Starting Over

I am so lucky. At Kip's house this morning, after we ate our bowls of strawberry/banana Cheerios, I got to watch most of today's episode of the syndicated daytime cry-fest "Starting Over." I was shocked (or maybe not so shocked) to see that some of the women who were in the house today, had been living in the house back in January, when I discovered how much I loved watching it. (I've not figured out yet, however, if we're watching reruns now, so maybe this was an old one, I dunno.)

Back in January, when things were really heating up, one woman had to wrap herself in ace bandages, replacing the fat self she used to be with this fake fat, because even though we may lose the weight, unless we've changed who we really are inside, what good does it do, right? Right! Not only did she have to walk around the house for who-knows-how-long covered in this fake fat suit, she had to then write in black marker all over the bandages things that she was holding onto: "Mother didn't love me," "I feel ugly," "Lack of intimacy," and whatever else.

At the same time there was a woman who had been relying on so many crutches. A-ha! The brilliant life coaches (or maybe it was the producers?) gave her some real crutches to walk around with for a while, so she would see what it REALLY felt like to rely on crutches. She had to write things on these tags which hung off the crutches, more "mother didn't love me" and stuff like that. The whole house was full of women in these ridiculous costumes taking themselves so seriously.

From their website, here is today's "Life Coach Tip:" "Call a thing a thing. Call your pain your pain. Call your hurt our hurt. Your anger our anger. Your joy your joy. Call everything what it is so that you'll know what is going on in your life." (Brought to you by Easy Off Bam, of course.)

I love you Starting Over--I call my joy my joy. I can't wait to see what masochistic psychobabble you dream up for the ladies next!