Weird week

The ankle seems to be holding up, and I am extremely grateful. I'm not needing as much pain medication. Tomorrow I go in and get the sutures and/or staples removed (I'm not really sure if there are staples). Both times I've seen the ankle it looked pretty nasty to me, but the nurses and doctors have always said it "looked good". I'm not a fan of having sutures and/or staples removed; it hurts more than they tell you it will, and it makes me rather queasy. Sugar-free Wint-O-Green LifeSavers are my non-drug nausea standby. I'll definitely pack a healthy amount in my purse.

My very first boyfriend from waaaay back in the day found me on Facebook a few days ago, and we ended up talking on the phone for a couple of hours, catching up. We were friends before and after our brief "thing", but lost touch about twelve or thirteen years back. It was great to hear from him and that he is doing well--we're both doing a lot better than we were when we knew each other best!

I just learned about NaNoWriMo and the 12-scene outline (if you had to outline your entire story in 12 scenes, what would they be?), so I decided to make the outline. It was actually easy. My PC's hard drive is taking a long and laborious crap and needs repairs (a new CD drive, mostly), so I transferred all my manuscript bits to the laptop. In so doing, I discovered I had a great deal more done than I thought I did (on this thing I've been trying to write forever that feels hopeless bordering on albatrossesque), and that encouraged me. I transferred some other pieces, too, mostly things I wrote and workshopped to death when I was getting my BA; reading them made me wistful. I don't feel an MFA is currently in the cards for me for a number of reasons--mostly financial--but I'm trying not to be completely discouraged and say never. I am still considering a post-baccalaureate Technical Writing Certificate because I think it would be more practical (not to mention lucrative).

Yesterday, Mr. Salted and I hit Party City to prepare for an '80s party we are going to this weekend. We're going to look great--especially him, because he can fit into everything--but I procured some flamboyant accessories for myself that will get the job done. I have enough Chucks and Vans to outfit the average elementary-school class, and our feet are the same size, so we're covered there.

Granny remains in the care center and has not felt well. I haven't heard much else.

I am supposed to return to work Wednesday. It will be good to get out of this house and earn money again.

The weight still creeps off. I'm glad I got a digital scale, because I can see the fractions of pounds as they leave--a pound every two or three days. I've lost fifty pounds now, and am not quite at three months out.

The fifty-pound figure is a bit of a bugaboo with me. I have managed to lose that increment--fifty pounds--using "natural means" in the past, but never more than that. Fifty pounds is a lot--unless you need to lose another 80 or so. I am at the lowest weight I have been in about fifteen years, which is great--but I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. I've always been this freak of nature that could not lose more than a couple of pounds a month no matter what I did, so it's always in the back of my mind that this surgery will not work for me in the long run. My determination to prove that fear wrong is much stronger than the back of my mind thing.

Another weird thing this week--I was looking at pictures on my PC's hard drive, because I'm trying to back them up before I send the tower in for repairs. People keep telling me how my face has changed, and I was amazed at how right they are. I deleted a lot of pictures of myself--I didn't see the need to keep them. I'm not going to destroy all "before" pictures of me, (a) because there would be none left, (b) because there are good memories in them, and (c) because it wouldn't be the truth. We take a lot of pictures, though, and there were definitely some I can do without.

Ho hum

I feel like I have had nothing to say lately. I do other writing that I don't put on this blog--or I try to. I have been working on a memoir for quite some time in fits and starts. Once in a while I crank out a poem. It seems like I spend a lot more time on pictures than I do on writing--new ones I take, scanning old ones, and messing with them all in Photoshop, putting them on Flickr, etc. Recently I worked on a whole passel of old family photos for a friend--it is amazing how much they can be improved in Photoshop, dust removed, color corrected, etc. I have considered photo restoration as a side business, but am not sure how viable an option that is.

I have not been very diligent about researching school funding options, either--I am just feeling incredibly discouraged. This is day 83 of the damn food journal, so I am still not quite halfway through the dreaded Six Months of Diet and Exercise.

One of my best girlfriends came down and visited a couple of days ago. She is one of those people who reminds me who I am as well as who I should be and want to be, so seeing her is always wonderful. She is great for perspective, and we also laugh like fools the majority of the time we are together. She keeps telling me that this may just be a period of time when I work on my health; my husband tells me the same thing. But I have this sense of urgency, the need to have an overall game plan tempered with the knowledge I'm not getting any younger and sprinkled with guilt that I'm not bringing in any income.

I have reconnected with old friends on Facebook in recent months and have actually met up with two, neither of whom I had seen in 20 years. That has been great for my current perspective, too. The way I am remembered by others from the long-ago past is always a trip. I have heard repeatedly how people thought I seemed to have it all together during the most desperate part of my life, which would have been my late teens through early to mid-20s. I don't think I was that good an actress, because I'm not really capable of that caliber of acting! I think people were immersed in their own stuff (as they should have been) and that illusion is everything. It is so freeing to realize that everyone isn't/wasn't staring at you--they are too busy worrying about whether everyone is staring at them.

Obama's Inauguration Day

I try not to pummel people with my views on current events. When asked or in a discussion, I make them known; I don't hide them. It's something I discuss only with people I know very well the majority of the time. I believe in respecting everyone's views and right to be heard, agreeing to disagree on all the big ones: religion, choice, politics, et. al. Hurray for freedom of speech! In that vein, one of the beautiful things about having a blog is being able to babble freely about what I'm thinking. There are many thousands of people who are much more articulate and knowledgeable about politics than myself, many of them with their own blogs. :o)

I watched the inauguration ceremony today until they went to lunch. Truthfully, I've never cared enough to watch an entire inauguration ceremony before. I was on the CNN/Facebook live feed, but watching it on TV. Being unemployed at the moment, I had the luxury.

Reading the live feed comments was a lot of fun, both from people I've actually met and know and people I will never meet. A lot of people were excited and moved, and some were not, but were watching nonetheless. Of course, there was chattered about what people were wearing, the trite along with the important. I loved seeing the footage of the crowds and the feeds from different parts of the country. As on Election Night, their reactions were every bit as gratifying to see as the event itself.

I loved seeing and hearing Aretha Franklin (and her awesome hat!), I loved the poet, and the benediction was great, especially at the end when we got to laugh a bit. I thought Obama's speech was extremely moving, articulate, and appropriate; I have always found him a wonderful speaker, maybe the best I have heard in my lifetime. (My husband and I were joking last night that he's almost too reasonable to be a politician.) I am glad that he reminded us of our own responsibility as citizens, that he acknowledged what many people have sacrificed for this day to arrive, and that there is a lot of work to be done.

I voted for Obama and was excited when he won. I would have been happy to see Hillary Clinton win as well, but Obama seems to be the shot in the arm American politics needed. I'm inspired to see people caring what happens politically and that there is at least an underlying climate of hope for so many of them. One of the CNN commentators said that, in a way, this was the world's inauguration; Bono said yesterday that it fulfilled not just an American dream but an Irish dream, a European dream, a Palestinian dream, etc.

The country is in a huge, frightening mess, and we all know it isn't going to be fixed in four years. A lot of voters my age (40) and younger don't feel they have had a President that was a true leader in their lifetime. I don't envy Obama his job, but I truly hope he can be the catalyst for positive change. If I didn't believe this was at least possible, I wouldn't have voted for him.

And that's just it. Many folks, including myself, are excited about possibility, at least for today, and why shouldn't we be? While possibility runs the risk of becoming a drug that prevents reason or focus, it can also become fuel to keep each individual person chugging along with our eyes on the prize--whatever that may mean for each of us.

Edit: on a lighter note, I had to Photoshop a picture of myself wearing Aretha Franklin's inauguration hat, which has its own fan page on Facebook....