How much does a great vacation cost? About 50 pounds.

Kaila is sitting next to me, happily playing with her Pretty Little Pony which I've renamed "My Nappy Little Pony." Whoever created this monstrosity clearly has an affinity for bundles of straw and stripper hair. The pony's mane is an incredible mess of coarse platinum blonde synthetic something. I've been trying to tease it up to resemble Cher hair circa 1985, but Kaila won't have it. Oh, whatever, Miss-I-Looooove-Jennifer-Aniston's-New-Do. Screw the pony. It's time to focus on me. We're en route to Cleveland via Delta and I've just asked for a seat belt expander.

That's the price you pay for a great vacation. The last time my belly was this big was when I was 5 months pregnant. I was sitting in my CFO's office, defending agency costs on a conference call with Hewlett Packard's Procurement Director. Mid-sentence, the button on my pants, which was tethered by a rubberband, cracked under duress and shot across the room like that dude at the fair who thinks blasting out of a canon is a good idea. Had I been a quicker thinker, I would have farted to cover up the episode. Luckily, none of the men in the room seemed to notice (surprise!). Even luckier, my ass was so huge, I didn't need the MacGyver contraption to hold up my pants. The next day, I went directly to A Pea in the Pod. I did not pass Go. I spent $200. It was worth it.

Now, I'm sitting here on my pleather Delta Air Line seat, wondering how much weight I gained after eating and drinking with reckless abandon for one week straight in Hilton Head. It was as if I had just won the reward challenge on Survivor and got to go to the food orgy picnic.

I packed two belts for the trip and required neither. I paged through People and looked at the pics (who reads the articles?), thinking I must now be curvy like a Kardashian. But, I'm sure the next mirror I see will confirm, I'm closer to a contestant on the Biggest Loser. Yes, of course I'm being overly-dramatic. I am a girl. It's my right. I recognize that, to most of you, I still look like a piece of spaghetti with a meatball for a butt. But, this week, I've been feeling more linguine or perhaps tortellini. Shit. Now I'm hungry. Hold on. I just made Kaila tackle the flight attendant and secure some shortbread cookies. See, that's the problem with over-eating. It's addicting. And, eating wrong feels so right.

The Nappy Little Ponies are now comfortably stowed under the seat and Kaila is comfortably sleeping on my lap, using my jelly belly as a pillow. I hope she doesn't get used to this. I refuse to buy Mom jeans to camouflage my muffin top. Shit. Hungry again.