Delete

I'm uploading my considerable collection of pictures to an online album, and my largest collection is from my days on tour with Oklahoma! This means a lot of pictures of me with Ben-in Cincinnatti, Key West, Boston, Philadelphia...you get the picture. As I drag the pictures to my photobucket account I find myself deleting Ben. Me and Ben at the New Orleans Aquarium (pre-Katrina, btw)-DELETE. Me and Ben at the Golden Gate Bridge-DELETE. Me and Ben doing anything-DELETE.

I no longer hurt when I look at those pictures. I do not regret my time with him or the experiences I had with him. I am even grateful to him, because had I not loved Ben I could not love Blake as well as I do. I am sad, though, looking at how much of my experience was colored by Ben, by how much I isolated myself with him. When I delete Ben I have to delete Coronado Island, Disney Land, and the Freedom Trail too. There's a whole period of my life-a very important, exciting, and once-in-a-lifetime period-that I allowed to belong to someone else. I have my photos and my memories, but for each picture and each city I can tell you exactly when, where, why, and how Ben and I fought. Even when Ben is not in the picture, I can see him in my smile. I am disappointed in myself that I did not fight to make that experience what it should have been for me-I was too busy trying to make it right for him.

The last year with Blake has been, hands down, the best year of my life. I have no doubt in my mind that I am at last with the man I was meant to grow old with, the man who was meant to be my partner in everything. My relationship with Ben left scars that have mostly healed, although there are days he still rears his head in my heart-mostly because I'm finally seeing the things that I did to contribute to our problems and fights. It's so much easier to think about how he hurt me and how I didn't deserve it than to face the fact that my quick temper and sassy mouth may have hurt him just as bad.

So now I am left with days wishing I could just DELETE Ben all together. Some day my daughter or son will come to me and ask how I knew Blake was "the one", and how do I explain that it's because of Ben? How do I explain that I don't think I would have recognized the gentle, adoring, funny, smart, selfless man who now holds my heart if I had never loved another less worthy? My gratitude and love and sadness are all intermingled, and some days it's next to impossible to untangle them. On good days I recognize that they don't have to be.

The other days I'll just continue to DELETE.

unremarkable

Now that I've taken a break from the X, I can blog about some other things that I've been meaning to for ages. Like Blake's sister, Brooke.

Brooke has a Christian band that performs all over the Dallas area called unremarkable-and they are anything but. Brooke writes all the songs and (for the purposes of this blog) more importantly designs shirts for the band touting their first CD, Angels Exist. Brooke and her husband Albert have the biggest hearts, and they have dedicated a portion of the profits from the shirts to go to a sweet little girl named Zala. Zala has a rare disease that affects her brain and nervous system, causes serious seizures, and requires expensive procedures and equipments that her single mother can't always afford.

So here's the easy and awesome part. Follow this link and this link and take a look at the REALLY cute shirts that will make great Christmas gifts, birthday gifts, or "I really like that t-shirt and I need one for myself now" gifts. They're comfy, cute-and you can feel good about doing a small part to help a deserving little girl.

While you're perusing their website make sure to check out some of their music, and if you want a shirt or CD and don't use PayPal, just let me know and Brooke will help work out something for you. Happy Shopping!!

Xing The X

All good things must come to an end.

In this case, they came to a great end because I finally get to eat potatoes again, which rocks my world. My pursuit for a body worthy of P90X, however, has come to a semi-screeching halt.

So many factors came into play-first the practical. I work 9 AM to 7 PM Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Which meant my choices were A) get up at 5:30 every morning, do the 90 minutes of intense workout then work for 10 hours or B) get up an hour later, do all my daily chores (washing dishes, laundry, etc.), work 10 hours, come home to workout then crash into bed and start all over again. Neither was appealing, and neither was really working. It is very depressing doing nothing but working and working out.

Second-the relationship saver. I was becoming a royal carb-craving, sleep-deprived, chicken-stuffed pain in the rear. Blake has now officially seen every mood swing I could possibly have, and we are now well informed that during pregnancy if I crave something, I should probably have it for the sake and sanity of all involved. Even I didn't like me, I could see the miserable face I was making everytime I passed a french fry joint and it wasn't pretty. If I didn't X the X soon, I think I might have been Xed.

I'm not completely giving up. I finally came to the conclusion that A) I don't necessarily need a 6 pack and 3% body fat to be happy with my body and B) I needed to follow a system that worked for me all the time, not just 90 days. I did enjoy a lot of the workouts, I DID NOT enjoy them after a 10 hour work day. Here's my new plan:

Run at least 2 miles at least 3 days of the work week (M, T, Th, F) before work, and if ambitious, I will do the Ab Ripper X video. Wed and Sat I will continue with some of the videos (I especially liked the Arm and Shoulder video, I'm going to try and work that in a couple more times a week eventually), and on Sundays I'll stretch with Blake. The nice thing about doing the X full out for two weeks is that I've been somewhat detoxed-my belly is already flatter, my clothes are fitting better, and I've learned the value of watching the portions and proportions of what I eat and cook. I'm continuing to follow the basic outlines of the diet, but with much needed carb modifications. I might not be grabbing a Krispy Kreme for breakfast every morning, but I'm definitely going to make potatoes with dinner on occasion.

All this means that now I can concentrate on more important things...like what kind of potatoes I can make for dinner...