Do You Ever Find Yourself..

Getting inspiration... from yourself?

Like this, and this and this?

It's funny, too, sort of looking back at all of this. Because the first of the "I'm really tired" posts started way back here.

Two months later, I was no longer boxing, the "I'm tired" posts got more frequent, and a year after that, I was lying in a hospital and being told my pancreas died.

And now I want to get up again. I want my life back.

Summertime Fridays at the Dayjob

The perks of summer: no bosses in on Friday, nobody shows up until after 9am, and everyone leaves around 4:30.

Also, nothing to do but update a datebase for an hour and attend a 30-minute conference call.

Anyway, I'm going to go and work on tDW. I have many rewrites to go before I sleep...

Also, I now have one of these again, because work is slow, and what else am I going to do all day?

What a Difference a Little Insulin Makes

It's scary, actually.

My numbers bumped down Wednesday at noon, gave me a below-200 Thursday, and I bottomed out last night with a too-low number of 55 after taking 2 units too much insulin (I'd planned to eat some fruit and yogurt, but ended up deciding I wasn't all that hungry, and went to bed). I tossed and turned until 10pm, when I realized my rapidly-increasing heartbeat and inability to sleep meant I should probably check my sugar.

I over-medicated myself with three graham crackers and a piece of chocolate (I think I was just so happy that I was low that I was like "Screw it" and ate 1 too many carb servings. I should have just eaten the graham crakers). So I was above 200 again this morning, but if all goes well, that should come right back down here at noon. In fact, I already know it's lower, because I can concentrate on the computer screen without getting a headache, and I don't have to blink all the time to clear my vision.

Also, I have a lot more energy. Everything is beautiful! Life is beautiful! I want to sing! And dance around the office! And go running!

Ah, yes. What a difference.

For the first time in a long time, I'm also back to my usual book-devouring pace. The first year I was here, I'd read about 2-3 books a week (I have about 15 hours of communting time each week; plenty of time to finish several books). As life started to get crazier, and I started to get sicker, I was lucky to finish 2 books a month. I tended to just space out during my commute and either try and work through various personal problems, or, toward the end, just try and get some extra sleep cause I was always so damned tired. And hungry. And thirsty.

So this week I finished Palahniuk's collection of essays, Stranger Than Fiction, and Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others, and I'm almost done with Mao's On Guerrilla Warfare (these last two are very short books). I've also come up with some ideas for a sequel to God's War, though that's not something I'm going to seriously plan unless I sell GW and it does well. Still, the ideas are there if it turns out they become useful. I do so love these characters, and this world.

Planning to work on GW this weekend, again. Hoping my numbers stay good so I can actually get some writing done (not coincidentally, I think, the weekend when my numbers were the best was the weekend I went from needing to write 75 more pages of GW to needing to write 55 more pages. It's a lot easier to write when you can think straight).

I was emailing Jenn the other day (yes, I conduct much of my socializing via email, even with people I live with. How odd is that?) about stress and feelings of not being "good enough" or "successful enough" at all aspects of our lives.

I mean, life is hard. It just is. And life has been kinda shit for me. Not... bad. There have been so many good things. But it's been hard, harder than it's ever been. And there are things in my life that I bombed out on. I mean, I've been crappy at relationships. I've been completely shunned at work, and all of a sudden I've gone from being a project coordinater who traveled and did reports to a lowly admin again whose sole job is to update a database for an hour every day. I completely ignored my health and let myself deteriorate to the point where I nearly died.

What I've been putting everything into, the thing I've been focusing on to the detriment of everything else, is my writing, and it's the only thing I've had any success at this last year. And that's because it takes up everything I had (and when I was sick, that wasn't much). And, you know: still not huge successes. I don't have a four-book deal or hordes of adoring fans or crowds following me around at cons. Yet I've sacrificed everything else in my life just to get this one little thing moving even a quarter inch. I mean, I hated it when I realized that some people just didn't have to work as hard to get the same result I did if I killed myself, but that's how it works out sometimes. I can work as hard as I want, but some other writer will always be more talented, more prolific, more brilliant, more famous, more well-regarded than I am, and they'll do it while raising four kids and competing in kickboxing championships and opening restaurants in their spare time.

It's like with me and maintaining my weight, or learning some kind of skill that involves physical coordination. I have to work harder than other people just to be seen as in the running. And that doesn't mean I'm a loser, or that there's something wrong with me. I'm just different. It sucks. It's shitty, but it just *is.* And I either accept that or lie around and whine about it and not get anything done.

And I really, really want to get healthier, because there's a lot more I want to do besides writing, like reading more, getting back to boxing, teaching myself some Arabic, and taking a refresher course in basic French.

I've gained ten pounds since I got out of the hospital, and I lamented over it for awhile. I worried that it would never stop. I worried about having an out-of-control body. I already had a broken pancreas. What if my metabolism was broken, too?

But the thing about that, about finally putting back on weight, is that for me, for myself, without looking out at the world, without thinking about how other people regard me - I really like being more substantial. I like having my biceps back. I like being able to get up the stairs without wanting to pass out. I like being able to get back to my regular workouts without feeling like I'm so tired I'll die.

And sometimes, I get so angry. I get so angry that I live in this society that tells me I'm overweight and unhealthy because I don't fit into their boxes, because they know nothing about my life. I'm angry because this body that I can train to do such great things isn't valued as much because it takes up an inappropriate amount of space. I'm angry, because secretely, I do like myself. I like the way I look. I like having hips, and broad shoulders, and muscles I can flex. Watching myself melt away was really scary there, toward the end. Looking at myself in the mirror at Wiscon, I marveled at how much my torso had straightened out. What was happening to my hips? I had no shape. And my biceps? How come I work out every morning and they stay so spindly? What's happened to me?

I guess I'm saying that no matter how much or how often I logically reject the social pressures to be small and fem, I still feel those pressures. They don't go away, not when I'm bombarded with those images every day. I have those times when I want to cut everything away, and then I realize what I'm doing, remember how weak I was with less of myself, and I say, "What the hell are you thinking?"

Because I'm so much more powerful a person when I'm healthy, and substantial.

And have enough insulin...

There's a time and a place for fighting. Sometimes you have to fight for your life, your beliefs, your sense of self. But there are times when fighting means becoming your own worst enemy, when you realize one day that it's not other people who are out to get you, it's not the world that's keeping you miserable, it's yourself.

And, maybe, a lack of insulin...

How Much is Too Much, and Who Says?

How much sex, exactly, makes a woman a slut? And why's having a lot of sexual partners still considered a "bad thing" for women, but a matter of "gaining useful experience" for men?

Well, then

I've discovered that I don't really like pistachios.

Huh.

Demolitions!

Kewl (and hey! I *know* that Trojan cooling tower - I used to pass it on the freeway all the time. Looks like they just blew it up in May)

Nightwatch

As expected, the women are all shape shifters. You do meet a shapeshifting guy at some point, but you never watch him shift. Is this fear of the naked male body again?

Dunno (OK, to be fair, the "good" women are shapeshifters, and the "bad" women are vampires, and the only other woman in the show is the McGuffin. And a lot of the "bad" guys are vampires, too, but because there are so many more guy characters than women characters, they get to have a greater variety of skills. Whereas women are just.. shapeshifters and vampires. I mean, couldn't you have a vampire, a seer, a shapeshifter and some kind of shooting-flames-from-eye-sockets power woman?).

Highlight of the movie: when the main kid sits and watches Buffy the Vampire Slayer on tv while carving kitchen utensils into pointy stakes.

This wasn't the movie I thought it was. I assumed it was going to be some sort of creepy ghosty show, based on the trailer I saw. Instead, it's a showdown between good and evil, where everybody has a superpower. A sort of X-men lite.

Also, the pseudo-climax is resolved pretty easily, with no real action on the part of the protagonist, at which point you realize that whole part of the plot was just a McGuffin that gets us to the place where his son has to choose between good and evil, and his part in doing that (though his part in doing that comes at the beginning of the movie, so again, his choices, the outcome, has already been made. Sort of tensionless then, really).

I might be interested in seeing the rest, maybe. It's the first in a trilogy. But... well, though I do sorta like some of the characters, I don't love any of them, and if you're going to invest that much time in a series, you generally have to love the people and really care what's going to happen to them.

And, mostly, I didn't really.

Though it was cool that the shapeshifting chick got to battle it out in armor in the opening bit.

Hey, I take what I can get.

Jiggety-Jig

This is just another reason why I don't buy the whole "he" is really being used as a pronoun meaning "everyone" thing.

It doesn't. It means men.



Ha.

Katha Pollitt Interview

Katha Pollit is awesome.

I guess I feel that the rollback of our rights is only temporary -- and I say that in my introduction. That a big modern industrial country like America is not going to become a right-wing Christian nation in which you have to show your marriage certificate to get birth control. If you can measure the strength of an impulse by the ferocity of the opposition to it, I would say that feminism is very much alive. People don't spend a lot of time anymore bashing unions, for example. They don't spend a lot of time bashing the black power movement, but feminism really gets to people. So I think the fact that it really gets to people shows both its relevance and its power.

Sugar, Sugar

Yea, my eyes are bothering me, so I'm less prone to type up long posts today.

I took some ridiculous amount of insulin this morning, and it only helped my average noon-day number by like 40 points. So instead of 220, I'm 180, which is still too high a pre-meal number.

But at least it was below 200. I haven't seen a below 200 number since Monday morning, and that was still too high as well. All that sugar has exhausted my poor eyes. Should clear up when the numbers do.

Simple Tutorials Explaining a Number of Medical Conditions & Procedures

They're very basic overviews, but somewhat entertaining.

Please Find My Friend Stephanie A New Job

Anybody know of any good receptionist/admin positions open in Dayton? Please. Find her a new job. With people who aren't originally from Dayton. Steph has a college degree and everything! And she uses big words, like egregious!

Here's a snippet of conversation she overheard at work today:

Stupid person A: "Have you ever tried to study geneology?"

Stupid person B: "No, I've never really been into rocks."

A Few More Photos Up At Flickr

Some more pics from the 4th weekend are up...

Buffy, The UnAired Pilot

Really, the one with the plumper version of Willow. God, I love the fucking internet.

The World, Without Men

All those far future SF novels about worlds without men?

Not so far-future, after all.

"Scientists have turned stem cells from an embryo into sperm that are capable of producing offspring."

Respect the Cock, Woman

Soooo... tell me what's funny about this comment written in response to this rather tame and reasonable post about the importance of creating strong female comic book characters:

Nice piece. Of course, the two main things that would need to change is there to be more female leads (either in their own book or another series) and more female creators (not always working on female characters, either).

But the thing feminist comic fans need to remeber, is that it's going to take time. Rome wasn't built in a day, neither was the comic industry. Things are changing to the better for women in comics (both in the books and in real life), but there is still more to be done. Guys understand that. But it seems that a good bit (not all, because not everyone is the same) of comic book feminists are a VERY impatient lot (and concidering the patience of "regular" comic fans, that's saying something).

We know you want to make things better. We even want to help where we can (because, I'm sure it wasn't just feminist comic fans who wrote in and saved Manhuter and Spider-Girl). But when you get impatient, you really hurt the cause more than help it. This is just a little something you should keep in mind, when you want to go off on rants about something you don't like. Normal comic book fans look stupid when they do it, having a "cause" behind you doesn't make you look any less so.

Let's keep making those strides to make better comics for men and women (has anyone here been reading Witchblade lately? Man, that is some good stuff.). But don't let the passion you feel for the issues, cause you to turn people sour to your points, simply bacause of your tone and attitude in expressing them.

When someone is screaming in your ears, the reflex is to cover your ears. Not listen more intently.

Just a little something to think about... :)

You poor little impatient feminist girls! You're soooo cute when you try and talk to "us," the men who make up the "real world"! You silly fems are just hurting your cause by engaging in intelligent discussion, don't you see??

Read the whole exchange. It's classic! Women are too angry, and don't respect the cock!

Really! Read it!

And, a response.

(thanks, Jenn!)

The Writers' Fightsong

So beat your helpless characters
With bricks and baseball bats
We've answered ALL our email
And shaved and waxed the cats (AND YAKS!)
Procrastination is the foe
Write in a kindly whore
And add a bit of sodomy (USE LUBE!)
And another dinosaur! (A LOT OF LUBE!)


MAKE THEM FIGHT AND MAKE THEM SCREW
MAKE THEM DO WHAT BAD FOLKS DO
MAKE THEM MEAN AND LET THEM FUCK
GIVE THEM REALLY CRAPPY LUCK

Rogue Waves

Are kewl. I really should see the remake of The Poseidon Adventure, just for the hell of it.

What can I say? I was raised on disaster movies and post-apocalyptic SF shows. I'm bound to be a little morbid.

Eating, Drinking, Fighting, Fucking and Other Fun Things

The other night, I wanted to eat a pound of cheese fries and drink five beers.

Wouldn't that have been great?

Instead, I went home, ate some Spanish cheese and soy crisps, and went to bed mostly hungry.

I am so tired of being hungry. Also, tired of needles. Also, tired of nerve-damaged feet. But having feet - nerve-damaged or not - is better than not having any feet. So really, I'm lucky.

But my feet are a constant reminder that things are not OK with me, that I'm sick, that at some point in the far future, I may lose some of these very lovely toes. On the one hand, the constant tingling or twitching on the bottoms of my feet and toes is a hateful thing. It keeps me from being able to pretend that everything's fine. On the other hand, it keeps me from be able to pretend that everything's fine, and so keeps me from eating like everything's fine. I know what's at stake. I can stay pretty focused.

And pretty hungry.

I called Dr. S today, and we upped the insulin again (I'd been upping it on my own between this call and the one before). We've gone from a starting insulin dose of 18 in the morning and 10 at night to 30 in the morning and 28 at night, which says something about why I felt so freakin' shitty after the initial leveling-out period.

I'll be seeing Dr. S. on the 19th, and unless this new uppage does some kind of wonderful thing, I'm going to ask that we move me back to the other insulin regimen, because this one just isn't working with any kind of consistency. My sugar spikes in the afternoon while at work and again at night while I'm lying in bed, so I lie there and listen to my heart pound hard and often irregularly in my chest for an hour before the insulin brings me back down.

Also, really fascinated with the fact that I've lost what used to be a really high sex drive.

Not that it's gone, mind you, but it's not what it was. That's what shitty sugar will do to you (and yes, that's another reason I really, really want to get the insulin sorted out). I do realize that, being single, there's not a lot to do with a sex drive if I did have my old one back, but you know, I *like* looking at people. I *like* sighing over people I find attractive. One of the reasons I hated being on the pill was because I never ovulated, and lost that monthly spike in sexual interest where everyone I met just looked so beautiful...

I miss that.

I don't know, sometimes, how much of my exhaustion with the whole thing is physical, and how much is mental. It's just the constant nagging thing, trying to get everything to work out right. I want to get this under control before I start boxing classes, which I wanted to start in August, but which I may push back until September (which is as far as I'll push it. After that, it's "suck it up" time).

Jenn had some friends in town this weekend, and the four of us went to a restaurant, and Jenn and I both ended up in front of the sinks in the bathroom at the same time, and when I looked at us both in the mirror, our difference in size was really apparent. I looked absolutely gargantuan next to her. Not fat, so much, though I obviously weigh more, but just... big. I am just big. When I stand her in front of me and line up her left shoulder with mine, her right shoulder hits the center of my chest. Granted, Jenn is just little, but man, seeing myself look so huge and intimidating reminded me again that I live in a society that doesn't seem to have a place for me. If I'm supposed to be a little objectified woman who exists to be looked at, well, I'm pretty bad at that... But you know, boxing? When I was boxing, I felt like my body was just right, like I was built just for this. I had this fantastic, powerful body that was actually really *good* for something. I didn't feel too-big or freakish. I felt just right.

And that's why I need to get back to it: beyond the fitness part, the self defense part, it's something that makes me feel better in my skin, that makes me feel like I'm not too big and bulky and awkward. No, I'm powerful and intimidating and free.

Also, really hungry right now.

I may have to get in the habit of making something like egg salad or chicken salad and bringing that to work to snack on. The idea of eating plain hard boiled eggs isn't that appealing, and you can only eat so much beef jerky before you get sick on it.

I think a lot of my problems with the change in eating isn't *what* I eat - I'm actually eating a wider variety of things now that I'm diabetic - it's *how much* I eat. I got so used to packing in some ridiculous amount of calories every day, living on popcorn and nutrigrain bars and going out to lunch and having chocolate cake twice a week, that changing that mode after a year of, "I can eat anything I want and still lose weight!" I'm pretty startled to find myself subsisting primarily on cheese and almonds. I mean, gawd, I'm a former binge eater, too, and one of the big reasons I resolved never to get any kind of stomach surgery was because I love to eat sometimes, just eat until I'm exhausted. I mean, that's what holidays are for. I enjoy the celebration. I'd broken the binge eating cycle before I got sick, but the, "Let's celebrate and eat!" thing was still OK, I could still do it.

And, I guess I still can, only with, like hot wings and omelettes.

Dammit.

I actually crave the low sugar days (few to none, right now) when I can eat one piece of chocolate or even three whole graham crackers! Or jellybeans! Or! Or!

Sometimes, I'm just tired. It'll get better. It'll get easier. It's only been two months. When I figure this whole thing out, when I find an insulin regimen that works and fine tune it, everything will be OK.

I know it will, but it doesn't mean it makes it any easier not to lust after cheese fries and multiple bottles of beer.

I get sad, sometimes.

Good Morning, Chiklits

It's a rainy day in Chicago, but the day job is slow, and I have coffee. Decaf coffee, but coffee nonetheless.

Always gotta look on the bright side.