Peeps!

This is just a housekeeping announcement, really, but I wanted to chat super quick about the appearance of my blog/website. As you may have noticed, the former messy desktop theme has gone bye-bye.

The short explanation is that I migrated my site to a new server this week – and that server found my old blog theme to be quite antiquated. The nerve! Normally, this could be fixed by someone in-the-know. I am not that person. In fact, my former blog theme was very generously custom created for me by an old friend who has since flown the coop and moved on to bigger and better things – so I have no access to him or his incredible brain.

I’ll probably play around with themes over the next several weeks and I just wanted to give y’all a heads up that I’m not going crazy or anything…I’m simply trying to find something that’s a bit more refreshed, but still pays tribute to the Hot Mess that I am. 🙂

In other news…GO COWBOYS!!! I don’t know what gets me more excited: the fact that my team is finally in the playoffs or the fact that I can finally shop for Cowboys gear like most other folks. That simple pleasure was denied me when I was a size 32.

I’ll be back soon with a few blog posts that have been poking at me lately. Wishing you all the very best in this fabulous new year. Let’s go make 2015 our bitch!

Someone on my Facebook fan page asked whether I’ve noticed, one year after surgery, that I’m treated differently by people…and the answer is yes. And no.

Most of the people I knew before my surgery still treat me the same – because they love me, or at least like me, for the person inside. They don’t even remember the girl in my “before” picture because they never really noticed my physical faults in the first place…and I love them for it.

There are a few people in my life who don’t get it. Unfortunately I work with them, so I can’t completely exclude them from my life. To them, my surgery and my process is not mine…it’s somehow about them. My decision to have gastric sleeve surgery seems to have labeled me as a person who needs to be babysat, else I might eat the entire Thanksgiving potluck and cause the rest of the department to skulk back to their desks with empty plates and empty stomachs. And bloody nubs where their fingers were because they tried to grab the last dinner roll from my heaving jaws. I call these people the Food Police.

It’s hard for me to handle people like this in a professional environment because I have quite the sassy mouth, but I also have a profound desire to keep my job. This is the reason I don’t drink at company happy hours. It’s also the reason I try to avoid the Food Police as much as possible. I’m just trying to keep the peace because, honestly, these people aren’t my personal friends and it’s not worth the hassle. Sometimes, however, I need to put someone in their place as an example and I get the sweats just thinking about it. I always feel like I’m going to let my tongue off the leash a bit too far and end up being escorted to my car with my personal belongings in a box.

One day in particular comes to mind as I’m thinking of the Food Police. I was chatting with a few people when one of the secretaries came by with a tray of cookies that were leftover from a celebration. I hadn’t had a cookie in several weeks and these were from a bakery…and they were gorgeous. A little something sweet sounded quite yummy to me so, like others in the group, I said thank you and took a cookie. You would have thought I pulled a gun out of my handbag and shot a dog…that’s the reaction I got from the Food Police.

It started with a very loud, over dramatic gasp, which brought everyone’s focus to the mortified expression on her face. As if that wasn’t enough, she pointed a finger at me and loudly exclaimed, “YOU CAN’T EAT THAT!!!”

Everyone turned to look at me. Bad, bad, bad. This is exactly the situation I try to avoid. First, it takes me back to my days as a ten year old kid who was repeatedly emotionally terrorized by an asshole over whatever food I put in my mouth. And then all the kids and parents would turn and look at me, most of them secretly grateful that the negativity was not aimed at them. I don’t like being reminded of what that felt like.

Once I get put in that spot, I feel a split second of fear and panic before I realize I’m an eff’in adult. I’ve spent a fortune on therapy to get past all this shit…and, oh crap, here comes my sassy mouth with a big zinger. But I’m at work. And I have to be professional. So I can’t verbally smack the crap out of this insensitive asshat like I want to. I decided to play along and see where that took me.

“Why not?” I asked innocently.

The Food Police sputtered madly at first, then blurted “Because you worked so hard and lost all this weight. You can’t have a cookie!!!”

By this time, most of the others in the group had slightly embarrassed or bemused looks on their faces because they realized I was fighting to keep a lid on the Hot Mess Princess who was just dying to get out and put this chick in her place. The finger was still pointing at me. Part of me wanted to bite it, but I would have just proved her point so I resisted.

“Don’t you think I can be trusted with a cookie? Do you think this one cookie is going to bring back all the weight I’ve lost and undo all the hard work I’ve done?”

She sort of blinked as she thought about it. I didn’t wait for an answer.

“Do you even know how long it’s been since I’ve had a cookie?”

More blinking. More suppressed smirking from my colleagues. I continued.

“I didn’t realize my food choices affected you so much, so I apologize.” I slowly moved the cookie away from my mouth with the same cautious obedience a criminal uses on an episode of Cops. Be cool, man. Just be cool. I put the cookie down.

“There. I put the cookie down. Are you feeling better? I’m so sorry I upset you.”

The look in her eyes told me she finally got it. She saw what she’d really done, which is embarrass me with her ridiculous judgmental bullshit. I resisted the urge to say “Maybe you should lie down” or something, but I knew I’d made my point. I walked away quietly.

As much as her behavior pissed me off and as happy as I was that I was able to stand up for myself with diplomacy, I still returned to my desk with tears in my eyes like a scolded little girl. I took a moment to pull myself together and then I was fine. That ten year old little girl will always be there inside my head…and that’s okay. I have the skills to deal with jerks now. I never fail to come to her rescue – but I hate that other people’s behavior touches this part of me. I know it’s going to happen once in a while. Once I unleash the fury of HMP, I feel better. The jerk’s feelings, to be frank, don’t matter to me in the slightest.

I have similar feelings about the judgy strangers I meet from day to day. I was out to dinner with a friend and I was eating my dessert when I caught the disapproving glare of a stranger a few tables over. My first thought was “What’s up their ass? I look awesome!” Then I realized this person doesn’t know that. He’s looking at a disgusting fat woman eating dessert. He doesn’t know I’ve lost 113 pounds. He doesn’t know I won’t be able to eat the whole thing. From his seat at the Judgy Asshole table, I’m going to eat the whole dessert and then go out for pie later. How dare I do that? I should be jogging around the parking lot, not daintily spooning up a few bites of my mini peanut butter chocolate mousse.

Who the hell did I think I was, right?

See, when I run into jerks like this I know I don’t have to face them again. Strangers are awesome that way. My job isn’t in jeopardy if I mouth off, so the sky’s the limit really. In this particular case, I settled for making a suggestive motion with the spoon like I was trying to turn him on.

I love doing shit like that to men who obviously find me disgusting and think they’re quite the badass for humbling me with dirty looks. My intention was to take away any possibility of a boner his little pinky dick might get for the next 6 months. Judging from the look on his face, I was successful…and that’s all I wanted. He doesn’t need to know that in reality I wouldn’t touch him with a ten foot pole.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are plenty of people who didn’t know me last year – so when they see me take a few bites of something and say I’m done, the unavoidable next question is…”Oh, are you on a diet?”

First I cringe, then I smile and explain. The fact that they first see a fat person and then they think it’s okay to ask such a thing just irks me.

The problem is…the world still thinks they have way too much freedom with the boundaries of overweight people and it really pisses me off. If there’s a guy in a grocery store with his cart loaded with booze, the assumption is what? Someone’s throwing a party!!! The assumption isn’t usually “Wow, this dude needs help…” Replace him with a fat person and a cart loaded with chips and processed crap? People feel they have the right to glance at the cart and give dirty looks. You disgusting person. How can you eat all that?

Hot chick walking out of Victoria’s Secret with a big pink bag ‘o panties. Like…hundreds of dollars in panties (which is probably 5 pair). Guys are drooling over her. Not one of them is thinking “Wow, she’s in credit card debt so bad she’ll be an old lady before she pays that off.” I don’t want to get with someone like that…she’ll drag me down into financial hell.

She looks good…so she’s okay.

Because we’re overweight, we wear our addiction for everyone to see…and so people feel entitled to assert their opinions for some reason. They think they’re being helpful. They think they’re educating us. They need to turn their judgy vision on themselves and leave others be.

So the answer is yes…and no. People treat me different and people treat me the same. The people who really matter in my life treat me the same as they did when I weighed 383 pounds. Healthy relationships don’t change whether you weigh 100 pounds or 500 pounds. And the jerks? Yeah, I still get the same treatment from them because jerks don’t change either. Sometimes we want them to, but they don’t.

There are a few clueless souls out there, however, who treat me like some sort of walking cookie monster because I was honest about having surgery and they’re judgy, misguided people who can’t see the damage they do with their unhealthy need to control. They need to interfere in order to feel helpful in someway and they don’t see the damage they do as they’re mowing you down in the process.

My take-away from all of this? I’ve changed…and that’s enough. I’m blessed with loving people in my life. I’m grateful for my independent brain and my will to be happy…and that’s all I really need.

Mud Pie W-Initial Canvas Tote

Soar Journal (Notebook, Diary) (Guided Journals Series) (Black Rock)

I’m so sorry I haven’t written a damn thing since…oh, about 1990. That’s what it feels like.

The thing no one tells you about losing a ton of weight is that you get to a point where you feel so good you want to do so much more – but you’re still dealing with the same 24 hours that you had before. If I’m going to have this much energy, the least they could do is give me more hours in which to accomplish all the amazing shit that a Hot Mess Princess must do…am I right? Well, they didn’t.

Y’all know that my plan for pulling away from emotional eating was to substitute that incredibly destructive behavior with something positive. A lot of people would have chosen exercise as the alternative, but I’ve seen that go the wrong way too many times. You can be just as compulsive with exercise as you can with eating and, if anyone’s going to fuck up their good intentions in that area, it’d be me. No thanks. I chose needlework because it’s been a passion of mine since I learned how in Girl Scouts…and because I know I won’t get crazy compulsive about it. It’s something I retreat to when I start thinking about food or body weight or anything negative and destructive. It brings me peace and calm – and it keeps my hands too busy to eat.

The farther I get from my surgery date, the more grateful I am that I had a plan for replacing destructive behaviors. Just over a year ago, if I had a bad day at work I’d get home and curl up with a pizza and a pint of mint chip ice cream. And maybe a bag of salty potato chips. And some licorice, perhaps. The list was endless and so was my appetite for calming myself with eating. Nowadays I eat considerably less. I’ve either made peace with the foods that were my vices or I’ve completely banished them from my life – but I didn’t have brain surgery, y’all. I still fight the compulsion to stuff food in my face and chew away my anxiety. The gift is…I simply can’t do it.

Having 85% of your stomach surgically removed doesn’t magically make you want salad and green smoothies for the rest of your life, but it does stop you from washing off a bad day by downing an entire box of Little Debbies. IF there was a box of snack cakes anywhere near me today and IF I wanted some, I could probably get part of one down. Maybe a whole one if I hadn’t had anything to eat for hours and hours – and, in spite of what the multi-billion dollar diet industry tells you, one snack cake isn’t going to kill you. For the record, though, snack cakes are on my banned list. Why? Because I simply don’t get enough enjoyment out of them anymore. They’re not worth the empty calories. My taste buds have radically changed…and most processed snacks taste nasty as hell to me.

So I’ve been doing a lot of needlework, which I love…and it doesn’t make me wear bigger pants. I’ve also been doing a few household projects that were badly needed, including cleaning our dumping ground of a bedroom so that the elliptical trainer could be unearthed. It took me hours of emptying storage boxes and tossing, putting away, or donating the crap inside in order to get to the damn thing – but I finally did it. It was an epic project on the same scale as finding King Tut’s tomb, peeps. Now the elliptical waits for me every morning. Sometimes I get on it, sometimes I don’t. But it’s all up in my face again, and it’s made me realize that the second part of my journey is just beginning.

For the past year, I’ve celebrated some amazing milestones. 50 pounds. My first drop in clothing size. Reaching my feet for the first time. Dropping another clothing size. Riding a bike. Hitting the 200’s on the scale…and more. These milestones are all amazing and wonderful. They’re also mostly weight or size related. Now that I’ve lost 113 pounds and I’m halfway to my goal weight range, I realize that there will come a day when I don’t have any more weight to lose. There won’t be any more sizes to drop. And then what will my goal be? If I’m not careful, I won’t have anything left to strive for. There won’t be anything left to write about – except maybe when HMH successfully farts along to the 1812 Overture – and I assure you, that’s not pretty.

I still have quite a few weight loss related milestones to celebrate, but I’m adding some exciting ones to strive for in 2015 – and, just like needlework, they’re helping me substitute one habit for another. I’m going to add the habit of exercise to my repertoire in the new year…and, like my withdrawal from certain foods, diet soda and caffeine, I’m going to do it with baby steps. With me, baby steps seem to be the only way I can really get things done. 2015 will be about celebrating the remaining weight and size milestones while bringing in new healthy living goals that will set me up for a lifetime of happy exercising.

In the next few weeks, I’ll share my 2015 goals with you and I invite you to share yours with me. As always, we’re stronger together than we are apart…and the wonderful thing about this thing called the internet is that even someone living in a remote location with no friends or family close by can feel connected to others with the same issues. So let’s squeeze together and hug it out and get ready for an amazing year because we deserve it.

I’m ready. Are you?

Peeps!

I just had gallbladder surgery on Thursday and since I’m restricted from doing pretty much anything else, I thought I’d post an update on my list of 50 awesome things I want to accomplish before my 50th birthday this November. So let’s check off a few!!!

1. Give blood

I did it…even though I’m petrified of needles and some dude totally fainted just as I walked in. I still did it. Thank God for my patient pal Laura who was there to hold my hand. LOL.

2. Volunteer
3. Visit my cousin in Florida

4. Sketch something
5. Rollerskate
6. Enter the State Fair of Texas needlework competition

Done! My needlework received an Honorable Mention ribbon. I’ll post a picture when the State Fair opens and I go see it!

7. Send flowers to someone
8. Take a CHL class  (cancelled – will explain in another post)
9. Write a short story
10. Play with sidewalk chalk
11. Finish the watercolor painting I started in Florida
12. Get my passport
13. Buy a new bike
14. Take a knitting class
15. Walk a 5K (in process…I’m registered for one next month!)
16. Design my first cross stitch pattern
17. Over-tip a waitress
18. Attend a live performance
19. Play in the rain
20. Lose 100 pounds

Done! I can’t believe how heavy these 50 pound bags were…it’s overwhelming to think I once carried this extra weight on my body!

21. Serve myself breakfast in bed
22. Clean out my closet to donate clothes
23. Eat ice cream for the first time in a year
24. Embroider something
25. Clean out the trunk of my car (talk about a hot mess…)

Done! It looks fabulous, trust me. If I waited to take pictures it would take even longer to post this!

26. Watch a movie outside
27. Eat a popsicle

Done! Nothing like major surgery and general anesthesia to give you a sore throat.

28. Get a new floor stand for needlework
29. Watch a sunrise
30.
31. Inspire a rebel
32. Surprise my Mom with a weekend visit

I don’t have pictures, but I did stop in Orange County on my way home from Kauai…but I was exhausted. LOL. Mom was over-the-moon excited to see her baby girl, I promise.

33. Make a really cool craft project
34. Teach a child a new skill
35. Help someone think better of himself or herself
36.
37. Make a new friend
38. Read a book

I read the first book in the Outlander series and started the second. Boom!

39. Go to the movies again (it’s like pulling teeth to get HMH to go)

40. Buy a stranger a drink
41.
42. Random act of baking kindness
43.
44. Ride a rollercoaster
45. 2014 DFW Penis Expedition (Confused? Read this: I live in a penis!)
46. Make a candle
47. Go to the top of the ball at Reunion Tower in Dallas
48.
49. Surprise HMH with a super awesome home-cooked dinner
50. Perform a random act of kindness every day for a week

As for the blank spots, I’m still working on filling those in. Any ideas?

It’s 8 pm Texas time on this Tuesday night and I find myself (finally) home alone…in front of a keyboard calling my name.

Writing time is scarce nowadays and I don’t like that. Hot Mess Hubby works a weird schedule and now we have Hot Mess Niece staying with us. I find it increasingly difficult to write when either one of them is home because I’m constantly distracted by “Babe! Come look how cute he (Dyson the dog) is…”  For the 100th time. It’s true, he is 130 pounds of adorable muppet dog – but c’mon. I wonder what HMH would have been like had we been lucky enough to have human children.

“Babe! Come look!! The baby just puked on the carpet and it looks like Jesus…I think it’s a sign!!!”

Perhaps it’s best that we’re parents to furry kids instead.

My office at home does have a door on it, but with Kirby the dog still using the room as her primary residence during recovery from knee surgery almost 3 months ago I’m unable to shut it. She wouldn’t hear of it. In fact, she’s been fond of reminding us lately that she’s not really fooled by the $10 baby gate we use to barricade her in the office. She stays in here because she knows that’s what we want and she’d rather die than disappoint us.

She has 2 more weeks to go before she regains her freedom and can roam the house as she used to. She’s getting stronger every day – and even though I don’t see her roughhousing with Dyson anytime soon, she does have her moments. We’ve been letting her out into the living room on weekends but, just to show her who’s boss, we put her on the leash and tie the other end to our giant coffee table. Dr’s orders, really. She’s not to be allowed to move around a lot. She’s to rest. Unless Hot Mess Niece comes home with a bag of food…and then she won’t hesitate to drag the entire giant-ass coffee table clear across the living room in order to get to that bag of burgers.

Knee surgery? What knee surgery?

Our girl is ready to get back to business and that’s a very good thing.

There is so much going on right now. I’ve recently been promoted at work. HMH is training for a bike race that will take him from one end of the Lone Star state to the other. I finally hit 299 pounds…that was an awesome effing day. I haven’t even had time to write about it. It seems like the more weight I lose the busier I get. Why? More energy. More flexibility. More everything.

A couple of weeks ago I decided that I was tired of staring at our ugly hallway (it’s been three different colors for about three years now) and I grabbed the ladder and started painting. Because I’m no longer too heavy to get on a ladder. Because I’m a badass.

I need to find a rhyme and reason for my projects, though. Right now I just sort of drift in and out of “OMG I’m gonna do this!” and “OMG I have no time for anything!” And then there’s the needlework project I’ve been working on/procrastinating over for well over ten years. The State Fair of Texas opens this fall and I’m determined to have it finished and entered in the needlework competition. Where will I find the time?

And then there’s the not-so-fun things…like the bizarre pain attacks I’ve had lately. The first one hit last Saturday and felt like the fart from hell, although there was no fart. It started out as a gas pain, or so I thought, but it just kept building and building until I was gasping for air and struggling to get to the bedroom so that I could collapse on the bed. I was home alone and quite freaked out.

The second one happened five days later…at work. Boy, was that fun. Thank God I have a calm and collected co-worker who didn’t freak out when I said “Hey, don’t panic or anything but I’m going to get on the floor for a few minutes…” Another co-worker who was passing through wasn’t so lucky. She caught a glimpse of my head on the floor and gasped “Oh my God!!!” I was okay within 5 minutes, but it was enough to get me to email my nutritionist with a “Hey, WTF is this crap?” email.

My gallbladder is the #1 suspect. Gallbladder problems are common in weight loss surgery patients. So I called my doctor and got an appointment for the next day. They took some blood, which I found out today is just fine. Nothing weird about it. This morning I had a complete abdominal ultrasound. Now I wait some more. Whatever it is, I’ll deal with it. I just have this perpetual fear of ending up in an episode of House. You know…like I end up with some rare condition caused by a chemical reaction between the top I’m wearing and the tube of Chapstick I just bought. And the only way to cure me is to run a tube up my butt and out my left ear.

So yeah…I have a lot going on right now – including a new project called “50 feats before 50” that I’ll talk more about soon. Until then, I continue to drive the Facebook fans nuts with nonsensical status updates. If you’re one of those folks who doesn’t want to broadcast their whole life on Facebook but you’re feeling left out, do what my crazy ass buddy does: create a profile that’s complete and utter crap. Let me give you a few fake names to get the creative ball rolling…

Seymour Butts (okay, maybe that one’s a bit obvious)

Tits McGee

Tiffany Von Flugerflickle

Gus Farkle

Shelly Smellyvag

Well…you get the idea. Enjoy creating a complete crap profile and then come hang out with us on my Facebook fan page. It’s awesome.

And now it’s time for me to hit the hay. Brain recharging time, kids. I promise to come around more often. This whole blog post was really about me bitch’in and moan’in about meaningless crap. Next time I promise to tell you about 299 day. 🙂

Promise.