hooty munchables

as most of you know, i've been dieting for the past 8 months. i've lost 65 lbs so far and i'm down 5 pants sizes. these are good things and i'm very proud of how hard i've worked to make the shrinkage happen.

however, there are some very non-glamorous aspects of weight loss that i hadn't anticipated when i got started.

first of all, people talk about my body all the time now. whether it's family members, friends, or people i barely even know, they all seem to feel free to discuss the size of my bits. generally it's flattering and nice things are said, but sometimes it ruins my mental image of myself pre-diet where i thought i carried my weight well and still looked presentable.

people haven't talked about my body this much since i was twenty-one and working in night clubs on the weekends. back then it was mostly comments like, "girl, yo booty's so fine i wanna bounce up outta here and git witchoo in my truck outside." or, "oh my gah, your knockers are so huge! are they real? can i touch them? i've been thinking about getting mine done, but my fiance thinks i'll leave him for another guy if he buys boobs for me." (this last one most often happened in the bathroom at a club whilst reapplying lipstick and straightening out our cleavage after doing 8 shots of goldschlager off the ice block.

one of the things i've discovered at this stage of the weight loss game is that my skin is not bouncing back. it's getting a little bit of a crepe papery consistency in certain places. think streamers for skin along certain body parts. i cut myself while shaving all the time now. what once was all padded, rounded tree trunks is now angular, knobby knees just asking to be sliced and diced as i drag that razor around my legs.

my poor butt has shrunk to the point that it's almost flat. there's some nice gluteus maximus action happening in there, but the curves are gone. as a result, the skin doesn't fit properly anymore, causing there to be folds at times when i sit. i can't sit comfortably in a hard chair for any length of time and i've resorted to sitting on an exercise ball instead of a desk chair when i'm at my computer. the worst part is when a chunk of my formerly round butt folds over on itself as i'm sitting my down onto something, causing me to gasp, wince and reach down to adjust things, just like an old dude who's accidentally sat on a testicle. very unglamorous.

my plump, lush breasticles are shriveling up at an alarming rate. when i take off my bra to release my after dinner boobs, there's a drop of several inches and then a sway that keeps going like ripples on the water. most of my bras are baggy now and sometimes, when i look down my shirt to admire what was once a luscious garden of ladydom, i see instead wrinkly meat bags hanging in my shirt, looking very sad and used up.

in the past when i lost weight, i managed to keep the hoots looking fresh and roundish, though slightly long in the tooth due to the great weight they maintained. i got thin, but still had two nice, full D cups perched upon my chest. in hindsight, i had nothing to do with that, it was just a lovely side effect of being busty and youthful.

apparently, 37 no longer qualifies as youthful and at the rate i'm going, i won't qualify as busty anymore by the time christmas rolls around.

too often now i discover what i've termed "yoga boob" on my chest. it's when you're wearing a sports bra and doing something active, like leaning forward and reaching out your arms. when you next stand upright, the girls are up, out the top of your bra, but not in a pretty boobie sort of way, but there they are, folded, twisted and stuck, looking defective.

i'm afraid i might find myself wadding up rags or clumps of dismantled stuffed animal fluff to fill out the gaping space in my non-sporty bras. at this point, i could fit a ham and cheese sandwich into each cup, so maybe i could utilize that possibility and make my bras into mobile snack storage units. maybe some sliced apples on one side and some low-fat yogurt in a ziploc baggy in the other.

we'll be at walmart for an overdue shopping trip and brooke will complain that she's hungry. i've stopped carrying my massive suitcase sized purses lately in favor of my cute little hand bags, so i no longer have a lunch box quantity of food and beverages hanging from my arm.

instead, i'll have the food hanging on my chest. i'll bring out a couple slices of cheese, warm and slightly melty, but probably still edible. i'll dig a bit deeper into the neckline of my shirt and find that roll of smarties that somehow found its way under my left lady lump. most of the candy is still in the wrapper and the ones that got away just look like extra nipples now.

on the right side i'll find some crackers that are partially intact and a couple pieces of pepperoni stuck together and oozing grease.

i'll plunk the mess onto a linty tissue i find in my dinky purse and hand this gourmet meal to my starving child. "there ya go. munchables, straight from my heart."

the pink nightie

sometimes it's said of a kid that "they're in a hurry to grow up." i think i was kind of like that, except i wanted to skip the journey and zing straight to adulthood. i wanted to zoom from 7 to 20 in no time flat. i longed to hang out with the adults and listen to the things they said. i wanted to hear the gossip and absorb all the information that i thought i was old enough to understand.

when i was about twelve, i started being allowed to shop around the mall with a trustworthy friend while one of our parents wandered around the mall apart from us. i thought that was about the coolest thing ever. i had a little bit of money because i always babysat, pet sat, raked yards, cleaned the house, washed the car. anything to get some moolah into my pink, pleather wallet.

i liked to buy my own clothes when i was with my friends because then i didn't have to listen to my parents' opinions about them. of course i thought i was a mature woman with my own income, so surely i was old enough to pick out my own attire. however, my parents, being conservative, had other ideas. they didn't mind if i bought my own stuff, but they didn't hesitate to shuttle me right back to the mall to return my purchases if they didn't fall in line with the standards that had been set for me.

it didn't take me long to learn how to get things that were acceptable to both my parents and myself so as to avoid the embarrassment of having to return things. it was awful to be asked by the associate doing the return, "reason you're returning this today?" and having to answer with my eyes averted, "my dad said it looked slutty."

there was one time though, where i decided that i didn't care what they thought. i was going to buy any old thing i pleased that was within my budget. i loved silky, lacy things, and underwear in particular. i was browsing through a department store's lingerie department. i meandered out of the bras and through the girdle region. before i knew it, i found myself in the land of sexy teddies. the things surrounding me were so beautiful and elegant. they were pleasing to the eyes and the fingertips and i longed to own one of my very own. i wanted to put it on and wear it under my clothes. i wasn't entirely sure what the intended purpose of such clothing items was, but i knew i had to have one.

i couldn't afford most of the lacy pretties, but i found a sale rack with some lovely little things. there was one pale pink, fake silk number with a scalloped lace neckline and skinny little straps. i held it there in the j.c. penny's and debated with myself. what would i ever do with this? did i really want to spend all the money i had allotted for clothes on something that i could never show to anyone? i put it back and started to walk away, but it called out to me in a gentle, whispery voice. it promised that i'd feel beautiful when i wore it. it assured me that no child had ever owned an item of such elegance.

i hesitated for only a moment longer before i snatched it up, hugged it to myself and rushed to the counter to pay. an elderly saleswoman waited at the desk to ring up the next customer. i tried to control the trembling in my hands as i set it down. she raised an eyebrow in clear disapproval. her look plainly stated that in her book, i wasn't even old enough to wear makeup, let alone buy a sexy nightie that would no doubt be put to shameful and unladylike uses.

in response to her disdain, i determined to be as womanly as possible. i puffed out my chest to show off my new breasts. i raised an eyebrow of my own and looked her right in the eye, just daring her to question my morals or maturity. i knew of no laws forbidding twelve year olds to purchase underwear and i was ready to state that for all to hear if she dared to so much as cluck her tongue in criticism.

when the transaction was complete, i walked sedately away, shoulders back, head held high, not letting on that my heart was pounding in terror and excitement. my friend was giggling and elbowing me in the ribs, but i held onto my mature facade until we were out of sight of the store.

we immediately raced into a bathroom where i threw away the bag and receipt and stuffed the beautiful silk treasure into the bottom of my purse. i couldn't risk getting spotted by my parent while carrying a bag that i wasn't willing to explain.

when i got home with my negligee, i held it up and twirled around in front of my mirror. i imagined wearing it to sleep or to church under my conservative dress. but somehow, i could never get up the nerve to put it on. i held it and petted it, i even ripped off the tags, but after each time that i admired it, i tucked it away in the bottom of my toy box full of stuffed animals to prevent it from being discovered.

after a few months of keeping the nightie in hiding, my guilt was becoming unbearable. i had figured out the reason that women bought such things and i knew i wasn't ready for sex. it no longer pleased me to look at it and now i sort of understood that the snap-crotch wasn't there to make going to the bathroom easier. i couldn't even think of it without feeling a twist in my gut, knowing that i shouldn't own it. i thought about throwing it away, but couldn't bear the idea of letting something so pretty go in the garbage. i had no friends who were old enough or slutty enough to be wearing such a thing for a boy or man, so i couldn't give it to any of them.

that left me with only one option that i could think of. i had to give it to my mom. i knew that if she'd caught me with it, she would immediately think that i was trashier than i was. at that point, i hadn't even kissed a boy, so i didn't want her to think that i was that kind of girl.

mother's day was approaching, so i decided to give it to my mom as a gift. i would act like it was a recent purchase and always intended for her.

i called her into my room that afternoon and handed her a plastic bag containing the slinky garment. i told her that i didn't give it to her in front of the rest of the family because i didn't want to embarrass her. i tried to play it cool. woman to woman. as if it was the most natural thing in the world for a child to give her mother a piece of sexy lingerie for mother's day.

she looked at the nightie. she looked at me. she narrowed her eyes, but i maintained what i perceived to be my air of mature innocence.

i suspect it was badly wrinkled from being crammed into my toy box for months and maybe even a little dirty or frayed from being petted by my childish fingers so many times.

i told this story to my mom the other day, hoping to hear her end of it. she didn't really remember at first, but then she ran up to her room and dug around in the bottom drawer of her dresser. she pulled an old plastic bag out and slipped the very negligee in question out of the bag and into my hand.

my eyes widened. i couldn't believe it still existed. i petted the cheap silk for a moment and then dropped it like i'd been shocked. i looked at her with a horrified expression and asked if she'd ever worn it for its intended purpose. she laughed and assured me that it had never been worn and she gave it back to me.

that night, i took it home. i told my husband of 14 years the story and pulled the little nightie out of my purse...

let's just say that even after 25 years, this little number is still hot. 

super aspie

i've been thinking about this aspergers thing again. actually, i've been thinking about it for the past 6 years, but as brooke gets older, my perspective changes.

i've been trying to decide if i consider her to be "special needs." i've never had a real need to qualify her in that kind of way because she's never been in day care or school. nothing more organized than sunday school or gymnastics class for the most part.

to me, she seems completely "normal" and functional much of the time. when we're home, which we are the vast majority of the time, she's happy and content and generally busy doing things by herself during her free time. we've developed routines to help her deal with the things in life that she hates or doesn't understand and we don't see many freakouts anymore.

when we went on the cruise a couple weeks ago, i was filling out registration forms ahead of time for the carnival camp. it was to allow brooke to do activities on the ship with some other kids and to give chris and i the chance to do something without her. there was a separate form to fill out if your child is "special needs." i hesitated and then didn't fill it out. she'd done so well at camp in ny the previous month that i thought maybe we wouldn't need to tell anyone on the ship that there's anything different about her. i thought maybe she could just be treated like every other kid and be fine rather than being treated with special concern or condescension.

i was wrong. i ended up having to fill out the form after all once an incident in the child care room popped up, resulting in her screaming and crying and insisting that she was never stepping foot back in that stupid place again. a couple days later she was reluctantly willing to try again in order to see a kids only magic show. as she walked sullenly away from me at the entrance, i quietly spoke to the woman in charge of check-in and said, "brooke is.... slightly autistic... and..." but before i could go any further, she said, "the whole staff is aware of brooke and we know ALL about her and her needs."

i swallowed the giant lump in my throat and all the words that wanted to spew out. i resisted the urge to slap her or thank her or snatch brooke right back out of that room. i clenched my teeth and i walked away. i sat on a bench a few feet away where i could see brooke through the window for the whole hour she was in there because she wasn't even willing to go in unless i promised to stay right in that spot. while i sat there, i held back tears. thinking or saying the word "autism" in reference to her makes my heart ache and my eyes leak. i rebel against it.

i want so much for her to like life. i want her to have all the chances to experience everything good and fun. i want her to be treated like all the other kids, but when she is, the result is all too often a fiasco. i want her to feel like she fits in.

but much of the time, she doesn't.

recently i've had some conversations with family members about her having aspergers. i think it's hard to understand. i don't for a moment feel like brooke is broken or defective or disabled. i don't feel like she needs to be "cured" if such a thing was even possible. she is just wired differently in a world where most people are wired more similarly.

i've been trying to think of a way to describe it to someone who hasn't done the research and doesn't want the long answer. i haven't found anything i'm fully satisfied with, but the best thing i can compare it to is being left handed. in a world dominated by righties, there are challenges for those rare lefties. they aren't sick or defective or in need of correction, but they need special scissors and they hold their papers differently. sometimes they'll bang elbows with their rightie neighbors, but if a little bit of care and planning is taken, the differences can be comfortably accommodated without a lot of undo attention.

that's what i try to do in brooke's life. i try to do that bit of planning and accommodating in advance so that things can flow smoothly. i'm trying to teach her how to explain herself and her differences to people in a clear and concise way so that they can understand her unique needs and still respect her as a whole, interesting, articulate little human. i'm also teaching her that just because someone is older than her, it doesn't mean they're right. i think it's really important for her to believe in herself and her own knowledge and opinions because there are so many ignorant, judgmental, rude people, adults included, in the world. she needs to trust that she's okay even if someone tells her she's not.

it seems to be working so far. she considers aspergers to be her own personal superpower. she embraces her differences and feels sorry for those of us who don't see the world from her fabulously interesting perspective. i hope she'll always feel that way about herself, no matter what she encounters in her life. 

facebook updates that never came to be

last week, my little sister sarah got married on a beach in florida. she was born when i was ten and i've always thought of her as my little baby/toy/practice child/protege. seeing her get married was happy and exciting for me.

the day after the wedding, 26 of us from the wedding group of family and friends all piled onto a cruise ship and headed to key west, florida and cozumel, mexico for four days.

since i don't have internet on my phone and we were in the ocean or in a foreign country for several days, i had no way of getting online. i kept thinking of things that would have made good status updates, but i couldn't post them, so i decided to do a blog post where i share my great vacation through the updates that never came to be.

if we've got to do an 11 hr drive, this is the way to go about it. and why would anyone want the non-drowsy version of dramamine during a car ride? bring on the sleepies!

the hotel and beach are beautiful and will be perfect for the wedding tonight!

you know you've arrived at the beach when you've got a butt full of rocks and sand. let vacation begin!

how did i get selected to be in charge of the flowers for the wedding? so not my thing, but with my mom and sister-in-law's help, we managed to come up with some pretty things. those boutonnieres were tricky little wastards.

sarah made a beautiful bride and rich is a lucky man.

hmm, do you think she's a paid lady of the night or just some chick doing the walk of shame at the bus stop?

boarding the ship! this is all very exciting, even if brooke is starting to come apart at the seams a bit with all the crowds and chaos and line-standing.

this room is soo tiny and windowless for the three of us. anyone else feeling claustrophobic yet?

omg, we just had to wait for 45 min through the safety briefing at our muster station. no air conditioning, hundreds of people packed into one tiny, airless space, excessively loud speaker overhead, and a child who was letting her autism show.

thank God for this tiny, windowless room where we can take brooke. it's like a cocoon where she can burrow down in and get herself restarted as often as she gets overloaded. the towel animals help too.

cruises must be really great if you're traveling with no kids and lots of money.

"i thought cruises were supposed to be fun," noah, age 8.

"i had 5 ice creams, cheesecake and lucky charms for breakfast. and orange soda and chocolate milk. can i have a pizza now?" sure, kid, go get yourself a pizza. maybe this cruise is looking up for the kids after all.

we just dropped the kids off at a nightclub on the ship for a kids only dance. they say they're just going for the free soda. looks like we finally get some adult time!

while trying to decide where to go on our free evening, we were spying on brooke through the club window. we saw her walk to the door and saw a child care employee let her right out into the hallway alone, beside the casino that was filled with hundreds of adults, many of whom were drunk. holy crap, i think i'm going to puke.

after a few choice words with the kids staff, we let brooke go back in after using the restroom. but then we sat directly outside the door and didn't move until it was time to retrieve her. so much for a parents only night of fun.

if you accidentally use a family member's toothbrush, are you obligated to tell them about it or can you just let it be your own little secret?

is that really the ocean we're in or did we enter neverland and we're sailing in a sea of blue gatorade?

no matter how huge this ship seems, it's very insignificant compared to the ocean. God makes some massive stuff.

we got off the boat in cozumel and we're in a back alley with some mexican guys in hopes that they'll give us a great deal on snorkeling. fingers crossed that we don't get sold into human slavery.

no slavery, just fun. other than the multiple stings by jellyfish, my first time snorkeling was really fantastic!

how many times can i apply sunblock in one day before my skin starts boycotting it?

you know how sometimes you'll see a toilet brush hanging from the bottom of a gas station bathroom sink? well i just saw a sink that had salad tongs hanging from the bottom instead. i wish i'd had my camera handy!

you know you're home from vacation when you've got three suitcases filled with wet, nasty laundry, you're cleaning up cat puke off the rug and all you can think about is how happy you are that you're going to be able to use your own toilet again.

and with that, my friends, i bid you farewell. the laundry is calling my name and i've got to get back to the salad diet and say goodbye to the potatoes and cheese.

little known fact

i always like learning new things about people. i also like holding some things about myself back in reserve to whip out and surprise people at unexpected times. i have one friend, jana, who i've known for about 13 years and we've spent countless hours talking, laughing,  and crying together. she thinks she knows me so well, but then out comes something random about my life that makes her shake her head and wonder if she even knows me at all. like the fact that my brother has called me choc for most of my life. and no, it has nothing to do with chocolate.

i'd love to hear something about you. something that maybe is a secret or maybe isn't secretive at all. perhaps it's just something that you haven't thought of in a long time. or something that goes way back to your childhood and has nothing to do with you now, but you can still claim it as your own.

i'll go first.

in my childhood i spent a lot of time swimming. my grandparents had a nice pool and i was always up for any opportunity to go for a dip (not of the skinny variety). i'd taken some swimming lessons over the years and felt that i'd mastered the craft of the different strokes and the end of pool flip, along with some basic dives.

when i was about thirteen, i signed up for synchronized swimming classes to give myself a new water challenge and hopefully become like the awesome ladies in the olympics.



unfortunately, no other people wanted to participate in the class. i went every week for three months and received private lessons, which sounds nice and personal, but actually was a little bit awkward. my instructor never got in the water, so i was only synchronized with myself and my own inadequate rhythm. i learned a few cool pool tricks, like i can float on the top of the water with almost my entire body sticking out, as if i were lying on something just below the surface. and i can flail my legs about out of the water in some fun patterns that look almost fancy, and not so much like a 4 year old does when they first learn to go underwater with their face.

but i never learned the synchronicity part.

how about you? tell me something about yourself. something interesting or obscure.

i'm waiting...

behold the power of balls

while out walking with my honey last night, we stumbled into an amusing conversation. it was about power, or more accurately, the feeling of being powerful.

the first time i remember ever feeling that i was powerful was when i was about seven years old. i was out running around the neighborhood with my posse of elementary hooligans. i'm not sure what game we were playing, but one of the boys caught me from behind. he had his arms wrapped tightly around me, pinning my arms to my sides as i struggled to find a way to free myself. no amount of squirming could break me loose, so i started kicking. one grand kick straight up and backwards bought me instant freedom. the boy released me and i scampered away, giggling and squealing, but not entirely sure why he'd let me go.

when i got a few paces away, i looked back and saw him laying on his back, moaning and holding his crotch. i stopped running and cautiously walked back toward him to see what was wrong or if he was just trying to trick me. several of the other boys in the group ran over and stood around him in a circle with looks of horror and sympathy on their faces. they placed gentle cupping hands of protection over their own crotches and then turned to look at me. they looked afraid.

i wasn't entirely sure what had happened with my kick, but suddenly i had the begrudging respect of all the boys on my block and there was murmured talk of balls. i didn't see any balls around, but whatever they were talking about, i knew i'd found a source of power in myself. an unexpected chink in the armor of the more physically power males of the species.

and with that knowledge, i skipped off, arm and arm with my best girl friend, singing a silly ditty and pondering those mysterious balls.

what about you? when do you feel powerful?

i posed that same question to my husband and he said, jokingly, that it was when he knocked me up. i'm sensing a testicular theme here... is there power in the world that isn't linked to balls?!

i'm not invisible

i got married in my early twenties. i was younger than a lot of girls, but i'd dated a lot of different guys and i felt confident that i knew what i was looking for and that i'd found it when i met chris.

before i was married, i felt like a confident, self-sufficient woman of the world who could handle anything that came my way. i had a lot to say and an opinion about most subjects, which i felt free to share any time with anyone.

my husband is very good at holding his tongue and over time, i learned to keep my mouth shut until i'd filtered my thoughts through my brain and decided they were worth spilling out onto the people around me. i think this is a good quality most of the time.

i learned how to delay any real decisions until such time as i had discussed them with chris. he's never been demanding about how i spent time or money, but it seemed reasonable to share those decisions rather than just rashly do whatever i felt like without thought to the other half of my partnership.

then i became a mommy. it was what i'd always wanted and i was very happy to have my little girl. my life revolved around brooke and her needs.

over the years, it seems like more and more of my self has vanished as i've dedicated myself to caring for my family. i ate what they liked, i slept when i needed to sleep so that i could best accommodate the lives of my husband and kid. i go where they want to go and watch what they like to watch.

as a larger woman, i've dressed in a way that would blend in to the background and i didn't do anything to draw attention to myself because i didn't want anyone to look at me and think the fat girl was getting out of hand. if i was invisible, no one would notice all the ways i was lacking.

when i think back to the time when i felt most like i knew who i was and was in control of my own life, i picture a big mouthed, hootchie-dressed, smoking girl, with super-high heels. i see long acrylic nails, red lipstick and sleeping til noon.

i like that girl, but those things don't fit me anymore. there has to be a way to rediscover or rebuild myself into a current version that will work for my life and not leaving me feeling like i only exist for the services i perform for others. i want a sense of self-satisfaction that isn't about anyone else, but isn't totally selfish either.

this year has been a time for me to start figuring that out. i still don't know what direction it's going to take, but i'm putting some time and effort into exploring my options. i've made myself more of a priority than i have in many years and it feels good.

maybe eventually i'll figure it out. i don't think the new me looks like either of those girls up above. i think she looks more like this. and she's not invisible.