SAVE THE WHALES...EAT PETA MEMBERS

There's only so far you can push us chubby girls. I've suffered through it my whole life. Never being a skinny girl, never even being thin I have built an entire lifestyle on trying to camoflauge my fat-itude...from my college wardrobe which consisted almost entirely of black, to learning how to turn to the side, suck it in and stick my head up like a perplexed ostrich for every picture I've ever had taken...including ones I had in done in grade school. The world seems bound and determined to make me incredibly aware that as a physical specimen I am less than perfect. Years ago, I would hold my breath every time I went through an airline check point, terrified they were going to tell me that I had to buy an extra seat because I was so bulky I would surely suffocate any stick-thin, high-strung salesman that tried to sit next to me. I used to have nightmares about the other passengers on the plane getting stuck in my fat rolls or climbing on to my back in case the plane went down and using me to safely find land. I stopped shopping at Bath and Body Works because when you are a large woman AND smell like food, people automatically assume that you spend your afternoon rolling around in a vat of apple pie filling. I have suffered at the hands of magazine covers featuring women who look more like bicycle frames than healthy role models and have ignored the passing-over glances of men who thought I was too thick to wear on their arm.
But I don't think that I need to be burnt in effigy on a billboard by a bunch of over-enthusiastic morons whose battle cry is "Meat is Murder". Growing up in rural communities, we don't look at meat as murder. We look at meat as survival. We don't see a cow as a beautiful animal...stand it in a garden and we see a happy meal of the future. But the new PETA billboard featuring a large, large woman in a bikini and the words "SAVE THE WHALES, LOSE THE BLUBBER, GO VEGETARIAN"...well that would have to be the last freakin' straw. You know PETA, the People who Eat Tasteless Appetizers and expect everyone in the world to think they are better than the rest of us because they can eat wheat germ without cringing. No, seriously, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is a wonderful organization that does a lot of good...sometimes. But like any human-being-based organization, sometimes they overstep their bounds. Devaluing PEOPLE because they are fat seems a bit unethical...and at the least, not very nice.
Their spokesperson, a very rakish, hip young man whose name escapes me encouraged people to find out what PETA is all about by going to their website, so I did. The first thing that caught my eye was a promotion against McDonald's. So in less than 20 minutes, PETA had offended me as a woman AND slammed on the Ronald...this was not boding well for our little tofu touters. PETA has designed what they call an "UNhappy Meal" which features a ghoulish rendition of the Ronald brandishing a knife on a bloodstained box of "Chicken McCruelty" nuggets. That was pretty much all it took for me to write them off as overeducated, uber-funded, and bicoastal with a tendency to forget there is an entire nation in between said coasts.
First of all, PETA is not appealing to anyone who cares... Let me explain. The people who eat chicken mcnuggets have greater concerns than how the chicken was killed. In all honesty, those people have probably seen chickens killed the old-fashioned way (grab by the head and fling them like a baton until their heads pop OR whack the chicken in the head and then chop it at the neck) and they don't particularly care whether the animal likes it or not. To them, meat is murder, necessary, vital, tasty, tasty murder. Also, these are not people that care that there is no part of a chicken called a "McNugget" or nugget for that matter and no, it doesn't bother them to think about what anatomical region of the chicken they came from. These are also your people who consider hot dogs and meats that come in an edible skin a food group in and of themselves.
So after seeing the UNhappy Meal promotion and reading all about PETA and how they truly enjoy the shock factor when it comes to their advertising, I didn't feel any better because it then occurred to me that animals have more value in their version of society than large women. Would they EVER put a mutilated dog on a billboard and use some witty jab at mutilated dogs? No. They would put a mutilated dog on a billboard and say something shocking to make the public at large empathize with the dog...but they would never ostracize or ridicule the dog. They are all up in arms about glue traps and fur, but don't mind at all taking a jab at fat people? Maybe we should officially begin referring to ourselves as chubby bunnies...maybe then we would fall into a hands-off category that didn't give them permission to berate and belittle us. The rakish hipster desperately tried to defend his organization by saying that they are only trying to encourage people to live healthy lifestyles by becoming vegetarians. However most dieticians will agree that vegetarian lifestyles are no more healthy than a balanced diet with exercise, so the hipster blew it there. And as he sat there in his handsome face with his devil-may-care hair and his "Save the Whales/Harpoon a Fat Chick" smirk I realized something.
He looked delicious.
And that is why EVERYONE should fear the fat people. Not because we are taking up two seats on your plane or because we are eating the last of the bread pudding at the AYCE buffet or because we are ugly-ing up the joint. Because if times get tough, and worse comes to worse, well, Mama is gonna eat and that's the bottom line. And those who have something to offer other than lean meat will get eaten last...that way we can enjoy their talents before we enjoy their tastiness. So PETA people, I issue an invitation to you now: come and join my new organization; it's called EAT or Everyone's Attractive and Tasty. We'd love to have you for dinner, and I swear I don't mean that in a Hannibal Lecter way...
And chubby bunnies of the world, FYI. Rumor has it those vegetarians are like human versions of free-range chickens....YUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMY!

Stay-At-Home BOMB

I can remember when I was a child and I would watch from the window as my mother would leave each morning and walk to work. She worked at a newspaper in a small town, about two blocks from where we lived. She would come home smelling like paper and photo developing fluid and I would snuggle into her and breathe in her day. She, on the other hand, would immediately change clothes, desperate to get the smell off of herself and inevitably end up in the kitchen attempting to make up for lost time. Mom wanted nothing more than to be a stay-at-home-mom...that's all she had ever wanted. But life, in all it's glorious inevitability, had different plans. My mother was a woman of the 90's in the 70's and 80's. She didn't consider herself modern, progressive, or groundbreaking. Most of the time she considered herself exhausted. A full-time job with two kids and no one to do everything around the house but her.
When my son was born, I immediately understood. To have to leave early in the morning while Kyser peered out at through his crib, his eyes all bright, his hair all fuzzy, his little body all warm and smelling like sleep, was painful to say the least. But it had to be done and I knew this.
Fast forward six years...so much has changed. Kyser no longer peers out at me through his crib, now he takes up all the space in a double bed and snores like a drugged gorilla, his eyes are still bright at least when they're not rolled up into his head in exasperation. His hair is borderline Opie-fro, red and bushy if not tamed on a daily basis. And his body, well, not so little, still warm but not so much with the smelling like sleep. I don't think I need to elaborate...
As fate would have it, my job situation took a turn for the worse at the first of May and so I decided I would take the summer off and be a stay-at-home-Mom. As difficult as this was for me comprehend, trying to get Kyser's mind wrapped around it was even more difficult. "You mean when I wake up you'll be home?" he asked. I told him yes. "And you'll stay home?" Again, yes. "And you and I will spend the whole day together and do fun stuff and you won't have to go to work?" YES, YES, YES! "Well, it sounds like a good idea..." And it did. So I immediately went online and did research on all these super-duper fun, educational things to do in the summer. I bought new pots and pans so we could make cookies and brownies. I found my copies of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn so we could read each day. It was going to be the perfect summer, perfect for me, perfect for him, just plain perfect!
So a couple of days ago, imagine my suprise when I realized how quiet it was in the house. I roamed back to Kyser's bedroom and found him in there playing quietly, alone. "Hey, what are you doing?" I asked. He turned and looked at me with those big blue eyes and uttered these words: "Mom, I just need some alone time...some ME time. Why don't you go read a book?"
I backed out of his bedroom and collapsed against the refrigerator. Now I know how the character of BraveHeart felt at the end of the movie, when they tied him down and did horribly torturous things to his personal person. Now I understand the pain of the thousands of mothers, nay millions of mothers before me who have been brutally rebuffed, made to drop off a block away from the school, not allowed in the room during the slumber party.
Then I got angry and the gift of guilt began to rear its ugly head... Here was a child that I had almost DIED giving birth to...Did he know how many hours I had spent painstakingly scrapbooking his life so that someday he would know how much I loved him? Did he understand how many times I had to make the stupid treasure chest out of angel food cake for his third birthday party before I got it right? Does he know how many people I had to whack with Peace On Earth christmas wrapping paper to get to the LAST Indiana Jones Lego set just so his Christmas morning would be golden, golden, golden? How about the blisters from making what must amount to hundreds of treatsacks over the last six years? I have sacrificed valuable television time, dressed up like a whoopie cushion, sang countless versions of "I'm a Goofy Goober" and listened to "That's the Way I Like It" at least 468 times in the last week in the car all for that little red-headed succubus. And HE wants alone time?
"Mom?" He came around the corner. "Can I have a popsicle?"
Popsicle? You want a popsicle? Sure, why don't I slice myself with a dull piece of dirty glass and bloodlet myself into a cup then I will eat ice and blow on said cup until you have a popsicle made out of the very fluid that gives me life? Would that make you happy?
"Mom? I'll eat a red one and you eat a blue one and let's go out on the back deck and talk about stuff..."
Talk? You want to talk to me? You want to spend time with me now? Now that you're done with your Legos and Lincoln Logs and race cars? Now that you've exhausted every other option you come to me?
"Okay, I'll get the popsicles and meet you out there." Suddenly nothing mattered as much as that popsicle committee meeting on the back deck.
It was then that I realized perhaps I am not cut out for the stay-at-home-Mom gig. I'm sure Kyser did need some time away from me...I had been hovering over him like a member of the paparazzi since the beginning of the summer. He had grudgingly made cookies with me, listened to me read to him, gone places I wanted to go, let me take pictures of him in numerous, ridiculous poses and in general, spent his summer entertaining me. That's a lot of pressure for a six year old!
I'm still at home, but not nearly as stay-at-home-Momish as before. We don't have a schedule or required activities for the day. We're just kind of taking it easy, being lazy and having the kind of summers I used to have as a kid: full of love, attention, and fun, but not too much of any of it.