Beer belly blues

Well, I'm slightly drunk, just getting back from a hippie-firepit-fest that was pretty awesome, but I feel like I need to follow my nightly blogging ritual that's apparently happening. Ironically, the beer in my flab-abs is related to today's topic of discussion.

I'm at a crossroads for a focal point here. It's either the fact that I'm a slight alcoholic or it's the fact that I've gained a lot of weight recently. Luckily, the two are joined so merrily hand-in-hand that I think I'll be able to splash around the page between both subjects and still appear to be making some sort of point.

I think I'll start with the whole gaining-a-lot-of-weight thing. Fun! It's been this last year, really, where this unfortunate transformation has occurred. There are some sure-fire signs of gaining weight that are actually really comical when they aren't downright depressing. The first sign is that your normal clothes just don't seem to flatter you very well, so you start putting together the loosest version of your usual attire. Somewhere along the way, starting about October, it suddenly became apparent to me that normal pants just weren't working for me anymore. This is when I entered my "leggings" phase. Leggings+long tops= fashionable way to avoid wearing real pants. Then, a couple weeks later, I realized that it wasn't just WEARING leggings that was important, it was the PLACEMENT of the waistband that was REALLY what it's all about. The key is to put the fitted elastic part riiiiiight around the MIDDLE of your protruding gut, so it cuts it in half and confuses the situation enough that it almost looks like it's flat! This is how I got through most of the fall and the beginning of winter. Then something horrible happened. The sheer volume of myself started taking on balooning effects, so the cutting-off-the-middle miracle wasn't happening anymore. Instead, my gut was hanging over my pants like a defiant pouting bottom lip. This is when my latest plan came in to play. Hey, I might not fit in to NORMAL pants, but I can sure fit into BIGGER pants!! I started shopping the largest size sections, and this weird psychological effect took place in my brain. If I wore super large pants, they'd be a little big on me, and I'd feel like I'd lost weight because my pants were just sagging off my hate-handles (whoever called them "love handles" was a fucking liar). This then led to wearing baggier Tshirts, and I actually managed to confuse myself into thinking I was getting SMALLER, because my fleshy limbs were swimming around in Hefty-sized fabric ensembles.

What's funny is that I'm speaking about this occurrence in the past tense. There's no wizened ending to this story, I'm just starting to like baggy shirts is all. Let's pretend this transitions into the other topic at hand, the whole pseudo-alcoholic (yay) thing.

I have NO idea how to know if I'm an alcoholic or not. I've often heard that if you drink alone, you're an alcoholic. I, however, think that's BULLSHIT, cuz I happen to enjoy my own company VERY much, so drinking alone for me is just like adding some hot pink pizzazz to an already agreeable situation. I don't even think I would be feeling this concern if it weren't for a recent incident with my boss/lady/landlord....

The first night I moved in to my own place, my brother-in-law stuffed all my homeless shelter into his studly Vigor of a car and took me to the nearby Riteaid to get a ceremonial case of classy Budlight with Lime. I drank one bottle that night, we drank a few as a group the next night, and took a few to his and my sister's house. So the next day, I discarded the empty box in the empty recycling container on my new property, not realizing that this might make me appear to be quite full of beer. My boss/landlady didn't say anything directly, but instead decided to hint about ways that alcohol affects people poorly. She went so far as to say that people under the influence of drugs are more susceptible to the body-snatching spirits in limbo. When I laughed and said "oh darn" because I was picturing dumbasses with dumbass angel dust sprinkling from their dumbass noses, she made sure to specify that by DRUGS, she meant alcohol. Which, by the way, no one would ever do, unless she were trying to call you out in some sort of round-about passive-aggressive fashion. I pretended never to let on to where she was coming from (in true alcoholic form) and instead just got reeeeeeal good at being sneaky with ma' booze bottles. That bottle of wine I bought last week? Just SEE if you wanna wrestle it from the used tampon and hair-ball wreathe surrounding it. I mean, seriously, what a BITCH for being concerned about the well-being of my soul and shit. ASSHOLE!

I have yet to resolve the disagreement between alcoholism and veganism. When I do, I am quite confident that my frowning belly tire will smile itself widely into oblivion, and my beer belly blues will be cured. In the meantime, I'm still figuring out the facts of fish bladders involved in wine filtering (barf) and such, so my final statement on the matter is yet to come. For now? All I have to say is that I may not be losing weight, but knowing that no one suffers for the deliverance of my food sure makes me FEEL lighter. God, I'm so FUCKING profound....

In conclusion...well... I probably need to lose some weight and gain some soberness, so I'll keep you posted. In the meantime I'll be cutting my window drapes Sound-of-Music style and turning them into fat pants, so please... please take pity on me and all eardrums around me when I break into song about vegan girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes, especially when I'm pretty sure those sashes were made by creatures whose heroic feats were unknown to the fashion world.