Fat Girl

The great thing about taking self-portraits is that you can find that one angle where you look best and then snap the shot. All these pictures, taken from your Schokoladenseite as they say in German, end up looking great. "Wow. I'm looking fabulous!" you can tell yourself as you browse through the pictures on your camera.

The problem? Sometimes OTHER people take pictures of you. This happened recently with a good friend of mine who I'm taking the photography class with. We had an Ausflug on Potsdamer Platz where we took lots of pictures to practice white balance among other things. When we showed the shots in class there was one of me, looking like a huge, double-chined heifer with a camera round her neck. This photograph confirmed the fact I prefer to overlook: I have gotten fat.

Yes, having two babies close together will do this to you. There are the women who loose all the extra weight plus some from breast feeding (aka lucky bitches n' hos....)but sadly, I am not one of them. If anything I might even have GAINED weight, but I can't really say for sure because, these days, I'm not going anywhere near a scale.

This is not the first time in my life that I've been overweight. In my early 20s, when my now-ex husband and I still had a long distance relationship, we spent a lot of time eating our way through both countries. I got fat, he didn't. Once, when he came and I was already tipping the scales at 180, I told him I didn't want to eat a carton of Ben and Jerry's with him every night as we had been doing. "Ok. What about every other night?" he said.

Much has happened since those days. My dress size has gone up and down a number of times, and was even down to a size 8 one particularly manic summer. Size 8 to my current size 16. That's an 8 number difference. Meeting somewhere in the middle would be nice.

To console myself, I can at least say I'm not as fat as Molly Luft. This is Molly Luft, aka the fattest whore in Germany.



When I first moved to Berlin she had an after-hours show of public access television. Basically the show was her in a room with a telephone. Other women would call the number on the screen and tell her she was fat and prostitution was gross and she would tell them we whores have rights too. At the end, she always took off her shirt and did a little dance, her huge, pendulous breasts swaying back and forth to the rhythm. I would watch this sometimes, still culture shocked and somewhat depressed, wondering what kind of country I had moved to.

I don't know what old Molly is doing these days. For a while she had an Eckkneipe (=pub for broken down old men)on the corner of my street. Her picture was on the wall outside and inside you could buy her used underwear among other things. Once, I even saw her sitting at the bar, her huge ass hanging over the sides of the stool.


The place eventually went out of business and now the very cool Van Doren has moved in and is already my favorite watering hole.

Will I loose the weight? I hope so. These days I'm feeling pretty determined. Besides, it's not over til this fat lady sings, or at least drops down three dress sizes.

I Can Do Without Platinum

This past winter was hard. Often bitterly cold even for Berlin, I also had to pack two babies into snowsuits which meant it always took at least 20 minutes before I could even leave the house. Now that spring is finally here I have been spending time in a lot of different areas of the city for a change of scene. Some of them are places I haven't really been for years. So typical of city life, that you choose your neighborhood and more or less stay there....

Last week I went for a walk around Savinyplatz in Charlottenburg. Although the area is a bit too conservative for my taste, it really is one of the best places to get a feel for posh, old school West Berlin (Mommsenstrasse between Knesebeck and Wieland is the best example of this.) For anyone interested in design there is plenty to offer, even Stilwerk which is a sort of mall for design goods.

Anyway, when I was strolling around in the area under the S-Bahn tracks I noticed a shop with great designer objects and clothing where everything was 50 to 70% off because they were going out of business. I quickly went to the clothing section and found a lot of really beautiful pieces from a Japanese label called Personal Affairs that I had never heard of. I tried on a beautifully cut pale pink knit jacket, 90 Euros marked down from 245, that was a size 42 (US 12.)

All of my adult life I have worn between a size 10 and a size 12 (even dipping down to a size 8 for a year or so). That is, until I had two babies only 18 months apart. Since I first got pregnant in the summer of 2007 until now I have gained around 30 pounds and wear between a 14 and a 16, on the very border to plus sizes. I suppose there is hope that I will someday loose the weight but, as I've told my husband, I'm not sure how likely it is since I'm not especially fond of exercise but love to both eat and drink (luckily, he likes me curvy so he's not complaining....) That being said, I knew a size 12 was, literally, a stretch but I thought, why not? Sure enough, it did not fit over my milk-laden breasts. At this point the snooty sales lady came over.

Snooty Sales Lady: "What size are you now?"

Me: "Around a 44(14)." (going for the modest estimate.)

Snooty SL: "Oh, well we do have other sizes in that jacket, but defintely not anything
larger than a 42."

Bitch!!!!

I did end up buying a purple sweater (an XL, thank you very much)the whole time thinking ha, ho bag, your shop is going out of business!

I've always had a fantasy about sewing my own clothes, but ever since my sewing machine blew up last year and I was the dunce of my sewing class, I've decided to let this dream die. If I could loose the post-pregnancy weight I would so buy each of these handmade clothing pieces on etsy.

Then again, I'm sure most of them can still be ordered in a size 14/16 but there is still the problem that I am also on a rather limited budget. My grandmother, who a was very old school conservative diva (a lot like Charlottenburg come to think of it)often said you can never be too rich or too thin. Though I don't actually agree with her, I wouldn't mind being a size 10 again and having a gold card. I think I can do without platinum. ;)

Ode to Profiterole

So, after having two babies pretty close together and having an incurable sweet tooth anyway I've been trying to loose weight. After going to my post pregnancy excercise class I came to a disturbing realization. I am probably always going to be at least a little overweight because I a) love to eat and b)pretty much hate to excercise (at least cardio, calorie burning excercise...) I told this to my husband but he wasn't too concerned. Luckily, he prefers me curvy....

I celebrated my birthday last Sunday and, as usual, did some "American" baking for my German friends. This time round peanut butter cookies and black bottom cupcakes. Here's the stuff I made:




There's a cafe here called Barcomi's run by an American. One of the guests gave me the cookbook they sell for my b-day present but then was upset when they saw the peanut butter cookies. "Oh no! You must already have the cookbook. There are those cookies with the fork imprint on them!" I assured her that I didn't and that peanut butter cookies, with their enigmatic double fork imprint, were not thought up by Ms. Barcomi! Because my husband is always a bit nervous when entertaining that someone might come away a tad bit unsatisfied, he also bought several boxes of profiterole and a tiramisu. For those of you who don't know what profiterole are, they look like this:


Custard filled cream puffs covered in a rich chocolate sauce. Probably not the best thing to have around when you'd like to loose oh, say, 30 pounds! Anyway, the party was a success. No one went away hungry. In fact, they left a good portion of cookies, cupcakes and the accursed profiterole behind. I just had two of the devilish little puffs of tastiness as an after lunch treat. Now, filled with such guilty satisfaction (not to mention a little bit of bloating....)I have decided to compose an ode to this cruel French treat.


Profiterole, your golden, tender puff
is filled with such rich custard
that there is simply no way my diet
will cut the mustard.

Your rich chocolate sauce
melts so sinfully in my mouth
but this is no surprise
no more than the
expanding of my thighs!