Stuff and Chicago

I've been up since 4:30 this morning and I think I am way overtired. I have a headache and can't seem to wind down. Why was I up at 4:30? I have no idea. I was supposed to get up at 6:00 to be at work by 8:00 but my eyes popped open and that was that. Since I had an extra hour and a half to kill, I had to decide between taking myself out to breakfast (Cracker Barrel was sounding good) or going for a workout. A couple of miles walked/run before the sun came up felt pretty damn good.

(My husband is too funny. When he saw my Facebook post from 5:00 this morning debating whether I would work out or have a greasy breakfast, he commented, "Since its a little after 6 and you aren't here, but your car is, I'm going to guess that you ran to Cracker Barrel???")

Tonight was the monthly support group for my bariatric surgery office. We had a potluck dinner. It was nice. I made my healthified shepherd's pie (with the cauliflower faux-tato topping) and got lots of compliments. One of my friends brought me a jar of her homemade no sugar added strawberry jam...delicious! I made plans with a few of the ladies to go for a long walk on Sunday. I'm really looking forward to that! One of the ladies, my photographer buddy April, is at goal thanks to her gastric bypass and looks AMAZING. Another lady just had her gastric sleeve done 3 weeks ago. Yet another is around the same phase I am, about 90 pounds down thanks to her band. It's nice getting to know all of these people and learn from their successes and struggles.

There was one lady there who made me sad. She was sitting in the back corner, not eating anything and not talking to anyone. I went over to introduce myself and asked the usual questions from these types of events (what surgery did you have? how far out are you? etc.) and she said she had the band but she's the big failure of the group and had lost about 20 pounds in 2 years. I told her not to say that because you're not really a failure unless you give up completely and she said she's ready to have the band removed because it doesn't work. She said she can't eat anything healthy like chicken or salad so she eats chips and cookies all day. She said she didn't have the willpower to resist the bad stuff and if she had willpower in the first place, what was the point of the band?

Wow. A little depressing. I don't know how to help her. I feel terrible for her. It made me very thankful for blogland because I didn't go into surgery with those kind of expectations.

So that brings me to the part I didn't really want to talk about...I don't think I'm going to make it to Chicago for BOOBs this year. Airfare is just CRAZY expensive from south Florida...like $300 for the cheapest flight out of Miami, more than 70 miles away (which means I'd have to pay for parking too). Almost double that to go from the two airports that are closer to home. I'll keep an eye out for cheap flights, but it's not looking great. I got all excited when I saw a flight for $192 until I realized...that was one way.

We're going to Alaska for our anniversary this year, which I am hugely excited about. We have a brand new nephew in Boston so we'll be back and forth to there a few times this year. We're renewing our wedding vows and throwing a big party for all of the people who were at our first wedding. I just can't afford to do everything, not to mention all the time off work.

Maybe it will work out. Who knows? I guess I'll have to wait and see.