Made It

• Hi all just wanted to let you know I made it through surgery with flying colors or at least that's what it felt like..man they give good drugs haha...but really it went well. I don't remember much but the hubs and mom said that it took much longer than expected (over 2 hours) because the tumor was much larger than they thought.  Turns out it was the size of a small tennis ball   HOLY CRAP!!! Well I'm just glad it's out and now I have this lovely drain thing sticking out of my stomach ick, I'm hoping some of my fat will magically liquefy and ooze on out... Sorry gross I know but I'm sitting here going crazy from boredom and it's only been a two days.

Just before surgery, sorry it's blurry hubs is not the best picture taker

• Now I'm watching T.V like it's my job and honestly it sucks balls!  I hate not being able to DO something.  I actually feel pretty good and am not in that much pain.  I can't lift anything so I don't but I find my self just walking up and down my hallway just to move around.  And it actually feels better when I stand than when I'm sitting but I promise I'm taking it easy.
  
  
  
  

• To and insult to injury poor DQ who is staying with Grammie C for the week came down with a fever and a major cough...poor baby all I want to do is cuddle her but instead now it means I won't even get to see her on Friday for the switch off to Grammie J's.  There is NOWAY I can get sick now especially a cough.  Yesterday I chocked on a bit of water and I thought my insides where going to come flying out it hurt soo bad.

• A bit of good I got these beautiful flowers delivered while I was typing this.  They are from my class, so sweet I miss them a ton already.  And the hubs has been my beck and call boy the last few days which I'm not gonna lie is kinda nice... not that I'm taking advantage of it or anything... ok I won't make him paint my toes lol, but he has brought me some pretty good movies to watch.

The Final Workout

• Thursday was my last early morning run at the gym.  There will be no more 3 am wake up calls at least not on purpose anyway. Honestly I thought I was going to be a bit happy about it.  Those mornings can be rough especially when 6pm rolls around and I'm  in the middle of cooking dinner.  But truthfully I was really sad, as tough as it was when I finished my run I felt great and accomplished not to mention pretty bad ass for waking up that early to get it done.

 

• Thursday was also my last "double" day  also know as girls night with CareBear.  We did Body Pump then relaxed and had dinner.  So gonna miss those too, at least DQ will still get a girls night.  CB is helping out by taking DQ over night once a week so Grammie doesn't get burnt out.
  
  

• Saturday DQ and I went to LaLa's birthday party.  It was a girly superhero party held at Pretend City (think our real life just kid size).  We had lot's of fun and kid size life is way more fun than real life. After the party we went to lunch and I got my eyebrows did (they were getting scary).
  

  
  

   

• This morning I went out for a final run.  I planned on doing 3 miles but it was so nice and I just didn't want to stop so I ended up doing 5.  Toward the end I have to admit I teared up a bit honestly WHO  am I.  If you would have told me 2 years ago that I would be sad that I couldn't run or exercise I would have laughed at you.  Now I'm freaking out and wishing my running shoes a teary farewell.  Hopefully it will only be 6 weeks and not the full 12 but I will for sure listen to my body and the doctor so I don't hurt myself or make anything worse. 

  
  

Meal Planning to the Extreme

• One week from today I will be having surgery.... OMG ONE week there is way to much to do.  That is why it's been almost a week since I've posted.  I'm hoping that with me pretty much stuck on the couch or in bed I will be better at posting things, but then I will have nothing to post about being stuck on said couch or bed ugh I can't win.  But anyway, I do go in this afternoon to do all the pre-admission stuff for the hospital.  Shit starting to get real!

• Over the weekend I was in full chef mode just call me Julia Child maybe with a little less wine...who am I kidding bring on the wine.  I am trying to be prepared for my surgery and though the hubby can cook (and well) he uses butter like it's the main ingredient and with no form of exercise in my near future I can't be eaten' like that.  So I made 3 weeks worth of dinners (for the both of us, I don't have to worry about DQ Grammie and CareBear are trading off keeping her ...have I mentioned I have the best friends ever!!)  that can either be thrown in the oven or crock pot and a shit ton of lunches (for myself) that just need to be nuked or thrown together.  Pretty much tons of chicken and ground turkey meals also a few spaghetti squash (regular pasta for the hubs) meals with different healthy pasta sauces (they freeze and reheat  really well), and some egg dishes. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• Sunday Was TaTa's 20th holy crap shoot me now I should NOT have a TWENTY year old birthday.  We celebrated on friday by going out to dinner with the fam to the local mexican place.  I was very good and got my fajita burrito but cut it in half as soon as I got it and but one half away and only ate the other.  It really helps when I do that because it keeps me from nibbling mindlessly while chatting.

• Yesterday we continued the celebration at Disneyland.  Even though DQ's pass expired in November,  us older girls don't expire until Feb. so I wanted to go one last time and mom and TaTa had the day off so I met them there for dinner and a few rides.  It's actually the first time since DQ was born that I have gone without her.  We had a great time and now time to retire the pass.  Maybe in a few years we will get them again but for now we are gonna try other things...(we'll see how long it lasts lol)

Oh and on a last note I was nominated for The Sunshine Blogger Award by Elizabeth over at The Singing Bird (she is the bee's knees go and check her out!)  I promise to get to it as soon as I can (probably when I'm all laid up so keep a look out.

Weigh in Wednesday

Ugg I'm up this week 176.4  I'm super bummed. Pffftt

Weigh In Wendnesday

It's been a full week of carb cycling, it's been ok.  Nothing to drastic but I have noticed I get headaches on my low carb days.  Also I'm having a hard time coming up with some low carb snacks (besides hard boiled eggs or peanut butter). Don't get me wrong I love peanut butter but it's very easy for me to eat the whole damn container.

And the results are today's weight is 174.5  so not quite a pound. Hummm I am actually a little disappointed I was hoping to see a bigger loss especially with the first week of cycling... Maybe it's that damn peanut butter.  I'm really tempted to quit and just go back to doing what I know works for me or at least what has worked for me in the past.  Counting calories and working out and make sure I am measuring out my portions when I track instead of guesstimating like I was starting to do.    

So this happened

Yup it's been less than a month and we've already broken the dog!! I still can't believe it.  It happened when we dropped him of at Grammies I was trying to get his harness on while DQ was holding him and he wriggled out of her arms and fell.  After his intial yelp he seemed ok but when we got back he still wasn't putting any weight on it.  I took him to the vet and turns out his leg is broken in two places HOLY CRAP!  Poor baby I felt so bad.  But no worries he is not letting that cast hold him back he is still all over the place and full of energy!   

Weekend Adventures

• On Saturday the hubs woke up biting at the bit for an adventure, wait...what.. Ok let's go.  I jumped at it I love hubs but the man is a homebody so when he gets a bug up his butt I just go with it.  Oh crap the dog! That's right, we have one of those now well poop... Grammie to the rescue we put in a call and dropped  Dobby of on our way to the Queen Mary.  

can you tell she's excited

• Can I tell you I've lived in SoCal all my life and have probably been to long beach about 7 times and 6 of those in the last 5 months lol.  This time we went to the Queen Mary but actually stayed overnight.  It was so cool, and a bit spooky some parts of it are said to be haunted (but we didn't tell DQ that ) and at night it was a bit eerie.  They had this special thing going on called CHILL Its a huge ice/snow theme park.  It had HUGE ice sculptures from the nutcracker, an ice skating rink, ice tubing, and other odds and ends.  

• DQ really wanted to try ice skating and I was totally up for it! My birthday being in February every year from 9-12 years old I had an ice skating party at the local rink.  Look at this SoCal girl trying to get some winter even then. I swear I was born in the wrong part of the country.  So we laced up and off we went.  Have to admit I haven't done it in probably 15 years and was a bit shaky at first but just like riding a bike it came back.  I couldn't believe it DQ turned out to be a natural this girl just took off with only a few minor spills, so much that we went back this morning before we left. So much better there was no one there and we had the ice to ourselves.

• It was such a great weekend and I didn't go overboard on my "cheat" day.  I did indulge but did not go crazy, though I did think about the fried Oreos they had I decided it really wasn't worth it "just to have because I could" so I didn't and instead I enjoyed a great dinner that was a few lot more calories that I would normally get and included a totally girly fufu drink. 

• Sunday is normally a run day for me so I hit up the ships fitness center.  It was really tiny but nobody else was there so no worries.  I hopped on the treadmill it was neat all touch screen and fancy like. There was "Say Yes to the Dress" playing on it but I really didn't watch I prefer to listen to my music. The controls were set to km so I have no idea what my pace was but I worked up a good sweat and ran 3.5km (I'm guessing close to 2 miles).  It was also pretty neat that they had some of the original equipment on display. 

getting warmed up at trying to figure out this fancy thing. I did  average a 6.9 km  ??

What did you do this weekend?

Weigh In Wednesday 2.0

• Even though I will be laid up at the end of the month I have decided to get back on the wagon of weighing in and doing it on Wednesday's again cause really it has such a nice ring to it. Weigh in Wedensday's see just rolls off the tongue.

• This week I'm starting out at 175.4. I think I'm up a bit from my last "official" weigh in here, but to be honest I'm actually down about 3 pounds from over the holidays.  But what ev this will be my starting point.

• If you look back on my weigh in page I have been playing with the same 3-6 pounds for the last 6 months it likes me that much so I've decided to shake thing up a bit.  With all the new years "resolutioners" around,  there have been diet "suggestions" all over the place, people talkin and so on. After a bit of research I decided I want to try carb cycling, I've heard Heather from the Half Size Me podcast talk about it (and if you haven't listened to her show before do it.. it's awesome.. for reals)  so I thought I'd give it a try. I read what I could on the interweb and Chris and Heidi Powell are big into and I totally love them and we are total bff's in my head  so that's the one I'm going with.  I bought his book Choose More, To Lose More and I'm going to give it this whole month (well at least until surgery and see what happens).
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
•  I did start this on Monday just going off what I read on the interweb and bought the book on Tuesday.  So I'm in the process of reading it and getting a better understanding and making sure I'm following it correctly I want to give it a real try. So we'll see how it goes.

Are you trying anything new for the new year?

Not The Muscle... Why not the Fat?

• So about the surgery, it seriously sucks.  Turns out it was not a simple cyst as I had hoped but instead I have what is called a Desmoid tumor. Basically it's a cancer type tumor that does not metastasize to other parts of the body (it's localized) so it stays in the original spot.  It's slow growing and attaches to the muscles (in this case my abs).  It's pretty rare but luckily very few people die from it (well that's good news and I guess if I had to get "cancer" this is the one to get).  If you want you can read more about it here.

• The plan is to have surgery on the 28th, I was hoping sooner but I think I may have pissed of the Nurse when I called back not once, but twice because I hadn't heard from them yet to schedule it... What I was told was he will be cutting out a large portion of my ab muscles (to make sure he gets all the "fingers"  (so it has a harder time growing back) then he will put in a mesh patch to bond the muscles together and hopefully it will hold and new muscles will form over it. (are you freaking kidding I'm finally working on those damn muscles and getting results.  Why can't it be the fat, I still have that and surely I wouldn't care if you cut that off!!). That's why I have to take so much time off from workouts, gotta give my tummy a chance to heal god knows I don't want that shit to rip, could you imagine ouch!! 

• The bummer besides having my insides be part of a bad game of Fruit Ninja, is that I won't be able to run the Surf City Half this year and extra bummer Barb and CB are... uggg life is being quite the bitch right now.  I did think about pushing the surgery back (it's only a week) but the hubs did not like that idea at all. Really it needs to be done and I can't afford or justify the $125 registration when it's already gonna be tight as all heck if I have to be on disability for any length of time (damn car payment).  So that is the long and short of it.  Until then I'm going to work my ass (and my abs) off while I can, and hopefully being in pretty good shape I will be able to bounce back a little faster.

 

Oh wait it is....  Well Damn!

 

*Okay I know I'm making light of a lot of this but it's just my way of coping.  I know that not everyone feels the same or thinks it's funny, but this is how I'm getting though it in my life.  

Trying to fit it In...

Oh what a wonderful 2 weeks it has been  (16 days to be exact),  but this was my last week of vacation... so of course we tried to squeeze in everything we could. 

• On Monday I asked DQ if she wanted to take Dobby to the park that TaTa and I saw on our hike and that was a great big YES!  It was a short walk but on a trail and it did have a few lot of stairs.  I was a bit worried how the tiniest dog ever was gonna do but that little pup may be small but he sure is mighty and handled it no problem.  We spent a few hours at the park, it was so beautiful and even had a little stream next to it that was perfect for DQ to explore. 
  
  
  
  
  

• New Years  Eve day we decided to go to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach.  I had gotten free passes when I ran the Long Beach Half and they expired that day.  It was fun, the aquarium is actually pretty small, so it was perfect for a quick visit.  It took us about 4 hours to see everything, and there was a lot of thing you could touch/pet, like sharks, rays, jellies (I wasn't so sure about that one) and of course sea stars, anomies, and urchins. We also got to feed the lorikeets, dude those things dive bomb you even if you don't have food for them, but they are so pretty I guess I can forgive them and the fact that I didn't get pooped on like the girl next to me lol.   Afterwards we walked over to Yard House for lunch.
  
  
  

• The rest of the evening was low key CareBear came over and we just hung out and caught up, she has been out of town for the last week. Of course we had a few cocktails (those in the bag ones you throw in the freezer... verdict... not bad) played candy crush cause we are cool like that, rang in the new year and were in bed by 12:05pm  hey we were just happy to make it to midnight #oldfarts.  NYD we got up lazed around a bit before deciding to go for a run, gotta start the New Year off right...right??  We planned just a quick out and back but as we ran I realized that this was the first run CB has done in my hood so we went the long way and showed her "my hills" haha non existent to say the least. 

• Finally our last stop for the week was Knott's Berry Farm.  I actually got season passes for the year, Disney was getting out of control expensive so I didn't renew thisr.  Kinda sad but for the price of ONE Disney pass I was able to get 4 Knott's passes (with parking and no blackout days...and the Disney pass wasn't even the top one it was second cheapest yikes).  It was just DQ and I but we got there early and were able to hit a lot of the Camp Snoopy rides before it got busy.  We walked around a bit and explored and decided one more ride before lunch, but along the way stopped for an ICEE...ya bad idea   *if  your squimish stop reading now* don't say I didn't warn you.... as we were waiting in line for the coach ride DQ is sucking down her ICEE a few minutes later she says she's dizzy and I tell her it was because she didn't eat her breakfast (that girl is the worst eater  I swear) and we'll go get lunch after the ride.  Well next thing I know she is leaning on me and I put my arm around her just in time for her to puke red ICEE all over my arm!!! Holy Crap GROSS and EMBARRESING.  So after a few murmurs of excuse me, be careful, don't step there, we headed off to the bathroom to clean up.  Luckily it wasn't to bad and with a mental note of NO ICEE on an empty tummy ever! We were off.
  
  
  
  
  
• Finally my doctors apt on Monday did not go as well as I hoped, and I will be def having surgery in the next two weeks (just gotta call tomorrow and schedule it).  He said the estimated the recovery time for work about 3-4 weeks...crap, and the recovery time for exercise 6-12 SHIT are you kidding!! I will fill you guys in more but this post has gone on long enough and I need to get to bed, first time I've set the alarm in 16 days **sigh**