Friday Five: When is the Fourth Friday not the Last Friday?

I have been so tense recently I thought this might be a little therapeutic. Shel

Friday Five: When is the Fourth Friday not the Last Friday?

It's Friday afternoon, Eastern Time, and this is your faithful Songbird with a calendar-related Friday Five. Due to some confusion with our dates, I'm stepping in today, although I am usually here only on the 5th Friday, when there is such a thing.

Here are five things to ponder about dates. I hope you'll play!

1) Datebooks--how do you keep track of your appointments? Electronically? On paper? Month at a glance? Week at a glance?

I now use a Blackberry. It is wonderful and totally addictive and yes I am a techno geek!

2) When was the last time you forgot an important date?

I didn't so much as forget as I came close. I almost forgot to pick my son up to bring him to work this morning. I had some digestive difficulty last night as only a person post Bariatric surgery can have. I over slept in spit of phone calls and alerts. I did get him to work in time though.

3) When was the last time you went OUT on a date?

I don't really know if you could call it a date, but I was out with a good friend last night. I really hate dating and the awkwardness of it. Think 30 + years since I last truly dated. The dinner out and the talk afterwords was quite good, maybe as close to a date as I would ever get these days.

4) Name one accessory or item of clothing you love even though it is dated.

I have a pair of sneakers that are several years old and they are comfortable. I also have several favorite purses that are kind of out of style, but work for me still. I actually don't fit into a lot of my old cloths any more because I lost so much weight.

5) Dates--the fruit--can't live with 'em? Or can't live without 'em?

I can take them or leave them. They tend to be a little over sweet. I think that as a kid I remember liking them. I wouldn't go out of my way to eat a date though.

Life is strange and wonderful

I have been under internal stress all week. It is something that I have done before and I am sure will happen to me again. It turns out that much of the stress was self generated, but there is no denying I experienced a great deal of emotion. I can't say that the cause is totally dealt with, but things are substantially better. This means that I feel substantially better not necessarily that anything external has really changed. I guess I am old and foolish and sensitive and I tend to over think things. There is so much in life a person really cannot control. Sometime those things are internal. It is the internal things that are the most treacherous in the end.

If there is anything I know and can be certain of it is that life isn't simple and most hings change all the time. I guess I am saying I'm having a better day today and that yesterday didn't turn out as tough as it might have. I am, though, looking forward to a much simpler day today. I hope your day is a great one.

Love,
Shel

All is not.....

All is not what it seems very often. My life has moved from a very staid and straightforward one to a very uncertain and somewhat precarious one. In the process I have been very sick and healed. For much of my life I appeared to be one thing while I was actually another. I am now largely conformed so my inner self matches my outer self. That is a wonderful thing, but really does bring with it new problems. Before most of my difficulties were inner struggles with myself. Now I struggle with life issues that are long ago settled in most lives. These issues aren't different from the ones anyone else has. I struggle with aloneness. I am not closeted or a hermit (God forbid) but I often do feel very alone. My children and I live apart now(they are grown adults)and I live with friends. In one way I am surrounded with people all the time, but in another I am alone.

Enough of my junk for the moment. I had my hair done this morning, always an upper, and I bought a new pair of glasses. It will take about 10 days for them to arrive. They are much like my current ones, but of course the prescription will be different. I have at last succumbed to multiple vision glasses(not bifocals but the progressive lenses.) They are more expensive but it is only money(snicker.)

I managed to get some sleep last night. The previous night was mostly sleepless so the sleep was very welcome. Nothing has really changed in my life I am just too exhausted to write about things much more.

You take care.
Love,
Shel

Misjudgement

I may have misjudged how powerful my current emotions are. I barely slept last night and I have a perpetual feeling of nausea. Say a prayer for me. Things are tough!

Love,
Shel

I just don't know

I guess The title sums it all up. For some reason my whole world seems turned upside down. It is an illusion that lets us believe that life moves along smoothly. I feel whatever it is that I feel a little too much at this time. I probably shouldn't write in this frame of mind, but here I am writing anyway.

I am an adult woman but I feel so immature, developmental even. Five years ago my whole life took a very abrupt turn. On the whole I have adapted quite well, but not completely. There are still big gaps in my life that I have been trying to fill. The problem is that I have been trying to fill them with the skill of a sixteen year old girl. Believe me I am no longer 16 and probably most 16 year olds handle things much better than I am right now. What am I to do? I wish I knew. I so fear that there is nothing I CAN do.

I wish some times I was constructed differently, but alas I'm not. I am just little old me. I can't take things lightly and I hurt all too easily. The problem is that I usually put up a front that says to all that I am in control. It is a fiction. It puts people off and creates a gulf between me and those I care about the most. In the past I have used this front to try and conquer every obstacle. I was mostly successful, but it turns out you don't learn much from success. A few more failure in my younger life might actually have been helpful. Five years ago I dropped the front, but I resurrected much of it. The reasons for this are significant, but I am not going there tonight. I now find that circumstances have forced me to drop the front a bit, not visibly, but internally. Everything is flooding out now and I may be heading to an implosion. Shel is no longer strong and in control is what I am saying. On top of that I think I may be heading for great pain. We'll see. I certainly am headed toward the great unknown and the uncontrollable. On top of everything I am about to make a complete fool of myself and possibly screw things up more.

I kind of wish I could say more, but I think that I shouldn't, so I won't. I am just hoping there will some pieces left to put back together. I am aware of the Humpty-Dumpty thing.

I am totally befuddled. I sincerely hope you are better than that.

Love,
Shel

Perspective

Let me clarify a bit. I am not headed to the rubber room. Yes, there are things that aren't going as I would exactly like, but they are not leading me down the road to serious depression. I admit, I am at times a little dramatic. What is happening is just the sort of up and down that happens in life at times. I have known serious depression in the past and this isn't it. I will cope with my son and granddaughter moving when it happens. I will just have to save my meager $'s and visit them once in a while. The other things that are happening will resolve themselves and I will adjust. Yes, some things are crappy right now.

I do appreciate people's concern. I don't want people to think that things are worse than they are though. Life is not constant and everything changes. Sometimes those changes catch us off guard. Living means adjusting though.

I hope to have a better day and I hope you do too.

Love,
Shel

PS. Just to add fire to the furnace one of the things I am coping with is the current trend to loose hair. It is a known side-effect of the weight loss surgery. It is temporary, but I had to go through this with chemotherapy and it is a really crappy thing. In fact the picture of me to the left was taken just after chemo ended and that hair is a wig. (I really need to update my picture, but I am a little camera shy and with the weight loss I am changing quickly.)I am hoping that the loss will not be very extensive. I kind of like my hair. I do get it permed and colored and if the hair loss continues I know that those treatments may need to stop for a while. This is just frustrating and adds to my current feelings. As I said everything changes.

PPS. I just found this on the web. It is a response to a question of hair loss post bariatric surgery.

Hair loss, and change in hair color and hair quality after gastric bypass surgery are common problems and typically happen within the first year after the operation. Your body goes through a period of severe starvation and tries to divert nutrients toward more vital organs. Although carbohydrates, proteins, minerals, and vitamins (especially the family of vitamin B) have been blamed for the hair loss, the exact mechanism of this problem is not known and multiple factors might be involved. The good news is that your hair loss after gastric bypass is usually temporary and will be improved when you get out of the rapid weight loss situation. Any patient who had a gastric bypass should have frequent doctor visits following their bypass surgery as the procedure is associated with incidence of iron, vitamin B12, folate, calcium, and vitamin D deficiency. You need to be on supplements of minerals and vitamins and you should also be monitored with regular laboratory tests for these deficiencies. Please keep in mind that gastric bypass produces medically controlled malnutrition to force weight loss.

I am told that the hair loss is more typical of bypass surgery, but my weight loss has been rapid and I certainly have been under some stress. I am now taking more supplements and my diet is more varied.

Funky Shel

A good thing to note is that I continue to loose weight. I have lost almost 70 lbs since January of this year. This is positive. The negative, I believe I am headed for big-time depression. There are a number of factors leading me to this conclusion. The first one is that my son and his spouse and my granddaughter may be moving to Phoenix Arizona before Christmas. This is a big-time bummer. My granddaughter is one of the things that make life worth living. Things will be very hard with her so far away. That fact in itself would be enough, but there is more. The more is really too hard to go into right now and may not really be resolved. I am feeling like life is spinning out of control. I've had this feeling before, but not in a very long time. Let me just say right now I feel that things really suck! Maybe tomorrow will bring a new perspective.

In a funk,
Shel

PS. By the way did I say I am foolish and old? Well I am!