TTT - Pet Peeve Edition

So thanks to the lovely (and pregnant with a sassy baby girl) Laura Belle, we've got Ten Things Thursday - wherein I get to cheat and still feel like a productive blogger. Love it!

I've been stressed lately, which usually makes annoying things stand out as even more annoying than they would be on a regular basis. So it's not very hard for me to come up with a Ten Things Thursday full of things that annoy me. Here goes, in no particular order:

{1} People who "pimp" out their babies on Facebook for "I'm the cutest baby in the whole, wide world" contest votes. I don't care how much I like you, or how cute your baby is - I'm not going to go vote so that he/she can "beat out" other one-year-olds for the title. Quit asking me to!

{2} People who drive on the shoulder when traffic is stopped on the highway. Unless someone in your car is having a baby or a heart attack, get your ass back in line and wait like the rest of us! 

{3} People over the age of eight who shuffle their feet when they walk. For some reason, that irks the crap out of me. Pick up your feet, it's not that hard!

{4} People who say/post things (on FB usually) to fish for attention. There's one girl on my friends list who does this constantly with status updates like, "Heading to Children's with DS", or "OMG, I am so stressed out and I just don't think I can take any more of this!", which comes off to me like you just want somebody to ask what's wrong with you and give you sympathy/attention. 

{5} My husband, who, after putting The Kid to bed last night promptly fell asleep in his clothes with the lights on in our bedroom. I came in and laid down while checking blogs and FB on my phone. After about half an hour, I woke him up to tell him that he needed to set his alarm because I was going to bed. He says, "You're going to bed?! I thought we were going to talk about X,Y, and Z?!" Um, yeah. We were going to talk about those things before you spent the past hour passed out. Now it's WAY past my bedtime! Gah. Men. 

{6} The fact that a fricking salad costs me eight dollars at Panera. Or anywhere else for that matter. Who in the world decided that it was fair to charge $8 - $12 for a few ounces of chicken and a bunch of lettuce? How many bags of lettuce could I buy at the store for that money?! Ugh. Also, {6A} that I can't buy Panera's Honey Tangerine dressing in the store and there doesn't seem to be anything similar on the market. I need it in my life and don't want to pay $8.08 every time I feel the craving. 

{7} Being on the weight loss teeter-totter. I really can't handle all this bouncing around. I just want to be able to post some sort of loss consistently. I am beyond frustrated by this. 

{8} That people/society seem to be in a pretty big hurry for MY son to grow up. He should have been off the bottle the second he turned one (he is off the bottle, but it was more like 15 months when we kicked the habit completely - gasp!). He should be off the pacifier by now (we just did this one a few weeks ago, at 27 months - gasp!). He should be potty trained by now (we're not even close to trying this and I'm not even remotely concerned about it - gasp!). He should be sleeping in a "real" bed by now (my kid likes his crib and I like the safety of it. he's not moving out of it any time soon - gasp!). Stop it! Stop trying to rush my kid into being an adult! This time is already flying like crazy, and I don't feel the need to pressure myself, my family, or my freaking two-year-old into thinking that he's falling behind already. He has been a person for all of two years, for jeebus' sake. Give the kid a break and let him (and me) enjoy being a baby for the short time it lasts. [End Mama Bear rant.]

{9} That my grocery store NEVER has enough lines open. I went grocery shopping last night. Two lanes open - that's all. Srsly? Ugh. 

{10} That money makes the world go 'round and my dreams of being an intrepid world traveller/travel show host/owner of my own far away island where I can run naked on my own damn beach (in slow motion, Baywatch style) and get sand in unspeakable places will never happen. Oops, did I say too much?

Over it.

Last Week: 239.6 lb
This Week: 244.6 lb
Gain: 5.0 lb

And I'm over it.

Especially over it when I gained back five freaking pounds and yet, I'm still PBing at almost every fucking meal.

I can't eat "normal" foods. I can't live on protein shakes.

I'm calling for a serious unfill today. I want it out. Everything I just got and more. 2cc, 3cc, I don't care at this point. I just want to get to a point where I know for sure that I'm not going to be PBing on anything.

And I am going to stay that way for a month. And during that month, I'm not going to weigh in. The weigh ins have just become something I dread, and something that makes me feel like crap. So I'm not going to do them for a while.

This sucks.

Wednesday Weigh-In

Last Week: 247.8
This Week: 247.8
No change

And I'm all, "eh, whatever" about that right now. It's not a gain, and it would have been nice to see the numbers I was seeing on Monday after a weekend of being so sick that I didn't eat anything for almost 48 hours. But that is the chance you take with being a daily weigher, and I also knew that once I was feeling better and started eating again, some of that weight would come back. It is what it is - I have too many other things on my mind right now to be disappointed in a wash week.

Would you like to step inside my head? Draz did something similar recently, and I found it fascinating. But really, I just have way too much crap going on and can't focus on any one thing, so I'm gonna write them all down to try to make sense of them. Here's the shit storm that is my mind, in no particular order:

1. Work. I'm not particularly happy in my job and I also don't work as hard as I could. Guilt plus general apathy does not equal the most productive Anna, which creates more guilt. Also, February has been and will continue to be a whirlwind of training events that I just don't have the energy to organize and host. 
2. School. I have seriously hit zero hour with school. My term ends on March 31st, but I have to have all of my "tasks" (19 - yes, you read that right, 19 - papers and one science experiment) finished about a week before that to give them time to get graded. How many of my 19 papers and one science experiment do I have finished? Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. None. And it's all my fault. 
3. Moving. I haven't really talked about this at all because I have a really hard time forming words around it. After MANY protests and tears, I have finally agreed for our family to move in with my husband's parents. For an unspecified amount of time, but probably at least a year. There is so much emotion surrounding this for me that I could probably write a year's worth of blog posts about it. I'm grateful that they're willing to take us in, but apprehensive and anxious about the change. Suffice it to say, I just don't want to do it.
4. Moving Logistics. In addition to the fact that moving in with my in-laws is not high up on my bucket list, there is A LOT  of work that has to be done in order for it to be possible. All by April 30th. The in-laws and The Hubs have to strip out a storage area down to the bare insulation and completely renovate the room. They have to add heat to one side of the house. They have to run wiring for internet. They have to go through three large rooms of accumulated gark and sort/store it all. Then we have to pack up our entire apartment and either move it to what storage area they have left or to a storage unit. I am paralyzed by the weight of it all and can't really see how it is all going to work out right now. 
5. Valentine's Day. Probably the least of my worries right now, but something that keeps nagging my brain like a gnat on speed. I completely forgot about the holiday until I started hearing all the commercials on the radio. And now it's the day before and I will have to brave the Hallmark store with all the last-minute husbands. 
6. Over-Estimating Time Constraints. Again. Sometime in January, I decided to make a gift for a person who may or may not currently be reading this blog. The time to deliver the gift is rapidly approaching and said gift is nowhere near complete. I had time, then I still had time, and now I have no time. I have been stressed out about it and working on it like a mad woman every day at lunch and after work. Mom guilt is killing me right now because my eyes are plastered on this project all night instead of on my kid. The Hubs has been super helpful, though, with trying to keep Logan Man occupied so I can make some progress. As of right now, I believe I will be able to finish it in time, but it is going to be very close. Probably something like crocheting the last of the Christmas dish cloths at 3 am Christmas morning. Something like that. 
7. A Rapidly Approaching 5k. It's coming and I'm not ready for it. I have been so lazy/preoccupied with other things that I haven't given much time or thought to training. I am sad to say that I haven't been back to the fitness center since those two days in a row sometime back in January. I need to suck it up and take five minutes at night to put my lunch and workout clothes together so that I can get some training done. However, if I train during lunch, I can't work on my gift project during lunch. So right now, because the gift deadline is much closer than the 5k deadline, gift is winning. 
8. Crappy Sleep and Vivid Dreams. I haven't been sleeping well lately, and it seems like when I finally get to sleep, all I'm doing is having very vivid dreams about things that I don't want to think about. So even when I'm sleeping, I'm stressed out. I am exhausted and feel like I just can't win. 

I can't think of anything else right now, but this almost qualified for a Ten Things Thursday...maybe I should have saved it for tomorrow. Oh well. It's here now, so it stays. 

This is just one of those oh so joyous times in life where it just seems like everything is being piled on top of me so fast that I can't dig out and can't breathe. I know that it will all work out, and I keep trying to remind myself that once the gift is finished, I can work on the school and the 5k. And once The Hubs' parents get rooms cleared out, I can start packing and moving our crap ton of stuff. And once May 1st comes around, everything on that list except for work and my crazy dreams will have come and gone. Nothing is permanent. These things are temporary. 

It's all temporary. Right?

Unsettled

Lots of things going on right now which are all adding up to a general feeling of unease and yuckiness.

I went in for my third fill on Saturday. My first two fills were easy peasy mac n' cheesy. I would go in, tell Kim about my experiences, she'd put me up on the table, find my port, stick me once, and the whole experience would be over in less than five minutes.

For some reason, things didn't go so smoothly this time. She could feel my port, and when she went to stick me, I could feel her hit the hard plastic side of it. So she kept moving the needle a bit and trying to get it in, but couldn't. This process repeated three times before she was finally able to get the needle in the port.

Not a pleasant experience. But I'm not bruised at all like I thought I was going to be, so there's that.

Then, I had asked her to pull all the liquid out to measure it because I wanted to see where it was at. Ever since my first fill, I've had a nagging feeling in the back of my head that my band is leaking. It could TOTALLY be paranoia (and that's what I'm hoping you all will tell me), but when she first measured the liquid in my band, she told me there was 0.9 cc in it from surgery. That seemed a little odd to me, that the doctor wouldn't put a round number in. But I'm guessing that it's possible for 0.1 cc to stay in the band/tubing and not come out?

And then, it has been my experience that I feel some sort of restriction for a bit, but it eventually wanes. Now, again, that could just be the saline settling in the band and everything getting used to being in there or whatnot.

So anyway, I asked her to pull the saline out and measure it. According to my past fills, I should have had 8.4 cc in my band, plus the 1.0 cc she was adding at the time, for a total of 9.4 cc. When she took all the fluid out to measure it (including the additional 1.0 cc), I was only at 8.2 cc.

What the eff?!

Now, I don't know if she was just trying to keep me from panicking, or what, but Kim didn't seem to be too worried. She said that sometimes they get the numbers mixed up, or add wrong, or whatever. But I didn't get my numbers mixed up. I went with what you told me you were putting in there. So unless there's a big number of saline stuck in my band/tubing that didn't come out, or you didn't put in what you said you were putting in, it looks to me like I have a leak.

What do you do if you have a leak?!

Naturally, I'm freaking out. Even though Kim isn't. I went ahead and made an appointment for another fill on March 2nd, and she said we would measure it again then to see how it is doing.

Somebody please tell me I have nothing to worry about.

Lane Bryant Can Bite My Ass

So I spent my lunch break partaking in every fat girl's favorite pastime - searching for jeans that fit.

Oh. My. Jeebus. Just shoot me now.

I currently have two pairs of jeans that I wear on a regular basis - a 26 petite Fashion Bug brand, and a 26 petite St. John's Bay from JCPenney. Both of these jeans are way too big and baggy now. Yay! Sort of.

Enter the frantic gotta-find-jeans-on-my-one-hour-lunch-break-at-the-ridiculously-busy-mall debacle.

Fashion Bug went out of business, so I can't go back there. JCPenney had NOTHING that fit or flattered. At Elder Beerman I found an awesome pair of Ruff Hewn jeans that were the perfect length and a very good fit. Score! And then I looked at the price tag...

$80

For one pair of jeans.

Nope. Can't do it. Don't really want to spend three days alone in the Tennessee mountains with a mad husband.

So then I did the thing I swore I'd never do. I went to Lane Bryant.

You see, years ago when the geniuses at LB lost their ever loving minds created their mind bending new sizing method of mixed colors, shapes, and sizes, I swore that I was done shopping there forever. You are a shop that is supposed to make it EASIER for larger women to find cute clothes that fit and flatter. Now suddenly I needed an advanced degree in heiroglyphical analysis AND five hours of free time to navigate your new and "improved" sizing methods.

Nuh-uh. Not gonna do it.

I created this myself! Woot!

But today, against my better judgement, I went anyway. It's been years since I had tried to buy pants there. Surely they had refined the process some by now, right?

Nope. 

Why are you sideways?! :(

I tried on every single Red Square/Yellow Triangle combination from size 22 to (get this!) size 28. What ended up fitting me best there? (And I use "fitting" and "best" VERY loosely) A Yellow Triangle 28.

I shit you not, my friends. I went from a well-fitting Ruff Hewn 22, to an ill-fitting, tight in all the WRONG places 28 at Lane Bryant. At the fat girl store! Say it with me now:

Double-yoo

Tee

Eff

Needless to say, I left there pantsless. 

Wait. 

I left there with pants. Just not new ones. That would be embarrassing. And I was late getting back to work. Why does this process have to be so hard, my peeps? 

Meh.

Struggling with Skepticism

I really don't know if this is all a coincidence because I'm getting so close to surgery, or if it is something that I should really, truly be concerned about, so your advice is much appreciated, dear, smart, Bloglandians.

It seems like all is not bunnies and unicorns and roses in band world, and it's starting to make me worry that the band isn't as smart a choice as I once thought it was. I know that there are many good stories and that people tend to believe the bad easier than the good, but it just seems to be creeping into my consciousness lately. 

First, I was talking with my step-mom, who is INCREDIBLY supportive of my surgery, and she casually mentioned that one of her friends had the band, lost a lot of weight, and then gained it all back. 

Then, I was chatting with another good friend, who is also supportive, who mentioned that she knew a guy who had the surgery, lost a lot of weight and then gained it all back. 

And then, remember how I mentioned that almost everyone in my surgeon's office has had the band? I have since found out that one of the nurses has had a revision, one of the office workers had a dilated pouch and has gained all her weight back, and the billing/scheduling lady that I have been working with has gained A TON of weight (compared to the associate pictures that were taken early last year).  

And, apparently I wasn't paying attention, because I was catching up on Dawnya's blog and saw that she's completely unfilled after band issues. 

I am trying so hard to remember that everyone has a different experience and that sometimes band failure is due to "operator error" (totally not saying that's the case for you, Dawnya!). And I'm also trying to remember that there are people out there like Lap Band Gal and Catherine who have been, and continue to be, incredibly successful. 

I just don't want to spend $10,000 and have surgery if the odds aren't in my favor that I will be continually successful in the long run. 

Am I just being a fear monger? Am I worrying over nothing? Should I focus on the fact that my band experience will be my own, and could be completely different from the experiences of those who have had trouble? Or is there something that people aren't really saying when it comes to the effectiveness of the band long-term? 

I don't know. I'm exactly 3 weeks from surgery today, and I'm a paranoid freak. 

Consult Day

Well, here it is. Consult Day.

I am scared as hell.

I really don't know why I'm so nervous. I don't think there's really anything rational to be afraid of today, but for some reason, I'm shaking in my boots. (Well, not really, I can't fit boots over my fat calves. But I'm shaking in my Fashion Bug flats, fo sho.)

I also found out on Monday when they called to confirm that the Program Fee is $350 instead of $300. I was convinced they had told me $300, but The Hubs seems to think I told him $350 at some point, so whatever. $50 is not a deal breaker here, and anything I pay now comes off the surgery cost, so that's $50 I don't have to pay later. Oh well.

I think it's just the reality of everything that is hitting me right now. This is the farthest down this path I have ever traveled. After today, I am monetarily invested in actually going through with this. If I don't have the surgery, we're out $350 now, which is A LOT of money to us. I feel like I'm hitting the point of no return, and even though I know that I want to do this, and I've wanted to do this for YEARS, now it's real. Now it's scary.

What if I go though all this, spend all this money, have SURGERY, and still fail?

Cautious Optimism

I think I've mentioned before that I am generally a very optimistic person. I have bouts of negativity, sometimes suffer with depression, and can even sometimes be (gasp!) dramatic. But on the whole, I really do see people and life as generally good.

In the post I linked to above, I had been going through a dark time and got really bad news. The Hubs and I had finally, FINALLY decided to move forward with my Lap Band surgery, only to find out that financing was not an option for us. (I'm pretty sure the computer laughed at me when I hit submit on the application...)

After that, I really did consider Lap Band an un-option. Insurance doesn't cover it, we don't have that kind of money in our savings account, and a personal loan from our banks was not a credible possibility. I just kind of gave up and wallowed in self pity for a while. Of course, my weight LOVES it when I wallow in self pity, because that usually means wallowing in comfort food, carbs, sweets, and anything else that temporarily can't let me down. And thus, I'm hovering between 269-271 right now. Re-donk-u-lous.

However, other, good things started happening, too. We paid off both of our cars. We paid down/off all of our credit cards. We started putting money in savings. And really, it wasn't that either of us got awesomely paying jobs or had any rich relatives die or anything. We just changed our priorities and paid more attention. (Hmm...is there a lesson in that somewhere?)

All this is to say that a few weeks ago, sort of on a whim, I cringed as I hit that submit button again. And then I gasped in shock when I saw that we were approved for almost the entire amount of the cost of Lap Band surgery.

Of course, the journey is just now starting and there are many things that still have to be done before I can officially say that I have a surgery date. But my consultation with the bariatric nurse, surgeon and psych evaluation is scheduled for September 27th. The ball is rolling, people. And that makes me very optimistic!

Crushed

I know I don't post often, but I had to give y'all a little update.

Last Sunday, we went to spend the afternoon with my dad and step-mom. They have a ranch-style house with a full basement that you access through an open stairwell. (AKA, there's no door to the basement or anything). Most of the night was spent making sure Bubbers didn't fall down the stairs.

I was sitting in a chair about 6-8 feet away from the stairs, and Logan came scarily close to tumbling. I went to get out of the chair to run after him, and I almost couldn't get up. I am so fat that I can't even get my ass up and moving in an emergency! Luckily, the kid got "shiny object"-ed and headed the other way, but the damage (to me) was done.

As we left that night, I told The Hubs that I couldn't wait anymore and that we needed to move forward with band surgery. I can't bare the thought of something happening to Bubs because I'm too fat to save him from danger. Because my husband is awesome, he agreed, and told me to call the doctor's office the next day to get the process rolling.

Monday, I called to find out what my options were for paying for the surgery. 1) Insurance. A no-can-do, as my miserly insurance plan barely covers doctor's appointments. Medical weight loss programs or surgeries are very clearly an exception to my plan. Even when the patient has weight-related medical issues, like I do.

Option 2) Self-pay. We have about $17 in our savings account and our credit cards are almost maxed out, since that's generally what we were living on when The Hubs was out of work. Cash, checks or credit cards would get us laughed out of the office.

Option 3) Financing. This was the route that we had already planned to go, knowing that Options 1 and 2 weren't really options at all. The doctor's office that I was planning on using charges $11,900 total for all aspects of the surgery and two years of aftercare. I called Monday, fully expecting to get approved for financing, but jointly, we were only able to get approved for $2,000. Granted, math is not my strong point, but even I can tell you that $2,000 is a far cry from $12,000. I called a couple days later to see if I could get an increase, and I'm pretty sure the lady on the phone tried to stifle a laugh.

A personal loan isn't an option, and I even went so far as to ask my dad if they could get a loan for me. No can do.

The major reason I want to have the surgery now is so that I can lose enough weight to not have a high-risk pregnancy when we try to give Bubs a brother or sister. He's over a year old now, and I'm turning 30 this year. Time is running out, y'all. We don't have time to save up $12,000, and if we did, we should use that money for a down payment on a house.

I may or may not have had a breakdown after getting the phone call from my dad that they couldn't help. Just the day before, surgery was a real, palpable option. I was so excited that it was finally going to happen and I was going to get to start living my life and be there for my son. And now, there are literally NO options. No choices, no chances.

It's gone. And not to sound melodramatic, but I honestly and truthfully feel like hope is gone with it.

Wherein I go all doom and gloom on your asses...(UPDATE)

I've known that I needed to post a new blog soon, but haven't really had the energy to do it. What I want to blog about is just not pretty or fun, and who wants to waste time writing about things that aren't pretty or fun? More than that, who wants to read about things that aren't pretty or fun?

So here it is.

I am in a dark place right now. I'm having a hard time seeing the light at the end of the tunnel as anything other than an oncoming train. I just haven't had the energy to put any of that elloquently, so when The BFF asked me in an email about what was getting me down and if there was anything she could do to help, this was my reply, and it's now my un-pretty, un-fun, dark places post.

"You can’t do anything. Life is just going through a super sucky period right now, and it sucks. It’s my job, his (lack of a) job, his mom, his mom keeping Bubbers at her house, his mom not coming to our house to help out, us spending too much time at their house, it’s The Hubs and I not having any time or ability to ‘reconnect’, it’s my mom being sick, it’s my dad being sick, it’s my sister being a derelict, it’s my nieces being who knows where, it’s me worrying about Bubbers, it’s me travelling too much, it’s me wanting out of our apartment, it’s me wanting to stay home with Bubbers, it’s me wanting The Hubs to try harder, it’s me worrying about our 3rd anniversary coming up and knowing that there are a million things on my mind rather than thinking about celebrating it, it’s me wishing he were more romantic, more able to show sympathy, a harder worker, smarter, more determined. It’s me feeling absolutely horrible for wishing he were all those things and not focusing on the good things that he is/does. It’s me wishing I had more time to devote to helping you with your wedding and wishing that we didn’t live so far apart, it’s me worrying that your wedding won’t be everything you hoped for but not knowing how to make it so. It’s me wishing certain people would jump off a cliff sometimes, and then feeling horrible about that.

It’s just everything right now. And it’s all bundled up into a nice big fat boulder sitting on my chest with a pretty red bow and a tag saying “To: Anna, Love: The Universe”. And I can’t make it go away."

Sometimes life isn't pretty. This is one of those times.  I'm breathing, and that's all I can really promise you right now, but I know that The Eternal Optimist is still in there somewhere, buried under all the rubble, and that someday she'll find her way out and into the light. And when that happens, I know it won't be the oncoming train.

*UPDATE*

You know, it's funny how much better I feel after just throwing up all of that horribleness into the vastness of the interwebs and into the arms of the loveliest blog readers a girl could ask for. This is what I assume praying feels like to believers - to just give everything up to God. Thank you all for your kind responses and love. You are my light.