So tomorrow night I will be embarking on my first Amtrak adventure to Reno.  I'm writing this now because I have no idea how much time I will have tomorrow afternoon after work to worry about entering another blog.  That's not to say that I may not create an entry from there...but I'm not planning on taking my laptop along so that's that.

I miss my husband, my pets...(even though I'll be leaving Peaches behind and missing her terribly).  I'll be having a lot of fun just being with my husband and celebrating our 8th anniversary (as of today!)

So here I sit...pondering over just how to pack the big ass suitcase full of stuff that I don't use here so that I can get it back to Reno.  Moving back one big suitcase at a time!

Oh...I can't forget my drugs.  God help me if I forget my anti-depressants and blood pressure meds.  I think I'd worry myself to death!  Haha!

There is a "fruit stand" up the street from where I live that has been there since before I can remember.  It's probably 6 or so blocks up...on the corner of two main streets.  It's more than just a stand...more like a small cement building.  It closes in the winter and opens in the warm months when the surrounding orchards are fruitful again.  It's always been there...always been a fundamental part of my growing up.  As children my friends and I would ride our bikes up the street, me with my flower basket and tassels hanging out of my handlebars...my friends, all with similar looking bikes...we'd pump our way up the street with our pockets full of change and purchase what then really WAS penny candy.  I still can't taste a swedish fish without remembering the good old days.  We'd buy our penny candies and then load up our baskets and head back home.  It was a short bike ride...but it was made several times a week during the summers.

It's funny how little things like that stay with you.  I don't have one particular memory that stands out...but I remember the days of riding up to purchase our penny candies and then biking back.  The couple who owned it back then were older...at least I considered them old by my young standards, and I'm they've probably passed away by now...but the fruit stand remains in the same family.  I haven't been in there in many years...I wonder if it's still the same inside.  Or if, as with everything else these days, it's been modernized...perhaps I will drive up there in the next few days and check for myself...and see if it still holds the memories within it's walls...of children laughing and ordering candy.  I wonder if other children are creating the same memories.  I never see bicycles parked outside anymore....so I'm banking on not.  Too many people worry about abductions, etc. to allow their kids to bike off to two main streets alone to buy open candy from strangers.

It's too bad it's changed...those are great memories.  Very great indeed.

Sometimes I get into a funk and ask myself..."why did I have to be fat?"  As with most families there are chunkier members than others but it's mostly the older ones...with age and all that.  I have a few fatties in my external fam...and I suppose that is where I get it from.  Some random fat gene handed down.

Why me, Fat Gene????  Why me????

I haven't wrote much about being short.  So here's something that happened to me the other day.

I wake up at 4am for work.  There are others who are still sleeping so I'm quiet while getting ready.  Well, I'd forgotten to make coffee the night before so I had to hurry and get all of that prepared and in the midst of all of THAT I realized that I was out of creamer.  I can choke down coffee without creamer if I put a little sweetener in it.  So I was trying to remember where the Equal was kept...and remembered it was in the cupboard...up high...on the top shelf.  *Sigh*  So I grabbed a spatula from the drawer and was trying to hook it behind the box to pull it down.  Apparently the shelf has a tiny lip on the edge because it kept stopping right there.  So here I am at 4:15am jumping up and down (jumping doesn't accomplish much when there's so much of me to heave off of the ground) trying to get the dang Equal down.  FINALLY the spatula caught and the box came flying off of the shelf...and clanged and banged it's way onto the stove.  I think that probably woke up the neighborhood!

Ahhh the stories I have from my 4am adventures.  I love working that early...but does it have to be so darn early???  Haha.

...makes you want to be dead!  Or at least close to it!

Have you ever wondered why you have the self assurance that you do?  I mean...really, truly wondered?  I've discovered that everyone, to one degree or another, is a product of what others tell them that they are.

Would I believe I was the most amazing about beautiful person on Earth had I grown up being told that?  Possibly.  But would I believe it?  Now I'm rambling...and I'm not even drinking!  Nor have I taken sleeping pills yet!

While I was laying down and drifting off in my nap time yesterday I had two ideas to write about for the blog.  I wrote about one...and the other has escaped me.  As much as I've tried to remember...it's gone.  I knew I should have jotted it down on my iPhone...but I honestly didn't think I'd forget.  Serves me right for assuming that one!

So I was thinking about my past relationships and my current one with my husband and I realized that for some reason guys must think that a woman's largest erogenous zone is between her legs!  Seriously guys....it ain't!  OK, maybe ultimately it is...but to get us to the brink of a great orgasm it doesn't start with the main course....you need to make it through the appetizers and salad first before you get to the cuisine, no?  OK...enough food analogies.  Here's the deal.  And guys...all of you...listen up.  This is a valuable lesson that you need to remember.  When you've got a hot, writhing and naked woman in your bed do not zero in immediately on her clit.  PLAY with her body.  The mind is the largest erogenous zone....and the way to the mind is by touching her body...talking to her....make love with touch and words....tell her how nasty she is and how much it turns you on...run your hands around her breasts without touching the nipples...tease...lightly...tickle.  PLEASE do not make the mistake of touching her to see if she's remotely wet and if she's not within 60 seconds dragging out the lube.  Not gonna solve anything, guys!  Undress her slowly, nibble down the sides of her neck, listen to her breathing quicken and soft moans.  Allow her time to run her hands behind your neck...kissing you...down your chest...over your strong arms.  Making love is so much more than just a 10 minute ordeal.  Take the time to learn each other...whether you've been lovers for one week or 50 years!  There is nothing more erotic than knowing that you personally turn your lover on.

And being a large woman...well, there's just that much more to play with!  Large breasts, large thighs, large ass, large stomach...everything is bigger!  Everything is tastier!  Make your way down between her legs and make her beg to feel you inside of her!  Withhold, tease, you've got the ultimate weapon...use it.  Buy some toys...a feather and honey dust can go a long, long way.  Shop together.  Buy something you will both enjoy using together.

Ladies...don't forget your man is more than just a penis.  I've learned that one myself.  They, too, enjoy being touched and teased.  Licked, carressed, kissed.  Don't forget to communicate what you enjoy.  Don't forget to tell your lover how much you love them...and how attractive they are to you.  Trust me...you'll be rewarded ten fold!

Ever since I remember my mom had me on a diet.  I harbor a great deal of resentment towards her about that but I'm working through it in my own due time.  However, when you're the age of 5 and on a diet for being chubby it's not cool.  What I didn't realize at the time but realize now is that what my mom was telling me in her own passive aggressive way was that I was less than good enough for her.  I was on diets at 5, 6, 8 and on up into my puberty years.  I was never good enough...pretty enough.  Wouldn't it have been just as good to enroll me in a sports program?  Swimming?  Or maybe just tell me that I'm pretty as I am?  I don't understand what was going on in her mind...but it has taken years for me to realize that I AM ok, just as I am. 

Some days are easier than others to understand that...I still have the occasional issue about not being good enough...especially when it comes to being with my husband.  I know he loves me...there is no doubt in my mind about that.  But I also know that I was never his "type".  Some people are attracted to fatties and some people aren't.  He isn't.  And so, while I have been with several men in my life...all of whom were very attracted to the fact that I was comfortable in my own skin...the one man who means the most to me I have the most problems with feeling adequate enough for.  I want him to see my personality and positive nature when we make love...but instead I see myself through his eyes.  Fat, unattractive, ugly.  And that hurts.  While men in my past love that I can climb on top and get all aggressive on them...I feel embarrassed and unattractive if I even THINK about doing it with him...let alone actually doing it.

This is not his fault.  He loves me.  And I love him.  Love is not the problem here.  Acceptance of myself...and of him...is.  I'm having problems.  Even now I'm crying while writing this because I feel ashamed that I feel this way.  Ashamed that I don't trust my husband enough to love me in the way that I need to be loved.  Ashamed that I don't give him the chance to.  God I want to.  I want to feel gorgeous and attractive in his eyes....and in the eyes of my parents.  Whom, I might add, still find me less than adequate.  My father reminds me that I need to lose weight almost every time I see him.  My mom...well, in her own way reminds me of the same.  My husband doesn't tell me any of that.  He just wants me to be healthy.  And that's all that I want, too.

I need to be loved, appreciated, accepted, and wanted without reservation.  Will I ever allow myself to do so?

So I finally got smart and checked the pricing for Amtrak rides between where I live now and Reno and it's cheaper than driving.  So I'm taking the train in a couple of weeks to Reno.  This is a new thing for me.  I've taken the trains all through Europe but Amtrak is a new experience.  I was fretting about seat width because as a grossly obese woman I need to think of these things.  And you don't even want to know how uncomfy it is to fly for me.  So, when I read on Amtrak's site that the seats are wide and comfortable I didn't know if I should believe it or not.  I mean....is that comfortable for a person size 5 or a person size 12 or a person size 28?  Wide and comfortable is extremely vague.  So...I did some searching online.  Oddly enough there's not a lot of other people out there who are fat and travel by train.  I wonder why....

So I ask friends on facebook and only one responded about getting a sleeper car and wishing they'd just gotten coach seats instead.  Not a lot of help.  So just when I think of giving up my new supervisor at work, also quite large, tells me that she's travelled via Amtrak and that I should have no problem.  The seats truly are large and comfortable.

What a relief!

It's shit like this that makes me really not like being fat sometimes.  Ah well....life moves forward!

I recently watched a movie, He's Just Not That Into You, and there's a quote from it...

"Girls are taught a lot of stuff growing up. If a guy punches you he likes you. Never try to trim your own bangs and someday you will meet a wonderful guy and get your very own happy ending. Every movie we see, every story we're told implores us to wait for it, the third act twist, the unexpected declaration of love, the exception to the rule. But sometimes we're so focused on finding our happy ending we don't learn how to read the signs. How to tell from the ones who want us and the ones who don't, the ones who will stay and the ones who will leave. And maybe a happy ending doesn't include a guy, maybe... it's you, on your own, picking up the pieces and starting over, freeing yourself up for something better in the future. Maybe the happy ending is...just...moving on. Or maybe the happy ending is this, knowing after all the unreturned phone calls, broken-hearts, through the blunders and misread signals, through all the pain and embarrassment you never gave up hope."

I've seen this movie twice now and both times it was a little hard to get into from the beginning...but then, somehow, like an old battered blanket that you used to hate but now you can't imagine living without, it creeps up on you.  You're into it.  It makes me feel so thankful that I have a wonderful and loving husband who fell in love with who I am...flaws and all.  Extra pounds and crazy attitude.  He didn't fall in love with who I might be.  He didn't fall in love with a woman that he planned to get to lose weight.  He fell in love with me.  And never, in all the 9 years that we've been together, have I ever doubted his love for me.  Call me cheesy...but he really is my other half.  My soul mate.  He's my yang to my yin.  We're not the most perfect couple in the world...but after all of the guys I've dated and even an ex-husband....I know he's the one I was working towards in my life.  He's it.  He's the one.  And I will always and forever be grateful for his love, his patience, his slapstick and weird wit and his true acceptance of me...all of me.

This post is dedicated to my husband...and to all those other people out there who are searching for love and keep stumbling.  Please don't give up.  You'll find your ONE.  And when you do....it'll be amazing.  I know mine is.

I love you, Kurt.  Forever.

OK, the subject has nothing to do with what I'm about to write.  But it sounded good...and kind of dramatic...no?

So here it is...another Friday night.  I'm alone again.  Well, not alone...never completely alone.  But not home with my husband where I truly want to be.  Still separted by over 500 miles of big, flat nothingness.  One more week closer to being back there, though.

I got my student aid report back today.  I am not eligible for any of the pell grants.  Bummer.  So I think now it moves along to the financial aid office to see if I qualify for any other grants or whatnot.  And if that fails...then it'll be a student loan.  One way or another I will get back to school.  I'm totally looking forward to it.

Side note: I think I'm a tinier bit more in shape...I don't huff and puff after climbing the 2 flights of stairs at work anymore!  That's something, right?!  Yay!