Week 4 - Slight Delay

1. Lose 20 Pounds and Keep It Off for a Year
I decided not to weigh myself this week. I get discouraged easily with dieting and if I find that I am not making enough progress I have a habit of going and eating the largest cupcake I find. If all the dieting and self control is not paying off, then I figure one slip up won't make a big difference either. Then that slip up turns into a week of slip-ups and well you get the picture. So, I am waiting for another week before weighing in because I hope by then the numbers will be very encouraging. I have been getting to the gym very frequently and I am beginning to see a little extra definition (very minimal but there is this one muscle in my leg that has showed up again).

2. Pray Every Day
Trying to pray while I drive was not a good idea. First, despite my tinted windows I find that I am too self-conscious to talk out loud without a blue tooth device in my ear. Second, I am way too distracted (not from driving, from praying - luckily for everyone else on the road) to actually get any sort of real moment of clarity to concentrate. So while my prayer life still lagged this week, I did at least switch back to listening to worship music while driving. Ironically, I feel less self-concious about belting out hymns in the car (picture me singing "Nothin' but the blood of Jesus' at an intersection). I think because more people tend to sing in the car, you generally look less crazy than if you are straight up talking. So I feel like I did arrive to school and home feeling a lot more uplifted than usual. I like variety though and I am going to need to start downloading more music to keep my songs in rotation.

3. Blog at least once a week
Four days late. Crazy amounts of reading this week. I suggest you blame my Business Organizations Professor who enjoys giving quite long assignments and keeping you accountable for all the tiny, little details in all of the cases. As such I am just getting time now to blog. This time I will add pictures so you get a little more bang for your buck.

4. Stop Biting My Nails
Still doing okay with this one...sort of. This weekend my mom and I went and got our nails done and I loved the dark, shiny blue that I picked! Sadly, it chipped only three days after I got them done. Once my nail polish is chipped even on just one nail I think that it looks terrible! Because my manicure had ended its very short-lived life I started to scrape the polish off my nails with my teeth while in class. Not exactly biting, but still gross and still defeating the purpose of getting my hands away from my teeth! The blame here also falls to my Business Organizations professor who sort of terrifies me which makes me very nervous and fidgety. So, new rule: once my manicure looks crappy I need to immediately remove all nail polish so I don't pick at it. Slow progress here.

5. Stop Cussing
I feel pretty good about this one so far. I have effectively removed the F-word, S-word, and D-word from my language. There is the occasionally slip up when I get very passionate about something. Another bonus of this whole experiment with taking out the cussing is that I find myself slowing down my responses and answers. I take just a few extra mental moments before responding to doublecheck that I wasn't planning to say a cuss word. Additionally, I find myself crafting slightly more intelligent and rational statements. I hope that even if I can stop mentally censoring my cuss words I can continue mentally slowing down my words so that I may choose them more carefully in general. My current dilemma is with the word ass. I can't decide whether or not I consider this a cuss-word and whether or not I need to stop saying it. Most times I say the word I am calling something or someone 'bad-ass'. Or I am referring to something kicking my ass. Please weigh in on the comments regarding this word!

6. Make One Frugal Decision a Week
My frugal decision this past week was to book a cheaper hostel for part of Bobby and I's trip to Rome over spring break instead of spending the whole time in the nicer hotel. We will be staying in the Al Centro B&B for part of the trip. For anyone who has been to Rome you will see if you click on the website that this B&B really is central. We are so excited to be able to leave the hotel and be a hop, skip and a jump away from Piazza Navona, Campo di Fiori and the Pantheon. The frugal hostel is called the Lilliput and is closer to Termini train station. While we stay there we plan to head out of the city and go on some day trips to Pompeii and maybe another place known for very sweet white wine (my fave!).

7. Go on Dates
Bobby and I finally made some time to celebrate our three year anniversary and went out for a delicious steak dinner. I find dating anniversaries kind of funny because I always feel a little like I am in high school celebrating them for some reason. But I do think that it is pretty awesome that Bobby and I have been dating for three years now - both our longest relationships ever.

We each bought each other cards from the same brand this year. Not on purpose but after I gave mine to Bobby, he found the same brand and bought one for me too. (he gets that generally when I give people things it is because I really wanted to buy them for myself) I thought they were pretty funny cards. My said "Things Just Make Sense When You're Around" and then contained the disclaimer pictured above. Bobby's said, "With Each Passing Day You Grow More Beautiful" and then also contained a disclaimer. I know, very lawyerly, but I loved them!

I feel incredibly lucky that someone could still find me interesting and fun and attractive to be around after three years. Our relationship has definitely changed since we first started dating and played it totally casual by only ever texting each other - to now where we barely text because it seems so much easier to just call each other. We went through that awful stage where you start to realize that you may actually love this person and suddenly every moving, breathing human becomes a threat and you start to realize how disgustingly jealous you can be of each other. Then we reached that awesome blissful stage where we realized that both of us actually really care and don't want to mess up what we have. Now I feel like we are in that stage where we actually know each other so well that can anticipate each others needs and do our best to meet them.

I knew we hit that point in our relationship when we were in Rome and my purse was stolen. I was freaking out because I had lost 100 euro, a credit card, my prescription sunglasses, benedryl and my beloved leather Fossil purse. I was literally crying in the middle of the street behind the Pantheon, not sure what to do. But Bobby grabbed my hand, led me to an internet cafe and got me set up to cancel my card, email my parents for emergency funds and get some much needed time in some air conditioning. He left me there, I assumed to go look for the gypsy thief, but instead he returned with something better than my purse: an espresso granita with fresh whipped cream. Bobby knows me so well that he knows that the best thing for me to do in a crisis is to do something to fix it and then to eat something to feel better about it.

I can't wait to see what year 4 has in store for us. It's my lucky number and also the year I turn 24 which is the age that I have been looking forward to for as long as I can remember. Granted, when I was 8, I thought that at the age of 24 I would be a journalist for the New York Times. I think my 8-yr-old self would be sufficiently proud of me being in my second year of law school. I also think she would be very proud of my super handsome boyfriend. See:
8. Expand My Pallet
Still waiting on Bobby for my next challenge. Feel free to suggest things you think I should try next month in the comments. Most likely it is going to be rock climbing per Shannon's suggestion! I am actually quite excited about trying this! Hopefully we will get time to do this on the weekend and we will take some great photos of my climbing prowess (or likely lack thereof).

9. Be More Emotionally Honest
I think I did pretty good with this one. Booking our trip to Rome is a little stressful and always involves a little compromise as we try to figure the best way to make our dollar stretch and what we both want to get out of our trip. I was honest about the fact that while I love the architecture and the history I am mostly just excited about getting a week with no homework that I can spend with Bobby and the fact that it is in Rome just makes it all the better. Progress for me because normally I would tend to just agree that I couldn't wait to see every important wall in the entire city.

10. Be available to Friends and Family
I had lunch and manicure with my mom on Saturday and exchanged a few facebook messages and wall posts with friends. Took some time and watched a movie with another friend. Trying my best with this one even though sometimes I find myself really resisting "wasting" time on people. It's terrible but I still calculate cost/benefit to communicating with people when I am super busy with school.