Today in 3rd grade

We were discussing the upcoming St. Patrick's Day holiday...

Me: "So what kind of creatures come out on St. Patrick's Day?"
3rd grader: "Groundhogs!"
I correct this and we move on...
Me: "What country do leprechauns come from?"
Different 3rd grader: "Cleveland!"

I guess we have some things still to work on.

Ready for a break

Hello. Am alive.

(I just read a book narrated by 4 characters with 4 different voices. One spoke like that - with no subjects in her sentences. It was weird. Also, eventually the 4 characters interacted and when she was narrating, they all spoke like that. But when someone else was narrating, they spoke normally. Not sure what this literary technique is called. Also not sure I like it.)

February has been a crazy busy month for me. The last week has arrived with blessedly little to do on the calendar, and I'm really looking forward to a low key week/weekend. I like being busy and have enjoyed most of the business of the past month or so. And I won't be upset if things come up this week. But still. Some down time is always nice.

I keep thinking that I need to be posting - I really want to have a record of my whole WLS journey. I just don't think that I really have anything to say. Things are just moving along.... I'm down about 130 pounds currently. I did buy a pair of size 12 jeans at Wal Mart the other day. They are probably the only pair of size 12s in the world that fit me, but still...there's one. I'm torn between being excited about this and desperate to hit a single digit size. Crazy, I know. I don't know which is more amazing - the fact that I ran 5 miles today or the fact that I no longer find that blogworthy.

Bad eating habits are starting to creep back in - grazing, "needing" something sweet because I'm so grumpy, etc. Not as bad as they were before, but they are things that I need to address NOW. It's hard for me because even with that, the weight is still coming off. It's hard to remember that won't always be the case. So that's my current struggle.

I promise I'll work on thinking of something interesting to say before I post again....

Happy Valentine's Day!

A few of my kids brought me Valentine's treats today, which was sweet. This one made me smile all day:


I've never really been pro or anti Valentine's. Sad, usually, that I'm alone, but altogether rather ambivalent on the topic. While we're on the subject, I should tell you that after 30 years of no one ever wanting to date me - and me not being willing to even if they had wanted to b/c I was so embarrassed by my weight - I am completely clueless when it comes to anything to do with dating. Anything at all. It's sad. I'm basically a 31 year old middle school girl.

Not that anyone is asking me out. I'm just saying. ;)

The beautiful weather has continued, I've run my 4 miles for the day, I have a party to go to tonight (an "Anti-Valentines" party no less), and Kay is bringing the kids to Lynchburg tomorrow. I'm a pretty happy girl right now!

6 month "nut" follow up

I'm supposed to meet with Pam, my nutritionist - or nut as refer to them in WLS-land - at the same intervals I follow up with Dr. Elliot. That is 1, 3, 6, 9, and 12 months or something like that. So my 6 month appointment came at 7 months and a week...that's close right? And isn't there something about close counting when it comes to horshoes and hand grenades? Julie?

Anyway. The point is - I met with Pam. One thing I wanted to talk to her about was how to eat while I'm in training. (Let me point out here that I LOVE to say that I'm "in training" and bring up being in training and/or running as frequently as possible. Much more often than I actually "train".) I've read a lot about eating just before and after runs and wasn't sure how that applied to me as a post-op. Well, as it turns out, she gave me pretty much exactly the same advice as I had heard other places: carbs before, carbs and protein afterwards. We talked about some good choices for me to make at those times. I also admitted to her (as I am here, to you, now) that I have gotten into a bad habit of grazing and I'm worried about that. Pam whipped out her little calculator and figured out that I'm burning about 2,000 extra calories a week with my running. (Can I just stop here and say WOW?!?!) So she said, "You're probably hungry" Hmmmm.... who would've thought???

So that was mostly what we talked about. She was pleased overall with my progress.

Have I mentioned that I broke my scale? Yes, 125 pounds ago I stood on that thing no problem. NOW it decides to crack on me??? So I don't actually know if I've lost any more weight. I feel like I have, though, because my clothes are getting looser. Getting a new scale is on my list...

It's definitely off to bed for me tonight!

God is so good to me!

God just knocks me on the head sometimes with how much he loves me. Today he wanted me to know it for sure.

It was one of those days where I started out grumpy last night and hadn't managed to shake it yet. I was seriously on the very, very edge of completely losing it and curling up into a ball somewhere. (You know how you have those days? I have them fairly regularly. I'm not what you would refer to as "emotionally stable". Although in a surprising turn of events, this was the first one of these days I've had this school year. It usually happens much sooner. Like pre-school week.) Just when I was at my lowest point - I had just finished with my very hardest class, which is also my next-to-last class of the day - God intervened. 3 unusual things happened at once:

1. It was 70 degrees in February.
2. No one was out at recess (on a 70 degree day in Feb.)
3. My last class got unexpectedly pushed back half an hour at the last minute.

So I went outside and walked around the track a few times. It didn't make everything all better, but it definitely helped. And enabled me to get through my day.

God had to be right there, smiling and hugging me, pushing me through it. He is truly an awesome God.

Heaven

I think about heaven a lot - how great it's going to be, how I can't wait to to get there, all of that. I have no fear or trepidation about death whatsoever because I'm so excited about it.

So this morning in the shower I was thinking about it and I began to wonder - why does God have us go through this life on earth first? Why not just create us directly in heaven? Seems like it would save a lot of pain all around.

I'm sure the answer is wrapped up somewhere in God loving us, because everything he does is. Maybe when I get to heaven he'll explain it to me :)

25 random things about me

Ok, I am totally and completely addicted to Facebook. Love the stalker aspect of it, love seeing pictures, love everything about it. (Except the 15,000 random requests I get every day. I don't even look at those) So this trend started where everyone had to write 25 random things about themselves. There have been other trends, but this is the only one that got the Sarah Nash "Cool Seal of Approval" (an award more highly coveted than the Good Housekeeping Seal) I had so much fun reading other peoples notes! So I thought I would share my post:

Um, I forgot to cut and paste the rules here. Seriously, is there anyone out there who doesn't know the rules by now? I was going to say I'm pulling a Katie Masinick and not tagging anybody. Then Katie caved and tagged people. So I'm just going to say that I'm not tagging people because everyone's already been tagged and I like to be defiant like that. I DO want to read your list, though......so write one already!

1. My two favorite things are UNC basketball and my niece and nephew, Abby and Brian. (ok this one’s not random. Everyone already knows this)

2. I almost always have half a glass of Cherry Coke Zero chillin’ in my refrigerator, getting flat so I can drink it later.

3. I have Jawad Williams’ leftover chicken wings in my freezer.

4. I’m somewhat of a control freak. That’s why I like teaching. Also why my favorite basketball position is point guard.

5. I get unreasonably angry over things which I have absolutely no control, such as college basketball and the weather.

6. At the beginning of the season, I write every UNC basketball game on my calendar including opponent, location, time, and tv channel.

7. I am a co-founder and co-president of Not Sarah’s Game Club, going strong for 5 years now!

8. I talk to my mom and my sister almost every day. I see my family at least once a month, and I cry every time I leave them.

9. My friends call me “Speed” because in high school I got two speeding tickets in the same spot doing the same speed within a few months of each other. Some call me “Sidim” and we will not discuss the reasons why.

10. I wish I could take a nap and a hot bath every single afternoon.

11. I have been on two cruises – one to the Caribbean and one to Alaska. I researched them to death, did everything I wanted to do, and loved every minute. Do I want to do another one? Ah. Take it or leave it.

12. I hate, loathe, and despise email forwards. Especially when the sender, who is supposed to a fully grown woman (JULIE SMITH IN COLLEGE) adds things like “I know this is silly, but I don’t want bad luck....”

13. I have a sleeping routine. I have to lay (or is it lie?) (It’s lie – Clark says “Chickens lay, people lie”) on my back, my side, my stomach, my other side, and back to my stomach. Then I have to sleep with one arm straight up under the pillow and the other hand under my cheek. One leg has to be bent up while the other is straight. Some people find this tossing and turning when I first go to bed to be disruptive. I find it to be normal and calming.

14. I have a blog instead of a journal because it looks prettier.

15. I’m running my first 10k at the end of March. That’s 6.2 miles. 10 months and 125 pounds ago, I couldn’t even run 6.2 feet.

16. My sister is my best friend and my hero. I want to be just like her when I grow up. She’s smart, funny, pretty, organized, and basically does it all with a smile like it’s no big deal. I need her to help me remember family member’s names and I don’t like to buy clothes unless she approves them first.

17. At one point I wanted to move to Maine, but then I realized I was too much of a Momma’s girl to move that far away from home. For the same reason, I think I’m the only person not to put “I love to travel” on my 25 things list. In fact, I think I’ll go ahead and put “I don’t like to travel” just to be shocking.

18. I’m the pickiest eater you’ll ever meet. I don’t eat any fruit or seafood. I like a few vegetables – broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, potatoes – but mostly with cheese on them. When people find out I don’t like fruit, they start listing them. “Really? Not even apples? Or grapes?” or they try and trick me “What about tomatoes?” Yes, people. I KNOW what fruits are. I just don’t like them.

19. I think that people seriously underestimate the importance of kids repeatedly reading and re-reading on their independent level.

20. I refuse to use abbreviations in text messages.

21. I still have 3 living grandparents. My grandaddy died 3 years ago and I miss him every day.

22. The only thing I really want out of a life is to be a wife and mother. I think I’ll always feel like a failure without that, but I’m working on it (the feeling like a failure, not the becoming a wife and mother).

23. I love The Office, but I think Psych is the funniest show on television. My dream guy has a lot of Jim Halpert and Shawn Spencer in him. I also loved that old show Sports Night that got canceled way too soon.

24. I spend a lot of time thinking about the first person I want to see or the first question I want to ask when I get to heaven. I think it may be “What kind of a student was Jesus? How old was he when he learned to read?”

25. I don’t believe in NASA. I believe it exists, I just don’t believe it should. Why spend billions of dollars on something that may possibly be out in space when we have tons of people here without food, homes, doctors, or books??

26. In high school, I had a “pillar of coldness” that kept me cold all the time. As I got super fat, it melted and I had little problem staying warm. Now that I’ve lost some weight I’ve rediscovered cold in ways I never knew existed. How is it possible to be THIS cold all the time??!!??!!

My list has 26 things on it because I love breaking rules!

My new blog

Well, I have finally finished it. I have created a second blog! I called it Fighting to Free the Skinny Girl Within. There is literally nothing on there that is not also on this blog. So, seriously, if you've been reading this blog there is no need to go there. I created it simply so that people who are only interested in finding out about my WLS experience can go there and not have to wade through everything else. I've also put a lot more detail into the labels - instead of just labeling everything with a generic "WLS", I've broken it down more. So, in the future, anytime I post something here that concerns my WLS I'll just copy it over there as well. I know it seems random and strange, but that's the kind of girl I am.

It's been an adventure reading what I've written the last 11 months or so...Sometimes I do a good job of documenting what I'm doing, and others not so much. Oh, well. I'm going with the "something is better than nothing" theory here.

A Beautiful Day!

So today we finally had some nice warm, sunny weather - the first time in a long, long time! It was so exciting! So I went to church, then went out to lunch with some friends from church. They were playing ultimate frisbee this afternoon so I went home, threw on an old t-shirt from the play I did in high school (Go Go Go Joseph!), and headed out to join them. I didn't actually play frisbee - I am no good at that and people who take these things seriously would get irritated if I tried to play - but I did play a little bit of basketball, which is awesome. I need to do that more. Then I headed over to the Masinick's to catch the end of their barbeque and play some ladderball. (Awesome game)

While this may sound like an awesome, fun day to anyone, to me it was nothing short of a miracle. Let me tell you all of the things from this day that would have never happened last year - note the phrase "some friends from church". I made friends, which is not something I did well when I was super fat. Note that I went to be involved in some outdoor physical activitiy - not something I could have done fat. Note that I threw on an old t-shirt from high school. It's actually looser now than it was then. Why I kept it all these years, I don't know. My life now is made up of miracles everyday and I'm so, so grateful.

I'm rarely sappy, but today I was just feeling this so much. I even called my mom and told her thank you. Not only did she pay for my surgery, but she encouraged me every step of the way. I have a long, uphill battle still to go but I'm celebrating how far I've come for now.

A dream come true!

I've talked before about how much I love really old movie outfits. Well, this weekend I went to a movie character themed birthday party, and I rented a dress and went as Guinevere. (You know? From Camelot? She was a bit of a tramp but the greatest, most idyllic kingdom ever was destroyed because of her?) It was sooooo exciting for me. I love being Guinevere. I want to be her every day. Here are some pics:

The outfit

The hairdo

Not only did I love being Guinevere, but it's amazing to me to be able to wear a costume at all. When I was fat, I could never have found an awesome outfit like this. In fact, I probably wouldn't have been willing to even go to this party. It's so strange how so, so much about my life is different now.

In running news, I've decided to scale back my training a bit. I was using the Y training schedule, but I was combining the novice and intermediate training schedules a bit. So I'm going to stick from now on just to the novice schedule. Although I can do the longer runs from the intermediate schedule, I think I'm running more often now then I was before which is making it more difficult. So I'm going to try and be ok with taking it slowly and setting more realistic expectations for myself, which can be frustrating to me.

One more note - I'm working on setting up a second blog where I'm copying all of my posts about WLS. That way if you don't know me and don't care about all of the other nonsense in my life, but are interested in hearing about my WLS journey I can send you there. I'm telling you this now so that I get motivated to finish it and get it up and running :)