Dances with DS

Tomorrow will be the New Year. I don’t have any resolutions. It’s because if I started making them I would have a long unrealistic list which I’d forget in the first week anyway!  Instead I look backwards as the year turns.  I count a few blessings.  My mum is here after doubt filled times, I am still grateful for my personal DS miracle that continues to work effectively, my family is in relatively good health. My kids are doing well finding their steps into being fully independant, Zenni my little dog still boasts an improved heart condition and we have our Ruby-Grace filling our home with bullie-love, mud and madness, after the horror of losing our Petal earlier this year.

This week between Christmas and the New Year has been busy. Mum and I have been to the Tate Modern and the Courthauld Gallery. I gazed apon Rothko and Van Gogh.  I walked through a maze of clocks and tape measures at the   amazing Cildo Meireles exhibition. My heart pounded as it was like walking through my life in some ways - my life when I was freaked out by measurements and the way time was passing by my morbidly obese me. Had there been a scale in the room I might have wept. All over again in my remembering. The thing about the remembering is how unexpected it is. I skip through life on mobile joints now. I try to live today & not reach back too far in a hurting past. But then I find myself back in thoughtland like a bad dream. It can happen in a room of tape measures or it can happen when people express a fatist attitude in front of me. It can be triggered by odd things that seem unrelated. It just never goes away.  The one thing that is a consolation is that it does seem more surreal now, a little further away.

I have been eating. Rather a lot.  I could do with less cherry liquer chocolates I think but the box is reaching the end of it’s life! At least it has taken a week to devour - once apon a time it would not have lasted me a day.

In between being with my mum and doing things outside the house, I have restored a beautiful ornate old mirror and painted the french doors in my lounge.  I feel pretty productive.  All the walking and doing of things does stir sudden hunger in me for which I have been unprepared. I have reached for the biccies instead of the slice of ham sad to say!  Yesterday my DS had enough of it. I had mammoth cravings for protein in the midnight hours which I will heed today.  It’s time to pay attention and to move back into being more compliant.

I read an interesting article about marinating meat to reduce cancer risks - I think it’s not a bad plan for us WLS patients who do consume more than the average population.  It’s that old pre-emptive type of thinking again.  But my feeling is it’s smart to always work on reducing potential risks. And this is a very tasty way of doing so!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/4031158/Marinating-steak-in-beer-or-wine-reduces-cancer-chemicals.html

Today we  are taking a drive out to Chichester, perhaps Arundel.  I am thinking how sad it is that I don’t explore Britain more. This is a beautiful (if frikkin cold ) country.  It’s  to my shame that I admit a large portion of my mental energy goes into figuring out how to get out of it to sunnier climes, instead of putting on the thermal layers and just going for it!

Tomorrow the door on the New year will open. I hope you will find good energy to carry you into the year ahead. I hope it will be a beautiful year for all of us and that some of your dreams will materialise for you.  I’m thinking very much right now of those who are pre-op, who are willing the year to come faster so that they can get their surgeries and start to move on in new ways, with renewed hope. Tomorrow I shall raise my little glass of pomegranate wine to all of you who are waiting for surgery. Keep holding the hope and the faith.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL 

In the blink of an eye it will be upon us.

My darling mum is here and she seems in good shape considering she had major surgery only 7 months ago.  It’s wonderful to have her with us over the festive season.  And the British weather is holding up well enough for us to spend plenty of time walking around too.

Walking around might not be any big deal for those who were lucky enough to be born slim, but I never forget that it was not a luxury I had for 20 years odd.  I am able to walk for hours nowadays, no perspiration, no constant breaks, no swollen feet, no raw thighs, no constant breaks, up stairs like a feather! Just me & the walk going on together.  Sometimes I think I could walk forever!

And walk we did yesterday. We caught the tube to go and see the exhibition at the London museum called ‘Babylon’ - well worth it if you want to have a nice outing.  It struck me how amazing it is that all these years later fragments of time long gone,before the birth of Christ resurface in our age.  I think in ages to come will we be remembered as nations?  Will our daily life sit adorning some science fiction building somewhere?  Will people think we achieved much in our time?

We then went to Portobello Road to find little things for christmas stockings. The idea was that anyway, but I bought an old  chinese table instead. Yup you read that right, a table. Admittedly small but as heavy as it could possibly be! It was in a sorry state, my usual thing, I cannot ignore beautiful things in sorry states. Even though my garage is a back log of projects ’sorry states’.  It’s not broken, the wood is just very thirsty and uncared for. It is beautifully carved with clouds & bats all around it and is a quirky shape. This I lugged with me for miles, building up the muscle in my right arm!

I thought I was finished with the Xmas shopping but Portobello is a lure to buy more. And I did. A Jade pendant, a beautiful coat for my daughter, a Russian brooch for dad’s wife.  I must avoid the Portobello’s of the world in future!

Business seems slow in that neck of London. The economy has taken hold it seems because the shoppers were not out in force. It was very quiet considering christmas is only days away now. It’s going to be a very grim year for so many people.  Meanwhile did you know Brown has saved the world. Isn’t he amazing. Grrrrrrrr.  Arrogant & I thought us Souf Effricans were forerunners in the arrogance stakes. Mmmmm.

We stopped for a bite to eat at a local Turkish restaurant - lamb and kofta with thick spicy tomato sauce and tart yogurt, it tasted sooooo good and knocked the chill off our bodies for a while.  We got home knackered, but happy.

Today will be a slow day, I hope. Just the infernal housework, but otherwise restful.

Last night we went to Pennyhill Park hotel to share Xmas festivities with old friends who are also my hubby’s work partners. It was an overnight stay & I enjoyed every minute of it.  We don’t socialise enough - most of the year is devoted to them working around the clock.  It’s a pity but I suppose that’s life.

The hotel is simply amazing.  A taste of life on the wealthier side. I could live like that!

We arrived and I went for a massage and facial.  Oooooh the luxury of being pampered. I want to live like that forever…lol.  If I had the money I would get these once a month at least!

Dinner was an experience. I admit I was very worried about this ‘10 course meal’.  I had nerves about it. On a good, a VERY good DS day I can do a main and a little dessert tops. So 10 courses seemed like potential torture to me.  But mercifully the courses are small & the eating process is long.  We watched the chef make up our food - each little detail thought out so that the dishes arrived and were simply out of this world. Little vinagrettes of beauty  - jewel food awash with flavour. It was a marvellous way to eat, it made me realise that size is truly not everything. The food was fresh and each dish had TASTE. One could engage with that.  Also it is visually presented in such a way that it was almost sacriligious to start eating it!  I had some wine, only a glass and was rather happy. I have not had a drink in years - and I am clearly still a cheap date!   It was a superb experience & I recommend it for those who have something to celebrate. Here is a pic of the room where we ate, plus a sample menu:

  http://www.pennyhillpark.co.uk/EXCLUSIVE_HOTELS/eating_and_drinking/henri_giraud_chefs_table.aspx

In short, it has been an eating weekend. This morning  I helped myself to an incredible breakfast - yogurt with berries, candied walnuts, sugar almonds, winter berries….divine!  Then I ate a fry up too. 8-O.

Later today I joined the WLSinfo gang for the christmas party. It was great fun to be with people that I think are simply amazing, we have such a warm welcoming bunch of peeps and I always feel among friends and kindred spirits.

I ate a very tasty Rump steak, with White wine cream sauce, beans and chips and Rose & I shared a choccie pud - 2 DSers together!

To say I am stuffed now is an understatement!  Tonight I will refrain from eating and settle for a large ovaltine instead. Tomorrow I’ll probably stay with light meals just to give my poor old DS a break.  But gawd I love this surgery - to be able to feel so free to eat is pretty amazing and for me my DS is still state of the art in this department…even though 10 courses (even little ones!) is pushing it.

Inbetween all of this my poor doggies have been neglected.  I came home to 2 wanton needy little animals - how I love these two!  We got our Ruwb’s after our beautiful Petal died and I still must compile a photo journal of her. She is 9 months old and a bit of a problem child, but also a bright intelligent sassy little girlie.  She has taken some of the pain we felt at losing Petal away, because she fills up our lives in a BIG way. Ruby is Mrs BIG personality. Bright as our Petal was, very loving, but high energy and oddly nervous at times.   We have gone through two major health episodes with her already - one was a bowel obstruction just a few months ago (would you believe it!!! I think we are the family of human & animal bowel obstructions *sigh*).  Luckily she has fully recovered, but the problem is that she will eat anything, so I still live in fear.  Shoes, plastic flower pots, her blankets - Ruby eats it all!

Tonight I am going to relax, replete, dogs in arms and watch a spot of the old telly.