Manolo for the Big Girl Fashion, Lifestyle, and Humor for the Plus Sized Woman.

Get your beautiful, beautiful minds out of the gutter, gang.  I’m talking about a quick blog post before Hot Latin Boy comes to pick me up for a picnic on the beach, which I’m sure will turn into another one of those five-hour lunches.

See, that’s the thing about living on the wrong coast (sorry, I’m an Atlantic girl and although I love my new country, I still generally object to the west coast, especially because so much of it is California) if I accidentally sleep ’til 11 because I am too fundamentally stupid to remember Time Bandits scares every last milky drop of bejeezus out of me and has since I was a kid, then by the time I wake up, it’s 2 p.m. in D.C.

The original plan for today’s picnic was some tuna salad sort of nicoise-style stuffed into these enormous tomatoes my neighbor grew, some cornbread from the only purveyor in town (it’s sweet, but sweet cornbread is better than no cornbread at all) a cold bean salad, one bottle of homemade jamaica each, some chocolate cake from the hardcore Mayan chocolatier down the street and a bottle of green Spanish wine, to split.

Sadly, the tomatoes and the bean salad are going to have to wait, because I only have time to run to our favorite taco place (I give them limes from my tree, they give us tacos from their parilla) to get a torta –a sort of enormous sandwich filled with carne asada and happiness– and the chocolate shop. I’ve got the wine at home and we’ll just have to have the bean salad at a time when I’m not too stupid to remember I’m afraid of Terry Gilliam and puppets.

Today’s question is simple:

You’re going on a picnic. You get to pick up to five living guests (dead people at a picnic are a drag, but I suppose they do help weigh down the blanket if there’s a breeze) and the menu. Who would you invite, what would you eat, where would you go and for extra imaginary bonus points: What would you do after?

(took this photo outside a shop in Aberystwyth, Wales. It’s so hard to pick just one)

I’d take my brother, my best friend Megh, my high school sweetheart (why not? He’s turned into a cool guy and I’d like to know him as an adult) Hot Latin Boy and my beloved pooch Dozer to have lunch on a beach somewhere desolate and beautiful on the coast of Pembrokeshire, Wales.

We’d have a combination of traditional Welsh food –laverbread, cockles, some nice meaty faggots, and bara brith– plus shrimp and grits and my grandmother’s brownie pecan pie, and after we’d all go for a long hike along the coast and then have a good tea and a nap. Then later, a game of football and the pub!

So here’s what I don’t understand: Are we supposed to be responsible for our own actions or not?

Because the charming follow-up article, titled “Paula Deen Needs to Accept Blame for her Diabetes” (note: blame, not responsibility because make no mistake, we are talking about something shameful. I wonder if athletic legend Billie Jean King also has to accept blame for her Type 2 Diabetes.) makes me confused.

If Paula Deen has to accept the “blame” for her diabetes because of the choices she personally made, then doesn’t that sort of mean we ALL are responsible for the choices we personally make? And yet she’s contributing to the Big Scary Obesity Epidemic because…what now?

Listen, I can’t say I have total recall of every morsel I’ve shoved into my elegant maw in the past 32 years, but I am almost certain even during my discotheque days I would’ve remembered a chubby Southern lady with strip lashes force-feeding me Krispy Kreme bread pudding.

We are all responsible for our own decisions and although I make my living on the internet, which as we all know is the Intergalactic Capital of Moron, even I give people enough credit not to base their entire nutritional lifestyle on someone they see on th’ teevee.

It’s not Paula Deen’s job or responsibility to be the health model of our nation because she makes food on television.

Do you think Andrew Zimmern from Bizarre Foods or whathisname, the guy who needs a shave and a shower in a carwash from Man vs Food, gulp down cold picked yak balls and 20 pounds of hotwings every day? Maybe, I don’t know their lives, but probably not. We imagine, because even on the internet we are marginally rational human beings, that they do what they do for a show, and that is not how they eat, or are suggesting WE eat, in our daily lives.

Neither of them are exactly willowy (hmm, could it be that men’s bodies aren’t generally considered public domain, existing mainly as an object to be appreciated or reviled, depending on how much random strangers find them physically desirable?) but no one seems to be on their mantits about healthful eating.

And what about Anthony Bourdain?

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen him smoke more cigarettes in his apparent lifelong quest to become Lou Reed (never gonna happen Tony, not for me, not for you, not for David Bowie) than anyone outside of a Thin Man movie. Is he responsible for the lung cancer epidemic?

Oh wait, not responsible…to blame.

Good morning, friends and lovers, how was your weekend?

Mine was okay. Friday, when I totally promised myself to write about Mode Merr (I will soon, I double promise) took an unexpected turn as I discovered when you live on the beach and the weather is perfect year ’round, that the appropriate length for a Friday lunch is just about five hours and involves a trip into town for a cultural event/random people watching, a leisurely lunch of aquatic foodstuffs and the mandatory accompanying cervezas, an even more leisurely stroll on the beach with the occasional smooch (recommended) and watching the minor league futbol team train in the sand (HIGHLY recommended) all topped off with a cafecito at home.

Nice work if you can get it.

Saturday was all fun and games, literally and Sunday. Well, let’s just say introducing the local population to Lemon Drops (straight shots of vodka with a sugar-coated lemon wedge as a chaser) was not the kindest thing I’ve done to my host country, so this morning –and not for the last time, I suspect– I uttered the phrase “I love you, but I warned you and I am NOT cleaning that up.”

Boys.

So while the shining stars of central American athletics were trying to locate their livers, dignity and any of my four complete (and thankfully tiled) bathrooms, all with little success, I was toodling around the internet for News of the Fats.

First up is this smug little article about Paula Deen getting type 2 diabetes. Honestly I don’t know much about her other than a few clips I’ve caught on the internet. From what I can tell, she makes high fat soul food . Okay. And?

Listen, if you’re going to make traditional soul food, it’s going to be high fat, it’s the nature of the southern fried beast.

Sure, she revels in her use of butter and other high fat ingredients, but it’s her shtick. Celebrity chefs gotta have a gimmick and that’s hers. Now I’m not going to pretend to say there isn’t possibly a correlation between eating high fat foods all the time and getting diabetes, but it ain’t that simple and pretending only fat people get sick is ridiculous, harmful and just another brick in the socially-acceptable wall of fat shaming.

Also, in 20 years or so, when our young, thin, vegan stars get osteoporosis, which is far less likely to affect a woman whose diets are chock-full of dairy and who carry a little extra weight on their frames, how many people are going to be smug about that, saying they had it coming?

I’ll have more for you tomorrow, someone just woke up downstairs and there are loud and pained cries for menudo. I sort of hope they mean the soup. But then again, I sort of don’t.

No, I don’t own this purse. But it’s a beauty, isn’t it? It’s the Florentine Toggle crossbody bag by Dooney & Bourke in Natural. You can find it at Nordstrom, along with a lot of other great purses. It also comes in black. I like it. This is a purse I could really fall in love with, use and abuse until we are both old and battered, and still really love.

See, this is what I personally adore in purses. I like something simple, but with good detailing and made of quality materials. I love a good crossbody, because my shoulders are narrow and sloping and I like to have my hands free to use. I like something big enough to carry some serious stuff without being so large it gets in my way.

In fact, my current favorite daytime purse looks a tiny bit like this. It’s actually a mustard-yellow leather, and it doesn’t feature the cool flap and toggle closure this one does. It just zips closed along the top. But it’s a good size, has pockets inside and out, closes securely, and sits perfectly on my left hip when I slip that strap over my head. I plan to carry that sucker until either it dies or I do. I’m like that with purses. I use them hard until they die in harness. Therefore, it behooves me whenever possible to get the best possible purse I can manage.

But everyone has a different idea of what makes the perfect purse. For everyone nodding happily at the concept of simple, capacious, and sturdy… there’s someone out there who’s dream is a tiny clutch with a rhinestone handle. For everyone who couldn’t imagine ever buying any purse that wasn’t a snake or lizard leather, there’s someone like me who would rather juggle all her possessions in her bare hands than do snake.

So I’m curious: what is your perfect daytime purse? Large or small? Leather or denim? Simple or outrageously ornate? There is no right or wrong answer to this. There’s only what speaks to you.