I have not been able to wear this dress since 2002. Yes, 22 years ago. It was around that time that I became a sandwich generation, mom. I had my own family to take care of and I also started taking care of older family members who needed help too. Almost all of my self care time disappeared almost overnight.
I lived on caffeine and fast food lunches. I mastered eating at red lights in between appointments for everyone but me. Slipping in grocery shopping just before school got out for Eric and just beating his bus home. In 2009 I gave up artificial sweeteners and substituted Mexican Coke instead. The pounds slowly creeped on. Favorite dresses and other clothing items were put into the back of my closet.
At one end I had school activities and fundraisers for both kids. I had activities for both kids at 2 different schools. I needed to be there for both of them. Eric had more medical issues and appointments. More therapy to be done at home. At the other end I had appointments to take elderly family members across town at the Veterans Administration Hospital and Doctors offices. They needed help with shopping and errands. They liked fast food lunches during the week because they missed going out to lunch. Yes, that added weight on too.
That slowly everything wound down to a different life after we lost the elderly relatives and Eric went to spend time with relatives who crossed over before him. The year 2019 brought Covid 19 to the whole world. The year 2020 brought 5 different surgeries for me. Then I spent time trying to recover my body and health.
A doctor recommended the weight loss program A Pound of Cure. Me being the skeptic bought the book and read it cover to cover before I made any commitments. Between myself and various family members we had failed at too many diets to count. So before I even went to the doctor who wrote the book and ran the program I gave it a test drive to see if it really was possible and really worked. After losing 30 pounds, I decided that the program worked and more importantly I could live with it. So I made an appointment with the doctor. I have continued to lose weight and inches. Which brings me to last week. I decided to try on some clothes to see if I had finally lost enough weight to fit into some of my favorites. Three dresses fit and were washed and added back to my wardrobe. A lot more clothes were regulated to a pile for the consignment shop either because they were too big, yeah me, or had polyester or acrylic in them. Somewhere between the time I bought them and the present day I became very sensitive to polyester and acrylic and can no longer wear them.
Here is a picture from today in one of my new to my wardrobe rotation dresses yes it is another driveway picture. It is an L.L.Bean regular size large. My daughter thought I had gotten rid of it a long time ago. I am so glad that I kept it. By the way it was in the mid 50’s when we took the picture and I was freezing cold. I am not a winter person.
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