Thank you Thank you Thank you!

A big THANK YOU to all my awesome donors (so far):

Brett Albright
Catherine Austin
Brian Bazan
Adam
The Boyds
Grandpa and Grandmother
Dad
Mikey (and there's a blog shout out for you, brother)
Mom
The Carmeans
The Daughertys
Brian Demeyer
Christiana Earle
The Earles
Kristin Geiger (and James)
Booker T
Nancy Hester
The Kruses
Katie Kummer
Sara McD
James Palmer
The Pawasarats
Sherry Pederson
Bev Poe
Lynn Renner (and Jerry)
Angel Suhor (and RJ)
Sherril Theis


With the help of all these amazing people, I have raised over $1600!! Thank you for donating to a great cause!

Dividing Line

My brother has this theory that all women are bi-polar. Naturally, in most cases I completely disagree with him. Obviously there are the few women that are literally diagnosed with bi-polar disorder but I think that his blanket statement is pretty much ludicrous.

Although, in my own strange way, I'm feeling so completely divided lately that it's almost bi-polar to a certain degree. It's almost as if you could draw a line down the center of my mind and body and have two completely opposite feelings and opinions. Half of me is relaxed and feeling so prepared for the wedding and the other half is scared out of my mind and completely overwhelmed by the details. I go from day to day on this as sometimes I am able to see the big picture and other times I just end up feeling totally bogged down.

I have so many goals and reasons for wanting to work out and eat healthy but then my devil half craves only pizza and fried buffalo flavored things. I like to believe that part of my lack of motivation is coming from the fact that the top of my left foot has been in bit of nagging pain for awhile and my shin/ankle discomfort from my fall down the stairs has only exacerbated that. I know I need to take it easy (especially in those barefoot dance classes where I believe the pain originates from).

I want to leave the city and some moments I cannot imagine one more day of it but I also want to stay in this place forever. Some days I love being in our little place and other days I feel so suffocated by it's size (or lack there of). I have moments where I cannot imagine someday having to drive everywhere and times when I would give my left arm to no longer have to ride the buses and trains. Why can't I just pick a side and figure some of this stuff out?

One the one hand, I am completely ok with the way that everything just is right now. On the other, I am freaking out about the future and what changes might be coming my way, whether they are under my control or not. There are so many things coming my way, big life-changing things, the least of which involves changing my last name, that I am not looking forward to having to face.

I guess I have never really been an indecisive person so the fact that I am swaying or wavering between feeling one way or the other about several different big life things is sort of stressful. And it's all stress I am essentially bringing on myself for no apparent reason!

In the book I'm currently reading (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver), the author argues that springtime makes people crazy. When I was reading it on the plane last weekend, I identified with what she was saying immediately. I am filled with so much promise and hope when I think of the upcoming warmer weather but yet deep down I know that I will tire of being too hot when the time comes.

Part of life is dealing with changes no matter how big or small they are and maybe the changing of the seasons is Mother Earth's way of constantly keeping us on our toes and prepared for the other things that life will bring us. The seasons always remind me that like all things, this too shall pass, and for me, the this that needs to pass is the way I am feeling divided.

Leave it to Africa

Not the continent, the song, "Africa", by the band, Tutu, circa my childhood. I've loved it pretty much forever and just finally last week got around to downloading it (thanks for those iTunes gift cards at Christmas). I have a bunch of new stuff (you should get the new Dave, it's good) on shuffle play on my iPod and during my train ride home this evening it happened to come on. It broke me from my Blackberry-Facebook-app-induced stupor to look up and catch what must have unequivocally been the best sunset so far of 2010. Yeah, isn't that just a revelation? The sun has decided to bless us here in Chicago with something other than below 10 degree temperatures (you know that whole clouds are a blanket theory, it's true, so the sun is my mortal enemy during Chicity winters and the sun sets at oh, around 3:30 p.m. so sunsets just plain suck).

But back to tonight, it was beautiful and I am so glad that Africa awoke my senses and I was able to enjoy it. I wish I had a picture for you but do a mental one of the brightest pink color reflecting on the high rises. On the elevated train, I had a pretty sweet bird's eye view. It was enough to fill my heart and soul and at that moment I needed it. Today has been a roller coaster. After a long weekend, I had a couple of pieces of mail that upset me a bit and also got some other not-bad-just-kind-of-annoying-and-out-of-my-control news that had me in a bit of a tizzy. I got a couple of pieces of great news too, so don't think it was all doom and gloom but the day was crazy in that it culminated in me falling down half a flight of stairs. Not to worry, I fell on my butt and mostly slid. My left side wrist and shin aren't feeling 100% but I think my pride was hurt more than any body part. Ug. It was just one of those days, you know? So to stop it all and take a moment to enjoy the city, enjoy the hope of spring, and just be filled with that bright pink sunset was just what I needed.

Twitter?

I kind of feel about Twitter the same way I feel about the massive vampire craze. Which is to say that maybe these are the first things that I am supposed to be "old" about. You know? "Those new-fangled things are just for kids!"

Except, I don't think I want to have that old attitude yet. I mean, I don't even have kids so how can I already be uncool and not on top of the times? (And no, I am not going to get into the vampire thing!)

So, is Twitter cool? I think I would enjoy following *some* celebrities. But is it like a big popularity contest where you have to try to get eleventy billion followers? I don't even know how many people that I know have Twitter accounts.

What's the dealy yo?

What's been going on?

Man, I have sucked royally at blogging the other day and the sad part is that I just haven't felt inspired or motivated to write (which for someone who is constantly thinking and mouthing off about said thoughts, it's been kind of odd).

It's not that things aren't happening because life has been moving at record pace. I even had a thought last week about not blogging anymore period, which I have never really considered before.

But that's neither here nor there, really, so here are some small updates in case you care about what's been going on for me.

WW: yeah. I have been royally sucking it up in the whole "living on plan" concept lately. I gained .2 two weeks ago, .4 last week and I am going back and forth about even weighing in this week because I ate lots of Mexican food, pizza, buffalo flavored everything and did not spend a wink of time in the gym last week. Eh. I hate to say something as clique or b.s.-y as "it was bound to happen" but seriously, it really was bound to happen and I know what kind of work I need to do to get back into the swing of things.

Wedding stuff: Last week, I got a cake (actually two cakes: one for the wedding and one for the rehearsal dinner because we aren't huge fans of the dessert at our rehearsal dinner restaurant). And I did not resist eating a ton of sample cake. OMG it was delicious. I also met with a girl who is going to do our day of coordination (my church hasn't had a wedding in 15 years or so, so yes, I need someone to run the show). She's also doing our invitation order and flowers. Wedding flowers = mad hella annoying so I am glad to have that done. I gave her pretty much free license to do whatever she wants because I am the anti-flower person. The moral of this story is please don't ask me what kinds of flowers I'm having (because I don't know or care) and please don't tell me technical things about said flowers (because again, I don't know or care). Flowers to me are the bottom-feeders of my wedding. We found a DJ, which oddly enough, was kind of like the flowers part for me and I wasn't looking forward to the process of finding one. But I'm happy with it and like basically everything else associated with the nuptials, I'm glad to have it done so I don't have to think about it anymore. My mom and I also went shopping and found her dress in about 20 minutes. Like I told her at the time, this is just how my wedding rolls. We find things that work and we make decisions. It's really fun because it seriously freaks out all our vendors. Her dress is beautiful on her and I'm excited to see it post-alterations.

Valentine's Day: We woke up and walked to get the most delicious coffee drink ever (Caribou Coffee's Mint Condition- go get you some) before heading to Michigan Ave to register at Chicago's only Williams-Sonoma. It was about 10 billion times better than our obnoxious experience at Macy's (which btw, I deleted every item off that registry this morning, there were way too many annoyances involved to want to use them anymore). I seriously want to work at Williams-Sonoma someday. They had a chick there that was baking the whole time. We had some Chocolate Chip Quick Bread (bought the mix, it was that good) and I think Adam may have pilfered a Valentine's Day sugar cookie or two. For most of the hour before they opened, we were the only couple in the store, which made it so nice. The sun was shining and I could actually feel it's warmth so we kept walking and accomplishing things. We stopped in at Sunglasses Hut so I could redeem my Valentine's gift from Adam (a coupon for my first ever nice pair of shades). I ended up with some sweet aviators that make me feel (and hopefully look) cool. We then headed down to Men's Wearhouse and did all the selections for the men in our wedding party. It's just become expected that whomever is working with us will make at least 3 comments about how easy we are to work with or how fast we make decisions. It's tux selection, not rocket science, right? We also had ideas of what we wanted before we even walked in. There were about 11,000 choices but luckily Adam is like me and knows what he likes. Without giving everything away, we ended up with some lovely tuxes and Adam looked really nice in the jacket style he chose. After that, we had a quick brunch/lunch and headed down to Bed, Bath and Beyond (my replacement for Macy's) to register and for Adam to use his V Day gift card on some new fancy pillows. I'm not going to lie, we were basically exhausted after that but managed to trek down to Greektown for a really nice dinner. All in all, it was a busy day but it was fun to spend the day together focused on our big day in October!

So for the most part, we have the biggest stuff wrapped up for the wedding! In my mind, the sooner the better because I hope to not have tons left to do as the time sneaks up on me. As of tomorrow, we are only 8 months away.

From the mailman

I've been enjoying warmer weather in Texas all week and look what was in my gigantic pile of mail waiting for me at home:

I was totally unaware that I would be getting a results book from the marathon. COOL!

Just in case you were interested, there was no one else with my exact time (5:44:00) although I finished one second after a 24 year old woman from Mississippi and a 21 year old woman from Kansas was two seconds after me (there were also two men with times of 5:44:02).

The last finisher was actually only 97th in her division as she is a 64 year old woman from Illinois. She finished with a time of 7:46:33. Which means she ran for over two hours longer than me and I was getting pretty darn sick of running myself. And 64 years old? YOU GO GIRL! If I can run a marathon at 64 years old, I will consider myself to be a baller.

There are also more detailed stories of lots of people, including the man who runs in the banana suit, who I think is a friend of my hairdresser.

Overall, it was a cool surprise for my homecoming. Oh and I ran outside for the first time since the marathon while I was in San Antonio. I only ran for about 40 minutes but it was still SO NICE to be able to do that. Here in Chi-city? Not so much. There is a foot of snow on the ground so it'll be another couple of months before I can hit up the lakefront path again.

Have I ruined it for myself?

I totally meant to have pictures of our awesome CSA box that we got yesterday but I didn't go and pick it up and my sweet Adam had everything put away into the fridge by the time I got home from yoga (which by the way was hard, but great last night). What is a CSA box, you ask? If you were to google the term, you'd find that CSA is Community Supported Agriculture and the basic premise of most programs is that you (and a group of other people that are into local foods) will make a payment to a farmer before the harvest season (usually June-Oct) to fund their growing season and in return you'll receive a box of that week's harvest each week during those months. I read about it in Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food and decided to see what was available in our area. Turns out quite a lot. Anyhoo, I signed us up for a much less money intensive program and we can get a box (or half box like we got this week) when we need it and we just mail a check each week. We get our stuff from a cooperative of farms in Wisconsin and they do their program year round, which is pretty cool in CSA land. It's easy, you sign up, mail a check and pick up at a local hippie coffee shop.

For the good... the box, or really paper bag, we got was full of goodness. Mushrooms, oranges, bananas, a large melon (not sure if it's cantaloupe or honeydew), apples, potatoes, onions, broccoli and some other assortments. I was surprised of the quantity. I also purchased a dozen eggs and they look GLORIOUS, all different colors of browns. And they are supposedly laid by happy chickens in Wisconsin. Cute.

For the bad... ok. My main reason for doing this was to hopefully educate myself on things that are in season and I know that the bananas and melon did not come from Wisconsin in the dead of winter. I realize they are just trying to give us our money's worth during the off-season but I would have rather seen beets (which would have required some research for me to cook with and some bravery since I'm not sure I've ever had any interest in eating them). So, I'm not sure how I feel about getting more of it although it was kind of nice to get a large quantity of produce for $9 and some sweet eggs that won't make me feel insanely guilty about the chickens.


Now, for the sad news. I think I may be on the path to ruining one of my greatest pleasures in life. The worst part about making major commitments to eating as much of your daily diet in healthful, whole foods is that you start not being able to tolerate the not so healthful things you mix in there. The last couple of times we've gone out drinking, I've had a rip-roaring headache in the morning, which is not something that has ever happened to me before. Last night I had a Miller Lite and two hard ciders and my head is bumpin! What is that about? Please don't let this new lifestyle ruin beer for me! Not cool, body. I have been trying to treat you as well as I can so don't let me down.

It's mornings like this that make me so irritated that I don't have an endless supply of real (not Americanized) German beer here. Why do we put sulfites and other crap (that ultimately turns into formaldehyde in your body... yes, the same stuff they soak the pigs and frogs you dissected in school in) in our alcohol here? Grrr.

Enough ranting. Must eat oatmeal and go to the gym to sweat off the beer and hopefully rid myself of the headache.