Dear Diary,

What is it, like May already? I haven't posted in ages. I am dying from The Tired. I keep thinking of things I want to write about, and then I don't get the chance, and none of them are related to each other, so I'm going to organize my thoughts here:

1. Last week's funeral. BRUTAL. My grandmother's funeral a few years ago was lots of sniffing and tear-dabbing and wistful-sighing; a bittersweet celebration of her life. This was a different ballgame. My aunt was 58. She has three kids, two of whom had birthdays this week-- one is 19 and one is 28. The oldest is 35 and was sobbing openly, which (naturally) is contagious. My other cousins and I were clutching each other and whimpering quietly, "how in the hell are we going to do this?" Because my aunt was the first of our parents' generation to go, and we will all be attending our parents' funerals. It redefined the word hard for me. I talk about losing weight, parenthood, winter being hard. Burying your mother? Just... No. No. I had two large coat pockets completely filled with soggy tissues.

2. I am still keeping my head down, nose to the grindstone to (A) lose weight and (B) get through winter. It's going. It's going about as fast as winter is going, and if you're in New England, you know how slow that is. But it is going. I am finding "The Biggest Loser" on TV to be a big motivator. I love that show. I've given up "Idol" for it. It's so positive and everyone is so supportive. But maybe what I like so much is that they are all working so hard, and dropping impressive amounts each week, and yet they don't look all that different. It's like there's someone else out there who is working really hard (way harder than I am), and the result still takes f o r e v e r. And they still keep going. It's great. I've been doing this now for almost seven weeks, and I've lost about 8 or 9 lbs. I'm giving it 4 or 5 more weeks. It's so hard to keep it up. I bought myself a very expensive chunk of super-dark chocolate to help me through the harder times. (Nick, if you're reading this, I hid it away while you were in the other room being the better parent. Not that I'm the best hider. But still, hands off the Scharffenberger. You stick to your chips, skinny.) Half an ounce of that and a small glass of wine, and all is right in my little world.

3. I recently joined Facebook, and found that it's so much easier to write one sentence in the status bar than it is to blog. Also, over the past few months, through the miracle of the internet I've come across a handful of old flames. This is how I know I married the right man. It's great to touch base with those guys again, but I realize now how wrong they would have been for me. I'm surprised to find out that they are not as witty or intelligent I thought they were. Nick also won the Perfect For Me award last weekend when I watched "Vicky Cristina Barcelona." First of all, what a great movie. The story was meh, but the scenery-- ohhhh. Just like "Mamma Mia" and "Hideous Kinky," I wanted to crawl inside my TV and live in this movie. Nick and I talk about being expats someday, and this movie confirmed that for me. I think the movie was trying to send a message of "marriage is lame and boring; go be a free spirit and have a wild fling with an artist!" And I thought... Nick is a tortured writer, and as much as that annoys me sometimes, it still makes him an artist. But he's also employed. Best of both worlds. And when I dream of moving to Spain, I think about how much I want to do that with him, no matter how smoking hot Javier Bardem was. Last summer I had coffee with a friend of mine who moved to France and married a winemaker. (I know.) She lives a ten-minute walk from the beach in the south of France. There is no word that accurately describes my envy, but as she was talking about her life, I was thinking "I want that. I want to travel again. And I want that with Nick." Ahh... I married the right guy.

4. I am brain-dead because I can't remember what else. Especially since I mentioned wine and dark chocolate. In short, life is kicking my ass right now. I've spent all my free time at school planning lessons for biology, and then when I get home there's grocery shopping/dinner/packing lunches/bedtime routine to deal with and I don't get a minute to think until about 8:30. That's my life in a nutshell right now: work and carrot sticks. It's real exciting.

5. Oh yeah! Trivial, but: my hair. Still growing it out. I looked in the mirror at school today, and three words instantly popped into my head: Frampton Comes Alive.

I would go dig into that chocolate but it wouldn't be appreciated as much right now because I'm so tired. I ran after school today, which was delicious-- I love to run so much, but it always kills me with exhaustion at the end of the day. I'm going to crawl in bed and watch The Office.