Our hike

There’s a place above the Y that we love to hike to, we call it “our rock.” It’s where Kevin kissed me for the first time, where we first said “I love you,” and where we got engaged. We made the time to go to our place last weekend, for what may be the last time while we are living in Utah. We felt very nostalgic as we reminisced on all the fun times we’ve had in the past 3 years that we’ve lived here together. We talked about all the hikes we went on, the big moments in our relationship, the camping trips and many other memories. We’ve loved living here and we’ve loved our time as students. We’re excited for this new adventure in Wisconsin but we are sad to say goodbye to the wonderful life we built here.

today i'm a negative nancy

I've had a lot of random thoughts bouncing around in my head the past couple of days. I thought maybe I would get them out here, and maybe then I'll stop fixating on them.

*Saving Mr. Banks. I cannot stop thinking about that movie. So good.

*I sincerely hope that Kevin never becomes an alcoholic

*Let's be real. Kevin is the greatest husband ever.

*All I want to do is be done with school so I can deep clean and reorganize our apartment

*I am not thrilled that we have to move in June (more on that to come)

*How can I make this giant ball of panic in my chest go away?

*Infant Development paper. 10 pages of Infant Development paper. Gah.

*I wish I had already written my Infant Development paper.

*Crap. I'm way behind on my Internship hours. I am not excited to make up those puppies.

*I feel like if I'm not in class I am constantly doing internship hours or work hours. Which doesn't make sense because I do most of my work in class.

*I wish so much that I hadn't forked over 200$ on textbooks. I stopped reading them during week 2.

*I was done with this semester before it even started.

Sorry blog readers, that was a stream of fairly negative thought processes. Life is good in general, it really really is. I'm just incredibly excited to graduate.

Some thoughts about the semester so far

Well, we're about a month into the semester. I'm super surprised by how this semester is going. Let's just say that things have not gone at all like I thought they would. I've had to make some major adjustments and I've learned some things about my ability to function during winter semester. I'm kind of shocked by how different this semester is going than last semester. Even though life is pretty much the same as it was during the fall, I seem to have lost my ability to do a lot of things. For example:

Last semester I was a boss at working out. I had a rocking work-out schedule and I stuck to it with no exceptions.
This semester I have been so lazy, especially since my race. I told myself that it was just because I needed to rest and recover, but it's gone past that. Even when I go to the gym I just do 30 minutes on the elliptical and then leave. And most of the days lately, I just haven't worked out at all. I miss it. I can feel it. I feel yucky.

Last semester I did super well at keeping the apartment clean. Not perfect, but for the most part I felt like everything was in order.
This semester I feel like I cannot keep up with the housework. The laundry is always overflowing, the dishwasher is always packed and dirty, I never ever vacuum because it just feels too hard. Kevin has had to help me keep things clean way more than he should (the boy is taking 18 credits of chemical engineering, he should not be worrying about helping me with chores).

Last semester I stayed so on top of my schoolwork. I (almost) always did my readings and my assignments well ahead of time, and I was super motivated to get homework done before I did anything else.
This semester I keep getting super overwhelmed by what I have to do and to cope with it I just pretend like I don't have to do anything and I watch a movie or read a book instead. Just to be clear, I really don't have that much to do. I do have more going on than I did in the fall, but it's not that much more. For some reason  I just can't bring myself to do it. I haven't been doing any of the readings for my classes (which makes the 200$ I spent on textbooks really redundant!).

Last semester I had so much energy and I felt like I could do anything and everything.
This semester I feel tired all.the.time (and no, I'm not pregnant).

Senoritis? Seasonal Depression? Who knows?

The good news here is that even though the semester has been kind of cruddy so far, it is in my ability to change things. This week has been slightly better because I've made a couple of changes. The biggest thing is that I've changed my work-out time. So far this semester I've tried to do it in the middle of the way when I have time, but that has NOT been working. So from now on, I'll be working out in the mornings (I'm such a morning person). I"m sure this will help things a lot.

Something else I'm going to change is my attitude. Instead of saying "what is my problem?? Last semester I was doing fine, why am I such a failure this semester?" I'll say, "today was really hard, and there are some things that I can just let slide. Tomorrow's a new day and I'm ready to try again."

12 weeks left of this semester. I can do it. I may not do it well, but I will do it and I will pass all of my classes (hopefully).

empathy

There's this thing that happens to me where I get super emotionally attached to what I'm reading. Not even to the characters themselves, I just put myself in the situation so completely that I start to feel that the story is happening to me.
I don't think it's very healthy.


On Sunday night, Kevin went to bed at 6pm so he could wake up at 3am to do homework (I know right? How amazing is he??). I decided to pick up a book I'd been procrastinating starting, "P.S. I Love You". I've seen the movie, I liked it, I thought it would be one of those "good cry" kind of experiences. I seriously read 28 pages and started SOBBING hysterically. I had to wake up my sleeping husband because I was so distraught, and he had to hold me for like a half hour, reassuring me that he wasn't going to get a brain tumor and die. Yeah, I'm taking that back to the library, unread.


Today one of my classes was cancelled, so I've been reading a book for my Adult Development and Aging class called "Life with Big Al." It's a woman's journal that she wrote during her time as a caregiver for her husband who had early onset Alzheimer's. It is an incredibly depressing book. It put me in a pretty foul mood for the next few hours.
It's interesting that this happens, that our emotions can be so swayed by something that has nothing to do with us.
Or maybe it's just me.

Lifestyle

There used to be this huge debate among social scientists about which influence had more of an impact on a person; nature, or nurture. In more recent years, pretty much everyone has accepted that people are impacted by a combination of both, and it can be hard to say which influence is stronger in a given person.

In my Adult Development and Aging class (yes, I have to take it), we were talking today about the biological effects of aging. It was honestly really depressing. The textbook is set up in such a way that it's like reading, "when you get old, your life is going to suck and there's nothing you can do about it!"

I definitely disagree with that way of thinking. And while I'm aware that there is little that I can do to prevent certain primary functions of aging, such as menopause and certain health things, I also really believe that what I do NOW in my life is going to have an impact when I'm older.

For this reason, I go to the gym for an hour three times a week, and I run three times a week. For breakfast every morning, I have a green smoothie packed with fruits and vegetables. I have certain nutrition goals for myself like, no treats for most of the days of the week, and eat six servings of fruits and veggies every day. I don't smoke, drink or do drugs (except for Aleve. IUD's really hurt sometimes!). I also go to bed between 9:00 and 10:00 every night and get up between 6:00 and 7:00.

I do all of this to keep my body healthy and strong, and to get (and stay) in the habit of having a good lifestyle NOW so that when my body does start to slow down, I will already be in those habits. This doesn't just apply to when I'm old. Someday, I'm going to be pregnant. And I'm fairly certain that there are aspect of pregnancy that are going to be really hard. So my thought process is that if I'm doing these important things now when it's not hard, then maybe I'll still be able to do them (even if it's on a smaller scale) when I'm pregnant and it's really hard.

Because I don't really care what people say. I think that a healthy, active lifestyle can make a difference in pregnancy, labor, and aging.

Beginnings

Today is the first day of my Senior Year of College. I've had one class, Persuasive Writing (yes, I procrastinated my last English class for as long as I could...). At the end of the class, my teacher gave the assignment to write every day of the semester. It doesn't matter the medium, it can be a blog, journal etc. so I decided to use this as a reason to revive this blog. I won't write every day, but I will write a lot more, and my posts will contain more words than pictures.
That being said, I've been thinking a lot about change lately. A couple of weeks ago, I turned in my badge for a job that I had (off and on) for over 5 years. It was bittersweet. Mostly sweet, because I was incredibly excited to do something (anything!) else than assemble traffic sensors. But it was also a little bit scary because the reason I quit that job was because of school, and for the opportunity to have a different job. Change is always a little scary I think, because it's just unknown. I don't know how this new semester is going to go. I don't know what my new job will be like.
I used to think that there was going to come a time in my life when things would be done changing for a while. I thought that when my husband and I were done with school, and he was in a career and I was in the home with our children, that things would settle down and stay the same for an indefinite amount of time. But then I realized that even if school/work schedules aren't changing, lots of other things will. Babies turn into children so much faster than I wish they would, and when I'm home with our kids, my life, schedule and routine will consistently change as they do. There will always be the change of the seasons, there will be happy times that drift into sad times and back again. No matter what happens, I can always count on the fact that nothing is ever going to stay completely the same.
Sometimes this concept is really hard for me. I want things to stay the same, I'm comfortable with where I am. Even though I was counting down the days til my last day of work, a big part of me didn't want to see the summer end because Kevin and I had developed a really fabulous routine. I knew that as soon as school started, we were going to have to completely revamp our routine. It's going to take a while to reach a point where I feel that we have reached a comfortable place. And the funny thing is, by the time that happens, the semester will be almost over and it will almost be time to start over again.
So I'm deciding to embrace the change this fall. Times will never be the way they were this past summer. But we have amazing memories that we can fondly look back on, and wonderful pictures to help us remember. And the best part about change is that is provides opportunity for a new adventure. Here's to many adventures this school year. :)