Its Friday.........

Class is still good but it is the weekend. My husband and youngest are coming over here and we are going to do a little relaxing in the high desert. It is probably the closest we will get for a vacation this summer so I am going to do my best to enjoy it.

After class today we had to clean out the classroom in case someone else needed the room for the weekend. As a result my hotel room has a wooden ball track from floor to ceiling leaning next to the bed, a desk top copy machine, a box full of cords, projector, document reader, video camera etc. sitting in one corner, my rolling bag of supplies under the sink, a box full of our snack on the end of the bed, my overstuffed backpack and purse also on the bed, and a case of water also under the sink.

When David and Grace arrive they are going to come with my scale (I am dying to know if I lost anything), their bedding, clothes...eeeeeek I'm scared.

I have a hotel problem. I like them to stay tidy. At home I can take mess (I think it is years of conditioning) but in the sanctuary of my hotel room I arrive, unpack and hang my clothes, iron any shirts and hang them, put my stuff away when I am done with it. My only concession to messiness is that I always sleep with papers or my backpack on the half of the bed im not sleeping on (easier to pick back up in the morning for more work).

David and Grace have a hotel problem..They like the throw their clothes, toys, laptops, underwear, socks....you name it they throw it...on the floor. I know that in one day my sanctuary will be a garbage dump. I try to stay on top of them and it but my stress always increases in a hotel room with the mess. ack I can feel my shoulders stiffening by just typing this.....breatheeeee their company is more important then the mess........Sometimes I wonder if I should have remained childless and single. :) I am sure we will have fun despite the messiness.

Food-I was a tad more open today but did not really have time to eat. I did just down some coconut flavored M and m's...they were tasty (mounds in tiny niblets).

1/2 chicken and cheese sandwich (minus crust)
1/2 cup potato salad (170)
1 oz cheese (110)
1 100 calorie yogurt (100)
11 doritos (150 calories)
1 bag of M & m's (210)

total 740 calories of mostly crap...I will probably have something more tonight...hungry now but will drink first.

Working Out of Town

Every summer since 2004 I have worked in Central Oregon doing professional development in mathematics and mathematics education. It is going really well and I am having a great time at it. There are five of us over here (2 math ed professors, 1 physics professor, one science ed professor and one math ed grad student). During the morning we do math (problem solving and working up to doing mathematical proof). In the afternoons the science people are doing various physics topics with our teachers (from grade 1-7). I don't know if it is the crop of teachers we have or we are doing a great job in organizing the classes but our students this year are doing so awesome. I have always loved teaching in-service teachers but this summer has been magical. A teacher-educators dream come true as every day is better than the last. I reaffirms my faith in all things educational..:)

ON the food front I am doing really well. I have tightened back up and am back to only being able to eat 1/2 cup of food at a time again. My class schedule means that i have to be in the classroom at 8:00am. I eat breakfast in my room or at the classroom. I eat a packed lunch and then go out to dinner with two or three of my colleagues who are also staying at this hotel. I will list my daily menus below:

Monday-1/2 my sandwich for breakfast (i had to throw away about 1/6 of it because i was too full), lunch was the other half, back at my hotel I had a 100 cal yogurt and dinner was 3/4 cup of Asian chicken salad. I had a screwdriver to drink before dinner.

Tuesday-1/2 my sandwich for breakfast (again threw some away), lunch was the other half. In the afternoon someone got out snacks and I nibbled my way through about 6 of them (bad I know). For dinner I had 1/4 of a southwest chicken wrap thing. That evening I had 4 cherries (any more and I would have stuck).

Wednesday-another 1/4 of the southwest chicken wrap but I ended up throwing 1/2 of that way (challenge-what is 1/2 of 1/4 haha). I got full and kind of stuck and the sandwich was super spicy on day two. I will throw away the second 1/2 tonight. Dinner tonight was a chili covered baked potato and a trip to the salad bar-a waste really on me. I had 1/4 cup of beets, 1/4 cup of peas, 3 noodles from a macaroni salad. By the time my potato came i could eat 4 more bites of the chili and I was done. I took the rest back to my room and have eaten the chili off 1/2 and had a few bites of the potato.

so---eating out with others. Everyone on the team knows I have had lapband surgery except the physics prof. It has been really weird eating such a small amount of food in front of someone who I can tell notices. The math grad student (we have a really good working relationship and flip each other crap constantly) started laughing and gave me crap when I brought back such a small amount of salad bar food. I told him to shut up and if I didn't have a problem with my portion sizes he could just live with it...again the physics professor is clueless about this whole thing. He is totally nice and I would tell him but it is sort of a personal thing and kind of too much information I think....

Anyway as I was paying for dinner the other science ed professor and I walked over to the register alone and I asked her if I should just tell him because i am sure he notices the small amounts (I have had two waitresses ask me what is wrong with my food!!)...I always say it is great and bag it up to take home. She said I should just keep it to myself and it was fine....so I'm keeping it to myself.

Eating out is kind of strange but I am loving the sense of control I feel over my food intake. I am loving that I have so much more energy (I used to be exhausted at the end of a teaching day with swollen ankles). I love it that I am surely losing weight (I am going to have my husband bring my scale over the weekend!).

Up until Friday I was holding my wardrobe to 2 pairs of shorts, 1 pair of capris and two pairs of jeans. Well we are having a heat wave-in the 100's every day and I figured i Had better get some more pants (I have shirts because you can keep wearing them too big). I now have two more pairs of capris.

All in all-life is good....

Halfway to Goal

It took me until this evening to go in and change the ticker I use on my Obesity help avatar. I found, when I was done, that I am halfway to goal!! 67 pounds gone and 67 yo go (wooohoooo). I have set my goal at 170 at this point. That weight is what I weighed for most of high school (except during 2 weeks when I made it down to 160 and promptly gained it all back).

If I make it to 170 and still feel like I have more in me I will alter my goal and keep on going to 150. 150 is what the insurance companies want me to weigh.

A Thankyou to the Scheduler

Well the irritation and stress from yesterday and probably poor eating speed and chewing meant that I did not do so well with keeping food down. I had to do a little spitting after breakfast, had a pb at lunch and finally lost dinner altogether when I got a small piece of hamburger (lean ground cooked in non-patty form at home) stuck.

This morning I finally cracked 240 and am down to 237. I will take it and do my best to keep eating the way I should.

I got through to the scheduler and she claimed that she made the appointment and it was correct and had been that way all along (just crap because I had a whole conversation about the two weeks I was out of town)...I am still kicking myself for not checking two weeks ago.

But--it is still apparent I have some restriction. I am fully capable of controlling myself for the 2-3 weeks I have to wait. I am going to do my best to lose more weight while I wait.

The Schedulers Strike Again

So you would think I would have learned to check up on the schedulers at my surgeons office. They have screwed up my appointments before but no...i trusted them again to actually make the appointment they said they made. Well-in double checking my appointment time for today I found that The person...the @#$@$%^#@# person has made my appointment for next week despite having told her if I cannot have an appointment this week I cannot come in for two weeks. She said-you have an appointment next Wednesday at 11 She actually gave me an appointment in two weeks at 11am and Now I have to cancel it because i am out of town for two weeks and I will have to go yet another two weeks without a fill....I am steaming mad. Worse yet I am mad at myself for not double checking on the stupid woman. arghghghghghghghg

I will try and call at 8am but I find it unlikely I will get in.

I have not been very good and white knuckling my food intake-Despite that, however I am still holding at 240....Hopefully that will continue but making progress before I go to Germany in September would have been nice.

:(

Tina

Ready for the Fill Already!!

I had been on a foodie-bender so to speak since last week when my stomach opened and I was suddenly able to eat naughty foods. Compared to pre-band days and probably at Christmas time I am being very good but when comparing it to last month I have been very very bad.

I still cannot fathom why I am soo open. Sure I have lost some weight but I am fluctuating around the same 240-243 pounds and not really tightening up just floating around.

I had a little mishap with a hamburger (yep you read it HAMBURGER). I ate 2/3 of one. I enjoyed the hell out of it. About a half-hour later my stomach did a huge reject of the thing and i spend several minutes in a swimming pool bathroom desperately trying to quietly(yeah not easy) expel the bite that I swallowed too quickly in my excitement.

I cannot really eat a large amount of food at any time at least not any more than I could before (still 1/2 a cup) but I can now sit that half a cup out and eat more in between 5-15 minutes. I have tried to eat things that i know will stick longer (things that normally I would just hurl when I am tight). I have had untoasted sandwiches but made them and put half in the fridge before I ate it. The sandwiches seem to last the best. I have had some salad (but very cautiously) and been OK. You already heard about the hamburger.

Tonight I went to the movies again (Harry Potter was excellent!). It has been about 3 weeks since I went to the Greek chick flick movie. When I went to that one I could only eat 1/2 cup of popcorn and my diet coke moved through slowly. Tonight I knocked back a medium diet coke and then chased it with 1/2 a small bag of popcorn.

I am convinced it is time for a fill (how many more posts do you think it will really take!!) but I am scared at the same time that I will tighten up on my own and be in big trouble...or worse yet that something has malfunctioned.....

it is fine... it is fine... you just lost fat around your band... it is fine...I will keep saying this until I talk to the nurse practitioner on Wednesday.

Filming In a Video Store Near You

I left my laptop cord at work last week. As I only go in once a week the last thing I wanted to do was spend the gas to go 120 miles back in just to pick up a chord. So I quickly emailed all of the files I could think of needing this week onto my old computer and attempted to make do for the rest of the week until it was time for another meeting.

Well the other computer cord bit the dust and quickly ran out of battery and I was shit up a creek with no computer and papers to correct, write and submissions for my yearly ed conference to prepare. (the cord died on Sunday). So at 5:40 pm we were driving around to all of the computer stores we could think of cord hunting for both my new and old laptop (cords have really gotten cheaper than they used to be!!)

so finally getting to the title of this entry-We ended up at Fry's (techy-nerd heaven and my husband disappeared from view in about 2.5 seconds flat). This disappearing act is a common one for him. Grace and I (and anyone else along for shopping) spend the rest of our time looking up and down the plethora of techy aisles trying to find him. Well on Sunday-in our search I happened upon one of those events that used to make me shudder...A video camera catching walkers by. Normally I would spot the thing ahead of time and jump to the other side of the aisle to avoid being caught on film. well this time in my quest to search out aisles I walked right into the path...I saw...I did not shudder in horror....I thought...BETTER!! I think this is probably a significant event. I don't look scary lumpy anymore.

On the fill front I have an appointment for next Wednesday. I am trying to figure out how much fluid to ask for. There is a person in the lapband boards (living quite near you actually Caroline)who said her doctor has her drink cups of water after a fill (mine does this) and then eat half of a yogurt. He used this technique to figure out exactly how much fill she needed. Apparently his strategy was the water should go through quickly but the yogurt should hold up a bit.

I am thinking of dragging a pot of yogurt with me and giving it a try---Do you think the nurse practitioner would think I'm a crack pot?

What a Difference a Day Makes

Yesterday I was tight during the day. So tight I could not keep an attempted early lunch or later reattempted lunch down. My morning scale read around 242 By dinner my stomach seemed to open up and at a Red Robin dinner I had a cup of taco soup (out of fear), a bite of my husbands steak slider, 1/4 cup of coleslaw and 4 frenchfries and then a small package of red vines on the drive home (I could feel the food slip right through my band right after I ate it).

This morning I woke up, weighed in at 240 exactly and was open as wide as wide could be. I was soooooo hungry today-all day. I ate like a crazy person desperately trying to maintain some sense of control. I had my morning Diet Coke, by 10 my stomach was rumbling. I had a slice of cheese, at 11:30 I had 1/2 a toasted cheese sandwich then at 1 some chips with more said cheese. I searched for snacks all afternoon succumbing to three rich tea biscuits, two rice krispie treats, more cheese. By 5:30 I was starving again and had a piece of pizza and then a protein bar. Finally this evening I am eating a bowl of shredded wheat. arghghgghghg and my stomach is screaming in hunger. It is driving me crazy. I can feel each bit pass through the band minutes after I eat it.

It is funny because yesterday as I puked my two lunches up I moaned to myself that life wasn't fair and I might need an unfill or perhaps eat liquids only during the day and the voila today I am scared to death that my band has popped or something because the food is going through so easily.

By 1pm when i was hungry again (1/2 a grilled cheese sandwich always lasts me until 5pm when I have a good fill). I called the surgeons office for a fill appointment. They could not make one because i have to talk to someone special and that person was obviously out because I got no call back.

Tomorrow i am at the university for a work day and because i don't have time to eat when I am there I will hopefully undo the damage I have probably done today. I will probably regain the 2-3 pounds and tighten up again. I think I am going to have to white knuckle it for the next week or two and try and get a little distance below 240 so I can take a fill and hopefully progress down into the 230's :) such a lovely number that! :)

arghghghghghg I Hate My Husband!!!!!!!!!

He has some damned computer zen-I shall explain-

I just typed the post below. Blogger was behaving strangely and periodically showing auto-save error messages. I tried to publish the post a couple of times just to check that my laboriously written post did not disappear down the blogosphere and got a funky error message both times. I told my husband that Blogger was acting weird today and he promptly went to his blog and found no problems. I saved and posted a couple of more times and again error message. I then cut and pasted my post to a word document for safe keeping and my husband walked over to my computer and watched as I clicked the damned button again...well Mr. Computer zen who always blames me for any error or problem with computers saw me click and then saw the @#$#$# post work!!!!! arghghg

Although I am happy it worked It gets really irritating to have technology work by his mere presence. It is just plain wrong and evil!!!

bahahahahahahah-I got the error message on this post!! He saw it!! It did not work in his presence bahahahahaha-I am finally vindicated. He calmly (I never behave calmly when things don't work on the computer) and said--hunh they have a bug...

Hairloss-

I have had a few bouts with my hair falling out. I have a lot of hair and along with my daughters we have always had a problem with shedding (lots of clogged showers and tubs) however post-surgery I have had it come out in handfuls three times. The first two were in the weeks after each surgery (band installation and port fix). Apparently this is expected following surgeries due to some hair shedding alignment that occurs following anesthesia.

Well-it has been a considerable amount of time since my port fix and I am pulling hair out of my head like crazy. i just ran my fingers through my itchy hair (it gets itchy when it falls out) and I am pulling out multiple clumps of 5-10 hairs with each pass. I just created a pile of hair that I will need to run into the garbage can. I swept my new hardwood floor (still make me happy to say that!) and created debris pile piled high with my hair. Mine is distinct from everyone else in the house as they have mousy brown and mine is black-and located around my chair!!

Now I like my hair-I have about four body parts I like on myself (boobs, feet, lips and hair) and I am not sure sacrificing my hair for weight-loss is OK at this point. especially since I am now swinging around the 240-243 cycle (today 242) I have already had to go from two twists of my big pony tail holders to three in order to hold my hair up. and my daughters have started picking hair off of my clothes (not just one of two but 5 minutes of picking in order to make me presentable to go out the door). My daughters swear they cannot see scalp yet but I am getting a little nervous. I guess it is time to pump up the protein or go get some rogaine!!

Ahh Fridays-I just love them!

My teaching week is over. I have gotten soft being out of the classroom for so long. I only had 6 kids in the class but the classroom management made me tired in just three hours every day. After my experience I am left with a lot of questions-like: How much learning can happen when teachers are constantly dealing with student management issues? Now I can chalk some of the work involved to the fact that I have students from 2nd to 5th grade. One of the younger students was fairly oblivious to any other student's needs while two others were siblings and very vocal and not shy. I had two students who were a teacher's dream and then my own child who was jut plain old a pain in the rear for the week. We finally came to a truce with clearly laid out expectations with promised consequences (Dad will come and pick you up if you do not behave yourself). I did not manage this until today though!

Add this to the fact that the materials I intended to use were not very engaging for the students and I stayed one day ahead of them trying to keep them interested...The big hit of the week--weapons baby :) We went down to the computer lab a couple of days where they played physics games on the computer (http://www.physicsgames.net) and then when I noticed that they all loved roly poly cannon I decided to make catapaults. My first intention was windmill machines but the windmills did not work very well and they were not even very interested (I followed through and made them finish but only one or two students were impressed with their windmill machines). The catapaults were very popular. They had paper throwing fights, I let them launch one rock at the fence to get it out of their system and they launched for two days and still wanted to go out again at the end of the day today. The second most popular activity was quiet ball (you get a skoosh ball, ask the students to spread out and they must remain silent while they throw the ball around to each other. I am the judge and you can go out if you talk, throw the ball in an uncatchable way or do not catch the ball when it is thrown nicely. they asked to play that game all day long!!!

Two other popular activities were making helicopters out of very small paper cups (cut propellor like appendages up the sides of the cup and launch them over a box fan laid on its side across two tables (you must have air flow). another popular activity was the straw building competition-with 100 straws, 24 inches of masking tape, and a partner how tall of a structure can you build?

Diet wise things have been pretty crappy. Between TOM, going back on my birth control and teaching i have not eaten properly (too many carbs not enough protein) My weight went back up to 243 this morning. I am sure much of it is water but I need to do some more exercise and go back to my nightly protein drinks to go back on the straight and arrow.

I got a call from the surgeons office-I scheduled my 1 year evaluation appointment for the research study I am taking part in. I consider the surgery a success but of course like everyone else I wish I had lost more :) but 66 pounds is a heck of a lot better than I have ever done in a year and I am pleased as punch that I am in a size 18 down from a snug size 26.

My stomach caught up and Dreams

So My stomach has figured out it is hungry again. Even as I sit my stomach is growling from hunger. I still cannot eat that much when I try (I even tried ice cream last night again and had a hard time getting it down). I am holding at 240 this morning.

Volunteering to teach the engineering class sounded like a great idea at the time but I Had nightmares last night that I forgot my supplies and we had nothing to do. It takes soooo many things for engineering. Now I remember why I Like math and English. The cleaner subjects...Pencils, paper and a few manipulatives. I am hauling in screwdrivers, broken or old cameras, dremel, clocks, pencil sharpener for them to take apart today, a pack of water bottles to turn into spinners, apples for snack. a sharpie to mark them, bolts for weight, string....arghg I know i am going to forget something.

240 240 240 240 240 240 240 240

Yippeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-I am just soooo happy! I have not been this weight since 1987.

I am teaching an ages 6-10 group engineering camp this week. I hope it goes well. We are planning on focusing on wind-power. I made the mistake of getting rid of a bunch of wood scraps that I should have saved for it because they could have really made a permanent windmill. Today and tomorrow we are going to work on sailboats. The rest of the week their mills.

It will be a busy day!

The Scale Has Unsticked...Unstuck?

Well, well, well-the scale as of today finally unsticked...or unstuck? I am sure neither is grammatically correct but regardless I am now down to 242...just one glorious pound below that evil sticky number 243.

While stuck at 243 and for the moment (I am learning never to say I have definitively learned anything when it comes to food) my head seems to have moved to a new and vary unusual place for me. I am now not concerned about food. It has been coming on for a few days-briefly last week when I discovered that I had only eaten 700ish calories in the day and gradually until now when I find I would rather drink or do anything else than eat. It might have something to do with the heat so I am not going to say my drive to eat food is over for good but I will tell you about yesterday as a prime example of this whole thing.


So yesterday was the 4th of July. We being the crazed idiots that we are said it was OK for our contractors who did not finish installing our hard wood floor last weekend came back to finish the job. This time three guys came and in tandem installed our bamboo floor and tiled my new kitchen. They were supposed to be done and packed at 4 in order for our guests to arrive at 5. Well guests came early and the contractors worked late so by the time the party started I had men working on tiling my kitchen and my husband making food in the backyard and using the barbecue for a stove but lets take this back to the topic I started with-

Breakfast-I woke up dying for caffeine so I walked in my normal zombie way out to the garage where our old refrigerator holds drinks and kitchen overflow. I took my breakfast Diet Coke for my morning email and blog prowl. I am no longer hungry in the mornings so the Diet Coke was enough.

Lunch-I finally got hungry around 1:30 (this was after my daughters Grace and Cinda (age 7 and 19) rode their bikes in the pre-neighborhood parade cycle and parade-viewing) I walked the 1/2 mile to and from the parade location and home. When I got home I ate 1 dill pickle spear and 2 bites of a huge toasted meatloaf sandwich i brought home in a doggy bag on Tuesday. I threw the rest away and went back to work getting ready for the party.

Dinner-We had quite the variety of meats, side dishes, chips, cookies, drinks, etc. at the potluck party available. Normally this array would send me off into foody heaven...Ahh I love potato salad, burgers, hotdogs, chips...ahhh summer picnic food!! but not this year- I spent the first two hours drinking one diet coke and a couple of glasses of expertly crafted sangria (from my friend Suzi's husband Phillip). and then about the time everyone had finished their food I decided it was time to eat something. My daughter made chicken tenders chopped finely in barbque sauce(yummy and very band friendly). I had 1/4 cup of the saucy chicken, a small spoonful of potato salad (also yummy and from Suzi), 2 Doritos. That was enough-I felt it hit bottom and stopped for about a half hour and then had 1.5 small brownies. More drinking (water included) and then about midnight after all of the fireworks shows etc. My daughter cracked into an apple pie she made. We and the remaining guests had a small piece of pie. Mine was about 1inch at its widest part of the wedge. It was more than enough.

Yipppeeee finally I am not driven by food. I imbibe and then walk away. I hope this is a new place for me and not just some busy induced blip in time. Instead of watching the clock for meals I have noticed I wait until I feel a little dizzy before heading to the kitchen. Oddly my stomach doesn't growl at all...

I have to say that this is what I envisioned the band to be---I do not know if this is really what it is supposed to be like but I will take it even for just a few weeks!