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" \nIt&amp;#039;s 1 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon, and Kelly Clarkson is braless, bleary-eyed, and recovering from a hard-core dose of NyQuil. Hanging on her 45-foot tour bus\u2014her home for nine months last year\u2014she&amp;#039;s just devoured a bowl of Special K Red Berries, and her pups, Security, a Maltese, and Joplin, a black miniature labradoodle, are snuggled in her lap. Lounging in her favorite sweatpants and a faded rocker tee, Kelly is completely unself\u2014conscious. &amp;quot;One thing I love about Kelly is her ability to not give a shit,&amp;quot; says her buddy Blake Shelton, who duetted with Kelly last year. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s not running for office. She&amp;#039;s a badass singer, a badass songwriter, and that&amp;#039;s her focus. The whole celebrity thing just doesn&amp;#039;t matter to her.&amp;quot; The girl from Burleson, Texas, has had a decade to get used to the fishbowl that came with being named the first American Idol. She&amp;#039;s sold more than 20 million albums, won two Grammys, and recently released Greatest Hits: Chapter One. She also has a serious boyfriend, Brandon Blackstock, [ED NOTE: They have since become engaged] a music manager who handles pals like Blake and is also the son of her own manager and stepson of her mentor, Reba McEntire. &amp;quot;Brandon&amp;#039;s totally the one,&amp;quot; she says, a slow grin spreading across her face. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve never been so happy.&amp;quot; As her phone lights up with texts from her guy, the singer known for kiss-offs talks about a life that is newly calm, confident, and &amp;quot;abnormally normal.&amp;quot; Cosmo: You&amp;#039;re only 30, but it feels like you&amp;#039;ve been doing this forever. Kelly: Yeah, it feels like 20 years. Things were so weird, so fast for me, that I kind of skipped over the surreal part. This [bus] is normal now. I get home and I&amp;#039;ll be like &amp;quot;What do I do? There&amp;#039;s no call sheet. Why isn&amp;#039;t there catering here?&amp;quot; It takes you a good solid five days to get into your routine, like going to the grocery store. Cosmo:You go to the grocery store? Kelly: Oh, yeah. I like it not just to be like an anti-diva but just to have some kind of normalcy of a pattern you&amp;#039;ve had your whole life. And I&amp;#039;m so \u00FCbercontrolling. I don&amp;#039;t even like people looking through my bags\u2014I&amp;#039;m like &amp;quot;No, I got it.&amp;quot; Cosmo: You&amp;#039;ve fought for control of your music too. Is it still hard to be taken seriously as a young female songwriter? Kelly: Not anymore. You have to earn your stripes. At first I thought, I&amp;#039;ve had number one hits. What do I have to do? Do I have to get some tablets from the top of a mountain? But I think that it takes a while. And also, I would compromise and bend and break to get people to respect me. I kept thinking that they&amp;#039;re never gonna respect what I do\u2014but the thing I&amp;#039;ve learned is, I&amp;#039;m not working for that. I learned at 30: Okay, I don&amp;#039;t really care if people respect me. I love what I do. And if I don&amp;#039;t wanna do something, just say no and I don&amp;#039;t need a reason. I used to be a major people pleaser, and that was my biggest downfall. Cosmo: People are obsessed with your weight loss. What&amp;#039;s up? Kelly: One magazine said I lost 40 pounds\u2014that&amp;#039;s a small child, by the way. I lost 18 pounds. And I think that happens when you fall in love or date someone. If I&amp;#039;m going to be kissing or messing around, I gotta look good. There&amp;#039;s not a fad diet. I was working with a trainer, and she said, &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;d be amazed the amount of weight you can drop by halving your portions. I know it sounds crazy, but do it for two weeks and watch what happens.&amp;quot; I just cut back my portions, I stopped eating late at night, and I work out a little more than I used to, and I literally dropped 18 pounds in a month. I think it happens when you get really busy as well. But when I&amp;#039;m on my off-time\u2014girl, those 18 might come back. Cosmo: Some people work really, really hard to be skinny. Kelly: See, I&amp;#039;m not willing to do that. I&amp;#039;m willing to work a little bit because I want to be a healthy individual\u2014which I always have been. I&amp;#039;ve put on weight, but that&amp;#039;s just what I&amp;#039;m happy with at that moment. That&amp;#039;s my life right then. And then your lifestyle changes: Brandon and I both have bikes on the back of the bus, and we both love the outdoors. Once your lifestyle becomes more active, obviously you drop weight. I wish people would stop talking about it, but I&amp;#039;m used to it after a decade. And I&amp;#039;m from a small town, so everybody has something to say about everything. I&amp;#039;ve grown up that way. Cosmo: There have been other crazy rumors\u2014the lesbian thing. Kelly: People think, &amp;quot;Oh, she&amp;#039;s been single for too long.&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s kind of an insult to the gay community. Being single doesn&amp;#039;t mean you&amp;#039;re gay. But I&amp;#039;m never insulted by it, obviously. I mean, I get hit on by the hottest girls ever. Oh, my god, if I were a lesbian, I would be so in luck. But it&amp;#039;s just not my thing. I&amp;#039;ve always batted for the boys&amp;#039; team. Cosmo: Do you get hit on by guys? Kelly: Yeah, I get hit on by both. But usually the guys who hit on me are tools. It&amp;#039;s the ones that don&amp;#039;t hit on you that make you like &amp;quot;Why didn&amp;#039;t you ask me out?&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s like American Idol auditions: The guys who are the most confident are the horrible ones, and the ones who are good have no confidence at all. Cosmo: So how did you and Brandon get together? Kelly: We&amp;#039;ve known each other for years, but we didn&amp;#039;t start talking until the Super Bowl last February. And this is the funniest/worst thing ever: One of my superhero idols is Whitney Houston, and the day she died was our first date. I was like &amp;quot;This is a bad omen.&amp;quot; Cosmo: But it turned out great. Kelly: Oh, yeah. Six years I was single before this. I&amp;#039;ve never been truly loved like I am right now. Cosmo: It&amp;#039;s almost a shock when it starts to come together. Kelly: Yeah, I know! When I hit 30, I was like &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t have a problem right now. There&amp;#039;s nothing to work out. What am I going to do with my time?&amp;quot; Some people worry about getting older, but my life is getting easier, so I love it. Cosmo: So how are you going to write your girl-power anthems when you&amp;#039;re so happy now? Kelly: It&amp;#039;s kind of the next chapter for me, so there&amp;#039;s still stuff to write about. The idea of &amp;quot;Catch My Breath&amp;quot; is &amp;quot;Man, it&amp;#039;s been a decade and a lot of growing up.&amp;quot; And I think women in their 20s are searching, searching, searching....What do I want? What makes me happy? What doesn&amp;#039;t make me happy? I tell my boyfriend, &amp;quot;I feel like the rug is gonna be pulled out from under me anytime.&amp;quot; He thinks I&amp;#039;m such a pessimist. But I think being so happy freaks you out. So there&amp;#039;s something to write about in that as well. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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