I hope they serve carbs at the Pinewood Derby

1. Mere days after abandoning Whole30, I’m here to report I feel back to my old self. Meaning, I have a little energy. Not enough to scale a mountain or anything crazy. But enough. I ran outside in the cold on Thursday morning and it finally felt normal again. Thank goodness. Like I’m not terrified enough as it is of attempting to go 26.2 miles. I’d like to at least feel like myself while attempting it.

2. I’m supposed to attempt my longest run to date this weekend. 21 miles. I’m above average worried about it. On the other hand, I’m above average excited to carb up to prepare for it. I plan to fall face first into every carb I can think of between now and then. Let the carbs come unto me for I will consume them. And they will one day deliver me to the end of my marathon and lo it will be a great celebration.

 

It took me several weeks of long runs to finally realize that you don’t just carb up before the marathon itself. 21 miles could use a little carb’ing, too. Go figure! My other recent epiphany is that the last 6 weeks of marathon training is not the time to be cutting calories and attempting to shrink my Jelly Belly. This is the time to attempt to not fall out on my long runs or want to rip anyone’s face off from exhaustion. So pretty much everything I normally do is on hold for this stupid marathon at this point. Sheesh.

3. Do the Girl Scout leaders of America coordinate with the Cub Scout leaders of America to intentionally schedule Girl Scout cookie madness at the same time as Pinewood Derby madness? Or is that just my bad luck? Or, is there no Pinewood Derby madness in other households? In the great division of labor in my house, my husband is in charge of all Cub Scout related nonsense which includes the Pinewood Derby. It also includes the optional Pinewood Derby car he made for our daughter as well as the one he made for himself.

Every day this week I’ve come home from work to car related madness. The first day was cutting the wood. The next day was painting. Yesterday there was some all important weighting going on followed by a phone call later while I was in the produce aisle at the grocery store to report that our Cub Scout’s car kept beating my husband’s car on the test track. I was confused why this was newsworthy since in my head the goal was for the actual Cub Scout to have the best car in our house. I’m still slightly confused a day later. 

My Pinewood Derby contestant in all his super cuteness.  The little uniform kills me.

4. The Girl Scout leaders of America may have screwed me over on timing cookie sales to coincide with the Pinewood Derby but they did do me a favor this year by at least giving us the actual cookies in our hands to attempt to sell instead of having us take orders and then deliver cookies several weeks later. I’ve never been a girl that’s into ordering them weeks ahead of time. If I’m in the mood for a cookie, I want to be able to rip the box open and shove them in my pie hole. Now. Because for all I know, I may be watching my calories next month when they arrive and suddenly I’m torn about calories and hard earned dollars spent on cookies that aren’t being eaten.

I want what I want when I want it. So do other people apparently. We’re walking down the street with boxes of cookies and people literally stop us to ask if we have Girl Scout cookies. One kid rode to us on his bike with money. A lady walking a dog stopped to tell us her address several streets over. And one guy pulled over in his car, rolled the window down and asked if we had Samoas. We sold him 4 boxes of cookies through his passenger side window not unlike a drug deal in a seedy neighborhood. It was strange. But we’ve got a lot of cookies to sell. So, we obviously didn’t let it stop us from taking his money.

5. My daughter can’t believe her bad luck that I’m not allowed to sell Girl Scout cookies at work. It’s considered an ethical violation and you can get in actual trouble. My husband tried telling me that rule didn’t apply to little kids selling cookies and they meant if you like run a business or something. I told him “Girl Scout cookie sales” was literally an example in the slideshow of what you’re not allowed to do at work. Pretty tough to pretend you don’t understand when it’s in black and white.    

Girl Scout sales girl, right here.  My brother is a dork but perhaps the vortex of cuteness that is him is him in a uniform will convince people to buy more Thin Mints.  He is permitted to pull the wagon of cookies. 

It’s also pretty tough to be my kid and have this whole ethics thing jeopardizing your chances of shilling enough cookies to win a free t-shirt. I tried explaining to my daughter that the t-shirt isn’t technically free because you’ve been out there working for hours on end hawking cookies to get it. Then I realized I was on the verge of discussing what our hourly wage ended up being when you take into account that all 4 of us were out there for 2 hours and sold 50 boxes. Then I decided maybe my Type A personality needed to just shut up and help pull the wagon full of cookies around the neighborhood. She has her whole life to discover what an hourly wage is.

That kid loves everything related to selling these cookies. She loves going to the door. She loves introducing herself. She loves thanking people and telling them to have a good evening. And she especially loves counting the money when we get back. It’s cute. It’s nice. That’s enough.

Linking up with Darci for Five on Friday!