Sights & Sounds of Christmas

Every December, San Marcos, which is a town about 45 minutes north of San Antonio has a Christmas event called The Sights and Sounds of Christmas. San Marcos is actually where I went to college at Southwest Texas State University which has now just become Texas State University and, when Tanner was about 3 or 4 we moved there so that he could start preschool at the Texas School for the Deaf in Austin.

Needless to say, San Marcos holds many special memories for me. It was the place where I finally discovered what I wanted to be when I grew up. Once I had that focus, it was like nothing could stop me. I could get through just about anything, including a Physics class that scared the crap out of me and almost kept me from pursuing my degree in Communication Disorders to begin with. My time in college was probably one of the happiest periods of my young adult life. I was thinner (not “thin” but thinner), in great shape, excelling in my academic pursuits and feeling great about who I was inside and out. I had a new found confidence that had been lacking through most of my earlier years and while I always struggled with insecurities, I think I was most sure of myself at this time. So yeah…good times.

Later, when we moved back there to shorten the commute to TSD, I found that I really loved living in a smaller town; especially as a young mother. I used to take Tanner to the park there and Erik, Tanner and I would often go to the river and walk the trails after he got home from work. Tanner loved to stop and watch the ducks (well really, he often used them as target practice using pebbles he found alongside the river, but luckily at the age of 3 he hadn’t perfected his aim). Sometimes, we’d just sit by the river and watch it meander past us. Nature was always something that calmed Tanner down and having moments where I could enjoy this challenging kiddo meant the world to the young stressed out mom I was at the time.

San Marcos was also the place where my son went through his super hero phase, wearing a cape (which was really just a towel until he got the batman costume) AT ALL TIMES for at least two years straight. It was also where I began homeschooling him when we discovered TSD wasn’t going to be a good fit. I have fond memories of homeschooling get-togethers and all the friends we made in that network. I LOVED exploring concepts with Tanner and discovering that we shared a love for Science.

I also remember attending the Sights and Sounds of Christmas with Tanner several times over the years and seeing the wonder on his face at all the lights, manufactured “snowflakes” that would rain down as you entered the event area, petting zoo and more. This was the first time I’d been able to go with him in 5 years. The last time I took him, I had a difficult time navigating the area, but I made it. This time, I still had difficulty and had to rest my legs, but only after being on my feet for well over an hour. Five months ago, I could barely manage 5 minutes on my feet before needing to sit down.


I was a bit disappointed, because after standing in line for about 15 minutes waiting for the bus to get to the entrance, then standing in lines for admission, tokens, carousel, kettle corn, and hot chocolate (yes I sampled the latter, but they were mainly for tanner lol), it had been over an hour on my feet. They had nowhere to sit, so I found a curb and sat down. I had gone with my friend Shannon, her daughter Jordan, and their cousin Jeff (who is from Canada and has an ADORABLE Canadian accent “Eh?” He’s also just plain ol’ adorable, but sorry ladies, he’s spoken for…) and although I really felt I needed maybe 10 minutes to rest my legs, I felt bad making them wait, especially since Jordan didn’t have a jacket and it wasn’t getting any warmer. So, ultimately they decided to head over to the main ride area without me. I think they planned on coming back for me, but once they got there, they said it was so crowded, they knew if they came back for me, it would be too late, so I basically sat there for about an hour twiddling my thumbs. I was worried if I went looking for them, we’d cross somewhere and then play hell trying to meet back up to leave (cell phone service was out for ATT users in San Marcos for some reason).

When they finally made it back, it was time to go and Tanner remarked that he felt bad that I got left behind. I assured him that I was happy that he had a good time and that next year would be WAY different! He was going to have to get in shape, because HE was going to be the one trying to keep up with me ;) So, although I didn’t have the experience I hoped I’d have on my first major outing post-surgery, over the weekend I discovered that it brought up lots of wonderful memories and was yet one more small step towards reclaiming my life. Walking under the lights with Tanner, sharing a hot cocoa as we people watched and admired the lights, and yes…even sitting on a curb for an hour breathing in the crisp December air beats the heck out of another night in my recliner which is probably where you would have found me this time last year.

Bigfoot Hunting and Other Things You Can Do After Weightloss

Actual transcript of conversation that occurred between Tanner and I this week:

Tanner: Mom?
Me: Yeah?
Tanner: When you get skinny…?
(this has become a regular topic of conversation lately…we enjoy talking about the sort of things we are going to do as I lose weight and get healthier)
Me: Yes?
Tanner: Can we go on a Bigfoot hunt?
(this, however, is the first time he’s proposed this sort of activity)
Me: Uhh, yeahhhhhh….No. That sounds like the perfect activity for you and your dad though.
(I blame Erik for letting him watch all those crap conspiracy shows, ghost hunter shows, etc. As I write this they are watching Destination Truth. This particular episode is about the Chupacabra, so I suspect he may propose a Chupacabra hunt at some point in the next few days)
Tanner: (waiting for a few moments) Uhh mom?
Me: Yeah sweetie?
Tanner: Why not?
Me: Sigh…because that just isn’t my sort of thing honey, I think Dad would have more fun doing that.
(a few minutes pass by as he sits behind me as I sort out my office)
Tanner: Mom?
Me: Yes?
Tanner: What about if we go hunting aliens?
Me: Nah, I don’t think that’s my cup of tea either.
Tanner: What are you talking about? I thought you liked aliens?
Me: Oh I LOVE aliens, but I’m just not the sort of person to go hunting them down.
(Tanner’s face drops immediately and then in a defeated voice)
Tanner: I can’t believe you mom! I thought you were a science genius! :(

I guess, no matter how awesomely gifted your parents are, we are just destined to disappoint our kids at some point. I did feel bad, but I do have many other things I’m looking forward to as I get this weight off. We’ve talked about going to the county fair, visiting SeaWorld, Fiesta Texas, Disney World. Taking vacations, buying bikes and riding after he gets home from school. Those are just a few of the things we’ve discussed.

I also realized the other day that I am actually enjoying the seasons as they change. It just kind of hit me as I sat there. I was looking forward to Fall, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. It kind of surprised me because I hadn’t realized that, in the last several years, I hadn’t really looked forward to these things. Why? Because, when you are stuck in your house, changing seasons…special seasonal activities…parties, etc. All those things really cease to exist. When you don’t leave your house for weeks at a time, what does it matter if the weather cools off or if the trees start to turn different shades? Who cares if so-and-so is having a cool Halloween party or if the family is getting together for Thanksgiving? Every day is just like the last no matter what time of year it is.

It isn’t that I didn’t KNOW my weight was having this effect on my quality of life, but it just hit me like a ton of bricks how much my perspective has changed since losing some weight. Not only that, but for the first time in a very long time, actually BELIEVING that I’m going to get the rest of it off. It is as if I’ve been living in a beige world for the last 10 years and slowly things are coming into Technicolor focus. As all of this slowly dawned on me, I realized I was smiling. Smiling is good.

Unexpected side effect of my WLS

I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you another wonderful side effect of this surgery. It has absolutely nothing to do with me though. Since I started getting serious about this surgery and working towards losing the 30 lbs I had to get off pre-surgery up to now, Tanner has lost almost 20 lbs!

We really started changing the way we ate; cooking more at home, limiting eating out to one day a week (Friday) provided Tanner worked out at least 5 days the preceding week and ate healthy the rest of the time. A friend warned me against rewarding him with food, but I mentioned that I thought the lesson in this exercise was more about how you CAN indulge once in a while as long as you are eating healthy and being physically active the rest of the time. Initially, it was a shock to Tanner’s system (more his head than anything else) because we ate out quite a bit as a family and he wasn’t all that thrilled with eating “boring” meals at home. Starting off, we did a lot of lean cuisines at home because I was still pretty exhausted and cooking took a lot out of me so I can’t say that I blame him referring to dinner time as boring. Now that I’m feeling healthier, I have been able to create quite a few recipes and borrow others from the internet which makes him feel like we are indulging without really breaking our caloric bank. I hope to eventually start adding these to my recipe blog. I’ve put it off because I always forget to take pictures when I’m cooking, but I think I’ll just start uploading what we are eating because I know low carbers (VSGers in particular) are always looking for ways to get their protein in. Don’t get the wrong idea though…what I’m eating isn’t Martha Stewart special by any stretch of the imagination.

Not only has Tanner been walking on the treadmill at home (at least 30 minutes at a time, often almost an hour), but often elects to walk without even being reminded to walk! He has also been going swimming with me almost every day and taking a water aerobics class with me. He gets excited every time he weighs himself and sees the numbers going down. It really is cool and I’m hoping this might mean that I can still have a positive impact on his diet and exercise habits before he gets too old and moves out on his own. Guess we’ll have to see.

What? No, I couldn't possibly eat another thing! I've had 15g of protein for breakfast!

1:19PM CST:
Holy lord a mighty…just did 5 minutes on the treadmill and it felt like 5 hours. Going to attempt another 5 on my lunch hour and another 5 before bed. My knee really bothered me most of the “walk,” but seemed to feel a bit better towards the end for some reason? Here’s hoping I can manage more later.

I also had a fruity little protein meal replacement shake for breakfast and let me tell ya…the satiety center of my brain apparently doesn’t register protein because I am STARVING at the moment and chanting “Nothing tastes as good as thin feels!” Erik made chocolate muffins for breakfast this morning too :P I had a tiny nibble just to see what they tasted like because we were trying a new “recipe” where you mix a boxed cake mix with a can of pureed pumpkin. It was honestly amazingly tasty and lower in fat and higher in fiber because of the pumpkin. What Tanner doesn’t know won’t kill him.

Speaking of…this past week I have been HORRIBLE when it comes to eating. For various reasons, we ordered pizza two or three times this week and Thursday, we ordered from Dominoes because I just wanted a sandwich. Tanner saw one of those pasta bread bowls and wanted the three cheese thing. I knew it was probably heart attack on a plate, but figured we were going to be cutting way back with me fasting and went ahead and let him have it. Yesterday I tried to find out nutritional information on the thing and was unfortunately NOT surprised to see that it has 1460 calories. Apparently it is considered two servings, but of course Tanner and I weren’t aware of that. Anyway, I can’t find a fat content to save my life, but I’m sure there is a reason for that. I don’t think I want to know. He will definitely NOT be ordering this again diet or no. And yeah, go ahead and sign me up for mother of the year please.

As for blog entries, I think what I’m going to start doing (she proclaims with every intention of following through) is updating the same post throughout the day as I exercise, etc. I’ll probably have something more to say, but I will at least do this just to keep me focused. Kind of like facebook updates only they will be HERE. Actually, I’m kind of thinking it might be something along the lines of what I did Christmas day…that was fun right?

For now, I have to get back to work so I’ll post in a bit when I get my next 5 minute trek on the treadmill completed!

2:39PM

Raced downstairs to make my lunchtime shake and completely missed seeing the flowers Erik bought for me on the kitchen Island. Stargazer lilies again, LOVE the smell!

I was so focused on making that shake and by the time I poured it in the glass, it was mostly bubbly foam. You could literally lift up the glass and it felt empty lol. Oh well "Nothing tastes as good as thin feels, Nothing tastes as good as thin feels, Nothing tastes as good as a hot fudge sundae with nuts and whipped..oops lost myself there"

3:08:

Ok, so I had a shake about an hour ago and I am ravenous at the moment. WTH? I know my stomach has to shrink, but the HMR shakes I use to drink filled me up more than this! I think the next couple of days are going to be grumpy days at the V's!

4:12PM CST

Ok to heck with what the doctor said...I'M HUNGRY! Seriously, each shake has 110 calories and I'm supposed to have one for breakast, one for lunch and then a small dinner (1 portion of protein the size of a deck of cards and a CD sized serving of veggies). I am going to have to work my way down to that boys and girls because I won't last the day and if Erik hadn't been here, I probably would have ate much more than I did. For the record, this is what i just had to eat:

1 banana
1 of the muffins we made this morning. I'll figure out the counts in a bit.
1 can of healthy request chicken and rice soup.

We are having taco salads for dinner so I should stay WELL under 1000 calories for the day.

I wasn't able to get another 5 minutes in. Erik is worried about my knee. If I can't get another 5 in later tonight, then I"m going to do some of the exercises my PT gave me to strengthen my knees.

It's a Wonderful Life?

Ok, I just had a God moment I think. I’ve been mulling things over since my last post. If you read my blog with any regularity, you have probably noticed a few patterns. First, I’ve had some crappy things happen to me. Second, I’m sometimes willing to take an honest look at myself and how I’ve managed to get to where I am today. Third, I just LOVE to pull out the violin every couple of posts and whine and complain and throw a grand ol’ pity party for myself. It is kind of a warped little dance I’ve been doing all year. I think the great thing about my blogging is that there is PROOF out there now; proof that I can’t ignore when it’s convenient. Proof that shows me that yes, while I have made some progress in some areas over the last decade or two…I still have a lot to learn. There is still a LOT of room for growth…and I’m not just talking about my weight. We all know that my weight is a symptom of much BIGGER struggle I have going on in my head.

The other day, I read a friend’s blog. She never fails to put a smile on my face, whether I’m reading her blog or chatting with her via msn. It is kind of ironic honestly, because as funny as she is…there have been many times in the time I’ve known her that she hasn’t always told me what I wanted to hear. We work together and when things between Erik and I started to go south, she was the one that really helped strip my blinders off. She helped me see all the excuses I was making for him and for myself and was relentless in forcing me to see things as they really WERE and not the way I was trying to imagine them to be. Until recently (when I gave her a link to my blog) I don’t think she had ANY idea about the extent of my weight problem and I was really ashamed to share the link with her. I even asked her not to read it until I was ready and as far as I know, she honored that request (I gave her the ok a few months ago). She hasn’t really said anything about the blog or about the realization that I am a ginormous fatty(we don’t work together as often as we used to so maybe it’s because of that…I find it hard to believe she would hold back if she truly had something to say ;) . To be honest, I wasn’t so embarrassed about her learning how much I weighed, seeing actual pictures, or reviewing my gargantuan measurements. I was ashamed because she was going to see my overwhelming and pathetic penchant for wallowing in my problems. Now I say she hasn’t really said anything about my blog, but today I think she told me just what I needed to hear…more on this later.

As ashamed as I am about my weight, I am truly probably more ashamed that I will turn 40 next year and while I may have moments where I can recognize my own part or responsibility in where I am at today, I haven’t quite figured out how to USE these realizations to move me PAST my problems; which brings me to this recent post of hers. I would encourage you to go read it for yourself, but here’s a little synopsis: Basically, she wrote about “It’s a Wonderful Life” and how she’s always had a problem watching it; not because it was sappy and at times saccharine, but mainly because, in typical Tammy fashion, she saw things in it that many other people missed: the fact that George had an awful lot to do with his current situation. George made decisions and choices throughout his life and those choices set him, as much as any circumstances outside of his control, on the path that led him to where we see him at the beginning of the movie. I read that and immediately felt the bright glaring spotlight of shame focused on my own glaring culpability in my current situation.

The weight is easy. I’m fat because ultimately, I make choices about what I’m going to or not going to put in my mouth and most of the time, I choose poorly. I also choose to not go to the gym or even do little things around the house that might slowly begin to build my strength up. Granted, I have a lot of crap in my head that often defeats me, but ultimately…the responsibility is on me. I choose to give into it all. I allow it to overwhelm me and defeat me. Even that is a decision I make.

Let’s talk about some other decisions I’ve made that have gotten me to where I am. First, I fell in love with Erik. I knew from the beginning that something wasn’t quite right. It took us two years (as good friends) with subtle and most times not so subtle chasing on my part to land him. That probably should have been my first clue. Once we were together, there were plenty of other signs that I chose to ignore. Regardless of anything Erik did in this situation, I made many decisions and really almost “forced” our relationship in a direction it wasn’t going in naturally. I didn’t get pregnant on purpose, but since we all know Tanner wasn’t immaculately conceived, I think we can agree that I should accept my part in creating him.

The financial problems we have encountered have also largely been due to our own choices. Yes, we have had oodles and oodles of medical bills and other unexpected things come up, I’m fairly certain that if we hadn’t been living way beyond our means for quite some time, things wouldn’t be quite as desperate as they are now. We would have been in trouble, but I think we could have dug our way out by now.

So yes, in many ways, my life sucks, but ultimately I think the thing that sucks the most is that I have to cope with the fact that I am the biggest reason it sucks; not erik, or Tanner, or my mom dying or whatever else I latch on to periodically to distract myself from the reality of my situation.

So these are things I’ve been mulling over since reading Tammy’s post. Flash forward to today…I get a call from my grandfather (hi papa :). He called to tell me he was sending money for Tanner’s Christmas, we talked about his upcoming wedding next March and how I was going to try to get Tanner and I up there around that time and somehow we ended up talking about my blog. Basically, he mentioned that he had read my last pity party (my words, not his) and felt like he needed to remark on some common threads or patterns he’s seen in the weave of my blog over the last year. I’m sure you can guess what they were. He acknowledged that while I can at times have moments of crystal clear self realization where I am open to accepting my part in the way my life has turned out…I also have many moments where I slip back into these periods of stagnation which keeps me stuck in this warped little static cha-cha you’ve watched me do all year. There can’t be any real growth because every time I take one step forward, I lose ground again. I set goals and then almost immediately lose sight of them and fall back into old patterns…the same old patterns that got me right to where I am today. Here is where I could come up with a bunch of excuses WHY I lose ground, but come on…you’ve heard them all before and in the end, you and I both know they are irrelevant. If I want to change my circumstances, I am the only one with the power to do that.

In the end, I thanked my grandfather for his advice, we said our goodbyes and, pondering the last bit of our conversation, went to check my email and there…like a period at the end of that conversation with my grandfather was Tammy’s comment on my last blog. You can go read it for yourself, but once again…I had to smile. I don’t know if it is God or fate or what, but someone or something is definitely trying to slap me upside the head this morning. Thanks Papa and Tammy for giving me the swift kick I needed. Here’s hoping I can keep my eye on the prize this next year and actually make some progress towards my goals.

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The scale is calling me

It's been calling me for a week. I know where it is. It isn't difficult to get to, but somehow I keep forgetting to pull it out and step on it. Part of me is worried I'm going to get the big "E" which means "EEEEEK you are too damn fat for this scale, please exit the platform." I have a feeling I may have gained some weight in the last few weeks. I feel like I have. I've been fighting a depression the last month or so and while I've made some gains emotionally, I think I've been resorting to old habits to cope with the depression.

The holidays pretty much suck for me nowdays. I lost my mom on Thanksgiving back in 2002 so every year I have to cope with that anniversary. Add to that the fact that I have NO family around me (outside of Tanner and Erik's family) and the holidays overall just seem like a non-event anymore. I feel bad, because Tanner gets shortchanged too. Our house is too small for a real tree so we have this sad little charlie brown Christmas tree on a coffee table downstairs. We haven't even bothered decorating it. I also have my 15th wedding anniversary coming up this New Years Eve. Both Erik and I really stopped counting our anniversaries back in 2008 since that is when we officially decided we were splitting up. The only reason we are still married really is because we are too poor to get a divorce.

I was talking to a friend yesterday about my grief over my marriage resurfacing and how difficult it was to understand it because I knew that I would never take Erik back and ...just for the record...I'm pretty sure Erik has NO plans on trying to come back (to the marriage...he lives with us, but you know...it's complicated lol) 20 years of wondering why I was never enough for him was quite enough for me thanks. We have a much better relationship now that all that pressure is off to keep a fake marriage going while ignoring the elephant (which wasn't ME btw!) in the room.

In talking to my friend yesterday, I realized that what I think I was grieving most about was that I really didn't have a chance to fight for my marriage. The fact that he is gay means there is absolutely nothing I could have done to save my marriage (short of growing a new appendage and taking steroids to get the kind of physique he is apparently attracted to). When I was thinner, I just thought I wasn't good enough of a person for him...and even though I was in fairly good shape, I always felt like the "fat girl" so I guess I probably still blamed how I looked even then. As I gained weight, our relationship actually improved; probably because I wasn't pressing him for sex or getting upset at the lack of physical affection he failed to show or initiate.

I don't want you to think that Erik was a jerk. He wasn't and he isn't. He is a really great guy who made all the wrong decisions for the right reasons. He was trying to live the life he felt was moral. The life his family wanted for him. He got me pregnant trying to convince himself he was straight and then married me because it was the right thing to do. He was always a great father and a great friend, but I realize he was never really a husband to me. Not in the way that separates a great friend from a great husband. I'm not just talking sex here...I'm talking about the fact that I realized the other day that I have never had a man look in my eyes, tell me he loves me, and MEAN it the same way I MEAN it. I've never had a man be just as happy to be with me as I was to be with him. I've never known THAT kind of love and I sometimes wonder if I ever will.

Of course it could be a lot worse. For the time that we were married, I had a man that I enjoyed being around, was a great father, good provider for the most part and yes....he did love me, still loves me...just more of the brother/sister kind of love and not the passionate sort. I know many other couples who have that passion, but every other aspect of their marriage sucks! All in all, if I had to chose between the two, I'd probably choose Erik all over again even knowing what I know now. Of course, if I had ever had the choice between Erik and a happy and healthy relationship with a straight man, I would have chosen the straight man hands down and kept Erik as my fabulous gay best friend.

Tanner, in his uncanny ability to pick up on my emotional state, broke my heart the other day. Erik calls him from work on his lunch break and out of absolutely NOWHERE, Tanner gets on the phone with him and says "I don't want you to break up." Not knowing what he was referring to, Erik said "What do you mean you don't want what to break?" Tanner said "I don't want you to break up with mommy" and started to cry :( Wahhhhh I have no idea where it came from, we haven't talked about anything like this recently and hadn't prior to him talking to Erik that evening. Erik did a great job of reassuring Tanner that we would always be there for him no matter what happened between Erik and I, that he would never have to choose between us, etc. In the end, Tanner was somewhat satisfied, but I think it was hard for both Erik and I to see him struggling with the concept.

Ok, well guess this is proof that blogging helps because I think I'm in a much better frame of mind at the end of this post than I was at the beginning. Someone recently told me to count my blessings when I asked how to get through a rough holiday season. It seems so obvious doesn't it? Almost cliche, but when I read her suggestion it really did help. Instead of focusing on what I don't have this holiday season, count my blessings...Tanner is doing great in his new placement at school, Erik has a new job he loves, I have good friends around me and great blogging buddies who put up with my sporadic posting style.

Btw, I am very grateful to those of you who still read and comment despite my obvious neglect (both in posting and commenting and reading your blogs). In the past week, just getting a comment now and then actually helped me pull my but out of bed on my days off so that I could get a few things accomplished around the house.

One more update: the craft fair didn't happen. I spent weeks upon weeks preparing for it then the morning of, Erik got sick and the friend that was going with me had a domestic issue and I couldn't manage getting there and setting up on my own. I probably should have tried, but to be honest....I was scared....scared because I didn't know how far I was going to have to walk, could I unload the car by myself without having a heart attack. If I did manage it, was I going to be in any shape at the end of the day to pack everything back up, etc. For some reason, the person that could muster up the courage to carry a folding chair through Hobby Lobby took a holiday that morning. I stayed home rather than expose myself to some embarrassment at not being able to manage it on my own. This probably triggered the following week's depression to because it is yet another time my weight has limited my independence :(

Ok, enough of that! I was on my way to ending this on a positive note and I still am dammit! There is a Christmas party at Tanner's big brother's church tonight and he invited all of us. As usual, part of me doesn't want to go for all the reasons I didn't go to the craft fair, but I may force myself to go anyway. I'm sure it will be fine and I'll enjoy spending some time with Tanner OUTSIDE the darn house.

I'll let you know if courage wins out over cowardice tomorrow.

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I'm still here

I know I've been a very bad blogger. I'm definitely not going to be on Santa's good list of bloggers this year. Only coal in the cyber stocking for me :( I apologize though. I have just been very busy trying to get ready for this craft fair while working two jobs. Believe it or not, I am *just* now getting over the problem I had with the cyst that took forever to heal. I seriously never thought it would finally close completely but this past week it did. I am going to get back into the doctor just to make sure it is all ok, but it feels 100% better so I'm optimistic.

I meant to get on yesterday, but I actually ended up out shopping with my friend Shannon. YES! I actually got out of this house for the third or fourth time this month can you believe it? I wore makeup and everything see

We had to go to hobby lobby to get some stuff so that I could finish a twilight calendar I've been working on. I'll post some pictures when I get it done...so far, I really love how it's turning out and I'm not even a big fan of twilight.

You can see a few other things I've been working on at my etsy shop. I haven't uploaded much because I want to take most of it with me to the craft fair. Even with all I've finished, I still won't have much to actually sell, but I'm going to have some examples of my work, so at least I'll get my name out there a bit.

I'm still working on my website, but feel free to take a look and let me know what you think.

Erik recently got another job so that is the BIG news at our house lately. I've been begging him to get a second job for a while, but for various reasons, it just kept getting put off. I had a mini nervous breakdown the day he was contacted about this most recent job. He hadn't been good about changing out the filters in our A/C so when it stopped working, we called the landlord to fix it. Landlord realized it wasn't working because of the clogged filters. Landlord sends us a bill for $125.00. I was going through quite a bit at work and when he came in to tell me about the bill we got, I told him that I was done. I can't handle shouldering a majority of our financial needs anymore. I was tired of never being able to save any money because I was the only one that ever had the money to pay for tanner's school clothes or hearing aid repairs, etc. I literally packed up shop in the middle of the day and crawled back into bed. The next day, he got this incredible new job working as a Deaf Support Specialist (lucky for him lol...I finally told him that if he didn't get it, he was going to have to flip burgers somewhere, find something!!) So far, he loves it. I can't wait until we have more money rolling in though.

It will be nice to not have to live paycheck to paycheck. Honestly... it was getting to the point where our paychecks (due to various things) weren't even enough to pay our bills. He had missed a bunch of work at his main job due to stuff going on with Tanner, me being sick, etc so we had at least two pay periods where he didn't really bring home anything. My job has slowed way down and since most of my pay is commission, it meant that my paychecks were almost half what they should have been. It has been a looooooooooooooooooooong time since we've really had something good happen for us I almost forgot what it was like to be optimistic lol. Now, I'm budgeting and trying to prioritize how we are going to get ourselves out of this financial mess we are currently in. Keep your fingers crossed for us :)

Tanner is doing SO well at school. He's enjoying himself, making new friends, loves his teachers. That is some pretty awesome news for us too considering how the year started off. We were able to cancel our contract with the lawyers (which they were nice enough to do for us) which saved us $750.00.

I haven't weighed myself, but I don't feel like I've gained. I probably haven't lost, but I'm definitely getting more active lately. It is just what most would consider ADL's, but for me, it is activity that I haven't incorporated into my routine for quite some time. Believe me, if you aren't used to standing on your feet for periods of time, a trip to the store is quite an outing for you. I'm also working on strengthening right now, doing squats a few times a day and other exercises to strengthen my legs. I'm working on standing for longer periods when I do stuff around the house (cooking, cleaning). If we can take care of a few things financially, we hope to take Tanner to Disneyland some time next year and if I can't go on the rides because of my weight, I want to at least be able to walk as much as I want without the problems I have to endure now. So, that is my motivation at the moment...long term that is. Right now, I'd like to just be able to take over other stuff Erik's been doing like grocery shopping. It's probably crazy, but I really miss going to the grocery store. I love to cook and I really miss not being able to pick out everything myself. I guess we'll see...I've said this (or something like it) before. I guess I just need to keep plugging away...maybe eventually I'll get my butt in gear and make some progress.

How is everyone else doing? I need to catch up on my blog reading, I'm way behind!

My life: An ongoing analysis of the Soap Opera

Note: The picture above is not of the Campus Cop described in this post...I just thought it was funny.

I’m so OVERDUE, I know, but hopefully when I explain you will understand. I have been extremely busy trying to keep my kiddo out of trouble (and failing miserably I might add). I’ve also been very busy going off my diet which is obviously a great reason for not updating a blog dedicated to my big fat arse. I’ve also spent some time working on getting some of my scrapbooking stuff in order. In my spare time, I’ve also been trying to make my eHarmony profile as unattractive as possible so I will stop getting people trying to communicate with me while simultaneously coping with the fact that my husband is possibly engaging in his first bit of same sex flirting. So, let’s start from the top shall we?

1. The life and times of Tanner: my son was just suspended for the FOURTH time yesterday. He was also suspended earlier this week (Monday) for getting upset and leaving school. He just walked home with his poor aid following behind him. Fortunately for the aid, we don’t live but half a mile from school. While this was GREAT exercise for Tanner, it isn’t necessarily how I would normally encourage him to increase his activity level so we grounded him to his room until he could return to school yesterday. We realize from a historical perspective that groundings typically have about the same effect as any other type of traditional behavior modification where Tanner is concerned…the fact that we continue to have the same issues proves they DON’T work; if only it were that easy guys. We continue to ground him though because he has to have some kind of consequence and frankly, we are at a loss of what to do anymore.

We returned him to school yesterday after attending a meeting with his teacher with high hopes that he would at least make it through the day. One of the other stipulations we placed on our expectations for future behavior is NO MORE xbox or wii during the week (ever). His ability to play them on the weekends is directly correlated with his ability to make it through the week without being suspended. Again, we employ a traditional consequence without any real expectation it is going to have much impact when the going really gets rough at school. When that switch gets flipped in Tanner’s head, he just doesn’t rationalize or generalize these consequences to his behavior “in the moment.”

By lunchtime, we received a phone call from the school. Currently, we have developed a Pavlovian response to the phone ringing while Tanner is at school. Immediately upon hearing the ring, our stomach knots up, we look at caller ID and pray to see the sweet sight of one of the creditors currently hounding us; when we do…instant relief, but no such luck…it’s the school. As we fight back the rising bile in our throat, we are treated to the judgmental timbre of the Campus Cop’s lovely baritone explaining that they have been working for the past half hour to calm Tanner down. Apparently, Tanner was agitated this morning and while on the computer, tried to visit a game site instead of work on the educational stuff his teacher had set up for him. The new aid reached over and “x’d” out the browser he had opened which of course caused Tanner to slam the tip of his pencil into the keyboard in a rage.

One note about Tanner: When he is already agitated, such a drastic move is tantamount to lighting the fuse of a very volatile stick of dynamite. Of course, when someone new is getting to know him, you can imagine there is a bit of a learning curve and I’m afraid the aid found out just how quickly we can jump the rails while on this curve.

After his attempted keyboardicide, he announced he was going home and this led to them chasing him around the school for a while until he calmed down (read: got too out of breath/tired) enough to go with the campus cop. Erik headed to school to pick him up and after having the situation explained to him, was treated to a “lecture” by the campus cop (said lecture was directed at Tanner, but most assuredly meant for us as well) who informed him that if this behavior continued, he WOULD take him downtown where he WOULD put him in juvenile detention and his parents WOULD NOT be able to save him. Not only does this imply that said parents (hi there, *waves* we’re standing right here  ) have spent their lifetime trying to “save” a delinquent rather than employing any REAL parenting methods thus producing a child with the problems Tanner has, but it also assumes that we haven’t actually explained this to Tanner 50 gazillion times in the past. It also assumes that it will have some impact on Tanner. (um, hi *waves* me again…shitty parent: I know you know this but obviously don’t care, but just for the sake of argument, I think it might help to remind you that he has multiple diagnoses in addition to organic brain damage and while I don’t take learned behavior and choice completely out of the equation…he simply doesn’t have the ability to process this information the way most kids do so what you are saying…I can almost guarantee you…will have absolutely NO effect) to which Wonder Cop says “Oh, he KNOWS” with the look that says “ wake up and smell the handcuffs deluded parents…your kid is a waste of space.”

Campus Cop is apparently done bestowing the wisdom he has gained by his almost 1.5 hrs with our kiddo (cumulative time spent with Tanner over the last month). Who knew? Apparently that is ALL he needed to completely figure our kid out. Where was he 13 years ago when all this started; when I had an 18 month old biting himself, bashing his head against various objects and experiencing rages over relatively minor setbacks like putting his juice in the blue cup instead of the red one or (behavior that is IDENTICAL to the behavior we see today, although somewhat improved).

Silly me, I’ve wasted all my time reading every single parenting book on the market, seeking the health of multiple doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists and other health professionals, going through numerous different types of medications (both for kid and parent), praying daily (and sometimes hourly) for God to either heal my kid or give me the strength I needed to parent him, etc etc. I could literally go on for hours about all the time I’ve apparently wasted trying to help my kid when the answer was so simple…I just needed Campus Cop to come to my rescue and threaten my child with a lifetime of incarceration. Needless to say, I’m anxious to see if this works! Of course we’ve warned Tanner about this ourselves and he HAS actually been arrested (at age 11) and taken down in the back of a squad car, fingerprinted, mugshotted, the whole nine yards, but maybe Campus Cops have magical powers I’m not aware of that succeed where other methods fail. I’ll keep you guys posted.

In the meantime, we wait to see if the school is going to press charges as it is a misdemeanor offense to destroy school property. I don’t expect them to, but needless to say…Tanner is out of school until we go back to ARD. I had a long conversation with the special ed “person” at the school about my opinion of this Campus Cop and mentioned that it might be helpful to have him sit down with Tanner’s medical file before offering anymore parenting gems, but indicated that I didn’t really expect it to make much of a difference where he was concerned. He’s obviously made up his mind about Tanner based on his limited interaction and he, my friends, is “EXHIBIT A” when it comes to analyzing why our juvie centers and prisons are made up primarily of children and adults with special needs. It is so much easier to make the obvious assumption that they are bad seeds with crappy parents than to actually sit down and try to understand what is going on in their lives/bodies/minds so that you can actually HELP them.

Oh well, I know I’m repeating myself at this point. I guess I’ll continue this post tomorrow where we will resume an accounting for what I’ve been up to whilst not posting. I promise more soap-opera-like goodness is in store because in our household…when it rains it pours like a sonofab****. I will actually have a few good things to talk about so it might be fun, for the novelty if nothing else…as always…thanks for reading xx


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On my own and Dorkin' out with my bad self

I got off work this afternoon and had the house all to myself. I grabbed my favorite CD of the moment, (I'm actually still listening to it, this song is playing at the moment LOVE IT!) ran downstairs, put it on our old Bose system and started dancing like a fool. Good lord, if you don't know what a 400+ lb woman looks like dancing, count yourself lucky! I'm sure it was horrendous, but I had fun and burned a few calories in the process. I only lasted a few songs, but it was a heck of a lot more fun than getting on the treadmill and I decided that I'm going to have to do that more often!

I then got busy sorting out some boxes Erik pulled out of one of our closets. I'm busy trying to get all my scrapbooking stuff out and organized (which I am miserable at...the organizing, not the scrapbooking). I decided that I was going to start trying to get some business doing custom scrapbooks. I've made several for other people in the past. The last one I made I charged close to $1000.00 for. I think you guys will enjoy the name I came up with for the business; well actually a good friend of mine came up with it, but it was my idea :) I'll tell you all more about it as I move along. Right now I'm trying to get some kind of a website up without having to pay someone to do it for me. I can barely do the HTML for this blog much less put a website together so I can't speak for how it's going to look when I'm done. I don't expect to make $1000.00 off every album, but I think I might be able to get enough business to help pay our legal bills at the least. Any little bit will help and this is something I really miss. I'm going to try to get some stuff together so that I can do a craft fair here in town this November. I have very little time to do it, but I think I could make a little bit of money at the event and get my name out there as well. I'm just looking forward to getting back into something I really enjoy. Another good thing about scrapbooking is that I FORGET to eat when I'm working, so thats a great side effect.

I have another post I'll be making in regards to some of the stuff I came across while going through the boxes. It was full of a hodgepodge of memories and as you can imagine, I found myself laughing at some, crying at others. Some things caught me by surprise...I guess because I thought I had moved on in so many ways; guess there are some things that never lose their ability to tug at your heart strings.

Erik and Tanner got home shortly as I was finishing up and I took a break to get up and dance with Tanner. I think he thought I'd lost my mind, but he was laughing right along with me. I went to "spin" him and, after going through boxes of mementos of his babyhood was, struck by the fact that I had to almost stand on tippy toe to allow him to make it under my arm :( I found myself experiencing happiness and sadness simultaneously as I realized how he really isn't my "little" boy any longer.

Speaking of Tanner, his speech language pathologist emailed me today to tell me what they were working on in his group speech therapy and took the time to include the following tidbit:

"Also, I wanted to tell you something positive that happened in one of his previous sessions. I was asking the students to all read a sentence at a time of a news report. One of the other students was very shy
about reading out loud. Tanner asked if he could help her, and even
asked to switch seats with me so he could be next to her to point out
the words. He was very patient with her and such a good helper!"

He's always been like that; such a nurturing and thoughtful kiddo. After my last post, I wanted to share that because it shows what he's really like. When I used to count my blessings, the fact that I had many lovely moments like that with him were always at the top of my list. I always felt as if they were God's way of giving me a window into his soul when I found myself getting overwhelmed by his challenges. I know many parents of children like Tanner often struggle to maintain a positive relationship with their children. It can be so easy to get lost in all the negative. I'm still so very thankful that I have MANY wonderful memories with him and I'm sure many more to come.

What else? Oh! I almost forgot. After weeks of going up and down within the same 2-3 lbs. I've decided to just go back to low fat eating. I don't know what I was doing wrong, but I just couldn't get past that plateau and I really shouldn't be plateauing a week into my diet which is about when the plateau started. So, I won't be weighing myself this week, because I expect to see some fall out from going from one WOE to another and I don't want to bum myself out.

Speaking of...I haven't eaten since breakfast (I know, not good either) and I'm actually feeling REAL hunger so I think I'm going to go and grab something to eat. Maybe I'll take advantage of the quiet (Tanner is with his Big Brother and Erik is out with a friend) to have another private dork out session! Today was a good day :)

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If you don't have something nice to say...

NOTE: most of this is bitchy and depressing Michelle. If you come for the laughs, skip to the bottom :)
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So I kept saying I’d blog when I had something nice to say. Today I figured I better just blog. This is probably going to be one long rambling vent, but what’s new?

Let’s start with the fact that I am back up to 440 after finally making it back town to 436. Why? No clue. Outside of about 4 tortilla chips I had when we went with Tanner’s lawyer to lunch after the hearing, I have not gone off the diet at all. The Mexican place we go to often has whole grain tortillas that I’ve probably been enjoying a little too often, but I called them today after weighing myself to see what the carb count was; Supposedly its 3g. I don’t know if that is before or after fiber or if it’s even accurate. Let’s face it, they can tell me whatever they want really. Outside of that and a few low carb beers now and then, I honestly can’t tell you what might be doing me in. I haven’t felt like I’m in ketosis though since making the tortillas more of a staple in my diet so I’m going to just discard those and see how I do.

Erik and Tanner made a concerted effort to support me in low carbing by actually eating low carb, but then erik got sick a few days ago and I think it was maybe easier for him to throw in the towel. I can’t blame him really, I’ve thrown in the towel on a diet for less. Tanner hasn’t been especially pleasant to be around and he can be difficult to handle on a good day. When you are not feeling good, the last thing you want to do is argue with him about what he’s going to eat. I just told Erik that we can’t have him low carbing with one regular/low fat meal a day or his body will never get into ketosis which will mean him eating low carb occasionally is really just feeding him a high fat diet. He will gain weight unless we have him on a low carb diet all the time.

We’ll see what he does when he’s feeling better though…I really don’t think Erik wants to be on a low carb diet. He still acts completely puzzled about what he can and can’t eat and honestly, sometimes it just irritates me because I know he hasn’t googled “low carb” or tried to figure it out on his own. I’ve sent him direct LINKS to information and based on his questions and other things he “thinks” it’s ok to eat, he hasn’t read them. This is the first time he’s put this much effort into changing over to a low carb eating plan so I’m going to give him the credit and hope that he gets back on the wagon with me when he’s feeling better. I really do think he wants to support me as much as he can.

We had the hearing on Monday and will meet again in a month to see how the new options go with Tanner. We basically moved him into the AI classes (where most of the deaf kids are) to see if that helps. I’m kind of excited for him because I know he will pick up more signing and I think it’s important for him to be around other kids with hearing loss. I can’t tell you how glad I was when I walked into that hearing with our advocate. I’ve been to many many many ARDs in his educational life, but something about this one was intimidating. The man who was running the disciplinary hearing was an ass. It wasn’t so much what he said, but how he said it. He definitely didn’t care what was in Tanner’s medical file and had already decided that whatever was in there didn’t matter. He pronounced Tanner guilty and recommended 30 days in the alternative school which is basically the school equivalent to “jail.” I was very glad to have the advocate with us even if it meant we had to pull $300 out of our ass.

See, this is a dirty little secret I’ll clue you in on. Eventually, most of these kids wind up in jail. They spend their childhood ignoring them, passing them around in school, putting band-aids on things until the kid moves on and becomes somebody else’s problem. There is very little help for you when your child has mental illness or brain injury. If they were visibly sick and miserable, maybe we could make a commercial to solicit the help they and we, as parents, need. You know, something along the lines of St Jude’s or one of those “Feed the Children” ads; the sort of ads that reach into your gut and stay with you unless you pick up the phone to give a few bucks. We all know that’s really the only way we can get back on with our lives…give and forget.

Unfortunately, I don’t think our children would elicit the same response. If we invited a film crew into our home, they wouldn’t see a child who was weak and lethargic, fighting for survival. They would see children completely out of control through no fault of their own; trying to cope in a world that is inexplicably 100 times harder for them to live in than it is for anyone else, but of course it wouldn’t LOOK like that. They might see the parents struggling to hang on to their own sanity, struggling to make it through one . more . day…sometimes just trying to make it to the next hour. They’d probably shut off their televisions around the time they saw my son banging his head into our ceramic tiled entry way as hard as he possibly could after what had already been a full-day meltdown. If they weren’t around to witness that, they sure wouldn’t see me crying my heart out in the shower and dreaming about a myriad of ways I could just end it all. When you have all your hopes and dreams crushed and then the world continues to heap more shit on you, it’s very hard to “keep on keepin’ on”; especially when you know you really just have more of the same to look forward to tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after, and the day after…

Oh no, people turn off their TV’s for stuff like this; either that, or they tune in in droves, but only if it’s billed as “reality” programming. Then they can point fingers and wince and thank their lucky stars their kids are “normal.” They don’t like it if we try to get them to sympathize with us; oh no, because mental illness and these types of behavior disorders are one of the last great taboos. It’s why most of our children are filling the juvenile detention centers and prisons of the nation and the other half are walking the streets lost and homeless.

So, what happens to these kids when they are too old for the schools? We incarcerate them of course. It is supposedly much more cost effective to funnel them into the criminal justice system than actually PAY for the mental health care they need or the ongoing support they need. If you don’t believe me, read this .

In Texas, something like 75% of children in the Juvenile Justice system have special needs. If you really want to know what life is like when you are struggling to survive every day with a child like this (not to mention the actual child who is simply struggling to live their life the best they can with the very crappy hand they were dealt), read this too . The first paragraph basically sums up our lives for the last decade or more:

“The tragedies of school violence around the nation have alerted all of us to the risks our children face. While national consciousness of the pressures our kids confront has been raised, I worry that the enormous difficulties that children with serious mental illnesses and their families confront day in and day out, year in and year out, are being overlooked. The results of this survey of families with youngsters with disabling mental disorders show without question the barriers these families face just to obtain basic and necessary medical treatment. NAMI's survey reveals the struggles these families must endure to get essential education for their children and much-needed supports for the whole family. As the title rightly states, so many of these families are on the brink of survival. The suffering that this report gives voice to deeply saddens and outrages me, not only because these are the voices of mothers and fathers who must try to comprehend why their loved one, their child, has a brain disorder, but because they find themselves all too often having to fight for every shred of medical attention, school system support, and acceptance from their neighbors and friends. In the face of this struggle, they confront the unimaginable but all-too-real risks of family dissolution, financial bankruptcy,
wrongful imprisonment of their child, and even the prospect of having to give up custody of their child just to get him or her treatment.”

I’m sorry to be going on and on about this. I really hadn’t planned on getting on my soapbox. Believe me I had LOADS more I was going to bitch about in this blog. Perhaps it was having a creditor who is calling me every 15 minutes, all day long for God knows what bill immediately following the week my car is repossessed sprinkled with bits from the email I just got from our educational lawyers saying that they’d be happy to go on representing us; we just have to pay them $750.00 on top of the $300.00 we already owe them which effectively exhausts all money I had set aside to file bankruptcy. Sometimes, I honestly feel like I’m the ONLY person that even thinks about where all this money is going to come from and I am about to freaking SNAP. Of course we are going to find a way to pay them. This is our child we are talking about. This is his futureand unfortunately the government only cares about helping you out financially if you squeeze out a few more kids. If you are sensible and stop when it's obvious the one child you have birthed is going to be quite enough to keep you busy for one lifetime….well then you have to sort it out yourself. So, yes…I will work more hours, take on another job. Put off that trip to my grandfather’s, forget about taking the vacation I hoped I’d be able to take for my 40th. Once again, anything I might have been looking forward to will die a rather slow death and I’ll find a way to keep on, keepin’ on…because what choice do I have?

Needless to say, I went back on my regular dosage of crazy meds today. I don’t know if the way I’m feeling is the normal reaction to all of this CRAP (lord knows I should honestly be immune…this IS my NORMAL for the last 15 years), the dieting, or the reduction in my depression meds. All I know is that the meds are the ONLY thing I can do anything about.

And here I am apologizing because my life sucks. Apologizing for inflicting it on whomever might read this. WHY? I guess I may be guilty of some of the same prejudice I assume is in the rest of the population when it comes to mental illness. Somewhere deep inside I am ashamed of my own battles with depression and my son’s battle with ….well EVERYTHING really.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to use this as an excuse to fall off the wagon; even though I’m not losing a darn thing. At least not today. I DO have a few things going on at the moment that are positive and maybe I’ll feel like posting about them later in the week. For now, let me cheer you up with this humorous exchange between Tanner and Erik upon Tanner’s arrival from school yesterday. Hopefully it will help tide you over until I can work on the next Tales from the Scale.

Tanner gets home: “Hi dad! What are you doing home?”
Erik: “Oh, I’m not feeling good, how was school?”
Tanner digging in his backpack for something: “Oh ok, a girl gave me this today…” handing Erik a piece of paper that’s been folded over and over again. Looking at it, he sees that it says “Boyfrined” (sic)
Erik: hmm, “Who is this from Tanner?”
Tanner: “I don’t know, some girl at school.”
Opening it up, erik sees that it says the following:

Name: Tanner
I love you. Give Hug?
Yes or No

(For the record, “yes” was circled for him.)

Erik: “you don’t know her name?”
Tanner: I think it was “lisa?”
Erik: The note says “Jennifer”
Tanner: “yeah, that’s it. She wants me to be her boyfriend. I told her I’d be her friend, but she said ‘NO BOYFRIEND.’”
Erik: “So what did you say?”
Tanner: Shrugging, “I said sure.”
Erik: under his breath so only I can hear “Sounds like our love story ;)”

I would have smacked him if I hadn’t been thinking the SAME DAMN THING right at that moment LOL! No matter how shitty life is for us, I’m very thankful that we can make each other laugh; even if we are laughing at ourselves. I seriously think we would have lost our damn minds long ago if not for that. Maybe that’s why we ended up together.


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I've got a case of the grumpies

Note: This was Written last night. My apologies for not getting up. For the record, we had our hearing today and things were sorted for now. We just have to see what Tanner is going to do.
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I’ve been super-extra-mega grumpy all week :(. I can’t tell what is causing it though; lowering my depression meds, all the crap going on in my life, or low-carbing. Really any one of those things could cause a mild case of the grumpies at the very least, but the three of them really is quite the triumvirate isn’t it?

I’ve blogged recently about how I’ve lowered my dosage on the depression medication I have been taking for years now. Previously, I was on a rather low dose to begin with; about half what doctor’s consider a “therapeutic level.” In the last month, I’ve cut that even further by half, so I suppose now I’m on a fourth of the therapeutic dose. Some positive effects of decreasing my meds are listed below:

• More energy
• More motivated to exercise and stay on my diet regime
• More “emotional” overall; yes this is a positive, much better than the same flat affect all the time.
• I feel the DESIRE to get my life back again as opposed to being frustrated with it, yet having no desire to really change anything.

Possible negative effects of reducing my meds:

• I’m grumpy/shorter fuse/less patience
• Sleeping less and not sleeping as good as I did before

I suppose listing them out like that, it doesn’t seem like that bad of a trade off, but then you guys haven’t had the pleasure of living with me over the last few weeks. Poor Tanner has asked me at least 4 times this week why I’m mad so it is obviously apparent to him as well. Of course, he’s one of the reasons I’m grumpy too :/ darn kid!

So, on to the next reason I might have a terminal case of the grumpies: Tanner. We went to have our hearing on Monday, but when they heard we were bringing our lawyers, they rescheduled for tomorrow. So, Erik and I have had another entire week to look forward to whatever is going to happen. Since then, Tanner had another meltdown at school. Luckily nobody was hurt, but he did almost destroy a computer after pushing it off the table and we were asked to pick him up. They suspended him again and he resumed his role as house slave until we can sort this out.

At this point, Erik wants to send him back to his old setting (he went half day to a school for ED kids and half day to a school for severely mentally challenged kids.) Neither one is probably that appropriate for him, but as always….nobody knows what the heck to do with him. He has so many different issues going on (PDD, hearing loss, static developmental encephalopathy, etc.) that he doesn’t really “fit” anywhere. I don’t necessarily want to send him back to the school for mentally challenged kids because he is a smart kid and functions at a much higher level than most of the kids that were in his classes there. He is having a hard enough time accepting his deafness at his age, being in a school where he can tell everyone is mentally challenged only affects his self image even more.

On the other hand, I’m not all that excited about sending him back to the school for the ED kids (emotionally disturbed) because he isn’t necessarily ED (although they’ve hung that label on him for lack of something else). Tanner isn’t the way he is because he’s had traumatic experiences in his life that have affected his mood stability or ability to interact with other people. He has BRAIN DAMAGE that causes his low frustration tolerance and meltdowns. Before he started going to this ED school, we hardly EVER had a problem with him cursing. Now, he has a whole lovely repertoire of words and gestures he employs when he gets upset. He hardly ever uses them at home, but apparently they hear them all day long at school. I just honestly don’t know what to suggest. I guess we will see what happens at the meeting tomorrow as that is something everyone in the ARD committee has to decide on.

So, we move on to the final thing giving me a horrid case of the grumpies….life in general. Getting my car repossessed was no fun that’s for sure. I’m upset because I had been paying on it and would have been happy to continue paying for it, but ultimately they said the only way I’d ever see the pink slip was if I paid off my car AND any other debt I have with them (a mastercard.) I am not proud of the fact that we are in the sort of situation we are financially, but I struggled for as long as I could while Erik tried to find himself and then it just got ridiculous. I’m not completely blaming Erik; a lot of our debt was due to circumstances beyond our control…having a kid in and out of a hospital, not being able to work, selling our house at a huge loss, etc, but it was also due to the fact that we lived beyond our means. It always felt like feast or famine with us. We’d have months where times were very lean and we were paycheck to paycheck and then when we got a little bit of extra money, we’d “treat” ourselves.

We had actually paid our debt completely off several times, it was only the last few years before all hell broke loose with Tanner that we allowed the debt to get out of control. As I mentioned, I was putting Erik through school and we counted on him having a decent job that would allow us to pay everything off once he was done. Of course that never happened so we found ourselves with a mountain of debt. I really think that if Erik had gotten a better job or at least a second job, the extra money would have allowed us to pay everything off, but he didn’t and working 80 hours a week started to wreak havoc on my health. Whatever…..excuses excuses. We all have them I suppose. All I can say is that I will NEVER get myself into this position again! Lesson learned.

I am grateful that at least we still have a car; even if it is a 2000 Toyota Echo that sometimes locks you in and makes me feel like a huge behemoth. I swear, I feel like I’m wearing the darn thing when I get in, but even that is a blessing I think. I’m not comfortable driving the car so it will be even more motivation to continue working towards my goals where my weight is concerned. It still makes me grumpy when I have to shoehorn my behind in the darn thing though. Did I mention it doesn’t have A/C either? Good times…

Lots going on this week, I hope to share some of it as we move along. Let’s just get through tomorrow and see where we wind up. As always, thanks for the support and thanks for reading!

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Breathe In......and Breathe Out...... (preferably in between sips of some really good Rum)

I was totally going to do a feel good post today. I had even started listing stuff I had to be thankful for, then my day began to unravel. I got a call 4 minutes before work was over that took about an hour to take care of. Meanwhile, I have dinner in the crockpot that needed some finishing touches; I had also planned to try mock mashed potatoes with it, but it was obvious that was not going to happen this time around. Needless to say, this phone call put me an hour behind schedule. Just as I was logging out of work, I get IM’d by someone regarding some scheduling drama that I won’t go into, but it was a rather stressful conversation that left me feeling as if some might have felt I was taking advantage of “the system” when I was just doing things the way I was told *sigh*.

I finally get past that, and move on to trying to scan this behemoth of a document to send to the lawyers and realize my printer only wants to cooperate ONE.MOTHERFREAKING.PAGE.AT.A.TIME. The document I’m trying to scan in is about 70 pgs long. Seeing as I’m not into self-torture, I decide to fax instead. While I’m coping with all this, I hear Tanner and Erik get home from a doctor’s appointment. Apparently Tanner is perseverating on downloading something for his xbox 360 so that he can play a regular xbox game (he got his games back today after earning them back) so of course he expects the world to come to a STOP while we fix it. Anyway, you get the picture. We finally figure out that we can’t get this game to work on the xbox 360 and erik heads downstairs to finish up dinner.

In the meantime, I heard back on the third job I applied for asking me to schedule some time I can be shadowed (work with someone watching me like a hawk) so I went ahead and scheduled about 20 hours next week. This is 20 in addition to the 40 at my main job and the 10 I work each night at my second job. I know it’s insane, but with lawyers to pay, I really don’t have a choice.

Then I come down to find that Erik has dumped an entire bag of egg noodles into MY low carb crock pot meal :( Somebody hold me…. In all fairness to him, his brain is just as scrambled as mine and he did go and meticulously pick out all the noodles in my serving, but ARRRRGGGH.

Breathe in…….Breathe out……..and go to my happy place. In case you were wondering, my happy place happens to be on the beach. I’m about 150 lbs in my happy place so I look Smokin’ HOT in a tiny little red bikini. My body is completely immune to the effects of gravity so my chi-chi’s are pert and happy to be kissed by the sun, Breathe in……….Breathe out……….I open my eyes, lowering my sunglasses a bit to look up into the beautiful eyes of Jeffrey Dean Morgan who happens to be moonlighting as my cabana boy, isn’t that nice of him? He brings me the tastiest foo foo drink he has and sits down beside me to massage my tense muscles and doesn’t even try to stop after the first 5 minutes! *sigh* It’s a very happy place.

I feel a little better, but it could have something to do with the xanax I took about an hour ago. On the upside…I lost another pound today so I’m down about 8 lbs since Monday? I stuck to my diet, but need to start working some walking into my schedule. That’s the next thing I’ll tackle.

As for what I’m thankful for; I’m thankful that we were lucky enough to find some pretty amazing educational lawyers several years ago and I’m thankful that they are going to do all this work for ONLY $300.00 (at least through the hearing on Monday). I’m thankful that I had some money tucked away; even though it was the bankruptcy money and this is the third time I’ve managed to save it up only to have to spend it on something else. At least we were able to hire the lawyers as I do not want to do this hearing on my own Monday.

I’m REALLY thankful that Erik just got home from the store with a HUGE bottle of Vodka and Rum! I’m making a low carb cheesecake with a low carb chocolate rum ganache for poker night tomorrow at the Ochoa’s. Apparently, they were having a sale at the liquor store and miracles of miracles, Erik picked out two liquors with 0 carb count. Woohoo, party at Chez V! Who am I kidding, we’ll probably have one drink and be in bed by 8PM.

I’m also thankful for the new Imogen Heap album that always seems to put a smile on my face when I listen to it; Particularly this song at the moment. This one is pretty good too. I’m also loving this song by Iron and Wine. I love music and I really love that a really great song can transform my mood; even if its only for 3 minutes 37 seconds. The effect usually lasts a bit longer afterwards. What are you guys listening to? What songs do you put on when you need a pick me up or need to escape for a few minutes?

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Doggie Diarrhea: The gift that keeps on giving (and other delightful moments in the last 24 hrs)

The crapfest that was yet another 24 hours in the live of the V household started late last night. Getting ready for bed, I remembered that I had to sort out my vpn access for work to ensure that I could login for work the next morning. They are implementing this super secret 007 security something or other that scans our computer every time we try to login. It looks for viruses and ensures that our computer has all the most up to date security updates as well as all kinds of anti-virus software. If one teeny tiny thing is out of place, you are DENIED and then have to spend hours of unpaid time (unless they decide the problem is on their end) trying to figure out why your computer is being shut out. Sometimes there are legitimate reasons for the denial, but 9 times out of every 10, you are DENIED for God knows what freaking reason. This is the boring part of my post so lets suffice it to say that I couldn’t get in last night OR this morning and wasted about half an hour trying to figure out why. Ultimately I logged in through another VPN and started to work.

Tanner woke up shortly thereafter and unbeknownst to Erik, started playing a video game. We had decided that this was a definite no-no and Tanner knew it as well because he left the sound off…sneaky kid. Erik wakes up late and notices what he’s doing and tells him to turn off the video game. Of course he’s like 9 levels in and needs to get to the next level or he loses his progress. Do we care; not in the slightest. He orders him to shut the game down, trying for a gentle approach to begin with (we’ll discuss repercussions for playing the video game when he was told it was off limits in the morning later…after he gets home from school). To say Tanner wasn’t happy about turning off the video game would be a gross understatement. Things devolved into a full out throw down with yelling and screaming, hitting walls, pummeling his head with his fists…good times. GREAT way to start the morning when you’ve about three hours sleep.

Why three hours sleep? Oh, I forgot to mention that Thunder also had another poo party in the kitchen right after midnight. Once again, I smelled the lovely aroma wafting up the stairs and came out to find Erik cleaning it up at 1:30AM. There wasn’t much I could do to help him and when he’s pissed off, it’s best just to stay out of his way, but the tremendous guilt I felt about heading back to bed kept me awake until at least 3:00AM.

We finally managed to get Tanner in the shower, dressed and calmed down enough to take him to school. By the time they left, he had lost video game privileges through Monday, but we explained that he could try and earn them back if he changed his attitude and had a good day at school. Sometimes our optimism knows no bounds.

Erik goes to leave to take Tanner to school and comes upstairs asking me where the keys to my car are. I have no clue and I’m working so I’m not much help. He eventually locates the keys…in the ignition of my car… which is now completely dead. He takes the time to send me AN EMAIL IN ALL CAPS TELLING ME THAT I KILLED THE CAR and sets off for Tanner’s school in his car. You can imagine my joy at receiving the email and the subtle emphasis his capitalization afforded. I send off a quick reply reminding him that the life he’s currently living? Yeah! I get to live it right along with him so if he’s having a crappy morning, chances are I AM TOO! Cut me some slack since the day before I was trying to make it in the house, in the pouring rain with Tanner who acts like he melts in any sort of precipitation; forgive me if I had a brain fart with the keys.

I bet you think the awesomeness stops there don’t you? Well I can assure you it doesn’t! Erik gets home and sees a phone call from the school. Picking up the phone, he finds the Asst. Principal on the line with good news! We ARE going to have a hearing about the incident last week and it’s on Friday!! Yay, we have two days to touch base with our lawyers to see if they feel like providing their services free of charge or in exchange for some really awesome cupcakes as we currently are broke. Guess I know what I’ll be using my bankruptcy money for this time.

After hanging up with the lawyers, I put in an emergency phone call to my doctor explaining that I need some Xanax STAT! I give them a one minute update on what we were coping with TODAY and tell them that if I don’t get something to help me calm down, I’m fairly certain my head will explode. They take pity on me and say they’ll call it in as soon as they can. I hang up the phone and turn to Erik and say “Guess I chose the wrong time to titrate down on the old anti-depressants hmm?” He looks back and yells, “THAT’S WHAT IT IS! YOU ARE COMPLETELY F’ING WITH THE UNIVERSE TRYING TO REDUCE YOUR MEDS AND GOING ON A DIET AT THE SAME TIME! IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT!” I calmly remind him that I am also on my period which makes it the ultimate universe f’ing trifecta.

I wound up developing a migraine and slept until about 4:00P, more goodness during a conversation with the VP at the school which resulted in me informing him that Tanner would NOT be returning to school until said hearing and ARD. Tanner gets home from school, erik heads off to the store for some low carb beer and xanax so we can survive the evening. While he’s gone, Thunder takes a huge dump on the berber carpeting next to my bed…Good times. For those of you wanting more rainbows and hearts in my post…I’m pretty sure that’s how rainbows get borned…a nice hearty doggie dump bedside.

Through all this, I’m sure you guys are wondering…did she stay on her diet? You will be happy to know that I did, I also stepped on the scale and saw that I’ve gone from 447.5 to 442.2 since Monday so not much further to go before we can move past my last official weigh in of 438. Taking it second by second at the moment and hoping for the best.

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Caught Blue Handed!

Yep, it happened. Why Blue handed? Mostly because Erik and I (me after making it through an entire day and morning on program) resorted to our typical crutch when fate gives us another knee to the groin…FOOD! Just before we got the phone call from the school to pick Tanner up, I had shown Erik a picture of one of those cookie cakes someone had just posted in my feed on FB. I remarked that I felt posting of said picture by a supposed “friend” mandated immediate removal from my friend’s list because they obviously could care less that I was in sugar withdrawals and resisting the urge to cheat when every fiber of my being was crying out for a sugar fix. Then I realized that said “friend” was just innocently posting a picture of her nephew’s birthday “cake” and I should probably cut her a break since she probably had no idea I was back “on the wagon” for the eleventyith-hundredth time this year. Let’s just blame it on low blood sugar shall we?

So, we get this phone call from the school, Erik dashes off to bring our happy wanna-be-felon home, and I sit there in a daze reliving our last tussle with the law. The prospects were not at all humorous at the time, but I’ve had a few days and as we always seem to do, struggle to find humor wherever I can. No matter how inappropriate it might be for a parent to find humor in something so serious, if it keeps us from retreating to our beds for the next month it has to be worthwhile right?

Erik gets home with Tanner, we have a short talk with him where we try to discuss what happened but can see by the glazed look in his eyes that he is comprehending NONE of what we are trying to get across which is pretty typical. Seeing that isn’t working, we decide to restrict him for the rest of his life to the dog crate and tell him we hope he likes bunking with Thunder from here on out. That’ll learn him!

No….of course we didn’t, but it is honestly what I wanted to do with him when he got home…put him somewhere to keep other people safe, but also somewhere I can keep HIM safe as well. *sigh* This kid is going to be the death of me I’m tellin’ ya.

What we did do is take away all his earthly possessions and tell him he was going to be our slave for the next three days. He’s actually done fairly well and helped with all kinds of household projects including cleaning the kitchen, his room, organizing his closet and more. He did most of it with very little arguing even though he knew he wasn’t making a dime off any of the extra chores. One thing we both noticed is how much calmer he is when he doesn’t have video games and TV. This realization also prompted us to drastically limit his time on both once the restriction is lifted.

I’m sure you are wondering where the blue-handed thing comes in aren’t you? Well, once we got him home and up in his room, we were ready for lunch. At that point, I wasn’t feeling any kinds of humorous about the situation. I flat out didn’t care about my diet so I told Erik to go get BBQ for lunch. He came home with BBQ AND two of these HUGE cookie monster cookies (oh yeah, side story: erik read the blog from yesterday and said “Thanks for making me look like a lush! I EAT TOO!” so there you have it folks, Erik is a lush AND a glutton…so sorry to have given you a false impression that he only had one vice…he has two. Is that better Erik?). They were made out of TWO chocolate chip cookies, filled with icing and then topped with more icing in the bluest blue so that it looked like cookie monster’s face. They were probably full of way more trans fats than anyone should eat in a year, much less at one sitting, but WE DIDN’T CARE…I’m tellin’ ya..could care less!

After lunch, like two true addicts, we whip out the cookies and hearing Tanner getting restless upstairs, start to eat them as quickly as we can. Erik finishes first and runs to the bathroom to wash his hands (there was no way to eat this thing carefully ya’ll).
From the bathroom I hear

Erik: “Oh Shit”
Me: “Wha wrng?” I ask with a mouth stuffed with cookie monster cookie.
Erik: “My lips and teeth are BLUE! And it’s NOT COMING OFF!”
Looking at my hands caked in blue icing I utter some kind of non-verbal ???
Tanner from upstairs: Mom? Dad? What’s going on down there, you ok?”
Erik: “Holy fuckballs! He’s coming down, put that somewhere!!”
Sitting there with blue hands and I’m assuming a blue mouth and bright blue teeth
Me: “Where?”
Erik: “Forget it! I’ll go up and stop him and brush my teeth. Hurry up and finish and then take care of your face because you are one hot mess!”

We both start laughing hysterically as he races up the stairs and I try to destroy the evidence as quickly as I can (not before pausing to take pics for the blog though…always thinking about you guys :) I get my pics and then finish it off (you didn’t think I was being literal about destroying it did you?) and head to the bathroom to see what damage it did. Un..real. I looked like a freaking toddler having their first piece of birthday cake instead of the almost 40 year old adult I am. After brushing my teeth and scrubbing my face and hands, I still wasn’t able to get it all off. Luckily Tanner wasn’t being all the incredibly observant and we got away blue-handed! We just won’t talk about the rainbows our toilet saw for the next two days. That would just be gross.

Well shoot: I was going to insert a pic of my blue fingers here, but it's uploading HUGE! It isn't as impressive as I thought it would be anyway. You get the idea though ;) thanks for reading!

Another Rambling Entry..........

I can’t tell you guys how helpful it was to get that monster of a post out the other day. It turns out that I was a bit hormonal which is probably why I was feeling so very low, but I have many days like that and I think even on days when I’m more up, there is a part of me inside somewhere whispering “Yeah, put on that happy face, It may fool others, but it will never fool YOU.”

I also had a crazy thought about trying out for the Biggest Loser….apparently they are having a casting call in my city this Saturday and I had almost jazzed myself up about going. I called a friend who would have probably canceled on me anyway, but I had said that even if she did I was going. And then Erik gave me that look… and said “Are you really going to do that Michelle?” in this tone of voice that was just like it was the most ridiculous thing he ever heard. I guess it is though. I can’t even stand long enough to cook a complete meal right now. I’d probably be their first fatality! In the back of my mind, I was thinking that I would have some time to really try to get myself into decent enough shape if I was selected so that I wouldn’t be so weak. I mean jeez, I used to do kickboxing at 419 lbs just a few years ago…GOD I wish I never stopped going to that gym. I was so strong then and I felt so good about myself.

Part of me was pissed at Erik for taking the wind out of my sails but who could blame him? You guys hear how hard it is for me. I can’t even really do the treadmill right now. Taking a shower wipes me out. He sees me on a daily basis, he knows. Ok, I talked myself out of being pissed at Erik lol.

I am taking Tanner to a hip hop dance class tomorrow. He has become a HUGE Michael Jackson fan in the last week. Seriously, he has been youtubing him and the Jackson 5, he watched the memorial (which was very hard for him btw, he also has a very hard time with death…he’s very sensitive like his mom). As always I’m on the hunt to find some things that will not only get him off the damn couch, but something that he might be able to do and feel good about himself! Some of the things we are considering are hip hop dance class, fencing, drum lessons. Not ALL of those things, probably just one to be honest…I’m not made of money quite frankly.

I’m dreading going to the dance place though. Uggh, I am just anticipating that look on their face when I walk in. I always feel like I have to go into hyperdrive and be super extra likeable so that they don’t continue to look at me with veiled disgust; I hate that. It will actually be the first time I’ve left my house for something other than fast food in…hmm, I seriously can’t remember the last time I left my house. Geez, could it have been as long ago as april? I think it was  Girl needs to get out!

Erik doesn’t want to go with us. I suspect its because he’s slightly embarrassed of Tanner’s weight issues and HUGELY embarrassed of mine. He doesn’t want to be embarrassed, but I know that he is. Erik rarely ever wants to go anywhere in public with me. For the last several years of our marriage and since, he talks his way out of going anywhere he might be seen with this ugly behemoth he married. Even if I just suggest a dinner out, he usually will complain that he’s tired or not up to going out, but I know… All those old feelings of not being good enough just hit me like a ton of bricks every time I suggest we do something together, even a family something, and he finds a way out of it. Sometimes, I feign a migraine or some other malady because I know how he feels and I don’t want to cringe inside the whole time I’m out with him; watching him out the corner of my eye to see if he has that tight lipped expression that says “is there enough distance between us? God, nobody think she’s my wife, nobody think she’s my wife.” He’s always been way more concerned about other people’s perception of him than I have been. I think I had to lose some of that parenting Tanner. I may have mentioned here in this blog somewhere, but I soon learned that when he had a public meltdown, I just couldn’t WORRY about what other people were thinking or I couldn’t do what needed to be done to handle the meltdown appropriately. So maybe my experience with Tanner helped me let go to some degree, my own worries about how I’m perceived. If only it could generalize that a bit more to ME and not just my parenting. All in all, I’m a lot better where this is concerned now than I was in my 20’s, but Id’ be lying if I said I didn’t still care about how I’m perceived because of my weight.

This post kinda seems all over the place tonight lol. Maybe it’s the late hour I don’t know. Thanks again to everyone that has been leaving comments. Please know that while I may not always work up the energy to comment back, your support means so much to me right now and I read EVERY SINGLE COMMENT that comes through. Let me get back on my feet emotionally and hopefully I can start supporting your amazing efforts as well.