• Previous posts

  • Aging is for the weak, and everyone else
  • More short cuts
  • Smol Ketchups
  • What’s the opposite of green juice and deep breathing
  • Living through it all online
  • The Change
  • 18
  • Ok but ALSO:
  • Midlife POV
  • Influence and Dooce
  • Horse therapy
  • You can’t go home again
  • Obsolescence
  • Before and after
  • A cringe confession on friendship

Archives from 2002-2006

This is not an actual update of any kind, but I canNOT deal with having a bikini picture just sit at the top of this page for DAYS ON END, so here, a couple photos I’ve taken since we arrived in Coos Bay:

More later. Hope you’re having a wonderful week.

I saw this call for entries too late to officially participate in their contest giveaway thing, but since they were promoting one of the websites that helps pay my bills AND they’ve got a list of links to some interesting blog posts, I’ll take on the subject anyway. The subject being SWIMSUITS.

A couple weeks ago, JB randomly asked me what swimsuit I was bringing to the cabin for our July 4 vacation, and when I answered (“The black one I always wear, dude”) he . . . well, there’s no other word for it, he winced.

Then I picked up the wooden mallet I keep handy for such occasions and I bludgeoned him to death. The End.

Oh, ha ha, of course I didn’t. I didn’t even file for divorce on the grounds of Being a Total Choad (despite the fact that I think we can all agree that men who wince at the memory of their wife in a swimsuit — even though it was admittedly a sort of frumpy design of the “Miracle Suit” persuasion, meant to give the illusion of being 10 pounds thinner by wrapping the torso in as much Lycra as possible until the midsection is essentially a solid, immovable mass, impervious to both sodium bloat and bullets — deserve to be forced to defend themselves to an all-female jury while wearing nothing but a Euro-style banana hammock. Let’s see who does the wincing then, Mister).

He quickly backtracked and informed me that he just thought since I’d been working out so much I deserved a fancier swimsuit, maybe something with, uh, less total square miles of fabric coverage?

I can think of few activities that I enjoy less than swimsuit shopping but I had to admit he maybe had a point. I bought that bathing suit after Riley was born, when I needed something like a body-wide support garment to rein in all my Akira-esque flesh-rolls. I tried it on to check the fit and it looked weird: still taut in the belly, thanks to all those Miracle panels, but loose in the butt and droopy in the arms. The size tag read 16. The neck dipped too low and revealed the embarrassing used-to-be-a-rose-now-mostly-resembles-a-long-dead-tulip homemade tattoo above my right boob (the one I’ve never had removed because 99.9% of my clothes keep it hidden).

So last weekend I visited a local swimwear store, the kind that has racks and racks of mix-and-match tops and bottoms. And after about two solid hours of trying on pretty much everything they had to offer, I ended up with . . . a two piece. Not even a tankini, but a bikini top and two different bottoms, one with a flouncy miniskirt thing.

I have never owned a bikini in my LIFE, I never thought I’d EVER wear a bikini, and I have no good explanation for why I have one now. My belly, while a lot stronger than it was, is still an area that makes me squirm, especially when I’m sitting down and all that post-baby loose skin just sort of folds over like a crushed origami swan. Like a Sharpei sitting in my lap. Like a semi-deflated personal-sized Goodyear blimp. Like a — okay, you get it.

I guess I ended up thinking that while my body certainly isn’t supermodel-perfect by any means, it’s been a hell of a lot of work getting to where I’m at now, and I feel confident enough to set the Miracle technology aside and bare the parts of me I’ve historically tried my best to cover up. It’s just a swimsuit, but for me it sure represents how far I’ve come in the whole weight loss effort. If you’d told me four months ago that I’d be buying a two piece anytime soon, I’d have thought you were drinking a tall cold glass of shithouse-rat-crazy.

JB, it should be said, did not wince when I modeled the suits for him. I believe his words were, “I’d hit that.” O, that sweet pillow-talking man of mine.

:::

In other news,

1) Go tell my aunt she needs to abandon this crazy idea of taking a blog hiatus because her email notification thingie stopped working, because 1) she’s such a great writer and it’s a damn shame to miss out on her posts for ANY reason and 2) I feel guilty as hell because I can’t figure out how to fix her plugin.

and 2) We are driving way the hell down to the Oregon coast tomorrow for a week of vacation. I’m looking forward to the change of scenery, but hoo boy, not so much the effort to get there. Someone needs to invent a Battlestar-esque jump technology for bypassing seven-hour roadtrips with small children, either that or we as a society need to cease and desist with this pesky business of declaring drugs “unhealthy” and “dangerous”. A couple tranquilizer darts for them, a pill or two for me . . . I can almost promise everyone would arrive in a much happier frame of mind. Wish us luck, and have a wonderful weekend!

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