Ladies and Gentlemen: I'm Large.

Why is this a blog title, you ask?  Because, until today, I was EXTRA large.  At least, I was according to the world of Old Navy sizing.  But today, when I headed off to the dressing room laden with size XL tops, every single one of them was too big.  That's quite a nice change from everything being too small, I'll tell you.  Today's shopping adventure proved that I've really been losing weight in a really practical way: I've dropped a shirt size AND a pants size since January!  Guess the "Get Fit" and "Eat Healthy" goals are working out (haha, bad pun unintended)!  I left with 2 pairs of capris, 3 tops, and 2 pairs of flip flops: a nice boost to my mostly non-existent spring wardrobe.  And my friend Rachel and I had quite the laugh-filled shopping spree (particularly when she accidentally brought me a shirt covered in pictures of fish instead of artistic flowers, like the one I asked her to trade in.  It was funny if you were there, I promise).

In other news, today was a GREAT day.  Besides the extremely victorious shopping trip, I also ate tacos on a restaurant patio in the gloriously summer-like Texas weather with friends, made enormous progress on my class presentation, and ate pizza and cake balls with the girls while having a quintessential movie night (this night's picks included Grown Ups and Secretariat: both good movies in very different ways).  I also managed to get a 98% on the church history midterm I was certain I failed, thanks to my professor's lenient grading (everyone did horribly, I think they just cut us all a break).  

Yeah...everything about today was good.  Actually, except the part where I ran the dishwasher without putting soap in it.  That wasn't so good.  There was also a part of the day where I was certain that I saw my car getting a parking ticket, and spent a suspenseful 30 minutes in anxious anticipation of what I would find upon my return.  But it turns out I was just paranoid, and quite legally (if poorly) parked.  Both of those things are insignificant in comparison to the rest of the day's goodness :)

Nervous Breakdown and Coffee Shop Productivity

This morning I opted out of going to church, as I woke up tired from a restless night's sleep...I wasn't feeling too great last night for some reason (actually, probably related to the giant bag of M&Ms I consumed during "The King's Speech"), and when the alarm sounded around seven o'clock, I chose more sleep over church.  I felt rather guilty...but there it is.

In other news, I had one of those "you're-not-strong-enough-to-be-in-a-career-in-ministry" / "why-the-heck-are-you-in-seminary" / "who-do-you-think-you-are-to-be-qualified-to-lead-people-in-their-spiritual-lives" breakdowns this morning.  It spawned from a realization that there was no way on earth that I was going to have the intellectual stamina to get through over 100 pages of reading for Tuesday's class, answer a bunch of questions pertaining to said reading (so I can email them in ahead of time and look good), do all of my class reading for tomorrow's class, post something intelligent on Blackboard for my church history class, and get a good start on my New Testament paper in one day.  No way in heaven or hell (maybe heaven, but as much time as I spend studying God-related things, I've been having significant trouble connecting with God in the personal realm lately).  And so, I did the natural and appropriate thing in such circumstances: I changed my Facebook status to something about not being cut out for ministry, and sat on my couch and cried.  Luckily for me (unluckily for them), my parents called right at the onset of the cry-fest for our usual Sunday chat, and offered some comfort and general distraction.

White Rock Coffee: Unassuming
But Awesome

After the phone call, I decided I needed to get out of the apartment.  I was a little weary of doing so after yesterday's debacle with the Dallas public realm, but my apartment was turning back into a hobbit hole of despair.  Going out into the world was necessary to maintain sanity.  So I got up, wiped remaining tears from my eyes, got dressed, and packed my laptop and textbooks up and took myself out to White Rock Coffee, a local coffee shop about a 7 or 8 minute drive from my apartment.  The beautiful thing about choosing this particular location was that it required me to drive AWAY from downtown...meaning in the opposite direction of all the Super Bowl fanatics flooding the Dallas area with their cheese hats and Steelers paraphernalia.  The fact that I encountered no crazy drivers on the way there put me in a good mood, and once I got inside the coffee shop and ordered myself a cafe au lait and set up shop for productivity, I got some serious work done.  I banged out answers to the education-reading reflection questions that had sparked the tears earlier (taking my mother's advice and "schmoozing" my way through...she studied education herself, so she knows what she's talking about).  That took about an hour and a half.  

Inside....Oozes Productivity

Then, feeling schmoozed out, I opted to do some CCFOF work instead of jumping into my NT paper.  THAT was a very good idea.  My job has ups and downs in terms of interest level of my assigned tasks, and right now it's DEFINITELY at a high point.  I have lots of things to do, and none of them seem pointless, and they're all a good change of pace and allow for creativity and correspondence with people all over the world.  I've actually been motivating a fair number of people to be prayer group leaders for this year's prayer campaign.  People email me random questions about stuff, and I turn it around on them to tell them how this or that would make them an AWESOME prayer group leader.  It's kind of fun.  In fact, YOU should be one.  I'm kidding...but really, you could be...You read my blog, after all, and what better way to get a feel for what I do in my work than to get involved???  Am I right???

OK, so anyway, after my 3 hours or so of productivity, I returned to the apartment very hungry (the coffee house baked goods are out of my realm of healthy eating at the present), and made a dinner of chicken, couscous, and green beans.  It was tasty.  Then, as the rest of the world tuned into the Super Bowl, I punched out a fairly good outline for my New Testament paper.  It still needs a good deal of work, but it's getting somewhere.  After the Super Bowl ended, I watched the new episode of Glee (yay!), and after THAT ended I spent FOREVER trying to plan out a healthy menu for this week so I can go grocery shopping tomorrow morning.  Cooking healthy is more expensive than cooking unhealthy, and that makes finding recipes very difficult when you're trying to keep to a budget.  I also don't have anything stocked up in my kitchen, because I've only gone shopping once since getting back from winter break, and the week of snow further cleaned out my cupboard.  It's frustrating, but I'll have food to eat besides chicken again.  If anyone has cheap, healthy recipes, send them my way...

I'm WAY past the midnight bedtime because grocery-list making took so long, and of course I have to post on the blog.  So sweet dreams everyone...I'll report back here again tomorrow.

Anyone have any Stress Management ideas?

What can I say about today?  All in all, it was fairly un-extraordinary...like yesterday, I spent the bulk of the day doing homework, avoiding homework, and eating less healthy food than I should.  I'm going to have to go grocery shopping tomorrow, I'm thinking I need to pick up some sort of healthy snack food.  Also, I'm falling back into the eating-to-kill-boredom/stress eating thing that I seem to do so well.  Actually, I may do a complete kitchen clear-out, and get rid of all the unhealthy things hanging about...or maybe not.  We'll see...yes, I should.  But I don't want toooooooooooooooooooooo!

OK, I'm done being a baby now.  Besides, it's almost midnight, and I don't fancy going out to the dumpster in the darkness.  If anything will be done about the junk food lingering in my cupboard and refrigerator, it will be done in the morning.

On the bright side of today, I finished the reading for my Tuesday education class (quite a feat, since this week's assignment was to read an entire book), and went to the small group I've joined since committing myself to the "getting involved in a church" goal.  That was quite enjoyable.  I'm glad I've been forcing myself into expanding my social circle.

Alright friends, I need some input from you...I need healthy, productive stress-management technique suggestions.  Because, as I'm getting deeper into the semester, I find myself moving back to my old unhealthy habits (both physically and emotionally)...these include, but are not limited to, boredom eating, excessive internet usage (Facebook and Youtube specifically), and to a certain extent, negative self-talk.  Anyone have any ideas for better stress management??  The semester isn't even all that stressful yet...it's thinking about what's to come that's got me thinking I need to prepare now...

Slump

Everyone has their little slumps on their way to goal accomplishing; I would call today a slump.

First of all, I accidentally slept until 11:00...I had two alarms set for 9:00 and don't remember turning them off, so I don't really know how that happened.  I've discovered that sleeping in late REALLY messes up my productivity groove.  It's weird, because I always consider sleeping in a luxury (and I suppose it is), but it's really not all that beneficial.  I'm finding out that it's better to stay on a regular sleep schedule as far as energy is concerned.  I'm sure someone told me that along the way...I believe them now.

The morning (time designation loosely applied) was fairly productive: I did my daily CCFOF research, and then went and sat out by the pool for a couple hours and accomplished a fair amount of class reading...unfortunately, I was being proactive and mostly reading ahead for a book review due in a few weeks, so I still have a lot to get through before Tuesday (Monday reading is happily completed).  It was a beautiful 72 degree day here in Texas, and I brought two books with me, allowing me to switch readings whenever I got too bored with one (an effective strategy, I discovered).

The other problem with sleeping late is that it throws off my meal schedule; so around 4:00 I got hungry for lunch and retreated to the room where the rest of the day was spent in a general slump.  After eating a healthy-portion-size meal I was still oddly hungry (despite significant chopping of portion sizes lately, I haven't had this problem before...and don't worry, I haven't been eating an unhealthily small amount or anything, I've just been paying attention to proper portion sizes, which are quite smaller than my past idea of a "portion").  This kind of led into a slump of junk food for the rest of the night, including at various points pizza rolls, hot chocolate, and peanut butter on a spoon.  Yeah...I'd call that a slump.  I was also feeling kind of sick this afternoon (pre-peanut butter and hot chocolate, those were attempts to use sugar to perk me up a bit)...as a result, the entirety of the evening was spent watching "I Love Lucy" episodes and "The Royal Tenenbaums" on TV (I actually liked that movie a whole lot...it's filmed in an artistic way that's really reminiscent of "Amelie," which I love).  After that, I spent countless hours on Facebook/Youtube, and eventually pulled the Wii Fit out not to exercise, but to do a body test (which I've committed to doing every other day).

Actually, the body test was a pleasant surprise: in the past 10 days or so, I've lost 5 pounds and lowered my BMI by 0.8!  I haven't even been working that hard either...just eating healthier foods in proper portions, and exercising for half an hour most days.  I'm rather proud of myself, if I do say so.  I'm sure that I won't keep losing weight this quickly...but still, this is the first time that I've set out to lose weight, and am actually accomplishing it.  It's a nice feeling :)

Bliss

This is bliss: cooking healthy and delicious tomato basil chicken and rice that makes the apartment smell like Italy, curling up on the couch with said dinner and watching "The Swan Princess," making frozen peanut butter and banana poppers, and working out with the Wii Fit.  

And this is how I spent my evening :)

If there's one thing that a week of focused goal-oriented diligence has taught me, it's that being productive in the beginning of the day sets you up to be productive throughout the day, which in turn allows you to have relaxing evenings that restore your sanity, thereby setting you up for productive mornings, and so forth...

If there's one thing that a week of focused, healthy eating has taught me, it's that the guilt-free feeling associated with eating better is one awesome feeling.

If there's one thing that a week of diligent, regular exercise has taught me, it's that exercise gives you endorphins. And endorphins make you happy.  And just as Elle Woods pointed out in Legally Blonde, "happy people just don't shoot their husbands."  They also don't wallow in fits of despair brought on by feelings of being overwhelmed and general lethargy.  They just don't.

Summary of one week back in Dallas: things are going great :)

Marathon Eating and Homemade Pinatas

Today was another hodge-podge day of unusual occurrences.

First of all, this was a marathon-eating day such as I have never experienced.  My mom and I went for breafast at La Bonne Bouche, a French bakery/cafe that always makes me have throwbacks to Paris the moment I walk through it's doors.  As usual, I had the eggs benedict (heaven on a plate) and coffee.  Something about the smell of their coffee is precisely the smell of the cappuccino at Parisian cafes.  After smelling the coffee and vaguely smiling for a few moments with Parisian reverie, I looked up and saw my mom eying me quizzically.  You know how some smells and tastes just instantly take you back to a place or time?  This was one of those moments.

Needless to say, I was stuffed after breakfast.  Which is why, naturally, I went to Mimi's Cafe for lunch with Jessica, the high school best friend.  To be fair, we were actually out running several different errands, and went and had lunch in the middle of them all.  Still being full from lunch, I opted for the crab fritters, a small and cheap dish of crab and artichoke and spinach magicalness.  And so I entered the afternoon feeling just as full as I had during the morning.

Later in the afternoon I ate a tootsie roll and felt like I was going to die.  Unfortunately, I couldn't keel over from food consumption, because the family was going to dinner at California Pizza Kitchen as a goodbye dinner for Hannah and I before we bounce back to school in a couple days.  Pressured by stressful ordering circumstances (one of those we're-all-hungry-and-ready-to-order-but-you-aren't-so-you-can-just-order-last-and-be-ready-then moments), I ordered a tostada pizza like I usually do, and needless to say took large quantities home.

To sum things up, my life = celebratory eating.  It's a good thing I didn't choose "Eat Healthy" as one of my five goals for January.

Incidentally, looking back at the intense goal-planning journal, I'm actually doing quite well for myself in terms of accomplishing things.  Although the big goals remain unachieved (it's only been a couple weeks), I've completed almost all of the mini-goals I set for myself!  Still have half of the month to go...let's see how far I can go!

The other event of note of the day was crafting a homemade pinata.  Jessica, my aforementioned BFF (juvenile abbreviation acceptable since our friendship dates to the year 2000) is the director of the Parent's Night Out program at the preschool where she teaches, and had her first event tonight: a trip around the world!!!  The whole concept was adorable; I was wishing I was a kid so I could go and do everything she had planned.  Anyway, I spent much of the afternoon helping her run errands to get ready for the night.  This is when we discovered that pinatas, though something intended to be viciously destroyed by children, are ridiculously expensive.  Like $20 for a tiny thing that wouldn't even hold a lot of candy.  The big fun pinatas are $40.  Jessica was dismayed, as the main attraction for "Mexico" was to be a pinata.  Enthusiastically, I said "Let's just MAKE a pinata!" - a concept that Jessica happily agreed to, and that I progressively came to regret, wondering if my overly optimistic confidence in me and Jessica's craft skills would lead to the fall of the Mexican Empire (at least, the preschool version).  Armed with wrapping paper, scotch tape, and string, we actually managed to succeed in packaging 20 little candy bags into a homemade pinata that kind of resembled an abstract internal organ.  Still, we were pretty happy with the result:

We should totally go into the pinata-making business.

My day concluded, surprisingly, by watching the second half of the Miss America pageant with the family...not because we'd planned to, but because it happened to be on TV.  During the talent portion (where too many of the contestants mistakenly thought they were the best singer on earth), fun facts about the contestant popped up on the screen.  One of the girls (I'm pretty sure it was Miss Arizona) apparently saved a child from drowning and delivered two litters of puppies.  Does anyone else find that funny?  It's like quintessential pageant-esque perfection...saving children and puppies.  I'm surprised that girl didn't win.  Also, the most common type of commercial during the pageant was for weight loss programs.  Coincidence?  I think not.  And since I watched the parade of slim pageant girls after my day of marathon eating and destructible-candy-container crafting, it's probably effective marketing.

The girl that ended up winning was, I believe, Miss Nebraska, and looked like just the sweetest girl that ever did run through the cornfields.  So congratulations Miss Nebraska.  May you be an effective goodwill ambassador of our fine nation.  And may you, too, strive to save drowning children and deliver litters of puppies into the world.

That's it for now.  Until tomorrow!

A Post in Three Parts

This post will come to you in three parts:

Part One: The Junk Food Epidemic of Early 2011

Like most Americans, I have made the resolution vow to "eat healthier in 2011."  That being said, let me quickly recount my diet since the clock struck midnight on New Years Eve: Papa Johns Pizza (two meals), Pop Tarts, Macaroni and Cheese, Steak and Shake, Sonic, and Crab Rangoon.  Yeah.  That's healthy, right?

Here is the conclusion that I've recently come to:  I find the notion of eating healthy for an extended period of time in a way that would account to a lifestyle change to be extremely intimidating and am, in fact, quite fearful of it.  As a result, I tend to go on a junk food craze and have lots of "last meals," so to speak.  Except, that every last meal isn't actually the LAST meal before junk food is banished from my life.  So I have last meals of junk foods for a good 2 weeks or so until I eventually settle back into my semi-healthy food style.

Obviously, this resolution needs some work...strategy and planning and what have you.  I'm thinking portion-sizing will be the key to victory.

Part Two: The Game of Life


My sister Hannah has an Xbox that she won online (because such is Hannah's life).  My aunt gave her the "Family Game Night" video game for Christmas, which includes Life (the board game) in video game form.  While we were playing it tonight, I realized how different the average life actually IS from this board game.  For example, I doubt that anyone gets $15,000 from each of their friends when they get married (last I heard, people got blenders).  Furthermore, never have I heard of someone I know finding $50,000 worth of buried treasure, or making $60,000 a year as a local hairdresser.  The only part of the game I personally related to was having a lot of loans to pay off.  Also, has anyone ever noticed that, according to this beloved childhood game, you "win" at life by having the most money when you die?  Knowing this, you're encouraged to gamble excessively and sue your friends.  Just saying...the life I want to lead would totally lose the board game version of Life.  (Please note that none of these observations stem from the fact that Hannah beat me in the game...though that is also true).

Part Three: Looping


I went to the Loop tonight with my friends Nick the Weatherman and Ashley, and had quite a lovely time.  For you non-St. Louisans, the Loop is a street of urban awesomeness.  You can google it if you want.  Tonight's Loop adventure centered on Thai food and Frozen Yogurt.  But, what's super cool is that Nick, Ashley, and I have been friends for 10 years, after going to school together for only 1 year (our 8th grade year, when we were all rerouted through the newly constructed Wildwood Middle School before branching out to different high schools).  10+ years of friendship spawning from 1 year of school, when we were all 13 and therefore at the most stupid and annoying points of our lives (no offense, 13 year olds, you'll understand one day).  That's dedication.  We'll go months without seeing each other, and pick up right where we left off whenever we get together next.  I feel blessed to have friends like them :)

Temptation

It's 1:10 AM.  I am laying in bed, perusing Facebook and YouTube and other such websites when suddenly, I hear it...

Something calling to me from downstairs...

Something saying "Celia, come and find me!  You know you want to!"...

That thing calling my name...is a Pop Tart.

But I will not answer the Pop Tart's call.  I will ignore its cinnamon and brown-sugar laden charms.

And I WILL have victory.

Resolution to Eat Healthier: 1.  Junk Food Temptation: 0.