woot fucking woot

guess who's down 21lbs??!!! oh, that'd be ME.

i think this is a terrible pic of me, but it's the perfect picture that fits my elation over my success thus far.

yesterday i began my 7th week on this diet. 7th full week, not counting the 4 days i put in prior to my trip home. 7 weeks and 21 lbs. that's damn good.

my new worry is my wedding dress. we ordered it based on the size i was at the time. that was 3 weeks ago. i'm down 8lbs since then. they said they can alter any dress up to 2 sizes before the shape of the dress becomes compromised. but the way i see it, why alter when you just need to send the damn thing back and order a smaller size? because the store doesn't nail down any alteration fees if you do that! well those bastards aren't getting me man. i have my first official fitting tomorrow after work. we shall see!

camping trip

dave and i were supposed to go to las vegas this past weekend for the rock 'n roll half marathon in vegas. we were pretty excited about the race, but when we looked at the overall expense of the trip, we decided against it. instead we decided to go to joshua tree and camp overnight.

long story short (go here for our new website), dave proposed to me. i'm so relieved to finally come out with it all! the engagement was perfect, something i'll cherish for the rest of my life.

i've been going a bit nuts here. we had been tentatively planning to do a wedding in june out here, small but in california, small still doesn't mean less expensive. the more and more we thought about it, the more we realized we really didn't want to mess with all the wedding crap. we just want to be married. that's when i started pricing everything. we truly realized we could be a couple in santa barbara, so we wanted to do it there. i sat down and started actually planning it, and immediately lost my mind. we talked and the option of doing it on the cruise presented itself. voila.

i didn't want to announce anything on fb or to our general group of friends until we were formally engaged. it's weird telling people you're getting married and then have that awkward moment where the stare at your left hand, only to see my gnawled off stubs and no diamond. luckily i no longer have to do that. and if you couldn't tell, i'm a little proud of the one he got me. totally caught me off guard. in a great way!

the fam is pretty excited. the wedding will be on the beach of grand cayman island. 2.23.12. great date. i was going for 2.22.12, but it turns out that's ash wednesday and you can't get married in jamaica on ash wednesday. keep up-to-date with wedding stuff on the website i linked above. i already found my dress even! found it, tried it on, ordered it, and paid for it all in one day. i'm good.

had to close with a cute fam pic from the camping trip. it's not the best of the ones we took, but all the others are annoying because my shadowed arm take up the entire bottom and it drives me crazy.

teaching baby

for the past 7 years, i've been around babies. every day. if not every consecutive day, i've been around them for more than the majority of my waking hours. i've seen hundreds of babies enter this world. some of those entries were smooth, others horrid. but i've seen a lot of them. the stories of births are always different, but they're always told with such passion.

our very dear friends had their first baby last night. during her pregnancy, especially here towards the end, i've been mentally planning my schedule so as to be available to them. and it's not because they're incapable, nor because i doubted their parenting abilities whatsoever. after driving home now from my first visit, i've realized i was planning my availability because i needed to be needed. nurses are notorious for their co-dependence, and i'm no exception. what i found this evening, both about my dear friends and about myself pleasantly surprised me. i'm not needed. like, at all. and in no way am i bummed about that. it's very weird. it's a feeling i've never experienced before. i take pride in being a nurse, but why? because i have a knowledge/skill set that makes me indispensable to people at their worst/best times of their lives. that sets me apart, and i cherish that. but it's not the case here. in this situation, i just get to be an aunt. and i'm so excited about that that i found it hard not to do 90mph on the way there.

when babies are born, it's been my experience that the mothers doing mothering well, naturally, and somewhat easily. those that don't most often have other issues going on, of any variation imaginable. but it does happen. watching my new mother/friend be a mother was very organic. it was as if that baby had always been there, and it's already so hard to envision a time before baby. it's that easy.

the fathering has always fascinated me. tonight i realized that in my practice as a nurse, i have a tendency to coach dads. dave has always said that my communication style is very masculine, and perhaps that's why i 'coach' the dads. if baby is crying, and dad continues to do the same thing in attempt to console baby (and it's not working), i'll softly suggest he try ___ or ____. it's never not been well-received. dads become dads when they hold their baby for the first time, whereas moms have been moms since they saw that heartbeat on the screen or felt that first kick. dads always seem to be open to whatever advice a nurse is giving. that's just the way i've always experienced the birth/parenting process. tonight was completely different. there were some things he was doing and i found myself wanting to 'coach' him, softly suggest something else. but i stopped myself. i couldn't identify why i stopped myself at the time, so i just watched him. he would keep with his plan to try to soothe her, and the minute it started to work, or the minute she would look him in the eye and that connection would fire, this man transformed before my eyes. he went from this awkward "wtf do you want?!" guy to this guy who realized that somehow, somewhere he knew what to do. somehow he knew how to make everything ok for this child he has created. and then i realized that if i had 'coached' him, i would have stolen that moment from him. forever. life is about the journey, and in this particular instance, i would've robbed him of that confidence/bonding moment - such a milestone in the parenting journey. lord i'm so glad i kept my mouth shut. that transformation is one i'll cherish for so many years to come. it was a learning experience that i'll be able to take with me. it taught me to just hold off for a second, let parents figure things out. there's a very finite window where new parents go from feeling capable/willing/able to feeling absolutely incompetent/ignorant, and that window is a part of the journey. i don't belong in that window unless invited. when parents are just at their wits end, that's when i step in. but not one second before.

aviva, i can't even begin to thank you for teaching me that lesson. you're such a blessing to this world, and i welcome you to it.

viva los wages

literally.

i'm in vegas for a conference. and my bank account is suffering. i'm not even shopping. i'm just eating. yesterday for lunch, my cobb salad and iced tea was $17.99. tonight my buffet dinner was $27.01. i had roasted chicken, tiny peel-n-eat shrimp, and asparagus. sure, that was all worth $27. i can say that while i'm on a diet, vegas is the most culinarily dissatisfying location in all the land. secondary only to france, i'd think. which is ironic because my conference is being held at paris, las vegas...

i'm in mourning. mealtime used to be such an enjoyable process for me. now it's just crushingly blah. and no, it hasn't escaped my recognition that such eating experiences are the exact reason for my 40+ pound gain. i know that. but it doesn't make it any easier to cut that off. it sucks beyond belief. it's not fun anymore. maybe i won't care when i'm back down where i should be, but right now the world is against me. maybe not really, but that's how it feels. and no, i've never been overdramatic.

someone slip me some fucking chocolate and i'll lick your toes for weeks on end. any takers? no? fine.

yesterday dave and i did the ROC race. it was held at the LA Fairgrounds in pomona, which is just 10 miles down the road from us. friday night we were indifferent - it was raining, we could've gone or not and not cared at all. but saturday we woke up ready to go. then we looked at the weather. no rain, but it was 35 degrees at 0630. by the 0900 race start, the temp was supposed to be 43. they were wrong - as weather forecasts always are. it was 44 degrees. (sense the sarcasm)

we got there in plenty of time, so we stayed in the car and people watched. boy what a time we had. this vibe was much different from a normal triathlon. people just didn't care about anything. 90% were dressed in costume of some sort. 70% were smiling regardless of the cold. 50% were drunk at 0830. there might be some correlation between those last 2.

the race is a 5k with 10+ obstacles. we were the first group of racers (there were 3 different signup times), and we were probably the 3rd wave that went off. with so many people, we still had to wait in line for the big obstacles. no biggy. it was cold, so having the time to cool down from the runs was perfect. first true obstacle:

super short (as in height) tunnel. it looks like just loose dirt, but it's not. it was lined with snow. the rain from the night before just made everything a muddy mess, but here it made it super cold snirt (snow+dirt)(yep, just made that up). it took awhile for our hands to thaw. there were 2 of these, dave first on the first one, me first on the second. just so i could do this to him:

the running caught me off guard - evidently i'm not very in shape anymore. dave was patient, he stayed with me. we soon realized we really wanted to stay together regardless of speed. it was just so much fun that we wanted to share. there were maybe 4 different stations where you were intentionally sprayed with hoses or water guns, which made it quite a cold morning. there was one section with 4 massive ropes hanging over a waist-high trough of nasty water. dave's military training showed on that one - he was the only one who laid ON the rope and pulled himself across. that particular method hurt my girls, so i just jumped in the water and walked. it was nipply. the huge bouncy slides were my fav, probably. dave and i went up the ropes together, we'd planned to superman it on the slide down. we get to the top and dave was so wiggly trying to position himself for his jump that i totally lost my balance and landed on the girls and just slid all the way down head first. oh and hysterically laughing the entire way. such a good time. there were a few other rope/hill obstacles and i really liked those. i totally biffed it on the monkey bars. landed in the water/mud pit. my hands didn't stand a chance with me at this weight.

in all we had just a great time. we laughed, we were somewhat working out, and we just really enjoyed ourselves. plus dave got a free beer at the end. he was happy.

the diet is going well. friday night i was suicidal. maybe not suicidal, but i was definitely ready to completely binge on anything in sight. i had to phone a friend to talk me down from the ledge. i've recruited a sorority sister into the diet with me, and she has recruited her mother and mil. i totally underestimated how helpful dieting is with a friend. especially one like her - we were separated at birth, we both feel the same way about food. we love it. she got me down, and i realized i was in phase 1 too long. saturday i was thinking that after the race i would probably have to come off the diet for just a meal. once i got done though, i realized i'd be fine moving into phase 2. in all, i'm down 9 lbs in 2 weeks. very happy with that. busy month coming up, so i'm hoping i continue to do as well.

a couple of weeks ago, my world crumbled. within a few days, some truly terrible things occurred in my little bubble, and i was desperately in need of escape. dave came with me this past weekend to clovis. just a quick trip to regroup, get grounded, and find myself a bit.

it just so happened to be my dad's birthday as well, so the timing was perfect. here we are at dinner with my grandma. oddly my dad and my grandma are only a couple years apart in age. as always, dave and my dad just paired off and we didn't really see them again until sunday. i needed some mama time anyway. the irritating and wonderful part about my dad's relationship with dave is that i just plain don't exist when dave's around. dad can ask a question about computers or ipads or macs and i can answer him. he doesn't listen to me. dave can repeat my answer word-for-word and then it's true. i'm just not there. drives me crazy, but it also warms me. compared to what i had in the past, i'm so lucky.

my parents have a loving standard poodle named bello, and he's just the sweetest thing ever. a true mama's boy. he follows her everywhere. he's convinced the squirrels in the backyard are secretly plotting his death, and his howl when they appear is just gut-wrenching. it sounds like he's mourning. we've decided to drive home for xmas so that we can take lucca with us. he needs to meet his cousin. i can't wait - they'll have so much fun! lots of photo ops, for sure.

on a new diet. surprise. it's a pretty interesting one though. the dukan diet is based on the principle that the only edible item we can't live without is protein. for that reason, the first phase is spent eating nothing but pure proteins. last week i did 4 days solid in phase 1 and dropped 5 pounds. over the weekend i decided to come off completely. we were going to have birthday cake, plus eating out at my hometown favs, and this isn't a diet you can do half-assed. it's based on cleansing your body, so eating things out of bounds isn't allowed. today i went back on. i already have a sorority sister on it, along with her mother. plus i brought back an entire chest of green chile with me, so i can add that to anything i eat (and trust me, i have). gets a bit monotonous, but i know it works for me!

i feel better now. since that week ended, i learned tons about myself, relationships, and my past. the way it all had to come about is just tragic, but at least i have some sense of clarity now. grounding yourself in your hometown is magically refreshing and recharging. i'm so thankful for the family i have.

stolen

fuckers stole our bike rack yesterday.

we had a lazy day. i've not been feeling well lately. dave got up at 7 and went for a ride. he only made it 12 minutes - he isn't feeling well either. he strongly feels it was on his car when he left for his ride, and when he came back. the car looks really weird without it, so he knows he would've noticed it then. the rest of the day we vegged out. at 3pm i was leaving to head to the grocery store when i saw our aunt jemima lookin' neighbor out front (across the street) with a cop, pointing at our house. well, a couple weeks ago there was a dumpster "incident" involving our dumpsters. i might have placed one of ours directly in front of the drivers side door of some random car parked on our street. in my defense, we only have one place to put them, and this car was blocking that space. so i was thinking now, 2 weeks later, this stupid bitch had called the cops and was telling them about that. which didn't make sense, but i couldn't figure out why else she'd be pointing at our house. i proceeded to the store, and called dave to tell him to put real clothes on in case we had a visit from a cop soon.

dave called me 2 minutes later. "hey, guess what? they stole my bike rack." awesome. i immediately turned around and headed back home. as the cop was leaving our neighbor's house, i yelled across the street and told him we needed to file a report. very nice guy, ex air force. new to the area. he finds it crazy we are triathletes. as most do. but he was awesome. we were able to print out the pic above and give it to him. the overall value was over $1000 so he assured us it'd be a felony. plus another felony when they were caught with stolen property. he thinks it'll turn up. i think he's dreaming. but nice.

we're sad about the bike rack, but we're even more disturbed. and violated. my fear is that now they know we have bikes. the people who steal these things know their worth, or they wouldn't steal 'em. they also know bikes. we have a dead-bolted door on the side of our garage leading right into it. dave just brought his newest baby home. i'd be heartbroken if they got our bikes. i realize it's material, but still. my biggest fear is that i go in and out of the garage all day long. i really, really don't want to walk in on these bastards as they're taking our bikes. dave doesn't seem to understand that leap. he doesn't think there's any way they'd come into our garage through the side door. i strongly disagree. not to mention dave is gone just about every quarter to Ada for work stuff. i don't want to be home alone with nothing but a damn flashlight to protect myself. it's a really heavy flashlight, but still.

ok, gotta go. time to scour Craigslist...