Drinking Coffee with my Kitty

Sorry for the super grainy quality of this photo, but I didn't have my phone or camera handy and Mister Rory was being very sweet.  About two minutes after I took this, he want back to being his old naughty self and attempted to get on the counter no less than five times.  Don't let that adorable little face fool you.  He can be a real pain in the tuckus sometimes.  Lately we've been experimenting with ways to deter him from being bad.  His main bad behaviors right now are the aforementioned counter surfing and then relentlessly attacking the Mister's feet at night.

With other cats, I've always relied on the squirt bottle method.  A quick mist of water and they usually stop what they are doing and after a few weeks of this, they associate the water with the bad behavior and they stop doing the things that get them squirted.  Rory, however, enjoys water.  He LOVES it.  He has taken to getting INTO the shower with me.  He only does this when my body is blocking the majority of the water, and usually jumps out when I move, so perhaps we should try the squirt bottle after all.  We tried closing the bedroom door so he can't get in while we are sleeping, but he claws at the door and cries and scratches up the carpet.  My current solution is to just take him out the living room with me and sleep on the couch.  This way, at least the Mister gets a decent's night sleep.  He's the one who gets up and goes to work, after all.  I can always go back to sleep.

So those are the trials and tribulation with the new addition.  When he's not being naughty, he's pretty awesome, if not weird.  His preferred sleeping places are usually plastic bags, which is how he's earned the nickname of Hobo Kitty.  Yesterday he claimed a bunch of bubble wrap.

What a weirdo.  But he's our weirdo & we love him.

The Cat's Meow

I keep unintentionally going waaaay too long between posts.  I guess I'm still trying to figure out in what direction I want to take this blog.  I haven't done an outfit post in about a million years.  I have a whole empty room in the new place, so if I picked up a tripod I could definitely set something up in there for taking photos.

I had a few months reprieve from wedding planning on account of the move, but now that we are settled, I've jumped back in with both feet.  And I might be starting to slightly freak out that it is only 4 & 1/2 months away.  Whoops.  Oh well.  At the end of the day, if the Mister & I are married then the day was a success.  The rest is just details.

I'm heading out to LA tomorrow for my first pre-wedding party.  The Mister's aunt & grandma are hosting a luncheon for me.  Momma & I are flying out and my cousin is flying up from Arizona to meet us.  I think we're going to have a super fun time!  I'm excited.

But the MOST exciting news is this guy:

Meet Mister Rory.  He's named after a character from Doctor Who and the Mister & I are just crazy about him.  I flew to Memphis on Sunday morning and my parents drove him to the airport and then I caught a flight back to DC.  He did really great in the car ride to the airport and was phenomenal going through security.  In fact, he was very well behaved for most of the flight except that it was pretty turbulent on our descent and he got a little airsick, poor guy.  I couldn't get to the car fast enough to let him out of his pukey carrier.  And while it may not have been the safest idea, I let him sit in my lap for the whole drive home.

So now he's been with us for a few days and I think he's made himself right at home.  And I have to say, I'm a wee bit jealous because I'm pretty sure the Mister is his favorite.

Rory paws at the door and CRIES if the Mister tries to take a shower in privacy.  He follows him all around the apartment and will sit and stare at the door for a long time after the Mister leaves for work in the morning.  When I'm home alone with him during the day he will deign to cuddle with me, but when the Mister is home, it's all about the boys.

He's a total cuddle bug, though, even when I'm all sweaty.  And he purrs, like, all the time.  And it is loud!  But I just like to think it is because he is super content with us.  I was worried that he would miss being at my mom's house or maybe wouldn't like us, but so far, those worries have all been shown to be completely unfounded.  He's made himself quite at home with us.

And speaking of being sweaty, I am FINALLY getting back into a more regular workout schedule.  I alternate between interval training on the treadmill and playing around with Your Shape Evolved on the Kinect, which reminds me a lot of the Wii Fit.  It's pretty fun though I wish there were a way to line up the exercises so they played one right after another.  The down time when I switch exercises or games is kind of a bummer, but otherwise I'm enjoying it.

Today is a treadmill day.  Do any of y'all do interval training?  The more reading I do on it, the more I like it. The idea is that high-intensity bursts over a short period of time are just as effective, if not more effective, than longer periods of steady-state intensity.  So I warm up for 5 minutes at 5mph and 0 incline and then I bump the incline up to 3 and I alternate between 30 seconds at 8mph and 1 minute of 5mph and I go for 20 minutes, then I do a 5 minute cool down.  If I wanted to be REALLY hard core, I'd try Tabata drills, where you do your absolute max speed for 20 seconds and rest for only 10 seconds.  Even thinking about that kind of makes me want to puke, so I haven't attempted it yet.  I get all red & gross & sweaty enough from my regular interval drills.

I'm down 6 pounds which puts me below my original goal weight from three years ago and my clothes are starting to fit better again.  I'm 4 pounds away from my "happy" weight, which is the weight I can easily maintain without too much effort on my part (but, you know, NOT eating French fries & ice cream every damn day) and the size for which I bought most of my clothes.  I'm another 5 of 10 pounds away from where I'd like to try to be.  I'm pretty sure my lowest weight, which was while I was training for the half marathon, was probably about 15 or so pounds lighter than where I am right now, but I'm not going to kill myself to get there.  I'm just trying to feel comfortable in my clothes again and regain a better handle on my eating habits.  No more mindless eating!

So that's what's new around here!  What's new with you?

p.s. We bought Rory a new toy the other day and sprinkled some catnip on it.  This was the result!

Random

I don't have much to say today, but it's been a while since my last update so I'll tell you about the weird little dream I had this morning.

The Mister gets up around 5am and will usually come wake me up after he gets out of the shower to see if I want to stay in bed or if I want a cup of coffee.  Yesterday morning, I had told him the night before, I needed to be out of bed and in my workout clothes before he left for work.  This morning I was sore, but not from my morning interval training, but from about an hour of Kinect Sports & a Star Wars Jedi game.  Go figure.  Anyway, I dragged myself out of bed and deposited myself on the couch with a warm snuggly blanket.  The Mister brought over my coffee, kissed me goodbye and left.  And I promptly fell back asleep.

Then I started dreaming that I was at my mom's house and she had these three cats and also a baby raccoon that thought it was a cat.  And the baby raccoon was freaking adorable and sweet and two of the cats were awesome.  But the third cat wasn't even really her cat and he was mean and nasty.  So in my dream I'm cuddling and playing with the two nice cats and the baby raccoon.  And then I brushed up against a space heater and my blanket started to smolder, so I was distracted trying to put it out.  And while I was distracted, the mean nasty cat came along and attacked the baby raccoon.  And I didn't realize it at first, but then I noticed that the baby raccoon was limping and there wasn't any blood in my dream, but the baby raccoon was obviously seriously hurt.  And then the poor thing died and the mean nasty cat came back to try to eat it & I had to fight it off.  And then I woke up, crying.  So weird.

TGI2013

Seriously, y'all, I don't think I've ever been happier for a year to end.  2012 is going down as one of my least favorite years.  I don't want to dwell on all the cray-cray that went down, because there WERE some good things that happened, like getting engaged to the Mister and moving into the new apartment.  But 2012 is OVER and 2013 is here!

Wouldn't you know it, I couldn't even remember what my 2012 resolutions were.  So I went poking through the archives.  First of all, holy crap I was tiny last December!  Then again, in the months leading up to December I'd been training for a half-marathon and had been running 20-25 miles a week.  As for my 2012 resolutions, they were:

~ Grow hair out super long, get regular trims, donate a foot of hair in December 

     Yep, failed a bit on this one.  Besides growing it out, I didn't do any of the rest.  But in my defense, I'm waiting until AFTER the wedding to donate my hair.  I think I will roll this resolution over into 2013.

~  Be better about staying in touch with people, send out Christmas cards

     Hahahaha, yeah.  This did NOT happen. Maybe this year.

~  Keep track of the books I read

     I started out pretty good on this one, until you know, my apartment building burned down.  According to my account on Goodreads.com, I read at least 17 books.  Not too shabby.  I think I'd like to attempt this one again this year.

So there you have it.  I pretty much failed all my 2012 resolutions.  But remember a few months ago, how I said I wanted to be okay with failure?  I am okay with failing my 2012 resolutions.  The beautiful thing about a new year is that I get to wipe the slate and start out fresh.  So with that in mind, I am rolling these resolutions over into the new year and I'm going to try something else too.

I discovered a blog this year called Enjoy It and along with Gretchen Rubin's book The Happiness Project, it's been really inspirational to me.  The woman who runs Enjoy It is very crafty and always has lots of projects going on.  And something I've discovered about myself is that I am happiest when I have Things to Do, when I have Goals to Accomplish.  But I am also lazy and unmotivated, which hinders my progress.  I am trying to change that aspect of myself, which brings me back to Enjoy It.  Something she does is pick one little word every year to describe her attitude for the coming year.  And I like that idea.  I like that idea so much that I am copying it.  And not only that, but I am copying her word from last year.  Not very original, but hey, imitation is the highest form of flattery, no?  Her word from 2012 was Choose.

It resonates with me because, deep inside, I know that my lack of motivation and laziness is a choice.  I have the time, the resources, the talent to accomplish the things I want in life.  But I often choose not to do them.  When I don't work out, that is a choice.  When I eat five candy bars in a day (not my proudest moment, but it has happened more than once), that is a choice.  When I dick around on the Internet instead of writing in my journal, that is a choice.  At the same time, when I close my laptop and pull out my knitting to work on a project, that is a choice.  When I sit down to read a book that interests me, that is a choice.  I want to feel more in control of the things I do.  I want to be more active in my own inner life.  Inaction is a choice and I don't want to choose that path anymore.  I want to make good choices, choices that enrich me and help me feel like a better, happier person.

So there you have it.  Along with my 30 Before 30 list & the rollovers from last year, in 2013 I want to make better choices.

And just for funsies, here's the first Drinking Coffee photo of 2013!

Happy New Year!

Finally!

Y'all, we are FINALLY out of that motel and into our new place.  To tell you a secret, we took this place sight-unseen.  We'd toured the apartment community and viewed a different floorplan, but when the time came to put our names on the dotted line, they no longer had our desired floorplan available!  After a few panicked phone calls, Sean & I decided to take a different floorplan, one that was actually LARGER than what we originally wanted.  So while we studied the layout in photos, we had no idea how the space would actually look.  And let me tell you, it was a very pleasant surprise!

I made a little video before the movers came with all our furniture and boxes, so the place looks a little empty, but it gives you an idea of the layout.  It's about five minutes long and I make a brief appearance with no make-up and my hair up in a messy bun.  The Mister makes an appearance too!



The movers came with everything yesterday and today we set to work unpacking boxes.  I am hyper vigilant about unpacking when moving into a new place.  I can't stand to have boxes lying around.  The kitchen is entirely unpacked & everything is put away, but a lot of the rest is still pretty disorganized.  But the good news is, all the packing paper has been recycled and all the boxes have been broken down!  The rest is just small stuff.

What's Going on Around Here?

So I mentioned in my last post that the Mister & I are camped out in a hotel for two weeks.  I spend a lot of time in hotels, so I thought this sounded okay.  Except that it is a lot less like Eloise than one might imagine.  The Mister chose this particular hotel because the rooms are more like little apartments than like hotel rooms and there are little kitchenettes.  Having the kitchenette is nice because we've been cooking rather than eating out, which saves a bit of money, but the kitchen isn't exactly well-equipped.  For example, there are about five lids in the cupboard with all the pots and pans.  However, not one of these lids fits any of the pots & pans.  Also, there is zero counter space.  There is a stove, the sink and one counter that is occupied with a toasted, coffee maker & microwave.

But I actually didn't come here to complain about the kitchen.  I came to talk about working out.  Because y'all?  I got real lazy over the last two weeks.  In the lead-up to the move, I went for a few runs and did my push-ups (more on that later), but since we moved, I hadn't done ANYTHING.  If this hotel were in a more neighborhood-y area, I might have been able to go for a run, but it's sort of in the middle of nowhere (which is because the Mister's base is in the middle of nowhere).  We've been talking about joining the Y once we are settled, and contemplated joining now because there is a branch about 15 minutes from the hotel, but we want to see how the Mister's schedule works out to see if we should get a family membership or if I should get a single membership.  Those are all of my excuses.  Do you like them?

Finally on Monday, I decided it was time to stop being lazy.  I have all kinds of workouts pinned to my Pinterest board.  My only limitations are that I have zero equipment.  Not even a yoga mat because we didn't think to keep any of those out.  Also, I'm trying to stop being so lazy, but I thought it would be better to start out slow, so I'm doing 10 minutes a day.  And I thought I might link you to some of my fave videos I've done this week.



This one is great because it moves pretty fast, but it gets intense at the end.  I work up a bit of a sweat and I'll tell you, my butt & quads were sore the next day.  I did this one on Monday & then again today.



I liked this one because it targeted my abs, but I didn't have to lie down on the carpet without a mat.  I'm not saying the floor isn't clean, I'm saying carpet is gross and I don't understand why anyone would want it in their home (Hardwood Forever!).  Also, my obliques were pleasantly sore the next day!



This is another one for the butt.  As y'all have seen previously, I have zero butt, so I need all the help I can get.  This workout was full of great moves for my butt.  Plus, the celebrity trainer has pandas on her sneakers!

So those are the videos I've been doing!  As for the push-ups, I finished my six week program of the 100 Push-Ups Challenge, but I can't do 100 consecutive pushups, so that is kind of a bummer.  The app suggested that I re-take my initial test and start the program again at a higher level.  And I will likely do that.  But I wanted to take some time off from feeling sore ALL THE TIME.  Except then I started these videos and I'm back to feeling sore all the time, except in my butt not my shoulders.  It's a rough life, y'all.

Ay Yi Yi

Goodness.  It's been a while since I updated, unless you count my wee post about the pop music mashup, which I do not.  So what's been going on?

I think the answer to that question is what's NOT been going on?  In the last two weeks, the Mister & I have moved out of our apartment in Norfolk, bought a BRAND NEW CAR, we've been camped out in a motel until we can move into our new apartment, the Mister started his new job and I just got back from a cookie-baking marathon with my mom & sister in Atlanta.  Whew.  It's a good thing I accidentally dropped all my trips but one in December or I'd be a pooped lady.

So first of all, my NEW CAR.  Guys, I am beyond thrilled.  I have never owned a new car before.  My first car was born 4 years before me, my second car was born 2 years before me and my youngest car was 11 years younger than me.  So to get to have a car that nobody else has ever driven?  It was so exciting.  And I am loving this bad boy.  Or girl.  I haven't quite figured out the gender of my car yet, so it is also as yet unnamed.

It's a 2012 Chevy Cruze and it drives like a dream.  I'm averaging 33 miles per gallon, which is phenomenal. The motel we are staying at is quite literally in the middle of nowhere, so I've been driving back & forth to Fredericksburg a lot just to have something to do.  I am loving the freedom this car represents to me.  I definitely enjoyed not having a car for the last five years.  Sure, there were times that I wished I had a car, but I loved not having a car payment or an insurance payment and I didn't have to buy gas or pay for repairs.   Not having a car was easy in Minneapolis.  Not so much in F-burg.  While the apartment we chose is very ideally located in Old Town with lots of shops & restaurants within walking distance, there isn't a grocery store near enough.  And since the Mister will be driving about 35 minutes to work every day, a second car became a necessity for us.  

And speaking of the Mister driving to work, he started his new job last week.  He's going to be an instructor and he's going to teach other people how to be awesome Fire Control Officers, just like he was on his last ship.  This definitely wasn't our first choice for location (I'd like to eventually get out of Virginia, at least for a little while!), the Mister is very much looking forward to teaching.  The thing I continually heard from people on his last ship was how much they learned from the Mister.  He is incredibly patient and he's good at explaining things in a way that just about anybody can understand. 

Here he is eating yogurt on his first day.  He wouldn't let me take a traditional "first day of school" type photo because "That's something a MOM does" so I was super sneaky and took this photo instead.  He's so handsome in his dress uniform.  I guess he always wears it when he shows up for a first day on a new job, but I'm excited because he said he'll also be wearing it the first Friday of every month.  The rest of the time he wears a khaki uniform and he looks good in that too, of course, but the dress uniform gets me every time.

As for the cookie baking marathon?  Sometimes my sister gets ambitious.  We baked 10 different types of cookies in about 10 hours.  We actually started the night before with a couple batches that needed to chill overnight and there were three additional recipes we didn't get to.  Momma & my step-dad's sister-in-law Jackie drove down from Tennessee to help out and my second cousins came over too.  We had a Christmas station on Pandora and had a pretty good time until about 10pm when I got a bit cookied out & cranky and my sister was literally walking circles in the kitchen,  But I tell you what, the cookies sure are delicious!

Momma & Steph mixing up a batch of something!

Stacie working on the sugar cookies.  That girl is so creative and has such patience.  After she left, Aunt Jackie & I took over decorating.

Those were my cookies.  I liked decorating the trees & the snowmen, but everything else sort of left me at a loss.  How do you decorate a sled?  I don't get that intricate with frosting!

Me & Aunt Jackie unwrapping and chopping Candy Cane Hershey Kisses.  I promise I wasn't pissed off at this point.  That's just my concentrating face!  I don't have any photos of my sister because even though I brought my camera, I totally forgot to pull it out!  Luckily Elise took those snaps on her phone, so I stole them and here they are!

The Mister & I have one more week here in the motel and then we can FINALLY move into our new place!  I am beyond excited!