Watch Out World!

'Cause I've got a motorcycle permit and I'm going to use it. Eeeeeee!

Yes, I passed my test yesterday. Perfect score. Yessss! So now it's on to the safety class, which luckily for me is going to be free for me because our Navy Base requires that all who are going to ride motorcycles on base must take a safety course and then repeat it every two years to continue riding on base. And since they require it, according to state law, THEY have to pay for it. Whoo-hooo! Hopefully I'll get in the one next month. Then I can start riding to work. Just in time for the cold weather to hit. Blargh. Oh well. That's what cold weather gear is for, right?

Now that Thing One and Thing Two are in public school, I get the lovely pleasure of fundraisers. Yes, that's right. The bane of every parent's existance. Because now they don't allow the children to go door-to-door like they did in my time, nooooo! Because there are all those nasty, evil people out there. Nevermind that they were out there when I was a kid, but that's besides the point. *sigh* We're so paranoid now.

Anyway, Thing One has to raise money for her choir trip to Disneyland. She has to raise $100 (or we/she has to pay the rest) in order to go. But since we live out in the boondocks, and really have no neighbors to speak of (except for the child molesters that I may have mentioned before), guess who gets to do the actual selling. Riiiight! Mom and Dad. Feh.

Look, I did my time. I stood for hours on end outside our local supermarket hawking World's Finest Chocolate Bars. I went door to door selling them as well, and the magazine subscriptions too. For YEARS. I had a cute spiel down. I smiled. I asked graciously. Totally unlike any of the snots you see now-a-days - which is one of the reasons why I've stopped buying World's Finest Chocolate Bars.

But now I'm groveling with my co-workers: Please! PLEASE! Buyyyyy this stuff for my chiiiilllddd! They MADE me do it! FORGIVE ME! I HATE MYSELF! *sob* So, whatcha gonna get?

Tomorrow it goes with The Husband to HIS work. Let's see how well he fares with this. There's a couple people he has to "get back" because they constantly hound him to buy Girl Scout cookies for their kids. And he always does.

Turn about is fair play, right? Pony up, suckers!

Monday Minutiae

It seems that I was incorrect in the model number of the motorcycle we have purchased for my use. It is just a TW200, not a TRW200. No biggie, but what, pray tell, does the "R" mean when it is present in a motorcycle designation for Yamaha and many other brands? Why that would be "RACING," which The Husband let slip when I referred to my motorcycle incorrectly this weekend. And precisely WHOSE motorcycle has the "R" in its model designation? Yeah. That would be HIS FJR1300. Yeah. Racing. Funny how he snuck that by me, pulling the wool over my eyes, so to speak, isn't it? Harrumph!

And speaking of pulling the wool over the eyes . . . the girlies and I went to have our eyes checked this weekend at Lenscrafters. Thing Two needed to be checked to make sure that she *really* needs glasses (she does, and has an astigmatism to boot! Feh!) and Thing One needed an update and new pairs of glasses. I needed my routine annual checkup, including the check for glaucoma, seeing as how I have inherited a double-whammy from both my mother's and father's sides the equations. Eye pressure is normal, as it has been since I was a teen, which is good. Not that I'm paranoid about glaucoma (which I am), but I really don't want to be in the situation my mother was where they didn't catch it until it was pretty well progressed and she has chunks that are missing from her vision as a result and has also had to have surgery to DRILL HOLES in her eyeballs to relieve the pressure so things don't get worse. Ahem. Not my cup of tea.

No, the surprise of the visit is that the last time I had my eyes checked (about a year and a half ago - before having the DS) my prescription was -1.75 diopters in the right eye and -2.25 diopters in the left eye. It's been that way over the last seven to eight years or so. This steady prescription put me smack-dab in the category of "people who are able to have LASIK surgery because their prescription has remained stable." Yay! A life devoid of glasses! Sign me up!

This visit, however, dashed my hopes entirely. A full half diopter change in BOTH eyes. Aaargh.

But wait. I'm not finished yet. The change? It's not that my eyes have gotten worse, it's that they have gotten BETTER! Yes, my prescription is now -1.25 and -1.75, right and left eyes respectively. Holy cow! My optometrist was stunned. She's never seen something like this before. People always get worse, not better.

Could this be a result of having the DS? Did my excess weight also put a strain on my eyes that I had no way of knowing about? I mean, this prescription is what it was when I was 25. And here I am at 37 years of age with IMPROVING eyesight.

Is this improvement going to continue? Is it based on my weight loss? Is it based on my change to a high-protein diet? Have there been studies of WLS patients studying this phenomenon? WTF is going on here?

All I know is that I will put this down in the column of "good things that happened to me after weight loss." Who cares that I need to wait another three-to-four years to have a steady prescription. I'll take glasses for a while with these kinds of results.

She Loses an Entire Other Person and She's Taking Up WHAT?

Motorcycles. Yup. You read that right. Motorcycles. I am now the proud owner of a Yamaha TRW200 - a dual sport that has a little bit of getupandgo and is still lightweight enough for me to feel comfortable actually maneuvering.

I held off quite a bit on this one, insisting to The Husband that it was a scooter or nothing else at all. I mean, my grandfather bought one for me when I was 16 and I used that throughout highschool so it was a comfort factor for me. But he somehow maneuvered around me, convinced me that it would be a marvelous training motorcycle for me because of the larger back tire and easy clutch (Just like driving a Volkwagon Beetle again! Yay!) and then as Thing One got older, it would make a great transition for her as well as she got her driver's license. Plus we could take it off-roading, and with me on the motorcycle and Thing Two on the back, that would mean all FOUR of us could go on a ride on the street.

Well, with logic like that, what woman can withstand it? Let's face it. He snowed me. Oh well! I wasn't complaining much. :-P

I went and took the motorcycle test today. And didn't pass by one point. Gah! I hate it when I do that. At least the questions I got wrong were wrong because I don't have much experience on a real motorcycle, and not because I don't know how to drive safely. The one that would have tipped me over the edge into passing I got wrong because I read it wrong. Blargh! Leave it to me to speed-read an important test.

Oh well. Next Monday I shall conquer the DMV and obtain my motorcycle license. As a bonus, I get a driver's license with a NEW PICTURE on it! One of my gripes about losing all this excess weight at this point is that NOBODY recognizes me anymore in my old picture. I mean, I nearly got denied access to my bank account at the place I've banked with since birth. WTF? And there was NO ONE around who has known me for years - an actual first. I had to remember both my mother and mother-in-law's maiden names to get access. They nearly wanted a blood sample it seemed. Aaargh!

But, I guess this means I've done relatively good, eh? If that's my only gripe at this moment, I'll take it. And I'm keeping my old license, come hell or high water. I want to keep that reminder around that I'm no longer that person who was uncomfortable in her own skin.

Incongruity

I heard on the radio and then read on the 'net about Russia's new, more "environmentally friendly," non-nuclear bomb.

In what alternate universe does "bomb" equal "environmentally friendly" I wonder? Hmmmm?

One of these things is not like the other . . .

What a Difference a Day Makes

Less than 24 hours after my last post, my father-in-law was dead. It was a peaceful passing, filled with family and song, so they tell me. At least the pain is over for him, and we can begin the healing.

Sunday we held the memorial service for him. It was very long, but filled with wonderful remembrances of him, his life, and what he meant to us. It ended with the American Legion Color Guard giving a 21 gun salute and the presentation of the colors to my mother-in-law. It honestly felt more like a wedding than a funeral. All in all a very good thing.

Grief is such an odd beast and people feel it and show it in different ways. For me, there is no grieving to be done. My FIL was a wonderful guy, but now he's gone. I'm sad that I will no longer receive calls from Dear Old Dad, as he liked to call himself, I'm sad that his sense of humor won't be around, but I'm not going to grieve his loss. Him being in the pain that he was in caused me to grieve. Now all that I can find in this is a blessed relief and yes, a happiness that he is asleep and knows no more pain.

So, hug your loved ones and gather them around you. Waste no time in doing what you must do to live life to the fullest. One of the best parts of this last year for me was having my FIL talk to me about my weight loss and how he, a blind man, could see that I was being filled with so much more joy in life, even as his was slowly being eked from him. He was so happy that I was getting back to who I was. It amplified my own joy as I found my old self again. I will never forget him and the love he showed me even when I was the new stranger in his youngest son's life.

God speed, Jack! We will miss you. But we'll see you again. Until then!