Well, I must say -- if I wanted privacy, I've got it!  Unlike at mblog where I had readers immediately, this blogdrive site must have me hidden under a cyber rock.  Not one single visitor or comment yet.  Wondering if I should find another host...

I was just looking at my excel weight chart, tracking my progress and noticing an interesting symetry.  The day before I headed out for my week in Cancun I was at my all time low of 138, and over the course of feasting in the week at Cancun I gained 6 pounds (up to 144) by the next weekend when I returned.  Now, one week back at the diet, the scale is back down to 138.  A perfect symetry -- 6 pounds to gain in a week, then another week to lose that same 6 pounds and back down again.  So I only lost two weeks out of my diet life -- I'm back on track to reach my bridal figure (and Costa Rica beaches honeymoon figure!).

Very soon I will need to go to the fitting for the dress...

It's so nice to be getting thin again, to look forward to how I will look in clothes instead of always feeling that irritation over certain trouble spots, to always calculate what types of clothes will best camoflage, to know other types are just automatically off limits.

Not only is this diet working, but that in combination with the lipo for my ultimate trouble spot thighs is soon going to place me smack dab in clothing territory I've NEVER been able to wear -- certain tight, form fitting pants -- it's an amazing thing looming on my horizon, exciting to look forward to.

Very soon now I will be plunging into numbers I haven't seen since that brief, fit summer of 1980 (?) at 135 pounds.  A few years ago when I (for only a few days) achieved 138 (after the flu of course) -- was the last time I came even close to that ellusive high school weight.  And here I am again -- 137 will be breaking past that 138 mile marker and soon -- I'll be in high school weight, and beyond...!
Even in high school I wasn't perfectly svelte, there were still some thick thigh issues -- so we'll see where this goes.
The 1200 calories per day is so maintainable - with my diet-buddy to encourage me -- there's no reason why I can't do it this time.
Hurrah!!!

The title just about sums it up -- I spent about 20 hours over the weekend addressing over 50 invitations (53 to be exact) with the potential for about 3 more once I confirm with my mother if they should be included.  Before the 3 additional invitations, I was surprised at the symetry of the fact that although husband-2-B has about 80% of the potential attendance, it actually turned out that I was sending invitations to exactly 25 households each.  But since a couple households had grown children who would be getting their own separate invitation, it through the number off a bit, and now if my mother approves the two extras, it won't be symetric.  Yet in a way even weirder, since that would be 27 households for me and 25 for him -- yet the vast majority of mine will not be attending.  It's just weird that I have so few coming, yet I'm sending more invitations -- I hadn't foreseen that.  Anyway, caligraphically hand-writing out the reply envelopes, as well as the main envelopes plus return address on back with caligraphy -- left me bleary eyed and head-ached.  Not to mention using the paper cutter to divide up the invitations, reply cards, reception cards, folding the direction sheets -- and keeping the two sides separate (his family will get differently worded invitaitons and differently addressed cards due to them knowing me by a different name than my side of the family!).
In other news -- hub2b has been extremely depressed about an increased skin-acne flareup ever since I went away to cancun and came back (for the last 3 weeks then?).  It happens that I react "in kind" to however he is reacting to his skin.  If he's sad, I'm sad and concerned with him.  But if he's mad, then I get mad too -- mad that he's all beligerant and throwing himself around the apartment (or alternatively sleeping in the middle of the day) - I get mad and say my peice -- yesterday at dinner I said he should be contacting his therapist and learning to control his emotions and deal with this, because I've done everything I can possibly do, but if he's just going to sleep through these episodes or yell through them -- instead of taking practical measures to learn to handle this -- then he's not going to get anywhere.  And that I wasn't looking forward to living with his rages for the rest of our lives.  I was expressing my own anger that after two years of these rages, he still wasn't taking any practical measures to control his rage -- he made enough trips to the doctor to get new medicines, that's for sure -- and I've certainly tried everything nutritionally and herbally -- but if these breakouts are going to continue -- it's time to deal on the emotional/mental level.  In fact it's long over due and long promised.
He angrily insisted he IS going to contact the therapist (yeah, but WHEN?!?!?) and suggesting I was out of line to be mad at him about this and how would I like to reverse positions and see how I deal with it, etc.  So after dinner he made a big show of yanking his shoes on and getting his coat while I washed the dishes (I knew he was planning on getting out of the apartment in reaction to the argument from me, which is exactly what I had been planning on doing except that I still had to finish the invitations).  So then he was at the door and saying "I'm leaving" and I was like "and WHERE are you going" and he was like "I'm not saying, but I'm not coming back" and I was like "WHAT the hell are you talking about?!?" and he was like "I'm just going to kill myself, I'm doing YOU a favor".  I was like "you are NOT".  I've had it with his threats -- like somehow he has to prove how desparate he is to spur me into motion to do what I can for him, to take him seriously.  Like I haven't already tried EVERYTHING in my power.  In fact, pressuring him to see the therapist IS something I'm doing to help, still.  At this point I already know his tactics and I don't really take him seriously when he threatens to kill himself, I understand it's more of his [albeit manipulative] way of underlining the communcation to me (or anyone) of how sad, mad and hopeless he feels, as well as a way of impelling me into action.
After I sort of called his bluff he backed down from his threat and reverted to a more straightforward plea to just DO SOMETHING to help.  I said "but what, I've done everything, I can't think of anything more" and he settled for letting me take another look at his skin on his back in case I could get any infection out with the tools, or inject anything with the cortisone to get the swelling down, which I did, and it seemed to molify him - doing something, anything -- anything at all, appears to be better than just bearing it through.
I do understand how frustrating it is, and after 20 years of trying one thing after another and continuing to just bear each breakout and each new wave of occasional worsening, without respite, can make it hard to just endure without doing SOMETHING.  I'm at a point where I'm just almost at a loss myself, the mystery of it on my mind even while I'm trying to fall asleep -- what, WHAT is poisoning his system?  There for a while it seemed when I finally convinced him to forgo the junk, sweets and grains (november?) that he was improving.  And any and all worsening periods were directly tied to weekend indulgences in candy, chocolate, desert, what have you.  But this time - what can I understand from this time?
As far as I know he didn't eat any junk, grains etc. while I was in Cancun - though the stress itself may have brought it on.  But after two weeks later he can't be stressed out still, and even his usual IBS and cramping that I point to as a sign that toxins are being held in his intestines and released into his body leading to breakouts -- even his IBS has been at relative by these last weeks -- so what could it be?
In the last couple days it may have gotten a teeny bit worse - but in the general worsening it's hard to say.  In the last couple days - the sugar-free cheese cake is the only addition -- could that be it? But what is in that except for cream cheese, cream, eggs, and sucralose? Nothing.  Which would mean cream cheese would make him worse - but that just doesn't seem right.  But could it be?  I will cut out cream and cream cheese after this batch runs out, and see.  Which is sad since it's his only source of pleasure when he craves sweets in the evening  (cheese cake, or whipped cream etc.), and leave him with only my homemade yogurt -- I'm not even going to bother to tell him my thinking this time, since everytime I say "it may be the ...(fill in the blank)..." he derides my foolish attempts to pin the cause on food and says it's just him, he will always break out no matter what, it's not food, it's nothing we can ever fix...
I however, will continue in a scientific manner, exhausting all possibilities, one variable at a time.  The other thing I wonder about is if there is a general hormone imbalance that could be causing this - since I've noticed that while certain foods do make ME break out (though not like his), there are also times of the month where I break out independant of what I eat, because of the monthly hormone changes.
If it's hormonal for him, I don't know what to do.  I suggested he see a specialist to test those aspects - but I don't even know exactly what sort of specialist could determine this and if they did, what could they do.
The bottom line though, is that something is poisoning his system - whether it's stress toxins, hormonal imbalance toxins, digestive failure induced toxins, or junk food related toxins... it's a kind of toxic poison and I can't identify where it's coming from.  I was so confident that I could at least minimize the contributions made from what he eats -- but I'm beginning to feel at a loss.

for the last few days hub2B has been an utter grouch due to break-outs.  Sometimes I really think to myself -- of all the people in the world missing a leg or an arm, or with various cancers, disfigurements etc. -- who have cheerier dispositions -- and I think after all these years - can't he learn to control his mood?  Instead of seeing a therapist to learn to control his mood, he would rather just commit suicide and avoid the harder, practical work of learning to control his moods.

I think yesterday's stomach ache was completely a by-product of being on the heaviest day of my period, cramping etc.  Somehow I just didn't recognize the connection - it felt like it was more in my stomach than usual -- like a kind of undigested-food-gassy feeling.
But today, I'm 100% fine - no cramps, no stomach ache, everything is grand, I'm feeling good.
Probably a mental boost of goodness is coming from the scale reading this morning - 140. After returning from my vacation last weekend to see 144 on the scale (having been at an all-time low of 138 only the week before!) I wasn't pleased.
In all reasonableness, I would have to attribute the astonishing drop to several aspects of the body's weight mysteries:
1. The water retention from the period was at maximum on Sunday, now it is completely gone
2. Now that I'm not gorging on pancakes and carbs and generally huge quantities like I did at Club Med, my intestines are emptying out again, the water retention that comes from eating junk has subsided, and the slight dehydration affect that comes from eating low-calories (1200) has also kicked in.
In essence -- it's all about losing excess water!  Probably only a fraction is from the lesser amount in the intestines.

that's all I have to say.  I took some advil - maybe it's because of my period. or maybe it's the extra thyroid pill -- but I doubt that since this isn't one of the symptoms.
Today, on other news, fiancé was depressive and suicidal again about his skin. He was going the usual route of saying "what's the use" and threatening that since nothing was working, he was going to return to eating whatever he wants, suggesting that his skin was better when he ate a box of hostess cupcakes each night than it has been since I've been restricting him to healthy food and no junk or sugar.  I said "if you do that, you can just just move out. I'm not going to be around to watch the consequences of you going down that road again.".  Because even if he can't see it, I know that he DOES get FAR FAR worse when he chows down on the junk.  I was infuriated that he would suggest such a thing and have the audacity to expect me to just be there to suffer the consequences as he goes into his resulting rages.
I have a toleration and a desire to help as long as he is TRYING and doing what he can -- but when he just gives up and refuses to do even what he knows helps, or to try something I have suggested -- then I draw the line.  I do not need to take that kind of abuse, and I do not feel any qualms about saying so.

I am going to go up to 4 thyroid pills today.  I think it was Monday or Tuesday last week at Club Med I upped the dose to 3 per day.
However, this morn the temperature reading was 97.9, and I was feeling particularly cold yesterday -- which is in keeping with the information I had come across that estrogen counteracts thyroid hormone and doses need to be increased during the period (or if eating soy products, which estrogenic properties have the same affect on thyroid and the body as real estrogen).  Before leaving for Cancun I had been seeing perfect 98.4 for a few morning readouts -- which is what the resting temperature is supposed to be -- but now it's back down during my period so I'm upping the dose.
Last night I had gotten a digital thermometer also -- and (with the tip cover) for the most accurate reading I tried the rectal method -- which gave me 1 degree less than what is normal by that method. The mouth was 2-3 degrees below normal, so I've decided to just forget the mouth method -- my mouth is clearly unreliable.
One thing I will have to do is a comparison between the 10-minute underarm mercury thermometer accuracy vs. the rectal digital reading.  and while I'm add it, what the heck -- why not use a cover for the mercury and try rectal reading that way too -- to know once and for all the mysterious differences between digital and merc.

Trying to find a new writing home.  Like a gypsy I have been pulling up stakes and traveling endlessly in search of truly private venue.  First the handwritten diary which obviously had no privacy.   Then a diary site which in poor judgment I let my boyfriend know about and inevitably had to let him have access.  Then a blog which I started and then (with incredible stupdity) accessed to write a single entry from home and forgot to clear history - so there it was, an open invitation to yet another of my hoped for bastions of catharsis.
This time I'm being more careful and may eventually relax to be able to write openly, true to myself.  Anonymously, with the feedback of strangers, I will be able to expose myself without judgment.

[transferred from previous blog]
I have to confess, every moment of every day when my thoughts are left to themselves, I am mulling and contemplating the idea of WHEN to up the dose to adding the next thyroid pill (three a day).  Some sites I've read say to go up by adding 1 pill every 2 weeks, but then other sites say something about the half life being something like 4-5 days I think - so why can't I go to the next level now that I've achieved more than 5 days of this 2-pill dose?
Will it really be so bad if I take another and it turns out three pills are a bit too much? So what if I get shaky, overheated, -- what's the big dealy-O?  I would just cut back down to 2 pills, no harm done, right? That's all a doctor would do anyway - it's purely experimental based on how you feel, and your temperature -- which is still not all the way up to normal -- but if I was doing this with a doctor's supervision and I noticed I was getting a bit too much hormone, I'd have to make an appointment to see him before I could have him assess what I already know, to cut back.
I'm so champing at the bit to go to the next pill.  I want that energy I used to have, and the reality is I still have the space heater going all day -- the morning bathroom routine aside -- I haven't seen 100% improvement yet...