Rock Star Life

49 weeks left
2 pounds lost
45 pounds left
17(ish) months until the wedding

Ever have one of those weekends when everything just sorta goes right? I am happy to report that this was my weekend. I got to spend it with AMAZING friends, eat good food, experience great weather, see my Rock Star Boyfriend (don’t worry, though I contemplated it, I did not actually attempt running away with him…this time) and just generally had everything go according to plan. ( This, by the way, rarely happens to me.)

FIRST. I had an uber productive Friday. This was the necessary first step to the weekend. I got papers graded. Lesson plans written. Reading done. All things that I needed to cross off the list before I could truly enjoy myself for the rest of the weekend. I got a good workout in on Friday after work, and came home to an hour long phone catch up with one of my best friends (bridesmaid!) Then I retrieved my mail and found just about the sweetest care package EVER from my mom-in-law-to-be (I’m like one of 6 people on the planet that is legitimately excited about my in-laws. Such kind and wonderful people. I’m seriously blessed in this department.)

The next day one of my OTHER best friends came to town for a lunch date and to pick up her wedding dress from the small boutique where she purchased it (before breaking my heart and moving away from me last year). Footnote: we are reciprocal bridesmaids to one another. I’m standing up for her in June. She tells me J and I should just elope while we still like each other. Tempting…

At any rate, the trip to the bridal shop was productive. She looks *incredible* (true story, I got weepy when she came out all finished with veil and shoes and all of it. Me= total sap. But then, I think we’ve established this.) And then I tried on MY dress (yes, I’m fairly sure I’ve found my dress. I try the same one on every time I go into this shop, which is often, because I’m friends with the owner. But that’s a story for another time. A good story, but for later.)

When I put the dress on Saturday, it fit much better than it ever had before. My friend the owner was like “holy cow, in just the month since you were here last…look at you!” Really? Now, I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, but patient is not one of them. I have been feeling like all this weight loss is moving at a GLACIAL pace- just a couple pounds a week. But since she hadn’t seen me in awhile, the 7 total pounds I’ve lost (whoo hoo!) actually made a difference in the way the dress fit. This was a great feeling.

Now, if care packages, best friends, losing weight and productivity wasn’t enough, directly after all this I met a girlfriend of mine with whom I work (though is also leaving me soon…grumble to living in a “transition city”) and we took a lovely little road trip to this beautiful old historic theater to see my favorite musician (ever-in-the-history-of-the-world) play a solo show. And oh, by the way, I had 10^th row seats.

Let me pause here to explain to you that my love for Ben Folds (that’s who this is by the way…Ben Folds) borders on problematic. So deep is my respect for his musicianship, my appreciation of his talent, the sheer happiness that seeing him live brings to me… (my ridiculous crush upon him) that whenever there is anything related to him going on (concert, song on the radio, bad musak version of his tune in the dentist’s elevator) I’m literally rendered speechless (I freeze, the world stops, and I am forced to go into a type of trance in which I start to sing along and ignore all others around me.) I mean…well, have you ever seen those old videos of girls at the airport as they greeted the Beatles to the U.S.? Yeeeeeeah. Kinda like that. (Don’t judge me…you know you have one of *those* artists you love unconditionally, too.)

At any rate, my friend and I had an incredible time. He played ALL my favorite songs (even the old obscure ones). And then, still in the afterglow of concert goodness, we went and had a fabulous dinner and then ended up back at the hotel, at which point we stayed up talking half the night like we were middle-schoolers at a slumber party (except that I did not freeze her bra at any point in the evening...nor was there crying of any sort.)

The next day found us in gorgeous weather, outlet mall shopping (by the way, I loathe shopping. I literally save my money up to go like three times a year. And I only go to outlet malls. Because I’m cheap.) We found great deals. We walked around in the sun, and had a safe and speedy trip home after a lovely lunch (do you know how hard it is to find a restaurant that can REALLY make green beans just the way I like them?!)

J called as our day was winding down. He sounded good, but tired. He’d had a long hard day working. He loved hearing the stories of our trip and was encouraged that I had not in fact left him for Ben Folds (this is a constant threat of mine…which is fine since he’s leaving me just as soon as Natalie Portman calls him up…)

“It sounds like YOU have had kinda a rockstar weekend.” For just a moment I felt really guilty. (People had told me I would feel like this- guilty that I was here at home having fun and living my life while he was hard at work during a desert deployment. This was just the first time I had felt it.) My heart momentarily sunk. But before I could say anything else, J added, “I’m so happy to hear you had such a good time. You sound happy. This is good.”

That was exactly what I needed to hear him say (he does that pretty often). As I hung up the phone, I realized that he was right, not just about this weekend, but about life in general: All things considered, I do sort-of live a rockstar life…in my own, small, small, C-list celebrity kind of way. And that is a good thing.