Haircuts and Hand Grenades

Just went and dropped almost 100 bucks for me and Emily to get our haircut, shampooed, and styled.  This is not a normal occurrence.  Usually it is the cheapy cut but one time I decided to treat us both to something different.  The irony was the girl sitting next to me getting her hair cut and blabbing on and on with the hairdresser.  She proceeded to tell a story (very loud to the entire side of the salon) that her mother had cancer and had lost all her hair a few years ago and how going through that made her not put a lot of stock into her hair anymore. She said she could go bald and wouldn't care (I found this strange considering we are sitting in a room of women who's job it is to care about hair)  So, after all that, this woman dropped 100 on just her head!!  She had the works done, color cut and style.  Umm ok...you don't care about your hair lady....keep telling yourself that.

Onederland!

This morning I woke up at 5:30 am having to pee.  My routine since surgery in June has been, get up and pee..go to the scale.  Go back to bed.  So, mid yawn I am standing in the kitchen on my scale (BTW it is in the kitchen because my bathroom is the size of a closet, welcome to the 1950's built house) freezing my key off and BAM!  the digital display stops on 199.9....what?  No friggin way!  I stepped on that thing 5 times making sure it was right and sure enough...there was that glorious little 1 staring up at me.  I proceeded to do a happy dance (quietly because it was 5:30 am on a Sunday) and go to bed and wait til my other half made a move or grunt so I could shake him into awake and tell him.
     OK, so you may be asking yourself  "You weigh almost 200 pounds and you are happy about that?"  Yes I am!  Considering that before I had gastric bypass on June 4th 2010 I weighed 330 pounds, had really bad plantar factitious in both feet.  Pain in everything on me. I never wore long sleeves or a winter jacket.  I ate horribly, and thought about food all the time.  I was a mess and never even knew it.  I couldn't walk from one side of my little ranch house with getting winded.  The stairs...forget about it.
     It was a year long effort to be approved for surgery.  you don't just wake up one day and schedule an appointment to have it done.  There are nutritionist, dieticians, surgeons, psychiatrists and  sometimes physical therapy to be done before you can even submit a claim to have it done.  And then you have a 50/50 shot of the insurance company saying yes after all that, not to mention the co-pays for all those Doctors and therapists, and then the hospital stay.  No matter what you may have been told, it is in no way shape of form the easy way out for a fat person.
     It is a total change of lifestyle.  And It's not like you can just decide screw it, and go back to old eating habits, or not exercise.  It's do or die after you leave the hospital.  And going back to old habits, not taking vitamins or protein really can kill you.  But the result if you do it right and listen to what the experts tell you, are unreal.  My life is better than I ever could have imagined.  My quality of life is so much more than it was and I never knew it. 

Why the hell am I here?

      I lost my job in July 2010 and the economy tanked all at the same time.  This is how I ended up back in college at 38 years old.  Because I have no skills for a real job, and no degree.  I am by no means complaining about it..in fact, I love being back at school, it has made me feel great, and I am hopefully going to be doing something I want to do after instead of what pays the bills.  So, anyways I digress.

     I am a Human services major, hoping to go into assisted living or the geriatrics field after school.  I am taking Human services 101 this year, interning, a history class ( I LOVE) and a class called Women's Issues.  Little did I know, that 2 of my 4 classes were going to basically be self evaluation.  Now, I have been through my share of drama in the past, and self evaluation is something I have done.  I deal with things and move on.  It's the past, period.  First assignment in WI was make a collage about yourself and present it to the class.  Easy enough I thought.  I threw some pictures of my family, a Steal your Face (I am a Deadhead) wrote some little facts and skirted all the bad stuff and went on my merry way.  Most people in the class did not do it this way.  They let it ALL hang out.  For the past few weeks, everyday another person would stand in front of the class and use the time as therapy and tell all their deep dark secrets, and most of us would end up in tears doling out hugs and pats on the back. 

     First I must say, I commend each and every one of them for having the guts to stand up there and say all the things they have done or been through.  But it is not my style.  My coping mechanism has been since I had my license to drive around listening to music and thinking.  For example, when dealing with my spiraling out of control marriage, I was driving all over the west side of the county blaring every sad Eagles song I could find.  It was depressing, self loathing maybe, but it made me deal with my emotions in a way nothing else could.  And I eventually say to myself, "I don't want to feel like this anymore."  Then I figure out how to fix it.  But that's another story.

     So, when leaving class a few days ago, I was telling the guy who sits next to me, my theory of how I deal with things and how I hate having to talk about it again.  Another woman in my class listening to the conversation said something that made me really think "It's not you that needs to tell your story, but someone might need to hear it."  The thought never crossed my mind that what I have been through might actually help someone.  

     So, here I am.  Back in self evaluation mode trying to number one, open up and talk about uncomfortable things, and number 2 see if anything I say, even something moronic, might help someone else in their journey. So, to anyone who bothers to read this.  Welcome to my world, feel free to comment about what I say, good or bad.  Ask questions if you like, I will try my damnedest to be honest and answer them.  And I will not apologize for anything I write here so if you take offense easily, don't read.  So, anyway, that's what I'm here for, here's hoping someone will bother to read.