struggling to lose a few pounds

My family is leaving for Disney World soon. But, before you mark your calendars “Burgle Michele’s place,” know these three things:

I’m not a complete bonehead. I’ll have people at my house in our absence.
I have nothing to steal. Truly, I own no pricey jewelry, furs, silver, fine art, antiques, fire arms or fancy electronics (except two VCRs, one of which is broken). My laptop will be with me.
He will be on guard 24/7. (see below)

The point of this post, you ask? Well, yes. I do have one.

Packing. It’s easily one of my least favorite things to do in the entire world. And the only reason I say “one of” is because I assume something like ditch digging is probably worse. Although I can’t be certain because I’ve yet to try it.

I hate packing for a myriad of reasons. It involves lots of laundry and trying on clothes to create “outfits.” Something that, when I’m feeling fat, I hate even more than packing. So I start thinking about it ahead of time. And obsessing about how I can drop a few pounds to make packing a breeze.

I think my inner voice explains it best. BTW, my inner voice is a jerk. Here’s what it’s been telling me for the past month.

“Okay, we’ve got a month until we leave. We can TOTALLY make a difference with a month.”

“Well, now it’s only two weeks away. But two weeks is still a long time. It’s 14 days. Ooh! We can do it like a cleanse.”

“10 days until we leave. Well, MUCH can be accomplished in ten days. No worries. We’ve still got this.”

“Wow. Is it only a week? Okay. Well, a week is plenty of time if we really apply ourselves.”

“Five days? Really?? Well, that’s how long we went on that Baby Food Diet. And that worked out great.”

“Three days. … Um, well, having three days is still better than NOT having three days. … Right?”

“Two days??? What the … How the freak did THAT happen? That’s, like, only 48 hours. And if we can say it in hours, that can’t be good, can it?”

“Wow. Only one day left. Are we really worrying about this as we binge on chocolate graham crackers? No. You know what? We’re fine. Because we’re driving the whole first day anyway. So it’s really still two days. Plus we won’t actually get to the park until, like, 10am the next morning. So it’s really like we’re still at two and a half days.”

Two and a half days? Seriously? Pish. Rounded up, that’s three whole days. Which is almost five. So it’s practically a week! Please. No problem.