Tag Archives: humour

Don’t Ask Me That!

Biggest struggles, In the here & now, , ,

XXXL

So, how was your day? Mine was going great guns right up until the moment that a male colleague from a different department to the one I work in sent me an email asking me what size shirt I wear. Way to put a crimp in my day huh?

I should explain – I mean it wasn’t done for sport, you know like ‘I can’t help noticing you’re the size of a moose and I was just wondering how many X’s you need ahead of the L hahahaha’…or worse, ‘I’m looking around for an awning on the side of my RV and I just wondered where you buy your clothes from’ – he did have a reason to ask. I have to go to a conference next month, and everyone there representing the company will need a branded shirt. But still, you can picture my face when the email dropped in I’m sure. It was one of those moments where time stopped dead in the face of mortification and I just sat and stared at my screen.

Of course the asshole was off and away from the starting block like Ussain chuffing Bolt, diving through that open window of opportunity with a selection of carefully chosen comments designed to hammer home the humiliation. “I bet the rest of his department are gathered round his screen waiting for your answer…they’ve probably got a sweepstake going!  They’ve probably dared him to come and ask you face to face so they could hide around the corner and watch you squirm!! He’s probably moaning about the fact that you’re going to blow his whole shirt budget on that one cavernous garment, hahahaha!!!”

As the flush of horror made it’s leisurely ascent from my toes to my ears, I thought about lying. What if, I say I’m a size large because that’s big ish but it’s only kind of the big end of average…I could try and stretch it..? I mean lots of people wear a size large don’t they, so that would make me nearly normal right? And if it’s not stretchy fabric, I could go find another shirt from a fat-lady-shop and cut the branded bit off, and stitch it onto the fat-lady-shirt and nobody need ever know how many X’s are really in front of the L…that might work..?

By this time, the asshole had gone into overdrive. “Hahahaha I bet the shirt making company will have to call him and make sure he’s put the right number of X’s on the form, that can’t be right can it?  She’s really THAT big..? Crikey how many pies did SHE eat?!!!”

I didn’t lie. I styled it out. “Hi, I’ll need a size 26 please, if they make them that big (!) regards, Dee”.

Get the joke in first to let him know I don’t give a crap that he asked. Even though I do. Let him know I’m ok with it, because he probably felt horrible having to ask (I mean he’s a bloke, you guys take your lives in your hands when you mention any woman’s size, right?) so make it obvious that your size isn’t embarrassing for you. Even though it is. Note to self: Make damn sure next year you’ll actually fit into size L which by that point might even be too big on your scrawny-assed body.

By the way, no cake was consumed during this pretty shitty day therefore the scores on the doors remain Me: 1 – Asshole: 0 🙂

Like it..? Tell your friends!
 

Essential Lady Maintenance

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now,

dog hair

Now, as the asshole pointed out earlier this week, I am overdue for a haircut so I’m headed to the salon this morning. I’m going to have a colour treatment too, fool the silver into posing as blonde, as you do. All sounding good so far? It’s probably the two most miserable hours I’ll spend this month. I look forward to hair appointments as much as my dog looks forward to going to the vet.

We have different stressors obviously…he worries about the thermometer, having had several temperature checks by stealth over the years. It’s the only time he ever sits without being asked and stays sitting. Me, I worry about leaving the salon with my hair styled in the shape of a cauliflower now I’m flirting with fifty, and I’m fat.

What if, the trendy young string bean wielding the scissors can only visualise that cauliflower hairstyle when she looks at me?  What if, my request for a soft and choppy layered look falls on deaf ears because it’s clearly too edgy a style for me, in her youthful skinny opinion? What if I come out of there looking like my mother?

I  will be forced to sit in a chair which is a bit too small, in front of a full length mirror, draped in a black nylon cape for two hours by a skinny girl who will cover my head in tinfoil and bake me under a heat lamp. I don’t do mirrors as a rule, but today I shall be forced to sit and stare at myself for TWO. WHOLE. HOURS.

It’s going to be torture. All I’ll see balanced on top of the big black dome of a cape is several chins followed by chubby red cheeks topped off with a head full of little silver squares…the asshole in my head is going to think all his Christmases have come at once.

But I tell you what, now we’re talking, in terms of diet motivation – by the time I leave that salon, having spent the best part of my morning staring at my living breathing ‘before’ photo, if that hasn’t added another layer of glue to the cake shield nothing will – bring it on, I say. Asshole, do your worst – fat face? Yes but it won’t be as fat tomorrow. Chubby cheeks? Yes but not many wrinkles – you don’t get wrinkles in a balloon, BOOM BOOM! 

I even have faith that my hairdresser will give me the cut that I like. And when I’m skinny, she can knock herself out and style it in the shape of whatever vegetable she likes…when you have cheekbones in place of hamster pouches even cauliflower haircuts look foxy 🙂

Like it..? Tell your friends!
 

Walking in the rain.

In the here & now, ,

wet dog

Morning…happy Bank Holiday Monday. Oh look, ‘quelle surprise’ it’s chucking it down outside. I can’t even claim a pyjama day because my dog is still going to expect a full service walk. Try and get away with anything like a short cut and I’ll get the doggy death stare as soon as he senses we’re homeward bound…it’s like he taps into my thoughts when we leave the house and if I deviate from the planned route somehow he just knows. You know how you tried to skip two or three pages when your kids were nodding off mid-way through their bedtime story, and three words into thinking you’d gotten away with it they were wide awake and protesting..? That’s what I’m talking about.

But today that’s ok, because didn’t I make a deal with myself that I’d do some exercise this weekend…I even said it out loud, what’s more I wrote it down and a bunch of folk have read it so I’m committed to the cause. In the rain. I mean it’s not just a bit damp out there, we’re talking big fat raindrops falling from a heavy grey sky and every car that drives past my house sounds like it’s driving through a stream. Lovely.

I think I’d enjoy walking in the rain if I was skinny. I’d have on some chic little raincoat, and a pair of adorable wellies, which would accommodate my calves without so much as a grumble. Somehow, those big fat raindrops would surround me without actually landing on me, and I’d arrive back home looking rosy-cheeked, without a hint of frizzy hair and looking for all the world as though walking in the rain was my favourite thing ever.  I would have walked so far that the dog would be exhausted and he wouldn’t nag to go back out again for the rest of the day.

But because I’m fat, we all know it’s not going to be that way. My chic little raincoat in fact resembles something you might find at the local camping centre. My calves will be shoved into wellies that were not designed for fat legs, so they’ll kink somewhere around my ankles and give me blisters, which if I’m lucky I won’t notice because I’ll be too busy grumbling about the red hot poker someone’s wiggling about in my knee. I’ll arrive home soaked to the bone, with a hyper excited spaniel who feels short-changed because we didn’t stay out for at least 3 hours, and he’ll be ready to go again within 10 minutes of getting home.

But, with every step I’m going to imagine the warm shower afterwards, and the feeling of achievement I’ll get when I’ve followed through on my promise to look after both the dog, and myself by not settling down in the armchair with a cup of tea and a packet of custard creams because it was raining too hard to go out.

Happy days!

 

 

Like it..? Tell your friends!
 

Holy Moly, the pressure’s on now.

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now, ,

writer

Thanks to a couple of very good friends of mine who’ve been kind enough to share the details of my blog on their Facebook page, I’ve picked up 10 new readers who don’t know me. To them – you, if you’re reading this – I’m just a blogger!! And you have every right to expect quality well thought out words, along with insight, honesty and interesting content.

I’m currently standing in that space between feeling excited and terrified, with a healthy dollop of understanding that from here on in, I really and truly can’t just talk shite as a space-filler, I mean I have a readership!!  What a responsibility…I feel like JK Rowling. Or at the very least JR Hartley.  My ‘web traffic analysis’ graph is going bonkers – well when I say bonkers I mean it’s no longer reporting a flat line of one visitor, so to me it’s become the most fascinating thing E.V.E.R.

Pressure’s a funny thing – I react one of two ways, and I never know which of the two I’m going to get – a bit like Forrest Gump with his chocolates.  I sometimes rise to the challenge and deliver, when I feel the pressure and get in the groove…other times I recognise the pressure on an intellectual level, but it doesn’t motivate me to pull my finger out and crack on at all. Lets take dieting as an example.

Back in January, I knew I had two very special holidays booked – it’s the big five-oh (no!) this year, and I really wanted to be slimmed down and full of energy so I could enjoy them both to the max, so (lets have a pop quiz boys and girls) did I…

a) Take full advantage of the respective 7 and 9 months lead-in time, get cracking with the diet after Christmas and feel slowly more fabulous as the departure dates got closer, or

b) Do nothing at all.

Yep, see how well you know me already…option ‘b’ for bugger all. I did nothing.  As the departure date for holiday number one got closer, like counting in weeks rather than months it did occur to me that I may have missed the boat (well, the cruise ship, pardon the pun) as far as my bikini body was concerned. Short of losing a lot of weight quickly by chopping a limb off shortly before embarkation or having extreme liposuction my options were a bit limited.

Don’t get me wrong, my friend and I had a wonderful holiday, but I felt every sightseeing footstep like a hot blade through my dodgy knee, I had to wedge my super sized rear end into the beautiful dining room chairs every night till the arms left bruises on my thighs, and I had to decline a gentle stroll around the promenade deck after dinner each night since the sheer effort of lifting the last petit-four off the dessert plate just about sapped the dregs of my energy.

Don’t even get me started on the subject of breaking the bed, although that’s definitely a story for another day.

Holiday number two will be different…seven weeks and three days from now, five of my closest friends and I are jetting off for four days of birthday madness, and seeing as I’m in the sweet spot, and your company is keeping me busy and away from the food cupboard, I’m rather optimistic that whilst still fatter than the average bear I’ll be a couple of dress sizes smaller with reduced aches and pains. Happy days!

Like it..? Tell your friends!
 

I’ve been thinking.

Freeform thoughts, In the here & now, , ,

fat

It’s a Bank Holiday weekend and I’ve got nothing planned. I might do some exercise.

I’ll just put that out there and let the words settle a bit, experiment you know with how they sound as I read them back. Hmm. They say diet and exercise together is the way to do it, but I hesitate for no other reason than really, who wants to see a proper fatty exercising?  Well when I say for no other reason, that’s not strictly true…there’s at least one other reason – I’m so unfit I’m afraid it might actually kill me.  In recent times I’ve been inclined to go and have a lie down if I’ve felt some exercise coming on.

Remember my skinny knees..? I was so fit at that time. I don’t mean fit as in phwoaaar fit, I mean fit as in fit.  I went to the gym pretty much every day and exercised for at least an hour, and I had bags of energy all the time. I’ve got to be honest, I didn’t enjoy it, in fact I hated it – always have – but in my newly slim and determined to stay slim body I was almost evangelical about it. I’d be beavering away on the cross-trainer and all the time I’d be muttering through gritted teeth about the injustice of not being born with a metabolism that laughed in the face of calories and screamed ‘come and have a go if you think you’re ‘ard enough’ at whatever junk I threw down my neck. But in spite of that I was pretty disciplined, because I had both feet planted firmly in the sweet spot – I was in the zone. And not looking out of place in a room full of other sweaty slim people helped.

I didn’t exercise so much when I was losing the weight, it was something I started doing once I’d pretty much reached my goal weight.  There’s something about fatties exercising that just…well, it’s a car crash isn’t it? For everyone that looks at you and thinks ‘go on lass, good for you’ there’ll be ten others who can’t wait to tell someone about the munter in the gym who was giving it large on an exercise bike, which by the way was threatening to buckle under the strain.  ‘Hahahaha you should have seen the state of it’…and for me that’s like going back in time, standing in front of that class being compared to a pig.

Perhaps I’ll stay clear of the gym until I can blend in a bit more easily. I’ll settle for pushing myself to walk a bit further and a bit faster with my pooch, who’ll think all his Christmases have come at once, bless him. Never mind that my knee will give me hell…no pain, no gain eh?

Like it..? Tell your friends!