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.

For This, I Will One Day Pay Very Dearly...

(But for now it serves as pretty darn good blog material!)

This is Tomato Man.


Tomato Man is mysterious. His mission is unrevealed. His origins are unknown - even to us, his family.

Tomato Man only recently began appearing in our lives - always unexpectedly and never without his tighty whities adorning his head and oversized sunglasses gracing his face to mask his true identity.

Rock on, Tomato Man!