On Fear, and Being Stronger

"I'm through accepting limits
'Cuz someone says they're so
Some things I cannot change
But till I try, I'll never know!
Too long I've been afraid of
Losing love I guess I've lost
Well, if that's love
It comes at much too high a cost!
I'd sooner buy
Defying gravity
Kiss me goodbye
I'm defying gravity
And you can't pull me down"

- "Defying Gravity," from Wicked: the Musical

"Look before you leap. Then leap."-anon

Jenn suggested that we go out for dinner to celebrate the fact that I've been out of the hospital for a month (this then prompted a long discussion about what should "count" as the date of my "defying death" anniversary. Should it be the 14th, when the paramedics arrived and I got to the hospital? Or the 15th, when I was actually brought into the emergency room [just after midnight], or when I was stabilized, which would have been a few hours after that. But then, I took a turn for the worst and don't remember much of anything from the 15th. So should it be the 16th, when I was finally fully conscious? Or the 18th when I was released from the hospital? Oh, who cares? It's just an excuse for a decent meal).

It feels like it's been a lot longer than a month, mainly because about a hundred significant things have happened between now and then. It's been a busy month, without a lot of time for thinking. I've been doing a lot of... doing -

- visiting friends, Wiscon (including my first panels!), tDW rewrites, insulin routine maintenance, relationship maintenance, movie watching, book reading, contract signing, note writing, long-mad-email-fiascos, weird emotions, low blood sugar nights (again, and again, and again to the point of exhaustion), doctor's appointments, weight lifting, cleaning, sorting, ordering, filing, writing letters to shitty healthcare providers...

I've put on a little weight, which is a relief. When I first got out of the hospital, I'd just spent four days without eating followed by two days of hardly eating because the nasty case of thrush I had made swallowing unbearably painful, to the point where I'd thrash in bed every time I swallowed. At some point that first day back home, I was talking to Jenn and put my hands on my hips. I've got pretty big, wide hips, and I've always had at least an inch of cushioning between the bone and the surface of my skin. But when I posed with hands on hips, I didn't even have to squeeze to realize that I was mostly just skin-over-bone there.

My deep fear of out-of-control weight gain, however, doesn't seem to be materializing. I wasn't eating all that bad before I was sick, but "eating well" and "eating in moderation" is now an enforced state of being. My blood's been high all week, mainly to do with the fact that the doctor cut my noon-day insulin shot. I see him next week, and we'll likely either adjust my Lantus or bring back the noonday shot, which I'd like. I hate the high sugar. It's why I measure what I eat and why I've cut back a carb serving from breakfast and lunch, to try and get it more manageable. I'm trying desperately to keep the sugar levels low because 1) I feel better 2) I don't want to get my feet chopped off

Over the long run, it means keeping me from losing my legs. In the short term, well, having high sugar all week means more problems with my feet, the return of the yeast infection, and a much longer sexual response time.

And that really sucks.

Overall, things are much better: the blood will get sorted out with the doctor again next week. I've been doing my weights routine regularly, and today was the first time in - I dunno, months - that I've been able to add reps without feeling like I'm going to die. I feel a *lot* stronger. Jenn and I are going to make a pilgramage to the local sports store and get me a 50 lb free weight (just one, for now), which'll mean upping the weight, lowering the reps for a couple of my morning exercises.

Jenn also suggested I go back to yoga this Friday. It's been a month, afterall. I'm mostly as "better" as I'm going to get.

I've been putting off a lot of things, like getting back to the gym.

A lot of that has to do with fear.

As much as I want to not be afraid, or just pretend I'm not afraid, I am.

But life goes on (unless you die. ha ha). I can't just keep coming home and reading books. Not that that's a bad thing, but I realized the other day that I've been hiding a lot at home lately. I've gotten better. I took a couple long walks on my own this weekend (with some hard candy in my pocket, just in case), and I walk a lot at the nature preserve across the street from where I work, which is how I get in my hour of walking every day. But mostly, I've been afraid.

Jenn's going to be gone several weekends and a couple of weeks this summer for various business psych conferences. I'm looking forward to it because there's a secret part of me that's really terrified of being by myself in the house again. I need to spend time by myself just to get my confidence back, just to convince myself that I'm not going to fall into a coma and die alone and get eaten by dogs.

Back when I was 19, I decided to change my whole life. I wasn't going to rely on anyone else. I wasn't going to become attached to anyone else, and I sure as hell wasn't going to be dependent on anyone else for the rest of my life.

And I still want those things, even now. I still find strength in it.

I have some traveling coming up as well. I'll be flying out to Ohio for Thanksgiving with my buddies Ian and Stephanie, and in October, my parents are flying the whole family out to Florida for a trip to Disneyworld. And all of that will be good for me, too.

It's a bit like being in a car wreck. Afterward, you really, really don't want to drive a car again. And the best thing to do is drive yourself home again right afterward.

Yoga on Friday will be good for me. If I collapse, there's a whole roomful of people who can call 911.

Heh.

And I think that there's still a small, secret part of me that worries now that the summer's spinning out and Jenn's going to all her conferences and getting ready to start the job markets process (her whole last year here will basically be sending out applications and flying out for job talks), that worries about What Happens Next.

I've started brainstorming the module I'm writing for the gaming job in Edmonton, and if I *do* get the job, I'd like to take a couple weeks and do some traveling between the end-date for Chicago and the new-date in Canada. I want to scream a big fuck you at the world and do most of it on my own.

But buried deep in me, as well, is the idea of moving on past this life and into the new one and figuring out who the hell would want to hang out with somebody like me. It's not a big thing, but I think about it. Sick people aren't terribly attractive. I worry about my limits. I worry about my restrictions. I planned an 11-day Macchu Pichu hike for my 30th birthday. I'm wondering if I have to postpone that until my 40th. I'm wondering what I can do. I won't know until I try.

I think I'm afraid I'll find limits.

I think about all the things I want to do. Things that I *will* do out of sheer stubbornnes, but... but I think about it.

Because as much as I try to stand up straight and get my shit together, things are harder. I knew they would be harder, and now the anger's starting to get to me, the anger everybody said would come.

Mostly, I'm angry at myself.

I'm angry at my fear, my self-loathing. I'm angry that I spent so many years figuring out how to be strong and live on my own only to be hit with a dependency. I've worked very hard to do what I've done and be the person I am. It's why I react so strongly when I'm with people who want to change me, who say I'm emotionally distant, too aggressive in my speech, too straightforward, too intimidating.

Oh, fuck you.

I was not always this way. I know that better than anyone. I've been the screaming, crying, blubbering housebound who kowtowed to an overbearing boyfriend, back in the day. I hate that person, and anybody who wants me to go back to being her can kiss my ass.

I remember that when B and I broke up, he spent the following days and weeks writing terrible stuff to me and about me. He insulted my friends. He said I "disgusted" him. He insulted my writing. He said I'd never make it as writer (one of the greatest things about allowing somebody to get close to you is that they know *exactly* where to hit you when they decide they never really loved you). He insinuated that by breaking up with him, I was giving up on love. I didn't understand love. I would never be in love. I would always be alone, exploring dead cities. He said I wasn't a fighter. If I was really a fighter, I'd have kept pushing through our masochistic relationship, which was killing us both.

Oh, fuck you.

I'm not a perfect person. Strong emotion scares me. Getting out of bed in the morning scares me. Going into a coma and dying scares me.

Not living the life I want because I'm afraid scares me even more.

At a certain point in my life, I realized I couldn't blame anybody else for the way I lived my life. I couldn't blame my parents because I overate. I couldn't blame my parents because I was bad with money. I couldn't blame crappy boyfriends for my terror of committment (Me: "I don't want to get married. I mean, being with Crappy Boyfriend #1 pretty much put me off that. He kept pushing and pushing, like a ring was a collar, like once I say yes I'd never be able to leave." My buddy Ian: "So you're basically avoiding marrying other men or forming strong committments because of some high school boyfriend you had." Me: "Yes. It was a bad experience. It formed my conception of what marriage meant to most guys." My buddy Ian: "Well then, he wins, doesn't he?" Oh. Shit). I couldn't blame a lack of physical activity on my historically sedentary lifestyle. I couldn't blame teachers for convincing me I was stupid, or assholes who told me "you can't." And I can't blame my pancreas for exploding and leaving me to figure out how to live my life without it.

Instead, I'm caught in this neverending loop of fear and anger, anger and fear. And it drives me, it drives me, because if I stop too long to think, if I think too much, I'm going to feel sorry for myself. I'm going to spend too many nights crying for no reason at all and saying, "I can't" when I don't even know what's possible.

But you know what? It fucking occurs to me that the sorts of people who cry and say I can't every night and never get out of bed because it scares them, they aren't the fighters. They're just tired, because it's too hard. I understand that. I understand how hard it is. But it's not the life I'm living, nor the one I want to live.

So what the fuck does that make me?

I've been called some pretty terrible things in my time. I've called myself even worse.

I remember my mom telling me once that she could never do the things that I've done or am doing because she'd be too afraid.

There's a false assumption in those sorts of statements.

It assumes that people who "do stuff" aren't afraid. It assumes that when you step into a ring, that big motherfucker in front of you doesn't - just for a moment - scare the living shit out of you. It assumes that I never have a crises of confidence, that I don't sit around fighting myself, my own assumptions, my own fears, everyday.

But I am afraid, and I do fight, every day.

I am getting better. I will be better, if only through sheer determination.

Because that's pretty much all I'm running on right now -

Blind faith, anger, fear.

And maybe a little hope.

Hope that I made myself into the sort of person who can get up and push back. Hope that I already know myself and my limitations (none), and that where I can go from here, what I can do, will surprise even me.

"You're the only person I know who can leap off a cliff into empty air and fly." - Jenn

Oh!

A brand of yogurt with only 8 carbs!

It takes so little to make me happy these days.

OK, back to work.

At Least I Know How to Keep Myself Occupied

A Little Chat with a "Nice Guy"

I am so amused.

Tootling Around

The Day Job had me working on updating databases yesterday for 4 hours, so I'm working from home today, mainly so I can get shit done that was supposed to be done yesterday.

Also, I just acquired a bunch more books.

This makes me happy.

Sugar Sugar

Die, pancreas, die!

Oh, wait. Already dead.

Oh well.

First Antho

Looks like they're going to try and launch the anthology that my story, "Wonder Maul Doll" is in at World Fantasy in Austin (barring disaster. Which does, of course, happen), and I have an email from one of the editors asking how many of us authors are going to be there.

It's the first story of mine that's going to be in an actual book, and I'd love to be there just to stare over a handful of copies, but tickets to Austin are running at $300. Also, I'm not sure if anybody I'd know really well would be there, and Jenn can't afford to go, so I'd be pretty solo the whole time.

WFC tends to be more of a "pro" con, and if it's anything like last year's WFC, the programming is likely to suck. And you know what? For $150, I want some decent programming.

Perhaps I will be content with my free author's copy and call it a year.

Shit I Need to Do Today/This Weekend

Got back the first of the reader-edits for tDW from my buddy Patrick yesterday.

He pointed out some typos (oh! It's soooo nice to be at the stage of this novel where I'm like, "Hey, yea, check for typos, because I don't intend on trashing this whole book and starting again!"), pacing issues, one rather irritating "but if it's an egalitarian society, and you could only really know who the *mother* of any one kid is, wouldn't the line of succession be through the mother, and wouldn't that hose up this whole problem with the bastard?" bigger sort of issue that I do need to deal with (that's the problem with having written the first half of the first draft of this book when I was 19. You end up with a lot of silly assumptions that end up being important to the plot, but don't really jive with the new society you came up with at 23/25).

The summation of the critique, however, amounted to: "Take this book and SELL IT."

For some reason I had one of those nights last night where I got home and just wanted to feel sorry for myself, but I sucked it up and input some of the edits into the first few chapters of tDW and started on the revisions of the last few chapters I wrote of God's War, which I completed just before the coma. It's a little weird to look back at those chapters because they've got some oddly put-together sentences and very little setting and description of any sort (and what's there is... weirdly worded). Instead, it's full of choppy action scenes involving pistols, whips, blowing up a woman's head, kidnapping, and finding a guy's head in a box.

I'm keeping all of those events, of course (how could I not???), but giving them some setting/padding (yes, sometimes you *need* some padding) and cleaning up the weird sentences.

So, my to-do list for the weekend:

1) finish contract writing passage (I have no idea why this is taking me so long. Denial. Fake writer's block. A need to not pound through it as slap-dash as I did the last one [which I completed with blurry vision and a sugar headache]. I'll push through it this weekend)

2) finish inputting Patrick's edits into tDW

3) finish GW revisions and start on those last 75 pesky fucking pages

4) write thank-you note to Jenn's parents

5) send in prescription claims to health insurance (had to make copies of my reciepts, which I've just finished here at work)

6) write out Strongly Worded Letter to said health insurance for their denial of my last half-day of hospital care. They argued that I was out of "immediate danger" by that time. I'm not sure how I would have a) known this in my sugar-dazed state b) been able to demand that the doctors release me in my sugar-dazed state c) would have been able to go home and give myself insulin shots when most of that day was spent going over how the hell I was going to care for myself post-hospital.

I FUCKING HATE insurance companies.

7) pay the most pertinent of the bills (ie the ones due before the 20th) with the paltry $650 paycheck I just received (oh, the joys of PTO that accrues at a snail's pace of 5 hours per pay period, and no sick pay!).

8) finish reading "On Beauty."

9) order books for as-yet-unnamed Genocide Novel research

10) spend today catching up on all the actual work at work I was supposed to be doing this week, but decided to spend writing emails instead....

Jon Stewart: Still My Secret Boyfriend

"Divorce is not caused because 50% of marriages end in gayness."

Telling Stories

I was chatting with Jenn last night about Meghan's post - some thoughts on sexuality, desire, and labels. And at some point I said something like, "Yea, people really like labels. I mean, I was white and a woman my whole life, but now I'm dating a woman and have a chronic illness. Does this mean I get more diversity points?"

"Yea.. how are you doing with all that?" Jenn asked.

"What do you mean?" I said.

"Well, within the last six months you've become visibly queer, and you've got, well, a chronic illness. I mean, how do you feel about all that?"

"I don't know," I said. "I don't think about it that much. It's all kind of happened so quick, I haven't had time to really think about, look back on it, create a narrative, you know?"

"Ah," Jenn said, "it's like asking you how you're feeling before you've had time to figure it out?"

"Exactly. Why do you think I blog? And before that, sent those huge 17-page stories about my life to the Clarion list? And before that, kept up long correspondences with people? I can't make sense of things until I can get some distance and make stories out of it. I need to know what it all means."

"And as you get older, the stories sort of shift, the more distance you get from them."

"It's creating history. You can see how myths end up being myths. At the core of the story, you've got core events, core feelings, but the way you interprete those changes based on where you are in your life, where you end up. If you go through old letters and correspondence of mine, you can see the emphasis shift as things I thought were important ended up not being important. Also, the older I get, the more I learn, the more I'll reinterprete events."

What I realized while we talked was the reason I write fiction, and the reason the reason I took to the blogging form so well.

I figure out what I'm feeling, dissect emotional responses, what events mean to me, by creating narratives, by telling stories. Until I can step back and look at how everything fits together, I have a difficult time talking about it. Ask me how I "feel" about something, and I'll struggle to find some sort of inarticulate response that "sounds good" at the time. Ask me in writing, when I can tell you the story - and that I can do.

I had to hear Jenn tell me the story of my time in the hospital for nearly a week before I could get it all together in my head and try to work out a narrative that I could post here (and I still think a lot of that post doesn't make much sense. Which is probably more truthful, since nothing made sense to me either).

I wonder if I'm just weirdly divorced from my feelings while I'm feeling them, or if storytelling is just my way of coping with strong emotion.

What I'm Reading

And, this.

This is what I do when I'm prentending I don't owe writing work to anybody....

Sweet! Liberation Means Not Shaving My Legs...

(via Feminist Reprise)

Lame

I hate measuring pasta.

It feels so anal-retentive.

I mean, I have good reason. But still.

Stabilizing

Well, the altered dose of insulin is working out well - no low blood sugar episodes since I cut back from 30 to 26 units in the morning.

Now we'll see how that changes with intense exercise. I do my free weights in the morning, and about an hour of walking a day, but if I'm going to start the boxing classes again in August, I need to know how pushing up my heartrate for 45-60 minutes is going to alter my sugar levels.

Have an appointment with Dr. S at the end of the month for follow-up. That *should* be the appointment where we lock in my insulin dosage. It generally takes some time for sugar levels to even out to the point where you can gauge how different types of insulin interact with you personally (everybody's body reacts slightly differently, as I understand it).

Deep breath. This is manageable.

There Are Days...

As regular readers know, I've struggled with coming to terms with my weight for a long time. I'm always thinking I should be smaller. Even when I realized what a benefit it was to be 5'9" and pushing 200 lbs (if you know how to hold yourself, people get out of your way), I still sat around angsting about it. When you're told that any woman over 120 lbs is undesirable, you get a little jumpy (Sex is a powerful motivator; I like sex). Who doesn't want to be movie-stock beautiful?

Pair all that with concerned relatives adding their two cents about how you need to lose and lose and lose for "health" reasons, every magazine cover screaming "thin!", and a society increasingly worried about all the fat people (oh, no, *I* don't want to be a fat person who puts a drain on our non-existent healthcare system!), and it becomes a backbrain obession.

During some of my worst days, I'd contemplate getting gastic bypass surgery. For better or worse, of course, I would never qualify for it. The one time I hit the 100 lbs overweight mark, I did so for a very brief period. And here I am, sicker than snot, 176 lbs and *still* overweight by society's standards.

The rules weren't made for me.

And you wonder why this country has a food obsession?

Of course, the real reason I could never seriously contemplate cutting my stomach up until it was the size of my thumb is because I like to eat.

Oh yes.

Even while on the strictest of diets I could give myself a celebratory meal. I could go out and eat whatever I wanted. Oh, sure, if you do Atkins too long and try and eat a plateful of pasta, you might get sick, but eating it *is* possible. Even after I broke my binge eating cycle, it was still really nice to just be able to sit down and eat a whole box of macoroni & cheese every once in a while. B & I used to order great heaps of nachos and hot dogs and waffle fries and watch old episodes of Dr Who during the weekends I'd fly to NY. We went all out. It was great. We had enormous breakfasts at the local diner, and I could drink cranberry juice and eat bagels and hashbrowns all in the same sitting. It was a social thing, a celebration thing. We sat and talked and ate and ate, and then I'd go home and get right back into my usual routine.

For better or worse, I can't eat like that anymore. Not even on "special occasions."

Oh, that fucking shovel.

One of the things my doctor said to me the day they released me from the hospital was that I was going to feel a *lot* better once they let me out and started me up on the insulin.

He was right.

Best I can figure, I started getting sick sometime in late July/early August of last year. That's when I went into PP for the first time with the recurring yeast infections. That was almost a year ago. I have no idea how I pushed through this for so long. No idea at all, except through sheer delusion; an inability to link all my symptoms to one core body failure.

The increasing thirst began not long after I started continuously combating the runaway yeast (high blood sugar = happy yeast who thrive on sugar), until the last couple of days where I did nothing but drink and pee, drink and pee. My formerly healthy sex drive was unraveling for months before the final fall (I justified this with the "I'm so tired and stressed" excuse as well). Climbing up the stairs got tougher and tougher. I just thought I was tired. I couldn't get up at my usual 5:25 am alarm. I started going into work late one day a week, then two, then three. Me, late for work! The startling weight loss started, I think, in September/October. I bought new clothes at Christmas and more clothes after I dropped a size - a whole size! - six weeks later.

And oh, how I ate! I was hungry all the time. Sure, I kept to "healthy" stuff: yogurt, popcorn, soup, omelettes. But toward the end I was stopping off and getting stuff to eat that I hadn't touched regularly in over two years: hot dogs at the 7-eleven, BBQ potato chips, cheese dip & chips. I stopped ordering my cheeseburgers without the fries. I *needed* those fries. I ordered dessert more often.

I started noticing increasing problems with my gums. They were receding. And bleeding. I realized I was going to have to go into the dentist soon. I bought some Listerine, but that didn't seem to help.

And oh, the yeast infections! The never-ending, anti-fungal cream resistant fuckers! PP told me it was the IUD, likely. Just irritating my uterus, no big deal. And I thought, I'm stressed out. It's just stress. That's why I'm so tired, that's why I'm falling apart. I'm falling apart because I'm just doing so much. Trying to be better. Trying to be the best at everything. I'm just falling apart.

That's something I've been thinking a lot about since I stabilized: I was falling apart. I was really, really, sick. But there I was, flying to NY every other month until February, then flying every week to Indy. Doing my weights routine every morning (the last two weeks before the coma, this got tougher and tougher. I was just so tired, and no matter how I tried, I couldn't seem to increase my reps, and I wasn't gaining any more muscle mass). I finished rewriting tDW, cutting 100 pages, cleaning up logical inconsistencies. I wrote over 200 pages of God's War. I kept sending out stories (and sold two of them). I went to World Fantasy and somehow managed to get out of bed before 10am (and kept wondering why I was so tired). I started taking yoga classes (I also stopped going to these the last few weeks before the coma, as well). I ended one relationship and started another one. I got a work promotion that meant more responsibilities, more stress. I blogged right up until two days before I was hospitalized.

I remember thinking, this last year or so, how I just wasn't getting anything done. Everything felt so goddamn hard, and I figured it was just hard because, well, I had to work harder than other people.

I beat myself up because I wasn't writing enough, wasn't going to the gym enough, wasn't teaching myself Arabic, hadn't gotten back into boxing classes. There was always something I wasn't doing enough of, something I should be doing.

Looking back on it, I'm amazed at how high-functioning I was. Either I was 1) really strong and delusional 2) just delusional.

And you know what the worst part is?

When I got home from the hospital, taking the stairs one at a time, resting on the landing, my vision blurry, suffering from a massive high-sugar headache, I went to my room and opened up the closet and looked for my favorite sweat pants.

They weren't there, of course. The doctors had cut them off me at the hospital.

I stood there beneath the lintel in a pair of loose size 12 jeans, my wrists and arms covered in bruises and half-healed wounds, and the first more-than-this-moment thought that my addled, mixed-up, sugar-saturated brain thought was, "Oh my God. I'm going to gain all the weight back. I'm going to get fatter again. I'm going to have to buy new clothes, again. Oh God, oh God."

If I'm angry about anything regarding this whole thing, I'm angry about that. About that thought; angry that the first real thought I had outside of, "Take this step. Then this step," was "Oh God, I'm going to get fat."

I'd been given back my life, and I was hysterical about how much bread I was going to have to eat.

That's fucked up.

And then I sit here and stare at my lunch - soup, peanut butter sandwich, some peanuts - and I'm so hungry I could cry. I want to eat and eat, because even during the worst days, when my parents had money problems and we were living on scrambled eggs and macoroni and cheese, we were still OK so long as we could eat. There was such comfort in food, in abundance, in over-indulgence. It was something you could choose, control - or not - as you wished. It was warmth and comfort on a cold night, when the whole world was going to shit.

Now I have to measure out my comfort in half-cups and quarter-cups and teaspoons and chocolate pieces.

It's a small - so small - price to pay for being alive.

I've always hated some part of this body, some terrible fatty, imperfect thing about it. Some stupid thing. Now it's really broken. Some core system has malfunctioned, imploded.

All I could think about was, "Will I gain 20 lbs? Am I going to start the cycle all over again?"

And what I want to think, the place I want to be, is:

"How much longer until I can run out into the world and kick somebody's ass?"

Because I'm blessed. I know it.

A dead pancreas doesn't mean I can't write. Or teach myself Arabic. Or go back to boxing. It doesn't mean anything like that at all.

But there are days when that's hard to remember.

Whatever

Scalzi, on framing arguments against the same-sex marriage ban, instead of accepting the anti-gay-rhetoric of the right and engaging on their terms:

1. Same-sex marriage already exists in the United States. It has for two years. The definition of marriage in the US already includes members of the same sex marrying each other.

2. By pressing for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between men and women, it is the marriage bigots who are looking to change the definition of marriage.

3. The language of the proposed constitutional amendment would end thousands of legal marriages -- both the same marriages that legally exist now and all the same-sex marriages that would occur between now and whenever the theoretical moment would be that the 37th state ratified the amendment.

4. The proposed constitutional amendment would make second-class citizens of all same-sex married couples by stripping them of a marital status they currently enjoy, while allowing all other legally married couples to continue being married.

Read the rest

Writing About...

Suggested Rules for Non-Transsexuals Writing about Transsexuals, Transsexuality, Transsexualism, or Trans---

(via the most awesome Mistress Krista)

Life During Wartime

Good stuff.

Though I'm wondering where, exactly, all the women's voices are. I know they didn't all die passively in wars. The one-voice-of-the-ten who may be a woman talks about her servant going off to war.

WTF?

Regender! Regender!

Motivation

Create your own "motivational" poster here!

The Adventures of Dr. McNinja

He fights pirates.

Also, McNinja vs. McDonalds.

(via Hal)

Writing Women: A Virtual Panel Discussion

"Lately, I've been thinking about craft and how storytelling relates to social and cultural norms and values. One thing that both amuses and troubles me is the idea that when a story is told from the male perspective, it's considered universal, yet when a story is told from a female perspective, it's somehow particular to women, or must fit into a defined category - commercial, literary, etc. and marginalized or examined with scrutiny... and yet, women are presumed by publishers to be the majority of book consumers in the United States. One only has to look back to the outcry over the National Book Awards just two years ago for a perfect example, or more recently, to the conversation around the 2005 round-up of people's favorite books -- how few works by women or featuring female principal characters appeared on lists compared to the usual fare."

I'm ready for the panel that's all about the "troubles" of writing from a "male perspective," myself. After all, writing about men is writing about people. Writing about women is writing about "the feminine perspective."

Can we stop that kind of men=people women=Other thinking, please? It gets old.

I was a little put off by one author's view - "I would say there’s an invitation to the reader (or audience) – an open seduction – that is not the same with a male character."

So all women vibe seduction, but men can't be sexy? I suppose if you assume a male audience, you've got a Fear of Homophobia (cause women being bi is OK, but men lusting the cock is not) if you say male characters seduce. I'd go so far as to say that every great character in fiction is, in some way, sexy. They seduce. That's why you keep reading about them, no matter the sex.

And then there's this comment: "I also write from the male point of view. I do find a difference between the two perspectives. There is often something softer about the women's perspective; the men can be more connected to the world, less to family in my fiction."

At least she qualified that with, "In my fiction."

There are some interesting observations, however, particularly when they contradict what they just said three paragraphs up with actual experiences.

Gee, I miss Wiscon.

How 40% of Women Can Get Abortions & Then Ban Them in SD and LA: It's Always an "Exception" When it Happens to You...

"I have done several abortions on women who have regularly picketed my clinics, including a 16 year old schoolgirl who came back to picket the day after her abortion, about three years ago. During her whole stay at the clinic, we felt that she was not quite right, but there were no real warning bells. She insisted that the abortion was her idea and assured us that all was OK. She went through the procedure very smoothly and was discharged with no problems. A quite routine operation. Next morning she was with her mother and several school mates in front of the clinic with the usual anti posters and chants. It appears that she got the abortion she needed and still displayed the appropriate anti views expected of her by her parents, teachers, and peers."

"In 1990, in the Boston area, Operation Rescue and other groups were regularly blockading the clinics, and many of us went every Saturday morning for months to help women and staff get in. As a result, we knew many of the 'antis' by face. One morning, a woman who had been a regular 'sidewalk counselor' went into the clinic with a young woman who looked like she was 16-17, and obviously her daughter. When the mother came out about an hour later, I had to go up and ask her if her daughter's situation had caused her to change her mind. 'I don't expect you to understand my daughter's situation!' she angrily replied. The following Saturday, she was back, pleading with women entering the clinic not to 'murder their babies.'"

Read the rest.

(thanks, Jenn)

Feminist SF Blog

For those interested, Laura Quilter and Liz Henry have put together a Feminist SF group blog.

Why, yes, I'm one of the contributers. I will be posting soonish (give me a little more time to sort my laundry).

And won't that be interesting?

Home Again, Home Again

I really do need to quit this job....

Some of the Horrible Things that Will Happen if TEH GAYS Get Married!

1) All hetero marriages will be desolved!

2) All heteros will be forced into same-sex pairings!

3) All your children will grow up gay!

4) Everyone will get AIDS!

5) There will be butt-fucking in the streets!

6) Free booze for everyone!

I don't know about you guys, but I'm voting yes... for the booze!

You know, when Hitler began working toward the creation of a "more perfect society" he got rid of all of us queers and homos and loud-mouths first, too (and the handicapped. Do I count as handicapped now? Oh can, can I, puleeeeeez?!).

Let's have a big party in the concentration camps!

I'll bring the booze.

More Oppressed Than Thou

Meanwhile, the abundant pity that Muslim women inspire in the West largely takes the form of impassioned declarations about "our plight"--reserved, it would seem, for us, as Christian and Jewish women living in similarly constricting fundamentalist settings never seem to attract the same concern. The veil, illiteracy, domestic violence, gender apartheid and genital mutilation have become so many hot-button issues that symbolize our status as second-class citizens in our societies. These expressions of compassion are often met with cynical responses in the Muslim world, which further enrages the missionaries of women's liberation. Why, they wonder, do Muslim women not seek out the West's help in freeing themselves from their societies' retrograde thinking? The poor things, they are so oppressed they do not even know they are oppressed.

(via feministing)

Sugar Sugar Sugar

Well, today's the first day I'm going without the midday insulin, as my doctor prescribed. I was supposed to lower my Lantus dose (my once-a-day long-lasting insulin shot that I take every morning) and go without the midday hit starting yesterday, but chickened out. My sugar count is always highest at noon, and I hated the idea of staying at a count that was over 200, even if it was only for a couple hours (the Lantus kicks in between 3-5pm and takes me right back down again). I also hate running high at noon because I can feel it. My head feels like it's going to float away, and I have trouble concentrating. But I had another sugar crash yesterday, and rolled out of bed to find myself at a blood count of 41 at 4pm.

Fuckers (no, I'm not sure who I'm addressing that to. It just seems like an appropriate response. Perhaps I'm cursing my pancreas?).

So today we're doing the 26 units of Lantus and a glucose check before dinner to see if I need another hit (I usually don't. I'm often really low by then. We'll see if skipping the midday dose fixes that). I had to take a hit at breakfast because I needed to up my sugar for exercise, and it ended up high enough that I needed to take insulin before I ate breakfast.

I realize that I'm still in this odd feeling-out period when it comes to sugar levels and figuring what the right doses for me are. I'd love to take a little less insulin, because it means I can take out a bread item or two from my carb count. I still have Atkins-induced-phobias about eating starch at every meal. I'm working on loading up on enough dried/fresh fruit to sub out some bread. I'd like to eat my two waffles, bacon, and blueberries in the morning without adding on the extra half a bagel with peanut butter.

All that bread weirds me out.

Granted, the last couple months I was sick, I was eating like a starving woman (for good reason. I was starving), and I didn't much care *what* I was eating so long as I was eating (and drinking. And drinking. And drinking). Now I'm a little worried that I'll need to go out and buy new clothes again. The sooner the insulin doses get figured out, the sooner I can go back to regular gym exercising. This morning I had to chug some orange juice before I could even do my free weight routine safely (I need to be 100 or above before I exercise).

I will be the Gatorade woman at the gym, never seen without sugary Power Drink in hand.

Right now it looks like I'll be signing back up for boxing classes in August. I figure that gives me 1) enough time for me and my doctor to figure out proper insulin levels 2) enough time to exercise at home and at my regular gym and see how exercise changes my glucose levels.

I'm reminded of a phrase I often say aloud when I'm down about my writing:

"The only people who fail are the ones who give up."

Bounce

Totally bounced two checks this month.

$400 in medication costs and 2 weeks of unexpected no-work pay will do that (alas, I'd already sent out these checks before getting the news that I was getting $300 less this month). And yes, I paid for groceries this week with my credit card.

Oh, I just got a bill for over $800 from the hospital for the endocrinologist who treated me when I first came in. Hadn't gone to insurance yet, so I'm throwing it to them to take 80% off. Looks like the medical bills will come in piecemeal.

Oh yay.

Here we go!

The Dull Knife

My second week of Clarion, I stayed up all night writing a short story about a women who leads a group of desert fighters on behalf of a foreign man she's sworn herself to. There were two kinds of women in this society - "women," who were the fighters and occasional mothers, and "ladies," who were the breeders/property of both women and men.

I got some flack from my colleagues for my heroine's use of a dull blade in a mercy killing (my Clarion buddies still make jokes about me bringing out the dull blade whenever I rip into somebody verbally or in writing), and more flack for creating a society where women only seemed to fight or fuck, so who was doing all the grunt work (um, the men?)? Overall, however, the reviews were positive. I had good characters, a good setting, some good worldbuilding, and a suitable plot.

I'd come out of my week two crit session with a pretty positive list of minor revisions. I was pretty confident I could sell this one.

Then it was week two's instructor's turn to speak about the story.

"I find this story personally offensive," he said. "I think it suffers from a failure of the imagination."

Imagine being 20 years old and having Geoff Ryman tell you this.

He was the first - but certainly not the last - person I offended with some piece of fiction during my six weeks at Clarion.

I thought I was fine with the "offensive" part. I figured that if I wasn't offending someone, I wasn't trying hard enough. But tell an SF/F writer their story suffers from "a failure of the imagination," and that's something else entirely.

Week five, David Hartwell had us all choose one story we'd written earlier in the workshop to rewrite. I chose my dull knife story, because it was the most successful and still the most well received of all my stories. And it had a special place in my heart. I loved the heroine, the world, the choice between loyalty to her patron and loyalty to her child. Choosing death and doing the right thing over life and betrayal of kin, and etc. I'm a sucker for sacrifice.

I smoothed and sanded down and sanitized that story, changed a few names, toned down a lot of the grittier scenes, and turned it in.

The response from my colleagues was lukewarm at best. The overall reaction seemed to be, "What the fuck did you do to this great story?"

I think it was my buddy Patrick who said, "What you've done is taken a story that was offensive to some people and made a story that's not offensive to anybody."

I'd started out with a story that had a few rough edges and some neat spiky bits. What I needed were better spikes and clean edges.

What I ended up with was a wad of playdough.

One of the huge wake-up calls I had after Clarion was realizing that I wrote salable stories that weren't selling. Before that, I'd assumed everything I wrote was just sub-par. I was aping MZB S&S stories, and writing them badly, because my heart really wasn't in it. I hated the Sword & Sorceress stories MZB put out every year. I thought they all sounded alike. Yet here I was, trying to write something just as generic (note that I'm 26 - by the time I was reading these stories, they were generic. No doubt at the time the first few were anthologies were published, they were new and different).

What writing my blood-and-sand story taught me is that is was OK to write stories that offended people, that made people uncomfortable. I've written a number of those since (one of the ones that offended another Clarion classmates is in round 2 over at Intergalatic Medicine Show. Yes, I would take a LOT of delight in getting into an Orson Scott Card mag, if only because I can think of oh-so-many lovely things I could put in my bio...). I've written some stories that I realize could be considered really, really anti-feminist ("The Women of Our Occupation" will be out in Strange Horizons sometime this summer, and when I explained the premise to a friend, he said, "So, you're basically writing a story about femi-Nazis." Oh, shit. Well. I suppose it could sorta be interpreted that way...). But ultimately, what I found once I freed myself of the "I need to write stories just like X" rule (which stifled my writing, made me unhappy, and didn't produce any salable stories), was my voice. I write Kameron stories. They may not all sound alike, but they all have some pretty clear pet themes. They may take forever to sell or not sell at all (one of my favorites, "Body History," has yet to find a home. What, getting oral sex from a disfigured body text is icky, or what?).

I got to thinking about this process after reading some of Kelly Link's writing advice:

The only thing you have to offer an editor, and readers, is you. Your voice. Stories and characters and narrative twists that only you are strange enough to want to write. Take risks.

It might take some time to start selling anything, but I think that in time, you will. Because in the end, all you've got is you. Writing another MZB story isn't doing anybody any favors. I like writing Kameron stories. I love writing stories like "Body History" that make me uncomfortable. I want to find out how far I can go, where and how I can push, explore what I'm interested in.

Not everybody's going to like it. They'll take your writing and try and infer a lot about you. They'll challenge your ideas. They'll call you a twat, a twit, delusional, weak, stupid, and anti-feminist (or "feminist," in that way that lets you know they think that's a bad thing).

And I think that's where the courage comes in with writing out stories that are so obviously pieces of yourself (they can't be pieces of anybody else, in truth). Taking risks means bleeding yourself all over the page, even if you don't think that's what you're doing. It means getting flak for things you may have done wrong, or things you did right but that other people think you did wrong. And you have to be prepared for that. You either need to defend your position or alter it based on the enlightened arguments you get from others (every writer gets to change their mind. Even LeGuin says she was wrong in using the "he" pronoun for everybody in "The Left Hand of Darkness." It's OK to realize you've made an error. It's called learning).

It's scary, it's risky, as scary and risky as putting out so many things about myself in this public forum. Perhaps even more so, because I think my fiction may say more about my underlying beliefs than anything I've said here. The subconscious works in mysterious ways.

The one thing you've got on everybody else in the writing world isn't talent, and likely isn't persistence, either. There's always somebody more talented and more persistent than you.

What you've got is you. Nobody else has that.

If you're lucky, you've got interesting things to say, and you're always reading, conversing, studying, traveling, to learn more, be more, do more, to have more to say, to formulate better opinions.

Because there's nothing so dull as a talented or persistent writer whose fiction is stale as old toast. Those sorts of writers might sell a handful of fiction, but they're not going to break out. They're not going to be names. They won't be loved.

Open yourself up, show us the world, and I believe people will respond. Maybe not in the mass millions, but enough to make every bloody word worth it.

Self-Medicating

Ran errands today with Jenn, and did our once-every-two-months-or-so Costco run. My blood had been running high at lunch, so I wasn't very concerned about it. I walked up our three flights of stairs three times, and for the first time in months, the idea of slogging up them didn't make me tired.

I grabbed a light bulb and the step ladder and went to my room to change the light bulb in my closet. I got everything ready and realized I felt a little dizzy. One of the things the big ADA book harps on about is that anytime you feel off, you need to check your blood right away. There's no "just give me five minutes" wiggle room. And I sure as hell wasn't going to be an idiot and risk falling off the step ladder.

I checked my blood, and sure enough, I was at 62. I ate three graham crackers and lay in bed and read for a few minutes until I felt better, then got up and changed the light bulb. I went back to reading.

Jenn came in with a pile of books to join me, and we sat around reading for awhile.

I still felt like crap. I started sweating and got shaky, and saw those little bits of darkness at the edges of my eyes.

I checked my blood again.

I'd dipped to 45.

WTF??

Drank some orange juice, ate three more graham crackers and lay prone on the bed again. I had Jenn give me one of the Lifesavers (oh, that's ironic) candies that I now keep on my desk. Ate that too, and continued lying in bed. It took another 15 minutes or so before my heart stopped racing.

Best I could figure, all the wandering around Costco and the walking up and down the stairs and the push-back of dinner by an hour (I had things to do!) threw me off, and my sugar level plummeted. The graham crackers weren't working fast enough. It's orange juice all the way, next time.

I'll be happy to start my new, lower dose of the Lantus insulin tomorrow morning. I think that's going to clear up a number of these hypoglycemic episodes.

What a weird disease.

Food Wars

Interesting article on the "food wars" going on in the school system . If the changes were about health, I'd love to get behind them: put more juice choices in schools, more trail mix as opposed to Snickers bars in the vending machines, making lunches palatable so you're not rummaging around for snacks all day and scarfing somebody else's pizza... I'd love a food program like that.

But having a pizza party once a week and a cupcake during a birthday party isn't the end of the world. And the more neurotic we get about food, the more we start encouraging binge and purge dieting, particularly in children. If you're not getting enough to eat or eating the right kinds of foods, you're more likely to binge. If you're getting the message that you're supposed to be skinny but your body's set point keeps bringing you back up into the silly "overweight" range on the bizarre BMI scale, you're more likely to start purging or cease eating all together (in my reading about diabetes, I discovered that many teenage type 1 diabetics, particularly girls, will take less insulin and keep themselves at a higher glucose level because they'll burn more fat that way, just like I was unintentionally doing before I was diagnosed. The problem with maintaining a high blood glucose level for a long time is that it puts you at risk for nerve damage [feet get chopped off], kidney failure, and blindess... but you'll be skinny, so you're Really Healthy, right???).

The more you try to limit a person's choices, the more you teach people to agonize over food, the more likely you are to encourage an eating disorder.

Food was a major subject in our house and among our relatives. Everyone wanted a say in matters of our weight. My mother - like, I suspect, many children's mothers - was always obsessing about weight and food. You pick that up pretty quick as a kid, and as kids who were just naturally bigger than everybody else, trying to "lose" those 20 extra pounds ended up sending all three of us into spirals of binge and purge eating styles. Sure, we lost the 20 - then gained 40, lost 30, gained 50. You end up putting more weight on than you would have had if you hadn't dieted.

It's taken me a fuck of a long time to break that cycle.

The first thing my buddy Stephanie's mom said when Steph told her I had type 1 diabetes was, "You mean type 2 diabetes."

Um. No.

The reason it took me so long to crash was because I was in such good shape.

At 200 lbs, obese by BMI standards, I was working out regularly, lifting weights, and for some time, doing boxing classes and jogging as well (looking back on it, I realize I ended my boxing classes about the time I started getting sick. I was just too tired to take that on, and the high-maintenance stuff in my life went first as I got progressively worse).

Now I'm 176, still "overweight" by BMI standards, and sicker than I was 25 lbs ago (working on being less sick, and gaining back some weight).

180 is a "fit" weight for me - below that, as now, is scary. It took me getting deathly ill to get me here.

But what about that pesky type 2 diabetes epidemic (type 2 being linked to excess weight), particularly in children? Well, it turns out those numbers are a little fuzzy, too:

We often hear, for instance, of a rising tide of obesity and Type 2 diabetes, especially in children. But the science behind such pronouncements is shaky. A study of nearly 3,000 children presented at the American Diabetes Association's 2005 conference suggested that a third of the children diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, which is associated with being overweight, were later found to have Type 1 diabetes, linked to genetics.

I would love to encourage kids in particular to eat right, have fun, exercise, make the most of their bodies, live forever. But kids know it's not really about being healthy and living forever. It's about being thin and popular.

When we approach the issue, seriously, as about health and not weight, I think it can be positive and successful. But as long as everyone's completely neurotic about food and weight, we're just going to go on perpetuating unhealthy ideas about exercise and nutrition.

(via bfb)

The Shovel

Did another follow-up call with my doctor, Dr. S, this morning. I've had a couple of nights where I've been running under 70 on the blood sugar count (and had two low sugar reactions in the middle of the night), so he's cutting my long-lasting morning insulin dose from 30 to 26 units, which makes me happy because Lantus is $80 a bottle.

He wants me to cut down my blood monitoring to twice a day - once before breakfast and again before dinner (and any time I feel weird, of course). The idea is that I should only have to take 2 shots a day now instead of 4 (and to be honest, I haven't had to take 4 shots a day since the first week and a half or so).

I also received a ridiculously big check from Jenn's parents, who - when they heard about my shit insurance and huge deductible ($2500) - said nobody should be worried about health insurance.

I don't deserve this sort of generousity. The love I get from the people around me is staggering.

The money is enough to set me breathing slightly easier, and be so thankful, once again, that I'm surrounded with amazing, generous, loving people.

How the fuck did I get so lucky?

Because that's the one thing I don't ever want to forget. The fact that I'm alive is one big roll of the dice, and I'm damn lucky. I arrived home from the hospital knowing I was going to miss two weeks of work I couldn't afford to miss - and opened up my email while still in a high-blood-sugar-daze to find that I'd been assigned another two writing passages for the contract writing job. The total check for that work is nearly equal to two weeks of work at my day job.

I'm not a huge believer in coincidence. Luck, maybe.

The universe will wack you in the back of the head with a shovel, but if you're lucky and work hard and value the people you love; if you're brave enough to accept some help in dragging yourself up off the floor, well, the universe just might help you take care of yourself, too.

After it hits you with the shovel, of course.

Fucking shovel.

Ode to My Feet

I was chatting with my buddy Julian yesterday about a number of things, and we touched on my feelings about my body's new "broken" status. I've been rejecting the "sick" label or calling myself "sick" because I have certain ideas about what sickness is: sickness gets better. Sickness is temporary. And, most importantly, for me, sickness isn't all that sexy.

I'm 26, you know. I think about these things.

Most of all, I didn't want to get into thinking of myself as some kind of victim.

"You can't be a victim," Julian said. "Being a victim implies that somebody did something to you, and unless you count your body as something outside of yourself, you can't claim victim status anyway."

OK, point.

It just so happens that Julian's got severe asthma, the type that means he has to carry around an inhaler everywhere he goes in case of an attack.

OK, so, I have a broken pancreas. It doesn't work anymore. But I'm not sick all the time. I don't feel sick. I can do pretty much anything anybody else can do, I just need to do it differently or work harder at it.

"Taking insulin doesn't make you a sick person," Julian said. "Taking insulin prevents you from getting sick."

Oh.

Oh, well yes. Yes it does.

I thought my doctor was on crack when he told me that the swelling in my feet was a result of my body's sugar being so high and then coming back into balance. I thought he told me it would go away in a couple weeks just so I'd feel better and stop calling him. But it's nearly noon now and I'm looking at my feet and I can see the tendons and viens and I don't have to loosen my sandals, and hey, my ankles look great!

Yesterday was the first time since I got sick that I felt near normal. My sugar hasn't been over 200 in six days (generally, you want to keep it between 70 and 180). I've accomplished this by testing my blood 4-7 times a day. Once before exercise in the morning, again an hour later before breakfast, once before lunch, once before I leave the office (I have a bit of walking in my commute and don't want to keel over if I'm too low), once before dinner, and sometimes once before bed and again if I wake up with low-sugar symptoms at night.

That's a lot of testing, but every single thing I've read tells me that the closer I can keep my blood sugar to "normal," the less chance I have of getting my feet chopped off, developing kidney disease, blindess, and more nerve damage to my feet or damage to my hands.

The first thing my buddy Stephanie asked last night when I told her about the numbness on the pads of my feet and the tips of my toes was, "But your hands are all right, right? So you can still type, which means you can still write. As long as you can still write, who cares if your feet are chopped off?"

OK, point.

It's so nice having friends you've known for over a decade. They can say things like this and it'll make perfect sense to you.

In one of those capitalist-society ironies, however, the most expensive item on my long list of keep-me-from-being-sick supplies are the testing strips for my blood sugar meter. Every time I test my sugar, I use a piece of plastic half as long as my thumb that somehow costs me a buck a piece. Seriously. They can grow human insulin in a petri dish for less money than it costs to check my blood sugar.

The biggest irony of all?

Most insurance plans don't cover testing strips, even though it's the best way to manage your sugar and keep you out of the hospital - paying for more testing strips could *save* your insurance company money in the long run.

But who has time for numbers these days?

I really do need to move to Canada.

Now that I'm feeling near-normal, it's time to put my timeline back together.

Afterall, life is short. There's a lot I want to do.

1) Fuck the day job. I'm not ever going to stress about this job again. I got several frantic phone calls today about reporting, and felt my heartrate climb because I just wasn't getting it out fast enough, they needed it now, yesterday, HOURS AGO!!!!!

You know what?

They'll fucking deal. Reporting is out, and the two-hour delay due to internal politics wasn't worth me making myself sick.

2) Sell another story by year's end. My goal this year was to sell three stories. I've sold two. I need one more.

3) Send tDW to Agent.

4) Finish draft and rewrites of God's War.

5) Start research for as yet unnamed family saga about genocide and female guerilla fighters.

6) Re-join my boxing gym. Because I love it, and life is short. It's $26 a month more than my current gym. That's not going to break all banks.

7) Apply to gaming job in Edmonton. For the healthcare and non-suckiness of the job!

8) Write better blog posts. Because that's fun and blows off a lot of steam.

9) Write more email.

10) Read lots of books, because that's fun. But try to *buy* fewer of them.

Anyhow, I'm going to go and stare at my normal-looking feet for awhile.

They really are beautiful.

Kiss It!

Did my full free-weights routine this morning without a hitch.

Kiss my biceps, chiklits!

Oh! Oh! Oh!

I realize I'm a year late in getting to it, but I just finished reading David Moles's story, "Planet of the Amazon Women."

It's good.

Go read it.

Mapping Our Rights

Cool interactive website that maps out the rights of women, men, and families state by state.

Check it out.

Sarah Waters, Queen of Kewl Fiction

Sarah Waters interview at the Guardian

Ye Olde "Can Men Be Feminists" Debate

I had the opportunity to hit the "Fundamentals of Feminism" panel at Wiscon, consisting of four women and Sam Delany. Delany's opening comments touched on men's interests in the equality of women throughout history.

"What do these men have to do with feminism?" he asked. "Absolutely nothing. Men cannot be feminists. Feminism is about women."

My buddy Patrick happened to be sitting in the front row of this panel, and I cut a look at him to see how offended he was. I know *I* was offended.

Do I believe that a feminist conversation should be controlled by women?

Yes.

Do I believe feminist issues should be determined by women?

Yes.

Do I believe that excluding half the population from the conversation forwards the goals of feminism?

No.

For a lot of people, it's the *wording* that seems to be the problem. As a white woman, can I call myself a member of the Black Power movement? There are a lot of wording gymnastics: pro feminist men, allies, etc. For the record, I don't mind a guy calling himself a feminist. The guys I'm leery of are the ones who feel they need to remind you that they're a feminist at every opportunity.

Delany said that in 10 of the 12 years he's taught creative writing, he's received a story from a female student about a woman who was breaking up with her "feminist" boyfriend who turned out not to be feminist at all the longer the relationship went on (or when they moved in together). When he approached these women, they admitted the stories were autobiographical.

"Your first clue that things weren't right should have been when he called himself a feminist," Delany said.

Or, as another blogger put it:

As a matter of fact, it's caused me to realize that most of the men I've personally known who have made a huge hairy point of identifying as feminists have been either date rapists, mom fetishists, porn addicts, or bear daddies inflicting their frustrated pseudopaternal tendencies on women. They are some of the most passive-aggressive, patronizing, out-dishing without it-taking twerps on the planet, and they are poisoning the women's movement from the inside by sapping the hell out of everyone's goddamn energy.

I was offended by Delany's comment on behalf of my guy friends: the ones who live feminism. The guys I've known who make a Big Deal about how "woman-friendly" they are usually do so because they're trying to mask their misogyny (One guy I knew went on and on and on about what a feminist he was and - in the same breath - talked about how much feminism oppressed him. We're no longer friends). It's like running around saying you're not a racist and have tons of black friends. Or not a homophobe and have tons of gay friends.

I used to be one of the biggest misogynists I knew (as a woman, you can convince yourself of this by taking yourself out of the "other" category and declaring yourself an "honorary man" ie a "real person" because you don't wear makeup or skirts). It's stupid, and I still catch myself thinking horribly anti-woman things on occasion. I write stereotypes and have to go back and fix them whenever I catch them.

I grew up in and am constantly immersed in a society that still denigrates women and forces men into monstrous-masulinity roles. I'm going to think these things. The best way to combat it is to read as widely as I can, talk to as many people as I can, and be aware of why and how I'm thinking and what images I put onto a page; what thinking goes on behind it. It's no easier for me, I think, than it is for a man to twist at my internalized misogyny. I'll be one of the first people to admit that stupidly racist thoughts go through my head at the oddest moments. But I'm aware of them, aware of where the racism comes from, and I fight it tooth and nail whenever I respond that way.

Does that mean I can't argue against racism and misogyny?

Lame.

The Abolitionist movement and the Suffrage movement would not have succeeded without support from a variety of camps. A great number of Abolitionists were pale people, and the deciding vote in the deciding state that ratified the amendment granting women suffrage was cast by a man (who did it because his mother told him to. Raise feminist men, women!).

I'm always leery of casting the feminist movement as a separatist movement that eliminates half the population from the conversation.

The Writing Life

75 pages of God's War to go, dammit.

Opened up the file, looked at the three chapters of revision I needed to do before I moved on, and closed it again.

ug ug ug

It'll get there.

Just waiting on responses from my second round of readers for tDW, then revisions, then I'm booting it back out the door.

Ordered the first research book for my next project, which will start in December.

Very exciting.

Oh, the Irony

My duties at The Day Job (TM) have been reduced to updating our client's database. I'm incredibly relieved about this. I keep hoping they'll just fire me. I would love to sit at home and collect unemployment checks for a couple of months.

But then, I better be careful what I wish for. The Day Job (TM) also keeps me in health insurance.

That's a bit more important these days.

I also seem to have either caught a cold at Wiscon or developed yet another allergy-related coughing/runny nose/sinus headache thing that tends to develop about this time of year. I'm leaning toward the latter, which means more doctors and drugs.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The good news is, I did 90% of my full free weights routine this morning.

I forgot how heavy those 30 lb weights are.

A few hours before, at 2:45 am, I woke up covered in sweat, my heart pounding, my body trembling. I waited a couple of minutes until I realized the room was actually cool, meaning my body's freakout was internal and not external.

I dragged myself out of bed and checked my blood: 50.

Too low.

Stumbled out to the kitchen, drank a glass of orange juice and ate three graham crackers.

I flopped back into bed and lay awake until the trembling and racing heart subsided. It only took a few minutes for my blood to stabilize, and lo, I was back to normal.

It's the strangest thing.

I used to think I was self-medicating during food binges, back in the day.

Now I'm quite literally self-medicating with food.

Oh, the irony.

Slash Fiction & the Venom Cock (Oh, You Knew This Was Coming!)

I happened to be comatose when this particular subject hit the blogs, but I caught up in the hotel at Wiscon when I got wind that a piece of mpreg slash fiction made the Tiptree Award longlist (and yet, my 2004 story, Genderbending at the Madhattered didn't make any 2004 list, long or short. I'm not bitter, really, but I'm trying to put this in perspective). Right next to the unfinished, badly written slash choice was our old favorite, the Venom Cock.

Every once in a while, somebody comes along who wants to be really controversial. Often, they're good at arguing and steeped in academia. Sometimes, they're just a little batty.

If I believed the cutting edge of genderbending/sex expanding/controversial/envelope pushing fiction was in the slash world, I'd be all for nominating those stories.

But grabbing the most slap-dash piece of fiction you can troll from the net and putting it onto an awards long-list to "make a point" strikes me as a little selfish and quite ill-thought-out. It embarasses oneself, may well embarass the author, the other judges, lessens the honor of the award, and perverts the purpose of the list - the list is for pointing out interesting fiction that explores sex and gender. Pointing out stories that are not only badly written but 1) merely consist of switching gender roles in the "Wheeee! Men will be pregnant and get sore nipples just like women!" sort or 2) merely restates the fact that being a woman Really Sucks and is Really Hard does nothing to expand anybody's thoughts on sex and gender.

In fact, reading such stories can enforce one's stereotypes of the sexes.

Before I go any further, I'd like to say that yes, I've met Liz Henry. Yes, she is very nice. I enjoy her effort at radicalism, because I get really tired of spouting off about misogynists like gabe, Trent, and David Brin. I enjoy disagreeing with somebody whose politics are far left. And I want to make that clear: Liz is great. I just disagree with her. That's very healthy. And before anyone recommends that she and I auction off a boxing match at next year's Tiptree auction, well, anybody who's seen us standing side-by-side knows who'll win that match, even in my weakened state.

heh heh.

In any case, VanderMeer and I are closer in weight class anyway (I need to put on about 10 lbs of muscle before it's a fair fight, tho).

It's up to each year's Tiptree jury to define what a Tipworthy story really is. As I'm not on a jury, my opinion doesn't officially count, but as a reader and writer, I have very strong opinions about what I'm looking for in my genderfucking fiction.

Egalia's Daughters bored the shit out of me. It wasn't the best-written book in the world. I didn't connect with any of the characters and it kept head-hopping. What it did do, however, was posit a world in which men took care of children and women birthed them. Not in an even-split gender-reversal way, but in a way that challenged ideas about what birth is, what it means to a woman, to society, and the ways we speak about biological destiny, virginity, and penetration-is-the-only-"real"-sex paradigm. I believe that the value of the book's ideas outweigh the shitacular writing and inane ending that made me want to throw it across the room (women are naturally nurturing and have an instrinsic understanding of nature and The Land, and because this is a matriarchy, nature is totally balanced. It's the same old "if only women were in charge society would be soooo peaceful!" cliche. I tend to think that any society that's socially unbalanced will also be unbalanced in regard to their treatment of the "natural" world around them). Because it fucked with my conceptions of biology-as-destiny and the ways our society treats birth and child rearing, I'd put it on any genderfuck-you-should-read list.

Several years ago, I wrote a story called, "The History of Anson U." I took Freud's account of Anna O., reversed the genders, plunked it on a foreign world, and ran with it. Problem was, all I really did was switch the genders. I even opened with a nearly identical opening to Egalia's Daughters in which mom's reading the paper at the breakfast table and dad's serving up the victuals (and no, I hadn't read ED at this point, which says a lot about social stereotypes and how ingrained they are). Needless to say, the story was rejected again and again and eventually retired.

If I tossed "The History of Anson U." up on my personal website and changed the names so I was writing a piece of Harry Potter/Buffy slash where Buffy played the Freud character and Harry was Anson U., and then cut it in half because I didn't like the ending, so it remained unfinished, would that story be Tiptree worthy?

I mean, the fact that it's self-published and slash fiction means it's "edgy" and "raw," right? And we need more of that sort of stuff in SF!

No.

Just because it's self-published slash doesn't mean it's anything new or contains anything controversial. The controversy isn't springing from the story's ideas but from the fact that all it's doing is rehashing old ideas that have been better done elsewhere. There's even a name for that genre of slash: mpreg. This means that unless the story's saying something new or different or fucking with ideas relating to that already time-worn topic, it's not worthy for inclusion on a list of fiction that should be getting more mind-blowing and envelope-pushing every year. When people start saying that the most radical genderfuck is going on in real life and not in SF, there's a problem. It means writers are being lazy. If "genderfuck" means slapdashing off a piece of old hack (ohhhhhh wouldn't it be kewl if men got pregnant and had to deal with swollen ankles????), what's that say about the current state of Tipworthy fiction?

It makes me embarassed to be an SF/F writer. Particularly one who's interested in pushing the genderfuck envelope. I want a long list of what's out there that pushes me to think in new ways, not fiction that reinforces dominant patriarchal heteronormative ideas about what sex, reproduction, and gender mean.

Which brings me to the Cock.

As one of the few people who've actually managed to finish this book, I was appalled to see it on the long list almost as much as I was appalled to see a shitty piece of slash fiction.

Almost.

At least Janine can put together a sentence.

I've heard it said that Cock's inclusion on the long list wasn't because it showed how crappy life is for women under patriarchy (yawn), but because of the "subversiveness" of the dragonfucking.

Here's the thing with dragonfucking: it's just bestiality. There's nothing new about bestiality, or having sex with animals as part of a religious or mind-altering experience.

But, you may protest, these dragons are sentient!!!!!!

Fucking a dolphin isn't any more subversive than a girl and donkey show.

The woman may believe she's edgy and subversive while she's fucking a donkey, but in the end, she's fucking a donkey.

I came away from Venom Cock thinking, "Is that it? Sucks to be a woman? Is that all the message you've got for me after this masochistic shit-fest?"

Because you know what? The Marquis de Sade was pretty edgy and raw, too. He believed women wouldn't be equal to men until they could do the same depraved, evil, terrible things men could do, but I wouldn't nominate Justine for a Tiptree either. It's a work that exists for another reason: to titillate. Sex sells books. Sexual freedom is certainly a tenet of feminism, but there's a fine line between sexual freedom and sexual exploitation. It's up to every woman to decide for herself where that line is (with the help of some great consciousness-raising sessions, I hope). If Cock - about the abuse and slavery of women - were written by a man, would anybody call it revolutionary and feminist? Something tells me Joe Cross would be seen as a little less thought-fucking.

I suppose this is the point where I come out of the closet as a power feminist. Are things shitty for women in most places? They sure are. Will they always be that way? Is showing worlds where it will always be that way forwarding feminism or challenging our thoughts about biological destiny?

I certainly agree with De Sade that before women are equal it must be acknowledged that we can do things that are just as shitty and depraved as what some men can do. If women were in charge, things wouldn't be much better. There are tools one uses to stay in power. Anytime you set up a power system, you're going to have to use certain methods to retain your power, and men have used those because they work. Those methods would likely be similiar in a matriarchy, though recast through the lens of woman-as-norm/template.

Reading yet another book about a feudal patriarchy makes me tired, even if it's set in the jungle with green women as protagonists.

I certainly want controversy around the Tiptree. But I want that controversy to spring from a story's ideas and the ways those ideas change the way we think. I don't want a controversy for the sake of controversy ("Should we include slash??" Of course we should, when and if anybody finds a piece that blows their head off. The one on the top of one's neck, preferably). I want somebody to recommend a book or story that changes my conceptions of sex and gender. That's a Tiptree.

There are plenty of works out there reinforcing patriarchal heteronormative ideas about sex, gender, and reproduction.

I don't want them recommended to me on my Tiptree list.

One More Reason to Vote for Stem Cell Research

And hey, I was all for it before (I have deep fears of developing Alzheimer's. Probably every writer's fear). Now I'm personally invested.

Juvenile-onset diabetes is caused by the immune system destroying the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. It can now be treated by transplanting beta cells taken from cadavers, using a technique called the Edmonton protocol. But many recipients suffer severe side effects because of the drugs they have to take to prevent their immune systems rejecting the foreign cells. Also, the supply of beta cells is limited – only 500 people have been treated so far.

Several teams around the world have now managed to derive insulin-producing cells from human embryonic stem cells (ESCs). While this might one day end the shortage of beta cells for transplantation, it is not a perfect solution.

My doctor mentioned this when we were chatting. He thinks it's about 10 years out. Knowing the FDA, however, I'd bet on 15-20. We'll see.

In the meantime, I'll post about some other stuff, I promise.

I Used to Have Such Beautiful Feet

She wanted back her strength, her stamina, her place at the head of legions.

I used to have beautiful feet.

Long, strong toes. Big, narrow feet. Size 11 feet that I could never find shoes for but that could land a front kick to the groin with elegant ease.

The day before Wiscon, my feet started to get fat and pudgy looking. I frantically called my doctor, fearing I was developing one of those diabetes-related foot diseases that would result in my legs being chopped off.

He assured me the swollen feet were normal now that my body was getting back into balance, and should ease up and go away in a couple of weeks.

Nonetheless, I went to bed alone and cried. I needed some time to digest it all for myself, alone.

I don't want my feet chopped off.

By the end of day one of Wiscon, my ankles were so fat that it hurt to press the skin around them, and foot rubs were out of the question.

The swelling goes down at night, but puffs back up during the day as fluid starts settling in my lower extremeties.

I shuffled around Wiscon like an old woman.

I spent much of the weekend being "on," assuring everyone else - and myself - that I was all right.

"I'm fine," I said.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," the echo of a nearly comatose woman from the back of an ambulance.

There was much joking, good humor, and I blew through both my panels, including one that appeared to be a crash course in how to moderate a panel where pretty much everything goes wrong.

I met a ton of people. I even spent a night running the party rounds.

The most popular question, after, "OMG are you all right???" was "Have you met Liz Henry yet?"

Ah, venom cocks and mpreg. I'll save that for another post.

The thing is, I haven't had a lot of time to digest the fact that I don't have a working pancreas. I was in the hospital for four days, my mom was in town for a week, then my buddy Patrick and his family arrived (damn, I missed them!), then we drove up to Madison and it was Wiscon-burn time. Right up until Wiscon, I spent all my time making sure I was well enough to attend Wiscon. I didn't do a lot of thinking. I needed to be strong and competent because Jenn and my mom and Patrick were all so worried about me.

And... and...

I wanted to be strong for myself. I needed to know I could get up out of a hospital bed without a working pancreas and get my life back together.

Every night at Wiscon I shuffled back to the hotel and propped up my feet for the night so I could get in another 12 hours the next day. At which point my feet would once again feel like they were going to explode.

I realized that what bothered me so much about my feet was that I have no real external signs of being sick... except that one. All the weight loss is considered a *good* thing in this culture, so all I kept hearing from people (even my mom, who was well aware of why I'd lost so much weight) was how great I looked. I'm thinner but sicker than I've ever been.

I won't mind gaining 20 lbs or so if it means I'm going to be healthier, thanks.

Diabetes is great because, sure, you have to shoot up in the bathroom before meals, and those close to you will see you shoot up at home and see the bruises on your thighs, but to the rest of the world, you look healthy. You look normal. You can pass.

You can pretend you're not dependent.

But the truth is that when the apocalypse comes, I'm pretty fucked.

Now I need to write a story about a post-apocalyptic diabetic warrior woman who hordes insulin.

heh.

I let myself sink on Monday at lunch. I interrupted one of Jenn's negotiation sessions with the waiter about the price of a salad, and she snapped at me.

I teared up at the rebuke, and quietly cried and stared out the window.

Obviously, this isn't something I do often. It was totally out of character. Jenn was pretty stunned.

This kicked off two hours of silence in the car on the ride back. When I'm sad, I want people to leave me alone. I don't often interrogate my feelings, so if someone asks me what's wrong when I'm in the thick of it, I can't articulate myself and end up getting angry and tired. I feel pushed.

Me going quiet hasn't worked for any of my partners because, well, they love me and want to know what's going on. Jenn got pissed because I wouldn't tell her what I needed, and then I got pissed because Jenn was pissed, and when we stopped at a gas station, I went inside for snacks, came back out, and discovered Jenn had disappeared.

The car was locked and parked. I sat down to wait, thinking she'd gone for a short walk. I was a little worried because my insulin was in the car, and getting insulin over 88 degrees makes it go bad.

After a while, sitting there on the curb crying and feeling sorry for myself, I realized Jenn hadn't come back. That wasn't like her.

I went back inside the mini-mart, looked through the aisles.

No Jenn.

I checked the bathroom.

No Jenn.

I walked around either side of the building.

No Jenn.

I started getting increasingly worried. I circled the parking lot. I went back inside and checked the aisles. I asked the cashier if he'd seen a skinny brunette about yay tall.

He shook his head.

At this point, about a million things were running through my head. Jenn is little, but fiesty. I couldn't see her disappearing among so many people without an attention-drawing fight. But she also tends to believe everyone is good until proven otherwise, and I could see her trying to help somebody and getting nabbed.

I looked along either side of the building again. I stood out on the sidewalk. Went back to the car in case she'd doubled back.

The sooner I called the police, I knew, the better chance I had. I started thinking of all the terrible things that could be happening to her. I started thinking about what would happen after the police got there.

My insulin was in the car.

Sure, I had extra insulin at home, but not the long-lasting kind I take every morning, the Lantus.

Everything in the car would be ruined. My blood sugar would plummet in a couple of hours, but my glucose meter that tests my blood sugar was in the car.

Jenn was off somewhere being raped and mutilated, and I was going to collapse into a coma among strangers.

I went back into the mini-mart one last time. I'd give her two more minutes. Two minutes, and then I was calling the fucking cops.

I pushed out of the market for the fourth time, and there was Jenn walking toward me.

She'd been lying behind the building.

I grabbed hold of her and started crying again.

We spent over an hour sitting in the car with the doors open and talking. I'm terrible at expressing myself face-to-face. I can say, "I'm tired," or "I'm sad," but that's about the breadth of my emotional vocabulary until I've had enough time to work through what I'm feeling.

The thing is, since I learned about the diabetes, I haven't been angry. You can't be angry at an illness, and I'm not a believer in a God you can pray to and blame for things, so damning God wouldn't help. I can't blame my parents, because I'm the only type 1 diabetic in our entire family circle (my grandmother's sisters had children who are type 2 diabetics, in France, and my dad is apparently a type 2 diabetic, though he didn't realize that's what he was getting the pills for until I got sick). Type 1 isn't something I could have regulated with diet and exercise, so I couldn't blame myself (in fact, I was in really good shape, which is why it took me so long to crash. I've been getting increasingly sicker for the last 8 or 9 months as my body turned on itself and attacked its own pancreas). I'd like to be upset at Planned Parenthood for not catching it before I went into a coma - frequent yeast infections are one of the prime signs of diabetes. All that extra sugar in your blood encourages the growth of yeast (oh, I can't tell you how extraordinary it is to be yeast and irritation free after 8 months!). But when I'd go in there and they'd ask if I was tired, I'd say sure, I'm tired, but I'm stressed out because of X, Y, Z. Granted, all that weight loss should have clued them in. A follow-up question like, "How many times do you urinate at night?" would have gotten them to do a blood test. I was getting up 3-4 times a night, and water tasted sooooo good that I drank it like kool-aid on a summer day.

So I didn't feel a lot of anger. I still don't. What I sometimes feel is sadness. I've always taken great pride in my independence. I avoided forming relationships and partnerships that I thought were too close. Whenever I got too reliant on someone, I'd back off and work things through again to preserve my independence. I have a core group of fantastic friends, but I've never leaned on them. It creeps me out that if I would have been alone that Sunday night, I'd be dead. I was so out of it that I was incapable of taking care of myself. I realize that at some point, this happens to everyone.

But for fuck's sake, I'm 26.

"It's nice to see a different sort of face in here," one of the nurses told me as she wheeled me upstairs to one of the general hospital rooms. "We're used to dealing with people who are 86, not 26."

Oh, wheeee.

One of the most important things, for me, is to learn how to be as independent as possible while still accepting help from the amazing people in my life. When I came home from the hospital, I had trouble turning keys in doors and had to ask Jenn to cut asparagus for me because my wrists hurt so badly. My buddy Patrick did some Reiki on me while he was in town and bought me a stone whose qualities are supposed to be good for ailments such as mine (I love my granola-munching-hippie Clarion buddy). My mom took out the trash, did the laundry, paid for tons of meals, and offered moral support. Everybody wanted to help me.

But my fear, my huge fear, the fear that fuels the bouts of sadness, is that I'm going to turn into one of those enormous, swollen-ankled sick people who can't get out of bed. I'm afraid I'll turn into someone who gives up, someone who says, "I'm sick, I can't."

That's the scariest part of all.

I tested my blood sugar when I got up this morning, had a glass of orange juice to bring it above 70, and did my morning weights routine for the first time in two weeks. Obviously, I wasn't in prime form, and had to stop and rest more often. My three sets of fifty sit-ups turned into three sets of thirty, and I had to lower my 1 set of 15 for several exercises to 1 set of 10.

But I did it.

The stronger I get, the easier it will be.

I'm going to work out on the elliptical machine at home tonight after Jenn gets home (exercise can drop your blood sugar really fast if it's too intense) and do a lot of blood testing to see how my body responds to formal exercise, then pick back up at the gym next week once I figure it all out. I've been thinking more and more about picking up the boxing classes again as well. I miss it so much. It'll just be a little trickier this time around.

Because despite my bouts of occasional sadness, I realize I'm very lucky I got diabetes in 2006 and not 1906 when there was no such thing as insulin. I'm lucky to be alive. This is the second time I've died and had to re-evaluate my life. The first time, I rejected a life I didn't want, one that was taking me increasingly closer to ending my own life. This time around, my body nearly ended my life for me.

This is an opportunity. I feel a bit like a ghost, someone living on borrowed time.

The wonderful thing about borrowed time is that every second you get after you died is that much more beautiful because of how close you were to not seeing it.

That's an odd sentence, I realize.

It goes back to what I'd said all along about wanting to excel at things physical when I spent most of my childhood sedentary:

I'm just going to have to work harder than other people.

Really, that's the only difference. I have to work harder.

This isn't a stretch for me. I realized a long time ago that if I wanted to be a really great writer, I had to work harder than most people.

And I think I do, and will continue to do so.

I have such desire. I am so full of desire to do and be and see and taste and touch everything. I want everything. I want the big life. Still. Even now.

Especially now. Because losing it all is as simple as going to sleep and not waking up.

When Jenn and I got home, I started putting everything away, unpacked my books, set up my computer for work on God's War this week, started a load of laundry, watered my plants, and as I walked into the bathroom thinking of all the things I needed to do this week - gotta get back to the weights routine, a little at a time, don't push it, pace yourself, then the gym, don't push it, pace, go, be, do, finish God's War a page at a time - a sentence popped into my head:

She wanted back her strength, her stamina, her place at the head of legions.

In my book, The Dragon's Wall, there's a half-breed woman named Zezili, a legion commander who fails in her duty to the Queen and is viciously mauled by the Queen's giant cats. Zezili loses a thumb, the ends of her fingers, most of one eye, and acquires deep cat-scratches all over her body.

When she wakes up from her fever in her new, altered, nearly ruined body, her sisters are all staring down at her. They've gathered to watch her die. The Queen releases her from service, and tells her she can either choose to retire or renew her oath to the country.

Zezili's lying there in bed, her wounds swollen and oozing pus, looking out at her expectant sisters with her one good eye, and she rejects the Queen's offer to slink back to her estate and lick her wounds.

She wanted back her strength, her stamina, her place at the head of legions.

There are times when I don't realize how much of myself, of my deeper self, my core beliefs, I put into my writing. But when I thought of what I need to do now, of the way I have to approach the rest of my life, the stubborness I'd need, the desire, the passion, I thought of Zezili.

There's a piece of you in everything you write. You just may not see those peices that often.

I have no illusions. I'm going to be sad sometimes. I'm going to hate these needles. I'm going to wish for some other life outside a broken body.

But I'm going to get up every morning. I'm going to hike up to Machu Picchu. I will run around the world and back again (and again). I will be able to live on my own. And travel on my own, if need be. It's not impossible.

I'm just going to need to work a little harder.

Like Zezili.

Like me.

My Most Memorable Wiscon Moment

Hearing Joanna Russ say she'd discovered Buffy.

Anytime I Start Feeling Sorry For Myself...

Jenn sends me a link like this.

Home Again, Home Again Jiggety Jig

Made it back to Chicago after a really great con.

My ankles are a bit swollen, my feet look fat, I'm a little sleep deprived, but otherwise I'm doing well.

Lots to say. More later, when I've gotten some sleep.

Final Wiscon Schedule

Me, Jenn and Patrick are off to Wiscon tomorrow. Here's the final schedule for the panels I'll be on. My sugars are still settling out low, so little to no alcohol for me, sadly. Dammit, I wanted my Wiscon beer...

Hope to see you all there! Swing by after and say hello. We're all staying at the Best Western.

Feminist Fiction Is So Five Minutes Ago (Feminism, Sex, and Gender)
Saturday, 2:30-3:45 p.m. Saturday, 2:30-3:45 p.m. in Capitol A

The word "feminist" has fallen out of fashion; for some of us middle-aged crones, calling a book or story feminist will attract us, but how do we approach young women and girls to get them to read the works that made a difference for us when we were young?

The Female Warrior in Science Fiction: Who Does It Right and Who Deserves a Soft Tomato? (Reading SF&F)
Saturday, 9:00-10:15 p.m. Saturday, 9:00-10:15 p.m. in Conference Room 5

Come share your favorite titles and hear the panelists' list. It's not like an IPod playlist, it's just good stories well-written.

35

...was my blood count this morning, which is dangerously low. Not enough rice last night.

This balancing act is a funny thing.

Drinking some OJ and scarfing toast to even me out before breakfast.

How strange, to have a body that's totally broken.

176

I haven't been 176 lbs since I was 14.

Until today, that is.

Everybody has a favorite horror novel, one that just cuts right to the bone.

Mine is Stephen King's, Thinner.

I had my first follow-up appointment today. My doctor, Dr. S, says my sugar levels look good. He's concerned about the numbness in my feet, but there's apparently not a lot I can do about it right now except take some vitamin B.

I'm taking 4 insulin shots a day right now, and he says that in a month or two when he's better able to see how the Lantus (a long-acting insulin) works with my body, I may be able to go down to two shots a day over the long haul.

That would be great. Shooting up four times a day is a neccessary thing, but if I could cut that in half, well, hey.

Oh, the irony: I was well on the road to learning how to eat right and exercise. Finally taking "good" care of myself. And now I *have* to or I'll keel over and die. Or, worse: just expire gradually from diabetes-related diseases like kidney failure, while my limbs are all chopped off.

The way to prevent a slow disintegration is four shots a day, three blood tests a day, and counting every carb that goes into my mouth (oh, thank the gods I was on the Atkins diet for a year and know how to gauge these!).

When I met with the dietician, she said, "I hear you've been losing a lot of weight recently. My job is to help that stop."

That's the first - and likely the last - time anyone's every said that to me.

Imagine a world where your dietician wants to stop you from losing weight.

I am stunned. And humbled.

Reading through a lot of literature so I can figure out how to go back to doing my workouts. My wrists are nearly better, so it's time to start free weights in the morning again next week. Walking really helps bring down my glucose; more intense activity may bring it down too low.

Like everything else, it's going to be a tight-rope walk.

WisCon Membership

I've got a free last-minute Wiscon Membership - a buddy of mine who was going to go can't make it.

First person to email kameron_hurley AT hotmail.com gets it (please only ask for this if you can make it last minute to Wiscon!).

I'll be in Madison around 1 or 2pm on Friday and can hand over the membership then.

Let me know.