Monday Musings: Reflections on our Two Biggest Milestones

Instead of sharing links with you today I wanted to reflect a little on the past year.  I don't normally do this kind of thing, but this past year has been filled with change, so I thought this might be rather timely.

First of all, as you know, my husband and I bought our first house.  Becoming new homeowners has its own set of challenges and firsts.  This change has allowed us to begin many of our sentences with "you know you're an adult when...".  For example, "you know you're an adult when you spend Friday and Saturday night at Home Depot."  "You know you're an adult when you look forward to the flyer delivery."  

So, not only have we spent far too much time getting to know each aisle of Home Depot, but we have also learned many things, like what thermostats are for, how expensive oil heat is, how to patch drywall and we met our forever plumber named Barney.  We have also learned that a house cannot be decorated in one, six or even 12 months.  It is taking way longer than we thought to get our house pulled together!  Thank goodness for Ikea and spray paint.

And if buying a house wasn't exciting enough, we adopted our little (currently 70 lbs and counting) furbaby Hugo.  He is the light of our life, we adore him and our world revolves around him.  "You know you're an adult when you spend Sunday afternoons at puppy school."  "You know you're an adult when you have to clean up crap off your kitchen walls."

He has made us more active - we now look forward to walks in the torrential rain, because we know it will tire him out.  We have actually met our neighbours and refer to them like so: Mimi's mom, Shaggy's dad. We have explored our neighbourhood in ways we had never done before.  For once, we dread silence, it means he is eating something he shouldn't, like socks, or ant raid, or kleenex, or plastic bags, or any other paper or plastic product, or the bath mat, or my coupons, or my dayplanner.  

He has made the holidays so much more exciting.  He is thrilled with the wrapping paper, the bags, the glitter and the food.  He is convinced every package is for him.  

He got jealous when the people were hogging the cheeseball, so he stole it - briefly, but he did put it back. He did the same with the Munchie Mix - he had a small victory there.  He got halfway on the table and licked the flour off of the prepared surface ready for the pie crust.  He licked faster when he saw his Nana coming.  He pooped out her plaid sock this weekend. She was looking everywhere for that sock.  

But, most of all, Hugo has turned our house into a home.  He makes us laugh all the time, even when we are trying to be mad.  He is beyond easy going, even when the bathtub leaked onto his head below.  He is a healthy eater and will eat everything from garlic to broccoli, from bananas to coconut oil, from carob to flour, everything except celery or mint.  He loves his sleep and allows us to sleep in.  He cuddles when he is exhausted, otherwise, he just wants to follow us and be in on the action.  He loves children and adults, men and women and other dogs.  He is convinced everyone is madly in love with him.  We certainly are!  

We are looking forward to 2014 as Hugo grows into what will likely be 130 lbs of goofy, lovable fun.  

Monday Musings: Some DIY Finds

Check out my musings for the week, which all seem to be DIY-inspired.  Hope you enjoy!

Simplified Bee - Organizing With Labels
I loved looking at the organizational eye-candy in this post.  I also promptly printed off the Staples coupon and made my way to label heaven.  I picked up a few labels for Christmas basket items and the hair ties (just ordered some new colours! let me know if you want to order some).

Brit + Co - 17 Ways to Bring Your Instagrams to Life
Like many of you, I also heart Instagram.  In fact, you can normally find me showcasing my beautiful beast Hugo as he provides me with daily entertainment. In terms of this list, I can personally vouch for Casetagram, I used this for a puppy-related anniversary gift for my husband.   We were both thrilled with the result.  The service was quick and the product was beautiful!  I really want to try BumbleJax, CanvasPop and Coastermatic.

Clean My Space - DIY Natural Home Deodorizers and Air Fresheners
As a result of a puppy-related incident this past weekend, I had an urgent need to find a natural deodorizer. This post came to my rescue!  We tried out the gingerbread concoction and it was a raging success!

Monday Musings: Thanksgiving Weekend

Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Canadians and Columbus Day to my American readers.  My husband and I celebrated with my family last week, which allowed us to spend quality with our fur baby this weekend. We spent most of our time doing yard work and hiking Cape Split with our little mountain dog.

Hugo absolutely loved the trail despite his exhaustion by the end.  He saw tons of squirrels, dogs, people and two horses and left completely content and muddy.

This has been the perfect holiday weekend in Nova Scotia; the weather was ideal for spending the days outside.

Here are my links for you this week ...

Girl Versus Dough - Pumpkin Coconut Yogurt Waffles

I made these for breakfast today with some leftover pumpkin from last weekend.  I did change up the recipe a little bit (substituting some protein powder instead of flour, peach yogurt instead of coconut yogurt), but these turned out absolutely amazing.  My husband ate six.  Love, love, love - would highly recommend that you try these!

PopSugar - Post Work Yoga Sequence Designed for Desk Dwellers

I bookmarked this one straight away given that I spend far too much time chained to a desk.  This will be extremely useful to me and likely to most of you.

Sarah Fit - Healthy Halloween Candy You Can Buy

I have yet to investigate the availability of some of these in Canada, but I am hoping that some have made their way up here so I can eat candy and feel a tiny bit less guilty!

Happy reading!

Lyndin

Monday Musings: Week 7

This week's post got sidelined for a little bit thanks to the Houdini move my lovely fur baby pulled when I let him out to pee earlier this evening.  It ended with a chase scene (and an unindentified brown object flopping out of his mouth) through the woods, accompanied by expletives that I can only hope the neighbourhood children did not hear.  This was followed by an early departure on my part for my tea date and his early entry into his crate - no treat for him.  As I write this he is trying to eat the zipper on my jacket and all I can think about are the germs floating around his mouth from that unidentified brown object.

He's lucky he's cute!

So, to re-focus this post, I thought I would share a few successes and failures from my recent musings.  I tried two recipes from last week's Monday Musings - the Almond Snack Bars and the Brown Rice Cranberry Chews from The Brunette Bit.  The verdict?  I will definitely be making these again!  Of course, I had to alter them a little bit because I have a condition and cannot help but change perfectly good recipes.  I did give the Chocolate Avocado Pudding a whirl from week 2, but did not love it; however, not wanting to waste it I added it to my morning protein smoothie and it was a raging success!  

I also spray painted my Ikea Marius Stool a beautiful aqua colour - I wanted to use the hack I linked to on week 3 of this series, but could not find a round swing plate, so I just went colour crazy and am glad I did!

Gluten Free On A Shoestring - Old Fashioned Gluten Free Cornbread

This link stems from my gluten-free experience thus far.  It centers around my desire to find a suitable bread substitute.  I have tried many, but they all end in stronger longings for a baguette.  I am completely weirded out by the flour substitutions in gluten-free bread and baking recipes - I have no interest in buying several different kinds of flour and combining them into some sort of mess that somewhat resembles bread - but really doesn't.  So, any baking I have done focuses on almond meal or something completely flour-free.  In the end, I just want to be able to find a way to eat a proper piece of garlic bread.  I really need garlic bread. Not quite sure how much longer I will stay on this, I have not noticed a difference in my IBS or my possible fibromyalgia.  For this reason, if I introduce it back in and there is no terrible reaction then I will be gluten all the way - bring on lovely, fluffy white bread.  Can you tell I have a slight fixation?

Manger - Market Days

Mimi pens a beautiful blog with stunning photographs that tell the tale of her life in Médoc, France. Not only does she have delicious-looking recipes, her posts about life in Médoc transport you into her world.  Personally, this made me long for Angers, France where I studied for a year and met my husband.  We have only been back once since, but dream of owning a home there and living the life eating fresh produce, drinking wine and generally basking in the French language and French culture.  Mimi was able to bring me there, if only for a few minutes.

Lifescoop - 5 Awesome Apps to Help Revamp Your Home Decor

We are currently obsessed with trying to pull the house together - fixing things and placing furniture, trying to figure out how to make it our own without spending a small fortune.  This article definitely caught my eye; it looks like there are a few in there that even my husband will use!

Exploring Pup-Friendly Places

Since getting our fur baby, Hugo, my husband and I have not only been initiated into the sub-culture of dog-ownership, but our lives are slowly beginning to center around "cool places" for Hugo to go for a walk and/or play.  Most of my evenings are spent shoveling down some food followed by a jaunt with the baby that will hopefully tire him out long enough for me to work on the blog (as you can see, that is going really well!), homework, writing about IBS or housework.  I have stopped thinking about what I want to do and imagine what is going on in his little brain and think - would Hugo like this?  And how could I not - he is just so damn cute!

In this vein, I have found a few of those "cool places".  These discoveries occurred out of necessity as I quickly realized that Hugo is too stubborn and too nosy to walk up and down our street.  He wants to stop and watch everything - that leaf blowing by, that car pulling out of the driveway, that bird flying in the air, those people shutting their curtains - Hugo is now the neighbourhood watch.

As endearing as this can sometimes be, it drives me nuts.  I am not one for standing around, I like to move and at a good clip.  Hugo has not yet adopted this habit of mine.  So, I was forced to be creative - I took him over to Hail Pond, a little trail around a pond that I never want him to swim in.  He doesn't do too badly there, you have to drag him the first half of the way, armed with treats and a black heart that will allow you to ignore his fake choking dramatics.  But, once he reaches that invisible halfway point he books it.

Now that he has been doing Hail Pond for awhile, we have added another spot into our routine - Hemlock Ravine Park.  This park is all charm, especially given the story behind the heart-shaped pond.

Hugo loves it here - this is where he met his friend Axel, the Bernese therapy dog.  They became fast friends and I had a glimpse of Hugo's future size - he will likely outweigh Axel!

I let him off leash here and we are working to ensure he sticks close to me.  He does pretty well; he likes to do short bursts of galloping - perhaps he is imagining himself frolicking in the Swiss Alps, the land of his ancestors!

Who Am I?

Welcome to Running From the Runs.  If you have irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or have ever experienced a bout of food poisoning or the flu, you can likely relate to this blog and find humour in the awkward and uncomfortable world of digestive problems.

Who am I?  

Well, first and foremost, I am a redhead and readily acknowledge that this is an integral part of my identity.  As a redhead I have endured many a joke – both of the unsavoury and predictable variety, but have come to love this feature in spite of what others may say.  As a redhead I am fierce, fiery, passionate and sensitive in all the ways this can be interpreted.  In addition to the hair, I am a proud Nova Scotian currently living in Halifax with my American husband (who I met in France).  I have a great love for French language and French culture and adore travelling in Europe – however, not often enough! 

What can you learn by reading my blog?  Well, you can learn about functioning normally while managing your IBS.  You will often leave smiling, or even better, laughing at some of the situations I have encountered as a result of IBS. 

Is this blog only about IBS?  No – definitely not!  A key component of this blog is to create a space where IBS-sufferers can learn something and find a safe haven in the knowledge that there are other people out there experiencing similar issues.  However, not everyone wants to talk about butts all day long, including me; therefore, this blog is also a health and wellness blog where I will focus on other aspects of health including: making healthy choices in the kitchen, various forms of exercise, stress management and also my fur baby Hugo! 

What else?  As some of you who have been reading for awhile will likely know, I am extremely injury-prone.  This blog started off as a challenge to try to manage my IBS while learning how to run … until I did a number on the vast majority of my lower body; I have been icing, x-raying, massaging, foam rolling and generally making the rounds of any medical practitioner that will see me.  I had moved on from running to spinning, until I managed to injure myself doing that, too!  For now I am sticking to tame exercise including yoga, recumbent bike, elliptical, walking and swimming. 

In other news, I love reading and you will often note references to Miss Scarlett O’Hara of Gone With the Wind fame.  My iPod is packed with Bon Jovi, Ben Harper, Eminem, Mumford and Sons and Roxette.  My day job includes working as a public servant and part-time as a Justice of the Peace marrying people.  In between that I freelance write and guest blog whenever I have the opportunity.  Not too long ago I decided that my BA and MA in French were not enough and am now pursuing studies in public relations.  I can safely say I am never bored!   

I hope you enjoy reading my blog – please feel free to comment and to question.  I take great pleasure in hearing your feedback and hope that for those with IBS, that this helps you in some way.  It is high time we stopped hiding behind the bathroom stall and talked to each other. 

Please contact me here about any questions relating to freelance writing or guest blogging.

Connect with me on Twitter and Instagram. 

Happy reading!

Lyndin

Bringing Home the Baby ...

Last week my husband and I had the great pleasure of adopting our first puppy - an eight-week-old Bernese Mountain Dog named Hugo.

Hugo's arrival home

Needless to say, our life changed pretty quickly.  This became crystal clear when in the middle of the night, my husband sat up in bed, looked at me and said ... "go get the ball" ... and rolled over and went back to sleep.

My conversations this week have sounded like this "have a pee", "have a pee on the grass", "no peeing in the house", "no biting", "be gentle", "have a poop", "no! don't poop there!", "come out from under the deck" and "good boy, Hugo, Mommy loves you!".  If I were my neighbour I would lose my mind if I heard any more about peeing in the grass.

Our little goof, into everything! 

Loving the "wilderness" in our backyard

It has been really fun watching him learn so much in only one week.  He has learned to come and to sit - we are still working on lie down.  He has learned to climb stairs, to ride in the car, to wrestle with his new friend Leo the poodle, to sleep in his crate, to work the room at a party, to be "gentle" (lick instead of bite) and he is slowly learning to go for a walk.

Hugo's first solo car ride

My husband and I are having great fun raising our little pup and have spent the vast majority of the week in our backyard or at the soccer field across the street.  I have not been up this early consistently since my days of lifeguardiing - 5:30 am on Friday morning running around the field with him, and I enjoyed it!