30-days of working out

Good morning my little apples!

I am trying to be a healthy healthy healthy bunny right now. Of course like any regular American woman I would love to lose some weigh but more importantly I just want to be in better shape. I want to be able to walk up the 11 flights of stairs to my apartment without wanting to give up around the 6th flight. And working out regularly always makes me feel so much better: I eat healthier, I love those endorphins that working out releases, and I sleep more soundly. It sounds like a win-win-win to me!

And also I definitely want to ROCK my swimsuit this summer!

(Which kind of looks like this but in black. Maybe after 30 days of working out
I'll actually show you a picture of me in my swimmy?)

So I'm making a promise to myself that I will work out EVERY DAY no matter what for the next thirty days. I'll be keeping myself accountable right here with y'all I can't guarantee that I'll always go with a great attitude and will be pushing myself for an hour run but I will be there!

In about 30 minutes I'm headed to the gym to take a pilates class! Which every time I think about the work pilates that Black Eye Peas (maybe?) song lyric "rock your body... with pilates..." gets stuck in my head for hours! So so so annoying!

I'm going to go get schwetty!
xoxo,
M

IUD Recovery

Good afternoon lambs!

Today I was forced to act like an adult (hate) while I was at the gynecologist. For a variety of reasons I decided that despite the pain and discomfort the best birth control option for me is an IUD.

It definitely did hurt. DEFINITELY did hurt but luckily just not as much as I thought it would. While I would rather get a bikini wax over an IUD any day... the pain wasn't unbearable by any means. It hurt while it was happening, like a giant pinch in my abdomen but now I'm just suffering through cramps (which are no worse than what I had before going on birth control).

But since I was forced to suck it up and not be a whiner in front of the doctor I decided to come home and act like a whiner in front my boyfriend. So far he made me a delicious lunch and gave me some much needed snuggles to combat the cramps.

I've also been indulging myself with a few cheesy episode of MacGyver:



Hopefully the cramps will go away soon and we can all pretend that I don't even like MacGyver and only read books my Tolstoy, Hemingway, Dostoevsky, and other great and intellectual novels.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful and cramp-free Monday!

xoxo,
M

What a trip!

Hello loves! It's been a long time since I've been home in Chicago! Chris and I flew out on the 12th of March and just got home this morning. We were suppose to arrive last night but electrical storms canceled our flight. We had a very early 7:45 am flight and as soon as we landed I had to rush to a doctors appointment downtown. I would have postponed it but the office has one of those very annoying $25 fees if you don't cancel within 24 hours-- I wish I could charge the airlines a fee like that for my flight last night!

You might be wondering what we've been doing away for the last 3 weeks. Luckily because Chris is a consultant and happens to be traveling to North Carolina the majority of weeks or can work out of the Dallas branch of his company he was able to work while we cobbled together a grand moving/road trip/friend seeing/Easter extravaganza. We flew into North Carolina, flew to Texas, drove from Texas through Arkansas and Tennessee back to North Carolina, and then arrived where we started in Chicago this morning!

While in Dallas I packed all of the furniture and belongings in my condo and turned the keys over to the new owners. It felt a little surreal moving out; I moved into the condo at the end of my freshman year of college and spent almost 6 years there. Packing and moving was a hideous nightmare. There was just so much stuff to go through. For instance, what was i suppose to do with my old college class notes? In the end I kept some and recycle others. But I'm sure in 5 years (barring that i go to grad school for history and bust out those old notes) I will come to my senses and get rid of them all.

The biggest lesson of moving was not to procrastinate-- go ahead and tackle the back of the closet or the bathroom drawer filled with cosmetic samples. Ten minutes on one project now is so much more tolerable than hours on every project when it's time to move. NEVER AGAIN. Seriously y'all. Lesson learned. If I'm not using that two-year-old sparkly exfoliating body scrub now I won't be using it in two years. So why keep it? And cosmetics have a pretty short shelf life or so i saw on an episode of Tyra once; but it was an episode of Tyra....

Chris and I drove an explore full of my stuff home to North Carolina. The drive was incredible and we had so much fun taking our first official road trip together! This weekend I celebrated (totally not the right word) Easter with my mom and our family friends, played a lot of tennis, and made some delicious meals. It was fabulously relaxing after a stressful week and a half of moving boxes.

But, I'm glad to be back here in Chicago. Strangely it now feels like home.

I'm alive

Hello love bugs!

Sorry for the disappearance! I have been BUSY BUSY BUSY over the last 3 weeks!

I have been dashing through the country packing up my condo in Dallas for sale and driving back to North Carolina with a small collection of my stuff!

But tonight I'm headed home to Chicago and will be uploading my pictures and will be back to writing!

It is suppose to be in the high 60s in Chicago this week! I'm so excited!!

xoxo,
M

Lifetime List UPDATE

Hello sunshines!

The sun is beating in my apartment window making me warm and cosy but also burning tiny hole in my corneas-- the are always pros and cons in life, right?

You might have noticed that growing list on my left sidebar of thins that I want to accomplish in the next 76 years. You might have also thought to yourself, "Well, that's all and good that she is motivated but puuuulllleeeeezzzeee is she ever going to actually do any of those things?"

I thought I would give you a little update as to what is going on with a few choice items to show you that I am actually doing stuff.

4. Start a by-mail book swap with my amazingly smart high school friends- While we haven't started anything by mail we did join www.goodreads.com where we write each other recommendations and rate books that we have read

20. Learn how to make delicious Indian food (there have been some very failed attempts in the past)- I bought a new Indian cookbook that is a lot less overwhelming and am planning on making Indian food for Valentines Day dinner!

25. Go 12 months without losing a cell phone.- 3 months in and so far so good! Ha... we'll see how long this lasts.

30. Bungy jump from the world's tallest bungy jump from Bloukrans bridge in South Africa.- August 2010 I'll be there! I think I'm going to jump in honor of my 25th birthday in September (ahhh 25! a quarter of a century!)

36. Own my own company.- While I am obviously in no place to open a company while traveling I do have some ideas brewing and have been researching and thinking thinking thinking!

And don't worry. I haven't forgetten. I'm still working on the rest of this long life-list! I'll be giving you more to-dos next week!

Reformed

Let me start this out with a confession. I was a cold-hearted bitch in high school. I was insecure after being a "nice girl" through all of my elementary and middle school years. I went into my new high school with a determined agenda: be popular. I choose my friends based on who I thought was cool not based on who was a good person. I made enemies. I hurt people on purpose; making other people feel bad about themselves made me feel good. I had an innate ability to come at someone with a quick and debilitating insult.

Then the bottom fell out.

My "best friend" at the time, also a quick-witted bully, and I turned against each other-- over a boy. Typical, no? While it was terrible at the time I am so glad it happened. After the break up of my core friendship I started to change and grow. While I stayed friends with many of the same girls, I also gained the friendships of others. I started distancing myself from the worthlessness of drama, fighting, and intentional cruelty. By the end of senior year I would like to think that I had made amends for many of my insults. And I am lucky that now I have a core group of 7 amazing friends from high school who I see on a semi-regular basis and talk to frequently.

But I am sure I have classmates who still dislike me. And honestly, I'm okay with that. Not because I am better than them as I would have said in high school but because I know I wasn't always a like-able person. I know that I was wrong. I know I don't deserve everyone's forgiveness. I also know that I've learned and moved so far away from those low points.

I learned these lessons early. Lessons that many women I know haven't seemed to grasp yet. I don't involve myself with drama now. Yes, I do still listen to gossip and might discuss someone's unexceptionably odd behavior. But I try refuse to lower myself to be mean to someone. It's cruel and it does nothing more that make me feel weak and immature. In all honesty, I still struggle with the issue. What do I do when I read an email or blog post that is blatantly bashing someone? Attacking someone simply for who they are? Do I respond? Do I defend? Do I simply ignore? Being an adult is hard for so many reasons why make it harder by creating unnecessary drama?

To my dearest loves from high school, thank you for sticking with me for the last decade. Thank you for seeing me through hormonal crying jags, intense bitchiness, and many many many bowls of queso. I love you all and if you ever have an emergency call me. I'll be there. Even at 5 am on a Tuesday.

KNUCKLE PUCK!

Ever since watching hockey during the Olympics I have had an overwhelming urge to watch Mighty Ducks.

It without a doubt one of my favorite childhood movies. And can we talk about how dreamy Joshua Jackson was? Swoon. After Devon Sawa he was my number one crush as a kid.