Lost All My Baby Fat ...

... it has been over 22 years. And I finally did it. Yep. Shed those unwanted pounds that accumulated when I gave birth to my 9 pound 10 ounce bouncing baby boy.

Wahoo! It took more than two decades, but I have arrived back at my fighting weight.

And surprisingly I feel great. Am not a major biatch. In fact not one at all. Haven't wanted to chew off my leg or arm. Amazing.

Again ... loudly and proudly WAHOO!

So wanted to slide into my sixties with elegance and grace and slender. My old self. Physically and mentally. Shed the excess ... be free. Really free to move forward.

And I have done it. Lost the last five pounds. Doubled. Just to dare myself to be myself again. Lighten the load.

All would be well 'ceptin' my Mama ... in her most honest phase ... did mention that I look fabulous but might need to do something with my neck. So you know what? For the first time ever I am not going to pay her any heed. Sorry Mom! Love you dearly. But this girl's gotta do what this girl's gotta do!

Cheers to shopping in my belt drawer ... and all that jazz!

Organic!

Somehow I backed into organic food.

Me!

Imbiber of eight TaBs a day. User of dozens of those pink Sweet 'n Low packets on everything from grapefruit to oatmeal to vinaigrette to hot drinks and cold ones, too.

Oooh, I love fake sugar. In fact I adore sugar. Am a processed food lover extraordinaire.

Apparently.

Ersatz low fat or better yet non-fat cheeses, sour creams, half and half. Kind of defies the laws of nature.

So how did I back into this reader of labels and purchaser of foods sans chemicals?

Well, the simple truth. A diet recommended by my good friend Gayla.

I have been wanting to detox. Nope. Not from martinis ... I drink them rarely. Not from Newport Lights ... I stopped puffing my two packs a day almost thirty years ago ... not from a lusty Cab or a sexy, smoky Malbec. No overindulgence there. I never sip alone. So that leaves me sober as a granite stone.

Then what? you are asking.

So if you really care to know. Drumroll ...

Chocolate chip cookies. Baking almost every night to be able to eat the batter (I know, I know salmonella lurks between the blades of the beaters). Brownies. Blueberry crumble. Banana bread. I swear I only buy fruit to see what I can bake it in with a streusel topping. Oh yes and candy. Most kinds. But M&Ms ... peanut ones ... by the bagful are my fave. Or coconut patties handdipped in dark bittersweet chocolate. The ones from Florida in the rectangular box. And, yep, that ubiquitous saccharin sweetener that I sprinkle on or stir in everything.

You'd think I wouldn't be able to fit through a door. But I manage. Although there have been times when I bump into the refridgerator bacause my sonar is off and I underestimated my hip girth. I am the lightest I have been in over two decades.

Ah, but I digress.

So now I find myself marching up the aisle at the supermarket looking for almond butter, forsaking Skippy's reduced sugar highly processed creamy that has forever been a staple in my larder forever. Or, looking for virgin pressed coconut oil. Arteries be damned. Stevia in green packets replace the Pepto Bismal pink ones that litter the bottom of every purse from every season.

I read labels. Pass by all things white. Rice, bread, flour sugar, potatoes, pasta. Gheesh. Forego anything that ends in -ite ... or -ose ... or is difficult to pronounce and makes me feel as if Mrs. Wimp, our 11th grade chem teacher, is spraying her words re marble chips and Hcl as petry dishes bubble steamy.

What's a girl to do? Gotta slide into my seventh (OMG) decade in style. Svelte. Healthy. Glowing skin. And speaking of skin ... in black skinny jeans and ballerina flats.

Cheers to getting through the holidays with nary a sugar plum fairy hovering over my sweet chestnut mane whispering naughty things in my ears. Ever the temptress.

Feng Shui and the Far Corners of My Home

Yesterday afternoon my new friend Jessica came over for tea. At 4 o'clock. A rather proper tea I might add. Unusual for this dyed in the wool New England village.

Nonetheless, I dusted off (rinsed out really) my underused blue on grey porcelain Royal Copenhagen Tranguebar tea and coffee service schlepped by my parents on the plane from their wintertime visit to Denmark in 1969. Gifts for each of their three girls. Not sure what Willy received, but I am confident it wasn't a tea service.

Mom disembarked into the International Terminal at JFK in New York wearing a most gorgeous pin seal coat from Berger Christianson ... (which incidentally hangs four decades later in my closet lengthened six inches from its original style when dresses and skirts were Mary Quant short-short never to be worn again for fear of someone throwing red paint in my direction protesting the murder of innocent endangered Scandinavian sea mammals). Not sure what Dad's souvenir was ... although I do remember some Aquavit on the bar when I was home that Christmas.

Jessica is my cohort at the cavernous 12,000 square foot antiques shop where I dally on a very very limited part-time basis ... and she works regularly.

Jessica, the self-proclaimed Obama Mama hales from a Nordic line herself and has the lemon white locks and azure eyes to prove it. She is an interior designer who needn't rely on workrooms because she can slipcover and make curtains like no one's business. A bona fide pizza oven is nested into the wall of her study next to the fireplace where her organic flatbread creations utilize only those ingredients grown in her five-acre yard replete with pond and cat-tails in the country. The whole wheat flour ground by her own hand from select crops across our country. She is most talented. Knowing Jessica is like having a jack-of-all homemaking trades at my disposal.

But one of the most fascinating parts of Jessica's not-so-hidden allure is her ability to commune with nature spirits and, using herbs and tinctures grown around the pond in her lush vast gardens, make concoctions that heal what ails you. No. Not the psychedelics. But real remedies like the Native Americans or early pioneers.

So when she appeared at my front door she first regaled in my home. Its lovely accessorized and wallpapered rooms, an eclectic mix of antiques and hand-me-downs from my grandmothers with a pink flamingo lamp or a contemporary brass sculpture tossed in casually. She loved my home. And that made me smile.

But then she wanted to know which door (I have five leading to the outdoors. Imagine five in an 1800 square foot home!) I use to enter and exit the house.

We share an eclectic spirit, adventuresome sensibilities (read: wanderlust) an insane Dolphin energy.

Cheers to my new friend and local cohort!