Your coffee, my lady.

This is Marky Mark (standing among a Funky Bunch of Bananas) and he is my new monkey butler.

Reaction to my original tumblr and Twitter posts about Marky Mark were not positive. “Terrifying” and “creepy” were the most common adjectives, but I think that’s just because many people do not appreciate unconventional beauty. And they do not know Marky Mark’s back story.

In September 2010, my husband Phil and I were in Nashville to attend the wedding of our friends’ daughter. The day of the wedding we realized that Phil had not packed a tie. So we went to Stein Mart, an eclectic discount retail chain just down the street from the hotel.

Stein Mart carries clothes, shoes and housewares. I suspect it gets a lot of its merchandise in unsold lots from wholesalers, because frankly, it’s pretty bizarre and you always see something different on every visit. As we wandered through the decor, I spotted a 3-foot smiling monkey, sporting a jaunty fez and gleefully holding a tray.

It was gloriously kitschy, borderline tacky, and undeniably awesome. I was in love.

Phil, however, was unconvinced that the monkey butler needed to become part of our family. Despite my pleas, which he assumed was just me trying to cajole him into making a ridiculous purchase, we left the store sans the smiling simian servant.

And in the past year, I have never let Phil forget it.

Every time I was unhappy, I mentioned I also don’t have a monkey to hold my drinks.

When The Bloggess purchased a giant metal chicken that she named Beyonce, I reminded Phil that there is a gallery here in town that features a giant metal zoo– grasshoppers, chickens, praying mantis — and I have never made a single purchase. All I ever wanted was a monkey butler. Sigh.

When The Bloggess purchased a mongoose-cobra-taxidermy death-match scene, I once again said, “See! All I wanted was a monkey butler. Which is far less creepy than a dead snake and an also-dead mangy mongoose. But I didn’t get a monkey butler, did I?” Sigh.

Little did I know, that as my husband was saying that he felt great camaraderie with Jenny’s husband Victor (Phil has also ended conversations with me by announcing he’s not talking to me anymore) that he had decided to shut me up make me happy by finally getting me my own personal primate.

Days later, as we were getting our drink on sipping cocktails on the sofa, FedEx knocks on our door.

MY MONKEY BUTLER!

My husband spent a lot of time scouring the Internet for a monkey butler ( actually, he spent just a few minutes because you can find almost anything instantly on the Internet apparently) that would complement our decor. He even consulted a mutual friend to test the awesomeness of various drink-holding chimps.

He finally found this happy fellow with a Harlequin vest, gold bowtie and pants (that matches our wall color, bonus!) and a silver tray. I named him Marky Mark because, well, why shouldn’t he be named Marky Mark? I was overjoyed.

Sure, he’s shorter than the one we saw in Nashville, and he doesn’t have the jaunty fez, but that’s actually a plus in the feng shui of the room. Besides, he’s much more beguiling.

And more than just being a conversation piece in our otherwise very traditional (read bland) decor, every time I look at the grinning two-footed-2-foot-coaster, I am reminded that I married my best friend who would literally do anything to make me happy.

And that? Is the best present I could ever get.

Still, if Facebook changing its feed is the worst thing that happens today, it’s been a pretty fan-fucking-tastic day, yes?

Twitter is my favorite social media site. There have not been too many changes over the years and it’s allowed me to make connections with some awesome and funny people that I would never have found otherwise.

Like this one. And this one. And this one, too.

Through Twitter I found Lisa, and then I found this post on her blog.

It’s hilarious and summarizes perfectly why I would rather stay fat than take Alli or any other anal-leakage-inducing diet pill.

And from Lisa’s hilarious post, I found this blog post from Jen P. And I damn near experienced anal leakage from laughing.

This is why I love Twitter. I hope it never changes.

Anyway, the wonderful Mommy Geek saved my ass. If you ever need blog work done, run to her. She’s awesome.

It was rather ironic that I started this weight loss blog two years ago and then proceeded to put on about 30 pounds.

As soon as I dragged my fat ass back to Weight Watchers and started losing weight, and thus really had something to write about, my blog was stolen.

While this site was being remodeled, I have been blogging over on Tumblr. I will copy those entries onto this blog to get it caught up.

This blog is open for business. And that business is writing about losing weight, dealing with emotional turmoil and mental illness, and whatever else I feel the need to spill into the Internet. With photos. Lots of photos. Cause I got my camera fixed while my blog was down.

It’s a website dedicated to and written by real women. I have found great recipes, read essays that made me laugh and cry, and had more than a few “Preach, sister!” moments inspired by these posts.

Last week one of my favorite bloggers (and a beautiful and fantastic person IRL) made readers aware of a campaign called “Swimsuit Confidence” that is connected with Land’s End. This pleased me muchly. Let me explain why.

Land’s End makes nice clothes. They make classic stuff that has appealed to me and, most importantly, fit me no matter what size I was (and I think, at one time or another, I have been all of them.)

Also, the Land’s End catalog has always played to my fantasy of living a sporty lifestyle near a large body of water, some place where it’s always summer and there is always a cooler packed and ready to take on a boat. I can hear Buffet, Chesney and Zac Brown Band playing on the soundtrack as I flip from swimwear to shorts to water shoes. I need sunscreen just looking at these pages.

But what I love most about Land’s End is they make these nice pieces and run them up and down the size scale. The same shorts, tops and swimsuits for slender ladies is also available for rounder babes like me.

They seem to understand that I don’t want to look at cute clothes for “normal” sized women, only to find the moo-moos made out of grandma’s curtains for plus-sized chicks buried in the back.

Just because baby got back doesn’t mean she wants to look frumpy. Hear that, retail world?

Any old hoo, so the Curvy Girls are pimping for Land’s End, and I am all over it, right? Even added the twibbon to my Twitter avatar. But here’s the hitch: To show real swimsuit confidence, I am *encouraged* to put a photo of myself in a swimsuit on my blog.

Hold. The. Phone.

This is where the old me would insert a joke about not having a wide-angle lens. But I am not going to do that.

I am trying to see this as a positive thing. What better way to kick start my conversion to a healthier lifestyle (which is what this blog is supposed to be documenting) than the classic “BEFORE” shot? This would also be a great way to come out of the curvy closet and proclaim: “Yes, I am a wider than I am tall, but who cares! This is me. In a swimsuit. Deal with it if you don’t like it, bishes.”

Today, I am going to the pool for the first time since last summer. I will be wearing my perfect-for-water-aerobics, brand spanking new Land’s End swimsuit. The pool, BTW, is located at my gym, another place I haven’t been since last summer.

Can I find my confidence?

It’s a daily struggle to recall all the things I am supposed to do and should keep track of, and the more that gets piled on the less I seem to be able to grasp of any of it.

Today’s lunch is a prime example. I removed it from the Lean Pockets box in the freezer, so that I wouldn’t tote both of them work with me when I only needed one. And now, for the life of me, I can’t remember what this thing is that I am about to eat for lunch.

Chicken, bacon, dijon? Maybe? That sounds right. And it sort of tastes like that, so we will go with it.

It’s a Lean Pockets sandwich that, if it is not filled with shreds of chicken, some chewy bacon bits and low fat cheese, then that’s what it replicates. The crust is a little herby and is the best part of the sandwich.

This thing is uber-salty, so that big bottle of water you see there in the photo will be gone before I finish typing this.

Also, you can see here in the photo that, like millions of my other fellow office dwellers, I am filling out my NCAA brackets on my lunch hour.

I resisted the urge to take Purdue to the Final Four, although it was tempting and if it turned out to be right I would look like a GEE-nius.

Sorry to my Dukie friends, I am not picking the Blue Devils to repeat.  I am staying true to the Big 10 and riding those nutty Buckeyes all the way to the championship.

So sorry, Ohio State fans. That probably means you are doomed to lose to whichever team makes it out alive today, UT San Antonio or Alabama State is round one, part two.

I suck at basketball brackets, as I recall.

I just spent part of my lunch hour cruising my Tumblr dashboard, like I do almost every day. Then I clicked on this link.

This was written by a charming and talented young lady I met online via Twitter and in person at last summer BlogHer conference.  I cannot tell you how much I admire this woman’s intellect and her writing. She’s honest and beautiful.

And every word she said in that post is absolutely true.

I commented that I do indeed know why I am fat, and I have known it most of my life.

I do not blame it on genetics — although I do realize with my short torso and squat legs, I would likely always be a little plush at any weight. I do not blame it on my thyroid or some mysterious illness.

I don’t blame it on society or American culture or advertisers or any of that.

It is exactly as Miss Grace said and it’s really simple math:

Caloric intake > energy expended = excess blubber on my ass, thighs and upper arms.

I love food. Especially sweets. I love fruits and veggies and I actually prefer lean meats, but I love pasta and bread and coffee and above all, I looooove chocolate.  I love to cook food, I love to look at food, and mostly I love to eat food.

To be able to maintain a healthy weight and still consume all the food that I love, I would need to follow a rather rigorous schedule of exercise. And since I was a small child, I have hated everything remotely connected with a gym.

My parents were older and very overprotective.  They did want me to get hurt so they did not want me to play outside. I have never learned to ride a bike or roller skate. I was never allowed to play any sports, despite begging for a tennis racquet because I had a huge crush on Bjorn Borg.

I was always chubby and slow, so I was ridiculed mercilessly by classmates and teachers in phys ed classes. I was the fat kid, sitting with her back pressed up against the cinder block walls of the gym, sobbing because I was the last chosen and the first slammed out in dodgeball.

To me, all gym teachers had the charm and compassion that serves as the model for the Sue Sylvester character on “Glee.”  I broke out in hives so badly in anticipation of a required obstacle course in middle school that I ended up at the doctor. The physician and my mother suspected a food allergy. I knew it was anxiety.

By the time I was out of school and old enough to make my own choices, I was already stuck in an emotional cycle of eating to make myself happy and dreading anything that would make me sweat.

These are not excuses. Not at all. I am an intelligent, college-educated professional who knows what I need to do to lose weight and how much I need to do it to improve my health.

And I am fully aware of all the psychological baggage that is tying me down and that it’s total bullshit to keep carrying it around.  But finally it comes down to this: If I do not want to be fat, I have to quit doing what I love and start doing what I hate. And I have accomplished that at least half a dozen times in my life and lost weight, only to put it back on again because I fail at changing the root cause.

I am fat because I eat more calories than I burn.

I am fat because knowing that logically and changing that emotionally are two completely different things.

I like to set reasonable goals that I know I can achieve.

Beyond that, I do have hopes. I hope I can stay committed to using this blog as a food/exercise/emotion journal. I hope that I can get my collective shit together to live healthier in 2011 than I did in 2010, which was really a massive fail on the get-fit-and-improve-nutrition front.

I hope that I can be a better journalist. I hope that I can be a better wife and parent. Not necessarily in that order, but you get the idea.

I hope that I can find a focus to my energy and that I can really live in each moment. A lifetime of always feeling that I should be doing something else somewhere else grows very tiresome.

I hope to be less emo and sappy because — DAMN — nobody digs that. Totally unattractive.

I hope to feel this optimistic in March. In July. In October.

A new year is a fresh start.

All the things a good knee should do.

Then one day seven years ago, I fell off a ladder, and that’s when my knee went bad. I shredded the cartilage that kept the knee moving smoothly, and it all had to be sucked out because I had rendered it useless and painful.

Now my upper leg bone and my lower leg bone just rub together, without the aid of the nice soft bone to keep everything where it’s supposed to be. Many days it aches. Yesterday was one of those days.

As I rambled around getting ready for work, my knee and my lower back were screaming. This was really shitty timing, because I had a holiday party to cater at my office and my final photo class. I had been mentally preparing for this most terrible day of the year, and my knee decided to say “Fuck it. It’s cold outside and I am not cooperating. Take a seat, bitch, cause I ain’t going nowhere.”

But I was not going to be deterred.

I basically told my knee to suck it up. I was going to get through this long-assed day, hauling heavy packs of bottled water and trays of hot food to my co-workers and listening to hours of ridiculous drivel in my photo class and BAM! All bad mojo that has hung over my head like a dark cloud for weeks would be gone and I could finally relax and enjoy the rest of this year.

So I hobble around all day, got all the food where it was supposed to be for the day shift party, met all my deadlines and was headed out to get more food for the night shift when my knee said, “WTF did I tell you this morning, bitch? DENIED.”

And then it crumpled under my considerable girth and brought me crashing down to the pavement outside my office building.

Um, OUCH.

After crying like a hysterical girl, I scraped myself off the sidewalk and, with help from a heroic co-worker, hauled my fat ass back into the building. Then I got to embarrass myself in front of untold number of people explaining why I was such a wreck.

I read it. And I read it again. And I was stunned. Then repulsed. Then angry.

I went to Twitter, where many of the people I follow were also upset by this post. I tweeted my own thoughts, including one aimed directly at Maura Kelly. I stand by that tweet because I do believe she is a shitty writer, which is pretty much the worst thing I can think to say to someone who pretends to earn a living doing just that.

Responses came from all over the Internet. Most were from smart women who are far more talented writers that Kelly. Read this one, and then this one, and then this one.

Brilliant women, all writing with authority, humor and eloquence on the subject of weight and bigotry.

The problem, however, isn’t just that this spelling-challenged woman wrote this blog post. The problem isn’t even that Marie Claire’s editors, clearly hungry for attention of any kind, allows the post to remain on the site.

The problem is that I believe her. I believe she really thinks this way. And I believe she is not alone.

I have felt this type of hostility and disgust, up close and personal. All my life I’ve known people who think nothing at all of treating me with clear disrespect, talking down to me, acting like I do not exist. Because I am fat. Always have been. Probably always will be.

Kelly wrote, “…I think obesity is something that most people have a ton of control over. It’s something they can change, if only they put their minds to it.”

There it is. If only I put my mind to it, I could conquer my obesity. I’m totally in control, and I could make myself into the person other people think I need to be so I can please them, if only I would try harder.

I need to change. I am not good enough. I am not worthy. I am “aesthetically displeasing.”

I have been carrying that burden, which is so much heavier than the fat that rests so solidly on my hips and ass, for as long as I can remember. Short and fat. Not aesthetically displeasing. And no matter how smart or funny or kind I was, I would never be really good enough until I was no longer fat.

And because of that, I missed out on a lot of things. I didn’t swim, even though I was good at it, because I didn’t want to be in public in a bathing suit. I never wore a sexy dress, because my legs were too block-like and my arms too flabby. I never approached a man I found attractive because I was sure he couldn’t possibly be interested in a fattie.

The Maura Kellys of the world have been living in my heart and my head for almost 47 years. All people like Maura Kelly see when they see me is “rolls and rolls of fat.” And even though I am a grown woman who knows I shouldn’t care what people like her think, it’s hard not to take it personally when people reject you outright because they don’t see you as a human being worthy of respect.

I am singularly defined, in the eyes of many people, by the size of my jeans.

Clearly Kelly thinks she’s got plenty of company in her misery of having to deal with fat people, since she ended her column with “What do you guys think? Fat people making out on TV — are you cool with it?”

Cool with it? Like normal sized people should find a way to reconcile to this horror or they should ban together and get these fat people off their television screens, you know, before children see it.

In her “apology”, Kelly writes that her opinion was likely colored by her “life-long obsession with being thin.” That’s about the only thing I believed in her apology. If she does have a history of anorexia, then weight has always been on her mind. Just like it has been on my mind for these last 40+ years.

The way she dealt with her weight obsession was to stick her finger down her throat.

The way I dealt with mine was to eat dessert.

I have turned her hateful words over and over in my mind since the day I read them. The memories her words brought back are painful.

Those words made me see that little fat girl, who sat in the school gym, her back leaned against the the thickly painted cinder block wall, crying her eyes out because she wasn’t fast to avoid the sting of the dodgeball.

Those words made me see the chubby teenager who finally got up enough nerve to ask a boy to a dance and then ran as fast as her thunder thighs would carry her when she was rejected.

Those words made me see the woman who has spent nearly half a century wanting to change, wanting to be better, wanting to be what everyone else thinks she should be.

And at this point, I don’t know what I am going to do with those words.

But I do know this: I have a good man who loves me unconditionally, which, according to her blog bio, is more than Maura Kelly has. (I also have enough common sense not to ride a bike in high heels, but whatever. ) I raised a beautiful daughter. I have a houseful of happy pets. I am paid to write stories for a daily newspaper where journalistic standards are expected and where blatant bigotry would not be tolerated.

I have written more than 1,000 blog posts between this personal blog and my work blog, and to my knowledge I have never hurt anyone. Because a decent human being would not do that.

I am slowly coming to the conclusion that I never will be thin. I never will be pleasing to people like Maura Kelly.  And slowly, I am trying to find the internal peace I need, where I am OK with that and where her words can’t hurt me again.

That’s one thing I really do have a ton of control over. If I just put my mind to it, I CAN DO IT!

I am both horrified and fascinated. This is the sort of kick-ass fucking awesomeness that makes the terrorists hate us.

Here’s the text of the e-mail:

I have no idea where the name comes from.  Supposedly, this recipe originated in Louisiana.

Handmade ground beef patties topped with sharp Cheddar cheese, then wrapped in a bacon weave.  Add hot dog head and legs, cutting little slits for the toes and tail.  Place on a rack in a broiler pan, cover loosely with foil, and bake at 400ş for 20 to 30 minutes.  A little crispy, not too crunchy – just how a turtle should be.

I gotta have me one of these.

God bless America!