Remembering My Grandpa

     Yesterday my son, Lucas, and I were watching the Disney movie Song of the South.  If you're not familiar with this movie or it's stories and songs it is set in the south with a little boy named Johnny and his time on a plantation and his time with a man by the name of Uncle Remus who would tell him stories of Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and Brer Bear.  My grandpa and I listened to the record, when I was a kid, yes RECORD!!!  I LOVED to hear these stories with him!  I'm told that this movie has now been relegated to the Disney vault "FOR EV VER" because of it's racist undertones.  Ridiculous.

     My grandpa was from Mississippi and had that slow, deep, drawl that Uncle Remus had and while I was watching this yesterday I couldn't help but start to cry.  It was the first time I had watched this movie since my grandpa passed away in April of 2013. 

     My grandpa was my world when I was a kid.  My mom was a single teenage mother, and we lived with her parents, so until I was about 9 or 10 (when my stepdad, stepped in, who is tremendous, btw) my grandpa was my dad for all intents and purposes.  He loved me when I thought he didn't have to.  You know how you always feel like your parent's "have" to love you?  Well, my mom HAD to love me, and my father clearly didn't and my grandma so obviously did but for some reason it was my sweet, gentle grandpa who I clung to. 

     He was born February 26, 1931 in Mississippi and grew up there, he joined the Navy and was sent to California in 1950 where he met my beautiful grandma and they were married, life went on until many years later I was born!  He was the one who when I was 4 and demolished a cake that my grandma was going to be taking to work with her, pulled me up onto his knee and asked "was it good?".  He was the one who when he gave me a dollar out of his wallet and told me that "that was my last dollar" I went into my room and tore it in half and came back out and presented him with half of it.  He was the one who would let me stand next to him on the seat of the truck when we went to the store (you could do that in those days) :) He was the one who I was certain needed me to go with him on Friday nights to pick up my grandma from work, for some reason he was fine the rest of the week but if I wasn't there on a Friday, I worried myself sick!  He was the one that I went to when my first car broke down at 4am and I walked to his house and didn't start to cry until he opened the door!  He just sighed and let me in :)

     He hand-fed squirrels and loved pretty much all animals, except Starlings, lol.  He kept a 50lb bag of peanuts in his garage for his squirrels and would sit and wait for them to scamper in and grab one from his hand, and this delighted him to no end.  He loved his dogs, when my mom was a kid she says there was a menagerie of different breeds but when I was a kid he had Dachshunds and later Chihuahua's.  His favorite Dachshund was Copper, that they got when I was 4 and they let me name him.  I had just seen The Fox and the Hound and so his name became Copper!  They had him for 18 years and he was my grandpa's buddy, he didn't care for grandma though, he would sit under the end table and growl at her as she walked by, lol!

     One of my most clear memories of my grandpa was when I was in my teens, I was at his house making some kind of cake and the recipe called for a "tube" pan.  In those days I had NO idea what a tube pan was, lol, so I used a loaf pan!  Bad idea, for future reference, this will not work.  The batter came up and over the pan and caught fire, and then as I was scooping it out of the oven it dropped down into the drawer under the oven and ignited a kitchen pad that my grandma kept in there under the pans; as I'm battling the flames my grandpa comes to the kitchen doorway, sees what's happening, shakes his head in disbelief and WALKS AWAY!!  HAHAHAHA!!  This was the type of man he was.  He just couldn't believe someone could be so dumb!  Oh, how I loved him!

     I am blessed to say that I danced with him at my wedding, he held my newborn son, and I had 35 years with this wonderful man, which is a lifetime more than a lot of people get with their grandfathers.  I'm selfish enough to say that I wanted more time with him, but I know that he is in Heaven worshipping Jesus and that I'll see him again. 

     My grandpa truly taught me what unconditional love looked like, what sacrificial love looked like, he would do anything for his family, especially my grandma; they were married for almost 63 years and I don't think anyone man could have loved any woman more.  He taught me what a husband should be, and my husband is pretty close ;) 

     I will miss him for the rest of my life and I will regale Lucas with tales of Paul Truett Butler for as long as my memory will hold out, because he was a great man, a man who loved Jesus, a man who loved his family, a man who loved me, and I loved him just as fiercely. 

 This is my grandpa in 1976.  Isn't he handsome?!?!

Reading together!

Dancing at my wedding :)

 



 

Visiting him on his birthday just a few weeks before he passed away.

What's Next?!

Whelp....I'm officially done with college.  Yesterday I walked out of my last class and wondered.."ummm....ok...now what".  It's not like I'm a 22 year old partier that is going to spend my "first night of freedom" drinking my cares away, I came home and did laundry actually, lol.  But I felt the same type of feelings as I did in June when I walked in graduation; a certain level of anxiety about what to do next.

I don't know if it's just me or if it's anyone whose finished school, but it's a VERY strange feeling to know that I DON'T HAVE ANY HOMEWORK!!! Not like, "my next class doesn't start for another couple of weeks" no homework, but really and truly...NO HOMEWORK!  I already volunteer in several areas at my church so I don't really need anything else to fill up missing hours, I was already cramming homework into those hours, it's more like "how is the removal of that stress going to affect my life?"  This is a stress that my husband and my son and I have lived with for almost 5 years!

I started college in January of 2010 when my son was not yet 3 and he's never really known a time when Mom didn't have homework or a class to go to and I'm excited about the fact that I have these hours back, but also wondering if I will be able to fill the time!  Don't get me wrong, I know that time will keep marching on, but I'm wondering if I will be bored, so to speak.  I like being busy, and while I am, most times, VERY busy, I do enjoy the rush of completing that assignment and getting it turned in and that feeling of accomplishment.  I will miss that.

 

I will miss college.  I have met some very good friends in my years at the University of Phoenix, I have enjoyed most of my classes, lol.  The most interesting paper I got to write was about a case study on Ted Bundy, my favorite paper I got to write was a compare/contrast paper about To Kill A Mockingbird book vs. movie.  I've had two favorite presentations, one was when my team and I had to pretend to be a news team and we went the whole nine yards!  We dressed up, brought in cameras, made name tags and went for it!  My other favorite presentation was one a friend and did where we had to compare and contrast Loki and Bart Simpson.  I've had two favorite teachers, one who taught my last class, Mr. Steven Denlinger, and the other was Erin McGibbon Smith, they are VERY different in their styles but VERY, VERY gifted teachers.

I may head back to school in the future in pursuit of a few more initials after my name, but for now, I'll fill those hours with laundry, baking, scrubbing toilets, bible study and being a wife and mom....which isn't boring in the slightest.

First Day of School January 21, 2010 I'm in the back row on the far right


Last day of school September 27, 2014!  Still on the far right, lol!!


Graduation day! June 21, 2014

I Miss Being Fat

The title is accurate.  I miss being fat.  As you'll see in the picture at the end of this post, I was fat.  I topped out about 2.5 years ago at 350lbs.  When I say I miss being fat I don't mean I miss how I felt physically, I guess what I mean is that I miss knowing where I stood in society.  I was on the bottom rung on the ladder of life and I KNEW that, while maybe I wasn't happy there, at least I knew my place.  Now that I'm 170lbs lighter, my social status fluctuates according to where I am and who I'm around.

When I'm with my family and friends or when I'm at church, let me tell you, I am on top of that ladder, lol, but then, out in public, everything changes.  I will give you a few examples of this.  Last April I drove cross-country with a friend of mine and I was wearing pair of jeans.  It got warm in the car and I pulled the hem of the jeans up so they looked like long shorts.  We stop in Ohio at one of their "plaza" things (which are really cool, btw) and I'm in the bathroom and I finish up and after washing my hands next to these two women I start to walk out and hear this woman say to her friend "why do skinny B*tches always wear their pants like that?" I walked out of that bathroom with the biggest smile on my face!!  My friend was dumbfounded that something like that would make me smile. 

My next example is several examples of the fact that I get hit on.  Something that NEVER happened to me.  Just the other day as a matter of fact, I was IN TRAFFIC, and a guy noticed my blue and green tattoo and Seahawks flags on my car and this conversation happens

Jeep - "nice tattoo (wink, smile)"
Me - Thanks
Jeep -""where ya watchin the game? (wink, smile)"
Me - "with my husband! (BIG SMILE)"
Jeep - (returns smile) "Alright!"

Going into public places in cause for different anxieties.  I no longer worry that people are making fun of my 200 extra pounds, now I worry that my extra skin is bulging or sagging on my upper body or legs and arms.  Or that everything that society tells me I should care about looking like won't be represented any particular moment.  Sometimes it doesn't bother me but then, sometimes it does and there's no real way of telling when that might strike.  But then I think that's universal.

I think there is a myth or misconception, however that people who have this surgery are suddenly cured of every insecurity they've every had.  Let me tell you that is categorically untrue.  I am still 350lbs in my head.  I still don't recognize myself in mirrors sometimes.  I still spend a few extra minutes looking at myself in a mirror every now and then (however vain that sounds) because frankly I'm just so surprised that It's me looking back.

Looking back at my 350lbs life,  I couldn't move.  I was in my mid-thirties married over 10 years to a wonderful man, we had a young son and I could not participate in our life. 

Don't get me wrong, until that point, I had tried everything.  I had done everything under the sun, diets, exercise, The Biggest Loser!  Pretty much anything that said it would help me lose weight, I was gonna try!  None of those things worked.  I did not have the capacity (will power) to put down the food.  I was the girl who was shoveling in her third Big Mac (true story), I was the girl who would go to dinner with her family, eat a FULL MEAL then go home and have a bowl of cereal.  I was a bottomless pit. 

So, in 2011, after some inquiring, my husband and I discovered that his insurance would pay for gastric bypass surgery (if I jumped through several qualifying "hoops").  So, my first step was to go to a seminar by a local doctor.  From there I had to make my initial consultation appointment.  They let me know that according to my insurance I would need:

A) 6 months nutritional counseling
B) a psychological evaluation
C) complete medical evaluation and several tests

As you may realize this was not going to be the quick process I had been hoping for.  The insurance also was hoping that during my nutritional counseling I would be able to lose 10% of my body weight, which at the time was 35lbs.  I told my nutritionist, Gretchen, that if I was able to lose that much weight I probably wouldn't be sitting in her office in the first place! :)

She was wonderful.  She taught me about portion sizes and calories and how our food choices effect us.  Things I already knew, but it was nice to get a professionals opinion.

I had the psych eval (basically consisting of the Meyers/Briggs test) and the medical tests and surgery was scheduled for April 17, 2012.

I'll go into those details later. :)

Me and my beautiful niece at my son's first birthday party in 2008.  This was about 4 years from my heaviest weight.

This is just after Christmas of 2013 wearing my husbands Doug Baldwin jersey!  This is about 30lbs from my lightest weight :) It's a new experience to be able to wear my husbands clothes :)

This is the winter of 2013 I went to a local "big girl" clothing store and put on a pair of the pants I used to wear and posted it on Facebook with the caption "LITERALLY half my size".

 

Refections

Is it odd that this would be my first blog post in amost 4 years?!  I’m generally such a happy-go-lucky person!  I’m outgoing (to the outside world), I love to laugh – and make people laugh, and I struggle and have led a decades-long struggle with depression, I guess my leap to thinking about Robin Williams wasn’t that big of a leap after all….In the words of another song (you’ll notice that I tend to speak in movie quotes and song lyrics) J “guess we’re really not that different…me and you…” Collin Raye

So, while I have my music on shuffle it comes across the Glee version of “Pure Imagination” (please withhold your judgment) J  and it contains the line “if you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it” and from there my warped little mind jumped (however irrationally), to the suicide of Robin Williams. 

As someone who has battled an almost lifelong battle with depression, (I was diagnosed at 18) I get it. I was put on Prozac at 18 and stayed on it until I was about 32, off and on; I also was on a different anti-depressant while I was pregnant with my son.   And even while I was on anti-depressants I wanted it to be over, even through the haze that comes along with those medications I was still sad, I was still…magoo (as I call it now).   I understand what the overwhelming desire is to have the pain stop, to stop feeling so sad, to stop wanting to sleep the day away, to stop wanting to go somewhere but wanting to go back home as soon as you were outside the house. But I also understand now, as I didn’t until 8 or 9 years ago that there is ultimate hope. I understand too, the people that are too “chicken” to end it, and therefore hold people like Robin Williams in higher esteem for having the courage, which sends a dangerous message, but perhaps it will send a positive mental health message too. I understand wishing you could get in a car accident but not have it be your fault so your family could still get an insurance pay out. I assume because I’m still here that Christ had a larger purpose for me because I chose not to kill myself, though at times, literally, the only reason I didn’t was because my mother had told me that she would be mad at me if I had ever killed myself. I still don’t know what that larger purpose is, but now I guess you could say that because I have accepted a saving faith in Jesus, I’m willing to fulfill it.  There are news reporters that have been blasted because of using the word “coward” in reference to Robin Williams’ act; other authors have used the word “choice” and I for one agree.  This was a choice and an act of cowardice.  No one held a gun to his head and forced this upon him, while he may have been seeking an end to his suffering or he may have used terms in head that he was seeking to rid those in this life from having to “deal with him”, it was a selfish act.  Robin Williams has tossed his wife and children into chaos.  And to an exponentially lesser extent, the people who admired him.  He was loved; whether or not he chose to acknowledge that fact is paramount.  He was loved by his children, he was loved by his wife, he was loved by friends and he was loved by a God that sacrificed His own life.  If Robin Williams had had the hope that lies in that knowledge perhaps he would not have made the choice that he made this week.  Maybe he would have made the choice(s) that I made and that many other people have made over the years and that is to keep living, to just keep putting one foot in front of the other.  To keep having faith that God has a greater purpose for your life and that He is the one in charge of my life is the ultimate reassurance in life.  Philippians 4:6-7 says:  “be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."  Which is SO hard to do, but really, really, REALLY the only thing that will bring lasting peace is Jesus! 

I don't understand! :0)

I don't get people!  I really don't.  I don't understand why, when someone cuts you off in traffic and you honk at them, they give you the finger?!!  As if YOU'VE done something wrong!  I wish there were a system on cars that allowed you to type someones license plate number into a phone in the steering wheel and talk to people!  That would probably fail on a number of levels, but an interesting idea, no?