Not surprisingly, I've been procrastinating on my first post

I don't really know where to begin. I suppose I'll start with how this blog came to be. I was reading the blog of a friend of mine, and she posts her daily struggles and accomplishments throughout her weight loss journey. She posts what she eats and when she works out. It really motivates me. I was thinking that if I did something similar, with a handful of followers, it would encourage me to be honest with myself and the world and finally whip my butt into high gear. So, I clicked 'sign up' to make a blog. This was three days ago.

The blog wanted to be named. That's fair, reasonable. So I sat there trying to come up with something to call it, to give it a proper and meaningful URL. Because I've yet to figure out who my audience for this may be, if anyone at all, I'll go into the long of it. Most of you realize I'm rarely short winded in the first place.

I'm having a really hard time letting go of my last name. Murphy is just a badass last name. It's great for nicknames, although I never had any derived from it. That was actually kind of annoying, I mean "Smurph" always seemed like a good one, it's a combination of my first and last name for crying out loud! I digress. I'm the end of the Murphy line. My granny had one son, who had one child -- me. So that's just it. There are no aunts/uncles/cousins to pass along the Murphy name. It just ends at me. I always knew this, and yet still looked forward to going the traditional route and taking my husband's last name when the time comes. And now here it is... and I'm not looking forward to it. My dad died in 2005. Since his only direct family is my Granny & I, I feel like no one ever has reason to talk about him or think of him. Since he lived in California my entire life it's easy for me to remain in denial about his death and pretend like I just haven't heard from him in a while. But now it's time to 'let go' of my last name, and it makes me feel like I'm losing him -- again. My dad was all about being Irish, his business was named "Irish Images" (a name I tried to convince Ben to call his photog business, although that didn't pan out) and he had MURPHY stuff all over the house. His friends called him "Murph" and he had lots of "Murphy's Law" stuff around, etc. I feel like his last name was really prominent in his identity, or at least more so than other people. My whole life people would see my red hair & freckles and then comment on how Irish sounding my name is. Finally a couple months ago Ben and I were at Engaged Encounter and the priest made the same comment, so finally I got my 'I told you so" in. haha.

Anyway, the point of all of this is, it's not that Helton is a terrible last name, it's just that I feel like I'm losing part of my identity, specifically the tie to my late father. It just breaks my heart. I attempted to convince Ben to take my last name, insisting that "Ben Murphy" sounded even better... but that will just never happen. It's not even that Ben is opposed to taking my last name because he's the man and it's unconventional, it's just that he's in the same situation I'm in. His dad was an only child, and Ben's the only male -- so it's up to him (and me) to carry on the Helton name. At the very least it's comforting that Ben is so wonderfully understanding about my hesitance, and he realizes that if his father had passed away and he didn't have a mom and sister with the same last name, it would be even MORE difficult... so that makes me feel better.

The point of that long winded explanation (hey, I warned you!) is that I had to decide on something to call this blog. I wanted very much so to stick my last name into the mix. The first thing that came to mind was "Making the most of my last days as a Murphy" which is entirely too long, but also brought with it the waterworks. I sat here staring at the start up page silently crying ... then Ben came in and it was time to explain. So NOW, three days later, I'm emotionally capable of naming and starting this blog.

Tie into it the fact that I'm writing this as motivation to become more healthy, specifically before our wedding in April, and it made the whole "Murphy" thing an even bigger deal. See, my entire life I watched my dad battle his weight. I don't want to spend my life like that. I don't want to spend my last two months with this last name being miserable and unhappy with my body and lifestyle choices.

So here's the gameplan--

I am going to write in this daily. I am going to update with what I ate and what exercise I did. I don't care if it's good or bad, hold me accountable for owning up to it. If I'm going to fail at this, I need it to be in my face. The days slip by so quickly, but they add up... and I want to know when I'm really slacking. I will also post wedding updates since this all coincides, and to hopefully make it a little more interesting, haha.