How Do You Eat An Elephant?

Note:  Part of the dream I am telling is graphic. Therefore, I have changed the color of the text to white. In order to read the text, you will have to click and highlight that paragraph. I am doing this to keep anyone from reading something scary.


I am quite the dreamer, but last night's dream was really something. It took today's light to see what my brain was trying to tell me.

I was at a picnic given by my mother (who died 20 years ago). She asked me to check on the food and there was a lady cooking a bunch of picnic foods, none of which were good for me : hotdogs, hamburgers, etc.

She also had a roped off place with hay strewn on the ground and there were two elephants (see note 1.)  there. A medium sized one and a young elephant. Maybe a year old.

Highlight to read the paragraph below:

Both were tied down with a chain and a stake in the ground.

I asked the cook what was for dinner and she (sorry for this!) got out a chainsaw and cut off part of the baby elephants front foot. Like a four inch thick slice below the ankle. Horrible! The baby elephant screamed and I screamed!

She started cooking it. It was repulsive. My thought was, "It's liver!"

The next flash was of me bandaging the baby elephant and a vet was telling me that it would grow back and the elephant would be fine. The foot then regrew and I was able to rescue the baby elephant.

I woke up very glad it had been a dream.


Waking realizations:

1. There is a parable about problems and how to deal with them: How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time. Huge problems are dealt with in small steps. 
2. I have been thinking a lot about my daughter's (age 10) relationship with food and her only seeing me as a fat person. What will her body/mind relationship be as she grows?
3. My mother was always fat, but when she got cancer, the chemo took her from a size 20 to a size eight and while she was in remission for three years she told me, "If I had known back then that I would feel this good, I would have lost the weight a long time ago."
4. Fatty Liver Disease has been on my mind, since it is an exclusion of the surgery. If you have fatty liver, they close you up and do not give you the sleeve. I had talked with my doctor and my husband both about it last night, so it was on my mind.