I'm sorry, didn't mean to send you to a place where you are lost. But thank you for sharing that. Wow, you really HAVE been through hell.

You said you weren't clear on my theory. My theory is, once addicted to smoking, one always will be. It's just weather or not they are smoking at any given time. No different than an alchoholic or a crack head. I freely admit that I KNOW I will return to smoking if some major turmoil happens.....but, I don't think that would happen if I wasn't a 'smoker'. TONS of people survive turmoil daily who don't turn to smoking to cope. That's all. Not sure if it makes sense or not. It's just that at it's base level, I realize that the smoking did not make anything go away. It didn't fix my problems or make them better. But there were (and I think will still be) times in my life where I did not think I would continue to BREATHE if that air didn't contain some nicotine.......of course, once on the patch I found that it wasn't the nicotine I was addicted to.

OK, so I just realized I should have PM'd this . Sorry, weight loss buddies! I was originally hoping there would just be someone else who thought thier relationship with food was like an addiction, too.

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Forget the PMs, this is where we always talk about our bodies and theories, mental health, and stuff like that. It's slow today. We're not in anyone's way. Oh, and totally an addiction, the food part I mean. Addictions of all kinds are so complicated...

Don't apologize at all. It was one of my several lifetimes all crammed into one. That one brought me great joy and life lessons, and a wonderful child who came into my life when I was 17 and changed me forever. Unfortunately, there was a lot of secondary misery that came along with her because of the people around her. It's frightening how many times in my mind I have compared her and Danny... Anyway, the breakdown of that almost nine years of life turned me into someone else too. Nothing small ever seems to happen in my life. I still miss her so badly. People usually used the concept of soulmate with a lover, but I know she was mine. And I was lucky enough to have her for almost nine entire years. I have tears even now, but they are no longer tears of grief as they were. Regrets, maybe, uncertanties, for sure. Mostly, I've just gotten to a point in the past six months where I can think and talk about her without all the pain and the wound in my heart gushing. It's okay.

OKAY, let me try to focus and re-read. Uuuh, Okay, I think I get it. I agree that it is unlikely for someone who had never smoked to use that as a tool to cope with a stressor. But every smoker started sometime, and tbey weren't one beforehand. I think there are multiple kinds of ex-smokers. Particularly, those like your dad (and probably Danny if he ever manages to quit and gets really serious about it) where all it would take was one and the habit was 'home' again. Or those like me -- I fully chose to smoke again. It wasn't a craving, and it's never in control of me. I had been over cravings for years by the time I started again. I was actually searching for an outlet for the stress of the situation and I knew it would be somewhat effective in a short-term way. In the past year+, I really haven't wanted to quit. I just kinda don't have much else to do. That sounds stupid, buuut...it's tru. I think that brings our two perspectives together...some people are one way, some are the other, but I think where the ideas meet is that you know that it will or wont be effective for whatever you might pick up back up for, BECAUSE you are an (ex)smoker. It's on the table. Yes?

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Yes, most definately! I'm sorry, didn't express that earlier. I think there are certainly different kinds of people. One of the things I find SO strange personally is the overwhelming NEED-not urge-NEED to HAVE something. It's so abstract and yet it runs my day. As I type, I'm chomping on 3 sticks of gum....my mouth HURTS. But if I take the gum out, I'll go looking for something else. But it's like I just HAVE to have "it" and I can't put my finger on what "it" is. Food makes the need subside a bit, but then I just feel bloated .

Do you still know where Shyann is? Or has all contact been severed? I can't imagine what that must have been like....or still is, for that matter. Now, her mother was your friend? Or a relative? I know you've said but I forgot.

I totally can agree about the soulmates thing, though.

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Her mother was my 'friend' for a year or so. I met her visiting another friend on my 17th birthday. By that next year, Shyann had arrived (I was literally in the other room when she was conceived we always joked), and by the time I realized that her mother had no soul, I had that baby. From the time she was six days old, I'd have her for days and days. I taught her to tie her shoes. I took her to have her ears pierced. I taught her how to take care of herself, how to buy fruit in the grocery store, I took her to church and answered her questions. I trummed her hair. I bought her school supplies, went to meetings with her daycare, took her to doctors appointments after she got sick. I did all the 'mother' stuff. She was nothing but a nuisance to her mother from the time she was little.

Contact was totally severed for years, and then out of the blue, her mother called me just before Thanksgiving 2006, saying that Shyann had been asking for years to talk to me, and I talked to Shyann twice. I was totally unprepared to sort through all of that. I was glad to talk to her -- it soothed my heart some to know she was healthy, but saddened me too to know that her life wasn't what it was going to be. They didn't follow through with their promise to keep her in gymnastics, which was her love. Even when she was so sick, she would just want to be there in the gym, even if she couldn't do anything. We sorted through a LOT of emotional demons through gymnastics (she started trainig to compete again after she was considered in complete remission, right after she turned 8, up to 20 hours a week). I was in the midst of my own several month long depression, and just was not in any shape to deal with that emotional baggage.

I still have their phone number. I've thought about calling. But I knew I couldn't deal most of the time in the past year and a half with opening that can of worms. I've had enough to deal with, and I didn't feel it was safe.

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OMG, so the downside of satellite internet is when the sky opens up with a terrible hail/lighting storm, the internet goes bye bye….along with the post that took you 15min.

So, Steph, to continue- what an incredible ordeal for you and Shyann. And you at 17? I can’t imagine. That poor girl. And the bio father was not involved outside of conception, right? I’m somewhat terrified that something similar (getting to love a child and having them yanked away) will happen if DH ever gets to know his son. See, he gave up parental rights right after the boy was born so that Satan’s (the mother) new mate could adopt the boy. Well, that never happened and after their divorce she started calling. She even had the son call once-totally blindsided us. And because there is no legal way to stay in the childs’ life, I was so worried that she could yank him away. Luckily, DH didn’t bite on what she was “really” offering and she found some other idiot to take care of her.

But I digress to my own problems…
I think you are right in keeping you r distance. Shyann will seek you out one day when she is ready.

OMG, I’m SO weak! Between DH being a prick, the psychotic customer from hell who is screaming at my best plumber for something SHE didn’t do (order a drain for everything else she ordered) and having to go out and TELL one of my other employees to get off the ladder outside (duh, you see that bright stuff? It’s called lighting, and it sure can sting) I caved and had two handfuls of wheat thins and a 100calorie pack of chocolate chex. Now I feel guilty.

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Well, he payed his child support (that never got spent on her even partly anyway) and provided medical insurance, and I helped them keep a smallish relationship, like I'd let her call him anytime she asked and stuff like that. He lived out of town, so it would have been disruptive to have to much of a relationship. To understand why he kept his distance, you'd have to know her mother... When Shyann got sick, he and his fiance were the ones with me at the hospital all night that first night with her in the PICU, me not knowing whether she would be alive the next day. He was kinda foolish when he was young (he's younger than her mother by a few years), but matured and tried to maintain a bit of a relationship with her. I have no idea what's happened since they moved out of state and took her.

It all does haunt me some, to this day. I'm still afraid that guy (the stepfather, evil bastard -- the man that drove me to understand the true meaning of rage; I used to just RAGE internally about him) is going to drive her to slash her wrists and they'll find her bleeding to death in a nice warm bath someday. She's 13 now. The last time I saw her was just before she turned 9, exactly five years ago this August 8th. I have pictures, so many pictures ~ we did so much and I took SO many pictures ~ clothes and all sorts of things, but it's all put away. You know, all the stuff that mothers keep as babies grow up. Her first lost tooth. A lock of her hair from when it started to fall out from the chemo. Her first little tap shoes and leotards, her gymnastics competition bag (that damn bag was like, $60!), several favorite dressses, stuffed animals, and miscellaneous drawings and oh just all sorts of things. I've never really thought it all the way through - what happened. But I know that no matter how it ended up, that child is alive because of me. Literally. So many times I'd have to chase her down to whatever family friends house she had been sent off too and give her meds when she was sick, her mother having never thought about it. They never understood the meds schedule, they'd even SKIP some of her meds sometimes. She's alive to this day because of me, and sheer determination on her part.

She asked me one time 'why does cancer grow in some people?' I told her sometimes it just does. She said she thought God put it there. I said it was probably hard to understand why He would do that since He loved her so much. She was like 'YEAH!!! Why?' I thought for a minute, and said that I thought He meant for her to be a really good person with a very stong heart, and sometimes the only way to create a person like that is for them to go through something really hard, like having cancer. And she absorbed that for a few seconds, and said back to me 'So maybe when I grow up, I can help other people with cancer?' And I whispered 'Yes, baby, like that.' I was floored. She was six. It is an incredibly powerful memory. She was an incredible kid. I hope it was all enough...my greatest fear was always that it wasn't going to be enough and she would turn out like her mother. I told her that once when she was maybe seven. It was prompted by lying or something like that. I needed her to understand that she had to tell me the truth, always always. She couldn't be like them, not in that way.

I can talk about it now without being overwhelmed by pain, but I will talk, and talk, and talk, and TALK about it. Obviously. Sorry. I will go on and on about this topic.

Another thing for the 'someday in therapy' list. I do hope to see her again when she is a little older. I'd know her on the street, like the back of my hand, like my own reflection.

I have decided that the big box with her stuff in it is one of the things that is going to stay here in storage when we move in a few weeks. That's a big step for me. I looked through it four month or so ago. For the first time since, without nuclear meltdown from just the thought.

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Went to WW tonight I lost 2.6 lbs...so their scale is about a lb. heavier than mine I was a little disappointed, usually the first week you lose a ton. I guess I wasnt eat SO bad before though. I'll take it! I got some cute shirts today so thats exciting

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Cassie - I am so proud of you that is awesome!!!!!!! I know we always want to lose more but just remember (I try to tell myself this all the time) that we didn't put it all on in a week it won't come all off in one week either. I am hard on myself and think I should have lost more that 12.6 lbs in 6 weeks but then I think about that is 2.5 bags of sugar and that is heavy so that is a lot of weight. It is hard because we all expect so much out of ourselves. WTG on your weight loss. Once we hit our 10% we will have to share before and after pics.


I am so happy I found a diet pop that I actually like!!! I normally can't stand the taste of any type of artificial sweetner. But I have been getting really tired of water all the time sometimes I crave a pop. I was a huge Pepsi drinker before my diet I would drink a 2 liter a day I tried COKE VANILLA ZERO and I am in love lol. It tastes so good I can hardly tell it is diet. I am limiting myself to one can a day because I know that water is best and that artifcial sweetners are bad for you but it is so nice to have something else to drink once in a while.

Robin - thank you! That was very sweet and encouraging! Yes it will be nice to see before and after when we are at our 10%! Dh loves coke zero, I actually don't like them. Maybe I would like the Vanilla. I do like the sprite, but I very seldom drink anything at all, well except milk, but when I am trying to lose I stay away from the milk and try drink alot of water. I usually drink a "pop" diet drink when I got to my parents. She has lots of good diet kinds!

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Cassie - Your welcome LOL I forgot about the pop/soda LOL

Cassie - that's great. If you continue at this rate, you'll be 10 lbs lighter by the end of July. Yay to new shirts. I'm thinking a/b buying some clothes this weekend.

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I always think about 1 lb of ground beef coming off my thighs. LOL That is a lot of jiggle.

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Christie - I really like your thinking!!!!!!!

Christie- That was a strange analogy

Cassie - yay to 2.6lbs!! Did you buy shirts that are too little? That would be a motivator? You know you will be smaller so why not have a goal?

Steph and Claire- you girls have been digging deep on me! Man.. And who the heck is Rhea? We need this inside info.

I went for a long power walk with Riley and Carter on his bike yesterday. It was HOT. I thought it wasn't too bad until we got halfway through and i was like OMGosh. But we kept going. I got new shoes a week or so ago and I have been wearing them to workout at the gym and they have been fine...Wore them to run two days ago and they were fine but lastnight when I took them off on my left foot...My big toe had a big blister all the way across tthe top and down the side. OOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWEEEEE! The shoes are not too little so I don't get it. They are Adidas which I haven't worn for years? But dang my toe hurts and I am wondering how I will jog at the beach??? Any suggestions. It hurts BAD and looks awful. I have to give myself a pedicure tonight before we leave inthe morning and I am dreading it due to my darn toe. (yes I am whining)

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uggg, so now that the storm clouds have cleared.......we didn't fly or float away or get damaged by the hail. Yay! The best part is that everything got a good soaking so my stupid drunk neighbors won't set my place on fire with fireworks tonight.

Cassie- WTG! At least it's forward progress. And yay to new clothes.

Robin- I'm convinced that there is something addictive in ALL sodas, diet and reg. I never used to drink it. Then I'd snag one from DH...then three, before I knew it I was drinking diet soda everyday. I had to quit cold turkey-LOL ! But I'm glad you found one you like.

Christie- ground beef! LOL, that's a good analogy. mmmmm, makes me think of tacos....

Karen- LOL! I'm Rhea.(Rheanna, actually) See, when I first joined I knew Satan was newly engaged. And I thought that since she had a child with DH and then husb#1 that she would probably want to spawn with her latest prey. I couldn't bear the thought of her knowing I'm not freaky fertile like her so I tried to be covert.....then it all came out. OUCH on your foot! I have no good suggestions other that wear the type of shoes that are the opposite (like loose sandals or flip flops) as much as possible. Wrap in when you are out and about but let it get air as much as possible. That's my recipe for fast healing of foot wounds!

Anyone else dreading the buffet of temptation at the BBQ today? I'm just going to try my best to do major portion control. Exactly how fattening is booze BTW?

Steph- oh steph! That is a major step to leave her things in storage. That "woman" sounds just awful. But you know what? You gave Shyann some awsome advice-now you have to believe it. Those evil people are going to make her stronger, too. I know that's not the nic