I am

. . . sort of stunned. I took our newfie, Zora, to the vet today and she now tips the scales at 200 pounds. No wonder she can't jump into my car. Instead she just stares at me and says, "Yeah, let's see how nimble you'd be with a backside like mine."

This just goes to show how delusional I can be. I've been thinking that she looks slimmer somehow. In spite of all those pancakes we feed her.

That's it. Time to put that dog on a diet.

The Column I Won't Write

I have a whole stack of columns I won't write for the paper, mainly because I know people will recognize themselves in an uncomfortable way. And really. That's not what the column's about. However, I feel like I can do a quick blog entry because not many people read this and those of you who do won't mind. THANK YOU BLOG READERS. I totally kiss you on the lips!

So my youngest boy came home yesterday and told me he saw the mother of one of his old friends at a restaurant. Now here's the deal about this mom. She has always been "smoking hot" (as all those ladies in weight loss commercials like to say about their new bodies). Seriously smoking. In a tan-blond-white-toothed-drop-dead-gorgeous-So-Cal kind of way. Even eleven year old males (like my son and his friends) were reduced to little puddles of nervous boyness whenever she walked into a room. Anyway, my son hadn't seen her in awhile and he reported that she'd "put on a few L.B.s."

"So am I skinnier than her?" I asked.

He thought about this for a moment. "No. I think you're about the same now."

His future wife will be happy to know that I gave him a terse, brief lecture on how NOT to answer that question.