"I'm a little preoccupied. I almost killed a man in the basement."

so far today matt has watched almost all of his farm vehicles break down and he's actually taking it quite well.  The dump truck lost an axle, the skidder is leaking fuel and something very bad happened to some welds on the back hoe...he parked the bulldozer for it's own protection and is finishing the foundation work with shovels because he just can't take anymore.  I'm having a much better morning.  I cleaned everything out of my cabinets, washed the shelves, and put it all back again.  it's one of those things that shouldn't feel productive but totally does because now i can open any door without spices and brown sugar falling down on me.

tonight i'm preparing my fourth meal in a row of snow peas.  I love them but it is getting a bit old.  i am very much wishing i had frozen them all the day i picked them which is apparently imperative in their preservation.  i think i'll risk it next time though because i'm so over snow peas there aren't even words.  it is kind of a prescription for healthy eating because stir fries aren't that bad for you if you keep the soy sauce down.  I'm also using up all my noodles from the chinese market.  there might well be an expiration date but since it's in chinese i've been ignoring it but it's probably better to use it all up.

things are going well enough with keeping those pounds off.  i haven't quite gotten down to 180 where i'd like to go but i haven't ballooned back up which is a huge relief.  i'm changing little things like sugar where i don't need it and less sweet baked good for matt's snacks.  instead of cookies and cupcakes i'm making muffins and soft pretzels.  still a calorie rich snack but we both feel better if the sugar content is just a little bit lower.

i'm getting nowhere on my wedding decisions.  I just can't make up my mind on anything.  matt and i are in a bit of a limbo because of some of things happening with his business.  it could be really awesome or really, really bad.  it might turn out for the best if everything is in my name and we're not married but it hasn't come to that yet so fingers crossed for awesome.

"Girls, girls, girls, don't fight; you're both pretty."

while i was home my sisters and i were talking about marriage and weddings obviously and my sister said something that really made sense of my childhood.  She said she never knew you were supposed to like the person you were married to.  maybe that is why i've never had the wedding fever so many women my age have had.  i had never really considered marriage until our relationship became such that it seemed the more practical thing to do, we have the partnership with or without the paper...the paper allows us to be there for each other officially and it means i don't have to get rental insurance in my own house and also the presents...  it never really occurred to me that i might have permanent scars in my brain where the big fat white wedding gene should be because of my parents but it makes total sense.  fortunately i like matt, i love him too but even more important i like him and i don't expect either of us to spend 40 years being passive aggressive and staying just for the money.

"When you think about it, shouldn't you be thanking us for making mistakes?"

My sister says that planning a wedding is one of the top five stressful life events, up there with losing a spouse and moving.  So that is the reason i haven't gotten anything done this weekend.  Actually the wedding stuff is pretty minimal in far as actually doing work, we just have a lot of decisions to make.  I just got distracted looking for farms to rent as wedding venues so we don't have to bust ass on our own by next summer.  It's hard to decide if we're more interested in being lazy or cheap.  Hard call.  Still a terrible excuse for not getting the dishes done.

"have you seen my drawer of inappropriate starches"

I've eaten like a ridiculous amount of chocolate today.  I couldn't muster enthusiasm for any of my chores so I ate chocolate instead.  Mostly lately that hasn't been a problem but today I'm just tired of traveling and being behind on my chores and i should be using today to catch up on said chores but i just can't.  which means i'll have to do it all tomorrow.  I was talking to my sister on the phone and she said that planning a wedding was one of the most stressful things you can ever do, up there with moving and losing a spouse.  That doesn't really seem like a reasonable excuse for my laziness and chocolate scoffing but i'll take it.  

"Actually I'm gonna wait until the bus stops and then I'll get off."

So when I told my dad we were going to get married he said "oh, ok" so I put it on facebook to get some positive feedback and give him an opportunity to see how to respond from other people.  I guess we'll see how that goes.  I guess it could be worse, he could have been really mad or something.  In that light I guess it's really positive that he was indifferent.  

Right now I'm supposed to be washing dishes but instead i wrote a big long thing about how matt's parents want us to share our garden with his brother for no good reason.  I guess they need the help but they have plenty of land and you know, dirt, so in theory if they were hungry they could like bust their own asses and plant a garden.  We plant a lot of food so we can have it all winter or sell it to feed the chickens.  We don't plant all those seeds so other people can have cable and nights out.  And you know, she throws away anything that's in her freezer too long and I didn't break my legs planting seeds so someone can throw away our food.  whoops, i did it again.  Matt's parents think we should grow a bigger garden so we can share.  no no no, I'm not killing myself forever for ungrateful assholes.  And that's why we aren't sharing our news with them just yet.  

"Yeah well, she's got two jobs. She's a pastry chef and a sniper."

I don't know how much I weigh.  not because it's like zen to let that shit go but because I can't bend my neck enough to see the numbers.  I'd love to know what the scale says but i'd also like to be able to bend my neck and move my arm and if i did pilates like a grown up i could.  Dr. internet diagnosed me with rotator cuff tendonitis which makes complete sense and the only way to avoid it is to keep the rotator cuff strong...you know...with exercise and stretching and I always screw it up.  Forever means forever not until i don't feel like it anymore.  I'm also going to get back in to the tracy anderson arm exercises because they are hard core with the lateral raises which are great for the rotator cuff.

If you haven't already, head over to rebecca's and check out her article for digital running, she's in the running for a column she'd be great for so go read and like it with the facebook tag if you love it!

another pound bites the dust!

I'm another pound down and I'm so thrilled.  I was really worried I'd be stuck at my plateau forever, gaining a little and fighting to get back down and and never really getting lower.  It's really frustrating and its so hard to ignore the fact that you aren't getting anywhere but you have to keep going on like it doesn't matter.  I don't know if it's the stress of the building or the wedding or whatever but I'm actually not finding it difficult at all to not eat everything in the house.  I also didn't bake any cookies or cakes this week which I'm sure helped with the incidental calories.

I've been working really hard on only eating when I'm hungry but it's definitely easier to cut the calories when there aren't cookies just hanging around.  one here and one there isn't the end of the world, but if its not part of a plan or a genuine desire...I just don't want to keep on eating stuff because it's there and not taking responsibility for that.  I feel really great the way things are going now and I don't want to jeopardize that feeling.

"your seed has no legal rights"

So, who wants to hear my wedding plans?  I can't do too much a. because it's way too early and b. because we haven't received a date or confirmation from our venue yet.  and c. we're also trying to build a house so we have a lot on our plates.

Our plan right now is to actually wed on the 7th anniversary of our first date.  This is in March and inconvenient to all so we'll have our private wedding and then in July we'll have our large family reception.  We're hoping to host the reception at a little visited part of the national park that has a large covered picnic area and a building we could use should the weather be truly awful.  The plan is to have lemonade and lawn games and sandwiches and cupcakes.  We'd like to put up volleyball nets and play kickball and hire an ice cream truck.  If it rains we're absolutely screwed because all I can think of is wii karaoke or one hundred sets of monopoly...better plan b ideas are very much welcome.

I'm looking at very casual white dresses and jewelry online and trying really hard not to think about losing weight by march.  I'm simply carrying on with what I'm doing diet and exercise wise and trying to keep up with my slow progress.  I don't want to get to that place where you're counting the weeks and the pounds and ordering a size 8 dress because you spent weeks doing fat math and avoiding reality.

"If her legs worked you'd like Bunty"

Last weekend we planted our garden and it's taken all week to get my legs back.  I did something so horrible to my hamstrings I don't even have words to describe it.  Old I guess, that's the word.  Thirty is kicking my ass.  It took an entire week to stretch the tight out of those muscles, literally because it's now Saturday and it still smarts just a little when I sit down.

Exercise and life in general has been on hold while I try to heal.  We've still been walking because if we don't the dogs walk around the house with picket signs but that's the limit of physical activity right now.  Which is a shame because it's finally beautiful here and we have a house to build and pounds to lose and a wedding to plan.  There is a lot of change going on here and not being able to walk is awful.  On one of our walks the dogs were barking and I thought it that's a bear I'm going to have to play dead because I'm halfway there.  I watched this show recently and the people were talking about their bodies betraying them and of course they all had television cancer but still it's mind blowing when you realize you can't even walk briskly away from the scary imaginary bear.

"Don't argue with destiny. It will kick your ass."

So I was on the fence about painting the tub teal until I saw these cabinet knobs and then I decided that I would not have found these knobs if I wasn't meant to paint that tub teal.  I'm going to test drive some teals this weekend, before I learn how to use the grinding wheel and resurface it.
     And then I decided I liked this chandelier from anthropologie but it's 4800 dollars and since that is more than our roof will cost I'm going to try to make my own.  I picked out a cheap base from IKEA and I'm busy flattening old flatware...I'm pretty excited about it.  Matt keeps calling it the "fork-alier" so I think he's excited about it too.  I think I'm going to make it messier than the one from the shop, more forks and things closer together so it's a little more abstract.  I'll put up pictures when I get further along.

"Medieval Fight Night two nights in a row? Man, my codpiece just got tighter."

We bought a tub for the house we don't have yet.  It's a vintage clawfoot and it's in really good shape.  A friend had been looking out for one for me and he found one and now it's ours.  It was a bad time in terms of prioritizing the budget but a good time in that it cost 90 percent less than the tub in the budget.  And it also needs to be painted.  I'd like to get the painting and grinding and cleaning done before the house gets into full swing.  It's something I can do probably better than banging nails and cutting timber joints.

I'm thinking of painting it a teal because I love teal and I really want to have some color in my very wood filled barn style house.  The problem is that I don't have a house yet and it might look awful and I'd kind of have to plan the whole bathroom around the giant blue tub.  I suppose the worst that could happen is that I might choose to repaint it later and have to do all the work again.

I guess I'm officially starting to decorate a house that isn't built yet.  I'm on the hunt for faucets and shower water hook up things and a sink and a whole bunch of things for the kitchen we need to find on the cheap.  I'll be at the ReStore every week from now till forever and searching ideas for cabinets and hardware.  Here we go, wallets at the ready!

"twice a week after work, I put on a totally realistic bear costume and hang out in the park"

So far I've lost 5 pounds by not eating carbs at dinner.  I hate cutting out things like that but it's not like south beach where it's verboten all the time, I just don't have spaghetti and bread for dinner...but I might still have it for lunch.  I made a giant batch of veggie chili for dinners and I have black bean soup planned for next week and spinach and white beans for some time in the future.  And when we pick up our new freezer I'll pop the individual servings in there and mix it up a little.  We're very excited about our new freezer and the new vintage bathtub, it's been a big week here...buying two expensive new house things.  This building a new house is starting to get expensive.  Maybe that's why I'm doing so well with my diet regime...too stressed out to eat!

"They insist the worst people can call it is "indifferent."

It's wonderful to know that I don't have pre-diabetes like everyone else I know.  It was starting to get a little worrying, all the pre-diabetic people I know coming out of the woodwork but we did this healthy consultation at work and my blood sugars are fine.  I'm massively relieved and now all I have to worry about is the paranoia and not the diabetes.

The weekend flew by and this morning if coming along slowly and beautifully.  We walked for an hour and a half and had breakfast and chased a porcupine up a tree (I don't know if chased is the right word, everyone was moving rather slowly considering the whole prey/predator thing) it's been a very busy morning and I still have twenty minutes before I have to leave for work.

I lost a pound last week and it's continuing to go down but I'm not thinking about it until next week.  I already weighed this week and I'm not doing it again until next week.  I'm not getting sucked into that weighing every day and going insane when it's a little bit up thing.  I'm all over that.  If it's down again next week I'll be happy and happy the week after that too but I'm not going to postulate about how skinny I will be if x happens every week for y weeks.  I'm leaving it at happy to fit in my smaller jeans because all of the jeans that fit me have holes.

"That's right. Once a month they send us a new cadaver whether we're finished with the old one or not."

Jolie refuses to learn her lesson in regards to porcupines.  I just spent a very unpleasant ten minutes holding her down and plucking the quills out.  It only took ten minutes because I drugged her first but I still lost my shit at the end and sat on her to get the last one out.  It's always the last one where you're so relieved to be almost done and then it takes another hour to get that last one.  I confess that I don't handle the frustration well and if I had kids they'd always be in therapy.  And I ripped my skirt.  I hate that.  I guess I should have used more drugs.

I lost two pounds planting all those trees.  And since Matt did most of the work he lost three.  I'm working really hard on keeping to my meal plans and avoiding sugar because it makes me feel terrible when I have too much.  I'm keeping up with my pilates and I've added squats and some interval training to my morning dog walk/hike.  A walk doesn't seem like enough calories but a hike seems like too many.  But a walk implies flatness and even breathing and our walks definitely aren't even.  Much like measuring food and calories, getting a real idea of calories burnt during exercise is important too and I'm terrible at that.  So much to work on.

Every day you shower and every day I have to scent you again

Every year we plant apple trees and every year we don't get any better at it.  It hurts A LOT every year.  No matter how much we learn from the last year or plan for the current year there is still a lot of digging and lugging and ouching.  We also mulched and fertilized the other thirty trees and I guess that's why I hurt so much.  We plant 10-12 at a time which doesn't seem so many but when you do it every year you end up with a whole bunch and when you walk around to all those trees with heavy bags of poo it is really unpleasant.  

We're very much hoping to get an apple this year.  I'm prepared to do just about anything to make one of those trees grow fruit.  If I have to lug poo around to all those trees every day I want an apple this year.  Just one from all this work and time.  We really don't want to wait for apples until we're dead, as per why we try to plant so many when we're "young".  I have hope because we did get a cherry last year, it was beautiful until the birds ate it. 

Our gardening plans are a lot smaller this year because we plan to build a house and being humans who work day jobs we can only do so much.  A lot of the food we grew last year lasted all winter.  We still have cans of beets and plenty of potatoes and one last carrot in the fridge.  We plan to grow all these things again this year but that's pretty much it.  So just the one apple would be pretty awesome as far as gardening prowess.  Even a tiny one.  A very tiny one would be fine.  As long as the birds don't get it.

"I wear very expensive shoes made from very soft animals."

Matt just discovered petfinder for himself.  We adopted Jolie from petfinder but I'm the one who oooh'd and aaaah'd for days at all the cute puppies.  He was looking for the pictures of some dogs his co-worker is adopting from the south (Yay for him, that's awesome!) and he discovered they have sheep and cows and all kinds of animals on there.  He had the best time and he really wants to adopt a cow from california who just retired from being a teaching animal at a vet school.  I'm not sure the california cow adoption thing is going to work out but I'm happy that he discovered how much fun petfinder can be.

I don't know what's going on with the shower except my anxiety level is ridiculously high and now we have easter.  Can I tell you I completely forgot about easter?  Because I did.  My mother was a nun but seriously easter means nothing to me beyond giving children candy.  Matt might be working, which he's never done on a holiday in the history of ever, but it's actually true and I don't think MIL believed me.  I mean, it's not even her house she's inviting us to.  You can't really invite people to someone else's house. That's not really how it works.  If the sil wanted us there she'd invite us and not half an hour before so i guess they don't want us there.

"Can't fight the seether"

And so begins another post in which I try to regain my humanity.  It turns out that I am a jerk.  I hate realizing that, I really do.  I got an invitation to a party and I'm pissed about it.  That makes me a jerk.  A party thrown for a person by a person who loves her and who invited me and still the whole thing makes me want to break things and stomp my feet and I don't know what but I don't want to go.  I really don't want to go.  I survived the wedding and the you should get married you're missing out but I just don't think I can survive the baby shower.  And Matt won't be there to deflect the ignorant advice and share in all the getting judged by strangers.  

I wasn't expecting a baby shower for the THIRD baby so I wasn't prepared for this, although that seems very foolish on my part.  I really don't want to hurt my mil's feelings so I think the best I can do right now is say that I can't wait to go and then develop a terrible cold that I don't want the mother to be to catch.  I am not a good enough person to sit through an afternoon of baby shower games and hearing how selfish I am for not having children.  I am deeply flawed and weak and so mean spirited that I can't either be genuinely happy for the family or fake it reasonably well.  

I wish I could be that person who can fake it and I'm not sure what that means, is that something I should aspire to?  Can you change yourself and be a person who sees sunshine and daisies all the time because that would be awesome.  I mean, generally speaking that's the kind of person I hate but then maybe it's because I'm ridiculously jealous of the daisy people.  I wish I could spend money I don't have and raise children without encouraging them to learn to read and have yet more babies I can't afford and not worry about any of it but I can't.  

I can't not worry about any of that stuff and I believe that I will never be able to not worry about it.  I've been doing a lot better since going to the spa, my friend saved my life with that trip because before that weekend everything made me mad and eventually even your sweet boyfriend starts to hate you when you yell all the time.  I haven't been mad enough to lose sleep between then and receiving this invitation and I don't want to let things get that bad again.  

I am hoping blogging will help and I apologize in advance for being so angry about a baby shower because I know that it is not ok to have anger about a baby shower.  Everyone is happy about the baby and buying gifts for the baby and doing everything possible for the baby and the mother and there is no earthly reason that that should make me angry.  It is not ok for me to feel that way and I know it and I have no idea of how to resolve it.  My wonderful savior of a friend who has her own painful baby shower issues said I don't have to go and I'm certain that everyone will have a better time without me or at the very least not notice my absence except for my mil who wants us all to be happy and get along and be the brady bunch in real life.  I really want to know why I can't find it within myself to do that for her, even for a few hours.  

I thought for a while that keeping boundaries on what I was able to give would be the best thing to help me feel better but it's not helping and I'm not better.  I'm not sure what to do now.

you take the one year off blogging and you miss everything

I've been out of things for a long, long time.  I meant to write this long thing about the spa and officer handsome at the border patrol but I don't know I guess I just don't make time for blogging anymore.  It's a shame because he was very handsome and charming and the spa was wonderful including the food.  It was really great not to do anything and to have the only time you have to worry about the time is meal time.  I didn't realize how wonderful it would be to not have to cook or worry about what anyone else needed.  It was very quiet with no tv's and no telephones.  Right now the dryer is drying and the washer is washing and I'm watching the fourth season of madmen and there are a bunch of men downstairs fixing a transmission and it's the opposite of quiet and peaceful.

Since then we had a hectic week and another weekend away and a very long car trip to Vermont.  I have laundry to fold and bread to bake but I'm sitting here blogging because it's been a very long time and I think a lot of the reason I am so stressed out all the time is because I lost my outlet when I stopped blogging.  I really need to write down words and let them go and it doesn't work so well on paper.  I don't know why, maybe because they aren't actually gone.  They're still in my notebook hanging around.    

It turns out that change is really hard and I'm trying to do things that make me feel better and that should be easy but it's inexplicably difficult.  The short story is that I'm trying and I'll be blogging more and it will probably be navel gazing drivel but c'est la vie.  I honestly don't care and I'm willing to try anything in order to get more perspective on things and release my jaw from the uptight position.

Don't make me get the hose!

can't believe it's been a month. Seriously I can't. It's been such a hard month I can't even express it. We're hoping for better things and easier days and medication for this anxiety disorder I'm nursing. Being too stressed to eat is good for the diet though. I ate three dove ice cream bars this week and still list a pound! Whoooo empty calories!

A friend and I are taking a fitness and wellness vaction this weekend. I'm expecting something along the lines of fat camp but in french so it'll be a charming fat camp. Au revoir Les croissants...

"You had a problem in your life and who stepped up to help you? Math."

A lot of things are making me grouchy this weekend.  I'm a grouchaholic and it's pissing me off.  I'm pissed off that I'm in a bad mood, that's how bad I need therapy.  Matt and I were reviewing our finances and it seems we spend one of my paychecks just getting to work every month...which makes us mad.  We spend enough money in gas to rent a place in bar harbor and walk to work.  Seriously, how annoying is that?  Grrr Grrr Grrr.  I'm just not in a reasonable frame of mind lately, not even close.  I really want to be one of those people who just drinks beer and has babies even when they have no money and doesn't worry about things like the gas supply and working so far from home but alas, I'm not that person and thinking about things like that really make me want to build a shelter and buy some guns.  I worry the crap out of caring for my dogs and cats and chickens in an emergency...if I had a child my brain would explode I'm absolutely certain.  I'd probably have to be committed, probably I should be committed now and save all that traveling.  Sorted.

So, Rebecca ran an awesome half marathon because she is a kick ass princess.  I'm really impressed and proud and she's just awesome and way less neurotic than me so hop over and give her some love because half a marathon is a damn long way to run.

I didn't run any marathons, not even like a quarter marathon.  The only marathonic related activity I had this weekend was the cleaning of my urine soaked house.  Old cat hates new cat, or us, or the sofa or has some serious bladder control issues because that bitch destroyed our crappy but formerly odorless Ikea sofa with only her urine.  She has a black belt in peeing, seriously.  It put all of us in a bad mood and we had to trash the cushions.  Now I have to make my own because we can't afford a new cheap Ikea sofa especially if we can't sort out the urinator.  I scrubbed the floor in two of our three rooms just to be absolutely sure we don't become those people with the pee house that makes their friends cry.  We really don't want to be those people.

Grudgingly as I don't want to admit the good pieces of news from this weekend, I did lose a pound.  And I made a really very tasty vegan chocolate cake that Matt couldn't believe was genuinely vegan.  I proceeded to add whipped cream and chocolate mousse and turn the whole thing in to lunch sized trifles but the slices we had virgin were very good.  I just really needed to use up that whipping cream or I'd have left it as was.  We also snowshoed 2000 calories each day.  I did anyway.  Dude, there is no option because the twice a week snow storms are back and there is officially no other way to walk the doggies.  We're all worn out from the extra exercise, especially the furries who have the luxury of napping 20 hours a day.  My quads could cut glass they're so awesome, or is it diamonds...or is the whole comparison completely wrong?  Whatever, they're John Basedow awesome, that's how awesome they are.  It looks like there will be compulsory snowshoeing through May at this rate so maybe the rest of me will catch up.  Basedow all the way, baby!