The music is from the car radio… out of my control. 
This is my nephew in the car before he and his mom and daddy (Eric, Jim’s brother) headed to Texas.
This is the first video taken with my iPhone 4 (and first edited with iMovie).
Today is my two year anniversary with Jim.
Things accomplished in the past year of our marriage:
- We bought a house and moved (WOAH), all right before Christmas.
- We adopted two large dogs simultaneously (WOAH), and are in love with them.
- We spent time adjusting to our new life (rough sometimes, a lot more responsibility) and remembering to make time for each other.
- We discovered yard work, mulch, and property upkeep (tiring, but cool). We have a LOT more space!
- We’ve gratefully noted a decrease in the number of times we’re asked about when we’re having children (THANK YOU).
- I’ve made some healthy life changes in the past six months and Jim has done nothing but support me along the way, with Weight Watchers, with running, with all of it.
- We’ve loved all the changes and we’re both still growing together and learning along the way.
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Things that are the same:
- We laugh a lot.
- I still don’t cook for shit.
- Jim’s gas is toxic and dangerous for the environment.
- We are both always right, and we both think we’re smarter than the other.
- I continue to the smartest and most continually right person in the equation.
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Happy Anniversary, bub! 
I hope we have a gazillion bazillion more, but I know there’s only SO many eons of my ever-increasing genius and beauty a mortal man can take! *mwah*
Seriously though, I love you!
(I really hope he didn’t get me a box of turds to go with whatever smart aleck card he’s found. I still have turds left over from last year.
And they’re still plenty fresh. Pbbbbbbblth.)
Are you ready to see the fruits of our hard labor throughout the month of May? Here’s a grand tour of our front and back yards just before our Memorial Day cookout. It rained overnight and blew some leaves and whatnot into the new mulch, but it still looked great and we’re really proud of what we’ve done with the joint.
Note the new table and chairs for the deck. We didn’t want a huge table to take up our limited deck space, so we opted for this small table that fits nicely with the built-in bench and came with great, swiveling/tilting chairs.
This is the view when you come out onto the deck and turn left. Note my thriving hen & chicks in the little tree bed, and Jim’s grill down on the patio! The towels are from storm clean-up before the cookout… it was soggy.
Patio view… the glider in the corner matches table and chairs on the deck. Door goes into the garage.
This is the view from the back of our yard, dogs and all. I can’t even tell you how much I still love that flowering dogwood growing out of our deck, even after the HUGE mess it made when the flowers fell off. Because of the trees, our back yard is mostly shade-central all day long, which is fantastic.
Walkway out to the side of the house. Dug up the stepping stones and replanted them after mulching.
This is the area that gets the most sun, so put the raised beds for veggies here. The bed on the left gets full sun, and the bed on the right gets half-to-3/4 sun. Leaving a lot of open space so that we have room for new ideas next year, etc. We did the walkway the night before.
The front of the house really just needed some weeding and mulching, and we’ve mostly left it alone. I love the Japanese maple and the thriving rose bush.
And finally, here’s a little taste of what we got grownin’ ’round these parts. Everything’s still alive so far, but we just planted it, so hopefully my pale green thumb will keep it all going!
This past Monday, on Memorial Day, I ran my first ever 5K. It was rough (damn that kid who gave me my race packet and told me the course was “pretty easy, mostly downhill”), I had to walk twice due to a couple of seriously daunting inclines, I saw stars when I crossed the finish line (and not the good ones, like Conan O’Brien or Mark Wahlberg… the “I’m going to pass out soon” kind), BUT…
I finished.
Jim was wielding my Canon on continuous shot mode at the start and finish line, so here’s a couple shots of the take off (I’m in purple with black pants):
I started off going WAY too fast. I was caught up with both the adrenaline and determination NOT to be at the end of the pack right at the start. I should have paced myself a bit more.
Here I am coming down the home stretch:
And, the push to the finish!!
You can see my family at the finish line in the background right as I crossed:
FINAL STATS:
44:58 finish time
14:28 mile pace
273rd place, Women’s Overall
41st place in 20-29 age group
(I was NOT LAST in any category!)
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I also had a lovely day (after a brief scare with the weather) with family and friends for Memorial Day afterward. It was a REALLY fantastic day all around despite muggy, then rainy, then muggy weather. The evening was beautiful. I didn’t take a single picture during the cookout, but sometimes zero pictures means you were just too busy having fun in the moment (or too tired to multi-task after doing a 45 minute run).
A week after the race, I’m still feeling really proud of myself, although I think I’m going to try and tackle a 2-mile on July 5th instead of a 5-mile. I want to stick with a distance I can comfortably do and maybe improve my time. Anyone want to join me?
Since February 1st of this year, I’ve been working really hard and since this week is one where I’m feeling overwhelmed with how far I still have to go, I want to recap accomplishments, and also make a few observations.
Milestones so far:
1. I’ve lost 35 lbs in 17 weeks.
2. I now run up to 6 miles per week.
3. I’m down two sizes in tops, one size in pants.
4. I no longer have serious joint pain from exercise.
5. I’ve influenced at least three people to try a healthier life as well.
How life is different:
1. I’m going to be a bridesmaid in my friend Simi’s wedding, and being asked to be a bridesmaid didn’t make me want to curl up and cry at the thought of wearing a dress in front of people.
2. I can now out-endurance my husband on the track, running at least a full mile longer without stopping. Just a month or so ago, he was running a mile and I was gasping through a quarter mile before walking.
3. Right now, the main thing on my mind is completing a 5K on Memorial Day. If someone had predicted even four months ago that I’d be doing something like that EVER in my life, I would’ve laughed at them.
4. My face is significantly changed (one of the first places the weight loss became noticeable), my legs and butt are smoother, I have a butt that is SEPARATE from my thunder thighs and has a little lift to it again, and my arms fit into tops that I haven’t been able to wear in over a year.
5. Due to the changes listed in #4, I occasionally look in the mirror and like what I see. I still see a long road ahead, but I don’t want to just crawl in a dark invisible hole anymore when I catch a glimpse of myself. That’s huge for me.
6. I’m happier and I have more energy. Exercise and the simple fact that I’m carrying around less weight on this frame are both huge factors in how good I feel right now.
7. I think about every single edible item I aim at my face 24/7. I prioritize (“is this worth spending points on?”), I think about how the food will affect my next run, and I seldom waste points on more than one beer maybe once a month. AND IT’S EASY. Sure, it’s more math, but seriously… you can eat whatever you want as long as you portion and plan ahead.
8. Current before and after:
What I’ve learned so far:
1. Being vocal about what you’re working toward makes you more accountable. I talk about my weekly weigh-ins and my running to anyone who’s interested, knowing that if I fall off the wagon there will be a huge number of people who will at some point ask about my running or my continued weight loss and I will then have to explain myself. Really good deterrent. I try to announce my weight change weekly, and the reason I’m always posting my run stats is so that if they ever disappear, people will know something’s up and hold me accountable.
2. Genuinely succeeding at being a healthier person gets you noticed by people you don’t even know that well. People I barely know (and a couple I don’t know) at work have made comments about the change in my appearance, which is both startling and really, REALLY encouraging. A few people I know who have struggled with and are not currently winning the weight battle have been genuinely happy for me in how far I’ve come (and some of them have gotten back on board with their own wellness as a result). People can be surprisingly supportive in really amazing ways.
3. WeightWatchers is not a cult, or rather, if it is a cult I’m incredibly happy with being a member. I always scoffed at WW, but I’ve never stuck with any other plan this long, and it’s never been this easy to stick to a specific plan and steadily lose weight. I’m SO glad Laura talked it up to me when she was here in late January. It’s changed my life.
4. Not everyone will be happy for someone who’s succeeding at making genuine change in their life. It threatens the validity of a lot of people’s assertions that “it’s too hard,” or “I don’t have time,” or “once you’ve gained too much weight, you’re just going to be a heavy person for life” and I think that makes a lot of people nervous. For every cheerleader I have, there seems to be someone else in my life who won’t talk about my new way of living or who tries to find a way to belittle my success in innocent (or even blatant) ways. Seeing someone make a major life change and really stick with it is a threat to the idea that a person can’t change, can’t grow that much, can’t succeed at daunting tasks. People don’t always want to acknowledge that, and I think a few people in my life miss the Brandi who walked into a room and made the “fat ass” jokes about herself first so that no one else would make them. It doesn’t deter me, but it’s a really interesting development in this process.
5. I am capable of much more than I ever thought I was capable of, physically and in terms of willpower. I didn’t give myself enough credit when I was 115 pounds in high school and college, let alone once I’d grown much heavier, and now I’m pushing myself further than I’ve ever gone, and doing it with a lot more weight on my frame than when I was a skinny thing with no endurance and no strength. I am truly capable of whatever I get my ass in gear and try hard at, and I don’t think I’ve ever believed that like I do now.
I also believe that about YOU. There’s still time to go on this journey with me… are you ready?
Old dishwasher that came with the house:
New (to us) dishwasher that Jim’s parents no longer need because it was replaced after their house fire (it still works perfectly fine, just needed cleaned up):
Jim and his dad were working hard on switching them out today, and then they fixed the downstairs shower so that it works (woo hoo, a place for dirty post-work Jim to shower!), and Jim has taken the basement door off the hinges:
Why are we taking the door off the hinges? Well, our dogs like cool temperatures and frequently go down and lie on the floor where it’s cool, so we always have to leave the door open so none of the animals get shut in or out of the basement.
If the cat gets shut out of the basement, she has to find creative places other than her litter box for peeing and pooing, which we enjoy very little.
When the dogs get shut IN the basement (sometimes the door gets blown shut when a window is open or the other dog will bump it closed), this is what happens:
So.
Rather than replacing the door we never close (and when it’s fully open it blocks the doorway to the living room), we are choosing NO DOOR. We’ll get a baby gate or put a door back up if we ever have the need for it, but for now I’m really just liking the open doorway.
Mae helped immensely with all of the house alterations today by ejecting more of her mutant fur all over the couch (that’s just from today, just brushed her yesterday):
She’s adorable though, so we forgive her. She knows not what she spews throughout our abode.
I helped by way of putzing around the internet with this windy overcast view and way too much time to play with my Eye-Fi card today. Those are my African violets in the window. I’m trying my hand at them.
“In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn’t merely try to train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.” – Edward Hoagland
I’m definitely open to living this kind of existence.
Woo hoo!! Got lots o’ planting done this past weekend with my friend Tim.
First we planted the Eastern Redbud that my mother gave me for my birthday:
We also planted this Mountain Fire Pieris that I picked up the other day on a whim:
And there’s the Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick tree, which Makai peed on LITERALLY ten seconds after it was in the ground and officially planted… *sigh*
We also planted a Dwarf Korean Lilac bush, a lily of some sort that Jim bought me, and three Salvia plants (one of which both dogs has trampled at least six times since).
Go Garden Brandice, Go!