(lifted from an email conversation from a relative...)
i'm still on the mend. surgeon (saw on Monday) says everything looks great. i've decided to put off going to work until march 2. i don't imagine i'll be ready in less than three weeks. i need at least one completely healthy week. jeff's still packing the open wounds, but that won't be much longer. maybe only 2 more weeks. i'm also under doctor's orders to be more active.
not driving yet because my reflexes are old-lady-slow. soon, i hope. i spent the morning actively cleaning out my closet. it was very sad, because most of my favorite, cute, easy, go-to work clothes are now far too big. i thought i'd be able to save some of them because they're wrap dresses, but no- they were just too baggy and unattractive. three large garbage bags for Goodwill. i hope someone will be able to benefit from them.
we're going to budget an amount each month to try to rebuild. i literally have ONE pair of jeans that kind of fit (too big, but I can make them work) and one pair of Gap black trousers (same thing- too big, but i can put up with the saggy butt.) The rest of my bottoms are 3 pairs of loungy sweat type things that are too big, but have a drawstring. Oh funny story- I was at a friend's house on Monday for a churchy dinner and my loungy sweat pants fell around my ankles. seriously dropped on the floor. only one person saw, but it was hilarious. what can you do? i just have to tie them tighter.
now, after all that work, i'm cuddled in bed with the kitties. the housekeeper is here and the little girl kitten Marley (who is little no longer) is terrified of the vacuum, so she's shaking under the covers with me. i'm about ready to take a nap, lulled to sleep by the vacuum.
I haven't really figured out what size i am yet. I'm wearing a medium in stretchy things- pajamas and loungy pants. The jeans that are too big, but will do, are a 10 from the gap as are the "curvy" trousers. Those jeans were my sexy, tight, make your butt look good jeans and now they're my saggy jeans. My undies are currently a large, but I'm not buying those for a while because they still have to fit the dressings. So I guess that I'm currently an 8 with the swelling still going on, and maybe a six when things are all said and done.
All of my dresses are jersey wrap and pullover dealies that I figured I could cinch a little tighter or belt a little tighter, but no- they didn't work. They just looked saggy and ill-fitting. So I kept all the size larges that would look okay and consigned all the XLs to the giveaway pile. The larges are fine, but as the swelling goes down, they won't look as nice. I'll probably stay at a medium when the swelling settles down (swelling is a 3 inch area just above my Beverly Hills belly button.) Such a problem to have.
Naked, first thing in the morning, I weigh 148, which is pretty good. (I weighed 135 the summer I turned 13.) I do think I wouldn't mind adding some weight in exchange for some muscle. I'm close to looking too thin, I think, but that might be just so many years of seeing me, uh, curvy. Legs look good, but could use some definition that I worked so hard this summer to get (with the running.) I think part of the thinness is seeing ribs and collarbones that have always been hidden (I felt a huge, long lump in my breast and freaked out- ran to Jeff so he could check it. It was a rib and of course there was an identical lump on the other side.)
As soon as I can manage it, I'm going to start some gentle yoga. I am doing a lot of stretching in bed- my abdomen is so tight from the muscle suturing they did, it's still a bit painful. Maybe in 6-8 months I'll try some ballet again. In the immediate future, I'm going to start walking Cameron to school. That's under a mile round trip, and I can do it as slowly or quickly as I need.
Another funny thing- on Monday, the surgeon mentioned using a rolling pin-like device to work on the scar tissue from the hematoma on my thigh (it's causing me a lot of pain still) and he ran out of the room and returned with a speedball brayer. I laughed and said, "That's a speedball brayer for printing and etchings..." He had no idea what it was really used for. It even said speedball on the handle. I ordered one and it just arrived a few minutes ago. So now I have to roll the brayer on my thigh to break up the dead blood and scar tissue- OWWWW.
I did a little makeup last night. Last minute, six of the original 8 Cedars babies got together last night since the one family who had moved out of state came back for a quick visit, I figured none of these women had seen me in a while (two of them had not seen me since the weight loss began at all) so I pulled out the makeup case and did a nice light job. Jeff even said I looked nice (and he's very frugal with the compliments.) I found the best lipstick/lipgloss. I have the worst problem of eating my lipstick off and ending up with a strip of color around the outside of my mouth. It's a MAC product and just DOES NOT COME off. It has two sides, one with the stain and the other with a gloss brush. I don't really use the gloss bush and stick to the color.
My closet has tons of room now, and I have a lovely amount of my wonderful wooden hangers to fill up with clothes (best way to keep the amount of clothes in your closet manageable is to only use wooden hangers- no wire, no plastic. If I want something new, it must have a wooden hanger by discarding something old.) Most of what I buy is neutral (grey, black, brown) and I have lots of pretty scarves that fortunately still fit. I bought a couple of loungy sweat things from Old Navy that will get me through my loungy at home days. When I go back to work, I still have a very respectable amount of jersey dresses that will look fine and professional (for a 2nd grade teacher.)
