patience

"What should I blog about, Mattie? Inspire me," I implored of my dear husband.

"Termites!" He replies, brightly.

"No, that's not fun. Something better." Visions of deep, heart-wrenching, yet somehow humerous blogs-to-be dance before my eyes. I just need a good idea to get me started.

"Blog about buying a house."

Boooo. "That's boring," I inform him. Like he doesn't know already.

"It's not boring. It's insane. You sit around all the time waiting for things to happen and you never have control over anything. We're six days in and it's like the craziest thing ever."

Well there you have it...Matt has blogged about house-buying on my behalf. He summed it up well-- you sit around a lot, waiting to hear from one person or another. Or get an email. Perhaps even an email or two with official-looking documents attached that inform you that at one point in time, perhaps even in February of 2009, the home you have a contract on had termites!! Joy!! Praises!! What a wonderful thing that is! Yet another document informed us that the termites had been treated/obliterated...of course, we will need to pay someone else to verify it for us. And then there's this appraisal thing....and blah, blah, blah. Homebuying (at least the way we're doing it) is really not very glamorous. I still don't feel that excited about it because it seems oh-so-likely that something will go wrong and it will all fall through. But, just because I love you guys so much, I will go ahead and post a picture. I don't have any good/exciting pictures of the inside (because how unexciting is a completely empty, white-walled house with no floors?), but here's "our" house from the street:

Sorry for the low quality of the photo (I don't normally make a habit of cutting off the sides of homes). At the time I took the picture, though, I had no idea if we'd actually ever bid on it...and we haven't been out since, so this is all we have!

And that's all I have to say about that. Instead, let's talk about abs, and how I'm hoping to find out if I actually have any buried beneath my fleece, 2 t-shirts, and tank top (I tend to over-layer my clothes, okay?). So I haven't actually exercised since like...'92. Or that could be a slight exaggeration, but I do think 3rd grade was a really solid year for me, physical-fitness wise. Anyway, I am probably one of the best excuse-makers you've ever met (trust me, if you never need an excuse for something, just ask me). I've been excusing myself from exercise (beyond walking Lola a few times a week) for years now. It's amazing, really. But I'm beginning to see the err in my ways, and since I'm not actually 6 months pregnant, I figure it's time to stop looking like it. (Sidenote: as soon as I find out I actually am pregnant, all bets are off. I retract all previously stated goals and ambitions) My main problem is that I don't LIKE exercising. It hurts and I don't like sweating (unless I'm laying out). I don't like panting, and I don't like messing my hair up. Or feeling in pain. I think that about sums up the things I don't like about exercising. Now, I do like some activities that are FUN but also involve exercise, like dancing and ice skating and swimming (aka laying on a float). But those things aren't readily available in my day to day life. I don't mind doing an elliptical, but I can't afford a gym membership. I HATE running, and home exercise videos bore me (except for that Richard Simmons 'Sweatin' to the Oldies' video my roomies and I used to have...whatever happened to it?)...so really, there are just no options out there for me.

But I gotta do something. So today Matt and I made a valiant attempt at exercising. I get these Prevention magazines in the mail (why? I have no idea, somehow I've gotten a subscription that I've never paid for) and they have lots of "inspirational" exercise ideas. So we did one together today, and it inspired me to bust out a few other home-exercise moves I remember from my dancing days. All in all, I broke a very minor sweat, felt lots of pain in my abs and triceps, and felt a lot less guilty when I pigged out on pizza and icecream for dinner.

You may think I am totally missing the health boat here...but I submit to you that today is a vast improvement over my normal life because I regularly eat pizza and icecream for dinner...and I never, ever exercise. So we'll see how long I can keep this up for. (I do plan to try to cut down on the pizza and ice cream, incidentally) I'm going to Netflix myself some dance workout videos and try to do a mixture of videos/Prevention mag ideas/walking (faster, with my handweights). You can all wish me luck.

All this talk about exercise is exhausting. Time to get back to my regularly scheduled sitting. In case you were wondering, I've been watching Matt out of the corner of my eye for the last 10 minutes. He's been pacing around the house with a very serious look on his face, with his hand pensively caressing his chin. I almost didn't want to know what he was thinking about, but I dared to ask.

"I'm assessing whether we'll be able to move all this stuff with one U-Haul or what. Or maybe we can just borrow my parent's blah blah blah..."

Men. One track minds. Goodnight!