purple room vents: FAT AND DON'T CARE!

I am trying hard to care...I am big again. Sigh. I had become about as skinny as I can ever hope to get last summer. Having a giant sick making polyp (TMI...sorry), and having an operation and then getting infected..leant itself to weight loss. Sitting around, keeping to my fifty steps a day, and eating bologna sammiches lends itself to weight gain. Consequently nothing summerish, at least the nice stuff, does not even remotely fit. So a plan B had to be enacted.

And plan B involved trips to the hellhole for a rubbermaid of past fat clothes (definitely NOT the nice stuff) and a couple trips to the fat lady store. Today I spent a fruitful half hour in there. Eeegads! Some of the choices were scary. I was kind of hoping to find one sun type dress that I could wear every night down there in Mexico. But the only available choices were downright ugly. The last time I wore a dress was at my niece Jeni's wedding and that was about ten years ago. I wasn't this huge back then and I saw a pic of me dancing with Bill and seriously I looked like a giant mobile tablecloth...or tent. Not happening again.

But I did find a couple of coooolotts (or capris) and a couple of dressy tops. That will have to do. And thanks to my awesome sister, who marched into that store with me the other day to help me find bathing suit covers, whipped out garment after garment until I'll be damned if she didn't find not one, but two items that were perfect!

I have been getting charlie horses again...really easily. Just the tiniest cough or movement slightly different than my body is used to, causes crippling muscle spasms in odd places. If I sit down absolutely still, I am okay. And I have to stay that way til the muscle memory those evil bastards have gets forgotten.

So today in the farthest possible corner from the changing room in the fat lady store, I was reaching up, waaaay up to get a shirt down to try on. And BAM!!! I got a spasm in my right rib cage. Holy Crap!!! They are awful!

So I bent way over to the left and threw my right arm up and over my head and contorted myself into an opposite position and crab hobbled over to a chair outside the changing room. And wouldn't you know it, just about every robust rotund round chunky lady in town was in there today. So embarrassing. Even in the chair I had to contort way over the side of the chair with my arm awkwardly slung over my head and freeze that way for a good five minutes. I'm sure I looked like a special person, everyone gave me a very (unnecessary I felt)wide birth. Eventually I was able to straighten up and continue on.

Graeme is borrowing my jeep whilst I am in Mexico. He wanted to do a test run before borrowing it, which was probably a good idea. Tank can be pretty obnoxious at times. So a couple days ago I drove down to his place and he took over the wheel. We drove up to Barnhartvale and stopped at The Pond for lunch. The place is awesome. They have a store full of crazy fun stuff and their food is delicious.

We left there and crossed the river at lafarge and came back to Kamloops on the other side. I love that drive. Anyway he got a feel for Tank. He is going to drive to Rossland to visit his folks while I am gone. And possibly he will help Anton move stuff up here. The jeep isn't very big but it does carry a couple of boxes at a time!

I have talked with Monte a few times. He is doing so well. Being off all meds is clearly helping for now. He is dropping weight too which can only be a good thing.

Kathy hosted a baby shower for Stirling. I gave her a hand and seriously, we had so much fun. Its nice for the guests to just show up and admire baby and eat shower food and play a couple silly fun games. But the real fun is in the planning, shopping and executing. She and I did the dollar store with a vengeance! So much fun! And we decorated, making big yellow flowers, hanging banners and streamers and decorating the table etc. Then of course the best part of all making the food. She made the most beautiful fruit thingy you ever saw! I will put some pics below for those who aren't facebook peeps. And Stirling was a perfectly good baby all the way through. Now his sister Ainsley...well she is such a hoot. What an interesting kid she is!

I just have to say here...this is exactly why I moved back to Kamloops. Nothing can replace a sister. We used to talk about how great it would be to live close by to each other and the fun we could have. And now we are doing it. There is no one else on earth that has that shared history the two of us have and you know its just different. Perfect.

The other day Ainsley had one of her very rare melt downs. She was just too tired. So she was howling and crying and had been for a little while. Finally Kathy went into the kitchen and trying to distract her asked her to bring a stool over so she could help do something there on the counter. So she turned around, and still full crying, went over to the stools and sobbing away she chokes out, "Okey dokey Omi." Who says that? What a kid!!

Today was errand day. The one I was dreading most was BCAA. I needed to renew my membership, check to make sure my Tank insurance was good for an N driver and get travel medical insurance. I expected to be in there for a good half hour or more. Well, get this...my membership automatically renews, my health insurance doesn't run out til the end of April and my insurance covers N drivers. I was out of there in five minutes!!! That NEVER happens to me!!!

And I went to the bank to get American money. I need one dollar bills for tips on drinks. So...five drinks per day, one dollar per drink, five days of drinking...twenty five one dollar bills was needed. And I needed six fives for the chambermaid. And five fives for dinner tips. And the bank had exactly what I needed!

The only downside to the trip into the bank was standing in line for about ten minutes, right behind a very dysfunctional sketchy guy who reeked so strongly of pot that my clothes smelled like pot for an hour after I got out of there. If he had stood still it wouldn't have been so bad, but he was atweeking bad. Foot to foot, spinning around, hacking and coughing...and smelly! At one point he swung around and glared at me and quite aggressively said, "What are you looking at?" And I very calmly answered, "Your awesome hat! I love it!" Hahaha!! He actually calmed down and said, "Oh"

Well I gotta bounce...TTYL