Constipation was not, so far as she could discover, an expected symptom of menopause. But constipated she was, and dreadfully so. It had been a week since she'd produced so much as a single sinister metallic-toned blob.
At least she had experienced some improvement in the gas department. While still plentiful and unusual in nature, her farts were no longer something that could be mistaken for an industrial fire. The smells they gave off were changeable and still sometimes oddly inorganic, but not like something that might, had, or maybe ought to explode.
All things considered, she felt pretty good. Lethargic, yes, and bloated to the point that her new maximum sized muumuus were beginning to feel not so very loose around the middle any more...
Surely that had to be due to bloating.
She couldn't possibly be that fat, so it had to be bloating—true, she still didn't feel swollen, but that was what it had to be. And as soon as she could do her business again, her dimensions would return to something less unnatural.
The little nagging voice in the back of her mind that insisted this was simply not true was the voice of unreasoning hysteria, and she would not have it, by God!
No one could possibly gain such massive amounts of weight in so short a time. It defied the laws of not only biology but physics. Ergo, it could not be true.
Of course, she had been eating a great deal more than she used to, so some of her weight gain might very well be real and lasting, but what of it? Lots of women became a tad 'hippy' when they went through the change. True, not many women went through the change in their twenties, but that also was not unprecedented. Merely atypical.
"God damn it—haven't you been to the store yet?" Jackson called out peevishly. "We're out of damn near everything! Why is the freezer empty?"
Odelia turned towards him and lied, patiently, "The power was out for hours and the food in the freezer started to thaw, so I had to throw it all away."
"That goddamned electric company! What the fuck do I pay a utility bill for? Useless sons of bitches... MELANIE!"
Odelia's sister-in-law was in the family room, staring at QVC on the big screen TV, and not about to leave it, so she screamed back, "WHAT?"
"PIZZA OR CHINESE?"
Odelia knew what was coming. They would spend ten minutes arguing, each trying to force the other to perform the monumental labor of calling in the order. It was a source of constant frustration to her that these two laziest of people each held down a job paying far more than any position she herself could ever hope to be considered for. She decided to retreat to her bedroom.
As she sank onto the edge of the bed, its frame groaned in protest. Ignoring this, she picked up the remote and strobed through the channels, stopping when she reached the one Melanie had been watching so intently.
"—this hour of Precious Moments, where we will be debuting several pieces specially produced for QVC and available nowhere else—" the television host was saying, in a voice that sparkled with infectious fake enthusiasm.
Precious only in the sense of conveying cloying sentimentality, Precious Moments were ceramic statuettes of children with tear-drop shaped eyes, frozen in tableaus of sickening cuteness. Melanie loved the horrid little things and displayed her collection in two glass cases kept in the master bedroom suite. Odelia occasionally wondered how Jackson managed to 'perform' with all of those painted tear-drop eyes staring unblinkingly at their marriage bed.
YOU ARE READING
Tipping the Scales
ChickLitOdelia has spent most of her life so firmly under her brother's thumb that she might as well have been an insect trapped in a chunk of amber, but now, at long last, something is happening to her. Too bad it's not a nice, normal, something, like a '...
