The Beginning of the Action Plan

Alright peeps, here's the deal: the action plan is beginning. For the first month, I have decided to focus on three things: exercise each day except Sunday (this doesn't have to be a certain amount, I just need to do something active each day), wake up everyday at 7:00am (this is important to me, I need to start training myself to get back into a normal schedule, and I need to ALWAYS pray on my knees ( I know this sounds silly. Our apartment is hard, hard old floors, and I have a hard time always ripping myself out of bed and putting my knees on the cold hard ground, but my prayers are more meaningful on my knees, so maybe I need a prayer mat/rug thing, but there it is). SO, these are the three I will focus on for the next month so until August 10th. KEEP ME ON TRACK FOLKS. HOLD ME TO IT.

So to recap:

1) Exercise everyday except Sunday

2) Wake up at 7:00am everyday

3) Always pray on my knees

Someone in my family suggested I get good couple bonding time with my hubby, I shall put that as number 4.

4) GOOOD bonding time with Hubby....not just in the same room, but actually engaged in something meaningful involving each other. I love this idea, sometimes it is too easy to be together but not actually spending quality time together. DONE and DONE.

So, I will report back on my progress in these four areas through out the week and on into the month. Thank you all for your wonderful ideas! I loved them.

Pretty, Big, Fat Blog Post

Hello to all my readers.

I am totally failing at keeping you up to date on my life, but I promise I think of brilliant things to share all the time, I just always want to capture something in a photo to put with my blog post, and I am not so good about that. So, here's the deal. I PROMISE I will put up pictures of my cute apartment soon. I LOVE it, and I am so excited to call it home for the next three years. But I thought I should probably blog about the goings on in my life, just to give you all a heads up.

FIRST OFF, it is official, I received my very first invite for a drinking party tonight via the University of Utah Law School email listserv. Some fine elder students were inviting us young'ns for a good time. Flattering though it was, I think staying sober will be my path of choice for this next phase of my life. My favorite portion of the email was the following, "If you should find yourself annoyed by our weekly ramblings and would like to be removed from the list, you're outta luck! We encourage you to stop by the Technology Help Desk located in the Law Library and ask to them about email filtering." To this I say, I hope that he will not mind my signing him up for the weekly newsletters from MedTox Substance Abuse Program. Too bold...? I think not. It is law school after all. I will tell you how it goes.

Secondly, Parker and I are house sitting currently. On Monday, Parker called me and asked if these yummy little fruity bar things that I made should be refrigerated. I honestly didn't think they would need to be. Yesterday, after cleaning up a large poop filled mess by the dogs we are watching at this house and washing my hands thoroughly, I grabbed a couple of those bars from the dark kitchen and quickly shoved them in my mouth on my way to work. HOLY CRAP! I cannot tell you from personal experience how it would be if your body all the sudden decided it was going to reject an organ or something, but I imagine it is like what I have felt the last day and a half. It took me a while to locate what offender could have wreaked such havoc on my body, but today when I got home from work, I flipped on the lights in the kitchen, pulled back that lid on the container of the fruity bars, and there lie glorious little breading ground of mold . YUCK. I don't know how I couldn't have tasted that, but I have definitely had like a million flash backs to that part in Minority Report where he eats that nasty mold covered sandwich thing from the fridge while he is still blind. SO GROSS. Though I am not Tom Cruise, and I am not in fact blind, I sort of feel like I can relate a little bit now. After two days of disgustingness...my stomach is feeling a bit more settled but there are many waves of grossness still working their way through my system.

Last thing for this post, yesterday at work, we had a bunch of the University of Utah's Rugby players out to teach the Boys and Girls of the Boys and Girls Club all about Rugby. I normally love when these volunteers come, and in truth, I loved it yesterday. But as they were leaving, one of the volunteers pulled one of my male co-workers aside and whispered something in his ear. Later on, I asked my co-worker what the volunteer had said. My male co-worker said, "Oh, he just asked where the "hot" girl-staff was." Then filtering from what was said to him into terms more suitable for me as his audience, he said one of our co-worker's names to clarify who the volunteer guy meant. NOW, let me explain why I am writing about this story. First off, I LOVE working with this particular male co-worker; he is awesome, and certainly was not meaning to nor had any idea this info would phase me in the slightest. Secondly, the "hot" girl-staff being asked about is absolutely adorable, and I love her to pieces as well; she is so nice and sweet and awesome, and in truth, very pretty. Thirdly, I am not on the market in any way, shape or form. I am married and love my husband. I have eyes only for him, and he for me, and I love that he loves me for BEING me.

BUT even with all those disclaimers, for some reason, hearing this comment, HURT.

I don't know if it is because my greatest insecurity about myself is my appearance. Or the fact that years of being overlooked always made me feel less-than in this category. Or because I have never felt that I have achieved "hot." Or because the word "HOT" took me way back to high school and singledom. Anyway, all the same, this comment kind of left me reeling. I hadn't really thought about "HOT" in a long time, and probably for good reason, but all the same, I felt somehow like the wind had been knocked out of my sails. For all you reading this, thinking to yourselves, "How very surprising that this affected Bekah at all." I AGREE 100%, I am sure that I am more surprised than anyone that I even cared that a few guys who volunteer at the club didn't put me in any category as personally flattering as HOT, because I mean, why would I care? And yet, despite all the disclaimers and logic and knowledge I have of who I am and how loved I am, this still hurt. CAN ANY OF YOU RELATE?

Realizing that this was clearly a chink in my armor, one that certainly needed to be dealt with, I decided to make this a point of pondering, and I have come to the conclusion that this comment hurt because I was already hurting in this area. I was already feeling negatively toward myself about my appearance. SO, I would like to deal with this. I already know that there are certain things I can do which help me stay positive about myself regarding my appearance such as: regular exercise, regular showering, controlled eating, limiting sweets, competing in races, a full night's sleep. During today's ponder session, I came up with a few more that are unique to me. Exercising in the morning instead of a different time of day, flossing my teeth, washing my face, going to sleep at 10pm, reading my scriptures. I would like to know what helps you though, SO PLEASE COMMENT AND MAKE SUGGESTIONS, because folks, I am going to be making an ACTION PLAN, and I would like to share that here on my blog, so that you can all know my progress, but to keep you interested, I would like to incorporate some of your ideas. So please tell me your thoughts on this. I hope this all made sense. Also, if you actually made it this far in my post, GOOD WORK. You are truly worthy of the title "blog follower."