Things I Have Noticed...

since losing (now around 28 pounds of) weight:

Strangers bump into me—literally—a whole lot more than they used to. Seriously, it’s getting so that I can’t walk across a public place on my own without having to perform an entire yoga routine to avoid collision. I don’t know why this should be so--I mean, I’m reasonably sure I wasn’t that much bulkier before. Or was I? Did I, in fact, bestride the hallowed halls of Manila malls like a colossus? Was I so massive that people viewed me as an oncoming steamroller, whereas now they see me as an attractive steamrollee, and therefore deliberately swerve out of their paths just to get me? Or could it be just that...

Guys take a longer time to check me out now. This one I completely comprehend, because before, their eyes used to just linger on my chest, then blip up quickly to my face to see if the windshield, if you will, lives up to the promise of the headlights. These days, the eyes start out at my tits, ooze down the rest of my body to my toes, then slide all the way up again before they get to my actual face. Honestly, it’s enough to make a girl neurotic about her pedicure schedule, but I’m not exactly offended. I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t acknowledge that I’m doing all this diet crap precisely to be easy on the eyes, right? I just wish they’d figure out how to do the once-over without us having to play bumper-cars eventually.

My husband is a tad more possessive than he used to be. I'm sure he hasn't realized this, but Dean has taken to steering me around public places with his hand in the small of my back. This is secretly hilarious to me because I know he knows he has nothing to worry about, yet here he is, acting like someone's gonna snatch me at the first opportunity. (He does not seem to feel the need to broadcast his "ownership" when we're with Sage, mind you--presumably my evident state of momminess renders me inviolate from potential woman-snatchers.) He also tends to lapse into goofily smiling blankness in mid-conversation; it's kind of fun to be able to render a celebrated speaker-cum-writer speechless with a tight t-shirt.

My back hurts almost all the time, although really it’s just a sort of low-grade ache. It’s not that I’ve been doing anything more strenuous than I used to, so my only working theory is that my fat actually used to help support my breasts, and now my poor spine is bitching at me for having to do all the work on its own. Okay, yes, I’m mostly kidding about this, but my back really does ache and my butt does too when I sit in one position for long. It’s the absence of previous padding, I tell you. Hmph, I thought I was supposed to feel healthier the closer I got to my ideal weight.

The tranny in the karaoke place we visit every weekend is still sexier than I am. Recently, Dean worriedly asked me if I was trying to become one of those anorexically-skinny model types; but no, my actual role model is the transvestite host at Music 21, who, despite having theoretically been born male, is now emphatically all woman, baby. It’s a sad state of affairs when the sexiest woman in the room is not only not you--it’s a chick who once had a dick.

Oy.


Check out the rest of the posse!

Cathy
Gabby
Sascha
Tobie