New Minivan (to me, anyway)

We went with the 2008 Kia Sedona minivan. It had the best remaining warranty (and we were able to upgrade that warranty so that we now have 5 years/58K miles).

I'm having to learn how not to drive with a lead foot - the Sedona has so much more acceleration and pick-up than any other vehicle I've ever driven, it's just too easy to hit the gas pedal from a complete stop and be doing 40 mph before you know it (and that's in town). It gets up to highway/freeway speeds faster than my Grand Caravan and Windstar ever did, so the cruise control will definitely get used a lot.

The only drawback to buying the Kia is that the seatbelt fit way too tightly and I needed an extender. Kia doesn't offer extenders, at all. Something about seat belt extenders haven't been tested for safety so Kia won't be responsible if the extender fails in an accident. Right, so the seat belt doesn't fit me, I can't buckle it, I'm in an accident - does that mean I can sue Kia because they refuse to put seat belts in their vehicles that will fit fat people? Not to mention that in MN, they passed the law where you can be stopped and ticketed just for not wearing your seat belt. So I've been cheating and driving with the seat belt buckled before I ever get in the seat and then I sit on it (looks like it's buckled and the harness is behind my back to anyone outside the vehicle). Just a stop-gap measure until I could go online and do a search for an extender that will fit the Kia (the ones I had for the Windstar wouldn't work). I finally found one on eBay (final cost with shipping was $38.98) that was 15" long, which is perfect, puts the shoulder harness right where it should be (between my breasts) so the damned thing doesn't decapitate me. Ordered it Monday afternoon and it got here in today's mail. Doesn't match the interior color of the Kia, but I don't care, safety is more important than a color-match, IMO.

I'll know in a couple of weeks how it does on gas mileage (in cold weather anyway). Vehicles always get better gas mileage in warm weather than they do in cold weather, so I know the mileage will get better when spring and summer get here (and it's finally getting really cold here in MN, it's actually 15 degrees F and snowing today, yuck).

Shopping for a new minivan

It's getting to be time to get rid of the Windstar, she's starting to nickel and dime us with repairs (and being a 2001 with 152K miles, is not worth a whole lot and probably won't last much longer anyway). The main problems are ones that are difficult to diagnose - both warning brake lights on the dash come on for no reason at random times, the back windows may or may not open (and if you get them open, they may not close), the number lock keypad doesn't work, the keyless beeper doesn't always unlock the doors, and 7 times out of 10, when you start the van, the windshield wipers cycle. Most of this has been a problem ever since we bought the van, and the dealer hasn't been able to diagnose what is causing it, so they can't fix it (and I'm not throwing any more money at diagnostic attempts when it's costing $80 an hour, and is going to cost the same to fix it, plus whatever the needed parts may cost).
So DH and I have been out looking at minivans. Now, the Windstar was a good one, other than the electrical problems (and so was my Grand Caravan, till it had electrical problems). So far, most of the minivans we've looked at - Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Kia, Honda, Toyota, Dodge - are all about the same. They're all easy to get in and out of, they all get about the same gas mileage (anywhere from 16/18 mpg city to 23/25 mpg hwy and I'm not going to quibble over a couple of miles difference), and all of them have pretty comfortable seating. All of the newer ones (anything 2007 and after) have front and rear heat/air. The only ones I've seen that have the Stow'N'Go seating tho, are the Kia Sedona and the Dodge/Chrysler/Plymouth minivans (and I really like the idea of the Stow'N'Go).
One drawback is that I will need to get seatbelt extenders with whichever one we decide to go with. Seems they've decided to shorten seatbelts. The seatbelt in my '97 Grand Caravan fit with room to spare, but in the 2008 I drove yesterday, it was tight (yeah, it fastened, but I had no room to move, and if I was ever in an accident, the damned thing would probably decapitate me). The Kia was the same way. But seatbelt extenders are usually free, and that's a small thing.
I think we've narrowed our choices down to the Kia Sedona or the Dodge Grand Caravan. I've driven both of them (DH won't drive them, he calls minivans "chickmobiles", and only drives his 4WD F150). The Kia, well, just let me say that I would definitely need to use the cruise control on the highway at all times. It accelerates quite well (yeah, it does....lol) and would get away from me if I wasn't careful. Of course, the Dodge was the same way, so that doesn't really go in to making the decision on which one we buy.
We're looking at how many miles are on each one, how much warranty is left on each one, the best price on each one, and what we can get on trade-in for the Windstar from each dealer. A lot will also depend on which one our bank will finance for us, too.
So, what does this have to do with FA/SA? Being a fat person, especially a fat person with arthritis who finds it next to impossible to get in and out of cars, I thought it would be informative for other people with similar difficulties to know what I've learned in my minivan shopping.
Granted, I prefer Dodges, I've had a lot of them in my car-owning history and they've always been good vehicles (and my dad likes them too, and that's a big influence on me). My son just bought a Kia Optima and recommended that I look at their minivans (he loves the Optima), so that's why I looked at the Sedona (yeah, I do tend to listen to my son when it comes to vehicles, he's not steered me wrong on the ones I've bought that he recommended). As always, YMMV, but if you're looking for a minivan that will fit someone up to 350 pounds and 5' 8" tall, the 2007 and newer Dodge and Kia minivans do it admirably (with the addition of a seatbelt extender).

We got a Wii, and the bowling is a blast!!!!!!

I spent 6 hours yesterday hooking it up and trying to get it to work on our TV, which is not easy when you don't have the original remote (DH went on a cleaning rampage and threw out all the universal remotes that had quit working and the original remote for the TV was in that lot). I finally found the website for help, I suggest not using the url they put in the manual but shortening it to support.nintendo.com (they said to use support.nintendo.com/inputselects.html and that doesn't exist when you type it in). So anyway, I ended up having to run the Wii through the VCR and then we have to put a movie in, play a few seconds of it, stop the movie, and then we can play the Wii. Pain in the ass, but my son said he'll fix that the next time he comes up here (probably at Christmas).
DH came home from work, we ate dinner, and he wanted to try it out (we bought the WiiSports). So we bowled 5 games before he decided it was time to quit and get ready for bed (he has to work today and tomorrow). Now, my son and his wife can sit down and bowl, but I found out that doesn't work for me, and it doesn't work for DH either, so both of us were taking turns standing between the recliner and the loveseat, in front of the TV, bowling (he said not to tell anyone, but I beat him 2 of the 3 games and it was my first time ever bowling with the Wii, he had bowled with my son and DIL on theirs). Don't let anyone tell you that bowling on the Wii isn't exercise. If you're standing up to do it, and you take at least one step forward when you release the ball (like I do), it's exercise. I wasn't breathing hard or anything like that, and I was having a lot of fun, but I was sweating and the house wasn't that warm. Today, my back is sore, and my bad knee is giving me fits, but that's not going to keep me from bowling again tonight when DH gets home from work and we're done with dinner.
I don't know if we'll ever play any of the other games that are on the disc (though DH did say he thought I might beat him at tennis, so we may end up trying that). Even if we don't play any of the other games, it's worth it just for the fun we have with the bowling. And DH saw another Wii game that he'd like to have - it's the one where you're shooting chickens, comes with a gun (there's a deer-hunting one as well). I agreed with him that the chicken one looked like fun, so that might be next on our list of things to get for entertainment at home............

Loan modification, finally!!! And a warning....

We've only been trying since August of 2008 to get a loan modification on the mortgage on DH's house. DH has an ARM, that was supposed to be set at 9% when he refinanced in 2006 (3 months before we got married). When he went to sign the papers, they had upped the rate to 10.55%. He didn't want to sign, but didn't have much choice, as he had credit card companies that were hounding him and threatening to garnish wages, etc (credit cards he didn't know he had, his ex-wife got them in his name, ran them up, and when she left, he was stuck holding the bag). So he signed. The rate was fixed for 2 years with an option to refinance.
Well, y'all know what happened to the housing market in 2008. His house, that had been appraised at 125K (and I have no fucking clue how they came up with that appraisal for a one bedroom, 1 bathroom house with no central heat/air), was no longer worth that (tax appraisal was 66.5K). Mortgage company kept calling and asking if we were ready for the rate to reset and our payments to go up, and if we didn't want that, they were willing to lock us in for 5 years at our current rate and payment (the payment was almost $1200 a month, including escrow for taxes and insurance). We told them no way were we willing to lock in at the current rate, but if they were willing to lower it, we would talk. Nope, they didn't want to talk. And that continued.
Then we got a call from someone who said he could help us negotiate a loan modification. We talked, and eventually, he couldn't help us, because we were "under water" on the mortgage (owed more than the house was worth). But, he knew of a company who could help us (and that should have been a huge warning flag). He said he was going with a company called Green Credit Solutions, who had lawyers working on loan modifications for people who weren't able to get their lenders to work with them. A couple of his family members were also signing up, and so were a lot of his other customers. Cost was $3,495 and if GCS wasn't able to get a loan mod for you, you got $2,945 of it back (yeah, right). So we came up with the money, filled out the paperwork, sent all of the documentation they required, and thought we were on our way to a loan modification.
Well, between August of 2008, when we first started talking with Sean and GCS,and July of 2009 when we quit hearing from GCS, we had 8 different negotiators who had worked on our loan modification. Now they did apply for at least one loan modification that I know of, because our lender told us we had been denied. Something about DH made too much money (but that was because they were counting my income, and they weren't supposed to, since I'm not on the mortgage, and I wasn't going to be on the new one either). At that point, one of the negotiators said he wasn't supposed to tell us this, but that if we quit making payments on the house, our lender might be more willing to negotiate a loan modification. Up until then, DH had had the payments on the mortgage taken out of the checking account automatically every month. So, in November of 2008, he decided that he would stop the automatic withdrawal and we went to the bank and did that, went home and called the lender, told them the AWD had been stopped. In December, the lender tried to do an AWD, it was refused, and I had sent them a check. The bank also refused to cash our check because they thought we had stopped all payments to the lender, not just the AWD. So when the check bounced (and I caught it right away, because I balance our checkbook online every week), I called the bank to see why they had refused payment on the check. Bank said oops, our mistake, tell the lender to send the check back through and we will pay it.
So I called the lender, explained what had happened, and was told the check would be sent back through. Problem solved, right? Guess again.
So January comes around. I send in the mortgage payment check, with a note in the memo line that it's the payment for Jan 09. Then the calls start coming about when are we going to make January's payment. I told them we made it. That they needed to send back through the check I wrote for December's payment and gave them the check number. They said they couldn't do that, that we needed to send them another check for December's payment. I said, fine, send me back the check I wrote for December and I'll send you another check. Can't do that, they said, we take an electronic image and destroy the check. So send me some kind of assurance that you aren't going to resubmit that check for payment. Can't do that, they said. Then piss up a rope for your payment, I said. I'm not sending you another check so you can have two checks for the same month's payment and be able to cash both of them, and I'm not paying for a stop payment on the one, when you charged us a bounced check fee for the AWD not being paid when you knew we had stopped that.
February rolls around, I send them a check for the mortgage. Check clears the bank, and they try to do an AWD. And they charge us a bounce fee for the AWD failing. I call and chew ass. Then I fax them a letter stating that the AWD has been stopped, with copies of paperwork from the bank.
Lender calls every day, 3 to 4 times a day, either wanting to know if we're going to make the missed payment (which is in the savings account), or if we want to lock in at our current rate and payment for the next 5 years. It gets to the point where I know all the phone numbers they use, and when those numbers show up on caller id, I don't even bother to answer the phone. DH won't talk to them at all, he gets too mad (like I don't....lol).
Finally, we decide that GCS isn't going to do us any good, and we stop making mortgage payments on the house (they go into the savings account). When the lender calls, we tell them "Either give us a decent loan modification or take the house, we don't care. We don't have any kids, so we don't have to worry about schools or anything like that. We're not so invested in this house that we have to stay here, we can move, and we will." They piss and moan and delay and belly-ache and say there's nothing they can do. They've had an online appraisal of the house done and that comes out at 80K. I start laughing. They want to know what is so funny. I tell them there is no central heat/air in the house, that there is one wall furnace in the hallway to heat the whole downstairs, there are 2 electric baseboard heaters for the upstairs, and there's no heat at all in the basement. The valuation for taxes has gone down to 60K, and they'd be lucky to get 45K for the house, if they could sell it at all (there are houses in this town that have been for sale for more than a year and they're all better than this one). The only thing this house has going for it is its location (across the street from the lake/park, closest neighbor is across the street, and one across the American Legion parking lot). We told them it would take them 6 months to get us out of the house (so they would have lost a year's worth of house payments (14K), then the house would sit empty for who knows how long while they had to pay property taxes on it and lose more house payments, and then take a loss if and when they finally sold it).
So we got a phone call a couple of weeks ago, telling us we had been approved for a loan modification. Our rate went from 10.55% to 3.375% and is locked in for 5 years. Our mortgage payment went from $1157.28 a month to $620.69. We got the papers to go over (and sign) on the 11th. They had to be back by 20th (luckily they sent them next-day UPS and included a return label for us to use and there is a UPS pick-up box here in town). They recommended that we have a lawyer go over them with us, so we did. We signed them, got them notarized, and sent them back with the certified check for the escrow deposit (and I wrote down the UPS tracking number, and checked on it, they got the paperwork back yesterday).
So it pays to be a bitch sometimes, and believe me, I was a bitch with DH's lender. I just wish I could find the assholes who ran the scam called GCS. They would not even want to meet Helga, let alone PsychoBitch from Hell. I guess we'll just have to chalk that money up to experience, and let it go, but damn, that burns my hide, especially since I did research them and they seemed to be a legitimate company. Now, doing more research on them since their website has disappeared and their phone lines are disconnected, I find out they've fucked over a lot of people. DH and I are lucky, in that we didn't lose the house, and we managed to get the loan modification on our own, but there are a lot of people out there who relied on GCS who weren't so lucky. All we lost was $3,495 - they lost that and their homes.

Carpal tunnel surgery upcoming

Well, I finally got the results from the EMG test done on my right arm. I do have carpal tunnel, the nerve is pinched in my wrist and the neuroligist recommends surgery to fix it before any damage is done to the nerve. At least the numbness is just in my hand now, and isn't in my arm, shoulder, neck, and head anymore. I am wearing a wrist brace at night, and it seems to help some, but the numbness in my hand doesn't ever go completely away. Unfortunately, I can't have the surgery done right away as DH is scheduled on Dec 14th for a complete knee replacement (his left knee is bone-on-bone and he's in a lot of pain that ibuprofen and extra strength tylenol combined don't even touch). So I'll probably get that done in February, after DH is mostly healed, but before he goes back to work (so he can take care of me, since I'm right-handed and won't be able to use that hand much for a couple of weeks).
His doctor at the VA says that, at 53 (almost 54), he's really too young for a knee replacement, but the orthopedic surgeon we saw yesterday said that since the cortisone shots and SynVisc shots didn't work, and pain meds don't help, that replacement is the only thing left to do in order to lessen the pain. Evidently, replacement doesn't always totally get rid of the pain, but most of the time, it does. DH is willing to go for it, he says anything is better than what he's dealing with right now.
The surgery isn't going to be done at the VA, they aren't doing any new surgeries because they are so far behind, so we had to find a civilian hospital to do it. Luckily, there's one in Alexandria (only 25 miles away) and the surgeon who will be doing the knee replacement trained at the VA in Minneapolis (small world....lol).
Looks like DH will be off work for about 8 weeks. He has some pre-surgery exercises to do to strengthen the muscles around the knee, and then he'll probably have to go to the VA at St Cloud a couple of times a week for physical therapy after the replacement. We have a meeting about knee replacements to attend next week, an informational type thing, where they tell us what to expect in more detail, and what medications he needs to stop taking and how long before the surgery he needs to stop taking them.
We may end up paying for a couple of his visits to the surgeon, since the VA says they're only paying for one visit before surgery, the surgery itself, and one visit afterward. According to the scheduling nurse, after the surgery, there will be a visit to remove the staples (two weeks post-op), then a visit 4 weeks post-op, and another one 12 weeks post-op (and another one after a year has passed). I don't think the VA is going to want to pay for those last 3 visits, but I don't see how a PA or an ortho doc at the VA is going to be able to do the follow-up when they aren't ones who did the surgery. But, like DH says, if we have to pay for the visits, so be it, we'll find the money somewhere (probably will come out of the money we're saving on the house payment since we finally got the loan modification on the house, which is a whole 'nother post).

Hooray for expanded mobility!!!

I finally got my Rollator walker last week. This means that I can now shop in places that don't have electric carts (like some malls, and most stores). It also means that when DH wants to go to the local toy shows, pancake breakfasts, and Pioneer Power shows, we can actually go because I'll have the walker to lean on (and when my back cramps and I can't walk anymore, it has a seat so I can sit until the cramping goes away). I won't have to worry about standing in lines forever anymore (and let me tell you, the pancake breakfasts around here have some of the longest lines I've ever seen).
This is a picture of it:

I ordered it from amazon.com, it was originally priced at $595, I got it for $163.62 (and didn't have to pay any shipping and handling, got it 4 days after I ordered it). It has a weight capacity of 400 lbs, so it's well worth the money (and was mostly assembled, just had to install the handles with the brakes, the basket, and the back rest).
I know I'm probably going to get looks from people when they see me using it, since I'm a fat woman - "Oh noes, she's fat and using a walker, what a lazy fat fatty mcfatterson she is." (same shit when I use the electric carts at WallyWorld). But ya know what, I don't care. They don't live with the pain I have, they don't know anything about it (and I don't talk about it much in the meatworld), and if this is going to widen my horizons and let me get out more and do more with DH, then I'm all for it.
Hell, I can actually go shopping with him at Menard's now, since Menard's doesn't have those electric carts, and the one wheelchair they have sure as hell doesn't fit my fat ass (it might fit my D-I-L, who is 5' 10" and 150 lbs). I'll be able to spend more time shopping in individual stores because I'll have a place to sit when my back starts hurting because I've been standing for too long - which may not be a good idea, more time to shop means more time to spend money......
We even have a bike/walking trail that runs past our house that DH and I will finally be able to use in the summer time now (can't use it in the winter time, it's a snowmobile trail then, and those snowmobiles zoom by, even here in town).
I am so looking forward to finally being able to get out and about more than I have been. This Rollator walker is going to open up my life so much, I can't even think of all the ways it's going to help.

Exposed to the flu and pneumonia and I'm still not sick

It's been a lovely ten days or so around here, I must say. DH has been sick with the flu since last Wednesday (the 21st). He was supposed to work Fri/Sat/Sun (23/24/25) but ended up going to Urgent Care at the VA on the 24th because he was coughing so much he was dizzy (not to mention not hungry, headache so bad his hair hurt, fever and chills, etc). They diagnosed flu, said we were doing all we could with the tussinDM, tylenol, orange juice/fluids, and rest, and gave him an excuse so he didn't have to go in to work (and his work was very understanding about it).
We figured since he had Mon/Tues off, he should have gotten enough rest and be able to go back to work as scheduled for Wed/Thurs. No such luck. He was still coughing up his lungs (dry, hacking cough), still fever and chills, and still not eating much of anything. But he got up and went to work. Two co-workers saw him, both said he looked like death warmed over, and since he was coughing, he didn't need to be there passing it on to the rest of them (or coughing on the soy milk they make and package). Boss wasn't due to come in until 8 a.m., but Chad (used to be a supervisor) said go home, I'll tell the boss, and you call him at 8. So home comes DH, calls the boss at 8, boss says no problem, we've got the floater to cover for you.
Back to the VA and Urgent Care we go. Now they tell us, after a chest x-ray, that his flu has become pneumonia. Oh goody. Well, at least we know what it is, and they can prescribe drugs to help him get over it. So we come home with cough syrup with codeine in it, an antibiotic (not penicillin, DH is allergic to that), and prednisone.
DH has been sleeping in the recliner in the living room because he couldn't lay flat without coughing, but last night, he actually got to sleep in bed for the first time in 8 days, so I think he's feeling better. He's not coughing as much, and his appetite is starting to come back. Today, he's playing games on Pogo instead of checking the backs of his eyelids for holes while watching TV.
It's funny, because when we were at the VA on Saturday, the PA we saw told me to stay in a different room from DH and to keep washing my hands all the time so I wouldn't catch his flu, that this was about the time I should be coming down with it. Well, I've been in the same room with him the whole time, taking care of him, making sure he takes his pills, giving him his insulin shots like I do every day, getting him something to drink when he's thirsty, giving him his cough medicine, and I still haven't gotten it. So far, the worst thing I've had is my sinuses draining (and I have that every fall when it gets rainy and damp).

Totally sick of the health care debate

I've been staying out of the health care debate, for the most part. I've experienced most of the situations that everyone is talking about - no insurance at all, being on Medicaid, having insurance through work but not being able to afford to use it, and now I have Medicare and Tricare (Medicare because I'm over 55 and disabled, and Tricare because my husband is retired from the Navy).

What pisses me off about the whole health care debate is the part where all the powers-that-be think that making fat people pay more for their health insurance is going to cut costs. Fat people aren't any more costly to the system than thin people or so-called average-sized people.
You want to know the people who cost the system the most? People who drink and drive, repeatedly, and don't stop to think about how many people they could injure or kill. People who participate in sports and get injured (don't tell me that torn ACLs, torn muscles, broken bones etc aren't expensive to fix), people who get old (yeah, the longer you live, the better your chances of having things like heart attacks, strokes, broken bones, etc), people who have unprotected sex (yeah, those STDs aren't cheap to treat, and unexpected pregnancies - well, let's see now, an abortion isn't cheap - if you can get one, and if you can't, it sure as hell isn't cheap to raise a kid), people who are addicted to drugs (it's not cheap to get treatment for them, if that's even an option - most of the time, officials would rather just jail them, not a cheap option either).
All of these people that cost health care dollars are thin, average, fat, and every size in-between. But it's too difficult to figure out how to get decent health care for everyone without bankrupting the country, isn't it, unless you have a scapegoat. And who makes a better scapegoat than fat people? After all, they went after smokers and were successful in banning them from public spaces, and have even been successful in banning them from some private spaces (some cities/states have banned smoking in cars if you have kids in them, some have banned smoking in open-air parks, some apartment buildings won't rent to smokers). They've even been successful in upping the taxes on cigarettes to an outrageous amount (I can remember going to the store back when I was 8 years old and getting a pack of smokes for my aunt and paying less than 50 cents for them). Being a former smoker, I'm not going to get into the right/wrong of it all (I quit smoking when cigarettes went up to $1.50 a pack, and I only smoked a carton a month. I didn't quit because it was bad for me, I quit because I had better places to spend the money than on something that usually just burned up in an ashtray when I got busy and forgot I was smoking).
Now they're talking about fat taxes on soda/sugar-sweetened drinks and junk food in order to end their made-up "obesity epi-panic". I think the only thing holding them back from implementing that tax right now is the fact that a lot of not-fat people would be outraged at having to pay a fat tax on soda and junk food, when it so obviously is not making them fat.
I wouldn't have a problem with this so-called "fat tax" if they would guarantee that every dollar of it collected went to pay for health care for those who can't afford to pay for it themselves and don't qualify for Medicare or Medicaid. But I would say the chances of that happening are slim and none, and slim just left town.
The thing is, I'm such an obstinate bitch, a fat tax wouldn't stop me from eating junk food. Are they going to put a fat tax on potatoes and cooking oil (home-made french fries)? How about a fat tax on sugar, flour, baking soda, salt, eggs, milk, vanilla, etc (can we say ingredients for cakes/cookies)? Hell, I could have my own little black market going in home-made junk food, fat tax-free.....ROFLMAO!!!!

Extreme weight loss show in the works for 2011 (by the asshat who did "Biggest Loser")

This has to one of the most obscene articles about a new TV show I've seen lately (and is another reason I don't watch much TV).

If you think you've already seen the biggest losers, just wait.

ABC is teaming with "Biggest Loser" executive producer J.D. Roth for a new show, tentatively titled "Obese," on which extremely overweight individuals shed hundreds of pounds over the course of a year.

Yeah, way to go, ABC, othering fat people with that title for a show about them. You really care about fat peoples' health too, don't you. It's just so safe for someone to lose hundreds of pounds in a year (since most doctors will tell you when you're dieting not to lose more than 1 - 2 pound a week, which doesn't come anywhere near 100 pounds in a year, let alone hundreds of pounds).
But it's not about health, is it? It's about making those ugly fat people go away (by making them thin) and who cares how much harm is done to them in the meantime? Because everyone knows that fat people can't have a happy, fulfilling life unless/until they get thin.

"We want to witness the most important year of a human being's life, and that's the one where they get their life back," Roth said. "We can help somebody lose 50 percent of their body fat, and you'll get to see that entire 365-day journey in one hour."

Excuse me!?!?! I happen to be DEATHFATZ (almost 400 lbs) and I never lost my life to begin with. I've always had my life, always been able to do the things I needed to do, and most of the things I wanted to do (and the things I couldn't do, well, I figured out how to adapt to not being able to do them, or how to work around it). Hell, I even fell in love and got married while being fat.
So this bullshit of not being able to have a life just because a person is fat, is just that - BULLSHIT!!!!!!

"This is a unique story that hasn't been told yet," said Roth, who will serve as the ABC show's executive producer. "There's something great and transformative when you take the game element out of it and just focus on one man or woman over the course of a year and there's no prize at the end. The finish is their entry into the life they've always wanted."

This is a story that hasn't been told yet? More bullshit. It's told every day on those cable shows when they tell the stories about the half-ton woman/man who just had to have WLS in order to keep on living (and ends up dying). It's told every day by people on "Biggest Loser". It's told every day by people who join Weight Watchers (or whatever other diet-of-the-day) and lose weight (only to gain it back again).
What isn't told every day is what happens to all those people who lose fucktons of weight in very short periods of time. No one hears about the complications, side effects, and weight regain. No one hears about the loss of self-esteem when weight is regained, because for most fat people, loss of massive amounts of weight is not permanent (and anyone who says that anyone can lose massive amounts of weight and keep it off permanently, well, I'm sorry, but, they're lying at worst, mythinformed at best).

New kitteh

We went to the Humane Society in Alexandria on Wednesday and picked up a new kitteh to be a companion for Fat Cat. His name is Marty (not that he answers to it, mind you) and he's somewhere between 2 and 3 years old. He's mostly white, except for 2 oval black spots on top of his head, between his ears, black oblongs on his right front and back legs, and his tail is black.
He and Fat Cat are still getting to know one another, with a hiss every now and then when they pass each other too closely, or a pawslap now and then. But no caterwauling catfights yet, though Fat Cat has chased Marty through the house a few times (this is good for Fat Cat, I haven't seen him move this much in a long time....lol). Marty has checked out all of the cat toys we have, and even Fat Cat has played with them more than he has in a long time, so I think getting another cat is good for him (he's been walking through house, meowing and looking for Slick, so I know he misses him, after all, they had been together for 10 years).
Marty is a very vocal, affectionate cat now that he's getting used to us, and he comes down to sleep with us after we've gone to bed. The first night, he slept on my hip (and here I thought my fibro was doing pretty good till I had a cat walking on me). Last night, he slept with DH and didn't want to move to let him up to go the bathroom in the middle of the night (DH had to slide out of bed around the cat, good thing we have a king-size bed now).
I went to do some grocery shopping today, and when I got home, I could hear Marty meowing, but I couldn't find him. I finally narrowed it down to the area around the washer/dryer, but couldn't figure out if he was in the crawl space under the house where the washer/dryer are (a cat can get in there from our basement bedroom if he's determined) or if he was actually behind the washer/dryer (the stairs to the second floor go up right beside the area where the w/d are, so there's a shelf creating a triangular space from the top of the dryer to the wall and then just open space we can't use underneath that shelf because it's right next to the dryer and the rest of the staircase, down to the floor, is solid wall). Yeah, he was behind the dryer/under the shelf next to the dryer and I couldn't get to him to get him out and he didn't have any room to jump out. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, just pull the dryer out, and let the cat out. But this space is really tight (leave it to a cat to find a tight place that's difficult to get him out of), and there's less than half an inch of space between the washer and dryer, no space between the washer and the wall, and no space between the dryer and the shelf. Lucky me. I finally figured out that if I opened the dryer door, I could lift up the dryer enough to pull it forward over the aluminum strip between the two different linoleums on the floor. I got the dryer far enough forward that Marty, with sufficient coaxing from me, finally decided he could jump out of there. Knowing cats as well as I do, this probably will not be the only time he does this, so I think DH is going to have to put up a shelf that rests on the back of the dryer so we can keep him out of there (and probably one for the washer too, just in case). And it's not like those shelves won't get used, so it's kinda like killing 2 birds with one cat-proofing stone.
Here are some pics I took of Marty with my cell phone: