15 September 1998: Empress of the Universe

Earlier this summer, someone retired from Dot Org whom I had really enjoyed. She liked to talk about books and was always curious about what I had brought back from the library. It was she who told me that Margaret Drabble and A.S. Byatt are half-sisters who do not get along; though I have established the veracity of the main clause but not that of the subordinate, the latter's possibility shines new light on themes and agendas in Byatt's novels.

It's obvious where this leads. The replacement is no substitute. She seems to function mostly in an Other Zone and emerge with difficult deliberation to greet one in the morning. In a rare lapse of restraint for me (I am scrupulous about not voicing negativity about coworkers while at work), when her subject had come up for some valid reason, I asked someone in my department if didn't she seem still, after weeks and weeks, to be new? And his reaction was such that I continued, "Not just new to the organization, but new maybe to the planet?" He laughed.

Of course, I go out of my way to notice her peculiarities because I resent her for taking the retiree's place, although not the retiree for retiring. Color me rational.

Speaking of rational, I presented my Great Toast Justification to HAO yesterday afternoon. I got home ravenous, having ridden home in slack mode because I had no electrolytes in my blood or something. I showered and then, still dripping, scrounged for food. The one fastest thing in the house was the heel of a loaf of bread, which I slathered with peanut butter while dialing (ask me why we have a sticky phone) and ate while talking to HAO: my desire for soliloquy would mean pauses between bites and prolong the eating process.

"Hi, I'm naked."

"I'm Hao."

"Of course you are," I growled in my best Kurgan voice, an allusion lost on her who has never seen "Highlander." "I just got home and out of the shower and the only thing in the house to eat is a slice with peanut butter. Which Blake is hogging."

(Sharing with Blake can be frustrating. He likes to bite big tearing bites of whatever, leading to much wastage, which is frustrating when you're as anxious for every morsel as the mouse in How the Grinch Stole Christmas. He eats the crumbs he makes, later, but not all of them; and as the human in the flock I haven't been so desperate to do the same. It's just that all his crumbs reduce my human portion considerably.)

"I'm sure he's not eating all of it. If you're so hungry, why are you sharing your toast?"

"How could I eat anything without sharing it with Buddy? If not his hogging, you know I'd complain about something else [Hao made an assenting noise]. But it's not toast, I couldn't wait to toast it; and that reminds me, I realized why I put butter on peanut butter toast." This is something that revolts Lo-fat Lite Hao and has elicited not a few comments from my conscience embodied as husband.

"Oh?"

"Yes and I can prove it. Take a slice of bread. What do you have?"

"A slice of bread."

"Yes! Now put it in the toaster and toast it. When it pops up, what is it?"

"Toast?"

"Blaaat! No. You have a slice of toasted bread. Toasted bread achieves toast-ness only with the application of butter."

"According to you."

"Yes, according to me, but who am I?"

"The Empress of the Universe," she conceded.

I do not eat peanut butter on toasted bread, I eat peanut butter toast.

Yesterday at Dot Org I had my annual evaluation. I was on pee-alert all morning. How I dread them. Massive dose of Impostor-ism.

I know my self-image is totally skewed, anyway. From how much I call myself fat in these pages, anyone might assume I am, actually, fat. I am not (and of course it's important to me that people know that). I am not even chubby or pleasingly plump, which was my mother's saccharine euphemism for my silhouette in early adolescence. I am regular, as RJH so kindly put it. I, like most women in this culture, think I could stand to lose some volume, but I am healthy, strong, and still wear clothes I bought when I was 20 (ten years ago). I can't wear clothes from my really thin times, but oooh, just wait until I go off the pill again. I've been one month pregnant for five years and expect to drop about ten pounds of fetal fuel when I go off again.

The summer I was 21, I went off the pill. I had begun to take it as a freshling in college, when a lot of women put on weight anyway. I dropped poundage without effort or notice, and luckily for my wardrobe in pill-years to come, bought only one garment for which my volume really mattered, a pair of white Levi's that has been my barometer since. If I can get them on, I don't have to staple my stomach; if I can get them on and wear them where other people will see me, I don't have to hate myself (unless I can find another good and compelling reason to do so, as I usually can). The only clothes I classically have trouble wearing are my sister's hand-me-downs, and as she is three inches taller and thirty pounds lighter than I, I shouldn't beat myself up about it. But I do.

Strong as a little French pony, as Pa Ingalls described Laura. At least I'm not some four foot eleven runt like her.