The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl (16 page)

I tucked the little scrap of paper in the back of my diary. I don’t want to actually do anything with it. I just want to keep it there and savor the idea that I could be someone who gets phone numbers from men.

I went to the dentist the other day for a simple checkup and to inquire about a nagging pain way up the back of my mouth. X rays and painful poking revealed that all four of my wisdom teeth are “severely impacted.” This means they’re growing at crazy angles and my mouth is not big enough to accommodate them.

So the only way is out. Three weeks from now I’ll be clobbered over the head with a brick, then the evil butchers will extract my freaky fangs with pliers. Well, apparently it’s gentler than that, but try telling that to the tumble-dryer nerves already gathering in my stomach.

I predict a Fat Girl Freak-Out. Anyone with a white coat and an authoritative manner chills me to the bone. They had to hold my hand and bribe me with jellybeans when I got a tetanus shot, and I was twenty years old. And the last time I had a blood test, they couldn’t find a vein! I’m sure it was because of my size. They prodded me for twenty minutes but the little blue buggers refused to swim to the surface. Perhaps my body was pumping with pure lard, not blood? They sent me home and told me to come back the next day, and have a very hot shower beforehand. In the end they finally drained me, and ever since then I’ve gone out of my way to avoid medical procedures.

But now there’s no escape! Here is my ever-growing list of fears:

1. Ending up on
A Current Affair
in a tragic “I Woke Up During My Surgery and Couldn’t Cry for Help” story.

2. Saying stupid things when I come out of the anesthetic.

3. Terrifying small children with my swollen chipmunk face.

The first one is my greatest concern. What if I’m so fat that there aren’t enough drugs in the world to knock me out? What if I wake up and hear them laughing, “Who’s this fat chick under the knife?” This worries me more than the actual pain and gore.

I’ve been wheeling and dealing. All I need is a cheap tweed coat with leather patches at my elbows and I’d be the Salesman of the Month. If someone says hello, I’ll pounce: “Hey, do you need a microwave?” or “You look tired, want to buy a chair to park your arse on?”

There’s less than six weeks until Rhiannon and I abscond, so we’re selling most of our worldly goods. We’d planned to have a garage sale tomorrow, but we’ve fobbed off so much stock to friends and colleagues that there’s not enough left to have one. We’ve had bidding wars and fights over furniture, plus one emotional Mothership attempting to hijack the whole event.

“You’re not selling that toaster, are you?”

“Yes,” said Rhiannon firmly. “We are selling that toaster.”

“Can I have it?”

“You already have a toaster!”

“But my toaster might die!” She hugged it to her chest protectively. “There could be a toast situation. I need backup!”

It’s all so surreal. It would appear things are winding up; doors are closing. Our gym membership has expired, we’ve given notice on our flat, there are removal boxes everywhere, and they’ve found a replacement for me at work. I’m watching this flurry of activity with my usual absent-mindedness and can’t comprehend that I’m actually leaving.

I don’t want to stop and think about it, because then the panic kicks in. I start running around in small circles and wailing. What if I can’t find a job what if no one understands my accent what if my friends forget me what if we can’t find somewhere to live what if I get fatter what shoes should I pack?

Today I broke up with SureSlim. I’m insanely busy with our Scotland preparations and next week I’ll be eating mush after my teeth get wrenched out, so the SureSlim ladies agreed it was best to wind things up now.

It was an amicable parting. Unlike Weight Watchers, I had no emotional attachment to the place. It was more like being sent to rehab—expensive, brutal, and mercilessly strict; but exactly what I needed to get back on the straight and narrow.

I haven’t precisely followed the program since Christmas, which meant I’ve not even lost five pounds in the past five weeks. But it’s impossible to get into my usual lard-busting routine with everything going on right now—preparing to move house, finishing things off at work, touring up and down Australia saying goodbye to our nearest and dearest. And I can’t weigh out my birdseed and chicken breasts because I’ve sold the kitchen scales. So I’m just trying to be as healthy as I can in between bon voyage drinks with friends and afternoon teas with my aunties.

So what did I learn from SureSlim? I’ve learned that diets do work—if you can stick to them. But who can do that without going insane? I think my seven hundred dollars was well spent just to blast off my mammoth regain, but I knew I couldn’t keep it up forever. I can only abstain from chocolate for so long.

SureSlim has also taught me that my body feels better with less processed food, so now I try to eat food that’s full of nutrition, rather than fretting about the calories. So my next challenge is to find a middle ground between the chocolate fiend and the nutrition nerd. I’ll just muddle along as best as I can in the midst of madness until we leave Australia. After 110 weeks, it’s rather daunting to be leading a scaleless existence.

First I conversed with the anesthetist.

“I hear you’re going overseas.”

“Yeah, but don’t think I haven’t noticed that huge needle.”

“Are you taking a year out before university?”

“No!”

“Just finished your degree, then?”

“No! I’ve been out for years!”

“Oh! Well I hope you’ve got some sort of qualification, if you’re intending to unleash yourself on the world?”

“I’ve got a degree, mate.” My vision grew cloudy. “Hey, did you really think I just finished high school? It’s the chubby face that makes me look young, isn’t it?”

The next thing I remember was hearing my voice talking and it wouldn’t stop. It was saying a lot of stupid things. My brain was soggy and numb as it pleaded with my mouth, Would you please shut up?

But the mouth wouldn’t comply. It was its own entity, completely detached from the body. I’d been put under intravenous sedation, as opposed to general anesthetic. So apparently you can’t feel a thing but you can get quite talkative when you come around.

I faded back in just as the surgeon was winding up. I felt something tugging at my tooth, but there was no pain. I babbled away in a wounded monotone, trying to make him feel bad for attacking me,
“Hey
. Hey. Ow ow.
Ow!
”

Then I chatted to a nurse.

“You guys are lovely,” I slurred. “You are doing a lovely job. Really you are. You have all been so nice.”

“Thank you, dear.”

“I was so worried you wouldn’t be able to knock me out. I thought I’d be unknockoutable and feel everything!”

“Well, we managed just fine.”

“Yeah, but I’m a big girl. It can’t have been easy. You know, half the reason I’m trying to shrink is to avoid doctors?”

Shut up!
(That was my brain speaking.)

“Is that so, love?”

“I’ve lost 126 pounds, would you believe.”

“That’s very impressive!”

I launched into what I thought was an articulate and detailed outline of my diet and exercise regime and secrets of well-being, weight loss, and eternal happiness, but I’m sure it was actually a saliva-drenched numb-tongued blur. As they wheeled me out of the operating room my brain cringed because my mouth was still moving and there seemed no way to stop it.

Half an hour later I was able to sit upright in a chair. I flashed a dopey smile as Rhiannon arrived to take me home, my mouth stuffed with cotton swabs.

“This one’s a talker,” said the nurse. She handed Rhiannon my bloodied wisdom teeth in a jar. “She told us all her secrets.”

“Ha ha!” I said. “Oh. Shit.”

It’s now 5:00
A.M.
, two days later. I can’t sleep because my head is massively swollen like a mutant potato. I was hoping for a cute little chipmunk face, but instead I’m a slab with eyes, like those statues on Easter Island. My lips are numb too, so when I spoon gruel into my mouth, it slithers down my chin as if I’m a helpless baby. Somebody should just strap me into a highchair and make the airplane noises.

I am hideous. Look away. Look awaaaayyyy! No hang on, fetch me some more drugs, then look away.

We’re now officially homeless. I felt sulky and betrayed as I watched the last relics of our cozy Canberran lives walk out the door with their new owners. My bed, the television, and the crappy coffee table we painstakingly stripped back and restored. And how one forms an emotional attachment to a microwave beats me.

Finally, on Friday afternoon, Rhiannon and I dropped off the keys to the estate agent. We’ve now moved in with the Mothership.

My eating has gone out the window. Now that I’m back on solids, I’m desperate to eat at my favorite Canberra restaurants one more time. Luckily, Rhiannon feels the same way, so we organized a dozen different farewell dinners with different groups of friends. We’ve had Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Italian. I had my final potato wedges from Tilly’s, my last Gus Café chocolate shake, my last sausage roll from Cornucopia, my last pumpkin pesto pizza from Babar. The food is always delicious, the company sublime, and every meal ends in tears.

With friends like these and food like that, why am I walking away?

I tell you, if one more person tells me how they gained so much weight while traveling overseas, I will punch them in the face. If I am to believe what I’m told, the streets of Edinburgh are paved with lard and it rains pure beer.

All this saying goodbye has left me rather emotional and pathetic. Sue looked at the calendar today and said, “You’re leaving in a week!”

“I don’t wanna go!” I croaked, and promptly burst into tears.

This was the second incident of workplace bawling in six months. At least last time Poppy had just passed away so I had a decent excuse. But today poor Sue looked quite alarmed as I hiccuped away.

Tens of thousands of Aussies go off to the UK every year; it’s a cultural institution! So why am I so afraid? It’s only two years. And we’re so lucky to be doing this, as everyone keeps reminding me. We’re on the cusp of a great adventure.

But I feel like a fraud. None of this sounds like a very Shauna thing to do.

Tonight I drove back to Mum’s house in Goulburn in the middle of a thunderstorm. Lightning scribbled across the sky, illuminating random bursts of sheep and gum trees.

It finally hit me as I rattled alongside the vast emptiness of Lake George. I’m leaving this beautiful country in four short days. I’m going to Scotland. I’m going to Europe. I’m going to see places I’ve only known from books. It’s terrifying—but holy shit, it’s exciting too!

And then suddenly my thoughts turned to chocolate. It’s almost Easter. Should I buy one last Red Tulip Bunny? They’re not going to have Red Tulip chocolate in Scotland. What if I never get to bite off those creamy ears again? Oh, I’ll have to get one. Maybe just a baby one.

The first thing we did when we arrived in Frankfurt was phone Mum to let her know we hadn’t been shot down over Iraq. I tell you, George Bush had a lot of nerve starting a war two days before we left the country. And that SARS outbreak was most untimely too. As if the Mothership wasn’t worried enough about her children leaving the country!

Rhiannon and I were the only ones not crying as we left Canberra airport. Our friends were tearful and Mum was sobbing, but even as I hugged everyone for the seventy-fifth time, I couldn’t quite comprehend that I wouldn’t be seeing them all again in a day or two.

As the plane took off, Rhiannon squeezed my hand and grinned. Her eyes were wild and glistening, as though she’d just spent twenty years digging out of prison with a teaspoon and had finally tasted freedom.

So now I realize just how far Australia is from the rest of the world. I managed to distract myself with Tetris from Sydney to Singapore, but I thought the fifteen-hour flight from Singapore to Frankfurt would never end. At least I had time to marvel at how easily I fit in the seat. I’d put the Fat Girl Logistics Department on high alert but I had plenty of room to spare.

We made it to Scotland!

Edinburgh is stunning. It’s particularly beautiful at 6:00
A.M.
We had the privilege of seeing it early, thanks to the snotty fuckwit in our hostel room. He was very polite and sweet in daylight, but when night fell he morphed into an evil flu-ridden snoring machine. It sounded like he was boiling a huge vat of snot in his nostrils, and another vat of putrid phlegm in his throat. His girlfriend was wide-awake in the bunk below, but did she once tell him to shut up? No! As his traveling companion, it was her duty to be on Snore Watch.

We gave up on sleep and went for a walk up the Royal Mile, plotting their demise. But they were soon forgotten as we went past the crumbling passages and tacky tourist shops all the way up to Edinburgh Castle. You couldn’t find a greater contrast from the clean lines of Canberra.

I swear the sunrise is a different color over here. In Australia it’s a riot of red and orange, here it’s gentle pinks and blue. We stood out in front of the castle and gawked down at the city, trying to drink it all in.

Our first meal in Scotland was McDonald’s. We arrived late on Friday night and were too knackered to look beyond the familiar arches.

“The Big Mac seems much smaller in Scotland,” said Rhiannon.

“Do you think that means everyone will be less fat?”

Since then we’ve been feasting from supermarkets. They’re big on ready-made sandwiches. They come in boxes or cellophane, many oozing with mayonnaise. How very curious. I’m used to the sandwich shops in Australia where they have all the ingredients in little dishes and you tell the sandwich wench exactly how you want it. Yes, I predict this will be about as profound as my cultural observations get.