Tag Archives: shopping

Almost But Not Quite Human

Well, I’m feeling more human than I was this time last week…that ear infection was nasty. I managed to make it to my friend’s house this last weekend, a couple of hours north of here. It was our bi-annual pilgrimage to the craft and food fair that we love so much and I was reluctant to miss it, but we had to adapt our usual drill to reflect the fact that I was feeling a bit feeble. I haven’t seen my friend since we got back from holiday in February, but rather than sitting up chatting into the wee small hours which is customary on the first night, I was asleep in bed just after nine.

I was wiped. And I still had ear ache. I still have, actually, although it’s not anywhere near as bad as it was. I’m going to go stage a sit-in at my Doctor’s surgery today until they either give me something to sort it out once and for all, or chop the damn thing off.

The Asshole voice has been both enthusiastic and persistent this weekend. There was a steady stream of helpful suggestions emanating from the corner of my head where he lives, including his permission to throw caution to the wind and eat what I wanted because apparently it doesn’t count when you’re poorly. Sly fucker. I had to push the voice away at every single stall in the food hall. Speciality sausages, pies overflowing with steak and stilton, brownie bars and a hundred different flavours of cheese were all fair game…the Asshole lobbied hard and fast for all of them.

I’ve got to be honest, I was tempted. Don’t you think it’s harder to resist stuff when your defences are low? I do. I even tried a few samples this time, where last time I had a zero tolerance and managed to make it around without a single one. I counted them though, so it was controlled. I had four fingernail-sized pieces of cheese, a mouthful of pork pie and an eighth of a sausage on a stick so I’m fairly confident it won’t break the points bank. I bought a small pouch of smoked almonds which were all kinds of awesome, but they fitted easily into my weekly points, and that was the only thing I bought in the food hall.

It’s a shame I couldn’t quite pull off the same restraint when it came to the non-food side of things. However. I’ve only got one extra chin nowadays, so it’s harder to resist some of the lovely hand made jewellery because it’s starting to look nice on me again. And even though I’m still a bit Buddha-shaped, my body pretty much manages to squeeze into a size large these days, so the lack of XXXL duds didn’t cramp my style like it has done in the past.

There were lots of lovely little boutiques selling exactly the kind of stuff I like to wear, and I had arms like a fucking orangutang by the time we made it back to the car from carrying all the bags but you know what, I figured it was better than than allowing myself to get talked into buying pies, right?  I can’t be expected to resist everything, I mean I’m still a work in progress after all.

I’m not feeling confident about weigh-day tomorrow. My food plan has been on point, but I’ve been laid low and didn’t make a single visit to the Kingdom of Pain last week due to the pain and the pressure in my ear. But on a brighter note, the Physio has declared that my dodgy knee is on the mend, and I can go back to classes as normal this week, with just a couple of minor adjustments so hopefully I’ll start to build up my fitness again. I missed it, like a proper weirdo.

I’ll update the Shitbird page tomorrow whether it’s good, bad or ugly. Please lets all close our eyes and pray that it’s not bad or ugly 🙂

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Size Matters!

I bought a lovely new top a couple of weeks ago, one size smaller than I’ve worn of late and my intention was to lose enough weight to be able to wear it on my holidays. I was feeling very confident as I fished it out of the wardrobe last night and tried it on. I started to sense it might be a bit too snug as I pulled it over my head and realised it didn’t contain as much elastic as I’d thought it did. I wasn’t wrong, but driven by the desire to get into something the next size down I pushed on regardless.

So, I concluded that it will look lovely when I’m another fifteen pounds down, but right now there’s not a hope in hell of me wearing it. Not if I want to move around. Or in fact breathe.

That said, at one point I thought I was going to have to wear it between now and when I’ve lost those fifteen pounds because I couldn’t actually wriggle my way out of it. The fabric had my arms in a vice-like grip and I couldn’t move them enough to reach around and pull it over my head. I  flapped around the bedroom busting moves for a good fifteen minutes before I finally managed to escape and put the offending article back on its hanger.

Now, I love the top and I’ll keep it of course…at some point over the next couple of months it’ll definitely fit me. But it dawned on me as I shoved it back in the wardrobe that I felt really fat. Which is ironic, because the only reason I tried the top on in the first place was because climbing the stairs to bed I’d felt really skinny and I was convinced my turbo-charged January meant I’d done enough to get into it.  Bugger.

I reckon it’s because I didn’t buy it from a fat girl shop. I’m wearing a size twenty now, which for my friends Stateside is a sixteen…the stuff I’ve bought in that size from fat girl shops is comfortable on me, you know? This one came from a regular store for regular girls, and as I stomped around the bedroom  last night trying to get the circulation back in my arms I hold my hands up and admit to using a few choice words about the skinny pattern-cutters who clearly want girls with bingo wings to stay the hell out of Dodge.

Having had experience of being fat through the ages, it’s definitely easier now to walk into a regular store and find stuff in bigger sizes, but it sort of defeats the object if they begrudge every extra inch of fabric. It’s like they want to tap into the fat-girl market without having to actually make them feel welcome. I imagine a gaggle of skinny designers sat around the table looking mardy with their herbal calorie-free tea debating whether they could even get away with charging more for fat-girl sizes, after all people who can afford to eat so many hob-nobs can clearly afford to pay extra, right?

Logic tells me that it shouldn’t matter what it says on the label as long as something fits and it looks nice, but I have a skinny friend who refuses to shop in a certain store because she has to pick up a ten when she’s really an eight. See, contrary to that wicked rumour, size matters… 🙂

 

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