No More Fatty Assids!

I had a vision one night in July.

It was really late, and I was dreaming of somewhere sunny and seventy-five (I love that song!).

And then I had a super awesome idea.

For the past 10 years, Josh and I have talked about going to Mexico. We started talking about it when our friends Travis & Kayleen lived in Salmon, and we said we should go there there all together. A few years ago, I even made a tentative plan for just Josh and I to go: I picked a destination and priced it all out, but alas, this Viva Mexico Vacation dream has never come true (mostly due to finances).

Every year I try to convince Josh that we should use our tax money to go on vacation. He's succumbed a few times (and hasn't regretted it), but mostly he feels obligated to pay bills with it instead (very responsible and fatherly, so I don't hate him for it).

But I feel the time has come to make our Mexico vacation dream come true, and the only way to make him really commit to spending our tax money on it is by committing something major myself, too.

Last year, I made a huge effort to be more healthy and lose weight. I started early in the spring, and exercised all summer long and into the fall. But because of hormonal problems, and 2 surgeries, I didn't lose as much as I would've liked. I was feeling pretty good about myself in September & October, but then the holidays came, and I gained all the weight back that I'd lost. My exercise buddy moved at the beginning of this summer, and I completely lost my motivation to exercise or be healthy or lose weight. But after seeing photos of me from my two sister's weddings this summer, I knew that I NEEDED to get back on the eating healthy/exercising/losing weight bandwagon again.

So one night in early July, I was trying to come up with some kind of motivation for myself that would push me to want to be healthy again. And ding-ding-ding, I thought of Mexico. I envisioned myself buying and wearing a new swim suit and looking and feeling awesome on the beach. Josh and I usually take vacations in February (that's when tax returns come, and also it's a slow time for him at work so he's better able to take more time off). I thought of a reasonable goal weight to get to in 7 months' time, which would require me losing 40 pounds: approximately 6 pounds a month or 1.5 pounds a week to lose.

By this time, it was almost midnight. In the spring and summer, Josh goes to bed early because he has to wake up super early to go to work before the sun comes out. In the summer, I like to go to bed late and wake up late--so our sleep schedules aren't the same until late fall & winter. Anyhoo, I was laying in bed for a considerable amount of time thinking about all this, and when I finally had that "aha" moment, I rolled over and woke up Josh around midnight. I really like talking to Josh at night, because our time is uninterrupted, but because I talk so much, he usually falls asleep. The same is true when I wake him up to talk--he falls back to sleep pretty quickly. So, I got right to the point and said "If I lose 40 pounds by February, will you take me to Mexico?" He responded "How are you going to do it?, and I said "By eating right and exercising". He said "Sure", then fell back asleep.

That was good enough for me. I felt driven and determined to make the dream come true. If he was really willing to take the time off and pay for it, then I was willing to work hard to make my weight loss happen. I want to get a new swimsuit and look and feel good on a sunny beach in Mexico!

It's been over a month, and so far I've lost 7 pounds. In order to do this, I've changed several things about my daily habits.

I used to treat myself to a small piece of chocolate every morning for getting out of bed (I am NOT a morning person and this was my motivation to wake up!). Now I don't eat chocolate anymore; instead, I wake up and walk on my treadmill. Walking on the treadmill is boring, so I've started reading while I walk, and I've made myself a promise that I wouldn't read a book unless I was walking. This has helped motivate me to keep walking day after day, and to walk for greater lengths of time because I'm interested in what I'm reading instead of being bored and watching the clock (I just finished my 3rd book!).

I used to treat myself to one or two cans of pop daily, but now I don't drink soda pop anymore except on VERY special occasions (in the last 5 weeks, I've had 3 cans of pop).

I don't have desserts anymore, and I've tried to cut back on foods and drinks that are high in sugar content. For the most part, this surprisingly hasn't bothered me, but I have had a few urges to eat ice cream (I haven't given in yet, though).

I have been eating healthier choices for breakfast and lunch, but I eat whatever the family is eating for dinner. For breakfast, I like to put fresh fruit in a bowl of milk, or have yogurt, or cottage cheese. For lunch, I have alternated between eating salads or having a simple egg burrito.

By just changing these few things, I lost 2 pounds a week for the first 3 weeks. However, the last two weeks it has become harder to drop the weight, so I need to make some changes again. I don't want to be on a "diet", because I want to make lifestyle changes, so I haven't cut out carbs. I think I will just add another thing to my exercise regime, and workout twice a day instead of walking just once a day.

I'm hoping that I can stay on track and keep focused on obtaining my goal, because I really, REALLY want to go to Mexico with my husband!!!

These photos were taken in 2012 on the Whitefish City Beach in Montana.

Once upon a dream (unhappily ever after)

Last night I had a very vivid, very unhappy dream.

At the beginning, I was telling my friend Amanda that I had purchased concert tickets for us to see a popular rock band perform in Gibbonsville. (One of the only details I can't remember is which band it was exactly! Also, for those of you who don't know, Gibbonsville is a tiny town about 40 minutes north of Salmon.)

On the day of the concert, I had to leave work (at the school) early in order to make it to the concert on time. Unfortunately, a young woman who used to live in the community and whose younger siblings attend my school, passed away that afternoon after being involved in a car accident and word got spread around to the people in Salmon and they had a candlelight vigil at the school. I had a hard time getting out of the building with so many people around. When I finally made it out, I knew that we were behind schedule to make it to the concert.

I went home to trade cars. I was going to get the van for our road trip because Amanda had to pick up some boxes of (I can't remember what) in Gibbonsville to bring back to her home in Salmon. But when I got home, Josh was in the van with the boys, and he said I couldn't take the van. I didn't want to take the truck, and the boxes wouldn't fit in our silver car, so I took the RV instead. (The RV that doesn't actually exist in real life.) Amanda and I decided we could just spend the night in it after the concert, so I told myself it would be alright to drive it with that validating reason. I wasn't comfortable driving it, because it was so large and I had never driven it before.

We were in a haste as we drove back to town, then down Main Street, which was really crowded (I think the vigil had spread) and when we reached Carmen, just past the fairgrounds, the entire highway was covered in water. It was like a flood, and I was white-knuckling it just to make it through the section of drenched highway, and thankfully I did just fine. After that, we pulled over at the Big Flat for me to take a breather after driving through that stressful patch, and all of a sudden there was a man in the RV. He'd followed us, and stopped behind us, and let himself in. He told us that he'd already called the cops because he witnessed the Hit and Run that we were involved in. Amanda and I were both clueless as to what he was referring to. But apparently, as we were driving through town, there were two men (both out-of-towners) crossing Main Street, and we hit one of them. We couldn't see them because the RV was on a lift kit, and we were so high off the ground, they were in our front blind spot. Neither Amanda or I believed him though, because we never even felt a bump. But then he showed us pictures on his i-Phone with evidence.

We made him get out of the RV, and we continued driving to Gibbonsville, completely in shock about what we had both just heard and saw. Right after we started on the road again, Amanda noticed a gun laying on the hood of the RV and she said "that's probably from the guy we killed". He was probably carrying it, and when we hit him, the gun landed on top of the RV as his body hit the ground. That made it all seem even more real, and I was sick to my stomach. I swerved the RV to get it off, and it fell to the right and into a ditch. When we arrived in Gibbonsville, we drove to the address printed on the tickets and discovered that the tickets I had purchased were for a cabin with a TV that was broadcasting the concert from somewhere else. It was unbelievably upsetting--that I'd killed a man trying to get to a live concert that didn't even exist (although I should've expected--of course it was too good to be true that a big band's rock concert would be in tiny Gibbonsville!).

We sat down in the cabin, and discussed my fate: I was surely going to jail, and for something that I didn't even intentionally do or was even aware of (and I didn't have an excuse like being mentally ill or in a drunken stupor). I just kept thinking if some of the events hadn't happened earlier that day (like taking forever to get out of the school, or taking longer to get the vehicle since Josh had the van), we would've left a little earlier and I wouldn't have been in such a rush, and a man's life could've been saved. I was trying to take the blame off of me and put it on something that preceded the incident that I had no control over (like the guy who sold me the fake tickets should have some responsibility in this too!).

And then I woke up. And I haven't stopped thinking about it since.

There are several aspects to my dream that I know where they came from in my conscious mind: the flooded highway is because Josh said the highway was really flooded the other day on his bus route, the boxes we had to pick up were the boxes of meat that Amanda is really getting from a butcher with her order of a half cow, the concert tickets are because I just recently purchased tickets to see Katy Perry in concert in September (yay!).

But the accidental killing of a man I didn't know, and the loss of a young woman from our community, and driving some unknown ginormous RV, and the grave disappointment of discovering that the tickets I purchased were a fraud, all of those came from some depressed, unconscious state of mind.

I can't tell you how happy I am that it was only just a dream. That I didn't really accidentally kill a man, that the young woman is still alive, that I'm not going to jail, and that we don't own that stupid RV that has a front blind spot!!

Nightmare

Last night, I was driving in Los Angeles. Jonah (age 5) wanted to drive Grandma and Grandpa's car, so I let him. I followed him down the highway, but he made one wrong turn. I was on a 4-lane highway with a cement blockade between the two ways of traffic, and there was no way I could turn off or turn around. By the time I got back to the road where Jonah was last seen, he was nowhere in sight. I was sick. In the car with me were Micah, Kanyon, Ammon, Josh and my friend Charlotte and her baby boy. I decided to head back to Utah to return Charlotte to her family. So I left the sight again, and got on a freeway. One side of the freeway was under construction, so both ways of traffic were using the 4-lanes on the other side. Except, there was no construction barriers, so you had to weave in and out of oncoming traffic, with semi trucks going both ways as the scariest part. After driving for half hour on the freeway, and being scared out of my wits, I decided to pull over. I called Grandma and Grandpa to get the make and model of the car (it was a Daimler-Chrysler). Then I called the L.A. Police Department. I gave them the car's description, the 5-year-old driver's description, what clothes he was wearing, his name, and where he was last spotted. Then I decided to turn around and go back to keep searching for him, knowing full well that I would probably be arrested for child endangerment. Charlotte called her brother to come pick her up and take her home. On the drive back to the road where Jonah was last seen, I pondered...
Why was I even in Los Angeles? I think we were vacationing and school shopping.
Why did I allow my 5-year old to drive? My conclusion was because I was too tired to realize it.
Why would I abandon my child at that scene? I wouldn't.
That thought woke me up.
My children were all safe in their beds. Sigh of relief.
I used to have nightmares all the time, but I haven't had one like that in months. It was very vivid and very horrible. I'm grateful it was only a nightmare, and nothing more.
Does this ever happen to you? Does your biggest fears become reality in your nightly visions?