Photo by thingsarebetterwithaparrott / by NCND 2.0 CC

My neurologist told me to lose weight and I thought, “So, it has come to this, has it?” The last time a doctor told me to lose weight, I weighed about 350 pounds and was preparing to have my gallbladder removed. To make the day even more perfect, the neurologist’s nurse had weighed me on one of those old scales with big metal counterweights that slide left to right. I thought the digital revolution had rid us of those scales and the drawn out torture of watching the nurse politely start at a lower number and then slide, slide, slide, slide you up to a much bigger number.

I know people have various reactions to a doctor telling them they’re fat, but my first thought was, “Yeah, of course I need to lose weight.” Let us not forget the pant-splitting incident in January precipitated by the 50-pounds of headache weight gain (which I actually had forgotten until I was searching the archives for something else and found that entry). […]

• Continue reading "Things never happen the same way twice"

When I saw a TV ad for the new iPod Nano last night, I felt rather old. The iPod Nano can record video, as well as play music and make you a peanut butter sandwich, evidently. It’s smaller than a deck of cards and probably lighter than one too. Yet, all I could think of was my dad’s first home video camera, which looked something like this, though the camera itself wasn’t as fancy.

Yes, my dad lugged a 10-pound VCR with a handle around the Baltimore Science Center taping the animatronic dinosaurs exhibit. The camera itself did not have a video tape holder. You had to plug the camera into the VCR and drag it along with you. The battery life wasn’t that long either. But now, you can just buy a Flip Camera that fits in your pocket to achieve the same goal.

When Dad was recording things with his huge camera, I was probably watching Inspector Gadget, a cartoon broadcast in the 80’s that was sort of a spoof of Get Smart, though if […]

• Continue reading "The times, they are a changin’"

I watched a woman pull into the driveway where I had my first car accident which involved a blue Ford van and a sideview mirror. Then she carried groceries into our old kitchen and I looked through the windows to see they’d had new cabinets installed. I wondered who lived in my old bedroom now, and if the BB gun hole was still in the window, shot there by the previous owners’ sons. I bet the woman in the driveway didn’t know they used to grow pot in the basement.

I don’t get down to Louisville that much anymore. Almost all of my high school friends have moved away, just like me. But it is one of the few cities in this country that has my memories seamlessly integrated into its edifices. I can’t drive down a road without triggering a memory. There’s the house where my best friend in 8th grade lived before her family moved somewhere only the army knows where. There’s the music store where I learned to play flute and met the […]

• Continue reading "The city I used to live in"

Last April it was dark and early and my bed was shaking. Alas, I was not having mind-blowing sex. I was lying in bed alone at 5:36am which is a time that I am almost never awake unless my cat is very hungry and I have forgotten to shut the bedroom door. As the movement shook my brain awake, I realized what was happening.

I was in an earthquake! In Indiana! Finally!

I have always wanted to be in an earthquake, just to know what it feels like. I know people sometimes die in earthquakes, so I didn’t want to be in one of those earthquakes, just a safe little earthquake where the ground moved and the plates rattled and perhaps a picture fell off of the wall. I don’t live in California though, and I don’t have any plans to move to a major fault line, so the possibility seemed slim. But here I was, at 5:36am, experiencing my first earthquake and it was awesome. I couldn’t wait to blog about it.

Then I realized, wait, […]

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I don’t remember the exact words I used to introduce myself at my BlogHer panel last weekend, but I do remember how everyone reacted. I said something like, “Hi, I’m Jennette Fulda. I blog at pastaqueen.com. Three and a half years ago I weighed almost 400 pounds.”

That’s when everyone gasped so hard I was nearly sucked off the stage.

I just flicked my eyes back and forth, furrowed my brow and thought, “What? Didn’t you read my bio?” I don’t know why I spent so much time deliberating over what to say in that silly little paragraph about myself if no one was going to read it. Now I wish I’d claimed to be the last Amazon warrior from Themyscira or that I’d been raised by alien goat people instead of whatever I ended up writing.

I’ve told my story so many times now that I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. I used to weigh 372 pounds, I lost a lot of weight, my flight leaving for Indy was delayed, I had some oatmeal […]

• Continue reading "Leave them gasping for air"