Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

I wish I could work from home this whole month. Every day this month, my workplace is putting out boxes and piles of cookies and chocolates. The ones out today look AMAZING.

It's been more than two years since I've had a single sweet. I'm not going to start now, but dammit work, why do you have to make it so much harder?

I'm really grumpy/sad about my weight, too. Even though my diet and exercise haven't changed at all, over the last three weeks, somehow I gained TEN POUNDS. At first I thought it was water weight, but holding onto it for three weeks? Ugh.

I've not had any popcorn in two weeks. My most favorite food in the world, but I cannot have something that's all carbs, butter, and salt when my weight is up.

And my workplace is full of cookies. I want to cry.

This is the most weight I've gained since I started losing. Regaining all my weight is my biggest fear, so I really need to get these ten pounds back off.

Go away, cookies and candy and amazing looking chocolates.

One good thing: I've learned that cutting protein bars in half works a lot better for me. When I eat a whole one, I feel like I have an awful brick in my stomach, plus by the time I get through the whole thing, I HATE the taste of it. A half-bar works a lot better, and then I can eat the other half the next day.

My back isn't broken yet, but I'd really appreciate it if the world would stop piling straw onto me.

[Rereading this post, I decided to add something positive to each point -- the other side of the coin. I'll add it in brackets.]

Weight: Two months ago I had hit my lowest number ever (200.2 SO CLOSE to being under 200!) and I never was able to get below it. I've gained seven pounds as of this morning (though this morning is unofficial, five pounds gained from official weighing date). It's just so amazingly frustrating as I'm not cheating, I'm not eating badly. [On the plus side, I'm off my high cholesterol medication, which means I'm down to one single prescription. As I used to be on four different diabetes meds and two other ones, that's a wonderful thing.]

Exercise: With my toe still not healed (seriously, I've had an open wound on my toe for months now, and I've been on antibiotics just as long) I can't do my usual exercises. There are still hand weights and pushups, but that's not the same as aerobic exercise. Which of course adds into the weight problem... [The good part is I'd be ready to do knee-high pushups if only I were willing to try. I worry that the position might put too much stress on my healing toe though. SOON! And then next will be doing pushups on the floor!]

Running: I decided there's no use waiting. Once my toe heals (if it ever does...) I'm going to try to start running. I wanted to use that "couch to 5K" app... but apparently my phone is too old to run it. An iPhone 4 is NOT that much older than an iPhone 6! It's utter BS that I cannot run what appears to be a simple app on my current phone! [All my life, I've wanted to be able to run. It was the one thing I felt like I was missing out on when I was heavier. I'm not sure if it will work for me, it might kill my knees, but I'm excited to try. SOON! As soon as my toe heals!]

Money: Adding into all that, money is still really rough. As in I'm living on my savings even though I have a full time job in the tech industry. This adds into the other issues, as in constant doctor bills for my toe ($250 per visit, weekly visits, even with insurance) and being unable to splurge and upgrade my apparently-ancient phone... [Hard to see a positive one on this point. At least I'm not homeless?]

Toe: I'm really so sick of dealing with it. My toenail was removed over a year ago, and it's never healed up since then. It reopened/re-got infected a couple months ago, and the infection is resistant to all antibiotics other than one. The pills cost $250 per pill, and I have to take them twice a day, and I'm on my third 10 day renewal of them, so the insurance company is being an ass about it. It's a constant fight with them to get my renewals, and they won't even cover a full renewal at once. I have to pick up 5 days, then the other 5 days on the day I run out of them, and the insurance has to approve it every time. It's nonstop calling, stress, and worry that I'll run out before the renewal is approved. [At least I do have insurance, so it's not all out of pocket?]

Vacation: I had the "good" idea to get a mileage credit card so I could fly home to visit my mother for free. I spent enough on it (and paid it off) to get the miles I need, but apparently it takes EIGHT WEEKS to credit the miles to you. Add to that the EXTREMELY limited number of seat options, and I doubt I'll be able to go home in June. (Seriously, a month ago, when I checked what was available in June, there were six seats for the whole month.) [Blah.]

Taxes: My mother's tax guy offered to look at my taxes and see if he could do better than the $1,000 TurboTax says I owe, but it's been about three weeks and I haven't heard back from him, even though I've emailed him multiple times since then. It's less than ten days until I have to file... [Well, I'm prepared for the worst. If he can't do any better, I was already mentally prepared to pay that $1,000...]

Life isn't supposed to be like this, you know? I work a full time "good" job. I have health insurance. I live about as far from an extravagant lifestyle as you can get. I have no children and no debt. [Hopefully things will get better soon... Money is unlikely, not until my lease is up and I can move to a smaller/cheaper place, but hopefully my toe will heal up soon and I can get back to exercising, which will help with the weight issue...]

This post was like talking to myself! :P

An assortment of random things. Like an assortment of chocolates, but with fewer calories!

It's odd being lonely at work. I've been here a couple hours already, and next to no one is here. Usually there are hundreds of people in this building.

I think I'm going to work from home ("work" from home) tomorrow and Wednesday.

Though it's still too early to be sure, I think the calorie counting app is really helping. I didn't lose much last week (.2 pounds -- two-tenths!), but the next day I lost a pound (unofficial weighing though). If I generally continue downward for the next two weeks, I'm going to call it a success instead of just a period between forever-plateaus.

[Glossary for next section: FFXIV = MMO/online game I play. FC = free company/"guild"/group you play with. RP = role-play.]

I'm going to quit my FC on FFXIV tonight. The way I jump from FC to FC is becoming a joke in part of my social circle, but I just find I have less and less patience for immature crap anymore. My current FC seems to be full of preteen boys: Racist, sexist, stupid "jokes" are the order of the day. Endless memes and that sort of thing. If the RP were good, I could put up with OOC annoying stuff, but in this case the RP is very borderline (there are a few good RPers in the group, some average, but many many below average).

Game/RP-wise, I'm in a good place though. More and more people chase after me to want me to join their FC. (I'm a way, WAY more experienced RPer than most folks, and it shows. I've been RPing longer than most of them have been alive.) It's such a good feeling when a FC tells me that I'm their favorite person to RP with, or when they thank me for being such a good sport in RP (with experience comes the knowledge that having your character lose can be just as fun as your character winning -- most young people want to RP being perfect and winning at everything).

Perhaps as part of my FC jumping, I feel less and less like my online friends are really friends. I used to think online people were just as real of friends as offline people could be, but now I'm seeing my online friends as just "people I'm now friendly with but can and will drift away from in the likely-near future". I wish that were otherwise. Maybe it's my own fault, maybe I have to reach out more after I leave people behind in a FC.

I'm going to be stuck in meetings all day, boo. My stomach is really bothering me too, which makes the all day meetings more of an issue. Blah!

Yesterday was my birthday. My company was doing a blood drive the same day, so I decided to take part. Never before (when I was heavier) could I take part because even for medical blood draws they could never find a vein and had to take it out of the back of my hand (OW). But now they can do it in my elbow just fine, so I decided that a great thing to do on my birthday would be to give back to the world...

Except I can't donate blood. I got there, filled out all the forms, did the interview with the nurse, only to discover that since my toe is still infected and I'm on antibiotics, I can't donate. It makes sense, but it depressed me for the whole day, nearly to the point of crying over it (I suspect PMS on that issue). It was worse because, when I checked in and they discovered it was my birthday, they sang to me. Then I had to slink out without donating. Blah.

In the evening, I watched the new Lion King movie/start of the animated series. The Lion Guard. While I was far from the target audience (preschoolers), I enjoyed it a heck of a lot. They ruined the hyenas (which makes sense, they don't want to scare the little kids), and there was too much silliness for me (again makes sense, little kids would like that), but this will be a series that I'm sure I'll be able to enjoy.

Since yesterday was my birthday, I went out for lunch (even though I'm trying to save money so never go out anymore). Just a couple of chicken skewers and I was bad and bought a small, freshly baked baguette (I had a mental IT'S MY BIRTHDAY I WANT TO EAT BAD STUFF!) moment. I had expected that I was going to eat the whole thing, but oddly I found I didn't want to. I ended up sticking half of it into the freezer for some future bread craving emergency.

Somehow, even though I had bread and butter(!!!) and what I thought was grilled chicken though was oddly very greasy, my weight was actually down this morning. If it stays down on my official weighing morning (Friday) I'm going to consider trying to be looser about calories one day a week. Maybe a slightly higher calorie day will shake my body up some and get me off this endless (two month long!!!) plateau.

Nutritionist: Apparently I'm ahead of the game. She said most people lose 15-20 pounds in their first month, and I've lost 30. She made the same suggestion most of us (me included) already knew: Don't weigh myself every day. She said to do it every two weeks, but I think I'd go crazy waiting that long, so going to go back to doing it once a week and trying not to check other times.

Diet: Just to keep record of things, I've "cheated" twice on my diet:

Once was "on purpose" (last week I was so miserable, crying at everything, losing no weight and eating nothing and thinking my life would never be happy again because I'd never eat "normal" food ever again), so I went to Popeye's (fast food fried chicken). I got a kid's meal (one chicken finger and some fries), gave the drink (soda) to the guy standing behind me on line. Ate half the chicken finger, and amazingly didn't get sick (in fact, I felt better after eating it than when I eat food I'm supposed to). It's amazing the changes that half chicken finger did for my mood, like night/day changes.

The second time, yesterday, was "not my fault" (excuses, it totally was). Panda Express has a chicken and green bean dish, which is just plain chicken breast and green beans in a soy sauce. Seriously low calories, low fat, almost no carbs, so fine to eat. I had a buy one get one free deal, so I went in and ordered two small sides of it. One I ate for lunch, the other I had for dinner... but somehow the woman at the counter packed the wrong thing as the second order and I had a side of orange chicken instead (sweet, fried, spicy). I had a little bite of it, "just to see", and it was so good I ate more (about a third of the small container). I was so certain it would make me sick, but it didn't.

I'm not happy that I cheated, though neither was too horribly bad. Those two things were the only fried things I've eaten in more than a month, the only time I've broken my diet at all. I want to live by "all things in moderation" if possible, though I'd rather start it later, once I'm done with the healing diet part of this.

Flight Rising: I don't need another obsession, but when accounts opened up yesterday, I decided to make one. I'm ThistleChaser there. I told myself I was making one "just to see what the site was like", but that's what I said about Neopets more than a decade ago, and then I was active on the site for ten years. I'm amused at how the first thing that happens after you make a dragon is that some random wild one shows up to breed with it.

RP: Oh man, I'm getting so much RP and it's so good. More than that, I'm getting a lot more social interaction/chatting because of the forum RP group. I'm in the great position where I actually sometimes turn down RP now because I have so much! Even though I write all day at work, writing for RP is a totally different animal. It just feels so good to write that way.

I'm really missing reviewing books. I'm about 25% into the second Stormlight Archive book, and there's still 18 hours of reading left before I finish. x.x I'm really, really loving the book, but man has the series killed my book count for the year. I was on track to beat my 50 book goal, but now I doubt I'll get out of the 30s. Still, it's worth it.

A month + three days until surgery.

On 8/26 I meet with the surgeon for the last time. I believe technically he approves surgery then, but as I've already lost the weight he wanted, it better just be rubber stamped approval. (Edit: My insurance company still hasn't approved it yet, but the surgeon's office doesn't think there will be any problem with that.)

I still have yet another class to do (sigh). At least this one is only two hours instead of three (like the previous two). I scheduled it for 8/29, but 8/22 would have been better. Unfortunately the hospital didn't give me a phone number when they called to make the appointment. (I just realized that my cell phone must have it listed in it -- yay smart phones.) I'll need to call back and reschedule it today. (Edit: Called, hopefully the right number... Got a few medical calls yesterday, hopefully I didn't leave the voice mail at the wrong one.)

After that I have one more appointment with the hospital to do bloodwork and an EKG. No idea yet when that'll happen.

As if all those things weren't enough, both my insurance company and the company I work for have nurses calling me to go over stuff on the phone. The last one was 20 minutes, the next call with be 40. Sigh. It's not even useful stuff. "Do you know what you're having surgery for? Do you know the name of it? Did you agree to have it? Has anyone gone over the lifestyle changes that will be required after it?" I'm supposed to do the 40 minute one today, but RP from yesterday got rescheduled to today, so I might just not pick up the phone. (I wonder if these calls are mandatory for me to do?)

Still hating the CPAP machine. Supposedly it helps you sleep, but it does the opposite for me. Takes me twice as long to fall asleep (so more than an hour), wakes me up many times during the night, and wakes me up an hour or so before my alarm goes off. This means I get very little, very broken sleep. I'm beyond the 30 days of the company monitoring it, so I'm seriously considering not using it anymore. Clearly I'm not going to get used to it at this point (almost 40 nights of using it), so I can't decide if any benefit I get from it is worth the big hit to the amount and quality of sleep.

I wish I were excited or happy to be getting the surgery done, but instead it's just a "have to" thing. I'd rather just continue with my life as it had been (before I started this current diet), but that's neither reasonable nor responsible.

(I decided to cut this part out of the book review post because I don't want comments on it. It's not anyone out there, it's just me not wanting to talk about this or think about it more. I do want to post it though because it's part of the process and I want to keep it on record.)

Wednesday is Official Weigh-In Day, so here goes.

( In which I am not cheerful and happy. Feel free to skip. In fact, I recommend it. )

Beware the zombie cows.



In semi-related news, I don't like Wendy's chili. I did successfully get in and out getting only a "plain" potato (yet they put butter and sour cream in the bag, sigh), chili, and a diet soda. Unfortunately the chili was full of beans, so I ate maybe a quarter to a third of it. The potato was meh, until I ended up using the butter ("butter", fake stuff) and the "lite" sour cream with it. I figured since I wasn't eating the chili, those would be fine. (40 cal for sour cream, 50 cal for the "butter spread" -- I'm surprised by that, I thought the sour cream would have been more, you got three times more of it than the spread.)

Still hating the CPAP machine. It wakes me up constantly. I haven't had a full, unbroken night's sleep yet in the two weeks I've had it. Blah.

Ellie New Cat has a new favorite place to sleep. It makes me snicker:
( Semi-big picture. )

She puts just her head under the bed, the rest of her sticks out into the room. So silly!

I finally taught her a new trick, trick #3. The first one was high-5 (she has to tap my hand to get a treat), second was sit up and beg (like a dog does), and the third is 'wave'. It's almost a combo of the first two: the 'beg' position plus she lifts one paw (but doesn't make contact with my hand). She learned it really quickly, which isn't too surprising since it's so close to the others.

Cats with no other animals around get so little mental stimulation that I wanted to do something to keep her little kitty brain engaged. In my previous apartment, at least I had a bird feeder/endless birds for her to watch, but in my current apartment there's nothing but an occasional dog or kid outside the window, thus the tricks.

It's surprising how easily cats can be trained and how well they remember their tricks.

I've written about Humans of New York before. It's a wonderful site. A guy takes a photo of someone in New York City and asks them a basic question, then posts the photo and answer together. Some are touching, some funny, but all are worth reading. However, I always forget to check the site, so finally I just made a LJ feed. If you'd like to have it show up on your friends page, just friend this: humansofny.

Related, many people know about Cake Wrecks. If not, it posts daily photos of horrible or great cakes (mostly horrible). Like Humans, I always forget to check it though, but luckily there's a LJ feed: cakewrecks

The last feed is my favorite one. akwardstock/Awkward Stock Photos is sadly no longer updated daily, but when they do update, the oh so awkward photos which are up for sale are always amusing... or at least cringe-worthy.

And to continue the feed trend: Diet is meh this week. I'm working just as hard at it as last week, but in five days I've lost a pound. The amount I'm working feels way out of balance for the "reward" of what I'm losing. I don't think I'm eating too few calories (used an online calculator). I'm eating a little more than last week, but by that I mean 100-200 more, so not enough to account for such a slowdown in loss. Blah.

Discovery of the week: Sugarfree Jello ROCKS. It's really sweet, it feels like I'm eating something "bad". While visions of horse hoofs dance through my head, it is fun to eat. I need to buy more.

In non-food related news, the weekend was great. Saturday was nearly nonstop RP, and outstanding RP at that. Just like the old days when I used to RP over IM from morning until night.

I had the most awful craving for almost the whole weekend. I wanted fresh bread (the kind with a thick crust) slathered with a thick layer of butter. Stupid craving.

Ice by Sarah Beth Durst
Rating: 5/loved (1-5/hated-loved)

( I dislike the cover and it's big, so click here to see it. )

When Cassie was a little girl, her grandmother told her a fairy tale about her mother, who made a deal with the Polar Bear King and was swept away to the ends of the Earth. Now that Cassie is older, she knows the story was a nice way of saying that her mother had died.

This book. Man, this book. Flawless.

Cassie lived her whole life in an Alaskan research station, where her father was the director. Her whole world was about science, she wanted to study polar bears for a living when she grew up, and was well on the way to that goal when she met a talking one.

Turned out the "fairy tale" her grandmother had told her was real.

When I say this book was flawless, I mean it. I fully believed each and every character as a real person. Cassie going from a world where science was her religion to a world full of spirits and "magic" would have been a journey on its own, but that was only the very start of things. We got to experience her growing relationship with a "talking bear" (a munaqsri, a spirit who is a caretaker for one of the species on Earth, they gather souls from the dying and deliver them to newborns). There was not one thing I disagreed with, disliked, or didn't believe in this book. Not one typo or rough wording. ...okay, I didn't like the cover art, but that doesn't really count.

I loved the book's setting to death. The whole way the spirits worked. The munaqsri as "people" (believable characters). Every step of her journey alone and on foot through the arctic and Alaska.

There was another journey in the book that was just as interesting, but it's a spoiler. Please do yourself a favor and don't click here! Read the book yourself! ( Spoiler for a more personal journey Cassie took. )

This was one of those rare books that, as soon as I finished it, I wanted to start at the beginning again.

On top of everything else, this was one of those (sadly) rare books that is self-contained -- it doesn't end on a cliffhanger and make you wait for the rest of the trilogy. There is no more after Ice. *sniffle*

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irreparable posted an amusing video today: The Wiggles: The Last Suárez Supper. The Wiggles are a musical group for children, which makes this all the funnier. Suárez is the World Cup soccer player who bite the other player (Chiellini) on the shoulder.



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Diet: I was worried about going back to work, but today was a really good day. In fact, my calorie count was so low (300 breakfast, 300 lunch) that I had to eat a "normal" dinner (I don't want to eat so few calories that my body goes into starvation mode). It was really interesting because I was barely hungry at all. Only because I was late in getting lunch (had to go grocery shopping again) did I have any hunger pains at all today.

Two days until my "official" weekly weigh-in, but I lost another pound and a half. So that puts me at 8.5 pounds in five days. I'm near the point of laughing at myself over worry at needing to lose 10-15 pounds in two months.

I want to keep losing even after I hit the goal. I haven't had any "last meals" yet, and I have two (or three or four) planned, so I want the extra weight loss to cover it. In order of MUST DO:
1) Chinese buffet. I don't go there often, but I love it so, and I'll never go again after the surgery.
2) Sweet and sour (chicken/pork/whatever). The buffet I go to doesn't have that, and it's my favorite Chinese food. It's unlikely I'll ever be able to have this again post-surgery (too sweet).
3) A beef dish from the local Hawaiian place. (Something I may or may not ever have later, some people don't like/tolerate beef after it.)
4) Fried chicken from Popeye's. (Possible to have after.)

Tomorrow will be exactly two months before surgery. (Nervous!) I bought my mother's airline tickets tonight, she'll be staying with me for two weeks to help out.