Coffee date

To get myself out of this funk I’ve been in I’ve been trying to go out with friends as much as possible. Let me tell you it’s working! Nothing better than surrounding yourself with friends, even if it is doing something small.

I met up with my friend Madelyn for coffee the other night. We went to Heine Brothers Coffee. I had never been before but was excited to go once I heard it was Louisville based. While I love Starbucks, I like the idea of supporting local businesses.

My coffee date….

And the irony, neither of us ordered coffee. Madelyn got tea and like a 10 year old I had hot chocolate.

House Hunting

 

I am apartment/duplex/house hunting at the moment. The problem is that I can’t decide where I want to live and what I want to do rent/own. I ended up going down to Tell City, which is 2 hours from my current apartment, but 20 mins from my work. The only thing is the town is so small. The majority of my work friends live there, but I can’t decide if I am going to stay at my current job, and if I don’t why would I live there?

I ended up going to five houses, and fell in love with two. The one that I knew I wanted from the listing …The house is cute. The inside is all new, the coloring is what I like….the downside, the neighbors. On the right you have cute houses, nice people, clean. and on the left….well let’s just say they bring the property value down.

I’m still planning on looking. I think more towards Louisville, but in Indiana. With the closer of my bridge to work my commute time doubled, so I went from an hours drive to 2 hour drive. If I move outside of the city, my commute will be less and I can still go back whenever I want. I plan to look more into that the next time I’m off!

Christmas in mid-January

So things are still hard, I’m not sure at this point if they will ever be easy. I am really lucky that I have amazing people in my life who give me encouraging words and even let me cry and get snot all over them….let me tell you I am a very unattractive cryer!

This week I was able to hang out with my Louisville BFF, Madelyn. We ended up meeting up at the Olive Garden for dinner and finally exchanging Christmas presents! Yes…it is mid-January!

Good food…I hate the cheese ziti. There was soooo much I ended up taking most of it to work the next day.

We exchanged gifts in the car…..Madelyn didn’t want to do it in the resturant because people might judge us for exchanging Christmas gifts mid-January!

I ended up getting such cute things from her like my new Turbis, because really who can have enough water bottles? (Maybe I am a bit obsessed?!) and I got some awesome texting gloves…and I hope I never get to use them, because I hope it doesn’t get that cold!

Tragedy

There have been some updates in my life, changes that have made me not want to get back into blogging. I’ve been neglecting my blog long before my tragedy, but I had always planned to come back but life seemed to get in the way.

On November 15th my mother passed away. My mom was my biggest supporter and my best friend. My mother was the person who I confided everything in and was always there for me even when I was wrong. She always pushed me to do my best and whenever I felt I couldn’t do something she pushed me to try harder. I am the person I am today because of my mom.

They still don’t know what caused my mom’s death. She was fine, while she had battled cancer two years prior her cancer was in remission and did not cause her passing. We still are waiting for the autopsy reports, I think the hardest thing is not knowing what happened. She went to the ER on a Wednesday and was released home with what they said was a UTI. Saturday night she was still sick with a high fever and went back. She was admitted overnight. Sunday they stat flighted her to Louisville. I found out my mom was sick on that Sunday. I immediately went to the hospital, but because they flew into Louisville they had to intabated her and paralyzed her. I stayed with her until that Tuesday when she passed. During this time she was unable to speak and wasn’t alert. We had many specialists come in from all over the city and they just couldn’t find the cause of what was making her sick.

I am still devastated beyond belief. I don’t know how to get through this. I try everyday to feel something, but I am just existing. I don’t know how to live without my mom. My mom did everything for me. I use to talk to my mom daily, even when I lived out of the country it didn’t matter I talked to her through everything. The hardest part is knowing that we were fighting before she died, I hadn’t spoken to her for two weeks. To know that I was angry with her over something so stupid and that I didn’t get to spend time with her before her death is probably the thing that is making it so painful. My mom was everything to me. She was my family. Now I’m alone. I’ve got a sister who is 12 that I am trying to be strong for but I feel so alone 90% of the time. Everyone says how strong I am and that I am coping really well but there hasn’t been a day that I haven’t cried or felt like I could get out of bed. I’m still working and that is probably the only thing keeping me going because it keeps me busy.

I have decided to blog again for my mom. My mom read ever blog entry I did and would always tell me how proud she was that I had the courage to post online what I was doing, even when I failed. It’s going to be hard to not have her to share my blog with but I think I need it in order to start finally living again.

The Grape Leaf

So since moving to Louisville I have been able to meet friends and experience new cuisines. Sunday was no exception. A few friends and I headed to The Grape Leaf (not the Grape Vine, which I had been calling it all week). It serves Mediterranean food, although I’m pretty sure it is all Greek. We were looking for Armenian, but were not able to find any locally.

We had a Keeping Up With The Kardashians party, which means we went to dinner, baked cupcakes, and watched KUWTK. Madelyn, is an awesome cupcake maker, designer so I’m going to be getting her to start blogging soon, but we settled for store boxed cupcakes in the meantime. Here are some pictures from the night.

The appetizer, Grape Leaves—split between us four.

We started off with salads, mine was Greek….and awesome.

Dinner, which consisted of the Chicken Sumac

Dessert, Walnut Baklava split between us four.

And the rest of the night was spent like this!

  

A random trip to Kroger, cupcake making, and the Kardashians. Next Sunday Chyla is hosting so we will be having a home cooked Southern meal. The best part is we have a whole list of places we will be checking out on Sundays.  

Tags: food, Greek, international, Sunday

Poolside for the summer

It is sooo hot here in Indiana. Luckily I have been spending the last two days at my mom’s, and luckily they have a pool! I have been doing some underwater running for exercise, this was great because my knee has been hurting and I don’t think high impact exercise would do me any good.

Oh and I’m in love with my new bathing suit!

In addition I had to play some football with the puppies!

 

And keeping with good decisions, instead of going out for fast food with my mom and co-workers today for lunch I opted for subway, black forest ham on wheat with veggies!

 

Kitchen overhaul

My kitchen was a mess. A hot mess. Luckily I have an amazing mother who came over and cleaned my house, well all except the fridge. That was my job…..

and I would rather avoid the kitchen at all costs lately. I am one of those people who buys produce and it wastes because I don’t do anything with it. Well I decided to change all that and organized the fridge and made some prepared meals before the items went bad.

 

The before….

 

And after….

I love the organized look. I moved all the healthy stuff up front so it will be easy to reach for. I am lucky to have good friends as Chyla donated most of my freezer stuff. She stocked me up on a lot of chicken and turkey products, so I will need to be making meals in the future and not relying on prepackaged meals.

While organizing I prepared some….

hardboiled eggs

Greek salad

homemade ice cream

  and some fruit smoothies

All the while I had a little helper….This little demon attacked me the whole time I was in the kitchen since she thought it was play time.

 

 

I’m really happy with the new kitchen. I want to start using the kitchen to prepare healthy meals and move away from processed foods. The first step is the kitchen organization and pretty soon I will be a chef in my own kitchen!

Tags: food, kitchen