Hi Julie:

Wow, aren't you lucky?? I always wanted brothers and sisters. I was an only child. My mother would always love to tell me "why on earth would I have more kids, when I had you, you never slept!!!" What she failed to mention was that she drank. Never knew that. I always thought it was normal to come home after school to find your mother sitting at the kitchen table drinking a glass of scotch. I am absolutely amazed at how naive I was. My father knew but no one said anything. That's why her personality was the way it was.

And that's why I ate. As we grow older, some of us get the lightbulb moment, some do not Anyway, I can only imagine having all those siblings. My mother had 5 brothers and 5 sisters. Holiday were crazy at my house and at everybody else’s house. I was always the odd duck because of my weight. When you are the biggest in the family and your mom is 5 feet tall and you’re grandma (the one who gave birth to 10 kids, who weighed between 9 and 15 lbs at birth), is all of 4 feet eleven inches tall, and then here I come, all 5 feet 7 and, well, let’s not talk about what I weighed, well none of my cousins ever had anything to do with me. I was the one who stuttered and who everybody made fun of. It’s quite odd, how at 60, you remember stuff.

It’s also quite odd that, at one family reunion, last year, at one of my cousins house, when Alan and I showed up and I had lost about 100 lbs since anyone last saw me and Alan lost about 75 lbs, and everybody is saying to each other “who is that??” and some one poked the other one and said “That’s Melody” and my cousin said out loud “THAT’S MELODY, OH MY GOD!!!! See, one might see that as a compliment. I do not. Not one person said “oh , you look great!!! Want to know why?? Because they all gained weight. So here we all are at this barbecue with all the food and they all weigh 200 lbs and let’s just say that I no longer weigh that and what got me, was the expression on the face of the guy who said “That’s Melody”!!!

See, I finally realized how they all saw me, as I was growing up. I was the fat kid.

No one really understands how others view you when you don’t look like the rest of the family. Well, I got it that day.

I also GOT IT, years ago when I visited my family in Florida. It was like visiting the Land of the Lilliputians, like in Gulliver’s Travels. Here I was, all big and tall, and people are ringing the door bell, all 5 feet 2 and 110 lbs. One my my aunts said to another aunt, as she was coming in the house and looking right at me “Oh my god, how big is she??”Like I couldn’t hear them at all. Yeah, right!!

I remember all this so vividly, it actually makes me grimace.

And I just came back from the supermarket. I got my Buffalo Chicken Sausage and my Perdue Short cuts. And Bumble Bee Solid White tuna is on sale for $.74 cents a can.

Can’t beat that!!!

P.S. Hope your headache is all better.