That's right, baby! 265 on the nose, a total of another 1.8 pounds from the week before, and down about four pounds from the weekend craziness. Of all of the weeks of the challenge, I'm most proud of this one because I really did dig in and put up a fight last week to try to right the ship. I'd say I probably went at 75% of my capability, which is saying something since I usually hover right around that 55-60% mark. I worked out (once, but it still is a small victory), brought my own food to work, got up early and made smoothies, and ate somewhere in the neighborhood of 84 clementines. I proved to myself that I could put together a strong five day run and persevere.
I celebrated my small victory in the way that I have every other week; I went out and did my best to undo every positive step forward that I made. I know what my ultimate goal is, though, and I'm not going to get down on myself for having a social life. Did I eat and drink a little too much? Maybe, but only if you use "little" in the same way as, say, the Twins are having a little trouble winning or that Brett Favre has a little bit of an ego problem. Regardless, the arrow is still pointing downwards and I'm still well on my way to my six-month, 30 pound goal.
What I really wanted to mention in this blog was how great I am in the friends' families department. I hope I've made it clear that I have fantastic friends and a fantastic family, but this blog specifically is a thank you to friends' families. It has always been important to me to get to know the important people in the lives of those who are important to me. Maybe I'm delusional and I'm really the Eddie Haskell who everyone wishes would go away, but I really feel like I have formed some deep connections with these folks over the years. When I left home to go to college for the first time, I was pretty emotionally rocked. I was convinced that as soon as I left Hartford that my friendships would never be the same. For me, I wasn't just choosing to leave the town or the state to go off into the scary world of Southwest Minnesota, but I was also leaving the "group" and going off on my own. Granted, I still was on Messenger every night with my friends (this was pre-texting) and I came home most weekends to see my family and girlfriend (probably not in that order), but I felt like I was leaving a "family" that I had worked so hard to build over the years. I actually went house to house to say good-bye, not to my friends, but to their families. Any of them can attest that I was a mess as I went to each of their doors with tears in my eyes to give them a hug, thank them for taking such good care of me, and for welcoming me into their homes and families over the years. Just as my parents had done for my friends, these people had on more than one occasion fed me, given me a ride to school on a snowy day, let me sleep on their couch, bandaged me up when I fell off my bike, and showed up to support me in all of my different activities, even when they didn't have a kid participating.
I was lucky enough to leave one group of friends who had wonderful families to find another group in college. In high school, our parents were kind of stuck having to like (or at least tolerate) our friends because we were constantly around and had been since we were little kids. They watched us grow, understood our personalities, and did their best to love us anyway. College parents are a different story. College parents encounter their kid's friends maybe once a year. If you hate your kid's friends, then you don't invite them to breakfast the next time you come to town to visit and there are no hard feelings. Well, I again hit the friend jackpot and managed to surround myself with good people who came from good people. I rarely turned down an opportunity to meet a sibling that was in town or to go home with someone to spend a weekend with their parents. I'm always fascinated with how someone's upbringing shapes them into the person that they are, so I want to know as much about why my friends turned out the way they did. Meeting and bonding with their families gives me insight into the first couple of decades of their lives that I missed out on.
I bring all of this up because I just spent a wonderful weekend with the families of two of my closest friends who treated me at every single moment like I was a member of their clans. In both my best and my worst moments, they took care of me and reminded me why it is so important to have these extended relationships. They wanted to know all about The Challenge, pledged to the cause, and promised that they would there to celebrate with me when it was all said and done. We danced. We laughed. We told stories about the good times and made plans to have even more in the future. For one day, we were a family reunited in Fargo, and I offer many thanks to the Malsams and Leendertses for reminding me how great being a part of your families really is.
I use this weekend as a specific example, but the same can be true of the way I've seen one friend's family rally around him as he's had some health issues or how another friend's family took me in just weekends after my February disaster and did their best to take my mind off of my troubles. I'm Facebook friends with moms, dads, brothers, and sisters of my friends, and I'm proud to be able to call them "friend" outside of the Facebook context. There are so many other examples from both high school and college that I wouldn't even know where to start listing them. Just know that today I sit at this keyboard, game planning how I'm going to have a strong week, and thanking my lucky stars that I am a member of the greatest families in the world.
With much love,
Jeff
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