Spring Cleaning and 'Far from Sports Illustrated'

This has been a gray week of rain in Avignon. It's one of the few weeks where at the beginning of the week, the weather here was so much worse than the weather at home (Athens, OH).

As a result, there have been mostly indoor activities on the schedule. Today: Spring Cleaning! I have so much winter clothing that's clogging up my closet here and I need to figure out how much space I'm going to my springtime visitors to leave in their suitcases so that I can send stuff home with them. I look around my apartment here and it's very easy to get overwhelmed about how much stuff I have to haul back to America in July. Plus, there's still one more round of 'les soldes' (national sales) to shop through before I leave! ;)

Here's a view of my closet/bookcase pre-cleaning. Ick!

While cleaning, I stumbled across an old frenemy... the bikini. I only have a bikini here with me in France. Originally I had it in the winter so I could wear it to the hammam (Turkish bath), but now that swimsuit season is coming, it's getting ready for more public action. Of course, I had to slip it on and, for the first time ever, I'm going to post a swimsuit picture of myself on the blog. ::wince::

So this is it. The bottoms have always been a bit small on this swimsuit. I bought it at Old Navy when I was out running to Home Depot for something for Jon this summer in Auburn, so I was in a hurry! I'm hoping by the time I go to the beach, there won't be quite as much of a bulge on the sides... Not a fan. That said, I'm kind of nervous about posting them on the blog, but I hope it'll just help me to be accountable to all of you in the coming months.

This face says it all.

My reaction to these photos? I've reached a point where I don't HATE to see myself in a swimsuit like this, but it's definitely not the toned, svelte person I want to be. I know there are abs under there (they're sore, so I know they're there!) and I just need to burn off the smushy layer surrounding them.

It's been a week and a half of tracking and I really think this is the start of a new journey. I have another blog post with my first weigh-in and some goals, so stay tuned.

Oh, and here's my newly organized closet for Spring! I forgot to pack away my winter running clothes and realized it after I'd stuffed the suitcase back up top (the carry on inside of the big one) and I'm too lazy to take it down again right now. Oh well! It's an improvement anyways!