Island Adventure

So we had a little adventure last night, although this kind of adventure is quite familiar to us.

It was 1:30 a.m. and, as usual, I was up late reading in bed.  Right next to me is a computer desk where I keep all my books and my reading lamp.  I was finishing up my chapter when I noticed some movement and looked to see a HUGE cockroach right next to me on the desk.  Needless to say, it was a little alarming and I gasped quite audibly, enough for Nick to wake up worried.  Getting out of bed to grab the Raid, I apologized and explained to him about the cockroach.  He got up to join me for the hunt.

This guy had us going pretty much all over the house.  He went from one desk to another, over to our dresser, under our bed, into the living room, behind the couch, under our television, and into the kitchen.  I was spraying wherever I could get at him but those buggers are hard to kill unless you hit 'em straight on.  At one point, Nick even grabbed his huge army boot and smashed him on the ground.  When he picked up his boot, the roach just kept running like nothing had happened.  Nice.

He was struggling after a few sprays and was running up near the ceiling in the living room.  There was a clear bowl nearby and I grabbed it and put it over him on the wall so he would stop making us chase him.  Nick handed me a piece of paper and I slipped it under the bowl to trap him inside.  I'm not sure where I was planning to go from there but I figured the kill would be easy with him in captivity.

I took the bowl from the wall, one hand on the bowl and one on the paper.  I glanced at Nick for a second and when I glanced back the cockroach was on my HAND!!!!  I screamed and I screamed loud.  First of all, it was so disgusting for this unnaturally large bug to be anywhere on my body and second of all I was not at all expecting him to be out of the bowl!  I guess my piece of paper was not a good enough barrier.  Duh!

So, I freaked out and dropped everything in my hands - cockroach, bowl, and piece of paper.  The bowl went flying toward Nick's feet and he had to jump out of the way.  Magically, it didn't break, even though I was standing on a chair when it fell from my hands.  After this dramatic climax, Nick quickly ended the hunt with a skillful direct-spray and then proceeded to laugh for the next half hour at my "sound bite blood curdling" scream. 

In the mean time, I worried that my neighbors had been woken up in the middle of the night by a murderous scream!  Hopefully they heard us laughing too and figured out that Nick was not trying to kill me.  I decided I would take a picture of our foe to defend my scream.  If this buddy unexpectedly ended up on your hand, you might shriek too.

Night Owl

I am such a night person!

It doesn't matter if I've gotten enough sleep, every morning I wake up feeling sluggish. And this lasts pretty much all morning and sometimes into the afternoon. It isn't until mid-afternoon that I start picking up speed and feeling alive. And then I can stay up until 2:00 am, no problem.

I wish I was a morning person because, well, there's stuff to do in the morning! That is when everyone is up and ready to go! And mornings are so beautiful. There is something peaceful about the early morning when the sun is just rising - this crispness to the air, this feeling of peace. I love it. But I rarely experience it.

Like I said, I've tried to change my ways. But if I rise before 8 am, I am not functioning well, even if I went to bed at 11 or 12 the night before (not so a great a fact for when I have kids). Maybe I am getting too much sleep? I donno. Feels like either way I'm just tired. I probably just need to be more active too. Maybe that would help.

But, either way, I have always been and still am a night owl.

Kinda Irritated

There are three reasons:

(1) This Europe trip is really a headache because we can't make concrete plans since we don't know when exactly we'll arrive. That's the trade-off for flying so darn cheap - no cost but no certainty.

Making reservations for a place to stay, for example, is really not an option. Instead we have to have option A, B, and C to address whatever scenario we encounter. If there's no room at the hostel, for example - certainly possible considering we're going to major cities in the summer months - then what? Well then we need to have some hotel options nearby, but what if they are booked too? Then we need to at least know some place where we can park without being bothered and just sleep in the car (assuming we are sticking with the driving plan).

In other words, the flight situation makes an already overwhelming amount of planning become that much more complicated and it can be frustrating. I feel like I'm drowning in information and options, options, options! At the same time, if there's one thing I don't like it's people who are so very blessed and take it for granted!! So, I'm trying to keep in perspective how lucky we are to even have the opportunity to go, even if it may not be ideal or may require a lot of work.

Tomorrow I will make a MASTER list of all that we need to be taking care of for this trip - something we can add to as things come up and look at as a reference to keep us on track. Maybe that will help to organize my thoughts.

2.) My goal for the day was to sit down and make a menu for dieting. I thought I would just try the South Beach Diet again (it's been about three years now - yikes!) so I brought out all my South Beach books and started looking at recipes. Then Nick showed me this lady online who documented everyday of her experience with it and as I read through it I got more and more discouraged. She lost like 5 or 6 pounds in the first week and then after another three weeks she only lost 1 more pound! I'm sorry, but if I'm forcing myself to eat terribly tasteless food then I better get more out of it than six pounds lost in a month, especially if the bulk of that came off the first week and nothing has happened since!!

So I felt like it wasn't even worth it, especially knowing I had already tried it and had lost not a single pound in the first week. Then I picked up my Body-for-Life book and that looked complicated and turned me off too and I was just sitting there pouting and wondering why all this has to be so difficult. I hate not knowing what will work and what is best.

Anyway, I finally just figured, maybe I should just make a menu of healthy meals - ya know, try to cut out sugary things - and count my calories. Even that is more work than I am comfortable with - figuring out the calories - but at least it's not so complicated with 'you can eat this but not that' and 'you can have this so long as it is low-fat sugar-free and completely bland.'.

Nevertheless, I still have no menu made and that irks me. It irks me bad.

(3) I have been trying to change my template to some nice pretty one from hotbliggityblog.com but it just isn't working!! I've worked on it for a half hour and followed all their directions and it's still a no-go. Bagh! What a waste of time!

Any hints to how to get this to work, all you bloggers out there?

A Pretty Awesome Day

First of all, it was sunny. We have been having such crappy weather over the past few weeks - wind, rain, clouds, blagh! I was starting to feel like I wasn't living in Paradise anymore. But finally the sun decided to peak his head out and I jumped on the chance to hit up the beach!

I got myself three hours in the sun. It was much needed and highly enjoyed. I talked to my mom on the phone, read a book, napped, watched happy people and happy dogs, and waded in the cool water. I even had a little crab visit me on my towel. Aaah, this is the life.

Then I looked down at my thighs and realized that although they were getting browner, they weren't getting any thinner. So I picked up my stuff, headed home, jumped into my workout clothes and went for a run. I was really short on time because I had a class to be at in only one hour! I learned that is one way to keep you running - go right before a meeting or a class because you can't afford to slack off or you'll be late!

I got back with only twenty minutes to shower, throw on some clothes, whip my hair together, touch up my face, grab my books and get outta there. I came in about one minute late. I didn't miss the daily quiz but I may have been marked absent. If you are not there when he takes roll right at 2:30 then you're absent. Freakin' Nazi teacher.

After school, I came home to find Nick gearing up for some P90X! I considered joining him but decided I didn't want to be broken for four days again, not to mention I had already exercised. Enjoying the irony of it all, I ate a cup of ice cream on the couch while Nick grunted and writhed in pain doing AB RIPPER - so appropriately named. His face contorted in ways I had never even seen so I grabbed my camera and got a few shots. It was highly entertaining and Nick now anticipates being unable to rise from bed tomorrow. I guess I will have to treat him like an invalid for the next few days.



An update on the Europe plans: After some comments from others on facebook (Hi Bro Prestwich) we started looking into seeing Europe by car. The more we thought about it, the more it sounded like a better plan - go when you want, where you want, and stop when you want, where you want. Not to mention we can keep our stuff in the trunk when we visit the cities rather than hauling all our goods with us all day everyday on our backs! So we may be doing the driving thing.

On the list of things to do tomorrow is apply for passports and look into international drivers licenses! :D

The Great Europe Debate

So Nick and I sat down tonight and had a big discussion about Europe.

Really, we had talked about this last fall and thought it might be fun for us to do a big trip before we have kids (here's hoping). This summer, if all goes well, could be our last with just the two of us. But when we did the research we felt the numbers were just too high and didn't want to see all that money go down the drain. So we ditched the plan. Until...

Nick discovered this website that made hoppin' military planes much more understandable. We realized how easy it would be for us to hop from here to California, and on to Delaware and then Europe (Spain or Germany). There are flights connecting these places going out almost daily, sometimes even two to three times a day, and all we need are two empty seats. With the cost of airfare out of the picture, suddenly a trip to Europe was much more accessible.

But I have been wrestling over the pros and cons. We had already made plans to see our families this summer and I've been very excited about it, especially my brother and his family whom I have not seen in TWO years! We were all going to get together in Zion Canyon, a place I fell in love with back in 2000 and have been trying to get back to ever since.

I have also been uncomfortable with the suddenness of it all - WOW, we need to plan for a six week vacation to Europe and be ready within six weeks! I would have liked to have had more time to think everything through, even researching customs and languages and stuff so I wouldn't be such a dumb American tourist. In addition, I have student teaching after I get home, not to mention a very important test to take to certify me as a teacher. In other words, I will have a few things on my mind as I am traveling through Europe.

There is another option. We could go sometime next year, maybe April, and then we could have more than six weeks. This has been another issue. As I look at where I want to go and what I want to do I realize that six weeks (more like five when you consider traveling there and back) really isn't much time to see much of Europe and all it has to offer. Waiting could provide us a few more weeks as we wouldn't have school to return to. I would also be graduated (YEAH!) and be completely at ease on my vacation. And, I could still see my family this summer, if only a little bit. I do miss them very much.

But... it's now or never. Or so we feel. Mostly because I will be working on starting our family very very soon and if God blesses me with a child then Europe will not happen, no matter what trimester I'm in. We'll also be getting our dog back this December (my poor mother has had to deal with the brat for two years) and I don't know about putting him in a kennel for months and I certainly don't wish the terd on anyone else for that long either. So the only way Europe would happen next year is if I remained barren and persuaded my saintly mom to hang on to my dog a while longer...

Better to not take any chances. After our long discussion about all the options, we decided that we need to go and we need to go now!

So the planning continues. I have been searching through tour company itineraries for lengths of about 30 days to see what are the popular destinations and routes of travel. This one looks the closest to what we are thinking, though a little more time will be spent in Spain and I'm not sure that we'll hit up Austria..

Gecko Love or Gecko Hate??

I saw the funniest thing the other night. I was sitting here on the computer and most of the lights were off since Nick had gone to bed and that's when the critters come out to play. I heard a strange little noise and looked over and saw a gecko on the wall not three feet away. That is certainly not unusual - we have plenty of geckos who live in the apartment and since they eat the bugs we just go ahead and leave them be. But he was chirping (they do that) much quieter than usual and his tail was hanging off the wall and moving from side to side, almost like a cat does when it's ready to pounce except it was so mechanical of a movement. With every quiet chirp his tail would jerk a little, like the second-hand on a watch - tick tick tick, chirp, chirp, chirp. It was so odd!

Then I noticed another gecko just below him on the ground. Okay, they were obviously engaged in some sort of communication but was this a hostile kind of territorial call or was this like a "hey baby, check me out, I'm so hot," kind of a thing?

Luckily, my camera was in front of me so I was able to snatch a few shots. The gecko on the ground started to move away but the gecko on the wall jumped down nearby! I was on the edge of my seat... was I about to see some Animal Planet action right before my eyes!? What was going to happen?


Well, they started biting each others' tails! What the heck? At first, I assumed this had been a hostile communication after all but, who knows, maybe that's like foreplay for geckos? Anyway, they didn't last long and quickly dispersed. Perhaps they finally noticed they had an audience. At any rate, it made for an interesting evening for me. :D

STABBED

That's how I feel. Like my legs got stabbed.

Yesterday morning, I decided to try something new. Nick has the P90X series which I had heard plenty about but had never done. So, I thought, why don't I give it a try? I know it's tough and that's probably what I need.

I decided to just start from the top, which was an hour long workout called Plyometrics. We are talking lots of jumping and moving around. Squat your butt down, touch your fingers to the floor, then jump up with your hands in the sky and do it all over again and again and again. A lot of high impact activities...

Right away, these big red flags are waving telling me this might not be the best choice for someone like me - completely out of shape. Tony, the enthusiastic trainer dude, says, "This is the "X" in P90X... this is the mother of all workouts!" That should have been my signal to pick something else for my first P90X experience.

But, I did it anyway...

The aftermath - I have been walking around like a penguin all day, waddling from one space to another and dreading having to sit down or stand up. My legs feel shredded, destroyed, abused, slashed, and burned - oh and my butt too!

So here's to my future of pain with Tony and his killer workouts.

Weekend with the Parkers

These are our friends...

the Parkers!

We had a fun weekend with these, our nextdoor neighbors! On Saturday, Janelle invited us over for a game of Settlers - she's a huge fan. I was excited because, well, as you can see, the Parkers are a lot of fun and it had been quite a while since I'd played Settlers. Then on Sunday, I made my oh-so-special Chicken Taco Soup which adequately lured them into another evening with the Taylors. As a joke, Nick and I busted out our Hungry Hungry Hippoes and Twister games but the Parkers were all for it! What a unique opportunity for some quality photos, not to mention some quality bonding time!!!

We discovered that Mike is quite the contortionists. He was like a spider!



Nick was trying to win Settlers with this swift silent moves.



Janelle tried to win with her plotting and scheming.



But Mike won the game... after we pointed it out to him. "I did?" Haha! Good job, Mike!

Thanks for the fun weekend! Can't wait to do it again!

ANDREA RESURRECTED!

Well...

I am going to try the blogging thing again for a lot of reasons. I really like listing things so here is my list:

(1) I am so very blessed and I want to share my gratitude by blogging. There are better ways, I am sure, but I really like to reflect on everything and see the blessings in my life and this seems like one good way to do that. This includes talking about my friends and family, my husband and our adventures, my travels and so on.

(2) I am FAT. I mean, my body has just completely broken down. I knew this would happen because I was always so hot and skinny when I was younger and I was the envy of every other woman and I knew someday all the irresponsible eating I was doing would come back to haunt me. Suddenly all those brownies would just appear on my thighs. And, lo and behold, they did.

So I want to be ACCOUNTABLE! I want to report on how I am doing with working out and my weight loss. Maybe, if I'm feeling extra-open I will post my weight and my measurements and we can see those go down. And if they don't, well, now isn't that just embarrassing! So I hope this will make me work harder as I report on my progress.

(3) Nick and I are seriously considering a trip to Europe this summer. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, especially as we will be saving LOADS of money on airfare and will be able to go for SIX weeks! HELLO!

So I figured it would be super fun to BLOG about my trip and why not get started now! I am not sure how much internet access I will have on my trip but hopefully I can get some pics up here and there and talk about our adventures. It'll almost be like my mission all over again - always lots of fun and interesting stories!

OK that is the end of the list for now.

As far as this particular blog, let it be known that I have A LOT ON MY MIND ALL THE TIME! So, this blog may get very deep and reflective at times. I am not a huge sit-down-and-read-other-peoples-blogs person but I have done my share of blog-reading and it seems like most people keep it light - funny stories, mostly, or projects like the weight loss. Well I am sure to have my share of those too but I may be posting thoughts here and there on different things in addition to my weight loss reports. I could easily write five different posts right now on five different topics or incidents. Should I? We shall see.

What I am trying to SAY (besides introduce you to my long-windedness) is that I am not yet decided on how extensive this blog will be. If my reflective postings get nothing but yawns then I will probably cut them out. But I will try it out for a while and see what happens. Maybe people are interested in what I have to say and maybe not. I'll work with whatever.

ON TO BLOGGING... !!!