Success!

After a conversation tonight with my beautiful sister Jodi, I realized how much small, seemingly benign interactions with people I looked up to as a child had impacted my life. We were reminiscing about old times, and she had said that when I was about 5 and she was about 7, we would often go on holidays to B.C. from Alberta in a Dodge pickup truck with a topper on the back. Not one of these fancy campers, I'm talking pretty cramped quarters. A piece of plywood would span the wheel wells, and we'd have our foamies and blankets to lay out on, without seatbelts (egads!). Her and I would keep each other company for hours while mom and dad, and often a set of grandparents would be in front in the club cab. There was a space between the topper and the cab, and a white inflatable round tube was placed there to cut down on wind while the back window could be kept open.

Jodi told me that, to get me to do things she would threaten to not be my friend anymore. On the verge of tears, I would do anything so that she would say she was still my friend. And so started 30 some years of wanting everyone to like me. It wasn't until the last year or so I realized people liking me wasn't that important, and that it was hurting me way more than helping me. My long standing guilt for tormenting my sister in her teen years suddenly dissipated once I realized she probably did way more damage to me than I did to her! My fave name for her was 'a green-eyed hog-nosed snake'; pretty rude, but at least I never said she wasn't my friend!!!

On the diet front, I know you've all been waiting to find out. Yes, I'm still going despite a quick glance at the whiskey bottle, and a quick craving for a smoke after I finally found a new roommate. Cooked some rice pasta and sauce, which caused absolutely no problem to speak of, despite having stomach aches for the last 36 hours basically. It's the best I've felt in 5 days. A fellow named Clayton that I met a couple nights ago at Kino Cafe, the Spanish Flamenco restaurant on Cambie www.kinocafe.ca/ , suggested the source of my GI troubles was emotional. Considering the stress of finding a new roommate may soon be over after 3 weeks, he may be right.