my next new thing...

let's see how long this will last.  I'm famous for starting stuff, not too good at finishing though.

I'm disgusted by my weight.  My belly is beyond description.  The other day I tried to do a crunch, oh, the embarrassment.  If I'm going to have little boobs, I'm going to have to have a little body to go with them.

I don't diet.  Oh, I've done a couple of diets in my day, but they seem to cause that horrible rebellious backlash resulting in many pounds regained.  However, I have picked up on a couple of good habits.  Like drinking water and walking daily.  I just cannot make myself journal what I eat, because I lie, and I can't bear the thought of counting calories and weighing and measuring.  And the minute I cut a food out, that's all I want to eat.

So I'm embarking on making my own diet.  I'm going to trick myself somewhat.  Hey, tricking myself worked with the spongebob thing, so maybe it'll work with establishing healthy eating habits.  Here's what I'm going to do.  I'm an all or nothing kind of person, I've discovered.  So I plan on implementing one "rule" a week.  Or every two weeks if necessary.  Flexibility is key.  How hard can it be to stick to one thing?  Instead of following 20 rules, failing at 1 and then throwing the whole thing in the trash, I'll do just 1 thing.  The failure rate would be so much slimmer. (hey, I didn't take statistics for nothin')  Plus, I plan on mixing up negative rules and positive rules.  Too many negatives makes for a grumpy gal.  Some of the rules have to be hard for any weight loss to happen - like reducing portion size or <shudder> let's not go that far yet.  But discipline is good, even for a short time.  I figure that along the way, I'll establish a few more good permanent habits that will help me for a lifetime, not just the meantime.

Okay, the tricking part.  I'm going to try to word these things as positively as possible and trick myself where I can.  For example, this week the rule is "no eating after 8 pm".  Here's the evil genius part (in my mind, at least).  I didn't put, "no food after supper" because that's too restrictive and negative.  I still have the option to have a little dessert if I need/want it - but at least it won't be right before I go to bed.  Plus, I'm too busy or full to want to eat until after we put the boys to bed at 8:30.  So, if I get that little craving after the boys go to bed, oops!  It's after 8, can't eat!  Therefore, I end up not eating after supper anyway!  Semantics, in a way, but it's worked for me so far!

I might set up a spot on the sidebar here to list my rules as time goes on.  I really don't plan on this being a dietary journal, so I may put it on my myspace blog (which I hardly ever do anything with). 

If you have a good rule that you think I should implement, leave a comment please.  I can always use some good ideas!

The other thing I'm going to do is collect my favorite recipes that are healthy, quick and tasty and make my own personal cookbook.  I've got so many cookbooks.  Maybe not quite a 100, but I haven't counted.  Too many.  Plus I have tons of loose recipes.  I keep tucking away my favorites and forgetting about them.  But if I combine my love for scrapbooking and cooking, then maybe I will come up with a bunch of recipes that are handy dandy and will reduce the excuses and need to go out to eat so much.

Maybe it'll keep me from journaling so much about the "girls".  LOL!

Abba Father

I think it was Thursday when I was sitting here all distraught and crying and feeling sorry for myself.  And feeling alone.  I was even saying to myself, you need to take it to God - but I was refusing that.  I really wanted a hug from someone.  A little sympathy from a real person.  I even posted on here some of my disappointment, but I held back, threw in a few upbeat parts.  Didn't work.  I wanted a pity party by golly!

So I relented.  No, I wasn't going to pray.  Just read the chapter to get ready for the Bible study that night that I had already planned not to go to.  2nd chapter of Daniel.  No, there was not one single inspirational verse that jumped out at me.  You know, that really hasn't ever happened to me.  I hear it happening all the time to other people...  Anyway.  Daniel is an exciting book of the Bible.  the lion's den, the firey furnace, dream interpretations - etc.  Chapter 2 was a dream interpretation.  And then it happened.  I was comforted.  Wha?  yep.  I was pulled up out of my little pity party.  Got a glimpse of the big picture.  The big picture will do that for ya sometimes.  The glimpse I got was that this world is wrong.  It's not as it was created initially.  Sin has ruined it - even the physicality of it.  Cancer is one of the by-products.  And cancer is what took a body part of mine.  Man can try to re-create it, and do a pretty good job - but it won't be perfect again until we get to heaven.  This that is happening to me is temporary.  Just a blip on the radar of eternity.  Not even a blip.

No big revelations.  Heard it all before.  And if any human person had said this to me - whammo!  Might've gotten socked in the face.  Okay that's melodramatic, but I would've wanted to do it.

We're studying God in Sunday School.  The past few weeks has been particularly that God is Abba Father.  Daddy.  Sometimes only your daddy can say things to you in just the right way.  And he'll let you climb up on his lap.  And cry.  That's what Jesus did in the garden before his crucifixion.  He was desparing to the point of death and cried out Abba Father.

I love my dad, but I really love having a Father that I can cry to and say, Look at this mess!  It's ugly, and yes I'm vain and I'm afraid that it's going to stay this way, and I don't want more surgery, afraid to not get more surgery and I hate myself for being so shallow and vain.  And I'm selfish enough to want a little/big pity party.  Please take it. 

And He did.

it itches!!!

Augggghhhhh!  I'm dying to scratch!!!!!  Please, please, please, let me just claw myself please!

If you've been with me from the beginning of this ordeal, you know how much I LOVE steri strips.  Note to self, write a note of thanks to the inventor of steri strips.

Thank goodness I can't feel anything on the mastectomy side or it'd be double torture.

I'm all red, just like last time.  I put a call in to the nurse and she confirmed that it was the steri strips or the glue and if it's still itchy by Monday to call again and they'll see me.  I guess they want it to heal up a few days before they pull them off.  She said the bump I feel, that is definitely the implant, is nothing, it just needs to settle and it's probably due to stitches or something.  Whatever she said, it made sense at the time.  (I'm such a good patient - whatever you say! tra la la)

I tell you, this whole thing really threw me for a loop.  I never expected to have the breakdown.  That was supposed to happen at the mastectomy, right??  That's what all the books say.  Wrong.  You don't expect to come out of a mastectomy looking normal.  In fact, I thought I looked better than what I expected.  Plus I knew it was not the final stop in my journey.  But this.  I've seen a lot of reconstruction pictures and let me tell you, most of them look pretty decent.  Plus, I kinda liked the look I had with the expander.  I did not like this shriveled, flat prune.

"They" say a lot of things.  And one of them is "it changes every day".  So far, that's true.  So, that's my word of encouragement to the other gals who might read this and also be freaking out.  Give it time.  You'll hear from me, as time goes by, as to whether I like them any better.  Oh yay, more booby posts!

It's still small and flat-ish, but it's not wrinkled any more.  It's filled out, plumped a little.  I've got an odd point, that was there with the expander, but I think that's extra skin he's going to use for the nipple.  It has a nice U shape.  I know that there are gals whose expanders or implants end up in their armpits, or give them a uniboob, or sit high on the pec...  I didn't say this in my last post, but I bent over and thought I saw the dreaded ripple.  I didn't even want to type it.  I don't think it's there any more.  I hope it stays away.

The other side is still swollen some, and perky.  So I have the perky side and the slight droop side.  Hmmm.  Sure, over the years, gravity will bring down that perk.  By the time I'm 80, I'll be even.  LOL!  The sisters will look related.

I dread bra shopping.  The doc said to wait 4 or 5 months before buying the expensive pretty bras.  Right now, I'm supposed to wear a sports bra all day and all night long.  I like the security.  I can't imagine at this point finding anything that would fit both sides at once, so a sports bra is the only thing that would do.  And that lovely white Walmart front closure bra.  Thank you Kim for the heads up on that one.  It's gonna come in handy again.

Oh, I'm back to using 4 pillows at night.  LOL!  Good thing we have a king size bed.  DH is being crowded out as it is.

No pain pills today so far.  I woke up this morning without that pain you get when everything shifts when you sit up.  yay!

so, have you had your boobs squished this year??  Have ya?

I'm home

And a little sore.  I got home yesterday after surgery.  Between naps, I threw up.  That sucked.  My sympathies to the ladies who have to do chemo.  Somehow, I slept all night and woke up feeling so much better.  I'm still sore.

The results.  Not so good, right now.  The lifted side is HUGE, very swollen.  But it's gonna be perky, I can tell.  This is the most sore side.  The implant side, small.  He says it's been squashed by the wrap and will fluff out to be a C cup.  Hmmm.  Looks like a barely B to me.  But I need to trust his 20 years experience and give it time.  It's got a nice little droop, the crease is good.  With the expander, it was a little stripper-ish having a high ridge, but that ridge is gone and has a natural looking slope.  Maybe I got a little too used to the stripper look.  LOL!  I don't care if it's small as long as they both match.  Ya know?  Match at least enough to not be noticable.  Right now it's D cup and B cup.  LOL!  But it's soft.  No more softball on my chest.  I got the saline.  No sloshing yet! 

*sigh* I'm disappointed, because I was expecting the reveal to be awesome.  If I had been prepared I wouldn't be so down.  But, I should have guessed it.  Swelling and squashing. 

SpongeBob Rules!

I went through with it.  If I get up the nerve, I'll post a little picture.  DH is mortified (when did he become so humorless?) but the plastic surgeon loved it and said to keep it on tomorrow.  (of course, it'll be removed when they clean me up for surgery).  Anything to get a chuckle, as far as I'm concerned.  I told him that I wanted them to be "youthful".   So far, I'm first on the surgical list, but I need to call to find out when to report.  Probably around 5:30 a.m.  Yawn.

I'm excited and nervous all at once.  He reassured me that I'll have a good outcome because my skin is in good shape.  He said that since I didn't smoke and didn't have rads, it'll be good.  From what I've read, radiation is hard on skin and makes reconstruction difficult.  You basically can't get just implants, you have to go the DIEP or Tram flap route.  (using skin from your belly or back, or even the GAP procedure which takes it from the buttocks)  I didn't know about this beforehand.  I was headed the lumpectomy/rads route initially, before they found out it was too big.  Well, I can't dwell on that now... The path I'm on has been turned out good for me. 

There.  Put up a picture.  I hope you aren't horrified.  Doesn't SpongeBob look like he's saying "I'm ready!" ?  I know I am.

I can't believe I put a picture up.  On the world wide web!!  Well, it'll get buried soon.

my resolve grows shaky

I don't know if I can go through with the spongebob tattoo.  I get squeemish when I imagine me sitting on the table with the little paper shirt on and the imagining the doctor asking me to open the shirt.  What would I say???  He's a very happy doctor, so I'm sure he'll try to go with the flow, but I'm sure he doesn't remember and will think I'm insane!  The other day I went out and bought 2 more packs of different tattoos.  I showed them to DH and he chose this goofy flower that has a smiley face in the center.  I think he chose it because it was the only one in the general circle-ish shape.  There's a peace symbol, but I'm not the hippie type and it isn't very attractive.  There is one that has 3 hearts, I like that one.  There is a green tree frog, that would be funny, but I might as well put on spongebob.  I think tonight I'll put on the spongebob and live with it for the night and some tomorrow.  Then I'll probably forget about it and not have enough time to remove it and HAVE to go to my pre-op with it on!  That's my plan for fooling myself.  LOL!  Shhhh.  Don't tell.

anyone else watch Lost?

Can I say wow-wee?  They had BETTER not kill off Locke!  He finally got his macho back.  And how scary and creepy was the whole Jacob thing?  One of the reasons I still read my A.N.'s blog is because she writes a real good analysis of this show.  No, I won't give you her blog page.  LOL!

Anyway, in the vortex yesterday, we were discussing Matthew Fox (from Lost) and where he lives.  I HAD heard that he lived in Kailua, but in a nice house in the hills (and gave wild parties where people like to skinny dip).  But yesterday, I heard he lived in the neighborhood near me (the one where the $24mil house sold, supposedly to Oprah).  Which is also where I thought I saw him running this past fall.  Yes, we love to speculate (we can't always be talking about motherly wisdom).  And as close as we are to these Lost characters, I don't get out enough to see them.  :-(  I'm not a good reporter for y'all.  Anyway, one of my friends said she saw Matthew Fox showering off at Kailua Beach Park and thought she recognized him but couldn't remember where.  She was about to walk up to him and say "hey, don't I know you from somewhere, like high school?" but her friend with her told her who it was.  LOL!  That would have been too funny.

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Last week at a neighborhood Bible study, we met a new couple.  The guy looks a lot like the Bachelor and he even said that some lady stopped him and asked him if he was Andy the Bachelor.  He doesn't watch t.v. so he had no clue who she was talking about.  The group of us talked about some famous people spotted on the island and I said that Jim Neighbors lives here and can often be spotted at concerts.  He was like, who?  I almost fainted.  Because that means he doesn't even know who Gomer Pyle is (and this is a soldier!).  Everyone knows Gomer.  Golly.  One occasionally runs into a person who doesn't own a t.v. or wasn't allowed to watch during childhood, but even rarer is the person completely media clueless.  LOL!  But good for him and his parents.  I think it's a good thing.  I watch way too much t.v.

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Ryan has a crush.  Her name is Lilly.  Since he can't pronounce his L's well, it's Wiwy.  He-he!  It's so cute.  She doesn't know.  :-)  But she is the only person at school he told about the camping weekend.  Awwwwww.  He's so cute!

Jake, No!  He doesn't have a girlfriend.  Ewwww, yuck!  :-)  Also very cute.