Trip to the Dr's Office or How I Spent Time in HELL with a Woman Who Could Outcomplain Me Any Day of the Week

Being a fat woman, I was forced to change medications by the doctor. He should have the standard statement printed out. "You need to loose weight and exercise more." Okay. Heard that the last time. If I knew the magic formula for losing weight and exercising more I would be a billionaire. I'd make Richard Simmons look like a piker.

There is no magic formula. You just have to make yourself do it. Apparently I can make myself exercise and do. But eating, well, that's another problem. Incidentally, I'm on day 3 of DIET NO. 1, and have lost three pounds. So there. Take that, skinny people. Power to the FAT WOMEN everywhere.

Anyway, back to the story. The doctor told me I have to change my meds. So I did. Then I gained fifteen pounds. Apparently the meds that I had been previously taking helped my digestive system a little too much. So off I went and took the new stuff. "Yippee," I said sarcastically. I could choose between being constantly diarrheic and keeping the weight off, or putting on fifteen pounds and being constipated. Wow. What a choice. So now fiber is my best friend. Yea, chewable pills.

The doctor sez check your blood work in 3 months and see how you're doing. I said, "Well, great, I love being hosed by the medical insurance, so just peachy." (Referring to the bill I got from the last blood work I had done, which i took to mean that the insurance company was washing its hands of me. But this is a whole 'nother story.) Like a good girl, I waited 3 months and made my appointment.

Another note. I know that the doctor's office has both fat and skinny women working there, because I've seen them. In fact, one of the doctors in the practice is a portly gentleman and he must catch hell from those skinny little twits upon occasion. I do not hold that against them, because I try very hard not to be fat biased. (Go FAT WOMEN, everywhere!) However, and it's a BIG FAT WHOPPING HOWEVER!!!!!! when I get on the phone with the receptionist and tell her that I need to make a blood work appointment because the Doctor has thus mandated it and God knows the Doctor is the King of the World, and she tells me 9:40 AM on such and such date, then follows it with, "Are you sure you can do that?" in a voice laden with sarcasm, it's not a good thing. (RUN ON sentence alert.) I think I can say that I have self-control issues with food. I love to eat. But I am capable of fasting for twelve hours, BITCH.

And here comes another HOWEVER!!!! However, (there it is) when I went to the doctor's office and I was mildly cranky, mostly from missing my caffeine fix and not from missing food, there was a woman there who was about a thousand times worse than I am. When I drove up I managed to get in ahead of her and behind me I could hear her saying she had an appointment for blood work at 9:20 am. Well, here's the thing, she was late, and I was early by five minutes. I got into the little, minuscule waiting room with her. Her daughter joins her. While I'm messing with my phone, she asks me if I have an appointment. Of course, I don't mind talking to people at the doctor's office, except maybe to the receptionist and sometimes to the doctor when he's lecturing me about not eating right. (I eat right. I eat too much right.) So I tell her.

Her: Well, I guess we're both going to be late then.

Me, in a mistaken attempt at humor (Warning, warning, witty morning humor and ornery people do not mix): Well, then I'm not happy about missing my cup of tea this morning.

Her: And I want my fucking coffee. And my fucking cigarette. And to be seen by the fucking lab techs on fucking time.

Her daughter (sotto voce): She has another fasting appointment after this one.

Me, not completely stupid and wondering if it was too late to put on a bullet-proofed vest: Wow. That's a lot of fasting.

Her: You're damn tooting. Hey, that guy came in after us. HEY, YOU IN THE LAB, THERE'S APPOINTMENTS WAITING HERE! (This was yelled in a pretty loud tone across a space of about six feet, so I think they heard her.)

The lab techs: Yes, Ma'am. We're working as fast as we can.

Me: I'll just let you go first, huh?

Her: I'm going to the front to complain.

Her daughter, after her mother was gone: She really misses her coffee and cigs.

Me: Yeah, well. (I didn't have a witty response so I settled for a silent, 'Duh? Don't you have a cage for her?')

Her, dragging a receptionist with her by the arm: I settled their little fucking hashes.

Me, on the inside: Please let them call her first. I think she'll take out my throat if they don't.

Then, guess what happens. One of the doctors brings a patient back and he gets seen by the lab techs before us. I swear the woman's vein on her forehead popped out and throbbed. If I had a ruler I could have measured it because it was popping out so far. Then her daughter scooted over about two chairs and I was looking for the exit. I thought since I had been unfortunate enough to get into the clinic's doors about thirty seconds ahead of her that they would call me next and the woman would go ballistic.

Don't get me wrong. I wanted the lab techs to get it over as much as the other woman did, but I wasn't in mortal danger of losing my ever-freaking mind because their system wasn't exactly state of the art. As soon as she yelled at the techs, I figured they wouldn't be seeing her until after lunch time, if she was lucky. And if we weren't lucky I was watching her hands to make sure she wasn't reaching for the little gun she brought with her. I was hauling ass for the nearest exit in a speed that is little expected from a woman of my stature. ("Did you see that?" "What?" "That fat woman could have won an Olympic medal?" "What for?" "The Fastest Fat Woman Running From a Tobacco/Caffeine Deprived Maniac Event, for goodness sake. Did you hear some popping noises?")

Anyway, for the sake of all mankind and the clinic in particular, the woman was called first. After all of that, it was pretty anticlimactic.

Diet No. 1

BTW, we're starting a new diet today. 10 1/2 hours into it and I want to go to KFC and order everything on the menu. Could I be a little cranky? Hmm.

The Underwire Bra - Wonder or Horrific Implement of a Vindictive Man

There. Doesn't the title say everything? I think it might. One day I was walking around, completely minding my own lingerie-minded business, when suddenly one of the wires in my underwire bra broke in half and stabbed me in the boobie. Now I don't mind technical failure when it comes to say a rubber band or any suspension bridge that I'm NOT driving on, but when it comes to my umlatters, that's a different story. My poor whoa-mammas were not doing a thing wrong, let me tell you. See convenient illustration. I think I left out a few swearwords.

Then my boobie got it right in the tender part on the bottom. I'm not sure of the exact thoughts that coursed through my pain-addled brain but it definitely involved swearing in two languages (my swear words are limited to English and Spanish and I intend to fix that as soon as I get on the Internet for future episodes of boobie stabbing by wayward brassieres), taking the Lord's name in vain in multiples, and questioning the parentage of the maker of the bra in general. I had visions of going to the doctor's office and/or emergency room and having to explain the incident. ("Excuse me," I whispered to the clerk. "I have a little problem." "OKAY, MA'AM," the clerk boomed. "YOU DON'T HAVE TO WHISPER. I'M SURE THOSE PATIENTS AND NURSES ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HOSPITAL WOULD LIKE TO KNOW ALL OF THE DIRTY INTIMATE DETAILS, TOO." "Awk," I whispered, in extreme mortification. "I think I'll just bleed to death instead.")

So there I was with an impaled boobie and I was kind of stuck in a state of mental well-what-the-fuck-am-I-supposed-to-do-about-it and it dawns on me that a woman couldn't possibly have invented the underwire bra. I mean, she would have to have known better. I should have known better. In fact, when I related the incident to my sister on the phone she said, "Well, why did you buy an underwire bra, for fuck's sake?" (Except she didn't SAY, "For fuck's sake," but I'm pretty sure she was thinking it.) So it had to be a man. So while I was meditating on what to say next I googled it and sure as shit, I was wrong. It was a woman. A dumbass who apparently never wore the thing herself. Since she patented in the thirties I can only assume that she was both trying to appeal to female vanity and attempting to make a buck in the Great Depression. Anyway, if you're at all interested look for who invented the underwire bra on wikipedia. Nice long article that tells you way too much about boobie attire and how we really got to the Wonder Bra.

All of which makes me think of the fact that I'm certain that somewhere, somehow some pitiful unfortunate woman had her underwire bra break while she was in the middle of something and she DIED because it hit her aorta or something equally vital. (It says on her gravestone: Poor pitiful, unfortunate Gertrude Jones, victim of fashion and a weak underwire from an underwire bra. WTF was she thinking?)

You decide. The underwire bra, a boon to mankind (Ha! It only makes mankind look at boobies more.) or a horrific implement of a vindictive man or woman as the case might be.

Where are the bleeping band aids?

Not Everything is About Fat

It occurred to me today that I place way too much emphasis on fatness. Not everything is about fat. After all, I'm having a wonderfully invigorating neighbor feud with the idiots that live next door and it doesn't have ANYTHING to do with me being fat. The short version: Their five year old wonder dumpling rang the doorbell twice and slammed the door knocker in an attempt to see if my six year old could come out to play at 9 PM on a weeknight, not to mention a school night. Well, my wondrous icon of childhood virtue was in bed already because we've got our priorities straight and since I was sick, I was already asleep and my hubs was out of town on business. So when the wonder dumpling did her iconic thing, it scared the crap out of me. The following day I said to the dumpling's cow mother, "We need a new rule about Dumpling ringing our door bell." Whereupon Cow Mama jumped on her 12 year old daughter's head, screeching about the fact that the 12 year old was supposed to be watching her. So the 12 year old did what any self serving, borderline hysterical personality with the mama from hell would do and LIED. "It didn't happen." Bill Clinton would salute in sheer appreciation. So I said I didn't appreciate being called a liar and Cow Mama leaped upon me with her claws fully bared. I believe the gist of it was that since it only happened once (the five year dumpling with trigger door bell finger) then it wasn't a problem (and how dare I complain about it) and since the 12 year old is only a 12 year old and virginly pure of evil malcontent, then I was judging her by adult standards (the 12 year lying about me.) Well, at that point communication pretty much melted down. Now I'm tempted to fire a BB gun out the garage window at their tires, kiddie pool and dog because I'm feeling pissy.

So look so not about fatness. It's about idiot neighbors ticking me off. Now I have ranted and gotten it off my chest, I feel so much better. Thank heaven for blogging.

Diet No. 3

The diet came. The diet went. The pounds went. The pounds came back. I did exercise, however. My sarcasm knows no limit. Alas, my stomach is still fat.

The Demon Papa John's

So there ends the five day diet. I lost four pounds. How did it end? It's a complicated story. My daughter was ill. A gastrointestinal event. (Out of more than more orifice.) So she's feeling better. I ask (herein lies the biggest error) what she wants to eat. She says, "Pizza." (This is followed by the second error.) My husband, who is also on the DIET, says, "I want a meat eaters." My initial plan was to get a small cheese pizza for the munchkin and we get eat that with salad. It sounds good. It would have worked. NOT. So what did we get. The small pizza with cheese. The medium meat eaters (because it does not come in small, those rotten papa john bastards and their wicked planning against all the fat people.) And an order of honey chipotle wings for me. (I love their wings, those creeps.) And I did it all on the Internet because I've got it all set up from the pre-diet days. (Advice to people on diets. Disable your Papa John's accounts.)

Anyway, DIET NO. 2 of 2010 has now commenced. May it last more than five days. Curse you, Papa John's!

New Year, New Diet

All right. Here goes diet no. 1. This is the first diet of the year sometimes the result of the dreaded RESOLUTION (defined as that awful, terrible thing that you do that people say you shouldn't do, but secretly you love doing, so you really don't want to quit, yet you're forced to make a formal declaration of intent, which is kind of like war in the Gulf, in order to placate friends, relatives, and yes, your psyche.) So far I've lost six pounds. SIX POUNDS. Then I read about this woman who eats the lite stuff at Taco Bell and lost 54 pounds. Excuse me while I double check my figures there. Ok. I was right. Christine whatsherface eats at TB all the time and orders from the fresco menu (Also known as the stuff that tastes like crap because there's no fat content in it at all, and btw it's about as Mexico as my Aunt Petunia.) So she limits herself to 1250 calories a day and that must mean she gets to eat twice. Since I've seen the after shot of Christine in a bikini, I figure the woman must have a trainer and run twenty miles a day. So I don't think the TB diet would work for me. Back to my diet. More veggies. More fruit. Less bad for me stuff. More exercise. My skinny trainer, Colleen, is on my case again. She's ready for me 'to take the next step.' I hate skinny people. Skinny people who have never been fat (five pounds DOES NOT count.) (Hell, twenty pounds doesn't count.) don't really understand the fat mentality. (An idea for a doctoral thesis: Understanding the Fat Mentality: from the view point of a fat woman.) So with that in mind. Please think of me while you're eating tato chips and brownies. I'm starving to death. I'm sick of lettuce and it's only the 8th of January. Yikes. I'm in trouble again.

Gym Agony!

Yesterday I went for my umpteenth training session with COLLEEN the gym training goddess and personal fitness Nazi. Apparently I'm not happy unless I can't get out of bed the next day. Like today. There was an exercise that involved a lunge and using muscles that haven't been used since I gave birth to my daughter. There were weights involved and the skinny perky titted twinkie was going, "You can do it! Just five more. Just twenty more. Just five more seconds. Here I'll wave a donut in front of your face and then not let you have it. Psych." In conclusion or in consequence, my inner thigh muscles and my butt muscles (of which have no need to be skinny because apparently my ass is one of the few parts of my body that is NOT actually fat) HURTS like a sonuvabitch. I'm told that I resembled a penguin whilst moving down my hallway this morning, which was not a comment that lended itself to anyone in my house getting any consideration out of me. Let me catalogue my woes. Inner thighs. Ouch. Butt cheeks. Owwy. Calves. Screw you. Back muscles. (Colleen LOVES to stick her finger in between my shoulder blades to make sure that I'm doing the exercise correctly. If I can crunch a walnut in between my shoulder blades I get to graduate to the next level.) Upper arms. Youch. Inner disposition. Why the hell do I do this to myself?

I Came, I Saw, I Ate

Hah. I defy anyone to go to a Xmas party without eating bad. We went to several. The business one was at Ruth Chris's Steak House. They were serving hordeurves. Let's see. Jumbo Shrimp on sticks. Scallops wrapped in bacon. Smoked Salmon on Crackers. And they had about a million bottles of wine on the central table with a ton of waiters pouring liberally into balloon sized goblets. And that was just the beginning. You should have seen desert. It was a cheesecake that I could have used as a flotation device if I was sinking. (There's a great analogy there.) In between there was a petite Mignon with more jumbo shrimp on it. And tons of potatoes with tons of butter (real). Also rolls with more butter. Also asparagus with a Hollandaise sauce. Let me say that everyone was secretively undoing their top buttons. And that was just the business one.

Then there was the neighbors. Who had crab, shrimp, more shrimp, stuffed oysters, chips, dips, and lots of other stuff. My God, who could resist.

Then there was the new year's eve party with enough food to equal a mountain. Cookies, fudge, more seafood, booze. Oh, the horror to a fat woman who knows she's supposed to be on a diet.

No one around here will go hungry on the holidays.

So anyway, I gained five pounds. End of story.

New Fat Issues

Today as I was driving my daughter to preschool we saw a micro car. I don't know what the name of the car is, only that it's like so small, a skinny person would have trouble sitting in it. Fat people BEWARE! This is not a fat friendly car. Can you believe it has two front seats? Yikes. Two skinny people stuffed in a car together. God forbid they go through a drive-through. If they ate a Big Mac, the car would explode. If one farted, then the other one would be blasted into outer space to commune personally with the remains of Sputnik.

I mean what were the inventors thinking? You cannot fit a normal sized person in this car. Anyone over the height of five foot three has to fold themselves up to get in. I think my daughter at forty inches is about the right size. (BTW, when she saw the car, that's what she thought, that the car was made for her. And she's only four so she's already nagging me about her driver's license.) However, the car gets insanely good gas mileage, so folding yourself up into a cramp filled nightmare must be just a little con. "I can't feel my left arm and my left thigh, but I GET 50 MPH. Whoo-hoo!" Anything to be green, right? Hey, walk. Take a bus. Take a train. Take a bike. That'll work and you have room AND you don't have to pay through the nose for the privilege.

Speaking of transportation. Go Canadians on the recent decision in their high court about fat people getting a free seat. (Like airplane seats are so roomy anyway.) It's not like there's a lot of elbow room on those suckers anyway. The airline companies are trying to get every little inch out of their airplane space. They'd put seats on the nose of the airplane if they thought they could get away with it. I'm surprised they don't sell the space behind the pilot. (I suspect that the pilot's union put a kibosh on that one.) In any case, I say let's visit Canada and give them some of our fat people tourist dollars. All right.

Gym Torture

Okay, there's a machine at the gym called an elliptical trainer. Basically you put your feet in the pedals and pump kind of like a bike except standing up. I call it the big butt machine, because if you have a big butt and you use this machine consistently, the chances are good that your butt will diminish. I, however, do not have a big butt. I need a big tummy machine. When I reported this to my trainer, Colleen, of the skinny, perky-titted-ness persuasion, she laughed and said, "it's good for you." I laughed, but not in an amused way. Then I commented that only women with shelf-asses should use this evil, archaic torture device designed by a man. (Two twisted men talking to each other: "Hey, my wife has a fat ass." "Hey, so does mine." "I know, let's invent a machine that works off their fat asses." "Great idea. Plus we can make a buck.") Then my trainer said, "I've got a shelf-ass." Whereupon I looked at her sculpted, well-exercised ass and snorted a chicken leg out of my left nostril. (I have no idea where the chicken leg came from.) This woman is like 5ft 8inches tall and weighs probably 120 lbs. She doesn't have a shelf-ass. As a matter of fact she doesn't even have a toe-hold ass. If a climber were climbing her back they would fall to their deaths because they wouldn't be able to catch a toe or a finger on her ass.

So anyway the point of the story was that elliptical trainers are wicked devices contrived by perverse men and that my trainer is insecure. Whoa. Just when you thought life didn't have any morals.

Oh, yes, and that's a picture of the Big Butt Rock just to drive my point home. (Or to kick you in the B***.) Oh, I amuse myself.