Sizes and Changes

When I had my last visit with my bariatric surgeon’s office, Monday last, they said my official tally is 65 pounds lost. I have to say right here, however, that according to my scale at home, it’s only 55 pounds. Apparently whenever they were doing one of the weigh-ins, I was bloated. 10 pounds worth of bloat.

Ahem.

Anyway, 55 pounds or 65 pounds, however you slice it, is a nice tidy chunk of weight lost. I’m happy about that.

And then this weekend I found myself at Penney’s. Amazing how that happens, you just find yourself somewhere like that. And I was picking out clothes to try on. It’s nice that dresses are kind of making a comeback, thanks to some fantastic television shows (which shows that television is actually good for something), and I tried on a couple of dresses, size 18, and they fit, and one of them was even quite flattering on me. I’m planning on wearing it to work tomorrow. And I got a pair of pants, also size 18. And I got a new top, a 1X.  I picked up, in addition, a pair of black pumps from Payless (where I rarely go, but it’s nice to be able to buy 9 wides instead of 9-1/2 or 10’s, which are too long, but are the only way I can get shoes wide enough for my fat footsies).

Bear in mind that when I started I was wearing tight size 24’s and loose size 26’s. That means 4X. And now I’m in 18s and 1-2X’s depending upon the cut.

I’m happy about that.

There’s still a long way to go, and I’m enjoying the journey, even if it does make my tongue hurt (stinkin’ grapes and pineapple) and even if it does take a little longer because I’m enjoying a couple of double-stuffed golden oreos in a day.

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My Thongue Hurthth

I’ve been eating fruit and veggies and salads and lean meats. It’s been good to get back into the kitchen, and start cooking again. Plus Market Street has these amazing salads, so I go once or twice a week and get a container of macaroni salad, tabbouleh, cole slaw, this awesome chickpea salad with kalamata olives and onions and tomatoes, and fruit salad, and anything else that piques my fancy. Then with whatever entree we’re having, we each have a spoonful, more or less, of whatever salads we want.

And fruit. They have amazing fruit. Over the last week we’ve gone through pink lady apples (jazz apples this week–yum!), these oranges that are not quite blood oranges, but sort of bloodyish, and seriously good, and seedless red and black grapes. And pineapple. Fresh pineapple.

And this morning while I’ve been munching on my red black grapes, I’ve noticed that my tongue hurts rather a lot.  This has happened to me when I was vegetarian, and when I was vegan, and right now, even though I’ve been eating meat, apparently I’m eating enough fruit and acidic things to irritate my tongue. And it makes me quite cranky. I mean, how can you have a better breakfast than some good grapes and a slice of cheese (or a protein bar, because I took too long in the tub this morning to have time to slice cheese)? But if your tongue hurts when you eat grapes, it makes the delicious breakfast a little less enjoyable.

I figure I’ll ask my dentist about it when I go for the root canal next week. Maybe he’ll have some helpful suggestions.

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Itchy! Itchy! Itchy!

On Tuesday I called the dentist’s office. I was having a killer toothache, and needed an appointment. The appointment was scheduled for today (Thursday). I spent the rest of the day Tuesday massaging my incredibly tender gum.

On Wednesday I called the dentist’s office. I couldn’t wait until 4 p.m. Thursday afternoon, and they kindly got me an appointment that day.  I thought it was a tooth that had had a root canal, but I was wrong. When Dr. W. had filled it a year and a half ago, he said that it might require a root canal, but he was going to take the conservative approach.  There’s a lot of inflammation, and a lot of pain, obviously, and a root canal is going to take place.

He asked me whether I wanted him to try to drain the abscess then, or do a course of antibiotics and let it clear up that way. Because of the degree of pain I was experiencing, and how swollen it was, he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to totally numb the area before draining it. I’ve mentioned here before how I have anxiety attacks surrounding dentistry–he’s the first dentist that I’ve been able to be at all relaxed with, which says a lot for his chairside manner.  So I said let’s do antibiotics and wait.

He prescribed antibiotics. And because of the pain, he also prescribed hydrocodone. Now, if I’m taking hydrocodone by itself, it works just fine. It’ll help relieve the pain, perhaps give me a little sleep. However, when combined with antibiotics, hydrocodone makes me agonizingly, painfully itchy. It usually takes a few doses before the itchiness sets in, so I was okay last night. I woke up at 4 a.m. in acute pain, and took a pain pill. I called my boss to let her know I wasn’t able to drive first thing this morning, so I would be a couple of hours late.

I got to work around 9, and took another pain pill. And the itching began.  I keep brushing my hair because the bristles scratch my scalp. I’ve been using my purple plastic ruler to try to scratch my back. I’ve been scratching my arms.  I’ve been wriggling trying to scratch the part of my back I can’t get at with the ruler. I’ve been surreptitiously scratching my legs and my ankles and my feet and my butt.

And I’m sleepy. He must have given me a fairly large dosage of the hydrocodone, because it doesn’t usually knock me out this hard with just one pill.

Oh, and my boobs are itching. Try sneakily scratching your boobs without anyone noticing.

Ay yi yi yi yi! I’m here till 5:30 or 6:30 (if I can stand it till 6:30), and it’s going to be a long, sleepy, itchy afternoon in Faithville.

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Cowboys and Aliens and Daniel Craig, Oh My!

Why should you go see Cowboys and Aliens?

Maybe I didn’t make myself clear….

Daniel Craig. In chaps. Fighting things. Climbing things. In chaps.

He is a beautiful man.

Oh, and the story is fantastic, and you’ll find characters to love and characters to loathe, and there’s lots of fighting and changing and cool stuff.

And Daniel Craig.

I’m just sayin’.

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Maybe It’s Maybelline

Six months or so ago, my favourite Urban Decay Big Fattie mascara ran out.  What kind of mascara to try next? What a dilemma! I ended up getting a tube of Dior mascara for around $25. And it was okay. Ish.  I mean, my eyelashes looked black, and it was good. Ish.

The other day, I saw a commercial for Maybelline Volume Express Falsies mascara.  Now, I’ve been around for a little while, at least long enough to know that you don’t take the claims of commercials/advertisements at face value. Nonetheless, I was intrigued enough to give it a try. At about $8, it was 1/3 the price of the Dior mascara that I wasn’t all that impressed with.

So okay. I don’t look like I’m wearing false eyelashes. But my eyelashes appear noticeably longer and fuller, and I have to move my reading glasses a little bit down my nose because otherwise my eyelashes bump against the lenses.

I’m not dissing Dior. But in the great mascara showdown, I’m sticking with Maybelline.

(and Urban Decay? Sorry, but the Maybelline falsies is comparable to your Big Fatty for a lot less money! Don’t worry. I’ll still get my smog and midnight cowboy and your awesome palettes.)

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I’m So Callous

My last pedicure was 3 weeks ago last Saturday, i.e., the day before our house burned down. Normally I’ll go far too long between pedicures, for financial reasons. They’re comparatively inexpensive, but I’m on very tight funds for one more month.

But all things considered, I decided I needed one, and when I stopped to pick up the dry cleaning, I saw there was a nail shop there.  The nail polish colour I picked out is indicative of my mood: black. The woman who did my pedicure did a fantastic job, and gave me a lovely foot & lower leg massage. And she went to town on my callouses–lathering on a lot of callous remover, scrubbing–at one point in frustration she wrapped my heels in plastic wrap to try to soften them up a bit. My feet look loads better, and they feel loads better.

So I’d rather take care of my callouses myself instead of paying $5 extra for someone else to do it. I need to get some callous cream and see if that will help. And the last time I got a pedicure, another woman there told me that she uses a cheese grater on her heels, along with the callous cream, and it works wonders. I’d never thought of using plastic wrap, though. I may have to give that a try.  I confess that I’m embarrassed by my tough cracked nasty heels that even a pedegg doesn’t work too well on.

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I Want These Shoes!!!!!

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Moving On….

Yesterday afternoon Joe and I went to tour an apartment complex that we’re considering.  It’s very, very nice, and I swallowed hard upon the realisation that the monthly rent is more than twice our monthly mortgage payment. But of course the insurance company is taking care of the rent, out of our policy, and we just have to keep paying our mortgage.

It has two huge, lovely pool areas. It has 2 fitness centers. It is extremely pet friendly, and has multiple doggie stations throughout the complex. It has a 1.5 mile jogging trail around a lake adjacent to the property.

The apartment we will most likely move into is on the ground floor, which is nice. It has an attached garage, also nice.  That gives us a place where we can clean off the dogs’ paws on rainy, muddy days so that they won’t track dirt into our flat (one of the things we lack, sad to say, at our own home, which is why we won’t carpet the house). The kitchen is bigger than the kitchen at home. Well, perhaps not bigger, but arranged far better.  There is a garden tub, nice for relaxing. There’s a built-in desk in the bedroom.

And we’ll have rental furniture, again thanks to our insurance policy. I was looking at furniture packages from different companies, and we found one we both like quite well. We’ll need a television and DVD player, but if I have my way we’ll just buy one, because we needed a new TV anyway.

So if we get this specific apartment, we’ll be moving on the 19th/20th. It’ll be nice to get out of the hotel. I greatly appreciate having lived at the hotel, and everyone there is so nice and friendly, particularly the lovely cleaning staff who’ve taken care of our room (and for whom we need to leave a large tip). The apartment is roughly twice the size of the hotel suite, still small. But it will be fine until we’re able to move back into our house.

Joe met with the restoration cleaners yesterday. Approximately 30% of our clothes were a total loss (of those they took). There are still bags full of clothes at the house that Mooring Co. considered a total loss.  And all my makeup and skincare, not so much from the fire, although that didn’t do it any favours, but also from being in the house with no air conditioning in Texas in August.

Speaking of which, we had a lovely little temporary reprieve yesterday afternoon.  Huge clouds spread over the area, with cool winds and the promise of rain. We didn’t get the rain, but the temperature dropped to 87 degrees for a while. Of course, by the time I left work it was back up, but it was very pleasant for that little while, with the promise of autumn to come.

ETA: We’re definitely moving into the apartment on Friday. So that’s a relief.

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Toddlers & Tiaras

I’ve mentioned before that I believe this show exists merely to instill in most sane people a sense of moral superiority. 

It’s like watching a train wreck. You see these normal kids being forced by their parents into growing up prematurely. Teased hair. Wiglets. Spray tans. False Eyelashes. Enough make-up to make a whore blush. Sexy routines and movements no 4 year old should know.

It’s a pedophile’s wet dream. And believe me when I say that is not a compliment.

Every now and then they’ll show a before and after picture. The before picture shows a cute, healthy child, looking like a child and behaving like a child. The after picture shows a tarted up doll. I don’t know which picture I am supposed to like better, but I will tell you that the before picture trumps the after picture every time.

And I get sick of the parents talking about how much their child loves it. One of the parents in an episode I saw yesterday was talking about how she was praying for a man with a 5-year-old girl so she could enter the girl in pageants. And she married a man with a 5-year-old girl, and began entering the child in pageants. Pre-pageant, they were making goodie bags to give to all of the other contestants, and the child was talking about how she would be happy for the winner, even if she wasn’t a winner.  On the day of the pageant, however, she was in tears because her name didn’t get called, and the remonstrances of her stepmother that it wasn’t her age group did little to make her feel better. 

Another child was watching her competition with an extremely jealous look on her face, and her mother kept talking about how this one particular girl was very stiff competition for her daughter.  And during the part of the show where they show the children and their parents practicing and preparing, the girl talked about how she wore a flipper because her teeth made her look like a jack-o-lantern (she was still in the process of losing baby teeth and growing adult teeth), and she didn’t want to be a jack-o-lantern because jack-o-lanterns are fat.

They’re children, people. When you prematurely force them into adolescent and adult roles, you’re taking away their childhood.  You’re teaching them–whether intentionally or not–that their worth is based on how many crowns they get, how many judges deem them worthy of crowns and sashes. You’re telling them that if they win, they’re awesome, and if they lose, the judges were biased and they should have won.  You’re turning them into monstrous little divas.

Adolescent girls are hard enough on themselves. Don’t do this to your children. Please. Let them just be children.  Let them believe they’re the greatest things in the world, because they are, not because a panel of judges gives them the biggest crown and a savings bond and a trophy.  Let them win trophies as they grow up and excel in whatever fields they’re interested in–sports, academics, etc.–instead of how slutty they look with ten pounds of makeup and their hair ratted and curled beyond all recognition.

And I’m not going to be watching any more episodes of this ghastly show.  Enough is enough. I’m not going to support the kiddie pageants.

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Exhausted

I am so blinkin’ tired!!!!!  Joe had to go out of town for a couple of days, so when Scout decided at 4:20 a.m. yesterday that he had to go poop right that minute, I was the only one there, which meant I was the one he woke up.  And since we’re in a hotel, not our own home, I had to get up, get dressed, put the dogs on their leashes, take them down in the elevator, take them to their favourite pooping place, let him poop, go back into the hotel, take them up in the elevator, take them to their room, and collapse in the bed and hope I could go back to sleep.

Well, I did, but not until it was almost time for me to get up anyway. Rackin’-frackin’ dogs!

So yesterday I made sure to take them out plenty of times when I got off work, even though neither of them did much of anything. And I told Scout very firmly that if he woke me up to let him go out and poop, I was going to be very upset. Well, either that worked, or else one of the poops I had to clean up this morning was Scout’s.

And I was so tired that when my cell phone ran out of juice and started beeping, I didn’t hear it. That means I didn’t wake up and plug in my charger. That means my phone turned itself off. That means my alarm didn’t go off. Yes, I woke up at 7:05. I’m supposed to be at work by 7. So I got dressed, took the dogs out, washed the dishes from last night, headed downstairs, got some food to go, and got to work 45 minutes late.

And I’m still tired.

I’m leaving work early today to take care of some business, and then I’m going to go to the hotel, arrange for service for our room, take the dogs out while our room is getting cleaned, and then I’m going to lie down and, I hope, get some delicious sleep.

Not only that, but Joe’s coming back this evening, which means if Scout *does* need to wake someone up during the night, that someone won’t be me. Because Scout’s a total papa’s boy.

Aaaah. The bliss that comes from a peaceful full night’s sleep. Tomorrow should be a better day!

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