Learn more about Jennette’s rosettes when she reviews Igigi’s L’Amourette dress.

Disclosure: I received the Igigi L’Amourette dress for free as part of this review.

One of the nice things about gaining back a bit of weight is that I can now shop at Igigi, though I still don’t know how to pronounce the store’s name. (Eee-gee-gee? Eee-jee-jee? Eee-gig-ee?) However you say it, Igigi makes beautiful clothes for plus-sized women. Sadly, I only heard about them after I’d gotten too small to shop there. Bummer. They would have been a lot of help that summer I was searching for a fancy dress with sleeves.

But now I’m a bit chubbier, and I fit into some of their dresses, so I finally got to try the clothes that I’ve heard so many of my friends rave about. The lovely Wendy (aka Weetabix) got the hookup and was able to score a free dress for me to wear at her party last weekend. Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of me wearing it at The Bad Bar with my glow-stick headband alighting my face, so I just took one in my apartment this afternoon.

I chose the L’Amourette dress, and it may as well have had compliments taped to the back of it because I collected adjectives such as “beautiful,” “gorgeous” and even “hot” throughout the evening. I don’t dress up much, which should not be a surprise coming from the girl who believes in one outfit for everything. But it was kinda’ fun to be all girly and pretty and to twirl around with rosettes on my skirt, for one night at least. The dress was very wearable. I had it on for at least seven hours and was able to dance, drink and eat in it without any bunching, clinging or other bad –ings. The size chart on the web site was right on, and the size they said would fit me did indeed fit me.

Igigi specializes in formal and semi-formal wear, such as dresses, skirts and blouses. They have a reputation for being well-made and beautiful, but you also pay for what you get, so you’re unlikely to find any deeply-discounted clearance items on their site. However, if you want to get your hands on the prettiness, you can use the code “Weetacon” and get 20% off your entire Igigi.com purchase. Offer expires April 1, 2010.

Thanks, Igigi!

It was fun to escape into a bubble universe for the weekend and live in a land where everyone is happy to see you and there is much dancing and revelry and ass-squeezing. (I’m looking at you, jenfu.) I am a bit disappointed no one flashed me or made out with me, and the raw food restaurant made my face so splotchy that it caused my fellow diners to frantically search for an antihistamine, but overall it was a high time. It was a place where my only responsibility was to make sure my bus buddy wasn’t left at the laser tag arena.

But now I am back in my day-to-day life and there are many responsibilities, like scheduling a conference call and picking up a friend from the mechanic and finishing a client’s site. It is tempting to contemplate a life where every week was a party week, yet I think the regularity of such revelry would destroy the properties that make those events so magical. It would also destroy my liver.

If every weekend was a party weekend, it wouldn’t be special at all. It would just be the weekend. Part of the fun of a party is that you get to escape from your regular life. If the party became your regular life, eventually you would seek to escape that. Anything that is fun and fulfilling has the potential to become a rut. It is an endless, annoying, vortex that circles around and around and sucks you in before you knew the whirlpool had formed.

And as much as I liked everyone who came to party, I know that if we all hung out 24/7, eventually there would be fights and disagreements because that is just what happens with human beings. There are very few people I could hang out with on a daily basis without beginning to fantasize about smothering them in their sleep.

So, it was a good weekend, a weekend I’d like to have again, but all the weekends in between are what make the fun never end.

Doesn’t the drive-thru exist so you don’t have to park? Or is this for people who go through the drive-thru and then eat in their cars? And if so, isn’t that sort of sad? It makes me imagine dozens of lonely people eating Big Macs in their cars.

I named my netbook Mini-Macaroni because I am the PastaQueen and I absolutely adore alliteration. Mini-Macaroni traveled to London and France with me, and took a trip to Chicago and South Bend, when suddenly he DIED. His little green light went out. Kaput. I would turn on the itty bitty computer and after 45 seconds it turned itself off before it could even finish booting up.

“Sounds like a cooling problem,” my smart, techy friend said.

“Oh, God,” I said. “That’s what I get for buying refurbished.” And, alas, I did not buy the extended warranty!

So, I unplugged Mini-Macaroni and let him sit in the corner of my office for four months, not ready to bury him, but not ready to try resuscitating his silicon soul. This week I was organizing all my to-do lists because I am the type of person who likes to organize my organization. I decided to take another look at Mini-Macaroni to see if he was salvageable, so I plugged him in, turned him on, and waited for him to shut himself off from the world.

But he never did!

Yes, Mini-Macaroni has miraculously come back to life! I do so love it when problems fix themselves, especially $300 problems. I pampered him by updating his virus software definitions and installing seventy Windows XP system updates. No, seriously, seventy updates. That’s not hyperbole. He took it all well, and appears to be functioning normally, but I am concerned he could flip himself off again at any moment. Hopefully he will survive my upcoming travels. Please pray for Mini-Macaroni and me!

I know many of you were waiting to hear about my experiences on week three of The Beck Diet Solution, but after putting off the entry for longer than it would have taken to complete the first three weeks over again, I realized I have no desire to continue the plan. I think it has some merit, but I don’t want to spend that much time thinking about my weight, my food, and my fitness every week. Not right now, anyway.

Beck burnout seems to have occurred to other people before. It makes me wonder if there is a secret chapter in the middle featuring a wonderful surprise. I heard of a software company that offered a free $100 bill to the first person who actually read their terms of service to find the offer. Dr. Beck might give away free ponies in chapter 32! I’ll never know. If you’re looking for someplace to discuss the book, it looks like Prior Fat Girl has a discussion page set up.

After ditching Beck, I read my One More Time in 2010 post again and thought, “Man, I was really fired up! Did you see how fired up I was?!” That’s all good, but I’ve simmered down from the fireworks and transitioned into a slow burn instead. I am content to do it the slow way, or even the super-slow way. I was listening to the Two Fit Chicks podcast this weekend, and Shauna, aka DietGirl, mentioned that she spent five years reaching her goal weight. That made me stop and look at my iTunes for a few seconds thinking, “If it takes me five years to lose fifty pounds, that’s fine. As long as I keep heading in that general direction, I don’t care how much time it takes.”

Back when I hit 235 pounds in 2006, which is a bit higher than my current weight, but not by much, I wrote:

“I could never lose another pound and I would honestly be happy with my body. Wow. There are girls who look 10 times better than I do who wouldn’t be able to say that.”

And amazingly enough, that’s still true. My current size doesn’t limit my lifestyle. I can buy clothes. I can walk around without getting winded. I probably have a higher risk for diabetes and other obesity-related diseases in the long term, but, well, no one’s perfect and I have to die of something. I’m going to hold the line and slowly push towards a lower weight, but it CANNOT be the sole topic on my mind night and day. And lately, it has been on my mind way more than I’d like for it to be.

When I first lost weight, I was doing it for myself, to make my life better. This go round however, it’s been more about other people. There was a man at my old workplace, Joe Anonymous, who had lost a few hundred pounds via weight loss surgery, but had recently gained back seventy of those pounds. A few of my coworkers and I passed him as he got off the elevator. As soon as the doors closed, one person said, “That was Joe Anonymous. He had weight loss surgery, but he’s gained a lot of weight back.” Immediately, I felt sorry for Joe Anonymous, not just because he’d gained back some weight, but because I doubted we were the first group of people to talk about him in the elevator. He wasn’t morbidly obese anymore; he was much thinner, but evidently not thin enough. I didn’t want people to talk about me that way in elevators, focusing only my body and comparing it to how big or small it’s been before.

The only bad thing about my current weight is all the time I spend thinking about what other people think about my weight. It’s a problem caused only by itself, like a snake eating it’s own tail. It’s a cyclical worry cycle, and I’m getting dizzy spinning around and around in my head all the time. I’ve wasted so many hours worrying about food, the scale, what I ate, what I should eat, and nagging myself to exercise, all because I’m worried people might be disappointed about how big I am if they meet me. Aaaaaaah!! It hasn’t been about about me and my health, it’s been about other people.

That’s why when I’ve gained a few pounds, I freak out a bit and feel like I should do something drastic, because WHAT WILL PEOPLE THINK?! When really, I should just chill out, and get over myself. People don’t think of me half as often as I think they do, and people who judge me on my weight aren’t people I want to like me anyway. I should just get my slow burn on and take care of myself for my own sake, not because I want people I don’t know to like me. It’s so easy to make up a reason that I should be ashamed of my weight. At my thinnest, I worried I was still fat. Now that I’m fatter, I worry that I’m not thin. It’s got to stop. There’s no way to win.

Lately, I feel like I’ve been running for mayor of Crazytown. I’d really like to retract my bid for that office because I don’t want to fritter my life away worrying, especially worrying about what people think of me. I don’t want to get ginormous again either, so I’ll always have to monitor my weight to some extent. I wish I could magically maintain my weight without thought or effort, but that’s not going to happen. I’d like to find a happy medium where I’m spending some time thinking about my healthy living habits, but not so much that I wind myself up over it or feel like I have to justify my choices to the rest of the world. I would like my weight to be between me and myself, not me and the world, but I also know it’s my own damn fault for writing a book and a blog about it.

Which is all to say, The Beck Diet Solution isn’t the solution to my problems right now. Chilling out and getting over myself, probably is. If I lose weight, it has to be for me, not for you. You can talk about that in the elevator if you want to.

UPDATE: Kyle is okay! Yay! Read about her earthquake experience here.

Second, I wanted to wish Erin Shea good luck. Good luck, Erin! Erin is running a half-marathon today in New Orleans. She’s been tracking her training on a group blog. I remember how much work training for my own half-marathon was and I wish for her good weather, many water stops, and clean Porta-a-Potties.

Farm Fresh Delivery has been delivering vegetables to my front door for two months now, and it’s going fairly well. I have yet to trip over a parsnip on the way out the door, and I’ve eaten several good-for-me plants I wouldn’t have otherwise. Yes, I threw out half the bok choy when it started to rot, after telling myself every night I’d do stir-fry for dinner and then popping open a can of soup instead. And I think they sent me a rutabaga instead of a beet last week. But I have been eating most of the fruits and vegetables before they turn slimy, and I’m content to continue the service.

My best discovery so far was how tasty snow peas can be. My roommate has a vegetable steamer and showed me how to cook the snow peas with it. They made for a crunchy snack that I know I would never have made otherwise. Broccoli and cauliflower definitely taste better chopped up fresh instead of defrosted from the frozen foods section. And I’ve eaten a lot more salads since they’ve showered me in baby spinach and radicchio.

Every week, I get a chance to customize my order, but I have avoided scrolling too far down the page because that is where the extra products lay. There are pastries and butters and all sorts of tasty items, but I took my hand off the mouse before exploring too far because I knew no good would come of it. However, I recently learned that Dillman Farm sells pumpkin butter through the site, and I have allowed myself to purchase a jar. I had never heard of pumpkin butter before this winter, but then I received a jar in a gift basket from a family member. I spread it on some bread and fell in love, as if it were the first time I’d eaten ice cream. Mmmmm, it’s like pumpkin pie in a jar. Perhaps this is how those Europeans feel about Nutella. I am eagerly awaiting my next delivery and whatever vegetable surprises lay ahead!

PS – I know I have not written about Beck week three, yet. Teach, can I have an extension on my paper? Thanks!

But as I contemplate my old age and the fact that I am probably too old to win a gold metal in luge, I am not too upset. A few weeks ago, as I exited a coffee shop, a teenage girl walked up to me and asked if I had change for the bus. She and her friend appeared well-groomed and sober, so I was 95% certain I was not giving them change to buy crack cocaine on the next corner. I emptied my change purse into her palm and wished her luck, remembering the days when I had to wait for the bus. It was boring, sometimes cold, and the ride home was always long and usually stinky.

A few minutes later, I was driving back home when I passed a car stalled in an intersection. Its occupants hopped out, all of them teenage kids, and pushed the car out of the path of oncoming traffic as if this were a normal happenstance. I looked at those kids and their baggy army camouflage pants, and I thought of the girl begging for bus money on the corner and thought, “You know, I am glad I am not a teenager anymore.” Then I drove home in the reliable car I bought with my own money, and not with spare change panhandled on the corner.

PastaQueen goes to Applebees, but doesn’t eat any apples.

Disclosure: Applebee’s sent me a free gift card to try their menu.

“Is that the Mortal Kombat theme?” I asked my brother as we waited for my mom to meet us for dinner at Applebee’s.

“No, it’s that song, Twilight Zone by 2 Unlimited.” My brother used to DJ and has an encyclopedic knowledge of dance tunes.

“Oh, wow. It’s like 90’s night here,” I said. We’d already heard One of Us by Joan Osbourne and Adia by Sarah McLachlan. I was starting to have flashbacks to high school, when I’d lay in bed listening to WDJX with a blank cassette in my tape player, ready whenever I felt the need to slap the record button to capture a song I liked. This was before Napster.

“Yeah, they’re probably playing this stuff because people your age are having kids and bringing them to Applebee’s,” my brother, the business and marketing major, said. I sat dumbstruck for a moment as I thought about all my high school friends on Facebook whose profile pictures included babies and toddlers these days.

“Oh my God. You’re totally right,” I said. “I’m ancient.”

My mother showed up soon, before I shriveled up and died of my old age. She arrived just after a party of ten with several loud toddlers left their table across from us, which made our dining experience more pleasant than it would have been otherwise. We got down to ordering some food that was on the house because of the free gift card an Applebee’s representative sent me.

Applebee’s has an Under 550 Calories Menu and the restaurant also lists the Weight Watchers points for several of their entrees. This can be handy for anyone watching what they eat. I always feel like I’m playing roulette when ordering off of most restaurants’ menus, trying my best to guess what is low-calorie. Unless you have a web browser handy to search the Internet for nutritional info, it can be hard to figure out what is the best item to order. You can view the Applebee’s menu here.

We started off our meal with a Spinach & Artichoke Dip appetizer, which was tasty, as most cheese-based items are. My mom ordered the Spicy Shrimp Diavolo, my brother got the Pecan-Crusted Chicken Salad, and I ordered the Grilled Dijon Chicken & Portobellos. My mom liked her dish, but warned us that it was definitely spicy. My brother was less impressed with the salad and said the chicken tasted like it’d been microwaved. I was satisfied with my meal, though it wasn’t anything worth swooning over. The broccoli was a bit crunchy and it wasn’t all that much better than a TV entrée. My mom ordered the Chocolate Mousse for dessert, which came in a small cup that she said was just the right size. And really, it’s hard to go wrong with chocolate. Mmm, chocolate.

When the bill came, I was able to cover the cost of the appetizer, three entrees, a dessert and the tip with the $55.00 gift card I received, which was rather impressive. Applebee’s is definitely an affordable choice if you want to take the family out or don’t feel like cooking for yourself. When I looked around the restaurant, I saw a lot of families with kids, so it’s probably a good choice if you have kids and don’t want to get nasty looks if they start acting up.

So overall, the food was mediocre, and it wasn’t quite the atmosphere I would personally go for, but I think they have a niche that appeals to a lot of people. I liked that I left the restaurant knowing I hadn’t binged horribly. The best part though, was just hanging out with my family for the night, laughing and catching up. On that level, Applebee’s definitely hit the spot.