To quote Flock of Seagulls....

I RAN. That's commonplace stuff for most, but I ran. Uphill. In extreme heat. A little over a week after I'd had my gall bladder extracted through this massive hole in my abdomen (that's going to leave a lovely scar.) I ran.
The details - 5 of us were in Tallahassee to watch Georgia Tech play (and beat) Florida State. If you're looking for nice, crisp football weather, don't look for it in Tallahassee. The highs everyday we were there were in the mid 90's. Humidity was officially 1 zillion percent. Because of the aforementioned hole in my abdomen still healing I was unable to get into the hotel pool. Hot weather really doesn't bother me...I'm just not used to it in October. Anyway, once at the stadium I found that all the cracks I've heard calling Doak Campbell Stadium an erector set are founded in truth. We had to walk about 9 miles of ramps to get to the ozone layer where our seats were located. My niece was walking well ahead of the adults. My sister - her mommy - reminds her to stay close to us. I say that I'll go up and walk with her. I found myself making a game out of this all of a sudden...and RUNNING up these ramps. "Uncle Tim's chasing meeeeeeeeee!!" were sweet words to hear. I was tired, but not dead. I was sweating, but not leaving puddles everywhere I went. My legs felt "exercised"...not on fire. I've said it a thousand times - it's the little, everyday things that show me how much my life has changed more than it is huge, heavens opening and angels singing moments. These days, on my worst days, I'm still having fun.

The Gift Horse Needs A Breath Mint....

'cause I'm looking him square in the mouth!
How is it possible that, after the journey of this past year, I still go through the motions some days? How is it possible that I'm not in a jubilant mood every single minute of every single day? I was George Bailey standing on that bridge and I screamed out to the Almighty asking for a second chance at life..and I've gotten it. Dear God, how many times have I used that tired cliche/image since I started this blog? But since I have gone down this road again, let's peel back some layers on old George.
His problem wasn't just frustration. His problem was an inability to see the big picture. He saw friends that had gone on to a life of luxury that made his own life seem void of accomplishment and success. He didn't see that by saving his little brother from that cold-ass creek he'd also saved the lives of "every man on that ship." I too am quite short-sighted in measuring where my life has taken me, what I have and what I've accomplished. I only see things started and not finished. Dreams born and dreams dying on the vine. Like many, I've jumped on board with these networking sites (Facebook etc...) and have caught up with some of my favorite people in the world. Folks whose roots are buried in the same ground as mine. Rather than relishing the opportunity to catch up with them, I often find that I'm constantly measuring my life against theirs. One high school/boy scout friend is a real-life "Maverick" flying F-14's in Japan. When someone says "I'm flying F-14's in Japan..what are you doing these days?" how do you answer?? "Uh, I cut the grass then shook up a martini and went to sleep in a patio chair." I need to learn to measure my life against, well, my life and not others'.
A year after my surgery and the woman I love the most continues to be my rock. The other night over dinner, I told her that I'm having a really hard time ridding myself of the regret over the many YEARS that I've just pissed away. She got rather adamant..."you didn't piss those years away! Those years brought you to THIS point and made you the person you are. You've taken a little bit away from every one of those different experiences and they've made you a very interesting person. You've got a second chance....be thankful for it and decide what you want to do with it." She reminds me that all of the stories and songs and plays that I want to write would NOT be possible had I not done a bit of wandering. All of those people and places I've encountered over the years have given me a treasure chest of characters and situations. She further reminded me that a lot of the folks I measure myself against might be really, really bored with where they are and can only wish they had been given the blank page I've been handed. Like the old cliche about the kids playing ball in the street. If you hit a ball and it rolls down the sewer drain then it's a "do-over." I've been given a "do-over."
So why am I ignoring the proverbial gift-horse and most days telling him to go play in his own yard? I think it's my old arch-enemy FEAR. So I've been given a "do-over." What if I screw it up? Rocky to Adrian on that beach in Rocky III - "and if I lose?" (you're now laughing because I quoted a Rocky movie...can't help it. I am, after all, a guy.) No matter what stars have aligned for me in the past I was always able to rest on one excuse for not chasing them down - my weight. That excuse is now gone and if we don't move forward there's no one to blame but me. THAT'S SCARY! The first step is going to be the hardest one to take.

"So Clarence where are you now?
The script's been changed somehow.
It feels like the whole world,
is standing on that bridge."
(ok, I admit it..I wrote that. A song called "Clarence." )

I know she's perfect...

I know she's perfect because the night before we got married God threw a rainbow across the sky after a hellish spring storm. Except we didn't get married in the spring. We got married in February. Symbolism much?
I know she's perfect because, when we were on our honeymoon in Charleston, Jimmy Buffett just happened to be doing a concert at the North Charleston Coliseum. Buffett don't just to show up to play for just anybody's honeymoon...he knew I'd done well.
I know she's perfect because she gets tears in her eyes watching animals play - whether it's dolphins off Tybee Island or a dog in the backyard. There's a rare soul living behind that pretty face.
I know she's perfect because she knows EXACTLY how many drops of vermouth to put in my martini (and, given a choice she knows I'd rather have a jalapeno stuffed olive than just a plain one.)
I know she's perfect because when it's college football season she walks in the door after work on Monday and says "Who's the Thursday night game this week????"
I know she's perfect because she does funky dances in the kitchen whenever I play Mother's Finest or Rush in the living room.
I know she's perfect because if she could be anywhere in the world she'd be sitting on a beach somewhere with 1 bucket of boiled shrimp and 1 bucket of cold Coronas (Ok, so the Coronas are for me..she'd have something with a lot of fruit and an umbrella.)
I know she's perfect because, when we had a chance to view my Mother at the funeral home she whispered to her "Don't worry about anything Erfy...I'm always going to take good care of Tim."

...and she does.

Mama, baseball and dogs........

So I happen to see a guy wearing a t-shirt with a picture of Skip Caray on it and on the front it says "Hello Again Everybody...." On the back it simply says "So Long Everybody" I thought "I've GOT to have one of those t-shirts..." (To somehow tie this back into the point of this blog - my weight loss surgery - I'll say that it's awfully nice to be able to find and wear cool t-shirts again..I love me some t-shirts, but it's hard to find a good one in size giant.) I did a Google search on "Skip Caray t-shirt." I still haven't found the t-shirt but I did find this article from one of my favorite sportswriters Jack Wilkinson. He wrote for the Journal/Constitution for 20-something years and has written four books on Georgia Tech sports (which makes him a good guy in Tim's world.) He mentions having the t-shirt I'm looking for (and still haven't found) and, as usual, tells a good story about his relationship with Skip and how much he misses him.

http://likethedew.com/2009/04/30/visiting-skip-hello-again-everybody/

The first thing I noticed about the article was the name of the website - "Like The Dew." It'll take anyone raised in these parts back to a time when one of the Atlanta papers (can't remember which...the Journal?) "covered Dixie like the dew..." So that was a good memory and prompted to me to bookmark this site for future reading. But what really caught my eye was the fact that Skip was buried with the ashes of several of his dogs. I'll put ego and macho aside momentarily to tell you that my eyes immediately filled with tears. Back in the spring two of my favorite souls on this planet were buried together when we had Mother's funeral. The day of her funeral we slipped the canister holding Buzz's ashes in her casket with her. It was a 'full-circle' moment of the umpteenth degree.
Buzz was a BIG, black Labrador Retriever. I'll probably always have dogs. I've seldom found one that I didn't love and that didn't love me. But no matter how much I love another one, there was only one Buzz. He was the Babe Ruth of dogs. He had the overwhelming desire to love and be loved that all Labs have. But there was a different edge to him - it was his world and we just lived in it...and he knew it! No conversation slipped by without his notice. He'd sit in a room full of people and turn his head back and forth listening to everything everyone said. He loved us all but it was obvious that he worshipped Mother. The intuitive sixth sense that all dogs seem to have let him know that she was the matriarch of the family. If he was in a mood to be hard-headed about something, Mama was the only one who could put the fear of God in him. A slam of her cane on the hardwood floors in her house coupled with a sharp "BUZZ!! WHAT ARE YOU UP TO??" could send this 130 pound bear of a dog into a fetal position.
In 2003, I turned 40 one week and Buzz died the next week. Honest to God, people sent sympathy cards. Everyone knew that he wasn't just a dog he was family. Mother was already in the early stages of Alzheimer's so she was initially spared the sadness the rest of us felt. But one Sunday afternoon not long after he died we took her to lunch. At some point she heard me mention Maggie (the yellow lab who had the unenviable position of replacing Buzz.) When she asked who Maggie was, I said "that's the dog that lives with Rhonda and me." She said firmly "BUZZ IS YOUR DOG." Uh-oh.... I went ahead and told her the truth. This woman who no longer had sense of time nor place suddenly had her eyes fill with tears while she gritted her teeth. She whispered "you should've told me." Looking back it was probably the last time I had the honor being scolded by my mother. The only blessing to her condition was that a moment later she had forgotten.
Mama loved to listen to Skip call a game. The fact that he was so good at what he did probably got him a free pass with her. Generally speaking, she had little tolerance for folks that were prone to make off-color jokes, speak rudely or were "bad to drink." But, because he could make her passion come alive on a radio or television he got that free pass. She liked him and she liked his father. They were - in her words - "baseball people." So when I read that Skip had been buried with some of his favorite dogs those aforementioned tears showed up. Mama would be the proud that she and Skip had something in common. The commonalities probably end there...Mama was never rude and never bad to drink.
Now I've got to get back to hunting down that t-shirt......

365 days

I started to begin this post by alluding to the fact that it's been one year since my life changed. But it would be better stated to say that it's been one year since my life BEGAN to change. Every single day there's something new that blows my mind as to how different the day to day stuff has become for me.
I park wherever I want to wherever I go. I used to have to strategically plan parking at any public lot. There had to be room enough for me to get out of my truck (meaning a car couldn't be parked on the driver's side) and I had to be close enough to the door so that my heart wouldn't explode while walking into wherever I was going.
This sounds silly - but when walking from the parking deck to my office used to be five or 10 minutes of sheer panic. "Folks are watching the fat guy walking and sweating" (even if in February.) "Folks are walking up behind the fat guy and walking around him because he's too slow...we're winners and he's a loser!!" I would stop and act like I was reading the headlines on the newspaper at the machine posted by the stairs. I was actually getting up enough breath to take another twenty or thirty steps. I now make a mad dash from truck to desk because I can. I park as far as away as possible and dash. If I hear anyone walking behind me I walk faster, certain that whoever is putting down the footsteps I'm hearing is one of the goobers that used to pass me and make me feel like crap about myself. (No, I'm not THAT stupid...I know the folks that passed me were just going about their day and weren't giving me a second thought...that's just how my mind worked in those days.)
I've actually been the recipient of some direct flirtations. One night at the ballpark a young lady asked me for my phone number. I figure she'd just turned her back on some vows and escaped from the convent and hadn't seen a man in years. I might've lost a substantial amount of weight but Brad Pitt I ain't. Anyway, I assured this poor soul that I was very happily married. I told my bride the whole story and she was torn between being wanting to strangle the guilty party or thank her for boosting my ego. I told her she had no worries...there was a time in my life when I thought drunk girls were pretty cool. Now I just think they're a pain in the butt.
I now walk into stores and try on things at random. Even things I would never wear, I try them on. Do you know how good it felt to walk through a big & tall store a few weeks ago and have a hard time finding stuff because everything was too big?
Along with the good has been some bad. Mother's gone. Aunt Jean's gone. But I really do believe that the fact that my life is once again my own makes the hurts a bit easier to manage. I can't imagine what it would've been like to have still been miserable and hating myself while I watched the woman that raised me slip away. I really do think it's something I wouldn't have recovered from. Now I can live the life she gave me and can make her proud while doing it. I think she'd be most pleased that I've spent more time this summer at baseball games than I have in the last ten years combined (literally.) Going to baseball games and getting paid for it???? She'd be most pleased.

"I came, I saw, I kicked it's........."

In the continuing evolution of the new universe in which I live, I actually made good on a promise to try something new and exciting. Understand, in my past life (The "Old Tim" is the phrase I use frequently) "new and exciting" meant blue-cheese stuffed olives in my martinis as opposed to jalapeno-stuffed olives. So to actually ride the chairlift thingy I mentioned in my last blog was quite a step up. But I did it. I wouldn't say I conquered my fear of heights, but I did conquer my fear of stepping up and doing something a bit out of my comfort zone. For that I'm proud.
Truth be told, the chairlift wasn't all that scary. Once you make it across the street, actually going up the mountain you're not really that high off the ground. The mountain is going vertical at basically the same angle at which you're going vertical. There were times that I actually lifted up my feet for fear they'd drag the tops of bushes and small trees going up the mountain. So anyway, that was no problem. My bride and I shared a moment of victory when we got back to street level. She was proud of me and I live for moments when I can make her proud...there's been way too few of them since we got married in 1997. This accomplishment now safely in my resume I then got cocky...
There's this place there called "Ober Gatlinburg." It's at the top of the biggest mountain overlooking Gatlinburg. I mean it's up there...so up there that there was (in July) a bit of snow on the very top that hadn't melted. They have this huge skylift thing that goes to the top. The cars hold over a hundred people...so you can see it's the graduate course in cable-vehicle college. After attempting it, it's clear that I should stick to the remedial courses. I feared for my life. I stared at the floor and said bad words. I made deals with God. Those who are reading this and have had the (dis)pleasure of flying with me know what I'm talking about. But the point is, I tried it. The door is now open...though I must admit that further explorations will involve strange new worlds much closer to the ground.
Here's a video some brave soul (who didn't stare at the floor and said bad words) took of the skylift ride to Ober Gatlinburg. Notice that when it goes over the huge towers that accelerate everyone screams. That's because it not only accelerates you but swings the damn thing back and forth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGXgs4PPIKo

"Big Medicine" and a year out from surgery...

Wow! For the first time since my surgery, I saw a new episode of Big Medicine last night. If you haven't seen it it's a documentary type show about a father-son surgical team that perform gastric bypasses for morbidly obese patients in Houston, Texas. I used to watch it with much fear and trepidation. It showed way too clearly how many obstacles one must overcome even to get approved for that surgery. So watching it beforehand wasn't fun.
I really never believed that I was going to have gastric bypass surgery until I was lying on a table and felt anesthesia being pumped into my mouth and nostrils. I remember waking up in the recovery room (seemingly seconds later) and still wondering if it'd really happened. Honest to God, I woke up with this fear that "I'm waking up too soon...something's happened and they weren't able to do it..." The first nurse I saw that came by and called me "sleepyhead" got her arm grabbed. "What's wrong?" she looked concerned...I must've had a deer in headlights look in my eyes. I mumbled something about "Done?" and she laughed. "Oh yes,,,you're done. You did great." Then I wanted to know if they'd had to do it open or were they able to do it laproscopically. Again, all I could get to come out of my mouth was "Open?" She had no clue what I was asking until she realized I was feeling of my belly for staples. Thankfully, there were none and I knew that I was done and it'd been as minimally invasive as Dr. Richard had promised. I'd lost a substantial amount of weight on my own before surgery to make laproscopic possible. But there was still the possibility of my liver being enlarged and me being closed back up and having to wait. I had a thousand scenarios playing out in my head...none of which came true.
So can you tell that watching that show last night put me in a most retrospective mood about this past year? I really can't believe it's been a year. I've lost 184 pounds in the last year, making my grand total lost right at 264 pounds. Life, in general, has improved in so many ways they're too numerous to mention. We lost Aunt Jean but the family grew with the birth of Henry Alexander ("Great Uncle Tim" has a nice ring to it....) The biggest hurt of all, of course, is that we lost Mother. But I've gotten my life back and she'd be pleased.
Now, if they had a surgery that could remove one's propensity to live in fear and make excuses I'd be all set. With excess weight no longer holding me back from chasing the things I've always wanted to accomplish, I'm forced to face the fact that I'm my own biggest enemy now. Dr Richard told me this was just a tool and "the rest" was up to me. I wonder if he ever gets tired of being right?
I'm on vacation next week. Our annual journey to my in-law's place in "The Redneck Poconos" (a.k.a. Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge.) They've got this skylift thingy that looks kind of like a ski lift. It'll take you up the side of the mountain there in Gatlinburg. My fear of heights is well-documented. But with God as my witness I'm riding that skylift next week. I no longer exceed any weight limits they have on the thing. Years past, I was unable to physically fit into the little lift chair. Now those excuses are gone. Picture Lt. Dan (in "Forrest Gump")hanging off that crow's nest, yelling at The Almighty. That's gonna be me next week. "YOU CALL THIS A MOUNTAIN??!!!!" I have no idea where this overwhelming urge to ride that thing comes from or exactly what it signifies. Maybe I'm knocking down fear one phobia at a time. I'll let you know how it turns out. In the meantime, keep an eye on the news...I might be so juiced from riding that lift that I run out into those Tennessee woods and wrestle a bear (put your money on the bear..still....)