I've decided I'm not fat anymore...

I gained three pounds this weekend. I'm not sure if this is a big deal or not. In some moments, I feel like I'm a total failure of a person because I can't get a grip on things. I try. I try to be in control of my schedule, my caloric intake, my spending, the laundry.

If I'm unhappy about the way I'm doing something, why am I living with it?

I have an easy answer for the laundry and my schedule. There are so many outside forces acting on me that it actually is futile to hope not to have a pile of clothing at the top of the stairs AND the bottom of the stairs. It is futile to hope to have the kind of day where I'm not rushed and not stressed and not so busy I feel like I might just crack and drive into the sea. I have kids. I take responsibility for all the laundry, feeding, dressing and caring for them.

My spending, it's really not all that out of control. I don't actually have enough money to be out of control of it. It's enough to get us through the month, and so I spend so that it does. And it always does. I'd like to have a savings, and I'd like to be able to afford to relax. Something like my 500 dollar month is actually kind of fun. I can rearrange things and simplify things, and hope in the end that I win. I think I will, despite the fact that I spent 200 of my 500 dollars in one week. I'm good at making a plan with little charts and projections.

My weight, however, is not a fun thing for me to tackle. It's purely annoying. There is nothing outside of me and my actions making me fat. I can't even blame having kids, because I was fat before I got pregnant. I was sexy and plump and taut and thinner than I am now and most importantly, all of my parts were in their right places... but I certainly wasn't skinny. I just want to be skinny, or at least some version of skinny. I want to catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror and think, "Oh yeah..." instead of gasping and saying to myself, "Every time somebody sees my profile, they're seeing THIS?"

I don't really even eat meals. I just grab stuff and eat it as the day goes on. For example, I had tea this morning, like I do every morning. Two hours later, I had oatmeal. Two hours later, the kids needed lunch, so I ate apple slices and peanut butter and pretzels. And then they wanted strawberries, so I ate some strawberries. And then we made banana cream out of frozen bananas. And then I ate a muffin, just because it was actual lunch time and I made them and they were there. My whole morning and afternoon always go like this. I just eat stuff as the day goes on. There's no structure to it. There's no breakfast, lunch and dinner. It's just a big, unorganized mess.

It's my mess.

I feel like I can't do anything about messes in my life, because my life is so busy and crazy and so much of it is out of my control. When it comes to planning the way my day is going to go, I can't think ahead. I have no idea if Cheesy is going to be miserable and teething or if Scouty will fall into the mud on our way to school, necessitating a trip back home at top speed to get new pants. There's no way for me to predict the whims and circumstances of my children. I feel out of control, in general, and the best way I know how to deal with it is to just kind of relax and let things happen organically.

This approach works wonders for my sanity, and it also makes me fat.

I'm no longer pulling off voluptuous and busty. I'm obscene and stretch marked and saggy. I no longer fill out my clothing in all the dangerous places. I am simply abusing the properties of stretch.

This is totally silly. Am I not the person who goes around claiming that we can be anything we want to be? We can decide to have happiness and then make ourselves happy. I believe that. We can decide that we want to be cool, and then be it.

Well, I don't want to be fat, anymore.
There. I've decided it.
I guess it's time to be it.