Down another pound

Wt. 232 a total of 72 pounds-I really do need to get a ticker on this blog. Last night David took some pictures so that I could update my profile picture. Although I can feel the difference when I touch my face (I can feel a jaw bone etc.) The pictures still show me with my same old fat face.

I am about to head off to Seattle to visit my second oldest daughter (Meghan) and go to a lapbanders bar b que. This weekend is an Obesity Help conference up in Bellevue and some banders from the discussion board have flown up and will be in town. I got an invite from a Seattle area bander and am going up for it. I'm not sure if I will go to the conference on Saturday or not.

Adios!!

Hungry or Thirsty?

Today was a work day. I got up and had my daily morning Diet Coke. I packed about 2 oz of cheese and 4 crackers and ate them on my drive south. I made the mistake of stopping into the talk some 'business' with one of the professors. I warned him that I needed to get lunch before my 1pm meeting but in the end I was out of his office at 10 minutes to 1 and therefore did not get my lunch.

My office-mate offered me my pick of his protein bar collection (he stocks them because he is a vegetarian and needs more protein in his day but he knows I use them to supplement my lack of quantity). So I picked out a nutty fruity bar thing because his super dense protein bars are kind of yucky. Well I ate it....then the meeting started......then I remembered that nuts do not sit to well in my stomach anymore. I have to say I almost made it through the meeting but eventually I had to excuse myself and rid my poor stomach of the now peanut-butter blocking my stoma.

After the meeting I was thirsty (nothing besides the diet coke until 3pm) so I went to find some water. a small bottle later and 3 hours of shooting the breeze with my office mate (mostly work related) and I was headed home at 6ish.

Now if you recall from my earlier posts my boyfriend McDonalds has always held an allure. Today even though I was really hungry (I think) I somehow drove past it, saying to myself, If I am really hungry I will stop at A&W before I got on the freeway (20 min down the road). I got there and said..Im OK Ill keep going and go to the next McDonalds down the road and if I am hungry stop...I did this all the way until I was about 30 minutes from home. I cracked but did so by stopping for a mocha frap at Starbucks. I could have turned right and gone for McDonald but I turned left instead...

By the time I got home I had a pretty horrific headache. I think it was a thirsty or hungry headache but I really do not know for sure because frankly I have never been thirsy or hungry that I know of....I always ate or drank when I wanted to. I always had enough stomach space to load up enough to get through a 2 or 3 hour meeting. I never would have gotten sick on a nut bar. Most importantly-I never would have gone all day without either food or drink like I did.

Ok, so I am well aware that I should have done a better job of planning (not my forte at all when it comes to eating or drinking). This result is a curious one, however. I remember growing up and everyone would say ..oh make sure your sister is fed as she gets grouchy. I know my own daughters' get headaches but I have never had that said about me because I have never, frankly been hungry or thirsty. I have needed a drink sure or felt that it was time for a meal....but never ever to the point that I was grouchy or had a headache or where my stomach growled.....

So finally my dilemma is I am not sure which it really was...hunger or thirst but it was something and at 10pm it finally eased off. I had a bit of cheese after and now I feel perfectly fine...weird but cool in a weird kind of way.

Note The Added Pics in the Busy, Busy, Busy Post Below-

Howdy-i worked at mastering both picture taking last week and picture loading tonight. They don't look half bad if I do say so myself-scroll down and you can see them :)

I will try and be better at the whole pic thing from now on. I do enjoy looking at other's picture posts but have never managed to do it myself.

Tina

Never Have Children-

So Today I was giving my kitchen a good scrub. In my absence for two weeks they did a pretty good job of keeping the main rooms tidy but the cabinet fronts were looking dirty so I did the dishes some floor sweeping and began wiping down the dirtiest offenders. The garbage cabinet-this one makes sense and the drawers with saran wrap and foil were the dirtiest (not sure why that one was so dirty). While I was cleaning there were these splashes of red that would not come off. On closer inspection the red splashes went across to another cupboard and a couple on the floor. I asked my oldest daughter (who feeds my grandson pickled beets quote often) if she had recently cut up some beets or spilled beet juice. She said somewhat forcefully that it was not beet juice and then after a few minutes confessed that she had opened a cupboard door (the medicine shelf) and a bottle of fingernail polish had fallen from on high and shattered all over my kitchen. Apparently she and my younger daughter (Cinda) had attempted to clean all of it up but they must have missed the three areas I then discovered today.

While in the cleaning process I also found a big chip out of the cupboard. She is claiming no knowledge and it is likely from some broom accident or something.

Two years ago while I was away teaching on my two week stint the three older girls actually tried to open a large jar of pickles in my once carpeted family room. They opened it it spilled and apparently vinegar launched all over my furniture and carpet!!

arghghghgh if you value you nice things avoid children. My office mate suggests that we should just live in a hovel until the kids leave from home before attempting any home-fix it.

sigh.

There-two posts in one day.

This Weight It Is A Creepin and Hot Flashes

So much to talk about so little space. Today I am down to 233. Yesterday was a strange and good food day for weight loss. On Sunday I got all cocky and decided I was loose enough to carefully ingest 1/3 of a hotdog from Costco. Yeah well I was wrong. It was strange really because I think my stoma was OK with the thing it was my lower stomach that immediately said-"whooooah you don't eat hotdogs anymore and I will be damned if you are going to start back now". So after about 4 hours of just not feeling right and a couple of spits in the sink the hotdog made a reappearance (just how many euphemisms can I come up with for barf anyway???

This event apparently tightened me back up again and yesterday I was not hungry all day. I had 1 cup of my chocolate caramel protein drink, a slice of cheese and two crackers for lunch, and for dinner 6 slices of cucumber in vinegar, 1oz of teriaki salmon, 1 tempura carrot and one small dumpling (shared a bento box with my daughter at a local Japanese restaurant). Speaking of which-Japanese restaurants are good for bandsters. It was the smallest meal I have had show up on my plate in quite some timed and the meat was clearly separate from the rest so I could eat it first. Now I am not sure how sushimi would go down on a band but my husband raw fished himself for dinner (I took a pass---blech).

My nagging worry now is that if I am not eating a whole lot and I am losing weight what the heck am I going into the docs for a fill for...arghghghghghg They are so hard to get an appointment for and here I am now doubting whether I should get one. The appointment is tomorrow!!!

Ok I have held off on this conversation for a while as I worried that it might be too much information for everyone. I then got to thinking that if this blog is going to accurately document what I am going through during the whole bandy thing I guess I had better include it. I have not been squeamish about barf but apparently I am about the monthly bleeding thing but here goes....Apparently hormonal issues are common when you lose weight. I had my band surgery postponed 4 months because of excess (oh and I am being serious here) bleeding last May. Well this time it is not a bleeding to death scenario just a bleeding long term problem. I have had a slow period since July 4. Yep that is right-one month and one week. Yes it is starting to worry me. I have an appointment next Monday with a gynecologist. I called her receptionist yesterday trying to get in a tad earlier but apparently she is booked solid until then. I told her I had been bleeding since July 4 but she seemed unphased by that statement (do patients use that one to get good appointments? is it no big deal for a gynecologist's receptionist to hear stuff like that? Did she just not listen? hmmmmm).

From what I have read as your fat goes your estrogen goes with it (we apparently store estrogen in fat). I am not sure if that is the case here or if I am having the May problem back. Either way I suspect I am in for the big Menopause. I am up this morning at 7:00 due to the worst hot flash in my life (sweaty and I already had my blankets thrown off). Last May they gyno put me on birth control to help with all of this but apparently that has now stopped working and I am going to have to start looking into a plan two. At the time she talked about ablation (some sort of laser D and C). My General doctor highly recommends it. She says it is God's gift to womanliness :) Ok she didn't really use those words but apparently it takes care of the bleeding problem for good (no more periods)and I would be able to go off the pill.

I will keep you posted....

Busy Busy Busy

I never did get a chance to post again last week. We finished up a very rewarding week teaching. I survived the second week with my husband and daughter sharing my hotel room. They even cleaned up after themselves twice!

On the weekend we went the county fair. We were going to go to the rodeo but a massive thunder storm came through the fair and trapped us under a tent for 20 minutes. Hunger finally drove us out and we ran to the 4-H building looking for dinner. My anti-fast food 8 year old rejected all the food options in the 4-H building so we ran to the adult competition building but their was no food there. After these two stops the rain finally stopped and we were able to go back outside and Grace finally accepted a hot dog. Grace gets really grouchy (think devil child) so we got her fed first and walked back over to the rodeo grounds. We both found something at that concession stand but before we could take our seats they called the rodeo due to mud.

On Sunday we returned to the rodeo after they completely pulled the top foot of soil off the rodeo grounds and replaced it with dry dirt. David brought his camera and we got some great pictures. Grace who usually has a short attention span wanted to stick it out for the whole thing. David and I were ready to go long before she was. It was very hot and humid but we held on until the end when the girls did barrel-racing.

Tuesday night after work we all went an hour south of where I was working to a observatory where they had about 20 telescopes set up along with the big one that viewed through the move-able roof. We watched a slide show about the planets and space-y stuff we got to see through the telescopes and had a guy show us the various constellations with a very nifty super-powered laser pointer.



This is Grace launching a rocket she made at the conservatory during a day class. We went back later that night for the telescopes and show.

The rest of the week was work, dinner, perhaps a drive around town or paperwork in my room and then bed while Grace and David went fishing, boating, the movies, bowling etc.


We were going to stay over until Saturday but were just plain too tired on Friday evening and I was ready to come home to my own bed. We packed up and got home at about 11. After unloading the car and dropping everything in the front entry we crashed.

Yesterday instead of unpacking and putting away my older daughters (Nichole and Cinda) came over and we went down to the Portland farmers market. It was totally crowded but beautiful and full of awesome fruits and vegetables.


I am in the foreground and my husband, David, is in the background. We just parked and are walking on our way to the farmer's market (photo taken by Cinda)


Grant (my grandson) Smelling the flowers (photo take by Tina)


Some Vegetables (photo taken by Tina)




A really cool house that was in sad shape when it was moved onto the Portland State University (PSU) campus back in the lat 90s. As a graduate student at the 'other' state university I used to sneak into the PSU library to dig out journal articles for my dissertation. The library is just south of this building so over a couple of years I got to see it renovated into the beauty it is today. This is about as old as it gets up here in the northwest. The tomato harvest is in as can be seen in the second picture.



On our way back to the car with our loot. From left to right is Nichole (daughter age 24), Cinda (daughter age 19), Grace (daughter age 8). Grant (Nichole's son is flapping around in Cinda's arms)

Wohoooooooooooooo I Weigh the Same as my Husband :)

Today I am officially 235-woooooooooooohooooooooooooooooooooo. We did lots of walking yesterday and of course the exercise probably did the trick. I also bought some more protein powder (left mine at home) and a bottle thingy that has a shaker inside (like a wire whisk). I take two scoops of the powder, 2 cups of water and shake-a-shake. It is then drinkable. I have chocolate caramel. 21 grams per scoop and 120 calories per cup. I doubled it because I had such little protein in the last week.

There is more to say but I will try and blog more tomorrow.

Tina