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.

The Village Idiot

The Doobies get their Guju on.

We flew back from Florida two days ago. Per Mike, I wasn't allowed to tell anyone via FB we were going away.

We'll get robbed. Don't you read the news anymore?

My page is private -- only friends view it! (And, no, I don't read the news. I rely on Jon Stewart for everything.)

Oh, so all those people are your friends? How well do you really know all 238 of them?

Crap. I hate it when Mike's right. That's my job. So, I changed my FB status from "woohoo packing for Florida so excited to leave tomorrow at 5am and our security code is 9312" to "doing laundry...again." I also wrote two incredibly lame blog posts that would be published in my absence, to cover my tracks. (Did you really think I gave a shit about how to make a robot from a cardboard box? C'mon! Y'all know me better than that.)

So, we were away. The West Palm Beach wedding/vacation was fun. The Doobies had a blast. And, I got blasted in front of my relatives + 300 other people. My cousin tried to twirl me around the dance floor at warp-speed, in my saree. But, the vodka tonics won and I bit it. Twice. I learned to say, "My ass hurts." and then "My ass feels better." in Gujarati. My grandmother was so proud. As Mike always says, "Every town needs an idiot." Luckily, this one never disappoints.



My cousin, "The Twirler"


My grandma, Ben!