The trouble with living in a northern climate is that toads hibernate about half the year.

Thus, when you find yourself in a situation where you become so very, very angry at someone that you need to fling toads at them, there are no toads to be flung. Imagine, being armed with your trusty MarnCo Toadapult, but forced to live in a climate often bereft of toads.

It's hard not to be bitter.

We had a little family drama over Easter about which I will say nothing because it's the spousal unit's family and they did not sign on to splash their lives throughout the internet. But at one point I found myself seethingly angry and completely unable to do anything to resolve the situation.

If only I had had access to toads.

Sometimes you say it with flowers or chocolate. And other times � other times, only a toad will do.

It's been stupidly busy here at the headquarters of MarnCo, the ruthless multinational behind The Big Adventure. We had the daughter home for the big Easter feast, the last time we'll see her before she leaves for Ireland.

I am proud to report that I was amazingly mature and never once broke down in body wracking sobs or mentioned her being kidnapped and sold into white slavery whilst overseas. Nor did I mention the dire threat posed by leprechauns.

But I wanted to.

Instead, I feigned nonchalance about the whole deal since the job of a parent is to raise an independent, confident, self-sufficient person perfectly capable of taking care of themselves.

Someone could have warned me that this might involve said person disappearing across oceans to places rampant with leprechauns.

We are in the midst of maple syrple season, too, our all too brief time to make oh so sweet amber goodness. We're having another unseasonably warm spring. If this keeps up the trees will bud before we know it, the sap will turn bitter and that will be the end of our season.

All together now, close your eyes, click your heels and repeat after me: "Give Marn warm days, cold nights. Warm days, cold nights." I thank you in advance for seeing to this urgently important matter.

My quest to do one unassisted pull-up before my 54th birthday in May is being complicated by my urge to also run a 10K race in early June. My trainer told me from the get-go that I would have to choose to either build a buttload of new muscle, or ramp up my cardio significantly, but I could not do both.

I, of course, pooh-poohed her observations because I am Marn, Warrior Princess and surely I could do both if I just focussed intensely.

You can well imagine my distress at finding that she is right.

When I put 45 minutes in on the treadmill and burn up 750 calories or so, my body tends to go after my pretty little gym muscles for fuel before it goes to my remaining fat store, especially now that I have my body fat down below 20 per cent. It wants to hold on to the fat as an energy reserve. It takes the body almost no energy to store fat, but every pound of pretty gym muscle I have takes about 35 calories a day to maintain.

My stupid, stupid body considers muscle high maintenance and in an energy pinch will jettison it before fat. My trainer did a body composition measure with callipers and almost all the weight I've lost since I started training for running is lost muscle. There are no words for how angry this makes me.

It's a good thing that there's still snow on the ground here, making it too cold for toads, because if it was warmer I would be flinging toads at my body. Shut up. Does too make sense.

For the next few weeks I'm going to try upping my protein, since that helps build muscle. I've upped my calories in the hope I will have enough fuel that my body will leave my muscles alone when I run intensely.

They say where there's a will, there's a way. I hope that's true because if I can't find my way towards achieving both my goals it will be toad city around here.

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 373.9 miles. Double Duckage. My joy knows no bounds.