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Whoah.

Did last week seriously happen?

Yikes. Yeah…yeah it did. Here, pull up a bean bag…I’ll fill you in. (I don’t have any bean bags…but I’ll bet even imaginary ones are comfy.)

First of all, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all you guys…I hope they were all awesome for you. Some of them were awesome for us.

Christmas was a little hectic but totally fantastic. Good time with family, good food, a long-awaited coffee date with one of my favorite bloggers, and honest-to-goodness homemade eggnog. That stuff was, how you say, le bomb.

What I really need to talk to you about, however, is New Years.

Now, I hate to focus on the negative, but if I don’t find a way to pull something positive out of a crappy situation, then I’m not doing a very good job at keeping up my optimistic label. New Years and the days leading up to it were utterly lame.
After the Christmas festivities, we headed to Kearney to spend time with Paul’s parents and our friends. I ended up going out on Wednesday night for the first round of Karaoke I’ve done in almost 4 years. (I know, I know… 4 years!? When I did the math, I could barely believe it either.) The Karaoke was so much fun. Some of my favorite people were there, and I even ran into one of my favorite people in the whole wide world from High School.Love Shack, Material Girl, Waterfalls, and Stay, (My Karaoke Staple) were sung, and I came home super happy.
The next night, Thursday, was Paul’s and my night to go out to dinner and grab a few beers with our mutual friends. Paul’s mom and dad were babysitting, and the night was ours. We went out to dinner, had a great meal…

And then I got the flu.

Now, I’m not talking about the “Man, I’m so tired and my body hurts and I’ve got a fever,” flu. I’m talking about the “Man, I’m so tired and my body hurts and there is an epic battle of such terrifying proportions being waged in my stomach, that both sides of fighters have decided to violently flee the scene,” flu.

Yeah. Sorry.

So, there we were, stranded at my poor in-laws’ house, while I loafed about feeling like crap. Charlie didn’t understand why I wasn’t getting up to play with him, so he cried at me and pulled the blankets off me all the time. Paul, who had been taking care of both of us, got rewarded for his efforts by…

…getting the flu. On New Years Eve…right about the time everyone is stressing out about finding someone to kiss. By this time, our trip to Kearney had lasted two days longer than it was supposed to, and Charlie had decided that my cell phone needed to take a leisurely dunk in my Gatorade. I’ve successfully filled my brain with images of a trash can that hadn’t been emptied, half of our apartment being burned down, having an eviction notice stamped on our door, and random, surprise bills cropping up that I had forgotten to pay.

I’m happy to say that we did remember to take out the trash. Halfway to Omaha we remembered that we actually took out renter’s insurance this time, so even if our apartmenthad burnt down, we’d be okay…and all of our bills are paid and we blissfully got to sleep in our King-sized bed last night. And Charlie NEVER got the flu.

Life…is so good.

So. It’s a new year. People are making resolutions. That unpleasant stretch of days has helped me decide on mine:

I will not let outside circumstances ruin my outlook or my attitude. I will look at the cold, hard, facts of what I have, and I will appreciate them, and use them to power through my rough patches.

I know this can be more easily said than done…but I think that 2012 might be a little tough in the needing-to-stick-it-out department, and I need to make a conscious decision to be positive. Also, I need to take more pictures of Charlie. Oh, and I seem to have forgotten the most important resolution of all:

I will get a flu shot.

Who’s got resolutions? I want to hear ’em!

This picture has absolutely nothing to do with this post. Paul made roasted chicken last night and it was pretty much totally awesome. I thought I should share. I don’t care what you think about Ina Garten… I lovelovelove her.

Aaaaanyway…

Every once in awhile, I realize it’s been entirely too long since I’ve talked to a friend. Like, months and months since I’ve even sent them a quick, “Hello!” on Facebook. This can make the reconnecting very…awkward. I always hope we can just hop back on the friend-wagon without one of us bringing up how long it’s been since we talked.

Blogging is similar. I’m not sure why, but it’s been weeks since I last blogged.

Yikes.

At first, I was busy. The end of the semester was speeding quickly toward us, and I felt like anything I wrote would be frazzly and incoherent. So, I thought, “Hey, a small break over the holidays is completely understandable.”

And then it got awkward.

That small break turned into almost three weeks, and by then, the thought of writing something stressed me out. The past few days, I’ve been quietly nagging at myself to just sit down and write something…there’s no reason to make a big deal out of this.

So, instead of trying to come up with something brilliant and profound, I decided I’d just getanything typed and posted, to get rid of this stupid awkwardness between the Blog and I.

This is kind of a usual pattern with me. I feel like I need to go all-out on something, and then the second I run into a setback, I feel like I’ve ruined the whole thing. This happens with exercising and eating healthily, and it’s a terrible attitude. I’m going through that a little bit right now with our calorie counting.

Right after I write a post about our awesome success with counting calories, we have a bad week. A week with too many “splurge days” and not enough exercising that knocked my weight-loss trend off-track.

Is this a big deal? Not if I just keep going, it’s not. If I decide to say, “Screw it! What’s the point?” Then, yeah, it’s a big deal. That, however, would be sticking to a terrible habit of mine, and I refuse to do it this time.

So I’m going to keep counting calories and exercising, knowing that it’s going to take a little more effort on my part to keep my brain in the right place. Just like I’m making myself sit down and write something. It may not be the most monumental post I’ve ever written, but it’s more than nothing, and that’s sometimes all it takes to pull you out of a rut.

Any of you dealing with a holiday rut? Need to vent? This is the place, baby.

It has officially been over a month since Paul and I started counting calories.

Now, to you guys, this may not seem like too big of a deal…but for me…

It’s a big freaking deal!

I have never, NEVER, been able to stick to any kind of deliberate weight loss/fitness endeavor for more than 2 weeks. In college, I did manage to go running every day with my best friends, but that was because we had nothing better to do in the afternoons, and it was mainly just fun to be with my best friends.

I think, however, that that was the kicker. It wasn’t deliberate, it was fun…and that’s an attribute that is pretty important to have when you’re talking about exercising; if I’m having fun, it doesn’t hurt so bad.

Except for ab exercises. Those were never fun for me, Marissa. Those were never, ever fun.

ANYWAY, I’m getting slightly off-topic.

Now, I’m not going to turn this into a weight-loss blog, and I’m really not trying to brag, but I’m pretty goll-danged proud of Paul and myself.

We have lost 5 pounds…together! And has it been painful, unpleasant, or a huge stressful burden? No. In fact, I’d say that it has been a great marriage activity. Paul and I aren’t very good at sticking to things. We just aren’t. We get easily distracted. We started doing theCouch to 5K plan this spring, and then we moved into a new apartment. And that went down the proverbial crapper. But this? Counting calories has been (are you sitting down?) not bad at all. The other miracle is that I’ve managed to exercise at least 3 times a week…every week. Miracle, I tell you.

There is, however, a secret weapon involved. www.livestrong.com I’m telling you, I don’t know if we would have stuck to this if it weren’t for this website. My friend, Jessica, turned me on to this site, and I don’t think I’ve told her this yet, but she looks F.A.B.U.L.O.U.S. (Obviously, simply visiting this page will not make you magically shed off pounds like little weight-loss fairies came and melted them off of you with a sexifying blow-torch; you’ve got to put in a little work.) This page allows you to enter your height, weight, etc… and calculates your caloric needs. You enter your goals and progress, and it even gives you fun little ‘badges’ along the way…as a reformed Zynga game junky, this is un-surprisingly motivating. The cool thing is, however, that as you enter your exercise, it changes your calorie needs throughout the day. “You ran 19 miles?” Says Livestrong.com, “Well, for cripes’ sake, make sure you get enough calories so that you don’t pass out halfway through the day.”

What’s totally, crazy awesome about this site is its enormous food database. You type in, let’s say, “Edy’s slow churned mint chocolate chip” and it brings up about 13 different kinds of Edy’s ice cream…and if I can’t find the exact kind, I can find one with the same amount of calories. Then it does ALL OF THE CALUCLATING FOR YOU.

(Notice here that I am eating ice cream. Obviously, I’m not eating 5 bowls of it…I’m having a serving. Why? Because it’s yummy and sometimes I need a little ice cream. Does it derail my endeavors? Nope. Because I’m not eating like an idiot. I’m being aware…and that’s what it’s all about.)

Anyway, I’m going to wrap it up for today, because this is getting long…but I’m not done. I’m fairly excited about this whole situation, so bear with me on the calorie posts…This isn’t going to turn into a diet/fitness blog, though, I promise.

Also, I had a friend mention last time that, because of a history of eating disorder problems, she can’t count calories…it makes her feel a little neurotic. That’s a good point. While calorie counting has been a really good experience for us, it doesn’t mean it’s good for everyone. Please remember, that I am BY NO MEANS a weight-loss expert, and if counting calories isn’t for you, for goodness sakes, don’t do it!

I just haven’t had much experience in my lifetime with doing a happy dance nearly every time I step off the scale, so I wanted to share my excitement with my friends. (That’s you guys, by the way. Hi, friends. 🙂 )

Thanks for reading! Now go! Go forth and be productive! Finish your coffee and create spectacular things!