Onward and Upwards

Things are good. I had a lovely mini-break in San Francisco at the conference I attended. It is the same conference I attended in New York this fall. Each year they hold it in the Autumn on the east coast and in the Spring on the West. The weather was partly rainy and partly sunny but provided enough sunshine that I was able to crack out my sunglasses once or twice. This work-related conference always revitalizes me and I Love the people who attend.

I have a sore backside from sitting in chairs all day at the conference. Do any of you have any post-weight loss butt-itis issues? It is seriously painful to sit for any length of time and as I type am shifting from once cheek to another wincing in pain.

Some of my colleagues knew me when I was at my largest and asked what I had done to lose the weight. I told them the truth and they were very gracious and asked just the right amount of questions. I even shared information with a few people who did not know me when fat. One person, who is a nurse, said.."I thought you had lost a considerable amount of weight" (citing my loose skin and chicken neck). She did not use those words (those are mine alone). She was very polite about it but shared with me how her sister had gone through bypass surgery and plastic surgery for skin removal. I am still not sure if I will ever pursue any skin tuck surgeries. Mostly I think no..but at times I wonder if clothes would fit better, or if I would feel better with a tummy tuck, or leg lift or arm work or even a boob job....right now it is still no but I continue to debate periodically.

I am a sharer..but really there is some sense of reward in being honest about this weight-loss method. This person lives in Chicago and said I should give her a ring when I am there. I didn't tell her about the whole BOOBS group but am thinking I will invite her for a drink in September.

I am still feeling good. I think I am over the hump and am vowing to simplify my life and get back to creating healthy boundaries. This whole thing is a process but one I am determined to master. :)

Happy Memorial day holidays everyone!

xxxoooo

Feeling Normal-ish Again

Ok...I'm back :)

I have experienced this depression thing once before (years ago). It was not nearly to the extreme that some suffer but for me it was debilitating. The great news was that Prozac nipped it right in the bud and I sorted my issues out shortly after. The first time I was having some martial problems, doing school, and stressing out over my ability to get a job after I graduated from college.

This time There has been a little stress over work but nothing like it was the last time. This time the depression blind-sided me. I had already made the job decision, the house was sold, David and I were doing fine. The kids were all fine. The weight-loss was great. I really have no reason really except physical things I guess. peri-menopause, something else??

I feel much better again today. Although the last few days have been a two steps forward one step back routine I really feel like the meds are working. They are not working the same as last time (I felt better right away and felt the side effects really early). The only side effect I am experiencing at this point is weight-loss (not such a bad one after all). Today was pretty stressful at work and I had very little difficulty coping.

I hope everyone is feeling good and living in sunshine.

xxxooo

Trading Roller Coaster Weightloss for Attitude

The rail car was moving in a upward direction today. The lethargy is gone. The scurvy even seemed a tad far-fetched at the time I was laying on the couch moaning of my fatigue yesterday :).

I had to attend a meeting today for work so my 'day off' didn't happen. Tomorrow is a long day but I am hoping to take a pass on the Wednesday work day to make up for losing Monday.

After arriving home somewhat early I got to sit down for a bit and then went with Nichole to pick up her farm share and hear about her new boyfriend.

Then home again where I watched a bit of TV and did some sewing, Grace needs a costume for the grade 4 Oregon Trail unit she is working on at home. I don't feel up to unburying my sewing machine so I am doing a bit of hand sewing to remake an old calico nightgown of mine into a pioneer skirt, put an apron together out of some muslin and and stitch up a bonnet. I am still working on the skirt-so the others will probably have to be fit in on Wednesday.

I am off to San Francisco on Thursday to attend a conference for a few days. Hopefully my mood enhancement will stay up and the trip will go smoothly.

xxxooo

Really Tired and Achy Today

I wanted to spend all day on the couch. I forced myself to get up and walk to our nearby farmers market. I had coffee :). We drove to get David some new jeans. We drove to Ikea and bought a TV stand. As requested by one of my daughters I made enchiladas for dinner. Cinda came over and helped and then like the good budding nurse she is..she looked up possible vitamin deficiencies I might be suffering from.

Today I was very achy and tired...lethargic even. I upped my prozac amount as suggested but I am not feeling anything different yet. Funnily enough Cinda's prognosis was scurvy :) A lack of vitamin C.

I do drink quite a bit of orange juice but I have also been craving it over the last few days. it makes me go hmmm at any rate. When I saw the doctor I did not ask for a blood test but now I am thinking I should have. Either that or start taking my vitamins better.


I slept in today but am off for an early night as well..

xxxxooo




xxxooo

Mixed Bag Day

Technology:

We have now officially reentered the digital age. The lovely guys from the internet company came and installed our internet service today finally. With the internet I gained some television. We now have Netflix and Hulu but no live TV. Apparently that will come soon??

Consulate Incompetence:

While David was waiting around for the internet guys to arrive I drove about 40 miles away to pick up some mail from UPS that they had tried to deliver to our old house. So here is the weird thing...it was from the UK consulate. They were supposed to be sending David's passport. First of all annoying and lacking sense they sent it with a private company instead of the postal service. Of course we notified the postal service of our move but had no idea that we should figure out a way to notify the UK consulate (one would think the government agency would actually use another for postal services). The time from initial application to this mail took enough time that we got a sales offer and actually closed on the house in the mean time.

Now for the somewhat freaky bit...the letter did not contain his passport but a denied one. Somehow there was a lot of missing bits to his application. With the amount of screw ups I have caught David in during the last few weeks and the sheer mistrust of immigration related institutions to get things figured out puts into question just who is at fault. The consulate said our credit card did not work (i checked the numbers it is a working credit card). They said they did not get a signature from a non-relative. He got the signature from our friend and I saw it when acquired but did not see it go into the envelope. Who knows...I am now a little worried that he will get a passport in time. I am not sure if we will need to travel to some location to hand walk it through, send a bucket load of money to pay for an expedited one or if he can even get into the UK with an expired passport and spend a period of our vacation standing around some office in the UK getting his passport sorted.


My mood:

My attitude took a bit of a dip today. I had my appointment with a recommended psychologist. I do not think it is a good fit. She made some good points but she is very young and did not appear to have any experience with the issues involved in having a family. I will not say that it was a complete wash but she was a bit heavy on the advice and a bit weak on the listening. She really focused on telling me I needed to take care of me. I will agree I need to be more mindful of my own needs but I guess I was hoping for some hints on how to develop barriers (remember that post quite a while ago when I decided I needed to improve mine) without resorting to anger. I was also hoping to get some help in dealing with the frustration and irritability I have been battling of late. Inexplicably she wrote me another prescription for prozac (which I already have??)...

I came home and we went out for a bit of shop and then came home and I took a nap. I woke up around 7:30 pm and ate a bit of dinner, forced myself to take a walk, and came home to clean house and do a bit of paper-sorting.

I am hoping for a bit more sunshine even though there is a forecast of rain tomorrow.

xxxooo

Back in the Saddle Again

So..as predicted I can already feel the effects of the meds...I am not feeling happy clappy, skippidy but definitely not the sad/angry combo I was battling over the last few weeks.

In fact today, inspired by Jen's butt callous post and in tribute to her road rash picture I got on my bike and road to work. Apparently it was ride to work day (I didn't know about this until I was told by a friend later in the afternoon). The ride in to work went well. The roads around our new house are AWESOME!! flat and low traffic levels. There are a few places with no bike space on the side of the road but in these places there are wide and unused sidewalks. I rode my bike the mile or two to the office of a colleague for a meeting.

I had one little mishap when I hit a particularly big bump on one of the trails I took. Apparently my tire ended up with a pinch puncture (sounds kind of cute eh?). By the time I finished the ride my tire was flat as a pancake. I pulled out my trusty emergency flit fixer CO2 cannister but it didn't work (duh..a hole meant the air leaked right out again). I do carry an inner-tube but do not know how to actually do anything with it :).

My colleague gave me a lift home and I took my tire in and paid a guy to both diagnose my problem and give me a new tube. He suggested I take a tube changing class...sigh...i guess I am going to have to comply finally.

I purchased plane tickets to San Francisco for next weekend. I have a conference from Thurs-Sunday. I have rented a car as well. I do not know of any fellow boobs or banders that read this in that part of the world but if you do and want to meet for coffee or something let me know.

OH and back to Jen...she is doing blog design these days and has a cool give away int he works..she did after all design my header! :) Go check it out and nominate someone!

ending this with the xxx and ooo's plus a :)...I'm feelin it.

Family Doctors are Great.

Not only did I get a quick appointment with my family doctor today but she was so sympathetic and helpful. I really, really think that everyone would have a much easier time with the band if surgeons installed the thing and family doctors monitored and did adjustments.

So my doctor suggested that It was perfectly normal feeling this way. That although the band helped me achieve this great weightloss and that I might not have had mood issues up until now it is only logical that some of the coping mechanisms I used food for before the band would rear their ugly heads again eventually. She felt that part of my mood issues were peri-menopause related. She gave me a good recommendation for a pshychologist (and commiserated on the difficulty to get decent help in that area in the Portland area).

She also gave me a prescription for a small dose of Prozac stating that if I had any trouble with side effects I should give her a call and she would work out another medication or an add on one. She also warned me not to discount going to the counselor when the Prozac kicked in because although I might feel loads better I needed to take care of the 'stuff'. Finally she said she thinks an itchy rash I have had on my back for the last several months is related to all of the stress stuff and she thinks that it will get better when my head gets better.

Just doing something about all of this crud has made me feel much better.

xxxooo

Debbie Downer Continues

I spent this morning making appointments. The lapband guy-closest appointment for the great OZ-more than one month. The soonest appointment for his nurse practitioner-Similar but two days sooner.

I called the psychologist affiliated with the department where I had my surgery. They will not take a new patient unless they have a recommend from my surgeon...who cannot be seen for more than a ##!@%$@ month. I had a little meltdown with the receptionist who must be used to people melting down on the phone because she offered to send a message to the doctor and see if he would allow me to make an appointment (after of course they checked my medical insurance).

I then called my general practitioner who can see me tomorrow!!! What is wrong with our medical system when there is such a discrepancy? Tomorrow I will give her my woe is me story and ask her for a recommendation. Perhaps she knows someone better than the over-worked and un-approachable people at my surgeons office.

We won't even talk about fills or no fills (I am sure my head needs sorting before I go back to work on weight-loss).

Ruminating

I had a boat-load of work to get done today. When I wrote a list this morning the tally was 20 items. I managed four in the end. most of the hang-up was uncooperative technology resulting from our move. We are on week three without any reliable internet. Television requires hooking the internet dongle we have (A mobile device David used when traveling) into his computer and hooking up to live stream netflix. Needless to say we reserve it for the evenings. getting the printer to work required plugging it in while the dongle is off (apparently they do not co-exist well). Getting the scanner to work is also tricky as I cannot then send the file but there aren't enough USB ports to plug in a thumb-drive so I have to unplug the keyboard in order to fit in the thumb-drive...arghghghghgh. Of course all of this I had to learn from David because I could not for the life of me figure it all out (or he set it up and I did not ask).

Anyhow today's lack of work progress was VERY frustrating. I had a little bit of a meltdown (thankfully mostly own my own-except for the brief phone call to get help from David). I think..I have discovered something. I am mentally unable to deal with high amounts of stress. I have noticed that a lot of us lapband bloggers are doers. Hard workers, high power workers, busy people with high expectations. I am one and I get that I choose this lifestyle but this got me to thinking..why? Why do I choose it? Why am I unable to deal with stress and still choose it? and guess what else i discovered? I ate to diffuse my stress and now that I cannot I do not know what to do...In my kitchen today I had a full on freezer moment. Thankfully there was only one serving of ice cream available because I think I would have attempted a tub moment today and then ended up embracing the garbage disposal with a return tub of ice cream. I was too busy to call for doctors appointments today but I did decide (of course the ice cream time should have been used as phone call time). I need a shrink and how.

I struggled all the rest of the day with strong desires of 'I want'...I didn't get but I still 'want' . I want David to be and do for me what I am sure I should be able to do for myself. I want to stuff the frustration and anger and disappointment back down and the band wont let me. I want to learn how to look at life with some sense of centered-ness. I am sure I should have learned this before now but somehow it is all hitting the fan. I think most of the last two years I played avoid instead of deal. It is time to deal with the 'stuff'.

xxxooo

Nothing Like A Steaming Pile of Horse Poop to Brighten Ones Day

I feel a bit better today.

1.David and I talked things out yesterday and made nice.
2.The rash is still there but I slathered it with some cream (it still itches).
3.I was not quite as achy this morning.
4. Yesterday David and I collaborated and made two raised bed (no arguments or anything!!)
5. This morning we walked over to our local farmers market and bought two heirloom tomato plants and some herbs. Later we got dirt and I planted them...Nice renewal thing.
6. Grace had horseback riding lessons and while she rode I mucked stalls (for some reason this makes me feel happy?)


Yes that is horse poop in the wheel barrow

The horse is a curious sort..she kept looking over at what I was doing.



She came out for a photo op..meet Callie. She is a a Morgan (apparently that is a breed type). She used to be a snooty feisty horse but since she got a doorway stall she has turned into a gentle little thing.


Tonight David and I will sit around and watch some TV or unpack some more boxes :)

xxxooo

Not Doing So Well-

I am either getting old or sick or something.

I know I have been busy with work and moving and hauling boxes but I have been waking up in pain for the last couple of weeks. My legs get crampy and pain shoots up them. My shoulders hurt and my back. I also have some sort of a weird rash on my back that comes and goes.

In addition, David and I have not been getting along-sort of depressingly as a matter of fact. I am beginning to think that the old saying that people move or have a baby when their marriage is going bad isn't really the case. It is the move itself (or the baby-only I am skipping the baby part and sticking with the move) that causes the thing.

I have no idea if any of this is band related, life related or just a funk but I guess it is time to have a visit with a doctor and psychiatrist (or psychologist). I have a friend at work who recommended her doctor but apparently she is a church related person (and church and I are not the mixing kind). I think my band surgeon works with people in his office. I guess it won't hurt to talk to someone who at least has experience with weight-loss related emotional changes even if this isn't really related.

Crazy and I should have Known it Would Be

I have been missing as the combined load of moving, working, more working, parenting, yada yada..have made me grateful for coffee.

I am retaining water again (puffy ankles) and feel like I am gaining weight. David keeps assuring me that I am not gaining girth but I am dubious.

Grace and I are on full countdown for Summer! June 12 is the day here...-34 days!!

xxxooo

Moving Bites

Did I once say I kind of liked moving? Yeah..well...I don't anymore. We might rent this house forever. We finally finished moving out of our old house-minus a missing wild cat (more on that story and scratch pictures later). Today was supposed to involve one more dump run, one house run, and cleaning. We arrived home at 9pm...I am exhausted and am on the hot seat at work because i have spotty internet and have not been attentive enough.

Tomorrow is another 12 hour work day (my day job and night job back to back). The new house will just have to stay messy and unpacked.

I think I dreamed up this move thing to simplify our lives??? it hasn't yet.

xxxooo

Eek..we have soooo much stuff!!

We are still moving. It is like a bottomless purse from Harry Potter--The more I take out of the cupboards the more stuff there is waiting to be taken. We finished all of the furniture tonight but I have to start cleaning tomorrow and strip my yard of my yard art and pots (I have way too much of it). I will take and send pics of the new place in all its boxy glory when I get a chance to breathe.

The eating thing has been crazy-I go from too tight to loose and back again. We have been subsisting on fast food and Starbucks. This morning I found my milk steamer and managed to make my own cup of coffee to enjoy on my new patio. I couldnt find the mint stuff though so had to have a plain mocha (I still enjoyed it in the sun on my patio though!!)

We might go offline for a while as we are having trouble getting internet to the new place. David has a wireless device from work that we have to share!! Needless to say he is chomping at the bit for me to get off the net so he can have it!

ciao for now! xxxooo