Today's strip will require a certain amount of brain bleach because we have to look at Elly (who, despite being barely 32, looks like the Flapandhonk that yelled that she was done with motherhood) getting dressed for the day and thought-bubbling something vaguely dissatisfying; the only good thing is that we can expect her to get a phone call after the humor-and-taste-free punchline from Cathy Guisewite demanding her shtick back.
Panel 1: We start with a pensive and old-looking Elly, who's wearing the sort of practical flannel nightgown that maketh bummed the heart of John, looking in her closet trying to decide what to wear for the day.
Panel 2: She grabs something from the closet.
Panel 3: She holds that 'something' (a pair of Mom jeans) against her 50 year old looking mid section.
Panel 4: A few minutes later, we see her in her undergarments putting on the jeans. It's a bit of a struggle because they're too small.
Panel 5: She bends down to zip up her fly.
Panel 6: She next gets on the bed to do that because, well, as I said, they're too small.
Panel 7: Having done so, she wheezes in exhaustion and is left with a muffin top.
Panel 8: She puts on a sweater to disguise the spill-over left from a combination of being too vain to admit that her waistline has increased and too stupid to buy the right size clothes.
Panel 9: She admires the results; since the sweater doesn't really disguise the spillover, she'd be about the only one who would.
Panel 10: She smiles and thought-bubbles "Why lose weight when you can redistribute it?"
Summary: First off, we know why she's a bit pudgy: her metabolism is slower than it used to be. That can't be helped. We can also see that she's got a slightly healthier attitude than Cathy; rather than go AAAAAACK because she doesn't look good in a swimsuit, she blames men for insisting that the way she looks in a swimsuit is undesirable. She should still not finish off her kid's leftovers though; that's kind of a false economy and it's also kind of stupid. Let's also remind ourselves that she should also not eat greaseburgers with extra bacon, tuna cardiac-arrest casseroles and rich desserts whose chief virtue is how readily they slide down her throat.