Beside Myself

Beside Myself 

I experienced some moments of glee in the last couple of days as I sorted through my slacks and jeans to weed out size 20 and up.

Here I am holding up the size 24 elastic-waisted black denim slacks I wore throughout the 2000s and into 2012 while wearing size 18 jeans.

I'm actually into a size 16 now and could possibly get into some styles of 14.

Since my arrival at Mom's in January of 2013 I've dropped from 220 to 160 pounds and from 44  to 37 inch waist.

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Wardrobe Malfunction

My Library and My Closet

My side of the bed in Mom's room is a never ending chore.  About once a month I get fed up and do a major re-organize that addresses whatever issues I was blaming the disorder on and I think 'This time I'll keep it this way!'

But no.

It occurs to me there are just some issues that can't be fixed by rearranging stuff.

One of them is the fact that during the day I can't see anything but dark shadows backlit by window light.

While the evenings are taken up by dinner and reading to Mom before she goes to bed.

So that leaves the weekends when Mom is at my brother's to address it.  Whether that means putting away the clean clothes laid willy-nilly during the week and those disarranged by rummaging for outfits or a complete reorganizing like it needs now.  Just one of a gazillion tasks that jostle for attention between Friday afternoon and Sunday evening.

The state it is in now is partly explained by my having unpacked the winter clothes from the big duffle that was supporting the boxes on the purple chair just before Christmas.  Not only is the duffle not plump enough to support the boxes I've not got around to packing up the summer clothes so there's more stuff to shuffle.

Another issue that can't be fixed by rearranging the stuff is the fact that 50% or more of it is too big for me now and needs to be purged...  All the 2x and 3x  and sizes 20 to 24 need to go or be altered.  And even certain cuts and styles of 1x and 18s.  Also the size 8.5 - 9 shoes.

But that's an issue that goes deeper than a simple organization task.  I'm emotionally attached to every item.  It's going to take more than a weekend to deal with that.

But if I did purge all that maybe I could have the purple chair back as a reading chair again.  Could that be motivation enough?

Maybe.

But iffy.

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Gullet Goodness

My New NUTRiBULLET

My nephew has one of these and my sister has the original Magic Bullet.  I told my sister over a year ago to watch for a good price for me on either of them.  She found one today.

Eating healthy is going to be so much easier on the teeth!

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Waisted

Who knew it was possible to get inebriated on a pair of size eighteen black  denim jeans and a white belt  needing a new hole 4 inches behind the last one.

But from the moment I tried these on at 4pm Monday and got them fastened until bedtime at 9pm I was giddy.  It ought to be understandable considering:

• It has been decades since I was comfortable in any waist band that didn't stretch.
• It was 1987 the last time I saw size 18--had topped off at size 24 pushing 26 in 2005. Started the downward trend in 2009 while spending 6 month at Mom's helping with her post stroke and broken hip care.  I reached 22 by 2010 and held steady until early last year when the steady down slope began in early February.
• The T-shirt is Large with no X for first time in decades and it feels roomy.  I'd been wearing 2X since 2009 when I arrived in Longview January 2013.  Needed 1X when I shopped for clothes last October
• I arrived at Mom's in January of 2013 with a 44 inch waist and reached 39 this month.

I refuse to promise to refrain from imbibing this intoxicant.

What do you think?  Can I reach size 16 by the end of summer?

I dropped from a 22 to 18 (except for stretchless waistbands) between January and September last year.  So maybe I could even hope for size 14.

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Sunday Serenity #325

Us Summer 2011

I'm going to do something I rarely do here and post a full face picture of myself.  This in honor of the fact that all of my serenity and joy of the last week is wrapped up in what this pic represents.  It was taken of Ed and I at Rice Hill OR where he'd met my sister and I to transfer my stuff from her car to his Dad's car upon my return from the  May-August visit at Mom's in Longview.  When I'd gone for Mother's day and stayed for my niece's wedding in July and my sister Jamie's surgery in August.

Anyone following my blog this month will know that we nearly split the week of Valentine's but managed to stop the bleeding of our broken hearts before they bled out via some intense email exchanges.  Then this past Thursday my sister drove me down after more of my stuff I'm going to need for the extended stay at Mom's and Ed and I had some intense face-to-face encounters that began the healing process.

My extended stay in Longview is for tending to a health crisis brought on by loss of my meds after we lost health insurance through Ed's job.  So I'm staying here where my sister can be advocate, phone contact and chauffeur as I get the necessary help and until something can be established back home to carry it forward once I'm stabilized again.

I have mentioned my various health issues here in the past but do not dwell on them nor feature them very often.  I will break that tradition now as my life is becoming an exercise in getting healthy and independent so that I can step up as full and equal partner with my husband and I can't imagine continuing to blog daily if I try to keep all of this private.

For now I will just list the issues:

I'm legally blind due to Retinitis Pigmentosa aka RP aka Tunnel Vision. This is a degenerative eye disease that takes the night vision first (my teens) then a progressive loss of peripheral vision (my twenties with legal blindness reached by age 27) and finally encroaches on the central vision (I've lost so much of the central in my left eye I can no longer read with it and it is closing in on the right as well)

My blood pressure was in the range of 220/120 when I finally started treatment in 2006 which was life threatening not to mention the risk of stroke that could take language from me.  It took a combination of four meds to get it under control and since last August I'd been taking only one or two at any one time as we tried to stretch a month's supply into six weeks or two month's.

I have a mood disorder that includes severe anxiety issues especially social anxiety along with episodes of severe depression.  All of that accompanying severe insomnia to the point I often go days without sleeping at all or weeks with sleeping less than four hours at a time. And the when is all over the clock.  The artist of the cat naps I am.  I went off the meds for this last August and thought I was coping but apparently nobody else thought so and once this latest crisis hit it became obvious to me as well.  The clinic my sister took me to is going to screen me for bi-polar next month before restarting the meds which probably won't be the same ones as before as my sister mentioned that she didn't think they were all that excellent.

I am also overweight by maybe 60-70 pounds now.  I've lost about 50 in the last three years that has come off without going back on.  I've come down from a size 24/26 to a size 18/20.

Additionally I have dizziness and balance issues, joint pain, significant loss of hearing accompanied by loud ringing in the ears and a mouth full of rotten teeth.

My sister is actually excited about the prospect of getting my health overhauled.  I wasn't feeling real cooperative about it at first but am now on board.

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