Sifting through the ashes

Wow . . . while resurrecting this blog, I revisited the comments that were left on some of my prior posts.  Mostly, I clicked on the links back to the commenters, and with the exception of 2, all of them had deactivated their accounts.

Kinda like coming back to your hometown and finding that it burnt down.

Wierd.

Still kicking

I'm still here . . . resurrecting this old dusty corner soon.

Enough bellyaching already

Back in the saddle again!

So . . . I am beginning Day 2 of the 5 Day Pouch Test - a nifty little plan I found online for folks like me that have had bariatric surgery, lost the weight, and gained some back.

Turns out, my carb snacking is a common thing among the post-surgicals . . . something about the simple carbs being easy to digest, easy on the little stomach, but hell on the metabolism. NOW you tell me.

No matter, lesson learned. I have sworn off the evil little pretzels, and I am getting back to the original plan. If all goes well, I and my pouch will ride happily into the sunset, protein shakes in our saddlebags.

Happy trails, ya'll.

The 35 year war rages on

Yep. Read it and weep.

30 pounds. 30 fucking pounds heavier than I was this time last year.

This time last year, my body felt reborn. I was about 2 years post surgery, and my weight had stabilized. My clothes fit the same from month to month. The scary drops in weight had stopped, and the bouts with nausea, and the problems with digestion. Everything seemed to have stabilized.

This time last year, I was packing to take the kids to Myrtle Beach. Matty was recovering from a month in the hospital - he had been diagnosed with cancer just a few months before in February, and the pain that landed him in the hospital seemed to be under control, and the chemo seemed to be working, and we were feeling hopeful.

This time last year, I didn't see my parents much, but I knew my dad was getting weaker, and my mom was growing more forgetful.

Within 6 months, I would watch a great many things.

I watched my dad slowly fade away in ICU. I'd bury my dad, move my confused and addled mom into my house, and see the extent of her dementia first hand and the extent of the cancer in her bones, and in her liver, and in her kidneys on MRIs in her kind doctor's office. It would feel oddly familiar. The same doctor had broken the news to us about my mom's breast cancer recurrence 6 years ago, and had gently told Matty and me about HIS diagnosis just the year before.

I watched Matty endure torturous, inhumane, painful treatments that he bravely faced so that he could live through this goddamned thief called cancer and be here for me and the kids.

I also watched all of his friends gather in his honor in NYC to help us celebrate his being able to be there and our marriage which we managed to wedge in among the tragedy and loss and just before his stem cell transplant - yet another hellacious procedure he faced head on without blinking.

Not once.

I tried to be as brave as him when I saw tubes sticking out of his chest that carried the poisons through his body to kill the intruder, and I tried to keep a steady hand when I flushed the lines with saline solution so he could keep receiving the poison.

I watched my kids go though all this too, without complaint. I watched time tick past, and mourned the time lost with them while I worked, or sat in a hospital, or sat with my parents. I mourned time lost with my mom when I was sitting right with her, seeing the look of confusion on her face and realizing that she didn't quite know who I was.

I watched it all. I sat through it all, very still, with hardly any movement at all.

I worked. I remained calm in the face of this shitstorm. I kept plugging.

And slowly, slowly, I relied on what I've always relied on to keep my nerves in check. Food.

I snacked. I rationalized. I began to fall back on old bad habits.

The worst part is, it all feels like vanity. I didn't care that I wasn't exercising. I didn't care that the weight was hurting my heart, or my back. I cared that my clothes didn't fit anymore. It didn't even dawn on me to step on a scale until my summer shorts felt tight. I blocked everything else - the lethargy, the aches, the depression, the loss of strength. None of that clicked, not one damn thing.

Just the shorts.

Stepping on the scale felt like climbing on to the platform and putting the hangman's noose around my neck. Breath held . . . . watching the numbers flash . . . ..

199.6.

I thought my heart was going to stop right there.

I had fought so hard, gone through so much, endured years of waiting, gone to so many doctors, endured so many exams, endured so many years of illness just to qualify for the surgery, and I had lived through all the aftermath, all the throwing up so that I would never have to see numbers like this again.

It took 2 years to recover and stabilize. 2 years.

I fucked it up in 6 months' time.

I am thankful for small favors, I guess. For whatever reason, seeing that little "1" on the scale made me believe that I could fix it . . .something about still not weighing 200 made the panic immediately flood my brain with "it's ok, you can fix this . . . . it's not so bad . . ."

But it is bad. Bad for my heart. Bad for my back. Bad for my body. Bad for the long term prognosis of me remaining free of this disease, or addiction, or shitty set of genes, or collection of habits determined to kill me, or whatever the fuck you want to call it. Bad for my kids that are relying on me to take care of them and bad for Matty that has fought so hard just to be able to LIVE to have me sit here and toss my health in the garbage can.

I owe it to all of them to stay as healthy as I can for their sake. They deserve that.

I barely made it through the day yesterday. Today, the panic is gone, but the sadness is just washing over me in waves.

I must have stepped on that scale 4 times yesterday. I've already been on it twice today.

196 this morning. That little part in my head that always rationalizes was the first to say "See? It will be ok! You'll get back to where you are supposed to! Just need to keep your eye on the ball . . ."

Then that part of me that lived through 35 years of obesity reminds me of how many times I have tried and failed, how many times the weight has come back, how many times I have given up, how many times I have beaten myself up.

I want to do harsh things, of course I do. I want to do nothing but drink hot coffee and melt the weight off through starvation. I want to beat myself up and run until I drop, but I'm so weak, I feel like I can't get up from this chair.

People always say, "Treat yourself kind - take good care of yourself. Don't be so hard on yourself." No part of me wants to be kind or gentle. If kind means eating right, exercising, and abstaining from my crutches, that's about the last thing I have wanted to do lately.

The kind gentle part of ME is the part that lets me keep pretzels in my office drawer, and a bag of jelly beans to absentmindedly pop into my mouth during the long boring hours while I sit here on conference calls, hearing people bitch about our company, and our jobs, and about each other. The kind part of me gives me treats so I can distract myself from the losses, and the sadness and the fear and the shitty hand I'm holding while bluffing fate with an unbreakable poker face. The kind part doesn't make me exercise, and helps me ignore the obvious while I grow weaker and heavier.

That's the part of me that feels kind - the part that feeds the addiction. Making me stick to the plan doesn't feel kind - letting me have what my body craves and playing a nonstop reel of justification in my head feels kind. Like all addicts, I guess.

And that's the part that gets you in the end.

This Old House

I've been really antsy about the house lately.

Since the divorce, it has felt like I have just been marking time here, versus really living here. In case you have ever wondered, I can say with absolute certainty that it's hard to stay in a house after a divorce, especially if you keep all the same furniture, and all the same dishes, and all the same pictures on the walls, and all the same linens . . .

You get the idea.

What (I think) has been a comfort for the kids has been more than a bit uncomfortable for me.

By my choosing.

Since the divorce, I have worked hard to make sure that everything has stayed the same, physically, for them. At first, I thought that was supremely important. Somehow, I thought that maintaining their home and their neighborhood and their surroundings would make the divorce less difficult.

Maybe it has. Then again, maybe that was just wishful thinking on my part.

Consistency was my battle plan for getting my kids through this whole debacle. Of course, who could have imagined a year and a half ago that we would be sitting here in July 2010 in the situation we find ourselves in now. Matty is here with me, living in this house with me, the kids, the dogs and The Ghost of Marriage Past, battling cancer, and we are living across the street from my ex-husband and his family in a home that I have always loved but now somewhat resent.

Let's don't even talk about the housing crisis, or the economy, or the 2 chances we have for selling this home and walking away with a penny in our pocket (those two chances being slim and none.)

Even if we could sell, it would be a terrible time to try. We need to stay put and get through Matty's treatments, and keep the kids in the schools that they are used to, and I still think it's good for them to have their dad and grandparents closeby, even if that's not the most comfortable thing for the adults (them or us.)

All of these factors have kept me from doing, well . . . anything.

It's taken over a year for me to consider what I could do to this place to make it feel like a living, vibrant home, versus a marital graveyard. I know it's been hard on Matty, too, moving into a ready-made home.

In a perfect world, we would have sold this home, and disposed of the furnishings and found a new place.

But you know what they say . . . nothing's perfect.

But when you find yourself in the situation that we are currently in, you take stock of what's important, and what can be enjoyed in the here and now, and if having Matty here has taught me ANYTHING, it's that the day is what you make of it, and you can choose to enjoy life regardless of the circumstances.

I love him so much for that.

So, with that in mind, I found my mindset start to slowly change about the house.

I do still love it here. I love my kitchen, and I love my walk in closet, and I love my basement office, and my wooded backyard. I love my flowers out front, and I love my dining room, painted just the exact shade of blue as my beloved Pfaltzgraf stoneware.

I even love the neighborhood, and the pool, and the sidewalks.

All of the things that I loved about this house are still here. Everything that made it felt like I would shrivel up and die if we didn't get this house are still here.

That realization has been slow to catch fire in my head, but it's been smoldering for awhile now, and seems to have worked up a little flame. It's only been in the past month or so that I have begun to assess the situation and make plans to remake this home into one that feels less like a monument to what was, and more of a comforting place to enjoy what is.

It really started with a couple of small things, but I've learned that it's amazing how encouraging small changes can be.

Matty bought me a new gazebo for the deck (my old one had been destroyed in a bad storm last year.) Somehow, having him make that effort led me to want to make the deck as nice as I could for us to enjoy, so I ordered some solar light caps for the deck railings.

And, oh my sweet Home Depot . . . it took me FOREVER to pull the trigger on the damn lighting.

I looked online for DAYS, agonizing over every choice. It felt like I was making some kind of life-or-death decision, which is crazy.

Well, it is.

Anyway, I finally took a deep breath and clicked the "buy" button.

Then I noticed how neglected the deck was, and how badly it needed to be cleaned and stained and sealed, so we started collecting bids for that work, and it wasn't too long before I took a good look at my exterior porch and garage lights and ordered some that are as pretty as the deck lights. (Sea Gull Yorktown 1-Light Forged Iron Wall Lantern, retail $104, EBay new in box $54.00.)

They are in boxes at my front door now, and I am giddy with excitement to see them adorn the entrances.

We also picked up some new showerhead sets for our bathrooms. If you don't have a rainshower soaker/handheld shower combo, I can't recommend them highly enough.

This past weekend, we bought some beautiful forged iron pulls for my kitchen and bathroom cabinets ($1 apiece at a closeout of custom order kitchen hardware, retailed for $8ish each), and I've ordered some replacement lights for our bathrooms (this Kichler 3 light set was $225.00 retail, $39.00 new in the box on Ebay. Her 4-light sister was $295.00 retail, got two of those for $49.00 each!)


I've also begun to assemble all of the things that will be leaving our house. I plan to have the mother of all garage sales very very soon.

Once the house has been cleared of all of the unwanted items, the biggest project of all will commence: painting. It's the only project I am actually nervous about, which is silly, of course. I'm sure once I actually start applying the paint, it will be a breeze, but deciding on the colors, and preparing properly, all that . . . it feels like a big challenge.