Cheeeeeeese

Yes, it's picture time. Tomorrow my boys go to my best friend's mother's house to see the Santa Claus that she hires every year for the four boys her daughter and I have between us, plus her brother's girlfriend's daughter. (Get all that?) There will be pictures there; Santa makes the adults sit on his lap. Which weirds me out for a whole different non-fat-related reason.

The day after that I get to go to my mom's house and have a family portrait taken for a bound book my sister is making for my mom's Christmas present. I have four siblings; why is it only me that needs a family portrait, you ask? Because there was a group portrait session months ago and the photographer took no pictures of me and the boys (together, that is). My husband was at work, so I don't know if the assumption was that I wouldn't want any pictures of me and my kids together without him or if it just honestly did not occur to her to make sure she got pictures of everyone. I'm so glad I'm grown up now--in high school, exclusion was free. Now I get to pay for it. And yes, I'm a tad bitter.

Anyway, the point of this post, once you get past all my bitching and moaning, is this: I am not afraid of pictures this year. In years past I have managed to be in the background or on the fringes of any picture including me, of which there were few. I am not photogenic, and that plus being fat made me want to skip all events where a camera could theoretically be present. I have decided that this year is not going to be the same. I'm not going to seek out the camera, but nor will I avoid it. I am what I am; I'll be the same whether or not there's photographic proof. And I like having photographic proof--we have thousands of pictures of our children, but there are approximately three total pictures of me while pregnant. That makes me sad; that's an opportunity missed that can never be gotten back. There are even fewer pictures of me--intentional pictures, that is--when I'm not pregnant.

I am of the personal opinion that our portrait Saturday will look ridiculous in context. Everyone else's portraits were taken outdoors in August. Ours will be taken indoors in December. It will be quite obvious that we were not included in the original portrait session. But whatever; it's done. Now I just have to make sure that I don't make a weird face in this picture.

Shopping While Fat

Normally I don't, but as I posted here I decided that owning a pair of jeans that fits again would be nice. A new Steve and Barry's just opened here, so I went out. I am hugely attracted to the idea of Steve & Barry's--it's like Old Navy, but cheaper, and with cuter stuff. I first heard about when I saw a piece from Sarah Jessica Parker's line Bitten, which goes up to size 22. (I discovered when I got there that SJP's line was the only thing that went up to size 22. The rest of the store did not even have XL. I'm not kidding; everything else only went up to a size L and the biggest I saw in pants was a 14.)

So I got my fat ass over there and picked out four pairs of Bitten jeans in three different sizes. As expected, one was too small, one fit, one was too big. I didn't buy any of them. In fact, shopping made me reaffirm my belief that homemade clothes are best because of one thing: tailoring.

I am, in addition to having a big belly and a big butt, gifted with freakishly long monkey arms and legs and a long torso. Try fitting that commercially. I dare you.

Every pair of jeans I tried on, low waisted or not, exposed at least two inches of underwear and, one would assume, buttcrack. Definitely not the look I am going for. So I purchased nothing. And for once I'm not blaming myself for being too fat to fit into the clothes.