Sticks and Stones

Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me. We sang that song as a kid and it's supposed to be true, right? RIGHT? Ummm. Not. So. Much.

This morning while waiting for the bus to come, Meg told me that her friend Abby called me fat. I asked Meg what she said to her, and she told me that she told Abby I was. not. fat. And I thanked her for standing up for me. Then while pretending to wipe a black fly out of my eye, I wiped away tears. Because I was proud of my daughter for standing up for me, but sad that what her friend said was pretty true.

Ok, so overweight is a word I'd rather use, but I suppose that 7 year olds don't think in such PC terms. I've always had a problem with my weight. I weighed barely 17 pounds at age one, which is unheard of these days (only Izzie weighed less than 20lbs at her year check up), but once I got older, weight was an issue for me. I am not athletic. I was a musician in high school and in college. I would rather sit and read or blog or scrapbook than exercise. I am well aware of this. I am also well aware that if I make an effort, I CAN lose weight. I am a Lifetime Member at Weight Watchers (if you've never done WW, a Lifetime Member is someone who gets to their goal weight, and maintains it for 6 weeks without going more than 2lbs over) and I've lost the weight more than once. But I get lazy I guess and stop paying attention. It's not that I get cocky, because I know how easily I put weight back on. Lazy is a good word to describe it. While I'm busy doing dishes and laundry and changing diapers, I don't get outside to do much other than water plants and hit the ball with Drew. I don't take the girls for a walk in the stroller right now because it's black fly season and those bites hurt. But I bought a treadmill and an IPod for a reason and I guess it's time to get back in the basement in the morning instead of pretending that I didn't hear the alarm and Doug telling me that it's 6am if I want to go walk. Because if my daughter's 7 year old friend thinks I'm overweight, I'm sure that's how I look to other people too. And while I'll try to tell you that I don't care what other people think, I do. Words sometimes hurt more than sticks and stones.