Food, Injuries and Pre-Canaa

Last night, I pulled out my trusty Veganomicon and whipped up some tasty chickpea cutlets. That's right, friends, you read that correctly! This means I FINALLY found some vital wheat gluten. I was about to bite the bullet and order it off a website Danie D. sent my way a little while back. Perhaps you've heard of it? Amazon? ;P Anyhow, I found the elusive substance and followed the directions to a satisfying, chewy meal. D-bones dug it, though as I always say, he's pretty easy to cook for, and I really liked em, too. Verdict: worth the search for vwg. 

I vowed to wake up early and make some amazing scones (also from the Post Punk Kitchen trove of recipes, with some additions of my own: vanilla and cinnamon), but woke up at 7am not remembering why I set my alarm for so early. My love ended up eating cereal and not waking me to make good on my promise. He's such a sweetheart! I wish I'd remembered, though! I like to be a woman of my word.

In other news, there may be a doctor visit in my future...as in, perhaps, tomorrow morning. I think I mentioned this a while back, but I'm not certain now. Back in November I ran an extreme off-track race. This went through the woods and huge puddles and ditches, over obstacles both manmade and natural...where, on my return, I tripped while leaping across one such manmade obstacle only to land 100% unnaturally on my right knee. I don't know how I managed this, but I landed smack dead on the outside part of my knee while my entire right leg buckled under me. When my friends Liz and Beth and I neared the finish (which was near where I fell), Dustin was shocked to see me stop and walk up the last hill rather than run. I have a tendency of running way faster on the last leg, especially when I know the finish line is that near. In his words he, "knew something was really wrong" when he saw me drag myself up the hill and, literally, roll back down to the finish line. (This photo is a pic of that race BEFORE I fell and hurt my knee.) 

The first few days after the race, I could barely walk. It was incredibly painful. My body was sore in a variety of places, but the right knee was, by far, the worst of it all. I worked through it and, before too long, I was running again. I've done a few 5ks and continued my normal running regime of 3-4 miles. However, lately, sharp pains in my knee have been waking me up in the middle of the night out of nowhere. I find that going up or down stairs sends shooting pain through my knee and, sometimes, it hurts for no reason out of nowhere. It never hurt when I ran, but this week the pain has been so acute, I decided not to run and, instead, to ask my father what to do (he's a doctor). He suggested heat pads and advil. That's all well and good at night when I go to bed, but the knee is still a hinderance when I'm awake and carrying out my daily rituals of stair climbing and long stretches of walking from one building to another. So tomorrow I'm calling the health center bright and early because I haven't been able to go running more than ONE time this week and that was for just over a mile. There are at least two races coming up that I want to run in and, in all honesty, I really want to be able to do things without worrying that my knee won't be able to hack it. For example, my friend Lexi takes a few ballet classes a week and I'm dying to jump in on that, but know my knee won't hack it for that long. Ugh! Frustrating.

In other news, Fi and I had our first pre-canaa class tonight. Muy interesante. Karen and Alex from school are both in the class, too. They gave us nametags and talked about, well, I think their goal was marriage and keeping our religious faith, but the structure of their talks were sort of lacking (do you see the teacher in full effect?). At any rate, we decided not to discuss pre-canaa on the blog until it's all over and we've passed (if it's a pass/fail thing, that is!).

Instead, here is a pic of D after pre-canaa today:

He was pretty excited about his nametag. Note the church in the background: Sacred Heart. Columbia, MO! Pre-Canaa every Tuesday night for the next five weeks. Wooohooooo! Look forward to a follow-up blog when it ends.

Oh, and, also, D brought home this Craft Studio brochure for me today. The Craft Studio at Mizzou offers free "crafternoons" and really reasonably priced classes, which I knew nothing about but will now be taking FULL advantage of. For example: tomorrow-Tin Can Flower day between 12-4. A class on recycling tin cans by making them into flowers! Pretty inventive, eh? Perhaps I'll go and make one for our office to spice it up a little bit. 

Will keep you updated on our Craft Studio endeavors and visit to the doctor, if I can get one!

Hope you're all well!

xoxo