He's flying the coop.....

I woke up this morning with mixed feelings. It's just a couple of days until my oldest boy, Mitchell, sets off for parts unknown. He's off to Europe for three months with his best friend Tom (oh, okay, I do know.. its Europe..doh!) . I keep telling myself.. 'It's only a few months', then I go..."Oh, it's three whole months!!" I feel sad, happy, excited, and a little trepidation all mixed into one. MOTH (Man of the House) and I have raised our children to be independent and when he first told me that he and Tom (his best friend) were looking at travelling I was thrilled. Really was. But now the time is near suddenly I want to hold him close and never let him go. We were sitting on the couch last night talking over last minute plans and he was assuring me now he has his new wireless notebook and roaming SIM he can contact us from anywhere or everywhere. I said back to him that he better keep in contact or I would hunt him down like a mongrel dog. Then we laughed. But seriously, this is really hard. I love my son more than anything and while I am so proud of the fact he gave up a year at UNI to work  his butt off  full-time to save enough to buy that ticket and have enough to spend,  sometimes I just wish sometimes our children never had to grow up. Does that make me sound like a control freak? Or worse, a clingy mother. Probably. I don't know, and nor do I care. What I do know is this: we as parents, gradually have to let go. In the past year or so he's not been around much anyway. He pops in, hugs and kisses all round, sleeps, eats and nicks off again. But at least I know he's around.. somewhere. Just as it should be. But my boy has grown up and is now doing his own thing. And I remember a time when MOTH and I would look at one another and go, "Can't wait till these kids are gone! Oh, happy days!"  I'm here to (finally) say it's nothing like that. They take a little piece of your heart with them.

On to band news. I lost 600 grams this week. I think maybe I need to change my weigh-in date because I've found if I weigh in on a Tuesday, for some reason this is when I show the biggest loss. Maybe my body is in a rhythm all of its own. Who knows. Does anyone remember an earlier post of mine where I was food shopping and lamenting the fact before I was banded that I might not be able to eat those deli olives again. Well, I'm here to tell you that they go down just fine! For some reason my tastes have totally changed. Before I loved sweet stuff. Would eat it until I was fit to bust but now.. I seem to like savory better. Weird. I had a terrible eating day yesterday - Turkish break, olives, feta cheese (yeah, you're right... I was trying to emulate that lovely lunch sans wine lol) and dip. I was keeping up with MOTH in the eating stakes and that did me. No dinner for me as I was too full by then. Silly of me, but I find I have these kind of days. One day I'm so strong and I can refuse myself anything and everything, the next I pick and pick and then go, 'You're mad woman! You're your own worst enemy." And yet..... I don't feel guilty. I just shrug and say to myself I will do better tomorrow, which I generally am. So maybe it all evens out.

I have a question. You all know by now that I'm off to Tasmania on the 15th of September. Well, I have a fill on the the 9th - 6 days before. It will be number four for me. Should I bring it forward in case I have a lot of restriction? My own thinking is because my Doc really creeps up on these fills of mine, he's unlikely to give me much anyway and it probably wont make a massive difference AND I have 6 days to see if it is working well. If worst comes to worse I can make an emergency appt. and get some out. But I think it's unlikely I would need to. Just let me know what you think. I would appreciate it :)

Before I go, I just quickly wanted to mention to Jen (Jen is gonna lose it) that your new page looks beautiful but for some reason it won't let me leave a comment on it. I don't know if others are having trouble too, or if its just me.

Seeya
Cara xx