I have a secret. Well, it won't be a secret now, obviously.
My secret is that I love fashion. This may come as a surprise to some of you (OK most of you), since my style is usually "Whatever's Clean" chic. I envy people like my sister Shannon who can wear anything in her closet and look amazing. This may very well have to do with the fact that she's 5' 9.5" and about 140 lb.

I guess I look at the fashion sites, like The Sartorialist or Asian Cajuns among others, hoping to understand how to pull off a clean polished look with a little flair. I think I used to be more fashionable. In high school I would scour thrift stores to find a perfect piece that would fit my hippie inspired look. The more children I had, however, the less I looked cool and the more I looked "mom". Not blue-jean jumper, white keds mom look. More like jeans and a relatively clean t-shirt look. Usually tie-dye since that hid any leakage from breastfeeding.

There's not so much in the way of fashionable clothes for overweight mamas. Unless I want something in a hideous flower print or embroidered denim button downs. OK, so there IS more than that but I like to make my point using ridiculous exaggeration. I'm currently working on losing weight. I'm tired of being heavy (not in a cool beatnik way). I also get to be in my sister's wedding in May and I don't want to be the fat bridesmaid. So there's plenty of incentive. I'm setting a goal for myself. It's a reward system. I'm going to get myself a subscription to a fashion mag, like 10 or A4 when I'm 10 lb. down from where I am now. I think I'm going to keep doing little things like this for myself. Like go get my hair colored and styled at a big-girl salon at 20 lb. down. Or a day at the spa for 30 or something.

This is kind of hard to write about. I'm a pretty private person when it comes to my emotions. But I know I can trust you, dear reader, whoever you are.