Am I Crazy?

I want to start this post by saying that I blame everything that follows on three people. It's their fault COMPLETELY.

Those three people are as follows:

Rachel. Rachel. Sarah.

Let's start with Rachel #1. My original healthy friend. The girl who is always eating the salad at the bar. Who prefers kale to chocolate. Who makes brownies with dates in them. I've pretty much always envied the way she respects her body, even if I've usually found it bananas.

On to Rachel #2. Here's where it gets really hairy. Rachel is like a role model to me. She's healthy as a way of life. She routinely gives up sugar. She rides her bike to work. She swims. She hikes. She runs. She just totally gets it. I try to be more like her everyday.

And finally Sarah. I have the biggest beef with Sarah. When I met her, I immediately recognized a kindred (though thinner) spirit. We gagged in unison at the idea of a vegan restaurant. We helped consume two very large pizzas and several pint glasses of beer with our guys with as much zeal and as many helpings. We both bitched about the size of our thighs while recognizing how very little we actually do about it. AND THEN SHE BETRAYED ME. Sarah is getting married this year and finally decided- to hell with it. She's taking control of her diet and her lifestyle. She went on this wackadoo two week vegan diet. She tried a detox. She's doing so awesome. She's awesome.

Worst of all? She's making me seriously consider giving it a try myself. 

HOW DARE SHE!

Honestly though, if you could wade though that heavy sarcasm what I'm trying to say is that my amazing friends are inspiring me to TAKE A LOOK AT ALL THIS. I've been thinking about a Paleo style diet for a while now. I've got a pal named Holly who is an acupuncturist/whole body wellness maven and she makes these life-changing statements the same way I say "another Pale Ale, please." She said the number one game changer she's seen in herself and her patients is to go gluten free, or to try the Paleo thing.
I've been intrigued since she said that to me, months ago.

Today someone posted an article online about the Paleo trend, but it also mentioned a program called Whole30 that I've never heard of before. It sounds . . . up my alley. I like short term challenges (hello 52 Photos... 52 Drawings) I'm interested in this whole thing anyway.

BUT I'M HONESTLY TERRIFIED. Namely, I'm afraid of failure. But I'm also afraid of how much I love donuts and beer and big, meaty cheeseburgers and I don't want to give those up forever and ever.

But I'm also afraid that in a few years my doctor's going to say, "Ok, but really, you are too heavy." Or that Brett and I will try to have a baby and we won't be able to. I'm a trend right now. I'm apart of the obesity epidemic in America simply by virtue of being overweight. That's brutal. It's a weird feeling. I hate it.

The thing I sort of like about the Paleo gig is that it's not a diet and it isn't about losing weight. It's about overall health and lifestyle changes.

The point of this post is- AM I CRAZY? Should I do this? Thoughts?

PS- Brett is going to kill me when he reads this post!

Workspace

Sometime after the wedding but before Christmas (November?) Brett and I purchased some new workspace furniture. I can't call it office furniture, because it's simply a little nook in our kitchen. Also "office" sounds a little official considering we sit here to blog and Facebook. 

The shelf, the table, and the drawers came from Ikea and the good news is that if you don't live near an Ikea (we don't) then you can get these shipped pretty inexpensively. 

I wanted something really clean, really simple, and smaller than the tiled table that we were using before. I've been really pleased so far! I'd be lying if I didn't say that the drawers collect most of our junk, but it's contained and that's what matters. 

In December, Brett and I decided to change up our budget strategy. Here's a piece of marriage advice that even a total noob can tell you: FIGURE YOUR MONEY SITUATION OUT FOLKS. Seriously. Don't even mess around with that.

For about a year, Brett had been doing most of the legwork with our budget. He's a numbers guy, so the fit felt natural at first. He paid the bills, checked our online accounts, and created our monthly budget. In December, it was family meeting time. We sat down and he confessed that he didn't really feel comfortable making all those choices without more of my input.  He often felt like because he "allocated" our budget categories that he was also "giving permission" for us to spend money or not. And that- was just not gravy with him.

In addition to sitting down together each month to craft our budget and set our savings goals, we decided to get a white board to keep track of our more fluid budget balances, like groceries, entertainment, mad money (I'll talk about this in a second), etc. So if we want to go to a movie and there's $5 in our entertainment budget- it's not a matter of Brett or I being the keeper of the keys and saying "yes" or "no." It's just not available to us because our budget won't allow it.

Another thing that Brett and I do that works great for us is a budget category called "Mad Money." It's simple an equal amount of money that each of us get to spend on whatever we want. Mine usually goes towards drinks with my friends and Brett's is typical spent on vinyl records. The point is that we have the same amount of money and we can spend it, guilt free, regardless of the other person. We trust each other implicitly, but it's really nice to have a chunk of change to spend each month with a little less discretion.

Lastly, this month we started using mint.com and we LOVE it. Each of us can access it from everywhere and that makes it convenient, transparent, and fair.

You can also see our "I love you because..." board. This was one of my first Pinterest projects. We try not to go more than a few days without jotting something on it. Usually a pun of some kind.

I also keep several cookbooks handy. If you look closely, you'll see I have about 6 slow cooker cookbooks! I do our meal planning here because I use magazines, cookbooks, and Pinterest to help me plan. We have a mug for pens and a small dish for paperclips, business cards, junk. Of course, most days there are stacks of mail and coffee mugs and sunglasses, but those were cleared for the purposes of this demonstration.

Probably my favorite new addition to the space is our new calendar from our friends Kyle and Rachel. It's cute, just like them.

This is one of my favorite places in our apartment. It's small, but it really gets the job done!

(PS: I'm trying out some fancy blog photo edit stuff. Thoughts? Sorry for the onslaught of colors.. I'll pick a scheme soon, I just wanted to play around.)

52 Photos, Week 3

This week's story: Last night while putting up my Christmas decorations (yes, I finally did it) I did something weird to my lower back. Pulled a muscle or something. I felt awful and crawled up into bed at about 9pm.

It's a bad sign when back breaking pain is the preferable feeling. At about 1:30 I woke up with a wave a nausea and so began the night from hell. I was in the bathroom about every 45 minutes with no sleep in between. No food? No problem. Still puked.

At 8 am Brett took me to the doctor (where I threw up twice) and I got a shot for nausea and vomiting. This has pretty much put me to sleep (or kept puke from interrupting my much needed sleep, I'm not sure which).

Needless to say, the Love Dare, Day Two was put on hiatus (not to mention working, eating, etc.) but true to my promise, here is potentially one of the worst photos ever taken of me for my 52 photos challenge. Enjoy!

(Editor's note: Brett didn't give me two black eyes. I chose this Instagram filter because it made me look extra dead. Good work huh?!)

Bloomington

So, one of the huge advantages of my new position at work being part time is that my schedule is pretty flexible. And since it's my first year of marriage and all (you guys know I got recently married, right?) I basically want to spend EVERY LIVING MINUTE with Brett. So when he told me a couple months ago he had a short work trip to Bloomington, Indiana planned, I was all, "I'M COMING WITH." (Enter SVU "dun dun" here.)

Bloomington is only about 7 hours from Kirksville so we left Friday morning and got back on Sunday evening. Brett's event was Saturday and I basically vegged in the hotel room doing crossword puzzles on the iPad and watching extremely edited raunch-coms on USA. What is interesting is everything other than those moments. What did we do in everything other than those moments? EAT.

We have friends who love Bloomington. Our pal Jason got his PhD at Indiana University (do I get credit for having a friend with a PhD? I want credit.) and he and his wife Erin had lists of suggestions for us. On some of Brett's longer trips, he loses the energy to seek out a local establishment every night (and who could blame him) so we wanted to take advantage of the easy commute to tasty places (our hotel was SO close to downtown), good company (hello- ME!), and trust-worthy recommendations.

Friday night took us to The Upland Brewing Company. As expected, it offered totally delicious pub fare (I had fish and chips and Brett tackled their Reuben) and their brews were very tasty.

I think this is their wheat ale:

I ate breakfast at the hotel in the morning, but Brett was able to get away for lunch and at Erin's suggestion, we tried Mother Bear's Pizza- a delicious pizza place with a very busty bear for a logo.

I took this picture of some graffiti in our booth.

No photos of the pizza, which was devoured too quickly to snap a pic. We shared pesto bread sticks, I had the Illinois Central (I'm a sucker for barbecue sauce on a pizza) and Brett had the Tuscaloosa Touch Down (two words: pulled pork.)

Saturday night, I scouted out a place to try and settled on Bub's Burgers and Ice Cream, mostly because those are two of my favorite things in one name of a restaurant. Turns out, Adam Richman visited their Indianapolis location and completed their food challenge- The Big Ugly. This is a one pound hamburger. Brett strongly considered that, but wanted to save room for a milkshake. I really liked this place. I had a regular cheeseburger, but Brett got adventurous and tried their Elk Burger. (I tasted it. It tasted basically the same.)

I also took the most pictures here because lots of other people were taking pictures which made it less awkward.

Not our best, but blog worthy:

They brought us samples of their soup of the day and I made Brett take it like a shot.

Brett going to town on Elkie:

And our super tasty milkshakes- Cinnamon Crumb and Praline Pecan.

We had brunch on Sunday (yep- still eating!) at The Runicble Spoon, a place that serves Erin's favorite mimosa. I'm inclined to agree since it was a full glass for $5! Our waitress had a hard time splitting our check and we sat next to some fairly self righteous IU students, but my Eggs Benedict was kick ass and Brett had a stack of blueberry pancakes that were very, very worth it.

On the drive home, we stopped for lunch/dinner in St Louis at about 3. A weird time, but by this time we had been destroying our bodies with food on a pretty regular basis so what did it matter. We did (you won't believe this) 5 Guys Burgers and Fries.

It was really yummy and I loved it because I am the type of person who develops an emotional attachment to her food. It made me wanna say DAYUM. (You knew that was coming, right? You knew.)

As you can tell, there were NO weight resolutions on the queue this year. I just... GUYS WE ATE SO MUCH FOOD.

We had a really great time together though and I'm feeling super grateful to have the opportunity to spend extra time with Brett when he travels. It sorta sucks when he leaves and it felt great to pack up into the car with him instead of saying goodbye.

As with any time I travel out of town, I gathered quite a few thoughts and insights on the process (more than just "Another pale ale, please" I swear) and I'll share those soon for sure. For now, I think I'll read back through this post and enjoy the visual feast from our weekend!

Passing It On

I love you guys.

Seriously. I knew when I posted my thoughts on being a better wife that I would get encouraging, uplifting feedback and I totally did. Thank you.

I thought it would be beneficial to share with everyone all what others shared with me. Because I got some awesome ideas. Also- most of my amazing friends write amazing blogs and so I'm gunna push some traffic their way.

Here's what you guys said-

Katie- "One piece of advice is to try to think of some way to bless your husband everyday. Ask him what things speak the loudest to him... is it initiating holding hand? Doing a load of laundry? Random I love you texts? Then try to focus your efforts on those things." 

Rachel L - "I went on a year long mission to love myself. I hated that I was my own worst enemy and giving myself a break meant giving (my husband) a break too." 

Rachel R- "I have a book for that." (I love her.)

Sarah- "I totally understand you when it comes to being more of a talker than a listener. I have to work at being aware and choosing to be quieter so I can support (my boyfriend) as well. I try to take a breath when he hasn't talked much to just be silent." 

Emily- "My favorite thing we do is read every night, not side by side, but we pick out a book and one of us reads it to the other." 

Jess- "Do the 'intimate married things' a lot. wink wink. Seriously. Don't ever stop. There will be lulls as life comes (babies, health, etc.) and someday we will be old and have bad hips or something could happen to one us and I just want to enjoy the hell out of my husband for as long as life allows." (EVERYTHING Jess said was awesome. Go read her comment. It rocked.)

What am I saying? It all rocked! I love you guys. Newly married or fine vintage- everyone said things that resonated to my core. Thanks for being my cheerleaders. My support. Seriously, thanks.

The Married Thing

For the purposes of full discretion, let me say this: when my husband reads this blog post, it will not be the first time he's heard these thoughts. I always feel weird when I see folks posts things online that clearly merit a personal discussion. So, again, this has been discussed- I'm just reaching out to my online homies.   

So I don't know about y'all, but I've been married for about 5 minutes and I already feel like I'm really dropping the ball. I'm not saying this from a point of crisis, but from a point of sincerity. I'm trying to respond instead of react.

Brett and I have been together over 5 years and even so, we are still very much in the honeymoon stage of our marriage. Getting married was awesome. I love being married. I love being Brett's wife. I really really love that Brett is my husband.

When I give myself a personal assessment though, I just don't feel like I'm earning a passing grade. I think so much about Brett's role in my life and how much I appreciate him as my support and my teammate and I forget about my end of the deal. Or I feel like I do.

Another important note- Brett thinks I'm an awesome wife. This is a self evaluation moment, not a marriage-in-crisis moment. I just want to be the best I can for him, ya know?

I'm throwing this out there for a couple reasons:

1) I'm an extrovert and this is what I do.
2) Brett and I are experiencing some situations outside of our marriage that have in many ways overwhelmed us and tested our problem solving and coping skills beyond what we expected to endure during the first few months of our marriage.
3) I want people to know that being married is awesome but not easy. I want to share my challenges so that others might experience peace in camaraderie. I also don't want anyone to be caught off guard if their honeymoon stage doesn't actually look or feel all the much like a honeymoon after all.

But most of all:

4) I'd love some advice.

Here's a short, incomplete list of ways I feel like I'm bombing it:

-Brett is happy when his outsides match his insides. I can neglect housework like its my job.
-Brett is touchy, feely, ooey, gooey, mushy, gushy. As I've noted before, I'm not much of a toucher.
-I'm so sassy. I have a snarky comment for everything. A suggestion. A remark. A critique. That's good for no one.
-I'm a better talker than a listener.

I could go on, but I won't because the point here is not to beat myself up. I want to be the best partner I can be to my awesome, caring, funny, intelligent husband.

I'd love any suggestions for books to read, blog posts to browse, lists to write, songs to sing, exercises to try- you get the picture. What have you done? What do you do? What have you tried?

I've settled on a mantra- "It's never to late to be what you might have been." And thus my endeavor to be Brett's best wife- what I might have been.

A picture. Cause otherwise this post would be boring. 

Christmas/New Year's Eve

I had a really amazing holiday. Of course, I forgot to take as many photos as I would have liked, but here's a nice sampling of my Christmas and New Year's Eve.

I got really excited when it snowed- We had a White Christmas!

We watched a lot of classic Christmas Shows!

I also did some fun Christmasy work stuff- like showing The Muppet Christmas Carol...

And walking in our First Annual Christmas Parade with my friend's adorable daughter Macy.

There was a LOT of this..

And wrapping, eating, drinking, playing:

Our Christmas Eve Tradition- Chinese food! 

Christmas morning-

(Every Christmas morning we've ever spent together, I get out my camera and Brett exclaims, "Are you going to take pictures of me?!" The answer is always, "Uhm, yes.")

I felt like a princess when I unwrapped this! My favorite..

Hanging out at Brett's parents 

 And spending some awesome quality time with a couple of our favorites (Fries and Rachel and Kyle)

New Years Eve meant a new hair cut and some fun in Des Moines!

Confession: I still have not taken down a single Christmas decoration. Really hoping to tackle it this weekend but man! I really lost my fire for it!

Day 9: Handmade Christmas Cards

Day 9 of our advent activities was to make each other Christmas Cards. I was looking forward to this one. It turned out as amazing as I expected. Brett hauled down our art supplies and we went to town. 

You'll notice we were NOT messing around- mod podge, glitter, crayons, paper cutter, etc.

My card was inspired by this pin.

 My Christmasy living room:

Another advent activity was to have a Moser Family Band Christmas Sing Along. I didn't take any photos (or recordings, oh my gah) but here is Elvis with one of my absolute favorite Christmas songs (and some nice winter/holiday imagery):

Also, in case you are wondering, I sing exactly how I think you'd expect me to sing- not that good, but not that bad either.