I am the Decider

Jeff hates me sometimes. I have the ability to make decisions very quickly and I very rarely regret them. When we have a decision to make that involves both of us, he likes to mull things over, thinking on the pros and cons, sometimes for days, and then he usually comes to the same decision that I made in 30 seconds. He wonders how I do it. Sometimes his decisions seem spur of the moment, but those are usually prefaced with, "I've been thinking about this for quite awhile". This has almost become a joke in our family lexicon because I hear him say it pretty often. These decisions usually involve electronics and large amounts of money. Come to think of it, purchasing decisions can be the ones that I will stall on, because I'm a cheapskate. Jeff does his level best to make sure he gets the best deals when we want large ticket item, but when you're talking about hundreds of dollars, a good deal on a LCD TV doesn't strike a chord in my cheapie heart like getting something for $6.00 that should have cost $70. Now, that's a bargain! Anne

Red

Sylvie has asked me several times in her life, “What’s your favorite color?” and in recent years has answered her own question with, “Red, right?” and I can tell her with all honesty that, “Yes, red is my favorite color.” When she asks why, I always say, “It’s always been my favorite", but I have put my finger on the why. It’s not so hard.
What is red that makes it my favorite? Well, let’s see, red is: clown shoes and noses, my favorite childhood swimming suit, the sun on a summer night that looks like it takes up half the sky, the moon on a stormy morning that foretells trouble and lights the clouds. Red is baby cheeks and glamorous lipstick and painted fingernails. It’s valentines and poppies and the color of love. Its sweet summer cherries and crisp fall apples and that weird cake called velvet. Red is a shirt I got for Christmas with my first real pair of jeans when I was six. It’s the color of hair I always wish I had. It’s that rind around real bologna that you have to peel off before you eat it. Gouda cheese has a red rind too. I like that. It’s the color of the sand on one of the beaches in the town where I grew up and of the roads on Prince Edward Island where we took a great vacation. It’s the color of my first bike. My Grandpa rebuilt it and my Dad taught me to ride it when there was still snow on the ground.
I don’t know if the color of so many of my favorite things makes them special, or if they have made red special. It really doesn’t matter. Red to me is so many things that I love. It will always be my favorite. I will enjoy finding many more things in my life that are rosy, ruddy, ruby, and beautiful. I love it and thank God for it. Red, to me, is happiness. Anne

Tastes Like Onions

I had lunch today from one of my favorite local places. It's called the Taste of Scandinavia. (Click on the post title to see their website.) When we first moved to Vadnais Heights, and for a long time after, it was just a tiny little pastry shop. I used to bring Sylvie there quite often for a cookie or a fancy pastry on the way to the park. We would take our treats in their little white bags and sit on a bench or in the grass and eat them and feel we were doing something very Euro-chic. Sylvie usually had water in a sippie cup with hers and I probably had a bottle of Willard's water. (That's what we call the flavored fizzie water from Walmart, courtesy of my mom.) I guess the sippie cup and the water from Walmart probably ruined our ability to look Euro-chic to others, but we were good with it. Anyway, the place is now a full fledged cafe' with hot food, specialty breads, fancy coffee, and yes, they still have the pastry. Today I had their swedish meatballs. They are probably much more authentic than mine and very tasty. They come with mashed potatoes (real ones) and lingonberries. The berries are whole, not sauce, but I find them to be too sour. I prefer good old Ocean Spray Cranberry sauce myself. Again, smashing Euro with the good old Midwest. I enjoyed my lunch heartily, but now my mouth tastes like onions. I love onions, but I guess I would prefer that they didn't linger around inside my mouth. Now I have to go brush my teeth. Anne

The Roller Coaster

I've had an interesting week. On Tuesday, I saw the surgeon and got my surgery date set. On Wednesday, I went to my nutrition and pharmacy class and then had three pre-op tests; a chest x-ray, an abdominal ultrasound (to determine if my gallbladder gets to stay in it's present location or must be removed), and an EKG. On Thursday morning, my doctor called me and said, "There's something irregular on your chest x-ray. I want you to have a CT." I lay in my bed talking to her and trying not to panic. Jeff was there and I didn't want to, as we often say, "borrow trouble", so I tried to be calm and very casual about it. Inside myself, I was screaming, "What!!! I can't have cancer! I'm fine! I don't even smoke. How unfair is this!" On Thursday afternoon, I went back down to St. Joseph's Hospital for the third day in a row, picked up the reports form the bariatric clinic and promptly went to the medical library. My chest x-ray said, "There is a small spiculated mass in the left upper lobe and some hilar density." Spicular masses are bad. Again, I sat and tried to remain calm. Everything in me told me this was not right. I had the CT and then had to wait. Thursday night, I went to work and tried not to think about it too much. Friday morning, I heard from a nurse in my primary clinic with the report. The report said, "There is a 7mm calcified granuloma in the left upper lobe and some calcification of the hilar lymph nodes." I did some research. WHEW!! Calcified granulomas are benign. They are caused by scar tissue from a former infection that collects calcium. They take a long time to build up. On Monday, I got a call from my doctor confirming what I had learned and everything is still a go, but wow, did that ever throw a big "what if" into those few days. My gut feeling was correct. Thank You God, this could have been a devastating finding. All is well, but it did get me thinking about all the things that can happen in a life and how lucky I am and have been. All the twists and turns make for a great ride. I continue to look ahead and pray for good things. Anne

Before

This is my official before picture. I say official because I like it alright. This is actually a rare occurence these days. Most of the time, I want to throw out pictures of myself. Jeff took it with our Fuji digital camera that we bought back in 2001. In terms of digital photography, it is a bit of a dinosaur. It is huge and eats batteries at an amazing rate, but it still works, so we'll hang on to it. I won't say how much I weigh, suffice to say, too much! I want to print out one of these and write on it with a grease pencil like they do on that glycemic index diet commercial. The one where the person crosses out any part of their body that they want to trim and then in the after picture, their body is just that shape! How do they do that? I'd like to not be a rectangle on top and a triangle on the bottom. Note the cute new hairdo though. It is stacked in the back and I really like it, so I think it will stay for the duration. I need something to remain static. So, "Hi everyone!" Anne

New Beginning

As many of you know, I have had problems with my right knee and with obesity for most of my life. After many years of knee pain, weight loss attempts (and weight gains) and then almost ten years of saying "forget this!" to dieting, I have made a big decision (no pun intended). I have been working hard for the last six months to fulfill the requirements of my bariatric clinic and my insurance company and yesterday the date was set for surgery. I am having gastric bypass surgery on the 18th of March. While I am excited and no stranger to this surgery (my dad had it in 2003), I am still feeling some trepidation with the decision. It is a big surgery and any surgery carries risk. I feel that I have done my research and the program I am in is a really good one. The support and knowledge they have given me has been phenomenal. I will probably be using this blog for a journal of my experiences with the surgery and the new life I will have afterward. I still intend to write on other topics. My weight has never, nor (I hope) will ever be, the only thing in my life worth keeping up with and communicationg about. That would be a bore, wouldn't it? I will be posting a before picture before too long. Say goodbye to "puffy" Anne. Love to you all. Anne

"Annie" at an End

Sylvie is in the throes of what I call "post play letdown". Her school musical is over. Anyone who has done something that requires weeks of work and fun and learning probably knows what this feels like. You wonder what you are going to do with all of your time now that you don't have this actvity to fill it. You wonder if you will continue to be friends with all of the new people you met and got close to. You can't wait for the next time you get to do it again. She came home from the cast and crew party last night, promptly put on her "Annie" soundtrack, and wept for about 15 minutes. Luckily she had some great plans for today to help take her mind off of it. A movie and dinner with some of her new friends. I hope she has a great time. Anne

A Taste of the Future

Sylvie is getting ready to perform in "Annie" at her school this week. She is one of the orphans. We were trying out make-up today and as you can see from the picture, this might be a little to glam for an orphan. We got it on her and I thought, "Wow, she looks like she's about 17!" Scary. I guess every parent reaches a moment like this with their newly minted teenage daughters, when they are standing on the brink of young womanhood and you look at them and feel all the potential that is contained within. The secret is to look at them and try not to feel too old. Anne

Pie Ladies

Sylvie and I are trying something new. Now as anyone who knows me can tell you, I hate to exercise. Why is this, you may ask? Two things: I hate to sweat and I hate to be in pain. Exercise means both, but being a rational person, I know that sometimes you have to do things you hate, if they are good for you. Things like: eat spinach, pick up stuff that is laying around your house, go out in terrible weather just because you have to be at work, and *sigh* exercise. So we started Pilates (christened Pie Ladies, by Sessa, I think) together at the Community Center at the beginning of January. So far, I don't totally hate it! It does make me sweat some, it's more embarrassing than hate-worthy, and it does make me hurt, but not until the next day. At least the hurt has not been centering itself in one area of my body. Pilates can be tricky that way. The pain moves around, so it's easier to forget from week to week. Today, my legs hurt. They hurt so much, I could hardly sleep! Now that is a hurt I cannot ignore, because not sleeping makes me hurt more and ticks me off. If the pain goes away by tomorrow, I'll go back, because it has to be good for me, right? But I've been going for four weeks now, and I still haven't seen any pie! Anne

Stress Dream

Last night I had my stress dream again. I don't know what I'm stressing out about, but whenever I have this dream, I know there's something. I always dream that my teeth are turning mushy or falling out. From what I've read, this seems to be pretty common. http://www.dreamreplay.com/teeth_dreams.htm I didn't know that until I was talking about it with someone at work once and she said, "I have that too!" I thought that was weird. I guess we all tend to think at least our dreams ought to be unique. The one I had last night was particularly graphic and scary. I dreamt that my teeth were just kind of loosening themselves from my gums slowly and one at a time. I would reach into my mouth and push one tooth in, hoping the roots would reattach, just to find out that there were others coming loose too! After awhile, I really couldn't keep up anymore and a few actually left my mouth. I picked them up and tried to shove them back in to my gums in the right spots. It was pretty nasty, because, of course they wouldn't stay. I sort of half woke up and really thought that my teeth were bad! I think I really felt in my mouth just to be sure! Boy, was I glad when they were all still there. Gross. Anne

Blog Envy

Ok, I know I'm new to this whole "blog" thing (please picture in your mind, someone smarmy doing that exagerated quotation mark charade manuever with extra curly fingers. It should be evident that they actually hate the manuever and are making fun of it), but as much as I love reading other people's blog's, I am jealous of all of their blog bling (Hey! Did I just coin a new phrase!?) Little things like links within the blog entry, lots of pictures, cartoons, fancy graphics, little movies, and really fantastic writing that seems like they were just talking (albeit, very cleverly) and someone else wrote it down for them. I love people who write like that, but boy does that stuff make me green! I think that through my blog effort, my writing is getting better, but I find myself going back a lot and changing things as I write them. We can't really do that when we talk without sounding like my college biology professor. We got so distracted by the number of times he said "um" in class that we counted them and missed what he was saying in between. No problem explaining my B- in freshman biology. My brother-in-law, Tom, is one of these people that have lots of bling in his blog. As an example, I would have loved to have Tom's name be able to link you to his site right there in the body of that sentence, but I don't have a clue as to how to do it. He is my go to guy for the neat stuff I already have (see neat cartoon with link on sidebar), but the best I can do is refer you to his blog website address also on the sidebar(not far from the cute cartoon). I guess I'll have to call him and spend some time with him on the phone again, or maybe he gives lessons? I can see the ad now..."Is your blog boring? Is your writing bad? Call me, Tom Smart, for lessons in up to the minute, cutting edge bling on your blog!" I think there could be a market for that. Anne

Back in the Saddle

I went back to work last night...*sigh*, I had to float. The girls on ICU tell me it's been feast or famine around there and they have been floating more. Since I was off for three months, it does make sense that it was my turn, but what a bummer. I was looking forward to being with my own "happy to see me" people! Now, admittedly, the shift was not too bad, but, talk about sink or swim! Used to staffing calling and asking if it's OK if they float me,...no call, find out when you get there. Used to familiar faces,...get over on tele where you only recognise three people! Used to two patients and mostly paper charting?...let's throw you out and give you 5 patient's and charting all on the computer! Used to a little down time in the middle of the night?..."MOVE, MOVE, MOVE", barely enough time for a break! Used to getting up after four hours feeling mostly refreshed?...get out of bed like an Uruk Hai breaking out of it's muddy birthing shell! Man, that was tough. My next shift is a four hour evening...more on that later! Anne