Read more
Zusatztext A sweet confection of southern charm and gentle humor. -VOYA Informationen zum Autor Suzanne Supplee, originally from Tennessee, lives in Maryland and works as a writer and teacher. She visited Ireland on her own many years ago and highly recommends traveling solo, at least once in a lifetime. Her favorite hobbies are reading and chasing her two Jack Russell terriers. Suzanne is married and has three daughters, Cassie, Flannery, and Elsbeth. Klappentext It?s not so easy being Rosemary Goode and tipping the scales at almost two hundred pounds? especially when your mother runs the most successful (and gossipiest!) beauty shop in town. After a spectacularly disastrous Christmas break when the scale reaches an all-time high?Rosemary realizes that things need to change. (A certain basketball player, Kyle Cox, might have something to do with it.) So begins a powerful year of transformation and a journey toward self-discovery that surprisingly has little to do with the physical, and more to do with an honest look at how Rosemary feels about herself. chapter one The Resemblance Mother spent $700 on a treadmill “from Santa” that I will never use. I won’t walk three blocks when I actually want to get somewhere, much less run three miles on a strip of black rubber only to end up where I started out in the first place. Aunt Mary gave me two stupid diet books and three tickets for the upcoming conference at Columbia State called “Healing the Fat Girl Within” (I’m sensing a theme here). Normally, I’m not a materialistic sort of person, but let’s just say this was one disappointing Christmas. At least Miss Bertha gave me something thoughtful, a complete collection of Emily Dickinson poems (so far my favorite is I’m Nobody!), and Grandma Georgia sent money. Still, all I really needed was to be stricken with some mysterious thyroid condition, a really good one that would cause me to wake up and weigh 120 pounds. Instead of experiencing a newsworthy miracle, however, I spent the holiday in sweat pants, with Mother and Aunt Mary nagging me to please change clothes. I refused, citing the whole comfort and joy argument. The truth was I had outgrown even my fat clothes. It was either sweatpants or nothing. Once I’d wolfed down enough turkey and dressing and pumpkin pie to choke a horse, I loosened the string in the waistband and plopped down at the computer. Consumed by overeater’s guilt, I browsed the Internet and gazed zombie-eyed at the countless and mostly expensive ways a person might lose weight (how pathetic to be thinking about this on Christmas night). According to a doctor on one website, “losing weight can be even harder than treating cancer.” This uplifting little tidbit was enough to catapult me straight back to the kitchen for two more cups of eggnog—right before bed. When I woke up the next morning, I didn’t even have to step on the scale. Still snuggled beneath my bedcovers, I could feel those new pounds clinging to my thighs like koala bears on a eucalyptus tree. The day after Christmas should get its very own italicized title on the calendar: December 26—the Most Depressing Day of the Year. With Christmas officially over, I knew there was nothing left to anticipate but the endless gloom of winter, nothing to look forward to except devouring the secret lovers stashed under my bed—Mr. Hershey, Mr. Reese’s, and Mr. M&M. I’m convinced Mother must have secret powers because just as I was about to rip open the bag, the phone rang. “What are you doing, Rosie?” she asked accusingly. “Have you used your treadmill yet? There’s a new box of Special K in the pantry. They have that weight loss plan, you know.” “Mmm, almost as yummy as packaging peanuts,” I replied. “I’m just calling because we need you at the shop today after all, Rosie,” said Mother, ignoring my sarcasm. “I want you to take down the Christmas tree. It’s a fire hazard. All dried out and messy ne...
