Fat Girl Slim

I know how long y'all have been anxiously awaiting my next post - crossing your chubby little fingers that I have not fallen off the no-jazzies-in-my future bandwagon - and I'm happy to report that my fat skirt is back to being a fat skirt again. Didn't take much - just 5 lbs. - but they was hard fought my brothers. I had foot surgery over the Christmas break which sidelined me from working out quite a bit. Instead, I decided to do what everyone else with OCD and a surgical shoe would do - I started a food journal. Wow.

Since the universe is always looking out for me, it decided to send a note in my daughter's backpack one day asking for donations for a big "snack sale" to raise money for Haiti. I immediately ran to my cupboards (surely burning a point without even trying), hoping to find some errant Cheetos or chocolate chip cookies in there, but - alas - the shelves only echoed when I swung the doors open. I think I heard a faint chuckle coming from the box of 20 calorie crisp bread - and that's when I saw them. The skorpor.

It is amazing to learn the calorie content of Zweiback toast (a.k.a. skorpor). First, you have to remember how it's spelled. Then, Google it (to be sure it's the same thing you were eating) because the online journal I'm keeping doesn't list Ikea food, for some reason, and Ikea doesn't think Americans deserve to know the calorie content of their skorpor because who, other than myself, actually buys them? Then, flush red from the realization that a single serving (3 pieces) of Ikea skorpor contains a whopping 140 calories which is, on the pious and spare plan, thoroughly unacceptable! So what to do with this adorable bag of not-even-that-delicious snacks? What anyone else wouldn't do...sell them!

Taking my cue from those good old gals from the days of WWII, I pulled out a bag of Ziplocks, stickers and a sharpie and packaged each one of those sweet little toasts into individual servings for all the kids of PS77 to buy at lunchtime. I labeled them "Cardamom Toasts" so as not to seem too obscure and included "Nut Free" because you have to do that even if it's a fucking bottle of water. Then I was just about to write the calorie content on the labels when my mind turned to Haiti. Then back to the image of over-privileged kids, then to under-privileged kids, then cranky teachers, then grateful teachers, then fat mommies, then...dead mommies. Needless to say I decided it didn't fucking matter how many calories the skorpor were, they just needed to do something more than annoy me and maybe, in the very smallest of ways, maybe help someone else. So, off I sent them in my daughter's backpack - along with a couple of dollars for her to buy some snacks, too. The skinny little minx.

So for that, yes, Virginia, there is a fat skirt. And, like Christmas, may it only ever come out once a year - if ever again.

Where we often may feel we can't do anything, there are actually many things we can do that, funnily enough, even benefit our overly-stuffed lives. My thoughts, dollars and skorpor are all for Haiti. God bless them all....