benefit luncheon (lyn)

About a month before the school Benefit, all the chairs get together to review and update everyone else on status.  Last year, and today, S is hosting.  She has a large and beautiful apartment here on the Upper East Side.  Last year she served an amazing array of fruits, cold cuts, pasta, and desserts.  I remember asking her for the recipe to the pesto pasta with peas dish.  She willingly gave it to me and I later served it to my book club.  Everyone loved it.  She also served an amazing chocolate dessert that was unlike anything I’d had before.  I asked her for that recipe too and she said, “I don’t give this one out.”   I think it’s a family secret.

So today we meet, about 20 volunteer parents-all moms except for one dad.  It’s a great group that I’ve gotten to know over the past few years.  We first grab lunch, which again, is a table full of tempting dishes.  I skip the pasta and desserts, and instead only take a tuna sandwich on pita and some fruit.  Shari, the Benefit Chair, runs the meeting well and within two hours we are done.

After the business part of the meeting ends, a few of us hang around to socialize.  Several people come up to meet to mention how thin I look.  S. asks how much I’ve lost and when I tell her 34 pounds, she says, “I didn’t know you even had 30 pounds to lose.”  And then in the elevator on the way out, two people say, “You are thin enough now.  Don’t lose any more.”

I am wearing a pair of skinny black grey jeans (size 28 Paige that have not been worn since October 2006), so I know my thinness is exaggerated. 

I finally do look good in clothes.  Now I’m ready for my next goal. To look good without them.