Cravings

I had a wicked craving for a quesadilla or pancakes at 10pm tonight. Man, that sounded uber-tasty.

But you know, I'm working on staying in my clothes cause you know, clothes are expensive, and sweet fuck I just had to buy two pairs of size 18 - 18!!! - trousers for job interviews.

So I brushed my teeth and went to my room to shadow box with free weights and I realized that though the craving was certainly surprising, it was nothing at all like the carb cravings I used to get before I got sick.

I've always been a ridiculous carb addict, which I found out later was also sort of something that went hand-in-hand in diabetic families. Craving carbs is the reason diabetes still survives, I think. I think the two genes are linked; I mean, back in the day, living until 26, I would have popped out a handful of kids by then and spread those carb-loving diabetic genes all over the fucking place. Having an intense desire to scarf high-calorie food at all costs and being able to retain that weight would have put me at a distinct advantage.

My cravings used to be so bad that I would literally shake - shake, like a drug addict or alcoholic - during particularly bad cravings. This was one reason why the Atkins diet worked so well for me back when I was 18/19. After two weeks of withdrawl, I was finally able to live without those intense cravings. They didn't go away, mind you, but I no longer thought I was going to die if I didn't eat something loaded with sugar.

Food and weight are touchy subjects. We have very clear ideas about what sorts of people overeat, about what "fat people" are like, and I know that to some extent, having these incredibly out-of-control cravings (and, particularly in South Africa, some really awful bingeing sessions) has left me with a huge feeling of personal shame. Here I am, this out-of-control fat person.

But what's been worse is to no longer eat the way I did during the most stressful times in my life - the last couple years of high school and my time in Durban - and to still be gaining weight and struggling to get back into shape. I've said before that I'm pretty happy at 200 lbs. I have no desire to attempt a cool 155 lbs, which I don't think I've ever seen in my life, except maybe a brief period in fourth grade. No, I like being big and strong and tall. But once you get up past a certain size, it gets harder to find clothes, and not being able to maintain a steady weight - no matter what number it is - is fucking maddening. It takes all your self control to not beat yourself up about it.

And it's funny, you know, because I did work so hard to come to terms with this body, with what it can do. I like being powerful. I liked not having to think about my weight constantly. It's one of those big societal traps we get into; thinking about weight is a huge mental timesuck. It takes away time from writing, learning French, even getting a job. It sucks a lot of brilliant mind power into struggling with something that is, at the end of the day, rather trivial.

Yet, even knowing this, I'll catch myself shopping for clothes and I'll want to burst into tears. I'll think, "Oh God, I want to kill myself," and it's the intensity of that thought, the sudden brutality of it, that will stop me short.

Dear fucking christ, how important is another inch of flesh? How important is it for there to be less of me in the world? So important that I wish I wasn't here? There's this sick guilt you get when you *don't* feel guilty. What if you're too confident and outgoing and pretend nothing's wrong and then people come up to you and go, "So you know you're fat, right?" What do you say to that?

"I sure as hell am, and I love not being able to find clothes."

Or you laugh nervously and say you're working on it.

Honestly, I don't want to work on it. I want my weight to stay steady. I just want it to stop. I'll take a steady weight. I want my body confidence back. I don't have to be a size 2. I just have to be a size that stops moving.

Pretty please.

I need this angst for more productive things.

Parthenogenesis Among.. Sharks

"Only a species under threat would reproduce this way."

Well, then. That does give me some ideas for a few SF novels...

Alcoholoscope

CAPRICORN (Dec 22 - Jan 19)
Drinking style: Capricorn is usually described as practical, steadfast, money-hungry and status-thirsty -- no wonder they get left off the astrological cocktail-party list. But this is the sign of David Bowie and Annie Lennox, not to mention Elvis. Capricorn is the true rock star: independent, powerful and seriously charismatic, not too eager to please. And if they make money being themselves, who are you to quibble? But just like most rock stars, they're either totally on or totally off, and they generally need a little social lubricant to loosen up and enjoy the after party, especially if they can hook up with a cute groupie.

Check out yours... (just in time for a con weekend!)

Blast

As of today, I've gotten at least four calls for temp jobs that would take place over Wiscon weekend (the one I was called in for today would start... tomorrow. I have a 2:30 flight to Madison tomorrow).

Blast.

But hey, once I'm back from Wiscon, I've got nowhere to be until September. Then maybe somebody call give me money. Or maybe even health insurance!

Boy would that be exciting.

One for the Road (and then I'm really going to bed, I promise)

Small Town Living

I liked living in Chicago. I liked feeling young and hip and successful. I liked my shiny shoes and my corporate card. I liked having money. And spending it.

I didn't like worrying about how I was holding myself when I was walking home at night, being worried about coming home a little tipsy, hauling my bike up three flights of stairs at home so it wouldn't get stolen on the street and removing the seat downtown when I locked it up to make it less thief-friendly. I didn't like getting cat calls on the train plateforms, getting hit on or just plain harrassed on the train at odd hours, or any of my commute times.

But downtown was a train ride away, and there were some shows, and movies, and everything you could ask for within walking distance. There were amazing restaurants, which also involved shelling out amazing amounts of money.

It was a great experience, and I enjoyed my time there, but I won't say I'm incredibly unhappy about living in a small town for a little while after four years of City living. I got tired of being on my guard all the time. I got tired of watching how I walked, what I wore. In Fairbanks, I was friendly to everybody; in Chicago, being friendly meant getting stalked (Jenn made the "mistake" of smiling at a guy in a video store once, who tried to follow her home. The quick-thinking video store clerk called the guy back to "verify" something, and Jenn called the store later and thanked her. "Oh thank God you called," the clerk said, "I was really worried. He bolted out of the store after you when he realized you were gone.").

There were things I liked about Durban, too, but it's that constant threat of violence that gets to you. B and I once got into a screaming fight with some asshole outside the same video store who kept trying to hit us up for money in an altogether menacing way. In Durban, I once got stuck at a busstop with two guys intent on blurting sexually suggestive threats to the little blond next to me. I broke down and cussed them out, too. Without getting knifed, which I thought was great.

You get tired of living in fear. You can do it, yeah, sure, and a lot of people live that way, but it gets to you. After a while, it gets to you.

Some of that is probably hype: you hear more about crime, you worry more about crime, but you know, one of the girlfriends of the guys in the apartment below ours was mugged - on our front porch, and Jenn had stuff go missing from her car. And let's not even talk about all the parties in Durban where everybody traded stories about the latest murder, mugging, rape, robbery, or mutilation.

It gets to you.

I was walking into the kitchen tonight to get some water and I noticed that the windows were still open from when we were cooking and I thought, "I should at least pull them down and put on the burgler guard," (which is just these two pieces of plastic that keep the window from being opened more than three inches - probably more a deterrent than anything else), and then I thought, "Well, hell, it's probably no big deal if I don't. We do live in Oakwood."

This is probably foolish thinking, and I'm sure Oakwood's got it's fair share of thievery, but you know, my bike's been leaning against the back of the house since I moved here. And it's still there (knock on wood), and the only time any yellow tape is up around here is when somebody's repaving their driveway. The neighbors actually say hello to you.

Don't get me wrong, now - there *is* something a little Stepford about the whole thing, and I get weirded out a lot about the glaring... well... *whiteness* of this freaking suburb, but sometimes it's nice to just sit on the grass at the park and not worry about getting hit on by some creep or worry because you haven't locked up your bike.

Sometimes it's nice to just... not worry.

I don't like our culture of fear, and it bothers me that instead of confronting those fears, instead of fixing the places and situations that make us so fearful, we have, instead, these carefully tended little white ghettos; the children and the swingsets, the strollers and sports teams. Because even as I sit there in the park, I know it's a fake existence. I know that just down the hill is the Dayton where "everybody else" lives. Where most people live. Where I'll live again.

But up here in the hills you can walk to Starbucks and pay $8.99 for a pound of cherries and go jogging at night... without fear.

Well, without *one* kind of fear.

I have no fear that I'll be harmed for being white and female.

But I do have a fear of being ostracized for being Other.

For being Feminist, a tad on the queer side, left-leaning. If I died my hair purple and had a face full of peircings and tattoos and rode the train in Chicago, I'd get barely a nod.

But here in Stepford...

Yes, well, it's all about trading one fear for another, one freedom for another.

I enjoy small town living, but the small town I loved best was definately Fairbanks. We were all a bunch of fucking weirdos, and they would find the neatly trimmed lawns as strangely bizarre as I do, some days.

Yes. We trade fear for fear.

If you toe the line, look sharp, don't do anything out of the ordinary... the white ghetto is a good place to be. It's a safe place. If you're white and middle class.

It's safe so long as you're not too different.

It's like any small town. Once you belong, they'll love you forever. But don't belong, and you're in trouble.

There are days when I'm willing to pass, if it means living without fear of violence for a little while. Just a little while.

Because I'm Supposed to have 200 pages of "Black Desert" Done By Wiscon...

I'll just need to write a lot on the plane...

I Want to Eat Some Lilacs!

Mmmm... lilacs!!

Things Other People Did At My Age...

At age 27:

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. dropped out from his job at General Electric to become a full-time writer.

Henry David Thoreau went off for two years to live alone in a cabin at Walden Pond.

Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space.

Memphis millionaire Frederic W. Smith, whose father built the Greyhound bus system, founded Federal Express.

Scottish botanist David Douglas discovered the Douglas fir.

Ernest Hemingway published his first novel, The Sun Also Rises.

Boston dentist William Morton pioneered modern anaesthesiology after learning that inhalation of ether will cause a loss of consciousness.

Jimi Hendrix choked to death on his own vomit after ingesting wine and sleeping pills.

Janis Joplin died of an overdose of whiskey and heroin.

How about yours?

One for the Road

Maleness as the Default Human Condition

Good stuff:

"Firstly, being female will always be a relevant detail about a woman in a way that being male is not a relevant detail about a man, leading to lack of attention to their more relevant qualities. This effect might be seen in the way that women’s literature is sidelined, as are women composers and women poets. A woman politician or a woman CEO qualities are less likely to be recognised as a male CEO’s are: the woman is thought of as ‘the female CEO’ while the man is thought of as ‘the confident CEO’ or the ‘the most experienced CEO’ but never as ‘the male CEO’."

Word Games

Select the correct definition for each word and see how many words you can get right in two minutes. Go!

Tonight's Exercise:

Shadow boxing with dumbbells.

This is hard, yo.

Well, if REAL People are Going to Die...

"Here's the headline from my morning paper: "HPV Factors in Throat Cancer: Study Could Shift Debate About Vaccine." You bet it will. Up to now the HPV vaccine—which, again, has proven 100 percent effective against the cancer-causing strains of the virus—could merely prevent 10,000 cases of cervical cancer in American women every year, along with 4,000 deaths. But now the debate could shift—it will shift, it already has shifted—because it's no longer "just" the lives of 4,000 American women that are on the line, but the sex lives of 150 million American men".

I should be happy about whatever it takes to get a vaccine that PREVENTS CANCER covered by every insurance program out there, but fuck, this observation makes me angry. Cause it's fucking true.

Who cares about 4,000 dead women? I mean, now we're talking about something that could... that could... hurt men!!!

Well then, sign everybody up.

It would also make it more likely that the vaccine would be given to women AND men (and yes, I believe it should be mandatory for men - who do you think most women get HPV from, the Easter Bunny?), and that's a huge omission that's been pissing me off from the start.

God DAMN, this makes me angry.

I must be feeling better.

Back in the Saddle

In my continuing quest for a better workout, I started formulating a new before-bed routine. I already have my morning weights routine down, and increasing the number of exercises in the morning just means I'm less likely to do them because it takes too long: the solution is to break the workout into two 15 minute sessions, morning and evening.

Temp job work on Thursday and drywalling this weekend means I haven't gotten in proper cardio in four days, so I'll need to get back on that this week, particularly with Wiscon coming up.

I tried out 100 situps (50 regular, 50 knee to elbow), 60 second wallsit (40 seconds tonight; I'll need to count properly), 20 pushups (10 tonight - my god, I used to be able to do 20 without a break. Man, I've gotten doughy), and I need to come up with three or four routines involving in the weights, stuff that's different from what I do in the morning so I can mix it up.

It's funny how, when I want to get back to a good place physically and mentally, I look back at what I was doing in Alaska. My eating and workout habits worked really well back then, and it's "just" a matter of getting back to that...

I think some of my reticence as far as implementing new workout routines goes is that I also have to figure out insulin adjustments, and you know, when you're nailing your numbers, the last thing you want to do is watch them jolt around jaggedly for a couple of weeks while you iron out routines.

But the alternative is... well, not to do it. And that's a lot worse.

So, here we go.

The 300 (take 2)

Steph: OMG that movie was awful.

Me: I LOVE THAT FUCKING SHOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Steph: OK, it WAS pretty cool when she killed that guy.

Me: THAT WAS THE FUCKING BEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Steph: Really, it was horrible.

Me: IT WAS THE BEST HYPER-MASCULINITY SHOW EVAH!!!! LOOK AT THE BLOOD!!!! "WE WILL FIGHT IN THE SHADE"!!!! LOOK AT THAT FABULOUS SCENERY AND BLOOD AND THOSE RIPPLING CGI ABS!!!!!! LISTEN TO THAT HOMOEROTIC BANTER!!! LOOK AT THE KEWL WAY SHE DREW THAT SWORD WHEN SHE KILLED THAT GUY!!!! LOOK AT THE BLOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Steph: You're such a guy.

How to Re-tape and Re-paste Your Drywall: Pt 2 - Sanding and Re-texturing

We let the paste dry overnight, and then it was back to work... using coarse-grained drywall sandpaper for the first pass...


And fine-grained paper for the second pass.


Tools of the trade



Home renovation chic.

The reason we were wearing masks.


Time to take a break while the dust clears...


Then it's back upstairs to vacuum up the loose dust on the walls and prep for the retexturing.


Retexturing... in a can!


OK, it took 3 cans.


But hot damn, that ceiling looks better...


Oh yes indeed.


Tomorrow: primer and paint, round 3.

The Lies of Locke Lamora

I'm forty pages in (and only that through sheer force of will) and I am BORED TO TEARS.

Band of young thieves gallavanting around a seedy medieval underworld.

And, are there any women in this book? Like, not even POV characters, but, like, secondary characters? "As you know Bob" babes, even, or shit, I'll take a fucking useless love interest.

Does this world have women?

If it doesn't get better in 30 pages, I'm selling it on eBay.

Bloody fucking shame, too. I bought this bastard in hardcover.

Barring the Removal of a Certain Piece of Hardware, I Can't Really Become Pregnant, So....

According to the definitions sections of Senate Bill 51:

The term woman means a female human being who is capable of becoming pregnant, whether or not she has reached the age of majority.

I do wonder what this mysterious Third Gender is, tho: what do we call all of those barren, menopausal, and sugically sterile women?

Do we get a special bathroom?

How to Re-tape and Re-paste Your Drywall: Pt 1

Wear comfy shoes. And put plastic over fucking everything.


Invest in a big ole' bucket o' paste.


Remove crappy tape and apply new tape. If you are unable to remove crappy tape job done by contractors, fucking put new tape over it anyway.


Tape tape tape. It is self-adhesive!


Begin paste job. Slather paste. Two slather things work well for this (yes, "slather things" is the technical term).


Fiddle with the light fixtures. This will make the lights in the rest of the room go out.


Take a break.


Keep fucking slathering paste.


Tomorrow, we sand this fucker. Again.

And then Stephanie and I demo and drywall the basement ourselves! (and this time, it will REALLY BE FREE)

Tomorrow: the EXCITING SAGA CONTINES WITH...

Sanding and painting, PART TWO!!!!!!!!!