Shelley was asking about priorities. What 3 things would you take with you if you had to leave your home in one hour and it might be destroyed? I answered photo albums and pictures on the wall. Reading Lisa Beamer’s blog, I also realized I should take my important papers (birth certificates, etc.), which are all together in a red file folder in my filing cabinet. That’s my three things, but if I had a whole hour, I should be able to take a computer or two as well don’t you think?

The kids would have a harder time trying to figure out what three things to take. Just to go to bed at night they need their special blanket, their special pillow and any number of stuffed animals. They barely have room on their beds for everything.

But this post isn’t about Shelley’s priorities. It’s about more weighty issues. Specifically – my weighty issues. I’ve gained weight and I’m not exactly sure how that happened. I kind of knew this was happening. There was one week that I fit into this certain pair of jeans and the next week I didn’t. I’ve discovered that I like the new “stretchy” jeans you can buy at Wal-mart, because that way I can buy the “stretchy” version of my size instead of actually buying the larger version that would fit me in the normal material.

It’s been a few months since I first noticed that I’m not fitting into a larger portion of the clothing in my closet. But I wasn’t too worried about it. I offered excuses. I’m bloated. I just ate. The clothes are stiffer when they first come out of the dryer.

So really, I proved to be quite delusional as to why my clothing wasn’t fitting. I avoided looking in the full-length mirrors. I pretended not to notice as I let a little more material out as I put on my seatbelt.

And then there was the month of April and the delusions just sort of reared their ugly head and made me take a real look at myself. The bigger version of me. The one that is falling asleep at 10 p.m. and having a hard time getting up in the morning at 6 a.m. The one who keeps saying she is going to exercise, but has secretly been very grateful that the weather has been lousy and kept her from walking, never mind the treadmill that she sees every day.

So what made me come to the realization that yes, my body isn’t bloated it’s just fatter? Well, I was on TV twice. And as you watch the television report and you see yourself on TV and don’t recognize that overweight woman because you aren’t that big and then you recognize the shirt and yep, that’s where you were sitting…. there’s a problem. There has been more than one event recently that required me to get in front of a camera lens instead of behind it. And as I look at the resulting pictures I wonder who in the heck that person is and how did she gain so much weight without me knowing about it?

I’ve put on weight these past six months. I’m not sure how much. I don’t own a scale. So now I know that I’ve gained weight. And I know I need to exercise. So what do I do? Well, you read the review. I eat four cookies for breakfast. They can’t be bad if the name includes the word “fruit,” right?

So I’m going to try to get over my delusions, start exercising and really lose the weight and this time keep it off. And what I want to know is how can it go on so quickly, but take so long and so much work to get rid of? That’s just not fair.