Mirror, mirror on the wall...

I have to write quickly this morning and finish this before Husband arrives home after taking our son to meet his dad for the weekend (Son's dad, not Husband's dad. That would be a more pleasant and less stressful experience for everyone). I'm supposed to be clearing out the spare room, not lying around in bed, reading OK and Hello magazines, drinking coffee, then getting up at 10, using all the hot water and wandering around the house, thinking about tidying up but instead surfing the net for summer holidays we can't afford.

It's a beautiful day. The sky is the light royal blue of my old convent school uniform, the garden is glistening with frost and is absolutely freezing. Perfect. Just the sort of day one shouldn't spend sorting out the spare room. Actually, there are two spare rooms but I can't face them both.

The bed is covered in the debris of our not so recent ski trip. Yes, the clothes are clean but they need to be sorted. I have to decide whether we do need 4 packs of playing cards, 6 travel cushions and the Crap Cars Top Trumps which seemed a 'must buy' item at the airport.

But the real problem lies with the 'summer wardrobe' which also needs to be addressed. It's time to admit that I'm really not going to fit into those size 10 denim shorts from 2002. I'm not even going to fit into the size 12 bikini from 2005. Yes, I'm on a diet but really - a size 10?

I absolutely loathe doing the Charity Shop Sort. The clothes lie in suitcases and vacuum pack bags, reminding me of failure in so many ways: my incredibly lax attitude to money (so many clothes too small, never worn), my abandoned exercise fads (there's a bag of Sweaty Betty gym gear, still with labels intact) and my steadily growing waistline (size 10, size 12, size 14, size SIXTEEN?? What the hell?).

We're on a low fat, low carb healthy eating kick at the moment. Husband was dismayed to step on the scales on Day One (24 hours down, only the rest of our lives to go) and realise that he's now the heaviest he's ever been. I didn't tell him that I weigh only five pounds less than him. As happens so often in my forty-something life at the moment, I snuggled deeper under the duvet, my inner voice screaming, 'Just how the bloody hell did that happen?'

It's time for change, for the sake of my bank balance, my sanity and my marriage. Husband is fantastic and loves me as I am. I'm not sure why, as I was a size 10 when I met him and we're both suprised to find me, six years later, regularly throwing clothes around the room before a night out after finding that the dress which looked passable on the shop hanger doesn't look passable on a size 16 with massive boobs (I never try anything on in shops, as this breaks my First Commandment: Thou shalt never look at thyself naked or undressed in a mirror).

Anyway, Husband is just pulling up outside, so I'm off to run upstairs, throw clothes around and look stressed so that he thinks I've been trying on those denim shorts again and will forgive me for doing bugger all whilst he's spent three hours in a car taking my son to meet my ex-husband. Isn't he lovely?