Freedom!

Today was finally the end....the of the semester. Yee Haw and a great big, "THANK GOODNESS!" Hallelujah! What a great day! Seriously. I mean it. It was a great day, and in my opinion, an exciting day!

You see, the truth is that there isn't a whole lot that I get excited over these days. At the ripe old age of 34, I've seen a lot. It's the little things in life that make me most happy: a clean house, NCIS and popcorn with Ken, a shower before bed along with fresh sheets, finding The Goonies on TV...You see, I'm a pretty content person and so the last few times I was ever seriously excited about something include the following (I may be missing some, but these are what come to mind automatically): Christmas eve as an 7-8 year old and receiving my doctoral gown in the mail. That second one sad? Maybe. But if you knew what it took to get that thing, you'd probably have cried too. I know I should add things like getting married and Ken coming home from war and all, and yes, those were important moments in life. But what I'm thinking about here is the youthful excitement that comes from deep within, something that stirs you at the core and makes it impossible for you to sit still.

Yes, my friends, that is how I felt today. Today was the best day - the last day of fall semester! A break... we all get a break...from work, from each other, from meetings, from going to bed super early and getting up super early, to responding to emails, to thinking about what to wear, oh how the list does go on. Today, I was so excited that I was actually skipping in the hallway outside my office. Yes, it was just that kind of day. Thankfully, I was not the only one to admit feeling this way. Many of my colleagues admitted to feeling excited and simply boisterous because of what the calendar was telling us. Freeeeeeeeedom!!!!

Stuck, stuck, stuck.

So, I'm stuck. That whole "lose weight pretty fast" thing has stopped for me. I'm trying to stay positive and remind myself that staying the same or losing just a little is ok. But really, how excited can a person get about losing 0.2 lbs when only a few weeks ago, they were coming off in 2, 3, and sometimes even 4 lbs at a time?!?! I'm getting nervous about making my 25 by Christmas goal. It may not happen at the rate things are going these days. Stay positive, stay positive!

Thanksgiving was good. I didn't deny myself anything good (hmm...and I wonder why the scale is stuck). But it was back on track for me on Sunday in hopes of a speedy recovery before weigh in. I also walked Sunday-Tuesday so hopefully that wil make 100 pounds fall off really fast.

Weigh in tonight: keep your fingers crossed for me!

And a Happy Thanksgiving to All!

Just a quick note to say Happy Thanksgiving! One more day of work for me (it should be a pretty easy day!) and then we're off to enjoy the holidays with Ken's fam. This includes the annual Pfiffner women's shopping trip. Who knows what wonderful... or at least interesting ... deals await us. Though I must say I'm not looking forward to the throngs of people. Ugh.

I also wanted to send out a wonderful bit of news...congratulations to friends Nikki and Brian on the arrival of their much-anticipated daughter Hope! We are so happy she arrived safely and is now officially celebrating the holidays with you all!

We're wishing all our friends and family a blessed day on Thursday. Enjoy your time with others and stay safe out there.

A Lot of Hard Work

Today is the first day in a while when both Ken and I have been home and able to get some much-needed work done around the house. I got up bright early around 4:30 a.m. -- but stayed in bed until around 5:30 a.m. -- and decided to get my "mandatory" Saturday exercise in and done for the day. I got on the treadmill downstairs and managed to get in about 50 minutes while watching almost two full episodes of "Sell This House." The good thing about walking and that show is that I desperately need to see the completed versions of the houses and so it makes me keep walking until the end of the show.

While downstairs, I managed to do two loads of laundry and clean the cats' litter box area (sweeping and scooping). Sadly, I discovered much to my dismay that one of the cats had peed in the Kitty Pop Tent and so had to also do a cleaning of the floor and another trip to the garbage to dispose of the now-ruined pop tent. So much for buying them toys! Side note: I must say that my Swiffer Wet Jet is my new favorite cleaning tool for the basement. It's perfect for cleaning and sprucing up a concrete floor after 3 cats.

After that, it was on to the outside where Ken (I made him get out of bed by this point) and I set to work on the yard. It was my goal today to get all the lawn decorations in and get some of the nasty plant stuff put into the yard waste bin. Thankfully, because yesterday was Veterans Day, there was no garbage or yard waste pick up until today, so we managed to get the yard stuff out with about 20 minutes to spare before the truck came around. Victory! Ken went around with the leaf blower/sucker thing and picked up a lot of the loose leaves blowing around. It looks pretty good out there. I should get a fall house picture up to share. Will work on that. Now we just have to get the furniture in the side porch pushed to the middle of the room and covered, and we should be pretty much good to go for winter. Considering we had our first round of snow on Tuesday, we are now aware that this could happen for real anytime.

Tonight we're off to a UNI game with some of Ken's family. His sister Linda is making chicken tortilla soup before the event. Can't wait! Not only do I not have to cook, but I get to have an excuse for not doing any school work for the rest of the day (not like I've started any of course).

On a side note, I thought I'd mention that I've been doing Weight Watchers again for the past 9 weeks or so. My friend Kelly and I decided to do it together. It's so much easier when there's someone who's going through it at the same time. We've been moving steadily along. Kelly hit her 10 pound lost mark on Wednesday, and I hit my 20 pound mark the week before that. My first goal is 25 by Christmas. I'm not looking too far past that at this point. Small goals, right?

A Trip to the Apple Orchards

Yay! I have 2 readers!! Thanks to Susie and Nikki for still checking in on me/us! That does my heart good.

This weekend has so far found us taking off from the Waterloo area and experiencing the fall colors. Sounds corny, I know, but everything looks so good outside and smells like fall all over the place. We took off Friday afternoon after I got done teaching. Ken even left work a little early -- that rarely happens! We headed out to his Dad's to check in and say hi and then were off on the road. We decided to go to this place in Wisconsin called Gays Mills (yes, that's really its name) where it's apple orchard upon apple orchard. Passing through the Mississippi valley area, we saw so many trees changing colors and as we made it toward the orchard areas. I took some pictures but haven't had a chance to get them ready for uploading yet. We ended up getting 2 bags of apples -- honeycrisp and creston (or something that sounds like that). We also bought some fresh squash and apple butter, which I adore!

It was so nice to get away from home and away from thinking about home/school/work. In addition to the students I mentioned in the last blog post, i.e., the zombies, I seem to have some who were especially starved for attention as children. Some follow me around in the room and to my office while others talk over others that I am speaking to just so they can be heard. Then I have some that act like children, okay maybe just one in particular who is so immature. On Friday in class, I had to actually tell him to stop jumping in class. He obviously has ADD/ADHD or something. For example, he almost always comes in late, and then when he does, he tries to bend down as he walks in between me and the class (whom I'm already speaking to as I've begun class). His bending down as he walks in, not out of embarrassment for being late but rather more for attention because he is trying to make it look like he is sneaking past me. Like I can't see this big dude with his baggy clothes and bright green sports jerseys crouching down in front of me. He wears on me and it's a struggle sometimes to go to class knowing he'll be there. In all seriousness, I really thought he was not likely to be here this long into the semester. I know that sounds bad, but early on her gave me the "Just here for the Financial Aid check" vibe. Alas, here we are at midterm and he is still coming in late and doing his jumping jacks in class.

Well, I'm home now and am beat. Tomorrow's a long day of grading and doing all the things I didn't do today. Thanks, friends, for reading. Before I log off, I'm heading over to your blogs to see what you're up to.

Doing Fine!

So, for my faithful reader (so far I know at least Susie is still checking in on me), an update. Ken and I are doing fine. We're just doing our thing: work, home, play, etc. Yesterday, we took a break from each of our work projects (writing soldier evaluations for Ken and planning/grading for me) and went out to Hickory Hills park south of town. It was a great day out, so we wandered around looking at the animals in the wildlife area. Then we went down to the lake and went for a hike. Afterwards, we had dinner at Perkins. I've been trying to eat better, so I stuck with the chicken breast on wild rice with broccoli. It was pretty good, I must confess. Ken stuck to his "tremendous twelve" breakfast platter.

Work is good -- I can't complain. The only thing that's getting me down a bit are the students who just sit there and don't do anything -- don't talk, don't participate, don't pay attention. It seems particularly bad this semester for some reason. Maybe it's just because I had the whole summer off so it seems like a big deal now. I just hate it when they look and act like zombies. It's really just a few here and there; overall, students are all pretty nice.

So, there's really not a whole lot new to report other than to say that life is good and we are blessed. We hope the same is true for all of our friends and family.

Should I change the focus of this blog?

So my new dilemma: is it time to change the focus of this blog? "Cohabitational Life" was meant to be about our new adventures of a couple living together (which those of you who've known us for a while, know was a HUGE accomplishment for us). That said, now we're married and living together (thanks to the military which has almost released him from his 20-year-long duty...just a few months to go!). But now, we've been doing this married/living together thing a while and things seem to have settled into a comfortable routine: work, home, going out, etc. Yeah, Ken and I are not ranking too high on the ole "wild and crazy" scale, but we're perfectly okay with that. Life is good and there is not much we can complain about these days.

That being said, what should be the focus now? In other words, obviously I haven't had a lot to write about lately, so I think I need a new focus to motivate me. Any ideas?