Saef - I can send you a care package of spice now that I can't eat anything spicey. I have brand new containers of mild and hot curry, dry mustard, and a few other big no no's on my restricted diet for acid reflux.

I was supposed to be up at our sailboat in North Jersey today to take out a friend who's visiting NYC, but it's raining all day today. So I'm 2 hours away at home in South Jersey, hoping it won't rain tomorrow so I can drive up and take her out then. They're predicting 60% rain for tomorrow. And there's nothing worse then sailing a big boat in the rain. even with head to toe foul weather gear.

In two weeks we sail up Long Island Sound for our week long vacation. Shopping for food that I can eat, that doesn't need refrigeration is going to be a challenge. I'll have a cooler, and we'll have to dingy into towns along the way to get more ice. I see a lot of canned tuna and granola bars in my future!

Wearing my size 4 off white long pants and a shirt that shows my curves that I haven't worn since 2007.

Cupcake dilemma!!!

So, I don't know about the rest of you, but I love to watch food network shows. Most of the time I can watch the decadent shows/food and just imagine eating it. I often feel I eat vicariously through other people!

So... one of my teacher friends has been posting pics on facebook of amazing looking cupcakes she's been baking. They look like they'd win on Cupcake Wars. She posted a black bottom cupcake yesterday (chocolate is my weakness) and I posted that it looked delicious. She just hand delivered one to me in the library. I should have kept my mouth shut! Now I've got the two voices going around in my head-- the angel and the devil-- you know the two! I had almost decided to eat it but I think I'm not going to. My weight was a little higher than I like it this morning due to Labor Day even though I was good and I have to officially weigh for Weight Watchers on Saturday. I think I'll try to bring it home for dd. *Maybe* I'll take a bite of it to try. WWYD? I almost feel guilty not eating it but that is what got my heavy in the first place (one of the reasons anyway).

Michele~take it home and share it tonight. That way you don't have to eat the whole thing. Part of a cupcake won't hurt too much.

Mudpie - I know about loneliness. My DH works 2.5 hours away so he lives on our sailboat during the week and I only see him on the weekends down at the shore. The majority of my close friends are well over an hour drive away and I have only 2 friends in our immediate area.

So I spend a lot of time on the phone with my far flung friends. And have a very active art email group I'm involved in and I post on Facebook once a day.

I work from home on my art and as an editor of an art magazine, so I don't get to go to an office and see people face to face.

We don't have kids and we're not at home on the weekends so while we've lived here 18 years, we've never made roots in the community.

During the day when I can call my friends and be online, I'm usually ok. It's the nights that I get lonely with just the cat for company. So I try to go out dancing on Wednesday nights to be social.

Definitely talk to a therapist and define some goals to make yourself more social.

I have been online or on the phone all morning, arranging telephone,internet and cable I now have 3 different providers, after choosing one provider and finding that won't work they didn't offer HiSpeed at my new address, I ended up putting everything on AT&T , that way I will only have one bill.

Thanks to all for the wisdom and advice regarding the osteoporosis diagnosis. Jay, thanks especially for making me look at it as simply one somewhat arbitrary metric. My doc has prescribed Fosomax (a bisphosphonate) and suggested that I research Forteo (a newer drug - it's a daily injectible that is essentially artificial parathyroid hormone). Well, after researching Forteo I am NOT going on that any time soon. Way too many side effects. And I haven't started the Fosomax yet because I want to discuss the side effects - specifically brittle bones - with my doctor again. She also has a "drug holiday" period Michele, but I'm so young I worry that these effects could accumulate over time. I still have a long life to lead, I hope.

I know there's tons of serious stuff going on in this thread, but what could be more important than this: What in the world did you do about the cupcake, Michele?

My Mom was on one of those bisphosphonates and she suffered tremendously. When they say you need to sit up after taking it, you REALLY do. She got a horrible esophageal ulcer from them. It made it terribly difficult to swallow anything other than liquid.

I always take it Saturday morning after I've gotten out of bed. I make sure that I'm up and about before I take it.

I am fairly young, though not as young as you (44) so hopefully I have a long time left too.

As for the cupcake conundrum....
I proudly saved it during the day (by covering it with napkins so it wouldn't torture me). I then took it home and shared with dd. I only ate 1/4 or less. It was good and I didn't feel like I blew my day entirely. Now I can honestly tell me colleague that I loved it!

Cat puking-- gotta go!

So after 4 days of eating and drinking off plan and 2 days of being back on I am at my red line weight.

That is good news and I'll take it :

My dad is back - he called last night but we didn't pick up - so the complaints will start rolling in as soon as he is a bit over his jet lag. I will stay calm and reply to everything with

"I did the best I could".

Good hump day all!

Dagmar (confusing emotions this week)

Ah, now I see where my troubles lie. I'm a failed Buddhist, Jay. Because I am drawn to old things, the stuff that has outlived its original owner by decades, even centuries. Things that are unchanging, and still carry some aura of the time in which they were made. What fascinates me is their seeming permanence and the comparative fragility and impermanence of a human life.

Rain, my newly made enemy, is falling hard this morning in Upstate New York. It looks like an all-day rain. I am sitting here in workout clothes about to go to the gym. I am struggling to assert some of my old routines in a new environment. I need to figure out how my days will be run, even if my planning is looser than what I was used to -- rather than just chucking all of my healthier habits out the window. I don't want to exercise, or plan, or deal with things. I'd really rather sit here looking through eBay obsessively with an eye to replacing everything I've lost. (After the initial exhilaration of purging unwanted stuff from my life, as well as profound grief over loss, I now really want to BUY STUFF, to get stuff back.)

I can feel a depression trying to descend on me, like a kind of net, and I'm struggling.

I would have had a lot of trouble with the cupcake that Michele veiled with a napkin and then carried home and shared. In this mood, no one else would be getting a crumb of that cupcake. And afterward I'd lick at and bite the cupcake paper frill that contained it, to get every last crumb or smear of icing.

This thread makes me want to get my skeleton checked out somehow. Everyone's bones seem to be melting away. I know it's a female thing. So all that milk that I drank for years ("Builds strong bones") or used as a delivery method for sweet cereal was a waste of calories?

And Jay, sorry, I've been self-involved, but I am very, very glad that your health issues turned out not to be heart-related, that your power came on and that you're with us in this thread.

Thanks, saef! I'm glad it turned out that way, too.

I have a new story about the world of modern Western medicine. The cardiologist wanted me to have a follow-up stress test "just to make sure." When I called the office, the scheduler said the dr had indicated a "nuclear stress test." Hmmm. I asked what "nuclear" meant. Well, it turns out to be a four-hour test during which you rest and exercise alternately while simultaneously having EKG, blood pressure readings, and imaging while a radioactive tracer is dripped into you via an IV.

I said I did not want that. There is nothing wrong with me! All my other tests indicate no cardiac problems! The cardiologist himself pronounced it as being esophageal spasm! And on top of the inconvenience and invasive nature, the test costs $800-$1200! So I asked whether I could have the plain old exercise stress test instead, which takes half an hour and is only EKG and BP while on the treadmill. They will ask the dr and get back to me... If they never get back to me, fine.

Oh--here's a more amusing little tale. Because I was on the cardiac floor in the hospital, I was automatically on the cardiac diet, which is low salt, as in, none. By the next morning, my BP was 91/53. I was tempted to call my SO and tell her to bring a salt shaker, stat!

Change of topic.

saef, the Japanese esthetic called wabi-sabi is derived from Buddhist ideals. Part of it is a reverence for old things, but also things that are rough, slightly assymetrical, and/or austere, with the beauty and serenity that comes from age. Wabi-sabi reflects the three simple realities that nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.

Final change of topic.

My bones aren't melting away. I have had two DEXA bone scans, about three years apart. Both showed the same thing--neither better nor worse. I'll continue to take calcium and vitamin D, get exercise, lift weights, do core exercises to improve balance (e.g., bosu ball).

Jay

Hugs to you Saef. Don't let the depression get you down. When are you seeing or talking to your therapist?
Are you able to work from home? How far is it to your office?

Jay wabi-sabi sounds a bit like contracting - nothing is square, nothing is plumb, nothing is straight . . .

So speaking of cats puking (as Michele was) Mudpie is going to town with being 15 years old. She is now defiance puking (and worse - we won't go there) whenever I don't do exactly as she wants. SIGH.

I can subdue 4 85-lb. dogs with a wave of my index finger and a hiss but an 11-lb. cat? Not likely. I now have major messes to clean up every day if Miss Murple doesn't get her dinner whenever she wants (yesterday it was 3:30 p.m.). Right now she is scratching the paint on the doorjamb to my office and screeching. Dinner time is 4:30 p.m. so I'll give it up in a minute.

I'm on board with ravaging the cupcake saef, even down to licking the ruffly paper. Soo frustrating dealing with an elderly frail animal. And now I have 2 - my dad's first complaints came rolling in today.

BLEAGHHH!

I will not eat tonite!

Dagmar

Jay