Going to Spain

Every two years, the school choir goes in an international tour. My Freshman year, it was Italy. Before that, it was China. This year, it is Madrid, Spain.

I didn’t go on the trip to Italy. I was still suffering from depression and cripplingly low self esteem at the time. I also had a mental dependency on Jacob. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to go out of the country for two weeks and not be able to talk to him in that time. It sounds stupid now, but it was the right decision.

Everything has changed for the better in the last two years. I am fully recovered from depression, and I think I am ready to go on a cultural trip and get that experience. I will miss Jacob, but we will have Skype etc.

The trip will last 10 days. One of those days will be my birthday. What a bummer… Jacob is sad that he won’t get to spend my birthday with me. I am too, but I can’t control the dates of the trip 😦

I wonder if he really doesn’t want me to go. This morning he told me he was “on the fence” about me going. I’ve already made a commitment to go, so I’m not sure how to interpret that. I think we. Feel the same way: it’s very sad that I will be gone on my birthday and we will miss each other greatly, but it’s a great opportunity that I shouldn’t pass up. And like I said, we have Skype. That is, if I am ever available to talk while he’s not at work!

Everything will be ok. Right?

Food journal

Ok SO. Since working out has not helped me improve my weight at all, I’m gonna have to go on a diet as well. This is not going to be easy. I know I eat a lot.

I looked on a couple websites to see how many calories a day I should be eating to have weight loss. One website was this funky calculator. It made me put in my weight loss goals. I have a number of pounds that I want to lose, but not really a time scale in which I want to do it. I said 20 lbs in six months, and the calculator said I should be eating 1400-1500 calories a day to achieve this.

Another website was an article describing how to figure out your target caloric intake based on your body weight. It says the number of calories you should theoretically eat to maintain your weight is your weight in pounds x14. For me this is 150×14=2,100. Then, the article says you should take of 15-35% of that number, depending on how fast you want to lose weight. The article used 30% in its example, so I did too. That put me at 1,470 calories a day.

Ok, now I’ve got my goal… And it seems intimidating. I will keep a food journal to see how this works out.

Today I wrote down everything I have eaten and it came out to 1,257 calories. Ok so WHY AM I FAT? Well probably because on average I eat more than that. Ugh. This sucks. I KNOW I can be 130 lbs. I was there! How did I ever do it? Oh that’s right, depression. Well, I must find a way to lose the weight in a healthy manner this time.

First weigh-in, utter disappointment. I am fat.

Well, I’ve been going to the gym for six weeks now. Originally I thought it was going to be three or four, even five times a week, but with my retarded school schedule it’s really been only one or two. Whatever.

The results are disappointing. I look the same. You can compare to my first post here.

 

As for my weight, I now am back to my highest weight ever, same as I was about four years ago. It’s 152 lbs, which is 69 kilos or just under 11 stone (10 st 12 lb).

Am I disappointed? Yes. Will I stop working out? No. Will I start counting calories? Obviously I ought to, because I must be eating way too fucking much!

Ugh.

my haircut looks 2 perf with headphones lol~

naw but I love this haircut for real I got it not too long ago

 

Remembering September 11th

I only have a few distinct memories from that day. I was in the fourth grade. The school year was just really getting really started. It was a beautiful Georgia day out, and I was loving my 9 year old life.

None of the teachers told us what was going on, but all the kids knew something was amiss. I don’t remember what time of day I left school, but it must have been the morning. Everyone was getting pulled out by their parents. Though I thought it was strange, I was just happy to get to go home and play.

When my sister and I (she was in first grade) walked out of the school, we found both our parents waiting for us. This is when I realized that something must have been really serious. Our parents had been divorced for over four years and we never encountered them together.

I asked what was going on. Perhaps our parents told us that there had been an accident. I don’t remember what happened until we got to my father’s house and they turned on the TV. We were just in time to see one of the hundreds of replays of the second plane crashing into the South Tower.

I immediately started crying. It was a horror, a tragedy that was happening right now on American soil. My mother told us that all of our family was safe. Nobody worked in that area of the city.

I hardly watched for sixty seconds before I asked them to turn them off. Even at my young age I completely understood the magnitude of the situation. I realized that I was witnessing history. Future generations would read about this day in school, and kids might ask me what it was like to live this day. At the same time, I felt guilty realizing that events like this happen all around the world but I never seemed to care about those events, only this one. I still feel guilty about that to this day.

Later that day I did see footage of the towers falling. I cannot imagine what it could have been like to be near that attack. I was far away physically, but near in spirit as all of us were.

Of course, the WTC towers were not the only buildings to be attacked. There was also a crash at the pentagon and a final plane that missed its target but still crashed to the ground, killing its passengers. We lost almost 3,000 lives to the events of that day.

Today I am enjoying the most perfect weather I have ever witnessed in South Carolina. There is not a cloud in the sky. But I’m confident there is not a hijacked plane up there, either. The horrors of September 11th did have one silver lining: they brought us together as a nation. I hope that on this anniversary, we can put our election squabbles aside and remember that we are all proud Americans.

Laptop update

I called the computer shop and learned a couple of facts that were not surprising, but sad nonetheless.

One is that my Apple warranty wouldn’t cover screen cracks anyway. Warranties are not for breaks you make yourself. Also, if I wanted to fix it anyway, I would have to do so by replacing the ENTIRE TOP HALF of the computer. I guess that’s a side effect of them being so thin.

So now I am faced with a decision, should I live with this badly cracked screen, or spend money to better my situation? Honesty, for the price it would cost to restore my MacBook Air, I would rather just get a whole used MacBook Pro. One of which my roommate has and would be willing to sell to me…

But in reality I don’t have a few hundred dollars to spend on anything, so there’s that.

More Rant

In addition to my normal woes of the week, this weekend is particularly woeful because I have to go out of town for my grandmother’s birthday. That is not the sad part, but the fact that I will miss so many things while I’m gone really sucks. I will already miss going to the gym for three days, so fuck that. I will only get to go twice this week. Well MAYBE twice! Who knows, tomorrow I might have to choose to skip it again because I have too much work to do. People use “I don’t have enough time” as an excuse not to exercise, but right now I really don’t have enough time and it is making me so angry!

It seems that every awesome concert or recital in the world is happening on this weekend, the ONE weekend I have planned to be away:

• Mark Husey’s organ recital at the church, he will have pieces that include string quartet and clarinet and there will be a reception afterwards. omg I would kill to go.
• There is a concert that will be performed by our voice faculty that includes several Handel arias and other great stuff, IDK because I CAN’T GO ANYWAY
• Just learned today about a concert of Baroque music that will be performed on period instruments and have BAROQUE DANCERS what is that even I want to die
• One of our piano professors and his colleague are performing all 10 Beethoven violin sonatas in order over the course of three days… the three days I will be away

To compare, here is a list of the recitals that I want to see in September on the weekends that I will be in town:

Time Management

A bit of a rant coming here:

It is only the second week of school and already I feel overwhelmed. I feel like I am being given so much work that it would require 32 hour days to complete it all. I have fallen completely and utterly behind on Sability work (luckily they just hired a new lady to do 90% of my duties, but I am still not able to complete that measly 10 percent) and church music. Perhaps the things that will suffer the most are composition (unfortunately no surprise there) and my new love, going to the gym.

Composition is my major, but I find it very hard to work into my life. This semester I am supposed to have new material once a week. This is hard to do for two reasons. 1) Producing new material to show to your teacher is so indimidating! 2) Every day that I want to work on composition, there are about 10 assignments due the next day, and since I have a week to do comp, it keeps getting pushed back more and more. I get home and I’m like well, better do homework. Oh look at the time, better run to rehearsal. Get home, damn it’s getting late better get ready for bed. An hour or two later I fall asleep from exhaustion. Then I have to wake up and either get on a Sability call or go straight to a thousand classes.

I hate school sometimes (read: all the time).

I won’t be able to go to the gym much either. I feel like I really like going because it is the only time blocked out on my schedule that is beneficial for my health AND also not mentally challenging. Everything else I have to do requires thought and work. They gym is like a break. Today I couldn’t go to the gym because I had so much work to do in the three hours between school and church choir.

And guess what, I haven’t been able to do a bit of composition in those three hours.

I suppose I could try and do some right now, but I have the hiccups which REALLY FUCKING PISS ME OFF and I’m already in a horrible mood.

UGH;jikoawgryhi;oujgarsejio

New Healthy Chapter?

I know this is going to sound like the same old song and dance, but bear with me… I think I really truly am going to introduce exercise into my daily life.

Since last week I’ve gone to four group exercise classes (Zumba and other cardio things) and I really like it! Of course I’m the most out of shape person in the room and I have to stop to huff and puff a lot, but that’s why I’m going isn’t it!

I am very unhappy with my body right now. The last time I tried to exercise, I started gaining weight, gave up and said fuck it, and just started eating junk. Now I am even bigger. This cannot go on.

Here are some things that I am going to do that I think will help me succeed:

• Schedule exercise time in to my week and stick to it.
• Go to as many group exercise sessions as I can, I really love having a teacher and this is the next best thing to having a personal trainer. I find that I learn best in classroom settings and thought I could apply this to workouts, so far it is going great!
• Try to eat more healthily
• Drink (more) water? idk I already drink a lot of water since I am a singer, but I could probably squeeze some more in!
• Take progress photos every few weeks.

Here are some things I am NOT going to do:

• Weigh myself. Last time I tried to get in a healthy routine (May/June) I weighed myself obsessively, and when I saw the scale going up instead of down, I panicked. I think now that my weight was going up because I was probably eating even worse because I felt like I could afford the extra calories? It could have been muscle, IDK.
• Judge myself physically. Although I’m not happy with my body shape, I should stop being preoccupied about the fact that I am the fattest one in the group exercise class. If I am there working out and I am eating well, this should improve.
• Set my expectations too high. In May I kind of wanted immediate results, even though I know that is impossible. These unrealistic expectations led to my downfall.
• Always eat food (especially junk food) when Jacob is eating. We are on completely different schedules. Sometimes when I pick Jacob up from work (around 10 PM) he wants to eat because he did not get to eat at work. Usually I have already eaten dinner at a normal hour. It is completely reasonable for him to want to eat at this time, but usually I just join along and eat too. Absurd! If I have already had dinner I should not eat again! Usually it is not very healthy food anyway! I need to get out of the mentality of poor college kid, eat everything you can. I need to get out of that mindset NOW and set better habits for myself in the future.
• Along that same vein, I should not eat when I am not hungry just because I feel like it’s dinner time and I ought to. Today I ate a bowl of cereal for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, an apple for dinner, and there happened to be cake at church choir so I had a small slice. When I got home I immediately started making dinner because I thought the apple wasn’t enough. Two weeks ago I would have eaten that pasta anyway. But tonight in the middle of cooking it I realized… I’m not really hungry. Which is a good thing, because it is 9 PM! I can put that pasta in the refrigerator and eat it tomorrow for lunch. This is a completely new concept for me.
• Take progress photos every day or two. This is TOO frequent. I will not see any changes in two days or maybe even two weeks. I will probably wait four to six weeks to take progress photos and even longer if I cannot see changes. Taking photos too frequently will be discouraging.
• Eat late at night. I hear this is bad for your metabolism or something
• Drink soda……. ok maybe every once in a while.

Let me clarify that I’m not doing this specifically to lose weight. I just want my clothes to fit again! Also, I want to be healthy. If I change my lifestyle this way and I stay the same size, so be it. It will be worth it to know that I am now practicing healthy habits.

So, here is what I am at now: I weigh about 10 1/2 stone, or 66.7 kilos, or 147 lbs. This is definitely the HIGH of my weight range. I have not weighed this much in two years. my lowest, if you are curious, was about 9 stone 4, 60 kilos, or 130 lbs about 13 months ago. Honestly, I’d be thrilled if I got back to that… but it is not necessary.

Here is what I looked like then:

And here is what I look like now:

Absolutely disgusting, isn’t it?

Well…. wish me luck!

Today (technically yesterday) was my third anniversary with Jacob!

We didn’t get each other any presents… I’d much rather us save the money! And anyway, I already have everything I want now that he lives here. Tonight Jacob told me “I’m glad I moved up here” (Columbia) and it really made me happy because he hasn’t come right out and said that very often. He keeps those kind of sentimental thing to himself for the most part.

Another adorable thing he said was “Thanks for three years!” and I said “You’re welcome, let’s do it again! Starting… now!”

😀 I am so happy. Today and in my life in general.