For those of you who are new to my discussions of weight gain, Jeremiah is my food baby. I make him out of butter and gummy worms. He generally appears somewhere around the end of January, after I’ve spent months sitting around on my bum, watching the world become snowier and snowier. Jeremiah, my food baby, is named after a particularly good looking man that I once went out on a date with. (We are still working out the custody terms.)

My food baby didn’t return last year. My grandmother pulled me aside last Thanksgiving and told me in no uncertain terms that I was not to gain weight that winter. So I didn’t. Let it be known that my Gran cuts a forbidding figure when she wants to.

By contrast, this year, because of all of my sitting and studying, Jeremiah is back, and bigger than ever. One might even say that I’m carrying twin food babies if my newly enormous bottom counted; if so then I shall name him Erasmus. However, I didn’t realize how large my weight problem had become until yesterday.

Meredith, my new roommate and I are the same height, have the same shoe size, and we both have knockers so large that if we turn around too quickly while standing next to a child under the age of eight, they could be knocked unconscious. This especially applies to me, as my brassieres resemble Medieval fortresses; heavily constructed battalions, able to withstand the siege of walking quickly or running. The difference in our figures, is that Meredith has a tiny waist, which has become tinier compared to mine of late.

Though Meredith is uncomfortable with showing skin around me, I’ve taken to dashing down to the laundry room in only a bra and a skirt to search for an appropriate top. Prior to yesterday, I had been covert about this, peeking out of my bedroom to see if my roommate was in the kitchen and then sprinting for the stairs. I was running late Wednesday morning, so I burst out of my room and headed for lower, more-clothed ground, without nary a glance to see if Meredith was watching.

Apparently she was because when I returned from my half-naked search for a sweater, I found a pair of pants draped over the chair in my room. “I left a pair of pants for you to try on”. Meredith called cheerily from the kitchen. “They’re too big for me. I don’t know why I thought I was that huge.”

It would seem that Jeremiah is making his presence known to the world, or at the very least to my roommate, as I make my jiggly way to the basement every morning.