Spinning, spinning, spinning

So, my little community is making a big splash in the news. You've probably already seen it if you're on the West Coast. Yesterday, a 75-year-old man went a bit bonkers because of bloodwork that needed to be done for labs, then went and got his shotgun, and THEN went and tried to rearrange parts of the medical office with said shotgun. When he turned his gun in the direction of the police, they did what was necessary and shot him. Dead.

And what, praytell, are the headlines saying?

"Elderly Man Gunned Down by Highway Patrol Officer"

Bullshit. Man, this whole "if it bleeds, it leads" shit is exactly why I got out of the newspaper/media business. I mean, I had a tough time sometimes coming up with headlines for some articles. Really, what kind of a headline can you come up with that is tactful when a man is arrested for having marital relations with his favorite dog? It's hard. Trust me. BTDT. Have the t-shirt.

But leading with a headline with the words "gunned down" gives you all sorts of wild impressions that are vastly misleading. This wasn't an elderly man going about his business. He had terrorized an office of people, slammed one employee in the head with the butt of his shotgun, lit off a few rounds wildly, and was now pointing said shotgun at police officers and wouldn't put it down. What other option do the police have? We don't have those lovely non-lethal shotguns that more metropolitan areas have. All our guys have is their baton, an Asp if they're lucky, pepper spray and their gun. And three out of those four don't work against a ranged weapon, folks.

It's been a sad day for us as a community. A man who was loved had a fit of insanity and was killed as a result of his actions. Another man, just as loved, had to make the decision to fire his weapon in the line of duty to save the lives of others. A no-win situation for all involved. Why don't the headlines show this?

Gah. I should quit spewing about this, but my coworkers are tired of my raving mania over this by now I'm sure. But enough with the sensationalism already, people! How about Elderly Man Shot After Rampage, Standoff? That more effectively conveys what happened, and actually fits better into the space you have for the headline. But it's not as catchy, now, is it?

And people wonder why the media isn't trusted. Feh.

Happiness is . . .

Having your eight-year-old child come up to you, give you a ginormous bear hug, look up at you with her angelic face and say, "Mommy! I can reach all the way around you!"

Let the Navel Gazing Begin!

Yes, I know, I've been a bad girl. No updates but once a week. Sorry. I'll try to be better. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

It's kind of hard to believe that it has been a full year since Dr. K went in, rearranged my insides and changed my life upside down in many ways. I can't say as I have minded, though. It's been wonderful rediscovering the old me and finding some new bits of me along the way.

I decided to title this post the way I did because I honestly feel that blogging about losing weight - heck, blogging for the most part - is simply an act of self-servedness, building oneself up, and essentially doing the whole "Look at Me! Look at Me! I'm IMPORTANT, DAMMIT!" thing. And it's something that I don't particularly enjoy. Never have, but I think I kind of got swept up in the whole, "You must catalogue these changes. You need to have a record of it all so that you can look back and see where you were in misery and how far you've come. If you don't, you'll just forget about it and NOT FORGETTING is important. You must remember your FEELINGS!" mentality.

But why? Why must I remember these feelings? I have to remember the feeling of despair that made me want to take a carving knife to myself to just get the damn fat off my body? Thanks, I prefer not to remember that. It was depressing living through it. Why would I want to re-live it? Even though I will always remember that particular psychosis of mine. But you get my drift.

Maybe I think this way because this journey along the DS garden path has, up until this point, been 95% a bed of roses. De-thorned roses with nothing but lovely scents and soft petals to cushion my fall. And now that I've said that, I will promptly be struck with bad luck that will have me in the hospital dealing with strangled bowel lengths and other nasty things like that. Because karma is a bitch that way.

So why do I continue to blog? Well, because I like to tell stories about what goes on in mine and other people's lives. I have about 25,000 words that I want to use a day and because I just don't talk to many people during the day, I usually have about 15,000 words that go unused a day. Blogging gets it out of me.

Here I sit, a hypocrite at her finest, telling you about all the lovely things that are happening to ME. Hey, at least I'm honest about it, right?

Anyway, in the past 12 months, I've managed to go from 315 pounds to 199. This despite eating all the wrong things at times, but still sticking to eating the right things because they actually taste good, you know? Life is a smorgasbord. I'm here to eat the delicacies from it. And I'm not going to apologize for it.

I have yet to take all my measurements. I'll probably be doing that this evening and I'll post the differences for you then. I'm sure it's going to be something utterly mind-boggling to me.

I have gone from a size 26/28 jean to a size 14/16. Technically, I am at the goal that I set for myself. If I could get rid of this damn pooch of a tummy, I probably could go lower. If I do, marvelous! If not, size 14 was my goal from the beginning and damn it if I'm not there.

On top, I have gone from wanting a 30/32 shirt (the girls needed their room!) to being quite comfortable, thank you, in a regular XL t-shirt. They're even a little bit *gasp!* baggy!

Dresses are a whole other animal. I used to wear a 26/28 from Lane Bryant. I really haven't actually tried any on since that size simply because I don't like most of the stuff I see. But the dress I sewed for The Husband's and my vow renewal started out at a 20 (equals a size 16 in regular clothes) and I had to chop a bunch down because I would have been swimming in it. So who knows where I am on that front. I haven't had the time to go to Mervyns and just pick out a bunch of stuff and try it on to see where I'm at but I probably should just for research purposes, you know?

Bones I never knew existed have been making themselves known to me. I have shoulder blades and collar bones for once. I also have sagging skin that makes me almost as depressed as the fat that formerly filled it does and makes me want to take aforementioned knife to it as well to get rid of it. At least a good foundation garment can take care of the ick factor for the most part, but still. Plastics will be a must at some point. Ugh.

I had my lab work drawn this morning before coming into work. Nine vials (Vampires those phlebotomists are, I tell you. Vampires!) of dark red blood that will be furiously spun in a centrifuge and subjected to testing to discover if I've been naughty or nice. To figure out if something Terribly Wrong is going on with my supplementation regimen and absorption levels. We shall see what we shall see and make adjustments from there.

All in all, it's been a wonderful ride this past year. Once the healing was over, my life has gone on, and it's been better than I even expected. I won't deny the hiccoughs, but that's all they've been so far - minor irritants in the great scheme of living life to its fullest. Hopefully this journey will continue that way for a long, long time.

Thus endeth the navel gazing of the day. Now commenteth! Validate me, please! Or not. It's all good. :-)

Summertime Life

Yeah. Well, life has been shooting by at about a million miles per hour. So what else is new, right?

Let's see if I can catch y'all up.

• We spent the majority of last week traveling to see my father-in-law in Nevada. Who knows if this will be the last time we see him. I'm glad we got to spend quality time with him, though. The Husband drove his motorcycle up and I followed later in the day with the truck and a trailer for the trip back down. Good thing we did. Several small wildfires were burning after lightening strikes on our way home. Would not have been fun to breathe in all that smoke.
• The new pairs of jeans I purchased two weeks ago? One of them is already sliding off my ass. I should have gotten the size 14 instead of the 16. Who knew? The cacklings of glee you're hearing is from me, by the way.
• Thing One and Thing Two are proving to us that they can actually be alone together without killing each other. This is astounding. And hooray for not having to pay for babysitting anymore! Whoo-hooo!
• On said trip to Nevada, all four of us dyed our hair. I am now in possession of ebony tresses tinged with blue, Thing One is washed with nutmeg and paprika, Thing Two is raven-haired, and The Husband first bleached the hell out of everything but eventually settled for light brunette with blonde highlights. Nothing like giving the elderly parents a shock when you come for breakfast one morning, eh? Hee!
• And saving the best for last. The scale this morning? 199. Hot damn!