Dear Jenny Rough,

I've been reading your "Roughly Speaking" blog for several months now. I love the honesty and insight in your writing. When you started your "EatWasaFeelGood" blog, I wandered over to take a look. Two things struck me - one, I can relate to wanting to eat "clean", and two, I know the health benefits of yoga, too. I took a class years ago, and have been a fan ever since.

But while your blog catalogs the steps you make in your clean eating/yoga journey, it does something else. It beckons. It calls. It whispers, "come, take part. Do these things for yourself - you can do it. You know you can. Come, take part." Until know, I've been resisting the siren's call with reasons why I can't. I live too far away from the natural foods store, I'd think. I'm too poor to eat organic, I'd complain. There isn't room in my house or my schedule to practice yoga again, I'd sigh. But the more I read, the more I realized that these weren't reasons, they were excuses. And not very good ones, either.

Today that ends.

As soon as I finish here, I'm digging out my yoga mat, slipping into something a little more comfortable, and I'm going to pop in my yoga DVD. I've had it a year and never played it. I'm sipping a fruit smoothie to give me the wholesome fuel I'll need today.

Thank you, Jenny Rough. Thank you for showing me that it's time to take part.

Yours,
Amalia

Damn it, I'm it!

Shari tagged me a couple of weeks ago. The tag (the rules of which I'm not going to repost here as I don't have seven readers to tag) says I must reveal three truths about myself. Here goes:

1. I cannot take cold showers. Even on the hottest days, the water must be at least medium-warm. If it's not too hot out, I insist on scalding hot water.

2. I rarely wear make up and do not own hairspray. I only put eyeshadow on maybe twice a year, and you can forget about concealer or foundation. I don't even know how to use it! It's not that I'm a tomboy or that I have an Eve Ensler - like aversion to it, either. It's simply because (and I hope you'll forgive the audacity of this next comment) I don't think I need it. I look fine without it. Honest. When I do wear makeup, I hardly recognize myself.

3. I yearn for two things: to become a writer (of chick lit and an awesome blog) and to play the fiddle. Every time I hear SheDAISY or the Dixie Chicks, I wish I knew how to play! I don't want violin lessons, either. Fiddling is different, more exhuberant ... better.

~Amalia~

Feel free to post your own truths in the comments - and no lurking! ;)

A change will do us good

Bear and I spent this last weekend rearranging the furniture in our living rooms and office. I say living rooms because instead of one big living room, this house has two smaller ones - 10ft by 10ft, roughly. When I first moved in, I hated how close the couch was to the bathroom - anyone with lactose intolerance will understand why I didn't want someone sitting almost literally on the other side of the door. The couch was then in what I call the big living room (it is marginally larger than the other). The "office" was in the red livingroom (so named because of the red carpet). The "office" consisted of a giant metal teacher's desk and an equally huge wooden chair. The other room I wasn't impressed with was the bedroom, which was an awkwardly long and narrow room with no insulation in the floor (this was especially rough during the long Maine winters). I so hated the arrangement that I insited we move things around when my stuff became part of the equation. I have an enormous couch and chair that I absolutely adore, so when we started cohabitating, the couch, chair, and tv all moved into the red living room, the desk and chair moved into the bedroom (creating an actual office), the bedroom stuff we moved upstairs and the big living room became kind of a catch all that housed our DVD collection, a gun case, the exercise bike and an old chair I didn't really like. It wasn't really a useable room, but it did a good job holding my crap.

This weekend we totally rearranged things. The office is now the gun room, the red living room is the office again but with a much smaller desk and the exercise bike and the big living room again houses the couch, chair and tv. This time, though, the tv is by the bathroom - not the couch. There is still a lot to be done, but I think it looks much better. Now every room is functional, I can finally blog while watching tv and exercise while watching tv, too. An added bonus is that now I have enough physical space to put my yoga mat in front of the tv and do one of my yoga DVDs. In the red living room, there wasn't enough space to do that.

Proof reading this, I see that unless you've been in my house, it is difficult to visualize things. As soon as my camera returns from the repair shop I will post some pics for you to enjoy.

~Amalia~

PS I haven't forgotten about creating a chart for my exercising/weight loss progress. I'm working on it!

Married Life...

... is really no different from the life I led before. Since I got married, everyone's been asking me, "Do you feel any different?" This question confuses me - am I supposed to? Different how? Bear and I lived together before we were married, my paperwork hasn't gone through so I can't legally change my name yet, and aside from the rearranging of some of my rings, my life isn't any different. What I can't figure out is if life is supposed to be different somehow. Did I miss something here? Does marriage make people cognizant fo some kind of change in their lives, their relationships? Am I the only one who feels totally the same?

Summer is progressing well for me otherwise. Until yesterday it really hasn't been hot at all - I think it's only been in the 90's once in the past two months. Yesterday and today it has been noth hot and muggy, so I think Bear is planning to take us to the lake tonight for a swim. Schoodic lake is a spring-fed lake, making it one of the coldest lakes around. It'll be the first time this year we've been really swimming.

I've been trying to lose weight again. After the honeymoon I weighed myself and discovered I have gained almost all of the weight that I lost last fall back. I weighed in at 180.8. I was kind of disgusted with myself. I thought about trying to make small changes, do one thing at a time, but that hasn't been working for me. I need to set a big goal in a short time frame - otherwise, it's too esay to make excuses. So my new goal is ten pounds in six weeks. That sounds like a llot, and it is. If I lose six pounds, I think I'll be happy. I set this goal two days ago, and have done more excercising in those two days than I have all summer. Bear has agreed that if I make it to 167.6 I can buy a new good pair of sneakers. That's thirteen pounds away. Hopefully by October I'll be back there. 167.6 is what I weighed when I met Bear. I am looking for a way to track my progress and post it here in a graph format - any ideas?

That's all I've got for now, I guess. The proofs came back from the photographer, but they were too small for me to really get a feel for them. She's sending them to me in a CD, and when she does I will post my favorites.

~Amalia~

My favorite pic so far (courtesy of Bear's aunt)

The Good and the Bleh

I talked with my photographer today - she is sending me my proofs this week. Not as a packet of individual photos - oh, no - as a magazine with all the photos digitally printed on the pages! All of the proofs are in it (over 300!), and I can show it to family and friends as a catalog - they can pick the prints they want and order from her directly. How cool is that? I can't wait to see it. I have to look over all the photos and decide what I want in the digital coffee table album that I'm getting. Every photo can be broken down into parts, too ... if I want just part of each pic, I can use that. So really the number of possible pics is infinite. I will show you as many as I can as soon as I can. I'm really chomping at the bit to see what she took for pictures, because the guests that were there took some awesome ones.

Bear went back to work today as the mill's annual two-week shutdown is over. This day has creeped by and I am SO LONELY! I really enjoyed having him around all day, every day. Maybe it's a newlywed thing, maybe it's not. All I know is I miss him!

~Amalia~

More Pics

Mrs. Kinne

That's me! I'm officially married. There's just so much to blog about, I'm not sure where to begin. The day went perfectly, I looked awesome, Bear and I had a marvelous time on our honeymoon ... in short, everything went swimmingly. I thought I'd share some pictures that friends and family have given us so far (I don't have the photographer's pics back yet).

The first pic is of the bridal party - my brothers are in red, Bear's best friends are in navy.
The above pic is the "you may kiss the bride" moment.















This one is right before we cut the cake.


No worries - more to come!

~Amalia~