Listen to your mother. Yes, you.

Sometime after Christmas break ended and before Valentine's Day -- it all runs together in my head these days -- I submitted a piece of writing to "Listen to Your Mother Indianapolis." LTYM is a national event taking place in almost two dozen cities. At each location, people -- mostly women, some men, mostly mothers, some sons and daughters -- will present live readings related to the topic of motherhood. As the LTYM people say, "giving Mother's Day a microphone."

Feeling the need to get back in touch with my funny bone, I submitted a variation on a previous blog post. It's amazing what you can do with something given a little time, distance, perspective, editing and minimum length of 4 spoken minutes.

Anyway, I got an audition. I expected the waiting area to be filled with the usual (and wonderful) fare of Indiana women bloggers, people I am quite familiar with. Surprisingly, I didn't know any of the women sitting there with me, though I did recognize the names of some people who'd been there earlier when I glanced at the sign-in list. Even more surprisingly, not every woman in the waiting room had a blog. You mean there are people out there, living their lives blogless? Shocking. But I digress.

The audition was pretty simple. Stand in front of the two directors and read my piece. One of them laughed. The other kind of smiled. And that was it. It took longer to drive to the audition than it did to actually audition.

Several days later, I received an e-mail welcoming me to the inaugural cast of "Listen to Your Mother Indianapolis."

I was happy. I am happy. But I am also panicked. I have a little more than two months to lose 700 pounds, get my hair (now in that awkward growing out phase) to behave itself, and find something to wear that does not look too matronly (ironically), too off-the-clearance-rack, too tight or too-oh-my-Gawd-mom-you-can't-possibly-wear-that. Too bad I gave away my fat dress; I'm probably too fat for it anyway.

Regardless of what I wear, it's going to be a great event. If you're local, treat yourself to a ticket and join us:

Listen to Your Mother Indianapolis
Thursday, May 2, 2013 at 7:00pm

at the Indiana Historical Society

Buy your tickets online. 10% of the proceeds will go to Partners in Housing.

If you're not in or near Indy, see if there is a LTYM show near you.

Yay or nay?

This is what I'm wearing today:

What do you think?

a.) Daring, but I make it work.

b.) It looks like I'm channeling my inner Japanese exchange student.

c.) You can't believe my family let me leave the house in this get-up.

Go ahead. Be honest. I really want to know.

The fat dress

Yesterday I wore my fat dress to work. Ladies, you know what I'm talking about, right?

Almost every woman has a fat dress - an easy to wear, loose-fitting dress that doesn't hug you anwhere. We gals wear our fat dresses on days we are feeling, well, fat. Fat dresses are comfortable and let us forget about the circumference of our bodies because there are no waistbands digging in at our bellies, no fabric trying to lay flat over the contours of our behinds. Fat dresses are all about comfort.

Except, yesterday my fat dress didn't do that for me. I was walking down the hall at work when I felt a strange sensation.

"What's that?!" I thought, panicked? I took a few more steps. "Aaaack! That is my butt!"

Sadly, the denim of my fat dress was tugging on my hind end with each step I took. Waaaah! I'm too fat for my fat dress!

My thoughts immediately went to the wedding reception scene from "Steel Magnolias" where someone commented that a woman on the dance floor looked like she had two pigs wrestling under her dress (her belly and her rear).

I guess I have two choices -- and buying a new fat dress is not one of them.

First -- and easiest -- I can change the name of this blog to the GAS (Gluttony and Sloth) Chronicles. Or maybe better the SAG (Sloth and Gluttony) Chronicles, since I've got plenty of SAG going on.

Or, and probably preferable from a health standpoint, I can get off my duff and do something about it. Where is Jillian Michaels when I need her? Maybe they should take a "What Not to Wear" approach to "The Biggest Loser" and just show up to save the sorry soul (me) from themselves. Or maybe A&E's "Intervention" would do a baked goods intervention for me.

(The fact that I've named one movie and three television shows in this entry probably has a direct correlation to the problem at hand.)

Maybe I could adopt a personal trainer? I can offer room and board to someone who is willing to be my own personal chef and drill sargeant.

I am an intelligent woman. I know what I need to do. So why can't I do it? The answer to that would be worth more to me than 10 fat dresses.

Hey Stacy & Clinton!

We had a little "what not to wear" debate here this morning. I put on a pair of jeans that are too long by about 4-6 inches. Ordinarily, when I buy pants, I try to get them in petite (for the length, not the waist, obviously) or I buy capri pants and wear them like regular pants for me.

But I think I snagged this pair of pants from my friend Lisa at a garage sale, so I couldn't be to picky about the length. I'm sure I told myself I'd get them hemmed. And of course, I haven't. So I tried rolling the cuffs, but there was so much to roll, I looked like I was wearing denim donuts around my ankles.

I considered pegging the legs (remember that from high school?), but recalled Mike's threat of abandonment if I ever did that in public (again).

So Mike suggested going with one large, straight cuff on each leg.

"It's the style nowdays," he promised. He would know. He pays way more attention to fashion than I do. Not entirely convinced, I asked Annie her opinion.


She took one look at my ankles and was instantly mortified that I would even consider leaving the house like this:

Which pretty much sealed the deal. I was definitely going to Charlie's soccer game with uber-cuffs on my jeans. What can I say? I like to see Annie squirm. And, now that I'm 39, what do I care what other people think of how I dress?

Except I do, or I wouldn't be writing about this here. So you guys be my Stacy and Clinton. (And if the real Stacy and Clinton from TLC's "What Not Wear" what to weigh in here, even better!)

What's your vote:

Totally hip and down with the fashion, you diva dresser you!

Or

Annie is right and by leaving the house in that get-up you totally ruined her social status for at least this school year, probably next.