Lilac Colored Glasses

So.

Wow.

There really is no amount of words to describe the past month of my life. I could seriously fill an immense chunk of virtual notebook pages if I tried to touch on everything that has gone on, but I think most of you out there got the gist of it.

On May 23 CB and I flew to my home in Pittsburgh, on May 30th I turned 29 and we were legally married in a beautiful ceremony in the heart of downtown Pittsburgh. Most of my friends and family were there to celebrate with us as well as 13 of CB’s family members as well. A couple days later we flew back to Belgium, barely finished unpacking and then welcomed my parents and my brother and his girlfriend to Gent for our Belgian wedding reception on June 12. No ceremony the second time around, just a spectacular and pyrotechnic (hopefully there will be pictures soon so I can explain what I mean) dinner and party where CB’s family, friends and colleagues (along with some of my blogging and barista friends) could come to celebrate our marriage. Not many brides have the opportunity to wear their dress twice, but like many other things in my life, I guess I got to do something unique.

On top of the wedding festivities, two other major things have happened.

My brother Scooter proposed to his girlfriend while they were on the Eiffel Tower in Paris and she said yes.
And CB’s doctoral thesis was finally 100% accepted by the jury selected to review it by Ghent University.

So aside from becoming a happily wedded wife, I’m also gaining a second sister-in-law (eventually) and a doctor (Ph.D) for a husband.

And after all of that, when I finally got a day or two to sleep in and pay some attention to the inner workings of my head, I really began reflecting on where I am in life compared to the same time last year.

I won’t drag you through any linky flashbacks, but I will say that this time last year I was jobless and hopeless and frustrated. I was feeling like a failure in my language abilities and I had run out of anything to write about because I found myself doing nothing but complaining.

And now, here I am, working full time, looking into starting up an intro course to French (not that my Dutch is even close to perfect, but it’s pretty fluent according to what most people have told me), married and realizing that, for now, at least, my life has reached the next plateau.

My biggest choice currently is whether we should go to Paris or London for a weekend getaway in August.

And I’m looking at my blog and realizing that, well, the me that started it is no longer entirely the me that is writing it. I’m not the timid suburban daycare worker trying to find her way in a new relationship and a new city anymore.

Methinks it’s high time for an overhaul!

(and no worries, there will be lots and lots of wedding photos, we just need to compile them and take out anything we deem too fugly for public viewing)

Heh…what a misleading title.

I guess we can say I’ve lost my ball, but the chain is still wrapped around my neck. Well, more like my thighs/butt, upper arms, waist and especially my boobs.

And you’re all probably still very confused.

I’m talking about my weight, a topic which I usually avoid, but occasionally address when I feel like wallowing for a while.

See, I haven’t really mentioned it but over the past 3 months or so I’ve really been watching how I eat and I also started biking to and from work. Five days out of the week I count the calories I’m eating and try to stay between 1200-1300 a day.

And I’m a staunch bitch those five days.

The other two days I allow myself leeway and try to eat within reason, without counting.
But honestly, I usually let it get out of control. Or at least I was until finally, this past Thursday and Friday when I wasn’t counting, and also didn’t gain any weight back.

So cut to the chase, you’re probably screaming, man up and tell us how much you’ve lost!!

Well, the answer to that is about 32 pounds (14.55 kilo) and I’ve lost 2 clothing sizes.

How much more do I have to  lose to meet my goal and to be at a more or less healthy weight pre-breast reduction (haven’t mentioned this, but yes, I plan on getting my DDD’s reduced to C’s)? Well, another 20 pounds.

And I find that I’m constantly asking myself when I will finally be finished losing weight.

Really, it feels like the last 15 or so years of my life has been spent trying to lose weight. Be it from peer pressure, the desire to share clothes with all my size 2 friends in high school, or doctors telling me I was overweight (according to bell curves, which in my opinion, is bullshit, but it’s not like trips to nutritionists and dietitians for more accurate measurements is cheap). I played soccer 9 months of the year from the time I was 9 until I was 18, but I was always overweight.

I still am, and I probably always will be overweight, although I think 5-10 pounds over is acceptable. I just don’t want to be obese anymore. I want to shop in regular stores and I don’t want to cry when I look in the mirror. I want to actually see eating and food as something to enjoy, rather than an exercise in mathematics and guilt. Because yes, counting the calories works but it makes me neurotic and pushes me into such a concrete mindset that I actually get nauseous and lose my appetite if I can’t accurately calculate how many calories I’m eating. And if I’m put in a position where I lose track of my daily calories, I quickly spiral into massive overeating for the rest of the day because I feel defeated until bedtime.

It’s just that, I feel that anytime I stop counting, I stop losing. Or worse, start gaining.

I’m currently 197 pounds (89.6 kilos). It is the least I’ve weighed since I was about 23 years old. It’s not what I wanted to be for my wedding, but it’s 60% better than it was 6 months ago, when the only thing I hated about my dress was the body that was in it. Every time I feel discouraged or disgusted I keep in mind that I’ve gotten more than halfway towards something that used to feel impossible.

I just have to find the resolve to keep going till the end.

As of last night, I’ve had two bachelorette parties here in Belgium. The first was arranged by my colleagues at work and the second by the wife of CB’s best man.
It is amazing how different those 2 parties were. The party with my colleagues was a joint party as my Dutch coworker got married on April 30th, so it was really for both of us. It started out with the two of us having to try to hawk thongs and chocolate willies in the most crowded part of Gent. My poor coworker ended up doing most of the talking because I kept freezing up when faced with the challenge of selling thongs to strangers in Dutch.

After we’d been tortured enough, we all went to the Drupelkot for a jenever (gin) and then to my Mexican coworker’s house where we all had some tequila and quite a bit of amaretto as well as a few appetizers before heading back to the center for dinner and lots of wine at a Turkish restaurant. We ended up in a salsa bar where my manager talked me into trying a caipirinha (she didn’t have to try very hard to talk me into anything at that point) and I rounded it all off with two Westmalle triples. Needless to say logical thought was no longer an option.

Apparently I had a lot to say about ninjas and bazookas while my Romanian colleague was driving us home/to our respective crash pads.

Last night I was treated to a nice vegetarian dinner by the wives/partners of CB’s friends and CB’s sister while CB was off being drowned in booze by his friends. After dinner we went for a long gondola ride through Gent, stopping for an apperitief under a large willow tree.

All I was told was I had to dress like the 1940′s, with a flower in my hair, so I made my best attempt, although I wore jeans for the part I have pictures from and changed into my skirt later when we reunited with the menfolk. Half of them had to leave early because they were no longer able to behave themselves in public. If I can convince CB to let me post any of it you’ll be hearing more about it later. I will just say I’ve never seen him drunk before, especially not dressed up as Rene Artois from ‘Allo ‘Allo!, so from what I can tell his night was pretty interesting. Anyway, it ended up being the anniversary of when Belgium was liberated from the Germans in WWII so we finally ended up at a ’40′s themed party in a club in town where we did a little dancing, encouraged our respective menfolk to drink extra water, and finally headed for home.

So, like I said, two veeeery different parties, but both very enjoyable.
Makes me wonder what my Pittsburgh bachelorette party will be like…

I fell in love on my second day working in the coffee kiosk.

It was an immediate gut reaction coupled with a hungry desire to explore the object of my lust.

The cream whipper. My precioussssssss.

Many of our drinks come with the option of whipped cream, so we go through somewhere around 10-12 liters a day. When I was learning how to make the cream I was told that we put a bit of vanilla syrup into the cream as well, to sweeten it up a bit.
Well then of course I looked at our multitude of other flavor options and began to dream.
Sweet, sweet daydreams of hazelnut whipped cream or cherry whipped cream or, even something more intriguing like banana coconut whipped cream. Oh the possibilities! But sadly, I’ve never seen a cream whipper anywhere aside from coffee bars.

Until this week.

Yes, Cloruyt is selling this in it’s Collishop store (where I believe we may register for a few things for the Belgian reception).

Now I just have to convince CB that it is a necessary part of our future life together…