Vacation-Related NSV

After days of research and comparison shopping, I just booked our summer vacation to Punta Cana. The pic is from the resort we're staying at. I am both excited and also a little nauseous about plunking down the chunk of change all at once. I've checked and double-checked, but I'm still paranoid that I put in the wrong dates, or spelled one of our names wrong, or did something else stupid that I can't change. Hello Anxiety! Now I have to wait until July :) But it will be a nice reward for finishing the spring and summer semester teaching.

One of the things that I did when I booked was reserve myself into the middle airplane seat on two of the flights. This is fairly monumental. Up until now, I have always made my husband take the middle seat, while I preferred the aisle, where frankly I could hang over all I wanted until the beverage cart came through. The window was ok, but the middle seat was a nightmare of self-consciousness and discomfort as I tried to make myself smaller than I was for the sake of my aisle-mates. My husband commented that he was looking forward to getting the aisle seat now that I've lost weight, and so even though no matter what I weigh I'm not going to love the middle seat, I know that now I can sit there more comfortably. So I put myself in it and reserved him the aisle :)

I also ordered 3 new swimsuits from LandsEnd that were on clearance (with an additional 30% off and free shipping, I paid less than $70 for three suits). It was sort of a crap shoot, because I'm not sure what size I'll be in by this summer, but the deals were too good not to take a chance. The one I'm most unsure about is the size 16 top, which will fit me now but will probably be too big then-- I'm hoping because it's swimsuit material and I have large breasts that being too big won't be an issue/largely unnoticeable. The other two tops I ordered in a 14. I ordered the bottoms in 12 because I typically go down in size on the bottom before the top (see previous mention of big boobs). We'll see when they come in, since I can always return what won't work.

In any case, I think I will be slightly smaller on this trip than I was during our honeymoon 11 years ago. I'm pretty sure I was in 14/16 clothes, which is where I am right now. I have become pretty comfortable parading around in a bathing suit in public since we are beach-type people-- I just don't worry about it. It's weird, but I'm really hoping I'm not more self-conscious now. Now hear me out. At 270-290 pounds, there was no sense in worrying about what I looked like in a swimsuit. It just wasn't pretty, period, so I got over it. But smaller, I hope I don't suddenly put pressure on myself-- you know, like oh my boobs look great, but look at how fat my thighs are! There are times when I put pressure on myself to look better now because I DO look better now. Does that make sense?