planes, faith & bacon wrapped meatloaf.

i got back from a long weekend in utah about an hour and a half ago. i am terribly tired but i'm still on mountain time so i can't quite go to sleep. so i'm here. and i'm about to tell you about my weekend.

planes:
i love southwest. only problem is cincinnati nor dayton have it. so i had to drive to indianapolis. which was kind of far but worth the money save. first flight on friday - totally packed and the guy next to me was not an armrest sharer. but i did get a window seat. second flight on friday - a 4 year old that screamed the entire time. the. entire. time. first flight today - i had a row alone and it was peaceful and got to read. second flight today - totally packed and i had a middle seat in a row. FAIL. and there were 7, yes 7 infants on the plane including newborn twins. shoot me now. i know what you might be thinking - "have some compassion for their parents!" no. i will not. get in your car and drive. if they can kick an obese person off of a plane for taking up too much room then i think they should kick off the babies for driving me crazy. oh and sidenote: i haven't flown alone in a few years. totally forgot how hard it is to not have someone talk me through the take offs and landings, especially the landings. i do not handle either well. i think i scared the guy next to me on the first flight. serves him right for taking my armrest.

faith:
i didn't go into this trip thinking i would learn anything about my faith, be challenged about my faith, or to be completely honest, even really discuss faith. i think it was a mixture of being in SLC where i think there is an inclination to discuss religion anyway and the fact that a few of the people i spent the weekend with seem to be going through a bit of a faith revival. friday night, we talked about faith 2 or 3 different times. saturday, it came up more than once. including a conversation i had with jonathan's friend jessica. {sidenote: his friends jake and jess are a couple that live 2 doors down that i wish lived in cincinnati because i would so be their friend. and his friend ben. they are dope. that is all.} she was telling me about the way her faith has changed recently. we were talking about easter and the cross and standing in jonathan's kitchen surrounded by a bunch of people laughing and carrying on, she started to cry. it was so honest. it actually convicted me. my faith has not been the most important thing in a long time {honesty talk}. but i told jon the next morning that if i could talk about the cross without crying or feeling those emotions, that something was seriously wrong. holy week is always a tough one for me. but similar to this year, there have been years before where i had drifted "away" and this easter time brought me back. it's what my faith is based on, it makes sense that it would. i woke up sunday morning and i had a song in my head. "if ever i loved thee, my Jesus tis now" and i knew that morning i had a sensitive spirit. we went to jonathan's church and they sang songs about the cross. the verse in 'how great thou art' started about Jesus' death on the cross and my eyes immediately filled up. i love it. when the writer thought about God giving Jesus to die on the cross, he said he "scarce could take it in". i get that. it's overwhelming. on my drive back to cincinnati from indy tonight, i was singing another song about the cross. in a verse where God is talking to Jesus on the cross he says "...but soon i will clothe you in robes of my own. Jesus, this hurts me much more than you know..." and i started crying. it's incredible to me the way that God works. and for me, i went across the country for vacation and got a wake up call i needed from people that were just sharing with me what was going on in their lives. if you didn't know, i serve an incredible God.

bacon wrapped meatloaf:
i kind of fell in love with salt lake city...and it's food. i had been there once before and done the touristy things. they were great and all but this time i just wanted to hang out with jonathan. friday night we went to dinner {i had a black bean and goat cheese quesadilla. mmm} and then out with his friends. it was a good time. i knew i would wake up earlier than him saturday so i planned to go for a jog. well. i was gone for 2.5 hours. i decided to run to temple square. then i decided to run to jamba juice which was way further than i thought {but totally worth it}. i explored downtown a bit. i could feel the blisters starting and i hadn't even started back to his house yet so i walked a lot of the way home. according to my iphone odometer, i did almost 7 miles. it was beautiful. a cool morning with crazy beautiful mountains and an awesome downtown district. i could move there. we went to lunch at a little cafe that was very good and took home tiramisu for later {yum!} i took an almost 3 hour nap {if you know me, this is rare} and then we went to dinner with jake and jess. we had a vegetarian lasagna pizza at a local pizza place that was delish! we went back to jonathan's and lots of people came over. sunday we went to church and then to brunch with some of his friends. {mimosas and bloody marys, thank you very much} then we had the most perfect sunday afternoon sitting in backyard chairs while the boys threw a frisbee.

this is when the magic happened.

we didn't know where to go to dinner. they threw around some ideas and finally picked a place that no one had eaten dinner at before. turns out it was southern cuisine. and i have to admit now that the best southern food i've ever eaten was in downtown salt lake city. it's true. i had blackened catfish with yummy hush puppies, everyone else had crazy good food but i'm pretty sure his friend ben won the prize. now, i didn't try it because i don't eat beef or pork but apparently it was a gift directly from God. yes, it was bacon wrapped meatloaf with country gravy on top. with killer mashed potatoes and DELISH mac and cheese {i did try that}. then we took home peach cobbler, apple brown betty, and banana pudding. and gained 6.7 pounds each. totally worth it.

so that was my weekend. i ate a lot. but that's what vacations are for, right? i got to spend time with one of my favorite humans and meet the people that mean the most to him and totally understand why they do. i got to see landscape that i'm not used to and it was breathtaking. i got to learn about myself unexpectedly. i got to travel which i love. i got to relax. all in all, it was a fantastic weekend.

i consider myself very fortunate. this morning i felt the same way that i used to feel when i would leave college to go home or vice versa. sad to leave, happy to go. i love my life here. but i could see myself in a town like salt lake.

who knows, i'm only 25. maybe i'll never leave cincinnati or maybe i'll live in 12 places in the next 15 years. but for now, i'll just go to bed.

xx

paul simon > art garfunkel

it asked me to title this something and i had nothing so i went with a random thought inside my head. art garfunkel should be thanking his lucky stars for paul simon and his crazy song writing ability. i don't even know if art is alive though so if he isn't...i apologize for being insensitive. but still. paul simon. love.

it is 9:41pm on thursday. i leave to go out of town at 9am. i haven't packed a thing. i haven't done the 20 things on my professional 'get done before you go' list. i still need to run an errand tonight. but i'm sitting here blogging because there's nothing i love more than unpreparedness. 

i really really do need to pack. but i just wanted to take a minute to tell you a story.

i've always been mouthy. i say what i want, when i want, to whom i want. i think it's one of my most endearing qualities. :)

2 years ago, right around this time, i said some things to someone. some pretty mean things. totally out of anger. i could tell you that since they were out of anger, i didn't mean them at all but that's not really true. i meant a little of it but since i was mad, i was ugly.

one of the things that i said to this person, or more accurately, about this person was that he had "virtually nothing going for him." out of all the things i said, i instantly felt bad for saying that. the thought of someone saying that about me makes me feel pretty low. it was an unfair statement & an inaccurate one.

i didn't see him for a few weeks after that. then one saturday, i saw him by chance and i got to apologize for what i said. he apologized for some things too.

awesome story huh?

well 8 days later, he died.

unexpectedly. 27 years old. died.

and i promise you - after the initial shock, all i could think about for weeks was what i said. there are few things in this world that i am more grateful for than the opportunity i had to apologize. now i know he doesn't care. he's free from the cares of this world, including what a punk girl like me said. but i care. and i carry the weight of that. the weight of my words. frankly, it was a nasty thing to say and it is something i am still ashamed of.

i still fail miserably at this but it really has made me watch my words. watch to make sure the hateful ones are limited and the loving ones plentiful. whether someone is 27 or 97, the chance of never seeing them again is higher than i'd like so i try to make sure they know i love them. and even when i'm angry, i try to not be spiteful. i don't ever want to feel that way again. knowing that without running into him on that saturday, that the last things i said about/to him were hateful. not a good feeling.

our mouths have more power than we'd like to admit. we can use that power to build up or to tear down.

consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark...

insert cliche 'never give up' quote {struggling}

like i said when i first started this blog, it would be a mixture of things - personal and professional.

well today's personal.

if you've been following me at all on facebook (and most of you have, that's how you're reading this), you know about the nearly 15 month long journey i've been on. on the day this weight loss journey hit 1 year, i told you i had lost 114 pounds. 2.5 months later, i've lost 133.

which means i averaged 9.5 pounds the first 12 months and 7.6 a month since.

i know what you're thinking - 7.6 pounds a month is still really good.

and i know i should be happy and i know i should be proud but i'm just really struggling today. mainly because i can only blame my metabolism so much. i feel like i'm more likely to waver from my self-set meal and exercise plans these days where i would rarely have before.

that frustrates me.

it shows complacency and apathy - two things that that rachel from the past was sinking in.

maybe it's just a bad day.
maybe i feel guilty because i don't want to tell you what i just ate for dinner.
maybe it's a plateau.

but i feel like it's in my hands. and i'm dropping the ball.

i will never look at 133 pounds lost and feel like a failure. it's pretty much impossible. but right now, i feel like i'm failing at my ultimate goal - victory over the self-inflicting habits i hid behind for so long.

i'm not in a rush -i've said that before. i would rather lose pounds that don't creep back than ones easy to regain which is why i have never done a fad diet, eliminated a food group altogether, or went about this unnaturally during the process.

i think i'm struggling because this hasn't been a bad day. it's been a bad 2 weeks. 2 weeks of not pushing myself like i should physically (it's like i ran 2 races and all of a sudden, i think i've succeeded and can quit) and not disciplining myself in the kitchen like before. and work has been stressful. isn't that everyone's excuse? :)

just last night, i realized that within walking distance of the apartment i'm moving to in June are 3 of my favorite restaurants. and i actually got scared. who gets scared of food? this girl. cause i'm learning that while for the most part, i did truly leave behind that girl, she still creeps up.

so forgive me if this sounds whiny. i'm not whining, i'm not even complaining. i'm just angry at myself and need a swift kick in the pants. because if anything, i've learned this year that i can do anything. i really can. so i don't have a fear of not completing this journey - i will lose the weight, i will get down to that goal. i just want to make sure that girl is gone.

and today, she's like a very unwelcome houseguest.

oh and by the way, it was pizza. and i already regret it.