I warn you in advance: this post has a LOT of pictures (all taken by my cell phone camera...)but it is the only way to really tell the story.
My Biggest Loser audition trip actually began on Friday night 3/12. Of course, the Friday night that we would plan to drive to Nashville would also be the Friday night that I worked until 2 pm, had to watch my niece and nephew till 5:30 pm, wash and pack the clothes we were going to be wearing (b/c since I have started working the amount of cleaned/dried/folded/put away clothes in our house has been reduced by about 87.6 %) and attend the Mother/Son Event (dress was nice casual - no jeans) at my sons elementary school!
I am proud to admit that not only did I get 3 loads of laundry washed and folded (they have since been rewashed due to the fact they remained non-put away for so long...) and the bags packed for an overnight trip for 5, but I was also able to put together a fairly nice outfit for said event...As time was winding down for us to leave the house, I frantically packed the car in my super nice outfit and hot pink crocs! I wasn't about to risk slipping and falling down or up the stairs in my heels. After I got the car packed, dropped off niece/nephew/daughter/other son/and dog at my sister's house I proceeded to head to the car, but not before losing my son. Yes, as I was grabbing jackets for everyone he thought they should be given to the owners right then, and so proceeded to run out the front door and down the stairs and over to my sister's house without telling me - she lives a few apartments over....Panic stricken and a lot pissed off when I found him, we proceeded to get in the car and head off to our super fun evening. We arrived at the school just in time to be last in line for dinner. It wasn't until I got in line and looked down did I realize that in the panic of losing my son I had completely forgotten to change my shoes. Yep - I attend the nice casual dinner in my super nice attire and hot pink crocs! We ate and were entertained by
Ken Scott: voted Atlanta Magician of the Year, invited to perform at the White House and for the Jonas Bros. It was a great show! My son and I had our pictures taken (no crocs) and then stood in line to receive the "$20 pkg" that included a DVD of his magic show, an autographed book of tricks, and a wand. Matthew was so stoked about the wand, and guess what was sold out by the time we made it to the table...yep, the wands. We bought the book and DVD, and headed back to get the other 2 kids. I think Matthew had a great time!
As we raced back to the apartments to retrieve not only my other 2 children, but my heels and the directions to where we were going; I stayed in constant communication with my husband, who was stranded at work b/c I had the car. We finally picked Bryce up about 2 hours after his shift finished and jumped on the highway to head to Nashville. Now, the plan was to drive at night (obviously) and have the kids sleep the whole way there - thus providing the illusion that my husband and I were headed on a romantic getaway weekend.....yea - one hour into the trip we heard a squeaky voice from the back proclaim that she wasn't feeling well and had to go to the bathroom. We pulled over in Chattanooga and let her use a gas station bathroom, while we stocked up on TUMS, Pepto, Benadryl, and a bunch of plastic bags. I gave her the Pepto and tied a garbage bag to the seat in front of her. Not 45 minutes later she vomited everywhere - okay, in the bag - and that noise became the theme song to our trip. For the next 4 hours, and all through the night every 45 minutes to an hour, she would hurl. By morning she looked like this:
and that was pretty much how I felt. I was on the phone with insurance companies, pharmacies, after hours numbers, nurses, doctors, etc. for most of the morning. At this point I was thinking: Great Gods of Weight Loss: why do you hate me??? I seriously considered just calling off the whole thing and heading home. I mean, who wants to be remembered as the mother who made her vomitous and diarrhea -ous daughter stay in the car so she could stand in line with a bunch of fat people who needed to lose weight?? Well, after speaking to the doctor and having a prescription of Zofran called in I proceeded with cautious hope to the pharmacy. Maybe the drugs would work? Maybe this would add to the story I could tell to the producers? You know, trials, perseverance. dedication, those sorts of things?
Well, we made it to the pharmacy only to discover that our insurance would not cover the drugs and the money we had brought "for incidentals" really turned out to be for 10 pills....grrrr. We finally made our way to Dave & Busters and found a fairly short line outside. I started to think that maybe I might have a chance...As I stood in line I made note of the fact that I had just a light jacket and the wind was super cold!! But leave it to my strange sense of humor to look around at something to laugh about...and guess what I found? Floating above the line of people with varying degrees of obesity I saw this sign:
Yep. I found it to be quite hilarious and took a picture of myself laughing hysterically at my own private joke: (don't hate on the picture, its hard to take a picture of yourself when your eyes are half closed and you are laughing...)
Yes, that morning admist the phone calls and vomit I had taken the time to apply my makeup and curl my hair. That was all destroyed in the first 5 minutes I was standing in line. The people around me were so super nice and struck up a ton of conversation about all kinds of topics from our own weight issues to cars to jobs to what we thought the auditions would be like to who had the best fat jokes to who we thought might actually make it. My husband and kids sat in the car while they waited for the drugs to kick in (which they did) and my daughter to start to feel better. Then they proceeded to explore the mall while I stayed in line. I was really happy to see them when they came over to say hi. At the time of the picture below I had been standing in line for a little over 3 hours...
That means that was the amount of time the children had been trying to keep themselves and their dad entertained...note that my daughter's color is yellow - she looks awful huh?? Well my littlest one was already tired of the day, and my son Matthew thought he was magic, making the line move everytime he said "GO!" (I wished) At about the time this photo was taken it was lunch time and all of us in line started to realize that we had no way to get to food. Picture a line of really fat people beginning to realize that they are stuck in line for gosh knows how long with no food! The conversation immediately turned to our favorite restaurants and where we were going to be eating as soon as we got out of line....
I think that I was standing outside for about 4.5 - 5 hours, which was about 1.5 - 2 hours longer than we were predicting we would be outside. One of the girls in line did the math and stated that we should be inside the doors of the restaurant at about 1 PM - when the time turned to 2, then 3 then 3:30, then 4...yea well we quit trying to guess....
This was the application they provided us to fill out while we were in line. I was number 501 but I think that by the time we got inside the last person to get an application was like number 745 or 56 or something like that! That was a ton of people (get it, ton??) Now if you have ever spent any length of time with me you know that I tend to get bored easily and I start to look around at things that might be funny. At this audition I wasn't sore pressed to find something:
Yes my friends, they were propping the doors open with pillows, and not clean pillows mind you. Wet, stinky, mildewy, rained on pillows....maybe I was starting to feel delirious, but I found that to be extremely entertaining. And so did my "group."
Once I finally made it inside the double doors and past the pillows I discovered this crowd awaiting me inside....Think back to your worst experience at an amusement park. Cranky, hot/cold, hungry, and terrified to step out of line for fear of losing your spot. You figure that you have committed to the line this long so you might as well wait it out just a little bit more. The people around you are your best friends and you are beginning to talk badly about the people at the front of the line. Who are they? DO they not have manners? Do they not care that you are at the back of line waiting? And what of the people who run the ride? ARe they incapable of managing the crowd? Did the ride brake and they just aren't telling anyone? But WAIT! IT's the door - you are almost there, and then as your eyes adjust to the inside of the room you see that there is still about 16 million more "bank lines" to navigate through before you can even get to the line where the ride is...yes, that, that horrid horrific, aggravating, infuriating, and so unbelievable that it starts to become funny, feeling is what I felt! And then, hope of hope, but who should appear, an actual BL contestant!!
LIZ, from the Brown Team last season 
was there! And she was carrying a COKE!! Oh liquid gold I was so thinking about you...but wait, she walked by and handed it the man behind me. And as she handed him his COKE she also handed him a lecture about UNrefined sugars and a whole bunch of other stuff...and it was then that I decided that my love affair with Coke was going to remain a secret.... Not only was Liz there, but
Allen was too! The best thing I heard him say was (as we were posing for our picture) "You aren't here to audition are you? You look way too skinny to be here!" At that moment, I fell in love with Allen.
I got called into the room and b/c the casting crew was running out of time I was only able to stand and say, "Hi. My name is Nikki Weekes. I am 28 years old and I work as a retail clerk. I really want to lose 100 pounds. And wait, oh yeah, I am from Cumming GA." After that our group was told to wait until 9 PM, after which if we hadn't received a phone call, we wouldn't be getting a call back. With another 4 hours to kill we decided to walk the mall, the kids and Bryce pretty much had the entire thing memorized and we tried to find somewhere to eat. I really wanted Chili's but for some reason the prices were DOUBLE!!! Hello expensive. We decided to eat at the MUSIC BUFFET, they advertised MAc and Cheese and mashed potatoes - which they ended up not having.....instead we ate this:
French fries and rice
Chicken and Corn
Salad and Scones
This cute kid that I brought home....;)
And chocolate pudding! We sat at the table for almost 2 hours because we had so much time to kill and then we just decided to head back to GA. I ended up not receiving a call back but in the end I was okay with it. It meant that I could still have a love affair with Coke! :)
Seriously - I met so many deserving people while I was there. Tosh was the guy who stood behind me in line. He had auditioned the year before and after hearing his story I could tell that he wanted to be there. He honestly was trying to live a healthy life but just needed the jump start that only BL can provide. Jennifer was in front of me. She was a second grade teacher with 3 kids. She had just found out that her oldest daughter might possibly have brain cancer, this being discovered after she had found her daughter n the middle of a Tonic/Clonic seizure in her bedroom only a few days before. She was looking for some good news anywhere she could find it. The others around me had to have weighed in around 375 - 450 lbs and they couldn't even stand the entire time we were in line. One of the games we played was called "compare your health." While I listened to tales of high blood pressure, heart disease, and cholesterol woes, I had nothing to add.
Yes, $250k would make such a tremendous difference to my family, but that isn't what BL is about. BL is about changing lives. Saving people from early deaths and diseases caused by obesity. I was applicant number 501 and by the end of the day there were over 700! In an eleven hour period over 700 obese people came to this audition. And what of other auditions, all over the country? My eyes were opened to the epidemic that plagues so many....and I am sad. And while I know that clinically I am considered obese: I can run, walk, play with my kids, my heart is in good health, and my Dr gave me a clean bill of health. As this past week has gone by I have thought less and less about how I look and more and more about how I feel. I don't think of myself as the fat girl...and maybe being able to do that is half my battle. Just thinking like a skinny girl is influencing the choices I make daily. Organic over processed, water over coke, home cooked over take-out, stairs over elevators, complaining over thankfulness. Happiness over all!
