Lookin' out my backdoor (if I had one)

     IT'S THE COVER MONSTER! aka Vinny, attacking everything from under a blanket. It must be his favorite thing to do, because he starts snorting and kicking around like there's no tomorrow. He has been sick the last couple weeks, and it is wonderful to see him back to his old self. I love the little guy....as he attacks Scott's legs!!
     I am disappointed in myself for not giving up facebook; I did for 3 or 4 days, but then something bad happened, and I used it to look and admire other peoples' newly blossoming relationships. Yeah, sometimes I do reminisce about our first few months together, before the stress of school and this depressing winter hit. And I refuse to say a good comment, due to the jinx (Jess and I have his insane problem with the 'jinx'; it proves to never fail in ruining a good moment). I will say that Summer is right around the corner, and we can both breath the fresh air we want to.
     I started actually working out again, yay! I really love it. Too bad it's raining today, because Mae and I had planned a little jog before pilates--plus, I can't walk Vinny. 
     Did I mention how wonderful it is outside? It's too chilly, but I see leaves, tulips, grass, animals!! AH! Wonderful.
     Anyways, geology lab final today, and I am ready to get it knocked out. I am doing so bad in school this semester; I think I have two C's. I think the winter and the stress have really combined. Plus, I have NO money, literally. I overdrew due to a confusion with the bank statement, and great, no one to teach last weekend or to train all last week. Great. I'm even more poor. Thank goodness it's almost summer--meaning I get to work and make a nice amount of $$. 
     Off to study. My goal today is to simply enjoy today. No stress.

bubbles in the wind

Today has to be the most beautiful day thus far. I'm so grateful for the weather.
I have already worked out, walked Vinny, and now, I'm about to sit in my lovely (yes, I mean that) Northern European Art History class. Last night I printed out a new work out routine and a meal plan. I'm excited to truly be on track again... The work out killed me, and sadly, I couldn't go to yoga for more than ten minutes. Tonight, after I teach some tennis, Scott and I are going to go work out, again. Aka, he's going to play basketball, and I'm going to sit on the sidelines wishing I had the balls to play with the guys.......

I paused and forgot I was writing this at about 1 p.m. Now it is 6:30 p.m., and I am about to teach my clinic. Besides the sheets of pollen in the air, it feels wonderful. Fox Den is always quiet and relaxing, especially when I'm sitting on my home courts. I'm on my favorite court, in fact, in the shade. The breeze is just light enough that it is cooling me off--or maybe it's just that Fox Den has a protective bubble around it, making its weather the best in Knoxville.
When I walked Vinny at about 5:30, I let that time become my time to think. I let off so much steam, I felt so tranquil, but now the peace is going away. I'm having to remember problems, again. But, that's okay. I am working so hard to understand life and its little antics. Nothing is perfect, because perfect doesn't exist in REAL life. Perfect only exists in math and science type things. Something can always be better (or worse if that is what you wish). But things are not ever the same; each moment is different; life has its ups and downs, and that is just what I have to keep telling myself.

:) love love

Work, work, all week long.

     The last week or so I have been taking Vinny on a walk/run every morning, afternoon and evening. I thought it would kill some of his energy, but he's just as crazy. I swear you can't unwind the dog. Anyways, Scott and I decided to take him to the play ground downtown, see if he liked it. Well, he LOVED it. He went down and up the slide a hundred times; he loved to climb all over the whole set. I love how childlike he is, how stubborn he is. We are both a bit obsessed with him--we even bought him a life-jacket for the summer.
     Friday night sucked, to say the least. I won't discuss what happened, it would be rude of me, but it was terrible. I didn't sleep the entire night, and I had to work the next day from 9am-6pm. The good news is? It's over. It's fixed. Major breakthroughs happened; things are better. Am I still hurt? Yes. I will be for a long time, but I think it has helped me grow a little bit. I am the only person that can make me happy--the happy as a whole, not mood--and that is okay. Basically, the whole weekend was so stressful that I only got like 6 hours of sleep in over 48 hours. Now, the most stressful thing is getting 3 paintings done, when I've never painted for a grade or from an actual object in my life.....
     I'm doing really well with my goals right now. I am working to get my life back to where it was, my body and mind. I am working to achieve what I have planned to do. By the end of the year, I want to be able to run 8 miles again... right now I'm at 3. I hope to go above and beyond the 8, and I wish I had someone who was willing to do it with me. I want to become a health freak and workout obsessor again. I think now is the best time to start, because I am reaching for who I want to be in life... making myself for likely to succeed at a goal I set.
     Sadly, I am not asking my mom to work out with me anymore. I can't take the excuses or being blown off. It's embarrassing, it hurts, and it makes me feel unworthy for her time--which is not something I want to feel right now.
     As I work harder and harder, I will blow off more steam. I will be able to manage who I am, how I feel and what I say. I just need a release agent other than food. I want to drop that bad habit. I want to exercise when I am down-in-the-dumps. But mostly, I want more that what I think I have. I want to work.
<3<3
  

April Showers Bring May FLowers :)

     Hello Beautiful Day! Yoga this morning.... :)! I'm feeling super today, eating my organic Kashi cereal--honestly better than dang CoCo Puffs--and drinking my organic tea. Back to health!
     My camera came out of its dusty bag yesterday, and I was able to paint (if that's what you call it) outside. I can't say anything because I'm feeling so great. I wouldn't call it happiness, yet, but I am sure near it. I feel like most people classify happiness as a mood, but Scott made me see [happiness] differently.
     When he would get upset, I would always say, "Why aren't you happy?" He'd quickly correct me, assuring me he was happy, just that his mood wasn't... umm... cheerful? Maybe he doesn't quite know what he was either (not the word cheerful, but what the whole statement meant). I just am excited to get back to who I am. It's spring. :)
     I'm not writing much today, because I want to be outside. I want to water all my plants, and open the windows. I want to cross the street and take my camera out. Actually, before all that, I'm taking Vinny on a walk. Ahh, fresh air = <3!
     
     Go outside today, guys! Go to the park, down the street, go somewhere!
Maroo.

Warmth!

Good morning glorious SUN-SHINE and open windows! I feel great today. I really do. Scott and I celebrated our 1 year yesterday, and--no jinx--the tension has been lifted off our relationship, a lot. Winter does some nasty things to our brain chemistry, but with a little bit of sunshine and warm air, I can feel the angst lifting off of my shoulders.
     My cell phone picture through a 1980's window does no justice to the view I see.
     Anyway, April 1st is quickly approaching. Scott and I have decided not to eat out one time during April, and we are trying to diet--Scott diet, I am going to less junk food... again. This time I feel like I can succeed, I feel ready. Maybe that comes from my better mood and the warm air, or maybe it comes from me because tired of failing at goals I set...maybe, it's because I've had enough cheese today to kill someone...and it's only 9 am. I heard a new study of GMA about cheese, and they said it raises women's estrogen levels? Which, in turn, leads to higher risk of breast cancer?! HELLO! Stop eating so much cheese! Duh, Miranda, it's obvious that you shouldn't eat so much. So, here I go, revamping my whole diet. Back to healthy. I so wish to be a vegan again, but I don't think that it would be the best decision at the moment. I don't eat very much meat, at all. The only time I eat meat, it tends to be chicken for one, and it tends to be every couple days. I have the occasional steak, but only when I crave it. I love seafood, but I only eat it every few days. But when it comes to dairy, OH MY. Ice cream, yogurt, milk, ice cream, ice cream, ice cream, and cheeses galore! Yum, yum, yum. I'm saying bye, bye to ice cream this month, but I refuse to not eat yogurt. 1) it is amazing for you, 2) I need some calcium, people. I am eating soy yogurt right now, eh. It's alright.
     Any way, I'm saying hello to this gorgeous day, and hell yes to the month of April. :) Happiness, I can feel your warmth, already. :)
     Love, love.

V-O-L-S, V-O-L-S, V-O-L-S, Go VOLS GO!

     Ah, what an end to a great day. Scott turned 20, and the Vols are in the elite eight. Wonderful. 
     
     It's becoming obvious to me that I have a problem with food, again. I am either starving, or bingeing, no  puking, just stuffing. I want to take control of my life, and I am going to. Scott and I start April 1st with a new outlook. We are both going on diets--I'm just truly going to give up junk food. We are not eating out the entire month of April. This will be hard. I am a sugaraholic and a chocoholic. If they had rehab for sour patch kids, I'd be in it.
     Yes, I am exaggerating my sugar intake. I really don't eat it daily, but when I do start, I can't stop. I literally can't eat it daily, I wouldn't have teeth. I would like to keep those, so I would suppose that it would do me a world of good to stop eating junk. I mean college has ruined me...and Scott has ruined me. ;) Lots of cookies and ice-cream, but no more, no longer will I give in! hahaha
     I gave up chocolate one day two weeks ago, and I'm pretty sure I was having legit withdraws by 6:30 p.m.. Awesome. So now, not only do I have issues with food, I have a chocolate, legit, addiction. You may not think these are problems, but they are. I didn't ingest food for two years, and I would prefer to not enter a time like that again.
     Here I am, setting another goal. I promise myself I will follow through. I will stop breaking my sugar addiction this week. That will help me succeed in April, rather than going cold turkey and breaking down. 
     On the bright side, I have been working out pretty regularly, which I love, and I am playing tennis tomorrow with the faja/coach. :) Super grand.
     Off to bed. But on the bright side,
"I said, 'It's great to be a Tennessee Vol!'" and "Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out."-Robert Collier

...

     There are some things I can't take back and do not even care that they have happened. But if I could take one thing back, it would be the last day I left tennis early.
     My brother had made a fool out of me, I was completely embarrassed, two days in a row. The second day was the issue. As a kid, I ALWAYS was mad on the tennis court, everyone called me Moody Miranda, but what they didn't know what how messed up I was inside. I wasn't crazy or anything like that, but I wanted perfection so intensely that I drove myself to pure frustration and anger. Anyways, I had stopped really getting so mad a couple years ago or maybe a year ago, but my brother still decided that it was okay to tease me about it. Blah blah blah, okay, back to my story. I had gone all day (a long time in my brother's mind) with out getting angry, so when I got back from our lunch break and headed back out to the court my brother made a lovely announcement.
     "Okay, everyone loses the bet!" He yelled it quite loudly. Wonderful. Grand. Great. Make a fool out of me Bobby, right when I had finally gained everyones respect. (I had been offered numerous full rides to D1 colleges, and this finally made the other kids at practice stop thinking of me as such a joke.) Of course, he had made this grand bet that I would get angry with in a couple hours of practice the day before--when he had also embarrassed me, causing me to leave practice early, which allowed him to place the bet without me knowing.
     I stormed off the court, and I had reason to. I was 18, I was not a child, I was about to leave for college, I was about to accomplish amazing things, but that all changed. I left, drove around for a bit, then headed home. He texted me the whole way back, saying possibly the worst things I have ever heard. Telling me I would never amount to anything, which broke my heart. He WAS my idol. Ha. Funny how things change. It's so ironic. That whole day. It was the worst day of my life.
     I was home, but I wasn't crying anymore. I was so angry that I probably could have broken everything in the house, but Mom was there. She read all the text, saw what I said, what he said. Distraught is a perfect word to describe how we both felt. My dad called. My best friend called. They wanted me back at practice. They said everyone was embarrassed about what they had done, and they damn well should've been. I regret this. So, so much. I got in my car. Took a deep breath, started my engine and drove off.
     Everything is in a white cloud, a fog. I come to my senses--what little I have--only to see a man screaming at me, calling me a bitch, telling me he's going to sue me for everything I have. I look in my mirror, there is blood all over me, my nose is crooked and swollen. I can't move. Men are all around me, ambulances, cops, state troupers, people keeping the man who would become a stalker of my family later off me. I can't find a word to describe how I feel.
     I don't remember much before of after my wreck. I remember the hospital a little. It makes me sick to think about it. The smells and sounds are the worst part. I smell my wreck, I instantly break down. I hear tires squeak, I lose my breath. I may not remember much, but I remember the slow motion tracking in my brain. I remember my car spinning, hitting object after object, but I do not remember it stopping. I don't remember knowing what had happened.
     Because of that day, I have no college tennis career, I barely play tennis anymore. I rarely talk to my brother, and I am constantly skiddish in the car. I am terrible at math, and I am not the best student anymore. Because of that day, I have regrets. I regret allowing one selfish, insecure person make me feel like an ant. I regret allowing that person decide whether I am good enough or not. I regret allowing that person access to my heart. But I mainly regret not having enough pride to stand up and say, "What ever, just shows how mature you are." Because, if I just had let it roll off my back, that day wouldn't have happened.
     I hated my life for months, but I love my life now. I live on my own (with Scott), I support myself mostly, I'm with the man I love and will love forever, and I go to the best university. I have amazing friends--very few, but that's okay. I'm not totally happy. But I am learning to be happy with a regret. It's hard to explain. It takes that experience to understand I suppose. But I will forget and move on one day. I will be happy.