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.

84960 seconds to go

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.

84660 seconds to go

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!

84120 seconds to go

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.

84000 seconds to go

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.

83640 seconds to go

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.

83520 seconds to go

I hope you all had a great weekend. We took Mum out to lunch yesterday and Poss and BF came too. Mum can’t help herself. Had to mention that Poss has put on weight. So glad she missed seeing Radio Boy on the weekend because he has put on a lot of weight. Poss, I know, loves to eat just as much as her mother does, poor thing. Not that she’s by any means large, but it is something she needs to get a hold of now, before it harms her the way it harmed me. I keep dropping subtle hints about how she’s welcome to use the treadmill and other exercise equipment any time she likes. I don’t want to nag her.

Radio Boy I do worry about. He is big. I blame his ex-girlfriend. They got together the same summer he got his first car. Instead of walking everywhere as he once had, he was driving everywhere. He and ex would buy a stack of food for lunch: frozen pizza, frozen oven chips, big block of chocolate etc every day and then just spend the whole day in his room (I don’t want to know). It was bad and he stacked on the weight. Now that he’s cooking for himself, he eats pretty well, but like me, too much. I give him magazines and hope he reads them and takes notice and does something. I worry about him. I worry about diabetes.

Beloved keeps talking about “when” I get thinner. The stuff we can do. It’s so exciting. The only thing I can compare it to is the mystery of pregnancy. Especially the first time, when I would look at babies in prams and think about how my bump was going to become one of those and it still didn’t seem real.

I guess the difference here is that I have been thin before. I do know what it’s like (can I remember back that far?) Yeah. The way my legs fitted inside the legs of pants without stretching the material so thin you could tell the colour of my underwear. The way I could walk without my thighs chafing together, and always having to throw pants out because the inner thighs had worn away to nothing.

I remember the way Beloved could put his arms right around me and even pick me up. I remember being so small and light that my dog pulled me right over when we went for a walk. I remember my arse not making an airtight seal on the toilet seat and bathwater flowing around me.

I remember running.

I’ll be able to go bushwalking, belly strap of my backpack actually done up so that I can carry it properly.

I’ll ride pillion on the back of Beloved’s bike, now able to wear waterproofs.

So many changes. 47 hours and 13 minutes.

Not that I’m counting.

Day 5 of 100 Days of Weightloss (yeah, I’ve been slack) is about the magic notebook. I do love the concept of “dealing” with food in ways other than by having to eat it. If you write it down in your notebook, then it’s been dealt with and that’s all you need.

I do have a notebook that I got when I started the 100 days thing. Although here, of course is a great place to have a magic notebook, it’s not quite as handy as a small, paper book that I can carry with me when I face the temptations of the big wide world.

Thanks, everybody, for your kind words and thoughts on this big step I’m taking. Thanks, especially, to you, Dad.

xxx

Thank you, BigProf, for the inspiration for this title. Your comment really made me laugh.

And thank you, Dad, for reading my blog. It really, really means a lot to me, and so do your thoughts.

One week to go and yes, I am excited.

Yesterday I was cruising round the shops, just getting some focus in order to do the grocery shopping (actually didn’t work: I forgot the cat food. Boy, am I in trouble). I kept being tempted to go into the clothes shops and get something nice there, but then I thought NO! Why do that? It won’t be long before I can look at stuff that’s a whole lot smaller and feel real good about buying clothes. In fact, I’ll be chucking out geological ages of baggy old stuff out of my wardrobe and rediscovering ancient layers of clothing that I set aside for when I lost “a couple of pounds” (or three).

Found out why I had the bizzarre munchies attack on Monday. I mean, it was just like a PMS thing, hunting down food and going for it. And then, guess what? Yeah. All my plans for a crone party next autumn have been dashed. Argh! I hate having periods. It’s been such a holiday, not having had one since January. Oh well, Ribs made me laugh yesterday when I txtd her and told her. She said “at least you’re not pregnant”. Then we met and had coffee and laughed more. Also got another inspirational story from her about gastric banding.

Inspiration from Day 4 of 100 days of weight loss is all about setting guidelines, not rules. Being able to adjust plans according to needs. That diet is not set in stone. I guess for me the important things will be maintaining my water intake and keeping up the exercise. Good old treadmill.

I put that there for inspiration with clothing. I put her in nice warm stuff coz it’s cold here.

In exactly 1 week from now I will be arriving at the hospital.

Excited?

oh

you

bet.