This afternoon, our beloved Gizmo has crossed the rainbow bridge

He was a character, that's for sure, and definitely "the Man" in his domain. He was a gentle soul, a pain in the butt, could be a pest, but was a gentleman through and through.

He was just a kitten, back in 2004 when we first fostered him with Kitten Action Team. He'd been with another foster home previously and they had nursed him through feline upper respiratory disease, he was very sick, and the vet had advised euthanasia, but his foster mama had said no, she wanted him to have a chance, and she nursed him through it. He had surgery on his eyes because of it, I don't fully remember why, and had permanent black leakage from this inner eyes, all through his life.

He was a tough kitten though. He took it all. For many years we had to take him for shots for the allergies that plagued him all of his 16 years or so, and then a vet told me that I could give him the 2mg over the counter allergy pills ... not that he enjoyed that experience at all. He'd gag and drip all kinds of gooey mess, for a few minutes, from his nose and mouth, requiring gently wiping it off with tissue to get it away from both so that he could breathe. Once it cleared though, he'd be so relieved and his breathing and "snottiness" would ease again.

He used to snuggle on my chest as a kitten and gently and rhythmically paw my shoulder as he sucked on my neck ...

He had a strut though, that said he was cock of the walk ... "this is MY domain" ... he thought he was a lion king.

It's hard losing furbabies, and sadly, because all of ours are older, it has been happening more and more. Since July of last year, we have said goodbye to Angel (14), Mystery (13) and Boo (15) and now to Gizmo. The only thing I can say is that they all know they were loved.

NOW I can see a difference!

When you are someone - like me - who is losing weight, neither the mirror nor the scale may alter your own conception of yourself. After many years of being a certain "way", the brain kind of still "sees" out body that way, even when outward sources tell us otherwise. Or, in the case of mirrors, we may still see "fat".

I've been happy with my numbers - I've lost over 100lbs now - and am definitely happy with my improved mobility, plus can feel the toning going on in various parts of my body BUT I honestly didn't comprehend the magnitude of my achievement until I came across an old picture the other day, from a few years ago.

This was me in 2014, it was taken at an AVON President's Club luncheon. My hubby had wheeled me in from the car, in a wheelchair.

I didn't go out much, everything was too much of an effort. Walking was very hard, and I spent most of my days in bed, other than when I staggered to the bathroom, the front door (to let the dogs in and out) or the kitchen to sit and wash dishes, or prepare food.

Throughout my home, everything was geared so that I could go from one place to another and be able to hold onto something to keep me steady.

At the grocery store, hubby would go in and get me a ridearound as I couldn't even walk into the store. I am still unsteady on my feet, without support, but now - most times - I use my walker to go into places, unless I'm having a "bad day" arthritis or blood pressure-wise and the  it's the ridearound again.

Last year, at an AVON "do" locally, this pic was taken of me with 2 of our AVON managers. I can see how much I had changed (and how much better I looked) in the face, my upper arms, and across my shoulders.

My transformation is still ongoing.

I log EVERYTHING I eat (and my meds!) on a site called Sparkpeople.com where I also have set it up to track my vitamin and minerals intakes as well. I log all my activity, and now that I am consistently using it, my time on the elliptical bicycle has gone from a 2 minute that felt like 200 struggle, to anywhere from 10-30 minutes comfortably, as I read various books. Oftentimes, my stopping is decided by my heart rate or blood pressure rising too much/too fast or my bum going numb!

I usually do from 30 - 75 minutes a day, depending on any of the above! Eventually I'd like to get to doing an hour at a time and maybe twice daily, but again, that will be determined by my body's reaction to it.

One thing that all of my health issues has taught me, is that I'd better do what it says, when it says, or else.

We still have not figured out what provokes my erratic heart rate to spike or drop periodically (I have A-Fib) nor why my blood pressure will soar into the 200s/110s for no reason, but, in being more aware of how it "feels" when my body does those things, is enabling me to better deal with them, and bring them back under control, when they do.

I am well pleased, though, with how this journey is progressing. I don't expect to get back to my "regular weight" of 140lbs that saw me through from 15 until I hit 30, but 160lbs would be nice and I'll even "settle" for 170-180lbs.

On that note, I'm just going to keep on keeping on.

Have a great day!

How things have changed

I remember long walks with my nan, with her telling me all manner of things about her childhood, from the time I was about 7. I was amazed at all the changes that had happened in her lifetime. She had been born in 1908, so had grown up and seen the suffragettes win the vote for women, Alcock and Brown's first transatlantic flight in 1919, the first and second world wars, the introduction of tv, and the transformation from horse-drawn to motor vehicles ... and this was only up to the 1960s.

Now, aged 63, I find myself in a similar boat of looking back, and seeing all the changes in my own lifetime, good and bad.

The flickering images on black and white tv (2 channels to begin with) that expanded to colour, and 4 channels, and now (courtesy of Android boxes, cable and satellite) hundreds of channels from all over the world. Among those 1960s images, news programs showing Yuri Gagarin's first manned space trip, Valentine Tereschkova, the first woman in space, and then Neil Armstrong, in 1969, taking those first steps on the moon. Amazing. In MY lifetime.

It amazes me that there is now more memory on a smartphone than there was in a huge room full of computers that sent those first astronauts into space.

Around the age of 11, I had a "tranny" (a transistor radio) that I listened to "pop music" on ... and we had a radiogram in the house that played recors at 3 speeds - 33 rpm, 45 rpm and 78 rpm for the "oldies". Only a few years later we had 8 tracks and cassette tapes, soon replaced within a decade, by compact discs, which are now (in themselves) obsolete with the advent of i-tunes and downloadable digital media.

I can remember reel-to-reel projectors that showed home movies, and then the Beta and VHS vcr tapes ... now long gone and replaced by DVDs and (again) downloadable digital media.

I grew up with lots of heroes, real people who had done extraordinary things, not like today where it seems the only people feted are actors, musicians or sports players.

People like Albert Schweitzer, who opened a hospital in Africa which still serves the local area and has one of the lowest child mortality rates for malaria there;  Gladys Aylward who helped stop the process of foot binding on female children, in China, and led 100 to safety when the Japanese invaded in 1940; Dr Martin Luther King Jr and Rosa Parks, who helped change America during the civil rights era; Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereschkova, and the many American astronauts who took part in the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and the Shuttle flights; Edith Cavell a nurse during WW1 who helped smuggle injured British and Allied soldiers to neutral Holland and who was executed by the Germans for it (there was a school near my nan's in Hackney, named for her, and local people were very proud of her) and Violette Szabo, a heroine in WWII, who was executed in Ravensbruck concentration camp; Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Birute Galdikas were also among so many people that I admired, as I was growing up. Jane Goodall is still alive and pursuing her dreams, an amazing lady.

I consider myself blessed to have grown up in the era that I did.