Sigh. Just don't know what's wrong with me lately

I didn't go to work today because I went to bed and woke up feeling dreadful. I think my TMJ kicked in because my head was pounding. I barely have enough sick time left after the back problem a few weeks ago and taking a day off after that lovely fall a little after that, but I think I have just enough to cover me. Doesn't really matter, I couldn't have done anything at work today, anyway.

I wanted to watch the Oscars last night, but went to bed while watching them and was in and out of sleep. I did see No County for Old Men win at the end, and was happy about that. So, I slept until about 4PM this afternoon and feel more like myself.

The problem is that I'm still in a bit of a funk. I had a great time over Pres' Day weekend, visiting my sister and getting away. Of course, as soon as I got back I got back into my same routine. I'm trying not to act any differently and actually hung out with friends all day Saturday and saw There Will Be Blood and saw Atonement on my own on Sunday morning when I still feeling OK. However, when I'm by myself I just want to cry. I don't know why, really. I mean, my life really isn't that bad and except for my recent klutziness and health issues things are fine. I'd say it was the weather, but the weather really hasn't been that bad, either. I either sleep too much or not enough lately. I don't know what's wrong with me but it's starting to get old. I don't want my health and klutziness to start affecting my job.

So, I'm feeling better and will go to work tomorrow and act like everything is fine and just laugh everything off like I usually do. I'm getting tired of laughing it off, though. But it's not like I can just go off one people at work (which I don't want to do anyway, and have no right to do) or go into some sort of crying jag because some little thing will set me off. Then they'll REALLY think I have problems and next thing I know I'll be a client instead of an employee, lol.

(See, there I go, laughing at it again. I guess I'm just not good showing my emotions and use humor to cover them. I don't know how to not do that.)

Meh, I'll get over it, but just had to get it out.

Foot mystery may be solved

I was planning on getting a referral from my doctor to see a podiatrist after my vacation, and after comparing notes with my sister I am very interested in seeing what happens.

My foot problem has not gotten better. I bought new athletic shoes and casual shoes (and not cheap), thinking that would help -- nope. That foot still hurts like crazy if I wear any flat shoes other than my Crocs. It's frustrating hearing people lecture me about the dangers of wearing heels when that's the only time my feet don't hurt. People talk about how ugly Crocs are and how sick they are of seeing them because "I can find plenty of comfortable shoes that aren't ugly." Well, good for you!

Anyway, I knew Mo had had a foot problem but we really hadn't talked about the issues we were both having until we got together this past weekend. Seems we had the same symptoms -- only comfortable in heels and no flat shoes (including sneakers), pain and swelling in the same place (even the same foot!), throbbing in the area when sitting after walking a while, excruciating pain if we bang that part of the foot or the other side of the foot, practically dragging the foot behind us when it really hurts, etc. Turns out that she went to a podiatrist who told her she has a genetic defect in that foot -- apparently a bone in the arch area (I don't say arch as our feet are completely flat) never fused properly and after 35+ years it had finally had enough. This started for her a few years ago, when she was about my age. She had orthotics made and she says it's completely different and her feet have been great since then. She can wear shoes that these don't fit in for a day without a huge problem, but she wears these in pretty much everything.

So, I have the feeling this may be my problem and will let my doctor know this new information. I'm hoping I can get to the bottom of this soon. I'm sure orthotics aren't cheap, but I haven't been exercising or even walking as much as I used to because it just hurts too much. I really noticed it when I was in San Francisco this past weekend and didn't do my usual wandering. I miss that.

Great weekend!

I got back from San Francisco about Midnight last night and went straight to bed. I planned on taking today off from work and am thankful I did!

I had a great time! I got in very late Friday and Saturday we went to this fantastic little place called Ella's where we ate breakfast on Saturday and Sunday - Best. Pancakes. Ever! The pancakes were lemon ginger oatmeal and were divine. Then we went to a very high-end wood furniture store to look at a table my sister has been eyeing for a while. I hope she didn't take me to talk her out of it, because the table is stunning. She ordered a square version of the table (the one they had was rectangular) and two chairs. They are made of cherry and are really pieces of art and get made to order in Maine. We both went home and hung out for a while and napped, then went to get pizza and see the Midnight showing of "The Princess Bride" at the small theater down the street. That was a lot of fun. I just love how there are so many interesting places within walking distance from where she lives.

Sunday we went up to Sonoma for a while after breakfast and did a little shopping. Later that evening we went to a luxurious spa and she bought me an 80-minute facial and they gave me trial-sized products to take home. Great stuff!

Monday she had to work part of the day, so I spent a lot of time reading. I didn't wander as much as I usually do when I visit because of my foot pain. I read "The Other Boleyn Girl" and finished it that day -- great book, gotta see the movie. Then we went to a Thai place for dinner.

I got a cab to take me to the airport at Noon on Tuesday, but I had time to check out a stitching place that was about a 15-minute walk away. It's called SF Stitch and was mostly for needlepoint but had huge amounts of silk floss and some other stuff. I ended up buying a few magazines and some books and next time I visit I plan on raiding all that beautiful silk floss they have. It's a great little shop on Sacramento.

So, now I'm back in reality and have to go to work tomorrow, but those little trips to San Francisco always help me feel better. I think it's the combination of being in a city I really enjoy, seeing my sister who I don't see often, and having the time to do anything I want -- or nothing. :)

One person's experience with Alli

I've heard about the so-called "side effects" of this drug, which made me want to never try it. However, here's one person's experience with this drug. I'm amazed that this was prescribed by doctors, let alone is now over-the-counter! Be sure to click on the "Read More" at the bottom of the teaser to get the whole story.

Almost there!

I've been acting like a little kid getting ready to go to Disney all week, lol. I'm really looking forward to getting out to see my sister and San Francisco for the weekend. The week is going slowly but still too fast, as tonight I need to do some laundry and pack my clothes to take to work tomorrow for Friday. That way I don't have to lug them around on Friday when I have to be at the EARN Center for most of the day.

I think I've been doing well with my eating. Yesterday I went to a luncheon and they had some really good chicken and vegetables. I ate all the veggies, some of the pasta and much of the chicken. However, I didn't feel the need to clean my plate as I usually do, so I wasn't stuffed and uncomfortable. I had a little cake, but wasn't thrilled with it so only had two pieces and left it. Everybody did the same thing, as the desert was set out with the salad before dinner. By the time we got to it, it was stale and crusty from sitting out too long. Blech. That's one way to get me to not eat the cake. Next time I see a set-up like that, I'm going to eat my salad then my cake. If people give me weird looks, fine. They'll be the ones to miss out on fresh cake. :)

I'm up ridiculously early this morning, so I guess I'll go ahead and get ready for work and go in early so I can leave a little early and get my laundry going. I should have done some last night, but I wasn't feeling my best and went to bed early.

Intuitive Eating progress

I think this intuitive eating thing may work for me. I'm slowly making progress on it. I sometimes catch myself eating because I'm frustrated or upset, but the fact that I'm catching it means I'm going in the right direction. I'm working hard on thinking about what I want to eat before I eat, and making sure I'm actually hungry and not just trying to feed something else. Sounds pretty "duh," I'm sure, but I've been on so many diets and used food as an emotional crutch for so long that I really need to reconnect with what it means to actually be hungry, not just to eat because it's Noon.

One important part of the whole thing is not concentrating on fat-free, low-calorie, no trans fat, etc. that we are trained to rely on. Some things are fine fat-free or sugar-free, but most of them just don't satisfy me and I end up eating more to be full and don't necessarily like the taste. For instance. I had been buying Dannon Light & Fit vanilla yogurt (4-oz.) to mix with my fruit and oat granola in the morning. It was OK, but I wasn't crazy about the taste and it was a bit runny. So, I bought some Dannon La Créme vanilla yogurt instead. Wow, what a difference! It's very thick and creamy (as the name insinuates), it tastes good, fills me up, and is just much more satisfying in every way. The light stuff has 60 calories and no fat. The creamy stuff has 140 calories and 5g of fat, which is probably why it satisfies me. But after I eat it I don't want more to eat, you know?

Speaking of low-fat and sugar-free, I've always bought the low-fat Jello pudding cups. They are actually pretty good, but now that I'm eating the regular pudding, it does taste better and fills me up quicker -- and doesn't have much more fat or calories than the low-fat. It's interesting, though, that there are more low-fat and sugar-free varieties of the Jello pudding than of the regular, at least in the refrigerated cups.

So, today I wasn't very hungry for much of the day until afternoon. Usually I eat breakfast, but since I wasn't hungry I didn't. I read that this is one of those things were one day you'll be hungry often and eat to satisfy it, and other days I won't be as hungry so won't eat as much, and it all balances out. Anyway, I bought groceries today and some nice salmon and a large amount of green beans for a mid-afternoon meal and am now enjoying some white wine. :)

So far, I'm pretty happy with this new way of eating. The hardest part is really asking myself if I'm hungry or if I want food for another reason, and stopping every so often while eating to check if I'm full and to actually taste the food and ask myself how much I really like it. That's when I realized that the particular light yogurt I was eating needed to go. :)

Wahoo!

My sister is saving me! We were tentatively planning to get together in San Francisco (where she lives) over Easter weekend, but it won't work with her schedule. After hearing about my latest incident, she decided to fly me out for an extended weekend over Presidents' Day weekend! I'm soooo looking forward to this! Plans include swimming in her gym's pool, hanging out in the hot tub at her spa, checking out a stitching shop she saw that is walking distance from her apartment, and general stitching, reading, sleeping, talking, and probably a little drinking. Oh, and she and a friend were planning to go to a midnight showing of "The Princess Bride" on Saturday night -- they've never seen it! So, that's going to be a lot of fun, too. I've never seen it on the big screen with a large group of people, so I'm looking forward to that, too.

I'm hoping this is the vacation I need to get out of this weird funk I've been in lately.

I have discovered Tim Gunn`

I've heard about his show but have never been able to catch it on TV. Today while I was wallowing in my misery under a blanket watching TV, I saw that there were a bunch of his shows on Bravo. I watched some of them and think he's wonderful! I so appreciate the fashionistas that are focusing on what an individual woman has going for her, both body and personality, and helping her find a look that represents both to their highest potential.

Five years ago, I never would have DREAMED I'd be hooked on shows like these, but they have helped me so much over the past year it's unbelievable. Now, if only I can find a show that helps klutzy people become a bit more graceful...

:)

Oh, for the love of Jeff!

I thought I was done with my body revolting against me, but I pulled another stunt today. My coworker and I were walking back from a meeting and I guess there was a dip in the sidewalk that I missed because all of a sudden I tripped and almost fell on my face. Instead, I fell on my bad wrist and knee. I didn't ruin my clothes or hurt myself in a big way, but my wrist is worse, my knee is scraped and sore, my good ankle hurts and my middle back hurts. Sigh. I'm going to see how I feel in the morning and go from there. I'm sure I'll feel better, I'm just so sick of this. I'm thankful, though, that I didn't fall in front of a car or really hurt myself.

I think this is really becoming a problem

When PBS premiered Ken Burns' The War back in the fall, I heard him in interviews say that he made this because a large percentage of high school graduates think we fought WWII with Germany and against the Russians. I think people who didn't live through any of the Cold War think we were always enemies with Russia, so of course we were against them in WWII. However, it's still not a good thing -- not at all.

Today I see that we aren't alone in being ignorant of important events in our own history: 1 in 4 Britons Think Winston Churchill Never Existed. I find it interesting but sad that people think Churchill, Cleopatra and Sir Walter Raleigh, to name a few, were made up for movies and books, but think Sherlock Holmes is real.

Sigh.

Fat acceptance TV segment

Some of you may have seen a segment about fat acceptance last week on the Morning Show with Mike and Juliet. If you didn't, check out Big Fat Deal or The F-Word. The owners of those two blogs were featured and were awesome! I'd rather not post the actual videos here and ask people to go view them at one of the blogs so that you can see their blogs and comment, if you'd like. You may have to scroll down a little to see the videos on their blogs.

Anyway, I've been reading a lot of comments here and there about the whole thing, and one point really sticks out: why didn't the thin people on stage tell us their stats? Mo and Rachel were asked their height and weight, along with questions about their blood pressure and cholesterol. As usual, it's simply ASSumed that the thin people are perfectly healthy and the fat ones have to justify themselves, and probably still aren't believed. I'm pretty sure people don't believe me when I say my blood sugar, cholesterol and blood pressure are all normal. Of course, the old "Well, it may lead to problems when you're older" comes up. Sure, it may also lead to problems in thin people, too. There are plenty of thin people who have problems with blood pressure and cholesterol.

I'm not anti-thin and I'm not pro-fat. I just want people to learn to feel good in their own bodies. As many of you know, this is something I've fought for years and have finally started to come to terms with in the last year. I'm also focusing on eating when I'm hungry, not according to any time table or schedule. I eat what I want when I'm hungry. Sometimes that means blueberries and tomatoes, sometimes that means a few Hershey's Kisses, sometimes that means chicken, sometimes that means a burger, etc. I feel much healthier and have started limited exercise again (limited due to the tendonitis in my wrist and the Dammit foot, as I like to call it). I got off that for a while and had no energy, was depressed, had all sorts of injuries and just felt awful. So, I'm back to what seems to work for me and I'm not gaining weight.

We are starting a health program at work and I'm part of the marketing team. I'm so proud that this program focuses on overall health, not weight loss. There are weigh-ins for people who want them, but the focus is on eating well and being active. This is great, because I'm done with diets. They don't work for me. All diets have done for me is make me fatter, lol.

Another interesting point that came up in that segment: Meme Roth, an anti-fat activist, says (and I'm paraphrasing) that fat people are already accepted and that an article in the New York Times touting that thin people should be accepted would be met with a backlash. I about spewed my drink on the monitor, lol. Didn't I see an article VERY recently that stated a prominent clavicle is the latest fashion accessory? Don't we see airbrushed people all over the magazines -- not just their faces, but arms and other body parts so that they look thinner (and ridiculously tan and smooth)? Doesn't every woman's magazine have at least one article in it about losing weight? How many times do you hear people who are a normal weight say they have to lose 10 pounds... or 20?


Oh, and one more thing while I'm thinking about it. I can't remember the doctor's name, but she did say these things aren't all black and white. That I liked. Then she went on to say that we can't use height and weight to determine health -- we should use BMI. Well, what the fark is the BMI number, if not a number based on your height and weight and no other factors? That one really boggled me.

So, Rachel and Mo were EXTREMELY poised, looked fantastic, and really handled everything so much better than I could. When I get mad my face turns red, so I would have been purple by the end of the segment.

Again, I want to stress that I'm not about hating anyone. To be fair, I think Meme Roth has some good points, particularly about getting soda machines and that kind of crap out of the schools. She doesn't mention it in the segment, I don't think, but I've seen her mention it in other places. I just wish she didn't have to act like it's horrible that we fatties have access to clothes that actually fit us instead of wearing mumus to punish ourselves until we lose weight to fit into "normal" clothes. I've lived that way (well, not in mumus) for way too much of my life, wasted my life waiting to do things until I lost weight, and I'm not going to do it anymore. I find it interesting that since I stopped dieting, I feel better and I look better.

Anyway, enough of the rambling. If you've made it this far, thanks. :)

Best. Deal. Ever!

So, I was talking about very bad deals in my last post, right? Between then and now I went shopping with a friend. She was looking at clearance racks for something to wear to an upcoming formal, I was looking to spend the $25 gift certificate she bought me for Christmas. I really didn't see anything and was going to save the certificate for later, then I saw it -- a beautiful brown suit jacket. I've been looking for one and there it was. Now, it's a smaller size than I usually wear so I looked at the size and figured it wouldn't fit and put it back. I wandered around for a while and helped Karri pick out some clothes, then I went back and that jacket was still there. I figured I might as well try it on. Lo and behold! It fit! It's not loose, but it's not too tight. I guess that's the definition of clothes fitting but I tend to go a little large, although I've gotten much better about that.

This is where the big deal comes in. It's on the clearance rack, and there's a sign that shows the prices. According to the sign, everything over $45 is marked down to $19.99. I looked at the price tag -- $144 marked down to $107. I'm thinking that maybe this is in the wrong place, etc. So, I took it up to the register and it was only $19.99! Sold!

It's lined and has a beautiful embroidered lapel and bottom, and also beadwork in those places. It's just stunning and don't think I've ever gotten such a good deal. I looked through it and there's no tears or anything, so it's good to go!

In case you don't already know...

Do not order from Cross Stitch Keepsakes! I can't tell you the many stories I've heard of people paying for orders that never shipped. I've lost track of how often I've heard about it, and this has been going on for years -- at least 5, but I think more. I tend to lose track of time. The "business" will be up for a while, then there's some sort of "crisis" and it's not updated for months. This usually happens after people order supplies that they never receive. I think one time there was a health issue, which wouldn't be so bad if this hasn't happened repeatedly over the years.

The reason I bring this up is that an email went out from the site, saying it has been updated and there will be a Super Bowl sale. WARNING! WARNING! DO NOT BUY FROM THIS SUPER BOWL SALE! You're better off paying full price for something than going here and getting a "deal" that never delivers -- literally.

To be honest, I ordered from her when she first went up and got my order. I found that I was very lucky, because it was soon after that the problems started. I think when things first start up again she's OK, but soon after all sorts of stuff goes down.

You can see info at the Better Business Bureau.