Woo! It’s been a while since I’ve written. It’s not because I haven’t had any news. It’s because I still have no functioning car and spend 4 hours a day riding the bus, giving me very little spare time. With the economy being what it is, I can forget about getting a car loan. I’m pretty much left with getting in-house financing, which means a 25% down payment. And the down payment is what’s keeping me from having a car.

My job has been affected by the economy. Multiple people have been laid off. Others have been forced to take a 1-day unpaid furlough every 2 weeks. For a while I was scared to death that I would get laid off. I kept waking up in the middle of the night having panic attacks. After a while though, I stopped being afraid and decided I would deal with whatever happens.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. Some more good things have happened as a result of my weight loss.Right now I’m 153.5 lbs. Woohoo! Still not at my goal of 135, but I still lose a few pounds every month so I believe I’ll make it there eventually.  The additional changes I’ve noticed at this point:

• My BMI is normal! I’m not overweight anymore. I’ve lost a total of 115 lbs. since surgery.
• Fungal infections on my back have gone away. I had them for years. Gross! I know.
• I have long nails now. For most of my life, I’ve had short nails. Those vitamins are working!
• People are noticeably a lot friendlier.
• No more restless legs. I used to have a problem keeping my legs still when I sat. I recently noticed that problem went away.
• People at work joke and say I’ve lost so much weight I’m going to float away like a feather.
• A guy on the bus said he barely recognized me because I had lost so much weight. I barely remembered seeing him before. It’s nice when someone you don’t even know  notices you lost a lot of weight.
• I’ve been called “cute” by a couple people at work. Hey, at 45 years old, I’ll take “cute” as a compliment.

The whole thing about people being friendlier is a plus and a minus. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it reminds you of the discrimination against overweight people.

I had to renew my driver’s license earlier this year and it was the first time I’ve ever taken a driver’s license picture with a smile on my face. The woman who took my picture noticed my weight went from 265 on my previous driver’s license to 165, and congratulated me and said, “You look 10 years younger!” Now I weigh less than my driver’s license weight. That’s a first. I usually weigh more than what it says…hehe.

Now that we have a president I like (Obama! Obama!), I am paying attention to politics for the first time in decades. Now we all just need to pray, chant or do whatever we can to help make this economy improve. These are scary times we’re living in right now, so it’s nice to have some kind of positive changes, and I’m grateful for that.

Tata for now!