Breathin' Down Your Neck, You Chubby Bunny!

*pant, pant*

I am coming for you, oh magical 169 pounds that will forever free me from the ugly "obesity" label. I am coming for you, and I am going to pass you right by on the way down!

Kah-razy!! You know, the weight loss is so difficult to grasp sometimes...my mom asked me the other day how much I've lost. Without thinking, I said, "79 pounds." Yah - like a long time ago, haha. As I was typing out 169 pounds above, I started backspacing to change it to "269." Me. I almost weigh 169 pounds. It has been forever.

Also, I am trying really hard to give myself credit where credit is due. When I weighed 171 the first time around, I felt FAAAAAATTTT! And so I hated on myself at 160, 170, 180...all the way up to the high two hundreds. When I was nine months pregnant with my now 10-year-old, I weighed 275 pounds. I was scraping that weight again shortly before surgery. I considered it inevitable that I would bypass the 300 pound mark.

Poor baby. :(

Now, I'm checking out my 171 pound frame and dah-um, girl, you are hot! Shake that bootie! Work it, mama! I am pushing myself to actually *see* my success, to let myself really see how much I've changed. I still get freaked out about "will I fit in that bus seat," "am I too big to squeeze onto the crowded elevator," etc. Yesterday at lunch I wanted to walk into Banana Republic. There is a huge mental hurdle preventing me from looking at these "regular" stores.

My commute ends in an underground bus tunnel with an impossibly long, steep, narrowest-you've-ever-seen-escalator to the surface. Really too narrow to politely pass people. So if someone gets on in front of you and stands still, everyone behind them stands still for the whole ride. Generally, people continue walking up the escalator, since, besides being long, it is interminably slow. So as the crowd heads from the bus platform to the escalator, there is always a LOT of jockeying for position. You see people trying to civilly "outwalk" others who they are guessing will block the escalator rather than walk up.

Here are a couple pictures of the impossibly long and narrow escalators themselves!

Back in the day when I was obese (I am already trying on my pending "overweight" status, haha) I always walked up the escalator, but I knew people were speeding past me to get on the escalator first. Now I'm one of the quick walkers. And you KNOW I can rock some stairclimbing, baby!!

This morning, however, I was judged as an escalator blocker (my ex and I used to call these PSD's, or "Professional Slower-Downers", on the roads or malls or wherever) by a man who was speeding to get past me. I let him. It's my new "Be Present" lifestyle. I'm enjoying my walk to work. (Ha!)

And when we got to the top of that long escalator and then had to climb the steep block up toward our common destination - I smoked him on that hill. Show you, buddy. And I was wearing my cute sandals. :)

Finally, sorry to report I missed another WLS support group meeting. It occurred to me that my massage appointment was at 5:00 p.m. and I had splurged with a NINETY MINUTE MASSAGE, and the support group meeting started at 6:00 p.m. In another city. After I took a bus ride to my car. It would have been after 7:00 p.m. before I got there, and the meeting ends at 8:00 p.m. I could have done it, but decided to treat myself to the art museum instead.

Which was...meh. After Picasso and Nick Cave's Soundsuits this year, they were due for a dud. I'm sure others enjoyed it, haha. But I did go to the museum bar beforehand for a glass of wine and a bite to eat. I'm trying to make myself do stuff like that by myself. I can go to the museum by myself easily, but sitting at a bar alone? Eeep. I want to read, or fuss with my iPhone. But I don't have an iPhone anymore. *sob*