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.

Quiet week

The ten-year date from the last blog hit on the day of my group meeting, and I felt under the weather and just didn't want to go, so I played hooky. They had all done a sugar detox, anyway (including no artificial sweeteners) and I was in no mood to justify myself or do much of anything else. I watched bad TV and chilled out, talked to a couple of my nearest and dearest on the phone. It was all good. The last meeting of the group is next week.

The weather has been just beautiful the past few days. I don't spend a lot of time outdoors, but I still appreciate it. It fills the house with natural light; I love to watch the cats jockeying for the sunniest spot under the big living room skylight so they can bake their brains out.

I've been scanning a lot of old pictures for people, and that has been fun. I LOVE to play in Photoshop and can waste hours doing it. I've toyed with the idea of an eventual photo restoration business, but everyone has imaging software now so I don't know how feasible that idea really is. I enjoy it as a hobby nonetheless and have improved a lot of old photos for my friends and family.

I'm eating and feeling well. I'm still eating some things that contain sugar, but not to excess--not even every day. Today I did get a Jet Tea smoothie--something I used to live on that probably has no nutritional value--and am just savoring it slowly, knowing it could be the last one I ever have. That's how I'm looking at it as we use up the last vestiges of things in our house that contain sugar. I know what's coming. I'm researching the food options I will have as soon as I have a surgery date and slowly incorporating them into our pantry and my diet. Asparagus has become my favorite vegetable--fiber AND protein! W00T! Seroquel seems to be working pretty well as a sleep med.

I'm not weighing myself. The only reason I own a scale at all is because we went to Mexico in 2007 and had to weigh our luggage. The ex-bulimic in me still thinks scales are evil, at least for me. I flat-out refuse to let that number tell me what kind of day I'm going to have--or, God forbid, what my worth is as a human being. Unfortunately, that is where my brain tends to go if I get in the habit of weighing in.

The ankle is bothering me a bit; I mostly stay off it unless I have to grocery shop or something. I have to be especially careful on our porch steps--there are four or five. If there is an elevator available, I use it. I have a harder time going down stairs than up them, though I have stumbled doing both directions in the fairly recent past with my ankle issues. I saw the little girl next door staring at me yesterday as I steadied myself with one hand against the wall going down the stairs to my car. (I have this irrational fear that the neighbors think I'm a drunk. I buy a case of beer at Costco for Mr. Salted every now and then--I hate beer and drink NONE of it, and only indulge in booze at all maybe three or four times a year. I rarely leave the house, I keep weird hours, and I always wear sunglasses. I also haven't had a job for a few months. I'm not one to care what the neighbors think, but I have nosy ones, many of whom don't seem to have much to do. Sigh.)

I have some pictures to work on today and I'll probably do some writing. I feel so fortunate to have all this quiet time before the weight-loss surgery to get my head together. A friend paid me to write a resume for her--bought the groceries this week!

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.