July 17th, 2008

I am leaving for vacation tomorrow. I'm nervous about leaving son home alone and I hope he doesn't have any big parties while we are gone. I won't have a chance to post agin until we return in august, but when I do I will give you the details of my vacation and post lots of pictures.

ENJOY!

Bird Watching

Alright... First of all I have no business goofing around on my computer this morning. I have a ton of work to do so I can leave for my vacation. However, last night I kept waking up and thinking about the work I had to do and I was packing in my head.... lol. I got little sleep and I should have got up and starting packing but I didn't want to wake my husband so I didn't.
Then I started thinking about all of the birds we have been seeing lately at our feeders in the back yard. I hope my son remembers to fill the feeders while we are gone. I decided to post some puictures of the birds we see daily in our own back yard. They usually come about the same time every day. I LOVE watching the birds.

There are still some I haven't been able to identify yet but I will keep working on it.

My husband and I are thinking about making bird houses, roosting boxes and bird feeders in the fall and selling them on line and at fairs and flea markets.

Tuesday July 15th

Three months ago today I had my gastric bypass surgery. The day of surgery I weighed 317 lbs. Today I weigh 252 lbs. Thats 65 pounds in 3 months. I feel great! I have so much energy and I'm not being so much a "wall flower". Before I did every thing I could to NOT BE NOTICED. Today I am much more comfortable with myself. I still have a long way to go before I reach goal but I feel better and better everyday.

I only lost 1 pound this week but it's better than nothing. I am wicked busy at work trying to get things finished up before I leave for vacation on Friday. I will try and post one more time before I leave for Maine. Lots of packing to get done t his week!

It’s a beautiful day here in Massachusetts!

We had a great weekend with friends and family all camping in our yard. The weather this past weekend was less than desirable but we still managed to have a good time. We played lots of cards and backgammon. Watched some really old family movies (8mm) and read. We did some get pool and hot time in when the rain stopped and Sunday actually turned out to be pretty nice.

Work is busy this week and I expect next week too. I have a big project that I have to finish before I can go on vacation next Friday. Right at the moment I am not working on my project because I have to wait for the registrar and the housing people to finish their part. I hate waiting on other people to be able to do my job.

Next week we will be heading up to Maine to stay at a campground on Sebago Lake for two weeks. When I was 7 my parents bought a summer house very close to the lake and the street we lived on had its own private beach. I spent summers there for about 30 years. We would pack up and move up there the day after school got out and come back just before school started. My dad came home to work each week and came up on the weekends. Many of the houses on the street were rentals and after a time we got to know the families that came each summer for the same weeks. I remember a family with 11 children from Larchmont, NY, they would rent two cottages and the older kids would stay in one and the younger kids stayed with their parents in the other. We had a lot of fun with them. They came every year for the same two weeks in July. There were many others and I still keep in touch with them today. After I had children of my own I continued the tradition until I had to work full time after my divorce.

My parents sold the house about 9 years ago and bought a motor home to do some traveling. They have traveled all over the country and now they spend winters in Florida and summers here in Massachusetts. For the past 5 or 6 years we have been camping at a campground about 1/8 of a mile from our old summer home, we get to see lots of old friends every summer and I really love the lake. This is the first summer that we didn’t rent a site for the entire summer. Last year we spent our two weeks vacation there and then went every weekend. This year we have a new home and we love being home. Also the price of gas makes it cost prohibitive to drive 300+ miles every weekend. Writing about that made me feel good; I really did have a blessed childhood.

I have been stressing lately about my 19 year old son. He really is on my very last nerve. I need to add some history here. When he was 5 he was diagnosed with ADD (not ADHD). He was not at all hyperactive, as a matter of fact he was pretty much a very quite kid that got little attention in school because he was a wall flower. When he was 8 his father and I got divorced and a year later his dad moved from MA to South Carolina and remarried a woman with 4 children. He only saw his dad once or twice a year for a few years, him and his sister would go for 6 weeks every summer and he would come up once a year to visit with them here sometime around Thanksgiving. I remarried when Nick was 12 to a man with no children, he took on the responsibility of being the “dad” figure and he did the “dad” things. He loves all 3 of my kids like they were his own. When “Nick” was 15 his dad was diagnosed with brain cancer and he died just a few months later. My husband and I took the kids down to visit several times to visit during those months. My current husband helped to care for my dying ex-husband. I think that speaks to the kind of man that I married. I have to say that I choose well both times I married. My first husband was a good man but circumstances and life caused us to need to go in another direction. I was very sad when he passed.

So back to “Nick” he is a lazy, angry, unemployed 19 year old who sleeps all day while we are at work and hangs out with his friends and girlfriend until all hours of the night. He rarely asks for money because it seems that his girlfriend is taking care of that. I’ve met her and she seems like a nice girl and she is going to one of the area colleges that you have to be very smart to get into, however I question her judgment as far as “Nick” is concerned.

Getting him to do anything around the house (mowing the lawn, trash, weeding, keeping his room clean…) always involves a fight. I have to ask several times and then yell and scream at him to get anything done. My husband is past being patient with him. “Nick” uses tools and doesn’t replace them, he leaves trash out where he parks his car, he doesn’t pick up after himself and does a lousy job at anything we ask him to do.

Every time my husband goes to get a tool or whatever… he can’t find it.

It seems that all I do these days is fight with “Nick” or fight with my husband about “Nick”. I’m tired. He really needs to find someplace else to live so I can have some peace. However, with no job and no money I can’t just toss him out on the street. Yesterday I told him that he should go and see the Navy recruiter. He is supposed to hear something about a job he applied for today. If he gets it I am going to tell him that he needs to find a friend to share a place with or something. When I get back from vacation I am planning to tell him that he can’t be at the house during the day while we are at work. He shouldn’t be allowed to sleep all day and party all night while we work to provide the roof over his head.

Sorry about the complaining but I needed to do that.

July 8th weight

Weigh in for the week. 253 lbs. that's a total of 64 since surgery in April - 12 weeks ago.

Happy 4th of July!

Enjoy the holiday and be safe everyone.

Time for a picture

BEFORE & TODAY

July already?

I can hardly believe its July already. I love this warm sunny summer weather. Today is a perfect day and I have been making excuses to get out of the building where I work all morning.

This past weekend was very good. I went to the beach on Friday with my mother, sister and a good friend. It was not a very good beach day. It was cloudy and it even rained on us a bit. We sat in our chairs and continued to read and chat despite the bad weather. We did a little shopping after our time on the beach and then went out for dinner. I didn’t order anything; I just had a bit of what each of them had ordered. We had a nice time. Saturday I did things around the house and enjoyed my day at home. Sunday my mom had cake (sugar free) for me for my birthday. All in all it was a wonderful weekend.

Last night I went to my Monday night Weight loss support group at the hospital. It was a bigger group than usual. There are two groups that meet on alternating Mondays and because of vacation schedules and such we have two combined groups meetings. I really didn’t have much to add to the group this week. There was a lot of talk about how people treat you differently after you loose weight and some people were feeling excluded by their friends and family. They were not being invited to places where there might be food or not invited to go for a bike ride if the others were going to be stopping for ice cream. I haven’t experienced that at this point so I didn’t have much to offer. All I could say is that you need to be honest with people when you are feeling left out and hurt. They need to know that we are okay going for a bike ride and not eating the ice cream. I suppose they are just trying to be helpful and not sabotage our weight loss by putting the ice cream in front of us.

This week is already going by quickly and with the holiday on Friday it will be a nice short week. I have a fun weekend ahead. We are campers and we have lots of friends who camp with us. We all have trailers, from pop-ups to big 5th wheel trailers. Rather than go away and pay campground fees and gas prices we have invited our friends to come and camp at our house in our yard. We have water and electric for their hook ups but we do not have waste dumping. Our yard is plenty big enough for the trailers and tents that are coming and we have a nice place for a campfire in the evenings. We have a pool and a hot tub, a volleyball net has been set up and the horseshoes are all set too. We live about ¼ of a mile from the town beach at a small lake. We have a couple of kayaks and a canoe that we can take to the beach if anyone wants to do the boat thing. We have planned our menu and everyone is bringing food and drinks. I am really looking forward to camping at home this weekend.

This is our first summer in our new home and I feel like I am on vacation all the time when I am there. There is little need to go away; we have it all in our own back yard. It’s just much more fun when you can share it with friends.

I did not lose any weight this week. This is the first week with no loss at all. I am still 258 lbs. I know what the problem is, Doritos. It’s kind of funny that I have a hard time eating the things I should like chicken, turkey… and tuna, but I have no problem at all with crunchy things like Doritos. Next week will be better. I would love to be under 250 before I go on vacation at the end of July.

Happy Fourth of July!