Wheetsin

Oh, I forgot a few places. For work clothes I also shopped at J. Jill (in most stores they'll carry up to 2x, and online you can get up to 4x) and Dillard's/Macy's. It sometimes took some looking to find something more my age than older, but I could always find something.

When I was in a larger size I shopped pretty exclusively at Avenue, Catherine's (ugh - few things for ppl my age, hardly anything cute - ever - but when you're buying "what fits" over "what I like", you take it), Fashion Bug, LB (on the off-hand chance that their largest size would fit me) and online stores like Roaman's and Silhouettes. Now I shop mostly at Old Navy (ours carries up to 22), Fashion Bug, Dress Barn, Target (really cute wrap dresses, ladies!), and Penny's. Penny's has some awesome sales on summer dresses right now. I picked up a $180 halter dress for $32... paired with the $20 shrug from Target, it will be a great outfit for summer night dinners, and it was cheap to boot! I shop at these places because their prices are cheap and I don't plan to wear the clothes for very long. Fashion Bug & Dress Barn have some really cute dresses now that don't make me gag, and that's saying something. I also buy some stuff at Avenue still. Depending on the piece I'm either their 14/16 or 18/20 (tops) and 20 or 22 in pants. Most of their customers are bigger sizes than that. Know what that means? Lots of leftovers! (aka SCORE in the clearance racks, because they ALWAYS have those sizes left over)

Look at all the typos Wheetsin makes when she can't edit. :girl_hug:

I SOOOO want to take a floral arranging class. Our community college is offering one that's four Saturdays -- of ourse Saturdays that I'm not free! Do you think you could epxlain the process for folding a fitted sheet? Mine goes kind of like this: Grab one corner, grab the opposite corner. Because that's how "they" say to start. Put corner A into corner B. Realize this is getting me no where and proceed to wrap around my forearms like a length of rope, then shove into the linen closet. If I could find a >400 ct sheet that I loved, I'd be all over it. But my finger tests (shoving my fingers into the package and findling the fabric) has never given me a good vibe.

I Loooooove my 400 ct sheets, but I can't stand anything higher. Too stiff for me. (did I really just say that???) I like my sheets to feel like "clouds", and I just don't get that feeling from anything sateen or above 400. I probably prefer Pima, but Egyptian will do in a pinch. Few things in life are better than a hot shower, and crawling into a bed with freshly laundered sheets. Heaven, I tell you. (Better things exist, but usually occur between the sheets (or on the stairs, or the dining room chair, or in the lake, or in the backyard, or...) so you're still crawling into the freshly made bed).

A fill is what tightens the band. It's "filling" it with saline. This is what causes restriction (the band tightening around the esophagus). The band somewhat rigid, but has an inflatable piece of "tubing" on the inside. Filling that tubing with saline causes the band to fit more tightly. Imagine a wristwatch that had a balloon taped to the inside. When you blew air into the balloon, the watch would get tighter on your wrist. Fills accomplish the same thing with the band, only instead of air, they're injecting saline. The saline is injected via a needle into the port. The port gives access to the "balloon" on the inside of the band. My fills were free for the first year, with a $20 copay per fill (office visit) afterward, but insurance covered my band. I believe my surgeon charges $150 for those who do not have insurance coverage. Cost will depend on what the surgeon (or whomever does the fills) charges, how they are done (fluoro or "blind"), whether or not you have insurance coverage, etc.

Hi Paula78, we have state-specific forums. When you're looking for people from a specific area, you'll probably have the best luck by posting there. Not that you won't get responses here, but they will be "concentrated" there. Link to KS forum: http://lapbandtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=37

I intended to include this in my prior post, but forget - and can't edit.

The "quiverfull" reference was to a specific movement that stemmed from conservative protestantism, not to people with lots of kids, and it has nothing to do with reliance on or independence from government assistance. It's an attempt at raising an army for god, and to try and stave off what they call "race suicide" - the result of integrating non-white/European races into society. Overpopulation is part of their "goal", so to speak, (although they don't see it that way, they believe their god will provide for its people) because overpopulation with white people means statistically higher white:non-white ratios.

And what statement was that, exactly? I asked a hypothetical question. Please share what 'statement" you are referring to, so I can respond. And if you're referring to the hypothetical question I asked, what you say doesn't even make sense. I asked if the rate of abortions would decrease, or is just the rate of safe abrtions would decrease (paraphrasing). How is that, in any way, related to tax revenue from drug addicts???

I didn't even mention the times when you're in a meeting across the table from someome with halitosis, or someone who doesn't observe the 3 foot rule wants to say something breathy. Oh, geez. There have been times when I've gotten a whiff of someone's breath, and literally had to turn my head so they didn't see me gag.

I have said stuff to people about it, because I will just bite my tongue about a lot of things I'd really rather address... but having to smell someone else is not one of those things. I've said thing to people (a few times I've had to, many years ago I was a manager in a call center, and had to send people home on a near daily basis for hygience and dress code reasons.) I just won't do it. If I can't walk away, I will ask them to step back. Ugh, I was on a flight the other week with a man who took his shoes off, and it was horrible. People six rows back were talking about smelling someone's feet. I told him he really needed to put his shoes back on. He refused, said he had athlete's foot and needed to air his feet out. There is no "just be nice" when it means you have to smell someone else. Uh uh, sorry.

My arms are gross. When your skin is significantly stretched for any length of time, lifting weights will only help in so far as the muscle mass is able to fill in the loose skin. It won't do anything to tighten the skin, but it can definitely help things look better. Unfortunately no amount of muscle mass is going to help me. If I started bodybuilding, I'd look like this guy:

(I'm still up. I went past that breaking point where you stop being tired). I will see if I can snag a pic tomorrow before everyone digs in. That sucker has a full cup of butter in it - 6 tbl in the sugary topping, and the rest mixed into the wet ingredients. It smells divine. Folding in the egg whites gave it a really interesting texture. I'm not sure I've ever seen such a texture in a cake before.

So why are we up so late on a Friday anyway? Tomorrow is DH's birthday. I'm surprising him by making a from scratch, pineapple upside down cake (with fresh pineapple). I couldn't get started until he went to bed. Call me ambitious, or masochistic. I just finished folding in 4 egg whites "beaten stiff but not dry". ???. Whatever, keep your fingers crossed. Maybe I'll take a pic if it comes out pretty.

I IM constantly at work. I will do "brb" or "lmk", n/p and j/k. Mainly because I can be on a conference call and still talk with people or answer questions. (Thank goodness for conference calls where you're just a name on the list). I can't think of too many others I use. I wouldn't IM, except that I can probably type more "wpm" () than I can speak. On boards I will use the standard IMO, AFAIK, etc.. In all honesty, I literally cannot understand some of the things that I see others typing to each other. I've never texted. Text is now a verb, apparently - kind of like google. And freak. My cousins were texting and wanted me to come look. I had no freaking clue what their messages said. It's like some kind of generational secret code, only instead of decoder rings the translation is via T-Mobile. I saw a commercial today where a daughter was talking to her mother in - I guess you would call it textese. Pretty damn accurate. Oh, and on the education note, when I started in my master's program, I was _anal_ about my writing. To an extreme. I just kind of figured - it would go with the territory. I mean, the program had some pretty tight admission requirements, they must really be looking for the "T". Boy, was I wrong. My program is a campus-based program, that offers online sections. The online courses are condecuted using a Lotus DB. In many classes there's a required number of postings and interactions, questions, etc. you have to have with the other students. There are LITERALLY times when, in order to respond to someone, I have to ask them what they mean. No matter how hard I try, I truly cannot figure out what the words on the screen mean. My first class into my program was a real reality check. The good news - making the grade became a lot less stressful once I was able to identify "par".

I'm the same way. But - even though I'm in the field and I see it every single day - it still never ceases to amaze me how uninformed and generally ignorant people are about things that are basic (one man's common sense truly is another's "a-ha!"), or are impacting their lives. You learn quickly to never assume anything, because it invariably bites you in the ass. In my field, it's a continous struggle to cater to the lowest common denominator.

(maybe you can tell I work in the adult education field and am just a tiny bit of a learning and education advocate) Laurend, didn't you mention earlier more aggressive sex ed programs? If you did (I really don't remember), what if part of sex ed was birth control including abortion, and including the pros and cons of all types of birth control? Ya know - off topic for a sec - that made me remember when I took sex ed. It was between 6th & 9th grade, but I don't remember when exactly. (And in elementary school we had a girls only ed class about menstruation where they gave us all tampons and pads). Holy crap what a waste. What I remember most is the elder lady who taught the class telling us, "Every girl has a little pink button, like a clam has a pearl. And sometimes when you're having sex with a man, his penis will run against the button, and it makes you moan!" I hope there have been major advances in sex ed programs since then.

I agree. But I don't think it's a reality. You'd think adults looking at the lapband would educate themselves about it, but we get a _lot_ of posts from people who have already been banded, and don't know the first thing about what they're doing. In the case of the lapband, I think a lot of people don't know where to go for education. It isn't terribly prolific outside of the internet yet. A lot of that belief stems from the number of people I know who now see me as their personal library, because I can answer their questions about it. You'd think it would be as easy as a google search, and for many here that's the case, but that isn't the case for many, maybe even most, out there. Based on my personal experiences, I think that most people who get the band are uneducated about it. And I think that's unfortunate, because I also believe it's a HUGE contributor to the "what the fuck did I just do to myself" reactions. I spent more than 5 years researching, debating, self-prpearing, etc. Most people I know who are banded made their decision within the span of a few weeks, and most have, at some point, regretted their decision. I didn't - never have. That's nothing about "me"... it's about "prepared and informed" vs. " spontaneous or uneducated". The education class I had to take to get my band was really a waste to me, because I knew everything she was telling me, and could even tell her some things. But even if you just look at the questions we get here... if everyone's surgeon had that same requirement, people would start off on much better feet. In the case of abortion, I think you have to consider a few different issues. One is that, usually, they aren't dont with a lot of planning. It's an "oh crap" knee-jerk reaction. Not terribly conducive to research. And it's also hitting (not entirely, perhaps not even mostly, but undoubtedly) a demographic that, for a few reasons, isn't going to be the best researcher. While I am extraordinarily pro-choice, I am also pro-informed-choice. I would not necessarily be opposed to having a mandatory education session before an abortion could be performed, if it could be done in a factual and unbiased way. To go back to the parallel -- seriously, I had to go to a 2 hour "class" about the band, how the place it, what life is like afterwards, what kinds of complications might arise, etc.

I sooo wasn't going to go here. Dammit! It's not true in DH's case. But probably not in the way you're thinking. He's - well, he's a viking. And built like you'd expect a viking to be built. Very nicely endowed. But he has relatively tiny feet. He's about 6'5, 260 (YES! I weigh less than my husband! Haven't been able to say that since we were newlyweds!), broad shoulders, thick thighs, and these tiny sz 10 feet.

I think it's possible for people to support the right to choose 100%, and still be morally opposed to abortion. In fact, I think (but could be wrong) that Carlene has shared that position a few times. And I think Laurend has also said she is not "pro" people running around having abortions willy nilly. And I know a LOT of people IRL who support abortion "if...". But sometimes you just can't have ifs. When you're dealing with medicine, there's always going to be an unprecedented case, or an anomoly. Or a mistake. I would guess that in most cases (and probably in the majority of cases), the right to choose and keep legislation away from your uterus overrides public moral objection to the fact that there's a fetus/baby involved. Meaning - while someone would never have an abortion themselves, nor would they ever want to prevent someone else from having the choice. I've not had an abortion, but I did have a close call with pregnancy once. While on the pill and using a spermicide. It ended up being for other reasons, but my period was over two months last. And honestly, I did start to have thoughts like, "I wonder if there is anywhere around here that performs abortions..." So I know that it's not a decision that - in most cases - is made lightly. I know that the fear that resided in the back of my head was -- perhaps I wouldn't regret it now, but what about 10 years down the road? What it something changed and I decided I wanted to have kids, but was then unable to for some reason? Etc. I don't know what's required to have an abortion - maybe just the cost. But I would hope that, at the very least, some steps are taken to educate - regardless of the "why". I mean - hell, I had to go through a psychologist to get my band...

Oh yeah, I can't edit, so "imo" to your heart's content.

Sexuality is nature. The idea that it's something to be changed or hidden is nurture. Poor nurture. Laurend - my husband and I had that exact conversation Monday or Tuesday on our way to work (our buildings are just a few minutes apart so we ride together). I was drawing the parallel that at one time, people would not have believed that interracial relationships would be an everyday sight -- and how long will it take before our descendents say the same thing about same sex relationships, and how stupid and ignorant will we look to them, for even daring to protest it... because at some point, the mere idea of trying to deny equal rights based on sexual orientation will be unfathomable (and not just disgusting, like it is today).

Just throwing a question out there. If clinical abortions were outlawed, do you guys think we'd see a decrease in the number of abortions that occur? (Let's say that hypothetically we could account for all abortions, legal and not - so the possibility that they could occur untracked is removed). Or do you think we'd just see a decrease in abortions done in controlled and reasonably safe medical surroundings, vs. the hanger in a bathtub, chop shop in someone's basement, or women who repeatedly bang themselves against the backs of chairs?

To me, a choice is a choice. I don't think we can say "It's ok if..." Either it's allowable, or it isn't. In that case, you will always have people who use it for its "intended" purpose (e.g. unintentional, medical considerations, etc.) versus "unintended" (e.g. leisure pregnancy control, nothing better to do on Friday afternoon, whatever). By advocating for the right to choose, you're advocating for the right to choose to do it for any reason. I *hope* (think) most people who advocate for a woman's choice understand that. Personally, I don't care why someone is having an abortion. My greatest hope would be that they at least make an educated decision - understand what it does to the body, understand the emotional consequences they may have and take as many precautions as possible, etc. But whether someone wants the abortion because they were raped or because they were too lazy to take their pill doesn't make one iota of difference to me. It's about having the choice and domain - not about the motivators or surrounding consequences.