Strength

I want to show you what strength is, and what the women in my family are raised to be.
When you fall in love, you hope that everything you see, everything you know about that person is exactly as it should be. That he's just as sweet, faithful, remarkable and true as he was as you fell in love.
Sometimes, however, we don't find out until after that maybe this man is lying. Maybe he's not so good, so sweet, so faithful.
There are so many women in this world who turn a blind eye to that; so many women who would find this weakness and cover it back up as quickly as possible, not wanting their image of him to be sullied.
And then there are women like my cousin, who put her foot down, and then brought the other one down on his face right after it.
Read this blog, and remind yourself of what strength is. So that if a friend or a loved one finds herself covering up the bad man, she may find the fortitude to stand on her own two feet instead.
The Release
I have never been more proud of you, Amber.

From Miss to Mrs.

Two months after my sister got married, my boyfriend dropped down on one knee in the comfort of our home and asked me to spend forever with him.

My beautiful ring.

Obviously I said yes.

My family requested that I wait a little while before planning anything - just to give them a break from my sister's wedding.

That was fine by me, as I was a little burned out on matrimony myself.

I've given them two months, but I haven't been sitting on my hands (who could with that rock on the left hand?!). I've scoured the venues in my area, I've started making a guest list, thought about my dress and even made an appointment for a store in Massachusetts for October. I think I've found a venue, done a precursory selection of the menu, and figured out how I would decorate the reception ballroom.

I've done all of this and I already want out.

It's been two months of quasi-planning and it makes me queasy (say that five times fast).

Don't get me wrong - I want to marry this man. I will marry this man. But I don't see the need to spend the equivalent to a down payment on a house for one night's celebration.

Maybe that's just the initial shock still absorbing, but some of these places are ridiculous! Thousands of dollars just to stand on your grounds for 30 minutes while I say "I do"? A $3 per chair charge for the ceremony so our families can sit down? And 20% gratuity? What if the servers or waitstaff are terrible?? Am I still required to give a 20% gratuity? (The answer is yes, actually. They can fling boogers on my dress and I still have to tip them 20%.)

Now that I know what my sister had to go through for her own wedding, I honestly would just rather elope.

But my guest list of 230 people would not be happy with us.

You read that correctly.

230.

Let the Hunger Games begin.

Date, set, match

We set a date!!

Three months after he proposed, and after checking every venue in the state, we finally found the place we're going to become husband and wife.
So now all the other silly little details can be figured out. Like what to put on the tables, where to seat everyone, which dress I'm going to wear, all that other crap that doesn't matter to anyone else but me.

And then there's the one thing that I will probably stress about until June.
The guest list.

Right now there are 230 people on it, and I have to cut it down to at least 180. Somehow.

#firstworldproblems

Lazed out

Sunday marked the first time that all of my sister's bridesmaids were together - luckily it was also the day of our first dress fittings.
I got in my dress and started to panic. When I had tried it on the first time it was slightly tight, but not too bad. The seamstress even said I didn't need to let anything out. This time though, I as she stood behind me and zipped it up I started feeling tighter and tighter, worse than the first time I had tried it on.
But it zipped. It zipped and it hooked and it stayed where it was and I could breathe OK.
Ida, the seamstress, said that I just need to lay off the salt and I'll be OK. But the more I've started to think about it, the more I've realized how easy it's been to let myself go.
Don't get me wrong, I haven't gained a ton of weight. My pants haven't changed sizes and my belt still buckles in the same place. But my little pouch of a stomach sticks out when I stand.
Problem: I'm still making excuses. I can't walk up the stairs anymore without getting slightly winded (not wicked winded, but plenty enough to worry me) and I say "I must be getting sick or have a sinus problem."
I don't have a sinus problem. I have a lazy problem and I have to get ahold of it.
But again, it's 85 degrees outside and I'm pretty comfortable on my couch. Plus, my iPod isn't charged. How can I run with no music? I'll laze out all over again.
The boyfriend doesn't seem to care that I have a pouch, which is part of the reason I love him so. But he's said we should both start exercising again, so I'm hoping we can figure something out for tomorrow and get me a running partner.
For tonight I think I'll stick with the crunches and some pushups to tone those arms for the wedding.
And a chicken salad for dinner.
Tomorrow I'll go for a run :)
No laze.
The dress fits and we're six weeks away from the nuptials, so it could be much worse.
But it can also be much better.

Tummy for President, 2012

I saw an ad for Nike the other day about how a woman's butt is a wonderful thing, and that 10,000 lunges makes it even more round.

Well I don't need any help in the round butt department.

What I do need help in is the flat stomach department. I want a stomach that you can bounce something off of. Not a quarter - that involves way too much work. But maybe a tennis ball. I'd like to be able to bounce something off my stomach, and if that something already has some bounce to it, yahtzee!

So I figured, if the woman in the Nike ad needed to do 10,000 lunges to make her butt look like mine, maybe I needed to do 10,000 crunches to make my gut look like hers, and therefore excellent in a bathing suit.

Thus, the beginning of a campaign. Tummy 2012!

To do 10,000 crunches, I'll break it down and make it easier for myself: 100 crunches for 100 days.

Today is Day 1.

At 4:00 p.m.

And I just want to go home from work and put on my sweatpants.

And watch this week's episode of "Once Upon a Time" on Demand.

...

And yet, this campaign is going to be far more interesting than the Presidential one this year.