When I decided to move in with my significant other, my friends wondered if something was wrong with me. Here I was…young…smart…motivated. And all I really wanted to do was to settle down with G. The weekends never really interested me in terms of going out hard in the city. Don’t get me wrong-I do love to party and I’ve done an assortment of “extracurricular” activities. But some of the things I love MOST are the following (listed in no particular order)

1. cleaning
2. running
3. sleeping
4. organizing and home-improvement (note: this is different from cleaning. If you’re mildly OCD and have a type-A personality like me, you’ll completely understand)

And these are exactly the things I was able to do this weekend.

Regarding home-improvement: I was FINALLY able to put up the photos in the bathroom that I’ve been meaning to put up:

For all those wondering…yes. Those are photos of a naked woman and a near-naked man. As some of you know, I work at Michael Kors, so we had a really scandalous ad campaign this past fall for our new men’s underwear launch. A friend at work had some of the images mounted on black matte backing, but her roommates refused to let her put them up in their shared bathroom. Luckily, my fiance is extremely attracted to the naked woman in the pictures, so he was fine with us putting them up in our bathroom.

In fact-he was sweet enough to get them framed for me for Valentine’s Day! 🙂

I was also able to dedicate a little bit of time to…my favorite…wedding planning! Up to this point, I’ve done SOME wedding planning…but really nothing to brag about. This weekend I made a preliminary invite list for our August 2013 wedding…and let’s just say I’m mildly concerned about the size of this thing. Listing only the most important people between G and I, organized in a multi-tab Excel spreadsheet, obviously, we have 239 invitees on the list.

I mean…I’ve never been married before, but I somewhat think that 239 is a pretty large number, especially considering that 80% of those invitees are family, giving them a 90% chance of giving us a “yes” for an RSVP.

Yikes.

Anyways. Here are some more of my favorite weekend things that I have done/have yet to do this weekend (again, listed in no particular order)

1. giving myself a manicure (if you read my previous post, you’ll learn that I have a phobia of gross hands, and therefore my hands MUST look pristine at all times)
2. doing laundry and changing the sheets on the bed
3. paying bills
4. cooking dinner
5. drinking copious amounts of coffee

Looking back at my lists, I fear I am really becoming a middle-aged woman…perhaps I’m approaching a quarter life crisis?!?! Considering I’m turning 25 in 2 months, I suppose there’s nothing I can really do about that at this point. (ed note: I’m really not undergoing a quarter-life crisis, and if you just read the above statement(s) and have concerns for me, stop reading this blog now, because you clearly don’t understand my sense of dry humor.)

Oh. One other thing to note about my big weekend endeavors…yes; I did say I was going to RUN this weekend. Not just 2 miles. But 4 miles!! four! F O U R miles. For all those just tuning in now: I have a bad case of ITBS and a “shin splint,” which I honestly think is a stress fracture but was completely misdiagnosed and I’m just too lazy to get a second opinion, especially considering that the only remedy for a stress fracture is to rest.

I’ve NEVER been injured…so this time off comes as a shock to the system. (Unless you’re counting the time that my clutzy self partially tore my meniscus when I was 13 from a very uncompetitive game of soccer…) But I digress. In all my 24 years, I have never REALLY been injured. Not after 4 years of high school sports. Not after 4 years of D1 rowing in college. Never. So how am I injured now? Let’s just say that, during fall marathon training, ramping up from 15 miles a week in August/September to 40-50 miles a week in October/November was not the best strategy I’ve ever had. Apparently I am not invincible, and my body did, eventually, break down because of the increased and sudden stress I was putting on it. Whoops. At least I ran a killer marathon I guess. 

Anyways…after some really rough runs in December, I have been in physical therapy for the past month or so, and things have really been going great. I’ve been really eager to jump right back into a decent amount of milage, but apparently that’s not what one should do after coming back from a stress-related injury. I’ve been told that I must start slow, so I’ve gone from doing 4 miles a week TOTAL, to finally 4 miles in just one run! And I am absolutely thrilled.

So, like I said, solid weekend in the bag. Pleased with my decision to move to the ‘burbs. Never been happier…and all because of quiet, low-key weekends like this. 🙂