I'm The Short Round One

I met Mom at her work tonight so I could lend my car to a friend who works at the same place. We swapped cars and I drove Mom home. On the way home, she was talking about her day, and the fun people, and the mean people she helped out. Then she got a kinda funny smile and mentioned talking to a customer on the phone. He asked how he'd know her when he came in and she said "just look for the short round one." When he came in later, a coworker of Mom's addressed him right before he spotted Mom, and he kinda laughed a little. The coworker asked why, and he said he'd been told to look for the short round one and that must be her. Later on, mom was helping him and they started joking back and forth a little. He made some joke about her roundness, then said "oh, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that." Mom said "I wouldn't have told you that if it bothered me, it's just a description, it's not gonna change." I love my mom, and I am so proud of her right now. Four years ago, I wouldn't have been able to take her swimming, she would have said something about how nobody'd want to see some middle aged fat woman in a swimsuit. Today she knows it, she owns it, she gets that it's her body and if somebody doesn't like it that it's not her problem. She's fat. I'm fat. We're fine with it.

This Disc is Copy Protected

This is cross posted with another bloggy thing I do, so I'm only ripping off my own ideas.

I bought Across the Universe on dvd 2 days ago. I've been wanting to own this movie since I read an article about it 3 months before it opened out here. The movie won't play in my dvd player, which is about 4 years old; but it will play in my computer, which is much newer. (I tried my best to punctuate that sentence and have no idea if I did it right.) I'm feeling really conflicted about this. I bought this movie so I could curl up on the couch with my fuzzy blanket and enjoy it. It's not the same watching a film upright in a rolly chair with the sound coming out of itty bitty speakers. There's a part of me that wants to return the dvd, but I won't because I've already seen it, and thus 'used' it, and returning it now would be stealing. (My parents worked hard to instill a good guilt instinct in me. I don't refrain from bad things because I might get caught, I do the right thing because it's right.) I will eventually get a new dvd player that the movie will probably play on, but I won't be able to use it in the way that I want to for probably another year. I would like to write a complaint letter, but where should I send it?