Carlene

I made sweet potato stuffing. It is more moist than bread stuffing and more nutritious.

You read that right. Put a whole chicken in your crockpot and cook on low all night. It will make its own juice and be so tender and moist, you won't believe it.

Friends & fellow Bandsters, We have reservations to gather for Holiday Bandster Dinner: Date: Thursday 14 Dec 2006 Time: 6:30 PM til- - - - - - - - - Location: Mercado Juarez Mexican Restaurant Address: 1901 W. Northwest Highway next door to Sam's Club We have a private room reserved and will have it to ourselves. A couple of other additions to the gatherings We will need a pretty close tally of attendees for the restaurant so please send an RSVP to Carlene and I will forward it to the host. Please join us for this final gathering for 2006 to Celebrate our banding, weight loss, better health and the wonderful year to come.

I belong to DFW Bandsters and attend the support dinner in Arlington on the third Thursday of each month (at Mercado Juarez). It's a great group of people. There have been a few get-togethers out my way (North Richland Hills/Grapevine), but none on a regular basis. If there were enough people interested, I would host one, though.

I only cheat with food.

This is the day the Lord has made; Let us rejoice and be glad.

I eat popcorn when the mood strikes me. I buy the low fat microwave kind and spray zero calorie "butter" on it. Sometimes it goes down fine and sometimes not.

I haven't seen my band doctor in almost a year. I was banded 2 years ago this month.

You can't feel the band or the tubing. I can feel my port. It feels somewhat like a nine volt battery has been implanted under my skin.

My PM doctor prescribed Methadone pre-op and I refused it. I understand their logic - that it relieves pain but there is no "high", so in theory it is less addictive. Psychologically that's true, but it causes a physical addiction and to my way of thinking, that's just as bad.

Thank goodness, it's almost all cooked and in the fridge. All I have left to do is roast the turkey and make mashed potatoes & the gravy. My MIL told me that the lady who lives across the street (and her worthless, middle-age, unemployed son) were going to be alone tomorrow and would eat their TG dinner at Luby's, so I invited them over. I already had 19 people coming, so what's two more? I made sweet potato dressing. For one thing, it's very moist, so I think I can eat a little of it, and for another, my DH bought a 10 pound box of yams, and you can only make so much sweet potato casserole. My banana pudding turned out beautifully, as did my coconut cream pie. My German chocolate cake looks okay - not great (a little lopsided), but okay. I'm sure it will taste fine, however. The ham has about 15 minutes left and then I'm going to bed. It's been a rough week. I have the cold from hell and my damn dog is in season. What else do you have in store for me, Lord?

Come to my house. You can help me cook TG dinner for 21 people. I promise you won't be lonely. PS...There will be 3 dogs here, too.

You have to chew everything really, really well, first of all. Secondly, you may want to avoid certain foods. I, for example, cannot eat most meat (I stick to ground beef, some dark, moist chicken, etc), pizza, pasta, rice, potatoes, anything with breading on it, fiberous veggies, and scrambled eggs. And you are right about it being "hit or miss". Some days I can eat something and some days I can't. Just my band's way of reminding me who's the boss.

I am a street walker...LOL. I have a route that is almost 4 miles long and I walk it each day (more or less). Sometimes I even manage to walk it TWICE a day. If you are going to walk in your neighborhood, don't just go around the block, even if you promise yourself you will do it 10 times. It's too easy to quit when you pass your house. Instead, walk a mile away from your house. That way, you have no choice but to walk another mile to get back home.

I am sick, with a cold...and lots of drainage. Thick stuff (like mucus) does not go thru my band very well. But I was doing okay. Until I ate lunch. It got totally stuck, and it hurt like hell. For two hours, I was in agony. If I didn't know better, I would have sworn I was having a heart attack. The pain in the middle of my chest was soooooooo bad. Finally, I opened a can of human Draino (pineapple juice) and sipped it very slowly. Some of the blockage came back up and the rest went on down. At any rate, I am unstuck, but very sore. I will be having warm liquids for at least the next 24 hours. Right now, I do not like my band. I will like it again on Thursday, but right now, it is not my friend. If I could, I would kick its little silicone ass.

I met a nice couple at our last Bandster support group dinner. He has just been banded and she is scheduled for December. She mentioned that the nurses at their doctor's office said they don't mention exercise to the patients. "Why ever not?" I asked. The answer was, "Because it makes them MAD." It would seem that some people think the band should do all the work for them. They maintain that if they had wanted to exercise, they wouldn't have gotten the band in the first place. I'm wondering if this is a common thing, and is the doctor to blame, for not giving his patients a more in-depth, realistic idea of what band success really is? I think (and this is just my opinion) that those who are unwilling to put forth ANY effort - revise their food choices, exercise, etc - should consider a different type of WLS. Is that "wrong thinking" on my part? I just hate to see people fail and blame the band, although I know that sometimes it is the other way around.

I heard a rumor - and I want to emphasize that it was a RUMOR - that Dr. Maese does not use Huber needles for his fills. IF (again, emphasizing IF) this is true, it is NOT proper procedure, according to Inamed (I e-mailed them and asked about it) and can damage your band. If I were using Dr. Maese, I would check this out. Not trying to stir anything up, just wanted to give everyone a heads up. I have never met Dr. Maese and have absolutely no ax to grind.

LONDON - Jack Neal briefly became the proud owner of a pink convertible car after he managed to buy it for 9,000 pounds ($17,000) on the Internet despite being only three years old. Jack’s mother told the BBC she had left her password for the eBay auction site in her computer and her son used the “buy it now” option to complete the purchase. “Jack’s a whiz on the PC and just pressed all the right buttons,” Rachel Neal said. The seller of the second-hand car, a dealer from Worcestershire, central England, was amused by the bid and agreed not to force the sale through. “Luckily he saw the funny side and said he would re-advertise,” Neal said. TOLEDO, Ohio - A teenager who put her bra on a car antenna before it flew off and led to a highway accident will be charged with littering, a prosecutor said. Emily Davis, 17, of Bowling Green, told investigators she took her bra off while her friend was driving on Interstate 75. James Campbell, who was driving behind the girls, said he swerved to avoid the bra and his car flipped several times. Campbell, 37, broke a vertebra in his neck during the Sept. 26 accident. His passenger, Jeff Long, 40, broke several ribs. A State Highway Patrol crash report, obtained by The Blade, said that the girls told investigators that before the accident the men were motioning to them to lift up their shirts. Both men denied making the gestures. Davis will be charged next week with misdemeanor littering, said Tim Atkins, a juvenile prosecutor in Wood County. Atkins said he'll meet with troopers before filing the charge. The girl's friend, Tabitha Adams, 17, of Bowling Green, said she told Davis not to hang her bra outside because she knew it would fly away, according to the report.

I am fused from L4 to S1. Back surgery is a very long and painful recuperation. I still have back pain sometimes, but it's not the constant, unrelenting, debilitating pain I had before. I would do it again - reluctantly. I had multiple herniated disks and stenosis (narrowing) of the spine. I put off the surgery for 8 years, did physical therapy, drug therapy, and facet injections. I finally ran out of options. I did office work - no physical labor involved - but sitting for long periods is often the most difficult/painful thing for people with back problems. I doubt that you would be able to work at Wendy's after surgery and rehab. You will need a job that doesn't require you to do any one thing for too long - sitting, standing, walking, etc. The best suggestion they could come up with for me was to teach. YIKES! Thanks, but no thanks. Few kids have committed such grievous sins that they deserve to be shut up in a classroom with me, 5 days a week. One more thing....be very careful with the pain management stuff. Some doctors are giving people Methadone to manage chronic back pain. Personally, I think that is a HUGE mistake. The last thing you need is a drug habit, on top of everything else.

I'm all for putting politicians and lawyers out of work. I'm not sure about the Fair Tax Plan. It sounds great - in theory. But so does Socialism.

Sunday, March 13, 2005 By Dan Fitzpatrick, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette All Murrysville dentist Michael Gigliotti wanted was a relatively cheap, last-minute flight from his mother's house in Florida to a natural-gas auction in Texas. But a $552 bill for the late-Februarytrip quickly went up when a late-boarding passenger complained he could not fit in the seat next to the 5-11, 300-pound Gigliotti. A supervisor from Southwest Airlines boarded the plane, crouched next to Gigliotti and said he would have to pay for a second seat on the return flight, claiming the dentist's large frame would not fit entirely in the 17-inch-wide space. Gigliotti did not feel humiliation -- just rage. "This won't hold up in court," he told the Southwest supervisor. "It already has," was her response, according to Gigliotti. The exchange captures a touchy topic in aviation -- how to deal with larger passengers as the nation's waistline expands. More than one-fourth of Americans are now classified as obese, and in an industry obsessed with fitting as many people as possible inside a giant aluminum tube, airline seats have shrunk to 16 inches measured from arm rest to arm rest -- narrower than an average-size computer keyboard and a tighter fit than the typical office chair or general-admission movie seat. "The airline seats are simply too small for a high percentage of the flying public," Gigliotti said. "We are getting bigger, we're getting taller, we're getting wider." Southwest is not the only major airline with a large-seating policy. US Airways, Northwest Airlines and America West Airlines all can require an overweight passenger to pay for two seats but said they do everything they can to find a pair of empty adjoining seats on the plane at no additional charge. Midwest Connect, which serves Pittsburgh from Milwaukee, requires that passengers unable to fit in one seat buy two; if there are other seats available on the same flight, they will be refunded for the second. But other carriers serving Pittsburgh, including United Airlines and Delta Air Lines, have no large-seating requirements. Hooters Air, an airline featuring slim, scantily-clad "Hooters girls" as flight entertainment, has no such policy, either. "We love large people," said Hooters Air President Mark Peterson. Hooters, which flies from Pittsburgh to Myrtle Beach, S.C., has never charged for an extra seat, he said, and fitting a larger passenger onboard has never been an issue in two years of operating the airline. While critics of Southwest's policy acknowledge that other airlines do the same thing, some said Southwest deserves to be singled out for its rigidity. "Southwest really expects its employees to enforce it, " said Mary Ray Worley, a board member on the Sacramento, Calif.-based National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. At other airlines, she said, "it seems to me their employees exercise a lot more of their own judgment in enforcing or not enforcing their policies. A lot depends on the prejudices of the employees involved." The large-seating policy is nothing new for the Dallas low-fare carrier, considered one of the industry's most successful companies, having made a profit 31 years in a row. It initiated a "customer of size" policy in 1980, requiring a larger passenger unable to fit in one seat to pay for two. But the airline, saying it could no longer ignore complaints from slimmer passengers, began enforcing the policy more vigilantly in 2002, requiring passengers to pay for the extra space even if others were available on the same flight. A refund is made available if the flight takes off with empty seats. Each case is a judgment call. There are no scales at the check-in counter. The test appears to be whether a passenger can sit in one seat without lifting the armrest. The increase in enforcement, leaked in a 2002 memo from Southwest President Colleen Barrett, sparked a few lawsuits and criticism from fat acceptance groups as well as jokes from NBC "Tonight Show" comedian Jay Leno. The negative attention was unusual for Southwest, used to glowing PR. Leno, in one of his monologues, stuck it to the Texas company, saying, "Boy, Southwest is cracking down on overweight passengers. Now any fat people standing in front of the terminal for more than 15 minutes will be towed." In another joke, he said Southwest had "been overstating each passenger's weight by 80 pounds so they can sell more fat ass seats." Southwest spokesman Ed Stewart attributed the controversy to "entertainment value." He mentioned the jokes from Leno and said "the reason you do it is because you think you can get a laugh out of it and it is something that affects everybody." The constant attention has "nothing to do with news value." It is little more than "people liking to make fun of other people." Most passengers, he said, like the policy. "For every 10 letters you get, nine of them will say they did not enjoy their flight because someone was sitting on them." Stewart said. A few, though, were upset enough to sue. New Hampshire businesswoman Nadine Thompson filed a lawsuit last year claiming she had no problem fitting into a Southwest seat but still was asked to pay for a second seat on a Manchester, N.H.-Chicago flight. When she refused, she was escorted from the plane, according to her lawsuit. Another woman in Spokane, Wash., filed a suit last year saying Southwest humiliated her in front of other passengers on a Orlando-Spokane flight, and that she spent the ride home in tears over her experience. But no one yet has been successful in overturning the policy in court. In 2000, a California judge ruled that Southwest's policy was "reasonable and not discriminatory" after a woman weighing 300 pounds sued. The woman's civil rights were not violated, the court said. But "I still think it's discriminatory to make me buy two seats," said the 5-foot-1, 350-pound Ray Worley, of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, who often will call ahead before booking flights to make sure there is enough room. "I believe I am entitled to the space I take up. It's a basic civil right issue. A lot of people believe it is within my control to be whatever size I am. That is completely false." When Southwest began enforcing its policy more strictly, it went before the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance's annual convention in Atlanta to explain it. It did not go well, according to Ray Worley, who was there. If Southwest hoped to make the policy more palatable, "They completely failed. ... The impression I got was they do not want fat people flying their airline. They don't want our business. They want us to go away." "What would make me want to fly Southwest?" Airline industry expert Terry Trippler said his biggest problem with the policy is its lack of consistency. If gate agents on one end of a round trip allow a large passenger to pay for only one seat, then the gate agents in another city should arrive at the same decision. But it doesn't always happen that way, Trippler said, and "everybody doesn't always have twice as much money for the airline ticket." "It's a tough call." Gigliotti, the Murrysville dentist, also has a problem with the way the policy is applied. "I think there has to be a measurable standard," he said. "The standard should be, can you put the arms down?" Gigliotti, who said his shoulders are wider than his waist from weightlifting, claims that he was able to get his arms down "without undue stress." The company, on its web site, said the armrest is the "definitive gauge." But in a Q&A about the policy on its Web site, Southwest said employees can still question the passenger "if a concern exists. ... Condoning an unsafe, cramped seating arrangement onboard our aircraft is far more inappropriate than simply questioning a customer's fit in our seats." Asked about Gigliotti's experience, Stewart, the Southwest spokesman, said, "I am sure he is a very slim 300 pounds" and it is "always going to be a judgment call." But every time the policy has been challenged, in court, "we have prevailed." Gigliotti was not charged extra for one leg of his trip, from Tampa to San Antonio, but he was charged for a second seat on the return trip to Tampa, despite the presence of other empty seats on the plane, he said. He was able to get a refund by calling a customer service number, but the experience is still with him. He fired off a letter last week to Southwest calling its policy "arbitrary and capricious." He vows never again to fly Southwest, even after its starts service from Pittsburgh in May. "I just want the public to realize what can happen to them if they fly Southwest."

Okay, boys and girls....I would like to have as much input here as you can spare. This is the deal. As I have mentioned before my MIL lives with me. She will be 87 in the spring. She's in great shape for 87, but she won't live forever, obviously. My husband has one brother (in another state). Recently we met up with their cousin N (reunion) whose mom was Aunt Louise. Aunt Louise died a couple of years ago. She was about the same age as my MIL. Cousin N is a retired high school principal (CA district) and her pension is 101% of her salary. Her husband just started drawing his SS because he wanted to wait until he could collect full benefits. They have a very nice income, which I do not begrudge them. Cousin N mentioned to my DH and my BIL that they needed to "get on the stick" and start disposing of their mom's money, meaning pay it out to themselves, have her sign over property, etc. Otherwise, she said, Medicaid would not pay for extended care when the time comes. She said there is a 3 year "look back" period (I think it's 5 in Texas). That means she can't go into long term care at the government's expense until all her money has been gone for 3 years. Cousin L and her sister had their mom give them all her worldly goods while she still lived in her home. They paid a Mexican woman $50 per day to take care of her, 24 hours a day, 6 days a week for the last year or so. When the look back period was up, they declared her indigent and put her in a nursing home at Medicaid's expense. My BIL was horrified. He considers this to be unethical, immoral, and fraudulent. I agree with him. My DH is straddling the fence. My MIL has about $400,000 in assets. Her income is not shabby - about $2000 per month. She has nursing home insurance that will pay $45 per day. My BIL and I think that when the time comes, we should put her in a nice home and use whatever of HER money is necessary to pay the bills. Whatever is left, the boys can split when she dies. It will not be necessary to apply for Medicaid at all. Cousin N's feelings have been very wounded as a result of my BIL's indictment of her (at least that's what she calls it). Her argument is why should the government get her mom's house/money and leave nothing for her kids. Lots of other people, who never owned property or saved a dime, are living in extended care on Medicaid. She says it's not fair for her to pay and them not to. My MIL, by the way, is all for this scheme.

My mother-in-law is so frugal, it drives me nuts, even though I am pretty thrifty myself. She gets terribly upset if I throw out the milk when the expiration date passes by more than a day or so. She says, "Oh, it's just a little blinky. I'll drink it." YUK! The worst thing is that she cuts back on her meds to save money. Instead of taking a pill 3 times a day, she will take 2. And all her meds are generic, so she's saving pennies and doing major dollars worth of damage to herself! She was recently diagnosed with retinal bleeding because she cut back on her blood pressure meds. But this story takes the cake.... My MIL walks two miles, every day. She's almost 87, so she walks in half mile increments. Anyway, she comes home all the time with stuff she finds in people's garbage. (This drives me nuts, too.) One day, it was one of those huge popcorn containers, decorated in a Christmas theme (it was August). We thought it was just an empty can and it caught her eye. Wrong. It was full of popcorn - and she ate it. I was sooooooooooo grossed out. I tried to get my DH to throw it out and NOT allow her to eat it, but he wouldn't. My DH says that when his mom dies and she gets to heaven, God is going to say, "Carmella, you could have stayed down there a lot longer if you had just taken your medicine like you were supposed to." And she's going to say, "I know....I know," then, looking around, "That's funny. Bill's not here." (Bill was my FIL.)

Yes...don't eat the Schnauzer's food. Just kidding...you'll be fine. If you are having stomach cramps, that means the orange went thru your stoma and into your stomach. The cramps are probably just a result of having been on a liquid diet for so long, then suddenly throwing an orange into the works.

I worked for tax prep companies and CPAs during tax season for years. Sometimes I hated to give clients the bottom line. They tended to take their anger at the IRS out on poor little me. One year I did the taxes for a man whose income had increased about 5 times over what he made the year before. He was a heavy equipment salesman and man, had business been good! When I gave him the bad news, he didn't bat an eye. I said, "Well, you certainly took that better than most people. I thought you'd be upset." He said, "I'm just thankful I made the kind of money to owe that much in taxes." Kind of like winning the Lottery. Yes, I know how much the taxes would be. Just give me the winning ticket and I'll gladly pay them!