As a kid I was never scared of monsters under the bed. Or in the wardrobe. Dust, yes. Mess, yes. Junk falling on me, yes. Not monsters, though. The only real monster in my life has been food. It hides in biscuit barrels and in the fridge. It ambushes me from fast food places and supermarket checkouts and petrol station queues. Food lurks like a ghost to haunt me at family gatherings, at outings at friends’ places, at trips to the movies and lunches out and even just having a cuppa in the afternoon is fraught with the threat of food. It has spoiled every birthday party I’ve ever been to.

When my kids were little, there used to be arguments at dinner time. Not “he/she got more than me” but “I’ve got more veggies than he/she does” (it’s not fair).

I am angry at food. I am at war with food. I hate it. I love it. I want it. I want it out of my life. Food is my enemy. Food keeps me alive.

There is no balance for me with food.

Today I ordered a copy of 2 of Linda Spangle’s books. I’m getting Life is Hard, Food is Easy and 100 Days of Weight Loss. Next week I’m having my first visit with the gastric banding team. Beloved is coming with me, just because he has questions he wants answered, too, and I’m glad to have him there with me.

Radio Boy came for a visit on the weekend. He insisted that we had to go out to dinner on Saturday night, so GF came too, and so did Poss and BF. It was BF’s birthday on Sunday, so a bit of a double celebration, really.

Here are Radio Boy and GF filling up on some ridiculously extreme drink. He had to hand over his driver’s license before they would give him the drink because people keep stealing the glasses otherwise (make the perfect home for a Betta splendens). With every glass of this drink comes a free hat which is described in the menu as a sombrero:

But that’s not a sombrero!

Now that:

is a sombrero!

Here are Poss and BF having a good time too:

BF wasn’t allowed to drink that night because he is still on his P plates and he was driving. Didn’t seem to bother him in the least though.

Oh, and speaking of Possums, I picked up a ringtail possum last week.

The silly thing was strolling about in the middle of a busy intersection and that’s not a safe place to be for anybody. I ran out and picked it up. The possum didn’t like this and it bit the hell out of my hands. Do you know how much damage a ringtail can do when riled??? Not a whole lot, actually. It hardly even broke the skin. I got it safely back to the vet’s, and I hope it’s okay now.

So, anyway, that’s me for the past few days. Once again I’m off to work tonight, and hoping for NO repeat of last night’s incident where a woman accused me of stealing money from her son. Seven little teenage boy hands had shoved money in my face. I needed $77 to give them 7 tickets. I took $80 and gave back $3. My manager checked my till and it balanced exactly. When I remembered the incident and suggested to the boy that one of his mates owed him money, the mother got up on her high horse and said that was just my opinion and she would be getting the opinion of the others involved. Well she can get all the opinions she cares to, or she can listen to what I told her: the truth. Shows a lack of understanding of the young (under 14) teenage boy’s mind if she doesn’t see how opportunistic they can be (I don’t believe the boy in question was being dishonest – just acting his age. Immature.)

And as for me and food, well, the war continues.

Well, I had my colonoscopy today. Although I didn’t come through as shiny as I’d hoped, it certainly wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

No cancer (whew!)

No polyps (whew!)

Turns out I have a diverticular disease. I’ll get the details of how to treat it when I see the GP in a couple of weeks, but basically I think it’s going to mean eating lots of fresh fruit and veggies and a high fibre diet.

H’m. Where’ve I heard that before?

Is this the universe’s way of making me lose weight?

Funny how yesterday, when I was not allowed to eat because of the medication, I could. Why can’t I have such focus every day? Why can’t I break it all up into separate moments of understanding that controlling what I eat is best for me?

Just a short blog tonight. Still tired from the sedative, though I did nap all day.

Thank you, everyone, for your thoughts and comments.

Ages ago I put a picture on my blog of this bulb with just the roots coming down. Now it’s a lovely hyacinth, smells so sweet and looks good in my kitchen. All that time waiting. All that time sitting in a dark cupboard.

It has not been a good week for me. I got stressed at work and was rude to some of my customers. Okay, school holidays are a rough time and I think about 90% of the customers go through some sort of “stupid” ray before stepping up to buy cinema tickets, but I’m paid to be nice to them and my stress levels are not their fault. I’m thinking maybe I need to go back to taking 1 whole antidepressant tablet each day, instead of 1/2. Things have been a bit rocky this past month and a bit since I cut down. I have to be sensible about this and admit that the tablets were working. I did therapeutic shopping on Monday and bought all the rest of my cutlery. I will have to take a photo of the cutlery and show you. But yesterday it was bad and I bought a Mars bar and ate it up.

Today even worse. I upset one of my writing buddies (really didn’t intend to, but something that was meant to be funny got misconstrued) then went and had a blood test (yeah, sat up all night studying) and then went and got the 62 tablets that I have to take on Monday in preparation for the colonoscopy on Tuesday. And then I went and did my worst thing: trashy magazine and junk food. Yeah, I’m all caught up on Brad and Ange and the kids and Jen’s latest split up and Tom and Kate and I’m up to here in KFC (and I upsized, oh yeah!)

Then I got back here and started reading blogs and I feel so much better because you guys do so rock and I love your comments. Thank you.

I thought about why I am suddenly eating this junk and I remembered some more of Jon’s words of wisdom and that’s FAT: Famine And Temperature. Our bodies think that all stress relates too not enough food and it’s too cold (so we have to eat more) and funnily enough it is cold here. It’s bloody cold. It might even snow tomorrow. So I’m stressed and I’m cold and therefore my body is doing exactly what it’s been programmed to do for millions of years: eat more. And I haven’t sat in the sun and done my 10 minutes of peaceful thinking in the morning (Jon’s SMART™ mode) so I don’t have to go back to square one, I just have to pick myself up and keep on walking.

Thanks everyone too for your supportive comments about my decision to learn more about surgical options. I just wanted to clear up some misconceptions here. I am going to talk to Adam, the surgeon, about a lap band, not gastric bypass. Lap band is done through keyhole surgery. Basically the surgeon gets in there and puts a ring around the top part of your stomach. So you’ve got this little pouch at the top and once it’s full up, well, you’ve had enough and you have to wait before you can let any more get through. The lap band is adjustable and theoretically a reversible operation. You’re out of hospital on the same day or next day and after a settling down period of a few weeks (while the stitches heal the band into place) you are pretty well right. Visits to the specialist keep the thing in check, and you can have the opening made narrower or larger by addition or subtraction of a saline solution into a small reserviour just under your skin. Here’s a link to Adam’s website and this is what it looks like:

It’s sort of like the ukai fisherfolk of Japan who fish with cormorants. They put a ring around the birds’ necks. The birds dive down and catch a big fish, but can’t swallow it because of the ring. Only small fish will pass through, they have to give the big fish back to their handlers.

The drastic gastric bypass looks like this:

It’s a way scarier option and I wouldn’t like to have that sort of surgical intervention without a really, really good reason.

Anyway, with the gastric band, there’s still a whole lot of hard work to do. You have to take care to eat well, because if you decide you need a diet of Mars bars, well, it’s just not going to work. But before the operation you get all sorts of counselling, and there’s also counselling afterwards, I guess because the doctor really wants to have lots of happy patients who can say they have lost weight and are pleased with having paid him money to help them.

And I hope that’ll be me real soon. I would like to lose 1kg every 2-3 weeks. Not quickly, but a steady loss so that I can get back to running. So that I’m not lying about like a beached whale all summer.

Slow change but good change.

And now some visual inspiration.

It’s imbolg here, pre-spring and the  time of year when the natives are in flower.

This isn’t a native at all. It’s japonica or flowering quince and I do love it. Those bright, bright flowers on the bare stems. And that’s our house. all blurry in the background.

Still no frogs or taddies to show, but looky here:

Do you remember when we planted our mulberry tree? I always worry  little bit over winter, will that plant ever get leaves again? But here it is. The mulberry tree all thick with bud and leaves coming soon. I wonder how many seasons we’ll have to wait before it gives us fruit?

I hope to get back on the blog on Sunday.

I am looking forward to school holidays being over.