Archive for April, 2006 Page 2 of 3

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He sleeps with the fishes.

Published
by
untitled
on April 17, 2006
in Family and untitled
. 9 Comments

So I walk into our darkened bedroom the other night, only to see untitledson sprawled out like a crime scene chalk outline in the middle of our messy bed. As per usual, he had snuck from his bedroom into ours about five minutes after I finished reading his last book.

At our house, this little tango occurs almost every night. I tuck him in, he listens for my footsteps down the stairs, and then he bolts for his rightful place in the master bedroom. He does not journey alone. He always brings the Three Wisemen (most often a Hot Wheels car, a book and his Care Bear).

I bought him Wish Bear a few weeks back, and it came with a ghastly Care Bears cartoon DVD. The heroes, of course, are this ragtag team of mercenary Care Bears that drive around in a cloud and take down villians (in this case, a tall, thin, soulless wretch named No Heart). To save you the viewing, I’ll tell you this — regardless of their overstuffed girth and penchant for melodrama, Team Care Bear manages to lay the smackdown on No Heart, returning happiness and light to the world. I mean, who knew that Ann Coulter got her start in cartoons?

Now, I fully expect that on any given night, I could find anything from a dump truck to dental floss in our bed. Nothing much surprises me anymore. But last night set me back a bit, for untitledson had brought with him his horsehead on a stick (a gift he got from grandma). Imagine looking into your dark bedroom and seeing your child laying in your bed, nuzzled up to a horse head.

Upon seeing this disturbing sight, I turned to untitledhusband and said, “Now how exactly are we going to get that thing away from him without waking him up?” He turned to me and gave a reply, one that reminded me just why I married him in the first place. “Let’s make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

Lifestyles of the fat and sweaty.

Published
by
untitled
on April 14, 2006
in Rants and untitled
. 8 Comments

Don’t touch me. Don’t speak to me. Don’t even walk within my four-foot perimeter. I just spent the entire day hurtling down the road in a 100-degree hotbox with a co-worker. No a/c. No open windows. No mercy. And let’s just say I’m a tad bit testy.

As I sat there, with droplets of sweat plummeting down the peaks and valleys of my backfat, the seatbelt was working overtime, doing its damndest to strangle me. It was a treacherous bitch, this seatbelt, reeling in and locking whenever I gave it a little slack. At one point, I made the mistake of leaning back in my seat, allowing the belt to completely retract into its housing.

So there I was, stuck in this ridiculous recline position, unable to lift my head from the headrest without crushing my larnyx. Did my co-worker see the struggle ensuing in the passenger seat? I determined that no, he did not. For if he caught even so much as a glimpse of me, I’m quite confident he would’ve pulled the car over, put a pencil in my mouth and called 911.

Now, any normal person would’ve undone the seat belt, pulled it out and simply repositioned it. But no, not me. I was all self-conscious, worried that maybe I had stretched the seat belt to its limits. I silently wondered if the seatbelt did this to all who occupied the passenger seat. I concluded that no, it didn’t. This here was just one more example of how the engineers of the world plot and plan to make us fat fucks suffer.

Weight Watchers Weigh-In: seven pounds gone, a gazillion to go.

Published
by
untitled
on April 12, 2006
in untitled
. 17 Comments

At my Weight Watchers weigh-in on Monday, I lost three more pounds. Before you mess yourself with excitement, I must tell you about last week, where I actually GAINED a pound. I still don’t know how that happened. What a mindfuck. Any week I don’t write about my weight loss, you can assume it was minimal, zero or I gained.

Now, let me just say that I’ve eaten so many bananas, apples and grapes in the last few weeks, I am capable of pulling my knees back to my ears and firing mixed fruit out my ass like a Salad Shooter. I don’t care what my Weight Watchers manual says. I really don’t think its healthy to be eating so much natural food. My body isn’t used to such substances — it runs better on the high-octane fuel, like Snickers and chocolate chip cookies. Thy oils and thy sugar, they give me comfort.

Here are a few things I have learned in the past few weeks:

Forget the overpriced Weight Watchers snack bars — get the Kashi Go Lean bars instead. They have more vitamins, fiber and protein, plus they are twice the size. They’ve got this sinful little sheet of milk chocolate on the bottom, too. They kind of taste like a dried-out Special K bar (holla, all my church ladies out there). Oh, some are two points, others are three. They have gotten me through many a mid-afternoon jones.

WOW chips are only one point a serving, and they don’t really give you the shits. Although, if they did, maybe they would be zero points. And that sounds like a fair trade to me. I must take a moment to thank the food chemist out there who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for the recipe for Olestra. Goddamn, you have no idea the contribution you have made to humankind. Now how about getting off your ass and mixing me up some Olestra Peanut Butter Cups, bitch?

Good girls and boys CAN eat cheeseburgers. Buy the Laura’s organic ground beef patties (they’re like 92% or 95% lean), and use one Kraft 2% cheddar slice, plus pickles, ketchup and mustard. Put it on the Sara Lee Deliteful bread (one point for two slices). There you go - a six-point cheeseburger. I could seriously eat one of these for every meal, breakfast included. I refrain, only because untitledhusband would see me for the junkie that I am. If you’re really feeling rebellious, have yourself some Ore-Ida waffle fries (three points per serving).

If any of my Weight Watchers freeks out there got some tips, now is the time to pony up.

An Easter hatchling.

Published
by
untitled
on April 10, 2006
in Life and untitled
. 10 Comments

We went home this weekend — kind of a pre-Easter visit, since I’ve signed untitledson up for a fancy, reservation-only Easter egg hunt next weekend. Last year, we took him to the free citywide Easter egg hunt, and he got railroaded by rabid four and five-year olds who knew their Easter shizzle and had come with their game faces on. If I remember correctly, the morning ended with untitledson pacing around a nearby compost pile, where he saw some broken egg shells. Poor thing kept thinking he’d finally found an egg. This year will be different, even if momma has to lay down a fee to make it so. But I digress.

untitledmother said my hometown (where she and untitledmother-in-law both still live) was sponsoring an Easter egg hunt uptown in the Youth Center. It’s a town of about 2,000 people, and I spent many an aimless night at this same Youth Center, whiling away Fridays and Saturdays, sucking on Blow Pops until I was old enough to drive. At that point, I had commenced to sucking down Purple Passion and Strawberry Hill, but again, I digress.

And so we hustled down to the Youth Center bright and early Saturday morning, only to find the place in the exact same condition as I left it almost 20 years ago. As I walked through the door, I felt small and self-conscious, like my underwear might be billowing over the waistband in my jeans and my zits were crowning through my make-up. This place that I once thought was so cool was now so pathetic — beat-down naugahyde furniture, a few tables and chairs, cement-block walls. The faint smell of old hot dogs and must hung in the air.

I saw some familiar faces. People I had gone to high school with. I’m always gun shy of running into these people, cause as soon as I leave the room, I imagine they’re saying, “Oh my god. Has SHE let herself go or what?” “I bet she weighs 100 pounds more than she did in high school. Maybe more.” I’ve changed so much since high school — in ways they’ll never see. And them seeing me fat — they’re going to think they know me. And that I will not tolerate.

And so more often that not, I simply choose to avoid these situations. But on Saturday, I willingly went to the Youth Center, because my desire to see untitledson in the thick of the hunt, tracking down stale jelly beans and temporary tattoos like the sugar bloodhound that he is outweighed my issues.

Not surprisingly, I ran into an old classmate. Someone who hadn’t gained 100-plus pounds since high school. Back in the day, she was quite the bitch. But man, she certainly had mellowed. I said hi to her and her new husband (second husband), and I met her kids. As we exchanged small talk, I could feel that she didn’t care about what I looked like. It seemed she was more interested in just seeing a familiar face.

For the longest time, I thought no one would be able to get past the fat. It was the reason I never attended my high school reunions. But here was someone who didn’t seem to care, who perhaps was more self-conscious about the fact that she was under age 35 and already on husband number two (which, in my book, is nothing to feel bad about). But I guess we all have our demons. Some of us wear them under our plus-size jeans, others on their ring finger, and still others in the darkest corners of their tattered hearts. The exchange lasted all of two minutes, but it was long enough for me to see that it’s not always about me. It made me feel like perhaps it’s time to get past my shit.

Dancing queen.

Published
by
untitled
on April 7, 2006
in Family and Life
. 19 Comments

untitledson’s daycare center recently began offering dance class. For an extra fee, your child can get two 45-minute dance lessons each week. When I first saw it advertised, I passed it up, since he already attends a weekly music class. Don’t want to overprogram the three year-old, only to have him use the karate moves he learned in kindergarten to strongarm the car keys away from me when he is 16, just so he can pick up his weed and his 34 year-old stripper girlfriend.

After the first class, his teachers informed me that he threw a hissy when he wasn’t able to attend dance class with the other children (OK, girls). To be precise, the note on his daily report said, “He REALLY wants to go to dance class.” I told his teachers to let him go to one class, so he could try it out. I figured he would either dig it, or he’d find it a bit offputting that he was the only one not wearing a pink tutu and toe shoes.

Now, I’ve always said my son can grow up to be whomever he wants. I won’t mold him or shape him — I will simply give him enough pizza, applesauce and organic skim milk so he turns out however he was meant to turn out. If I see him tucking his shirt into his underwear, chewing his toenail clippings or huffing his own farts, I might straighten him out there. But other than that, I want him to grow up to be himself.

So why all of a sudden is this crazy homophobic fear gripping me? The pea-sized primordial part of my brain keeps saying, “If you let him attend dance class, he’s gonna go GAAAAAY!” Yeah, I know. It’s ridiculous. You are either born gay or straight — you can’t gay anyone up, just like you can’t straighten anyone out. What’s more, gay is normal, just like brown eyes and curly hair are normal. If he grows up gay, well then by god, he is gay. If one day, he sits me down and says, “Mom, I’m gay,” I’d thank him for being honest about it, and I’d tell him that very few people in this world are courageous enough to be themselves. Dammit, I would LOVE MY BIG GAY SON! I would prepare him, tell him it’s not always going to be easy, given all the ignorant fools out there. But in my home, he’d never feel anything but love and acceptance.

All this being said, I’m still concerned about dance class. Don’t get me wrong — I am going to support and encourage his interest. I just felt the need to come clean and put my dirty rotten thoughts out there. I mean, no one ever talks about it, but don’t we all have thoughts like this sometime? Ever hit the automatic door locks when rolling through a po’ neighborhood? Or do you look into the fat chick’s grocery cart to see how many Ho-Ho’s she’s buying? We need to be honest with each other. Maybe by hanging our horrible thoughts out on a line like a pair of holey underwear — the kind with racing stripes — maybe then we can truly get past it.

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