The End of the Old Year the Eve of the New Year

As the sun goes down on another year, the first ten of the new Millennium and the last day of my mother's visit I am waxing philosophical. There has been a lot of good over the last year. I think I will spend today's post making a little list of A. The wonderful things about the last year B. The things I hope for for the next year. I fear that if I don't do it in list format I will end up missing the last night of my mother's visit, lost in a wander down memory lane. So here we go....

A. Wonderful things about 2009

* I have been working at my current job for the last year and have found myself a family in the night crew of the ER.

* The Hubbs and I got to celebrate many exciting things like birthdays, family reunions, holidays (Hubbs made his first Christmas Dinner all by himself) as a couple. This is exciting because I am no longer "new and shiny" to his family and thus it takes a lot less effort for myself as well as everyone else to be comfortable just spending a weekend together.

* I got engaged to my best buddy. 2009 began the period of planning and working towards an official life together.

* We were booted out of one house and stumbled into the amazing place we live in now. (Sucked at the time but has turned into a GIGANTIC blessing).

* I got into and have proceeded to kick ass in paramedic school. Without the hubbs I never would have known what a fantastic opportunity and possibility for my future this could be.

* We adopted a funny little Luna. She has been a wonderful addition to our little proto-fambly. She keeps Gwen on her toes and feeling young, keeps me feeling loved and keeps the Hubbs warm on nights when I am at work.

* I got to watch and help as my best friend became a mother and welcomed the otter into the world.

* I got to go to the Country Fair again.

* I got to help other friends celebrate their happy news of a new baby "OMG" on the way over turkey

* I reconnected with a long lost friend from my life back east.

* I got serious about being healthy and happy and found help and partnership with both of those missions.

* I made an AWESOME new friend....Elaine!

* My parents have continued to remodel their friendship and I am confidant now that even in spite of the huge distance between them they will continue to be my family both individually, together and and with the love and support of their partners.

*Dad and Kathleen moved to Idaho and are now only 9hrs away....vs 4days away.

*The Hubbs got a full time gig in his dream job as a "wilderness" medic for lack of a better term. He runs the every day calls too but is part of the team that responds to the crazy wilderness stuff too. He is so happy here and it makes me feel better about losing him for 4 days at a time, every four days.

B. Things I am hopeful for in 2010.

* I will continue to take my health and physical fitness seriously and will reach my goals.

* I will get to see more of my family.

* I will be getting married. I hope to continue to build a partnership as well as a celebration which represents and supports the kind of woman and person I want to be,

* I hope for a real change for universal health care

* I hope we pull our heads out of our assess as a nation and grant same sex partners "married" status and all of the things that come with that.

* I hope to graduate with honors and get a sweet gig (read and job as a paid paramedic) in the city.

* I hope for the best for my friends and family both biological and newly extended. I know there has been a lot of hardship this year and I hope for a better time of it for everyone this coming year and decade.

This is clearly and abridged list but none the less this is what I am grateful for and what I hope for for the coming year. Happy New Year to anyone out there reading...

I will be back to writing daily now that the holiday hubub is passed...in case anyone is out there....

Fitness day 14.

I have lost a total of 6lbs since I started.

Today

Elliptical machine 48min 600kCal

Pilates 20min

I have managed to work out all but one day since my mom came to visit. I am happy and thankful that she was so happy to jump on board and come to the gym or do pilates on the floor with me. Thanks Mom!

Merry Christmas Baby

Today is still Christmas to me because my mother just arrived from the East coast. I have been excited about this since oh, September! Christmas has never been my favorite holiday, that space has been reserved for 4th of July and Thanksgiving for a long time. However, my mother and my brother have loved Christmas for as long as I can remember. My brother loved any holiday that involved sleeping in dim lights on top of the heating vent. My mother loves the memories of her childhood in the farm house where we all grew up. She was very close with her grandparents and brothers and has wonderful memories of holidays and family on the farm. I think she still loves the cozy blankets of tradition and makes efforts to build traditions with us even in this evolving time of bicostal and multi-continental families. She still gets us LLBean socks and little things like that to carry the tradition through from year to year no matter where we find ourselves.

The Hubbs and I are celebrating our second Christmas together this year and I am spending it working in the ED. It is in fact my first weekend back to work since my injury. I am happy to be back and happy to be surrounded by my ED family as well as being part of a team who are "on watch" for those who need (and those who don't) help over the holiday. I take a great deal of pride in working on holidays. I grew up with my mother as a solo provider Midwife who rarely had a partner or back-up to cover call for those births that just couldn't wait till the presents were opened or the birthday candles were blown out. Because of this we celebrated a lot of modified holidays as a family. As a kid this occasionally bent my nose out of joint, having to wait or postpone festivities. However, as an adult I am really grateful to my mother and father for having raised me that way. I now don't give a hoot one way or another when a holiday or birthday is celebrated. It's not a matter of times or dates for me its a matter of feelings and intentions. As long as there is time set aside from the hustle and bustle to acknowledge whatever the occasion is I don't care. Because of this I happily sign up to work holidays. I feel part of a brotherhood of those who take the torch on the days when others can't or reeeealy don't want to. I like the feeling of being on duty so that others may enjoy time with their families. Its odd maybe but I am lucky to have found a partner who feels the same way. He was off tonight (because one of us had to be there to gather my mom from the airport) but were it not for the special visit he would have been out there on a street corner keeping watch too. I love this about us.

Last Christmas I was working and Hubbs, then still known as Puppy Love to one of my most favorite ED doctors, was also working in the city. It had been a typical Christmas night at the inner city trauma center and we had seen ambulance after ambulance roll through the bay doors and none of them were my sweety. I had finally given up seeing him that night when around 430am the radio crackled to life. Medic 971 was coming in with a trauma. Something about a guy tweeking out eating glass and busting into a condo complex. Odd. Twelve minutes later the stretcher rolled into the department driven by my sweety and moments later the trauma team was standing around us. "Let's get his clothes off", said the trauma surgeon. I reached for my shears and began cutting his pant leg. I looked up and my eyes met his, "Merry Christmas Baby", he said and flashed me one of his winks. "Merry Christmas. I love you" I mouthed back to him. Shmultzy I know, but this is the suckers we are. We love it. We love our work and we love each other.

This year I was certain I did not care about making Christmas at our house. I was waaaay too consumed with school and being pissed off about my broken paw, on top of some interpersonal strain caused by the constellation of pressures surrounding us to give a rip about trees and lights. The Hubbs, smart thing that he is, saw waaaay beyond my final moments of school stress and realized that when the dust settled I was going to want a tree and lights and the whole bit. He shoped and decorated and wrestled with a pine tree. He is a star! The house is so beautiful and the tree is perfect. He has managed to make our second Christmas even better than the first. He picked my mom up tonight from the airport and brought her right to the hospital to say hi. I was so proud of him. He seemed comfortable and genuinely at ease hanging out with my mom. It made me happy. On that note...I will end today's post with the simple thought that sometimes it really IS the littlest things that make you the happiest like a little I love you whispered under the din of a busy trauma room. Other times it is the big things like Christmas trees and twinkly lights and mothers retrieved from the airport.

Oh Happy Day!

This is a picture of me on the day I became Mrs Hubbs to be!
Today is fitness day 6! This morning was a leeetle rough what with the whole getting up to pilaticise with the SIL before she headed off to work at 0-dark-thirty. I went to the pool and decided 6 days was a long enough waiting period to weigh myself again. 4lbs down! Holy moly! I am suspicious of course. I know I have been putting in a solid 2 hours of working out daily and working hard to make good food choices. It hasn't been as hard as I had anticipated. I have found yummy foods that mostly I cut up and put on salads or eat a small nibble of after eating my good choice salad and drinking my water. It is nice to feel that I am not forbidden anything just taking notice of how MUCH of anything I am taking in. I will say that this week I have worked hard to avoid refined sugar and melted cheese as they are common trap foods for me and being tired and or overwrought leads me to go for those first instead of a swim or a walk or a salad. I am trying to break the habit in this first 2 weeks. My own south beach meets sugar busters method. I am a total sucker for fats, salts and sugar.

Anyway, enough about the diet exercise crusade. Today is a day to celebrate. I have had soooo much fun making Christmas prepairations today I can hardly stand it! After my trip to the pool today I came home and awoke the Hubbs from his "I work the night shift and thus nap like a tranqued baby during the day" nap. We peeled him out of the bed with the dogs and poured him into the car. We headed out to find a Christmas Ham...like every good Jewish family (His not mine). I had no idea where to find a good butcher shop in town so I did like a good modern child and Googled one. We arrived to find a dreary little store front covered in car Lot paint way out in one of the less savory parts of town. We walked in a were smack in the middle of a bustling little market where those behind the counter were running back and forth grabbing cuts of meat and whole turkeys and wrapping them up for those of us jockeying for position on the other side of the counter. We were standing back trying to get an idea of how the system here was working and were greeted by a large man with a chef's hat on offering us some home made BBQ sauce. The Hubbs does not speak New Jersey/Southern hybrid. I, being well versed in stranger talking, understood him just fine and launched into his life story. Long story short we walked out of there with a 13lb ham and an armful of BBQ sauces.

Next stop was TJ's where we stocked up on Prosecco and other tidbits with which to "Make Christmas". From there we hit the wine shop and 2 more grocery store. Upon returning home the Hubbs made dinner as I checked the final work out off the list for the day. We have since been working on putting things in order in the house for the arrival of the fams the day after tomorrow. Looking around tonight I had the realization that this will be the first big holiday where our families have come to our house. I am so excited. I LOVE our new house and look forward to sharing time here with those I love. Somehow it doesn't seem real until I share it with my loved ones and my mom and the Hubbs' folks definitely count.

I think the biggest reason for celebration today is the fun we had putting all of this stuff together. The Hubbs and I have struggled lately with my being in school and then the broken foot bent my nose a little out of joint. We have been working on getting reconnected and I think nothing does that like putting together a holiday. We are feeling all silly and happy and optimistic about the coming year. It is nice to be able to have so much fun doing things, largely for others today. I don't think I was ever truly in danger of forgetting but today I was reminded why I love him so much. He is my best friend. And with that thought, I am going to go help him make up the guest bed for my mother.

All I want for Christmas is my mom's plane to land (here, and maybe on time too...)

My Mother will hopefuly be arriving on Christmas night. I say hopefully as there is rumor of a large batch of shitty weather headed to the east that may cause some travel issues. I am staying positive and keeping my fingers crossed that she has a safe and speedy flight over so we can have some time together. My mother lives in Maine. That's 3500ish miles away. I have been over here for almost 3 years now and she still hates it. I do to I suppose. I hate that when something hard happens she is so far away. I hate that when something good happens she is so far away. I hate that there are 3 hours difference in time so that sometimes it is too late to call by the time I get done with my day.

My way of expressing this dislike is by saying things like "I miss you and I wish we were closer." My mother's methods are a little harder to interpret sometimes. For example...I had some pretty significant stomach issues about a year and a half ago. I was working in a job that barely paid me and disallowed me to have another job, had crazy hours and kept me constantly guessing my schedule as well as my work environment. (This was an internship-like job where the connections and the experince are 2/3 the pay. It was part of the get into medical school plan. I didn't ever apply to med school but it has definately paid off in other more important ways). I wasn't making enough money to cover all of my bills and I was begining to live off my credit card. Then I developed an ulcer. I had shitty insurance and was so sick that I couldn't work for several weeks. I called my mom one night worried and broke and feeling ill as well as like a total failure at my new life on the other side of the country. My mom's response was in its most basic description a lecture all about how I needed to learn to take better care of myself and a list of all of the ways I was failing to take care of my self such as not sleeping enough, not eating right, not making a core group of friends, not working in a job that met my financial needs. I was devestated. I just wanted a simple "There there sweety, I am so sorry things are hard and you are sick and frightened. You are not a failure, you are doing the best you can and you are gonna make it." I had forgotten who I was talking to.

My mother has always been no nonsense. She is an extremely loving woman but not in the traditional bake you cookies and kiss your boo boo types of ways. My mother expressed her love by challenging me. I see now that she didn't coddle me because she thought that would make me weak and turn me into someone who couldn't soothe their own hurt feelings or bad days. She was teaching us to care for ourselves and pushing us to need less and less from her and dad. Well, that may be all well and good but sometimes a kid just needs a cookie and a kiss or a "there there honey" phone conversation. It took me a long time to learn that when my mother chews me out on the phone for this or that...mainly for not being good enough to myself, she is saying "I love you. I hate that I am so far away and can't hold you tight and tell you to your face. You are wonderful and capable and smart and lovely but you are human too and humans need food and sleep and days off". Now that is something to hear on a bad day. I count myself fortunate that I have learned to translate long distance mother so well. I am not completely fluent. Sometimes I hear bees when she said cheese and get all wigged out and upset. But most of the time we do really wel.

Anyway, my mom is coming for Chistmas. I will likely be at work on the night of the 25th when she flies in and the hubbs will pick her up from the airport and bring her home to pour her into bed. It will be past one in the morning in her body and that flight is nasty. The next day I will get off work and come home to snuggle into bed next to her for a few hours before we start cooking the Christmas feast. The Hubb's family will be coming over in the afternoon for meet the mom and open the stuff and stuff the face. Then mom and I will have 5days to hang out and plan wedding stuff and see the area. I can't wait. You see, learning to speak long distance mother has brought us a lot closer. It has helped us both feel heard and like we are better listeners. Who doesn't want that?

As I was cleaning up the kitchen tonight I was thinking back and trying to remember when I started to really care what my mom thought of my home. You know, as an adult "woman". I can't remember. I certainly wasn't any time I was still living under her roof as she often threatened to put all of my things into the garage and make me sort it out before putting any of the crap I had in every nook and cranny back into the house. These days I am not so clingy to things. I have moved one too many times to have much investment in anything that takes up any space or weighs anything at all because it just means I am going to have to dust it, dust around it or move it to the next house we live in.

I was scrubbing the counters and thinking about how I want my mother to like my house and my family and my dogs and all of the other stuff I identify as "mine". I want her to approve of the kind of woman I am. I want her to be proud of me and of herself for raising me to be this woman. I want her to think I did a good job cleaning the bathroom. I think it will be important to remember to translate long distance mom even sitting across the table from one another because I don't think my mother is ever going to become June Cleaver or Betty Crocker and I don't think I would like that very much. My mom is fun. She is tough and smart and silly and knows a good time when she sees one. She is also adventurous and brave and loving. I am her daughter and I guess that means I like a challenge. So let the countdown show 3 days until mom arrives. Hip Hip Hooray!


Mom and Hubbs 2B on a ferry back east last year

Fitness Day 5....
*Pilates/aerobics 40min AM ---a bit fristrating as I can really only stand in the hard shoe. I can't flex my foot for pushups or stuff like that. Phooey!
*Pool running (sounds cooler than aquajogging) 60min--PM Took my iPod wrapped it in a plastic bag and tied it to my head so it would be safe from the water. This was pure briliance. I was the only one at the pool so there was a LOT of dancing. I need to make a new POOL playlist. More pop and dance mixes. Woot for cardio.
*Pilates 20min PM -- feeling like an abreviated or just plain simple easy workout tonight. My foot is killing me.

Off with her boot! (Fitness Mission day 4)

It's official! I have been released to weight bearing activity as of this morning. It has been 3 weeks since I broke my foot running in the Seattle Half Marathon and it was 21 LONG days. I am a fairly active lady and get a lot of joy out of living in an area where I can walk to the store and take my dogs to the park or on a hike no matter the weather. The last three weeks have been devoid of those walks. I haven't even been able to grocery shop as crutches inhibit basket carrying or cart pushing. Needless to say much of my holiday shopping has been via Amazon.com. It has been hard to be unable to run or even carry a cup of coffee from the kitchen to the couch. I dislike having to ask for help and have hated being unable to "nest" now that I am done with the semester and finally able to do some of the settling into the house. However, things are different now. I can walk. The doctor put me in a walking shoe with a "cuboid pad" (see the above picture). It pushes up on the broken bone and prevents it from flexing under the weight of walking. The upside is having my independence back...the down side is how much it hurts to walk on it. The doc warned me that it will be sore for a while as there is still swelling and bone healing going on but it still hurts....Waah waah waah...I know.

I think I will tackle our bedroom tonight. There are just a lot of little things that I want moved here or there and tiny pieces I want picked up, especially before my mother comes to see the house. Moving around on the crutches was just such an effort that I have forgone any major projects until now. I am excited to get started. Yay Holiday Break!

I have been doing my 40min of pilates and hour of aqua-jogging daily...this is day 4. Things have been going well. I am feeling like I am sleeping better, eating better, feeling more positive and relaxed. All the good things that endorphins bring. I am making a huge effort to be as "well behaved" as possible (read not eating cheese as a cure for boredom or as a substitute for a meal) so that I may eat whatever I want for Christmas. I was out to meet a friend for coffee this afternoon and realized how hard it is to find food that is not either a bacon and melted cheese sammy or a dry wrap with hummus and cucumber. I settled today, for half of a tomato, basil, mozzarella sandwich. It was good but somehow it still seemed against my efforts to eliminate cheese as a food group. Oh well, there will be more pilates tonight to make up for the popcorn I sooooo want to eat. Ahhh I just had a thought that now that I can bear weight on my foot I can do workouts that have me standing up. Sweet!

My mother arrives in 4 days. I am getting excited for her visit. I think we will have a lot of fun. I want to take her to see some of the beautiful scenery. I also intend to drag her to the pool. My thoughts about mothers, daughters and the body issues in between will have to wait for another day. In the mean time I will say that I am happy she will have some time to meet the Hubb's folks. I am under no illusions that just because Hubbs and I are in love, our families will be BFFs. I am hoping that they will see the common ground they share of loving their kiddos and be able to have some sort of family relationship. You know what they say....You don't choose your family. I think the same is largely true of in-laws too. Though, I must admit that if given the option I likely would have chosen my future in-laws. They are rad and I am lucky indeed.


My mom and I at the coast on her last visit


The future-in-laws


Anyway, this post was not suposed to be about how much I love my family and family to be....it was supposed to be a hip hip hooray for the end of the crutches and the begining of the foot rehab.

Day 4
40min Pilates AM
35min Pool AM
40min strength training workout PM

Thoughts on a dog's life...

I grew up with dogs. From the time I was born my family had a dog. The first was Doc. He was some sort of Lab-mixish pup who was given to my mother back when she was teaching special ed swimming. He was a tiny puppy being fed on hamburgers and other non-dog food. By the time I can remember he was a very mellow, protective old guy. I have memories of waking up in the middle of the night as a tiny girl to find doc asleep beside my bed. Unfortunately, we lived on a horrible street out in the country where people drove as fast as they wanted and my family lost several dogs to traffic out there.

The last of the family dogs of my childhood is still alive. She is currently 16, deaf as a post, debatably blind, always hungry, incredibly affectionate and 100% Lab. We got her from some friends when I was ten after our last lab (Sophie) was hit and killed while we were away on vacation. (Worst birthday ever). From day one Cede (Mercedes) has been the best dog I have ever known. Other than the typical puppyhood nonsense of eating only one shoe or stealing food from the counter she was well behaved and incredibly affectionate. When I moved away to college my parents moved to Maine. When I transferred to a new school and moved to an apartment in the city I decided to take Cede with me. She was such a well behaved pooch that she single-handedly turned the building into a pet friendly place. The owner, a stereotypical "maine-ah", was in love with her. By now she was 11 and was a dream dog for the single girl in the city. I walked her several times a day rain, snow or shine without a leash. She didn't like to get too far away from the hand that feeds her. I was also nannying for a little boy at the time and she was amazing with him too. As he crawled and learned to walk and talk they became quite the little pair of buddies. Cede would wait for Milo to put the cracker down on her bed before she would take anything from him in spite of his constantly wandering around with a half eaten cracker or banana in his hand. It convinced me that raising babies with middle aged dogs was something I wanted to do for my own family some day.

When I moved to the West Coast Cede had been diagnosed with cancer and had been quite ill. I had made the heartbreaking decision to leave her behind with my mom and her partner for fear that she may not survive the summer cross country journey in a pick-up truck with no AC. I cried and cried and cried and kissed her goodbye sure that this would be the last time I would see her. It has been 2 1/2 years now and Cede is notably less spry than she was as a pup or even a year ago. She decides that sometimes she doesn't want to walk down the steps to the yard and thus pooping on the porch is a fine substitute. She was the summer camp dog this summer as my mom went to be the Camp Nurse. She wandered down to the water and into the dining room and even got so excited she pooped there too. It didn't seem to deter anyone from falling in love with her. Cede is still, and likely always will be, the best dog I ever had. She was my best friend and served as an important link for my family during the period around my parent's divorce. I feel badly that eventually, my mom will have the impossible duty to decide when Cede has reached her time. However, I couldn't be more grateful for the 16 years I have been able to share with her. In Buddhist terms my dog taught me true bodhichitta or loving kindness.




These days the Hubbs and I have 2 pups of our own. Gwen is a 7 year old Kelpie who has been with Garth for 5 years now. She is brilliant and skilled in psychological warfare on anything younger or less brilliant than herself. She is also the biggest counter surfer and Houdini in history. When we moved several months ago she freed herself from a harness at the store and took herself on a little tour of the new neighborhood. I ran home to find her proudly sitting on the front step all wiggles and "Hey Food Lady, I found the new house! Aren't you proud Food Lady?".

Our other four-legger has only been ours for about 9months now. I found her on the Internet one night and knew from first sight that she would be the next member of our little family. Her name is Luna AKA: LuLu, Lunatic, Stinky, Baddie, Little One, Pickle Head. She was full of barking, begging, craziness and boarder-collie energy when we got her. She was a wild thing and we were not certain it would ever get much better. We had just about resigned ourselves to a dog's lifetime of pure cattle dog insanity when out of nowhere several weeks ago she turned 2. It was sudden as a thunderstorm. All of the sudden she has mellowed and become a dream dog. Don't get me wrong, she still has her moments but over all, these days she is mellow and sweet and only barks when she needs to poop, eat or is being tortured by her big sis. She has even decided that if push comes to shove and she has to have an accident in the house, she will do it in the bathroom on the linoleum floor or as she did in the cabin we rented last week in the SHOWER! Brilliant! So here's to Luna and all the dogs out there who people love both for a lifetime and suddenly and unexpectedly. Here's to dogs. Happy Birthday Little Stinky.



In fitness news Day 3:
Aqua-jogged/swam 60min
Pilates 40min

DAY 2

Yesterday my wedding dress arrived in the mail. I was sooo excited. There had been a lot of thought and honestly, angst about what sort of dress I wanted to walk down the trail in. (We are having a summer camp outdoor wedding so the aisle is a bit non-traditional). I finally decided I wanted a traditional-"esque" dress and then came the struggle over the money. My Hubbs to be (H2B), is fantastic and supportive and would get me the moon if I wanted it. I was struggling internally with my feminist, thrifty-minded, reality based ideas versus what I pictured in my head and what made me feel all giddy and excited.

I wrestled with all of this nonsense until I finally just talked to my mom and got her blessing to find the dress I wanted. As a side bar I will say that the idea of spending over 250.00 dollars on an item of clothing to be worn once makes me want to throw up. I am a jeans and t-shirt kind of lady. I love dressing up every once in a while and I love looking nice and put together but I do NOT want to feel like I am wearing a costume on my wedding day. My mother had bought me a very sweet white sundress (that will be perfect for the picnic and party on Saturday). I love the sun dress but as I said it just didn't feel like "the dress". Images of tv and movies and what a bride is supposed to look like on the day flashed through my head. I didn't have a clue who I was in the context of wedding world. It sucked. I didn't feel justified spending 200.00 of our 6,000.00 wedding budget on a white dress when I had one that would be just fine. My hubbs mom is ALSO wonderful. I am so freakin' lucky I can't even express! She gave me a check and a very stern talking to that I was not allowed to say no to the help. It was more than enough to cover my dream dress (a wopping 200.00 once it went on sale....hmmmm). It was sooo nice. I must have done something good in a past life.

So, as I said, my dress arrived yesterday and my stomach was full of butterflies as I opened the box. It was white and silky and felt beautiful. I slipped it on and zipped it up and looked in the mirror.....Ugh!

When did my body become this shape and size? Where did this come from? Ahhhh yes. I am happily engaged and full time in paramedic school....I am a good Midwestern girl who treats everything from homesickness to excitement with a healthy dose of cheese. I love food and am marrying a man who is tall, rail thin and manages to have a perfect cholesterol level in spite of his love of bacon and avocado.

I am a distance runner and recently broke my foot running the Seattle half marathon. I have been in a boot and on crutches for 3 weeks and it is making me crazy. I was running 4 days a week for stress control, fitness, and socializing. I am not saying that this physical body has developed over 3 weeks of limited mobility. I am saying that putting that dress on yesterday lit a fire under me to take the next 9 months seriously. I did my first 45min of pilates last night on the livingroom floor and followed it up with an hour of swimming (aqua-jogging) and another 45min of pilates tonight.

I want to clarify that the dress fit. It covered everything and hung the right way but its the difference between feeling like some girl in a dress and feeling proud of myself as I walk down the "path". This brings me to the WHY of this very blog. I am commiting to lifestyle changes for the next year. To start with I will be doing pilates daily for the next 8 weeks. I commit to at least 30min a day for 8 weeks. In addition to this a friend has offered to send me the P90X workout DVDs and I am (freakishly) excited to see what 90 days can do. Until the P90X arrives I am going to be swimming for at least an hour, 5 days a week. When I can run again I will mix it up between the running and swimming in an effort to avoid jacking up my foot again.

As I was running laps in the pool this morning I started thinking about my future beyond the wedding. I want to be a mom and a healthy wife, daughter and friend to myself and others. I want to avoid type II diabetes and cancer, I want to set a healthy example for my children and be an active grandmother some day. I want all of this....so what's the problem? Where is the disconnect? I need to start making some positive changes now so that they become positive patterns and second nature in the future. This blog will detail my struggles and successes over the next year as I set out to take my health future in my own hands. It will not be all fitness related. It will also chronicle my wedding planning adentures, my adventures in paramedic school and my journey to adulthood. So, welcome....If you find yourself on a journey to practical womanhood join the convo. Shed a little light on things. Lets see what we can fingure out.