Sir Monkeypants bought a new scale a couple of weeks ago. I was quite sentimentally attached to our old scale, which I bought back in university when I finally got around to taking off that Freshman 15 in my senior year. The old scale was a very nice scale, in that it always weighed 4 or 5 pounds on the light side, and was even more generous when the battery was close to dying. It allowed me to live in a world where I was just a wee bit skinnier than I really was.

Now we have this fancy new contraption, and it not only weighs accurately — to one decimal point even, so you can see the immediate effect of having a haircut — but it also has a fat percentage calculator. Whereas our old scale would have gently suggested that my most recent pregnancy has left me pleasantly plump, the two stats from the new scale have screamed that I have moved well into the range of obese. Obese, by the way, is such an ugly word. I’d like to start a movement to hijack a nicer word from the dictionary to take its place, like, say…daisy. My scale says I’m a little on the daisy side today. My period comes next week, and I’m so daisy! I’ve gained a few pounds, oops-a-daisy! See, it works.

Anyway, my past pregnancies have resulted in several years of up and down weight levels, and I have a huge range of pants here, starting at size 6 and going all the way up to size 16. Sadly, I’m currently at the top of the range, and I just have the one pair of size 16 pants, purchased back when I was 4 months pregnant with the Captain and looking for something to bridge the gap between my usual wardrobe and maternity wear. Now they’re the only thing I can squeeze into (because I already gave away all my maternity pants, because I am NOT PREGNANT, and refuse to wear them ever again). And these pants, they are, shall we say, not the most attractive things in the world. But I must wear them every day.

Sir Monkeypants wants me to go the mall and get some pants. But that would mean a) shopping for clothes, which I totally, totally hate, and b) admitting that I am a size 16 and unlikely to be getting smaller any time soon. I thought, instead, I’d start a killer new diet and start going to the gym. Then, reality kicked in, and I realized that Sir Monkeypants is going back to work in — DEAR GOD — less than two weeks, and I’ll be alone with three kids, one of whom needs to be nursed, which makes me extra hungry, and one of whom needs to be toilet trained, which makes me extra cranky. And I’m thinking, the month in which Sir Monkeypants goes back to work, and I’ve committed to blogging every day, is probably not the best time to be starting a crash diet.

So I guess there’s no way around it…I’ll have to hit the mall. Bother!