& the week ones are in

so the first stats are in. & it's looking good. i'll let my cohorts reveal their own triumphs to the world, but myself, i lost five pounds, which makes me wicked happy. it's five closer to being able to do all those things that i want to do. & it's five pounds closer to me winning the big money!

it's like the biggest loser, except in the real world & without trainers. oh wait, it's like actually losing weight in the real world! & not the MTV show : ) so here's a tracker. i picked a weight that i would be happy with. & this is a new ticker for readers of both my blogs so that your eyes don't get bored.

oddest gym injury, ever

so last night i was working out with miss jenn at our fabulous local Y & after our workout & stretching she tells me that her right eye is bugging her something fierce. she keeps rubbing at it making her eye redder & redder, most likely by scraping the surface of her eyeball on the foreign object.

& even though it seemed kind of wrong, standing in the cardio room next to the water fountain, i offered to take a look to see if i could determine the object of her agitation. she pulled at her eye lids & yup, sure enough, she had an eye lash stuck vertically in her eye. i offered to pull it out, but was upfront with the fact that i was hestitant about the whole thing because i thought maybe she might flinch causing my fingernail to scrape her cornea which wouldn't be good for either one of us. & jenn didn't want her eye gouged out by my fingernail & i didn't want any eyeball goo on my nails, so we scratched that plan, no pun intended.

i told her the eye lash was right there & i was sure she could get it out if she looked in the mirror, so we headed to the bathroom. jenn stood nose to nose with the bathroom mirror, which i thought to be a brave thing because i don't trust any public bathroom anywhere. she saw the renegade eyelash, poked at it, prodded it, & stamped her feet several times after it stayed firmly lodged in place.

once again, it was my turn to look. she turned towards me, looked down, then up, & i couldn't believe what i saw. i told her "you're not going to like this." & she didn't. what i saw what that she had a long eye lash growing out from the underside of her eyelid, pointing straight down. most bizarre thing i've seen in quite a while. i told her i had a tweezers in my purse, just in case she wanted that to be an option. & of course it wasn't, since if she didn't want my long elvira nails near her eye why would she want me near it with a sharp pointed metal object?

jenn continued rubbing her eye & *poof* the eye lash was out of her eye & on her finger tip. as she looked in the mirror jenn noticed there was a rather significant hole in her upper eye lid, which, to be frank, creeped me out just the wee teeniest little bit. she then did some examinations & noticed tiny pinprick holes in both lower lids, & then noticed there was a hole on her upper left eye lid, matching the one that the stray eyelash came out of just moments before.

it then dawned on us, somehow an eyelash fell out of her eyelid, into her eye & then proceeded to shove itself up into her tear duct.

yeah, so weirdest gym injury ever: miss jenn got an eyelash in her tear duct as a result of stretching post elliptical.

welcome to the farm people's blog

hi there, this is beckah, & welcome to our blog. some of you may know me from my blog, beckah's blog, & others may have just stumbled upon us by chance. in either case, pull up a chair & a low-cal snack & enjoy the show.

so far there's four members of this challenge. there's myself, jenn, jen, & jack. each of us is doing this for a different reason, but we're all in it to cheer each other on, lose "the weight", and of course win the big money! here's how it works: starting this past weekend we each weighed in with our starting weight. every friday we'll weigh in, i'll be the keeper of the notes & the lincoln's. each week each person puts five bucks into the pot, lose or gain, it's five bucks to play the game. it started this past weekend, october 20-22, 2006. and will go until friday december 22, 2006. whomever loses the most percentage of weight in that time gets the whole kit n kaboodle. right now the anticipated pot is $180. 4 people times 5 bucks a week times nine weeks= grand prize $180. we may be gaining a fifth in which case the stakes will rise to $225.

the rules? it's simple, lose weight in a healthy way. no dried dragons bones or eating disorders. no purging of any kind. for once we're all trying to do this the "right" way. & yes we realize right for one is not right for all, that's why the only restriction is that it has to be healthy. one person may do atkins while another does weight watchers. we're not here to judge, just support.

as for the blog name, that comes from a tragic conversation i had with my mom last week, actually on the topic of gastric bypass. here's the full on blog i wrote about it, so i won't bore you with those details. the punch line of it is that at the end of all of it, she pled her case for me not pursuing gastric bypass because she stated that "you come from farm people, & farm people are big." i told the jenns about this & jack & everyone i could think of & they all found it quite hilarious that the term farm people*** is synonymous with fat. & as a result we decided what better way than to document our transformation than to use the term supplied to us by my mother.

i'll let each of my team-mates update the blog in their own way with their own quirky stories, as for me, this is my last chance before going for the slicey-dicey. i've started the process of getting approved for gastric bypass early this month. my nutritionist thinks i'm the perfect canidate & sees great success in my future. while i'm going ahead full steam with planning for the surgery, which could be as early as january, i decided i couldn't just sit & stuff my face in the mean time. this is basically my last chance to do it on my own. if i don't make it then i'll be getting the full on gastric bypass early next year.

& like i told miss jenn & miss jen, i have basically no shame, as you can see from my other blog. so here's my starting stats:
weight: 276 lbs
height: 5' 4 1/2"
shape: jiggly hour-glass
goal: right now anything under 200lbs

***btw, we don't mean any offense to people who do actually live on a farm & are literally farm people.