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So in the wake of all of this hurricane mess, I’m assuming that the folks over at Catoptric are safe and sound, albeit without electricity. That seems to be the case with my parents, anyway. Jackson is about 200 miles or so inland, so they weren’t affected by the mass devastation the way that towns like New Orleans, Biloxi & Gulfport were. But 75 mph winds in a town full of trees makes for lots of downed power lines, so that’s what they’re dealing with. Plus my great aunt, her daughter (my mom’s cousin), the daughter’s friend/boyfriend/not-really-sure-of-his-status, and their dog all evacuated New Orleans and are staying at my parents’ house. They did this last year during Hurricane Ivan as well. Oh, and my great aunt? Is 90 years old, almost completely deaf, and paranoidly senile. She’s in the phase of dementia where she repeats everything she says approximately every 30 seconds, plus she gets easily agitated and becomes verbally abusive (mostly toward her daughter, but god help you if you accidentally say the wrong thing), so you know they’ve gotta be having a big ol’ laugh riot over at my folks’ house. Plus it’s 90 degrees and they have no air-conditioning because the power is out. I am SO glad I’m not there.

And then we have my poor dad, who is what one might call a routine-based person. You throw in the extra visitors in the house, which stresses him out under normal circumstances, then take away his regular golf game (because the streets are covered with debris so no one can drive anywhere), plus no TV or Internet access, and he is just on the verge of losing his mind. Poor guy. And there’s no telling when my aunt and her family can go back home to New Orleans, but it looks like it’ll be at least a week, if not longer. It’s entirely possible that her house is safe, because she lived in a different parish than the ones that have been severely impacted, but there’s no way of finding out for sure, since news from that area is spotty at best. My uncle’s house may not have been so lucky - they were all in Houston at the time the hurricane hit, so they’re safe, but they have a house in St. Bernard parish, which was pretty badly flooded. Again, no way of knowing for sure, but my cousin found this picture, which is an aerial view of the area - if this is any indication, it looks like their house could be under several feet of water. This is all very, very bad.

As for life here in the Northwest, I have a few potential job leads at the moment, but I won’t know anything for a while, and I don’t want to jinx anything by talking about it too soon. We’ll just have to wait & see.

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Thanks, everyone, for all of the kind comments and concerns. I really am ok. I already have a few options that could turn out to be promising, so we’ll have to wait and see where those go. And I’m really not sad at all about leaving this job, because I haven’t been enjoying it for a while now. As far as things like health insurance, I never signed up for benefits of any kind with this employer, so I haven’t lost anything. Um, except that paycheck thingy… boy, I sure will miss that. But I’ve been covered on Dave’s insurance since we got married, so that’s all fine. In fact, when I told my father about this yesterday and told him that I don’t want him to worry about me, he said, “I’m not worried, you’re Dave’s problem now.” Nice.

Today feels sort of strange, it’s almost like the last day of school before summer vacation. I don’t really have anything to do, and it’s not like I’m going to start on anything new on my last day. So I’m reading blogs, checking out all the online job boards, all of that fun stuff. What are they going to do, fire me? HA! I think my lackadaisical (ooh, big word!) attitude can best be summed up by my hair: I stuck it in a clippie, which is in & of itself pretty darn lazy, but I’m not even sure that I brushed it beforehand. (In my defense, it was early, I can’t really remember most of my morning routine. Maybe I brushed it. But probably not.) Making an effort? Today? I think not.

I’m actually sort of excited that it looks like I’m going to have at least a week off. And it’s fortuitous (ooh, another big word!) timing, because Dave was already planning on taking off next week, so we’ll both be at home, which means we’ll have time to do all of the dozen or so little home improvement projects that we’ve started and haven’t finished yet. I’m kind of excited about that. And tonight, we’re going to see Rufus Wainwright and Ben Folds in concert, which I think is just about the perfect way to kick off my unemployment.

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So you know how I have that rule about not talking about work on my blog? Well, I’ve kind of decided that rule can go to hell for now, because my job? Doesn’t so much exist anymore. Or at least it won’t in two days. I was informed this morning that it’s nothing personal, they don’t think I’ve done a bad job, blah blah blah, but they’ve decided that the work I was hired to do is going to be outsourced to someone who has like 12 years of experience writing the types of documents that I was supposed to write. “So thanks for everything, but your last day is Friday. Buh-bye!”* The thing is, when I was hired, I was told that I was going to be working for the marketing team, so the documents that I was going to write needed to be “dumbed down” so that any random non-techie person could read and understand them. So that’s what I was doing. Then my boss (the guy who hired me) left to start his own company, I got a new boss, and apparently my job description totally changed, but I was never informed of that change. Oops. So I’m a little annoyed, a little relieved (because I wasn’t really enjoying the work I was doing), and a whoooole lotta stressed.

I talked to my rep at the agency who got me the position in the first place, and they’re looking to find something new for me as soon as possible. My officemate works for a different agency, so she forwarded my resume to her rep on my behalf (hey, can’t hurt to get the word out, right?), and I talked to my old boss, who said that he will look for a position for me with his group as well.** So I have a few possibilities, which is good, and that’s honestly what is keeping me from completely all-out panicking right now. Meanwhile, if everyone can send “find Cindy a new job immediately… and a 20% pay raise while you’re at it” vibes, I’d much appreciate it.

* Not an actual quote.
** He also said that they were idiots for cutting me, which was nice to hear.

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Ok, so I will follow my big heavy post (ha! no pun intended) with something completely light and boring. Like a weekend recap. On Friday, Dave and I bought a freezer for our garage. Do you know how cheap freezers are when compared to their refrigerator-freezer-combo brethren? As it turns out, SO cheap! So we bought it, it was delivered on Saturday, and it is awesome. After it was set up, we went to Costco to stock the new freezer with huge bulk items at incredibly low prices. A six-pound bag of meatballs? Why yes, thank you! Ten pounds of chicken breasts? Load it on the cart! Whee! Of course, the main idea with the freezer is that I can cook things in large quantities, then freeze part of it for later. So on the days I come home from work and don’t feel like cooking? Grab something out of the freezer, pop it in the oven for half an hour, and voila! It’s kind of embarassing to admit just how excited I got about this freezer. But hey, I’m a dork, and I will admit that I was really, REALLY excited. Excited to the point of jumping up and down while clapping maniacally. That excited.

Oh hey, remember Mr. Ralph Mouse from last weekend? Saturday night, Dave was half-asleep upstairs, I went down to the kitchen, turned the light on, and there he was scurrying across the kitchen floor. Well, perhaps not so much scurrying as he was limping, since it appeared that one of his hind legs was injured, so he was mostly just dragging himself by his front feet, which is kind of hard to do on hardwood floors. Still, he caught me by surprise, and I shrieked the loudest horror movie scream I think I have ever screamed, and then I called for Dave at least 4 or 5 times. He didn’t come, so I ran upstairs, threw open the bedroom door, and yelled something like “Mouse! Help!” Perhaps not the most polite on my part, but I was in panic mode, and my brain couldn’t quite process the idea of nice-ifying the message into something like, “Excuse me, sweetie, I know you’re trying to sleep, but there’s a small rodent leaving germs and god-knows-what-else all over the lovely downstairs part of our home, would you be so kind as to come down to remove it from the premises?” A good minute or so later, Dave finally came downstairs. Meanwhile, the mouse had squeezed himself under the door and into our front hall closet, and I was trying to figure out a way that I was going to scoop him up into a tupperware thing (which I probably could’ve done, since he was injured and moving so slowly). Instead, Dave went into the closet, picked the mouse up by his tail (!!) and deposited him outside. He was quite pissy about it, and I got mad because the whole “eek, a mouse!” thing is part of my female genetic imperative, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about that except shriek like a helpless whiny little victim. But he totally redeemed himself by getting flowers for me on Sunday morning before I woke up. So all is well in our household, have no fear.

Sunday ended up being yet another home improvement day, because Dave decided that he wants to turn his little den/music room into his office, which means that I’m going to take over his office, since my current office is basically a guest room with a desk in it. We decided to paint his office (my future office) because it’s a small room, and the walls are dark blue, which makes it feel really closed in and claustrophobic. We got two coats of primer on the walls and the blue is still showing through. So that looks like it’ll end up being quite a fun little project. (Ha.)

Then last night was the finale of Six Feet Under. There were a few scenes that made me sort of misty, but overall I was ok until the last 5 minutes. Then I lost it, and I cried and cried. And cried. For long after the show was finished. Such a great show, so sad that it’s over.

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There is this major story that I’ve never written about here, and I’m not sure why. I guess because the people who are close to me in real life already know about it, and I figure that it isn’t anyone else’s business. (Which really just furthers my theory that on blogs, you only get to know a fraction of a person, the small part that they choose to share with the world.) But by not talking about it, it sounds like I’m ashamed of it, and I’m not. So here’s the story: a little over 3 years ago, I had gastric bypass surgery.

I was always a “fat girl.” When I was little, one of my aunts nicknamed me the Michelin Tire Baby because I had rolls of fat down my arms and legs. I didn’t outgrow it, either. I went on my first diet and exercise plan when I was 9 years old, and I was on and off of them all through junior high, high school and college. I hit 200 pounds for the first time when I was in 9th grade, at 14 years old. (I’m only 5′5″. Big-boned or not, 200 is pretty heavy for someone my height.) High school wasn’t exactly fun for me, for obvious reasons. College was better, but still, you name the diet, I have probably tried it. But no matter what extreme diet or exercise program I tried, I could never lose more than 15 pounds at the most. I should add that I am a very conscientious dieter; when I do it, I do it all out, I never cheat or slack off. And considering that I needed to lose well over 50 pounds throughout most of my adolescence and adult life, 15 pounds wasn’t enough to be encouraging.

So, on May 14, 2002, I had gastric bypass surgery. It was quite possibly the most difficult, painful thing I have ever endured. There were complications with my surgery, so I ended up in the hospital for 6 days instead of the typical 3. Basically, the place where my esophagus connected to my (new, tiny) stomach got completely covered in ulcers, and it swelled shut, so I threw up everything I swallowed. Including my own saliva. About every 5 minutes or so. Plus one of my lungs collapsed. I have quite honestly blocked out a lot of that time because it was so horrible (and hello, demerol IV! If anything can help you forget unpleasantness, that’ll do it), so I only remember a little bit of it here and there. I remember that late at night, after my mom went back to my apartment to sleep, I would walk down to the nurse’s station because I was convinced that I was going to die, and I didn’t want to be alone when it happened. I remember being awake, fully conscious and crying during one of those tests where they put the scope down your throat to take a look at what’s going on in your stomach. And I remember the pain. My god, do I remember that.

The ulcers caused me to throw up pretty much non-stop for the next 6 weeks. Luckily, about a week before my surgery, I had gotten laid off from a job that I hated (yay, unemployment!) so I could relax in the comfort of my own home and puke, I didn’t have to do it in an office environment. And then, finally, the ulcers healed, I stopped barfing, and I lost weight like crazy. (Oh yeah, and found a new job.) I weighed 265 pounds at the time of my surgery; here’s a picture of me a few days before the operation. This one is from a few months before, that’s me and my brother on New Year’s Eve 2001. By the summer of 2003, a year after the surgery, I had lost a little over 100 pounds. I’ve regained about 10 to 15 pounds since then (thank you, birth control!), but I’ve stayed more or less the same weight for the past 3 years. I’m still not a skinny girl by any stretch of the imagination, but if you compare those pre-op pictures to something like this or this (which were taken 2 and 3 years post-op, respectively), there’s a pretty huge difference.

As for how it affects me now, it’s hard to put that into words. Most of time, I still think of myself as the fat girl that I was before surgery, even though I know that’s not how the world sees me. If you met me on the street, you probably wouldn’t know that I used to be morbidly obese. My brain hasn’t quite reconciled that, even after all this time. I’m not sure it ever will; more importantly, I’m not sure that I want it to, because I don’t want to lose my ability to empathize with people who have serious weight problems. And I still have plenty of hang-ups about food - the surgery fixed my stomach, not my brain. As for my health, I have to drink protein shakes and take all kinds of vitamins because my body doesn’t absorb nutrients from food like normal people. But when you think about what would’ve happened to my health if I hadn’t had the surgery - high blood pressure, diabetes, joint problems, etc. - taking a few minutes out of my day to swallow some pills and drink a shake seems like a pretty ok trade-off. For the first year or two, I only ate tiny amounts of food, but I eat pretty normal-size portions now. There are foods I have to limit my intake of, though; mostly carbs (potatoes, pasta, etc.) and sugar, because too much can cause some major abdominal discomfort. And I’m now lactose intolerant, so I have to buy lactose-free milk, and ice cream is off-limits altogether, which is fine because I am all about the fruit sorbets anyway.

I guess the main reason why I generally think of my gastric bypass surgery as something that I keep private is because I don’t want people to judge me for it. No one has ever had the nerve to say to my face that I was just fat and lazy, or that I took the easy way out by having surgery, although I know that’s what people think a lot of the time. And if you read above what I went through, you might understand why if anyone ever does say that to me, they are probably going to get punched in the neck. Actually, credit where it’s due, the only reason I finally decided to write about it is because I read Amanda’s story on her blog, and I really admire her honesty and openness in the way that she talked about it. I’m not sure I agree with her that surgical weight loss procedures are the only way to cure our nation’s obesity epidemic, but I do believe that there’s a rather large (no pun intended) subset of the overweight population who would greatly benefit from this surgery, particularly for those who may not be able to lose weight any other way. Unfortunately, it seems that fewer and fewer insurance companies are covering the surgery, which means that a lot of people who need it, and who can’t come up with the tens of thousands of dollars that it costs, won’t have access to this life-saving procedure. I was extremely blessed in that my insurance covered me 100% when I had mine. My heart goes out to those who don’t have that luxury.

Oddly, I got married the day after my 3-year gastric bypass anniversary. I remember thinking of it when we set the date for our wedding, but when it was all happening, I don’t think the surgery even crossed my mind because I was too busy thinking, “holy sh*t, I’m getting married tomorrow!” Oh yeah, plus I was apparently preoccupied with taking pictures of my ass. Whatever.

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Saturday, Dave had to work all day (poor guy), so I took advantage of my day alone to tidy up & do the five or six loads of laundry that had been piling up. (I’m such the domesticated little wifey, no?)Somewhere near the end of the day, I went into the laundry room, and there was a mouse on top of the washing machine. Not that mice are uncommon out in the boonies where we live, but usually when I find them, one or more of our cats are playing with and/or nibbling on their lifeless little bodies. So this mouse was noteworthy because it’s the first live one that I’ve ever seen in our house. He was very little, and sort of cute. He didn’t run away either, he just sat there and stared at me. He had a ding in one of his ears, and he reminded me a little bit of Ralph Mouse from those Beverly Cleary books. Like if I got him a little toy motorcycle and half a ping-pong ball to wear as a helmet, he’d be Evil Knievel-ing all over our house. But, then reality sets in, and I know that he’s probably carrying Bubonic Plague or something equally horrible, so we’re supposed to be enemies. And besides, if the cats find him, he will meet a very prompt untimely demise. I was thinking about putting a pot over him and scooting him off the edge of the washer and using the lid as a base, so I could take him somewhere safe (like the woods) and set him free, but I’m pretty sure those little critters can run pretty fast when they want to, so I wasn’t sure I’d be able to catch him.

So I ran into the next room, grabbed the phone & called my mom. She told me to put one of the cats in the room with the mouse and close the door. Keep in mind that while we were talking, I had walked back into the laundry room, and the mouse was still sitting there, just looking at me. And dammit, he was so cute, and I didn’t want to listen to the cats kill him - the little mouse death screech is a sound that makes me cry and I absolutely can’t stand it. So I got off the phone with my mom and called Kris. She told me that I should make my husband deal with it. Luckily, around that time, my husband came home. I ran to the front door to get him, and by the time we went into the laundry room, the mouse was gone. I hope he found his way out of the house, but most likely, he’s probably in the wall behind the washing machine. Great. Stay tuned, folks, I think we’ll probably be seeing Mr. Ralph S. Mouse again sometime.

Totally unrelated: I don’t usually talk about my dreams here, because they’re usually very random and strange (whose aren’t?), but I had one on Saturday about another blogger, so I thought I’d share. I dreamed that Sally came to visit me, along with her dog, Lulu Mae Barnes. Only I kept calling her (Sally, not Lulu) by her pseudonym, not her real name. And she was really, REALLY pregnant. Like to the point where she was talking about how she was going to be induced if the kid didn’t come out on its own in the next week. And then, she, Lulu, Teenie and I broke into my next door neighbor’s house just to be nosy and see how they decorated the place. Admittedly, in real life the outside of their house is god-awful, so I am somewhat curious to know what’s going on inside. But yeah, that was weird. Especially since I’ve never actually met Sally in real life, although I think that the next time I’m in my hometown, we should totally meet up & go out for creamy margaritas. (Note to Sally: That’s assuming that you aren’t 9 months pregnant at the time, like you were in my dream.)

Movies watched this weekend:
* Hide and Seek - What a pile of crap. Yes yes, Dakota Fanning is a brilliant little child actress, but seriously. Every scary movie cliche you can think of was used in this movie. Shaky light fixtures and unreliable sources of electricity? Check. Something scary in yonder bathroom looms? Check. (Side note: what is up with scary things happening in bathrooms? I can think of at least a dozen movies off the top of my head where this happens. Does it have something to do with “Psycho”?) Creepy children’s singing voices? Check. Dopey policeman? You got it. Knife rack and one of the knives is missing? No doubt.
* Constantine - I’m still not sure what I thought of this. I guess it was ok? It was very weird. I think Dave liked it. Um, I don’t really have anything else.

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I survived the dentist with very minimal freak-outs. I have 4 cavities, which is the same as I had 6 months ago - but sadly, my insurance company sucks and only covers 20% of my fillings, which means I have to come up with several hundred dollars to pay for them, and… yeah. It’ll get done, eventually. Meanwhile, I’m trying to just pretend like I don’t know about them. Please don’t tell me how bad an idea that is. I can’t hear you, la la la la.

I got all excited because the weather was really mild yesterday, and again today (high in the low 70’s), and I started making plans of how Dave and I can do stuff outside this weekend, like using our new grill, or cleaning the garage, all that fun stuff. But according to weather.com, it’s going to be in the upper 80’s again this weekend. Which means that if we try to clean out the garage, we’ll last all of 15 minutes before we die of heat exhaustion. Hm, perhaps not.

In other news, I just got this exercise video collection (and I am NOT typing the name of it here because I don’t need those types of Google hits, thank you very much; let’s put it in code and call it “C@rm3n El3ctr@’s A3r0b1c Str1pt3@se”), and I love-love-love it. It feels very silly at first, and I was all self-conscious and kept worrying that Dave was going to stick his head in the room and ask me what in the sam hell I thought I was doing. But I’ve done it twice now, and I have muscles aching today that I haven’t felt in a while, because, well, let’s just say it works *entirely* different muscle groups than walking or jogging, which is basically all I’ve been doing lately. So that’s pretty cool.

And the exercise thing is good, particularly since I had the very healthy lunch today of leftover pizza. Which has the very unfortunate side effect of making me feel something like this:

Yeah, the pizza? Is not my friend. (As a side note, aren’t my artistic skills impressive? The stringy hair in particular is frighteningly dead accurate.) But all is well, because I shall go home tonight and prance around like a big ho in the privacy of my living room. And pray that if there’s a God in heaven that my neighbors don’t have binoculars aimed in my vicinity.

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