Hey Mr. Panda.

I ordered food from Panda before I left work tonight. Shrimp fried rice & shrimp with chinese veggies. All the way home, I was grateful it was dark so nobody could see the drool pooling on my lower lip. It smelled like a slice of heaven.

Once home, I dish up my trough.. erm.. plate and settle in at the desk/computer. Because everyone knows that surfing the net while eating makes the food tastier. Mid-way through the feeding frenzy, I look down and study my dinner.

Fried rice. Check. Shrimp. Check. Chinese veggies - where the hell are they? Leeks? That's it. Leeks.

I get pissy.

I make a mental note to self: The next time I order from Panda, ask the little chinaman to throw in some baby corn, peapods, a fucking broccoli floret or two. I'm good for it, Hung So Low.

Chirp - McD's.

Last night, while on my way home from work, I two-wayed my husband. He will be known as 'J' from this point forward.

By two-way, I mean that obnoxious feature that Nextel phones have - the walkie talkie.

I told him I was on my way and asked him if he needed anything.

In the few seconds it takes for him to mash the button and for me to hear the cute chirp, I thought.. Wouldn't it be nice if he said he just needed me? And then I laughed at myself. We've been married for a coon's age. (That's a long fucking time in non-hillbilly speak.) No way was he going to say something sweet like that. Rather, he was going to ask me to stop at McD's for a heart attack, hold the pickles. Super sized.

I hear the chirp. His voice. "I just need someone to hold."

The Kodak moment would have shown me, smiling a sappy, stupid, Hallmark smile.

I reply, "That would be me. I love you too so much."

*insert approximately 45 seconds.*

Chirp. J. - "If you feel like it, you could stop by McD's and get me a double cheeseburger, hold the pickles and a strawberry shake. Get yourself one too, we'll cuddle and drink them."

Who says romance has to end after the honeymoon?

Phat Life.

So, I was looking at my myspace page before coming to blog & I notice that the advertisement banner at the top was.. beat up. It’s divided into three areas - more bang for the space, I guess. One part is advertising Waylon Jennings ringtones for your celly. I’m down with that. Got me some Waylon on my cell already. But another part was about how to lose weight. Like what.. they know I’m chubby? How?!

*looks around for the spycam, knowing it’s somehow hooked up inside the fridge*

I’m riding the phat rollercoaster, y’all. Allow me to break down how this works.

Every night, when I’m blogging my little heart out for people to read (but is anyone really out there?), and I’m pleasantly full (see stuffed to the point of vomiting), I think to myself - Jody, tomorrow morning you are going to start on your diet again. First of all, you will not eat for a week, to clean out your system. And you will take diarrhea pills & drink lots of water, the whole time. Because yanno, I want to be REALLY, REALLY clean.

And then you will eat yogurt, cucumbers and one lettuce leaf a week. The next morning when I wake up at noon.. I am still dead set on this plan of action. Until 2:00 p.m. Appromimately. Then I’m hungry. I eat a pickle. No calories. Check the jar.

Then I remind myself that my husband super likes yogurt & I should save that yummy treat for his work dinner. So I have some cookies. I don’t want them to get stale & the package is still open from the night before. (Do recall I said stuffed to the point of tossing my.. well.. cookies.)

I do regret for the next couple of hours and give hate eye to the lettuce leaf. By then, it’s dinner time, and I am a stellar cook. Thinking that surely the cookies I hoover’d only had the caloric value of what I would have eaten for breakfast (had I been awake anywhere near the morning hours), I know that yes, I do deserve a decent dinner.

*insert a picture of me ladeling asparagus in cheese sauce over top a ribeye the size of Texas - it’s called Steak Oscar & if I were on death row, it would be my last meal so I could fry happily.*

The next few hours I spend content, if filled with a regret that I ignore. Then it’s time for web surfing, playing Pogo!, watching Big Brother, SVU, The Tudors, Will & Grace (depending on night, time, and courtesy of my loverly Dish Network package.) Speaking of which, the bill is due. I wonder if they would give me a free month based on my myspace shoutout.

But anyway, none of those shows would reach their full entertainment potential without a bowl of popcorn. Right? Right.

Now my daily intinerary has went full circle. Stuffed, bed, dedicated to tomorrow being the first day of the rest of my skinny life. Pft. And don’t even get me started on Sundays - the Sabbath for Diet Promises to myself. Somehow, myspace knows my dirty little secret. (That I sway back & forth between a ghetto booty/mass choco eating & forgetting to eat due to stress while dropping weight at an alarming pace.) & they are advertising - to ME - on MY myspace profile, diet.. crap.

The nerve.

The twisty turn on this rollercoaster is that at times, I think it’s perfectly okay to be on the phat ass side. I’m not a teenager anymore. I’ve had two children, c-section, so my stomach is the Rand McNally of scars. I really am a great cook & enjoy my food. My husband prefers voluptuous (isn’t that the best word for fat, ever) women. And I’m kind of pretty so surely that makes up for jiggly ass & tits, no?

But then I think about my health. Like.. a heart attack at freakin’ 40. Diabetes Type Two. My joints screaming at me to put down the coconut cream pie, right fucking now. And I know that it’s not about looking good in a bikini anymore. It’s not about sashaying my arse around in a pair of Apple Bottom jeans. (It is, however, about fitting into this sexy lingerie my hubby bought me about ten years ago.)

It’s okay to be chubby, plump, phat, voluptuous. A woman can be truly beautiful & sexy no matter her size. And it’s okay to bite into Steak Oscar & think that it’s almost as good as sex. I am guilty of enjoying, sensually even, life in the moment and worrying about the consequences later.

But I think there is a compromise.

To live life that way, with full & rich enjoyment, but in moderation. To lick the spoon clean of brownie batter & then go take a walk on the perfect Spring day. To eat a slice of strawberry pie & then go make love to your husband & burn off the calories. Maybe that’s the secret of life.

Or maybe that's me rationalizing the Cheezit's I'm scarfing down right now.