“Trust Me When I Say I Know the Pathway to Your Heart.” – R.E.M

Overall, I have been feeling really optimistic.  I’m encouraged by my progress so far and I know I have the right mindset to keep making good decisions for myself.  That does not mean I am 100% confident all the time or that I only make good decisions or that I don’t have moments of complete and total self-doubt. 
 
I admit I have been struggling a bit lately with my diet…..for the last month, at least, maybe more.  The scale hasn’t budged, although I continue to notice my body changing.   My shoulders are starting to emerge.  There is a definite…..”space” in my arms and thighs between the muscle and the fat and extra skin that continues to hang there.   I try to not be obsessed about it, to not study my body in the mirror and analyze what I see.  It is what it is and I have very little control over it.  I’m already doing what I can do…obsessing over the result of my work is not helpful.  Easy to say, not so easy to do.

I stopped going to the lifestyle manager I started to see in February.  I felt that perhaps he didn’t entirely understand the dietary needs of a bariatric patient….that he’s used to dealing with bodybuilders.  There is some crossover…nutrition is nutrition.  Clean eating is clean eating.  But weight loss surgery patients do have some unique needs.    More importantly, I could not afford him, my trainer and my gym membership so something had to go.  And I’m not giving up my trainer or gym membership. 
 
Sadly I have also cut nuts out of my diet.  I had been eating nuts as a snack every day.  I love them.  Even though they are good for you and the perfect food, I just cannot handle them right now.  They are so high in calories, and go down so easily that I found I was just consuming way too many calories by eating them on a daily basis.  I’m much better off with cottage cheese as a snack.  No one binges on cottage cheese.

Many bariatric patients struggle with hair loss a few months after surgery and I am now at that point.  I am seriously worried about how much hair I’m losing.  There’s hair everywhere I go…in the shower drain, in the sink, on the floor, all over my bed, on my desk at work, the whole garbage can in the bathroom is filled with my hair…. every time I brush my hair, my brush is full of hair;  every time I touch my head, a handful of hair comes out; it’s everywhere, and I am trying to not freak out about it but I wonder how much I can lose before it will start to show.  
 

I should not be freaking out.  I have already experienced this when I had my lap band.  And I knew it would happen again.  And, if I didn’t talk about it, no one would even know because, lucky for me, my hair is so insanely thick that I can afford to lose some hair.  But still, it is pretty scary.  Logically, I know it will stop sometime.  But I worry it won’t.

I’m also struggling with comparing myself to other weight loss surgery patients.  I know I should not, but there are people who had surgery at the same time as me who have already lost 100 pounds.  I’m nowhere near that yet.  I tell myself that I’m feeling great and making choices that have impacted how fast I would lose weight, and I did that intentionally…so how can I now compare myself to other people who made different choices?  Everything everyone else does just looks so easy.  You don’t get a sense of other people’s personal struggles, especially if they don’t talk about it.  So I wish people would talk about it. 
 
One thing I do know for sure is my sleeve honeymoon period – that time after surgery when you feel the most restriction, when you struggle to consume enough calories and protein to sustain life, when your new stomach probably won’t tolerate many different foods – was very short.  Almost as soon as I came off my liquid diet, I could eat anything.  My stomach tolerates everything.  I definitely get full much quicker than I did before surgery and I don’t get hungry as often, and it’s wonderful to actually experience feelings of “fullness” and “hunger”…….but I absolutely need to track my food every single meal otherwise I could easily eat 3000 calories/day even with the sleeve.  I have learned that if I eat over 1000 calories/day, even though I am working out several times a week, I am probably not going to lose (or gain) any weight that week.  Right now that seems to be my maintenance number.  I really like SparkPeople.com for tracking my food.

So I make sure I eat less than 1000 calories a day and I don’t stare at my body too much and I just accept the hair falling out as a fact that I can do nothing about and I don’t interact with other weight loss surgery patients when I’m feeling insecure.  I just go with the flow.  The old Laura never would have been so compliant, but something I said in one of my previous posts stuck with me:  I need to get out of my own way.
 
This means not fighting everything and everyone, including myself.  I’ve always been an impulsive person.  But I have also always let fear paralyze me.  And I tend to make a decision, act on it and then do something completely stupid to mess it all up.  At this point of my life, my challenge is to make thoughtful decisions that will get me where I want to be, and also not let fear block me from doing things that are scary but might be good for me.  I need to trust my instincts and not do something stupid that will cause me to self-destruct once I have made a decision.  I need to focus my energy where it will do me the most good and when I recognize fear or self-destruction, or impulsivity, I need to just step around it and keep moving on.

This idea of not fighting myself, of getting out of my own way, has to lead to some interesting results.    For example, as a testament to my overblown, recently re-found confidence, I offer this photographic evidence:

This, my friends, is my “racing” number for the JP Morgan Corporate Challenge.   Yes, I, Laura Lea Dennis, former goth girl, “I’m too cool to exercise” couch potato and the girl who would not walk around the block to save her life, have signed up to stroll (not race) through the Corporate Challenge.  3.5 miles.  5K.  Happening today.  At 7pm.

I don’t know who I think I am signing up for a 5K.  People don’t usually do this kind of stuff until after they’ve reached their goal weight.  It’s a common goal to strive for among WLS patients…..1 year post op, lost 100% of my excess weight so I think I’ll do a 5K to show myself and everyone else how far I’ve come. 

But not me.  No….I’m not even 5 months post op, have lost 34% of my excess weight, and am still not even close to being fit.  You probably can’t even see how far I’ve come yet.  If I squint, I can barely see how far I’ve come.  But a couple weeks ago the idea popped into my head that I should do it now…..to hell with waiting.  My company participates every year. At the very last minute, when the deadline for registering was upon me, I registered and that was it.  There was no time to back out. 

For the past three weeks, there has been a voice in my head throwing a temper tantrum and screaming at me, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!??”…but I pretty much just ignore that voice.  Every once in a while, I’ll go…”what AM I doing?”  But I’m doing it anyway.  I’m doing it.

I have no idea if I can actually do it.  The longest distance I’ve walked on the treadmill at the gym so far has been 2 miles and it took me 45 minutes.  So I’ll probably be the last of 10,000 people who crosses the finish line but all I care about is that I do in fact cross the finish line.

Two weekends ago I went to my cousin’s wedding in New York City.  I’ve lost enough weight that I feel pretty good.  But I grossly overestimate what I am actually physically capable of most of the time.  So I headed to New York thinking I could conquer the city and do a million things while I was there.  I couldn’t do a million things.  But I could get a new dress and shoes that I liked, go to the wedding, have a great time, walk to the subway, the train, the hotel, stand around schmoozing at the wedding, and also do 10 other things, but not a million.  And I had a fantastic weekend and I’m glad I went.

Late Saturday night while I was there, I was flipping through channels on TV and happened across the movie “My Cousin Vinny”…just starting.  Some of you may recall that I mentioned in a previous post that this movie was on TV while I was being raped in 1994.  I had never seen it before that but I recognized Marisa Tomei’s and Joe Pesci’s voices and focused on them until it was over.  Afterwards, I found out what movie it was so I could avoid it like the plague.  I refused to watch it.   I left a party once because everyone at the party wanted to watch it. 

In my hotel, I was presented with the opportunity to watch it and I didn’t think about it….I just started watching.  And I kept watching.  I even laughed a few times. The voice in my head kept screaming, “QUICK, TURN IT OFF NOW!”, but again, I just ignored the voice.   It was a pretty good movie.  I did not burst into flames and I did not melt into a puddle of flashbacks.  I was fine.  It’s just a movie.  I went to bed afterwards and woke up the next day just like every other day.  My life went on.

My neighbor Pat has been going through her own journey of sorts since her husband Harold died last July.  A couple weeks ago she talked to me about how she always wanted to try horseback riding…she has never done it before.  I think I have mentioned before that getting back on a horse is one of my goals.  So I mentioned this to Pat and the idea of our doing it together was born.  She is going to wait for me to be ready and then we’ll go riding at a farm owned by friends of hers.  I think September has a nice ring to it.  (I just realized we didn’t talk about English/Western riding and I have no idea which one she meant.  I have no idea how to ride Western style…only English.  No matter…I’ll do it anyway.)

Granted, the riding thing hasn’t actually happened yet, but just the very idea of riding again makes me positively giddy.  I just know this is going to be another one of those things where the voice in my head is screaming and I just ignore it and I’m ready to do it much sooner than I thought I would be.  
  
I have started to nullify the idea that unless I get down to a certain weight, I can’t do the things I want to do.  I’m much much more willing to try.   I’m starting to realize that I know how to make myself happy.  I can do it right now….I don’t have to be miserable until I lose weight.  Being overweight is not a punishment I need to bestow on myself.    Or rather, denying myself the things that give me pleasure because I am overweight is not a punishment I need to bestow on myself.  I can live a whole life and be happy right now.   I owe it to myself to be happy right now.
 
So those are some of the things that have been happening by me simply just getting out of my own way.

In other news, the only response I’ve had to the posters about Felix so far – the ones I posted on the street by my gym -  has been one phone call from a woman who said she found a dead cat that looked just like Felix in her garage in March.  Obviously she doesn’t have the cat anymore so I can’t confirm one way or another.  She swears this cat looked just like Felix but many people have said that about many cats in the last year…and they are not wrong. 

However, the cat I saw a couple weeks ago was clearly not the one who died in this woman’s garage.  My trainer mentioned a couple nights ago that she saw a cat that could be mine just a few nights ago behind the gym.  So my hopes are still high. 
 
Another pretty exciting thing for me has been starting to take care of other areas of my health.  Sorry for the overshare, but hey, that's what a blog is for!  I have a new doctor and one of the first things she did was take me off Metformin (which I was taking for PCOS) and put me back on the Pill instead.  This makes me happy for multiple reasons, not the least of which is the Pill is a LOT smaller than Metformin.  You probably think the size of a pill makes no difference but let me tell you, for me it does.    Taking my meds every day is like a meal in and of itself.  Because of my sleeve and the number of pills I take, I am completely full by the time I have finished taking them all.

If you saw my morning pill-taking routine, you’d swear I am an 80 year old woman on the verge of death with only medicine keeping her alive.  I’ve got one of those ridiculous plastic daily pill dispensers and if I don’t use it, I sometimes forget to take my vitamins.  I have 8 different medications I take every single day….almost all of them are vitamin supplements.  Annoyingly, the FDA is so messed up that the 5mg Folic Acid tiny tiny tiny pill I used to take in Canada is not available in the US.  Since I moved to the States, I have to take 5 giant 1mg Folic Acid pills every day (which are ¾ sugar)…so it’s actually 15 pills I need to take every day. 

So replacing one very large pill with one very small pill is reason to be slightly excited.

On that note, I’m off to the Corporate Challenge!  Wish me luck…

 

Random Stuff:

·        I hate the word “Scranton”.  I don’t want to say it or hear someone else say it.  Like nails on a chalkboard.

·        I love original art.  I bought my first piece of original art on a trip to NYC when I was in high school from a guy on the street who painted street scenes.   The piece I want to acquire next is called “Dare to be Me” and as soon as I saw it, I knew it would provide a source of strength and inspiration for me to keep going with this "journey" I’m on. 

·        I’m not a huge fan of chocolate.  I like it, but I’d rather eat something caramel-y, nutty, salty or fruit-y than chocolate.  And I’d pick vanilla over chocolate any day of the week.

·        If I do eat chocolate, my fave chocolate bar is the Barcelona bar from Vosges.  Sea salt, almonds and dark chocolate…..so simple but amazing, and it reminds me of my first trip to Las Vegas ‘cos that’s where I discovered it.  So even though I can get it at Wegmans, there’s always something slightly exciting about getting one.

·        I am also excessively fond of Hedonist chocolates here in Rochester.  Their chocolates are so beautiful and delicious.  There’s something very special about choosing a box of 30 yourself.  Then when you get them home, you don’t want to eat them because they are just so beautiful to look at…like a collective work of many tiny pieces of art.

·        Cookies are my kryptonite.  I can’t keep cookies in the house or I’ll eat all the cookies until they’re gone.  And then I will immediately want some more.  So these days I try to pretend cookies don’t exist.  I do not go down the cookie aisle in the grocery store and I curse co-workers who bring cookies to work.

·        We never had traditional birthday cake while I was growing up.  My brother isn’t a fan of cake so my mom always made him chocolate pie for his birthday.  I love trifle so I always had a birthday trifle. 

 

“An Inspiration is What You Are to Me; Inspiration. Look... See.” – Led Zeppelin

I’m on a roll.  Seriously.  Every freaking day is amazing.  Exhilarating things keep happening in my day, all around me….and it somehow feels like I’m willing it all into being.  I know that sounds arrogant….I don’t mean it like that, but somehow I do feel like I’m pretty powerful right now.  I’m not sure how to explain it…….I feel like I can turn the world on with my smile;  take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile…….  I just feel like my world is so dynamic, so electric right now….there’s no space for mediocrity, everything around me is buzzing with excitement.  Every single moment I’m awake has purpose and is enlightening.    I don’t remember a time when I have felt so optimistic, so happy, and made such good choices for myself so consistently.    I just want it to stay like this forever.

There are many reasons for my feeling this way, I think.  Writing this blog is one of those reasons.  It has been incredibly liberating to just air out every dark corner of my mind – not that I have even come close to telling all my secrets just yet.  But the point is not whether or not I have said absolutely everything I want to say or whether or not anyone has even read my posts.  The point is, my conscience is clear and I am at peace because I say these things out loud and accept the choices I made as the choices I made.  I’m human, I have a past, I have made mistakes,  I’m definitely not perfect nor do I want to be, and I have the ethics I have.  I don’t care who knows it.    What’s done is done.

Someone very recently told me I should protect myself more online…that they were able to find out all kinds of stuff about me online because of a nickname I used…..where I work, my Facebook page, my Linked In profile, my email address and phone number, etc.  They acted like they were doing me this huge favour telling me this, as if I didn’t know what the consequences might be when I chose the nickname I did.  I thanked them for telling me, but honestly, I don’t care who knows what.  So you know where I work…big deal, I would have told you if you had asked anyway so where’s the harm?  I'm not concerned with this deceptive thing called privacy.....what is the value of privacy anyway?  Is anything ever really private or are we all just kidding ourselves that privacy exists?  I can see if you’re Angelina Jolie why you might not want the public to know your phone number but for the average person, why does it matter?  You know all my darkest secrets and my phone number?  Congratulations…I’m not ashamed and I don't care.

I mentioned in a previous post that my parents always told me as I was growing up how “naïve” I can be….they always said I trust too easily, hope too easily, open myself up and believe in people when I shouldn’t.  I know my idealism can run wild, but that’s just who I am and always have been, and really I would not want it any other way.  I live on instinct. 

But I’m not an idiot.  This willingness to trust, hope and believe is not, and never has been, based on an unawareness of reality….far from it.  I am well acquainted with the dark places of this world….I see them in myself, other people and all around me all the time.  I know they’re there.   No, my willingness to trust, hope and believe is based on my desire for there to be a different reality and the belief that I can somehow make that reality happen.   There is, within each of us, the potential for darkness and lightness.  We all make the choice each day which it will be.   Most days, I choose lightness.  That’s what I have control over…my own choices.  I’m in touch with reality and still, I choose lightness. I WANT to believe and hope, so I do.  It’s an act of rebellion, not naivety.

I know I am probably going to be disappointed most of the time, and I am not at all surprised when it happens.    But this disappointment is not going to stop me from continuing to trust, hope and believe again and again and again.  I just refuse to let that happen.  I know these choices can be risky.……so what?    Yeah I have little fears that make me hesitate sometimes, but besides death and heights, there is nothing I am REALLY afraid of, and I have complete faith in my own ability to either get out of or get through any situation.  What’s the worse that can happen?   If that makes me naïve, then so be it.  But I don’t think of myself that way. 

Another reason I’m feeling so positive has got to be the fact that I have added exercise into my life. You know, for years I've heard that exercise boosts your mood and can smooth over depressive symptoms and I guess I believed it but it wasn’t enough to get me off the couch.  I was a die-hard couch potato.  I was dreading the fact that in order to have the life I want to have, I was going to have to exercise.  If I want to ride horses, be a roller derby girl, pole dance and have the kind of sex life I want for myself, then I need exercise….there’s no getting around that.  I talked in a previous post about how hard it would be for me to be "the kind of person who exercises". 

But you know, I’ve not found it difficult at all….I absolutely love what I’m doing.  I joined ROC Boxing and I really love being there.   Hanging out there is just fun.  There are always people training in the ring on the lower level while I’m on the treadmill on the upper level, so I get a show to watch while I walk.  I can pick up boxing tips, lust after all the amazingly hot men , aspire to be like some of the female boxers.  Everyone – female boxers, hot men, families – is so supportive and lovely.  Everyone talks to each other…there’s no feeling of segregation.  From Day 1, I have felt welcomed by everyone there.    I work out with my trainer, Dana, three times a week now and I try to go on my own once or twice as well, so exercise really has become a part of my lifestyle now and I can feel the results of that work.  I can walk longer, faster, use heavier weights than I could when I started 3 months ago, so I feel encouraged to keep going, keep doing it.  And I’m learning to box, which is so incredibly empowering.  There's no other word to describe it.  When I wrap my hands and put on my gloves, I feel like a warrior.  I’m also picking up new interests….I started watching boxing matches on Showtime and plan to see some live matches this Summer.   I actually enjoy watching them and understand the technique, the skill involved in this sport now.

It’s weird, it’s like I don’t know who this person is…except, I do.  It’s me and everything I’m doing feels completely natural to me.  It feels like something I will keep doing.  I don’t dread doing it.  I’m disappointed when my workout is over and I can’t wait for the next one.

Another  reason for my feeling the way I do: Today was my last appointment with Jessica, my therapist.  As planned, she discharged me.   We talked for about an hour and this session was very different than all our other sessions.  She asked me a lot of questions about what I had been doing in the last six weeks, what was I taking away from our 18 months of working together, what has my mood been like, and what was the turning point for me.  She also asked me what would be the sign that I needed to contact her again….how would I know if I needed to seek treatment again.

I really didn’t know how to answer that so we discussed it and we agreed that my behavior would be the guide.  If a month passed and I had not gone to the gym or I used food as a coping mechanism that it would be time for me to get help again.   
She also talked a lot about the things she personally noticed in the last year and half that made her feel confident about my progress. For example:  my writing the appeal to my insurance company for my sleeve surgery.  My surgeon’s office said they would handle the appeal for me but I decided I didn’t want that to be their responsibility.  I was not their only patient and I knew my own history and story better than they did so I wrote it myself, followed up and managed to get the decision overturned without any help from my surgeon’s office at all.  I never really thought of things like this as accomplishments but hearing Jessica talk about them made me realize they are.

Jessica and I have always had a very professional relationship.  If I cried in session, she didn’t react the way a friend would…that was not her role.  She didn’t comment on my progress.  She stayed at a distance while she was treating me.  Today, she told me I am her poster child.  She told me she was so very proud of me and asked me if she could hug me.   I was so moved by this, coming from her.  I walked out of her office with the most enormous smile.  It feels so amazing to know I was ready to stop seeing her.  It feels great to know I can go back to her if I need to, which I know I won’t.  I thanked her for all she did for me.  She has been such an important person in my personal growth and I will always be so grateful.  I told her the design I drew for my first tattoo is based on a conversation I had with her.

Right after Jessica, I went to an intake appointment for a new Primary Care Physician.  I have mentioned in the past how unhappy I am with my current PCP...there's nothing wrong with him.  He's not incompetent.  I just think I can find a better fit for me.  Now that my sleeve surgery has happened and I’m doing well, it’s time to broaden my focus.  I am going to Trillium now which used to be exclusively for HIV/AIDS patients.  They now also focus on other areas such as women’s health and transgender patients.  My PCOS hasn’t been treated in years so I decided to try Trillium for their expertise in women’s health.

On Saturday I changed my hair colour from blonde to dark violet red.  The salon where I get my hair done is in Canada and I was an hour away from a double header roller derby bout in Hamilton, so I decided to go.  I have been a super fan of roller derby since many of my friends here in Rochester joined RCRD, a league that was just starting up, 6 years ago.  My friends  are skaters, NSO’s, refs…they were (are) all super involved in the league and Sam and I were suicide season pass holders from the start.  I always wanted to be a skater.  While I lived in Canada, it was clear I couldn’t join the league….I was too far away for practices, it just wouldn’t work.  When I moved to Rochester, I realized I couldn’t join because of my fitness level.  I could barely walk around the block, how was I going to skate?  As I got heavier and heavier, it actually started to become painful to go see bouts.  I wanted to do it so badly and just could not, so I didn't even want to watch and I stopped going all together.  It wasn't just roller derby I avoided.  For about a year after I moved here, I really just kind of became a recluse.  Other than work, I did not go out anywhere or see anyone.  I just didn't want to.  I hated myself way too much to do anything other than wallow in my hatred. 

But that's not the case anymore and I went back to my first derby bout in about 18 months.  I sat suicide with my new fabulous red hair and loved every single second of it and I didn't care that I had a 3 hour drive back to Rochester that night.  Back at work on Monday, one of my co-workers told me that if you make this kind of dramatic change in hair colour, then you need a new name to go with it.  So he decided that my new name is Wonder Woman Bat Girl.  I like it.

In two weekends I’ll be going to New York City for my cousin’s wedding.  I am super excited for this trip!  I haven’t been to NYC since 2008 so that in itself is exciting, but also I’m excited for my cousin.  Her fiancé seems like an awesome man and they make an adorable couple.  I’ll be the only person, besides my aunt, there from my family so I’ll be representing.   My aunt lives in Toronto and is going to the City early for "mother of the bride" kind of things so I’m travelling alone and staying in my own hotel room and I don’t even remember the last time I took a trip, that was not work related, by myself.  I. Can’t. Wait.  A year ago I could not have even thought about going to NYC…I just would not have been able to physically do it, so this is kind of like a honeymoon with myself.  God that sounds weird, but seriously....four days of bliss in one of my favourite places in the world. 

Something else exciting happened last Thursday night.   Rick and I were talking in the parking lot by my gym. (No, that’s not the exciting part.)  There was more activity on Atlantic than usual:  a group of people across the street at Sticky Lips were loading up their truck, another group of people walked past talking loudly and excitedly, and the gym was closing so people were leaving.  In his usual animated way, Rick was telling me a story when out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a cat near the front of the gym trying to escape all the hustle and bustle.  I admit, I am two seconds away from being a crazy cat lady so it’s no surprise I saw the cat, but there was something about this cat that immediately got my complete attention.

I could see the cat was freaked out.  He/she quickly turned towards us.  It was dark outside, we were the only ones in the parking lot and it’s not very well-lit.  It also backs onto several backyards and a big empty industrial loading area.  The cat looked like it knew its way around and wanted to escape to one of those areas, which would have meant he/she would run right past us a few feet away.  Then everything started to slow-motion.  Rick’s voice disappeared into the night and I watched this cat, completely engrossed, memorizing its markings, its body, its movement and it occurred to me that this was a tuxedo cat.

I stood there quietly, waiting for him to get as close as possible to me.  As he approached us, I realized this cat could be Felix.  Not just in the “I wish it were true so I’m going to pretend it is” kind of way, but realistically, this could ACTUALLY be Felix.  The cat looked like him, moved like him and we were less than a mile from my house.  Cats are territorial…they don’t generally wander, but there are a lot of outdoor cats in our neighbourhood.  It’s very possible that when Felix got out, he got chased from our neighbourhood and ended up here. 

For those of you who have been reading since I started writing this blog, you are probably sick to death of hearing about Felix.  You probably think I should just get over it already.  But I can’t…that’s just not me.  I have seen probably 100 found tuxedo cats since last July as a result of the search for Felix……in shelters, on streets, in people’s houses – dead and alive – and there hasn’t been a trace of him anywhere.  I always suspected, based on his very nervous personality, that he would not be caught by anyone, or go willingly into anyone’s house, and that he was still outside somewhere, perhaps in someone’s garage during Winter, hunting his own food.  All I know for sure is he’s somewhere.  A cat doesn’t just disappear into thin air and as long as I don’t know what happened to him, then in my mind, there’s a possibility I could still get him back.

All of this went through my mind as I watched this cat run towards me and so, without thinking, I called out his name, in the same tone I always called Felix at home.  The cat stopped dead in his tracks and looked right at me.  (This is the exciting part.)  He didn’t look freaked out that the scary human noticed him and made a weird noise….he just stopped and looked.  So I called him again and still, he stood there looking at me, a paw still in mid-air.  Same facial markings as Felix, same socks, same body.  Just as I was about to try and induce him to come to me, the driver of the Sticky Lips truck laid on the horn and the noise broke the moment. The cat stopped looking at me and took off for a hidden hole in the fence.

I almost started crying….from frustration, happiness, hope.  Mostly from hope.  Honestly, after the brutal Winter we had, I really had almost given up all hope that Felix was out there.  Rick and I started to wander the neighbourhood with me calling Felix and Rick talking about what I could do to find him.  Rick’s got a lot of experience rescuing cats off the streets and dealing with feral cats so he was excited by this too.  The cat didn’t make another appearance that night so I went home, completely wound up.  I could barely sleep.  I just kept thinking about how I needed to print some more posters, start getting up at 4am to go out and search for him again…but at least I had a neighbourhood to focus on.  I kept thinking about how I was going to catch him and how would he be different after being outside for 10 months…what would he need to feel comfortable in the house again, how I needed to get him checked out by a vet, how he’s due for his shots, how the other cats and dogs would react to him being back.

I knew I was getting myself all excited and it probably isn’t even him.  But it could be him and that’s all I care about.  I have to know if this cat is Felix and if it is, I will get him back and I am beyond excited about that.

I could go on…there are so many great things happening right now and I don’t know if they’re happening TO me or if I’m making them happen or both but whatever is happening, I want it to keep on happening. 

Random Stuff:

·         I am a compulsive list maker.  I feel lost without a list.

·         My very favourite apples are Mutsu/Crispin apples and since I’ve moved to the States I have had a really hard time finding them.

·         I have a love/hate relationship with the Wegmans close to my house on East Ave.  The parking lot and traffic flow are a nightmare.  On the other hand, I can find Mutsu apples and a single serving size of lump blue crab so sometimes I have to go there just for those things.

·         I’m not sure I’ll ever want to move back to Canada at this point.  I’m not sure how I feel about that.

·         Lately I have been listening to a lot of The Doors and Chris Cornell’s acoustic, live stuff.  I feel like I should be listening to something more upbeat to match my mood.  I’ve realized that the music I find inspiring is actually not upbeat at all and that’s ok.