Thurs night my daughter asked to skip karate. She had a hard day so she took a long, hot shower, and I worked until 6:20.

Friday I started the day bonding with the Stairmaster. Then I had Core Conditioning class. I went in prepared to count crunches and plank minutes for my 2010 goal, but the whole class was planks and crunches. I’m goignt o guess 7 mins of planks and 100 crunches just for fun. That’s not crazy considering it was a 30 minute class.

Then I did some yoga – more for my brain than for my body.

I told Brian we had just spent 3 weeks straight with the kids almost every day, and I was ready for some adult time. I had a gift card to a coffeehouse downtown, and we had a meeting downtown, so we left early for the meeting and had lunch at the coffeehouse together. We used to hang in cafes and drink hot cocoa and sink into couches in our 20s all the time, and just walking in the place made us feel at home. I had sesame soup – the same base as tahini, with carrots, onions, peas, a few gnocchi and something lemony. And probably cream. I Googled some recipes but they were for black sesame soup, and this was more like a lemon sauce you would put on chicken. It was awesome. I also had a portabello mushroom wrap with feta and tomato inside. Brian had a Roast Beast sandwich, which was pressed and I’m guessing had cheese.

We visited my friend’s photography studio because she was collection supplies for Haiti and I scavanged the house for medical supplies, soaps, tampons, etc. Her studio had moved to a new location I had not seen yet, and it was cool to walk in and see a great big photo of my girls on the wall!

So we had our meeting, finished work, and continued our “adult time” with a trip to a wine tasting with my friend Michelle.

Saturday Brian had a 20 mile run and I had a cleaning marathon. I told myself I would clean until noon. Little did I know I would wake up at 7:30am. I did some in the garage, some in my closet, some in Alice’s closet, helped Alice turn her desk into a vanity with a makeup tray and little mirror (trip to Target with gift cards), and much, much more. But I had a good excuse – company Sat and Sun.

Saturday night we had friends who also have 2 daughters drop their girls off at our house while the grown ups went out to dinnner (more adult time!) We went for sushi since Brian decided last weekend he actually kinda likes it. We shared some edamame and sashimi, then shared 4 sushis. Brian kinda cheated with a Bang Bang chicken roll, I got the volcano roll with the warm conch and crab on top, our friends got a spider roll and a fried sushi rock tuna roll. We also tried saki for the first time, which I can do without. I promised Alice I would bring home sushi for her and surprised her with a 007 Roll – calamari, salmon, and crab wrapped in rice and seaweed, lightly battered and fried and then topped with dynamite cream sauce. It was HOT!!

We returned home to join the girls for some Wii time.

Sunday we invited over a French family that just joined the girls’ school. Every time I welcome a new family I wait for the mom to ask me about a local hairdresser, and sure enough she did. I wonder if my stylist knows I send new parents her way all the time… Brian was working Sunday night, and I was melting down Special Dark miniatures someone gave my daughter and dipping strawberries into them for me and the kids. I don’t have a double boiler, but I understand they keep the chocolate from burning when it melts, so I took a small saucepan about 1/3 full with water and put an empty, small Pyrex bowl in it. I added the chocolate to the bowl and sure enough as the water boiled in the saucepan the chocolate melted in the bowl and did not burn. The bottom of the bowl against the bottom of the pan made a loud shaking noise, but it worked great.

Today – Monday – MLK Day – I woke up to 55 degrees and 0 percent chance of precipitation. Perfect running weather! I ran 3 miles and I think I walked less than a minute total throughout the 3 miles, which felt great considering I hadn’t run through a mile on a treadmill in a LONG time. I finished with 40 bicycle crunches, 20 crunches, 30 seconds plank straight arms, 30 seconds on each side with last 10 seconds with one leg raised, and 30 second plank on elbows.

I wore some items while running that I got free to review for my blog. One was a shirt that protects your skin from the sun’s harmful rays. The other was a spibelt to hold my mp3 player, cell phone and house key. I’m going to describe them both in my next post. I have to drop off a daughter’s friend and this got long enough.

2010 goal update: 4520 crunches, 103 minutes of plank remaining.