Dances with DS

I have had a fabulous weekend and was very spoilt on my birthday by my family.  Time is flying all round - on friday I will return to South Africa. I always feel like a tourist at first - somewhat misplaced from my motherland until I walk into my mums home. Then under the mountain I am at home and something in my gut unwinds into peace and restfulness.

I am longing for my family. My brother, my aunt and uncle, all my cousins, Pete’s mom & family…it will be so good to be with them all.  Missing them always accelerates just before I see them again.  I know there will be good days full of laughter and conversation,  hearty meals together outside in the sunshine. We celebrate our togetherness through food at home and I am glad my DS allows me to partake without guilt or regret.  I used to avoid these celebrations when I was larger. I had terrible fears of eating with others. I felt that perhaps they would judge me. My family never did - but even so I preferred to eat alone.  These thoughts still come to me unexpectedly.  I am glad that I have normality in my life nowadays about food related issues. It is wonderful to eat & enjoy and not feel stressed out about it.

I will be staying a little longer than I anticipated as my mum wants to take me to see her birthplace. This is in a place called the Karoo.  She was born in a town called Graff Reinet and spent her early childhood there.  She has always said that her soul remains tied to that place but we have never been there together. I have driven through parts of the Karoo before but not as far as Graff Reinet.

It’s quite an amazing place. The landscape is semi-desert, small round scrub bushes surrounded by mountains and hills. Hot and dusty sometimes but the night sky is astonishing.  The entire milky way can be seen and one can lose oneself in the beauty and enormity of our galaxy there.

I will take a photo journal of this journey as I go back to ancestral roots and post it up on my return.

No doubt my protein intake will consist of lots of Karoo lamb (the best lamb in the whole world!) and Ostrich meat. I do worry a little about having a DS related emergency so far from any help. There won’t be any WLS experts on hand out there in the bush. Cape Town has WLS surgeons now so over there I feel safe, but I will be many hours away from them!  I always worry about this anytime I am about to depart off the beaten track.  However, I also know I cannot let my anxiety confine me. I have to remind myself I had my DS for this - to be able to travel & explore many things and it will just have to behave! I feel good at the moment so fingers crossed things remain stable. There is no reason they should not.

I’ll be gone for a month.  Already I am writing long to do lists for my family!  My contact with this blog and the UK will be sparse.  The internet in SA is slow and tiring when one is used to fast technology.  Quite a good thing as it forces me into getting on with the day instead of being near a screen!

The next few days will be a busy rush for me as I must pack. I have to get my zinc on prescription which I have left till the last minute, so just hoping it’s not too late! 

Zenni & Ruby need to have their meals cooked & frozen before I go. Major mission - but so worth it as they both thrive on homecooked meals. There are some small gifts to be bought for family & friends. My suitcase boasts strange things in it - cow shaped egg cups for a mate who collects porcelain cows - arthritis gloves for an artist friend who struggles to paint (I hope they are not just hype! and that they really help.) Goats milk cheddar cheese!  Toys for my little nieces - I now wonder if a rinky dinky CD player is such a wise move - lol! We will be listening to Twinkle little star on an hourly basis no doubt!   Not to mention my stock of vitamin supplements.   Pete is off on a trip to Croatia tomorrow, just a night away…but one more thing to deal with.  My suitcase remains unpacked still! I wish I was more organised but am not - so just going to focus on everything and I’ll get there!

Well the time is flying and the trip to Cape Town is just around the corner.  I am really excited to go now as I feel like forgetting about WLS world and playing with the kids.  Just the thought of being able to actually romp about with them is bouying up my spirits.  I’m afraid I missed the boat with my own children. I could never run around with them - I still feel sad thinking about those aspects of mothering that I failed at so abysmally.

But with my brothers little ones I can at last fully involve myself physically - even if it is a rare thing to see them.

My birthday is coming up on Easter Sunday.  I had a lovely birthday meal out with a friend today - bit early but really nice. She took me to Loch Fyne Restaurant.  I ate crevette salad for starters - lovely fresh little things.  Although it is a fish restuarant I plumped for duck breast which was delicious.

She asked me how I felt about adding another year to the many *gulp*.  I don’t like it but on the plus side while I look my age , I don’t feel like I am in my mid forties. It’s a bit problematic sometimes. I am quite miffed that no one informed of this side effect of WLS.  My surgeon should have been more responsible - I blame it entirely on him!

This lack of info is born out by a present I bought myself on e-bay - a pair of ‘anti gravity’ boots with springs in them. I know it is totally crazy & lawd knows having bought them I am having anxiety attacks about leaping about in the local park with them!  

It’s all a bit embarressing - especially since they arrived in a box that states they are for teens!  Part of me wants to rise to that and say: ‘Really??? - well we shall see about that then!’   The other part of me is the fear of looking like a half cocked madwoman.  They are not subtle - they are very in one’s face.

http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/airkicks/index.html

I put them on and gained a 6ft stance. Quite darned scary being so suddenly tall. I was surprised I never toppled over. I don’t know about anti-gravity tbh…more like ‘tempting gravity’.

I could not stop laughing.  I sprung about the house, a bit wobbly, - (that’s the age showing) - giggling loudly ( that’s the child in me)…then noticed the dogs had hidden under a table!  Two pairs of brown anxious eyes peered out at the insane spectacle going on…

T’was only then that it dawned on me that if even my poor dogs were hiding - what effect would it have on people exposed to this wild spronging woman!  Also - what if I toppled over and looked like a complete fool. What if I oversprung and knocked someone over in my spring zest for life! Or if I managed to break my ankle before flying off to South Africa?

I suitably subdued my excitement at the idea of being perhaps graceful, like a leaping gazelle.  Much like I had to accept the ruinous tatters of my own deflated skin post WLS - I am probably going to have to accept that a gazelle I will never be - and if I land arse end up in a ditch I will have invited this on myself.

Ooooo - but I tell you it is wicked fun!  A bit like bouncing on the bed.  Mind you I could have saved myself a lot of money if I’d just confined my bouncing habit to the bed…

They are not quite as ‘flighty’ as I had hoped…I would have liked more lift - but perhaps they need to be broken in more.

My kids (grown ups) all expressed great delight at the new toy.  There was much laughing going on while they tried them out. Part of it was directed at me I’m afraid.   My daughter asked if I was really going to try them out in a public space and suggested I find a field somewhere off the beaten track.  Subtle huh!

I have decided that I will have to become a midnite practiser.  So if you see a  leaping woman  with strange boots on, laughing hysterically, bounding on through the wee hours of the dark night just ignore her.

She is taking literal leaps and bounds into the world of having some fun again…

AGE BE DAMNED!!!!

I spent the day in my garden today. I had a need for the sunshine so I decided to plant up a small area with some fresh organic salad leaves, and herbs.  Got some nice oriental seedlings, bok choy and mizuma, to make summer salads more interesting. Planted chard with bright red and yellow stems, broadbeans and peas, oreganum, thyme, garlic chives, chervil, a super Italian parsely and rosemary.  I can’t live without my herbs, not happily anyway. There is rollo rossa(sp?)  lettuce - a cheery lettuce with bronzey red leaves and the soft green of butter lettuce. There are baby toms and red and green peppers. I put some beetroot seeds and American cress seeds into the ground. Not sure if it’s okay to plant them at the moment, but we’ll see if they come up! I packed the seeds into a tight space - this way as I thin them out there will be leaves for the picking!  I fancy baby beetroot right now - just thinking about it. The leaves van be cooked like spinach too, or when young eaten as salad and they make a dish look special.

After I had planted all the salads, I made a bamboo fence all the way around my little raised veggie bed - to keep Ruby the bull-terror out. She is a terrible plant monster right now. I dig - she digs out everything I put in! Each little plant was sniffed in turn.  I raked and tilled and  planted all afternoon long and I currently smell like horse manure!  Probably look like it too.  

I had the gratitude for energy and health as I so often do when I am being physical. I am pleased for my DS everyday in one way or another.

I saw Mr Patel last week. I have lost a little more weight.  Thought I had gained some a few weeks ago so I feel it might have been brought on by the protein experiments. (Or maybe my head is just playing up again!). It’s been quite a learning curve and I’m probably proof that Protein supplements can be an aid to weightloss.   I have never waded through so many drinks in my life before!  So this week I am back on real food and enjoying every meal. Today for lunch I bought a punnet of Tescos creamed spinach. I made 2 ‘wells’ in it and cracked an egg in each. I grated fresh mozzerella cheese  over the top, baked it and it was soooo yummy. I think there is a name for this dish, but I forget what it is?? It’s one I will repeat soon again as it takes seconds to prepare.

Aside from that I am going to Cape Town on the 17th April. I am going to see my little nieces whom I seldom see as they live in Australia.  We are a very scattered family and it’s not right.  But what can one do. I have to snatch these times and hold them close because I know I will look again and Alexis (4yo) and Sara-Jane(1yo) will be all grown up. And how I long for my blue Cape mountains again.  It’s magic living beneath mountains. I will look at them everyday while I am there and enjoy their beauty.

Ruby turns one this week. Pete has instructed me to bake her a cake! I bought her a disgusting big tongue shaped rubber toy and a fancy diamante bandana.  We will celebrate because it’s extra special for us.  Our Petal never made it to one year old and so these are bittersweet days in some ways. We think on our Petal.   I lived in fear of losing Ruby and still do, to this terrible worm that A Vasorum is. She is as much frog hunter as Petal was - despite all my efforts to get rid of the garden frogs she caught one.    Some days later she started the same dry weird little cough just like Petal had. We dewormed her with panacur even though she is on Advocate de-wormer too. We just can’t risk it.

We are over the moon that we have this girlie and we have made it to her first year. She’s as much a love in our lives as our Petal was.  She’s a funny dog - makes us laugh every day.  I said to Pete the other day that the gods gave us a shining jewel after our horrendous loss of Petal.  Although I still miss Petal so much & wish I could have both dogs - Ruby has negated the empty space Petal left behind. She fills our days with mad bed jumping 8-O, she is always near us, my house is strewn with dog toys.

Our house is a crazy bully world again just how we like it. 

Ruwbs soon worked out that if she said ‘mama’ her mama would spoil her with tasty little treats. How could I not?! So now she frequently says mama to me, particularly if she wants something.  She went through quite a destructive phase of chewing things up - partly it was teething puppy, but also she was bored. So we started to play little games with her to stimulate her mentally and she loves to learn new tricks.  Here is my girl learning foot tricks with Matt my son taking her through her paces. And the ‘mama’ is not a voiceover - it’s the real thing!  She also says ‘yum yum’ but we have not caught it on camera yet.

Here’s my miniature bullterrier Ruwbs,  doing her stuff :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXrA-usZFzw