7.29.2010

I know you're leaving In the morning when you wake up, leave me with some kind of proof it's not a dream...

Today I picked up the keys for my apartment.  I am insanely excited about it.  I know I haven't mentioned it a whole lot, but long story short, I am getting a cute little studio apartment in Des Moines, right by where I work.  It's going to be super fun.  I'm starting to move stuff over tomorrow, but official move-in day is the 7th.  Sorry if I've already blogged about this.  I don't remember what I've written or if I've written anything.  I use Twitter a lot and sometimes I forget what I blogged and what I tweeted.  Twittered.  Twitted.  Hahaha.  Anyway, so yes, starting tomorrow I'm moving stuff over.  I'm excited for that.  Then the 6th we go to IKEA and get a lot of furniture, hopefully, so that the few people who are coming to help me move can carry it up to the 3rd floor (heck yes) and assemble it.  If you've bought anything from IKEA, you probably know that putting stuff together that comes from there is no simple task.  Along with the cheapness comes complicatedness.  Haha.  But it's worth it, because IKEA stuff rocks.

So.  21 days before Andrew leaves.  For the last several days I have felt like I am kind of about to cry at any second.  So far I haven't.  But I will.  Lots.

I went on vacation.  That was exciting.  I kind of went on two vacations, even.  The first vacation was to Door County with Andrew and his family.  I had a lot of fun with them, hanging out on the cabin at the lake with his parents and siblings and grandparents and a couple of his cousins.  We did fun stuff, like going to a candy store called the Yum Yum Tree and this ice cream place where you can get a giant huge massive sundae with five softball-sized scoops of whatever ice cream you want and toppings and whipped cream and cherries.  I got all the cherries on me and Andrew's sundae.  I also consumed a large portion of the whipped cream.  Not to mention far, far too much ice cream.  But it was fun.  After Door County for a few days, I went to Mount Rushmore with my family, which was really great.  We saw some bison.  Actually, they basically surrounded our van and trapped us in the middle of Custer State Park.  Which was hilarious.  And we saw many prairie dogs.  They are really cute and funny, and we learned that they don't drink water.  We went to Wall Drug twice, and I got a shirt there.  I also got Andrew a cool knife while I was there.  We saw some other stuff too, like the Badlands and stuff.  And Mount Rushmore of course.  Mount Rushmore is pretty boss, I have to say.

I'm kind of lame at blogging right now, so I'm just going to be done.  Love you all.

Mara

7.13.2010

You can’t even hate on me 'cause you don’t exist...

This is my 398th blog post, just for the record. Also, I am blogging from my iPod, so of there are lots of typos and places where i lack appropriate punctuation, it's because this thing ia actually not too easy to type on. So, anyway. That's that.

I do have a legitimate reason for blogging today, as opposed to any other day. I actually have two reasons. The first one is a confession. I have confessed this to people before and they tend to not take me seriously. If you don't either, I won't be too surprised. The confession is that I need to lose about 20 pounds. Ha! That's all. And actually, at this point I have already lost 5, so I have 15 more to go. That's not really the part that I want to talk about so much though, although there is plenty I could say on it. I never wanted to be the girl that gained the weight after high school. I never wanted my old friends to come home and see me and think "Wow,that's sad, she looks heavier." I eventually realized that this was, indeed, what I was becoming. So I decided that I didn't want to be fat, I didn't want to be lazy, and I didn't want that to be what people thought of when they saw me. So I started to make changes.

I know people who have much more weight to lose (I get that 15 pounds is a drop in the bucket compared to the challenges some people face with their weight)and several of them have started consistently blogging about diet and weight loss and health and whatnot, so I had an idea of what it would take. My friend Art (you can find his blog over at overweightamerican.blogspot.com if the URL is still the same) started doing a thing called Couch to 5k. C25k = running. I HATE running. But I wasn't being consistent with any other form of exercise and my diet is inconsistent enough that I knew I couldn't rely on eating healthy alone to get me where I wanted to be (which, again, I realize is not that far from where I am now) so for whatever reason something came over me and I decided to do it. Not sure what got into me there. But I already finished Week 1 and the first workout of Week 2. And frankly, it isn't so bad. And like I said, I lost 5 pounds already. So I am doing something right.

So, I'm running. Which is insane. But so far it is going really well, and I feel really good about it.

The second reason I'm blogging today is to ask for prayers for my friend Blake. Blake found out last week that there is a mass in the back left portion of his brain. He is having it removed on Thursday and will then find out what it is and what course of action will need to be taken to get him back into good health. We are praying for a miraculous healing to take place. Blake graduated from high school this past Spring and plans to attend Ohio State University to major in Aramaic. He is an amazing young man after God's own heart. Please pray for his complete healing

Sincerely,
Mara Tenille