Sporadically Sandra

Hit all my GHG's most of the time - Well, I did hit all my GHG's most of the time, but i don't really feel I did very well anyways.

Read 1 Self-Improvement Book - Not yet completed. I got sucked into too many other things, like the Hunger Games Trilogy. I started but got distracted. I'll probably keep this one for September!

Run/Walk/Jog 20 Miles - Done! I finished it up today with 2.5 miles on the treadmill for a total of 20.04 miles. I'm very proud of this.

Stick to my Budget - Ehh.

Tune in tomorrow for my September goals!

1. Joseph - my husband, my best friend, my favorite person. He truly takes care of me and treats me like his love. I could go on and on, but I'm going to keep it short.

2. My family - This consists of my mom, dad, sister, nephew, aunt, uncle, cousin and grandma. I adore my family. I love seeing them and spending time with them. They are all awesome and amazing people.

3. My In Laws - I have to say, I am a lucky, lucky girl. I love Joseph's family. I always know that when I see them, I'm going to have a great time. I was very blessed with the in-laws I got, especially since I've read a lot of bad in law stories!

4. My friends - I don't have a lot of close friends, but the ones I have, I know I could trust without a doubt. I'm very friendly, but not every one gets to know the real me. For those that do, they are stuck with me for quite a while.

5. Music - I love music. I think my love of it first started when I took guitar. My guitar teacher was like seven years older then me (?) and had great taste in non "old people" music. He introduced me into some of my favorite bands, which only led me to discovering more bands. Music is so inspiring to me in so many ways.

6. Writing - I love creative writing, I love blogging, I love just documenting my life. My dream job would be to get paid to write stories that other people read. Stories that move people, make them feel or inspire them.

7. Reading - You can't really love writing if you don't love reading and I've loved reading since I learned how. I won two different reading contests when I was younger (and made some money!) because I couldn't keep my nose out of a book. Even now, that can be quite a difficult feat!

8. Cooking - I love cooking. I love creating a new recipe or dish. I love feeding people. I love to eat, which probably is a big reason why I love to cook. If I were more creative, I would probably want to go to culinary school, but most of my creativity is funneled into writing not cooking. And, alas, I can't conquer making Lasagna

9. God - I love God although there are (a lot of) times that I do a horrible time of showing it. I have lots of questions and things I don't understand but I've never questioned my belief in or love of God.

I'm sure I'm not the only kid who grew up eating egg in a hole. It's a quick and easy way to make a delicious breakfast and as a kid, it was so much fun to help. I got to carefully cut a hole in a piece of bread and mom would do all the other work.

Well, I'm no longer a kid but I can still enjoy egg in a hole, especially if I give it a fun twist to make it a little more sophisticated. A recipe isn't really required, but it was so simply genius, I had to share anyways.

Ingredients:
Tomato - finely chopped
Mozzarella Cheese - finely grated
Parmesan Cheese - finely grated
Fresh Basil - finely chopped
Bread
Egg
Salt & Pepper - to taste

Mix the shredded cheeses with the fresh basil.

Using a glass, cut a hole in your piece of bread, discard or eat the middle.

Melt butter in a frying pan over medium heat and add the bread. Crack an egg into the hole, and if you want, break the yolk. Salt & pepper to taste.

Once egg is set on one side, flip over bread. Sprinkle cheese mixture over bread. Once cheese is melted and egg is set on other side, remove from pan and place on plate. Sprinkle tomatoes on top.

Eat & enjoy. Simple yet delicious!

I'm stealing this idea off of Megan's blog, who stole it from someone else. But, it is such a great idea and I'm excited about it. She plans to do it as a weekly challenge, I plan to update it as I feel like it.

I'm going to go ahead and start today with Ten Secrets

1. I learned I was a good writer because of fan fiction. Some how I started reading Degrassi: The Next Generation fan fiction and thought, "This sucks, I can do way better." But, I didn't actually start writing it until I got into Harry Potter fan fiction (Draco/Ginny all the way).

2. Although, I'm not always the best at losing weight and living healthy, I want to one day figure out how to help other people become healthier. I love how I feel when I'm eating right and exercising consistently and I know others could benefit from my first hand knowledge.

3. Even though I used to live alone in an apartment, I am terrified of spending the night alone. On the rare times when Joe is out of town, I will go to my mommy and daddy's house and slumber there. (Except when they all abandon me on the same weekend!)

4. I could watch Psych over and over again. I've seen all the episodes on Netflix, numerous times and watching another one right now. I think partially, it's because Spencer reminds me of my husband and also because the show is funny, no matter how many times you watch it.

5. I'm ridiculously bad at making friends. I'm scared of putting myself out there to people and being let down, but once I make really good friends with someone, they typically stay that way.

6. I always have a story plot in the back of my mind, whether it is something I'm working on or something I have yet to work on. Because so many different plots circle around, I often have a hard time finishing a story because I get excited about the next.

7. I have two birthmarks, neither of which people typically see. One is on my butt, which leads people to think I've sat in something when in a bathing suit (which is why know I only wear skirt or short bottoms) and other is in my eye. It makes me wonder if people are bad at making eye contact or just oblivious.

8. One of my favorite compliments of all time was that I was so good at dancing I could be a black girl. I thought the delivery was funny because it was a black guy who told me and he started it with "Don't be offended." It would be pretty rude of me to be offended by that. I took it as the awesome compliment that it was.

9. If I were at a healthy weight, I would be trying to have a baby right now. But, I want to truly live a healthier life before bringing a child into this world because I want my future kids to grow up with a healthy view of food.

10. I have a twitter. I finally caved. My nearest and dearest know my feelings on twitter which makes that even harder to admit. You can follow me @sbragg87. Although, I have 0 tweets, nor do I know how to use it. Twitter 101, anyone?

I have to say, I don't know what it is about women that think it is perfectly acceptable to leave the bathroom looking disgusting. When speaking to gender stereotypes, women tend to be the cleaner, neater sex while men are thought to be messy pigs. Yes, I do realize this isn't necessarily true, but for the sake of this, we need to make it true.

1. If you "dribble" on the seat, wipe it off. Why does it seem to be so difficult for women to clean up after themselves in this regard. I mean, it isn't that hard to NOT dribble, but if you do, take a little tissue paper and a quick swipe takes care of it.

2. Flush well. I can't even count the number of times I have entered a stall to find that the toilet seat liner didn't flush completely, or there are remainders in the bowl. Seriously, ladies? It isn't that hard, flush multiple times if needed. I know, I personally, don't want to try and use a toilet that isn't done with the previous job.

3. A toilet stall is not a phone booth! Ladies, can we not take our phone conversations somewhere else. I mean, it's uncomfortable enough having YOU hear me pee, I don't want your husband/brother/sister/mom/dad/other friend of family member, hearing it as well. AND chances are, they don't want it to hear it! They don't want to hear flushing, farting, peeing. Bathroom noises are gross, no one wants to hear it. Along with that, don't talk to me while I'm in a stall, I'm POTTYING.

4. Stall choosing. If there are multiple stalls, don't pick the one right beside the ONLY occupied stall if there are other free stalls. (This is forgiven if the toilet is suffering from point one or two). But besides that, leave a stall buffer. It's awkward enough that we are all peeing in the same room with only thin walls separating us, let's leave as much room as possible.

5. Remember girls don't poop. So, if someone is in there for a while, just leave them be. They obviously want some private time and certainly don't peek under the stall and identify them by their shoes!

Motivation, what motivation? This girl has no motivation. It's much easier to believe that working out really hard will take care of all my bad eating habits. I'm 80% good, but when trying to lose weight, that isn't good enough. I've lost my motivation. Flat out have none.


How do people get their motivation back? I really want to run the Disney Princess Half, but not by myself. I'm trying to talk my boss into doing it because her sister wants her to do it too. Then, I would have to train for something AND I would have to work at losing weight because who wants to carry all that weight around.


I just wish I could get some freaking motivation back. I did so flipping great when I started it and now, slacking hard. I just need to focus on all the reasons I want and need to lose weight and the fact that I don't want to look back in regret because I've been slacking.

Disclaimer: There is honestly no way for me to write this well enough. I cannot stress enough that I can't go into depth and explain how truly horrible this experience was for me (and how it continues to haunt me) but I've done the best I can.

Part 3: The Trouble Begins


For whatever reason, we didn’t have the most amicable split. I can’t remember if I goaded him, or if he would goad me (probably both), but we would just argue. He was still living at our house as my parent’s didn’t want to make him homeless (you know, on the weekends) but I know we would argue. And he would get violent. He punched walls on more than one occasion, right by my head as if to warn me how easily it could have been me. He threw a helmet at me, that would have hit me if I had not turned to go into my room. There was one time he tried to force himself into my room, I can’t remember why and I kicked him as hard as I could before slamming the door and locking it. I don’t know if I told my parent’s this, I can’t remember. It was a pretty sucky time for our family, my sister was having issues of her own and I’ve always been pretty self sufficient.

I had multiple email and messaging accounts, at least one Aim, one Yahoo and one MSN. You would have to know me to know that I had numerous accounts and to know what they were. My best friend at the time had moved to TN and she had a yahoo, most of my other friends had AIM and then I personally had MSN because of hotmail. I was logged into all three of them one day when one by one I was logged out.

I was confused and so I proceeded to login in again only to be logged out. This went on a couple more times before I was told my passwords were invalid. I knew that “A” was going to school for something related to computers and I instantly suspected him of doing it. A couple hours later, I was able to log back into my Yahoo and I received a message from a stranger letting me know he would let me back into my email and that he hoped I could read Dutch. The thing is, it was obvious that this wasn't a stranger who happened to figure out I had mulitple accounts on multiple platforms.
Weird things like that kept happening. But, it isn’t like I had any real information, or knowledge. I just knew that someone was accessing my email, my files, my computer. I had no proof but even at 15, I had women’s intuition. But to other people, I was just a bitter ex.

Monthly Goals


I’ve done this before with both success and failure, but, when it comes down to it, I like having goals. I like making lists of things to do so that I can cross them off and feel accomplished. I also like having a list of things I want to accomplish so I don’t forget the things I want to do that I think will help me grow more.

• Hit all the GHG’s most of the time – This means getting in 5-7 servings of fruits & vegetables a day, 6 glasses of water, a vitamin, 2 health oils, 30 minutes of activity and 2 dairies. I can do this and doing this will make me feel better and healthier.

• Read 1 self-improvement book – I bought 2 or 3 of them a couple of months ago and then got distracted by the nice fictional books. But, I enjoy self-improvement books because they help me get my mind in a good place, it helps focus me.

• Walk/Jog/Run 20 miles – I think it would be cool for me to hit that and I think it is very doable. I average about 2.25-2.50 per session and I try and do that 3 times a week.

• Stick to my budget – my spending has gotten out of control. With buying a new house and wanting to decorate it, it seems I can’t tell myself no. So for this month, my goal is to tell myself “no” every time I want something that isn’t in the budget. Especially since I plan to pay down some debt

Three goals is all I’m going to work on for now. I think that four is a good number to shoot for. I’m mostly excited about the mileage one but I’m pretty much equally excited about all of them.