It's not like I'm Mary Louise Parker peddling a bag of weed or anything.

I’m getting pressure to join the PTA at my son’s school. Now that the Hubby is a teacher he has decided that all the GOOD families have parents (read: mothers) on the parent council and, you know, participate in some way. He is also feeding me some bullshit about there being a conflict of interest about him joining the parent council.

I’m not sure how that works exactly since he doesn’t teach at our son’s school, but he swears to god that is some kind of rule somewhere and he needs to follow it.

Here is the problem – we moved about five years ago to the other side of the city, and it’s kind of the wrong end of town.

For people like us.

Our neighborhood has three types of people:

1. Stay at home moms who are always draped head to toe in Lu Lu Lemon and can go grocery shopping at 2:00 pm on a Wednesday afternoon;

2. Families who love baby Jesus; and

3. Super old people with gazebos in their backyard who have lived in the neighbourhood since Kennedy was assassinated.

We do not fit into any of the above categories.

I make the Lu Lu Lemon moms super uncomfortable because not only do I have to work, like, everyday, I’m fat. Fat, working moms are not on their radar. At. All.

I make the baby Jesus families uncomfortable because I deliberately fuck with them whenever possible.

See, I have this ‘multi-faith’ calendar at work which alerts me to the various holidays being celebrated around the world on any given day. For example, today is the first day of Ridvan, the Bah’i festival that commemorates the 12 days that Baha’u’llah spent in the garden of Ridvan during his exile in Baghdad.

I know, right?

Now if I happen to see one of the Jesus families walking their dog while I’m playing with the kids outside after supper tonight, I’ll call out to them, “Happy Ridvan!” and wave fanatically.

As for the super old people – I irritate the shit out of them because aside from the standard mow now and again, I don’t really give a crap about the state of my lawn. The old people, however, will mow their grass, rake up the mowed grass, get this crazy looking contraption out and, I shit you not, VACUUM their lawn. They average about 3 hours a day on that mo-fo. It’s actually a nice wind down to the day watching them go through all that effort for a patch of grass. I just sit on my stoop and eat freezies.

Where was I originally going with this? Oh yeah, the PTA.

I have been avoiding joining the PTA because in my neighbourhood I’m the crazy fat chick with the brown lawn who worships satan.

Nobody wants that chick on the PTA.

But, apparently at some point in the not so distant past I indicated on some shitty little form I wasn’t really paying attention to that I would be willing to volunteer for school special events. Really? I’m pretty sure the Hubby suckered me into this one somehow, because I totally do NOT remember signing on for that. However, I got a call today, from the president of the PTA herself, inviting me to a meeting Thursday night to discuss planning the annual ‘Hoe Down’ the school throws in June.

I told her that she’s lucky the meeting wasn’t scheduled for tonight because it’s Ridvan, and work is traditionally suspended on days 1, 9 and 12 of the festival.

Then I told her I’d see her at the meeting and to keep an eye out for me - I’d be the chubby one in the WalMart 'George' label yoga pants with with blue freezie stain dripped down the front of her tank top.

Blue is the best freezie colour, hands down.

They’re going to LOVE me.

Fat Chick vs. Food - Week 7

I’m still having a hard time this week staying on the straight and narrow post vacation. I worked out four times, and it was hit and miss with the food. The weekend is still a bit of a problem for me.

Also, I’ve been struggling a little bit with the role of the blog. It certainly helps me – no question about it, but what is the message I’m communicating here? Someone very close to me said something about my blog the other day that was so off the mark I found it quite offensive. He said, “Yeah, the blog. I’ve read it. It’s just a way to slam skinny people in a light hearted way”

Huh? That is not at all the point. Not even remotely close or even almost resembling the point. At all. Um, dude? This blog is about ME. Interesting that the people closest to me who should be my rock of support don’t get it. Strangers from other countries? You all seem to get it just fine.

I’m not just ‘slamming’ skinny people here, in fact I think I make fun of myself more than anyone else anyway. I throw some jokes in here and there because it’s my writing style and I’m hoping you will take my wife, pleeease. Ba da dom.

I do not have some bone to pick with skinny people – everyone I know is skinny. Seriously – 100% of all of my friends are thin people. The biggest problem any of them have is trying to lose the last five or ten pounds of hanging around baby weight. I’d be pretty lonely if I had some grudge against skinny people. I’ve had the same friends for twenty years and body shape is not a qualifier. They don’t give a shit that I’m fat. I need them, they get me. Besides, there are plenty of other reasons to make fun of them and I do, frequently. Hey, it's just all part of my charm!

This is actually fairly important to me, what I’m doing here. It’s my own on-line journal and I keep myself honest all week with thoughts of having to update the world on Monday. While it may look stupid, this is my way of trying to accomplish something that has been pretty hard for me for a lot of years. I put it out there like this to get the support I need. And, it’s working. While I have some good weeks and some bad weeks, it’s working. Casey, the head Nagger-in-Chief over at Hasay was kind enough to ask me to guest post this week's Hasay update located here. Go check it out! I’m very flattered she asked me because it means that someone somewhere is reading this and doesn’t think I’m just a bittered old fat girl who is a stupid joke. I’m a snarky, overly sarcastic fat girl who writes her own stupid jokes. There is a difference people!

Usually when someone I love really disappoints me I eat crap. I hereby vow not to fall into that again. This week will be a better week! I’m going to try a few new things – new exercises, new foods, some new drugs and possibly an eating disorder. Ha! See? I kid.

(Disclaimer - that joke was not directed at any skinny people. I love you in all your lu-lu lemon glory)

I just weighed myself and I’ve lost 3.5 pounds this week. Really?? Wow - this has got to be some kind of miracle. I'm going to double check my bowl of cornflakes now because the face of Jesus must be floating in there.

This means I lost the 2.5 pounds I gained last week, plus another pound on top of that! Do you know what this means?? I'm officially over the first landmark, the FIRST TEN POUNDS! Yay me!! I'm mentally jumping up and down high-fiving myself right now.

So far I have lost 10.5 pounds. I have 49.5 to go.

Dirty Words and Lu Lu Lemon don't mix

I have a question – at what age do you allow your child to start swearing? The adults in my household have some major potty-mouths and while we try (sort of) to keep it g-rated around the little ones the rest of the time we sound like the Osbourns. J is fifteen and told me to fuck off about three times yesterday. I know that all of you with your little ankle bitters are totally horrified that something so vile will someday be uttered by your little ones, but I was OK with it because it was in context. As in, it wasn’t your typical fifteen year-old teenage head case screaming “FUCK OFF MOM I HATE YOU!!” it was, “I’m trying to finish my homework so would you just fuck off already?” She’s a good kid, but I casually ask her if she’s a crack head every once in a while just to keep her on her toes. She just rolls her eyes and tells me to fuck off. According to 20/20 all kids who end up crack heads start off good kids, so I’m just practicing due diligence.

Every time J swears I tell her to stop swearing, but clearly she knows I don’t care because she tells me to fuck off when I say that. Should I care? I don’t. Is it all that bad that I don’t really care? I'm not sure. She doesn’t gratuitously swear (at least not around me), and the rest of her vocabulary is pretty impressive for a child that age. I heard her call her friend a troglodyte the other day, so obviously her potty-mouth hasn’t compromised her ability to use more sophisticated words when insulting people.

J did, however, get kicked out of homeroom the other day for telling a girl to fuck off because she’s stupid. The girl in question (part of the ‘Lu-Lu Lemon crowd’ as J calls them) did not know what an inauguration was, and was making fun of J who was trying to lead the class in a discussion about how important the impending American inauguration of Obama is to Canada. Granted, your average 15 year-old girl is a lot more focused on trying to find a way to meet the Jonas Brothers than she is on who our political leaders are, but J is the type of person who feels it necessary to enlighten the stupid. Should she have chosen a more constructive way to prove her point? Probably. But she didn’t get kicked out of class because she was wrong, she got kicked out for using the world ‘fuck’. Not appropriate for high school, but neither is being fifteen years-old and never having heard the word ‘inauguration’ before. Still, I was initially mad until J explained that the “fuck, you’re stupid” comment came after the Lu-Lu Lemon girl asked if inauguration was a basketball term. “Fuck, you’re stupid” suddenly seemed very appropriate to me.