Reluctantly Healthy~

This week I had dinner with Charlotte, who is one of my steady girl dinner date partners. We share a love of red meat, wine, and have a shared intolerance of stupidity. It gives us lots to talk about.

Anyway, during the course of conversation we were talking about the ridiculousness of weight loss and gain. She, being pregant, has an excuse for weight gain. I am simply gestating a twenty pound pizza. And simply writing that sentence makes me want a pepperoni. What on earth is the matter with me???

Absolutely nothing.

Here is my view on weight. Would I like to be 150 pounds and toned and smoking hot and never have to worry about thunder thighs ever again? Of course. Would I like that at the expense of pizza and pop and ice cream and M&M's and all the other completely awful-for-me things that I like? Not a chance.

Genetically, I am not meant to be skinny. Seriously, I researched this and some people's genetic code makes their fat cells more likely to absorb and hang on to fat than other people. It also genetically picks what places on your body that fat clings to. When I told Lola this she didn't feel better. I thought it was reassuring - like....'Hey! Its not us! Its our jeans! Errr....genes!' But she was not reassured. As a matter of fact she went crazy and declared war on our genes, getting all skinny and toned and reinforcing all my bottled up shame from eating more than two doughnuts in one sitting. Ugh.

BUT...

I saw how much Lola had to do to get skinny and toned - and I watch her beat herself up for gaining a few pounds back or losing tone and getting soft or squishy a bit. And I think about all that work sometimes when I sit on my couch and eat my doughnuts. Poor Lola, missing all this sugary goodness and eating her little portions of low fat, low carb, (blasphemy!) mini meals and snacks.

This is not to say that I just sit around and eat and work on producing fat rolls. I occaisionally declare war on my genes from time to time as well. About two years ago I got on a scale just out of curiosity and almost passed out when it said two hundred pounds. Two hundred pounds? How on earth had I got there? If you are two hundred pounds, this is not an insult to you by the way - but for me, that was the line. I knew where I had been my whole life and for me to cluelessly just climb the scale and hit that point was ridiculous. I was completely motivated to get healthy and wage war on my super-soaking fat cells.

So Lola and I and Leah and Olive and a few others all joined a local body challenge and vowed to be in bikinis by summer. Lola kicked all our asses and still today makes me look like her chunky version, but I lost thirty pounds and I felt better than I had in years. At 170, I went out and bought bikinis and lived in them all summer long. I was happy. I was healthy. And I was shameless. And according to medical professionals...I was still twenty pounds overweight.

I am never going to be at my doctor recommended weight. I haven't seen 150 pounds on a scale since I was in high school and I have zero plans that involve ever seeing it again. I know that Americans are overweight and that we all should be health conscious, but at what point do we say enough? People are made in all shapes and sizes and we should embrace that. Especially us women. Let's stop beating ourselves up and find that things that are beautiful about us - whether they jiggle or not. Because let's be real here....do you really want to live a long healthy life....without donuts?

Floor Plans~

So from time to time my brain snaps and I believe that I am adept at all things construction. Never mind that I have zero experience in anything that requires manual labor or that my avorite kind of project is one that is neatly wrapped up in four hours or less. However impractical, I have random moments of grandiose dreaming where I believe I know all.

Prime example. When Leah and I first moved in together we were sitting around - at like six o'clock in the evening mind you - when we decided we should paint our bedrooms. Not one of them, but both. Painting party! So we got on painting clothes, headed up the road to Menards where we spent at least an hour debating colors, came home and moved all the furniture and started painting......at eight o'clock at night. And not just plain painting - we got creative. One whole wall in my room is striped four different shades of blue - which looks really cool if you stand far away and ignore the fact that I freehanded it so I could do it all in one night instead off taping it off and being patient like a normal person. Leah painted her room green with drawn on circles and stencils. We were up for a very long time.

We get this trait from our dad. The entire time I was growing up my dad was always into some kind of project. These projects almost always were a surprise to my mom, who would come to find a random wall demolished or her cupboards all ripped out, the dreaded drop clothes spread out. However, my dad probably knew what he was doing most of the time - where I just think I do.

What prompted this blog? I ripped out my bedroom carpet last night at around seven o'clock. I was certain there was beautiful hard wood floor underneath so for three hours I moved furniture, yanked up carpet pulled upholstery nails, tore up padding, and generally made a mess. Underneath was a beautiful, old wood floor.....littered with spots and stains. Perhaps it was overly optimistic of me to assume a gorgeous floor was just sitting there waiting to be revealed, but now I have no carpet and a wood floor that requires more loving care than I think I am qualified to give. So I am going to give it my best shot - possibly rent a sander and play with it over the weekend. Perhaps try and shanghai Jack into helping me by offering up my body for the good of my floor. And if all else fails....I will shopping for area rugs Sunday night.

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Pretty Feet On The Horizon~

I love to win. I mean I really, really, really love to win. Anything. Everything. The hardest part of my day is fighting the urge to beat the kids in Candyland every day. Ok...maybe I am not that bad, but it is a close call.

Anyway- I won round one of the weight loss challenge with my sisters. (Feel free to applaud here) I lost seven pounds and earned myself a free pedicure, courtesy of Lola and Leah...aka 'The Losers'. I am going to bask in my glory through Christmas and then it is back on....they should prepare for a January defeat as well~

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Watch Me Win A Pedicure~

It. Is. On.

Lola has challenged me to a weight loss contest. I, in turn, extended the challenge to Leah. And now there is a three way sister battle for calorie counting dominance. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

It all began because Lola was whining about her stomach. Here is what you need to know about that - Lola is the thinnest sister by about thirty pounds. She whines like she is overweight when in reality she routinely rocks her bikini. (I am hoping that she is so happy that I said that about her bikini that she doesn't whine about me calling her a whiner.) When I said that I really wanted to lose some, too, she issued the challenge. Here are the rules - from now until Dec. 20 whoever loses the most pounds wins. Super easy rules, huh? And then we are doing a second round from Dec. 20th to Jan. 20th. So there are two chances to win! The first round prize is a pedicure and the second round prize is dinner. Both prizes will be awarded at the end of January when we go out for a spa day and dinner to celebrate our birthdays.

I am going to win - at least the first one. Not because I am super strong willed or a great exerciser....but because I have the most to lose. So it will be much easier for me to lose than it will be for the other two. I also have an elliptical machine right in my house staring at me, making me feel guilty if I don't use it. And I work out of my house. So it would seem that this contest is made for me. However, I have awful, terrible willpower when it comes to things like pizza, chocolate, and...mmmmm yummmy..... bread. So keep your fingers crossed for me and I will let you know periodically how much I am rocking it!

Perfect Day~

Today was a perfect day.

I woke up headache and hangover free after a fantastic night out with Jack and Leah and her future husband, Hercules.

I went to Mass at my church, where my family has gone all my life and where I know most people’s faces if not their names. I sat in the choir and waved out at my nephew in the congregation where he sat with several members of my family. He didn’t wave back, but the kid in front of him did.

I went to McDonalds for lunch with my family after – which we have been doing since I was about seven. I ate apples instead of fries to be healthy and they actually tasted better than the fry I snagged from my sister. I felt vindicated.

I went to my Moms, harassed my Dad, and refreshed my memory on my fantasy football players and their game times- all the while flirting with Jack via text.

I played with my dogs, pet my cat, and read while they played outside for a while.

I went to Jack’s, where he had a fire and the two wick candle burning and I curled up on his sofa in front of the fireplace watching football and catnapping.

I had a super great steak dinner that Jack made for me – while I was catnapping and watching football.

I went for a walk with Jack and his puppy and got to kick at crisp, bright colored leaves like a school girl.

I played a few games on the Wii that I was no good at, but for a short enough time that it was just funny and not frustrating.

I got teary eyed watching Extreme Makeover Home Edition – and enjoyed harmless lustful thoughts about Ty Pennington.

I finished roughly eighty percent of the Sunday crossword puzzle while Jack and I watched random tv and read the paper. The other twenty percent was incorrectly organized I am sure.

I scored a big fat win in fantasy football, hopefully boosting me up a rank or two.

I spent a satisfying amount of time making out with Jack by the door when it was time for me to go home – satisfying enough to make me smile as I sit here thinking about it on my couch listening to the tail end of the thunderstorm, which also happens to be one of my favorites.

I drove home singing to the radio and thinking about how lucky I am to have found Jack at this particular point in my life – how I needed to be here in this time with this amount of baggage and this amount of life experience so that I could see the wonder in a simple beautiful day with a man that makes me feel like all my past heartache was worth it to get to here and now.

And now, I end my perfect day blogging about it. So good.

Wedding Day...and Night~

So Lola's wedding was amazing, awesome, fantastic, and a bunch of other synonyms for 'great'. After all the insanity, everything wasn't perfect, but no one cared. We all let go of the stress and the worry the night before. I can tell you the exact moment it happened. After rehearsal dinner, my Mom and Lola and myself were driving home and Lucy called. My mom told her to hurry up and take a shower before bed. Lucy paused a moment and then said, "ok, but it IS my third shower today." We all busted out laughing like idiots and maybe just realized how crazy we were trying to manage everything - that Lucy was going to just take a third shower to avoid arguing with us. From that moment on, the weekend just rocked on forward with no real insanity.

My family is all truly happy to welcome The Cowboy officially to our family - and it was wonderful to see him and Lola exchange vows while trying not to cry. I like to see tears at weddings. Call me strange, but it makes me happy to see someone so in love that they can't physically hold it all in. I can't possibly tell the story of them, but when she gets back from her honeymoon, I will cajole Lola into telling her side of how she met The Cowboy and their wedding day fun.

For now, I will tell you my stories. I spent the majority of the evening dancing and socializing, with a healthy dose of drinking and cake eating thrown in. I did not trip once on my dress or over my heels, even after the drinking. I have fantastic pictures of all my family and friends. I hid behind the wedding cake because I did not want to be one of like three single adult females amidst a gaggle of children. (Lola thankfully only screamed my name a few times before giving up.) I had a drink spilled on me by someone that I didn't know who was so drunk that she was caught in the bathroom later washing an article of clothing in the sink. I slow danced with babies, did the polka with my mom and my aunts, and line danced to "Boot Scoot Boogie" with the bride. All in all a lovely, lovely evening. So lovely that when it was over I was too geared up to go home....thus beginning the second half of my story.

After the band said goodnight and Leah and I took care of our bridesmaid duties, we went to the pub with our dates and Stella. We both had zero shame in wearing our floor length gowns into the bar and a very happy DJ actually dedicated the song "Crazy Bitch" to the crazy dancing bridesmaid - in a good way of course. Leah decided to take the guys home after a short while because they were pretty drunk. Stella and I decided to stay and party on for a while. In the bar was a man that I have known almost my entire life. We had seen him when we were out on the sidewalk earlier in the evening and at some point in the evening, Stella and I ended up at the bar drinking and chatting with him and his friend. Now I have known him forever, but we were friends when we were kids. And by kids, I mean little kids. I haven't had a serious conversation with him in over a decade. It is a little surreal to have a heart to heart with someone that knows all your background, but none of your recent history. And I think I told him that about fifty times that night. So Stella starts chatting up his friend and we eventually hit up another bar with them and then go back to his house for munchies and rum. We were up until five in the morning- which I am sure contributed to my next day hangover. I think it likely that I will see him again, but have learned over time to never have expectations in this department, so time will tell. However it works out, I had an amazing, amazing wedding weekend with everyone. I have the best friends and family in the world and it was fantastic to be able to cut loose with all of them and to see Lola so freaking happy. Congratulations Lola baby! I love you and am so happy you snagged your Cowboy.

Lola's Last Night~

It is here. The big, tell-all bachelorette blog. Are you ready????

First things first. The ladies all need aliases. It is mandatory. Also, it is fun. Last night at dinner my blog was brought up and apparently aliases are crowd pleasers. We had some discussions about possible aliases, but no hard decisions were made. Probably because the alcohol was messing with our ability to stay on topic for very long. With that in mind, all my ladies have a few days to request an alias change from what I am about to give them if they so choose.

So this is our cast for the evening....myself, my sisters Lola (the bachelorette) and Leah, my sisters-in-law Fiona and Olive, my friends Sasha and Stella, and four new blog characters. Actually, I am lying. One of the 'new' characters is actually my friend Cindy, who has been mentioned in this blog many times - but always as 'my friend Cindy'. I repeatedly think of aliases for her and then forget what I picked. Starting today, she gets to be....Charlotte. Our three new blog inductees are Lola's best friend that lives out of state and is pretty much an honorary sister at this point, and two sisters that Lola and I know from high school. Lola's best friend gets to be...Hot Mama...and one of our sister friends really wanted to be known as MacGruber - so by default her sister gets to be MacKenzie. One brief note before moving on to our tale. We seriously have the best girl group ever. There is nothing that makes you feel better than a night out with a group of women that just get you. There is major power in a group of strong, fearless females - and ladies, I am proud to call you all members of my wolf pack.

So we kick off the night at a local restaurant that we all know and love. Partly because they have good food, but mostly because we like to go drink wine there. Hot Mama made us all adorable wine glasses - leaving us no choice but to fill them. We had a brand spanking new server who told us it was his first night on his own. And the poor kid gets a group of eleven shameless, noisy, wine drinking ladies looking for mischief. He held his own fairly well and we kept our harassment to a minimal level. We ate, we drank, we made Lola open lingerie in the dining room, and we had a man at the next table start unbuttoning his shirt for us. (We tried to talk him up onto a chair, but he demurred.) We took a gazillion pictures, laughed like idiots, had Lola pretend to be a waitress at a nearby table, and pretty much probably annoyed anyone that was looking for a quiet dinner out. Thankfully, the waitstaff is mostly familiar with us and fairly tolerant.

Having done our damage there, we migrated out into the neighborhood on foot, wine glasses in hand. We hit a handful of downtown bars for fill-ups and continue making Lola earn pretty thongs by doing things that would have been embarrassing when we were younger, but as mentioned before- we are all pretty much shameless now. Here are a few highlights from our walk:

• Olive and Fiona trapping a man in the bar on his way out so that we could get a picture of them holding onto his suspender straps. This was really funny in person and he was a good sport.


• Lola using the waitress to get a condom. This is only hysterical because she got it off the kid working the bar, but he made the waitress promise to keep it hush hush because his dad was in the bar and he didn't want him to know he gave her a condom. hahaha


• We went to an outdoor bar on the river and there was some Jamaican music being played....so naturally Lola and Olive went to the dance area and Lola played the bongo on Olive's pregnant belly for the bar. I laughed so hard I cried, but that may have been the whiskey leaking out my eyeballs.

And this was the tame part of the evening....

We all found our vehicles and the designated drivers herded us all together and we headed over the bridge into our city's little bar district. We started out at the martini bar, where Lola was supposed to find a guy that would give her his underwear. Instead she found a man that ripped off his underwear TAG for her. (He wears Tommy boxers if you were wondering) Then she had to sing a song to someone - so naturally we picked one of the band members that was on break for maximum embarrassment. She did good, although I still have no idea what song she was singing. We danced there for a bit to the decent cover band and then progressed to the pub up the street. I am going to admit that at this point my detail recollection is going to get fuzzy. By this time we have had wine, whiskey, martinis, and are back to whiskey. No one got messy drunk, but we were definitely all feeling good. I remember lots of dancing, lots of singing back at the band, searching for a bald head to kiss, (which never happened because the one guy we found was too sweaty - Lola refused) and at some point Lola opened up her last pair of panties - which Hot Mama thoughtfully made granny panties.

Right around then, we decide to go to the bar across the street where, let's be honest, we are considered the old people. It is the bar where you are most likely to be propositioned in disgusting ways or have drinks spilled on you. It is the bar with the biggest dance floor - which worked well for our party. It is also the bar that Lola and I used to frequent during the infamous summer of sinning. We lose Stella to a guy at the bar and head to the dance floor, periodically sending someone to check on her and make sure she didn't want to be saved. By the end of the evening the guy started saying profanity every time one of us came over, proving our theories about this bar, but Stella enjoyed him for the moment. We closed the bar down there, spending the last part of the night with a trio of wet behind the ears 21 year old kids who thought we were the coolest thing since sliced bread. One of them was so cute I wanted to stick him in my pocket and make him my pet - in a completely non-sexual way. He was adorable. He was completely agreeable to the plan, but I don't think I have the energy for caring for an overgrown boy laced up with hormones and beer. When we left him he was dancing around proudly wearing Lola's bright pink bachelorette sash. Stand up kid.

All in all, a fantastic evening. And most of us even stayed awake long enough to have last call. Although I wouldn't be lying if I said that we spent most of the last hour complaining about our heeled boots and trying to hold back yawns. Everyone had a great time, got home safe, and the story almost ends there. However, my phone rings off the hook at nine the next morning. Five minutes late my mom pulls in my driveway frantic that I need to go pick up my Jeep before they tow it. Apparently 911 dispatch called her to let her know my Jeep was parked in a parking lot that was scheduled to be re-paved that morning. What are the odds? Apparently, I should have answered my phone. So at 9:30 the morning after, I get dropped off in front of an group of construction workers in my pajama shorts and a tank top. Not the best way to heal a hangover. Just in case you were wondering.

It's A Small World After All~

Here is what I love about living in a small town. I love that I can be driving around town at lunch time and pass my dad on the street driving the other way. I love that I can go to Meijers and run into an old friend or an old neighbor and spend ten minutes catching up. I love that I could be dropped randomly anywhere in the city and know where I was and the best way to get home.

Here is what I don't love about living in a small town. At some point, everyone is connected to everyone. I feel like it is possible that I personally know ninety percent of all the thirty year olds in town. OK- maybe not that high. But I probably am connected indirectly - through a family member or an old boyfriend or a class at school - to at least eighty percent of them. This makes dating a little interesting because everyone you date has connections to someone else.

So it should come as no surprise that a little while ago I was absently scrolling through my Facebook wall and saw flirts from Chet with some girl that I know online. Not that I object to him flirting or to this girl in particular, but I really don't want to look at it. If we lived in Detroit or Chicago it would have been over and we wouldn't have had to even cross paths again. Sadly, that is not the case. Especially sad since I love Chicago....

So I did the mature, adult thing....and deleted that girl from my account so I didn't have to look at it. (ok, maybe not the most mature thing, but it was definitely in my best interest) Chet and I have been over almost as long as we were together - I have completely burned all the candles I took with me when we split - and while I have moved on, I would rather not see proof that he has as well. It is better for my ego to think he is wallowing in self doubt and loneliness while I am auditioning new sexy shoulders and enjoying myself. Speaking of sexy shoulders....

Another potentially awkward aspect of dating in small towns is that waters get muddied. I had a fairly entertaining evening with an interesting man a little while ago. Nothing serious, but definitely fun. A week later I was given a set of rules by....let's call her Leah. Leah felt like it was in her best interest to make sure that if I continued to dally with this guy then I had to forsake all other men in her social circle to avoid any awkwardness. So I just unknowingly forfeited all my rights to swim in this dating pool for random moments with this guy. Granted, he is clever and passed the shoulder audition, but it is highly doubtful that he is going to be the guy to get me a tiara and a boa for my birthday celebration every year. Hopefully there is not a tiara buying man in Leah's social circle because I just unwittingly closed that door with the sexy shoulder guy.

Maybe I need to consider moving to Chicago....