regrets

what do i regret? well, let me set aside a whole day's worth of hours to start recording them all. i regret loads! loads and loads of stupid things, loads and loads of rather important things, loads and loads of unfortunately life changing things. right now though, i am regretting not praying for some of my friends more. now i know prayer changes things and god really truly does listen to our requests, but we also have a a free will and prayer alone will not change someone from a selfish liar into a loving devoted friend again...but maybe if i had been praying earlier or kept my eyes open to some of the signs better, there would have been a better chance for change.

i am excellent at cutting you out of my life if you hurt me too much. if you cross the line that i draw in the circumstance, i won't let you back over. i reget that i did that to my friend...my best friend at the time. i knew her faults. i enabled most of them because i'm in general non-confrontational. i saw them get more and more out of control, but never said anything to voice my concerns. as a friend, that was not how i would want to be treated. i want my faults voiced and brought out so that i can work on them, accept them as faults and move forward. now, she too knew some of her faults, but never wanted to work on them. she expected us to live with them because "that's just how she is". i deeply regret i didn't stand up for what's right and say that NO, just because you know you have a problem doesn't make it ok to keep living like that and treating people like you do. a friend should sharpen you, make you want to be a better person every time you're around them - not just spiritually or morally, but physically, mentally, athletically, scholarly and the list goes on - in every way, you as a friend should sharpen those around you. i chose to let her get dull in some ways because it was too hard or uncomfortable to try and sharpen everything. what a shame - what a regret.

i saw the signs of lost interest, of flippancy, of annoyance. why didn't i ask her about them? why did i listen to her speech of love of a lifetime, perfect match, and marital bliss? why didn't i say anything about the slow but steady change i was seeing? why didn't i question her actions? regret, regret, regret...

she stood by my side on june 11, 2005 and told me that marriage was the best thing that ever happened to her, that she knew that i had found my one true love just as she had 10 years before - but she was already planning the break, the deception, the cowardly and manipulative betrayal - she had already begaun the unimaginable process in her heart.

she betrayed a lot of people - i am not even high on the list of those who were most hurt i'm sure. but this hurt has affected so may layers of my life and i regret that i let it. for a while i was terrified that i would do the same thing - let myself change so subtly that after ten years, i was such a different person that i didn't care about what was right anymore. but then i realized, i have a choice. AND I CHOOSE TO STAND FOR WHAT IS RIGHT. i choose to keep myself around people who will sharpen me, who will tell me when i am screwing and when i need to make a change for the good.

I CHOOSE TO NOT REGRET MY LIFE AND THE DECISIONS I MAKE.

the healthiest me i can be

so i've been reading several books lately that ... gasp ... aren't fiction! i know, so shocking! i never ONCE read a text book in college (except for my literature classes, but those were fiction or poetry so that doesn't count - i wanted to read those) and in high school i literally just skimmed. so for me to pick up 4 non fiction/text book type books in the past month and devour them is practically unheard of!

the first book i went through was YOU on a diet: waist management. this is a hilarious book that really teaches you how your body works - why eating one thing could cause another part of body to not work/function at it's full potential. it's not really a diet like the title suggests, more of a guide on how to optimize your body's performance. this is an amazing revelation if you are interested in better nutrition whether you're "big" or "little" already.

then i received a book from my mother-in-law called The Healthiest Kid in the Neighborhood by Dr. William Spears and his wife and two sons who are also doctors (pediatricians). if you have or are ever planning on having children - PLEASE READ THIS BOOK! i cried several times because i want to give eisley a better chance at being healthy and having a better body image than i received from my parents and i want to be a role model for her. Now, i'm not saying my parents did a bad job AT ALL! i can't remember a time when i was in school that we kept chips or cookies or soda - or anything like that at all in the house. in fact, i distinctly remembering training myself to like soda - it hurt sooooo bad at first to drink it - then of course it became easy :) so actually my parents gave me an incredible advantage starting out in that respect, but we also ate lots of mac-n-cheese and loads of other processed things with more salt or sugar per serving than one needs all day! i am an admitted salt junkie - if it's salty and has partially hydrogenated soybean oil in it, i probably like it! i can give or take sweets, but salty is where it's at. this book really has given me a new outlook on my role as a parent. the book mentions that we as parents naturally want the best for our children and also ourselves. we give them the best toys, the nicest clothes, want them to attend the best schools and get the best education, so why would we feed them sugar loaded breakfasts right before school that inevitably cause them to act out, fall asleep, zone out and not get the full experience at school and why would we feed them foods that break down their immune systems instead of fueling them so that they don't get sick as often? Since we as a family, my parents and shane's too, have been eating healthier, i can't tell you how much better i feel - more alert, happier, more energetic, i really like life again! If you never read this book, but i wish you would - remember these three things:

Never eat anything with these ingredients in them and you will be 90% of the way to eating very heathfully:

1. partially hydrogenated soybean oil


2. high fructose corn syrup


3. any dye/color followed by a number; red 40, yellow 5 etc...

then the next book i picked up was No Need for Speed: A Beginner's Guide to the Joy of Running by John Bingham. lauren, me, my mom and shane are going to run the bolder boulder in may (national pickle month by the way) and we are starting our training now. my mom and dad were runners before i was born and up until i was about 3 - they even wrote a running book - i can't find it anywhere online, but we have a copy somewhere in the basement. my dad has for probably the last 7 years been running again - on a treadmill because his knees can't handle concrete. my mom however, has not run since i was three - she actually ran the bolder boulder while she was pregnant with me! this is a great book too if you want to get into running - it lets you know it's ok that you're not going to be a marathoner overnight or even after a week's training for that matter. it's very inspirational and has lessons from everyday people like us that haven't been running that long and the changes it has made in them. The book has a quote in it that goes something like this, i don't have it in front of me so this paraphrased: when you untie the "nots" (reasons you are NOT capable, good enough, etc) you learn that you can change and you can change into the best you you can be. you may not be the best runner ever, but you can become the best runner you can ever be. as your outside changes you start to notice your soul change as well.

the fourth book, i'm still reading, is another running book called The Complete Book Of Running For Women by Claire Kowalchik. i just started it, but it's just geared, obviously, towards issues women face while running.

i'm excited to start my life, with the support of my family and friends - to become the healthiest me i can be!!!

blood on the ice

last night i went to my first ever hockey game. it was so much fun and we won!

i don't know what it is, but lately i have just been wanting to do stuff that is totally off from what i normally like to do. going to a sports game is definitely out of character for me. watching grown men fight like school boys over a poor call and getting paid way too much money for it usually doesn't sound fun. but, lately, it has...i got completely drawn into the world series - i even painted my fingernails and eisley's toenails purple to support the rockies...although it didn't seem to help them at all :( shane and i stayed up late watching the games and even went out to buffalo wild wings to watch the first game with a group of friends!

so at shane's work they drew names for four tickets and a parking pass to last night's avalanche game against the calgary flames (i know absolutely nothing about hockey, but i had actually heard of the flames before, so i felt pretty good about that). shane didn't win them, but our good friend emily did and invited us to go with her and her hubby chris. so we got a babysitter and had a mighty fine double date! the parking pass was for the VIP lot - sounds way cooler than it was, but it was very close - and the tickets were amazing!

row 13 (our heads were just above the glass) and just off to the side of the goalie - perfect for watching all four of the goals the avs made last night. there was a bloody fist fight and shane caught a pretty lame t-shirt! all in all, it was a great game, even though i didn't have a clue what was going on half the time.

it was a great night with people i love. i like trying new things and stepping out from my norm every once in a while. i am gonna start doing that more often!

idk my bff leona

my good friend jenna has moved to atlanta - the ATL - the dirty south. she is gone and most sadly admitted, is the better for it. it was her time to move on and up in life and this was the most logical and promising step. but why, you ask, entitle this entry “Leona” and not jenna? well, to give you a quick and dirty break down, take out your cell phone. start a new text message and turn on the predictive text. now type in jenna or 53662. if your phone is like mine, it will instead produce the name leona. which in turn tells you that your phone believes it is much more probable that you know and correspond with a girl named leona and not a girl with the antiquated and almost unheard of name in this day and age jenna!
if you know jenna, and many of you do, leona just fits and it was a serendipitous day when we discovered this faux pas of predictive text. it takes time (that you somehow appear to not have when using T9) to save into the phone’s memory that in fact you, unbelievably enough, DO know a girl named jenna and actually talk about/to her more than that other girl leona. now up until now, if you are not intimately acquainted with jenna’s alter-ego leona, you have been saying it all wrong! the correct pronunciation is said in a east coast, sickly, old aristocratic woman’s voice…leeeoooooona – add in a daaaahhhhrling if you’re not already too embarrassed. now jenna is not limited to leona as her only amusing moniker. her other designations include, but by all means are not limited to: big red (i have never ever called her this), jennie joe, it’s evil twin yenna yoe, and my other favorite, mary.
big red speaks for itself when you look at the picture attached to this blog – she has very red hair. end of story. jennie joe, on the other hand, has a much more involved story. jenna is one of the many children of “the joes.” you must be inducted into this very elite family. my name being rather hard to come up with a good joe name, is still not officially associated with it’s own unique joe. my daughter, eisley, has been inducted and was christened joe-e or joey however you want to look at it. you know you’re “in” when you get your “joe” name. whoooooooaaa – if only i knew how to attach a sound byte and you could hear a joe’s “whoa.”
now we come to the story of jennie joe’s long lost evil twin yenna yoe. when jenna was applying for scholarships for college like most high school seniors, she decided to use every resource available to her. she even applied for an hispanic scholarship and won it – she is somehow within the qualifications of the scholarship just hispanic enough and she will prove it to you if asked to. this fact is pretty laughable in that jenna is the most “white” person i have ever met. we’re talking stereotypically vanilla. j.crew wearing, starbucks drinking, mayo on her wonderbread girl. but when you get her going, and yenna comes out, all of a sudden we’ve got jennie from the block on our hands! she turns her j’s into y’s and says “chure” instead of “sure” and “ju know” for “you know.” yenna yoe isn’t completely evil, just a little and unfortunately gets blamed for all the times jenna is just being plain ornery!
now for the final and most endearing, mary. this time, for reasons i can still not figure out, the correct pronunciation is maaaaaaahry…same as leona, but with a british flair. jenna has an obsession with the little house on the prairie tv show. jenna would even go so far as to auto-tune my tv to watch little house on the prairie when she comes over and looks at me with a look that pleads “pretty please with sugar on top” whenever it is listed on the upcoming shows. i inevitably allow her a (in my opinion a generous) minute or two before i can’t handle anymore and we simply must switch it back to something really good like, america’s next top model re-run marathons, or even the real world (actually anything on mtv is better). i’m sure you have all seen the show: laura ingalls with her orthodontia needing teeth, pa with his his goofy grin, big floopy hat and sound god-fearing advice on every subject from being honest to when to plant your wheat every year, nelly the town’s pretty, rich and stuck up girl who turns out to actually be ok in the end, and of course, mary, laura’s older sister and the only other way to remember her…the blind one. jenna has perfected and spread what is called the “mary stare” and we have many a picture to prove that it is a phenomenon sweeping the nation. i’ll tell you how to do it in pictures and you can start it in your own circle of friends too. first really try to embody the spirit of living in the old west – this is key. then look about a foot to the right and up from the camera. smile blankly making sure to let your eyes glaze over and not focus on anything. there you go, it is as simple as that. you can even carry on conversations with your friends in this manner…i’m sure jenna would love you to.





so that’s jenna explained in terms of her nicknames. she is my good friend…no scratch that…great friend… no, still not right…she is closer than most of my blood relatives…she is my sister. and i miss her…