Overheard at my quilt bee on Monday morning, “I’m not on a diet. I’m done with it. I’m just focussing on drinking water and walking every day. I figure at age 45 it’s time for me to start liking myself and how I look.” I loved that.

This morning during a discussion of what clothes LightGirl has and what she needs to take to camp at her grandparents, she surprised me with this, “I don’t like to wear shorts, Mom. I have fat legs. Especially up here.” and she indicated her thighs. And my heart shriveled and died for her. “She’s only twelve,” I thought, “I’ve done my best, I don’t want her to have that voice in her head.” I wanted to weep. I hope it doesn’t take her til 45 to learn to love herself. How does our culture do this to our girls?

Yesterday LightHusband and I went to the grocery store around supper time. Well, it was before supper because we needed to get food for supper. We also needed milk and stuff. Like envelopes, because our envelopes are buried in his former office closet which is now a nuclear dump zone (but you didn’t hear it from me). Anyway ….. as we walked around the grocery store sort of aimlessly without a list because all we knew was we had to get dinner, I noticed that a grocery store is a leveler. Everyone who is there is on equal footing. Some people get expensive bread and some get cheap bread, but everybody has to go to the bread aisle. There isn’t a hoity-toity aisle and welfare aisle. The food and other goods are sorted by type and within type by price, so everyone has to mix together to go up and down all the aisles. It’s the one place (at least in my town) where everyone from all income levels from illegal immigrant on up to the mayor comes together. It’s kind of nice.