Oh Horrors! Horrors!

There's a fat picture of me on the internet.

Well, fortunately thinner than I was at the beginning of July. And had that picture appeared on the internet, I would have crawled under my computer desk to whimper and hide for the rest of my life. I've been working on dealing with pictures but there's still a LONG road to go. At work it is commonly known you never take a picture of me. I begged my boss to get a fat picture of me (with her at an work event) off her desk or at least let me tape a picture of Cindy Crawford's face over mine.

Which goes to show some clear self acceptance issues I know. We'll get there someday. But today was not that day.

I had been doing some random bored killing time looking around the internet like i do when the White Sox have totally tanked a game and there's nothing good on TV. So for grins and giggles, I swung by the website of the meetup organizers website and saw the blurb about our baking meetup today.

One of those semi-interested "hey, wonder what she wrote about it' thoughts.

And then there was the picture. Pictures. Three of them to be precise.

One of me in a group photo smirking instead of smiling as I always worry about food being stuck in my teeth when I take pictures.

One of me whisking chocolate.

And one of me doing who knows what with a bowl and a few people around me.

If I were a Victorian lady right now I'd be swooning and calling for my smelling salts.

Now from what I remember she says that she has people following her blog from around the world. Which means my fat pictures are out there.

And yes, I get that right now there's not thousands of people spreading the word that there's a self conscious neurotic woman worrying about what people might think of her fat picture. But it's still the knowledge of seeing myself in a picture and not being able to run away from it, stick my head in the sand and pretend.

Today I had to look at myself.

Now I'm pretty sure that if I sent an email to the organizer she'd probably take the pictures of me off the website. And once I have a chance to think about this overnight and calm down, I may or may not do it. I'm too shell shocked right now to make a clear decision that won't make me sound like a complete fruit loop.

Because for one short split second somewhere in the midst of the freak out, I had one lucid glimpse at the picture and thought "Hey, I don't look so bad."

I saw in the picture the weight loss.

Excuse me for a moment while I hyperventilate.