Canasta at Schnauzerland
The canasta party was definitely a mixed bag. It ended up being just the four of us: S, her adult daughter J, sbjb and me. We all go back 25 years or more, so it was the kind of familiarity that had us bantering insults, timing jokes for maximum spit takes and considerable off-key singing, much of it mine. (I'm a baritone.)
S stayed awake through it all, which was better than some previous evenings, although her concentration wasn't that hot, and she demonstrated an annoying tendency to mumble things, so if she was more than five feet away, we kept asking, "What?!" I ended up being her partner, and somehow we managed to skunk Team Taurus. (No, I did *NOT* stack the deck.)
Okay, look---I'm not being catty here: S looked like hell. She's five years older than I am, but right now, she looks like Kat (who's 12 years older that she is and dying of lung cancer)---she's shrunken and pale and her arms are covered with bruises. It's alarming. She said to me in as many words that she's addicted to her sleeping pills and whatever else she can coax out of her doctor. She's down to 116 pounds; I'd gotten her a matching shirt and pants in a tropical print for cheap, supposedly a 12/14 in White Stag: They fit her like baggy pajamas. She was talking about all the stuff she can fit into now, but doesn't seem to comprehend that low weight doesn't automatically mean healthy and being able to wear something doesn't necessarily mean it's flattering.
At the end of the evening, S got a wild hair and pulled out a tape meaure and some index cards. We weighed and measured each other and wrote down the results, and S said that in a year we'd see them to see who was healthiest. (I'm going to take it as a good sign that she thinks she'll still be here in a year.) Didn't ask her to quantify her definition of "healthy".
Yes, I'm going to share my info---y'all know I'm not shy about shit like this. S has the same kind of balance scale I do, the kind with big notched blocks for 50-pound increments and a smaller sliding block to count of the individual pounds. On her scale, after four pieces of pizza and 2 liters of diet cola, I was 317 (exactly 201 pounds more than S).
My measurements were:
Bust -- 54"
Underbust -- 47"
Waist -- 51"
Hips -- 60"
That's a good few inches less than the last time I measured---although that's at least two years and 30 pounds ago. Go, me!
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9:45 AM, ETA:
Mind you, this morning on MY scale, I was 310---of course, that was less full and stark naked. (Yes, I also have a balance scale, in fact, it originally belonged to S's mom---I "inherited" it after we cleaned her place out after she died.) I don't usually weigh in shoes, but S said she'd broken a glass recently in her bathroom, so I wasn't taking any chances.
I wonder how little I'd have to weigh for all my numbers to be in the "40s"? It would make buying bras SO much easier!
S stayed awake through it all, which was better than some previous evenings, although her concentration wasn't that hot, and she demonstrated an annoying tendency to mumble things, so if she was more than five feet away, we kept asking, "What?!" I ended up being her partner, and somehow we managed to skunk Team Taurus. (No, I did *NOT* stack the deck.)
Okay, look---I'm not being catty here: S looked like hell. She's five years older than I am, but right now, she looks like Kat (who's 12 years older that she is and dying of lung cancer)---she's shrunken and pale and her arms are covered with bruises. It's alarming. She said to me in as many words that she's addicted to her sleeping pills and whatever else she can coax out of her doctor. She's down to 116 pounds; I'd gotten her a matching shirt and pants in a tropical print for cheap, supposedly a 12/14 in White Stag: They fit her like baggy pajamas. She was talking about all the stuff she can fit into now, but doesn't seem to comprehend that low weight doesn't automatically mean healthy and being able to wear something doesn't necessarily mean it's flattering.
At the end of the evening, S got a wild hair and pulled out a tape meaure and some index cards. We weighed and measured each other and wrote down the results, and S said that in a year we'd see them to see who was healthiest. (I'm going to take it as a good sign that she thinks she'll still be here in a year.) Didn't ask her to quantify her definition of "healthy".
Yes, I'm going to share my info---y'all know I'm not shy about shit like this. S has the same kind of balance scale I do, the kind with big notched blocks for 50-pound increments and a smaller sliding block to count of the individual pounds. On her scale, after four pieces of pizza and 2 liters of diet cola, I was 317 (exactly 201 pounds more than S).
My measurements were:
Bust -- 54"
Underbust -- 47"
Waist -- 51"
Hips -- 60"
That's a good few inches less than the last time I measured---although that's at least two years and 30 pounds ago. Go, me!
==================================
9:45 AM, ETA:
Mind you, this morning on MY scale, I was 310---of course, that was less full and stark naked. (Yes, I also have a balance scale, in fact, it originally belonged to S's mom---I "inherited" it after we cleaned her place out after she died.) I don't usually weigh in shoes, but S said she'd broken a glass recently in her bathroom, so I wasn't taking any chances.
I wonder how little I'd have to weigh for all my numbers to be in the "40s"? It would make buying bras SO much easier!