Lessons to re-learn

I had one of those random trains of thought while considering this post.  It started when I was thinking about the epic Nickelodeon game shows of our childhoods.  The ones like Legends of the Hidden Temple and Double Dare.  The shows we all loved.

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Then I thought about what my 6 year old self and my 27 year old self would do if they had to hang out together for a day.  That was pretty entertaining.

Then I thought about the advice that I would give my 6 year old self.  That was pretty typical and dumb.  Which led to utter brilliance.

The lessons my 6 year old self would re-teach me.  Epic.

Play in the dirt.  It's fun.  Besides, you're going to have to take a bath... might as well make it worth it, right?

Owies don't hurt THAT bad... come on now, stop being so afraid of taking risks.  It's worth a skinned knee to push yourself to the limit of greatness.

Grown ups worry far too much.  A'int nobody got time for that (okay, my 6 year old self would NEVER say that, but it's what she would mean).

Playing dress-up is always the best response to a bad day... you get to be somebody else for a while.

Board games are a blast.  Especially when you make up your own rules.

Your imagination is the best toy you will ever posess.

If you don't understand, ask why.  Ignore people who get exasperated.  Seek out the knowledge.  Ask Priests deep, heartfelt questions, like "What does God look like?" and don't let them cop out.

An outfit does not have to match, it just has to make you happy.

Oh, that 6 year old Kristen.  She was a fun one.  Sometimes I look back and wonder how the path has moved me to where I am now.  How I could have forgotten all those lessons while "learning" so many other things along the way.

This song just came on DWTS... it is so fitting for this post, so there we are.

Have the best weekend ever, friends.

Totally not original

All of you "every day in May" peeps have got me inspired... that day 14 "things that make me happy" made me so, so happy.  I got so inspired by your responses that I just had to jump on the bandwagon too.  So without further ado...

Kristen's list of happy things

-Sunrises
-Early morning kitty snuggles

-Coffee (yes, I know.  This is that kind of blog where I repeat myself again and again)
-Urban fantasy novels and their ridiculously cheesy cover art
-Trashy romance novels
-Jane Austen
-Guacamole
-Ice Cream

-This dude

-Getting to share life with the above-mentioned dude
-Knowing that sharing life with said dude means always getting to eat 90% of our "shared" desserts

-Hiking, biking, and generally being outdoors

-Growing things

-Flowy skirts that make pretty twirls
-Music that encourages twirling
-MmmBop
-Amy Farrah Fowler.  Always.

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-Knowing that debits will always equal credits
-A dang good microbrew
-The sorority girl squat

...I'm going to stop.  This list is taking over my life, in the best possible way and I'm getting picture/life happy.  So I'm going to continue to smile about my favorite Vixen, and head off to the beddy-bye.  It's after 10:00pm as I write this, which means it's after bedtime.

I hope this did something to help you get through the worst day of the week.  Don't fight with me and say Monday is the worst, we all know that Thursday is a big teasing floozy of what's to come.

Too effective

Lately I've noticed a few things in my life that are either too effective, or I'm highly effective at doing... sometimes leading to "interesting" consequences.  So, in no particular order...

1) The Revolt Diet:  This week, I am starving ALL of the time, and actually getting light-headed.  I've been following the diet to a "T", but this week I added one mile of running to my workouts.  Just one mile.  12 minutes (yes, I run slow).  And all of a sudden I feel like I'm going to pass out while driving.  Uhhhh... no thank you?  Even celery is tasting good right now, and that's practically impossible.  I think I'm going to be going up to the next calorie level of the diet in the next few days to see if things get better.

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2)  Coffee:  It just does so many good things that I will never quit.  You keep me happy.  You keep me awake.  You keep me regular.  Sometimes so much so that I have to make a run across complex for the bathroom.  Too much???

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3)  Drinking a gallon of water every day:  Yes, every day, even cheat days.  I've gotten so good at this that I'm almost always done with a gallon by 6:00pm.  I now find myself needing to be close to the toilet every 30 minutes, no matter what.  My main office and my apartment are 20-35 minutes apart from each other, depending on traffic.  It gets kind of dicey some days.

I had absolutely no plans to turn this into a conversation entirely centered around my bathroom habits, but I guess it happens every now and then.  Consider these words to the wise... there can be, in fact, too much of a good thing.

Have a great day, guys!  Drink your water, it makes big things small!

Just a few highlights

I'm chillin' on my couch right now, trying really hard to not distract Ammon while he prepares for his last final (we SINCERELY hope) of his undergraduate career.  If he decides to be insane like me and go back to start over from scratch, I may kill him.  And it would be justifiable, I promise.

Homeslice has put me through a lot with the school thing over the past few years, and when you are condensing multiple major life events into a short span of time, surprises tend to be... unpleasant.  I am honestly more stressed out about his final final than he is.  That tends to be a trend for us, though.  I do the stressing, and he just takes life as it comes.

We had other big life events this weekend.  I finished up my semester for school, and firmly solidified my fourth consecutive 4.0 GPA.  I don't even know how to explain to people how much pressure I put on myself to succeed academically.  I do know that waking up at 7am on the weekends to work on homework sure did pay off, though.

We also did our Engagement photo shoot.  Yup, a whopping 6-ish weeks before the wedding.  I know it's insane, it's just the way it worked out.  I can't wait to see the finished shots, it's more thrilling than Christmas.  Also, we kissed so much my lips felt swollen and fatigued.  I guess having been together for so long we're out of practice???  That, or it was just a dang lot of kissing.

Another major life event is that I don't have to bundle like nanook of the North anymore... the bad weather appears to have vacated!  I'm sure for most people the changing of the seasons is no big, but it makes me supremely happy when this is no longer my view.  In May.

I even managed to work on some wedding stuff Sunday night like a boss.  I got it into my brain that I needed custom bunting to go around the outside of the reception tent.  Heeeeeeelllllllooooo longest, most tedious project ever.  We started that one literally months ago, and I got so tired of it that I set it aside.  Sunday was finally the time to bust it out and get it done.  I managed to get all of my triangles cut out, and now I'm collating them into the proper color sequence.  Then it's time to burn my fingers off pretend I'm some sort of famous craft blogger and glue gun to my heart's content.

Someone PLEASE save me from myself.  This is utter madness in the name of cute decor.

Oh, and not only does Ammon graduate Saturday, but my brother graduates with his Associate's degree tomorrow night, too.  Oh, hey life... when did you get so full?

Revolt -- Week 3

Did you guys miss me?  Yeah, I didn't think you had.  It was honestly a pretty spectacular thing to walk away from blogging for a few days.  I understand why so many of you do it.  Sometimes it's pretty hard to come up with something interesting, or funny, or heartfelt, or inspiring to say.  Hopefully now that school is done (for the semester), I am back on track.

Today starts week 3 of my 12 week Revolt Fitness journey.  When I weighed in on Thursday, I weighed 146.4 pounds, which is down from my starting weight of 148.8.  Oh yeah, it's getting real up in here now if I'm telling you how much I weigh.

My week 2 progress picture.  At the end, I want to make a collage of all of them to show the time-lapse of this journey.  That is, provided the results warrant such work.

The food during week 2 was much better.  We had the choice of a few meal plans, but we chose ours based solely on the fact that it involved guacamole.  I would do just about anything for that stuff.  It's my fave.  Sad note though, is that the tri-tip steak we bought for dinners went bad halfway through the week, and I didn't really want to go out and spend money on any more.  Also, with it having been Mother's day weekend, we took my mom out on Saturday, and we spent the afternoon on Sunday with Ammon's mom, so one cheat day ended up becoming 2.  Hopefully, this won't completely throw off all of the hard work I've been doing.  I made it a point to drink plenty of water, and I tried to balance out my choices.  However, this most certainly happened:

And this:

So it's back to clean eating for me.  This coming weekend Ammon's dad will be staying with us, so it will be a challenge to eat on plan.  I may have to feed the 2 of them something else while I try to stay on track.  I just don't know yet, but I have to figure out a way to be better on these weekends.

The workouts.  Ummmmm, yeah.  I did 4 out of 5 this week, and I felt really unhappy with them.  The workouts are meant to be progressed through the 6 week cycle, so that they get harder as they go along.  I started the program with the week 3 workout, and this week was the week 4 workouts.  Even the easiest level was so challenging that I had to make a lot of modifications, and as a result, I just felt frustrated, and like I didn't get enough out of it.  It's my own mental block, because doing anything is better than nothing.  I'm just dang competitive, especially with myself, and I hate not being able to finish something in the manner that it's designed to be completed.

This week I am going to be starting to incorporate running back in.  I backed off when I started this program so that I wouldn't overdo it.  The goal for this week is to run 1 mile before each Revolt workout.  While it isn't a lot, it will be a great test of where my endurance is at, and if the cross training is making a difference in my running.  Hopefully next week I can run even more, but bit by bit I will make it there.  Also, I would really like to get in all 5 workouts this week... even if they frustrate me, and even if I have to modify every dang move.

So that's where I'm at.  I can't wait to catch up with everyone and find out what you have all been up to!

Disclaimer:  Revolt Fitness provided me a free 12 week membership in exchange for a comprehensive review of the program.  All opinions are my own.

Just a few things running through my mind today

I'm going to keep this short today, because I didn't get out of bed until almost 6:30, and so my workout got pushed back, and thus my free time before work suddenly is much shorter.  But I have some random thoughts to share.

1)  I think it's hilarious that while all of you have gone on the "blog every day in May" bender, I find myself completely disinterested in blogging.  Well, not really disinterested, per se... more that I have nothing to say that's interesting.  Unless you want to hear about the never ending data entry catch-up project at work, or how amazing food tastes this week, or my Accounting homework.

2)  On that same vein, food tastes AMAZING this week.  Oh em gee, guys.  After a week of plain chicken, spinach, egg whites, oh my, I feel like Michelle Tanner when I dig into my morning plain old fashioned oatmeal:

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3)  Expectations.  It amazes me the expectations that people have for themselves, and for others.  I have really high expectations of myself, and I do my best to meet them in every way possible.  It is not easy to work full time, go to school, and plan a wedding, so I try to prioritize.  What kills me is that a lot of people set entirely different sets of expectations, and different sets of priorities for me to meet.  I want to meet their expectations, but they are so far out of line with what I'm doing that it's practically a lost cause.

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And I know a bunch of you are going to say something like "screw all those other people", right?  Well, the truth is, they aren't entirely wrong.  We have been utterly neglecting the wedding so that we can get through school, and they are trying in their way to keep us on track.  I get it, I just don't like it, you know?

Anyway, it's time for another protein shake.  I feel bad always telling you when I have these, because I know that ALL of you love them oh so much ;-).  Have a great day!

Let's do this, week 2

Today kicks off week 2 of the Revolt program for me.  Holy heck was week 1 a roller coaster.  Week one is purposely way harder than any other week, because the goal is to encourage you to shift your diet.

To be honest, the only hard part about the diet for me was how plain everything was.  I've been following a low-carb diet since January, and even the detox phase of this diet has more carbs than I am used to eating.  Ammon about died, though.

We followed the diet almost to the T.  We made a few modifications though, like steaming our spinach for our last meal instead of having a second spinach salad (called for 2 3cup spinach salads with very light dressing.  Blech.), and we could 't even think about eating the prescribed egg whites with our dinners each night.  So many hard boiled egg whites (he was supposed to eat 12 a day, I was supposed to have 7)...  Other than that, we stayed the course with the diet.

Ammon didn't follow the workouts this week.  He was too busy dying from not having his regular diet of chips, cheese, and Chipotle.  I managed to fit in all 5 workouts, though!  Monday and Tuesday I was hobbling like a Grandma, but as of yesterday, I feel like my body is adapting to the workout stuff again.

As for progress, I "officially" lost 0.6 lbs.  I say officially in quotes, because I decided to make Thursdays the official day I weigh in.  I'm pretty stoked about that, seeing as between the Thursday before the program and the official start date on Monday, we went hog wild with our food and beverage choices.  You probably saw it on Insta, but there was one of these involved in our Sunday night "last meal" festivities:

Needless to say, I had to overcome a fluctuation in the wrong direction to weigh in 0.6 lbs lighter just 4 days after the Manberry Margarita glory.  It was worth it though.  Also of note, even without working out, Ammon dropped 1 inch around his waist!  It's amazing what cutting a ton of sodium from your diet can do.

The best part of the program this week:  had to be how short but intense the workouts are.  I love being done in 20 mintues, but feeling like I've gone much longer.

The worst part of the program this week:  hard boiled eggs.  I am refusing to be too picky, so we're trying to follow the diet as exactly as we can.  I would have much preferred scrambled eggs, or any other treatment than the one they got, but we ate them because that is what the plan said to do.  We are looking forward to better food this week, that is for sure!

Alright, I'm off to drink a protein shake.  I can hear your jealousy from here...