School holidays are on the way with some private (aka “public schools” here in Victoria, just to confuse people) schools already out. I just don’t get that. People pay all this money and their kids spend LESS time learning stuff. Ripped off.

Anyway, that’s my excuse. One of them. The other being fear. You see, last Thursday, all going good, blah blah blah and I go to bed and as I lie down: PAIN Imagine being stabbed with a red hot knife. Right where the gastric band is. Oh gods. I tossed and turned in bed and every time I moved that pain came back. It was terrible. But when I got up, it went away. So I forgot about it. Sort of. Friday night: same thing. I was up at midnight, surfing the net for “gastric band pain” to see what other people had experienced and I found one. And she didn’t know what it was, either. Nobody seemd to think it was the band moving, though.

I was so scared. Mostly that I’d broken it. I kept going over all my stuff ups and no, I haven’t been particularly good with the diet. I mean, sheesh. If I could do diets I wouldn’t bloody have needed surgery, would I? Yes, your honour, I DID eat a steak on Thursday for my dinner. It was tender as and I cut it into eensy little pieces and chewed each piece fifty thousand times.

Saturday, tried to cheer up. It was a perfect day. Spring was here and Beloved and I planted some tomatoes.

The wire on the ground is chook-proofing. Stops them rearranging the mulch to their liking. If you look very closely to the left of where Beloved is digging, you can see a chook, Sir Boris (a hen, despite the name) is already helping.

We have a few different kinds of tomatoes, Mighty Red, which is just big ones, some Romas, some of those little cherry type tomatoes, one plant of yellow ones and one Heirloom variety: Black Russian

Here’s my Black Russian. He already has flower buds, the enthusiastic thing. I have dubbed him Illya Kuryakin

Because David McCallum is forever my pinup boy. Long ago Beloved accepted the fact that I fell in love with Illya at the age of 12 and there’s nothing he can do about it. He doesn’t mind. He even records NCIS for me. What a guy!

Beloved is digging mounds. Here he is with Boris:

Boris is feeling a bit lonely at the moment. Her “sister”, Sir Morris, has vanished. The world is full of predators and hens are very tasty. Beloved is digging mounds for the seeds that I’ve planted and am hoping will actually germinate.

I did cucumbers, cantaloupes, watermelons, capsicums and eggplant. Yummm! I hope they grow for us. I’ve never had much luck with seeds, mainly because I’m afraid of wasting water, but with Radio Boy now living away from here and Poss only here part of the time, well, water isn’t so scarce. Anyway, it was a good feeling, gettting those tomatoes into the ground and befuddling the chooks so they can’t dig them up and planning for more seeds.

Saturday night: more pain and by Sunday I was feeling downright miserable. As though I’d managed to yes! Sabotage myself so that I, alone of all the hundreds and probably thousands of people around the world who have received gastric banding surgery would be the single one stupid enough to break it and not be able to lose weight.

It was another warm day and we went for a walk in the forest. The treeferns were all unfurling for the spring

and we saw a cute little swamp wallaby, like the ones that live on our road. He was nibbling grass just near the path, but the photos I took of him were crappy, so haven’t included them here.

We walked to a nice little restaurant called Cook’s Corner. It’s super yummy there and I felt relaxed and good and we had lunch and then walked back. I took lots of photos and so did Beloved. He’s having some fun with his camera. I even took photos of forget me nots

because even though they’re a noxious weed here, they’re still pretty.

Well, yesterday I rang the people who did the op and the nurse really didn’t have a clue and all she could do was quiz me on whether I’d been sticking to the diet. But the pain didn’t seem to be any different if I’d eaten or not, gone with food or liquid. She booked me in for an appointment with the doctor on Thursday, but I don’t want to go on Thursday. I’m supposed to work. I want to get my WALL*E t-shirt and save up money for my writing workshop.

Last night when I went to bed, the pain was still there. But not so bad. Kind of like a pulled muscle x 1000. So maybe that’s all it is. I’ll see how I go tonight and hopefully be able to cancel my appointment with the doctor.

Anyway, not working tomorrow, so I can catch up with everyone and see how you’re all going (well, I hope). Right now I have to go and visit Editor and her cute new baby. He’s a whole week old and I haven’t seen him yet! Ah, at least I’m not going to breathe any germs on him and that’s gotta be a good one.

be well, everyone

The last time I wore jeans, real ones (not just denim pants with elastic waists) was in 1987. In the 3 months between becoming a lifetime member of Weight Watchers (which entails achieving goal weight and maintaining it for a certain number of weeks, can’t remember how many) and getting pregnant with Possum.

Happy times.

Since then I have pretty much lived in stretchy pants.

Is anyone here a fan of the catroon Daria? Loved that show. I remember one episode where The Fashion Club somehow got stuck in a mall in the sticks. It was a confronting experience for them all, especially when they came face to face with a bunch of fat ladies in stretchy pants. One of the girls had a severe reaction and had to be reminded that fat ladies wear stretcy pants, but people in The Fashion Club wear leggings, so it was okay because they were wearing leggings.

I fear that Quinn and the other members of The Fashion Club would have a similar reaction if they saw me. Me in my stretchy pants. Sometimes stretched so thin that YES! Oh my gods! She has on pink undies with polka dots on them, I can tell because those pants become see-through when they’re stretched that much. Stretched so much that the seams on the inner thighs get worn to nothing by the constant chafing of my thighs. More than once I have torn them to shreds in my anger and frustration at my fatness.

Last night I split another pair. Oh well, at least it didn’t happen when I was at the shops. It waited till I was home and not far off going to bed.

There are times when I’ve taken those pants and sewn those seams back up again, which only made them more uncomfortable and prone to chafing. Now I throw them out because I know that it won’t be long before I can replace them. With a size smaller.

Here’s to getting thinner.

I haven’t got back on the treadmill yet, but I will. Tomorrow, I think. I no longer have a box of tissues (a big one) as my constant companion, feeling so much better. In fact, my buddy Editor had a baby yesterday and I’m thinking I can actually go and visit them in the hospital without feeling like a sociopath for spreading my germs to the poor little one. Still a bit tired and cotton-woolie in the head, and I have to work tonight, so I’m not going on the tready today because I know that will make me feel tired. So tomorrow, something to look forward to. Yeah.

I’m still eating mushy food. It was Poss’s birthday party on Friday night. Saturday was all leftovers. I ate 6 pieces of pizza (coz pizza is mushy, right?) Now that doesn’t sound at all like a change of eating habits. Except that those bits of pizza consisted of 2 for breakfast, 2 for lunch and 2 for dinner. Pre-op I would have knocked over 6 pieces of pizza in one meal, topped off with a can of soft drink and been looking for dessert.

I know I’m never going to be real thin. I know I’m never going to be one of those girls who has pencils for legs and a concave belly. I just want to be able to walk into a room and not think: I’m the fattest one in here. I’ll just be part of the crowd, and that’s a good thing.

Just had to add this picture of fizzy bubbles. I love the way they make little spirals in the glass. I’m not sure if it’s because the setting I had the camera on has somehow tracked the bubbles, or if it was just trying to compensate for my shaky hands. We had lunch with the in-laws on Sunday, celebrating Poss’s birthday, Father in law’s birthday and Fathers’ Day.

The scars on my tummy are really healing well now. I was a bit concerned about the bit of fishing line sticking out, but Ribs assures me that it is a dissolving stitch and it will be gone soon enough.

I’m just hanging out for my next visit to Adam when he puts in my first shot of saline and the gastric band starts really earning its keep.

…nearly.

I’m still kind of laid low with this virus and it’s driving me nuts. I go out and do something one day, and then spend half the next day in bed. Yesterday I excelled myself, making 2 batches of patty cakes for Possum’s birthday party. I needed a nap afterwards. Oh well.

The good news is that all is going well with the gastric band. I saw the nurse on Wednesday and she was delighted with my weightloss so far. I admitted that I hadn’t been all that, um, thorough with sticking to the liquid diet. Partly because I’d been given conflicting information (one person said two weeks and one said one to two weeks). I was kind of worried that I might have been completely sabotaging myself, but the main thing is NO VOMITING and I sure haven’t done any of that.

It’s been a relief to eat some real food, even if it is mush. I was so hungry the other day, I bought some curry at a food court. Scraped the gravy off and ate it, but chucked the chunks of meat away. Felt like I was committing a crime (hey, if the cow had to die, I should at least eat it) but I didn’t.

Beloved and I went for a walk in the forest on Saturday. It turned out longer than it should have been (I was trusting to Beloved’s uncanny sense of direction, but it let us down.) Meant I was late for my writing group, but they forgave me. And it was worth it.

Anngirl, I don’t know if you have the same little pictures above your “post” box where you write your blogs, but mine is set to “visual” and I get a row of image boxes. If I click on the one that sort of looks like a tree (between the broken link and the thing that looks like a page cut in half) it pops up a dialogue box for inserting pictures. With this new version of 3fc I have to first put my pictues on a photo-sharing website, and I’ve been using flickr. I just insert the url of the picture and it appears in the blog. Hope this helps with your photo attempts.

I sounded a bit like a steam train going up some of the hills in the forest, I partly blame the virus and partly blame the anaesthetic. I have this theory that it takes me 6 weeks to feel totally better after an anaesthetic. I’ll know if it’s true in about 4 weeks

It’s been a real relief to get back to eating a bit of real (if mushy) food. We went to an Indian restaurant for Possum’s birthday on Tuesday and I was having curry. Yum. It’s been great to have a bit of flavour to break through the weight of this virus and great to have a bit of texture. I had a nibble of garlic naan, but less than half a piece and I was happy to stop eating when I felt full and leave some butter chicken on my plate. I was okay with that because it was enough. I know the hardest part of this is going to be overcoming my training as a goodie two shoes to always clean my plate.

Most of the wound sites are clean now and look like nothing more than heavy duty scratches. One isn’t doing so well, though. I noticed the other day that there’s a bit of a stitch sticking out of it. It’s clear, sort of like fishing line. The nurse said it was a dissolving stitch and it would go away, but it’s leaking a little bit. Not infected, just a bit of clear ichor coming out of it since yesterday. I guess it will go away soon. It’s the one on my left side, where I picture my stomach and the actual band to be located.

I can feel Doris, the port, under my skin. It’s in the middle of my chest, just below bra line.

I walk around the shops now and I look at the nice clothes. I’m not tempted to buy. Not tempted to even try them on because I know in a while I’ll be fitting much, much smaller sizes and it’s so exciting to think about.

I’ve had a couple of other exciting things happen to me this week, actually. They’re about my writing. I submitted the first 1000 words of a children’s book I’ve written to a competition where the shortlisted entries get to be seen by publishers. And mine got shortlisted! I was so excited when I heard that. Then the next day, Tuesday, while I was out with the family celebrating Poss’s birthday, I got another call. This one was from a group called Clarion South. Every second year they run a scifi/fantasy/specfi workshop in Queensland. The workshop goes for 6 weeks and only 12 people get to go. I had submitted an entry to the workshop, not really expecting to be accepted…and I got accepted!

The funny thing about this is that I submitted to it when I just started doing this blog and had just started on the Gabriel Method. Every morning as I did my 10 minutes, I also pictured myself at Queensland Uni (which is where it’s held, with participants living in student digs). I pictured myself there, thin, being active, making use of the uni facilities: gym, pool etc every morning, and feeling great about my fitness.

And now it’s coming true! I’ll miss Beloved like hell, but he’s decided he’s going to do a major ride. He’s going to ride up the coast, visit Radio Boy for a few days, have the weekend with me, keep going right up the coat on An Adventure, and then have the next weekend with me, and then back home again. So it’s going to be fun for him, too. Soooooo excited. Oh, and I’m getting a laptop, too. So I’ll find some way to keep in touch.

Oh, this is what else Beloved and I saw on our walk. It’s a lyrebird. He wasn’t displaying or anything, just having a bit of a scratch and a peck, like a chook. Unfortunately it’s not great photo, but at least I, unlike Beloved, brought my camera.

Time to go now. Poss and I are going to buy some soft drinks and chippies for her party tonight and I have to put icing on the cupcakes. My taste of cupcake was just licking the bowl yesterday, and I guess I’ll have a lick of icing today. Beloved and I are going to see a movie tonight while Poss entertains her buddies. I guess it’s best this way. I’m not up to solid food yet, and I’d be sorely tempted by pizza.