Sunday, November 24, 2013

Another Thanksgiving after WLS

Jackie will again be working her little tail off getting things in the house ready. She will be scrubbing and polishing everything to make it look nice in the house for our guests. She is always so concerned that there may be a piece of lint or something out of place. She will vacuum the floors at least 10 times before everyone get here. Well maybe that is an exaggeration, just 5 times.

I am more concerned about the food and making sure it is ready and cooked correctly. Jackie and I will work together as we always to get it all done. As we get older it is harder and harder to set up and prepare a big shindig like this each holiday season. We will be doing it again on Christmas and probably New Years as well. Buy we love having the family around and will hold the festivals here as long as we can. One year as I remember when the girls were all in school and nobody else was coming to our home for Thanksgiving, we went to a restaurant and had a buffet. It was good, but it was just not the same with the family all around laughing and having a good time, so we would just as soon continue with what we do for as long as we can.

This will be my second Thanksgiving after my WLS. I plan on having a little more this year than I did last year as far as volume of food. I can tolerate a little more these days but still will have a hard time eating more than would be on a small salad plate. But I am going to have more than a square inch of pie like I did last year. However I know what will happen if I over eat and I have to make sure I have nothing after about 7:30 in the evening or I will suffer with heartburn all night and I definitely do not want that.


Everyone have a great holiday and please remember those family members and friends who are not with us physically anymore and be thankful for the family and friends you will enjoy being with this year. 

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Had Another Birthday

Well yesterday was my 72nd birthday. I had a wonderful day and enjoyed best wishes from many friends and family. I am still very amazed that I have lived this long and I am looking forward to many more years.

It really was quite an achievement in that my mom was told that I would be very lucky to live to the age of about 35 years as I had very bad asthma as a child. Two different times my heart stopped when I was in the hospital and had to have it started again while I was there. In those days they didn’t have those paddles that they shocked you back to life again, they had to take a long needle and inject adrenaline into your heart through my chest cavity. But thankfully, asthma has pretty much left me as I got older and other than a small spell when I eat something I know I am allergic too.

Anyway my life now is much better after WLS even though it was just 2 yeas ago before the surgery. I can eat most anything I want but still not much more than about a cup of solid food, and I am full. But I could eat that amount several times a day and of course I would gain weight again. So I still must be very careful not let my addiction to food overcome me and I know it has the ability to do that if I give it a chance and don’t weigh and measure everything I put in my mouth.

Yesterday my mom, who is 95 took me to dinner. Because it was Veterans’ Day many of the restaurants were very full. I did not want to spend a lot of time waiting for a table, and my mom has a lot of problems with her legs and hips so I did not want her to have to spend a lot of time getting something to eat. So we went to an Asian buffet here in my town that is quite large and can serve many people very quickly. Well that was a mistake. I was told never to try something in a place like a restaurant that you have not eaten before. Well I did not follow that advice and had some things that I had not had before and I got very sick. I thought I was going to through up but did not want to do it in the bathroom at the restaurant so I was just sick and it seemed like hours before everyone else to finish eating and go home. We did finally go home and I was able to start feeling better.


But all and all, I had a good day and I am looking forward to many more years now that I have a body that can do just about anything I really want to do. I am going to be getting ready to do a lot of remodeling of our home just after the holidays and really looking forward to it as I know now I can do what just two years ago without the WLS would have been impossible. 

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Bored

Well one thing I am learning is that if you want to keep your weight off, it is much easier to do if you can keep yourself busy. When the weather around here was good, I could always find something to do around the yard. But now the normal weather for this time of year is in full force and it is too cold and wet to be outside much.

Now because I am somewhat bored, I find myself thinking of eating something all the time. I have been pretty successful as there are not many things in the house that would be that bad for me to eat unless of course I ate a lot of them. We now have herbal tea each day at about 2 PM and will usually have a shortbread cookie with the tea. I of course count the calories in my daily menu plan and record it on MFP, but still it would be easy to eat many of them during the day and that would lead to problems.

There are only so many things I want to look up or access on my computer. Only so much time I want to spend on my other hobby amateur radio. After that I find myself looking for something to do around the house to keep my mind off of eating something because I am bored.

It is my birthday in a couple of days and Jackie got me a home weather station. It is fun to set it up and play with it a little and it did take me away from boredom for a time, but now I have to look for more things to do. I put the weather station on my computer so I can see the display better and it gives me more details than the regular control panel can have on it. I also registered and put my station on the Weather Underground and you can find it on the internet by searching for stations in Lacey, Washington. The name of my station is Slum of Lacey.

Of course we have the Thanksgiving holiday coming up soon and then Christmas so I will be kind of busy during those times, but they involve food so I also got to be extra careful that I do not over indulge with all that great stuff we have around.

After the first of the year, I will start putting in new floors in the house, painting, and remodeling the kitchen a little so for quite a few months until Spring, I will be very busy doing those tasks so I will not have much time to be bored and will probably wish I could actually be bored again.