Ooo, look! A new post!

When I started this blog I was newly widowed, had just purchased my first home and totally did not know what to do with life.

Fast forward 5 years.  I still have just one kid.  He is amazing.  Most days my heart breaks over how much I love him and how much I can't shield him from the world.  I hate that.  That's life.

I finally have a dog pack, Rupert, Gilbert and Oscar.  Lock, stock and three dog dishes, they weigh 41 pounds total.  Somehow, I thought my dog pack would weigh more.  They are terribly efficient at alerting me to squirrels breaking wind in the backyard.

I have two horses.  Yeah, two.  I adopted a four year old, unbroken Clydesdale/Thoroughbred nurse mare foal about a year ago.  Hugo is...well, Hugo.  He's a hit everywhere he goes.  Kids LOVE him.  Women think he is the bee's knees.  Men find him a kindred spirit.  In the last year, I've been bitten (totally my fault), stepped on, pushed over, fell face down into the muck pile....you get the picture,  I'll let you in on a secret, despite all that, he makes me insanely happy.  I adore the big lug.  I needed an hobby and I got one.  One year later, I'm getting back from the trainer this weekend.  Now I have to learn to ride all over again.

Jimmy is the other horse..er..well, pony but only just.  Parentage is uncertain, could be POA, could be AQH.  He is 13.2hh, bay with a blaze, white rump spots and two white corona bands.  Technically, this is Jeff's horse.  Guess who feeds him?  The little bastard (Jimmy, not Jeff) has been ours for approximately 4 months now.

Sigh.

Did I say the equines make me insanely happy?  Yeah, emphasis on the insane part.  All my animals make me happy.  I like them more than I like most humans.  Jeff is my crowning glory.  He is such a great kid.  I lucked out.

This last year has me in better physical shape than I've been in since I left New Orleans.  I'll let you know how the riding goes.

This is an amazingly cool site

http://community.livejournal.com/abandonedplaces/

Two years?????

Has it really been two freakin' years? Wow, time flies and all that crap.

Things have changed. I work now. I can move now. The mini van is no more. We have another dog. El Jefe is ADD/ADHD with dyslexia. I may be ADD myself. I was assimilated and joined Facebook. (I still shake my head about that one.) To be honest, I'm just happy my blog is still around. I like the couple of things I've written here. They make me feel like my higher education wasn't in vain.

Have you ever wanted to lolspeak or just plain ol' misspell things just to see it work? I thought about doing that but decided not to because there were far too many people out there screwing up American not on purpose. I know better therefore I shouldn't. Yeesh, I hate being responsible.

My link word

Rob at Cockeyed.com is a fantastically warped individual with a brilliant way of looking at the world. His website has been a long time favorite of mine. Frankly, I have NO idea how on earth I ever found it in the first place but I head that way about every three or four days. I'm a huge fan.

Well, he's come up with this wacky idea on how to link words within websites and blogs. It's an insane idea and with Rob's considerable cyber-clout will undoubtedly work like a charm.

As soon as my word is assigned, I'll be posting it here! Oh JOY!

TADA!!! I have been assigned! Here it is!

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We now paws for this message....

My dog is nuts. I'd say my kid was nuts as well but that would be redundant. My kid is a typical 5 year old whose favorite past time is taking headers off the couch and farting.

My dog on the other hand......

We have anxiety issues. Left to his own devices, Rupert, (that's the dog) will destroy anything within his reach. Thank the gods the dog only weighs 13 lbs. (approx. 6 kilos). He's a chihuahua/dachshund cross. I'm convinced therein lies his problem. Chihuahuas would rule the world if they had opposable thumbs. The next time you see a chihuahua basking in a sunbeam, take a hard look. That dog isn't napping, she/he is plotting (not entirely unlike The Brain) to take over the world. That supremely benign expression is pure ecstasy at the thought of a chihuahua run world.

Now back to Rupert.

His dachshund side is considerably more pragmatic than the chihuahua side. Dachshunds are tough little bastiches with a no nonsense air about them. His rampant discontent is because one part of him wishes to be Supreme Ruler while the other side sees the futility of trying to make adult human beings do anything that makes sense...not entirely like herding cats or asking for a group of 5 year olds to maintain a modicum of order.

So Rupert is sentenced to a life of conflicting thoughts and I am sentenced to a life of picking up piles of shredded tissue or overturned trash cans. My mini blinds are forever in peril.

I had gastric bypass surgery

There are quite a few people in this world that think I took the easy way out when it comes to losing some of the 250+ pounds I had to lose. I have to say, I got enormous over the last two years. After Scott died, I comfy ate. Go figure. It took three years for me to find insurance that would actually cover the procedure.

I decided I owed it to Jeff to become a mommy that didn't have to use a cane, puff like a freight train when she walked and couldn't stand up for more than 45 seconds.

I once went through the Diet Center's program and lost the same amount of weight I've lost through RNY. I gained that weight back plus some. I once went on the SlimFast diet and lost the same amount of weight I've lost through RNY. I gained that weight back plus some. I once got pregnant and lost the same amount of weight (via morning sickness that lasted my entire pregnancy) the same amount of weight I've lost through RNY.

The difference? Well, when I was on those diets, I constantly thought about food. I was constantly hungry. When I failed at those diets, I binge ate. With my RNY, I'm not hungry. I simply can't binge eat. The weight loss *IS* easy, the route I take to the weight loss isn't. I don't tolerate any artificial sweetener well. They all make me ill in some form. Sugar also makes me ill if I eat too much. I'm soy allergic and winding up with pulmonary edema from an allergic reaction is reason enough to be a soy nazi. My WLS has its trials but in the long run (Yeah, right, I'm only 4 months out) I believe this is the one that will stick with me.

Or I could just be talking out of my ass.

There are no easy solutions, I guess.

All I was looking for with this surgery is a life where a Lean Cuisine would fill me up....now I find out they are loaded with soy protein. Does that qualify as irony?

What is it about mothers?

I'm well past 21 but my mom still sees fit to get into every single aspect of my life, bidden or unbidden. At this very moment, she is so pissed off at me because I can't tell her when I'm going to get started on my home improvement projects. I don't know! I'm a real 'when the mood strikes me' kind of girl. That means it might strike me at 3 am. I'm just never sure. I would really love to be able to say, "Mom, I'm going to start on this next Thursday at 11:25 am. I'll be using a medium spackle knife and a #3 paint brush." but I just don't think that way. Frankly, I would really like to know when my house became her business. She constantly tells me how to raise my son. "He's hyperactive." "He needs a speech therapist." "He's not reading yet?" Just some of the little gems that have fallen from her lips in the past 6 months. I recently had gastric bypass surgery and I've finally stonewalled her enough on how much weight I've lost that she's stopped asking.

Why don't I just tell her to fuck off? Well, I was raised in the South by a military father and a Southern mother. I was also raised in a christian household so that whole 'respect your elders' so that paradigm is in place. I'm getting better with time. I stopped doing guilt years ago but she still keeps booking those heavy guilt trips for me. The bitterness and anger from her 'poverty' and advancing macular degeneration is tangible.

Sigh.

I guess I'll never understand my mom. I just hope I don't turn out like her in my later years. That thought is one that haunts me in the early morning hours.