LADIESSSSSS

The party has started! I hope you all have a weekend full of fun, adventure, bonding, shopping and sisterhood. xoxo

My Sad Boot Tale

I had a shopping adventure on Monday at Saks Fifth Avenue, and I'll post some photos just as soon as the tailor finishes with the new clothes.

One of the things I got was a really cute black dress that would look great with knee-high boots.

{Cue dramatic music here.}

Naturally, the Saks ladies' shoe department, which famously has its own Zip code and takes up an entire floor of the department store, has not a single pair of boots to fit a lady with, um, athletic calves.

I bemoaned this to a friend of mine, who reassured me that I'd have no trouble finding extended calf boots on JCrew.com. She was right!

I found this cute pair and ordered them and they arrived and I tried them on and... well, it was very sad. They did not pull up over my calves. The extended-calf pair, that is.

So I'm back to square one with no boots and kind of bummed out about the whole thing. Is there anywhere else I could find boots that might work? Maybe a zipper would be better? I don't know.

Tummy Tuck

I've been talking for years about having a tummy tuck. I want a flat stomach, and no matter how much weight I lose, a flat stomach will require surgical intervention. With perhaps a bit of pixie dust added for good luck.

I saw a plastic surgeon last week for a tummy tuck consultation. I got this surgeon's name and number from a girlfriend who had four kids in quick succession and was in otherwise excellent shape but had a pooch that wouldn't go away. She loves him and was really happy with the way her tummy tuck went.

My main question was, how much more weight do I need to lose before I can have the surgery? Because while I haven't completely given up, there's a part of me that suspects I may never get all the way to goal. My surgery was 20 months ago. I've lost exactly 50 percent of my excess weight, which is what Allergan's studies say is typical for band patients. My weight has essentially been the same, give or take eight pounds, for the last year.

My tummy is floopy and floppy, and in addition to being a pain with clothes, it creates some awkward moments when I'm exercising and in other, similarly physical, situations. If you catch my drift. I usually wear fitted yoga pants with a long t-shirt to work out, but even then sometimes I can hear it flap-flap-flapping around in there and it's awkward.

The surgeon said he could do the surgery anytime, but that the more weight I lose, the easier the surgery is for him. He also suggested that I check with my band doc to get his go-ahead first. I see the band doc in another 10 days so I'll get his input and also ask for a couple more names so I can meet other surgeons. I'm not sure this guy has a lot of experience with lap-band patients, which I guess isn't a big deal but I'm not sure. He didn't seem worried about the port, which I assume is one of the practical issues.

I know a couple people in blog world who've had tummy tucks (Draz and Angie), and I've followed their posts on this. I know the recovery is no picnic. I know I'll have two grenade-sized drains for a whole week, and it'll take several weeks, maybe a few months, before I feel back to normal. I've heard about the binder garments that have to be worn during healing. I'm trying to figure out how I can fit this in with minimal disruption to my kids' and family's schedules. It's all a little daunting.

If you have any advice, I'd love to hear it.

Unfill

I guess the biggest band-related news is, I went for an unfill last week. Just kept having vomiting episodes, even though at 5.2 cc's my band was less full than it's been for most of the time since surgery. My surgeon was great about it, took out 0.2 cc's and I immediately felt better. In fact, we both heard the little POP when he took out the fill and things opened up and all the gunk went through instead of sitting there in my esophagus waiting to come back up.

That's a nice image, isn't it?

Anyway, for the most part I've been feeling OK since then. Tight tonight, but I attribute that to a stressful and busy day. Which hopefully will offset the pretty bad snacking spree I had yesterday.

Tomorrow marks three weeks until Hubs and I leave for our 10th anniversary trip to Italy. I've kind of fallen off the exercise wagon, so I'm setting a goal of doing 15 workouts between now and takeoff on October 5th.

Can she do it?

Stay tuned...

Eating Less, Sweating More

Well, look who fell off the blogging wagon? It wasn't because I didn't have anything to say - I kept thinking to myself, "That would make a good post!" and then not doing anything about it.

Anyway, the end of the summer has been busy in a great, end-of-the-summer way. We spent 10 days in the Adirondacks, swimming and tubing and kayaking and camping (well, Hubs and the boys camped). And because I am the mom, doing piles and piles of laundry, grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning up after endless meals, etc. The usual.

My 9-year-old worked on his dive:

After 10 summers of sitting on the sidelines, I finally learned how to drive the boat!

Hubs took the boys canoeing while my 2-year-old and I paddled behind in the kayak.


I'm still trying to catch up on everyone's blogs, but let's wrap this post up with a few bullets:

* Last time I posted, I was rocking the exercise but not so much the eating. While we were vacationing, I was so busy trying to tire out the kids that I didn't eat as much and actually lost weight despite being in a cottage with multiple packs of Hershey bars (for s'mores).

* I fell off the exercise wagon a little bit while I was away. I did a three-mile run/walk once but otherwise it was so busy that I didn't take the time for other formal workouts.

* Hurricane Irene threw a wrench into our plans, so we ended up staying an extra couple days in the mountains (and lost power up there from the storm!) and then bobbing and weaving our way home past downed trees and a couple washed-away bridges. Lots of adventure.

* We came home late Monday, the kids were supposed to start school today. Because we still have storm damage and some roads are still closed, they've pushed the start of school till Wednesday. I don't think I can handle this many more days of summer adventure. I'm exhausted.

* Yesterday morning I got a call from the Big Time Newspaper asking me to work on a storm aftermath story. I dropped everything and spent seven hours reporting, and they didn't end up using any of it. That's never happened to me. They didn't even call to tell me! I knew because I didn't get a call from the copy desk last night with questions. To add insult to injury, the story ran on the front page and they put my name in the "additional reporting by" box even though none of my reporting made it into the story. I told Gilly it's like a pity f**k. Ugh.

* I went for a tiny fill on Tuesday, went from 5.0 cc's to 5.2 cc's. Was so busy yesterday that I had nothing but iced tea until 7 pm. Can you believe that? Because people, I cannot. believe. that.

* I went back to the gym this morning, first workout in a while. TOUGH class, but I made it through and felt decently strong. YAY me!

* Oldest Child and I are road-tripping this weekend. My old roommate invited us to an airshow at her husband's military base. My son is reallllly into everything military and pilots and airplanes, so we're making the trip to see the Blue Angels perform and check out the Naval Academy.

If you're traveling this Labor Day weekend, be sure to look for me on the Jersey turnpike!