We all have our personal challenges in life.  They are as unique as each of us is.  One of mine is overcoming envy, jealousy, and the bitter hatred of all the fires in hell that accompanies them.  I have written before (see “Bitches I Hate”) about my tongue-in-cheek jealousy of others, including popular mommy blogger Kelle Hampton, she of http://enjoyingthesmallthings.blogspot.com.  She who has two children, but fit into her pre-pregnancy skinny jeans weeks after giving birth while I was still tipping the scales at over 200 pounds six months later.  She who lives in Naples, Florida (golf course capital of the world) where the median income is well over $100,000 and they own their home where Kelle can follow the fairy dust trail from her lanai to the woods behind her little Eden to bake cookies from scratch while unicorns frolic with leprechauns.  See?  Bitter, bitterness.  Her husband probably even opens his mail.

Just yesterday, I found out that she has a book deal and that the title of her book will be “Bloom.”  LIKE MY PROJECT!  Only the bitterness here is that, while I have the project, she has the book deal.  She didn’t even NEED to bloom!  Go to her website and look at her pictures!  She’s been a flower all along. As Joan Rivers would say on “E!’s Fashion Police,” Bitch stole my look!

And while you’re there, read the hundreds of comments that come after every post.  People LIKE this kind of writing.  Nay, LOVE IT, as they emphatically declare.  This is what inspires people: well-to-do people who look great in pictures (at least after photo editing) “blooming” in the face of adversity.  Or at least, inconvenience. 

I’ve felt stalled out on my “project.”  Yes, I use lotion.  I shave my legs.  I try to put mascara and lipstick on most of the time.  The baby weight is coming off little by little.  But I don’t think I’m ever going to be one of those fabulous ladies I’ve always envied.  I think I’m too granola.  I don’t wear make-up. I love my old, scratched up motorcycle boots. I like patchouli.  I mean REALLY like it.

Maybe I’ve made this “bloom” idea too much about the outside.  Yes, I want to be pretty and look as young as I possibly can, but why does it have to be all about looks?  I’m writing more than ever before.  My writing is being READ by people.  I’m becoming a better wife and mother as I become more willing to change.  

The anger I feel is all at myself, but DAMN if she doesn’t make a convenient target for it.  Her blog couldn’t be easier to parody if she tried.  Or HE tried (I suspect she has some help writing it).

It’s hard for me to get past the skinny thing, too.  It was drilled into me as a child that skinny equals good.  A few weeks ago I had a stomach virus.  As a result, I lost 5 pounds and got over a plateau.  The former anorexic in me was all, “Whoo hoo, stomach virus!  Huzzah!”  Last week, I gained it all back and I felt super sorry for myself.  It came off and stayed off.  I’ve never been fat, but I’ve never been skinny.  I will never be skinny.  I may be leaner or thinner, but skinny is not in my genes.  Not even my bones are skinny.

Mine and Odie’s is not an easy food marriage.  I am a vegetarian, he is not.  I am a lousy cook.  He does not cook.  We don’t like to eat the same things.  I am, in fact, not really a “meal” person.  I lived alone for many years and got in the habit of nibbling on this or that without thinking about how this could feed the whole family.  I used to live behind a grocery store and simply walked over there when I was hungry and bought exactly what I wanted to eat, keeping almost nothing in my refrigerator.  And as I’ve said before, no matter what I cook, Odie goes grazing in the kitchen after eating and almost always eats a bowl of cereal.  So why not just let him have cereal for dinner?  Fewer dishes, same result.

I eat compulsively to bury feelings.  When I stop doing that, I lose weight.  It’s really quite simple.  It takes very little food to stop me from being hungry.  It takes great quantities to make me stop hating Kelle Hampton’s blog.  The problem is between my ears.

Now I need to stop blogging about her, lest this become an “I hate Kelle Hampton website.”  It’s all hyperbole anyway. I don’t “hate” anyone. Although I think I should put that phrase in this blog enough times that Google will pick it up, because I think she is annoying as can be with her “let’s all ride a unicorn to fairyland and throw confetti and glitter with the joy of how super awesome we all are!” And I absolutely cannot be the only one.

In “The Witches of Eastwick,” where my “bloom” quote comes from, Nicholson’s character didn’t just mean the women became physically beautiful.  He meant they flourished in their lives.  They became the THEM they were always meant to be. 

I bloom. Like flowers.  Like fruit.  I am ripe.  And I don’t mean that in a “new mommies never shower” kind of way.