That would be the sound my mind is making as every day until my Duodenal Switch surgery passes. It would be funny, except for the part where I can't sleep. And dammit, but I need my sleep!
It's gotten so bad that two nights ago I was so exhausted from previous nights of next to no sleep that I not only slept through the alarm clock when it went off for The Husband to get up, but I also slept through him kissing me before he went into the kitchen to get his stuff together and almost slept completely through him kissing me goodbye! Aaack! (Although, I must admit that it is really, really nice to be awoken by the love of your life sweetly kissing you and stroking your hair. Aaahhh!)
I'm usually the person who is wide awake ten minutes before the alarm is set to go off, no matter what time, so being this dead to the world because of exhaustion is something totally new for me. No matter how tired I am (and I'm always tired lately it seems) my mind just cannot relax for a single moment. We go to bed after an exhausting day, and while The Husband is out cold, I'm lying there with my eyes closed and mind a-whirling for hours on end, it seems. Which means that I am constantly feeling like putting my head down on my desk and taking a nap. (I did that yesterday after my comatose morning. Shhhhh! Thank God for the new cubicle that I'm in!)
As a result, I am consuming more caffiene than ever in the form of sodas and coffee - and the combination of sugar and caffene buzz and then the abrupt crashes from coming off of the stimulants is making me cranky both in body and attitude. My acid reflux is killing me every day, and I am becoming more and more snappy when something annoys me.
I think it's time to see the doctor and get a prescription for Ambien or something like that. I also need to start back on the occasional Prozac because I know that my hormones are going to go completely ape-shit when I have surgery and all that estrogen is released from those fat cells. I really don't feel like snapping and committing an axe murder just because somebody changes the channel on the TV to something I don't like, so I consider this a pre-emptive strike at saving my marriage and preventing me from doing some jail time over something really unnecessary. Stripes just aren't my thing, you know? They totally make you look fatter than you are, and Lord knows I don't need anymore of THAT going on.
* * * * *
Well, the Farewell to Food Tour (tm Dagny) continues for me. Tomorrow, I'm going to meet my friend Amy who had the DS for lunch at one of our local Chinese eateries. This should be fun - actually seeing how much she eats five years out from this thing. While I'm able to indulge my tastebuds with Crab Rangoons and Orange Chicken. Mmmmm!
Also, I just ordered four of Lou Malnati's deep dish pizzas to be shipped here tomorrow. The Husband and I LOVE Lou Malnati's pizza, but let's face it. We can't afford to fly to Chicago on a regular basis to satiate our tastebuds. So, it's going to come to us. I'm going to savor every last bite, dammit. Chinese for lunch and Lou Malnati's for dinner. There's about five pounds gained for the day right there! Aaack! But it'll taste ever so good!
And next year at this time, when I've lost 100 pounds or so, I'm going to order another pizza from Lou Malnati's, and we're going to eat it in celebration, because life with the DS is going to be so much better than life as it is now. I can't wait for this new life to begin.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
A Dark and Stormy Night Indeed!
This year's 10 winners of the Bulwer-Lytton contest, AKA "Dark and Stormy Night Contest" (run by the English Dept. of San Jose State University), wherein one writes only the first line of a bad novel:
10) "As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break wind in the echo chamber, he would never hear the end of it."
9) "Just beyond the Narrows, the river widens."
8) "With a curvaceous figure that Venus would have envied, a tanned, unblemished oval face framed with lustrous thick brown hair, deep azure-blue eyes fringed with long black lashes, perfect teeth that vied for competition, and a small straight nose, Marilee had a beauty that defied description."
7) "Andre, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his mind as he crept along the East wall: 'Andre creep... Andre creep... Andre creep.'"
6) "Stanislaus Smedley, a man always on the cutting edge of narcissism, was about to give his body and soul to a back alley sex-change surgeon to become the woman he loved."
5) "Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her from eeking out a living at a local pet store."
4) "Stanley looked quite bored and somewhat detached, but then penguins often do."
3) "Like an over-ripe beefsteak tomato rimmed with cottage cheese, the corpulent remains of Santa Claus lay dead on the hotel floor."
2) "Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn't know the meaning of the word 'fear'; a man who could laugh in the face of danger and spit in the eye of death -- in short, a moron with suicidal tendencies."
AND THE WINNER IS...1) "The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's deception, screaming madly, 'You lied!"
10) "As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break wind in the echo chamber, he would never hear the end of it."
9) "Just beyond the Narrows, the river widens."
8) "With a curvaceous figure that Venus would have envied, a tanned, unblemished oval face framed with lustrous thick brown hair, deep azure-blue eyes fringed with long black lashes, perfect teeth that vied for competition, and a small straight nose, Marilee had a beauty that defied description."
7) "Andre, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his mind as he crept along the East wall: 'Andre creep... Andre creep... Andre creep.'"
6) "Stanislaus Smedley, a man always on the cutting edge of narcissism, was about to give his body and soul to a back alley sex-change surgeon to become the woman he loved."
5) "Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her from eeking out a living at a local pet store."
4) "Stanley looked quite bored and somewhat detached, but then penguins often do."
3) "Like an over-ripe beefsteak tomato rimmed with cottage cheese, the corpulent remains of Santa Claus lay dead on the hotel floor."
2) "Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn't know the meaning of the word 'fear'; a man who could laugh in the face of danger and spit in the eye of death -- in short, a moron with suicidal tendencies."
AND THE WINNER IS...1) "The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's deception, screaming madly, 'You lied!"
Monday, June 26, 2006
At least we got free room and board. And good hotel sex.
Eeesh. Never in my life have I anticipated something so much in order to be so disappointed by it. Unbelievable.
The marriage weekend? The one I rescheduled my life-changing surgery for because this class was going to be just as life-changing, if not more? Was a complete waste of time. Both The Husband and I found it completely lacking.
There's a reason why they don't want you to tell other people about it and make them anticipate it because it's "secret." Because it's boring, has no cohesive structure, is stuck in the 80s and basically takes far too damn long.
Maybe our disappointment was because both The Husband and I have been involved in two highly engaging marriage classes - one of which we've done twice. We're too spoiled, and know what it means to attend a directed seminar on how to make marriages better by applying Biblical standards. We know the information you're going to be presented with because let's face it - the Bible basically doesn't change. Different translations, maybe, but it's the same thing. But why we continue to attend them and seek out new speakers is because we are looking for new nuggets of information that can be discovered even though the big stuff remains the same.
Let me tell you the one little nugget that we gleaned from this seminar. Are you ready for it? Here it is: Junior Highschoolers? They're "pre-people."
Yes, folks, we went to an all-weekend-long marriage seminar and learned that the 12-15-year-old set are "pre-people." Shoot me now!
Very little of the actual seminar was on how to apply things to marriage. We talked about things like forgiveness and communication, and wrote love letters to each other dealing with these topics, but the whole thing was lacking. It seemed as if it couldn't make up its mind if we needed to be bludgeoned into becoming believers or if we actually wanted to hear about how to apply the whole God/Christ, Christ/Church, Husband/Wife relationship thing that so many people just don't understand and have frankly never heard before. THAT's what a marriage seminar should be about. Not about focusing on how we need to praise God and how we should do that.
But the worst thing? They made us sing hymns. Not just any hymns, but obscure ones that the vast majority of us attending had NEVER even heard of. It's one thing for everyone to sing "Amazing Grace" and another to sing these hymns that according to copyright information were from the sixties and seventies and had never seen the light of day since. Oh, and there was no accompaniment.
This obvious dating of the whole class is apparently because the people that run American Family Services are in their seventies and eighties and possibly nineties. They are part of what some of us call the "old guard." And it isn't that the old guard isn't needed anymore, it's just that most of the young people that would come to seminars like this just don't identify with many of the things that the old guard love. The old guard loves these hymns. Most of the young people in today's emergent churches have never heard them. To insist that we sing these hymns, however lovely in sentiment, creates a level of uncomfortableness that I don't think was ever overcome throughout the weekend.
They also played those insipid TBN-style hymns with the organs and harps - lovely words, but the style of music just makes you think of three piece suits, wingtips, shoulder pads, eyelet lace dresses and Tammy Fay Baker hair and makeup. Not the kind of thing you want when you've got young, hip people that are the core of the modern church attending a seminar.
Just so you know, it wasn't as bad as all that. We had some friends there that we had a ton of fun with, we met a bunch of new, neat people from all across Southern California, ate some freaking fantabulous food, and stayed in a really nice room.
As an added bonus, on Saturday night, we all got a chance to renew our wedding vows. This made it the third time The Husband and I have gotten married. But get this. Every time, we have "eloped" (first time in Lake Tahoe on the spur of the moment, second time in Las Vegas in the drive-thru of the Little White Wedding Chapel) and neither of our mothers have seen us get married. And all three times I have been wearing black. Yes, I wore BLACK to my wedding. It's not my fault, it was all that I had and that's what I get for not planning a wedding ahead of time. So sue me. :-P I told The Husband that the NEXT time we do this I WILL be wearing another color other than black.
This morning The Husband e-mailed me when he got to work. "Only 9 more times we'll be able to have an anniversary every month of the year. I like that idea! Up for it?"
Silly boy. I'd marry him every day of the year if I could. Isn't that what marriage should be about?
The marriage weekend? The one I rescheduled my life-changing surgery for because this class was going to be just as life-changing, if not more? Was a complete waste of time. Both The Husband and I found it completely lacking.
There's a reason why they don't want you to tell other people about it and make them anticipate it because it's "secret." Because it's boring, has no cohesive structure, is stuck in the 80s and basically takes far too damn long.
Maybe our disappointment was because both The Husband and I have been involved in two highly engaging marriage classes - one of which we've done twice. We're too spoiled, and know what it means to attend a directed seminar on how to make marriages better by applying Biblical standards. We know the information you're going to be presented with because let's face it - the Bible basically doesn't change. Different translations, maybe, but it's the same thing. But why we continue to attend them and seek out new speakers is because we are looking for new nuggets of information that can be discovered even though the big stuff remains the same.
Let me tell you the one little nugget that we gleaned from this seminar. Are you ready for it? Here it is: Junior Highschoolers? They're "pre-people."
Yes, folks, we went to an all-weekend-long marriage seminar and learned that the 12-15-year-old set are "pre-people." Shoot me now!
Very little of the actual seminar was on how to apply things to marriage. We talked about things like forgiveness and communication, and wrote love letters to each other dealing with these topics, but the whole thing was lacking. It seemed as if it couldn't make up its mind if we needed to be bludgeoned into becoming believers or if we actually wanted to hear about how to apply the whole God/Christ, Christ/Church, Husband/Wife relationship thing that so many people just don't understand and have frankly never heard before. THAT's what a marriage seminar should be about. Not about focusing on how we need to praise God and how we should do that.
But the worst thing? They made us sing hymns. Not just any hymns, but obscure ones that the vast majority of us attending had NEVER even heard of. It's one thing for everyone to sing "Amazing Grace" and another to sing these hymns that according to copyright information were from the sixties and seventies and had never seen the light of day since. Oh, and there was no accompaniment.
This obvious dating of the whole class is apparently because the people that run American Family Services are in their seventies and eighties and possibly nineties. They are part of what some of us call the "old guard." And it isn't that the old guard isn't needed anymore, it's just that most of the young people that would come to seminars like this just don't identify with many of the things that the old guard love. The old guard loves these hymns. Most of the young people in today's emergent churches have never heard them. To insist that we sing these hymns, however lovely in sentiment, creates a level of uncomfortableness that I don't think was ever overcome throughout the weekend.
They also played those insipid TBN-style hymns with the organs and harps - lovely words, but the style of music just makes you think of three piece suits, wingtips, shoulder pads, eyelet lace dresses and Tammy Fay Baker hair and makeup. Not the kind of thing you want when you've got young, hip people that are the core of the modern church attending a seminar.
Just so you know, it wasn't as bad as all that. We had some friends there that we had a ton of fun with, we met a bunch of new, neat people from all across Southern California, ate some freaking fantabulous food, and stayed in a really nice room.
As an added bonus, on Saturday night, we all got a chance to renew our wedding vows. This made it the third time The Husband and I have gotten married. But get this. Every time, we have "eloped" (first time in Lake Tahoe on the spur of the moment, second time in Las Vegas in the drive-thru of the Little White Wedding Chapel) and neither of our mothers have seen us get married. And all three times I have been wearing black. Yes, I wore BLACK to my wedding. It's not my fault, it was all that I had and that's what I get for not planning a wedding ahead of time. So sue me. :-P I told The Husband that the NEXT time we do this I WILL be wearing another color other than black.
This morning The Husband e-mailed me when he got to work. "Only 9 more times we'll be able to have an anniversary every month of the year. I like that idea! Up for it?"
Silly boy. I'd marry him every day of the year if I could. Isn't that what marriage should be about?
Thursday, June 22, 2006
So she thinks she has an original song?
Is it just me, or is Rihanna's song "SOS" a blatant ripoff of "Tainted Love" by Soft Cell? Damn. I could sing the whole damn song and it didn't sound bad with whatever it was that she sang tonight. If you're going to sample, sample - don't rip it all off. At least have *some* originality. Eeesh.
That said, Heidi's solo was THE BOMB! If Nigel had told her to go home (or Dmitri for that matter), I would have turned off the TV on this show forever. Not that I expect her to win, but damn. That girl could DANCE!
That said, Heidi's solo was THE BOMB! If Nigel had told her to go home (or Dmitri for that matter), I would have turned off the TV on this show forever. Not that I expect her to win, but damn. That girl could DANCE!
Miscellaneous ramblings of the disconnected sort
Lord Almighty, but it is HOT here! In the triple digits and quickly climbing so much so that the middle number will no longer be a zero. Ooof!
Temperatures like this of course mean that I feel like a sweaty, sticky pig. Ew. It doesn't help that the building that I am in currently has airconditioning that only works when it feels like it. That is to say, erratically. But never fear! A work order has been sent out! They should get to it with the two technicians they have for the entire freaking base by, say, oh, about mid-July. :- Good thing I'll be out on medical leave by then.
And let's not talk about having to actually walk between my building and my car. Heat makes me breathe more, which makes me wheeze more, which makes my heart race. Not a good combination when you feel like you're going to have a freaking coronary just getting to your car. This surgery cannot come soon enough, I tell you!
. . .
This weekend should be rather interesting. Tomorrow The Husband and I will be dumping Thing One and Thing Two with their Godmother and heading off to Oxnard for the annual Loving Marriage Seminar. This seminar is supposed to be so good that they keep it a secret from anyone who hasn't attended what it's all about. Right. Because being a good Christian means that we keep secrets of marriage success to ourselves and only hand them out to those so priveledged to be deemed worthy to receive them.
If we hadn't been waiting so long to go to this seminar that I rescheduled my surgery for it, I would be very tempted not to show up. The Husband kind of feels this way as well.
First off, I/we hate secrets of this nature. It's one thing if you are given who the speakers at a seminar are and what they will be talking about. That's an acceptable level of secret to me for a seminar. You know the general topic, but they're not going to hand you a copy of their speech, right? No problem.
But this? Nobody will tell us anything. Not if there are going to be speakers, if it's just going to be a Bible study, if it's going to be exercises of some variety - nada. And it's driving me insane.
And then we're expected to not tell anyone else about it either. Oh, but we're supposed to make couples feel good about it if they're one of the lucky ones who get to go next year. Or we might be recruited to help at the next one! Yeah, right! Secret keepers are us. NOT!
Remind me again why I postponed my surgery for this? Please? *sigh*
. . .
I am sick and tired (and tired always follows sick) of being either asked the same thing over and over again or being told the same whiney song and dance over and over again. This is being done by two well-meaninged, but ultimately annoying, older gentlemen in my office.
The first one at least has an excuse. He was recently out on medical disability because he fell down a flight of stairs at work here and broke oh, just about all the major long bones on his left-hand side. And this was only 8 months after he had two spinal surgeries. He blacked out and was alone in the stairwell for at least two hours, possibly more, so if he doesn't remember things too well, I try not to get annoyed with him.
We used to work for the same company, but when the contract was re-bidded, we ended up being on separate companies. Now, he gets these e-mails from my old company sending him to websites to do their mandatory training and keeps asking me if I had problems with them. I don't work for the same company that you do anymore, dude. I say this at LEAST three or four times every. Single. Week. This week? I've said it at least three times a day. I try to be polite, but after a month or so, you tend to get a bit batty from the constant questions that have the same answer. My timecard sheet? Not the same company. Employee intranet? Not the same company. Get the picture yet? Aaaaaugh!
The other gentleman? Well, he doesn't have an excuse. He's just a leech. He likes to glom onto you and tell you his latest woes. Which happen to be the same woes he told you about last week. And the week before. And the week before that.
Due to a system that shall not be named out loud for fear it will take over my entire life, a system that was *supposed* to make us all work faster, better and more efficiently but has instead ended up costing the gummint much more than they anticipated, this second older gentleman has been without a computer onsite for over a year. And because of my position, he had to deal with me every time he needed changes made to a specific document. No big deal, right? I can do that.
But then he thought I was his best friend in the whole wide world and his leech-e-ness came into play. He now must tell me of all the indignations he has suffered because of Ehn-ehm-see-eye and his not having a computer, about how he got kicked out of the software building because people didn't like him, and how he needs to have surgery on his foot but he doesn't know if he can afford it. And his foot is considered pre-gangreneous. Gah!
I have considered getting a blowtorch and bringing it to work just so that I can singe him every time he starts to leech on me because isn't that how you get a leech to release from sucking your blood? By touching it with a match? Or is that a tick? Anyway, same principle.
I am sick unto death of acting like a lady and being polite and saying the nice things when all I want to do is start screaming the minute one of them begins talking to me. Deep breaths. I'm getting all worked up about this. In. Out. In. Out. I can do this . . .
. . .
Anyway, I'll be gone until Monday and then I'll update you on the damn super-top-secret marriage seminar weekend thingie because dammit if I'm not a rebel. Somebody's got to break the silence! The Repression Must Cease! The end.
Temperatures like this of course mean that I feel like a sweaty, sticky pig. Ew. It doesn't help that the building that I am in currently has airconditioning that only works when it feels like it. That is to say, erratically. But never fear! A work order has been sent out! They should get to it with the two technicians they have for the entire freaking base by, say, oh, about mid-July. :- Good thing I'll be out on medical leave by then.
And let's not talk about having to actually walk between my building and my car. Heat makes me breathe more, which makes me wheeze more, which makes my heart race. Not a good combination when you feel like you're going to have a freaking coronary just getting to your car. This surgery cannot come soon enough, I tell you!
. . .
This weekend should be rather interesting. Tomorrow The Husband and I will be dumping Thing One and Thing Two with their Godmother and heading off to Oxnard for the annual Loving Marriage Seminar. This seminar is supposed to be so good that they keep it a secret from anyone who hasn't attended what it's all about. Right. Because being a good Christian means that we keep secrets of marriage success to ourselves and only hand them out to those so priveledged to be deemed worthy to receive them.
If we hadn't been waiting so long to go to this seminar that I rescheduled my surgery for it, I would be very tempted not to show up. The Husband kind of feels this way as well.
First off, I/we hate secrets of this nature. It's one thing if you are given who the speakers at a seminar are and what they will be talking about. That's an acceptable level of secret to me for a seminar. You know the general topic, but they're not going to hand you a copy of their speech, right? No problem.
But this? Nobody will tell us anything. Not if there are going to be speakers, if it's just going to be a Bible study, if it's going to be exercises of some variety - nada. And it's driving me insane.
And then we're expected to not tell anyone else about it either. Oh, but we're supposed to make couples feel good about it if they're one of the lucky ones who get to go next year. Or we might be recruited to help at the next one! Yeah, right! Secret keepers are us. NOT!
Remind me again why I postponed my surgery for this? Please? *sigh*
. . .
I am sick and tired (and tired always follows sick) of being either asked the same thing over and over again or being told the same whiney song and dance over and over again. This is being done by two well-meaninged, but ultimately annoying, older gentlemen in my office.
The first one at least has an excuse. He was recently out on medical disability because he fell down a flight of stairs at work here and broke oh, just about all the major long bones on his left-hand side. And this was only 8 months after he had two spinal surgeries. He blacked out and was alone in the stairwell for at least two hours, possibly more, so if he doesn't remember things too well, I try not to get annoyed with him.
We used to work for the same company, but when the contract was re-bidded, we ended up being on separate companies. Now, he gets these e-mails from my old company sending him to websites to do their mandatory training and keeps asking me if I had problems with them. I don't work for the same company that you do anymore, dude. I say this at LEAST three or four times every. Single. Week. This week? I've said it at least three times a day. I try to be polite, but after a month or so, you tend to get a bit batty from the constant questions that have the same answer. My timecard sheet? Not the same company. Employee intranet? Not the same company. Get the picture yet? Aaaaaugh!
The other gentleman? Well, he doesn't have an excuse. He's just a leech. He likes to glom onto you and tell you his latest woes. Which happen to be the same woes he told you about last week. And the week before. And the week before that.
Due to a system that shall not be named out loud for fear it will take over my entire life, a system that was *supposed* to make us all work faster, better and more efficiently but has instead ended up costing the gummint much more than they anticipated, this second older gentleman has been without a computer onsite for over a year. And because of my position, he had to deal with me every time he needed changes made to a specific document. No big deal, right? I can do that.
But then he thought I was his best friend in the whole wide world and his leech-e-ness came into play. He now must tell me of all the indignations he has suffered because of Ehn-ehm-see-eye and his not having a computer, about how he got kicked out of the software building because people didn't like him, and how he needs to have surgery on his foot but he doesn't know if he can afford it. And his foot is considered pre-gangreneous. Gah!
I have considered getting a blowtorch and bringing it to work just so that I can singe him every time he starts to leech on me because isn't that how you get a leech to release from sucking your blood? By touching it with a match? Or is that a tick? Anyway, same principle.
I am sick unto death of acting like a lady and being polite and saying the nice things when all I want to do is start screaming the minute one of them begins talking to me. Deep breaths. I'm getting all worked up about this. In. Out. In. Out. I can do this . . .
. . .
Anyway, I'll be gone until Monday and then I'll update you on the damn super-top-secret marriage seminar weekend thingie because dammit if I'm not a rebel. Somebody's got to break the silence! The Repression Must Cease! The end.
Maybe I'm just a moron, but . . .
I honestly don't get the behavior and rationale of some people. I really and truly don't. Because frankly, it just doesn't make sense.
Maybe this has something to do with my lack of a sensitivity gene that I mentioned back here when I ranted about females and friendship and there expectations thereof. Maybe it's because I am in a committed relationship and we got over these petty little differences in styles of communication a very long time ago (although not without many tears and bruised knuckles and dented wall studs). Because I'm talking about a female and about a relationship this person is having. Or apparently is not.
This female in my life has been blathering on to all and sundry about this relationship they have been having. She is a divorcee, has lost a lot of weight, has a good job, good friends, struggles with the basic insecurities of life like every single one of us. All is good, right?
Well, not for her.
Her beau is a busy kind of guy. Always on travel and such, which is to be expected in the profession he is in. So, because of his being as honestly busy as he is, he doesn't always call or talk with or see her in a fairly regular manner. But it's not like he's seeing anybody else, either.
Now, I can understand being upset that there isn't as much regular communication going on at the moment. But that's something that could be easily recified, now don't you think? I mean, all you do is say, "Hey! I'd like at least a call or an e-mail or an IM at least every two or three days." I mean, most men actually need to be told this or else they do forget that things like lines of communication need to be kept open and all that sort of jazz. That's not so hard, now is it?
But apparently it is for this female. She likes to angst over EVERYTHING. And we can't get her to shut up about it. I mean, it's like the Overshare person on the blog I link to on the right. You can't get her to be quiet about it! Since it is all-enveloping to her, obviously it is all-important to us, right? Right?
Um, that would be a no.
So, instead of just telling the guy that she would like more regular contact, she decides on a deadline for him to contact her. But get this. SHE DOESN'T TELL HIM ABOUT THE DEADLINE.
And, of course, he doesn't make contact before the deadline. Because he doesn't even know about it.
What does she do in response to him not making his unknown-about-dealine? She blocks every form of communication that they have together. E-mail, IM, MySpace, phone (both home and cell). She can't block the work phone or e-mail, however - the gummint kinda frowns on that - but she can just delete the messages or not pick up the phone if she sees caller ID, I suppose. And then she begins to "mourn" the loss of this guy by moping around the office and blathering in our ears about all of this.
All because her beau didn't make a deal-breaking deadline to contact her that he didn't even know about. And to top it all off, I would lay dollars to doughnuts that he is currently on travel and probably incommunicado at this time as well.
This, my friends, is the reason why men think women are so flighty and basically insipid and stupid even though we are really not. Women like this give women like me a bad name. So freaking cut it out already!
Maybe this has something to do with my lack of a sensitivity gene that I mentioned back here when I ranted about females and friendship and there expectations thereof. Maybe it's because I am in a committed relationship and we got over these petty little differences in styles of communication a very long time ago (although not without many tears and bruised knuckles and dented wall studs). Because I'm talking about a female and about a relationship this person is having. Or apparently is not.
This female in my life has been blathering on to all and sundry about this relationship they have been having. She is a divorcee, has lost a lot of weight, has a good job, good friends, struggles with the basic insecurities of life like every single one of us. All is good, right?
Well, not for her.
Her beau is a busy kind of guy. Always on travel and such, which is to be expected in the profession he is in. So, because of his being as honestly busy as he is, he doesn't always call or talk with or see her in a fairly regular manner. But it's not like he's seeing anybody else, either.
Now, I can understand being upset that there isn't as much regular communication going on at the moment. But that's something that could be easily recified, now don't you think? I mean, all you do is say, "Hey! I'd like at least a call or an e-mail or an IM at least every two or three days." I mean, most men actually need to be told this or else they do forget that things like lines of communication need to be kept open and all that sort of jazz. That's not so hard, now is it?
But apparently it is for this female. She likes to angst over EVERYTHING. And we can't get her to shut up about it. I mean, it's like the Overshare person on the blog I link to on the right. You can't get her to be quiet about it! Since it is all-enveloping to her, obviously it is all-important to us, right? Right?
Um, that would be a no.
So, instead of just telling the guy that she would like more regular contact, she decides on a deadline for him to contact her. But get this. SHE DOESN'T TELL HIM ABOUT THE DEADLINE.
And, of course, he doesn't make contact before the deadline. Because he doesn't even know about it.
What does she do in response to him not making his unknown-about-dealine? She blocks every form of communication that they have together. E-mail, IM, MySpace, phone (both home and cell). She can't block the work phone or e-mail, however - the gummint kinda frowns on that - but she can just delete the messages or not pick up the phone if she sees caller ID, I suppose. And then she begins to "mourn" the loss of this guy by moping around the office and blathering in our ears about all of this.
All because her beau didn't make a deal-breaking deadline to contact her that he didn't even know about. And to top it all off, I would lay dollars to doughnuts that he is currently on travel and probably incommunicado at this time as well.
This, my friends, is the reason why men think women are so flighty and basically insipid and stupid even though we are really not. Women like this give women like me a bad name. So freaking cut it out already!
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Every year I love reading these. For your reading pleasure . . .
Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country.
Here are last year's winners.....
1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p. m. instead of 7:30.
12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p. m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p. m. at a speed of 35 mph.
15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.
16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.
18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
22. He was as lame as a duck - Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
Here are last year's winners.....
1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p. m. instead of 7:30.
12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p. m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p. m. at a speed of 35 mph.
15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.
16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.
18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
22. He was as lame as a duck - Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
Monday, June 19, 2006
Time will now either come to a standstill or go at mach speed
Because I am precisely one month away from having the DS. Wow. Just, wow.
New beginnings are the best.
New beginnings are the best.
Why do they have to grow up?
Thing Two turned seven this Saturday. Seven. Years. Old. Holy crap! When did my little girl grow up?
And, as The Husband says, "Seven down, 11 to go!" God, I love that man!
As a mother, it's always a hard thing watching your child grow up, even though you know that you just want to get them out of the house because damn, they are such leeches! Just kidding. But seriously, it really is very hard.
I remember how upset I was when she started walking. No longer did she need me - she was independent, by God, and she was going to go wherever she damn well pleased. Well, at least until she ran into the baby gate. Evil, evil mommy!
Then when she was still a toddler, I could see the baby shape going away, and knew that I was going to lose my baby to this, this child that was going to be a pain in my ass until she moved out of the house, and even long after that. But I distinctly remember the day I made that realization, and I had to go to my room and cry because I knew I would never hold a "baby" that was mine again. She was becoming too grown up. And I didn't want her to.
So, in honor of Thing One gradually becoming a little lady (Ha! Yeah, right. At least she gets straight A's in school. I'm not going to hold my breath on her being lady-like for quite some time.) I'm going to tell one of our favorite stories about her and her childish antics.
You see, Thing One is a blonde. Very, very blonde. When she was born, her hair was clear. All this hair, and you couldn't see it. Because it was so blonde it was clear. Over the years it has darkened some and is not as blindingly white-blonde as it used to be, but it is still very, very blonde. And so is she on occasion.
At the time this happened, Thing Two had just turned four years old. I was at work, and The Husband was at home watching both Thing One and Two. He decided to send them out to do one of their chores - picking up the dog poop from Thing One's dog. Thing One and Thing Two would shovel the poop into a wheelbarrow, and then Thing One would take it and dump it on the far side of the property and then come back for more.
Thing One was taking the wheelbarrow for a dump when The Husband caught Thing Two in the midst of a rather naughty act. She was taking her small shovel, placing the tip against the ground just behind a piece of poo, and then snapping it up, propelling the piece of poo high up into the air . . . and into the neighbor's yard. D'oh! Needing to correct the obviously childish behavior, The Husband heads outside. The following conversation ensues.
"Thing Two, what are you doing?"
"Fringing poo." She can't quite say "flinging" at this stage of the game.
"Okay. *Why* were you flinging the poo?"
(Two little blue eyes dart back and forth, searching the data banks inside her head for a plausible excuse as to why one would "fring" poo into the air.)
"Because I'm blonde?"
Making choking sounds, The Husband comes back inside and then explodes into laughter, out of sight of Thing Two. He calls me up on the phone to relay the story, and as I'm gasping for air making my co-workers wonder what in the hell is wrong with me he says to me, "Honey, we've taught her all she needs to know in this life. All we need to do is find a pastor for her to marry."
And, as The Husband says, "Seven down, 11 to go!" God, I love that man!
As a mother, it's always a hard thing watching your child grow up, even though you know that you just want to get them out of the house because damn, they are such leeches! Just kidding. But seriously, it really is very hard.
I remember how upset I was when she started walking. No longer did she need me - she was independent, by God, and she was going to go wherever she damn well pleased. Well, at least until she ran into the baby gate. Evil, evil mommy!
Then when she was still a toddler, I could see the baby shape going away, and knew that I was going to lose my baby to this, this child that was going to be a pain in my ass until she moved out of the house, and even long after that. But I distinctly remember the day I made that realization, and I had to go to my room and cry because I knew I would never hold a "baby" that was mine again. She was becoming too grown up. And I didn't want her to.
So, in honor of Thing One gradually becoming a little lady (Ha! Yeah, right. At least she gets straight A's in school. I'm not going to hold my breath on her being lady-like for quite some time.) I'm going to tell one of our favorite stories about her and her childish antics.
You see, Thing One is a blonde. Very, very blonde. When she was born, her hair was clear. All this hair, and you couldn't see it. Because it was so blonde it was clear. Over the years it has darkened some and is not as blindingly white-blonde as it used to be, but it is still very, very blonde. And so is she on occasion.
At the time this happened, Thing Two had just turned four years old. I was at work, and The Husband was at home watching both Thing One and Two. He decided to send them out to do one of their chores - picking up the dog poop from Thing One's dog. Thing One and Thing Two would shovel the poop into a wheelbarrow, and then Thing One would take it and dump it on the far side of the property and then come back for more.
Thing One was taking the wheelbarrow for a dump when The Husband caught Thing Two in the midst of a rather naughty act. She was taking her small shovel, placing the tip against the ground just behind a piece of poo, and then snapping it up, propelling the piece of poo high up into the air . . . and into the neighbor's yard. D'oh! Needing to correct the obviously childish behavior, The Husband heads outside. The following conversation ensues.
"Thing Two, what are you doing?"
"Fringing poo." She can't quite say "flinging" at this stage of the game.
"Okay. *Why* were you flinging the poo?"
(Two little blue eyes dart back and forth, searching the data banks inside her head for a plausible excuse as to why one would "fring" poo into the air.)
"Because I'm blonde?"
Making choking sounds, The Husband comes back inside and then explodes into laughter, out of sight of Thing Two. He calls me up on the phone to relay the story, and as I'm gasping for air making my co-workers wonder what in the hell is wrong with me he says to me, "Honey, we've taught her all she needs to know in this life. All we need to do is find a pastor for her to marry."
Thursday, June 15, 2006
When Nature Attacks!
One of the questions we usually get asked by people after we tell them that we have thus and so number of chickens, turkeys or what have you is "how in the heck did you get all of them? Did you hatch them yourselves?" And the answer is no, we don't hatch them (although Chicken Man did for a while in the past), but we do get them in the mail. This usually draws blank stares.
Seriously. We get them in the mail. Murray McMurray Hatchery sends them to us by USPS the day that they are born, and we get them by day 3. Then the Post Office calls and tells us to pick up this box of little peeping creatures. It's always so cute. They get a huge kick out of it and so do we.
About two weeks ago, we received these little guys over here on the left. Thirty-five little peeping three-day-old pheasant chicks. Here they are in their little shipping box. And a bit lower here's one up close. I hope you can tell the size of these suckers by looking at the one in my hand. 
(Pay no attention to the terrible fingernails. They needed work and are all better now. Sorry!) They are teeny-tiny but ever so freaking active for their size. I guess that's okay, seeing as how they are a "wild" gamebird and all that. Very tasty, though. Hence, why we have them!
Seeing as how I am the closest one to home, I'm the one that usually gets to get them from Post Office, take them home and out of the box, and make sure they know what water and food look like. It was a hot day, and I sweated off all my makeup doing this. Yuck! I go back to work once they are settled, and go on with the rest of my day.
The Husband decides to leave early so that he can make sure that the little guys are secure in their pen and life is good with them. While I'm still at work, I get a call from him.
"Honey? Who ordered the velociraptors?" he asks me.
It seems that the little buggers had formed a pyramid out of about five of their cohort (one of which was dead - he wasn't doing too well after the shipping anyway) and were in the process of propelling themselves up high enough so that they could leap out of the kiddie pool that they were inside. Aaack! So The Husband spent the first fifteen minutes home chasing the little escapees around the larger pen that they were in and then putting them back in the kiddie pool (after removing the dead one). He then secured them further with chicken mesh around the sides so that if they attempted the same trick, they wouldn't succeed again.
All's well in the pheasant pen. The little buggers are eating and drinking, getting bigger gradually. A few of them die due to natural selection. Then it happens.
Thing One and Thing Two are doing the chores while The Husband and I are inside getting the laundry started. The two of them burst through the door with cries of "Mommy! Daddy! Come lookit!"
Obligingly we come and see this.
Apparently the pen was not secure enough for Mr. King Snake, and he decided that an easy snack was in order. *sigh* Normally I don't mind King Snakes. They eat the sidewinders and Mojave Greens that we have around here. As well as the mice and rats that we can't avoid. They are our friends. That is, until they start eating our freaking livestock! Arrrrgh!
They don't bother the full-grown chickens and ducks, obviously. They're way too big to eat. But little pheasant chicks are apparently just snack size for them.
Needless to say, we are building a snake-proof brooding pen for the little guys this weekend. And we were so looking for some time off. I think I'll make The Husband do most of the work. I'll just hand him the nail and screw guns. I mean, that's why I was a good wife and bought him lots of power tools. He wouldn't want me to get a splinter now, would he?
Seriously. We get them in the mail. Murray McMurray Hatchery sends them to us by USPS the day that they are born, and we get them by day 3. Then the Post Office calls and tells us to pick up this box of little peeping creatures. It's always so cute. They get a huge kick out of it and so do we.
About two weeks ago, we received these little guys over here on the left. Thirty-five little peeping three-day-old pheasant chicks. Here they are in their little shipping box. And a bit lower here's one up close. I hope you can tell the size of these suckers by looking at the one in my hand. 
(Pay no attention to the terrible fingernails. They needed work and are all better now. Sorry!) They are teeny-tiny but ever so freaking active for their size. I guess that's okay, seeing as how they are a "wild" gamebird and all that. Very tasty, though. Hence, why we have them!Seeing as how I am the closest one to home, I'm the one that usually gets to get them from Post Office, take them home and out of the box, and make sure they know what water and food look like. It was a hot day, and I sweated off all my makeup doing this. Yuck! I go back to work once they are settled, and go on with the rest of my day.
The Husband decides to leave early so that he can make sure that the little guys are secure in their pen and life is good with them. While I'm still at work, I get a call from him.
"Honey? Who ordered the velociraptors?" he asks me.
It seems that the little buggers had formed a pyramid out of about five of their cohort (one of which was dead - he wasn't doing too well after the shipping anyway) and were in the process of propelling themselves up high enough so that they could leap out of the kiddie pool that they were inside. Aaack! So The Husband spent the first fifteen minutes home chasing the little escapees around the larger pen that they were in and then putting them back in the kiddie pool (after removing the dead one). He then secured them further with chicken mesh around the sides so that if they attempted the same trick, they wouldn't succeed again.
All's well in the pheasant pen. The little buggers are eating and drinking, getting bigger gradually. A few of them die due to natural selection. Then it happens.
Thing One and Thing Two are doing the chores while The Husband and I are inside getting the laundry started. The two of them burst through the door with cries of "Mommy! Daddy! Come lookit!"
Obligingly we come and see this.
Apparently the pen was not secure enough for Mr. King Snake, and he decided that an easy snack was in order. *sigh* Normally I don't mind King Snakes. They eat the sidewinders and Mojave Greens that we have around here. As well as the mice and rats that we can't avoid. They are our friends. That is, until they start eating our freaking livestock! Arrrrgh!They don't bother the full-grown chickens and ducks, obviously. They're way too big to eat. But little pheasant chicks are apparently just snack size for them.
Needless to say, we are building a snake-proof brooding pen for the little guys this weekend. And we were so looking for some time off. I think I'll make The Husband do most of the work. I'll just hand him the nail and screw guns. I mean, that's why I was a good wife and bought him lots of power tools. He wouldn't want me to get a splinter now, would he?
Now the excitement sets in. Finally!
Remember how I said that I wasn't excited about having WLS, just impatient? Well, I lied. Now I am VERY exicted to be having the DS. It's my right. I'm a woman. I can change my mind, right?
How did I have this turn-around? Well, I went to one of Dr. K's support group meetings with a girl in town who is having her surgery a week before mine. There were a lot of people there, but more importantly someone that I have known for years. The last time I saw her, she was literally a butterball. Approximately 5'7", and perfectly round. Bubbly, even, if you know what I mean? I can't even begin to guess how much she weighed.
At the time I last saw her, I was in my incarnation as a newspaper reporter and she was trying to get elected to the School Board. Then I abdicated from the newspaper, and because I started boycotting it, I never saw pictures of her after she got elected to the School Board. Turns out, in 2001 she had the DS with Dr. K. And now? She looks fan-fricking-tabulous.
She called my name when she saw me and I didn't even recognize her. I replied nicely and acknowledged her, but it wasn't until I got up to get some water that we really made contact and she mentioned that it had been about 6 years since we had seen each other last when I covered the School Board elections. Then it all clicked. It was Amy! OMG!
So now we have each other's phone numbers and will be getting together for lunch sometime soon so that she can fill me in on the gory details of what I'm getting myself into. While yes, I already "know" about all of this, it's going to make it a bit different now that I have an actual DS post-op-er in town to help me through all of this. I mean, we have RNY-ers coming out of the seams around here, but since the DS isn't performed as often as the RNY it's a bit difficult to find them in a shit-kickin' town like BFE.
It helps, too, that Amy isn't just your average soccer mom. She's into piercings and tattoos. And has lots of both. She lost her belly button when she got her tummy tuck and so she tattooed a really nice Celtic ring where it would have been. I'm going to start planning mine out now, just in case I lose mine as well. Or even if I don't lose it! *grin*
So, in honor of *finally* being excited to have this life-altering surgery, I will officially create my "What I Want To Do When I Lose The Weight" list.
How did I have this turn-around? Well, I went to one of Dr. K's support group meetings with a girl in town who is having her surgery a week before mine. There were a lot of people there, but more importantly someone that I have known for years. The last time I saw her, she was literally a butterball. Approximately 5'7", and perfectly round. Bubbly, even, if you know what I mean? I can't even begin to guess how much she weighed.
At the time I last saw her, I was in my incarnation as a newspaper reporter and she was trying to get elected to the School Board. Then I abdicated from the newspaper, and because I started boycotting it, I never saw pictures of her after she got elected to the School Board. Turns out, in 2001 she had the DS with Dr. K. And now? She looks fan-fricking-tabulous.
She called my name when she saw me and I didn't even recognize her. I replied nicely and acknowledged her, but it wasn't until I got up to get some water that we really made contact and she mentioned that it had been about 6 years since we had seen each other last when I covered the School Board elections. Then it all clicked. It was Amy! OMG!
So now we have each other's phone numbers and will be getting together for lunch sometime soon so that she can fill me in on the gory details of what I'm getting myself into. While yes, I already "know" about all of this, it's going to make it a bit different now that I have an actual DS post-op-er in town to help me through all of this. I mean, we have RNY-ers coming out of the seams around here, but since the DS isn't performed as often as the RNY it's a bit difficult to find them in a shit-kickin' town like BFE.
It helps, too, that Amy isn't just your average soccer mom. She's into piercings and tattoos. And has lots of both. She lost her belly button when she got her tummy tuck and so she tattooed a really nice Celtic ring where it would have been. I'm going to start planning mine out now, just in case I lose mine as well. Or even if I don't lose it! *grin*
So, in honor of *finally* being excited to have this life-altering surgery, I will officially create my "What I Want To Do When I Lose The Weight" list.
- I want to weigh 250 pounds.
- I want to weigh 200 pounds.
- I want to weigh 150 pounds. (I'll settle for 175 because I'm as tall as I am.)
- I want to be able to fit into my wedding dress.
- I want to have to take in my wedding dress for it to fit.
- I want to be able to not struggle getting on a Waverunner or SeaDoo.
- I want to be able to pull myself back up on a Waverunner or SeaDoo if I ditch it in deep water.
- I want to get a "goddess belt" tattoo after I have the necessary plastic surgery and be able to show it off in a bikini without too much self-consciousness.
- I want to be able to ride a horse comfortably again.
- I want to be able to play with my children and not get winded unless we are doing something really strenuous.
- I want to be able to go back to aerobics class and not hurt myself because of my weight.
- I want to be able to have marathon sex sessions with my husband again, instead of being tired out after less than five minutes.
- I want to not wake my husband up with my snoring ever again.
- I want to have a real-sized lap for my miniature dachshund to sit in.
- I want to be able to chase my sheep around.
- I want to not hurt myself so badly when I fall.
- I want to be able to dance again.
- I want to be able to climb stairs again without being winded only a few steps up.
I'm sure I'll have more to add to the list later. This is sure going to be an adventure. July 19 can't get here soon enough!
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Why does this have to be so hard, dad?
Today is my dad's birthday. So, being the good daughter that I am, I call him up to wish him a good day and see how things are going and stuff like that.
Turns out that I will probably be the ONLY one of his four children that will be calling him to wish him a Happy Birthday because my other siblings? Well, they've apparently blocked him from their phone and e-mail accounts. Due to a very long and drawn out situation that I may or may not get into on this blog. But damn! He's your dad, people! Am I going to have to get all wicked big sister on your ass? *sigh* This makes me so sad.
Anyway . . .
We're chatting it up because we're both really terrible communicators and only call each other like once a quarter. It's not a big deal to us, although it wierds some people out. I know he loves and cares about me and vice versa. Our family just isn't really long on good communication. Always been that way, always will be. So it always makes for long conversations when we do talk.
We're discussing things he's been doing and things I've been doing and then he asks it. The question. You know, the one about my weight and how things are going in that direction. I take a deep breath and take the plunge. I tell him that on July 19, I'm having the DS.
Needless to say, the reception to this news isn't the best that it could be. *sigh*
To give a bit of background, my father is a big guy. He's six feet, three inches tall. He was always big, but he was always a muscular big. He would ride his bicycle at least five miles every day to work and back, rain, sleet or snow. Then he retired, and the pounds started to creep on him. Then he developed diabetes. And sleep apnea. He got up to probably nearly 350 pounds. But because he was a big guy to begin with, it didn't look so bad on him, but it was definitely affecting his health.
Then the issue that will not be discussed at this point in time happened, my mother decided to divorce him and moved out of the house. This meant that for the first time in his adult life since marriage (32+ years) he had to make ALL of his own meals. Now, my dad's a fairly decent cook, it was just that my mother is a gourmet cook, and, well, gourmet cooks trump decent cooks most days of the week, except when the gourmet cook wants to take a day off.
As a result, my dad decided to follow the American Diabetic Society's diet for diabetics. To the letter. Measuring every. little. thing. And discovering foods that actually weren't working for him, so he cut them out. He has now lost all the excess weight and is back to being the slim and trim father that I see peeking out of all of my baby pictures. It's pretty impressive and he no longer takes medication for his diabetes. It's taken him three years to do this. Yay dad!
But anyway, he hears that I'm having SURGERY to help me with my weight and he kind of flips. Wants to come down and stay with us for a while so that he can present to me his diet. Because he knows that it will work for me. Because he's an engineer and engineers analyze everything and BY GOD they are right about everything.
Yes, dad, if I was single and had all the time in the world, yes, this diet would work for me. I have no doubt about that. But I'm not single. I have two demanding children, and an even more demanding husband; I work, I have a small ranch to take care of, and a bunch of other commitments. This means that I have NO TIME for food prep like you do. I know damn good and well that it is portion control that is my main problem, but going on a diet (and one that I have been on before as well) just doesn't work for me and never has.
You see, dad, I need a little bit of a push. A little bit of help here. The whole conversation that we were having about this, you kept pooh-poohing everything that I was doing to lose weight on my own. I know that you mean well. I know that you are trying to show that you care for me, but daddy, I'm not your little girl anymore. I make the choices for me now. And the fact is that I made this choice. I have read and studied and asked questions for EIGHT LONG YEARS. I have done my research. I have failed horribly trying to do this without surgery, making myself more and more miserable every step of the way.
It's not that I have given up. It's that I have realized that I can't do this with my body and my willpower alone. That I need help from something else.
In a way, this is almost like a religious experience for me. Sort of like finding God and who He is and why He does the things He does. I'm finally finding who *I* am and what I need to do to become that me.
Daddy, I love you very much. But I cannot and will not allow you to come visit me if all you're going to do is try and convince me not to do what I feel I need to do. You could have come visited before. I mean, I am the only child of yours to have presented you grandchildren. Please don't think that I'm blaming you or am upset at you because you haven't visited, because I'm not. My love for you isn't dependent upon things like that. That, plus I know that you're not the type of person who goes and visits other people just because. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, you know?
This will probably be like when The Husband and I ran off and got married in Lake Tahoe without any of my family and didn't have our marriage sanctified in the Catholic Church. I know that you were very upset at me - even angry about it - for a long time. You probably feel like I will be violating the body that God gave me. One of the reasons why I have held off on having bariatric surgery was just because of that reason - that I would be violating a God-given system.
But Daddy, I've grown up. I'm not Catholic any longer. Some people would say that I'm not even Christian any longer because what I do believe about God is so controversial.
But what I do believe, with every fiber in my body, is that God has said to me that this surgery is the right thing for me to have. I tell people that when I came across the information about this surgery that it felt like the doors of Heaven had opened for me, so great was my peace about it.
So please, don't try to disturb the peace that has been given to me, because I won't allow it. I don't often get this "right" feeling about things, but when I do, they are always correct. I know that your empirical knowledge about things is great. You have a wonderfully keen mind. But remember, you passed that same keen, analytical mind onto me, perhaps more than any of your other children.
It's okay, dad. You can let me grow up at long last. I know I've finally let myself do so too. I love you!
Turns out that I will probably be the ONLY one of his four children that will be calling him to wish him a Happy Birthday because my other siblings? Well, they've apparently blocked him from their phone and e-mail accounts. Due to a very long and drawn out situation that I may or may not get into on this blog. But damn! He's your dad, people! Am I going to have to get all wicked big sister on your ass? *sigh* This makes me so sad.
Anyway . . .
We're chatting it up because we're both really terrible communicators and only call each other like once a quarter. It's not a big deal to us, although it wierds some people out. I know he loves and cares about me and vice versa. Our family just isn't really long on good communication. Always been that way, always will be. So it always makes for long conversations when we do talk.
We're discussing things he's been doing and things I've been doing and then he asks it. The question. You know, the one about my weight and how things are going in that direction. I take a deep breath and take the plunge. I tell him that on July 19, I'm having the DS.
Needless to say, the reception to this news isn't the best that it could be. *sigh*
To give a bit of background, my father is a big guy. He's six feet, three inches tall. He was always big, but he was always a muscular big. He would ride his bicycle at least five miles every day to work and back, rain, sleet or snow. Then he retired, and the pounds started to creep on him. Then he developed diabetes. And sleep apnea. He got up to probably nearly 350 pounds. But because he was a big guy to begin with, it didn't look so bad on him, but it was definitely affecting his health.
Then the issue that will not be discussed at this point in time happened, my mother decided to divorce him and moved out of the house. This meant that for the first time in his adult life since marriage (32+ years) he had to make ALL of his own meals. Now, my dad's a fairly decent cook, it was just that my mother is a gourmet cook, and, well, gourmet cooks trump decent cooks most days of the week, except when the gourmet cook wants to take a day off.
As a result, my dad decided to follow the American Diabetic Society's diet for diabetics. To the letter. Measuring every. little. thing. And discovering foods that actually weren't working for him, so he cut them out. He has now lost all the excess weight and is back to being the slim and trim father that I see peeking out of all of my baby pictures. It's pretty impressive and he no longer takes medication for his diabetes. It's taken him three years to do this. Yay dad!
But anyway, he hears that I'm having SURGERY to help me with my weight and he kind of flips. Wants to come down and stay with us for a while so that he can present to me his diet. Because he knows that it will work for me. Because he's an engineer and engineers analyze everything and BY GOD they are right about everything.
Yes, dad, if I was single and had all the time in the world, yes, this diet would work for me. I have no doubt about that. But I'm not single. I have two demanding children, and an even more demanding husband; I work, I have a small ranch to take care of, and a bunch of other commitments. This means that I have NO TIME for food prep like you do. I know damn good and well that it is portion control that is my main problem, but going on a diet (and one that I have been on before as well) just doesn't work for me and never has.
You see, dad, I need a little bit of a push. A little bit of help here. The whole conversation that we were having about this, you kept pooh-poohing everything that I was doing to lose weight on my own. I know that you mean well. I know that you are trying to show that you care for me, but daddy, I'm not your little girl anymore. I make the choices for me now. And the fact is that I made this choice. I have read and studied and asked questions for EIGHT LONG YEARS. I have done my research. I have failed horribly trying to do this without surgery, making myself more and more miserable every step of the way.
It's not that I have given up. It's that I have realized that I can't do this with my body and my willpower alone. That I need help from something else.
In a way, this is almost like a religious experience for me. Sort of like finding God and who He is and why He does the things He does. I'm finally finding who *I* am and what I need to do to become that me.
Daddy, I love you very much. But I cannot and will not allow you to come visit me if all you're going to do is try and convince me not to do what I feel I need to do. You could have come visited before. I mean, I am the only child of yours to have presented you grandchildren. Please don't think that I'm blaming you or am upset at you because you haven't visited, because I'm not. My love for you isn't dependent upon things like that. That, plus I know that you're not the type of person who goes and visits other people just because. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, you know?
This will probably be like when The Husband and I ran off and got married in Lake Tahoe without any of my family and didn't have our marriage sanctified in the Catholic Church. I know that you were very upset at me - even angry about it - for a long time. You probably feel like I will be violating the body that God gave me. One of the reasons why I have held off on having bariatric surgery was just because of that reason - that I would be violating a God-given system.
But Daddy, I've grown up. I'm not Catholic any longer. Some people would say that I'm not even Christian any longer because what I do believe about God is so controversial.
But what I do believe, with every fiber in my body, is that God has said to me that this surgery is the right thing for me to have. I tell people that when I came across the information about this surgery that it felt like the doors of Heaven had opened for me, so great was my peace about it.
So please, don't try to disturb the peace that has been given to me, because I won't allow it. I don't often get this "right" feeling about things, but when I do, they are always correct. I know that your empirical knowledge about things is great. You have a wonderfully keen mind. But remember, you passed that same keen, analytical mind onto me, perhaps more than any of your other children.
It's okay, dad. You can let me grow up at long last. I know I've finally let myself do so too. I love you!
Friday, June 09, 2006
You might be a redneck if . . .
I didn't start out all redneck and farm-y, you know. I was born a city girl - albeit a small city. The closest I got to doing all the things I do now is when we would go to visit my mother's family in Thornton on vacation. There, we could pick wild blackberries, watch the corn combines go by and see the menfolk come in all dirty from a long day of farming. We would have fresh corn on the cob that my mother's Uncle Scoop had picked from the sweet corn patch. And that was kind of the extent of it, you know? Vacation would end, and we would go back home to BFE, and I would do regular person things, like purchase produce in the store and things like that.
Then I met The Husband. Little did I know what I was in for.
The Husband grew up milking a cow and killing farm animals for food. He knew that meat didn't just magically appear on that styrofoam plate in the grocery store. Then he went into the Navy and did the whole Desert Storm/Shield thing, got to see the world, etc., etc. When he got out of the Navy, his parents had moved here to BFE to be nearer to his sister and her family as her husband was stationed here. In the Navy. In the desert. Yeah.
Anyway, he came here because they were here, and then they moved away and he was stuck. But then he met me and all was well. We romanced, ran away to get married, and started settling into our lives.
The Husband went to work with The Chicken Man. At that time, however, he was not The Chicken Man. However, he had been arrested at one point for, um, cultivating things that the government has decided that we mere mortals just shouldn't cultivate, you know? But The Husband and Chicken Man became really great friends. Then Chicken Man had a marvelous idea. How about we raise our own chickens, get them all fat and sassy and then kill them and eat them! Ooookay.
Next thing I know, I find myself six months pregnant with Thing One, chasing chickens around a yard, taking them to the guys so that their heads could be cut off, plucking their feathers, gutting them and sticking them in a freezer. The only thing I was missing was being barefoot. You might be a redneck . . .
Eventually, we moved withing "drunken stumbling distance" of The Chicken Man on acreage. There, we got into the rhythm of Chicken Man raising the two-legged creatures on his property and we would raise the four-legged creatures on ours. This included pigs.
Now pigs can be both the cutest and the most disgusting creatures at the same time. They can be all pretty and pink and Babe-like, but then what comes out the rear end of that cute, cuddly beast is the most foul-smelling stuff on the planet. I mean, ew.
We had kept pigs at one of our other houses that we lived at. The guys built a really strong fence out of wooden pallets that nothin but nothin could get escape from. At this new house, however, there was fencing that had been put up probably for a horse at one point in time, but it wasn't completely pig-proof. We figured we'd get little piglets and they would be fine and we would be able to shore up the fencing appropriately before they would get big enough to push their way out of the pen.
So we brought home two cute little piglets, both about the size of a full-grown beagle. We let them loose in the pen, got them some water and some food and stood back and admired. Ahh! Bucolic bliss!
Then it happened. One of the little assholes decided to push the fence. And it came right up. And the little shit slipped out of the pen. Like a greased pig. Doh!
Twenty minutes later, after chasing this little turd all over creation and back again, into the neighbor's yard, all around our yard, through the desert, we finally managed to catch it with the help of Thing One, who was about four at the time. We're exhausted and haul the thing back to the pen. We stick it back in the dog kennel that we had brought the two of them home in so that we can repair the fence and then put it back in.
As we were going to repair the fence, the OTHER piglet makes a break for it on a different part of the fence. Same result as the first time. Fencing goes up, pig goes out. And the chase is on. Again!
This time, the chase wasn't so long. The Husband and I cornered the little bastard in a lean-to for horses. We knew that this was going to be it. We were both too exhausted and were both ready to grab the nearest gun and shoot the damn thing and cook it for dinner that night if we had to. It was NOT going to get away!
The plan was that we would rush it in such a way that either one of us would be able to literally fall on it to capture it. We started inching our way towards it.
You know that whole fight and flight syndrome? Where first the animal shits and then it runs? Well, yeah. The pig did that. And right as it ran, we flung ourselves on top of it.
So there we are, The Husband and I, rolling in pig shit trying to capture all four legs of this squirming creature. Did I mention that we were rolling in pig shit? And did I mention how much it stinks? Yeah. Fragrant!
We subdue the damn beast and then the smell hits us. It appears that the pig didn't just shit and run. It shit while it ran. A whole lot. And it was now all on us. In the clothes, in the hair, rubbed into the skin.
I look a The Husband. He looks deep into my limpid blue eyes. He sees me trying to hold back the involuntary spewing of vomit from the smell.
"Well, it's official," he says. "We're rednecks. We've rolled in pig shit together. This is more binding than marriage."
Then I met The Husband. Little did I know what I was in for.
The Husband grew up milking a cow and killing farm animals for food. He knew that meat didn't just magically appear on that styrofoam plate in the grocery store. Then he went into the Navy and did the whole Desert Storm/Shield thing, got to see the world, etc., etc. When he got out of the Navy, his parents had moved here to BFE to be nearer to his sister and her family as her husband was stationed here. In the Navy. In the desert. Yeah.
Anyway, he came here because they were here, and then they moved away and he was stuck. But then he met me and all was well. We romanced, ran away to get married, and started settling into our lives.
The Husband went to work with The Chicken Man. At that time, however, he was not The Chicken Man. However, he had been arrested at one point for, um, cultivating things that the government has decided that we mere mortals just shouldn't cultivate, you know? But The Husband and Chicken Man became really great friends. Then Chicken Man had a marvelous idea. How about we raise our own chickens, get them all fat and sassy and then kill them and eat them! Ooookay.
Next thing I know, I find myself six months pregnant with Thing One, chasing chickens around a yard, taking them to the guys so that their heads could be cut off, plucking their feathers, gutting them and sticking them in a freezer. The only thing I was missing was being barefoot. You might be a redneck . . .
Eventually, we moved withing "drunken stumbling distance" of The Chicken Man on acreage. There, we got into the rhythm of Chicken Man raising the two-legged creatures on his property and we would raise the four-legged creatures on ours. This included pigs.
Now pigs can be both the cutest and the most disgusting creatures at the same time. They can be all pretty and pink and Babe-like, but then what comes out the rear end of that cute, cuddly beast is the most foul-smelling stuff on the planet. I mean, ew.
We had kept pigs at one of our other houses that we lived at. The guys built a really strong fence out of wooden pallets that nothin but nothin could get escape from. At this new house, however, there was fencing that had been put up probably for a horse at one point in time, but it wasn't completely pig-proof. We figured we'd get little piglets and they would be fine and we would be able to shore up the fencing appropriately before they would get big enough to push their way out of the pen.
So we brought home two cute little piglets, both about the size of a full-grown beagle. We let them loose in the pen, got them some water and some food and stood back and admired. Ahh! Bucolic bliss!
Then it happened. One of the little assholes decided to push the fence. And it came right up. And the little shit slipped out of the pen. Like a greased pig. Doh!
Twenty minutes later, after chasing this little turd all over creation and back again, into the neighbor's yard, all around our yard, through the desert, we finally managed to catch it with the help of Thing One, who was about four at the time. We're exhausted and haul the thing back to the pen. We stick it back in the dog kennel that we had brought the two of them home in so that we can repair the fence and then put it back in.
As we were going to repair the fence, the OTHER piglet makes a break for it on a different part of the fence. Same result as the first time. Fencing goes up, pig goes out. And the chase is on. Again!
This time, the chase wasn't so long. The Husband and I cornered the little bastard in a lean-to for horses. We knew that this was going to be it. We were both too exhausted and were both ready to grab the nearest gun and shoot the damn thing and cook it for dinner that night if we had to. It was NOT going to get away!
The plan was that we would rush it in such a way that either one of us would be able to literally fall on it to capture it. We started inching our way towards it.
You know that whole fight and flight syndrome? Where first the animal shits and then it runs? Well, yeah. The pig did that. And right as it ran, we flung ourselves on top of it.
So there we are, The Husband and I, rolling in pig shit trying to capture all four legs of this squirming creature. Did I mention that we were rolling in pig shit? And did I mention how much it stinks? Yeah. Fragrant!
We subdue the damn beast and then the smell hits us. It appears that the pig didn't just shit and run. It shit while it ran. A whole lot. And it was now all on us. In the clothes, in the hair, rubbed into the skin.
I look a The Husband. He looks deep into my limpid blue eyes. He sees me trying to hold back the involuntary spewing of vomit from the smell.
"Well, it's official," he says. "We're rednecks. We've rolled in pig shit together. This is more binding than marriage."
Wanna bust a gut?
If y'all haven't been paying attention to some of my links over there on the right hand side, you have totally been missing out on one of them. This week's entry by Miss Doxie is the end-all, be-all of funny. Check it out now!
Thursday, June 08, 2006
Behold!
The power of the Internet!
This makes me remember fondly the days when there was that huge uproar over the girl that was sick and died of cancer or leukemia or something and then we found out that not only was she not dead, she wasn't even a real person and the person claiming to be her mom had just made it all up. And then the Internet community felt that they were being scammed, because you know, people had sent this "girl" PRESENTS and things like that and "talked" with her on the phone and all that. Scandalous!
This makes me remember fondly the days when there was that huge uproar over the girl that was sick and died of cancer or leukemia or something and then we found out that not only was she not dead, she wasn't even a real person and the person claiming to be her mom had just made it all up. And then the Internet community felt that they were being scammed, because you know, people had sent this "girl" PRESENTS and things like that and "talked" with her on the phone and all that. Scandalous!
Why and blog?
Then again, why and anything?
(Just so you know, I really do understand the English language and know how to use it rather fluently. However there once was a little lady on a message board that I belong to with the rather unfortunate screen name of "Babytiger." Unfortunate because she lived up to the "baby" part and not much else. She became infamous for her mangling of grammer and speelink. One of her more classic lines was "Why and be snarky?" From then on, people on said message board have used the "Why and . . ." appellation both on boards and IRL whenever they felt that something was silly and wanted to point it out, much to the consternation of others. Babytiger was also known for the phrase "doing and grabbing" because for some reason she couldn't bring herself to say sex. And this was on a board full of married women. Who have all done some doing and grabbing themselves at one point in time or another I would hope. Some people . . .)
Seriously, though. I never got into blogging previously because I thought it was the ultimate in self-adulation. And that's not something as a morbidly obese person that I am into, you know what I mean? There's not much to adulate when you've got more rolling hills than Scotland.
But now that I have been doing this for a few weeks, it's kind of a cool thing. I get to vomit up some of my 30,000 words a day into the Innernets thereby making The Husband imminently grateful that he isn't the recipient of more of them flooding his brain; make some people laugh if I'm particularly funny in a post; help other people find someone to relate to that they would have NEVER met otherwise if it wasn't for the great World Wide Web; and get to chronicle the ups and downs of my life in a way I never could before. Pretty neat, don't you think?
Anyway, thanks to those of you who are actually reading me. And to those who are not? Get on here already! Because dammit you're missing out on a really fun time.
And sheep. Lots of sheep. Your loss!
(Just so you know, I really do understand the English language and know how to use it rather fluently. However there once was a little lady on a message board that I belong to with the rather unfortunate screen name of "Babytiger." Unfortunate because she lived up to the "baby" part and not much else. She became infamous for her mangling of grammer and speelink. One of her more classic lines was "Why and be snarky?" From then on, people on said message board have used the "Why and . . ." appellation both on boards and IRL whenever they felt that something was silly and wanted to point it out, much to the consternation of others. Babytiger was also known for the phrase "doing and grabbing" because for some reason she couldn't bring herself to say sex. And this was on a board full of married women. Who have all done some doing and grabbing themselves at one point in time or another I would hope. Some people . . .)
Seriously, though. I never got into blogging previously because I thought it was the ultimate in self-adulation. And that's not something as a morbidly obese person that I am into, you know what I mean? There's not much to adulate when you've got more rolling hills than Scotland.
But now that I have been doing this for a few weeks, it's kind of a cool thing. I get to vomit up some of my 30,000 words a day into the Innernets thereby making The Husband imminently grateful that he isn't the recipient of more of them flooding his brain; make some people laugh if I'm particularly funny in a post; help other people find someone to relate to that they would have NEVER met otherwise if it wasn't for the great World Wide Web; and get to chronicle the ups and downs of my life in a way I never could before. Pretty neat, don't you think?
Anyway, thanks to those of you who are actually reading me. And to those who are not? Get on here already! Because dammit you're missing out on a really fun time.
And sheep. Lots of sheep. Your loss!
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
So, now she's horning in on my particular surgery? Buh?
You know, I really shouldn't take these things to heart but dammit, when you've had one particular weight loss surgery, you don't go gloming onto another one, claiming it as your own. I don't care that you're a moderator and have powers to change things here, there and everywhere, but damnit, follow the poet and to thine own self be true!
Here's where I become a bitch and say what's on my mind.
If you get a particular surgery and are a success with it and get fawned upon and lauded up and down all the live-long day because you are soooo knowledgeable like two other people that I can think of, then do and be just that - a spokesperson for YOUR surgery. I don't need you coming in and "helping out" with the surgery that I have chosen because frankly, I don't think that you know even half of the things that I know about the surgery that I have chosen for myself, nor do I want someone like you or even you who had this surgery speaking for it! Gah!
Say it with me, sheeple. All together now! Baaaaa!
Here's where I become a bitch and say what's on my mind.
If you get a particular surgery and are a success with it and get fawned upon and lauded up and down all the live-long day because you are soooo knowledgeable like two other people that I can think of, then do and be just that - a spokesperson for YOUR surgery. I don't need you coming in and "helping out" with the surgery that I have chosen because frankly, I don't think that you know even half of the things that I know about the surgery that I have chosen for myself, nor do I want someone like you or even you who had this surgery speaking for it! Gah!
Say it with me, sheeple. All together now! Baaaaa!
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
All right. I'll do the freaking meme. *sigh*
- What time did you get up this morning? 4:30 AKA the asscrack of dawn
- What was the last movie you saw in the theater? The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (yeah, I don't get out much)
- What is your favorite TV show? The Amazing Race, followed closely by So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing With the Stars. I am totally prepared to LOVE Treasure Hunters this Summer.
- Diamonds or pearls? Neither. Sapphires, please! But Diamonds if you must. Plebians.
- What did you have for breakfast? Slim-Fast Optima Strawberries and Cream
- What is your middle name? Rose
- What is your favorite cuisine? Chinese American. Followed closely by Italian American
- What foods do you dislike? Lima beans, brussel sprouts, asparagus
- Your favorite Potato chip? Pringles
- What is your favorite CD at the moment? Flyleaf
- What kind of car do you drive? 1983 Toyota Landcruiser
- Favorite sandwich? Sun-dried tomato crusted turkey breast with provalone on white. Hot, please.
- What characteristics do you despise? Stupidity and lack of common sense
- What are your favorite clothes? Floaty lacy things. Think the kind of things Stevie Nicks would wear. *sigh*
- If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would you go? A tour of the British Isles and all of Europe, ending in Italy
- What color is your bathroom? Ummm, brown?
- Favorite brand of clothing? No real favorites, at least not yet. I actually like to make my own.
- Where would you want to retire? Somewhere coastal, but not where there are hurricanes. Perhaps the French Riviera?
- Favorite time of day? Whenever I'm sleeping
- Where were you born? BFE, California
- Favorite sport to watch? Football! Go Rams!
- Coke or Pepsi? Coke, natch!
- Are you a morning person or night owl? I'm a better night owl than a morning person
- Any new and exciting news you'd like to share with everyone? Um, not really. Which is why I'm doing this.
- What did you want to be when you were little? An Egyptologist
- What is your best childhood memory? I was about 9, and I was staying with my grandparents. My mother's youngest brother was sick with cancer, but he was doing okay at that time. I did something for him, I forget what, and as a thank-you, he kissed my hand as if I was some grand lady. That's the last happy memory I have of him, and I will never, ever forget it.
- What are the different jobs you have had in your life? McDonalds, bookstore clerk, Wal-Mart jack of all trades, newspaper typist, newspaper reporter, newspaper editor, exterminator company secretary, railroad shipping billing clerk, ambulance company accounts payable clerk, government technical writer, online college teaching assistant. Whew!
- Nicknames? Hey you?
- Number and location of piercings? Four. Three in my left ear, one in my right. I think. Maybe there's two in my right ear. It's been a long time since I've used all of them.
- Eye Color? Blue
- Ever been to Africa? Nope
- Ever been toilet papering? Hee! Yes
- Been in a car accident? Yes, but all low-speed collisions. Usually me backing into somebody else. *sigh*
- Favorite day of the week? Friday
- Favorite restaurant? Lou Malnati's
- Favorite flower? An orchid that has the common name of "Little Stars"
- Favorite ice cream? Dulche de leche
- Favorite fast food restaurant? Wendy's
- Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? Hrm. Hancock's of Paducah or Sephora
- Bedtime: Anywhere between 8 and midnight
- Last person you went to dinner with? The Husband
- What are you listening to right now? Mozart on my Ipod
- What is your favorite color? Purple
- How many tattoos do you have? One. I need to wait until after plastics before I can go get more. *whine*
- Who was the last e-mail you got? My daily comic strip fix of Get Fuzzy
- What time is it now? 8:16 a.m.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
What was the name of that truck?
You know, the one that hit both me and The Husband? Oh wait. That was our massage therapist.
Now don't get me wrong, I love my massage therapist. She is a goddess at whose hands we worship. But damn. What in the hell did The Husband and I do to ourselves that she had to beat us up that badly? I mean, I can hardly get up or down it hurts so much. Ow.
Massages and other kinds of pampering have been mentioned lately on the WLS blog-o-sphere it seems. Sassy Fatty Sister Jen talks about it here and Alison talks about it here. And it's something that I think many of those of us who are overweight routinely deny ourselves. I can't count how many of my overweight friends get self-conscious when the thought of getting something like a massage or *gasp* a bikini wax crosses their mind.
Getting something like a manicure or a pedicure is something that seems to be exempt from this realm of shame, at least in my circle of real life friends. That's no big deal. It's just legs and arms But to bare any amount of flesh in the torso? Um, that would be a big no. We're just too fat.
It's all part of the cycle of shame of being fat it seems to me. I know that I would have never considered getting a massage unless The Husband had suggested it to me. The thought never crossed my mind. Get naked so that someone other than him can touch me all over? Well, almost all over? Get out of here! Who would consent to that?
And to add to that, when you do go to one of those high-falutin' spas, oftentimes they don't have robes that even cover half of our flesh. It's as if they deliberately make it embarassing for us. What, you can't fit in our plush, luxurious robes? Get out of here, you plebian! You're not good enough for us.
You would think that seeing as how more and more of Americans are getting larger and larger, they would WANT to cater to those of us of larger than average size. Heck, some of the robes I tried on in these spas wouldn't fit a size 14. What in the world are they thinking?
It's not that I want special consideration for people of size. It's just that if you are offering a service that does not specify a weight limit, then damn it why can't you accommodate the whole spectrum of people? It costs probably $5-10 more each to get a bigger size robe. Invest in a few, why don'tcha? Maybe then you'll have more customers and *gasp* make more money, ya think?
Massage therapy has become a godsend to both The Husband and me. He suffers from bad knees that we are eventually going to have to replace at some point in time, as well as has a rib that chronically pops out of place due to things he used to do in the Navy. My sacrum is determined to separate from my body and become its own country, thanks to an injury back in elementary school where I decided not to run the full length of the long jump track, jumping early and thereby landing on the wooden edge of the sand pit with my tail bone. Chiropractics takes care of putting the bones back into place, but it is up to our goddess of the muscles to convince our wayward ones into letting the bones stay in place and make the rest of us feel better.
So every two weeks, we make our way to our appointments with her. And while it may hurt for a little while, eventually we feel good enough to deal with life for a while instead of staying curled up in bed popping pills - which is where we both were on occasion before her.
Who knew pain could be such a good thing?
Now don't get me wrong, I love my massage therapist. She is a goddess at whose hands we worship. But damn. What in the hell did The Husband and I do to ourselves that she had to beat us up that badly? I mean, I can hardly get up or down it hurts so much. Ow.
Massages and other kinds of pampering have been mentioned lately on the WLS blog-o-sphere it seems. Sassy Fatty Sister Jen talks about it here and Alison talks about it here. And it's something that I think many of those of us who are overweight routinely deny ourselves. I can't count how many of my overweight friends get self-conscious when the thought of getting something like a massage or *gasp* a bikini wax crosses their mind.
Getting something like a manicure or a pedicure is something that seems to be exempt from this realm of shame, at least in my circle of real life friends. That's no big deal. It's just legs and arms But to bare any amount of flesh in the torso? Um, that would be a big no. We're just too fat.
It's all part of the cycle of shame of being fat it seems to me. I know that I would have never considered getting a massage unless The Husband had suggested it to me. The thought never crossed my mind. Get naked so that someone other than him can touch me all over? Well, almost all over? Get out of here! Who would consent to that?
And to add to that, when you do go to one of those high-falutin' spas, oftentimes they don't have robes that even cover half of our flesh. It's as if they deliberately make it embarassing for us. What, you can't fit in our plush, luxurious robes? Get out of here, you plebian! You're not good enough for us.
You would think that seeing as how more and more of Americans are getting larger and larger, they would WANT to cater to those of us of larger than average size. Heck, some of the robes I tried on in these spas wouldn't fit a size 14. What in the world are they thinking?
It's not that I want special consideration for people of size. It's just that if you are offering a service that does not specify a weight limit, then damn it why can't you accommodate the whole spectrum of people? It costs probably $5-10 more each to get a bigger size robe. Invest in a few, why don'tcha? Maybe then you'll have more customers and *gasp* make more money, ya think?
Massage therapy has become a godsend to both The Husband and me. He suffers from bad knees that we are eventually going to have to replace at some point in time, as well as has a rib that chronically pops out of place due to things he used to do in the Navy. My sacrum is determined to separate from my body and become its own country, thanks to an injury back in elementary school where I decided not to run the full length of the long jump track, jumping early and thereby landing on the wooden edge of the sand pit with my tail bone. Chiropractics takes care of putting the bones back into place, but it is up to our goddess of the muscles to convince our wayward ones into letting the bones stay in place and make the rest of us feel better.
So every two weeks, we make our way to our appointments with her. And while it may hurt for a little while, eventually we feel good enough to deal with life for a while instead of staying curled up in bed popping pills - which is where we both were on occasion before her.
Who knew pain could be such a good thing?
Thursday, June 01, 2006
Because I'm a dork
I thought I would be all cool and turn on the "moderate comments" function on this blog. Not realizing of course, that this would mean I would have to approve what people said. I thought it just meant that I could remove them if necessary.
So, I've been stalking my own blog for the last two days wondering why in the heck nobody's been reading me. Everybody hates me, nobody loves me, think I'll go eat some worms!
Everything is back to normal now. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!
So, I've been stalking my own blog for the last two days wondering why in the heck nobody's been reading me. Everybody hates me, nobody loves me, think I'll go eat some worms!
Everything is back to normal now. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!
Love and Marriage and Weight Loss
"Mahwidge. Mahwidge is whut bwings us togethah today." If you don't know what movie that line is from, then perhaps I think your license to be a human being should be revoked. It should be a law, dammit.
Awesome movies aside, marriage is something that is very important to me and helps define who I am and what I do. I guess it kinda helps that I am currently in a marriage myself to The Husband.
Marriage is so important to The Husband and I that we have become involved in the area of what we like to call "Marriage Health" through the church that we belong to. We have what are called "small groups" where we get together with other people, be they single, dating, engaged, married, divorced, whathaveyou and discuss Biblically-based principals that have been found to help two people "become one."
What this means is that we are both TOTALLY unqualified as counselors, but by God we're here to help show you some tools that can help you make your own marriage work better. No seriously. This stuff really works.
And if we had had these tools oh, say, twelve years ago? Our marriage would be a thing for the annals of history by now. Romeo and Juliet? They wouldn't have had a damn thing on us. And we wouldn't have had a whole lot of really really stupid fights and a whole lot of salt and tears would not have exited my body throughout the years and The Husband would not have been exasperated with me to the point of wanting to shoot me and go bury the body in the back yard or drop it into a deep abandoned mineshaft. And vice versa. Let's be fair. We're both human. And highly annoying at times.
One of our old fights used to be about size. More specifically, my size. You see, when we were first together, I had just lost 20 pounds in a month because my ex-fiance finally up and moved out after nine months of hell because he cheated on me and I forgave him and then he waffled and . . . basically I was very depressed. I could only manage to eat one meal a day, if that, and so I lost weight. Go figure. However, ex-fiance moved in with The Husband and then a few months later I moved in with The soon-to-be Husband and ex-fiance moved out. Again. And that, as they say, is history.
But back to my size. Having just lost that much weight in a very short period of time, I was interested in losing more, and I honestly thought I could. I looked damn hot and wanted to look hotter, especially for my new man. However I hadn't realized that by getting together with The Husband I was dooming myself. When I'm happy, I eat, as opposed to starving myself, and that means that I can't lose weight. But by God I was going to lose another 20 pounds. And I promised The Husband this. In return for him quitting smoking. Needless to say, neither of us have followed through on our promises. *sigh*
Anyway, it was a pattern for the longest time as my weight gradually crept up that about once every few months or so The Husband would get pissy that I had never followed through on my promise to lose more weight. This would create a scene and many tears would flow because damnit, I wanted to lose the weight but for some reason I couldn't. And if I did, then it just came right back on when I went off the diet. Maintenance was something my body just could not do. And The Husband just didn't understand why I couldn't just use enough self-control or will power do do this thing! Since he was blessed with an awesome metabolism, he didn't understand (and neither did I at the time) that my metabolism is slower than a three-toed sloth.
So, as those of you who have struggled with weight loss along with me know, this sort of thing just didn't work and only made for unnecessary tension between us as well as further driving my self-esteem even more into the ground.
Now to bring this back around to the whole "Marriage Health" thing, we were in one of our small group sessions about two years ago, watching a DVD by John and Liz Haywood discussing some common problems in marriage. John related that one of the problems with men is that they wanted to fix everything. That every time their wives came to them with complaints about something, they wanted to get out the toolbelt and make it right. But that wasn't what their wife wanted - she just wanted to be understood, get out some of her frustrations, or just get out some of the 20,000 extra words that she needed to use up for that day.
On the trip home from the church, The Husband was kind of quiet. Usually he liked to discuss what had gone on in the group, and sometimes we came up with new subjects to bring up with the group. No worries. He was probably tired or something.
When we got home, he took me by the hand and led me to our bedroom and pulled me onto the bed. And then he began to apologize. You see, The Husband realized that he had been doing the exact thing John Haywood had been talking about, except only with my weight. It obviously was a defect in me, and it was up to him, the Knight in Shining Armor, to make it all better for me, the Damsel in Distress, and show me how to FIX this problem that I obviously had. And that I was going to like it whether I wanted to or not.
After I picked up my jaw from off of the floor, he continued by saying that he was sorry that he had been so critical for all those years. That he would never again start that fight over my weight and the lack of my losing it. That he loved me the size that I was and that even if I gained another 200 pounds he would still love me. So long as I still had a good pair of boobies, that is.
And that's when yet again I knew that I had a keeper.
Artwork in this post is copywrited by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law.
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