YO YO YO, Murderinos!  Sweet shirt, huh?  It could be yours!  Go to Facebook and search Weirdo Neighbor.  Find the pinned post and order up one of these fly-ass t-shirts!  It’ll help you stay sexy!  Not getting murdered is up to you!

True Life Horror Story

You wanna know what fear is? Dread, horror, abject terror? Trying to get your sports bra on but it's new and not stretched out yet and you're wet and sticky because you just got out of the shower and you get it so rolled up and tangled in the back that you start thinking your only option is going to be asking your teenaged stepson to come help you get your bra untangled. AND! His best friend is over.

It took 20 minutes, but I got that shit figured out. Because no WAY was that gonna happen!

I survived...

Raising Little Miss Fearless

Back when I was telling everyone I was never having kids, I would sometimes think that even though I didn’t want one, it would definitely be a fun experiment to see what kind of personality they had, what they’d look like, all that.

By the time I was in my mid 30′s I’d changed my perspective on the having a kid thing after marrying a good guy and went ahead and had one.  Well, 25 year old me was right.  It’s endlessly interesting to watch her personality evolve.  It’s also often ranges from amazing to maddening.

I call Melody my Pink Bulldozer.  She’s a girly girl in a lot of ways, but absolutely not in others.  She’s a study in duality as she runs your ass over on her razor scooter, muddy hands clutching the handle bars, dirty Elsa dress flapping behind her, crooked tiara balancing precariously on her head of long “princess hair” that’s a bedraggled mess since she HATES for me brush it.  “I’m Queen Elsa! And I’m going to fart on you!” she declares.

I see things in her that will most definitely help her in the adult world, but can be pretty damn annoying in a 4 year old.

When she walks into a place, she acts like she owns it.  Not a trace of self-consciousness or shyness, she’s aaaaaaalllllllll confidence.  Head up, big smile on her face, walking with brisk purpose.  Right in front of an old lady’s cart.  

“Mel!  Watch where you’re going!  Stay over here by me!”

There’s nothing she thinks she can’t do.  She wants to try everything, and wants to do it herself.  She’s super independent, and always has been.  I remember trying to carry her as a baby as she squirmed and kicked at me, wanting DOWN so she could move around on her own.  She’s her own person.  And possibly a person with 1st degree burns as she nearly falls in the campfire trying to wrestle a hot dog roasting stick full of weenies away from her brother because SHE CAN DO IT!

“Mel!  Knock it off and get away from that fire, you’re gonna get burned!  Get over here by me!”

She doesn’t know a stranger.  Everyone is a possible buddy.  She loves trying to strike up a conversation with people.  She likes to try to play with kids at the library, the park, wherever.  She likes to try to make people laugh, sometimes with a fake fall, sometimes with a fake accent, “paaardner.”  She’s friendly and accepting of others.  Even the meth head-looking dude at the gas station.

Mel!  Get over here! Stay by me!” (whispering as I squat down beside her: “Not everyone is a friend, Sweets!”)

She’s not afraid of much of anything.  If I tell her to be afraid she wants to know exactly why she should be.  She loves scary characters and the Halloween store.  She likes to climb up on things and jump off.  She likes to go fast.  She sees something she wants and goes for it, she doesn’t even take the time to let being scared come into her mind.  Like when she damn near ran out in front of a car at her brother’s track meet because she wanted to go around to the other side of Aunt Lethy’s van to look in the window at her cousin Bella.

“MEL!!!!!!! You almost got hit by that car!  You get over here and STAY BY ME!!!!”

As hard as it is to deal with sometimes, I hope she keeps her confidence, her independence, her friendliness, her fearlessness.  My challenge is going to be keeping her safe and in line WITHOUT crushing those attributes.  And as she gets older I’m going to have accept that she will probably never “stay by me”.  I’ll just have to enjoy it all from 8 or 10 steps behind.

Keep Your Cry Baby Apologies, and Hey, Maybe Your Dignity

Celebrities, man...

Look, I don't care about any political side when I say this, you guys know I pretty much hate both sides equally. But what I also really hate is watching dumbass Kathy Griffin cry on TV and give some half-assed apology over the Trump's head thing. JUST ONCE I wish one of these celebrities would have the nuts to do something crazy that causes a big ruckus and then call a press conference and be like "Yeah, I did it, no, I ain't apologizing. Suck on THAT!" And then give the press the double bird and strut off. I mean, what's the worst that could happen? You look bad either way, in my opinion, you might as well own it and tell everyone to kiss your ass. If you did it in the first place trying to be a big, controversial badass, then see it through, ya know? If you aren't prepared for the backlash you're gonna get when you, oh, saaaaay... hold up a bloody, severed prop head of the president, for example, then just do us all a favor and don't bother with it in the first place. You're not adding anything to the conversation but more noise if you're just gonna tearfully walk it all back in two days.

Quit apologizing for your opinions, celebrities! You're contributing to the communication block we're experiencing in this country. You're adding fuel to the PC fire, proving to the blowhards on either side that all they need to do is get nasty on the internet for an afternoon to bully those who don't share their opinions into shutting up or apologizing and looking like a beaten dog. This isn't how this democracy thing is supposed to work.

A Zoo Shot This Gorilla to Save a Kid...

and all hell broke loose a year ago, remember?  Here’s something I wrote about it back then.  

Read a few things about the kid in the gorilla pit story. Like everyone else, my initial knee-jerk reaction was "What the hell's wrong with that kid's parents?" But, since then, I've read more about the situation and I've changed my opinion, mostly due to my First Supreme Rule of Life, which is:

Never Say Never.

I think parents, more than anyone else on earth, lie to themselves every day. "That could never happen to me because of (insert 90 reasons)" or "My kid would never do that because he's too smart/better disciplined/ knows better." It's a scary thing to realize and then admit, but we are not in control 100% of the time. This doesn't mean we're crappy parents. This means we're attempting to control yet-to-develop people with their own minds and zero impulse control. 90% of the time, we probably get them reigned in and it's all good. Out of the remaining 10%, 8% of the time we could possibly have a close call. For that last 2%, the unthinkable could happen. And then you're on the freakin' news getting called the worst parent in the world because no one knows or gives a damn about that 98% of the time when you've managed to keep it all together. So...yeah. Never say never. Because once you start in judging other parents left and right telling everyone how that would NEVER happen to you, my Second Most Supreme Rule of Life has a way of enforcing itself on you.

That's the Karma's a Bitch rule.

Portuguese Artist Luisa Azevedo Creates Dreamy And Surreal Photo Manipulation

The Fidget Spinner and the Decline of Western Civilization

Fidget spinner hatred is weird. It's a toy like anything else...where's the outrage over super balls? I HATE those! The kid bounces them all over, knocking stuff off shelves and shit and then cries for half an hour when it rolls under the stove. Or how about Legos? I got some serious hatred for Legos. Little tiny pieces all over hell, clogging up vacuums and bruising the soles of feet. And then, more crying when the kid can't get it put together right because I've sucked up a half a dozen pieces with the afore mentioned vacuum. Or bubbles! F bubbles, man! Leaving my kitchen floor a soapy skating rink for me to bust my ass on. Then the world ends as the bottle gets knocked over and all the magic bubble fluid soaks into the rug creating one weird-looking clean spot. Pretty much all toys are a pain in the ass. Fidget spinners aren't the ruination of today's youth, they're just another dumb toy fad. The ruination of today's youth is social media, actually...but that's another bitch for another day.

Throwback On Growing Up a Girl

I wrote this a year ago in response to a particularly daft mommy blog where this dipshit woman talks about how she only wants to mother boys because they’ve “already won the gender lottery” and it would be torture to have to raise a girl in our society that reduces all females to stereotypes and sex objects.  (Melodramatic as fuck, huh?  Talk about a female stereotype...)  Here’s the link if you wish to read it:

http://www.scarymommy.com/never-want-daughter/?utm_source=FBOnsite

And here’s the response I wrote a year ago.  It ends up being a testament to just how goddamn great my mom is.

Mommy Blogs...some are great, some are stupid, but this one? This is looney-tunes nuts.

The stuff she writes about? Uh...what? I mean, I know I was a kid like a half a million years ago, but I don't remember this constant torturous turmoil over being a girl. I mean...help me out here, Fellow Ladies. Was I not paying attention? Did I block out being shoe-horned into pink frills and being told I was second-best to the boys in school? Did the trauma of some dude noticing I had boobs scar me so horribly that my subconscious has erased it from my mind? No, wait...I remember now.

None of that crap happened. Because my mom wasn't a lunatic like this woman. It was the 70's when I was born, my mother a young Baby Boomer. Was she consciously raising me according to some feminist agenda to assure I wasn't crippled for life since I had the extreme misfortune of being born a girl? Nope, she did what she always has done. Used her good sense, the way my lovely grandmother raised her and love for her kids to guide the way. I didn't like pink, this did not bother her. She let me wear cowboy boots and and the same red and blue windbreaker every day. For Christmas and birthdays I'd ask for anything from play kitchens and Cabbage Patch Kids to Kiss records and Star Wars crap. I was never told some toys were only for boys, I just had toys. She never told me to expect that boys would be considered better than me, she just told me to always do my best. Whatever I said I wanted to do or be, she was like , "Yeah, cool. Do it." The boy-girl stuff never came up. I never got a make-up tutorial from her or a lesson on fixing hair because I never really cared for it. If I'd asked, she would've happily helped me out, but she knew it wasn't my thing and she was fine with that. If other kids thought I was weird because I wasn't really very "girly", I never knew it. I guess I never cared much since at home I was allowed to be who I was.

When I got to be a teenager, she told me boys would start looking at me differently. She didn't say if this was good or bad, she just told me I didn't need to do anything I didn't want to do to make a boy happy and clued me in to the fact that sex can have some pretty heavy consequences. When guys were jerks, she never brought up the patriarchy and all that she just said "That guy's a jerk. Move on." When the subject of boyfriends came up, she told me I'd have a lot more fun in high school without one (which is the truest thing maybe EVER) but that's about all we ever talked about it. There was never any pressure to have one or not to have one.

Now I have my own little girl. She likes Princess Elsa and pink and wearing a skirt. She also likes playing in the dirt, talking like a zombie and bloody monsters. And that's cool with me. Because I was raised to see people according to their personality rather than the antiquated societal construct of what you have to be if you're a certain sex. Or race. Or whatever stupid thing people like to argue about endlessly.

Thanks Mom.

It’s MY truth!  MINE!  MINE!

Stupid buzzword/term currently getting on my nerves "My truth". How do you own truth? It's either the truth or not. Even a half truth is still not the truth. Calling your opinion or your anecdotal story about something or your personal emotions regarding whatever "your truth" doesn't make it actually true. Are we really so conceited that we think we can twist the definition of TRUTH so that our feelings or opinions can be magically more credible? "Alternative facts" aside, we really can't, regardless of if we call it ours, yours, theirs or whoever's. They're still just opinions, and you know what they say about those and assholes!

3 Cheers for Lexapro!

Or at least for its generic equivalent, which is what I take.  But really, 3 cheers! Hell, 10 cheers!

I started taking it almost 2 months ago.  It was a long time coming, although I really didn’t know that.  I thought I was fine.  Just getting old or just too fat or something like that.  I mean, I wasn’t lying in bed crying all day.  I was going to work, doing stuff with my kids, being pretty much normal as far as anyone could tell.  Except...

Except for the fact I couldn’t pay attention long enough to read a chapter in a book when before I was blasting through entire books in a few days.

Except for the fact that I didn’t give a damn about any of the stuff I used to get really excited about.  Like decorating for Halloween, for example.  I used to LIVE for that shit, now I didn’t even want to bother with it.

Except for the fact that I was super snappy and grouchy with my little kid pretty much all the time.

Except for the fact that it was all I could do to force myself to get some laundry done or some dishes washed.

Except for the fact I was getting a kick out of throwing bombs into comment sections so I could argue with strangers to vent my anger a little.

Except for the lingering thought that there was always something bad waiting around the corner to pounce on me and cause chaos.

I could go on, but you get the idea.  I wasn’t really myself anymore, and it took a long time for me to finally realize it.  After getting my bum thyroid tested 3 or 4 times (since low thyroid function can cause depression and anxiety,) and having the levels come back as normal, I went to my doctor and told her how I was feeling. I told her I didn’t know what was wrong, but I really wasn’t sure it was depression.  She said “Huh.  Well, that’s what I think it is.  Just because you aren’t standing on a ledge weeping doesn’t mean you’re not depressed.”

This is where I went wrong.  I felt like as long as I was functioning, I was fine, I just needed to shake it off and keep going.  And I did.  For nearly 4 years.  I thought maybe that was my new “normal”, it was just that being apathetic and angry and unmotivated and numb came along with getting up past 40.  That was pretty stupid of me.

Now that I’ve been on these meds for a while, I realize just how shitty I really felt. I laugh like I used to.  My patience with my kids is much better.  I feel like actually going out and DOING stuff without it being a struggle.  I don’t feel that dread I used to feel like the worst is yet to come.  Even the mystery aches and pains I used to get all over are gone.  

I know there’s a portion of the population that think turning to a chemical to “fix” myself is a cop out, weak, lazy.  They’re the ones that post memes of campfires or hiking trails or a man and a kid fishing that say shit like “The most powerful anti-depressant on earth.”  Yeah, cool, but a weekend camping trip ain’t gonna do it for me.  I still have to exist within my own head, I can’t leave it sitting next to the campfire  (plus, now I have to clean up and put away all the crap we took camping.  BOOOOO!) Besides, and you can trust me on this, if you ever do become depressed, like ACTUALLY, FOR THE REALLIES depressed, you ain’t gonna want to camp or hike or fish or NOTHIN’.  And if that ever happens, don’t do what I did and think it’s a phase or a symptom of getting old.  Go to your doctor and take the steps necessary to lift that cloud that won’t leave you be.

And then go get back to your hiking.

Lighter Shade of Pale

Polymorphous light eruption. It’s not the name of a 70′s light rock band.  It’s not a techno song.  It is allergy to the sun.  And it’s on my stupid legs.

I’m no stranger to sunburn.  While I may be a “daywalker”, I’m still technically a ginger, so I am a sunburn virtuoso.  But this is a new one on me. (Literally.  It’s ON me.)  Supposedly it can happen when an area that hasn’t gotten sun in a long while is suddenly exposed for a length of time.  Most people get it upon the first wearing ‘o the shorts in the spring and it goes away.  I’m hoping this is the case.  I don’t really care how it looks so much, but that shit itches.

So, if you’re out and about catching some rays and you get a freaky, itchy rash, don’t fret.  Hit this link, it’ll tell you all about it.  

https://patient.info/health/polymorphic-light-eruption-leaflet

Be an asshole

This popped up on my “On This Day” thing on Facebook.  I was writing it for my son, who, thankfully, dumped the psycho chick that was making him miserable.

Dear Teenagers:

First, I'm proud of you. You've been raised to be considerate, respectful, and kind to others, and you show the part. It is definitely an advantage to be a good and kind person, don't ever change. Except...

Maybe we as your parents need to start teaching you that sometimes there needs to be conditions to your kindness. Sometimes it's OK not to be the nice guy. Sometimes you have to look out for Number One.

I'm talking about dealing with people we all have come into our lives sometimes. The Users, The Selfish, The Abusers. People who start out seeming like a great friend or a sweet girl/boyfriend but start to change the minute there's a disagreement. The ones who use guilt and fear to manipulate you into doing what they want you to do. The ones who like to create drama and turmoil in your life while isolating you from your family and friends. The ones who are so jealous you can't even be friends with the opposite sex. The ones who want nothing more than to control you, sometimes going to the extremes of using threats of harm to either you or themselves.

With these sorts of people, my dear, sweet, thoughtful child, you have permission to be an asshole, for lack of a better word. These kind of people do not have your best interests at heart, they only care about what you can do for them. This is not kind, considerate behavior, and therefore, does not deserve your kind, considerate behavior in response. So, please. Be an asshole.

Break it off and don't look back. Don't give them the chance to win you back with guilt trips and tears and threats. Don't allow them to emotionally abuse you. You deserve to be happy, and you are responsible for no one's happiness but your own. And more importantly, you are responsible for no one's actions but your own. You don't own the blame for how someone reacts to you releasing yourself from their manipulation. So, when you run into a poisonous person, run fast and far and don't give it another thought.

And as weird as it sounds, I'll be proud of you for finding the guts to be an asshole.

Where's Dr. Xavier when you need him...

The Kid: Your thoughts are getting out and I can hear them in my head. Me: 😳

Sleeveless Hoodies and Biker Jackets

Last summer my son, who is 15, decided he HAD TO HAVE a sleeveless hoodie.  Yes, that would be a sweatshirt with a hood but no sleeves.  I thought that was hilarious.  What the hell is the point of a hoodie with no sleeves?  Do you have an unusually cold head but overheated arms?  Seemed weird to me.  His aunt got it for him, and after witnessing the selfies he took in it, I figured it out;  the point is to show your “guns”.  So, yeah, OK.  I get it now.  I guess...

After thinking about it for a minute, I realized that my son and really, the vast majority of his peers, dress pretty conservatively.  I mean, there’s nothing too weird going on, jeans and t-shirts, mostly.  And then I started thinking about the stupid junk I used to wear.

In about 5th grade I started trying to express myself through clothes.  I latched on to this 70′s cowboy shirt with pearl snaps that belonged to my dad.  It was white with kind of faded American stars and stripes over the shoulders and collar.  I thought it was the coolest thing ever.  I’d wear it over top t-shirts and let it hang long or sometimes I’d tie it in the front.  I’m pretty sure 70′s cowboy shirts weren’t in in 1986, but I didn’t care.

Also about this time, I put another piercing in my left ear.  Not my right, just the left.  Why?  Beats me, you’d have to ask 11 year old me.  I’d wear, long, wild earrings, a different one in each hole.  The earring (notice, it’s “earring”, not “earrings”.  I had no need of two, I was anti-pair,) I loved the most was a miniature globe.  Like, a geography class globe.  There’s a school picture of me floating around somewhere featuring that earring.  And really ugly bangs.

Another thing I insisted upon around 11 or 12 was tinted glasses.  Regular glasses wouldn’t do, I wanted purple tint.  So I walked around in purple glasses the size of a VW bug windshield thinking I was the shit for a while there.

Then I saw a video that changed my life.  Sweet Child O’ Mine.  Who the hell were these guys, looking like dirty gypsy bikers?  They were the coolest looking dudes I ever saw, WAAAAAAAAY cooler than the other hair bands (who I probably secretly resented because they knew how to put makeup on correctly and were prettier than me.)  I was going to look like them!  Or, wait...I was going to look as close to them as my mom would allow!

From that point on it was all jeans and black rock band t-shirts (4 of which were, of course, Guns n’ Roses).  And I HAD TO HAVE a black biker jacket.  I’d never come within 20 feet of a motorcycle, but damnit, I was gonna wear a biker jacket.  And my mom (who is actually really cool,) got me one.  I wore the living shit out of it.  I’d probably STILL be wearing it if I hadn’t uh...”outgrown” it, let’s say.

Today, my style (or more accurately, lack thereof,) remains pretty much the same as that 7th grade me.  (Although I overcame my fear of pairs and wear earrings in the conventional manner now.) T-shirts and jeans, Converse shoes. Why mess with perfection?  And, why mess with kids today over the stuff they want to wear?  It’s just clothes.  Take a cue from my mom and let em have their fun.  Even if it leads to cold arms and a sweaty head.

Fat-spiration

I saw a meme today that made me laugh extra-hard because I realized how me it was.  It was a fat guy on a surf board and it said something like “when you give up on your diet and just say ‘fuck it, I’m, fat’.”  They could’ve used a picture of me it’s so me.  

Now, I know how I’m SUPPOSED to feel.  I’m supposed to want to do better for myself and my health and my well-being and all that self-help buzzword shit.  I’m supposed to be sad and depressed that I’m fat.  I’m supposed to sit by looking morose as my daughter runs and plays and I can’t keep up.  I’m supposed to have a moment of epiphany in the Safe Way checkout line upon seeing the Sports Illustrated swim suit edition and be inspired to join a gym and lose a bunch of weight and then blog about my experience so I can be a “thinspiration” to others.  Thing is, I get twitchy when society starts laying what I’m SUPPOSED TO DO on me.  Then I start having this problem where I just can’t seem to keep my middle fingers down...

SO, instead, maybe I can be someone’s FATspiration.  Here’s my “journey to self-love” or whatever psychobabble stupid thing you want to call it.

I haven’t always felt the way I do now.  The first time it occurred to me that I was fat, I was in the 3rd grade.  I don’t remember WHY it occurred to me.  Maybe some kid at school said something.  Maybe some elder relative made a remark about it.  I was a pretty observant kid, so maybe I just looked around at the other girls in my class and figured it out, I don’t know, but I know that’s when it all started.

From that point throughout elementary I remember thinking I’d “grow out of it”.  And I kind of did.  In junior high I was thinner, but not thin enough.  I still had the poochy stomach, the wiggly parts.  I was as tall as I am now (5′2″) and weighed about 135-140, which is normal BMI, but not normal compared to the “hot girls” in school.  And that damn stomach.  Couldn’t show that off.  That’s when I started experimenting with fasting.  And that’s when my inner mean girl started harping on me.

Through high school, my weight went up and down.  I wasn’t satisfied with how I looked AT ALL, but just decided a bikini was never gonna be in the cards and rolled with what I had.  I was lucky and went to a small school where bullying, while not non-existent, wasn’t really all that bad.  I had a super-smart mouth, though, and a self-deprecating style of humor that probably didn’t make me a very fun target in the first place.  So I had that going for me.  Even if there had been bullies, they weren’t gonna be any worse than my own inner dialog.  By the time I graduated I was in a relationship with the guy who would be my first husband and I weighed 165.  I remember thinking I was out of control and needed to do something.  I fasted and took pills and all sorts of crap.

Throughout my first marriage, my weight was a constant source of insecurity.  I COULD NOT figure out why he wanted anything to do with me physically.  It (and some other factors) made me not want to have anything to do with sex.  I’d exercise a while, fast, lose a little, gain it all back.  Back and forth like a see-saw.  I’d get wrapped up in it to the point where it was just me and the fat, there wasn’t room to think about much else.  Nothing seemed to work.  Then, after a bunch of weird health crap and about going crazy, the doctor figured out I’m hypothyroid.  No wonder the weight wasn’t coming off.  And then I broke my ankle (destroyed is probably a better word than broke,) and I was immobile for almost 4 months.  I got fat as hell.  When I got divorced, I weighed 250.

While it wasn’t the only reason we broke up, I blamed my weight A LOT for the split.  I was so depressed I could barely leave the house.  I put on a happy face for everyone else though, and soldiered on.  I was so mad at myself for getting the way I was.  I had nothing but pure hatred and contempt for my lack of self-discipline.  After being divorced for a year, I went on the crashiest of crash diets and got down to almost to my high school weight.  I got tons of compliments, started getting attention from men.  It was great.  They didn’t need to know I was essentially starving myself, only eating 500 calories a day.  I started partying my ass off, had a great time.  But...

Was I really happy?  I was finally thinner, wasn’t I supposed to be gleeful as shit like those people holding up giant pants in the weight loss commercials?  All that old self-hate, it wasn’t gone.  It had just shifted to other shit to hate on. “You’re still not skinny and no diet will ever make you pretty.”  “You’re still alone.”  “Why did you talk like that to that guy?  He’s never gonna call you back now.”  “You’re gonna be a broke-ass cat lady all your life.”  How was I ever gonna win?  That was when stuff started to change.

I started seeing my husband now.  I fell in love with him and his kids and we got married fairly quickly.  I had my daughter.  The birth of this kid was the single biggest catalyst in my life.  After having her, the volume got turned way down on all the other shit that used to take up space in my head.  Being fat didn’t matter all that much anymore.  All that mattered was taking care of this little person I’d made and my little family.  It made me re-evaluate happiness and what our society tells us about obtaining it.  Made me realize there is no such thing as constant bliss, there’s always going to be problems and bullshit no matter what.  So why did I want to complicate things further by carrying out this non-stop campaign of hatred I’d waged in my head all my adult life?  I thought about what that kind of attitude would do to my daughter as she observed me growing up.  Did I want to plague her with this “never good enough” bullshit?  She was already gonna get it from literally everywhere else, I didn’t want to participate in it too.  And I quit.

I quit worrying about diets and finding time to squeeze in exercise somewhere. Quit worrying about my stupid jeans size.  Quit worrying what people think of me.  Quit feeling guilty about eating pizza, sitting on my ass and laughing at a movie with my family.  Quit equating whether or not I was a good person with my size.   Quit beating myself to death over being fat.  Quit thinking that fat was the worst possible thing I could be.

Did the self-hate completely go away?  No of course not.  But it’s one less thing to hate on.  Am I 100% happy?  Again, of course not.  But now I realize that no one is, no matter how they look.  I got over myself, got out of my own head and started appreciating all the good stuff there is in life that’s STILL THERE no matter what the scale says.  Does this mean I’ll never try again to lose weight?  No, I might want to again some day.  And when I have friends that find success losing weight, I’m truly happy for them.  But that battle is just not on my to-do list right now, and that’s OK.

I know there are plenty of people who think I’m lazy and undisciplined.  They think I’m driving their health care costs up since I’m so “unhealthy” (I’d like to compare doctor visits in the past year with these people; I bet I’ve been there less than they have).  They think I’m a drain on society.  There was a time I would’ve agreed with them.  But now?  Now I just hope the sight of my fat ass out and about pisses them off so hard it wrecks their stupid little day.  And I laugh and eat my cheeseburger.