I think it’s odd that I have a PO box. When I was a kid, PO boxes were only mentioned at the end of commercials for Topsy Tail or Picture Pages. They didn’t seem like things real people had. Yet, now I have one and I’m pretty sure I’m a real person. It was really easy too. Last year I went to the postal counter, asked for a PO box, and they gave me a key and an address after I handed them my credit card. Credit cards are like magic wands.

It’s kind of fun to check my PO box because I never know what will be in there. Sometimes it’s a bait and tackle catalog addressed to the previous owner. Sometimes it’s a nice letter from a reader. And sometimes its an ad for a retouching service that promises that you’ll “look great in your summer pics,” though by “great” they mean “less like Porky the Pig.”

I’ve blurred out the company’s name because I’m not sure what to think about their service. I don’t [...]

• Continue reading "Wednesday wondering: Do I need to be retouched?"

A couple months ago I was at the bank drive-through window when the teller said, “Oh, hello! I just talked to you sister yesterday.” Which was news to me, because I don’t have a sister, and to my knowledge my brother has not been depositing checks in drag. I corrected her error, but the incident reminded me of two other events in my life.

First, right after I moved to Indianapolis, I was waiting in a line wrapped around a movie theater to get tickets for Star Wars – The Phantom Menace before we all found out the prequels were going to suck. The guy in front of me turned around and said, “Didn’t I go to high school with you?” Of course he hadn’t, because he wasn’t from Kentucky. The second event, was two or three years later when I was living fat and alone in my college apartment. I stopped at a liquor store to buy pina colada stuff when the counter boy asked me, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” But he didn’t.

During [...]

• Continue reading "The doppelganger effect"

Checking out at the grocery store makes me sad. Not because I have to hand over my credit card, (though that doesn’t fill me with paroxysms of joy either) but because of the magazines. Oh, the magazines. The covers of tabloids that ridicule women for being too fat or too thin. Covers that pimp the soup diet and the potato diet and the carrot diet. Covers that speculate on who’s pregnant and who’s just fat. It’s depressing and I rarely ever want to buy any of those magazines. I doubt I will, until I see a cover that touts how to lose 20 pounds sensibly in 20 weeks instead of in 20 days. Why are there always women on the covers? Magazines marketed at women have women on the covers and magazines marketed to men…also have women on the covers, though usually with considerably less clothing. Odd.

Seeing covers like that makes me glad that I’ve essentially checked out of pop culture over the past few years. I’m really picky about what TV shows I watch, [...]

• Continue reading "Off the rack"

As I mentioned earlier, whenever I’ve started my car the last couple weeks the “Change Oil Soon” light has turned on for 30 seconds and then turned itself off. I finally read my owner’s manual, and learned that if you don’t reset a button in the fuse box after you change the oil, this light comes on every four to five thousand miles. I had my oil changed 1000 miles ago, and I bet the mechanic forgot to reset the button. So I popped the hood, got my hands dirty, reset the fuse, and the light hasn’t come on since.

The “Change Oil Soon” light in my head is still flashing, causing my nerves to light up a headache in my skull although nothing is actually wrong with me. I have not been able to reset the fuse for the past 19 days. Yes, I have had a headache for literally 19 days. 24/7. Non-stop. Not 19 headaches over 19 days, just one, long, never-ending symphony of pain. It feels like too much pressure in my [...]

• Continue reading "Marinating in the migraine of pain"

Back in high school, Deirdre Barnes poked my belly on the school bus and giggled. I giggled too because I am ticklish everywhere I have skin.

“Why’d you do that?” I asked, confused.

“You’re so jiggly,” she said. It had never occurred to me that a thin person might not know what rolls of belly flab felt like. I didn’t like being poked. I hadn’t given her permission to feel me up. But I understand her curiosity now. I didn’t know what a thin person’s body felt like either. The closest I’d come to feeling up a six-pack was when I’d grab a Mountain Dew from the fridge.

I still haven’t felt up six-pack abs, but I’m sometimes surprised by how firm my body is becoming. When I but my hands on my sides I can feel solid muscle beneath my thin layer of fat. If I squeeze my thighs, there is extra skin and adipose tissue, but I also feel the ungiving firmness of muscle. My scale says I’m about 30% fat now, which means 70% of [...]

• Continue reading "Please don’t poke the fat girl"