel like I am blowing them off when I say I have to work.  “Really?  Don’t you get to make your own schedule?”  Yes, but the more I work the more money I make.  If by Friday I have only made enough to fill the car with gas and not enough to pay the phone bill or the power bill or both, then I have to work more.

I wouldn’t trade my jobs for anything.  They have their hassles, and I have my complaints, but I love what I do.  I love seeing my name in print and knowing that I can say I have been a professional writer for over a decade.  I also love being able to read tarot for people and help them through trying times in their lives.  I REALLY love not having to spend tons of money on a wardrobe for work because I CAN and I DO work in pajamas or workout clothes.  I am very lucky in being able to work in areas I love, but the trade off is not really having free time.  Anytime I am not working cost me some money, and depending on the day it may be costing me a lot.

This is not a paleo recipe.  This is a not a remotely healthy recipe, but it is one of my favorites and it is my birthday today, so I am cheating on my diet and making this as a breakfast treat.  I use a lot of cheats when making quiche because otherwise it can be time consuming and kind of a pain in the ass.  There are three main parts of a quiche: crust, eggs, and meat/vegetables.

For the crust, I use store bought crust.  It is simpler and faster than making your own dough.  They are in the refrigerated section where you find biscuits and crescent rolls and things like that.  You have to cook the crust first, otherwise the egg mixture will make it soggy.  You can use a pie plate or a cake pan.  Spray the pan, place the crust in the pan, poke the crust with a fork a few times on the bottom, then bake for 15 minutes at 375 degrees.  Let the crust cool for a bit before adding in ingredients.

The next step is what goes into the crust.  I find bacon or ham work really well, but have had really good quiches with veggies only, so it is really your call.  The veggies need to be already cooked as does the meat.  When making one with bacon, I sometimes just buy bacon crumbles instead of cooking bacon and as I am awful at cooking bacon.  If you cook up the bacon yourself, make sure to cut it up before placing it on the crust.  I layer the bottom of the crust with whatever meat I am using, bacon, ham, sausage or whatever else suits your fancy.  Then I put in the veggies.  I used frozen veggies this weekend, because they cook pretty quickly, but also with frozen veggies as long as you thaw them and drain them (otherwise you get a very soggy quiche) you don’t even need to cook them.  I also use onions because I like them, but they do need to be chopped and sauteed unless you are using frozen onions.

Most recipes say to use 1-2 cups of meat and veggies, but I kind of just eye ball the amount.  I layer meat in the bottom, then onions, then whatever other veggies you like – such as asparagus, broccoli, spinach, etc.  Then put cheese on top of the veggies.  I used a three cheese blend, but really you can use whatever kind of cheese you like that will go well with your meat and veggies.  Feta, cheddar, swiss (spinach, mushroom, and swiss cheese makes an excellent quiche) – you get the idea.

Then you want to add in the egg mixture.  According to Julia Child, each egg should equal a half a cup of mixture.  Basicially, crack the eggs into a measuring cup.  If you use 6 eggs, you will want 3 cups of egg mixture, which is eggs, cream, and milk – equal parts of cream and milk.  In my last quiche, the eggs made up about 1 and half cups by themselves, so I then added 3/4 of a cup of cream and then 3/4 of a cup of milk to make the mixture reach 3 cups total.  Then you add salt and pepper, whisk it together with a fork until it is blended and pour it on top of the meat, veggies, and cheese.  I also add more cheese on the top after I pour the eggs in.

The amount of eggs you use will depend on how deep your pan is and how many other ingredients you add.  The eggs will get larger as it cooks, so leave a little bit of room on top so that they don’t overflow the pie pan and drip down.  I put the pie plate on a cookie sheet just in case they overflow.  Then cook for around 40-50 minutes until the eggs are set and are brown-ish on top.

Bacon and Broccoli Quiche:

Preheat oven to 375
Place pie crust in pan, poke with fork a few times and cook in oven for 15 minutes.  Prepare other ingredients while crust is cooking and cooling.

Cook bacon, set aside to drain and cool.  Once cooled, chop up bacon for 1/2 to 1 cup
Chop a small onion, saute in bacon grease and then drain, or thaw frozen onions, about 2/3 cup
Cook broccoli or thaw frozen broccoli, strain and dry thoroughly, use about 1 cup to 1 and a half cups of broccoli

Layer the bacon, onions, and broccoli in the pie crust.  Sprinkle with cheese, about 1/2 cup

Crack 6 eggs into a measuring cup.  For each egg, you will want a half cup of mixture, so with 6 eggs, you will want 3 cups.  Look to see how many cups the 6 eggs make.  Then add cream and milk, in equal portions to get to 3 cups.  So if the eggs make 1 cup, use 1 cup of cream and 1 cup of milk.  This will vary depending on the size of the eggs you use.  Whisk the eggs, cream, and milk together with a fork until completely blended, then gradually pour egg mixture over the rest of the ingredients in the pie crust.  You may have some mixture left over, depending on how deep your pie plate is and how many other ingredients you placed in it, so pour gradually and leave a little room at the top.  Sprinkle more cheese over the top

Place in oven on a cookie sheet at 375 degrees for 45 minutes.  Let the quiche set for about 5-10 minutes after removing it from the oven so that it is more solidified.

Asparagus and Bacon Quiche:

Preheat oven to 375
Place pie crust in pan and cook in oven for 15 minutes.  Prepare other ingredients while crust is cooking and cooling.

Cook bacon, set aside.  Once cooled, chop up bacon for 1/2 to 1 cup
Chop a small onion, saute in bacon grease until lightly cooked, then drain OR thaw about 2/3 cup of frozen onions
Cook asparagus or thaw frozen asparagus, strain and dry thoroughly, then cut into small, bite-size pieces, use about 1 cup of asparagus

Layer the bacon, onions, and asparagus in the pie crust.  Sprinkle with cheese, about 1/2-3/4 cup

Crack 6 eggs into a measuring cup.  For each egg, you will want a half cup of mixture, so with 6 eggs, you will want 3 cups.  Look to see how many cups the 6 eggs make.  Then add cream and milk, in equal portions to get to 3 cups.  So if the eggs make 1 cup, use 1 cup of cream and 1 cup of milk.  This will vary depending on the size of the eggs you use.  Whisk the eggs, cream, and milk together with a fork until completely blended, then gradually pour egg mixture over the rest of the ingredients in the pie crust.  You may have some mixture left over, depending on how deep your pie plate is and how many other ingredients you placed in it, so pour gradually and leave a little room at the top.  Sprinkle more cheese over the top

Place in oven on a cookie sheet at 375 degrees for 45 minutes.  Let the quiche set for about 5-10 minutes after removing it from the oven so that it is more solidified.

Now, if I can just convince myself that it is a good idea to leave the house in this cold weather to get some quiche supplies, I will have a birthday breakfast quiche for breakfast today!

This week my knees have been complaining since Tuesday.  Running around the block and at Crossfit yesterday, the hardest part wasn’t losing my breath which is what normally gets me, but the fact that running hurt my knees.

I’ve spent the better part of three days trying to figure out what I was doing wrong.  I was really worried that it was simply running every day, but it makes little to no sense to me that 5 minutes of running a day would cause my knees this much trouble.

Sitting in front of the computer last night, I realized the problem.  I am sitting wrong.  AGAIN.

So, note to self – when my knees hurt, it is because I am sitting with my feet in my lap while my knees are bent at odd angles for hours at a time.  I keep wanting to blame exercise, but really, it is the sedentary part of my life that trips me up.

Also, I have to say that bad habits – such as sitting in a way that causes chronic knee pain – are hard to break.  I simply forget that sitting that way will cause me pain.  When the pain happens I am mystified.  What?  You mean if I keep doing the same thing I will get the same results?  Astonishing!