A new dress

I vowed I wasn't going to buy anything else from the fat ladies store.

I was going to wait (weight?) until I was skinny enough to just buy any old thing from any old rack. But hell, I just lost 50 pounds and I've got two, count 'em, office Christmas parties coming up and damned if I want to show up with some old dress hanging off me like yesterday's potato sack.

So yesterday me, Dave and Sam went down to Barrie to my favourite fat ladies store, Addition-Elle. They actually have clothes that look like they belong to somebody under the age of 85, you know what I mean? I had been stalking their website, eyeballing up their tasty collection of sequinned holiday dresses and drooling.

The thing is, I really didn't know what size I was going to need. The last time I went shopping for clothes I was buying size 24. Yeah, I know. A big old tub 'o lard, that was me.

I started picking out dresses to try on, getting two sizes of each: 20 and 18. I knew I had slimmed down but I wasn't sure how slim was slim. Because, honestly, I want to lose a lot more weight before I'm done.

I tried on the size 18 first because I was excited and optimistic, and you know what? IT WAS TOO BIG.

Sam and Dave and a saleslady were hovering outside my dressing room. The guys were like Richard Gere to my Pretty Woman and I was giving them a free fashion show. Both of them had looks on their faces like, I'd rather be dead, but I think they were having a good time.

I came dashing out from behind the curtain in the baggy dress and shrieked, "IT'S TOO BIG!" Everyone giggled, but nobody more so than me. Usually what happened when I went clothes shopping was I kept sending Dave out for bigger and bigger sizes until he found the biggest size in the store, the Omar Tent size they kept out back for visiting circus troupes.

Not this time! The saleslady went scurrying back into the bowels of the store for size 16 in everything while I danced around in the baggy-ass dress and high-fived everyone and boasted and carried on like the obnoxious fool that I am.

She returned with three dresses in size 16 and all of them looked really, really good.

I mean, I looked HOT.

I could see the look in Dave's eye, that he was appreciating all the sequinned junk in my trunk and I thought about sending Sam off to a babysitter's for a few hours, if you get my drift...

All the dresses looked so great. I couldn't decide.

Then the saleslady said there was one more I could try (it's the one pictured in the Addition Elle ad, above), so she went and got a black sequinned strapless number. I tried it on and it was fabulous – but IT WAS TOO BIG.

The saleslady said, "there's so much extra room in the back that, if I wanted to, I could look down the back of this dress and see your underwear."

Good thing I had on decent ones.

So she went and fetched a size 14.

"No way," I sez to Dave and Sam, "that size 14 is gonna fit me. It's going to be WAY too big."
"You never know," sez Dave.

I tried it on and IT FIT PERFECTLY.

SIZE FRICKIN' 14.

THE SMALLEST FRICKIN' SIZE IN THE STORE.

"I'll take it!" I hooted.

Then I went and got some fancy jewellery and some fancy high heels. I haven't worn high heels for YEARS.

Am feeling like the hottest thing on two legs, baby.

There is lotsa sizzle in my whizzle.

There's a train a-coming and I'm hotter than a two-pistol papa.

I'm a-putting the Cat back in Cathy 'cause I'm rocking the Sex Kitten.

MEE - YOW!

An Ugly Picture of Me

And from the Ugly Pictures of Me Department, here's a real beauty that was taken last Sunday during the book launch of The Hidden World of Huckleberry Rock.

The two good-looking people on either side of me are author Andrew Wagner-Chazalon and photographer Bev McMullen. They hosted a rather nice shin-dig over at a fancy schmancy golf club ... the kind of place where they might frisk you at the front gate to see if you're rich or you're rabble. Nice place, yes, but man it was hotter than the hounds of hell in there. You mean to say you can afford to build a place like that but you can't afford air conditioning? I was dripping sweat. The back of my hair was soaked. Perspiration was running off my chin like a leaky faucet.

And there I was hobnobbing with people I'd never met before, introducing myself with soaking wet enthusiasm to people I have long admired. There was fellow blogger Malcolm Robertson, cool as a cucumber, and there I was all fat and flustered and soaked, goofily trying to be cool, and there was that look in Malcolm's eyes – that scared look like he was dealing with a lunatic. You know the look, right? You don't? Well, I'm pretty familiar with it. If you looked as bad as me, you'd know it, too.

Oh, and what's with my t-shirt? Why's it hanging all funny like that? It looks like I'm wearing a flour sack. OMG, and the neck is all stretched funny. Andrew and Bev are probably thinking, who is this flour-sack-wearing hick dripping sweat all over our shoulders? And why won't my eyes open?

To think I lost 19 pounds before this picture was taken. Can you imagine what I looked like before??? GAK.

By the way, the book is Fab. You. Luss. You can buy it at the Muskoka Bookhouse in Bracebridge or by going online at www.muskokabookhouse.com. I promise, there are no ugly pictures of me in it.