You may have seen a photo this week of actress Minnie Driver splashing around in the water, belly out to there, ready to give birth at any moment. The story did not focus on the impending big event so much as her mismatched bikini, a checkerboard print bottom, a flower print top, which by no stretch of the imagination would have been allowed by the fashion police to come home that way.##M:[more]##
To which I must retort and ask what would be wrong with that, aside from offending the sensibilities of some smug self-appointed style maven, and believe me, that’s not something I would lose any sleep over. In fact, I pulled a “Minnie” myself this week, wearing two different bathing suit pieces to the beach.
It had nothing to do with fashion and everything to do with comfort. As any female over the age of 12 will tell you, your body is not necessarily the same size all over. That’s why many clever bathing suit manufacturers have started selling their suits a la carte. It plays into the need for women to find the appropriate size to cover their essential parts and also fits nicely into the seller’s markup strategy — you can charge more by the piece than by the set.
As to why my previously comfortable bathing suit did not fit so very well, I suspect it had something to do with these very late nights these recent weeks, staying up until the wee hours to catch the Olympics on TV. Eating popcorn in front of the boob tube at midnight tends to do bad things to that part of the human anatomy and other parts as well. I thought I was the only one guiltily staying up past my usual bedtime to catch the superhuman Michael Phelps and inspiring pixie gymnasts in action, until I read a newspaper article describing the “Olympic hangover” gripping much of the country, and then I didn’t feel so bad.
There is, however, one thing that I am feeling bad about. Confession time: I lost nine pounds on Weight Watchers at work, and was doing so well all summer long, until the Olympics and my mother-in-law’s annual reunion in Pennsylvania, when I came home three pounds heavier. (As usual, it is in some way my husband’s fault.)
It was all downhill from there, or uphill, rather, as I did not have the heart to step back on the scale again for weeks. But I was forced to last night because I had to weigh Molly’s luggage to make sure it did not exceed the 50 pound weight limit. My method in weighing most things, including babies, puppies, and in this case, suitcases, is to step on the scale myself, step back on holding the item to be weighed and subtracting. I should known better.
Oh well, easy go, easy come, as they say. Except in this case, how is it possible that it could take seven grueling months to lose nine pounds and then only three short weeks to gain most of it back? How is this even remotely fair? I suppose I could try to emulate the Olympic swimmer’s diet a la the human dolphin — and swim five hours a day. That would mean I could consume 10,”000 calories and man, how fun would that be? They should make the yo-yo an Olympic sport — yo-yo weightlifting that is. I’d be the gold medal champ.
Now the Olympics are over and so is the summer, so there’s no more excuse. I have a new incentive to work for — I just received an invitation for a milestone high school reunion. Let’s just say it’s somewhere higher than 25 years and lower than 50 and I actually really want to go. But only if I lose 10 pounds.
There is one thing I have lost recently and that is my credit card privileges. With all the income/outgo activity in our house these days with school tuitions, and the challenge of maintaining a healthy cash flow, my husband has put me on a diet of sorts. We’ve quit plastic cold turkey and gone to an all cash diet. I wish the weight would slip through my fingers as easily as the twenty dollar bills from the ATM. But who said life is fair?
