Buffet Pants from the 7th Circle of Hell and Why is Everyone Trying to Kill Me?

Whether you know or care, as a woman gets older her metabolism tends to slow down. Life is all cute and exciting until you reach the age where it takes all damn day to burn off the calories in a stupid pickle. By calculating yesterday's homemade noodles, squaring the stuffing times pumpkin pie and rounding off to the nearest caloric integer - it seems that I will be *working off* Thanksgiving dinner until the sun is a cold, frozen chunk of charcoal and all life as we know it has ceased to exist. Possibly roaches, rats and the IRS may somehow manage to survive, but the rest of us will be screwed.

I love how family members dress up in their Sunday-best for Thanksgiving. You've never seen so many bows & belts and dress shirts and A-line skirts in your entire life. It's like J.C. Penney threw up in the dining room.

Not me. I'm the pariah in buffet pants with the elastic waist [?] band. I know what's coming. I also know that cranberry sauce is impossible to get out of any fabric known to man, and that the sodium content in gravy will make your feet swell up like zeppelins if you're naive enough to wear heels.

I also know that every other female on God's green earth gains weight in their bust, except me. Frankly, I'm starting to get a little bitter about this and furthermore I hate you all.

Just kidding. Not.

NOW today I get up, well rested and basking in the warm glow of candied yams whose beta-keratin content has lended the blush of youth to my otherwise pale & waxen cheeks, only to discover that somewhere between midnight and 9 a.m. that the entire friggin' blogging community has exploded with about 8 freakazillion damn giveaways/hops/memes/tours and who knows what else 'cos it's not even noon yet.

Seriously.

Someone is trying to kill me. SOMEONE knows that Mary Ann is just crazy enough to actually try to do it all. Really. I will. Like the book-addicted freak that I am, I will totally sit at this stupid computer [desktop no less] until my wrists go numb with some terminal form of advanced carpal tunnel-bridge syndrome and my butt cheeks look like two pizza boxes shoved down the back of my [buffet] pants. Ha friggin' ha.

As someone who is full-blooded, second generation Irish I would like here to point out that MY ancestors - the same people who got drunk on potato-beer and then stumbled around the moors seeing leprechauns and water sprites and getting their asses handed to them by every Fae who copped a *bad attitude* - THESE people were not exactly known for rational thought. Therefore I accept no responsibility for my actions. It's all in the blood, you know what I'm sayin'?

Thank God I've got plenty of smokes and a fresh, chilled 2-ltr of fully caffeinated Diet Mtn. Dew to see me through the day. And if that sounds unhealthy to the rest of you granola-gnashing grunts, I can play the *health* statistics game, too.

For example. Take squirrels. Squirrels eat really healthy squirrel-type food like nuts n' shit. Last I knew, squirrels do NOT smoke, imbibe caffeine nor eat chocolate every damn chance they get. They also do not wear buffet pants.

And yet. Brace yourself. MORE squirrels than people died last year. I know, I know. It truly is mind blowing when you look the facts square in the face, but I think I'm onto something here. Either that or my meds are kicking in.

Whatevs.

No, seriously. Kinda sorta. Heart disease runs like REALLY rampant in my birth family. Out of 17 siblings, no lie [you can't make this type of stuff up. I know. I've tried.] - out of my large, Irish family at least half have died - DROPPED FRIGGING DEAD, to be accurate - from major heart attacks. Many were UNDER the age of 40. Our dad, too. Dropped stone cold at age 5o.

Now, some of my siblings who died were healthy, slim, non-smokers. Some took care of their bodies and some did not. Obviously, we are talking heredity here. Before menopause hit [like a train wreck], I was a small size 4 who walked miles every day. I'm still a vegan, and generally avoid fatty, greasy foods because I plain do not care for the taste of buttery, oily, fried food [gag] but between my meds and menopause I've gained a ton of weight. It sucks, for real. And I WANT to get the weight back off. And I WILL, when I'm damned good and ready [or I've run out of buffet pants].

But I've also, not fatalistically, but realistically, come to realize that quality beats quantity hands down. I might live into my 80's like my birth mother, or I might die early like one of my sisters who dropped dead in her home at age 41.

But I won't be scared into changing my life, or what makes me happy. Today it makes me happy to be a smart-ass, caffeine guzzling middle-aged nutcase. Tomorrow I might be happy on a new health kick. I know myself, and I'm quite versatile/eccentric/easily bored. I like to try new things, to think outside the box, and to thumb my nose at the ever-changing statistics constantly shoved down our collective throats.

I also believe the mind is the real captain of the ship, so to speak. I've seen/experienced a lot of weird-ass shit in my life and I'm still trying to figure things out [Mongo like weird]. I also think that what will kill us is what we BELIEVE will kill us. Hence the success of death wishes in particular and the placebo effect in general.

Basically, I dislike convention for convention's sake. And before I'm done being serious for today, I want to add that I sincerely love each and every one of you. I'm thankful for the time I have on this fubar of a planet, and the incredible souls it has been my pleasure to meet. So do what you will and enjoy your gift of life. Make each day special, in some crazy ass way, even if it means going commando under your Liz Claiborne or putting an elaborate hex on your credit card company. Try wearing the same color to work for an entire week/month/year and see how long it takes people to notice. Talk in the third person to telemarketers on the phone, or begin every sentence with "according to prophecy" [we've actually some of the above and it's GREAT].

Laugh all you can and treasure the ride, folks. And give thanks for every goofy minute. ;D