The Blog Book

As you know, we're trying to put put together a book to benefit the NieNie fund, written by bloggers.

All proceeds from the book will go to the NieNie fund. We'll be self-publishing it through Lulu. (This is a no-upfront-fee internet publishing site that will take a small portion of the price per published book as their fee.) We'll also be offering it as an eBook, for those who want ALL of the proceeds to go to NieNie and who don't care about holding a book in their hand. The working title is "Sometimes Life is Funny."

So now - we need content! If you've always wanted to see your name in an actual book, here's your chance. I'd love to have you submit a post-length essay. The goal of the book is to make people smile - so everything from mildly amusing to laugh out loud funny is needed. Your essay can be about anything - a day in the life, parenting, marriage, dating, growing up, work - anything. We want everything from laugh out loud funny to things that just make you smile. We'd prefer new, unposted stuff, but we're flexible.

Here are the rules:

• You must have a blog where you are currently, actively posting
• It must be amusing on some level
  
• You can submit using your blog name or your real name
• It can't be something you've previously published, other than on your blog
• It must be under 1500 words- ish
• You MUST publicize the book and the contest on your own blog, and if you make it into the book, you must buy it
• You must link back to this post AND the NieNie recovery site (http://www.nierecovery.com/) in order to spread the word about both (By the way, we need a button/graphic to use for the contest - if anyone wants to volunteer to make one, I'd be grateful.)

The deadline for submissions is September 30th, 2008. You can send your submission to us at sometimeslifeisfunny at gmail dot com. You don't have to be a mom, a woman or a mormon to submit. If you've ever written something funny, we want you.

If you've already emailed me or left a comment about it, thank you. If you're not sure if you are funny enough - don't worry! All kinds of things are funny. Just take a shot and submit. I can't wait to see what you all come up with.

Here Is What I Hate About Being Fat

Where to start.

1) In my head, I'm totally a blonde, blue eyed, 23 year old ingenue, and it always surprises me when I walk by a mirror, like, AAAAAACK! (That picture up there at the top of the blog where I look almost average sized? Outdated by about 25 pounds.) (It's been a stressful year, shut up.)

2) If you are me, which I am, you sometimes feel the need to make jokes about how fat you are, which is just a HORRIBLE thing to do to people. I mean, way to make everyone feel awkward. If they laugh, they're jerks, and if they don't laugh, then it's like they're acknowledging the truth of the statement. What are they supposed to say? "You're not fat?"

3) Yes. That is what you are supposed to say. Even if your friend is 350 pounds, if she says "I'm so fat," the correct response is a quick, automatic, "You're not fat," with a change of subject. Don't worry. You're not enabling her. The thing is - she already knows she's fat. CRAZY TALK, I know. And if you don't say anything, or if you say, "Here, let me give you the number for Jenny Craig," she will drive straight home and eat another gallon of Ben and Jerry's. And yes, I agree that true friends should be able to say anything to each other. Just - not that.

4) I don't appreciate it when my skinny friends give me dieting tips. If I bring the topic up, which I don't all that often, because HELLO, it's not like I need to call attention to it, they will sometimes (gingerly and in a loving way) try to give me weight loss advice. This is annoying because, HELLO again, I know how to lose weight. I've lost my entire body weight, twice (spread out over time, obviously - I'm not MAGIC). I've read every weight loss/healthy lifestyle book known to man. I know about lifestyle change. I know about exercise. I know about muscle mass. I know, I know, I know, I know. I KNOW! I just... ...really like to eat.

A Few of the Diets I've Been On: Weight Watchers, Body for Life, Atkins, the South Beach Diet, Carbohydrate Addicts Diet, the Rotation Diet, the Cabbage Soup diet, and the Diet Dr. Pepper-Fasting-Chewing Gum diet.

Once I talked to a doctor about it, and she actually said, "What you need to do is stop eating so much and exercise." And then on a little pad she wrote Eat less, exercise more.

I stared at her. "Holy mackerel. I have never heard this before. I think you may have just unlocked the door to weightloss for all mankind."

No, I didn't say that. Actually, I just muttered, "That's harder than it looks," which led to talking about my unhealthy obsession with food, which led to her prescribing me an ACTUAL diet drug - phentermine. It was AWESOME. I lost 40 pounds in eight weeks AND I barely ever had to sleep. I was so productive, I can't even tell you. My throat was hoarse from never shutting up, all day long. But eventually Dr. Jerkface made me go off of it, and I gradually gained it all back. (Big surprise.)

5) Highland doesn't have fat people, other than me. I'm SPECIAL. But I love all of my skinny friends, and I never judge them for being all fit and healthy and semi-obsessed with running triathalons. My heart is big. I do not discriminate against the fit. I love ALL sizes (even the 2s and 4s! See? I'm a giver!)

But it would be nice to have a fat friend. It's sometimes nice to have a friend who is fatter than you, so that you can feel like the skinny one. This is a politically incorrect but still true truth. I don't do this anymore (LIE), but when I was younger I cycled between normal and chubby on a regular basis, and if I was with a fat friend, I'd constantly assess our relative fatness, wondering "Do I look like that? Am I that fat? Is she fatter? Or am I fatter? Huh. I think she's fatter." And if my friend was fatter, I felt way more comfortable out in public, because, yeah, I might be fat, but at least I wasn't as fat as her. And then lightning would come down out of the sky and strike me dead, because MAN, that's awful.

But anyway. I feel gross. I've gotten to my gross set point, and I'm ready for a change. (Yes again.) (The folks over at the weight loss blog I started and promptly abandoned are all snickering at me, I know. But I REALLY MEAN IT THIS TIME.)

So - LIFESTYLE CHANGE, HERE I COME. WOOHOO. Yippee. I'm SO excited. or something.

And now I'm trying to figure out how to go about this, so what I'm wondering is - anyone ever eaten a tapeworm?

P.S. I'm KIDDING, don't send me gross pictures. BLECK.

P.P.S. Don't worry fat acceptance people, I'm not down on myself because of my weight. I know that I am STILL FABULOUS. I'm a basically happy person. My weight is not constantly on my mind (um, food however...). It only bothers me every third Tuesday, when my jeans refuse to zip up. I don't let my weight define me, blah blah blah. Whatever.