How I Met Your Mother

Well the weekend is almost over and getting ready for another work week.
Work has been pretty busy.
Everyone tells me this is our "slow" time, so the fact that I have managed to stay completely occupied has me a little nervous for these summer months! I'm ready though.
My co-worker, Jeanette, and I were asked to create some Fall '10 designs for Dicks Sporting Goods which we spent countless hours on before and a little after Christmas into the new year. I turned them in right at the beginning of January and we have started to see some fruits of labor begin to produce. Pretty soon I will be able to walk into Dicks and say, "Hey, I designed that."
I'm excited for that moment. I have had that experience one other time when I went to Kohl's and found a UNC design I had done. THAT design though was not a concept I originally came up with though, so this Dick's experience is my true first and I'm pumped. :)

This last week I stuck to my work out routine and am REALLY enjoying it. I go on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. However, if you have read any of my current FB statuses, I tried a new class done by my spin instructor, Amy (who is the size of my pinky mind you).
Oh, Amy.
Besides being 27 and looking like she could def be in college, she is a teacher by day so she is always full of way too much spunk for the "torture" she puts us through. :)
Monday spin went great.
Wednesday spin we had a full class where I was finally not the newest person in the class, but was acknowledged as a "regular."
Weirdly enough, that was a really awesome feeling.
Being a "regular." LOL.
Well, on Mon and Wed Amy said that she was teaching the special "class of the month" the women's gym puts on for Saturdays only.
Usually it's a fun class like belly dancing or something real random, but fun.
Well her version of "fun" was doing a kickboxing/cardio/toning bootcamp. This was her first time doing the class of the month, so I felt like as a "regular" I should support her. HA!

Bootcamp should have been my clue. Sigh.

She said there'd be a different instructor here for spin on Sat if we wanted, but if we wanted to try something new on Saturdays, we should come to her class. Well, I figured why not, right? Something new, something different to challenge me. Believe me, spin is still a challenge. You can go to it everyday and it will still be a challenge, but kickboxing and toning perked my interested so I figured I'd go for it.
Saturday I woke up and told John all the sudden I had a bad feeling about this class.
I've been working out three days a week for about a month now.
That's coming off of NOT working out for about 4 years.
Hence my easing myself back into a work out routine.
I told him I was REALLY nervous that this may kick my butt so bad that I'm going to get really discouraged.
Turns out I was right!
OMG. Amy!!!!! I  have never "hated" you so much until that class.

"How you ladies doing!?!?"
Silence/panting/death.
"Ladies! If you don't yell anything back at me I'm going to think you're bored and am going to pick up the intensity!!"
I don't think I ever wanted to scream at someone so loud in my life (I didn't scream though, I'm not the hooting while I work out type)!

I could go on for a while typing out all the insane stuff she was having us do (do jumping jacks with 10 pound barbells for a couple minutes and you'll get my drift) but instead all I will say is I got in my car afterwards and my eyes teared up.
What the HECK am I doing here?!!!?
I drove to the salon to my nail appointment and most likely freaked Christina, my nail technician with my ranting. I was honestly just pissed.
Kind of defeated.....maybe??
Mad for letting myself go to something like that when I wasn't ready, mainly.
I'm over it now, I've got the sorest butt muscles I have ever had IN MY LIFE.
It hurts to sit, it hurts to stand. I need to invest in a butt doughnut between spin and this madness.
I'm going to sound really defeatist in saying this, but I don't think I am going to go back to it.
Not right now anyways.
I need to get into better shape before I succumb myself to this type of torture.
What she had us doing wasn't HARD.
I just wasn't ready.
SO, in the mean time, I am going to go to my spin classes.
I have an appointment on Tuesday with a trainer for my free session I got when I joined the gym.
I'm actually excited for this.
I know I'm going to be weighed and measured and all that humblingness, but I honestly can say for once I won't mind it. It's going to give me a stepping stone.
Even more humbling, I'm going to post all the info of my measurements, etc on here so I can look back and keep myself accountable.
After all, that's the reason I'm doing this!

Ok, recipe time.
Last week tried my first pot roast in a crock pot and it tasted pretty friggin good if I say so myself. It's not really diet sensitive, but it's still good!
So, here we are with a little tweaks I learned.

1 rump/shoulder roast
2 cans of garlic cream of mushroom soup
1 soup can of water
2 cloves minced garlic (I bought the minced garlic in a jar and measured it out to be about 1 to 1 1/2 tsp as equivalent to the two cloves)
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 tsp basil
1 tsp oregano
6 small red or golden potatoes, quartered
1/2 a diced onion (or 1 tsp onion powder)
3 c. chopped carrots
3 c. chopped mushrooms

Set cooker on L. Chop onions. Remove as much fat as possible from roast and discard. Add roast, soup, water, onions, and your herbs and spices.
Simmer for 4-6 hours, stirring every once in a while.
After about 4 hours or so, add the rest of the veggies and simmer for another 1-2 hours.
WARNING: The smell is AMAZING! My kitchen smelled so good!!  :)

Tweaks: The potatoes were a little underdone so next time I think I am going to lift the whole roast out of the cooker, add the rest of the veggies, and then put the roast back on top of all the veggies. That way they are more submerged into the juices and liquids and should turn out more cooked.

This week I made my own breaded chicken strips for work. I'm going to try them at work tomorrow, so if they turn out I'll post it on here. I am also in the process of cooking my first pork shoulder for BBQ pulled pork sandwiches and am also about to mix a cranberry chicken salad together. If they turn out I'll put 'em up here.

So the title of my post, "How I Met Your Mother."
Never watched the show, but goes with the sermon I heard today.
John and I went back to a church we visited a while back. They are pretty large, but it's what I am more used to, so I enjoy it.
They have four services a day, and I'd say the 10 am one we went to, easily had about 500-700 in it.
You can easily get lost in the crowd, but the style of music and such is much more our style.
Not sure if it was divine intervention or what, but we got a flier in the mail from them that this Sunday they were starting a "Let's Talk About Marraige" series and it's based famous TV shows.
Next Sunday is "Lost" (effective communication).
Then "Desperate Husbands" (roles in marriage).
"Desperate Housewives" (roles in marriage).
Then finally "Sex in the City" (Rated R for romance) (LOL).

Well, "How I Met Your Mother" was a sermon on how/why God invented marriage.
It focused mainly on the concept of becoming one, "oneness" that is presented in Genesis.
The part that spoke most to me was when the issue of friends/work/hobbies become more important and start dividing you in your mental/psychological/emotional/physical oneness.
Being military that is John and I's number #1 issue.
We constantly struggle to have a defined line that his job, which defines our livelihood, has in our lives/marriage.
I am CONSTANTLY nagging John to find the "off" switch when he gets home and to stop working.
Quit writing counselings.
Stop calling and texting your soldiers.
Quit studying.
Your home now, what gives!?!?!
His job takes up 90% of his life. Period. Whether he wants it to or not.

Then there is the side of me where I KNOW I have to respect what he does because it has not only given us what we have, but it's what he LOVES to do. Who am I to stand in the way of our own family's success?
Then there is the friend issue.
I have none here, so it's more of his friends! LOL.
Now, don't get me wrong. His friends are great. He considers them his brothers, so they instantly become important to me as well.
The problem lies with the fact that he works with them all day, they come to our house for dinner, we go out to dinner with them every weekend because it's good for "morale."
It's cause they work hard all week and they want to "let their hair down and relax."
Together.
All the time.
Ugh.
And here comes my personal conflict.
He's with them all the time, why do we have to hang out with them on the weekends? Why do we have to go out with ALL of them (we're talking tables of 20-30 here)??
Why not just a select few for sanity's sake!?!?
Because they are a team. They are brother's they do it all together.
Part of me thinks I'm just jealous cause I don't have a group that I could do the same with like I used to in CO or in OK.
I actually think that's a lot of it.
When it's the weekend I want to hang out with my husband who is pretty much MIA at work all week. Yes, I am selfish with how I want my weekend, and in this instance I don't think that's a bad thing.
This slight bitterness from me has made me start to get annoyed by his friends.
Which is REALLY not good.
These are the guys that make sure he comes home to me at the end of the day.
At the end of field missions.
At the end of crazy deployments.
These guys represent the protection my husband needs when he is in harms way.
So why do I have a slight chip on my shoulder.....??

I'm still trying to figure this out. It's an odd conflict and I don't think it'd be such a big one if I had girl friends of my own. That's another thing I'm working on, but right now it's not there. So this is all I think about.

My responsibilities are cut out for me.
There aren't many that I can look to that are in my exact same shoes and see success.
I see a lot of bitter people.
Husbands that'd rather be out with their joe's than at home because of the bitterness their home represents.
I'm trying to NOT be that way which is why it's on my mind constantly.
My marriage will NOT be a military statistic.

I will ALWAYS be the best support I can be for John and all his friends that do what they do.
No one, not even me, can understand the things they have to do.
Therefore, I put my heart and soul into being the most understanding, flexible, supportive wife AND friend I can be and hope that my efforts will be the example I can't find elsewhere.