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I’m so glad I finally booked our vacation for our anniversary. Going to the beach for 4 days will really help me with all this stress I think. It’ll be nice, quiet, and relaxing. We’ll be going to Edisto Island, and we’ll have a nice quiet little beach house.

I’ve been trying to make a list of things I need to buy before we go and things we need to take with us. Hubby wants to take his golf clubs so he can possibly hit the golf course down there on the island, but I’ll have to see if I can get him a few replacement clubs. His clubs are pretty old and beat up…they were his dad’s old ones. I might have to see what Callaway golf clubs I could afford for him. Even if I could just get him 1 new driver I think it’d be worth it.

For me, I’m just taking the basics…a few nice books to read and my camera. My idea of the perfect vacation is sitting on the beach reading and enjoying my surroundings.  I thought about taking my laptop, but then I decided against it.  It’s been a long time since I had a weekend away from the computer, and I think I might just need that.  If I decided I want to quickly blog about something I can just as easily use my cell phone.  Other than that I’d have no real reason why I’d even need my computer.  Any pictures I take I can share when we get back.

Now, September 20th just needs to hurry up and get here so we can celebrate our anniversary at the beautiful beach!

I just wanted to throw in a quick update to let you all know Grandma passed away this morning. I don’t feel like pouring it all out again here, but you can read what I’ve written about it on Everyday Randomness.

I haven’t really done much today other than catch a few hours of sleep finally, and I spent a good bit of time with my own grandparents. I always run to them when I’m upset, but today it hit me even harder because I realize how little the amount of time I have left with them really is. I didn’t end up going to court with my cousin, and she totally understood just like I would have understood if our roles had been reversed.

I’m supposed to go shopping with my aunt tomorrow. My aunt needs a new stove top, and I promised my sister in law I’d check out espresso machines since we both want one, but I doubt I’ll be going. It will depend on if Hubby chooses to take the day off work or not. He was going to come home today, but he was afraid he’d have to take a day off later in the week for the funeral, so he chose to work.

He’s just now beginning his grieving process, so I see him deciding to spend the day at home tomorrow. There won’t be a traditional funeral, and services are being postponed until Mother’s Day when the family can meet at Arlington Nation Cemetery to scatter her ashes over her late husband’s grave.

I thought a little more about what I wrote last night about my mother and my weight.

My point to her is I don’t think she has any right to continuously call me fat. I don’t care if I’m 90lbs or 400lbs, it’s just wrong. If she was genuinely concerned about my health and was discussing that with me it’s one thing, but to constantly walk through stores with me looking at clothes telling me I’m fat isn’t.

She wonders why I hate shopping with her. She wonders why I never wear the clothes she buys. No matter how many times I tell her what size I wear she still insists on buying me something 2 sizes bigger because I’ll “grow into it”.  I ask her not to even buy me clothes, she still does it.  I donate them all to Goodwill with tags still on them.  There’s someone out there less fortunate than me who will be greatful to have the clothes, and they’re not hanging in my closet as a constant reminder of what my mother thinks about me.

To me people like that are what drive so many young girls to eating disorders. I think the only reason it didn’t happen to me was because I was the young acne prone skinny girl who struggled to gain weight, not lose it. I wore baggy clothes year round because I wanted to hide the fact that I had this stick thin body that I felt uncomfortable with. I was happy when I started filling out.

I think what pisses me off the most about my sister and her weight gain isn’t the fact that she’s gained weight.  It’s the fact that my mom doesn’t say one word to her even though she badgers me constantly.  My sister was the bigger girl as a teenager, but she was never fat.  Honestly she was about the size I am now.

Then when she went on her thyroid medication her weight dropped drastically.  She became too skinny.  Now that she’s overweight my mom won’t even help her stick with her diabetic diet.  What bothers me is the double standard.  I don’t want anyone calling my sister fat, and I don’t tell her she’s fat.  I just think if my mom is so worried about my weight she needs to be trying to help my sister be healthy instead of having this double standard.

I don’t think she has a right to constantly torment either one of us about our weight.   Honestly, it makes me ashamed that I have to call someone like that my mother.  I have to wonder why she does this, though.  Is it because she struggled with her own weight for so many years?  She was also that stick thin girl in her younger years.  She didn’t gain much weight with me, and she lost it all shortly after her pregnancy.  She kept her body until she got pregnant with my sister, then she gained a lot of weight that she struggled with until my sister and I were almost adults.  No one ever heckled her though.

Why is it that I always hate the way I look in photos? Is it because I’m setting my own standards way too high, am I just not that photogenic, or do I just not want to admit to myself what I really look like when I look in the mirror?

No matter what it is, I’m always extremely unhappy when I see photos of myself. Just like any other woman I have self esteem issues, but I normally try not to let it bother me too much. Stick a photo of me in my face and that goes right out the window. Half the time I promise to share photos on my blog or in flickr or even on my Myspace, but I never upload them because I honestly can’t stand the way I look. Why would I want to share them?

I look at my photos today and I see the extreme need for diet pills. I know I’m not super fat by any means, but I am a little overweight in my own opinion. I know there are probably a lot of women who may read this and think “OMG she thinks she’s fat? What a bitch!” Truth is, I don’t think I’m fat. I think I could definitely lose a few pounds, but for the most part I’m comfortable with my weight…until I see a photo of myself. My low self esteem issues as well as my mother constantly telling me “you’re going to get fat if you sit at a computer all day” (her way of trying to convince me I should have been a doctor) makes me look at those photos and think I am fat.

I used to not let it bother me. Of course I was also a “little” girl until a couple years ago. As a teenager I was 5′2″ and around 95-105lbs at any given time. I cried my junior year of high school because I wasn’t able to donate blood because I didn’t meet the 105lb weight requirement.

Just 2 years later I cried again when I came home from college for the weekend and my mom told me I was “getting too fat”. I hadn’t gained much weight. I was just starting to develop that womanly figure. My non-existent butt and hips suddenly appeared out of nowhere. I’ve been a large chested girl since the minute I hit puberty, but nothing else decided to fill out until I was 19.

From that point on my mom constantly reminded me how my metabolism was slowing down, and I would if I wasn’t careful, “get fat”. I tried brushing it off over the years, but lately it’s only gotten worse. These days she doesn’t tell me I’m getting fat. No, instead she reminds me of how fat I am because I’m not stick thin anymore. Apparently she doesn’t care that I’m comfortable with myself most of the time. At least for the most part I know if I got sick I could spare a few pounds.

I think what bothers me the most is the fact that I know my sister has gained 40lbs in the last year, but my mother doesn’t say a word to her because she has a thyroid disease that can contribute to the weight gain. Unfortunately my sister’s weight gain isn’t healthy…so much so that her doctor quickly put her on a diabetic diet to try to help her lose weight to prevent becoming a diabetic.

But to hear my mom tell it every bit of my sister’s weight gain is due to her thyroid, not the fact that she sits on her ass eating junk food all day, and she pushes fattening unhealthy foods on my sister because she’s afraid the diabetic diet is going to “scare her into being anorexic”. Give me a break already. That’s the biggest load of bullshit. But, alas, instead of helping my sister get healthy, my mom deals with it by constantly badgering me about gaining 20 lbs in 3 years.

I know I’ve strayed from the point of this post, but that’s just something I had to get out. I’ve been debating posting some new photos taken last week, and I just can’t make up my mind if I can even deal with sharing them. I know 1000’s of people aren’t going to flock to my blog to tell me I need to lose 15 lbs, but every single time I look at the photos I hear my mother’s voice ringing in my ears.

“Oh my goodness Jenn, you need to lose a few pounds. Look at that fat roll.”