Drew, I know you're my DH and all, but since I haven't talked to you since yesterday, I just want to thank you for the thoughtfulness of your post. I appreciate you taking the time to explain where you were coming from, and I'm so sorry that this is triggering you and making you miss your father even more. Love you.

Teppy, eek! I'm glad it wasn't anything, but I'm also glad you're going to have a stress test soon.

ION, OMGWTF how is it only Tuesday.

I'm glad to hear your heart is hearty, Steph.

Steph, I'm glad your heart's OK.

Teppy, I'm so relieved that you're ok, and I hope the symptoms go away soon.

Glad the baboon heart wasn't needed!

I also love Totino's Cheap-Ass Crap Pizza.

I have a friend who is so Buffista-like, even down to the way she phrases things (today she said STABBITY! Who says that?), it's hard for me to believe she isn't lurking here. So, AA, if you're here, you know it's me, unlurk already! Or at least email me.

ahem Carry on.

The fact that I'm posting either means that I'm recovering after getting a baboon heart transplant and The Boy brought me my laptop, or I'm home waiting for pizza to get out of the oven.

Go pizza! Choose pizza!

Steph I am so glad you are OK

Andi, I too wonder what it's like to be beautiful. I hate what I have become and despair of ever being attractive or losing enough weight to possibly help my lymphedema and make breast reconstruction a safer bet.

I am fat now, but in my teens I was not (although I had a semi eating disorder.) Being non fat did not make me beautiful, in fact I actually got many many comments about how beautiful my body was, and it was too bad about my face! So, in some ways, it is a grass is always greener sort of thing. Not that this negates your experience, at all, just that mine as a thin( but unattractive person when I was young is very similar to my experience as a fat person who is older.

My BFF, who has been fat since childhood expresses the same desires to just chop off parts of her body, and it makes me so sad, because you and she are really beautiful.

I also think about what a difference an offhand comment makes... WHen I was in High School I was hangng out with a friend and really laughing and having a good time, and she looked at me and told me I was really beautiful when I was smiling and that has stuck with me through so much, because although I wasn't the kid that people hung out of bus windows and yelled fat hating things at, I was the kid who people yelled at about how I looked like aa monkey or a mouse or just, like in Color Purple "You sure is ugly!"

I still remember that in elementary school, some kid said I smelled like fried corn. I never really understood that.

I was good-looking in college. Big tits, red hair, not too pudgy. I hated it, because I had no frame of reference for why guys kept sidling up to me. I suspect a lot of the weight gain was so that jerks would stop yelling across the street that they liked my tits. (Of course, if I lost the weight now, I'd probably have a National Geographic style droopy bustline, but hey.)

In somewhat related news, yay, Totino's! Their Canadian bacon is so yummy.

some kid said I smelled like fried corn.

Yeah, but he didn't call you ugly fried corn.

Sophia, I've met you in person and I don't know how to break this to you - I mean I don't want to shatter you illusions - but you're pretty.

Though I will concede you do look exceptionally pretty when you're laughing.