A Most Unreliable Narrator #129 Barcelona
Fat girl surgery, Barcelona, African bracelet scam, and fashion advice
Welcome to A Most Unreliable Narrator, the slice-of-life newsletter of GenXer around town, Lisa Rabey. I talk about anything and everything with a bit of swears. I’m glad you’re here.
Welcome to A Most Unreliable Narrator, the slice of life newsletter of GenXer around town, Lisa Rabey. I talk about anything and everything with a bit of swears. I’m glad you’re here.
Dear Internet,
Greetings from dreary Barcelona! It is Thursday and Viking has kicked us off the boat today and I’m now in the hotel lounge waiting for our room to be ready. J is exploring the neighborhood and tbh, I’m kind of over walking.
I received double good news this week!
First, I was approved for Wecovy, the weight loss drug. Second, I was approved for fat girl surgery with the surgery date of December 27 at 11 a.m. Happy holidays to me!
Since I’ve been approved for the fat girl surgery, I will not be taking the drug. It is also the same drug used to control diabetes and it’s currently on backorder due to high demand. I’m not that shallow about my body to take a life-saving drug away from someone who actually needs it, so I cancelled my script.
(Either Best Kate or Kristin told me the K-dashs advertised how Wecovy was great as a weight loss drug and fucking influencers, they are part of the reason the drug is in high demand. This makes me uneasy and angry. Fuck!)
I’m ready for this surgery.
All of my Discord and Reddit groups talk about having that last meal before surgery and for me, it is last meals. The last two weeks traveling has lead to a lot of gluttony. I mean, all you can eat sushi and unlimited red velvet cake? Let’s be serious here. The buffet on Viking is referred to “The World Cafe” because every day was different type of food along with staples and we ate there for most meals. The day I over ate the sushi, I was in stomach agony for hours from night going into the morning. I did not eat breakfast or lunch the following day and barely made a dent into dinner I was still so full.
From stories I have read, this is what it feels like when you over eat after surgery. It is painful and uncomfortable and I do not want to go through that again. I have learned my lesson.
Fat girl surgery is a tool and not a end all be all. I am acutely aware of what this surgery will mean for eating habits and choices I will make. To be clear, current and past behaviors have not gotten me anywhere I want to be so I’m glad for this change.
My liver shrinking diet starts the day after I come home. The diet is pretty strict: 60g of protein and 40g of carbs. They have sample menus available to get an idea on what to eat but from my understanding in my clinic’s FB group, most people ate meat and cheese and low carb fruit. Protein shakes are a big staple of the diet which is fine. I have shakes at home that I like and I have protein powder to add to water and approved SF Gatorade flavors if I can’t get protein any other way.
When I started modifying my diet before the trip, I was shocked to discover how much of my healthy choices (fruit, high protein yogurts, etc) were heavily carbed. Bananas alone were around 30g of carbs and my beloved SF Jell-O dark chocolate pudding cup was nearly 50g. There is a lot of discussion across all my forums about whatever to track macros, calories, or a little of both. As I mentioned in a previous installment, I was so over using two to three apps on tracking my food and getting stressed out if I ate 13 tortilla chips over 12. But this time, things are different and I really need to come at this with a different mindset.
I am not sure how long I will be out of work. Best Kate took six weeks. Others in my forums took off a few days. It varies widely. If I recall from conversations with Best Kate to take off as much time as I need.
I am grateful the surgery is before 12/31 since that means it’ll cost very little since my medical insurance deductibles have already been met. When I get back into the office, I need to start my STD (short-term disability) paperwork and get that approved. I also need to clear this with my boss since the last two weeks of the year is vacation heavy with majority of the team out (mostly the colleagues who have kids still in school. Bastards plan this time out years in advance. Boss is a bit annoyed about this behavior since the coworkers are assuming first come first served but what if I want to do something? Or someone else? How does that work? My boss likes to say that management of the team is not by committee. I like my boss most days.)
I’m visiting HRH Brendan at the end of January so that’ll be a good introduction to getting back into the groove for eating like a human. I’m assuming I’ll be on soft foods by then. I’m super excited to see him and pet Ottah and the trip is non-refundable so I’m compelled to go.
There is a lot going on in the next few months.
We spent a day at sea and docked in Barcelona on the morning of the 7th. I assumed we wouldn’t be docking in Barcelona until the last day of the cruise so we had no plans other than chores (packing and laundry) on our actual last full day of the cruise. I wanted to tip our room stewards and my favorite bar staff, Algie, so we went into Barcelona to get some cash.
We walked up and down La Rambla, which is one of the primary shopping districts in Barcelona. The Barcelona Erotic Museum and Dick Waffles are on La Ramble as were tons of cannabis and souvenir shops. (I am leaning to getting devil’s lettuce while we’re here but J is not as keen so probably not. I want to sample and do what locals do; is that so wrong?)
One of the more famous open air markets was also open in our strolls. We ate paper-cups of Catalan ham and drank fresh squeezed juice.
J and I are not fancy dinner people and we love street food so we’ll be visiting the open air markets and the street food carts a lot on this trip. It’ll also be a great way to control what we’re eating because eating at “the trough” (as J called World Cafe) was becoming very problematic.
When we entered the open air market, a gentleman tried to entice me with the African Bracelet scam.
We were heading to Trevi Fountain in Rome when a gentleman approached Big Guy (J) and did the whole, “Where in America are you from? Oh, I have a cousin who lives in X.” I had two bracelets slapped on my wrist from this guy who kept saying they were free and I walked away, hoping J would follow. No, he got sucked into it’s not really free but asked for €5 for his “baby.” (He tried selling he made the bracelets himself but we’re not that stupid.) I was standing by the fountain when J waved me over to give the scammer some cash. I was a bit pissed because not only did J fall for this scam but he also has advertised I had cash on me. J says he always appreciates a goods scam but c’mon my dude, let us not be those Americans.
The African bracelet scam is everywhere. We were hit in Florence and instead of the “Where your rom Big Guy?”, we got a lot of “What time is it?”and once you looked at your watch, they would slap a bracelet on your wrist and the scam starts. I figured this out super quick so I told them the time without checking my watch and they walked away. We saw this in Barcelona as well and I was approached yesterday at the open air market. I just ignored them and they went away. One tried to get into a conversation with J in Florence and J got flustered and said, “I know how you guys work!” And the scammer said, “Calm down, big guy!” J got even more pissed telling the scammer he was not going to calm down as we walked away. The guy eventually left us alone as we stomped our way to the Uffizi.
I noticed a lot of trends while we were out and about so far. In Italy, black remains very chic and everyone wears it regardless of their social status. You could tell the Americans were a bit off in their attire but they too tried to fit in. I on the other hand have always favored the Life Savers approach to clothing (everything matches) so I stuck out like a sore thumb. I wore mustard yellow tights one day and got a lot of disapproving looks. Clearly, I was not from there.
Black is just so boring. And overworked. Johnny Cash one sang that he wore black for all the down trodden and the oppressed which works but that’s about the stretch of it.
Leather pants on women were everywhere no matter their body shape. If the fabric is actually leather or not is subjective but I saw it all over Italy (and France and so far in Spain) in variety of dark colors. The pants were matched with everything from hoodies to more formal options. Shoes went from platform sneakers to stilettos.
When I was last in EU, Chucks were every where and not so much anymore.
Big and intricately styled scarves are still a thing.
Smoking is everywhere. I dumped some pics from Aix-en-Provence that included pics of an ashtray on a table because that was the norm in every outdoor restaurant and cafe we came across.
It’s wild.
As a non-smoker for many years, I’ve now become one of those ex-smokers who cough dramatically when walking through a fog of smoke. (Not gonna lie though, I still crave a cigarette after a really good meal. It’s like the perfect ending to a perfect day.)
Women and men wore cross-body bags and the bag was in the front, not the side or back. Any bag that had a strap was a cross-body bag. Fanny packs (or bum packs depending on where you’re at) are now the rage being worn as a cross-body rather than around the waist. Again, the bag itself is in the front.
What blew my mind in Florence, Aix-en-Provence, and especially Rome was how many of the locals spoke English. When I was last in these areas 20 years ago, we got around with my cobbled together French and Italian but now, in center of Rome, not only were signs in half Italian and English, but many signs in shops were mainly in English and not Italian. We had no problems anywhere we went and I felt a bit defeated I could not practice my Italian skills with them. (I tried but yeah, the person I was talking to would swap to English pretty fast.)
Marco, our drive in Rome, talked about how the next generation, which make sense since it was 20 years since I was last here, spoke English since it’s such a dominating language in business and tourism. Get you those Western dollars!
(In Barcelona so far, Spanish (and some Catalan) remains predominantly and with swapping between three languages (English, Italian, and French) for the last week, J is fogging up on Spanish which he does have some competency in. The next few days are going to be very interesting.)
What else? I didn’t really notice anything else that was remarkable enough to remember. People looked like people and they could be anywhere in the Western world.
We’re more or less all the same, right?
Lisa x
(Fuck fascists and Nazis!)
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