Oh boy the adventures in my house in the last few days.  I’ve only been able to sit down now to record it all because my youngest has a fever today and is snoozing in a sling on my chest right now (squeaking in his sleep, it’s so cute!).

I imagine you’re wondering why my title is as such and I got to tell you that I had a revelation, and it was a fat girl’s revelation.  I’m a fat girl.  It’s not something I say aloud print because I’m proud of it, but I just say the truth.

I love to ski.  I’ve loved skiing since I was young and trailing after my dad like a maniac.  I don’t have pictures from that time but you can bet when my mom got the camera out I was wet, sloppy, grinning from ear to ear and following my dad everywhere he went.  I stepped into skiing quite easily, most likely because I was a kid, but I do think it was a bit more than that because I wasn’t afraid of speed and I preferred the speedier hills, not necessarily blacks but heavy blues with lotsa powder.

When you get to the size I am (18 if you please), you start to restrict yourself from things.  It’s a fact and I know of other fatties that do it to.  ‘Ah no, I don’t think I’ll go swimming’, ‘maybe I better not try that new sport’, ‘no, I’ll just sit on the sidelines for today’.  I had always thought it was a sort of self-punishment.  I had always believed that I restricted myself from things that are fun or important to punish myself.  I know most people won’t understand, but here’s an example.  I take the girls to gym class every other week and I consistently refuse to play games, even games I like, with the kids there.

When Bing asked me to try snowboarding with her I didn’t hesitate.  I really didn’t, which is a bit surprising.  I was really quite excited actually, so much so that I didn’t even consider restricting myself to that with which I am familiar – namely skiing.  I couldn’t imagine missing out on an opportunity to learn a new thing right beside her.

Well shit, I guess the ski hill doesn’t do snowboarding lessons for kids and adults together, so we had to have separate lessons.  What is awesome about going mid-week is there is very few other skiers or boarders so the hill was quiet as were both of our lessons.  I had a lovely young gentleman from the U.K. teaching me on my own (private lessons for a group lesson fee – woohoo, go me!).  He swore I picked it up very fast, but I disagreed.

Imagine jumping on large plank of wood, strapping it firmly to your feet, positioning yourself purposely on a downhill slope and hoping like hell you can remember all the steps the instructor has taught you.  Then, picture all that with about 50 extra pounds on your body and your pants constantly dipping well below what I’m sure is perfectly legal in many countries.  It was painstakingly embarrassing most times.  I have to say I enjoyed it for about five minutes and then I was too tired to care and was looking forward to the very moment when the lesson was done.  I fell countless times, forward and back, and lucky for me, I remembered to wear wrist braces or I’d be making my daughters type for me right now.

Truthfully, I wasn’t so horribly sore, but I was so beat I could barely stand up and it had started raining shortly after we started (a typical weather pattern at this particular hill) so I was also very, very wet.  Lunch came and I was too tired and too cold to eat anything, but I knew I wasn’t going back to it after lunch.  I could see the disappointment in my daughter’s eyes because we were going to go together up the chair (at this point she had only been on the platter lift/bunny hill and I had gone up the chair once).  I didn’t see how I could do it I was so tired, plus I figured I’d seriously hurt myself if I tried.

I gave in.  I gave in because I was bored and I wanted to be with the family.  I strapped on my board and headed off to the chair lift with Bing in the late afternoon.  We slid ourselves up to the line to wait for the chair and Bing being her nervous, and anxious self sidled right up to me so I didn’t have room.  I went to sit down hard and sat right on the bar arm rest, right on the left sit bone.  I saw instant stars and held my breath.  We were already swinging off the ground so I just had to move myself gently onto the seat and hopefully not scare Bing too much with my, ‘ow, ow, ow’.

I made it the rest of the way up the chair and even made it half way down the slope.  At the half way mark I fell backward onto my butt and saw stars again and knew if I fell like that again I’d have broken something so I took my straps off and admitted defeat.  I walked the rest of the way down the hill.

Now, I’m sure you are still wondering about the title and why I started this about us who are overweight tending to restrict themselves.  You see I had always thought I did it on purpose and that there was no real reason behind it.  I thought it was just me punishing myself, not allowing myself to have fun, and the reality of it was that the fat didn’t limit anything.  I discovered how wrong that was this week.  The fat itself really does limit things.  Do you know I couldn’t stand up if I had fallen on my back?  It wasn’t because I was tired, it was because I wasn’t strong enough to lift my fat arse off the ground to a standing position unless I was facing uphill and had the lesser amount of distance in which to push myself up.  That and if I tried to push myself up, my overly large belly got in the way of bending.  It’s sick I tell you.  I couldn’t go 10 feet without huffing and puffing for air because I was so out of shape.  My clothes were wet not only from the rain, but from the pools of sweat emanating from my pores from the work I was putting into it.  I came to the realization at that moment when I could no longer stand up that it wasn’t me trying to punish myself but it was me trying to resist that feeling of utter humiliation for a moment longer.

I could be good at snowboarding, I’m good at sports in general, but I won’t be picking it up again without a lot of weight lost and a good pillow in my shorts.

The condo was fantabulous.  We had a condo last year that had no doors on any of the bedrooms.  I don’t mean they were removed, but the place was designed in an open concept.  Well, when you have an infant among you the idea of an open concept is utterly ridiculous, but this time we actually had doors!  We rented a 3 b/r place with a kitchen and it was beautiful.  It was quite nice and got us talking again about investing there, but that’s another topic and a half.

I went swimming in the hotel pool and waterslide.  I resisted the temptation to bow out in the name of saving other people’s eyes and plunged head first into it.  Unfortunately, I didn’t find out until I got home that the back of my swimsuit was absolutely shredded and partially see through.  Oh yeah, so not only was I flashing poor kids on the bunny hill with crack (they’ll say no to crack from now on now won’t they) but I scared a great group of German tourists too.

Lets top this morbid and quite revealing post off with some awesome pictures huh.

That’s my punk lookin cute.  She is timid about skiing since twisting her knee last year, but she does it very well.  Yeah, I know, I’m hammin’ it up.   Look at that awesome board behind us!

There’s Bing on her board while I tighten Punk’s boots.

This is so cute.  I think this was a picture taken when we walked in.  He did very well being with Gramma and Grampa, but the look on his face says it all, doesn’t it?

All-in-all it was fun.  I won’t say that the revelation I had brought me down because I can’t get that way or I’d do nothing in my life.  But it did give me the aha moment that I may have needed.  Time will tell, in the mean time, I’m going to consciously work at lessening the size of the tummy so I can get up much easier next year.