Pigging Out to "Princess Loser"

This evening at dinner in the sweetest imaginable voice ever, Milla told me, "Mommy, I want to watch "Princess Loser" with you tonight."

It is presumably obvious to most that what she really meant was she wanted to watch Biggest Loser with me. I can only imagine as to how she came to this association but my guess is somewhere along the way in her three-year-old mind she married her princess obsession and her love of Mommy & Me couch time and gave birth to "Princess Loser," which is almost certainly nothing like what it sounds.

All of it was, undoubtedly, too cute for words.

At 8:00, we sat down and tuned in and, as is always the case when I watch Biggest Loser, the junk food cravings began.

There was a time when I actually believed most of America sat perfectly postured, watching Biggest Loser, with a bottle of water and on the edge of their couches, listening intently to Bob and Jillian advise and verbally assault the show's contestants. And then, very slowly, I began a process of waking up as I watched my friends' Facebook posts.

I began to see that my husband and I are not only not the exception with our open potato chip bags and homemade muffins and assorted other goodies that grace our Tuesday evening Biggest Loser tv-watching sessions, but rather, we are the rule. And that is ironic. With children with autism and the never-ending unpredictability we face, we are almost never "the rule." Usually, we set a precedent for being the exception to the rule.

This evening's Biggest Loser buffet consisted of buffalo chicken snack rolls, mint Oreo's, and mint M&M's. Good stuff. I am sure Bob and Jillian would be disgusted beyond belief.

Anyone who knows me, knows how I love a good case of irony.

My family's life is full of irony on a daily basis. Sometimes the irony is good. Sometimes it is the kind of bad that angers me to no end. With all the irony constantly going on, I also crave normalcy like nothing else. How funny is it that I finally get to feel just a teensy bit "normal" because I sit, pigging out, on Tuesday evenings right along with millions of other Americans while we all watch a show about extreme weight loss?

That is irony. The good kind.