70 pounds of awkward.

Every picture taken of me in the past three years shows me in the same pose. Looking at the camera, chin in hand. I'm not acting forlorn, I'm not in the habit of wistfully starting out windows whenever cameras are present, either. What I'm doing is hiding a terrible, terrible secret (terrible only to those on Facebook, or Myspace, whom I haven't seen in years, that is) -- my cheeky chap, chin number two.
Having not perfected the "fat girl action shot" (tilt head down, hold camera up), I have to rely on my tiny T-rex hands to hide Number 2. God forbid those estranged Facebook friends see that I've put on weight in the ten years since graduation. It would be just awful if my not-born-yet, and not-planned-upon children were to stumble onto them in ten years when I'm almost forty and fabulous. So, I hide my double chin. I kind of hate him anyway...he always gets the first AND last laugh, and he sort of makes me look like a bullfrog. Flattering, huh?

I wasn't always sending mental hate mail to my double chin. I could give a million reasons as to why I let myself get fat - and it was a "fat getting", not an "always have been so". I used to be fairly athletic when I was younger, one might even venture to say quasi-jock-ish. I spent my teens and early twenties with soccer players legs, hard as a rock calves and teeny ankles, made to look smaller by my o so cool super soled Sketchers. Now my legs continue to wave for a good ten seconds after I've stopped. It irks me that they're so enthusiastic all the time.

Here I am now, two years from 30, with seventy pounds of awkward hanging on my 5'2" frame. Being in my late twenties, I am naturally becoming more mature (read snobbier) and more socially aware (read occasionally picks up the paper so as not to feel stupid in trendy coffee shops) and all of this news I'm reading about obesity, and health problems and blah, blah, blah is causing me to lose a little sleep. Or, it could be the obesity itself that's to blame for my insomnia...In either case, it's time to throw down. Choke down a salad once in a while. Admit to my friends that I occasionally do that Carmen Electra strip tease exercise video. Stop looking at my self as my own not so secret Santa (my belly too shakes like a bowl full of jelly). And of course, bitch about it on the internet.