85080 seconds to go. Not that I’m counting or anything.

I’m getting kind of scared. Not scared of the pain or scared of the changes, scared that they will have some reason to not do the operation. I haven’t really been sticking to the OptiFast thing. It’s so BORING and I get hungry on it and oh, der, if I could stick to diets and meal replacement shakes and things then I wouldn’t be lining up and asking for surgery, now, would I? I just hope he doesn’t peek inside and say “No, her liver is too big, I can’t fit a gastric band in there, she’ll have to wait”. I don’t want to wait. I want this all over.

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This time tomorrow I’ll be at the hospital. I guess I’ll still be doing paperwork. I’m last on the surgeon’s list for the day, so I actually get to have breakfast. As long as it’s a light breakfast and I don’t eat after 6 am. Big choice, do I get up in the cold cold morning to take my medications and have a hearty glass of boring meal replacement shake, or do I snuggle up in bed and ignore the whole thing? Probably go better if I have some breaky first.

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Hey Susan, those bird pictures I put in yesterday are some of the wild birds that come and visit us. They’re very bossy, the wild birds around here. Cockies follow you from room to room, peering through the windows and waiting for food. King parrots sit on the verandah and tweet loudly. The ones yesterday were galahs (the pink ones) who are normally quite shy, and rainbow lorikeets, which are very aggro and bossy. The red one is a crimson rosella, which are our most common bird around here, and there’s a magpie. They usually prefer to eat The Dog’s breakfast, but she’s actually been finishing her meals lately.

The rainbow is from our kitchen. We have a wall of north-facing windows in the kitchen, dining and loungerooms and I’ve hung crystals in all of them. I love it when the sun comes through and I get my rainbows. I must take photos of the crystals.

I must dust them first.

This is our daphne. I’ve had it for years, one of the few plants that’s actually survived for me. Its flower heads haven’t been as big this year, I wonder if that’s because of the drought. Glad to say it’s been raining for days and the ground is getting wetter than it has been for many years. I hope my daphne will survive.

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This one is a prostanthera. It’s also called Native Mint Bush. It smells nothing like mint, but it does have a lovely, refreshing smell. I love it when we’re walking through the bush and you catch a drift of prostanthera. It’s also one of those plants that makes things cooler. I’d love to have a whole lot more of them planted about the place. Come to think of it, even the sheep don’t like to eat it, so maybe it would stand a chance!

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Well, the next time I blog here, it will all be over and I’ll be on the way to my new life.

I met this man at work. He’d paid with his credit card but the signature on the back was worn off. I asked to see another kind of ID and he showed me his driver’s licence, proudly admitting that he didn’t look very much like the picture on that, either. So much thinnner. Of course I asked him the secret and he told me he’d had a gastric band.

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I’m going to call mine Doris. I’m naming her after Doris Leadbetter, who was the mentor of my writing group, the Lazy River Writers. When I first knew her, I called her the third fat lady (just quietly, to myself) because she reminded me so much of the Two Fat Ladies:

As well as her shape, her very posh tone reminded me of Clarissa and Jennifer. She got real skinny, though, because of her gastric band, and she was probably the first person who I knew and who I talked to, seriously, about having one myself.

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This is a bloody awful photo of Doris. Sadly, she died back in 2004, so I can’t share my thoughts with her. I know she’d respond with enthusiasm for me, though.

Tomorrow it all changes.

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