What is that number????

We went to my parents’ last night – partly to use their pool, and partly to pick up their mail and water their plants while they relax their behinds in Hawaii.

I was changing into my swimsuit in my dad’s bathroom and I just had to do it. I had to use his scale.

Our scale is boring, old, spring loaded with a dial display that wobbles for a while before it settles on a number. It also has this nifty little adjuster dial so that you can make yourself lose 10 lbs instantly just by turning the dial the right direction.

My dad’s scale is smug and European and digital. You have to nudge it with your toe to wake it up, then it prepares itself, and finally it allows you to place your feet on its sleek, smooth surface. And then you wait and wait. And all along you’re thinking, oh for pete’s sake stop toying with me and just tell me you bitch.

So I go through the entire scale appeasement routine and finally it blinks its answer and the answer is horrible. It’s kg but it’s still horrible. I jumped off as if I had been scalded. Quickly flipped the machine over and switched it to lbs because I had a feeling that this number of kgs is really bad but I couldn’t do the math in this state of shock. I was raised in metric but my culturally acquired knowledge of appropriate weight is in lbs.

Well crap. It’s even worse in pounds. This might have been an acceptable weight if I were 8 months pregnant. In fact, I think this is how much I weighed at the end of my last pregnancy. But now? All I’m incubating are Purdy’s chocolate caramels.

I resorted to weighing myself in stones, and that was satisfying for a moment because you get a really small number, but all I know about stones is that double digit is no good unless you’re a hulking Scottish warrior being weighed with your sword. And I got double digits.

Of course this vile scale is a liar. And it doesn't have a little dial you can use to adjust it to accurately reflect truth and beauty and all that is good. I checked.

The other possibility is that since I didn’t shave after all, and since I’ve grown my hair from a really short shag to a bob length shag, that’s the source of the added weight. Hair is heavy you know. I’ve heard Victorian ladies suffered great headaches and neck strain from all that hair piled on top of their heads. So that must be it.