"Let's Swim to the Moon, Let's Climb Through the Tide." - The Doors

Right now, I’m so sick of hearing my own voice.  I’m sick of hearing myself say things out loud.  I’m sick of the constant chatter in my head.  I’m sick of writing emails and Facebook posts.  And I’m kinda sick of my blog posts.  Once I finish one, I can’t bear to go back and read it again.  I can’t take re-visiting my own angst.  I just want to be quiet for a while and not speak…..no talking, no thinking - just doing and evolving.

Other people’s voices can also have the same effect on me.  I don’t want to make polite conversation about the weather and traffic or go around and around discussing the same solutions to the same little problems at work over and over.  None of it matters to me right now at all.  If we can talk about something that matters, great.  (And by “talk”, I mean discuss like civilized adults……I do not mean insult each other like children because someone disagrees with us over politics, ‘cos I don’t care about that either.)  The only thing that matters is what really matters…..everything else is just noise pollution (and yes, I get to decide what matters to me).

In some ways, my world has gotten very small, very simple.  Like a pre-teen, I’m experiencing a growth spurt.  I don’t want anything to disrupt that.  But my world has also gotten a lot bigger, ‘cos I’m doing more, trying more, open to more, living more, searching for more, wanting more, expecting more, meeting more people, hearing more stories….

I need more fun in my life, I really do.  I desperately want it too.  I need the sun on my face and giddy, silly adventures and hysterical laughter and carefree afternoons…but behind every adventure, the dark cloud of reality follows me.  I can’t seem to shake it.  For every positive story and experience I’m drawn into, there are 10 dark ones that I just have to know about.  I’m constantly drawn to the most depressing stories I find…you know, stories like how unwanted birds at chicken factories are buried alive in mass graves or how terrorists beheaded yet another American journalist.  I feel like I need to read these stories, like I HAVE to know about them….as if to deny horrible things happen in the world or not care that horrible things happen in the world is wrong.

Right about now, I know what you’re probably thinking as you read this. I’m thinking it too…….I know what my problem is.  It’s always been the same.  I think way too much.   I worry too much.  I take everything – including myself - SO seriously.   It’s such a drag.  That’s why I need to try and be quiet for awhile.

In addition to the depressing stories I have always been drawn to, these days I spend a lot of time thinking about habits.  No, not the kind of habit a nun wears…I’m talking about the behavior patterns we all manage to acquire and perform until they become automatic.  And habits are not a fun subject.  There’s nothing sexy about habits.  At first glance, they’re not even worth thinking about, but if you really stop and think about it, you realize how fascinating habits actually are.  If you analyze why you do a certain thing every day at the same time in the same way or why you do something at all, you’ll see something about yourself you never saw before.

I started thinking about habits after my sleeve surgery, obviously.  I had to.  My old way of doing things was just not going to work anymore if I wanted to get the most out of my sleeve.  Then I started reading a blog called “The Happiness Project” and the author of that blog, Gretchen Rubin, is kind of obsessed with habits.  She writes about habits, among other things, a lot.
As I started to think about habits, I realized just how important good habits are for a free-spirited, rebellious individual like myself.  Left to my own devices, my day is pretty chaotic.  Everything is “fly by the seat of my pants”.  I do everything on a whim.  I need structure.  I need habits.  My week nights are very structured now.  I get home from work usually around 6:30.  I change for the gym, eat a snack, relax for a short time then head out to the gym at 7:30.  I come home around 9, eat dinner – usually 2 scrambled or poached eggs – and go to bed as early as I can make myself. 

In the last month or so, I realized I have started to REALLY like Saturdays.  Like everyone else, I look forward to the weekends but lately I’ve been noticing I love Saturdays even more than I used to.  Then I realized why…it’s because I get up and meet my trainer at the gym at 10am.  Sam is usually at his girlfriend’s  house on weekends so I get up, look after the dogs, have a snack and go.  When I come home, I have the house to myself, look after the dogs again, shower, make some food (usually breakfast even though it's after noon) and relax with coffee on the couch.  My day has structure, purpose.  See, I used to just sleep in, then wake up whenever and have no real purpose to the day. These are all new habits for me and they really make my day.

I have to admit, it was not easy forcing myself to accept these new habits.  I didn’t want such a regimented schedule just like I did not want such a regimented diet.  But the more I talked to people at the gym about their lifestyles, the more I realized most people don’t become healthy and in shape by accident.  They work at it every single day and they do and eat the same things over and over.  So that’s what I started to do too. 

Another thing Rubin writes about often is whether we should accept ourselves the way we are or challenge ourselves to be more.  This is another one of those ideas that has been on my mind for many months, mostly as it relates to body love and weight loss.  I don’t know how many articles I’ve read that support the idea of loving yourself and your body the way it is right now at this very moment.  As I’ve said before in another post, there’s something about this idea that really rubs me the wrong way.   Of course I want to love my body and myself...and, it's complicated, but I mostly do.  But I know I can do and be better.  To me, it is not contradictory to love my body and also expect more.  That expectation comes from a place of love.

I also really dislike the complacency implied in the idea of “accept/love yourself as you are”.  One of my fellow weight loss surgery patients who got her sleeve a year ago has said her obesity was caused by “complacency disease” and I can completely see that.  I feel like it’s giving up and being a bit of a victim to just accept something, whether it’s your body or some other part of you or some other situation in your life.  “Acceptance” implies that what you are right now is all you’ll ever be and all you’re capable of, which isn't true.  It also implies that everyone else should not expect anything from you, and you should never expect or hope for anything from yourself either, which I find really sad.  I mean, there are times in life where hope and expectation are the only things to look forward to.  

Another blog I regularly read is “Girls Gone Strong”.  It’s a community of women in the fitness industry who write articles on fitness and wellness in general and weight lifting specifically.  One of these articles contained some words of wisdom I could really identify with:

“Initially, my own desire to improve and transform came
from a VERY unhealthy place.  I just thought that
I wasn’t enough. Those thoughts looped in my
brain over and over and over again, and led me to a
place of negativity, fear and self-loathing.”

That, of course, hits home for me.  I received quite a bit of negative feedback after my last post related to body image some months ago.  A lot of people think the act itself of having weight loss surgery is an act of hatred against your body.......and I’ve done it, twice.  I’ve heard the expression, “You can’t hate yourself to happiness” and I really started to wonder if that’s what I was trying to do.  

But no, I had weight loss surgery not because I hate my body but because I love my body and myself and know I can be better…what’s wrong with that?  I hired a trainer because I love my body, and I want it to be the best it can be.  The obese body I had and still have doesn’t reflect self-love…in fact it only reflects my previous self-hatred, my violent and reckless history…..so why would anyone think that's good enough for me and that I should accept myself the way I am?  I should accept self-hatred?  I don't think so.

Indulge me for a moment while I get  bit self-righteous. I really just think we are ALL – every single person alive - capable of so much more than what we are right now.  Our potential for greatness is limitless.   Even people who already  live crazy awesome lives and do amazing things are capable of doing more and they know it….that’s why they live crazy awesome lives and do amazing things.  Because they can.  And they know they can.  So they do.

For example, my photojournalist friend Kris doesn’t go, “Hey remember that first time I went to the Amazon and talked my way into places no white girl has ever been before and  almost got killed five times trying to photograph that village? Yeah well that’s it for me…..  I’m gonna milk that story about how I fell into the anaconda nest and had to ditch my boots for all it’s worth for the rest of my life while I sit here in my rocking chair and wait to die.”  No…she knows she can  do more, be more, IS more so she does not “accept herself the way she is”….she constantly puts herself out there and takes huge risks and allows her experiences to carve into her and shape her into a new person.  And then she does it again and again and again.  I admire that.  I more than admire that. She is amazing and I wanna be like her.  I want everyone I know to be like her and have amazing stories to tell about the fantastic life they are living.

I’m not saying we all have to go to the Amazon to live up to our potential.  But no matter what kinds of lives we have, no matter what kinds of bodies we have, no matter what kinds of people we are, no matter what our circumstances in life, I know for sure, we all have SO MUCH POTENTIAL so why aren’t  we trying harder?  I don’t mean in our careers or to get more money or bigger houses or whatever.  I’m not talking about elevating our social class or financial status.  I’m not talking about the never ending quest for perfection.   Those things are all temporary…an illusion.  No one on their death bed is going to go, “wow, I am so happy I made VP!”.

I’m talking about on a basic level, as human beings who have the power to shape the world around us, why aren’t we trying harder to constantly challenge our limits and define our desires and carve out a life we dare to imagine and fight like hell to be the best version of ourselves that we can be?  Instead of constantly rewarding ourselves for doing the bare minimum, for being mediocre, we should WANT to reach for the stars.  We should be focusing on our own internal selves instead of constantly criticizing or analyzing what we see externally.  We are so busy commenting on what we look like, what others look like and do but we don’t spend much time recognizing our own individual potential and striving to be better human beings.  At least that’s how it seems.  That’s how I feel about myself.

When I think about how I felt after I lost 100 pounds with the lap band 10 years ago, I realize I was focused on the idea of “being happy” but I never went deeper with that idea.  Happiness was all about the present moment.  I never thought about habits and I never thought about pushing myself to be more, to live up to my potential.  I didn't even think about what my potential was.  I just accepted the weight loss that came easy to me and I accepted a life of constantly being sick and a diet of ice cream and chips because they were easy to swallow and I thought I was successful and happy.  That was good enough at the time and I assumed that since I was happy in the moment that I would be happy for ever, and I felt entitled to that happiness. This thinking concerns me quite a bit and I don’t want to fall into that again so I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about what it is that would make me deeply and truly happy and how to make that happen, because I know for sure I have to work for it.  It isn’t just going to fall in my lap.

The first thing I MUST do to be deeply happy is reach my weight loss and fitness goals....this is non-negotiable.  That is really the only thing that truly matters to me right now because virtually every other thing stems from that.  Without that, everything else falls down.  If I can’t live the life I want then I’m watching others do the things I want to do, I’m watching others have the kind of sex life I want, I’m watching others get the jobs and the partners and the clothes I want.  I'm watching others have fabulous adventures and take risks.  I’m watching others reach for the stars without me.  I've got the black cloud of "what if..." following me around for the rest of my life.  I'm living with the knowledge that my demons beat me, and I cannot live with that.

People always ask me what my goal weight is.  Well, I don’t have a number.  Nor do I intend to really ever decide upon a number.  My surgeon told me the day after my surgery that if I lost 100 pounds he would consider me a success.  I’ve accomplished that, but it’s not enough.    I want more for myself than to be considered a success by my surgeon.  I want to consider myself a success too and I don’t yet.

I have a list of things I want to do, things I want to try, things I wish were physically easier, and when I can do everything on that list, and anything else that strikes my fancy in the future, without a second thought about my weight holding me back from doing so, then I will know I have reached my goal.  I’ll know it when I wake up one day, look at my body and I'm proud of what I see.  I don’t care if the medical community or other people still think I’ve overweight at that time.  I don’t care what size I wear or what the number on the scale says.  When I can live the way I want, then I’ll know I have reached my goal.  

Maybe you can understand now why I need to quiet my voice.  There is just so much noise.  It’s all good stuff to be “thinking” about but there comes a point when thinking becomes a real disadvantage….and frankly, I feel like I reached that point a long time ago.  All that “thinking” and not enough “doing” just creates turmoil and prevents me from living authentically.  Who cares which is “better” – having a habit or not, challenging myself or accepting myself?  All can exist at once.  What matters is what I actually do and what works for me as I reach for the life I want.

And on that note, here’s some of the more "practical" stuff going on with me right now:

My Green Card situation is moving along, impressively quickly for the USCIS.  As I mentioned in my last post, my GC was set to expire on July 30 and USCIS has extended it for a year to allow them time to process my application.  That means I can still work and travel without a problem but they won't issue me a new card until they're done processing my paperwork.  I need to carry the letter of extension with me along with my GC to prove my GC is still valid.  I already have an appointment in Buffalo next week for my biometrics, which is totally normal and expected.  This will be maybe the fifth or sixth time I’ve had to give USCIS my fingerprints, photograph and signature.  They ask for those every step of the way through the process. 

My cold is gone but I now have a pretty bad sunburn after spending Sunday outside all day at the air show.  It just kind of snuck up on me...it wasn't even that hot or sunny outside!  And I was wearing a hat, sunglasses, sunblock…but I had on a deep v-neck t-shirt and sat in the same spot watching demonstrations for a couple of hours.  Two hours after I got home, I realized my chest/neck, face and arms were extremely red and sore.  Ouch. I’m sure I’ll start to peel soon and won’t that be attractive.

My last blog post had double the readers of my previously highest read blog post.  Weird.  I find it kind of interesting to watch my blog stats and I often wonder why some posts do better than others.   It can't be the topic or the quality of the writing because people would still have to click on the post to know that.  Maybe it has to do with when I post or the lyrics I choose for the title…?  No idea.  I have readers from 15 countries, which kind of shocks me but it's pretty cool!

Dana, my trainer, has given me a new “walking” challenge this month of 15 miles.  Last month it was 10 and I easily did way more than that.  That’s basically my warm up miles….the time I spend on the treadmill, elliptical or rowing machine before my actual workouts with her.    I’ve also upped my training time with her from 30 minutes 3 times per week to 45 minutes 3 times per week.  And I still go on the off days and work out myself.   I want to do 6 days a week (the gym closes at 7pm on Fridays and by the time I get out of work, there is just not enough time, or I'd make it 7 days a week), but it usually ends up being 5 days a week (I sleep in on Sunday and the gym closes at noon).  I am definitely feeling a difference and seeing a difference on the scale.  This former couch potato is all in on the exercise thing….I’m a believer.

Next week I’m going to my first live boxing match at the Armory and I’m super excited about that.  I watch them on TV all the time but Dana says they are very different live.  I believe it too, ‘cos I felt that way when I went to see the Jets play live a few years ago.  I admit I am not a huge football fan.  I’ll watch it and try and figure out what’s going on, but I find it really boring in comparison to, say…hockey.  But Sam is a huge fan, so when we took a trip to NYC in 2008, we went to see a game and it was a LOT of fun.  I really enjoyed it quite a bit……It was almost worth the $700/ticket price!  But it was much more exciting than watching it on TV so I’m expecting the same from this boxing match.

The plans for my tattoos are really taking shape and I’m super excited to get the first one done.  The first, I mentioned previously, will be built around the words "True Grit".  After my last post I worked more on the sketch and scrapped the idea of the Italian version because I've  got some Italian in my second design, which will be a sleeve or half sleeve on my right arm, and honestly I didn't like the closest Italian translations I could find.  But my True Grit tattoo is going to include all kinds of elements like a barbell, Felix's face, a reference to Canada and the US and a vine-like design with stars and flowers.  It sounds weird, I know, I'm really excited by the picture I drew of it, and it's still going to be on my left forearm. 

Also in the works…my first ever motorcycle ride!  I am nervous as hell.  But kinda excited too.

Finally, I have been thinking for a while about getting a second job.  I really want the extra money so I can save more for when Sam finally kicks me out of his house.  I still haven’t decided if I’ll buy a house, rent or what, but one thing I do know is I’m gonna need money.    I didn’t want to start looking for another job until my Green Card got extended.  I knew I could find something pretty fast so it just didn’t make sense to even look if I couldn’t present documentation to show I can still legally work here. 

But while I was at my brother’s three day birthday party in Canada at the beginning of August, I met an American friend of his who is married to a Canadian girl.  So he’s going through the Canadian immigration process and we compared notes.  Surprisingly, the immigration process seems very similar in Canada and the US.  He lives in Toronto and he’s at the point right now where he can’t legally work in Canada.  He told me about how he ghostwrites as a way of making some money.  How it works is he belongs to a few American agencies.  Companies hire these agencies to write articles for them whenever they need a written piece for a trade magazine or whatever.  The company gives the agency a page of facts or statements they want included in the piece and the agency gives it to one of their freelance writers to write the piece.  The writer gives the piece back to the agency when they’re done and the agency makes sure it meets their standards.  If it does, they pay the writer $100.  My brother’s friend says he is a slow writer, as am I, but that he can write several such pieces in one week.  It’s not the kind of money he can make doing his real job when he’s allowed to work in Canada but for now it gives him some money and it's all done online through American companies so he's not breaking any rules for his immigration claim.

I was, of course, very excited to hear about this.  I had resigned myself to the idea of working my nights and weekends in a call center to make extra cash…..but it would be amazing if instead I could write and get paid for it.  My own hours, work from home (or frankly, wherever I want with my laptop) and I get to do something I really like doing.  Perfect.  So I applied to all the agencies he told me about and some others I found online too and now I’m hoping one or more of them will take me on.  I’ll keep y’all posted.

That's all for now, folks.  Until next time....

Quotes I Find Inspiring Right Now (and maybe you will too...):

• “Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.” - Flannery O’Connor
• "Discovering who we are involves learning the difference between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.” - W.H. Auden
• “The present changes the past.  Looking back, you do not find what you left behind.” – Kiran Desai
• “What’s terrible is to pretend that second rate is first rate.” – Doris Lessing
• “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” – George Eliot
• “Don’t limit your challenges, challenge your limits.”  - Jerry Dunn
• “You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.” – Michael Jordan
• “Excellence is not a singular act, but a habit.  You are what you repeatedly do.”  – Shaquille O’Neal
• “I am always doing that which I cannot do, so that I may learn how to do it.”  – Pablo Picasso
• “Give the world the best you have and the best will come back to you.”  –Marilyn Bridges
• “Adventure is worthwhile in itself.” – Amelia Earhart

“They Say it's Your Birthday....It's My Birthday Too, Yeah.” – The Beatles

Both of my grandfathers were in World War 2. 

My mom’s father was in the Air Force and their family moved around all across Canada every couple of years the whole time my mom was growing up.  Her father was a medic in the war.......my grandfather who died when I was five, so I never got to talk to him about his experiences overseas.  By all accounts, my grandfather was a  fun loving guy – a lover, not a fighter - and he did not want to talk about the war at all when he got back.  I really don’t know a lot about where he was stationed....I suppose I could find out.  I don't know how he survived the war, how it changed him, how it defined him.  After he returned home from the war, he left the Air Force and went to work as an accountant in a hospital.  He had a heart condition, he drank a lot, was the life of the party, he loved his family and died at 48.  Maybe that early death was a reflection of what the war did to him, but that's just speculation.

My father’s father enlisted in the 48th Highlanders, which is an Infantry reserve.  He was married with a young daughter when he went to England but his experiences in the war were the defining moments of his life.  He is a small but tough Ukrainian guy who breaks your hand when he shakes it, washes dishes with boiling hot water and pulls shrapnel out of his own leg in his garage….he’s THAT guy.  Chuck Norris’ brother from another mother.  He does not show vulnerability or make small talk….but after 94 years alive on this earth, he has got some fantastic stories to tell and most of them revolve around the war.

He has always talked about the war with a lot of pride which caused a lot of tension between him and my grandmother.  He spent a significant amount of time in England, France and Holland and had a serious girlfriend in Holland….she might even have had his kid after the war ended but he did his duty and returned home to his wife and daughter.  This was no secret in my family.  My grandmother had her picture and showed it to me once when I was a teenager.  I think she thought he was living it up overseas...having the time of his life.  And she resented him for it, unfortunately.

 My grandfather spent a year and a half in England training with the British Army before he went to France and then Holland, where he stayed until the war ended.  He was a sniper.  He likes to tell stories about the famous people who came to entertain the troops and the boots he stole from  German soldiers (he presumably killed) and the time he got to dance with Princess Elizabeth and the Nazi bank he and his fellow officers broke into.  He gave his share of whatever they found there to his girlfriend in Holland when he went back to Canada.

I have to admit, I love hearing his war stories.  He’s 94 years old and has a mind like a steel trap…he remembers everything and he’s a great storyteller.  I didn’t always love his stories – especially while my grandmother was alive since it made her so upset when he started talking about it - but in the last 7 or so years, and especially after I moved to the States, hearing his stories helps me feel connected to Canada, and to him, in a way that they didn’t before. 

I never heard him get emotional telling a story until a few years ago when after a bottle of wine I asked him if he had ever seen any of the concentration camps.  Then he told me for the first time how he and his regiment liberated one of the camps but he didn’t know which one, only that it was in Holland.  I looked it up online…..I’m pretty sure it must have been Vught.  He said he still sees the faces with blank eyes and sunken cheeks staring out from behind the fences, the boney hands grabbing at the soldiers' coats as they broke those fences down, the way they all just stood there after the fence was down....they didn't know where to go or what to do, what his regiment did to the German officers they found there. 

When I was younger, I didn't understand how he could be so proud, so boastful when he told these stories.  Some of these experiences were so awful, you'd think he would be humbled by them...grateful to be alive.  It occurred to me as I got older that he wasn't really capable of showing humility and gratitude 'cos that makes you vulnerable and that was just not something he could ever show, especially when he was a younger man.  It was up to me to accept him, love him, understand him anyway.  But more importantly, he was telling me these stories so that I would feel humbled and grateful.  Who was I to judge how boastful and proud he was when he was the one who willingly gave up his youth, allowed his entire life, individuality and spirit to be shaped by the horrors he witnessed? 

The only question my grandfather has ever refused to answer is “have you ever killed anyone?”.  It’s a question I asked 20 years ago before I knew he was a sniper.  He just looked at me with his clear blue eyes like I was a fucking moron.  After I found out he was a sniper, I didn’t need to ask.  After he told me that I saw “Enemy at the Gates” and it became one of my favourite war movies ever ‘cos it told me something about my grandfather’s life even though it’s not a Canadian story. 

I'm willing to bet that someone reading this has had similar experiences with their American or British loved one as I do with my Canadian grandfather.  These experiences don't stop at the border.  And in fact, as my grandfather told me many times, "I didn't need a passport to go to war....they just loaded us up on a cargo plane and we went to England."  To him, a border between countries is meaningless. 

Ever since I moved to the States, the first week of July is always a really weird week.  I’m a Canadian Citizen living in the United States.   July 1 is Canada Day…..a huge holiday where everyone in Canada goes, “Hey let’s have a barbecue and get drunk to celebrate being a part of the British Empire!”.   Then July 4, Independence Day, rolls around and everyone in the US goes, “Hey let’s have a barbecue and get drunk to celebrate being rid of those damned Brits!”.

Yup, weird.  Kind of like the kid stuck in the middle of two fighting parents.  Who am I loyal to?  Canada is my birth home…I’ll always be Canadian, not a thing can change that.  But the US has embraced me and I have embraced it, warts and all.  And Britain is my spiritual and cultural home…I love it there, so there’s that.

Given the WW2 history between Canada, the US and Britain, it has always seemed inappropriate to me to be at opposite ends of the spectrum with our July celebrations.  I dunno, it just seems strange to me. 

 

So I don’t really acknowledge either holiday.  It’s great to have a day off work…..but it’s just another day off work.  Two years ago, my passport was expiring around this time and I needed it to get back into the country if I left the US since my VISA was in it and I hadn’t gotten my Green Card in the mail yet.  So I went to Canada on July 4 so I could get a super expensive same day passport.  I don’t even remember what I did last year.  This year I'll go watch the fireworks with a friend because he really wants to.

I’m pretty sure I’m going to become a US Citizen.  I mean, I’ve given it some thought but there are serious responsibilities to becoming a dual Citizen.  For one thing, the US doesn’t even recognize dual citizenship.  When you take your oath, you “declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen.” 

That’s pretty clear.  But I don’t want to give up my Canadian Citizenship….ever.  Conveniently, Canada doesn’t recognize you saying the words of that oath as you giving up your Citizenship.    If I want to give up my Canadian Citizenship, I have to sign a form and pay a fee to the Canadian government.  So I could declare the oath with the US, and far as they’re concerned, I’m theirs…but by not telling the Canadian government in an official capacity, they still think I’m theirs.  And that’s how you become a dual Citizen of the US.  By lying, essentially.

If I were a dual citizen, I could not enjoy the privileges of both citizenships when travelling.  Whatever passport I use to enter a country, that country recognizes me as that citizen.  So for example, if I went to Italy and used my US passport, if I got into trouble in that country, I could only call the US Embassy…I could not rely on Canada’s help since I did not use my Canadian passport to enter that country. 

If I became a US Citizen and then moved to another country, I would need to file a US tax return every year for the rest of my life, no matter if I ever live in the US again or not.  And of course I’d have to file in whatever country I live in as well.  Two tax returns?  I dunno.

The alternative is remaining a Permanent Resident, which means I can never ever vote in the US.  And if I’m going to live here, that seems unacceptable to me.  Not to mention that Canada only allows expats to vote in Canada for up to 5 years after leaving the country so in a couple years if I still live in the US and am still a Permanent Resident, I can’t vote anywhere.  I have no voting rights at all in any country.  Plus it means I am never done with USCIS.  I’ll have to renew my Green Card again in 10 years.....another $600 fee, another interview, more biometrics, more affidavits.

Definitely something to think about.  If Sam and I do not get divorced before next July, then I can apply for Citizenship next July.  If we do get divorced before next July, then I will need to wait until July 2017 to apply for Citizenship.  Either way, I have time to think about it.  That’s assuming USCIS doesn’t throw me out of the country before all that happens anyway.  The bust up of my marriage has left me feeling very vulnerable about the whole thing.

In any case, both Canada and the US are incredibly special to me.  I grew up in Southern Ontario very close to the US border.  Just like any other border kid, crossing the border was no big deal for me.  I always had American relatives in Attica (the town, not the prison), New Jersey and New York City and we’d visit them often.  My grandparents went to Florida for half the year and we’d go visit them.  We’d cross the border to get gas and groceries in Buffalo.  After I got my driver’s license, my friends and I would go clubbing in the States.  Many times I also crossed the border just to go the movies or out for dinner…it was just as close as going anywhere in Canada.  I know that seems crazy to people who don't live close to a border but for those of who do, it's no big deal.

So, honestly, I did not expect there to be a big difference when I moved to the US.  The landscape looks the same, the people look the same and speak the same language (other than that ridiculous Rochester accent), all the same shows are on TV in both countries (except the Food Network), all the same stores and brands.  Superficially, there are not a lot of differences.

But as they say, the difference is in the details.  Once you get past the surface of “everything is the same” and look a little deeper, you realize it really isn’t the same in many important ways.  The US spends most of their money on their military which doesn’t leave a lot for anything else.  It’s easy for Canada to criticize that and talk up its subsidized post-secondary education system, health care system and social programs, but if there was a serious war, Canada would need the help of the US military.  One country isn’t better than the other…they both have flaws, they both do great things, they’re both “real” countries but they have very different philosophies on the role government should play in the lives of its citizens. 

I’d love to go on a cross country trip across the US......get an RV and travel from town to town, state to state, stopping for anything interesting on the way, work in exchange for food and gas.  I was in Kansas once when I was a kid, but I don’t remember it.  I’ve been to Vegas twice but stayed pretty much on the strip.  Other than that, I’ve driven to Florida and back a number of times, have been all along the East Coast (which I love) and have been to Michigan.  There’s a lot more out there to see and I want to see it.

I’ve seen some of Canada but, again, not enough.  When I was 14, my mom, my brother and I took a bus across Canada to go visit my aunt, her husband and baby in Stewart, BC….a tiny town which borders Hyder, Alaska, another tiny town.   Greyhound had a special…go anywhere in Canada for $100….or something like that.  So, the three of us got on the bus for the five day trip across the country. 

The trip to my aunt’s place was filled with adventure.  Since there were three of us, someone always had to sit next to a stranger and since I am older than my brother, that someone was me.  So I sat next to a lot of characters and listened to a lot of questionable stories on the total 10 days we spent on the bus.  We stopped in some interesting places that I had no idea existed, the first of which was Wawa, ON.    Wawa’s claim to fame is its 30 foot statue of a Canadian goose.  

When I was younger, I got car sick pretty often.  I had to take Gravol (I don’t know what the US equivalent to that is…I just know I can’t find it in the US) while travelling.  Much to my mom’s horror, I must have not taken Gravol or ran out or something but at one point I got sick all over the stranger sitting next to me.  Literally threw up all over him.  The bus had to make an unplanned stop so this poor schmuck could clean up.

We stopped in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan  for my uncle’s wedding.  My uncle is a huge music fan and while I was at his place, I raided his album collection and recorded as many albums as I could on cassettes to listen to in my Walkman.  I still had a huge box of cassettes when I moved to the States….just got rid of them last year.  My favorite was the one I made at my uncle’s place….one side was Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the other was Roxy Music’s Flesh + Blood.  That cassette provided the soundtrack to the rest of the trip.

That trip was a life changing experience for me in many ways.  The way my aunt and her husband lived was very different than the way my parents lived.  My aunt and her husband lived in a teepee in the middle of a forest outside of Stewart.  The bus simply stopped on Highway 37 in the middle of nowhere to let us off – I have no idea how the driver even knew where to stop…it’s not like there were any buildings, any landmarks - and my aunt’s husband emerged from the forest to come and guide us back to the teepee.  On the trek through the woods, he pointed out the glacier stream they use for drinking water and refrigeration.  We stopped for a drink and the water in that stream was the coldest, purest, clearest water I had ever seen.  I could barely drink it ‘cos it was so cold.

The teepee was a one room structure, so they had set up a tent outside for the three of us to sleep in.  He showed us where the outhouse and the outdoor shower were.  There was no running water and no electricity.  The first night was kind of scary.  The trees were taller than any I had ever seen before – you could not see the sky - and the night was completely black.  There were animal sounds all around us everywhere…it really was a completely different experience for us and my mom did not like it at all.   In the middle of the night, after she had tried to go find the outhouse in the dark, she took us inside the teepee and my aunt’s husband went out to sleep in the tent by himself.
 

They hunted for moose to eat and for the fur and raised their own chickens for meat and eggs, so we ate moose and eggs while we were there.  I balked at eating moose so my aunt said she would make chicken and she went out to her yard, grabbed a chicken, killed it and cooked it….no big deal.  I was mortified.  Such a spoiled little princess.  One night as a treat for dinner we got a couple of King crabs…live King crabs.  Those suckers are HUGE.  In retrospect, this seems kind of cruel but we sat around the deck of the teepee and watched the crabs race around before we roasted them on an open fire and ate them. 

My aunt took us to Bear Glacier and told us how to react when we saw certain kinds of bears, which we did…lots of them.  We parked in Stewart and walked across the US border to Hyder, Alaska.  There was a tiny little shed in the parking lot which was the Customs office.  There was a sign on the door asking you to fill in a declaration form and drop it in the box…there was no one there manning the shed.  My brother and I thought this was hilarious since we were so used to the Peace Bridge.   We could not believe someone could just walk into another country and no one would even notice.  My aunt told us that Hyder is so tiny they don’t even have their own school, police or hospital.  US residents who live in Hyder go to Stewart, BC.  for school, police and medical care.

We watched the salmon run while Grizzly bears waded through the water and devoured salmon.  They could not have cared less we were there, as long as we didn’t get too close.  We spent a few hours wandering around looking at glaciers, which is a completely awesome and overwhelmingly beautiful experience.

I’m sure it was on that trip that I learned to love remote, unpopulated, wild spaces.  It also showed me that the border really is meaningless when it comes to how people live.  We had more in common with my cousins in Attica, NY than we did with my aunt and her family in Stewart, BC.  It’s been too long since I took a life changing trip like that and I’m hungry for another.  Canada or the US…doesn’t matter.  Either will do.   Both countries feed my soul and I could not imagine living on a different continent.  People joke about Canada becoming a State but honestly for me, that border is invisible.  I respect the differences of these two great countries and don't think either one of them should change who they fundamentally are.

So Happy Birthday Canada!  Happy Birthday America!  Celebrate!  You are both everything to me and I wouldn’t be who I am today without you.

“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.