Skip to main content

Riffing on My Midriff

I’ve got a legitimate question. Why is it that no matter how many grape tomatoes and kale salads I pack in my lunch, my middle still looks like I swallowed the Michelin Man? I’m beginning to look like a preschool drawing; a big circle with twigs sticking out of it.

I realize I have the Guinness family to thank for some of this, but surely after months of never-before-attempted consistent exercise and more steamed broccoli than a pack of wild vegetarians could possibly consume, I should be able to add pants with zippers to my wardrobe by now.

It could be genetics, and if so, then why God, didn’t I take after my mother? I don’t think she ever wore anything with a double digit. Of course, she did eat like a bird, except when it came to black jelly beans and her morning doughnut.

The only thing I can come up with is that I’m over 50 now and I have stretched my skin so far over the years that it has to accumulate someplace and it decided to hang out right at centerfield. What’s worse is that I have a feeling it has taken up residence and has no plans to move.

After a certain age, everything between my shoulders and hips became nothing more than a series of rolls. I lose a roll sometimes and maybe a few of the mountains have turned into hills, but I could still carry a roll of quarters in between them.

This reminds me of when I was in college and read in Cosmo or someplace that you should not be able to fit a pencil under your boobs without it dropping to the floor; even back then I could have fit a pack of highlighters under there.

A while ago I began trying to make peace with the fact that these rolls are probably here to stay. I am trying to take heart each time the count goes down and I lose one of them, dear friends that they’ve become.

I know losing one is a victory. And like a true champ, I want to celebrate every success with a nice slab of cake with a side of ice cream finished off with a helping of deep remorse.

My dream has always been to lose enough rolls so that I could finally look like Meg Ryan. Instead I have to keep wearing baggie shirts that don’t stick to my belly dough.

Oh, I know, I could just get over myself and wear a shirt that touches me. But somewhere along the way I developed a strong aversion to my clothing actually rubbing up against my skin.

I’ve seen other Rubenesque women pull off the clingy shirt, but it’s not for me. Oh, I’ve tried it, but before I even step out of my bedroom to look in the mirror, the shirt is halfway over my head and I’m pulling my waggling arms out of it.

And forget about tight pants. I own about a half dozen pairs of those leggings, mostly black of course. If you see me in them it means all of my jumbo pants are in the washing machine.


I guess if, I mean when, I turn into Meg Ryan I’ll have to write her a letter and ask her if she’d consider dressing like Bea Arthur.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

He sells sea shells, I wish

   So now rather than being obsessed with fake fingernails I can’t afford, I’m becoming obsessed with checking this blog. I’m pretty sure all 52 views were made by either me or my husband.   That leads me right into the current situation at hand. We need friends. We’re desperate for them. I’ve started handing out my telephone number to people I meet while doing my meager freelance work. They think it’s for the story I’m writing but really it’s in hope that someday they’ll find a reason to call and then I can hit them with, “By the way, do you play cards? Bingo? Gin Rummy?” If I wasn’t so arthritic I’d throw Twister in there.    It’s not so much for me, it’s my husband who likes to have people around. I have become hermit-like since moving here while he has become convinced we could die here and not be found for months. He had friends back in Syracuse but he chose to stay home at night with his loving wife. Now all of a sudden I get the impression he’d h...
6 comments
Read more

I Like to Call Them Ow-Bows

   It’s a toss-up. Do I write about the fact that if you search “jobless goddess” in Google the dairy goddess and the library goddess come way ahead of me, or do I write about the fact that my husband is incapacitated due to a broken elbow? I guess I’ll go with the broken elbow. Besides, who the hell breaks their elbow anyway? My husband of course.    It started out innocently enough. I, in my desire to lose weight and become the wrinkly, thinner woman I was meant to be, decided we should start up the morning walks again. I prodded him while he was still under the covers. “Come on, let’s do it. You know we have to do this,” I said while tugging on my really sexy yoga pants (which, by the way, never get used for yoga).    To his credit, he got up, pulled on his pajama pants and went with me. We got about a 16 th of a mile past the driveway before he landed in the gravel. I’m talking a bed of gravel. Gravel embedded in the palm of your hand. Gravel ...
2 comments
Read more

Parish the Thought

     I love small towns. When I lived in Parish, New York, there was no end to the reverie, not to mention the constant parades.      We had a Halloween parade through town featuring people of all ages marching in costume along a rather abbreviated parade route. It all culminated at the fire barn where a couple of old draft horses would pull along a hay wagon. Most all town festivities featured the fire barn.       Monday night bingo held there. The caller was a volunteer firefighter prone to bringing on fits of laughter when he drew N 44…which he pronounced as "N farty-far," whereby producing great gales of cackling from the middle-aged women who showed up every week, I think maybe just to flirt with the caller and the other male volunteers who collected their money. Don't get me wrong, I'm not making fun. I spent more than a few Monday nights there myself.      The gas stations served as restaurants in Parish. You...
2 comments
Read more