A Time To Heal

Remember last week's five pound gain and the frustration that went along with it? Yesterday I was finally able to get to the office for my unfill.

If you'll remember, I got a 1.0 cc fill a little over two weeks ago (on April 6th) wherein I couldn't even get water down for most of that weekend. Five days later, I went in for a slight unfill of 0.5 cc. I was afraid to take the whole 1.0 cc out because I didn't want to have paid for nothing, and I felt like I truly needed a fill at the time. 

Suffice it to say that 0.5 cc was not enough. I was PBing at almost every meal. I was unable to eat any sort of meat. I could get down liquids and most soft/mushy foods, but I'm not a person who can live like that for extended periods of time (And you shouldn't have to with the band. That's not how it's supposed to work.) So I would keep trying the meat - small bites, chewchewchew, eat slowly, and still get stuck and PB. Almost every time. So what was happening is that my band/stomach/pouch/esophagus were constantly inflamed and angry with me because they were never getting a chance to heal from all the PBing I was doing. 

So like I said in my previous post, I went into this appointment yesterday with a plan: unfill A LOT and stay that way for a month to allow my body to heal. Fortunately, Kim wholeheartedly agreed with my plan. Unfortunately, Kim was the one who was going to perform my unfill. 

OH. MY. JEEBUS. 

But I'll get to that in a second. 

According to their numbers (which I don't agree with) I had 8.75 cc in my band. My calculation is that I actually had 10 cc yesterday before the unfill. But anyway, we were going off of her numbers, so I told her that I'd be okay with her taking half out. She agreed to take 4 cc out of my band and thought it was a very good idea to give myself a month to heal at that level. 

And then, out came the needle(s). 

Kim's first several fills with me were painless. One stick and in and out in a matter of seconds. Then something happened and she just wasn't getting it right. Several sticks and lots of mini pokes while the needle was in my stomach, but not in my port. And lots of alarm-raising scraping of the plastic sides of my port. Trust me, that feeling is NOT something I wish to repeat. And yet, every time I see Kim, I get to repeat it. 

For my first unfill (on 4/10), she had to stick me twice, and did the zillion-little-sticks thing and scraping-the-plastic thing for a bit before she was finally able to get in my port.

I noticed afterward that she was sticking me right above my port scar each time that she was having difficulty. Previously, when she (and Kristina) were able to get my port in one stick, the spot was right under my port scar. So, hoping to not have to go through this un-fun process, I mentioned this to her. Luckily, she's a nice, fun lady and didn't take this as me trying to tell her how to do her job. She seemed really surprised and felt around for my port again. She kept saying that it felt like it was right above the scar, and I kept telling her that all I knew was that when they're successful, the sticks are right under the scar. 

She stuck me once - and got nothing. A zillion little sticks and scrapes later, and she told me I could put my feet down (they have you lift your legs a couple inches to make the port easier to find) and rest for a minute. Raising your feet a few inches off the table for a sustained period of time is a surprisingly tough workout! 

She stuck me twice - and got nothing. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. At one point, she told me to relax and we were talking, and I didn't realize that she hadn't actually taken the needle out of my stomach. I looked down as we were chatting away, and there it was, just poking out of my body (with her holding on to it, of course). Strange. After resting for another minute or so, she tried again. Still nothing. 

She stuck me three times - and got something. Unfortunately, the something that she got was the plastic side of my port. She jammed the needle right into the damn thing! After pulling on the syringe and not getting any liquid, she realized that it wasn't in the right spot and went back to her usual practice of a zillion little sticks and a zillion little scrapes. 

Eventually, she found the damn thing and I (very literally) breathed a sigh of relief. She took out 4 cc, and all of a sudden I started feeling a really painful pinch in the area. I kept saying "Ow! Ouch! What are you doing?!" and she looked at me like I was crazy. Turns out, what she was doing was pulling the needle out of my port and stomach. The BENT needle. Ask me how it feels to have a bent needle pulled out of you. Go ahead. 

IT FUCKING HURTS. 

Apparently, when she jammed the damn thing into the side of my port, she did it hard enough to bend about a quarter of an inch of the tip of the needle. After she pulled it out, she kind of looked at it, then looked at me, and gave me this sheepish little "oopsie!" kind of smile. 

Oopsie, my ass. 

She did have one small shard of brilliance, though. After she shredded my insides pulled out the needle, she circled the blood spot with a pen and asked me for my phone so she could take a picture of the "successful" spot. Successful here is a VERY relative term. But at least she'll have a picture to go off of if she ever touches my port again. Which I'm very doubtful of, since I think I'd have better success if I gave my two-year-old a syringe and said, "go at it!"

 

You can see two teeny tiny pokes very close to each other at the top, which are from 10 days ago. Then the three other pokes are from her blindly playing pin the tail on the port yesterday. You can see how the one on the bottom is bigger than the others - that's because of the bent needle. And the redness to the right is what happens when you give me a band aid. Is anyone else "allergic" to the adhesive?

And as a side note - I'm so glad I'm a good healer! Look at that pretty scar! :-)

In any event, I feel so much better after having 4 cc taken out. I haven't had any trouble eating or drinking, and it almost felt "weird" to me to not get stuck. It's amazing how, even though it's so uncomfortable and unpleasant, you can get used to a feeling like that so easily. 

For now, I'm taking a month off of fills and weigh-ins. And I'm feeling very good about that.  

Mish Mash

Randompants post ahead. You've been warned.

1) The scale is being nice to me right now. Let's hope it sticks around for Wed-nes-day Weigh-In time. I'm pretty sure it's mostly because I've been drinking TONS of ice cold water while at work. Like, TONS. Did you know that drinking very cold things helps you burn more calories? Your body has to work harder to regulate your internal temperature when you do, thus, calorie burn! I don't know exactly how many more calories it burns, but I can totally attest to the temperature regulation thing. I have been FREEZING at work since I've been drinking all this ice water. And like I said, the scale likes me right this very second, so I'm gonna go with it.

2) Easter weekend was weird, but in a good-ish way. For literally the first time EVER, we didn't spend the holiday rushing between families and worried about whose feeling were getting hurt by us not being there. We spent the weekend with just the three of us, doing whatever we wanted to do. It was so nice. We gave The Kid his basket Sunday morning, then enjoyed the breakfast bar at Frisch's Big Boy, then had an in-home egg hunt. Nice and relaxed, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

3) That's a lie. Most of the weekend was nice and relaxed. Except for the part where we decided that since the whole family was home and we had no plans, this would be the weekend we finally broke The Kid of his pacifier ("passer" or "nuk nuk" to him) habit. A long time ago, we restricted his passer use to what we call "night night and naps", so he knew that unless he was sleeping in his crib, he couldn't have them. And I've known for a while that we need to kick the habit completely at some point, but I haven't wanted to do it.

Well, since we put in our 60 day notice to our apartment complex and will be moving in with my in-laws soon, and I knew that every weekend after this would be me and The Kid alone while The Hubs is working on getting the in-laws house ready, and I wanted to have the habit kicked before we moved, this was the time. (Nice run-on sentence, Anna.) So I cut small holes in his nuk nuks and left them out for him to find. He realized they were "broken" and I asked him if he wanted to throw them away. (That kid LOVES throwing things away.) So all was well and good until it was actually time to take a nap or go to bed.

OH the pity. "Mama? A new nuk nuk? Pwwwweeeeeeeeeease?!" It's a good thing we had thrown them all in the trash or I would have totally given in several times this weekend. It has been a challenge, to say the least, but he has taken naps without his passer both days, and fell asleep (after a long bout of crying) both nights. It helps that we gave him Buzz Lightyear and Woody action figures instead. LOL

4) It's Opening Day!!!

Born and raised a Cincinnati girl, today is the second best day of the year. I didn't realize until recently, though, that other cities with major baseball teams don't go crazy for opening day like we do. We love our Redlegs. Did you know that we're the oldest baseball team in America? And did you know that because of that, we ALWAYS get to play at home on opening day? It's a BFD. (Big effing Deal, if you're not down with the language. LOL)

It is really depressing to me to not be a "true" Cincinnatian anymore. Even though it will always be my home town and I will always love that city, I (very unfortunately) keep moving farther and farther north to be with my husband. I'm from Cincinnati, he's from a town north of Dayton, so when we moved in together before we got married, we chose a town in the middle. Now that we're moving in with his parents, I'm going all the way up to his hometown. And for people there, Dayton is the closest "city", so they consider themselves Daytonians. I don't want to be a Daytonian. I am a Cincinnatian. Ugh.

Anyhoo, Go Reds!

Wednesday Weigh In and Meeting A Blogger Crush

This is my 300th blog post! What do I get for that?

Last Week: 244.2 lb
This Week: 246.6 lb
Gain: 2.4 lb

I was doing so well. Bringing my lunch, tracking my carbs, calories and protein. And then the french fries happened. I picked the absolute worst time (10 pm the night before a weigh in) and the worst food (Rally's french fries and a Hi-C - carb city much?) to give in to a craving. And today I'm super bummed about it.

AKA: "The Devil"

But look! I didn't hide from it! I didn't pretend it doesn't exist. It's here. And it will go away.

It's one weigh in. One give-in to a craving in an otherwise great food week (so far.) Meh, whatevs.

In other totally awesome news:

Last night, I got to meet one of my girl crushes - Jenny Lawson, The Bloggess!

Darn you, Books & Co. employee, for not being able to take clear pictures!

If you're not familiar with her blog or her memoir, Let's Pretend This Never Happened, Jenny kind of comes with a warning. She finds humor in very offbeat things. She says things people just don't say. She's wonderfully weird. She cusses. A lot.

In fact, Books & Co. told her she couldn't cuss during her reading and talk, so she decided to replace all of the cuss words with "hippopotamus". She chose to read aloud the third chapter in her book, called "Stanley the Magical Talking Squirrel" (in which her taxidermist father scars she and her little sister for life by making them believe that a roadkill squirrel is alive and speaks to him...seriously, you just have to read the book.) Originally, she was going to read a different chapter, but it had too many hippopotamuses in it, so she chose the "cleanest" chapter, which was still chockablock with hippopotami.

As a side note, one of the things I absolutely LOVE about her book is that she tells these completely outrageous stories - and remember, it's a memoir, so it's supposedly a recollection of her life - and the stories are so ridiculous that you think, "No way. You're making that up. That didn't really happen." And then you turn the page, and there's a picture showing that they really did have a pet raccoon named Rambo that they dressed up in pajamas.

One of the funniest parts of the book signing was when she went on a small side tangent about fellatio and Texas law. And how her friend got her father to pay for a ticket by telling him that fellatio was Spanish for "speeding". Probably a "you had to be there moment", but hilarious nonetheless. 

On a serious note, though, Jenny struggles with mental illness on a daily basis - anxiety disorder, impulse control disorder, and depression are among the illnesses she has dealt with, spoken about, and raised awareness of. She shared some great advice that someone (I can't remember who now, which bothers me) gave her when she was about to have a panic attack over recording her audio book. She sent a frantic email to this person (ugh, who was it?!) and they sent back one sentence that changed her life:

"Pretend you're good at it."

Now, Jenny uses that advice when she's near a panic attack, an agoraphobic woman faced with standing up in front of hundreds of people on her book tour. It was totally a takeaway for me, applicable in so many areas of my life. I'm going to try to remember it from now on - whatever may come my way, whatever paralyzes me with fear, whatever I think there's just no way I can accomplish - I'm gonna just pretend I'm good at it and see where it takes me. 

It was a great night. I'm glad I went. 

And you should totally read that book. 

Because, Who Doesn't Love Progress Pics?

The picture on the left is from August 2011. On the right, this past Sunday. Almost 40 pounds...NUTS.

NSV and Being a Preppy

Happy Monday morning to you!

Hope you all had a great weekend. Mine was spent sans husband and child (lovely!) running errands, cleaning house, and working on school stuff. The school situation still looks bleak, but I'm trying to stay get positive about it.

No matter how dreary and depressing the school situation might be, I've got an NSV to tell you about that definitely put me in a good mood!

MFN (My Friend Natalie, the lovely lady who did the Shamrock Shuffle with me) has a birthday two days after mine. We were even born the same year (1982 represent!), so I'm officially two days older than her. So naturally, having a BFF whose birthday is so close, we usually celebrate together - usually by NOT running 5ks - and get each other small gifts.

MFN is going to school right now, so she works two part time jobs. One of those jobs is at The Loft outlet. And I can honestly tell you that I've never set foot in The Loft in all my life. Because I have always known that it was futile. Nothing there is going to fit me, so why put myself through the drama? But at our post-what-we-thought-was-a-5k-but-later-found-out-was-a-4.5k breakfast, Miss Natalie handed me a shopping bag from the store.

I thought she was just re-using a bag and never expected the gifts inside to actually be from The Loft. But they were. Two super cute shirts. And Natalie is super supportive of the whole Lap Band thing, while also being the friendly kind of realistic, so she told me that the shirts were something to work toward. I had no expectations of being able to fit into something from a "regular" store in a "regular" size, so I thanked her for the motivation and went about my day.

But yesterday, I was trying on a bunch of other clothes that I already owned, and figured I'd give it a "what the hell". Do you see what I see?

Blurry pic, and I'm looking slightly zombie-ish around the eyes. Makeup, Anna! 

Your eyes are not deceiving you.

HO-LY HELL. This is seriously mind blowing to me. I cannot believe that shirt actually fits ME. Now, the universe making sure I don't get too cocky about anything, made sure that the other XL shirt MFN gave me was a completely different story not fit for public consumption. But this shirt. It fits. A size XL from a regularly-sized-people-shop-here store. NUTSO.

In other news, and on the topic of being a preppy:

Remember my recent post about being lazy? A lot of you had great suggestions about preparation being key to actually getting shit done. So I took advantage of a recent grocery shopping trip and the fact that The Hubs and The Kid were gone, and got my prep on.

Thanks, LoganMan, for donating your snack cups to the cause. 

I bought some lunch meat and portioned it out into 3 ounce portions. I used chicken and turkey. I also bought a quarter watermelon and sliced it up into chunks. Wow, that was a juicy job, let me tell you! Easy enough, but definitely messy. It then got packaged into containers of about 4 ounces each. Then I packed two tablespoons-ish of my current obsession, Dean's French Onion Dip, into small containers to go with pretzels that I keep in a drawer at my desk. Combine these with an EAS protein shake for breakfast and some yogurt for a snack, and I am ready to go! 

Lookie here, all organized and shit. 

And then, I took it all one step further, and pre-bagged each day's lunch. I packed for four days of lunches, figuring I'll give myself Friday as a day to eat out as a treat.

Middle row, pretty Kroger bags all ready to go! 

Oh, and if you're wondering what those brown things are sticking out of the beer bottles at the top left, The BFF made The Hubs Beer Reindeer for Christmas. Those are pipe cleaner antlers. LMAO. 

Anyway, it felt great to be so prepared and ready to go. It was awesome this morning to just be able to pick up a bag and walk out the door. The only downside is that all that prep came at a cost to my school work - I had to choose which thing I wanted to spend time on, and prepping and packing four days of lunches (including cutting up a watermelon and peeling/slicing four baby cucumbers for The Kid) isn't really a quick process. I'm happy to have done it, though. Can't wait for lunch today! 

Everyday I'm Shufflin'...(a long semi-rant)

Saturday was my 31st birthday. I decided long ago (never to walk in anyone's shadow) to do a 5k to celebrate this wonderful occasion. So I picked The Shamrock Shuffle. It turned out to be a HUGE race, with over 5,000 participants.

MFN and I before the race. It was COLD.

This race was so poorly organized, but I didn't really realize how bad it was until later that night. Random things would happen throughout the experience that I would kind of question, but because of the excitement of being there, I just kind of let them go. But now, after the adrenaline is gone, I'm really kind of bummed about a lot of things. 

1) The "festival" area where the before and after block parties were held was A MESS. Everything was tightly packed in a small space, when they had tons of room that they could have spread out into. They were giving away free food both before and after the race, but it was stuff that I would NEVER consider eating at 8 am - Cool Ranch Dorito Tacos from Taco Bell, Chips and Guacamole from Qdoba, Frozen Yogurt from Menchie's Frozen Yogurt (it was like 30 degrees outside!). Re-donk. 

2) The starting line for the races was a short walk away from the festival area, but (this is hard to explain, so I'm going to try my best) the only way to get to the starting line was from one direction. But the direction we were all coming from headed straight for the front of the pack, the front of the starting line. So people didn't realize that they had to keep walking and go to the back of the pack if they were walkers/with strollers/with dogs, etc. They just walked up to the mass of people and stopped, not realizing that they were in the front of the line. The start and first half mile of that race was a complete clusterf***. 

3) My second biggest pet peeve of the whole thing - they had no mile or km markers along the whole race! Who "professionally organizes" a 5k and doesn't put up mile markers?! Natalie and I aren't cool enough to have runner's Garmins or anything like that, so we had to go off of our estimated time. It's a really good thing that I thought to look at my phone as we were crossing the starting line, or we would have had absolutely NO idea about our approximate location on the course. 

4) The finish line signage was backwards! We were moving along and I saw a big thing of signage up ahead of us, but it was facing the other direction, so I thought there was no way we were headed for the finish line. Usually, the word "FINISH" is facing you, and that's how you know. Not with this ass backwards race. The "FINISH" signage was facing the freaking spectators! WTF, dude?

5) They were completely unprepared for the waves of finishers at the line. Nobody was manning the water stations, so people were piling up trying to get water out of big plastic cases. There was nobody directing people to/where to turn in their timing chips. As a result, Natalie and I didn't even realize we still had ours until we were eating breakfast at IHOP later! Now we have to waste time and a stamp to mail them in. 

The backwards finish line. High on thinking we had completed our goal. But did we?

6) And my biggest pet peeve about this stupid race? The organizers posted on their FB page later that evening that the 5k course was actually shorted. Remember back up at number four when I said I thought there was no way we were actually headed for the finish line at that point? I knew something was wrong. I knew the numbers didn't add up. I thought we had to keep going around and head into the finish corral from the front, because it just didn't feel right. And our race time seemed really freaking good for two girls who hadn't trained much at all and who walked the vast majority of the course. Well, la ti da, no wonder our times were so good - instead of doing 3.1 miles, we only did 2.8. They shorted the course by three tenths of a fracking mile! Instead of a birthday 5k, I did a birthday 4.5k. I was robbed. 

And you know, I try to stay positive. At least I got out of bed. At least I paid the $30 entry fee. At least we did it even though it was butt ass cold. At least. But at the same time, there's something about that distance. Something about officially going 3.1 miles, that I feel like we didn't really accomplish our goal. Even though we thought we were doing it at the time, we didn't. It's a bummer. 

But we did have fun. Natalie worked really hard to distract me through the parts where I wanted to die. We gossiped about girls' jiggly butts in their too-tight running pants and tried to figure out which ones were wearing underwear and which ones weren't. At one point, we started singing songs to keep our brains occupied. We would sing until we forgot the words, and then pick up another song. I'm sure the people around us hated us, but I really don't care. We traded sweaty gloves back and forth when our hands got too cold or hot. We plotted our outfits for next year, if we decide we're crazy enough to do this again.

We did have fun, and that's what birthdays are supposed to be about. Not-really-a-5k-5ks and all. 

Bad Pictures of a Recent Project

But before we get to that -

I have a slight obsession with these:

And I will usually have two or three (five is 200 calories, so 40 calories each) after lunch at work. And y'all know that Dove is famous for their little affirmations or sayings that are printed on the inside of the wrapper. You know, they usually say things that aim at getting you to slow down and indulge in a "moment" or whatever.

However, I have noticed two recently that really kind of irk me. One that says "Chocolate Loves Unconditionally", and this one that I just unwrapped today:

Really, the "Chocolate Loves Unconditionally" one is the one I have a major problem with. I could totally be a Debbie Downer who thinks too much about this stuff, but when obesity is such a problem in this country, and when eating disorders so often center around emotional needs, it seems so irresponsible for a chocolate company to feed into that with these "comforting" messages of love by chocolate. Chocolate does NOT love unconditionally. Chocolate doesn't love at all. And an overweight person who is dealing with their emotions by way of comfort food is probably going to read that and go, 'Aww....chocolate loves me. I should eat more of it because it makes me feel good!" While they're not addressing their emotional issues at all.

I don't know. It just bugs me.

But on to my project that has been taking up all my time for the past couple of months. My friend Tonja is pregnant with her second baby (another girl!) and The BFF threw her a shower this weekend. I decided a couple months ago, because I apparently didn't learn my Christmas Dish Cloths lesson and I'm an idiot who is a glutton for punishment, that I would crochet her a baby blanket.

Unlike dish cloths, I was not up until 3 am the morning of the shower working on the blanket, amazingly enough. I finished it at 11:30 pm the night before, thankyouverymuch. I wanted to make a ripple/chevron afghan, so I scoured the interwebs to find a simple pattern, and totally scored with an amazing Youtube tutorial for a pattern called "Lazy Waves". If you're a crocheter, the whole thing is nothing but Double Crochet (DC) and Double Crochet Together (DCTog or DC Decrease) stitches. SUPER simple, even I could do it!

Anyway, as I began working on it, I slowly started falling in love with it, even though it was a huge PITA (Pain In The Ass). Even though it was simple, I was using very fine/soft baby yarn, so the stitches were super small and slippery. One row, at the beginning, took me more than 30 minutes to do. There are 82 rows in this blanket. So even when I got a little faster, and each row was taking me about 20 minutes, you're looking at at least 1,640 minutes of work on this afghan. Not to mention all the weaving in of ends I had to do after changing between colors. And if you're curious, like I was, 1,640 minutes is more than 27 hours. Tonja's lucky I like her.

So by the time I was finished and had invested 27 hours of my sweat and tears into this thing, I was kind of sad to see it go. Before I wrapped it up, I took a bunch of pictures of it. But the lighting in my apartment is horrible, so they don't really show how pretty it really was. If you're interested, I used Bernat BabySoft and Softees yarn for this project. I used one whole large skein of hot pink and less than one large skein each of the Burl Gray and White. The final size was probably 2.5 feet by 4 feet-ish. I forgot to measure.

Without any further ado, the bad pictures:

It was a huge hit! Tonja loved it, and the little girls at the shower all wanted to be wrapped up in it at once. It was so worth all the time I put into it, and I hope her baby girl enjoys it! 

For now, though, I have to force myself to not start any more crochet projects because I have so much else going on. And I know that if I did start one, I would totally use it to procrastinate from doing any of the things I really need to be doing...*cough*SCHOOL*cough*. 

What about you guys? What is your go-to procrastination method? Crafts? Books? Hiding under the covers and pretending everything outside the bed doesn't exist? Tell me! 

New Food Find

Strapped for cash and time yesterday, I ran to Kroger to find something for lunch. And maybe these little babies have been out for years, but I just discovered them yesterday, and I'm in love.

Lunchables Snack Duos - and before we go any further, nope. This isn't a sponsored post. I just ran into these and wanted to share.

Anyhoo...they come in packs of two, but I had already ripped into one in the above picture, and at my Kroger, the two pack was $1.99 on sale. I believe the tag said $2.49 regularly priced.

What I love:

• Small portion. Perfect for a quick lunch.
• Small pieces. No dicing required, and less risk taking too big bites. 
• Assembly required. My favorite thing about Lunchable-type meals. Makes a little food take a long time, so you feel like you're eating more. 
• 150 calories and 8 grams of protein. 

What I don't love:

• Processed, processed, processed. Ham with water and "smoke flavor" added, "Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Product". Blech. (But boy do all those chemicals taste good...)
• Ran out of mini Ritz crackers well before I ran out of meat or cheese. Come on, guys! 

All in all, I know that there are healthier, more natural options available, but for quick, convenient, and low-cal, this will do. I also bought the turkey and  mozzarella variety, but have yet to give it a try. 

What have you guys found as a great quick meal/snack option? Share, please! 

A (Very Literal) Scale Victory

We weight loss bloggers tend to write a lot about Non-Scale Victories (NSVs), and save our Literal Scale Victories for weigh in days. Nuh-uh. Not today, sistas. I have a very literal scale victory and I'm going to share it with you. And it's not even a Wednesday weigh-in day.

Okay, so I've droned on and on about the company fitness center, and the classes, and the trainer, and blah blah blah. It's all good stuff - great for general health and well being.

But there's also a more sinister component to that room...

Cue mystery music here...dun dun duuuuuun! 

(Oh, and in this picture, you can also see the comfy couch that I use when I'm crocheting during my lunch breaks. LOL)

Anyway, that damn doctor's scale. It has not been my friend. Every day that I weigh, it usually weighs me in about 2-3 pounds heavier than my scale at home. And, unfortunately, with that scale being in a public place, and at work, I can't exactly weigh in in the buff, like I usually do. So I know that a portion of the weight difference is in the clothes I'm wearing.

But still, it's a big, fat bummer to weigh in under 250 at home and then come in to work and weigh more than that every day. I have been patiently waiting for the day that I was far enough away from 250 at home to literally tip the scales under 250 at work.

And TODAY WAS THAT DAY, kids.

Today was the day when I stepped on that scale, fully clothed, and pushed the big 50 pound weight over...50...100...150...200...250. Then I moved that little single pound weight thingy allllll the way over to zero, and bonk. Too heavy!

So I slid that happy little 50 pound weight back to 200, and slid the single pound weight thingy almost allllll the way over in the other direction, and blahdow! I'm under 250 fully clothed on a "real" scale. Holy shitballs. (Pardon my French.)

For some reason, it is so much huger (it's a word now) to weigh in under 250 on this scale than it is on my digital guy at home. I think it's the tactile-ness (again, a word) of it. The fact that you physically have to move the weights over to balance the scale. And the fact that ever since I first set foot on that damn thing, I have automatically slid it all the way over to 250, then even farther up the small scale. So moving that 50 pound weight back to the left about an inch just feels so enormous to me.

Peace out, 250s. Don't expect a postcard, because I will NOT be missing you. Oh, and tell your friend 240 that I'm coming for a visit soon!

Wednesday Weigh-In and a NSV!

Last Week: 250.2 lb
This Week: 249.6 lb
Loss: 0.6 lb

Huzzah! The 240's! Finally.

I'm not comfortable hovering so close to the 250s, so hopefully I can get my eating and exercise together this week to make sure I get as far away from the 250s as possible. But, yay! 240s!

I only made it to the fitness center those two days last week. Stupid training got in the way. And even though our fitness center is open both before and after work, I'm not willing to make the changes that it would require to do so.

My MIL drives about 45-50 minutes every morning to come to our apartment and watch Logan every day. This means she's leaving her house at about 6:15 am to be at my house in time for me to leave for work. I'm not willing to ask her to leave an hour earlier so that I can get a workout in. She does so much for us already, and the drive is hard enough. I don't think she'd be willing to do it, and frankly, I'm not willing to ask her to.

And as far as after work is concerned, technically, I could do that. The Hubs is home with Bubber Man, and I know that he wouldn't mind if I stayed late a couple nights per week. However, my drive home is about 45 minutes. If I stay an hour late to work out, I wouldn't get home until at least 6:45. Logan goes to bed between 8 and 9, and I like to spend as much time with him as possible, because, you know, he's my kid. 

And I guess, if you were going to go all Jillian Michaels "no excuses" on my ass, the second one would really just be an excuse as to why I don't want to work out at night. Technically, I would still get to see my kid, even if it were only for an hour or two. To some people, that might be enough. Or exercising might be so important that it trumps kid time. No judgement here, but that's not me. Call it an excuse if you want, but my baby is only a baby once, and he's already growing up so fast that I just can't imagine missing any more of it than I already do.

Ah, mother's/wife's/employee's guilt. We're having fun, aren't we?

So, that pretty much leaves lunch time workouts for me. Except for the fact that the fitness trainer does classes from 12 to 1 and 1 to 2. So what I was doing last week, was taking a super early lunch from 11 to 12 and working out then, while I had the facility mostly to myself, and then eating my lunch at my desk after. I'm okay with this set up, so that's the plan for now.

Wow. This post went somewhere I wasn't planning on going. LOL

Oh! My NSV! I almost forgot...

Probably 8 years ago, I bought a grey peacoat. And it basically fit until I got super pregnant in late 2010. After that, and even after having Logan, it buttoned no more. Like, I couldn't even sausage myself into the thing. None of the buttons would close without fear of one popping off and taking someone's eye out. So, winter of 2011, I bought a new, much larger, coat and have been wearing it ever since.

Until today, baby!

I'm back in the peacoat! And nobody is in danger of losing an eye! Thirty one and a half pounds down and the coat is back with a vengeance.

Can I get an amen?!

Wahoo!

So the back's still screwy, which is no fun at all. But, I did get to the work fitness center both yesterday AND today! (Cue gasp!)

Yesterday, I forced myself to do the whole 3.1 miles, since it has been over three years since I moved that distance.

Wow. It was HARD.

Seven weeks to birthday 5k. Ain't nobody got time for clear pictures!

Ignore the sad time. 

I walked the VAST majority of that, and ran a teenytiny bit. I did it, but I felt like total crap afterward. Like, seriously, chills and shakes and falling asleep at my desk. So, methinks I may have over done it a bit. Blah.

Today, though, I went in and just walked at (what is to me) a brisk pace - 3.3 speed for most of the time. And I stopped after 1/2 an hour. I got more than half a 5k done in that time, and I felt GREAT afterward! Energized and happy, and excited. Not like I wanted to die a slow, painful death at my desk.

I have every intention of working up to the full 3.1 miles again, because I know that only doing half 5ks won't help me at all when it comes time for the Shamrock Shuffle. But I loved the feeling I had today after my workout. I'm going to stick with the brisk walk, half 5ks for this week and then see how I feel next week. At the very least, it's movement.

I've been doing pretty well on food, too. Not really feeling the restriction as much anymore, but I'm trying to focus on eating less carbs and watching my night time snacking. Hoping it will show at tomorrow's weigh in!

TTT

Thanks, Laura Belle, for the wonderful-ness that is Ten Things Thursday. Wherein I get to take the lazy way out and still feel like a good blogger.

 1) Work is nutso. Part of my hodge podge of a job description involves recording training videos. I spent the last two full days recording. And I mean, literally, videotaping seminars from 8 am to 5:30 pm. It is exhausting and no fun.

 2) Speaking of work, I got "spoken to" today about the fact that I come in between 5 to 20 minutes late every day. Bummer.

 3) My work to do list is re-donk. Just shoot me now.

 4) No stuck episodes since Tuesday's lunch! Huzzah! And thanks for the comments on the last post. I am in agreement with y'all. No unfill for this lady. Just a whole bunch of slow down and small bites for me! Seems to be working now.

 5) My spaz of a 2-year-old has decided that any time between 3:45 and 6:30 am is a great time for a crib party. Seriously. All week long, he has woken up between these hours and has a grand old time carrying on a conversation with himself. It wouldn't be such a big deal if his head and my head weren't separated by about 4 inches of paper-thin wall.

 6) I have an official goal to weigh in at 231 by my March 9th birthday. It's a slightly crazy goal that would require me losing more than two pounds a week, but I really think that with my new-found restriction and upping the exercise ante (which I haven't done yet, oops!) I might be able to do it. Or at least get super close. If you will recall, my highest NPR (non-pregnant recorded) weight was 281, in March of last year. If, by my birthday, I get to 231, it will be 50 pounds down in a year. Which would be total awesomesauce, if you ask me.

 7) I had to change the comment settings for my blog because I am getting SO MANY spam comments! It is so frustrating! Hopefully, the change that I made (allowing only registered users to comment) will stop the stupid spammers, but not be as frustrating to y'all as if I had turned on word verification. I really HATE word verification, and it's the last option for me as far as this goes. So let me know if you have issues commenting, please!

 8) The Hubs and I are going to see "Shrek: The Musical" on the 18th. I'm super excited for this because {1} It's Shrek! and {2} The Hubs actually agreed to go to the theater with me, which is like a "hell froze over" kind of event!

 9) I know I've said this recently, but the whole learning how to follow bandster rules thing? It's hard. But I'm kind of glad that I had two stuck episodes, because I'm so much more careful now about chewing and small bites-ing since I know that pain. And me no-likey the pain.

10) Biggest news of all: I done gone and did it. I signed up for my first 5k of 2013!!! On my birthday, no less! So even though it will definitely be cold, and there's the possibility that there will be snow - believe me, we've had blizzards on my birthday weekend in March before - I will be at the Shamrock Shuffle, shufflin' my 5k worth of buns off. And it's already paid for and everything. So I have to do it now! I've got about 8 weeks to get my butt in gear, so we definitely need to come up with a plan up in here. But I'm super excited to get back into running, and to have a goal to work toward. Woo! 

Post Holiday Jumble (and a "Wednesday" Weigh In)

Today's weigh in is a day late because I was nowhere near a scale yesterday. Which is probably a good thing.

Last Week: 255.0
This Week: 254.2
Loss: 0.8 lb

I am actually AMAZED at the loss. I can (and have) eaten pretty much anything I want, so I am totally going to take that 0.8 lbs and run with it. That's 9.6 pounds in 9 weeks, which doesn't sound like a lot, but averages out to a little more than a pound per week. And, hell, it's a loss! Anything is better than what I have been doing up until this point, which is gaining weight every single year. Even if it's slow, and even if it jumps around and I (temporarily) gain some back, it averages out to a loss. In the end that's all that matters to me.

And dear Jeebus, I need a fill. I had one scheduled for 12/22, but we couldn't part with the money so close to Christmas. It's rescheduled for 01/05, so only a week and a half away.

Other things: Christmas was good. We've technically had 5 Christmases so far, with one more to come on Saturday. Plus, Logan is getting birthday gifts mixed in with the Christmas ones, so the kid is making out like a bandit. He's having a ton of fun this year being Santa's helper and handing out gifts to each person, then once he delivers the gift, he starts opening it for them. Handler's fee, I suppose.

This is my Bonus Mom's Christmas tree. It is gorgeous every single year, and it takes her an entire weekend to do. Every single ornament is perfectly placed, and she even "hides" ornaments inside the tree toward the center to add dimension and a little surprise while you're looking. There are so many ornaments - every year I see new ones I didn't know she had.

Oh, and see that highly fragile, ceramic nativity on the floor? Thanks to my two year old, one of the shepherds is now decapitated (the piece second from the left, behind the laying ox). Logan accidentally knocked the shepherd over and he hit the ox right between the horns, and seriously, it was like a slow motion nativity guillotine...the shepherd's head just made a clean break and rolled across the floor. There was a gasp through the room and then a huge roar of laughter, and poor Bubbers had no idea what had happened! Julie (my bonus mom) says the break was clean and that she can glue it back on, and that the 25 year old nativity has had many repairs throughout the years, so I guess it's no harm no foul, unless you're an unlucky shepherd whose ox turns on you.

The Hubs' big Christmas gift this year was tickets to see Jeff Dunham. I bought the tickets back in October and have been itching to tell him since. It was priceless to see him take them out of the bottom of his stocking on Christmas morning and realize that we were going to see him the next day! It worked out really well that Jeff was doing a show close to us, and so close to Christmas, so I didn't have to give him a Christmas present he couldn't use until June or something.

Of course, we got a "blizzard" yesterday, too. So there was a whole anxiety thing about whether or not they were going to cancel the show, and if they didn't, whether the roads would be good enough for us to get there. In the end, we decided that we didn't want to waste our 7th row tickets and would brave the roads. We left 3 hours early for a trip that would normally take 40 minutes. The roads were fine, and we ended up where we needed to be early enough to enjoy a yummy steak dinner at Longhorn.

7th row, baby!

Breakin' the law and sneaking a pic.

The show was great. The Hubs told me later that he hasn't laughed that hard in a long time and that it was totally worth the expense. One thousand Awesome Wife Points for me! Huzzah!

We had such a good time and laughed so hard, and then when we were walking back to our car last night, I saw that I had two missed calls from The Hubs' mom. The mood instantly changed and we both knew it wasn't good that his mom had called twice after 10 pm. Jack's Great Grandma (Bubbers' Great, Great Grandma) had recently been sent home from the hospital after doctors told her there wasn't anything else they could do to treat her Stage 4 cancer. We knew she didn't have long, and on Christmas Eve, the doctors said she had about 48 hours to live. I guess they knew what they were talking about, because she passed sometime in the evening yesterday.

We're all very sad since we had just seen her this summer at her 90th birthday party looking sharp as ever. She was doing well at that point and responding to therapy. And we were able to get one more Five Generations picture with her then:

Five Generations: Logan, The Hubs, Grandma, Great Grandpa, and Great Great Grandma

Rest in peace, Grandma Mays. We love you.

Wednesday Weigh-In

Last Week: 256.6 lb
This Week: 255.0 lb
Total Loss: 1.6 lb

Now that's more like it!

You should have seen the comedy in my bathroom this morning as I was weighing, though. Normally, I'm a "one and done" weigher. Whatever I see on the scale the first time is what I take. But this morning, when I stepped up, the first reading was 253.8. Now, while that's a totally awesome number and I would TOTALLY take it, I just had a feeling that it wasn't right, so I hopped back on. This is how that process went:

Step on. 255.0. Hmmm, I think I preferred the first one. Step off. Step on. 255.0, Okay, at least we got a double confirmation, guess we'll go with that. Let's brush our teeth and get on with the day. Step off. Teeth and hair brushed, and the scale is RIGHT THERE. Let's just check one more time. Step on. 253.0. WHAT THE CRAP?! Step off. Ok, last time, and then we're hopping off this crazy roller coaster, dude. Step on. 253.0. *facepalm*

Since I know that I didn't do two pounds worth of teeth and hair brushing exercise, I decided just to go with the 255. And this morning when I got to work, I hopped on the doctor scale in our fitness center and weighed 256 with light clothes on, so I'm thinking the 255 was the closest. Whatevs, a loss is a loss is a loss, and I'll so take it. I am accutely aware of my desperate need for a fill, and that is scheduled for bright and early Saturday morning. Hopefully we'll really start seeing those numbers move after that.

In other news:

We finally received our Thomas Kinkade last night. To refresh your memory, we bought it along with another painting back during our anniversary trip to Gatlinburg in October, but it stayed in Tennessee so that we could have it professionally highlighted at the gallery. Our gallery rep sent us pictures of our painting getting highlighted at the event, which I think is really kind of cool to have photo proof and to see it happening.

She did a great job with the highlighting, and it was fun for The Hubs and I to look over the painting last night and try to spot all the areas she did. It really adds some dimension to the canvas, not to mention value, too.

The only bummer is that our frame has 3 pretty noticeable dings on the left side. I have to email our rep the pictures today and see what she says. It's a bummer to have your pretty (and expensive) painting finally home, but not be able to hang it and enjoy! Blargh.

Also in other news: I hate dish cloths with a passion. I have seven more to make, and no time to make them. I have resorted to eating lunch at my desk and then using my full lunch hour to crochet like a madwoman in the break area. Which happens to be directly across from the glass doors to our fitness center, so I'm pretty sure people think I'm some crazy crocheting stalker lady with a fitness fetish. Fun times.

In true Grinchy spirit, I abandoned ship on Christmas cards this year, too. I just had to give SOMETHING up, and cards got the ax. I haven't wrapped a single thing. The Hubs hasn't shopped for me, and can't until we get paid on Friday. Nothing like waiting until the last minute. I have to make birthday cupcakes for Sunday (Logan turns the big TWO!), and a pumpkin pie with whipped cream for Tuesday. I have to pack and ship Grandparents gifts, like, yesterday. And we haven't even started the thirty-something ornaments that we're making as part of our gifts this year. Oh, and did I mention that Bubbers got the flu last week and has been miserably and pitifully sick since Thursday? And my MIL, who is our daycare provider, got the flu too, and has not been able to watch the kiddo, so The Hubs has had to take two days off work without pay this week?

I don't know why people keep complaining that the holidays are so stressful.  Pffft.

But we will survive. We will put on happy faces. We will be those parents who are up until 4 am on Christmas Eve putting together the comically large train table for the kiddo. And we will enjoy every. single. minute. of it. Because I have the luxury and gift of being able to watch my child wake up on Christmas morning. And that is a gift that I am so much more aware of and thankful for this year.

Meet Tim Gunn...

Hey everyone! I made it through surgery, and have been resting at home for the past two days.

My weight on surgery day was 257.2, which was a loss of 6.6 pounds during my pre-op diet. Over all, I was down 12.8 pounds from my initial consultation weight on September 27th.

Here are some "official" pre-op photos. Nevermind the bathroom - we live in a tiny apartment that gets NO good natural light, so it was our only choice for the photo shoot.

Surgery day was quite an experience. I was scheduled for surgery at 1:00 pm, and we arrived at the hospital at 11 am just like they told us to. We waited in the lobby for about half an hour and then a nurse called me back . She gave me an awesome astronaut suit to put on - seriously, this was the coolest hospital gown I've ever seen. When I sat down, she hooked up a hose to it which blew in heated air to keep me warm.

Then she asked me a zillion questions and got down to business. She gave me a shot in my leg of something to help with anti-coagulation so I didn't develop blood clots, she gave me an anti-nausea pill, and placed an anti-nausea patch on my neck. She also checked my blood sugar, temperature, heart rate and blood pressure, and then attempted my IV. She tried in the back of my left hand first, but was unsuccessful, so she ended up having to do the IV on the inside of my left arm. O.U.C.H.

She was all done with me and the anesthesiologist came in to ask me a million more questions, and by this time it was 12:45. The nurse came back in and told me that my doctor was still performing an operation at the adjacent hospital and would probably be an hour late. Gee, just what I wanted to hear - let me sit here in my astronaut suit with an uncomfortable IV in my arm and just hang. Fun times!

Around 1:45, the nurse anesthetist came in and went through her whole schpeal, so I figured things were about to get moving. The last thing she said to me, though, was that the doctor still had another operation he needed to perform at the adjacent hospital and that it would probably be yet another hour. I was so not a happy camper at this point. I hadn't eaten or drank anything since the night before, and I didn't get a very good night's sleep because I stayed up until 2 am watching the presidential concession and acceptance speeches.

Anna was not happy.

Finally, at 2:56 pm (I remember looking at the computer to see what time it was) my surgeon came in and asked me if I was tired of waiting, to which I replied, "Um, yeah!" In hindsight, it probably would have been more prudent for me to be nicer to the guy who was about to cut me open and gut me, but I was grumpy and he was 2 hours late.

The good news was that once he got there, things moved fast as lightning. I walked myself back to the OR, laid down on the table and had like 5 or 6 different nurses doing stuff to me from every angle. I felt like I was in the Wash 'n Brush Up Company in the Merry Old Land of Oz! Within minutes, they had my arms out, my legs in the massage-y wrap-y thingies, and the anesthetist was saying, "Ok, here we go. Everything's going to be fine..." and I was out.

I woke up in recovery with a wonderful nurse named Martha, whom I remember having a whole conversation with regarding the fact that Logan loves to watch Martha Speaks. Human Martha had never heard of the show, so I had to explain to her that it was a cartoon dog who ate alphabet soup and could now talk. Human Martha wasn't too keen on my comparing her to a dog, but we got through that little bump in the road. I also remember some sort of conversation about Martha not wanting to see me naked, although I can't quite piece together how that came up or why. Must have had something to do with my awesome astronaut gown, though.

She wheeled me back to another recovery room where The Hubs was waiting, and I got some apple juice and put my clothes on, and headed home. We left the hospital at 5:45 pm.

I did not see the doctor after surgery, but The Hubs told me that he said everything went fine, and that they fixed my hiatal hernia, which was "larger than usual". Glad that's taken care of, but I was very surprised to see that it required an additional incision. For some reason, I thought he would be able to do that while he was already in there, but nope.

If you're squeamish, look away, because I'm about to show you a picture of my cottage cheese-y stomach and all five incisions...

Obviously, the one up top is the hiatal hernia fix, the one second from the left is my port, and the others are the instrument incisions. Right now, the only one that hurts is the port, and I can't feel the others at all. I have been taking my liquid narcotics just about every 4 hours, though, so that might be helping.

As far as food goes, I've been eating very little. I have felt hungry, though, which is surprising since so many people say you won't even want to think about eating after the surgery. I'm sticking to the all liquid diet, eating tomato soup, applesauce, pudding, and baby food. (The fruit baby foods are surprisingly not that bad!)

Oh, and the post title? You know how it's kind of a tradition in band land to name your band? I decided weeks ago that mine would be called Tim Gunn. One, because he's an awesome gay guy, and I love me some gay guys, and two, because his signature slogan is "Make it work!", and that's what I fully intend on doing with the help of this little guy!

I'm totally gonna make it work!

Thanks to you all for your thoughts and well wishes! I'm so excited to be on the band wagon! :)

Awesome Anniversary

A wee bit o' background for ya - October 21/22, 2006: The Hubs and I had been dating for less than 4 months and decided to take an impromptu day trip to Bowling Green, Kentucky to tour the Corvette manufacturing plant.

Ah, six years younger and 50 pounds skinnier...

Since we were already half-way to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, we decided on a whim to just head down for the night and come back the next evening. We had very little money, no hotel reservations, and the time of our lives. 

Smoky Mountain Pit Stop

Fast forward two years, and you're at October 20th, 2008 - two days after our wedding and the first day of our week-long honeymoon in...Gatlinburg, Tennessee. 

(Pretend you see pictures here of us, just two years older and a few pounds heavier.) 

Fast forward four more years, and you're at October 20th, 2012 - the third time The Hubs and I have been to Gatlinburg together, and also, somewhat coincidentally, the third time we have been to Gatlinburg on that EXACT SAME weekend in October. I now consider it our lucky weekend. The weather is always fantastic, and things just kind of seem to fall in place for us there and then. 

Yep, it's hanging off the mountain.

We arrived at our chalet around 3:30 pm on Saturday. See that gorgeous 2013 Chevy Equinox? It's not ours, but we wish it was. The Hubs and I have had our hearts set on one for a while now, and he jumped through a thousand hoops to find one for us to rent for the trip as a surprise for me. One Thousand Awesome Husband Points for him! 

We settled into the chalet and changed clothes for dinner/sightseeing around town. Remember how I had said I had been waiting for a steak from The Park Grill for months? It TOTALLY didn't disappoint. I had a combo 5 oz. filet mignon and pineapple moonshine grilled chicken - mouth orgasms all around.

After dinner we did a little sightseeing around Gatlinburg. Bought some fudge, which is a requirement down there, and also visited a moonshine distillery. They were offering free tastings of their 12 flavors of moonshine, so The Hubs and I gathered all the courage we could muster and saddled up to the bar.

They started - STARTED - with 100 proof White Lightning moonshine...

HOLY HELL.

Seriously, The Hubs and I thought we were gonna die, y'all. After a too short recovery period, the next sample was White Lightning marinated cherries. Yum, cherries! This can't be bad!  

Um, not so much. We are total losers! I couldn't get my 1/2 cherry down, and The Hubs suffered through his. From there, we decided that we are not cool enough to be moonshine junkies, and gave up on the tasting. But, I have to say, I am dorkily proud of the fact that we both even TRIED the White Lightning. I bought us a magnet and Christmas ornament to commemorate our bravery. LOL

Sunday, we had a train excursion from Bryson City, North Carolina, which is near Cherokee. To get to Cherokee, you have to drive through (up, down, around, into, etc.) the Smoky Mountains. Great views, hell on the inner ears.

How do you like his $3 sunglasses we bought during an emergency WalMart run the night before? LOL

The train excursion was through the Great Smoky Mountain Railroad, and was a 4.5 hour trip through the mountains. The Conductor walked our engine to the front of our train and we boarded our swanky first class car.

I think I can, I think I can.

First Class, y'all. It's how we roll. 

Our first class ticket came with lunch and desert aboard the train, a free souvenir tumbler with free pop/tea/coffee for each of us (which you can see in the above picture), and a free embroidered tote bag each. We rode about 1.5 hours out and had a layover at the Nantahala Outdoor Center, where we watched amazing kayakers make the river their bitch. 

No kayakers here, but you'll just have to trust me. They. Were. Awesome.

Then we took the train back to Bryson City and did a little shopping there. I got The BFF some Pumpkin Butter and we got ourselves some Sweet Potato Butter. So delish! 

After leaving Bryson City, we went back to Cherokee to the Harrah's Casino on the Reservation. No pictures of this, but I totally won $70 on a 30 cent bet on penny slots. Boo-yah! I ended the night up $40, Jack ended down $15. Not too shabby for us novice gamblers! Then we drove back through the mountains (much more scary in the pitch black night) and ended the night with wine (me), beer (him), and cigars (both) in the hot tub on the chalet deck. 

Monday, we partook in a Gatlinburg tradition - the Sky Lift. 

One cable and one tiny little yellow bar protecting you from sure death.

We did some shopping and looking around, and then we hit up another Gatlinburg tradition for us - going to the Thomas Kinkade Gallery. Ever since that very first trip to Gatlinburg, we make it a point to go into the Gallery and drool over the expensive beautiful-ness. Back in 2006, we literally fought over two paintings that we couldn't have afforded in a million years - Evening Majesty (which is now sold out unless you want a gigantic one for $2200, btw), and Mountain Paradise. 

The Hubs pulled me aside in one of the gallery rooms and told me, very sweetly, that he knows how badly we've both wanted a Kinkade, and that he doesn't do enough nice things for me (not true!), and that he wanted to surprise me and purchase which ever one I wanted as an anniversary gift. 

I was floored. My husband is frugal. My husband handles the finances and gets upset when I eat out for lunch. My husband wears underwear until you cant figure out which hole the legs go into because he doesn't "need" to spend the money on new ones. (TMI? Sorry 'bout that.) But the point is - here was my sweet, sweet man, telling me that he doesn't do enough for me, and offering to buy me any incredibly expensive painting I wanted (within our pre-determined budget, of course.) Seriously? Tears. At the art gallery. In public. But I don't care. 

We had an awesome dealer working with us, who was able to help us figure out a way to stay within our budget and accomplish two things: (1) Get the Mountain Paradise Kinkade that we have been wanting for so long (24x36, and framed), and (2) Get another painting that we had seen in the gallery this trip and fallen madly in love with. This one is by an 18-year-old, self-taught artist named Abraham J. Hunter, and it's GORGEOUS. And all mine in an 18x27, also framed. 

The Hunter piece will be arriving this week, but we have to wait until December to get our Kinkade. The piece has to come from the warehouse, which takes 3-4 weeks, but our gallery is hosting a highlighting event with a Kinkade Master Highlighter (a painter who was taught by Thomas Kinkade himself, who highlights certain areas of the paintings with an additional layer of paint, adding value to the piece) in early December, so they are going to keep our painting there so that it can get highlighted, then ship it to us. I can't wait!  

After dropping a redonkulous amount of money on artwork (how "adult" of us! LOL), we went to a few more places and then headed out of Dodge. We finally arrived home a little after midnight this morning and promptly passed out. All in all, my trip was fabulous. I love my husband, I love that city, and I love my life. :)