Well

I effed up NaBloPoMo.

So, I'm in Canada having a great time.  See ya'll sometime next week.

It's all Gina's fault.  Her and her red bloody wine.

Road Trip!

So tomorrow afternoon we are heading to Canada for a couple of days.  Today was a shopping day and dang, do I love me some new clothes from CJ Banks.  However, I really need to stop buying them now until after surgery and weight loss.  They are kind of needed at the moment because of winter coming and I didn't have much in the way of sweaters and I am so all about the warmth! 

My sister in law is a speed knitter.  In the course of about five days, she knitted a cabled bag that needs to be felted, compared to my twelve inches of scarf in the same amount of time.  I love the way English gals knit; the way they rest the right handed needle between their thumb and pointer finger, while using the pointer finger to place the yarn over the needle, but I can't seem to get the hang of it.  Maybe it just takes practice.  I'm not sure I'll ever be more than a novice knitter, but that's okay.  I just love knitting and the way the wool feels in my hands.

After all, I am all about the warmth.

The Consult

Apparently, no matter how organized one tries to be, one will get screwed over.  About six weeks ago, I printed all the necessary forms off of the surgeon's website, made a copy and then filled them out for both the Brit and I.  I then put it all neatly in a manila envelope, addressed it and sent Aaron down the street to the mailbox to mail it. 

Apparently, organization requires a copy.

We got to the consult to find out that they had none of the paperwork.  The excuse was that they got so many completed forms in the mail and those people often never schedule or show up for a consult.  So, we had to fill them out all over again...all twelve pages.

After that, things got better.  We met Pat, the nurse practioner and then Dr. S.  I had been warned that though Dr. S was one of the very best, he was not a "warm and fuzzy" doctor.  I really didn't have any issues with him at all.  He was friendly enough (he talks really loud for some reason), straight forward and honest.  The Brit asked why he had gotten into this line of medicine and his answer was that he was tired of putting a bandaid on the co-morbidities.  He would treat something that was caused by obesity, but not the obesity itself. He wanted to deal with the cause of the problems and not with the symptoms.  We discussed his complication rate and he went over the way he prevents leaks (as of January 2006, after 1000 gastric bypass surgeries, he had no leaks....this is one of the lowest in the world). I asked him if he'd had any patients die and he told me not on the table but that he had lost a couple of patients due to blood clots and those patients had a history of blood clots before surgery.  He answered all our questions honestly, told us we only needed about 4-6 between our two surgeries (now we have to decide who goes first) and gave the Brit a couple of options.

So on Wednesday, I plan to call to schedule our appointments with their nutritionalist and try to get it on a day where we will all ready be down there for our other structured diet meetings.  I need to find out how to pick a shrink to do those assessments in the event the one that Bayview recommends does not take our insurance. 

But all in all, a good day!

Oh, and i'm knitting on straight needles at the moment...can you believe it?

If I pull this off it will be a miracle

Now I'm having my doubts about even finished NaBloPoMo!  I lose track of time in the evenings when sitting around chatting with Gina and before I know it, it is nearly midnight and I haven't blogged!  It's so nice to have another female in the house close to my age, whom I see eye to eye with on so many things, that I just want to take advantage of the time they are here!

Tomorrow we have our consults with Dr. S in Baltimore.  I'll let ya'll know how it goes!

Amish Country revisited

So we took Gina and Gareth to Lancaster today and had a wonderful time.  We took them to The Outhouse, which is always good for a laugh.  Then we hit a buffet for lunch at Hershey Farm, hit the Mt Hope Wineryfor some more of my favorite brand of wine (We got a case...woot!).  Then we went for a ride through the Amish countryside, courtesy of the Strausburg Railroad.  It was a bit chilly all day but sunny and lovely otherwise.  I took pictures, which I will try to download tomorrow for your viewing pleasure.  I  never get as much shopping in as I'd like to do in Lancaster, but one day it will happen!

Tomorrow, we're having a quick cleanup and start of laundry after church.  Then some shopping and a trip to Lisa's. 

I'm not sure if these posts would be considered "quality" but I'm trying!!

Just under the wire

I'm thinking that nearly forgetting to blog on day two is not a good sign of things to come.

I have already given myself permission to not complete a novel in the month of November.  I have not given up, but given the fact that I am completely enjoying the visitors from England, I can't bring myself to cloister myself away to write and miss the two weeks they are here.  I will still strive to make the word count, but if I don't, so be it.  People are more important and being with the other daughter-in-law to my in-laws has been great fun thus far.  Gina and I have much in common, from knitting, to many of our likes and dislikes right down to our senses of humor.  Though it has only been one full day, I think I shall miss her terribly when she goes home.

Tomorrow, we are taking she and Gareth to Lancaster on a day trip (my ulterior motive is to purchase more of that wonderful wine we got in August!).  Next week, we are taking the kids out of school for a long weekend to visit Niagara again, as it is something Gina would very much like to see. 

That's it for now!  More soon!

And so it begins

Well, I'm out of the starting gate.  I have written so far today, 2,691 words.  Can I tell you I'm terrified??

Here's a sample of today's writing.  Remember, lots of editing needs to happen!  The main idea is to get the thoughts down and they can be rearranged and made to flow beautifully later!!

I was eleven that summer and the day we moved into our new home, I got my first period.  My mother was so excited she called her brother to tell him that her little girl had become a woman.  I remember being really embarrassed by her doing that.  It seemed like such a gross, yet personal thing and it certainly wasn’t something I wanted anyone male to know!  Needless to say, my mother was the only one excited about it.  It was just one more thing that made me different in my eyes. 

When we had lived in California, I had attended a private Lutheran school.  Now, in our new town, there was no private Lutheran school, so I went into the public school system.  The little bit of teasing I had endured in California didn’t hold a candle to what I went through in Maryland.  Public school children here were so much different than the kids I had grown up with in my rather sheltered life.  On the west coast, I endured an occasional mean spirited comment about being overweight, while on the east coast, it was rare that a day went by without someone saying something to me or about me. 

I hated it and felt lost and alone.  The friends I made were in my neighborhood or on my bookshelves.  As a child, I had always been an avid reader and now especially, I could easily lose myself in such tales as “The Black Stallion”, “My Friend, Flicka” and “Misty of Chincoteague”.  I was completely infatuated with horses.  Maybe it was because they could run so fast and it didn’t matter what size the rider was, she could go as fast as the wind upon a trusty mount.  Reading also isolated me and protected me.  Books didn’t judge and they took me to wonderful places where friends were friends forever and always and no one moved away.

My parents soon realized that public school and I were not getting along quite so well, so they decided to try to give me a little of what I had always known, though it was one of the most misguided things they had ever done.  They enrolled me in private school…private catholic school.  Suddenly, I had to wear uniforms that consisted of a dress/jumper and a white blouse, knee socks and black shoes.  What was even worse was the fact that every week, each class went to a mass held in the church.  They went to confession and took communion, but I was not permitted to partake of any it because I was not catholic.  I would sit in the pew alone, while the rest of my class went through the familiar ritual.  I felt singled out and self conscious and everyone was aware that I was not permitted to participate.

I was struggling to make friends at this new school and it didn’t take me long to find out that either sixth grade girls or catholic girls knew a lot about sex that my little life had not permitted me to know.  One day, a few of the older girls cornered me on the playground to give me a “sex test” that consisted of a couple of questions.

I flunked.

They all had their laugh at my embarrassment and I went home and told my mother, who in turn, went out and purchased me a book with animated pictures of naked people in it that explained about how babies were made.  Ironically, I remember how the woman in the book was thin and lovely and the man had a bit of a beer belly. 

Another day, I was coming out of one of my classes, when Floyd, a boy who was known for being in persistent trouble, reached over, grabbed my breast and twisted it, while yelling “Titty twister!”  I was still one of a few girls who had even started growing breasts and for anyone to point out what I considered to be one of my shames was terribly embarrassing.  The school told my mother that Floyd was a bit of a special case and that they couldn’t do anything about it.

It wasn’t too long after that our parents put the house on the market, sold it, and we moved back to California in what was about to be another difficult transition.  Kids are fickle and when their friend moves away, their lives do not stop because they know other people and had no need to start over.