We Said Goodbye to Aaron

Monday morning Karen called me at work and told me that her Dad had died.  It wasn't expected or unexpected, but Karen was with him when he died, and that was unexpected.

Sunday I'd brought the priests over to give Aaron the sacrament and that was very special.  Matt Vigil was one of the priests and he was at the funeral.  I mentioned it to him and he said that he'd already thought about it and was glad he'd been able to administer the sacrament for him the last time.

Aaron was a very special father and father-in-law.  At lunch I shared with Shawn, Barry and the twins how shortly after Karen and I were married Aaron told me about how people had asked him if he was worried about me marrying his daughter, and he told me that he'd told them that people could change.  I know that he'd had to convince Norma that things would work out with me marrying her daughter.  I always thought that he was in my corner in the Bond Family.

The thing about LDS Funerals is they always seem to be a joyous/sad event.  Joyous because they are like a family reunion, sad because we are not going to get to meet or talk to Aaron again in this life.  However, Kiki and Chio came from Texas.  Teandra flew in from Indiana.  Chantel took some time off from school, and her "friend" Brian came out.  Iwalani is always here so all my girls are together again and I decided to take off work so I get to spend time with them so that's joyous for me.  Shawn's family all came, without wives, which is sad because I like their spouses, and Kelsey and Josh brought their kids.  Greg and Donna brought their kids, and Rachel brought little Carson "CB" Ethington.  Carson is the cutest kid.  He's small for his age so you don't think he can walk then suddenly he pops up and takes off walking like a pro.  "CB" stands for Charlie Brown because he has this round little tow head, just like Kiora used to have, except he has more hair that Kiora had.  Shaun and Rachel came down and Darby and Eddie brought their kids.  So it's like a family reunion and a lot of fun but it's a sad occasion as well.

Writing this gives me some insights, as the last few funerals have given me insights.  First, I used to suppose that those on the other side were not lonely, but why wouldn't they be?  I suppose Aaron will miss Karen as much as Karen misses him.  Second, we're having a good time with family and reminiscing and I suppose Aaron's having a "family reunion" on the other side as well where Aaron will be having a good time as well meeting people he hasn't seen in a very, very long time, and he could be telling Jaden about his Mom and how special she is.

I believe the phrase is "on Earth as it is in Heaven."

The funeral was a good one.  Greg did a great job on the eulogy.  He got the tone just right especially about Linda.  He said that Aaron meeting and marrying Linda was a miracle, and that she probably saved his life.  I'll always be grateful to Linda for what she did for Aaron, and I'm pretty sure that Karen feels similarly.  I remember the first time Aaron saw Linda.  He was introducing me as a speaker at a single adult activity, and he forgot my name.  He later said that as soon as he saw Linda he forgot everything else, including my name.  Apparently he'd had a dream of a woman and Linda was that dream.

Now we enter a new phase in our family and I'm not sure how it's going to work.  I guess we've always been a blended family, but now I'm beginning to realize it.  Here's a perfect example of what I mean.  Tonight I was talking to Chantel, and said that she was now down to one grandparent, but she didn't say anything.  I asked her how many grandparents that she thought she had and she said two right away.  I then asked Kiora how many she had and she said one right away, meaning that she doesn't really think that Linda is her grandmother but Chantel does.

We're going to treat Linda as a part of the family.  We always had to be sure that we told Linda what was going on with our family if we wanted Aaron and her to show up.  If we invited Aaron he never came.  We never figured that one out.  Anyway we're going to tell Linda (Nan) that she's invited to come over to our family dinners every 2nd and 4th Sunday, just like she and Aaron have always been invited.  Chantel is an adult and she'll invite her grandmother to whatever is going on in her life.  Karen see's Linda more as a friend than a mother, someone she's grateful for what she did for her father.

A Week of Doctors

This week seems to been some kind of a peak and I think it's because of the doctor visits.

First I talked to Dr. Lowe who is a surgeon that was recommended by Dr. Anderson.  I brought Karen with me, which when I do, seems to result in the doctors getting a better idea about what is going on with my health.  The doctor obviously wanted to check out the hernia.  He pokes his finger up around the hernia and then he touches it and says "Does that hurt?"  Why do they do that?  I'm sure they must know that it hurts, perhaps they just want to see how much it hurts.

During the check up the doctor finds out that I've been constipated, and suggests that I should have a colonoscopy.  Then he found out that our family participated in the colon cancer study, and he felt even more that I should have the appointment, before the hernia surgery.  Dr. Lowe got me an appointment with colonoscopy doctor and I got the appointment on Friday.

Into the colonoscopy doctor I go.  I told him about the rectal cancer study, and it seemed like he knew about the study, but didn't sound like it led to much.  He found about the hCG diet and didn't seem very impressed about it, but he didn't know anything about the diet, but he felt that he could advise me against doing the diet.  I guess that OK on a certain level.  Most diets are probably not too good for you, but that doesn't mean that every diet is bad for you.  I guess my default position would be that I would probably advise against most fad diets.  In fact the first time I heard of the hCG diet it sounded crazy to me too.  Take a hormone that's found in pregnant women's pee?  Your kidding right!

The long and short of it is that I found out that I definitely do have a hernia, and now have a date for getting it fixed.  I also have a date for the colonoscopy.  Knowing definitely about the hernia is a relief.  However, the doctor said that the hernia is probably not what is making me feel so run down, and that was part of the reason that he wanted me to have the colonoscopy.

This week Karen sister Shawn and Barry came to visit.  I'd told Barry that I didn't think that I'd be up to playing golf so we didn't do that.  Instead Barry spent most of his vacation being a plumber by helping install a dishwasher, a disposal, a bathtub, and finishing up the tiling of a shower.  I felt kind of bad, but I hadn't know that they needed the help, and with my visiting and helping my Mother I don't have very much time.  There that's my excuse and I'm standing by it.

Finally at the end of the second week I lost about 1.3 pounds, which really sucks except that according to the data I lost around 4 pounds of fat and put on around 2 pounds of muscle.  Now I don't know how much I trust that.  It would seem to be impossible to be putting muscle on but that is what I would like to see, a loss of fat and going up in LBM.  Karen noticed that my stomach just hangs wierdly because it must be mostly skin right now.  She called it a dewlap, and that's pretty much what it looked like.  It was pretty silly looking.  This is going to be the last week, and I'm glad.  I won't have to go back on the diet again.  I'm going to keep the weight off, and hopefully lose some more weight.  Hopefully the Primal Diet will do the trick.  Perhaps I should actually read about what the Primal Diet is since I say that I'm following it now.  That at least sounds a little better.

I'm In Trouble and I Don't Know Why

OK the title is a lie, I do kinda know why, but it's not fair.  The world's not fair.

Karen and I went on the hCG Dieting Phase where we eat ~500 cals a day.  However, I'd been doing the Primal Diet before this phase and realized I could do the Primal diet on the hCG Diet.  What I do is eat my fruit during the day then eat my vegetables and protein at night a couple of hours apart.  It's a very cut down Primal Diet but still the Primal Diet.

Anyway it looks like I've lost about 9 pounds the first week.

I'm starting to try and look at the connection between the water and BF%.  There is obviously a connection between the two because when my BF is low the water percentage is high.  One day this week lost 6 pounds in one day.  When I checked the water it looks like I actually lost 4 pounds of water that day as well.  That makes sense so I'm going to look at it a little closer.

I'm pretty sure that I have a hernia.  My groin area was really hurting on Tuesday so I went into an urgent care facility to get a second opinion.  The doctor didn't impress me very much but when I described my symptoms he said that it sounded like I had a hernia and gave me a referral to one of their doctors, but they gave me an appointment sometime in September, then I called my doctor and he referred me to a surgeon that I was able to get into next week.  After sitting around on Tuesday I was feeling pretty good for the rest of the week, then I went over to Linda Bond's house with the Priest Quorum to help tear out her bathroom, and now I'm not feeling so good.

So that's about all that's happening, we're on the second phase of the diet and I think I've got a hernia.

"Trails to Testimony" by Brad Harris

I've been tracking my weight lass losing the scale that Chantel got me for Christmas.  It's a nice scale and it measures weight and body fat percentage (BF), and water percentage as well.  I've heard that these scales are not especially accurate in the BF measuring area, but they are easy.  Well I've noticed that the BF and H2O% are closely connected.  The higher the  H2O% the lower the BF.  I don't know why this is but every time I have a good BF reading it means that the H2O% will be high as well.  The BF is going down consistently but it jumps around quite a bit.

When I used to follow the Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle book the author of that book said that the best way to determine fat content, besides an underwater weighing, which is obviously a very difficult thing to do, is to do a skin fold test.  Certainly a skin fold test would not be a subject to jumping around as much as the scale.

So last night I found the old spread sheet that I was using to track my BF last year.  (It was pretty easy because it was on Google docs.  I really like Google docs.)  The skin fold test had gone from 15mm to 9mm which is pretty good I think.  Actually I had a bout 2 months worth of measurement and they'd actually gone from 20mm to 15mm.  Also, the measurement around my gut had gone from 45" to 42".  I would have like to see that measure be better but what the heck.

Here's my quandary.  According to the scale I'm at 26% BF, and the skin caliper it is 15.32%.  That's quite a big difference.  I don't have any idea how to decide which one is right.  It's a difference of about 25 lbs.  I guess I'll just go through the next phase of the diet and then think about a way that I might be able to figure out a little better which one is the right one, although I think that I lean towards the caliper test, I'm still going to have to think about it.

I've been tracking my weight lass losing the scale that Chantel got me for Christmas.  It's a nice scale and it measures weight and body fat percentage (BF), and water percentage as well.  I've heard that these scales are not especially accurate in the BF measuring area, but they are easy.  Well I've noticed that the BF and H2O% are closely connected.  The higher the  H2O% the lower the BF.  I don't know why this is but every time I have a good BF reading it means that the H2O% will be high as well.  The BF is going down consistently but it jumps around quite a bit.

When I used to follow the Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle book the author of that book said that the best way to determine fat content, besides an underwater weighing, which is obviously a very difficult thing to do, is to do a skin fold test.  Certainly a skin fold test would not be a subject to jumping around as much as the scale.

So last night I found the old spread sheet that I was using to track my BF last year.  (It was pretty easy because it was on Google docs.  I really like Google docs.)  The skin fold test had gone from 15mm to 9mm which is pretty good I think.  Actually I had a bout 2 months worth of measurement and they'd actually gone from 20mm to 15mm.  Also, the measurement around my gut had gone from 45" to 42".  I would have like to see that measure be better but what the heck.

Here's my quandary.  According to the scale I'm at 26% BF, and the skin caliper it is 15.32%.  That's quite a big difference.  I don't have any idea how to decide which one is right.  It's a difference of about 25 lbs.  I guess I'll just go through the next phase of the diet and then think about a way that I might be able to figure out a little better which one is the right one, although I think that I lean towards the caliper test, I'm still going to have to think about it.

New Phases

Nothing much has happened for the last week.  Today I went over to see my mother and helped Trisha clean the rocks around her path through the grass.  Trish probably didn't need the help, but as she said it's fun to work with other people.  Oh yeah I call Trisha "T" now.  Here's the story.  When I got my new iPhone I slowly started entering the texting world.  Turns out that some people seem to communicate better through texting than any other method.

My daughters Teda, Chantel and Nini started the family on texting.  I'm not sure how it started with Teda and Nini, but I'm pretty sure husbands were involved.  Or boyfriends that became husbands were involved.  Or (especially in Chantel's case) Church callings were involved.  Anyway our Verizion plan did not include texting.  We had a "Friends and Family" plan that allows us to all call each other and Teda and Chantel added texting.  When I got my iPhone I added texting one day and Karen pointed out that that was stupid because I had an unlimited data plan so I could get a free texting app and text for free instead of paying for it.  Anyway through various machinations it turns out that we now all have unlimited texting on our Verizion plan so we're doing much more texting.

OK that was pretty random but what I'm getting at is that I finally started texting my sister Trish who never answers her phone, but I was appalled to see that the first text that I sent her started with "Trash"!!!  What!?  How did I do that?  The 'a' and 'i' keys are not very close together.  Then I realized that the iPhone was helpfully changing "Trish" to "Trash".  Now that's not a nice thing to call your sister at all, and Trish seems to accept that the phone is doing it to me, however the very first time it happened was on Facebook so the entire world got to see that.  How embarrassing.  Well I was texting her today and when I was reading back through the texts it had happened again.  So I decided that's it I'm calling her T from now on, and then I realized that Chantel calls Teda T as well so it must be a cool this to do.

That is a new phase for me, but the real new phase is that Karen and I are going to start another dieting phase of the hGC diet today as well.  The fun thing is that when you start the diet you do two days of what is called "gorge" days where you're supposed to eat a bunch of fatty foods and stuff to get your body ready for the diet, to make sure that you have fat reserves and what not.  Cool huh?  And fun.  That's what we've been doing today.  I decided that I would eat some Atkins junk food so that it would really screw up my system.  It did and it gave me horrendous gas.  I think that I've been put on the list of international criminal list for crimes against humanity for using chemical weapons.  You know very powerful farts.  Karen's going to make me go sleep with the dogs, only we don't got any dogs, so maybe I'll have to go sleep at Grandma and T's house because they do have dogs.  Actually Karen and I started a pre-gorge day yesterday since the way things are turning out we're having one of our gorge days fall on a fast Sunday, and that just doesn't make much sense at all.  We're thinking that the half a day of gorging on Friday then the gorging after fasting on Sunday will count as one day of decent gorging.  I don't think it really matters all that much.