Ok, so I'm not here much but I have another blog...

I decided to start another blog called Bariatric Girl so if you find me here, you'll find me better over there.

Bariatric Girl

I'm still leaving this up for the mean time because it has a lot of info. I'll be back when I have something not related to my life at Bariatric Girl.
hugs, Yvonne

Mean People Suck....

I find so often these days that after suffering from morbid obesity for so many years, there are not too many things that really cause me to sweat the small stuff.
Before pictures
After pictures
After dwelling in the negativity for so many years, I avoid it like the plague. Stepping back a bit from the discussion boards that were just for fun was a necessity because it hurts my heart.


Mean people suck....


It seems that even on the boards where we are supposed to participate....offering support and unconditional love...well, that's not always the case. It continues to amaze me what people will say behind the anonymity of a user name. It boggles the mind even further when you eventually meet them face to face and they are perfectly gracious, polite people...in person. Let them back to the keyboard and it's got me screaming "STOP THE INSANITY".

I try to spend time "paying it forward" on the obesityhelp.com board. I think it is such an important part of the journey of weight loss surgery success. Obesity Help has come up with a brilliant idea. When someone steps over the line, their thread or post is moved to "Rants and Raves". WOO HOO!! Even youtube has a rating system on the comments and you don't have to look at the negatively rated unless you want to. The psychological harm to new members looking for support and information is so detrimental when people are just plain mean. I dream of the day when this is unacceptable behaviour...either through some miracle of resetting our general mindset or maybe we could do an online equivalent to what the comedian Gallagher suggested several years ago. He said every driver should be issued a rubber dart gun with a "stupid" flag attached to each dart. That way when someone comes down the road with about 100 flags on their car...well you get it.

I hope that visual brought a smile to your face because it always made me laugh!

A Moment of Joy....

The picture is of Brenda and her daughter Natalie and their dog Luke. Luke had been missing since 10pm on Tuesday. Last night I received an email from Vicki telling me that Luke was missing and Brenda needed help. Vicki is a foster mom for Small Paws Rescue and she fostered my dog Sundance before he came into my life. I was ready to go last night but I wasn’t called into service until this morning. I had never met Brenda before but it didn’t matter because I knew she was in a panic. When I arrived Brenda was in tears and exhausted. Her daughter could barely move because she was so sore from walking the neighborhood looking for Luke. They had left flyers at every house for blocks and had plastered them everywhere they could. Something told me that we would find Luke today. Thanks to all their hard work a woman that had seen the flyer found out another lady had found a dog. She called Brenda’s house and told her not to get her hopes up but we couldn’t help it. Brenda and her daughter asked her questions. Was it a Bichon? Was he dirty? Was he neutered? YES, YES, YES! Brenda got the call from her husband Robert and daughter Natalie. IT’S LUKE!!!!!!!!!!!! I called Vicki immediately and everyone was screaming. Today was a good day… and I got to photograph a moment of joy.

The Beginning

OK, this is the very beginning. I hope this blog can serve as a place to combine all the places I have appeared or contributed on the web because sometimes it even confuses me. There have been so many and even I am beginning to forget the places I have been and need to go back to. I will try to start by posting links and adding to my profile.