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.  

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?

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. 

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.

Wordless Wednesday: Hick Edition

Ugh

Judge for yourself, but I say this woman is awesome.

American Apparel's Creative Director, Iris Alonzo is quoted as saying: "If every brand that tried to do this was met with such negative press, we may have to wait another decade for the mainstream to embrace something so simple."

How dare American Apparel use this as a means to justify discrimination.
 
I'm disgusted.

PayPal Diatribe Number 2: or "Why I'll never be a Customer Service Representative"

OH EM GEE, people!!!

So, it's been days and I haven't received a letter with a code. Meanwhile, my lovely new blog is dangling in the nether regions of the interwebs.

Lovely Tricia sent me an email letting me know that PayPal contacted HER and let HER know that they are giving ME back my money. Luckily, she was nice enough to pass on the message, because PayPal apparently didn't think it was an important enough piece of information for them to, you know, tell me.

So I checked my account, and sure enough, my moolah is back, but my account is still limited access, so I can't do anything with the money that is rightfully mine.

At this point, I've absolutely had enough. I decided that I'm going to call the bastards and get some answers and get this shit settled. So I look for their contact information, and of course, they want you to use their written prompts to try and figure out your problem before you actually call a human. I make it through all that and find a phone number for customer service.

Now, folks, what does a customer service phone number start with? Usually 1-800 or 1-866, right? Do you think PayPal has a toll free customer service line?

Of course not.

1-402-935-2050. I had to call them long distance to solve a two week long dispute that THEY CAUSED. But, okay, fine, I'll call Nebraska for you fuckers. Anything at this point to just get access to my own damn money.

I called Nebraska, and of course had to go through five minutes of phone prompts and yelling "REPRESENTATIVE!!!" at increasingly louder decibel levels. (I was smart enough to leave work and go out to my car to make this phone call, because for some reason, I had an inkling that it might get a lil' rowdy.) And I finally. Finally. get a person.

Turns out that, yes, I do have my money back, and yes, there is a limitation, and yes, he can lift it during this simple phone call without me having to wait days for a pin number to show up. Oh, and why did the "dispute" happen in the first place?

He asked me if I had been travelling.

Nope, not recently.

Do you work in a different city from where you live?

Well, technically, yeah I do. Why does that matter to you? 

Did you access your PayPal account from a work computer?

Okay, Big Brother, I did, but don't tell my boss on me.

Aha! That's what caused your issue. I can take care of it for you right now.


Apparently, their smartie two shoes system saw that I logged in from a different city and went all "Danger, Will Robinson!!!" on them saying that I might not be who I said I am because I logged in from a location 30 miles from home. So take that, internets, you're supposed to be all "hey, connect from anywhere and be connected to anywhere all instantly and shit", but as it turns out, I'm only allowed to connect from home. Connecting from anywhere else obviously means my identity was stolen and someone is trying to steal minimal amounts of money from me.

Clearly, that's the case.

Now, Blogland Lovers, I *so* try to not go all bat shit crazy on Customer Service Representatives, because, hey, I know it's not your fault you work for the biggest douche canoe of a company known to man. But, duuuuuuuuuude. You all have no idea how hard it was for me to not scream at the poor guy.

I took a few deep breaths, tried my best to reign in the snarky, and "calmly" let him know the process that I wen through to get to this point. I told him all about the bait and switch email that said "oh, just change your password and all will be right with the world" when the actual process was something more akin to teaching an elephant to speak Chinese. In sign language.

I told him how I think it's re-donk-u-lous to require a land line in "this day and age." (yep, actually used that phrase. I'd like to be called Grandpa from now on, please.) And I told him that his company is not customer friendly and that the thousands of blog followers that I have all know about their evil-doings.

So I embellished a bit. Sue me. Or better yet, call me long distance from your land line and we'll hash it out.

At any rate, he lifted my dispute and I'm supposedly able to get back into my account and do whatever I want to do with my money. Thank you, PayPal, for the privilege of being able to access my own damn money. Douches.

But I'm not bitter...

PayPal: A Diatribe

Listen to this ridiculousness…


As you all know, I'm having my blog re-designed into something super fabulous by this lovely lady. We used PayPal to complete the transaction (which she's done a million times, and I've used PayPal for years with no issues). Anyway, I went to paypal to pay for it and they took the money out of my account. I thought all was hunkey dorey.

Then the fun began.

Paypal sent both she and I notices that my account has been frozen until I verify that I am who I say I am by updating my security settings. The email said I have to go to the PayPal website and change my password and my password questions.

Okay, well that’s dumb, but I’ll do it.

I go to the website, and before I can even get to the part where I have to change my password, I have to give them the FULL account number of the bank account that my paypal account is registered to. I don't have it memorized (do any of you have your bank account numbers memorized?), so I had to wait until I got home last night to look it up. Here is where my pulse starts quickening and I can feel my blood pressure starting to raise.

I had The Hubs look up the bank account number and went back to the website to type it in. Then I finally get to the screen where I can change my password and password questions.

Done, right?

Wrong. Next, they tell me that they have to verify my address before they can lift the “dispute”. In order to verify my address, they now need me to link a credit card to my account. I screamed "Are you serious?!" at the computer, but got no response, so I assumed it was, in fact, seriously requiring me to do this. So I dug through my cavernous hole of a purse and found a card. I had The Hubs put in all the numbers and the code on the back and my address and the name of our first born son.

Done, right?

Wrong. At this point, I'm swearing and gesturing dangerously behind my husband who is doing all of the finger-work at the computer. Now, they need a phone number so that PayPal can call me to verify my address. Now, setting aside that completely illogical thought process, I'm thinking, "I really want to get this over with so that I can play in my pretty new interweb home. This HAS to be the last step. And what are my options, anyway, short of shoving my fist inside my husband's computer and hoping to strangle a PayPal developer on the other end?"

I give them my phone number and I have the choice of “have PayPal call now” or “have PayPal call in one minute”. Dear God, I don't want to give PayPal another nanosecond of my time or thought, so check the little button to “have PayPal call now” and hit "Submit".

Done, right? (You lovely blog readers out there on the interwebs are so smart that I bet you know where this is going...)

Wrong! The next screen tells me that they don’t accept cell phone lines for verification and in order to verify my address through a phone call, it must be a land-line. Who decided to be all dependent on technology and not have a land-line in her house?

Thaaaaat's right. Me.

However, sweet and helpful and accomodating as they are, PayPal offered me yet another way to "resolve my dispute" (the dispute that THEY initiated, mind you.), as if giving them my full bank account information, providing them with a new password and password questions, linking a valid credit card with a billing address to my account, giving them my cell phone number (which I don't give to anybody), promising them my first born child (only if he turns out to be a dud, but don't tell PayPal that), and the promise to never watch trashy reality tv again weren't enough. ("Love In The Wild", Mama's gonna miss you.)

Turns out, after all this technology, and trying to pay for something through an "easy and convenient" electronic method, I'm now reduced to waiting on snail mail. Who would have thought, in this day and age, my electronic purchase would be dependent on a land line and snail mail?! My alternate option to verify my address requires Paypal to send me a letter (like, acutally, in the mailbox) with some sort of code on it. PayPal's website said "...it should take days to receive this letter..." No, really, PayPal. Days? Thank you for being so specific.

When days are up and I finally receive their letter, I have to go back to the website and enter this code. This magical code that is somehow acceptable notice that IyamwhatIyam, that none of the other information I provided to them was able to do.

Done, right?

Who the hell knows. I'll let you know what other hoops lie ahead after I enter the code. What else do you think they could possibly make me do?

All I know is: I'm doing this for you, my Blogland Lovers.

Y'all better appreciate. :-P

Stupid or Clever?

The Hubs sent me this picture of the outgoing mailbox in our apartment building.

Is the sender just really dumb, or are they trying to get away with something? Either way, I don't think this letter will get very far.

Fuck off, diabetes.

I now feel "officially" like a high-risk pregnancy. They've decided to put me on insulin, in addition to the Metformin I already take.

3 insulin shots a day, 2 different types of insulin, 1 very freaked out momma-to-be.

It's gonna be a very long 34 more weeks.

A bad idea.

I'm angry, and I shouldn't post when I'm angry. But I am, so there.

I love living in the USA. There are only a small handful of other countries in this world that I would even consider moving to. I appreciate the freedoms that I have. I appreciate the fact that I can (theoretically) be whatever I want to be when I grow up. I appreciate the fact that I am a woman with the right to vote. Other women before me fought long and hard for that, and I love them for it.

This is not to say that this country does not have issues. We've got a TON of issues. I get that too. Some of those issues are caused or made worse by people not in my political party, and some of them are caused or made worse by my own "people". Some things are caused or made worse just because in a country of 300,000,000, you're bound to have some crazies in the bunch.

I voted for Barack Obama. I stand behind that vote. Say or think what you will, but I'm absolutely, 100%, no-doubt-about-it proud of that and have no qualms about whether or not I did the right thing for myself and the country as a whole.

Having said that, I have to admit that I did not foresee that hiring him into this position would cause such scary division and pure, unadulterated hatred and just plain meanness in our country.

I identify with the "liberal" side of the spectrum, but that does not mean that you can fit me into every little peg on the "Liberal" board. I don't see why you need to try to, either.

Why does everything that Obama does have to mean the end of the world as we know it? Why can't people just take a step back and look objectively at things? Why is everyone so up-in-arms about every little thing? We aren't becoming a Socialist country. We will not be Communists. And far be it for someone to finally step in and try to give our own country the kind of healthcare that we spend so much money and effort trying to provide for third world countries.

All this completely random post is trying to say is: can't we all just get along? I'm sick of it.

Frenemies...

Remember my old pal, Sigg?

Turns out, she might not be much of a pal at all...

According to this article, Sigg bottles made before August of 2008 (which my lovely "Earth" Sigg bottle was) have trace amounts of BPA in the lining. BPA is the toxic chemical found in plastic water bottles which has been found to effect levels of estrogen in females.

While Sigg tests show that there is 0% leakage of BPA from their old liners, they also changed the liners of their bottles to new, BPA-free liners after August of 2008. To me, this says they were concerned enough about it to change what they were doing, so I should be concerned about it as well.

Sigg is doing a voluntary exchange of all Sigg bottles with the old lining. Unfortunately, because it is a volunteer effort, you have to pay to send your Sigg bottle back, but they in turn will give you a gift certificate code to purchase a new Sigg bottle from their website. I'm not sure whether the code will include the cost of shipping your replacement Sigg to you, but I'm guessing it won't.

Probably 75% of my co-workers own Sigg bottles because of a company-wide initiative to quit using disposable cups and plastic bottles. Now, I'm in charge of collecting all our old Sigg bottles and sending a mass return back to Sigg for new ones.

By the way, if you own an old Sigg, and you wish to exchange it, all the information you need is in the article above, and you have to return it by October 31st of this year.

Something to think about...

"Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you..."

a.k.a. "The World's Longest Post". If you manage to make it all the way to the end of this crazy train I call a blog post, more power, kudos, my sincerest thanks and deepest appologies to you.

("Ironic" by Alanis Morissette).

So I started this blog all gung-ho, lost 12 pounds, and fizzled. I started again, and fizzled before even getting off the ground. Rinse and repeat. Rinse. and. repeat. And then I started my crazy 30 pounds in 11 weeks challenge, lasted not even two weeks, and what do you know? Fizzle fizzle bo bizzle. (I'm in a unique mood today, can you tell?)

Last week, I was just about to write a post about how I'm guessing I'm just not ready to really get into it. How I don't really have the motivation or drive. How I'm just not really caring right now, because, unfortunately, all of those things were (and pretty much are) 100% true.

Prep for whining here... I'm tired of it. I'm tired of attempting when I'm not really whole-heartedly in it, and then failing miserably. I'm annoyed and just generally over it. And with an attitude like that, I'm pretty sure failure is eminent. Resistance is futile. Danger, Will Robinson. Which ever entertainment quote you want to put there, it pretty much means I ain't losin' no weight. I ain't getting any healthier. I don't know nuthin' 'bout birthin' no babies.

Which is quite the delightful segue into why I'm writing this post now, instead of last week. Prep for what might possibly be TMI. I was due for my yearly with my ob/gyn, and since The Hubs and I are getting up there in age (ah, 27, I never would have guessed you'd make me feel elderly, but alas) and need to start looking into family planning, I made an appointment for us to meet. I found a new doc closer to my job, and we met her on Wednesday.

Prep for shock. I have diabetes. (Okay, maybe if you've paid attention to my rambling at all over the past 8 months, that's not a shock). Diabetes makes me a high-risk pregnant woman if I were to conceive. Like, seriously, high-risk. Not "oh, well, we'll just keep an eye on it,". More like guaranteed bed rest for months, tons of testing and monitoring, possible insulin shots, blood sugar checks at least five times a day, doctor's visits at least three times a week toward the end of the pregnancy. That kind of high-risk. Now, doesn't that sound fun? Yeah, we thought so too.

But, sensing the panic mode that The Hubs and I had painted all over our faces, she throws in this little piece of optimism: if I can maintain my A1c at 5.5 for at least two months before we conceive, I'm no longer considered a high-risk pregnancy, and my pregnancy will be just like any other pregnancy except for the fact that I'm pretty much guaranteed gestational diabetes, which she believes can easily be controlled with oral medications.

Btw, for you non-diabetics, an A1c is a blood test that basically tells you what your average blood glucose levels have been over the past 3 months. Magically. Don't ask me how it does it, because my knowledge ends there. Someone without diabetes usually has an A1c at around 5%, and someone with diabetes that is out of control might be between 10 and 25%. From what I understand, if you're at 25%, you're pretty much dead.

So basically, she's telling me what my regular doctor has been telling me for a year. I need to reverse my diabetes. How do you reverse diabetes and lower your A1c? Oh, it's simple really. Diet and exercise. Lose weight. Or, re-visit and attempt to break (again. again. again. AGAIN.) that crazy cycle of "Gung-Ho, Fizzle Fizzle Bo Bizzle". Great! Fabulous! I'll get right on that. Ugh.

So we came home from that appointment and I basically laid down in bed and cried for an hour and a half. Cried and cried and cried. She had pretty much told me that all of the hopes and dreams of not only myself, but my husband, all rested on my (completely incapable) shoulders. I have to lose weight. I have to control my blood sugar. I have to do it. And if I don't? WE can't have kids. WE can't have kids because I'm fat and lazy. No pressure or anything. I'm already feeling incapable, unmotivated, ready to retreat into fatness for a little while longer, and then this happens.

(And, yes, technically, we could get pregnant. We could have kids, but the chances of them having birth defects practically quadruples, not to mention the danger to myself and the drama of being a high-risk pregnancy. I just don't think I could live with myself knowing that it was all my fat and lazy fault if our kid was messed up and my husband had to go through all that. So, no. We can't have kids unless I get my A1c down).

Weight loss: FAIL. Kids: FAIL. Good wife: FAIL. Man, I'm really sucking these days!

So where's the light at the end of the tunnel? Where's the silver lining? Where's the Eternal Optimist that you all know and love? She's here, muffled and squirming under about 50 pounds of extra weight, excited about the prospect of being pregnant and having a baby, but just a little too jaded to go straight into "Gung-ho" again. The task before me is monumentally more real and challenging knowing what is relying upon my success. I'm sure most of you are just dying to send me that comment that says "You can do it! You have a reason now! You have motivation!" and you might be right. Hopefully this is the catalyst for me finally doing the thing that I've never been able to do.

But past failures have planted that seed of doubt, and current moods are watering it daily. I wish I were able to just forget about that little, nagging voice saying "You have failed. You always fail. You will fail. Every single time before, look what you did! This is no different". But I can't. It's there, and I'm unconvinced at the moment that I can beat it down into submission. Even for a baby.

This is not to say that I'm not going to try. Hell yes, I'm going to try. I basically have 9 months before we would like to be trying for a baby, which means about 6 months to get my A1c to an acceptable level and maintain it long enough to eliminate the extra worries of the diabetic, high-risk pregnancy. My A1c in December of 2008 was 6.7. My A1c on Friday was 6.4. It is moving in the right direction, but there is still a long way to go.

It's a long, hard road out of diabetic hell, and I just have to figure out how to get my wheels turning.

I suppose we all just wear bed sheet togas...

The 5k I'm running in tomorrow is sponsored by a popular local running store. I went to the store today to pick up my race packet. Let me preface this little story by telling you that the store was pretty well populated...it certainly wasn't dead in there. Plenty of ears around for the following verbal transaction between myself and the older gentleman manning the packet pick-up table.

OG: Name?
Mrs. B: Mrs. B.
OG: Ah, here you are, Mrs. B. Shirt size, extra large. No...WAIT! ONE X?! I didn't know they made them that big!
Mrs. B: *stunned silence*

Really? Seriously?! The man was just kind of clueless. He really wasn't trying to be malicious or mean, but saying something like that out loud? Let alone loudly out loud? In a populated place?

Where's that brain-to-mouth filter when you need it? Ugh.

Mystery and Intrigue at Chateau Noir...

You all know by now how The Hubs’ crazy schedule is: on Mondays he has class from 7-9:15, and work from 10p – 6:30a. This means that I get to see him after I get home at 5:35 until he leaves around 6-6:10. The past few Mondays I’ve come home, he’s been up running around, making his lunch or finishing some last-minute homework and whatnot. One day a couple weeks ago, I got home, tried to open the door, and found he had it chained. He promptly rushed to the door and opened it for me. Trust me, Grasshopper, this will all make sense in a minute.

Last night, I got home at my normal time. I unlocked our door, pushed it open, and BAM! found it chained again. Assuming that my husband was running around as usual, I shut the door and waited for him to come rushing over to unlock it, only…he never came. After a few seconds, I opened the door as far as the chain would let me and realized that it was completely dark and silent in my apartment. I think, his car’s outside, and the chain’s on the door, so obviously, he’s got to be home. I call his cell phone – straight to voicemail. I call his cell phone again – straight to voicemail. (What’s that saying? The definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? Just call me crazy.) I think I called his cell phone at least 4 times, and every. single. time. – straight to voicemail.

I think, Okay…I can’t get to him on the phone, and the door’s chained. How else can I get into this house without having to break down the door? The windows are all locked, so that won’t work. I had a fleeting pang of hope when I remembered that I have a key to the sliding glass door, but we’ve got a metal bar on the inside so that it can’t be slid open. I try in vain to somehow magically snake my arm around inside the door and simultaneously pull it as closed as possible to try and undo the chain. If you’ve ever seen a movie, you know this won’t work, and only succeeded in making me look like an idiot when our neighbor decided that that exact moment would be the one in which he would take his teacup Chihuahua out to poop.

I yell Jack's name, I bang on the door, I yell his name some more. There’s a very fine balance I’m trying to strike here, because the apartments I live in are not exactly strangers to the cops. I don’t want to yell and bang too much because I don’t want to (a) embarrass myself even more, (b) have the cops called on me, and (c) have to explain this situation to ANYONE. Without any other solutions in sight, I yell, and bang, and push on the door some more.

Now, at this point, I’ve been struggling to get into my own house for almost 25 minutes and I’m starting to panic. The Hubs is always up on Mondays. What is going on?! Why isn’t he up running around getting ready for school? Why is his phone dead? Is HE dead? Did somebody break in and kill him, and then chain the door to slow me down from finding him, and leave out the bedroom window? Did he have a heart attack from all the stress of night school and working third shift and having a crazy lady who’s contemplating breaking down the door for a wife? (Remember…I’m in panic mode).

Add this situation to the two other ill-fated chained-door entry issues in the past, and the door jam was barely hanging on by a thread (or a screw, I guess) at this point. I could push on the door and the jam would bow out from the wall, only attached at the top and bottom. Now, I’m panicked, my husband has surely been savagely murdered by someone conscientious enough to come back and chain the door before exiting out a window, or he’s in the throws of a heart attack, and I need to get to him. The only solution is to break open the door. So I start pushing on the door, and wedging my hand in between the jam and the wall, seriously hoping that I don’t get a splinter or get mamed by the screws hanging precariously on the jam. I’ve screamed his name, I’ve banged on the door, I’ve called his phone, I’ve solidified my crazy lady existence to the neighbors, and now I’m trying to break in to my own house.

Finally, I succeed, and the door jam breaks away from the top of the wall with a loud *crack* but remains connected to the bottom. It's enough for me to start working my way in the door, and then I hear an “oh, shit!” from the back room. I knew instantly that my husband was, indeed, alive, and not suffering from gunshot wounds or a heart attack, and I wanted to kill him. Since the jam was still connected at the bottom, the door was still only partially open but I could see The Hubs rushing down the hallway from the bedroom. “Are you okay?” I whimpered, and by the time he got to the door, I was leaning against a wall in the hallway completely sobbing. The thought that he could have seriously been gone had finally hit me. And then relief, mixed with absolute fury over the experience that I had just had took over. It manifested itself in blubbery, loud sobs.

Jack, concerned that my crying in the hallway might elicit some response from the neighbors, (as if the yelling, banging, and breaking down the door wasn’t enough) told me to come inside, but I couldn’t get my shit together. The purse I’d dropped on the floor in my attempt had spilled, and the decorative hanger that I had flung down there after my attempts to open the door got serious, lay discarded too. I finally managed to gather all my things, come in the door, and throw them on the ground. I calmly and politely asked my loving husband to not lock the chain while I'm gone, which came out something like, “You better never fucking lock that thing again!”, and sat down to decompress.

The Hubs, who probably had not once been scared for his own life that day until AFTER I got in the door, said he was sorry, and that his phone was dead and that he had been sleeping. I wasn't quite ready to chat yet, so he got all of his stuff together for school. I made myself dinner, made his lunch, kissed him goodbye, and spent the rest of the evening watching bad tv (Hello? Bachelorette? Ed gets the last measly 5 minutes, and you give Reed a half an hour?!) in bed.

This morning, the door jam is still hanging there, the chain is unuseable, and all is (at least temporarily) right with the world.

WTFS* Moments...

*"What the eff, seriously?!"

I feel the need to share these two fast-food related WTFS moments because (1) the second one just happened today, (2) my first job was at McDonalds. I was 14 and I like to think I had more common sense than the characters I seem to keep encountering, and (3) the common 'combo' theme cracks me up. I didn't know it was really that challenging.

WTFS Moment #1: Arby's. I picked up lunch for MFN and myself a few weeks ago.

Mrs. B.: Do you have a Ham Melt value meal, or do I have to buy all the items separately?
Arby's Girl: No, we don't have a value meal.
B: Okay, then I'd like a Ham Melt, small potato cakes, and a small Diet Coke.
AG: *lightbulb* Oh, well we have a Ham Melt combo...
B: (after a WTFS moment/look)...Okay...I'll take that.

WTFS Moment #2: Wendy's. Thankfully this WTFS Moment did not actually happen to me. I was merely a witness.

Customer: I'd like a Number 1...
Wendy's Guy: The meal? Or the sandwich?
C: The Number 1...
WG: The meal?
C: Yes.

Do you have a WTFS Moment you'd like to share? I'm sure they've happened to you - idiocy can't possibly contained to the fast food restaurants in the Cincinnati area...