Off Topic Rant (long...needed to vent!)

The SERIOUS Lack of Movie Theatre Etiquette:

We went and saw Despicable Me tonight. It was an absolutely wonderful movie and I can't wait to own it. However my experience was completely ruined because of how RUDE people are these days!

Problem #1- People talking on their cell phones:
OK people... you are at the movies. You are presumably there to watch a movie, not get on your cell phone with your best friend. Everyone SHOULD set their cell phones to vibrate or silent or just completely shut them off when the previews start. It would be the smart thing to do. That way if someone calls you, you do not disturb everyone around you who paid the same money you did to enjoy their night. Tonight this little teenager behind me answered her loudly ringing phone during the movie!!! "Hello? Hi Mom, no I'm at the movies with my friends. Well what do you need? Oh...oh ok. Yeah that's fine. Ok. No I'm in the movie right now. Yes, it's on right now. Ok. Alright, I'll call you when I'm done. I don't know, maybe another half hour? Yeah. Ok. Love you too. Bye." ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME?!?!?!?! And she wasn't even whispering...just talking full volume as if she were sitting at home and didn't have 100 other people trying to hear the movie and not her! How do people just flat out not know how insanely RUDE that is?!?

Problem #2- People who TEXT on their cell phones: Our theatre has stadium seating (as I'm sure most do these days) and we like to sit toward the top. The problem with that is that we can see down the entire theatre and there is constantly little lights popping up in what is supposed to be a sea of black. Not just once, but MULTIPLE times from the same people. Apparently the guy sitting a couple rows down from us got bored during the movie because he actually started playing a game on his cell phone during the movie! WTF?!?! You pay $8.50 for a movie ticket to sit and play a game you can do for free OUTSIDE the theatre? I just cannot FATHOM how people don't "get" that we can ALL see that glow from your phone, and it is very distracting! Even for 1 second, even if you hunch down over your phone, even if you keep it in your purse...if you can see it, every single person sitting behind you can too.

Problem #3- People who talk: It is completely understandable and reasonable that people will talk before the movie starts and even a little during the pre-views. But once the house lights are turned down and the rest of the theatre gets quiet, take that as your queue to SHUT THE HELL UP! No, your story about how your son's hockey game is not important enough to keep talking at full volume about it as the movie is starting. The proper way to abruptly end a conversation is "Oh the movie is starting, I'll tell you after." And during the movie, if you need to comment to your friend about what just happened, WHISPER!!!!! Lean your head over to theirs and point your mouth toward their ear and WHISPER what you need to say. Do not loudly announce that the scene you just saw was stupid or that you don't get it. Trust me, there are clearly a lot of things you don't get if you can't understand the 2 inch voice rule!!!

Problem #3- People who bring their very young children to movies that aren't appropriate for children: Obviously seeing Despicable Me, I expected that children would be there, and they were. And for this particular audience, I have to say the children were much better behaved than all of the teenagers and some of the parents. But I've been to movies that were rated R and were just absolutely not good for kids. Like the movie "Taken." If you don't know, that movie is about a teenage girl being kidnapped while abroad on vacation and being sold into an underground world of drugs and sex. Some guy brought is little daughter to that movie, she had to have been about 7 or 8. And when one of the girls in the movie was dead, strapped to a bed and had semen all over her, and had clearly been on drugs and this little girl asks her dad, without whispering, "Daddy is that girl sleeping? What's that stuff on her face?" that is exactly when he should have realized NOW would be a good time to remove my daughter from this movie that I clearly didn't research before subjecting her too. But no...she sat there w/him through the entire movie. There were so many kids at Get Him To The Greek that I thought we had walked into the wrong theater. And not like 10 year old kids, I'm talking like toddlers and kindergartners. These are all parents of the year...taking their children to watch a movie full of swear words, drugs, alcohol, and sex...a movie glorifying ALL of those. And while I absolutely loved that movie, I felt very uncomfortable sitting next to these kids who were soaking in all the drug scenes and sex scenes. It's just so wrong.

Problem #4 (Last but not least)- Parents who do not REMOVE their screaming/crying children from the theatre!: I cannot tell you how many times a child started screaming or crying during Despicable Me. It completely disrupts EVERYONE and makes it so that none of us can enjoy the movie. Is that the plan? What...if you can't enjoy the movie because your kid is screaming and you might have to leave then NO ONE should enjoy the movie they paid for? Do these parents actually think that their child's ear piercing shrieks don't bother the rest of us? Are they so selfish that they refuse to miss part of the movie to do the right thing and leave with said screaming banshee? I just don't understand this. And has any parent in the HISTORY of time ever actually gotten their very upset child to stop their wailing by saying "shh!"??? Has that really ever happened?!??! I'm thinking NOT! And it is NOT ok to let your kids go running up and down the stairs for their entertainment. Every single person they pass is immediately interrupted by small children going up and down and up and down and up and down those blasted stairs just because you refuse to get off your ass and do something about your kids! So if you can't find someone to watch your kids, then cough up the $5 the daycare at the theatre costs and leave your kid there while you watch your movie. And if you can't afford the $5 then you probably shouldn't be paying for movies and extra large buckets of popcorn in the first place.

It is experiences like this that really ruin going out for me. I remember back in the day when everyone knew the "law" of the movie theatre, and that was to sit down, shut up, and watch the dam movie! Can we PLEASE get back to that?? If not, can I PLEASE have a marshmallow gun to shoot at causers of the above mentioned problems?

A Sign of Things to Come...at least that's what I'm telling myself:

I think God gave me a sign that I'm meant to be thin and healthy :) lol.

Last year's Victoria's Secret swimsuit collection had a bikini that I absolutely fell in love with. I've never had a bikini in my entire life, but I'm bound and determined to be able to wear a bikini someday, and I really don't care about surgery scars! And it had to be THIS bikini because I seriously could not stop thinking about it for over a year. It's just a black halter style bikini top, but the "straps" are more of a wide fabric, not strings, and my favorite feature is that in the middle of the top, where the two "triangles" come together in the middle in between your boobs, it's held together with a metal heart :) It also has an additional strap that goes under the boobs and connects with the other straps in the back . The bottoms are also just basic black bikini bottoms, but they have the fabric being held together with 2 metal hearts, one on each hip bone basically. And for whatever reason, I just LOVE that bikini more than I have ever loved an article of clothing before. But I could never bring myself to buy it because each piece was like $60 and $120 for a bikini that I was not even close to being able to wear just seemed a bit superfluous to me.

However...(I know you all knew this was coming)...
Yesterday I was browsing the VS clearance section online for super good deals to add to my thin boxes (because I still refuse to buy myself clothes in my current size, but hey...a girl's gotta shop!) and I found a couple other bikinis that were on killer sales that I decided would be good motivation. I didn't even bother looking for the black heart bikini because I'd looked when this season's bathing suits came out and it wasn't there, so I figured it was discontinued. Then I was just about to check out and saw one more thing I wanted to look at, and when I added it to my cart a bunch of pictures of things they thought I might also be interested in popped up. And guess what the first item was....YEP! It was my black heart bikini!!!!!! I swear I had looked through every single page of bathing suits and never once saw it. So I called in to place my order and asked the phone rep about 20 times if she's SURE that bikini is in stock because I will be crushed if it's only up by mistake. She said the computer system confirms that it is (although I know all about "computer systems" lol). AND it gets better....the bottoms were on sale for only $37 and the top was on sale for $30! So I absolutely couldn't refuse. BUT WAIT...that's not all! (said in my info-mercial voice)... I just happened to find it on the very last day of their extra swimsuit discount of 20% off the sale price!! So I got both pieces for a total of $56.78. More than half off the original price!

And the spookiest part of my story is that I've been TRYING to find that bikini again on their website today so that I can show you a picture of it...and it's absolutely not there. I even did a search for the item number that is shown on my order confirmation and it's just not anywhere to be found.

So I'm convinced....God wanted me to have this bikini as a sign that good health and a good body are on their way!

Good news though, because of my obsession over this bikini, I apparently saved a photo of it to my computer last year :) So I do have a pic for you! I also posted pics of the other two I got for my thin box. Someday I'll post pictures of me wearing them :) And I promise I won't look even half as good in them as the VS models, but as God as my witness...I will never wear old lady one piece again!

This one is just super cute, I love the "tattoo" design and it's just such a summery yellow.

I HAD to have an itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini...that I'll wear for the first time someday... ;)

And here it is ladies!! My heart bikini!! I don't care if you don't love it...it was meant to be.

My Apologies

Sorry everyone...I didn't mean to neglect my blog for so long. I'm going through some drastic "family issues" that have been keeping my mind elsewhere. I'll go into detail later. Thank you to those of you who reminded me to blog :)

As far as my revision surgery goes...

I didn't fly to WA to have my consultation. Because of said family issues, money got really tight really fast and then job issues came into play. With the uncertainty of my job I did not want to risk taking the time necessary to have an out of state surgery. I did not feel confident that I would still have a job when I would have gotten back. However money was really my biggest deciding factor.

As it turns out, my AZ surgeon called me, literally one week before I was supposed to leave for WA to meet w/that surgeon, and apologized for the "confusion" in translation. She received an official letter from the Johnson & Johnson surgery center in New York (I think...the specifics are foggy) and they (my surgeon and her assistant) will be flying out "for sure" the end of August or very early September for the DS training. Once they get back after a 3 or 4 day training, they will be ready for me.

I decided after MUCH deliberation to give her another chance and wait the few extra months to have her do my surgery rather than spending $3000 more, missing a lot of work and therefore possibly not having a job to come back to, hours of work trying to file for FMLA and temporary disability (which just sounds like a pain in the ass), having to stay in very uncomfortable conditions during recovery, and having to re-do all of my tests to have my surgery in WA. The pros for waiting just far outweighed the cons. And really, in a couple years from now, will these 3 months really make that much of a difference? I mean TRUST ME...they certainly do now! Every single day seems like an eternity, but once it's all said and done they will have been nothing.

SO...that's what's going on with that.

In somewhat related news...I have SOME restriction with my band. That's good...I guess. The bad news of it though is that it's too much and it's not right. Sometimes I can eat whatever and it's fine. But more often then not, after just a bite I start PBing and I get that insane burning in my chest and I've thrown up a few times. But it's over things like scrambled eggs or broccoli or applesauce...yes, I'm not kidding, applesauce! I mean it does it for other things too that I would kind of expect, like bread or pasta or even chicken if I forget to chew it up enough. But this is just crazy. It is extremely uncomfortable and just because I have restriction doesn't mean I'm not hungry. In fact this morning I was absolutely starving (well...you know what I mean) and so I made some Weight Control banana bread oatmeal. First small bite...fine. Second small bite...stuck a little and then went down fine. Third bite...OUCH!! It sat in my chest for like 5 minutes at least. And so I couldn't eat any more, but I was still HUNGRY! 3 tiny bites of oatmeal is not going to last me more than 10 minutes before I'm hungry again.

It's things like this that make me so excited to have this band out of me. I want an honest feeling of being full after a smaller amount of food intake, not just feeling like I'm going to die after a few bites. Oh well...I'm about a month and a half away from my new surgery! Bring it on!