Almost TWO months!

I just realized that as I posted a bit ago, it had been almost two whole months since my last post! WOW! Why, you may be asking????

Well, life is CRAZY here right now!
1) My daughter's divorce is not going really smoothly.
2) We're doing visitation every week, three days a week for 5 hours each day.
3) We got an offer and sold our house.
4) We're preparing to move back to Florida after 10 years here in WV.
5) We're packing and selling and packing and selling......
6) The 4-H cookbook finally went off to press with over 600 recipes!
7) 4-H camp is THIS WEEK!

I still had boxes that were never unpacked from our move in December of 1999... Granted, they were my good dishes that I never got a reason to use. But, they were still wrapped and packed from our last move! We have accumulated SO much junk in 10 more years. Where did it all come from? Why have we kept it so long? So much of it has been trashed, sold, or given away that I wonder why we ever packed it in here in the first place! Don't get me wrong, the extra cash from the stuff we've sold was cool... But, it probably would have been better to just keep the cash we paid for it way back when! LOL

And, OMG, the sorting! I have to pass on all the 4-H stuff to whoever will be taking over my club's leadership. I have tried not to save too much soapmaking stuff, so have been eBaying like crazy to move it out of here. I have a local lady who will take a bunch too, but haven't been able to even get her on the phone! I gave away a bunch of sample products I'd gotten to try formulating new recipes. Just passed them on to other soap and body product makers to play with.

CLOTHES! Wow, where do they all come from?? When I lost my weight, I gave away over 200 pounds of my own clothing. Now, as we go through drawers and closets for my girls, there is probably over 100 pounds of stuff that they are ready to give away.

And books! OMG, so many books! I am a history teacher. That doesn't help, but I have an entire 18" x 18" x 12" box stuffed full of cookbooks! That doesn't count all the stuff I've printed or written down over the years either! I didn't get to weigh 410 pounds without loving to cook! LOL

Add to all of this, the clutter of 41 years of living..... Well, 41 for me! I have SO MUCH STUFF!! Ugh!

We finally wrapped up the 4-H cookbook and ended up with 600 recipes! WOW was all I could say as I typed the list of recipes.... WOW!! That book will be a hit and I won't even be here to get one.... I'll have to leave a padded envelope with someone to send me one!

4-H camp is this week. I am the president of the Leaders Association, and camp planning was my responsibility. I was also to teach classes this week at camp, but with the move have had to find others to take that chore. Wow, my last 4-H camp... My girls are pretty much grown. Mandy could do 4-H for 3 or 4 more years (age out of program at 21), but really doesn't show enough interest to stick with it once we move and she has cousins to hang out with again... So, this may be the end of my time in 4-H unless I lead a craft group or some other specialty group in FL. It has been fun and I've made lots of friends who I will truly miss...

Emotional Aftermath of WLS...

In an interesting post yesterday by Therese (Miss Redd) over at OH, the term "emotional aftermath" was used in reference to the period after WLS when we all have such turbulent emotions as we attempt to get used to living in the "normal" world without so much extra weight to pack around... It was discussed how the journey is more than just a period of weight loss. It is a time of really finding ourself all over again. We were fat for SO long. During that time, we were rejected for various reasons. We were too fat. We were unable to do things. We were unhealthy. We had no self-esteem or confidence. Sometimes it was other doing the rejecting. Sometimes it was just our beating ourselves up.

Now, as we lose the weight and take our lives back, we still beat ourself up! We are still fat in our heads and will probably always feel that way. Once the fat chick, always the fat chick--even if only in our own mind... We still struggle with SO many things. And it is more than just not really feeling comfy shopping in the juniors or misses department at the clothing store!

I related a story about shopping for cars. I looked at cars I would never, ever have even glanced at before solely based upon the proximity of my belly to the steering wheel! Someone else told about skipping a pedicure with friends because of her weight. We can get so depressed even after losing the weight that we stop going out and being with others! How can we get past this? I truly think that the emotional impact of the weight loss journey needs to be addressed more before surgery is performed. They want to know that we can deal with the eating changes that are required before they do the surgery. How about starting to help deal with the thinking changes???