Ayn's Multiple World

Let's get on to December WooHOO! FRIDAY!!!

Good morning. This is me. It’s about 8:30 am now. So, we’ve been here for almost an hour. We might have gotten in about 10 minute late. There we had to do a little trouble shooting this morning. First our AOL wouldn’t come on, so we had to reconfigure some stuff – can’t believe we got it to work, usually we have to start it all over – downloading that is. And, then the changes must have affected our music. So, we went through the changes it recommended which was medium hard … not really hard, but took concentration.

So – where do we stand?

I think there was good and not as good. We really had to watch our dollars, because we had only $11 and had to worry about tolls, parking, gas and a soft drink from it. As things went we didn’t get the soft drink - $5 went to gas, but we still ran out before getting to Dr. M’s … we bypassed the tolls, and since we saved on the parking at Dr. M’s … yes. That meant there was $6 for a seafood submarine. Yeah, yeah … you do the math. Uh huh.

I think that was my only extravagance though. We had an orange after that and some water, so the end of the night turned out ok. We also spent about an hour to an hour and a half in the room. I think about 6:30 – 8 pm, or there about. I didn’t really go in there to talk this time … I think I would have if it had been slower … I think its just that we’re not up to the speed of a fast room.

As to what we learned – not sure. There were a few new people we noted. One was wealthier and talked about spas, which everyone seemed to enjoy and another talked about the surprise in finding out she’d found out she’d been turned into with the surgery a “raving sex machine.” That one really made us laugh. I’ve heard that going around. Seems like good things are ahead. Another didn’t get much support from her family and was looking forward to drinking a full glass of water – she was at 3-4 weeks and would have to wait until possibly 7-8 weeks. I didn’t realize that we weren’t going to be able to drink afterward. One of the ones I thought was a person who gave good advice was in and there was another who was having surgery in less than 2 weeks and was struggling through the liquid diet part.

I keep trying to pick up parts of how things are going to go and what I should be looking toward. It goes the same with food notes. We figured out last night that soft food includes lunch meat, moist chicken or pureed, baby food, eggs, fish, tuna, etc. And we learned that when people plateau that one idea is to go back to liquids for a week and then go through the food phases again. We also learned that we had to keep the carbs to about 15, because at about 20 carbs, we would experience the dumping. And one person suggested that if everything else failed – go back to eating cheese.

Ok, lots to learn yet, right? Oh one more thing. We got a call from our Surgery staff. She said that I should do the psychology part, and pulmonary test, and continue with the 6 months, then when those results went in – and were ok’d by them, they would send info for ok from the insurance company. If that went ok, then they’d set up the dates for all those other blood tests, ect. And they’d give us a date. I guess that’s the big thing … I also have to keep concentrating on losing weight. I’m thinking that I need to get back into a physical plan too. Something should be recorded as a regiment. I think this might be part of it though. That is keeping records. Need to work more on specifics … I think I need something to report to the nutrition and wellness center. Ok, this part to be posted over to OH and then we’ll continue the regular blog.

Good morning. I'm taking a few moments out to say that I got to work and so far everything is fine. I would rather still be at home just going over thoughts on getting ready for the surgery. I feel pretty obsessed with it and being around the group of people from OH. This morning I found that the surgery might increase our sex drive ~~ WooHOOO!!! Look out Sweetie!

I'm on a medicine now that is supposed to curb appetite. I forget what it is called. I have to start it slow. 1 pill in the evening for a week, then 2 pills one in the morning one in the night, and onward until by the end of the month we're up to 4 pills two in the morning and two in the night. I didn't feel hungry this morning for the cereal, but it didn't stop me from eating the last piece of pumpkin pie. We started the medicine Wednesday night.

I know I have to focus on work. We've set an internal rule about not visiting the chat room while we're at the office ... yes dear ... even after 4 pm. If we want to chat, we will need to go home. I think we're going to allow the blog entries just for a few moments ... just so we can make it through. It's going to be ok, right? I think we have to set a goal though ... why don't we say let's work on just eating what we're supposed to so tomorrow morning we get on the scale again, hmm? Ok you ... now don't be difficult!

Hmmm?!

Ok, back again. It’s now 9 am. We are very happy to now have five friends over at OH, one I met from the links to matching surgeons, three are from the room, and one is from reading her blog on a search of other women who were in my weight category.

She had a really creative blog. I’m still thinking about all that a lot, while I’m at work. Not sure what to do with that. Its like breathing air … I seem to require it desperately. I’ve got on my left screen a copy of the OH and AMW Blogs … I need it for some kind of emotional security. Yesterday that lack of security prevented us from going to the first meeting when we should have to have kept Dr. M’s appointment. I really didn’t remember it before we backed out to Plan B., but nonetheless … we needed to be writing like we are now.

I know that means that I’m a particular personality that is different than some of the others that can do other things. I don’t know how to identify myself as different. I think I get the same pictures of what’s going on as them … maybe that’s the problem … it’s too much. I need to keep things in mind … in front of me to keep up with what’s going on. I have trouble holding information together. I really don’t know what it is that we’re supposed to be doing. The bulletin board states that we are to look in the spreadsheet for something … oh it has our task schedules. But, what happens if I don’t want to do that! Shhh, ok, that tells me that I’m probably not the oldest wisest part. Shh, don’t get me started. Ok ok … shhhhhhhhhhhhh

I don’t think we’re supposed to do any observations today, but we should probably get the last one typed up. AND, we’re not started on the first goal outstanding for C. PLUS, we got Thinking Group today at 1 pm. Can’t even remember the last time we had one. I haven’t the faintest idea how to do all that. Probably will take some planning time. I have to watch out for excusing myself that I don’t have to do any “hard” work until then. You know not focus until before or after that. I think we can’t write a book on how who and what we are all about until after Sr. is gone and we’re retired, or she’d skin us for all the time we aren’t concentrating on work directly. Hmm, our Sweetie is coming in today too. Oh him the mastermind who can glance at us in a minute and tell us what we’re up to. HMPF!

Ok, at least now we’re thinking of work like thoughts. That’s good, write? I think part of my needs are that I need my fingers on the keyboard and going relatively fast. I need to think and type. That’s the way I work. THOUGH … someone seems to be making a lot of typos … that could stand some improvement, hmm?

Oh … just for a side note looking around the room, today is the first day we wore our winter coat into the office. We got it out for going out to the meeting in Elgin last night. Maybe we can talk a minute about it being a Friday AND Sr. has already passed out the checks. That means that I need to stop by the bank on the way home, and maybe by Monday I can send out the checks for the car and the rent. That always makes me feel better. And, we’ve held good to the part where we don’t spend money from the bank account … I think there’s $6-700 left.

I think we’re going to need reimbursing sweetie for gas though. He didn’t say that, but I feel guilty saving money for it from the bank account and then getting the money from him. We also cheated a little. We figured that we should spend about $30 for gas and he gave us a $50 and asked for change back. So, we went to the gas station and got $20 back, but we only got $24 gas. The $6 difference is going to go for cleaning our filthy car. It didn’t open until 9 am – 8 pm, but I figure we’re going home that way tonight for the bank. I think the number is good for a month.

We put a special hole mark in the receipt so we remembered not to throw it away. Good thinking us!

Hey did you hear snow maybe for tomorrow? Let’s check into that!

Right now is 32 F, but do to 15 MPH wind and such it’s supposed to feel like 22 F.

It’s supposed to be sunny today and mostly clear tonight, but it will be followed by clouds. It says for tomorrow a light mix of winter precipitation becoming heavier and steadier in the afternoon as the wind picks up. Cold. High 32 winds 10 to 20 increasing to 20-30 mph. And, then in the evening windy with periods of snow, sleet or freezing rain in the evening changing to rain showers late – damn then mid 40’s and rain showers on Sunday. I really was hopin for snow. Double damn.

Well there you are, you heard it from here first. Stalling? Me? What do you mean? Just saying is all!

Ok, let’s say within 20 minutes or by 10 am, we’ll get into something. Let’s be firm ok? What will we get into? I think we’re going to do the notes from Maria’s room. Might as well do it while its still fresh and she is probably more eager to see it. I think she’ll be ok. I showed her a copy and she returned them of the other two that I had done. I don’t know if she had any questions, but at least she knows what we were after. I think we should look for Kathy’s and if there is time this afternoon, maybe we could do hers too.

Hmmm … Seems there was a whole tour through my office a second ago. There were a bunch of maybe 8th graders who were visiting from a nearby Catholic school … I had heard they were coming – it’s always good to mix the groups – all about inclusion.

They look so young and sort of nervous, because they don’t know what to expect being here. I had to laugh … Brandi was giving the tour and introduced my office as the place that everything happens. I like that hehehe … it really means though that she doesn’t know what we’re doing. Rich had stated that that we were sneaky. He said it was part of our being so smart that we could hide things . I suppose that’s not so good an idea, hmm? Maybe later after these people leave we’ll go talk to Sr. about the meeting. Hmm, she’s handed it off to Brandi … maybe she has time now, maybe I better check that out? *sigh* sounds like work. Ok, ok … we’ll at least check.

Hmm, she’s touring with one of the groups too. We’ll check again about 12:15-12:30 pm. Went up front anyway, because we wanted to get some ice water. It should be listed as one of our steps … there … noted it on OH. That’s where we want all our food and exercise things to be. Ok, did we get somewhere? It’s 10:07?

It just takes some effort, remember? Let’s go over this … you can do it. Maybe we can type it? Then you can be at the computer? We can put documents across the screens … Hmm, doesn’t that seem like fun? Ok, we’ll have an orange and then we’ll do it at 10:30 am. That gives us an hour – quick lunch then an hour to plan Thinking Group, we gotta do that, remember? Then back to the Observation work – oh and get the original from Kathy I don’t think we got a copy day before Thanksgiving, k? Yes maam. Next time up.

Ok, 15 minutes … and we better look efficient … Rich is here. We heard him, so figured we better take down our blogs. That means we should anyway … I guess that’s the new policy … if Rich wouldn’t approve we are probably doing something that we should be. He’s tough. Let’s get the set up for the other thing.

WooHOO! We did stuff! It’s now 3:53 pm and there is only 7 minutes to TGIF Time!!! AND … SWEETIE IS TAKING US OUT! WOOHOOO!!!

So, it be in our best interest to go home, hmm?

Just wanted to finish up here. Loosely, we worked with just a couple things.

You’ll see posted in this next entry after this the Observations. This took a long time to do. True we had a couple of groups. I had forgotten about the Circles group at noon, and then there was the Thinking Group after that. We also had gotten the late start due to the reading and are leaving on time … So, I guess it’s not too bad. We had 10 pages of long 14” legal pages of notes to sort out. We felt real proud of ourselves for working it out as separate words documents across the screen. At one point you weren’t able to do that … sure the extra screen helps a lot, but at one point the Word program was made so there could only be 8 docs open.

Could you imagine them thinking that could ever be enough? That’s just silly. We had 10 going and it was beautifully teared so kinda fun … It was much better than the desk version of looking through the paper set 10 times and writing it all by hand. Yeeks! What was I thinking?

As a reminder if anyone wants to write on it later the groups were both good. We caught the Leadership group up on the yellow acquaintance circle and the orange strange kid circle and we talked in general to see how they were doing, and then we went through scenarios of “what if?” It was great. The bottom line is that you don’t get involved with strange kids. But, there was a lot of tempting … Ok shhhh, we can save some of that for later if there’s time. The group asked what we were going to do in Thinking group at the end of their group. I asked them, hmm what do you want to do? They figured they wanted to do Christmas plays. So, we squeeked out 3 of them. We paid attention to the theme, setting, plot and character. That’s pretty much it … the 3 stories were about Santa coming to their party and handing them out presents, being around their home Christmas tree, going out and then being robbed of presents, and then being at a K-mart and being upset because they didn’t have your movie and needing to be escorted out by the security guy.

Yah yah … that’s what we all think about. Everything around Christmas time seems to be about presents. We’ll have to manage around that later. Oh, one more thing we just got a cal from Liftetime fitness. They had a sale that ended tonight for half off the entry fee – so $149.50 for that, $79.95 monthly, a free extra month of a trainer and I agreed to come in tomorrow at noon. I just want to see what’s there.

I’m not afraid of signing up because I don’t have any money. Sweetie said he had a game at night and on Sunday morning, so maybe he’ll come and maybe he won’t, but one way or another I should advance that deal. The sales persons name is Chris, the place is at 601 Burr Ridge Parkway, in Burr Ridge, 60527 and the phone number is 630-288-5217. Hehehe just taking a note here, so I don’t have to carry anything with me. What a good life I lead … and leading such … don’t want to keep sweetie waiting … see ya later!

posted by Ann Marie @ 11/30/2007 03:24:00 PM Comments: 0