I keep forgetting how long it has been since my last post. Every time I think of something to place here it turns out that weeks or even months have passed! Yikes! It gets hard wanting to get riled up and ranty for all the many various and sundry ways that the world around me hates my body size and shape and would love nothing more than for me to give in, give up, submit to incessant public demands to hate myself and prostrate myself before the alter of Potentially Getting Thin(ner). So, as I’m rather enjoying being a lovely, confident, currently ranting-on-hold, fat woman, I will instead post some highlights of what I’ve been up to of late
Last weekend, I got to attend a medieval themed wedding in a mountain-esque region New York. There were some awesome statues outside in the gardens at the wedding site and I couldn’t resist a picture!
Prior to that I was dancing for various events in central Mass. One of which was a Pride event that totally ROCKED! The energy of the folks cheering us on was exhilarating. The crowd loved our moves to Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep”.
I also applied for a fun sounding position at a fairly nearby town’s public library…but used the wrong TOWN NAME three times in the coverletter and email. What’s worse is that it wasn’t a matter of using an old coverletter and forgetting to replace the company/library name. I introduced the errors manually. C’est la vie, so it wasn’t meant to be!
I’m crocheting a half-sized Dr. Who scarf for Adam D. so he can wear it more frequently than the full sized 13-foot scarf of uber-awesomeness.
No other fun library interactions of note to report since the “Artist” came by (and for those wondering, I haven’t seen him since…)
I’ve recently read two books with fatness as a theme/major component.
- The United States of Air was a fabulously funny and, at the same time, horrifyingly chilling satire on the US’s twin obsessions: Fatness (and it’s eradication) and Wars on Things/People/Ideals. Agent Frolick is the Ambassador to France, relating his personal story of how he came to fully believe in the US’s new Prophet’s demands that people subsist only on eating Air. Caloric intake is Food Terrorism. The parts I found most frightening were those that, outside of this book’s world, many people would off-the-cuff agree to as a “solution” to all us darned fatties existing in this realm! (Fat Camps, fatties sent without trial to such places to learn to “eat air”, advancement in any military or government establishment based solely upon waist size, corruption of the highest order…)
- Butter tells the story of one fat boy’s often sad and all too relate-able attempts to just get through life. He finds himself thrust into popularity when, in the depths of depression and self-loathing, he starts a blog dedicated to the count-down until the night he plans to eat himself to death. It was a well-written, though certainly trope-y book with a character who is overweight (according to the book) largely because he overeats dramatically. For that reason it held less appeal than it could have as a touching story about a troubled boy finding his way.
What’s next? More dancing this weekend, a new hair today that reveals, once more, my neck to the glorious breezes of Autumn. What’s next on YOUR plate?
I AM in shape. ROUND is a shape. 
Wow! You look so fabulous dolled up for the wedding! That red brings out the sparkles in you beautifully.
I think I visited the United States of Air on saturday when I brought all these gorgeous home-baked-from-scratch treats to the annual block party to share with ALL the neighbors only to have several people inform me that they were high calorie. Really???? It never occurred to me that there might be CALORIES in a white chocolate layer cake filled with lemon curd and frosted with lemon buttercream made from real butter! I couldn’t have imagined as I whipped the cream for the malted milk ball tart that eating the entire thing by myself might result in gastric disaster! Seriously, I was baking for the entire damned neighborhood, so I’d be kind of astonished if someone tried to eat an entire cake or tart or batch of scones all by themselves. And since I’m one of the few people on the block who bakes desserts from scratch, and since I love to feed people and share the joy of good desserts, I do spend the week before the party mostly in the kitchen baking.
At least aside from the folks visiting from the United States of Wet Blankets, there was much rejoicing when I appeared with all my goodies. And out of four large desserts and a batch of scones, all that came back to my house was two slices of cake and a bunch of platters scantily festooned with crumbs. That was a successful outcome.
Other than that, I recently celebrated my glorious half-century, I have acquired a couple of lovely cook books to play with in the last couple weeks, and Mr. Twistie continues to be awesome. Oh, and I’ve taken up baking bread again for the first time in a long time. Don’t know why I stopped. It’s so satisfying and tasty and so much less expensive than buying bread.
OOO fresh bread! Very tasty and fun when homemade! NOM! Sorry to hear about those obviously US of Air-heads at that block party but very excited to say Happy Half Century!!
Now you have me craving homemade bread so I might have to make some tomorrow!
That reminds me that now that autumn is here, it is about time I started baking bread again.
You do look gorgeous in your wedding finery, April. Lovely picture.
And so many people indeed do believe that we need to live in the United States of Air. I might read that book but doubt that I would read the second, as I have read & heard all too much about how fat people eat themselves fat & that, whatever age we are when we die, we dug our graves with our forks. I always found it amusing that my one thin brother was never digging his grave with his fork when he sat across from me at a family dinner eating three times as much as I ate.
I made a reluctant decision last night to stop watching my favorite comedy show, “The Big Bang Theory” because I can no longer tolerate the way these supposed geniuses & their supposedly intelligent writers insist on ruining an otherwise good program with fat hatred & almost constant reinforcement of fat stereotypes. I like nerds/geeks, I am one myself, & indeed we come in all sizes & shapes, but you will notice that the producers of BBT do not include a fat geek. I have watched the program for awhile now & the good parts are outweighed by the anti-fat nastiness in NEARLY every episode. Last night was the last straw. Sheldon was ‘talking trash’ to a rival about their upcoming competition in some event matching homemade robots. He said, “I understand that your mother is overweight, unless of course her weight is the result of glandular problems & not just sloth & gluttony.” That was the moment the tv got shut off. These are guys who spend a large part of every episode eating, either in the college cafeteria or sitting around Sheldon & Leonard’s apartment eating takeout food. As fits with nerds stereotypes, they are not athletic or coordinated & do not generally engage in exercise unless they are running away from people whom they have offended or dogs or flying their kites (they should have a episode featuring a mob of fat people chasing them). They live pretty much the lifestyle which they ascribe to all fat people, but, as always, it is okay because they are thin.
I am coming to have more sympathy with those who have completely stopped watching television. TV is poisonous. I am not a heavy viewer, I only watch certain things. Now I will watch one less certain thing.
Ironically enough, CBS is also home to a program in which I have detected NO fat prejudice, “Criminal Minds”, about the profilers of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. One of the show’s regulars is a reasonably fat woman & she is cool, funny, brilliant, respected & loved by her co-workers. When they do show fat characters, they are just characters…sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes a tiny bit part…but no mention is made of their body size. I have not yet seen an episode where a serial killer was driven to murder a lot of people by his fat or the way he was treated because of his fat. I hope this attitude continues, because it is one I don’t think I have ever seen in any other show.
And, Twistie, those desserts sound wonderful. I am sorry I missed them. On my plate is caring for granddaughter & getting her on the bus, then walking 45 minutes to get home several days of the week, reading, cooking, puttering around, trying to remind myself that a 63-year-old woman with cerebral palsy & arthritis functions well with moderate exercise but not so well on two hours or more of walking while pushing a walker up & down steep hills & that I don’t need to prove anything to anyone, either for being fat or for being disabled. Otherwise, I am enjoying every moment of glorious autumn, my favorite season, & decorating for Halloween.
Squee! Another Criminal Minds fan! And yes, that’s one of my favorite things about the show. The closest thing to fat shaming I’ve ever seen on it was a season two episode where the unsub had gone off his psychiatric meds in part because they made him gain so much weight. Everyone was far more concerned with the… rather specialized cooking he was indulging in after he stopped medicating than how much he did or didn’t weigh.
Garcia is my hero in so many ways. I adore that there’s a fabulous, brilliant, huge-hearted, fearless fattie with gobs of awesomely individual style on television working alongside the thin people and being respected and loved by all of them in different ways.
And if we’re ever in the same neck of the woods, I’d be delighted to feed you something home baked and delicious.
Patsy Autumn is my favorite too! I don’t blame you for wanting to turn off Big Bang. Adam D and I both have tried to watch it but it just strikes me as far too trope-filled to actually be amusing. But from your review of Criminal Minds now I’m definitely thinking I need to get the Tivo to snag an episode!
I can highly recommend Criminal Minds & I have decided that, while I am fond of nerds & proud to be one, Big Bang is just too much of a huge stereotype, right down to the skinny but kind of dumb & promiscuous blonde whom Leonard constantly pines for & pursues even though they have NOTHING in common. That for me was another annoying thing…these guys are all skinny, ordinary looking guys, kind of weird-looking in Howard’s case, possess no social skills, Howard is a total creep, yet they seem to believe (except for Sheldon, who doesn’t really want human contact & has a mind connection with his GF rather than a sexual one) that they should snag supermodels & that normal human women just are not good enough. I do of course know that plenty of real men are the same & that this is self-hatred & insecurity speaking.
And, yes, Twistie, Garcia totally ROCKS!! She is my favorite character on the whole show. And I would love to sample your goodies. Usually when I bake, it is yeast bread.