So I have not made good on my pledge to blog at least once a week. I have got to get myself together! But I'm home today on President's Day. I don't have this day off, but Emiko and Hideo are both off from school today. With my new job as a temp proof reader, I don't get paid when I don't go to work. I really liked when I was a teacher that I was off the same days as my kids. I always wondered how working parents with regular jobs did it. Now I have a clue. Thank goodness Hideo's preschool is open for spring break, and Emiko can go to spring break camp at her before and after school program.
     Since my last post, I ran my second marathon. Did I post about running my first marathon, two years ago? Probably not. I should have. It was a huge, momentous personal journey! It was amazing -- I still can't believe I accomplished it. Both times I have run the Surf City Marathon in Huntington Beach, CA. It's beautiful -- you get to run on the Pacific Coast Highway. This second marathon was harder than my first, however. I would like to blame it on the severe sepsis/near death/kidney failure fiasco of 2011, but really I just didn't train adequately. I am going to do the Beach City Challenge, where you run Surf City, the Orange County Marathon, and Long Beach Marathon consecutively. You get a really cool medal when you are done. I love my medals!
     So the OC Marathon is May 5. I am going to train way better for that one. Would like to PR (personal record) or at least have to same time I had for my first marathon (five hours, twenty seven minutes). This last marathon took my five hours and fifty six minutes and thirty nine seconds. The race has a cut off of six hours, so I was happy to make the cut off. But it would have been so much easier had I trained like I was supposed to. Todd did really well -- he finished in four hours, thirty five minutes. Show off!
     Todd got me a medal hanger for Christmas, and it is awesome. It says Run Like a Girl, and, of course, it's Razorback red! I do enjoy walking down the hall and seeing my medals. Very motivating, and inspiring. To think of where I was before I got in shape, to what I have accomplished so far with my (albeit very slow) running.
     I am starting to feel like I'm getting into a sort of groove, at last. I have met a few moms -- we had a play date with two moms and their kids on Saturday, and it was a lot of fun. I have a new job. It's not perfect -- at all. But it's way better than working as a teacher's aide, which I hated. I'll post more on my new job later.
     Todd and I joined the South Coast Roadrunners -- so we've made a few friends from that group. Everyone is really nice. They have parties fairly regularly. We've met a guy named Matt, who is from Texas. So he and his wife are also new to Orange County. They've been here five years, I think?  
      When I was teaching after school science classes last semester, I met a dad who is from Detroit. He happened to overhear me tell a mom that I had just moved from Chicago. He was so excited to meet someone from the Midwest (of course, I had to tell him that I'm Southern -- but had lived in Chicago the last nine years). He and his wife were old school punk rockers from Detroit, and moved here two years ago. They've actually had a hard time adjusting to life in the OC. They have two kids who are a bit older than Emiko and Hideo. We've hung out with them a couple of times. It's nice to meet people who are also transplants.
     I know that things will continue to get easier. It's much harder to make friends when you are forty versus when you are twenty. I do feel much more at ease -- I have a greater sense of where things are than I did the first few months. I still need to find a doctor. I did find an amazing chicken pot pie diner in Anaheim. And there is a fantastic Middle Eastern grocery store right up the street from our place that has a delicious gyro plate. Progress, progress.
     That will do for now. Let's see, so I'm five posts behind? Get together, Amy! I think that's my 2013 motto.