Going Back to the Mothership

Today is Monday and my family is going to Alabama on Thursday.  I am deeply regretting not getting my act together and buying a really nice camera before this trip.  My grandparents' house is gorgeous, and it makes me sick to think that their house and land might not always be where we go to when we want to remember our roots.  Thus the reality of changing times and the people who I always thought of as full of vitality and life growing older.  It is wholly unfair, but I can't do anything about it except make time to go there and soak it in before it is gone.  I really want to capture it in photographs, but my camera is just not very nice.  The camera I want is almost $2,000, so I guess I better start saving.  In the mean time I will try my best with the camera I have.  I am not bringing my computer on this trip, so I will be MIA for a while after Wednesday night. 

These are some pics from our last couple of trips...

I am thinking about joining Twitter.  Not that I need another excuse to use the internet and my phone constantly, but it looks like fun.  I have been delving deeper into the world of fer-serious blogging the past few weeks, and am super jealous of the women who got to go to BlogHer a couple of weeks ago.  Here is my first twitter:

I fit into a size 8 jean, trouser, and skirt at the GAP today.  That hasn't happened in about 5 years.  Oh, and I bought all of them.

A Beautifully Crafted, Supple, Durable Dilemma

As has been established, I am now a vegetarian.  I have been a vegetarian for one month tomorrow, and it is going smashingly.  I have more energy than normal and just feel good in general.  What I have come to realize over the past month is that giving up the meat was the easy part.  The part that is going to kick me in the ass is living without wonderful, beautiful, soft, hypocritical leather.  I L-O-V-E LEATHER.  Unlike my past food intake, I have the evidence of my former lifestyle all around me in the form of wallets, car seats (It must have taken an entire cow to cover the inside of that car.  Sorry Bessie!), planners, PURSES, watches belts and most importantly, shoes.  And it is not even the having the leather that bothers me, it is the not being able to purchase leather anymore that is sad to me.  It is the best feeling in the whole wide world to go into a beautiful store and pick out a beautiful, well-made purse that you know is going to last you forever, and drop that credit card like a ton of bricks on the counter.  Is that materialistic?  Yep.  Is it only that good if the purse is Italian-tanned, tumbled leather?  Absolutely.  

OK, so where is all this pent-up leather-loving coming from, you might ask?  It has been pointed out to me on several occasions that I am being a hypocrite if I choose to continue buying leather products and wearing leather now that I am a vegetarian and claiming that part of the reason I became a vegetarian is for the animals.  Well, people, it is partly for the animals, so I am going to have to suck it up, huh?  I can't do anything about the things I have bought in the past, and I refuse to throw away literally thousands of dollars of beautiful, hand-picked things because of a lifestyle change.  I have chosen to severely limit my leather purchases in the future, with the main exception being my shoes.  I have horrific feet problems -- of course they are enormous, fallen arches, horrible cramping, etc. -- so it is really impractical to never buy a pair of Borns again, for example.  Here is the thing.  My feeling is that I do not have to have meat in my diet to be the healthiest I can be, and in fact eliminating it might make me more healthy, but in order to justify spending money on items like high-quality purses and shoes that are investments and will last a very long time, leather is the best quality material available.  Therefore, if you see me out in public with my enormous red leather purse, it is not necessary to point out to me that it was, indeed, made out of a cow.  I know.  Thanks.  I don't need to justify all of this, it is just something that I have been asked several times, especially by people who know my affinity for shopping, so I just wanted to explain where I am at.

ANYWAY, let it be known that I have discovered Death Cab for Cutie.  They are pretty amazing.  I hate their name and I feel like a total dweeb saying it, but their music is so ethereal; deep yet simple, I wish I had not resisted them for so long.  I bought Transatlanticism first, and I recently bought Plans.  My favorites so far are We Looked Like Giants, Passenger Seat, Someday You Will be Loved, and I Will Follow You into the Dark.  Granted, I have only listened to Plans once through, but those are my initial feelings.  The thing is, I ALWAYS find my self strangely attracted to weird guys in weird bands who make weird music.  I have an emo disease of some kind.  I had to say that to preface my next new music love.  PLEASE DON'T DISOWN ME AS A FRIEND!  It's.....Metro Station!  Miley Cyrus's older brother's band!! AHH!  I simply can't help myself.  It is just my thing.  The way he looks has facilitated my like for their music.  It is just a surface love, not a deep love like Coheed or anything.  Their song on the radio is Shake Shake, which you might know.  

I can't embarrass myself any further.  Ta ta for now:)

It is a Miracle of Some Kind

Well, I am actually updating in a timely manner! Like I said, it is a miracle of some kind. I just got home and dinner is in the oven. While I am waiting for the food I am flipping between Jon and Kate + 8 and That 70s Show and wishing Dave was home and we were eating dinner. I wanted to update and give the fun news that I passed my 10 lb mark in Weight Watchers this week! As of Monday I weighed 149.2 down from 160. Yay! It was really rewarding to hit that mark. As for the vegetarian change, it is going really well too! I honestly have not missed eating meat at all, but I will admit the thought of never eating El Con's soft chicken flautas and the occasional Arby's roast beef sandwich makes me a little sad. But I think it is for the best, and I just think of all the pros when I am feeling sad about foods that used to be my go-to comforts.

Something else that I wanted to share with everyone is a change that David and made a while ago -- we gave up bottled water! It was kind of hippie-ish, but Dave played along and now a lot of our friends have joined on in! Now, I think in most places, for instance, my parents' house, they don't need bottled water because the water naturally tasted great, but here in Waco it tastes horrible! It is simply called Waco Water and everyone knows that it is rank. It affects the soft drinks, the tea, the coffee, you name it, so I always used to use bottled water or the filtered water from our fridge. About three months ago I decided that we were being super wasteful with our daily bottled water consumption, so I did some research and ordered us BPA-free water bottles by CamelBak from REI. I had never heard of REI before, but apparently it is a BFD, and they had a great selection of BPA-free bottles. I admit, they kind of look like sippy cups for grown-ups, but they work really well and don't leak or anything. Dave and I were the first to get them, then my parents wanted them, and then Jessica and Jennie from work got them too! I am just glad we are reducing the water bottle waste:)



So today my music obsession might seriously surprise some of you. I LOVE the NEW New Kids on the Block!! You have to understand, I grew up at the very end of their reign and more in the Hanson, Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync craze, even though I never really swooned for any of them. My sister on the other hand was obsessed with all of them plus the Spice Girls. I was into Alanis Morrisette, Savage Garden, The Wallflowers, and people like that. The point is that the NEW New Kids on the Block are SO tacky-licious, so over-the-top ridiculous, that I just have to love it. The slang! The beach! The voguing! The synchronized dancing in matching outfits!!! It is too much to handle. I absolutely can't get enough. I think I have an illness of some kind! Help!

You MUST watch if you haven't experienced it yet!

Doin' it for the Animals, and My Colon....

TMI? Then don't read on. This post is long overdue, as I don't make it a priority to update this thing. I have, however, made it a priority in my life to change some things about myself and my life in general that I have been meaning to do for a really long time. The first major thing that I have done for myself is to lose some weight. Now, every time I tell people this they look at me like I am nutso, which I do understand because I did not look overweight necessarily, but I am a firm believer in things being relative, and relative to my health and weight when I was in school I had become the most unhealthy I have been in my life. The history of my weight is that I was pretty chubbums in middle school, and the very end of my 8th grade year and the summer before my 9th grade year I lost it all. And my all I mean I had NO body fat. I was as tall as I am now, which is 5'10", and weighed about 109 lbs. I am not 100% sure how I was mobile. It was an extremely awkward skinny, not a good skinny. Then as high school and college went on I progressively gained weight and I was at a steady 135 for a really long time. I wore between a size 8 and a size 10, which seems kind of big, but I am super tall, so I need the length associated with those sizes. I never felt big at all wearing a 10. So by the time I finished college and got married I weighed about 140. I was totally happy with that, but in the time between finishing school and now I gained about 20 lbs. This was mainly due to the fact that I went from being very active with school and work to sitting at a desk in front of the computer all the time and not changing my eating habits at all. I was not really unhappy with my weight except for the fact that the clothes I was so used to wearing were not fitting me anymore, and I did not want to have to buy all new clothes in a size 12. So that is why I chose to lose some weight. I decided to do Weight Watchers. The idea of keeping lists and weekly weigh-ins was appealing to me, but going in to meetings was definitely not, so I chose to do the online program. My starting weight was 160, and my target weight is 139. I have lost almost 10 lbs since I started, and I am really happy with results, pace, etc.

The next thing I have done that I have wanted to do for forever is become a vegetarian (hence the title of the post). I know that may sound kind of funny to say I have wanted to do that for forever, but I was not in a place in my life where I had the freedom and money to make that choice until recently. I am not a PETA member or anything yet, but I do have extreme compassion towards animals and I don't think eating meat fits in with that mentality. I have officially been a vegetarian for one week now, but before that I slowly went off of red meat to make the transition easier. This switch has fit in well with Weight Watchers, and David is not yet malnourished, so things are going well. I bought some books to help me out, and I had my second veggie burger ever yesterday for the 4th of July, and it was super tasty! I am just really excited about this change, how it will impact my health, and I am glad I am doing it now because it is really important that when I do become pregnant I have healthy habits in place and I can teach my kids healthy habits and compassion towards animals. Here is where the TMI comes in: as some of you may know, I have had digestive issues for a really long time now. I think most people do, but they are too embarrassed to say anything. Well, I am not, and the #1 benefit of the Weight Watchers and the vegetarian thing is that they are highly fiber rich. Not only has this helped me lose weight, but it is totally preventive for things like colon cancer (which my family has a history of). It is super important people! Get on the fiber trian!

The third thing I have done is just get my shit together in general. I have always wanted to be one of those people that gets up really early, gets ready for work, maybe runs some errands on the way there, still gets in by 8:00, has their morning coffee, goes to the farmer's market, etc. Before about a month ago I was one of those people that couldn't get my ass out of bed before 7:30, got to work after all my part time people were already there, couldn't be bothered to set up the coffee maker the night before so it just never got done and the last filter I used would be moldy the next time I checked, NEVER made it to the farmer's market, insisted on taking a shower in the morning because I was too lazy to do it the night before, etc. etc. Today, that person pisses me off. The main part of all that that makes me upset at the way I used to be is the whole getting to work on time thing. I am amazed I wasn't reprimanded in some way. It is definitely unacceptable to get to work at 8:55 in the morning when you expect your part timers to be there by 8:30! So I made some changes. They weren't motivated by one thing in particular, but they all add up to a better me. I started taking my shower at night most of the time, and I don't bother blow drying my hair, I just let it air dry over night then flat iron it in the morning. This leaves plenty of time for me to get up about 7, put my make up on, flat iron my hair, get dressed, take DJ out, get my lunch together, and turn the coffee make on (which I now religiously set up the night before) by 7:45-7:50 ish. Sometimes it is a little later than that, I definitely still have those days that I am dragging a little, but that is the usual routine. I get to work at an appropriate time, sometimes I go to the farmer's market (it is on my way to work for cryin' out loud), sometimes I skip the homemade coffee and go visit my friends at Starbucks, it all just depends. The point is, I am excited and feel like I have entered a new phase in my life. Dave, bless his heart, is so supportive and has graciously tried, and I think genuinely liked!, my tofu salads, vegetarian lasagna, and other dishes I am experimenting with. I still encourage him to eat meat if he wants whenever we do dinner separately or when he goes to his parents' house, but my hope is that as we do this thing together his dependency on meat, especially red meat, will lessen. I don't want him dying of a heart attack when he is like 40 or something!!! Not something I want to have to worry about. Anyway, I will hopefully keep this updated on the progress I am seeing with my weight and vegetarian lifestyle. Now that I feel like I have a grip on some other stuff, maybe this blog will become a priority too. Wish me luck!