I am not a small woman.

I know this.  I own this.  I have never been petite.  I will never be petite.

It isn’t easy to be big.  It, especially, isn’t easy to be big when you need to put on a bathing suit and actually allow people to see your thunderous thighs.

I mean, really.  It’s one thing that everyone can see my gigantic, looks-like-I-play-in-the-NBA, hands, but allowing it to all hang out is something else entirely.

Last week, my family and I rented a vacation house for a night to celebrate my daughter’s 12th birthday and the birthday of one of our friends.  While looking for the rental unit, one of the requirements was that the house have a hot tub.  Unfortunately we found one.

So, there I was.  Not only was it snowy and freezing outside, but the 104 degree hot tub overlooked beautiful scenery and I had been suffering from a stiff neck for days.  It seemed…appealing.  While the adults were all scattered among different parts of the house, I decided to bite the bullet, put on my bathing suit and climb into the hot tub with my daughter and our friends’ two kids.

If anyone won’t pass judgment on you it’s two 12 year old girls, because they are so concerned about themselves they don’t even see your thighs.  Plus, there was a nine year old to distract them…or irritate them…same difference.

I walked outside, removed the towel from my waist, climbed the steps and, under the gaze of three children, I dipped myself into the hot tub.

There.  That wasn’t so bad, now was it?  Sure, I’m big…but, it’s not like the water went pouring over the edge.  I leaned my head back and let the jets pound against my stiff neck.  I can’t believe I was so worried about what everyone thinks of me.

Which is when my daughter looked across the water and said, “Um…Mom?  I think you need a tissue.”

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You know how you enter a new year all starry-eyed and sure that things are going to be, at least, 20 times better than the year before, then right after the ball drops, your husband spills his glass of punch on your living room area rug, then your son spills sparkling grape juice all over himself, and then nine hours after that you take your husband’s car to the shop and it needs $500 in repairs, and then the shop calls back and says, “Whoops, we mean $700!”, and five hours after that you find out that your sister-in-law, who is also your dental hygienist, isn’t at the family get-together because she’s home with a vomiting virus, and she just happened to clean the teeth and floss the gums of every member of your family two days prior, and then you play in a poker tournament with 15 people where the top three players get paid, and you go out fourth, then you spend the first night of the new year not sleeping at all and on the second day of the new year your dog throws up all day?

Yeah, me too.

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