Mistakes I’ve Made in Weight Loss

Sunday seems to have become to the day to write a blog post, I guess!

I’m excited to announce that my pants fit again. Hurray! About 3 weeks ago I was distraught to discover that none of my jeans fit comfortably around my legs. They would button in the waist, but I couldn’t hardly stand to wear them on my thighs for more than a few minutes.

Make that “All Pants”!

The one time that this happened in the past I bought new shorts that were the next size up from what I have typically worn for the last few years. Eventually I returned to my usual weight and last year I sold those shorts on ebay, vowing to myself that I wouldn’t hold onto them on the chance that I might need them again someday. So, this time, it was time to take immediate action.

Since May 1st I have been simply counting calories and doing some sort of exercise almost every day. As I said before, I’ve been trying to pretty much drop my expectations. When I set expectations for myself and don’t rise to them, especially in the area of health and fitness, I end up disappointed, discouraged, and usually quit. So this time I only calculated my daily caloric intake necessary in order to be where I want to be by August, which is one of my best friend’s weddings!

And then I’m also in another one of my best friends’ weddings the next month!

–Lauren! We didn’t take any pictures when I saw you last Super sad.–

(I’m so excited. ) I didn’t get a chance to focus on my health before my own wedding, and now am reminded every time I see the pictures from that day. I want it to be different when I look at my friends’ wedding pictures. I want to feel proud and confident in my own skin. Of course I won’t be nearly as radiant as the bride herself, but at least I will be able to focus on their needs that day and not distracted by my own insecurities. I know I had some super great help on my wedding day, and for that I will always be grateful.

Just creepily stealing other people’s Facebook pictures without telling you guys. Surprsie!

 

I also stopped weighing myself. The scale can be so misleading. There are so many factors that change that evil little number.

Muscle weighs more than fat. Water weight changes the number, and along with that, what time of the month it is certainly makes a difference. Your chest size can make you weigh more! You know what I’m talking about, girls. If I subtracted that, I’d probably be pretty stoked with my little evil number! Unfortunately, that’s difficult to do. I would know. I’ve tried it. And those numbers are easy to compare to other’s numbers. However, usually their bone structure is different. Their height is different. Their curves are different.

When I first started, the scale said that I lost 3 pounds in the first week.

Happy dance!

I’m sure that I did. That’s usually my water weight, and seeing that much within the first week is really exciting. Day by day for the next week I started to see it decreasing a pound, which is what the goal for each week was. Then, for no reason at all, my number stopped going down. It went up. Now, if I had to guess, I’d say that it’s because I’m also doing a little bit of weight training. I am as soft as they come, so I’m sure my body reacted strongly to the little bit of muscle mass I began to work on. And I got really discouraged. I’m working hard. I’ve changed my diet. I want to see progress from my efforts, not feel like it’s all pointless. And I recognized the defeat in my attitude and where that usually leads me. But I want this time to be different. So I decided to forget the scale. In fact, we still have some unpacking to do for our office, so I put all those boxes in the 2nd bathroom gathered around the scale so that I can’t even get it to. Maybe I could have just put it in storage, but hey, it justifies my lack of unpacking for now

And I thought, I’ll just wait and see how my clothes fit after a month and if there’s no improvement, then I really need to reevaluate my methods. Well, I tried on a pair of pants yesterday that were unbearable before, and they went on They were snug, but not uncomfortable. Victory dance.

I really need to take more recent pictures.

So now I’m at my body’s comfort weight, the size that my body generally sits at without any effort on my part. It had gone up from that in the last few months due to my health issues. So now I’m not behind the game anymore, or even yet ahead of the game, I’m just right back to zero. Now begins my efforts to become leaner, toned, and generally more fit. I can safely say, even at my lower weights, that I have never fallen into the category of “fit”. I’ve never had much muscle or endurance. Now, I don’t have specific goals in either of those areas. Each day I just try to do what I feel like I can do and push myself to a good sweat. I’ve been walking and running and working on my abs and arms. I’ve got about 3 tricep moves that I do, along with sit ups. I’m trying not to beat myself up or do anything overwhelming. I started out being able to do 15 sit ups. Now I can do 2 sets of 12. As I was doing my sets the other day I thought about what I can add next. Probably something that works more on the obliques. Doing a triceps press-down (not technical term??) I noticed it getting tougher around 8 reps instead of 5 as it had when I started, so I began to think about working out my back along with my arms. But this is my new process. Not setting strict expectations that make me feel defeated when I don’t meet them, just going along at my body’s pace, not my mind’s.

I had also set rewards for myself for each week of completing the weight loss. My first reward was to go get a few more sports bras, since I always seem to run out before it’s laundry time. That was the week that I first didn’t meet my goal. So I told myself that I could only be rewarded once I reached that weight. This upcoming week the reward is supposed to be to be able to begin tanning. I was disappointed that I would be set back in that, as I take a million years to build a slight tan, and we all know that the count down is on to the first wedding that I’m in. The past few days, as I discovered that I have made progress, despite numbers, I decided that I should reward myself even if I don’t make any progress. I should reward myself just because I worked so hard. Now, if a week goes by and I know I didn’t give it my best effort, then I definitely should not go out and reward laziness. But I’ve been working hard. I’ve been changing my diet and I’ve been sweating in the gym about 5-6 days a week. And that deserves a reward.

That’s where I’m at right now in my process towards a healthier body. I’m just taking each day at a time and trying not to be too hard on myself. I’m sure I’ll find more mistakes along the way that I’ve been making and adjust accordingly. I know that I need to find some better foods to get my calories from and learn a little more about my daily intake of fats, proteins, sugars, etc. That’s next up on the list. And I’m sure you’ll be the first to know

 

My Sickness

I’m sitting here with my hot tea and my coconut candle lit, the porch door open with the backdrop of the sound of rain. We got home from church a little while ago. I’ve been waiting for the right time to write how I’ve been. It’s long and I still don’t know how to tell it with any sort of resolution, but I know that I need to tell it. So, if you have a good half an hour, you should begin. If not, dog ear it, and come back later.

The message this morning at church was really good. Lisa Harper was the guest speaker this morning, at the new church that we’ve started to go to the last 3 weeks. We’re pretty excited about it. So far the leaders seem to have their hearts in the right place, the messages have been good, and there are small groups for young married couples, which was exactly what we’ve been hoping to find for a long time. Today, for Mother’s Day, Lisa spoke from 1 Samuel about Hannah’s plea for children when she felt forgotten. I’m not a mother yet, so I couldn’t sympathize with Hannah in that way, but I did identify with wondering if God hears me, with feeling forgotten, dealing with something difficult that I don’t understand.

On a Saturday night in September of last year I sat in our living room making a fall wreath for our front door. Southern Gentleman sat beside me, watching tv. I leaned back to watch it with him, glancing down at my phone to check a few things. As I sat there peacefully, my heart suddenly began to race, as if I was about to bungee jump off a cliff, or had just narrowly escaped a car accident. You know that feeling. Except that normally your “fight or flight” instincts go away once the danger is over. You understand why your heart is racing and then you eventually calm down once you feel safe again. I’ve never before experienced a racing heart when at peace.

From there I got up and began to walk around, trying to make sense of what was happening to me, trying to explain it to SG, how my body was internally losing it, when I looked fine on the outside. When my heart began racing it hadn’t been because I was afraid, but after a few minutes of no change, I was. I went out on our porch for fresh air, trying to calm myself down. SG didn’t understand, but after a few minutes I sat down in the doorway and asked that he pray for me, terrified. Could I have a heart attack at 23? Is this what a heart attack feels like? We prayed as my body began shaking uncontrollably. When my fingers started to go numb I brought up the emergency room. SG called his grandmother, a nurse, and she said that it sounded like something was wrong with my thyroid. He told me to lay down, to try to calm my body.

I laid down for about a minute, before getting up, terrified. I had no more control over my body. I couldn’t physically get my heart to stop racing, I couldn’t hold my body down from shaking. We got in the car and I called my friend Lauren, also a nurse. She stayed on the phone with me for the car ride…one of the longest 15 minutes of my life.

When we got to the emergency room and I lay down on the bed, petrified as my mouth and face started to go numb. The doctor came in, asked me questions, and left. SG and I started to pray right there, in front of anyone who was there. I was gripped for the first time in my life with the reality that I am human, I am not untouchable, I am not promised perfect health. For the first time I felt like I could die. Still unable to stop my body from shaking, I tried to jokingly ask the nurse if they knew what was going on, if she thought I was going to die. Very seriously, she responded that she can never promise anyone anything and couldn’t tell me that. So, that was comforting.

Then we began to get asked if I had ever had an anxiety attack before. An anxiety attack? Noooo…don’t you have to be anxious for an anxiety attack to hit you? Not always, they replied.

Still confused, the doctor, about as helpfully as the nurse, then proceeded to tell me that sometimes when we’re anxious, it’s because we don’t put enough trust in God, and that therefore I should just begin to trust him, and I would be fine.

I all but glared at him and told him that I was here for him to fix me, not preach to me.

They gave me a sedative, and after the longest 3 hours of my life so far, it kicked in and my heart began to slow, my body stopped shaking, and I could feel my limbs again. We went home and made a doctor’s appointment.

The doctor told us the same thing, that anxiety is a very strange thing, which is code in the medical world for we still don’t know much about it. He talked about himself and his daughter the whole time, and sent me on my merry way with an anxiety prescription, leaving me puzzled still, at how I could have an anxiety attack out of the blue, when I felt no more stressed out than any other time in my life. He said, see you in two weeks. Two weeks??? I can barely imagine two more hours like this, let alone two weeks.

Thus began a period of a few months of varying degrees of continuing “anxiety attacks”. Except now that I was pretty sure that I wasn’t dying, I forced myself to resist my instinct to immediately race to the ER, the place that heals you. I paced, I did yoga, I cried, I prayed, and usually, after hours into the night, I took nyquil, and terrified of dying in my sleep, would eventually loose consciousness in the early hours of the morning. SG got up with me at first, but then he could only do so much when he had work the next day and it was happening every night. Thus began the period of my life where I have never felt more alone.

I took the medicine, but it didn’t do anything. In fact, I started to get this feeling that I have a hard time describing, but it’s like an unbearable tightness in my chest, not pain, but equally as uncomfortable. The tightness feels like if someone could just pop a hole in my chest and let it out, then I could be relieved. It sometimes feels like a small motor, buzzing, just beneath my skin, electrified with tension. The medicine did not prevent the attacks, and it did not aid in the feeling in my chest, and I put it away in a drawer.

I contacted an old friend from Connecticut who I knew had anxiety. What he had didn’t sound like mine. He talked about instances where his was brought on, mine wasn’t brought on by anything. It just didn’t feel right.

They did some tests. My thyroid is fine. Let’s test again. My thyroid is still fine. Everything else tests fine. You’re young, you don’t smoke, you’re really fine. Except I didn’t feel fine.

I thought maybe it might be hormonal, maybe my body is all mixed up, and contacted my gynecologist. The receptionist was blatantly confused about why I was there to see my OBGYN for anxiety. I said please, just let me in to see her. I just need someone to help me. I told my OBGYN that my doctor didn’t seem very concerned, but that my life was beginning to be affected. I was worried that I couldn’t work anymore. I said, maybe it’s my heart? She wrote me a referral to a cardiologist.

The cardiologist asked why did your gynecologist refer you here? I said please, you don’t understand, I can’t live like this. I just need some relief.

The cardiologist put me on a 2 day heart monitor. They didn’t find anything. I went back. They put me in a 2 week event monitor. Then they said, press the button when you feel it coming on. I said, What if I feel it constantly? The nurse looked at me, puzzled. I said, The feeling that I have doesn’t go away. It’s not an event. It’s my new life. The nurse called over another nurse. That nurse called another nurse. The three nurses said, Huh, honey, I’ve never heard of that before. I guess just keep pressing the button.

Except that it only held 5 event recordings at a time, 5 button presses, and then you call in from a landline, and wait 8 minutes while it beeps high pitched into the phone, like the dinosaurs used to do in the stone age before we had wireless internet and all the other miracles of life. I whispered, I don’t have a landline anywhere. At work we do, but not one that I can emit 8 minutes of high pitched beeping out of even once a day, let alone every hour.

And the receptionist said, So you’ll bring in your monitor after 2 weeks, then we need to wait 10 days, and oh, that looks like a holiday weekend so, I guess we’ll see you in about a month.

And I sat in the hallway of the hospital and my mom called and I just cried into the phone. People walked around me like they do every day there. They see illness and pain and suffering every day. This living and this dying is normal to them. They can’t hurt for me, they can’t stop for me. I said I can’t live another day like this.

And my mom put on her mom pants and took care of me as best as she could. She told her 23 year old baby that she was to drive to Greenville to see her and her naturopath doctor that she saw for issues with her bladder that stumped the doctors. Cancel work, cancel your life for a few days, and come see the crazy lady who works on you when modern medicine doesn’t know what to do with you.

I saw her and I thought she was a little crazy. But she was the first person who listened to me, the first person who didn’t shoo me out of her office, the first person who sat back and cared. And when I left her office, the buzzing in my chest was gone, for the first time in months.

My heart continued not to race, but beat heavily in my chest. My heart to this day hasn’t stopped beating hard where I can at least feel it to some extent when I’m at rest. However, that has been my only consistent symptom since I left her office in Greenville that day in January. I haven’t had one “anxiety attack” since, and the tension in my chest has gone down in varying degrees. Sometimes I can’t feel it at all, and those days I will never take for granted again, those days where I feel like a normal person. For the last month I had relief, and it was amazing. And for the last 10 days it’s returned, sleeping my only break. I can feel it right now, as I type. I know that I will feel it later today, as I run on the treadmill, and I know that I will feel it the strongest this evening, when I lay down to sleep, with a heating pad on my chest to distract my body to focus on a different feeling.

We have since moved to Greenville to be closer to my family during this time for support and closer to my new doctor, the naturopath, only semi-crazy to me now, since I have to go see her at least once a month. And still, she doesn’t quite exactly know what is wrong with me.

The best that we can figure is that my body is broken. Bodies respond physically to emotional stress. Maybe that is what all anxiety is, and modern medicine just doesn’t know how to address is without feeding the monster that is pharmaceutical companies. Maybe I do have anxiety. But we look at it as my body no longer responds to the basic stresses of life as it was built to, and somewhere along the way, all of my hurt became physical. Bodies are really funny that way, how that can happen.

We don’t know what initially caused it. We think it has something to do with everything that happened at the church when we had to leave last year. We think that it has something to do with these first years of marriage, my body no longer healing over hurts, but storing them up and reacting physically. But I can say “We” now. I have a person who is with me, who emails me, who texts me, who I know wants to figure it out with me. She’s a follow of God, and I see God through her. He sent her this way to help people. I’m not completely healed, but I’m better, better than I was this winter. I don’t know what I would have done if my mom didn’t know of her.

And somewhere in the winter I cried out to God, after a period of mostly silence on my end. I told him that I’m mad at him. I’m mad that he let everything happen at the church. I’m mad that I gave my whole heart to people who ultimately told me that I wasn’t holy enough. I’m mad that I spent my high school years hating myself, my college years learning to love myself, just to turn around and be told that who I am is actually terrible, and I was in fact, right all along.

I understand why they did the things they did. I understand that they were hurting for other reasons, that they’re human and they had good intentions. I understand that I’m on the road to forgiveness and that it takes me a little longer than it takes some people. Forgiveness has always been the way in which my heart looks least like God’s. I like to mean things when I do them, and so forgiveness takes me a while to mean it. Forgiveness is a path that I’m still exploring.

I’ve been mad at those people who hurt me, but I’ve been more mad at God. Because I can understand why the people did what they did, but I can’t understand why God sent us there to do ministry, just to have us leave 9 months later, defeated and wounded, abandoning the students whose trust we worked hard to earn.

I started to search out why God lets bad things happen to us. I wish that I could tell you why. I still don’t know why. What I’ve got so far is that sometimes he wants us to seek him out, to admit that we need him, so he allows us to be brought to our knees. And that’s where I am.

I don’t know if I hadn’t “gotten sick”, where I’d be right now. I might still be mad and ignoring. But I’m sick, and I’m seeking. Is that why he allowed me to get sick? I don’t know. I don’t know why he does a lot of things. I might not ever know. And that’s a really hard reality. But he has his purposes. And he sees me.

Which is what Lisa Harper spoke on today at church. She said, God sees you and he remembers you. And eventually God gave Hannah, who was barren, a baby that she named Samuel, meaning “God has heard.” That doesn’t mean that God will answer every barren woman that way, and it doesn’t mean that he’s going to answer me the way I see fit. But he hears me. I’m not alone. I don’t just have my alternative medicine doctor, I have my alternative medicine God. And today in church, chest buzzing away, heart beating hard, jiggling my leg just to distract myself from the feeling, as I find that is my new norm, I was blessed by the reminder that God will remember me.

And that’s how I’ve been lately.

Expectations

Oh man. It’s been a while!  I have so much to update about.

I considered starting a completely new blog. I began to feel inadequate to be an authority on a healthy body, a healthy mind, or a healthy marriage. And lately I’ve been thinking…I never claimed to be an authority- I just claimed to be striving in those areas. I know I don’t like to read about someone who has it all together. I want to read about someone who is flawed, someone who is like me.

I also admitted to myself that I was writing more in hopes that others would find my blog and comment, for approval, when really, I just want to write to write. Writing is a part of me, carved into my being a long time ago. I’ve never written for anyone else and I don’t want to start now.

I’ve also had a hard time discerning what is appropriate blog material and what is not. There’s a line between showing your flaws and sharing too much. These last two years…I’ve had a lot to share. There’s been a lot of crap. Sometimes I think crap is better off publicly reflected on once you’re through it  than while enduring it. But I’m not sure. And that sums up a lot of things.

I’m just not sure.

So I’m not really going to write with expectations. Before I had a lot of expectations about what my blog would be. I would write every day. I would have something insightful to share when I wrote. I would know what my blog theme was about and stick to it. Here’s the truth. I’m inconsistent. I’m not good at doing something everyday. Some days I’m in a really bad mood and don’t feel insightful. I have no idea how some mega bloggers are in a good mood every day. Maybe they get in bad moods sometimes but they hide it well enough for their blog. I’m sure that’s the case. But I suck at hiding how I feel. I used to be under the impression that I was good at faking it or a good actress. And maybe I did used to be….but whatever the case, I’m not anymore. Something has happened to me. I’m transparent.

So, welcome to my transparency. A long time ago I had hoped that by the time I graduated high school I’d have it all together. Then that came and went and I thought…maybe when I graduate college. I’m not sure how it all got mixed together but somehow graduating college and getting married happened at the same time [I don't recommend this][!] and I realized that I wasn’t even going to have it all together by the time I got married. Anyone older than 22 can laugh at this, knowing how young 22 really is…but you never feel young when you’re the age that you are. You always take yourself seriously. Or at least, I always have. And I’m realizing… I’m not even going to have it all together when I have kids. I always thought that I would. I don’t think I have expectations about when I’ll have it all together anymore.

I don’t think I have too many expectations at all anymore. I’m not even sure whether this is good or bad…but I hope it’s good. It might be depressing. Maybe it’s okay to have other things of that nature…standards for yourself, goals, dreams, hope. Maybe it’s okay to not have expectations.

So, I’m going to write a little bit. For me and my handful of amazingly awesome friends who take the time to come to my blog…who take the time to tell me when I’m not writing that they miss it  Ohmygoodness. You found a little secret pathway to my heart.

So what’s been going on with me lately? Hmmm. I’ve been hurting. And I’ve been healing. If it was a pie graph, the hurting would be a much larger part of the circle…But the healing is pushing it’s way in there. God is demanding that I know that he loves me. We moved and it’s a story that’s a little longer but I’ve been praying that God show me his love. I’ve been sorry that I take for granted all the obvious ways that he’s shown me his love, but shamelessly asking for more of it anyways. Sometimes we need more love. Is too much ever enough? And of course he showed me his love in how he orchestrated our move, which I can go into more detail soon, and of course I said “Show me more.” I was like a Coke Zero commercial.

And we visited apartments in our new city and found The One and I should have been, but I wasn’t even phased when I saw our apartment number.

I had asked for more and there it was. Is there any more recognizable Bible verse number?

I said, “Show me more.”

He said, “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

And I’m reminded of it every time I walk into my home. I’m still asking for more. But I’m trying to be more thankful of the ways that he’s already answered me.

He’s sent me friends who have shown me his heart so much that it makes me emotional to just think about.

He’s given me a little family that teaches me more each day about his love.

He’s controlled my life even when I have been completely in the dark.

I don’t have it together. I don’t see all the ways yet. But I see some of them. And I’m still going to keep asking for more. Maybe this is one expectation that I can have.

And? 

My Life Completed

Life has been slow but steady here in the Civil War household. In summary, the job hunt continues and I have begun to cultivate an obsession with getting our new apartment not only in working order but on it’s way to completion. Think every closet ridiculously immaculate, frenzy of selling furniture on craigslist, clothes on eBay, scouring thrift shops, compulsively refreshing the craigslist furniture page every half hour! All in the hopes of turning our little love nest into a cozy, comfortable environment that we can live life in together. Of course, Colty has also been working very hard as well.

Speaking of Colt, he’s going to get his first official obedience training class in September. We’re all thrilled.

I got offered a job but shockingly did indeed turn it down. I hope to go into more detail in a later post soon. I felt like it was the best decision, even though if means the return of the sinking feeling on my stomach of the big question mark that is my future. For now, I will continue on my dwindling list of things to get done around the house and obsess about finding a black dinette table. A square one. That’s less than $150. Shouldn’t be too hard, right?

For now we have the table that my parents so kindly lent to us.

Nice, but doesn’t coordinate well with our black living room at all.

I can’t wait to do a post about our apartment and it’s decor! Soon soon. Possibly this week.

I DID work out today for the first time in…a while.

No worries, this ensemble was not worn in public. I did change to shorts that don’t blatantly clash. I hope you enjoy my ducky face.

I’m quite enjoying my new baby, which I’m actually typing this post on right now, seeing as how my elderly Mac is unfortunately mutinous. I refuse to buy him a third keyboard. He chose the wrong person to bully to fork over the cash for constant new accessories. Gold digger!

Our mailboxes are on the way to the gym so I checked it before working out and look what I found!

We got a new bookshelf which I was excited to proudly display my collection of the Twilight series (laugh at me all you want. I love it!) Unfortunately, the person that I lent the 2nd book of the 4 to dodged all my efforts to get my book returned to me and I have been left for several years with an incomplete collection, something that’s bothered me mainly because I never buy books and so the few that I intentionally do purchase are important to me. That, and seeing only 3 displayed reminds me of my frustrations with not getting it back.

SG knows this and ordered “New Moon” for me as a surprise! Yay husband points for him! And now all is right with the world.

After rejoicing over the fulfillment of my life and my husband’s thoughtfulness, I got my workout on.

Good old fashioned sweating wins out in the end. I never got to review the Paleo diet, but I will say that it wasn’t the best diet for me, being allergic to nuts. I missed out on one in four of the allowed food groups. It was a decent cleanse, but I really only needed about two weeks of it as opposed to the month that I did.

I went to the apartment gym for the first time and it was a million times better than our old apartment’s gym that made me fear for my life.

It also had a nice mirror for me to stare at my beautiful hair in the whole time.

I did my usual run/ jog/ incline alternating combo, mainly to test where my endurance is at after a good long break from exercising. I’m thinking about jumping into the Couch to 5k program in whatever week I currently fall under so we’ll see how that goes.

We all know how I am with consistency. It’s obviously my number one trait. Right up there with sporty.

.

Sporty duck.

I know you’re all dying to heat about my job & home updates but alas, I must prepare dinner.

I shall leave you with this little gem that I saw in the Walmart parking lot the other day.

My love for the Hunger Games seems healthy compared to that! Even though ironically I did just admit to holding a multiple year grudge for an unreturned Twilight book…

Northern Lady

A Father

Whenever you have an absence of something in life that you desire, it becomes the most important thing that you strive for. Money, love, success, power, respect. Absences shape us.

Arguably a father is the most important person in America today, as so many children are, for one reason or another, being raised solely by their mothers. Boys are growing up who don’t understand how to be men and repeating the cycle. Girls are growing up searching desperately to fill that hole in their life, never being taught how they actually deserve to be treated by a man. Women are learning to become the mother and the father, taking roles that while they excel at, should never have had to feel the weight of.

A mother is a little piece of God’s own heart. A Father is an extension of God’s own hand, designed to empower, to fill a place in our soul that can only be filled by him.

I can’t wait to someday celebrate this holiday with my husband, who I married for many reasons, but on this day is a reminder of the role I know that he is strong enough to fill that we have both know the special importance of. Starting a new legacy, I know will be the most important thing that we do in this life. And I’m looking forward to the day that we have the honor of doing so.

Happy Father’s Day to all the guys who are men. A good, involved, loving father is a beautiful, precious thing. I hope that today you are appreciated for the most important role that you play. Thank you for taking your time and your heart to make the world a better place, one child at a time, sharing the gift of responsibility with the woman in your life. Today is certainly a day to celebrate you.

Happy Father’s Day.

My Upcoming Trip

Confession: Sometimes I call SG “SG” in my head during real life. Not “Southern Gentleman”, but the initials that I use most commonly here.

SG does not love picture time as much as I do.

SG is not his real name. That’s why it’s mildly entertaining that I’m beginning to naturally refer to him as that in my mind.

I actually really love his real name. It’s different but not in a bad way. When I was a little girl I would try to imagine what my future husband’s name would be and it turns out that was useless, as I’d never even heard of his name until I met him during my junior year of college. Since then I’ve heard a handful of people with his name and now understand the very southern roots that it comes from. It makes sense why I never heard it growing up in New England.

Of course if we're on the floor Colt thinks he has to be a part of it.

But I have a very boring, normal, common name and he has a wonderful, nice-sounding, unique name that I’m completely envious of that I wish that I could share with you.

[Exciting Announcement]

I struggle in the spontaneity department, I really do, so planning a 5 day trip less than 10 days ahead of time is a real improvement for me but…I’m going to Chicago on Monday To see…duh da duh, surprise surprise, my friend that I named Chicago for the blog

Chicago is on the right My newly-pregnant sister- in law is on the left.

Hurray!! While SG is training during the week and I’m still unemployed is the perfect time for me to go visit one of my bestest friends! I’m so excited…I haven’t seen her since the fall…for 9 months or so. That’s a lot time!! But somehow we’ve managed to see each other at least once every year since we both went away to college. We became friends in Connecticut before our freshman year of high school and haven’t lived near each since the fall of 2006. She’s been in Chicago and I’ve been somewhere down south.

So on Monday Colty and I will be making the nice like 10 hour drive. But it will be worth it

[Saturday]

This morning SG got a bunch of errands done while I listed some clothes on ebay. If you want to check them out, then click here! Then we went to the mall where he proceeded to get a haircut from a silent man. Really, he didn’t speak. It was very odd.

We also tried to go to the library but we found out when we got there that it’s closed on Saturdays and Sundays Boo! Now I can’t get any audio books for my long drive! Whatever shall I do? Podcasts possibly? On Cd? My transmitter for my ipod for the car got stolen two years ago and I haven’t replaced it since. I don’t even know where to begin with finding podcasts and putting them on cd! Oh man.

After the haircut and the library attempt I got a new cute shirt at Plato’s which I’m sure you’ll see soon and we rented “I Am Number Four” which probably won’t be amazing, but SG loves Disney and I’m interested in watching it for Dianna Agron and Alex Pettyfer.

SG wasn’t thrilled with the lack of groceries around the house due to my diet, so we grabbed Subway on the way home. On the way it started POURING, which is ironic, because I had two people coming by the apartment to get the shelf and teal chair that I listed on craigslist.

It’s ironic because the last time it down poured was when I was making a craigslist transaction as well.  But I was nice and dry inside my own house this time. Much better.

We’re in the middle of Pearl Harbor right now. I hope you all have a great Saturday night!

Avocado Chili Chicken & Celebrities

Last night I was finally in the mood again for a nice cooked meal. I ran out to Wal-Mart again and picked up some new avocados, since my first 2 spoiled. Along with the avocados, I ended up picking up a few more things

And I bought my first watermelon! I definitely decided that husbands come in handy for carrying watermelons from the car and up the apartment stairs. And of course I took the other 2 bags at the same time because I’m stubborn like that.

I made Chicken in Avocado Green Chili Sauce with Spicy Butternut squash. I got it from the same Paleo recipe blog that I got the other recipes from last week, but I don’t want to link to it because I don’t want her to know that I really didn’t like her other recipes.

It was definitely decent. I really loved it at first but as I got about halfway through the flavor started to be strange, which is what I noticed with her other recipes. But it certainly would be worth a try if you’re looking for something different!

Basically you boil the chicken, roast a peeled, cubed butternut squash with oil at 350 for about 25 minutes, and make this sauce:

2 minced garlic cloves
half a diced ancho chili (which I couldn’t find so I diced jalepenos)
4-5 diced tomatill0s (which I didn’t know existed before this recipe. But they do. They’re little green tomatoes.)
cilantro to taste

Put all of the above in a pan with 1 tbs of canola oil and heat until the tomatillos start to break down (which was maybe 15 minutes for me?)

Then dice 1-2 avocados (Two for me because I laaahve them.) and when the sauce is done, mash them in with the tomatillos sauce. I think I just like saying that word. Tomatillos! with 1 tbs lime juice.

Serve sauce over shredded chicken, butternut squash on the side. It was suppooooosed to be “spicy” butternut squash with the other half of the ancho chili cooked in there with it, but I forgot to substitute the jalapenos.

Avocados are my new favorite food obsession. Coconut has not moved far down the list…but the whole coconut water experience really really scarred me.

[What Celebrity Would You Want To Look Like]

Now, I’m all for being confident in yourself and loving who you are, don’t get me wrong. I’m certainly on that journey myself.

But the other day I got into a discussion about what celebrity I would want to look like if I could. I’m not talking celebrity whose life you’d like to have or a celebrity you like a lot or would like to meet. I mean who would you look like if you could?

We all know about my girl crush on Emily Maynard, but I consider her a normal person who happens to be semi-recognizable now.

Of course, all celebrities could fall under that definition, but mainly I’m talking about someone really famous.

I decided on either Rachel Bilson or Evangenline Lily.

She’s so little and so stinkin cute.

And Evangeline is just so naturally beautiful and fit as well.

There may be someone else but I honestly can’t think of anyone off the top of my head. Besides, of course, my favorite twins.

Ashley in particular, when she’s not looking crazy, is quite beautiful.

So what celebrity would you want to look like if you could? And don’t say you want to look like yourself

Northern Lady