Green Smoothies and Excuses

This is my Pin-spiration for the week.

Last Saturday night Mike had to go out of town at the last minute and we didn’t know how long he was going to be gone. As of this writing, he’s booked on a flight for tonight. I’m keeping my fingers crossed, but we know how things can change. He was supposed to come home last night, so I had to face a disappointed little Muffin this morning when she went through her list of who is home and who is not home when she woke up.

In the past week I’ve been frantically trying to keep up-to-date with my schoolwork (thanks to a generous extension from my professor) while providing Muffin with at least the minimum requirements of food, clean clothes, school, and fun time. She is tired of being passed off to our housekeeper for a couple hours every day, but she’ll survive. I have not been running. I have not been sewing. I have not been formulating the plan I need for making dozens of cupcakes and multiple colors of buttercream frostings for Muffin’s birthday party next week. (Mike will be home from work for a few days next week, so I’ll be putting him to work making goodie bags. He can also assemble her birthday present.) I think I can manage to finish sewing her party dress, too, if things go back to a more normal version of normal with Mike's return tonight.

I’ll have to slowly work back in to the half marathon training. I know I can do the distance and the first of the two races is still over three weeks away. I know I could have taken Muffin to the park with the jogging stroller or left her with the housekeeper for going to the gym to run on the treadmill. But I didn’t. It was the last thing on my mind. If I wasn’t working on my schoolwork or doing something wholesome for Muffin, I felt guilty. Even with our housekeeper’s help I was exhausted by the time Muffin went to bed each night. If she was asleep by 8:30, I was asleep by 9:00. I think I would have passed out in her bed each night if I’d added running to my daily schedule.

My first green smoothie.

Despite the stress of the last week we kept up with our healthy eating for the most part. Annie’s gluten-free macaroni and cheese made a few appearances throughout the week, but so did green smoothies. Muffin sipped from them (and she actually asked for carrots with dinner last night!). I don’t know if the Indian spinach has a stronger taste than American spinach or if everyone who says you can add enough fruit juice to cover up the spinach taste is a liar. Regardless of what I do, I always taste spinach. It’s not necessarily bad, but it’s there. So, green smoothie drinkers, I dare you to tell me if you really don’t taste the spinach, or if you just don’t mind the taste of it, or if you suck it up and drink it anyway whether you like the taste or not.