$%&# snow.

Ok. So, this morning I walk to church. It's literally right over there *points* so that was easy enough. Except it's cold. And wet. And I was on the verge of a panic attack because I'm going to this enormous church all by myself and have no one to sit with.

SO! Church went well, the sermon was good and very thought provoking. I filled out a "Connection Card" because I want to get involved in a small group. When I turned it in this very nice blonde woman gave me a welcome packet that included a CD, a little booklet with church info, and a piece of dark chocolate. "How can you go wrong with chocolate?" she says. "Well, I can't have chocolate," I reply. "I'll just give it to someone."

Hey, anyone want a piece of dark chocolate?

Go home and have quite the afternoon of phone calls with my bestie and the fiance and movie watching. Have a gloriously amazing headache, and the whole time it's snowing like crazy. This morning for church you could still see road. and grass. Not anymore!

Now, at 5:30 there's a young adult service for people in their 20s-30s that I wanted to go to, figuring I could meet and connect with some other Christians and make some new friends. It's also at the church so I'm thinking I can walk there, which is great considering there is now around four inches of snow on the ground. I get all bundled up and start walking over only to find the main entrance is blocked by an automated gate. Wonderful. The other entrance is a bit further away so I go to dig out my car.

Ten minutes or so later I'm driving uber carefully down the drive to the road. Make it to the main drag, head up the street, get stuck at a stop light in the left turning lane. I literally sat there at that light waiting for a good five minutes because the light decided no one wanted to turn left and never gave me a signal.

FINALLY I turn onto the correct road (after nearly getting in an accident because some really intelligent person ran the red light while my green arrow was on. Lovely.) and head down there to the building and found a parking lot devoid of people except for some poor girl whose car had slid into the curb and up onto the landscaping and getting trapped there by a bush. Two other cars had stopped and I watched as two guys and a girl lifted her Mini as she drove in reverse and get her out.

Once she was free I went over and asked if there was even church tonight, considering the parking lot was empty, and no one knew. But considering it was going on 5:40 and it was supposed to start at 5:30, it was most likely cancelled.

So I dug my car out and went through all of that for nothing.

And now I get to sit in my empty apartment and watch the millionth movie of the weekend.

The most wonderful time of the year.

To end on a happy note, I found a couch and a chair for completely free and my dad is coming down with Johnny on Wednesday with all of my stuff and we're also going to pick up the couch/chair and I can FINALLY get settled in! So excited, I actually really like this apartment a lot. :D

Have a great evening, y'all!

Yes.

I hope I meet people here soon.

That's all.

Ah, panic!

Today is it. Moving Day! ... I think. I got an email from the leasing office a few days ago telling me that I'd be able to move by Saturday (today) so I have two friends coming to help me transport everything from this apartment to the next. The problem is that I do not have my keys, I haven't signed a lease or put down a deposit and I should have gone last night instead of driving to Columbus for dinner with a friend.

But dinner was great, so no regrets here!

Anywho, the leasing office is open today, but not until noon. Noon happens to be exactly when my friends arrive!! So i guess they'll be shifting stuff out of my apartment while I head over to the leasing office for a chat and some signing and some check writing.

I might be just a leetle stressed. However, I will be a very happy girl when I'm in MY apartment and can actually decorate, set up furniture, put out all my books, have my TV instead of using my laptop for movies... I have so many ideas for decorating and things to do to make it a homey place that I enjoy coming back to every day. But all I'll have till Wednesday is the same stuff as now because Dad and Johnny are bringing everything else down that day.

Really I'm just putting off getting up and packing up the bathroom and kitchen. Dishes. Cleaning. Yes, cleaning. My mom, the woman who makes her hotel bed before checking out, instilled in me the habit of leaving a borrowed place nicer than when you got there. So I will be cleaning the kitchen and bathroom very well today before the boys get here and before signing my lease.

Think I'm crazy?

Good!

It's Times Like These...

Last night was a bad night, so I took myself on a date with my book to Panera Bread for some soup, bread, lemonade and a nice fire.

As I was leaving my apartment I heard the strains of guitar coming from a nearby apartment. I have no idea who was playing or what was being played, all I knew was that I loved it and that it was my mood exactly. Which, by the way, never happens.

www.christchurchmusic.org

And even though I really needed to get going all I wanted to do was find the door behind which the guitar was being played and just sit there and listen.

http://www.flarefilms.co.uk

Of course I didn't, but it made me long, once again, for the millionth time, for an acoustic guitar. I have vague knowledge of how to play the guitar, and I pick things up fairly easily so I'm sure if I had one and sat down with some patient person, like my bro in-law Derrick, I would learn it pretty quickly.

I just love the sound of acoustic guitar, all by itself... that's my favorite kind of music. For example, I love love the soundtrack to Dan in Real Life because the whole thing is unpresumptuous guitar. Give me a guy on a stage with a voice and guitar and I'm in heaven. Or in love. Take your pick.

Really it would just be lovely to be able to MAKE the music that I FEEL. Because I can never find a song that quite fits my mood and honestly, sometimes, you really just need a song.

Day One....

Yesterday after church and my mom's birthday dinner my sister, dad, Johnny and I packed up my car with the stuff I decided was essential and then I drove 2.5 hours through horrible Thanksgiving aftermath traffic to Cincinnati. Once there I found the keys to a two-bedroom apartment under the doormat of the leasing office of a complex in Sharonville. 

What took the four of us about a half hour to pack into my car took me an hour or more to move into the second floor apartment all by my lonesome. Once inside I kept realizing stuff I forgot, like the bag of frozen food my mom gave me (bagels, veggie burgers, an organic tv dinner, etc) and claw clips to hold my hair so I can straighten it - very thankful that those bracelets held out last night...

So after a dinner of tortilla chips and salsa I watched the extra stuff on the Charlie St. Cloud DVD Johnny and I bought the other day while sitting on my bed. aka, my sister's air mattress. 

About this air mattress... It looks great when it's first blown up. But, after only an hour of lying on it you're suddenly on the floor. Apparently she (my sister) has never had a problem with it. But I got to refill it at 11pm, 2:30am, and then got up at 5am, once again lying on the floor. Definitely no sleep for Emily. This is how the bed looked when I got up.

You can't tell from this picture, but there's definitely almost no air left in this thing.

This is how it looks when it's full.

Thankfully I mentioned my predicament to my co-worker and she's bringing her air mattress to work tomorrow for me to use till I have my bed here. Apparently you plug it into the wall and it's as high as a normal bed and it doesn't deflate. :DDD

So I get up and get ready and iron my dress clothes and then I realize I have no breakfast food except for dry cereal. And no milk. Or orange juice. *sigh*

Walked out the door at 6am hungry and still wearing my slippers (which I realized before I made it to the stairs). Dunkin Donuts directions in my head, I got breakfast and drove to work and arrived a full half hour early. Realized I forgot my headphones and my USB cord so I could charge my phone while I listened to music.

Started to work at 7am and omg after working from home for so long being on the actual system and my actual work computer is a HUGE improvement. I finished 295 claims in less than four hours (less because I took some time to go down to the security desk and get my permanent badge, pictured below). Normally I finish around 300 or a little more in 7.5 hours.

Bought lunch from the caf. Forgot/didn't have any food to pack.

Finally in the afternoon I got to meet up with another Plan B-er and our trainer for the new position in production and we learned to input claims. I'm super stoked to finally be leaving Plan B and doing something new! And apparently I'll be getting a new desk, thank goodness. I'm off in the wild blue yonder all by my lonesome kind of really far away from where production sits right now.

Got off work at 3:30 (score!!) and went straight to Walmart to buy all the stuff I forgot and FOOD! Now I sit alone in this big apartment eating ramen and writing to all of you!

My favorite room is the bathroom.

Followed closely by the kitchen.

In my opinion they're the homiest parts of this place, probably due to the colors in the bathroom and the personal touches in the kitchen (like the teapot and the pic of Clyde and myself). Otherwise the "bed" is lying in the middle of the living area and one of the bedrooms houses all of my clothes, shoes, and other random stuff.

Yes, all of those big suitcases house almost all of my clothes, and the other two hold shoes. The little computer bag has socks in it. I don't do anything in the two bedrooms because they do not have lights. Just windows.

Anywho, this is where I live but only for now! Hopefully this weekend will be the big move to the more permanent location. And I found a couch I like! I told Johnny to look at it, and if he likes it too we're going to pool money and buy it. It's a sofa lounge, so it converts into a bed, which is super convenient for when I have friends/family over!

Now I will pay on my credit card, which I had to use to buy my groceries due to leaving my debit card at home (notice the forgetfulness pattern???) and then play Angry Birds on my phone.

Here's hoping tomorrow is better!

You Kinda Had to Be There.

It was like that time when we were moving old tables out of Red Lobster and it was pouring rain and we all got really wet, it was hilarious.

Remember that time during the Gilmore Girls party where we had quotes hanging everywhere and candy and stuff? Ugh, it was awesome.

This one time, at band camp... (just kidding.)

It's funny, just laugh.

Happy Turkey Everyone!

PLEASE don't hate me for this...

Ever since my freshman year of college I have kept a journal. Lately I've kind of let it go (probably because of this here blog) but I have, like, ten or more journals full of my scrawl and pictures and cards and song lyrics and lists. There was once a time when I enjoyed rereading my old journals. Now, when I read them, I stop after a couple pages to scream

SOMEONE SHOOT ME!!!

My old journals are so full of me, me, me, boys, boys, boys, and lists of what I'm going to eat/what I'll do for a workout because I'm "fat".

The sad part is that the "fat" part is still hanging around.

And what's even sadder is I'm NOT fat.

I am barely 5'3", and according to those ridiculous weight charts hanging out online and in high school health rooms across the country I'm supposed to weigh something like 110lbs.

I weigh 121, as of 9am-ish this morning.

All the way through college I struggled against anorexia, often losing the battle, and it still likes to come around to bug me. And those darn charts don't help because they don't take muscle mass, bone density or genetics into account. I managed to get down to 111lbs once in college, and everyone was worried about me because I did it by starving myself and I looked really ill.

Over the years I've learned to keep this issue to myself, as most girls I know would punch me for saying "I'm fat" outloud.

But today was a hard day for me.

I try to stay away from scales, but after my surgery was over and I was able to walk again and most of the muscle I had gained over the summer disappeared I weighed myself one morning and was shocked to find I had lost a good five pounds and weighed 118. At the beginning of the summer, sometime around April, I was in the 126 range and distinctly remember stepping on the scale one morning and being shocked and rather thrilled about 121 flashing in front of my eyes. Now, because I had been 118 a mere couple of weeks ago, 121 is fat.

This is me on Sunday afternoon enjoying a bridal shower.

I'm pathetic. Wouldn't you agree?

When you think about it, weight is a really stupid thing to be obsessed over. I mean, back in Renaissance times being heavy was the fashion because it meant you were rich enough to be overfed. Why can't we still be cool like that? But instead the world has helped to create girls like me, who are obsessed over weight and looks and feel as though we won't be liked unless we look like THAT.

Whatever THAT is.

I could rant about the liberal media and its effect on today's women, or about how men are the reason for this weight obsession, but honestly it's been ranted to death.

One of these days, I will post something more lighthearted. I promise!

Oh, and I made the rehearsal bouquet for my friend's wedding. :) Fun times!

Aaaaannndd finally a pic of me and my future husband (btw, I HATE the word "hubby", drives me nuts I REFUSE to use it EVER).

Yeah, we were kinda made for each other. :D  Have a grrreeeat day!