I am sort of known amongst my friends and acquaintances to be an exercise nut.  I love to work out, to sweat, and rarely miss a gym day or at least a daily workout of some kind.  So I wasn’t really surprised when one of my friends (one who doesn’t happen to be a huge fan of exercising) sent me a link to this article in Time magazine entitled “Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin”, with a note reading “See???”.  At first I was a little annoyed and wondered what kind of crap someone was saying now.  But then when I read the article, I began to wonder if she actually read it at all (or just read the title and was convinced that she never again had to get up off the couch.)  In fact, what the article is really saying is that exercise does help you burn calories (obviously) and could help you become thin… except for the fact that people tend to eat more after exercise.  And they tend to overestimate how many calories they burned in their exercise (or they don’t even think about it) and the increase in calories that they take in ends up being more than the number of calories that they burned in the exercise so they don’t lose any weight.  And frankly, that is just common sense.

I have fallen into that trap myself.  Sometimes running for a half hour is so hard, it’s hard to believe that I only burned about 300 calories.  Only half of a small Dairy Queen Blizzard, for all that work!  WTF???

The key is just to be conscious of what goes in your mouth vs what you do on a daily basis.  And eating intuitively, which I am working to master every day.  I know, all of this is much easier said than done.  But it’s still incredibly interesting to me.  The bottom line is, exercise is always good for you.  And you should do it mainly for your health, although fitting into a nice pair of jeans is always a plus.  And shame on Time magazine for giving a misleading title to their article.

I’m feeling much better today than I was yesterday when I wrote my sulky blog post.  One of my problems yesterday was that I didn’t go to the gym at all.  I am really trying to take it easy the day after my long runs, because this week I have a 16-miler and am pretty scared.  And last week I had a tough time on my long run because I really feel like I overdid it the rest of the week and didn’t take a single day of rest.  So this week I took a day of rest yesterday and will take one on Saturday so that I am really ready for Sunday morning.  But it felt damn good to get back to the gym today – 50 hardcore minutes on the stepmill, baby.

Eats included my omelet breakfast with a clementine, and turkey salad for lunch.  Snacks were cereal:

Some grapes and a plum:

Dinner was a hodgepodge of egg whites, turkey, laughing cow cheese, tomatoes, and cashews.  Weird?  Maybe.  Delicious?  Hell yes.  Also had three veggie spinach nuggets with it:

Dessert was ice cream with angel food cake, a banana, and chocolate syrup (and gotta love my pink sprinkles!!!)  I loved it so much last night, I had to have it again.

Finally, I finished off the night with some Swiss chocolate with hazelnuts before I went to sleep.  What a perfect ending:

The annoying thing was, we had a problem at work again tonight.  My application had a problem starting around 9pm, so I had to work from 9-11.  Bummer.  But problem solved, major crisis averted, and then swiss chocolate.  Now, sweet dreams.  I will dream of my broken dryer getting fixed, because almost every clothing item I own is dirty and I’m pretty sure that soon my next door neighbors are going to come over and tell me that I’m stinking up the whole townhouse complex…

I don’t know what my problem is.  It’s like I constantly am testing, pushing the bounds in my relationships to see how far I can go and how much I can get away with.

I’m too tired to write more details, but suffice to say that I am testing S the same way I always seem to test people I care about in my life – my twisted, stupid way to try to see if they care about me.  Which of course does not work at all, but obviously that doesn’t seem to matter when I do it.

Eats:

And a shitload of other things, namely cookie dough, chocolate and peanut butter out of the jar.  I’m going to bed before I explode and/or S figures out what I am doing.  FML.

Ok, so maybe that’s a little bit dramatic.  I don’t think I changed any lives today.  But who knows, maybe I did change someone’s life somewhere.  A girl can dream, right?  But yes, I did change some oil.  Or at least I kind of helped.

Saturday night is kind of a funny time – at least it has always been for me as a runner.   I’m still pretty young, and try to get out and about occasionally on evenings where I don’t have to be up early the next day for work.  So that pretty much leaves me Friday night and Saturday night.  But… what tends to happen is that Friday night I am so exhausted from the entire day (and week) of work that I just decide to stay in.  And then Saturday night, when I should be raring to go… I start thinking about how I have to wake up at 6am for my long run in the morning so… usually end up staying in.  When did I become like a 90 year old grandma at the age of 26??

Today was actually quite a productive day.  I slept in, which is always a good start.  We didn’t get up until around 10:30, and then we headed to Barnes and Nobles for our ritual.  Woo hoo!  We didn’t get to go at all last weekend, due to all that was going on with his parents last few days here, and it was the first weekend in months that we didn’t go.  Isn’t that crazy?  and I really, really missed it.  After the ritual, we went to Kragen auto parts store.  We decided that from here on out, we were going to do our own oil changes in our car.  I always used to do mine myself, until I went to grad school and didn’t have a garage or the tools to do it anymore.  Now I have the garage, and the tools – we just needed to get some one-time purchases such as a hydraulic jack and stands to put up the cars, a tarp and some towels to keep the garage clean (I made it very clear that I would have a meltdown if oil got spilled all over my garage floor… that shit is impossible to clean up) a funnel, a drop light, etc.  Then we went to Target to get a cheap kitty litter box to catch the old oil in underneath the car.  While we were there, I got some dark chocolate coconut Kashi bars on sale, a flavor I haven’t tried yet but have been meaning to.  Woo hoo!

I also got another box of hair dye – this one for “dramatic blonde highlights.”  It’s one of those ones where you put on the cap and pull pieces of hair through to paint and highlight them…  Yeah, more on that later (don’t worry, I haven’t actually done it yet.)

We also stopped by the grocery store, which was great because we were running majorly low on food at the house.  Well, I wasn’t really.  I don’t think I ever run low on food.  But real food, the kind S wants every day such as pasta, meat, etc. was running low.  I got lots of goodies, such as fresh plums, big green grapes, fresh tomatoes and broccoli, bananas, some yogurt, some cereal, and an angel food cake

My car doesn’t actually need an oil change for another couple thousand miles, but Big S’s was waaay overdue.  I’m talking 3000 miles overdue.  So, since I only have a one-car garage, he pretty much did most of it himself – I only helped with a little bit at the end and then with the cleanup.  But I still had fun, and soon it will be my turn to do my car.  And he didn’t make a mess of my garage at all, which I was extremely thankful for.  While he was working on the car (like everything else he does, he did it very SLOWLY so it took him approximately 3 hours total) I managed to go to the gym, come home, shower and make us both dinner.  And then help him finish and clean up.  Oh yeah, and I had about a 15 minute conversation with my neighbor in there, who happened to go by as I was outside.  I took it easy at the gym – I was exhausted (for some reason my body has really felt like an old person’s lately, with all these aches and pains) and I knew that I have my long run tomorrow (albeit it is only a 10-miler… cake after last week’s fourteen.)  So I did 30 minutes on the elliptical, while watching football.

Did I mention how TOTALLY PSYCHED I am that football season has officially begun?  Or, at least preseason?  Steelers have already won their first game…  I have a feeling this is going to be a good year.  Sevenburgh doesn’t have quite the ring to it that Sixburgh does… but I’ll still take it!  WOO HOO!!!

My noms for the day:  Breakfast was a whole wheat english muffin with peanut butter and a tangerine at Barnes and Nobles (with my coffee of course):

S wanted his picture taken too:

And we were there for quite a while so I got hungry again and had a Kashi trail mix bar:

After all of our shopping, I had to try out my new gigantic grapes when I got home.  They were delicious!

I also had a piece of my new angel food cake with some pudding:

And right before I headed to the gym, I had a few… ok four… brownies:

For dinner, my turkey salad:

And for dessert, one more brownie and a homemade banana split with my fresh new bananas and some candied almonds… YUMMERS!!

After dinner, I went outside and picked up one of the little froggies that are always hopping around in the mornings and evenings when it is cold.  I brought it in to the house for a little while just for JB to play with (I don’t let him hurt it, don’t worry… just kinda follow him around while he hops around the house.  JB LOVES it.)

Here are some cute pics of JB and his friend:

Every night seeing JB with something else reminds me how lonely he has been since bunny died and how much he needs a friend (besides me and S.)  S is strongly considering getting a kitten, which I think would be great for JB to play with (as long as they get along…) so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Now I’m off to bed to get sleep for my 10-miler tomorrow morning bright and early.

At the end of the day, it’s me myself and I.  Right?  I can wish and pretend that it’s not, especially when I’m in a relationship.  But I have to remember that the only person I can really, truly count on (besides my family) is ME.

I have been having some doubts the past few days.  I am trying to figure out if the doubts are just because of fear, so I should ignore them as my insecruties are causing me to make issues up where they don’t really exist.  Or whether they are real doubts that I need to trust and examine, whether they are red flags that I need to listen to.  The problem is that right now, I am not sure how to figure out which exactly they are.

So, I was up all night fretting over it and eating over it, resulting in the physical evidence of my binge and my fear/frustration.  And yes, Stephen was upstairs asleep through all of this.  So this is what he woke up to find:

Before I get into my jumbled thoughts, here are some recent noms.  Today, I continued on my tangerine and other fruit frenzy – much to my delight.  Lunch was turkey salad.  Snacks were cereal and more fruit with some yogurt.  Dinner was where it got a little more interesting – chicken breast with eggbeaters and laughing cow cheese:

Followed by a magnificent ice cream sundae with chocolate and vanilla ice cream, a brownie crumbled on top, and chocolate syrup:

And then some of my soy chips:

Oh, and today we finally got through to the inner layer of my dryer where the heating element is, and determined that is definitely what is broken.  The spring itself just snapped – you can see completely where it broke.  I have ordered a new one, with priority shipping, so hopefully it should be here sometime at the beginning of next week.  And now, for your entertainment pleasure, here is what my house looks like with a dismantled dryer blocking the entire hallway and the gazillions of big, small, dirty, dusty pieces, tools, screws… you name it… laying all around and extending all the way into the bathroom (allowing for some incredible scenery if you are actually able to get through the obstacle course that is the hallway and actually try to use the toilet:

Here is an outline:

• First, and I think the most important to me, I feel like I don’t 100% trust him.  I don’t usually have trust issues, so I’ve been trying to figure out why exactly I think I feel this way.  And I figured out the other day – the reason why I don’t think that I truly trust him is because I honestly don’t think he trusts himself complete.  So… if he doesn’t trust himself completely, how the hell am I supposed to trust him?  Why do I think that he doesn’t trust himself?  There are many different reasons, all different things that he has said.  One of the latest things, for example, was a week or two ago.  We were talking about places where we might want to live that weren’t in California, and he mentioned Las Vegas.  I’ve never even been to Las Vegas, but for some reason he has this absolute fascination with the place.  Which I think is kind of bizarre for someone who doesn’t drink any alcohol or gamble at all.  But anyways, he mentioned maybe living there, but then said “Actually, I don’t think that would be good for our relationship.  It would only be a matter of time before I fucked up.”  Um… ok.  What am I supposed to say about that?  I mean, I don’t think I would exactly love to live in Las Vegas, but that particular reason never crossed my mind.  It’s not like I think, oh, I couldn’t live in Las Vegas because eventually I’d cheat on you.  No, I just think it’s a place of material gluttony and filthy overindulgence and extravagance – perfect for a vacation but NOT perfect to live in.  (Again…. disclaimer here… I have never actually been to Vegas.  I only know what I have seen on TV, in adverts, and heard from friends.)  It’s not like Stephen said, “Living in Las Vegas would not be good for any relationship” or “Living in Las Vegas would lead to a lot of temptation around”, etc.  He literally said, “it would be bad for our relationship because sooner or later I would fuck up.”  So to me, that sounds like he doesn’t trust himself.  So how the hell am I supposed to trust him?

There have been numerous other things that he has said too, in the time that we have been together.  For example, we have had in-depth conversations about how he thinks it is human nature to want to be with numerous partners – that it is against our natural inclinations and instints to be monogamous with just one person.  I’m not saying that he’s wrong.  But I’m saying that I don’t give a shit what our natural inclination is, and he better not use that as an excuse, EVER, to cheat.  Human beings also do not have a natural inclination to wear clothes, but you don’t see me running outside butt-ass naked.  We have willpower and the ability to make decisions for ourselves.  So to say that cheating and wanting to have sex with many people is a natural basic human instinct and there is nothing we can do about it is absolute bullshit to me.  I have made it very clear to him that if he cheats, ONCE, it’s game over with me.  He says he understands that.  But his beliefs once again lead me to not trust him.  And once again, they make me feel like he doesn’t even trust himself completely.

• Second, sometimes I just don’t like the way that he behaves.  Like, the types of things that he says and how he says them, and the way that he talks about and talks to other people.  He can be very disrespectful – when he speaks about people, or often even when he speaks to people.  I hate the way that he spoke to his parents some of the time while they were here.  He was often very impatient with them and sometimes downright disrespectful, and I couldn’t stand to hear it.  I told him that, and he disagreed with me – he didn’t think he was disrespectful.  But I told him that the bottom line was that if any child of mine ever spoke to me the way he spoke to his parents, I would put them across my knee and spank their bottom.  Not a chance in hell I would put up with that from a child of mine.

Also, like I wrote in a previous post, he hurts my feelings or slightly offends me quite frequently.  I was wondering before if it could perhaps be the language barrier thing, since english is not his first language.  I said that to him the other day, though, and he assured me that was NOT the problem.  So… I don’t know whether to be happy, because I don’t have to worry about that or him ever trying to use it as an excuse, or unhappy because it shows that, in my eyes, he can just be a huge asshole.  Maybe a little of both?

• Thirdly, he is just kind of self-centered.  Since we have been together, one time he bought me flowers and some chocolate – and that’s it.  Oh yeah, and last week he bought me a ceramic mug from where he works.  He does little things too – like the time he took the past few days to take apart my dryer to help me fix it.  But the truth is, he really did that for him.  He loved every single second of it and was happy as a clam dismantling a huge appliance.  In fact, today he asked me if we could break my washer after we fixed the dryer, so he could take that apart too.  Um… yeah.  I don’t consider myself to be an extremely materialistic girl, but I am a little disappointed with the lack of small gestures he shows.  For example, besides making him lunch and dinner at least every other day, I have surprised him with little gifts – his favorite body gel, which he wasn’t able to find.  His favorite cologne, which he was running out of.  A subscription to a magazine that he likes.  When I go to the grocery store, I pick up things for him that I know he likes (things that I sure as hell am not going to eat.)  I have left little notes in his lunch telling him to have a great day and that I love him.  I got him a speaker to connect to his laptop to play music in his apartment.  Just a bunch of little things like that which I don’t really feel like I see in return.  He says very sweet and loving things to me – he always opens the door and says hi by telling me how beautiful I look.  He tells me all the time he misses me when we are apart.  But in a way, I feel like words are just words and sometimes there has to be some more action or something else there to back them up.

• A final big issue that I have is the fact that he often likes to do things JUST to piss someone off, or JUST because someone told him he can’t do it, or JUST to go against the grain and prove that he can and that he doesn’t have to listen to anyone else or give a shit what they say.  He doesn’t like to listen to authority, and he doesn’t like to hear what someone has to say if they think they know more or better than him about something.  He is constantly questioning things (which I do think is sometimes a good thing, and which I don’t think I do enough of myself.)  But it’s almost like sometimes he questions them JUST to question them – to come up with some crazy conspiracy theory JUST to prove that it COULD be possible and that every single person in the majority could be wrong.  It’s so fucking annoying.

I think that those are a pretty good outline of the major concerns and fears that I have.  There are a few other, smaller ones – such as the way that we handle money and think about financial matters (which I think we differ on… he doesn’t think so.)  The way that we just think about things and do things (when it comes to safety, financial matters, and other practical things, I tend to be risk-adverse.  Stephen is constantly looking for the riskiest solution.)

I have to emphasize, for anyone who has read through all of this and now thinks that I completely hate him and that we must be a horrible match because of all the things I just said that I have a problem with, that I really love him.  We go well together in many, many ways – sometimes we seem so similar that it scares me.  He is smart, good looking, and can be extremely sweet.  We have the same sense of humor and are just on the same wavelength in a lot of ways.  I am with him pretty much all the time and rarely feel like I want to be away from him – and on the rare occasion that I do, I am usually away from him for just a few minutes before I want to be back with him.  He really is different than anyone else I have ever been with, and I can’t simply list all the things that are wonderful about him in one blog post.  But I wanted to make sure to end this post by emphasizing that point.  I am very happy with him, 95% of the time.  It is just that other 5%, and the importance of those issues that make up that 5%, that scare me.  And the fact that we talk so much about the future and really think far ahead.  So little things are much more important now than they might have been in a not-so-serious relationship when I was a teenager or in my early 20′s.  I’m just sayin…

So now that my head is officially spinning (Ha, I’m glad something is.  Because my dryer clearly isn’t…)  I am off to bed.  Talk soon, baboons.

Did you ever have one of those days where something happens, or you find something out, and all of a sudden it makes you question your life and the decisions you have made to get you to exactly the point where you are?  That just happened to me.

When I was in middle school, I had a best friend – I’ll call her K.  K moved to Pittsburgh, very close to where I lived, and we clicked right away.  We did everything together…  My sister also became best friends with her little sister.  Her parents were like my parents… every night either I slept over at her house or she slept over at my house (even week nights, which was unheard of for all of my other friends.  My parents let me have sleepovers with her on weeknights because it was basically like we were sisters.)

K was (is) very religious.  Although technically I was raised Jewish (my mom was Jewish, my dad Christian), I went to church with her every week as well (because I did everything with her).  I went to homecoming with her older brother, who I had a huge crush on for years.

I always knew K would get married relatively young.  In fact, I was surprised that it took her until the age of 24 to get married – I truly thought it would be in her very early 20′s at the latest.  Unfortunately, I was unable to go to her wedding (which was in March 2009) because it was in Pennsylvania and I couldn’t take the time off work to go across the country.  I had just returned from my trip to Israel and was busy playing catch-up already.  I sent her a gift and my blessings for their happiness.   She wrote me back a really long and kind letter thanking me and telling me about the wedding, her new life, etc.  It made me really happy.  I haven’t heard from her since then, although I didn’t think that was unusual because she just got married, moved to a different state, and I’m sure is very busy acclimating to her new life.  But then today, another friend of ours from high school wrote this on my Facebook wall:

You going to visit K* when the baby is born?

Ha.  Baby.  I didn’t see that one coming.  Don’t ask me why, I guess it should be perfectly obvious because I know her so well.  I don’t know why it took me so off guard.  But it was a double whammy – I was upset because she hadn’t told me, and then I was upset because I realized where I am in my life vs where I wish I was.  I have no details – I don’t know how far along she is or whether she knows if it’s a girl or a boy.  All I know is that I’m happy for her, and in many ways I’m sad for me.

K chose relationships.  She chose marriage and children first.  She did the school thing, she did the grad school thing, but she did not put her career first.  I chose career.  I don’t even feel like I made that choice consciously… I mean, I know that I decided to go to grad school and take this full-time job and move to CA.  I knew that my company was known for working people to death and not exactly allowing for the best work/life balance (although they do a good job pretending that they do.)  But as far as putting my job above getting married and having kids, it wasn’t like that.  Believe me, if I had found the right guy (and yes, I was looking), I would have married him.  I would love to be married right now, I really would.  I know that a bunch of people reading this are going to want to shoot me for writing that, but I’m just being honest.  If you would have asked me when I was a teenager, I would definitely have said that I would be married and settled down at the age of 26.  Needless to say, that is not the case.  I do not want to get married just to get married, or have kids just to have kids.  I would rather be single for the rest of my life than settle.  I am pretty sure that’s what happened with my parents – not that they didn’t care for eachother, but it was more that they were getting older, had been together for a while, and they just got to the point where they either had to get married and build a life together, or move on separately.  And I know that my mom really wanted kids, she always wanted to be a mother.  So they got married, and had me soon after.  And now look how they are (for anybody reading this who doesn’t know, they got divorced about 5 years ago and hate eachother’s guts.  They haven’t spoken literally in four years… any time one of them needs to tell the other something, they have to go through me or one of my sisters.  It is infantile and pitiful.)

So yeah, if I could write out my life story to have everything be perfectly the way I would like it to be – I wouldn’t be at the point where I am.  But I guess this is irrelevant.  I am here, and have to make the best of it.  I know that I am still young, although days like today (and homeowner issues such as broken dryers) make me feel very old.  I don’t know what is going to happen with Stephen – I am constantly reminded of the fact that he is younger than me and that as much as I care for him, we are definitely at somewhat different points in our life.  And I either have to accept that, and be happy each day, or move on.  And I love him, I don’t want to move on.  I want to let go and enjoy each day as it comes.  Why do I find that so difficult to do???

Ugh.  So some of my eats for the day – I ate about a gazillion clementines (but somehow it seems like I’ve still barely made a dent in the huge box that I got) and my turkey salad for lunch.  Afternoon snacks were cereal, yogurt and a kashi cereal bar:

Dinner was grilled chicken breast stirfry with broccoli, onions and Switzerland cheese, followed by dessert of an ice cream sundae with my new Schwann’s ice cream!

Finally, I had my Wednesday night development meeting for work, felt sorry for myself a little bit longer, and ate a bag of sour cream and onion soy chips:

Now I’m going to bed with the only child who is in my immediate future – the little gray furry one.  JB.

I’m 26 years old, but most of the time I don’t feel like it.  I feel like a little kid playing grown up – going to work every day, paying my bills, taking care of the house, cooking dinner (for Stephen now, not just for myself.)  I know that I am a pretty responsible person, but there are times when something happens to make me feel like I am simply not ready to be an adult – in this case, not ready to be a homeowner.  And I’m not talking about the things that happen on an almost daily basis (i.e. a salesperson or postman or something rings the doorbell, and when I answer, they ask if my mom and/or dad are home.)  Today my dryer broke – I washed a load of laundry in the morning and then stuck everything in the dryer before lunch so that my gym clothes would be all ready to go when Stephen got home (because he actually agreed to go to the gym with me!)  I always use the lowest heat setting in the dryer, air fluff, because it’s the least hard on the clothes.  A little over an hour later, I opened the dryer and everything was still wet.  It had been on, I could hear it working, but it wasn’t drying the clothes.  I thought I just had the setting too low, so I moved it up to medium heat.  An hour later… nothing.  Still wet, and I couldn’t feel any heat in the dryer.  This is when I knew something was wrong.  I tried high heat, no cigar.

I’m not 100% positive, but pretty sure it is the heating element that has kicked the bucket.  Stephen came home from work and got really excited about the prospect of taking the whole thing apart to figure out the problem.  He started (and of course didn’t finish the big job in one night) so now my stackable washer and dryer are sitting in the hallway in a gazillian pieces, blocking the path to the bathroom.  There are tools everywhere, screws and pieces of metal, and random tubes and pipes sticking out of the wall that he disconnected.  And he took off and left for work this morning, leaving me to stare at it all day while in my home office.  Lovely.

Here are some nom nom highlights from the past few days.  I did some grocery shopping – my favorite brand, KASHI!!! is on sale at Target this week so I got TLC trail mix chewy bars, TLC dark chocolate cherry chewy bars, strawberry cereal bars, and my go-to GoLean cereal.  Woo hoo!

I have been eating clementines like they are going out of style, because I bought a 5 pound box on sale at safeway (and 5 pounds is a lot for one person):

And also feelin fruity with peaches:

I have also been quite the sundae queen.  Monday and Tuesday nights I had vanilla frozen yogurt with chocolate syrup, some m&ms and a crumbled kashi crunchy bar:

When I was growing up, we had regular delivery from the Schwann’s man.  I used to LOVE when the Schwanns man would come, he would bring all this yummy food like these individual deep dish pizzas that were my absolute favorite.  And the ice cream, they make a birthday cake flavor that was my all-time fave.  So I have started having the Schwanns man come to my house in CA.  It’s expensive, but just kind of a nice, comfort thing to me.  It reminds me of home and growing up.  It’s like comfort food for me.  Unfortunately, the guy was late today so I wasn’t home when he came.  But Stephen was there and got my order, which consisted soley of ice cream.  Hey, it’s my first order.  I promise I will order some real food next time

And in the true spirit of playing house, Stephen and I bought some things for the house today.  The house, slash my house, slash our house.  Guess I should try to get used to saying that.  We got some tools, and one of those Pur water filters that attach to the faucet.  I personally don’t care about drinking tap water – I drink it all the time and think it tastes fine.  But Stephen has to have filtered water, so he wanted to get one of those things (even though I do have a Brita pitcher in the fridge, but we are constantly emptying it and refilling it.)  It is actually pretty cool, and was easy to install so made me happy

So now I’m off to clean my house, pay my credit card bill, and do other grown-up things.  And then I’m climbing into bed with my teddy bear and falling asleep sucking my thumb.

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I’ve always said that in many ways, I’m more like a guy than I am like a girl.  I’ve spent the past few years of my life believing that, in fact, and trying to convince everyone else that it is true.  And in many ways, it is true.  I love cars and football and getting sweaty.  I can out-eat anybody I have ever met, guy or girl, and in college I could drink fraternity boys under the table.  I’m pretty rational and try to solve problems calmly and analytically… I don’t like getting all worked up and emotional.  And when I talk to someone about an issue in my life, I want them to help me find solutions and possibilties – not just listen to me bitch.  I hate drama and, oh yeah – I have basically no boobs.

In some ways I’m really girly – My favorite color is pink, I always have my fingernails and toenails painted.  I love dresses and long hair, I almost always have some sort of makeup on my face.  I listen to girly music and am afraid of bugs.  And jewelry, flowers, suprise gifts or little notes or gestures will always melt my heart.  I’ve always belived in happy endings and know that I will have my fairy tale (even though realistically I know that it will not be like in the movies, but will rather be made perfect by its own endearing imperfections.)  Oh and of course, chocolate makes everything better, every time.

So I always thought that, unlike other girls, I wasn’t really that sensitive.  I am pretty sarcastic and tend to call it like I see it – but I always thought that I could take it just as well as I could dish it out.  One of my last boyfriends, not mentioning any names (*cough* *cough* PAUL) was so super-sensitive that it drove me up the wall.  Remember him?  The one who was crying his eyes out on my couch almost every night for a week?  Whose feelings I seemed to hurt every time I opened my mouth?  I guess the biggest problem that I had with that was the fact that he was a man (or supposed to be, at least.)  I don’t really do well with sensitive people in general, but particularly sensitive men.  I mean, I guess as a friend is fine but I do NOT want a boyfriend who cries at the drop of a hat or whose feelings I am constantly hurting.  I want someone who is confident and can take a lot of the things I say – understanding, of course, that usually I do not intend to be mean or harsh but that sometimes the things I say come out the wrong way.  I recognize that and try to work on it, but it is definitely a fault.  I say things without thinking about them.  Or sometimes I think about them but still can’t come up with the right words so things end up coming out the wrong way.

Stephen is sensitive about certain things, as well all are.  You know, everybody has some issues that when you bring them up or say certain things it just strikes a nerve.  But overall he’s not a sensitive guy.  However, being with him has made me start to realize that I am more sensitive than I thought I was.  Either that, or he frequently says/does things that hit a nerve with me.  I’m still in the process of trying to figure out why that is.  I think part of it is simply the fact that this is all moving fast and I really care about him and I’m just scared.  So when he says something seemingly innocent, sometimes my fear kicks in and I unneccessarily read between the lines thinking he was implying something that he really wasn’t.  I think another big thing is the fact that, although he is excellent at speaking english, it still is not his first language.  So sometimes his word choices are not ones that I would pick or ones that really get across what he is trying to say in the most tactful or accurate manner.  I try to keep that in mind, but I still think that he is in many ways lacking a sensitivity chip.  There really are two completely different sides to him.  Sometimes he is so sensitive and kind and caring that I feel like pushing him away because I’m suffocating or I don’t want to be treated like I am breakable.  But other times he says things or does things and I just feel like this must be the most clueless guy in the world.  He hurts my feelings and literally doesn’t have the slightest idea.

Oh well, I’m still working through it – obviously.  But maybe now I will try to be more careful what I say around others, because for one of the first times in a long time I am feeling the other side of the coin.

Breakfast today was tea, a nectarine and coffee.  I’m really kicking butt with my tea-drinking… I think that I have had a cup every day this week!

Lunch was a turkey salad with mixed veggies, provolone cheese and almonds, and a peach:

After some crazy work, I went to the gym.  I did 35 minutes on the elliptical with intervals between levels 11-17.  Afternoon snackies were a pure protein bar, a nectarine and some honey nut bite-sized frosted mini wheats:

Then Stephen and I went grocery shopping.  I invited his family over to my house for brunch Saturday morning, since they are leaving to go home on Sunday.  So we bought all kinds of goodies – eggs, pancake mix and syrup, bacon and sausage, cantaloupe.  We also will have bread for toast with butter, jam and honey, cheese… should be great.  Except I have to clean my house and make it all.  Yay.

For dinner I made Stephen Barilla pasta (his favorite) – elbows with marinara sauce and ground beef.  For me it was a turkey salad, with an sundae (vanilla frozen yogurt, crushed golden grahams, and chocolate syrup) for dessert:

Then we went to his place and did some studying.  I’m trying to learn German, and it’s freaking HARD.  And then, last week, his parents bought me these cassette tapes (yes…. CASSETTES!  That’s all they were available in.  And they were $100!!!!) to learn Swiss German.  They were like, “Let’s see how much you can learn before you come in October!!!  Great.  Nothing like pressure, right?

Finally, jelly bellys and now bed.  Thank goodness tomorrow is Friday!