Welcome December

November passed by very quickly. To be honest, most of this year has, but November seemed especially quick. It's not that it was a bad month. Some really great things happened. My best friend had her baby. Thanksgiving was good. My roommate and I went to a dinner party. I worked on my afghan, the first and probably only project I will complete since my hysterectomy. For the most part, it's been a pretty good month for me.

I'm weirdly unhappy about December starting. I've had a string of bad Decembers and I don't want another one. I've had enough bad months this year. It would be nice to end the year with some peace and comfort. Here's hoping that can happen.

I did some new stuff on the balance ball today. Some of it seemed like it would be pretty easy and it surprisingly worked parts of my legs I had no idea could feel pain. I guess that's good? I was pleased with the new things and plan on making them part of the overall routine. This may not get me up to a full 30 minutes, but we'll be getting closer. I'm hoping that by the end of the year, I'm 30 full minutes on the ball and doing more sets of what I'm doing now. This would be a nice pace for me.

My weekend was nice. I folded a lot of towels and had some pretty great discussions with people. My roommate has an appointment this week and I have plans for Friday. Next week should be pretty easy, but the week after that will be full. The week past that is my birthday and Christmas. December is always pretty busy. Here's hoping we survive it.

Activities

My roommate and I, antisocial beings that we are, actually went to a dinner party tonight. I am very proud of both of us. We drove to a new place, got our directions mostly correct, and interacted with other humans. Yay!

My pies may have not been a hit in our household, but the dishes my roommate brought to the dinner party were. He made a jalapeno corn dish and a cranberry salsa. The cranberry salsa is served over cream cheese. We discussed serving it with Greek yogurt, but that seemed too soft for the purposes of serving. The cream cheese served to offset the heat of the salsa. It did quite well. Both dishes were praised.

We discussed my pie today and decide the best solution is to do it crustless. We'll bake it in a glass dish and serve it with whole graham crackers instead. I think it will work better that way. The grahams' texture will work better than the graham crust did. We probably won't try it again until next year, but I'm looking forward to it.

Update on the Slightly Creative Bits

The week of Thanksgiving is over. My roommate and I have a party to attend tomorrow night, but other than that, we're pretty good until Christmas. We're still eating on our holiday food and somehow managed to make that an even bigger thing today because we found some great deals on rolls and some pies.

Speaking of pie, I promised a progress report on mine. Hmm. I would say it's a mixed bag. I have no problem with the pie filling, though it tastes more like pumpkin cheesecake than pumpkin pie. I didn't like it with the graham cracker crust though. I just didn't feel like the two aspects of the pie did each other any favors. I'm enjoying eating it, but I'm not sure I want to use that kind of crust on it again. Though, I'm not sure it would work with traditional pie crust.I'm just going to have to think about it for a while.

We took down our small display of Thanksgiving decoration and replaced it with three bits of Christmas decoration, including the snowman I made last year. I was very happy to see them come out. This new tradition I started of having at least some small something to acknowledge the holidays has been good for me.

The afghan is now big enough to keep me warm as I work on it. Truthfully, this is always the goal. It's not quite big enough to be completed, but we're pretty close. I should have it finished by the end of the week.

Thanksgiving Reflections

Thanksgiving has come and gone. I had dinner with my family and then with my roommate. I am full and somewhat over the food already. I know I'll feel differently in the morning. It will be charming again by then. Right now, I really don't want to look at food at all. Thanksgiving fickleness.

I have remained pretty thankful all day. I have a cat sitting by me right now, and I am very thankful for that. I love the comfort and happiness my cats bring to me. They can be TOTAL PILLS sometimes, but when they're good,  they're very good.

It's wonderful that I get to have these moments of love in my life. Sure, the cat thinks it's mostly about her, but I get a lot out of this too. Maybe when I die I won't have memories of children or torrid affairs, but I'll have lots of memories of knowing that animals loved and trusted me. I'm aware that some people would see this as less than, but I don't.

Tomorrow is the official start of the Christmas season. I'm going to do my best to really enjoy it. I'm here to be a part of it, so yay! I'll be enjoying it in my own way, mind you. That's for the best in any case.

The Night before Thanksgiving

My roommate and I spent some time today preparing parts of our Thanksgiving meal. Over the years, we've found that it's easier to do this in stages, as to not make the day overwhelmed with cooking. It feels good to know that tomorrow, pretty much only one or two things need to happen. This is good, given that I'll be gone part of the day.

We have two unusual additions to our meal this year. One is a 'just by chance' thing. Several weeks back, my roommate found some roasted turkey breasts on a very good sale. He bought two and we froze them. Today, I shredded them off the bone. One will be eaten just as turkey breast. The other was tossed into the dressing. We usually do chicken in the dressing (and have no turkey at all), but this year, we get to upgrade. It's unlikely this will happen again, so I'm going to view it as a nice little change for this one specific Thanksgiving.

The other new addition will hopefully be staying. When we started planning our Thanksgiving meal, we both agreed we didn't like the quality of frozen pumpkin pie we could afford. We also both knew that upgrading to a better pie was not really in the cards. We knocked around alternative dessert ideas, but finally settled on making our own pumpkin pie.

In fact, we settled on this because I volunteered to do it. I found a recipe for pumpkin pie that used Greek yogurt and wanted to try it. It comes to quite a shock to me that I love Greek yogurt as much as I do. I loathe almost every other type of yogurt, but I adore this stuff. I think it works really well as a sub for a lot of things and I am hoping it works well in the pumpkin pie.

The recipe I found was pretty simple. We altered it some because we know what spices we like and the recipe just wasn't giving as forthcoming with them as we wanted. It only called for cloves, ginger, and cinnamon. We added allspice, pumpkin, and nutmeg. After baking for about an hour, we have what look like pies. I suppose tomorrow we'll know if my plan was a success.

If you're reading this, I hope you have a happy Thanksgiving. I know a lot of people don't do the traditional stuff, and if you're one of them, I hope you find meaning and memory in the holiday in your own way.

As for me, I have a lot to be thankful for this year. First and foremost, I'm alive. There are any number of ways I could have died this year and somehow, none of them happened. This, truly, is a blessing. I am also thankful I managed not to get addicted to pain medication. Trust me, there were times when weening myself off my pain pills was very difficult. I did it though, and I am thankful for that. My friends and family supported me and kept me in good spirits during my hospital comings and goings. People clearly believe my life has value and meaning. I could go on and on about this, but I think you get the picture. I am in awe of this Thanksgiving because I get to participate in it. I am very thankful for that as well.

Of the Conversation

I went to see my best friend and her new baby today. Another one of my friends drove us up there and we had a very good visit. I got to feed the baby and hold her for quite a while. I think I put her socks back on her feet 10 times, but that is the nature of babies.

For the most part, the baby was good. She slept part of the time, but during the majority of the visit, she was awake and rather aware. My best friend remarked that she thought the baby enjoyed the company and liked hearing the conversation and multiple voices. It was soothing to her, maybe even interesting, to see how groups of people interact with each other.

I'm inclined to agree with this. I remember how one of the things I enjoyed a great deal as a child was listening to the adults talk. It really wasn't about what they were saying. I honestly couldn't recall the details of their conversations if you paid me. What has stuck with me is the cadence of their speaking, the ebb and flow of conversation. I was always calm and comforted by them because I knew my mother was happy when she was talking to her friends. She was getting to be clever and funny. She was in her element.

Even as an adult, I find comfort in listening as conversations go on around me. Often when we're in groups of people, we feel this pressure to participate, but it's really not necessary. I think there is value in being part of the conversation without really having to be IN the conversation. Listening is important and listening to two other people talk can be quite lovely.

I'm glad the baby gets to experience listening to us talk and laugh. I think it can  teach her some valuable things about the exchange of ideas between close friends and between people who respect each other. It can also offer the comfort of knowing she is safe within that conversation. That is a wonderful feeling to have.

Love Again

One of the things I love about having really good headphones is that I discover things about music I never really heard before. This can even happen in songs I've been listening to my whole life. When this kind of thing happens, it's like discovering a secret door in the back of your closet. It's thrilling.

Today, this happened when I was listening to Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams." I have probably heard this song a million times. But today, I really paid attention to the acoustic guitar during the chorus. My god, it's magnificent! I knew it was there, but I've always focused on other aspects of what is happening at those points in the song.

That guitar though, it's pretty awesome. I set the song on repeat and listened to it over and over again, so happy to have finally found this new dimension to the song I love. I was at Walmart, waiting in the parking lot for my roommate. It's a few days before Thanksgiving so everything going on around me was chaotic and frantic. Inside the van, however, everything was just that guitar riff. It was beautiful.

So what did I learn today? I think I learned, and this is a lesson I learn quite often, that there is value in returning to the things you love. The reason you love them is usually because they appeal to you on one level at one given point in time. You change, and perhaps they don't seem as important to you anymore. However, as you grow (and as technology gets better), you may discover new aspects of the things you loved. You get to fall in love all over again. That's always fun.

Ball Progress

I finally dismantled the ugly hat I'd been toting around for years now. It will become part of the afghan as a testament to me being able to get rid of things, even if they're my own creations. I should do this more often. I thought I would feel some sadness when I ripped it apart, but I really didn't. As a hat, it served no functional use. As part of an afghan, it will.

I did work on the exercise ball today. I bravely opted to do some things I'd never done before. While I am a bit surprised I was able to pull them off, I'm also happy it happened. It was by no means the workout someone in great shape would do, but it was pretty intense for me. I've been feeling my body protest ever since.

We're heading into Thanksgiving week. This is going to be interesting for me because I have a lot of stuff to be thankful for this year. I may be rather reflective on the blog over the next few days. Or, you know, I may just continue to ramble about this afghan.

Personal Narrative

I was reading an article that a man wrote about how horrible his marriage had been. He was gay and Christian. He was also married to a woman. They were miserable and fought a lot. They wanted to divorce, but felt that wasn't a viable option because they had two daughters and viewed it as against their religious beliefs.

The article was about the pain of being trapped, or rather, feeling as if you are trapped. This man felt trapped by his conflicting ideas about sexuality, but even more so, he felt trapped by the view that divorce isn't an option. He was miserable. She was miserable. Every day, they both woke up to the reality that they had made a mistake and felt there was no way out of it.

At one point in the article, to illustrate how desperate he had become, he confessed to praying that God would kill her, so that he could be free again.  His point in making this confession was to show how twisted the idea of never divorcing had made him. He would rather his wife die than have to face the 'failure and sin' of divorcing her.

To me, this confession was important. It showed how warped a sense of morality can become when morality is set to a rigid standard. Truthfully, when you reach the point where you wish someone was dead in order to get them out of your life, you should walk away from them. There is no love between you and no good will. He knew this. And as he was writing the article (some 12 years and a divorce after feeling this way), he knew praying that she died was wrong. He also knew that is probably something that happens quite often when people feel trapped in their situation.

In the comments, however, a lot of people attacked him for wishing she was dead. They were appalled that he could feel this way. It was one point people kept coming back to, about how awful it was that someone could have these kinds of thoughts.

I think they kind of missed the point that the author himself was equally appalled that he felt this way. It disturbed him that his mind had gone to this place and he spoke of it, not as a way to justify how he felt or to excuse it, but in order to demonstrate how distorted his views had been. He was saying, "Hey, this 'til death do us part' thing is absolute torture for some of us. However, it's become such a rigid part of our religion and identity that we'd rather people die than us find some kind of civil way to part company."

Increasingly, our culture has a lot of blogs in it. Many of us read blogposts every day. Many of these are written by people who are not professionals. And many of them are written as a kind of confessional. My blog certainly is from time to time. I think it's important to remember that. This isn't journalism. This isn't impartial and professional.

To me, one of the more fascinating things about this kind of personal narrative is that often you can find a deeper level of honesty in it than you will in other types of writing. Sometimes that personal narrative is far from pretty. People use their blogs to talk about their fears and dreams. They discuss their medical procedures. They indulge for days about whatever has struck their fancy. And sometimes, they confess to their darker thoughts. I say thoughts here because thoughts are still in our heads. We can think a lot of awful things and never act on them because we know they're wrong. Even still, just the thoughts can cause us to feel pretty awful.

Confession is a very healing thing. And yes, whatever you confess to online, you are putting out there for people to judge and hold against you. I know that often when I read stuff that I don't like, I also hold it against the people who wrote it.

Sometimes though, when I'm being a bit more reflective, I can see that their confessions aren't about bragging. Usually these confessions are about pain or just a total sense of loathing that they feel after they've done whatever they've just confessed to doing. There is also usually a chain of things (events, beliefs, people) that are part of what caused them to think the dark things they've confessed. Like the author I used as an example, often the process of breaking that chain (walking away from the situation, changing how you feel, removing people from your life) is enough to stop the darkness.

We have an outdoor cat who spent most of the evening trying to get Tinkerbell's attention and she ignored him. Later that night, I caught Tink playing by herself and whining because she was lonely. One would think the solution would be to warm up to the outdoor cat, but with cats (and people), it's never that easy. Sometimes I think the people on the internet are a lot like this. It's just a vast collection of lonely people who keep crying out for someone to notice them and then being hostile when someone does. That's very sad. Perhaps it's another chain we should break.

Goats from the Past

As I've been working on the afghan, I've been thinking a lot about my relationship to making things and where that began. It started with my grandmother, who made dresses and other items of clothing. I still can't sew, though I need to learn how. She also crocheted, and always had a good collection of afghans around. She loved them and I loved to snuggle in them. As a child, they were my favorite kind of blanket.

There is another influence on me that directly ties to Grandma though. It has to do with a book she used to read  to me when I was little. The book is called The Goat in the Rug and it's by Charles L. Blood. The book is about a Navajo woman and the process she goes through to sheer her goat and then take the wool and add it to a blanket. We go through the whole process, from her sharpening her sheers to the actual weaving.

As a small child, this book fascinated me. Three/four year old me was a big fan of learning about process. My favorite part of educational TV was always when they would show how things were made. The goat story was my favorite though, because it was a continuing process. Geraldine (the goat) could provide lots of wool from many sheerings and her contribution was an important part of the household. It showed the interdependent relationship between people and animals and no one was fighting for their lives like poor Wilbur the pig.

Sometimes I forget that when I work on an afghan, or any crocheted project, I am celebrating my grandmother's legacy. These are the skills she taught me and part of the larger connection between us. If there is anything I would want to pass on to a kid, it would be my yarn skills. I feel very grateful they were taught to me.

Deconstruction

The afghan is coming along. I'm kind of in that place where I am worried I'll run out of yarn before I finish. This is kind of insane because I know I have enough. It just doesn't quite feel like I do. Some things will look pretty crazy by the end, but that's just how the end of afghans go. I almost wish I wouldn't have made it as long as I did, but on the other hand, I kind of love the idea of it being pretty big. I want it to be really cozy.

I'm taking apart one of the first hats I ever made and adding it to the project. I'm doing this because, honestly, the hat sucks and no one would ever wear it. I shouldn't hold on to things that suck and serve no purpose just because I made them. Sure, I'll stick a wonky hat on my head. But there is wonky and then there is nonfunctional. Anything that is falling into the nonfunctional group should be dismantled and made useful again. It will help to declutter my life.

Anyway, that's where we are on the blanket. It isn't moving as fast as I would like, but I think maybe I'm purging a lot of emotion as I'm working on it. I knew I would, but perhaps more is happening than I realized.

Yarn Philosophies

The cat has decided to sit in my shoulder. She's even doing this while I type. I'm not sure how long it will last. I fear this will end with her falling and clawing her way down. Ahh, the joys of catdom. She's purring, at least. So we have that.

Today I saw my usual therapist. She is back from maternity leave.  The session was basically about what I'd been doing since she left. I told her about my cancer free status (at the moment) and my lack of creativity. We talked about the ways I'm trying to combat the lack of art in my soul. I brought up the afghan.

You know, I have this thing about afghans. I think they should be garish. Mind you, I have a lot of love and appreciation for the ones that people do with bold, beautiful colors of complex patterns. But at the end of the day, I like my afghans to be crazy. I want it to look like some granny just randomly picked out yarn from a bag, never once paying attention to what colors went next to what. There is a homely, lovely feeling to work like that.

I see a lot of writing by people who want to brag about how men have built our culture. I won't deny their influence, but then again, it's easy to build a culture when you're standing on the backs of everyone else. It's also easy to build a culture when you dismiss or deny the artistic work done by the people who don't fall within your group.

To me, things like afghans and quilts have a lot of value. I love the time and attention people take in making quilts. I love the random beauty (or structured beauty) of afghans. I love that people would add lace detail to pillow cases and make potholders have color. The arts of the home may have been humble and dismissed by the arbiters of taste, but they will not be dismissed by me.

Days of Cold and Cats

It snowed last night. It didn't snow enough to cover the ground or cause a lot of problems, but it was still very odd to see snow in November. Rowan clawed her way up onto my shoulder and stayed there, shivering, for the better part of an hour. The stove was on, so I think a lot of that was just drama on her part. She can be very dramatic.  She's sitting on my lap right now, basically preventing me from working on the afghan. I'm pretty sure she's aware she's preventing me, because she's purring about it.

Tinkerbell is staying mostly on my roommate's bed, but as this is the coldest room in the house, she's been making more trips out into the rest of the area. She never sits in the living room with us, but she'll sit on the outskirts of it. Sometimes she'll go in my room and hang out by the door that leads into where we're sitting. Usually when she's in there, she glares at me.

As for Rhiannon, well . . . she's crazy. Her days are usually spent buried under a pile of blankets on the couch. When my roommate sits down by her, she hisses. When he pets her, she hisses. When she comes out from the blankets and sees us, she hisses. Today, she was behind the couch for a bit. He tried to see if she was okay, and she ran off, hissing and growling the whole way. We're a tad bit worried her mind is slipping. Actually, we're pretty sure her mind is gone.

In any case, the cold is here to stay. Cold weather is probably the reason why cats decided to con humans into thinking we'd domesticated them. We're nice and warm and we have blankets for them. We also keep roofs over their wicked little heads. And there is cuddling.

Warm Legs for Fat Girls

I write a lot about how weight loss, especially large amounts of weight loss, should always be a journey where accomplishments are recorded and acknowledged. I know that some people will roll their eyes at that and say that it's the same thing as Everyone Gets a Gold Star, but fuck them. It's not. This is the celebration of actual accomplishments, that happen after you really do something.

It's important for you, personally, as the one losing weight, to acknowledge your milestones. Yes, it's nice when someone else says something about your weight loss process, but we also know that can seriously backfire. Often praise from others can set off a cycle of resentment. This is certainly the case if it's someone who has their own selfish reasons for wanting you to lose weight (like, for example, they will feel like a better grandmother . . . sometimes I experienced a lot in my life). It's also very precious when you have people around you who you know ARE NOT selfish about their observations and I am lucky to have some of those.

Even if the people around you are good about it, keep in mind that losing weight is a process of healing.  Yes, part of that is about healing your body, but it's also about healing your mind and your heart as well. It's about learning to affirm yourself and handle your emotions in a way that don't involve soothing them with food. So in the same way that you walk to strengthen your legs and your back, in the same way that you lift weights to strengthen your muscles, you should affirm your progress, as a way to strengthen your soul. The stronger you are on the inside, the less you'll fall into the habits that got you fat in the first place. I hope.

My roommate bought me some new sweats. I tried them on today and they fit. They're snug, certainly, but they also certainly fit me. This is a huge thing for two reasons. For one thing, it means I can get pants from the store for a third of what I can get them ordering them online.  This will save me a lot of money and I need to save all the money I can.

Second of all, these sweats are actually sweats, made of fleece, meaning they are actually WARM to wear. None of the pants I have been able to buy since I got really heavy have been warm. They always throw them together with the thinnest materials they can find. Even ones that are supposed to be for warmer weather never really are.

So for years now, I've spent my winters with cold legs. You'd think the fat would keep me warm, but fat also doesn't allow for great circulation, so my legs were never that warm at all. So I had these cold legs covered by pants that really only work during the warmer months. Almost every winter, going outside meant facing cold legs and just doing my best not to think about it. I really didn't see any alternative.

But NOW, now I am writing this post with warm, toasty legs, covered in nice fleecey goodness! I can walk outside and not freeze to death! I can wander through the house without shivering! It's awesome. It's a very nice little accomplishment.

The Magical Walk

There are days when my morning walk is difficult or annoying. There are other days, most days, really, when it's just blah. On occasion though, my morning walk is amazing. This was one of those days. As I was walking along my driveway, one of the trees was letting hundreds of leaves go. They were flowing all around me, as if I were in some movie. They skittered on the ground, making the cutest little noise. As the wind picked up, many of them blew back into the air, dancing and dancing around me.

I know that this walk lasted no longer than any other, but as that was happening, it really felt like time slowed for me. I know it was only a few seconds, but it was wonderful. Even thinking about it now really fills me with a sense of being caught in the middle of something special.

If you read the blog regularly, you know I usually don't have that great of a relationship with nature. Most of my encounters with nature involve fleas biting me or fire ants attacking me (I still have scars from that) or sunburns. Rarely are my personal moments with nature anything that is wonderful and good.

Today though, today was good. Today was beautiful and magical for me. I'm thankful it happened.

Practiced and not Perfect

The afghan has gained some more inches. The colors are going together somewhat well right now, but I am sure that won't last. When you're doing an afghan just to get rid of yarn, quite often things are ugly and desperate looking by the end. I'm sure this one will be no different. Even though I thought I was watching my count, I'm still getting a jaggedy edge. This may be due to the varying sizes of yarn I'm using. More than likely, it's due to my miscounting.

As I've mentioned before, one of the things I enjoy most about working with yarn is that I'm not really that good at it. Most of my projects turn out askew. They often have an imperfect, screwed up look to them. I don't do this on purpose either. I just have some kind of disconnect about how to follow patterns. . . even as I am trying my damnedest to follow the pattern.

Normally practice makes people better, but I've only seem a small bit of improvement in my skill. I don't work as tightly as I used to, which means my work is softer and easier to handle. I'm more consistent with stitch size. I'm more likely to count and check to see if things are where they should be.  Even with these new skills in place, the final products still look strange.

It's okay though. I'm not good at this, but I love it. I love what I make with my meager skills. I'm wearing a wonky hat I made a few years ago. It keeps me warm, even if the top of it does kind of look like a nipple. The very first afghan I ever made is still in my possession. I made it when I was around 21. It's ugly and sloped, but it's warm and still with us.

I suppose that's the important part.

Practical if not Pretty

Looks like the decision to make the afghan is a go. I was still debating it until around noon today, when a series of events made me just really anxious to start purging the unused yarn into something useful. I've made some headway on it. I doubt it will be pretty, but it will be very warm. Right now, practicality trumps cuteness in almost all cases.

It's been a long while since I made an afghan. I've forgotten how much mental and emotional junk it can purge from you. There is something about adding rows and rows of straight lines that is quite cleansing to the soul. I have a lot of stuff to work through. This could end up being quite good for me.

Even if that part doesn't pan out, at least I'll be rid of the random balls of stray yarn that are left over from other projects. Instead of being moved from place to place and resorted into nice balls after everything unravels and gets knotted up again, all of it will now exist as a new thing. It will be an afghan of random, mismatched colors. It will serve the purpose of keeping me warm. And all the storage stuff that holds yarn can be put away. The house will be a little less cluttered.

I'm glad I'm doing this.

Heater On

We wanted to hold out as long as possible before turning on the heater, but unfortunately, that isn't going to happen. It's not even late into November, but the heater has had to come on. It's supposed to get very cold tonight and we just can't risk the pipes. We did put it on as low as we could though. We have blankets and that should keep us warm enough.

Last year, my roommate bought me some sweats to wear around on really cold days. I could pull them on, but they were fairly tight. This year, they're still pretty snug, but they fit better than they did. I'm happy about this because they're wonderfully warm. They're also very long in the leg, which means they wrap nicely around my socks and don't ride up. Nothing is worse than waking up in the middle of a cold night with half your leg exposed to the chill.

I wandered around all day in a hat I made last year. I'd hoped it would be enough to inspire me to start working with yarn again, but it didn't. Creatively, I'm still in a void. I can't even begin to explain how frustrating that is for me. I really hope I move past it. I'm actually considering just going for broke and starting an afghan with all the stray yarn I have. At least it would get my hands involved in doing stuff and, honestly, it would be nice to get my random bits of yarn out of the way. I don't know yet. An afghan seems like a big commitment. Then again, what the hell else am I doing?

Anyway, for the most part, my day was good. Therapy went well and I got my errands done. I also got to cuddle with the cats because they're cold. That's always nice.

Favorite Documentary This Year

I just finished watching The Chair. It documentary show on Starz about two directors first time directors making the same movie. I have to say, I was very impressed with it. I had my doubts about it, but in the end, I was very pleased with the whole thing.

To begin with, one of the more fascinating parts about this was the way in which one gets to see the whole process that goes into film making. From writing a script, to rewrites, to hiring producers and tech people, to scouting locations and finding actors. There is so much stuff that happens in pre-production that completely alters how the film will be.

There are even things that one might not think would have much of an affect that really do change everything about the mood of a film. For instance, one director brought in only one person to handle the technical side of things with him. He works with a producer on his other projects and she worked with him on this one. Everyone else he hired was new to him. The other director had a small, close group of people she works with to handle this project with her. They were more collaborative in their approach. During the documentary, there are times when one director's choices seem to be working the best, and times when the other director's choices work the best.

Even the way the two directors lived during the filming affected their films. One director rented a house, where she lived with several people working in production with her. They cooked together, had meals together, and discussed the film late into the night. The other director stayed in a hotel. His meals were all from restaurants. When he was finished with the film for the day, he could close himself off in his room and not deal with anyone else. He was able to stay in his own headspace and reflect on the movie in private.

The amazing thing is, both directors managed to finish their films. Two movies actually WERE made out of this. Even if those movies aren't that great, I believe it's quite impressive that they were able to accomplish this. If you enjoy watching how complicated things get made, I very much recommend The Chair. I think you'll enjoy it.

Good Ending to a Rough Week

Last week was pretty stressful and rough. As I wrote about, I had some discouraging things happen, and then just some overly difficult moments as well. However, my best friend's new baby was born, I survived the stressful events, and life moves forward.

It's supposed to get really cold this week, like winter-levels of cold. I need to get out some more of my winter things and get some preparation done for this. That's basically my goal for tomorrow.

For the most part, the weekend was good. It was great to meet the baby. The cats didn't cause too much drama. I am hoping for a reasonably easy week. That would be nice for a change.

Walls of Discouragement

A few months back, I broke the stationary pedaling machine.  I was pretty devastated, as I tend to be whenever I break things, but my roommate just shrugged it off and bought another one. A few days later, noting my hesitation, he asked if I was still upset about breaking it. Of course I was. He reminded me that we'd had it for over a year and that it wasn't that expensive of an item. I felt better about it and resumed my activities.

Last week, the new one broke. It broke in the same place as the last one. This, as you will note, is only a few months after the break of the last one. It's also about the same amount of time that I, personally, was using the thing. Sure, we'd had it for over a year, but I wasn't using it for all of that time. Given that, it looked like the pedal machine was only going to last me about two months. This makes replacing it far more expensive.

This was emotionally rough on me. I had to make a decision to give up the pedaling because I just can't afford to keep replacing it that often.  I panicked about this for a while and then just got really depressed. Even though there are alternatives and I've come up with some plans for ways to move around it, it frustrated me. I felt defeated by the whole mess.

This post is hard to write. I'm sure if I had a lot of followers, this post would go viral and people would snicker about that fat woman who breaks work out equipment. It's actually embarrassing to write this and I feel a bit naked in doing so. I gave this a lot of thought and had mostly backed out of even mentioning it.

Why did I change my mind? I think it's for the same reason I blog about the pain I feel as my body is changing due to workouts. When you start losing weight at the size I was, or even at the size I am now, you think the hardest part is going to be sticking to plan. Commitment is hard and by the time you're in your 400-500s, you've started and failed workout programs a lot.

Commitment is only part of the difficulty though. The world just really isn't set up for people as fat as me to lose weight. Equipment is a big problem. Most of it isn't designed to handle people past a certain weight and it will break if you use it. When it breaks, it's very discouraging. And as much as commitment can be hard in this process, feeling like the world is actively discouraging you is even worse.

I'm sure everyone handles this differently. In the past, even I handled it differently. I used to hit walls of discouragement like this and let that end things. It just felt emotionally too difficult to continue. I would break something or someone would say something or the workout would cause too much pain or make me physically ill and I would just stop. And if I'm being really honest here, part of me was always happy when I stopped. I'm not even sure why.

These days, I'm trying a new approach with the discouragement. I give it a couple of days. I let myself be hurt about the situation. Then, I start trying to see if there are ways around it. Sometimes there aren't. Other times, there are. Hell, most of the times there are, it's just a matter of being brave about what you can manage to do with your body.

Even though more and more people are obese now, the world hasn't caught up with this. The world is still designed for people with average body types and that likely isn't going to change. As always, the fat people of the world need to find ways to adapt to this. It can be discouraging and frustrating, but it is what we have to work with. We can let it defeat us . . . or we can let it defeat us for a while, and then move forward with our plans.

Minor Bits of Productivity

Hey! I was productive(ish) today. To begin with, I made an appointment for my next swab. This is assuming they don't do it when I go to Tulsa on the 17th of December. The appointment is in the morning on the day I go to therapy. This should, in theory, may things easier. We'll see. The end of December tends to be a bit unpredictable.

This next point isn't MY productivity, it's my roommate's. For a week or so now, he's been watching these precooked turkey breasts they had for sale in the deli. Today, he caught them on a very good sale and bought a couple. By good sale, I mean less than three dollars. We get turkey for the holidays! Usually, turkey is way out of our budget and we end up with chicken on dressing. It's nice, but having turkey for a change will be pretty great.

I guess my point of being productive was that I bagged the turkey for freezing. I also took a chicken off the bone. It was already cooked, just to be clear. The chicken was also already roasted and also purchased at a very good sale price. It was turned into bbq chicken to be eaten tomorrow when we get back from seeing my best friend's new baby.

The plumber came today. Finally. Like, after a week of us waiting, he finally showed up. He fixed the thing we wanted him to fix last time and didn't charge us for it. I'm pretty happy about that.

The weather and the time change are really making me tired. Or, I don't know, maybe it's just part of the depression I'm in. I have a feeling this depression is going to last for a while, but we've talked about that before. Even despite it though, I had a good day today. I'm glad of that.

Blah and Ashes

I didn't blog last night and I won't blog too much tonight. Things have been stressful and I feel like ash inside. Normally, I am at least creative enough to handle the blog, but even that is gone now. I'm so empty. I just want to be quiet and zone out and not think about things, but even that isn't possible right now.

I know I'll get past this, but right now, I can't.

Maybe tomorrow.

Progress Report

One of the new exercises that I do on Lumosity is about paying attention to details. Basically they have you click on an item and then switch screens, asking you to click on a different item. The screen switching and new items continue until you screw up and hit the same one twice. This gets a bit more complicated because you have to do three rounds of it, meaning not only do you have to remember what items you have clicked on and not clicked on for THIS round, but also for the other rounds as well. I did okayish this first time.

However, even though I didn't do that great on the game, I really liked it. I don't think this is something I've seen  before on the site and it's a new way to look at how to pay attention to details and keep track of things. I know as I grow older, it will be these kinds of mental skills that will begin to fade first. I worry about that (a lot, really) and want to do everything I can to prevent it.

One of the side benefits I've noticed about exercise, mental or physical, is that it allows me to just tune out the world around me for a while. It's nice when my thoughts can just be all about the task at hand, and not distracted by the constant bullshit stress of life. Sometimes the best thing about a walk is the fact that it allows me to clear my head for a bit.

I've always read about this vicious cycle that fat people can get into. They gain weight. They get depressed. The depression makes them not want to move or try to eat healthy......and so they gain more weight and get more depressed. Every time I would read something about this, I would feel more discouraged about the whole thing. It just seemed like there was no way out.

The opposite is true as well though. I'm in this place where sometimes I eat healthy and sometimes I don't. When I don't, I certainly notice my body doesn't feel as well as it does when I do. I've also noticed that on many levels, I feel better after doing exercise.  It improves my level of physical comfort and my mental state. Now, sometimes it exhausts me as well, but that is kind of in conjunction with the rest of it. And those moments of being able to just focus on the task and let the stress go are certainly helping with my emotional and mental health.

Welcome, Frankie

My best friend's baby girl was born on Nov. 3. I suppose that is yesterday, as I'm writing this past midnight. I am overjoyed to welcome her into the world. I'm glad she's here. After all the stuff we've struggled with in 2014, it is good to know that a new person is joining the fold.

I hope Frankie laughs loud. I hope she never apologizes for her own amusements. I hope she walks proudly and rolls her eyes when people try to stop her from doing so. I hope she brushes off taunts and looks at problems as challenges to be overcome. I hope she's good with money, wonderful with friends, and able to let people find joy for themselves without passing judgement. I hope she's strong. I hope people take her seriously. I hope she feels free.

I know she has good parents and a loving support system. I know she has responsible people around her who will make sure she's taken care of. I know she's going to have her ideas treated with dignity. I know her interests will be explored and encouraged. I know she will feel safe and she'll never go to bed hungry. I am so happy for all of this.

Welcome to the world, Frankie. You are loved and adored already. You always will be.

Scorno

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about nerds and geeks and the kind of scorn they face. It's been in the overall Gamergate discussion, but I think it's part of the dialogue that needs to be explored more. That isn't to excuse any of the horrible things that have happened to people in the name of Gamergate, but to point out that there is a lot of pain all around. This article discusses that very well. It talks about the pain of being a social outcast, but still takes the gamers to task for the shit some of them have put other people through.

I am not going to pretend I get this kind of pain for the male perspective, because I'm not one. I empathize, but I won't condescend and say I understand that kind of pain. All I can talk about is my own. I was always a geek girl, but even that was overshadowed by something else.  I've was (am) The Fat Girl, which is its own kind of place of scorn.

The thing about being fat is that you can't hide it. Fat people become easy targets for this reason. We're not viewed as attractive. We're assumed to be lazy. People analyze our behaviors and believe they have us all figured out. The shittiest part of that is realizing that a lot of the times, you even play in to their stereotypes. God, that so sucks. And you stereotype them right back. When a lot of people dish our scorn to you, part of your emotional defense is to stop seeing them as individuals and just to see them as types. You begin to fit people into groups of how they will react to you.

There are the Outright Haters. These are the people who will just scream "FAT BITCH" at you for like ten minutes. And laugh. These are the people who believe you're there for their amusement and resentment. This can get pretty brutal for some fat people. There are some Outright Haters who believe they should fat bash. They will beat up fat people just for being fat. I'm not sure what that is supposed to accomplish. Thankfully, this has never happened to me.

As I have mentioned before, there are the Concern Trolls. These people will constantly bring up your fatness, but in a way that makes it seem like they're trying to help you. They'll talk about diets. They'll talk about your health issues. They'll talk about people they know who have changed their lives for the better by getting rid of the fat. Of course, they're not doing this to really help you. They're doing it because they like to make people VERY AWARE of their flaws.

As annoying (and sometimes dangerous) as these first two groups can be, I think the most difficult group to deal with when you're fat are the Charitable Angels. These are the people who will be nice to you and include you in things, but make sure to let you are always aware of the fact that they are doing you a favor. They don't HAVE to be nice to your fatass self, but they will be, and you should be damned grateful for it. You're an undesirable, after all. And they are being so nice by including you. This kind of person never really tries to get to know you as a person. They will always see you as the Token, the misfit they included just to appear inclusive.

Now, I not saying these are the only people I've ever met in my life. I have some very amazing friends who see me as me and accept me for who I am, flaws and all. I love the hell out of them for that.  And I'm a grown up now and realize that as much as those three groups can get on my nerves and have done some damage to me, anyone who is the Other faces these people from time to time. And any of us can slip into these groups if we're not being self aware.

I think it's very easy to form opinions about people who are different than us. Hell, look at what I even did with this post! I have all kinds of opinions about the people in these groups, and some of those opinions are less than nice. I think we need to remember that we're not entitled to give everyone our opinions of them though. Sometimes it's best to just keep things to ourselves. Even if we don't like someone or approve of what they do, they still deserve dignity. If we take away their dignity, that's saying a lot more about us than it is about them.

A Few Yay Things

What makes me most happy tonight? The glorious start of Fall Back!  We get our blessed hour returned to us and I get to sleep in longer! So much sleeping will be had! I've been looking forward to this for so long. It just pleases me to no end. Yaaaay!

So November is here. My roommate and I raided the store for cheap candy!  This is another thing that makes life worth it. We'll be happily sugar high for the rest of the weekend. Yaaaay!

Tomorrow is my best friend's last day of work for a while. She is about to have her second child. This pregnancy has been one of the things that kept me going during the darker days of cancer. I'm glad I'll get to see the baby soon. Yay!

Why am I celebrating? Because I've been depressed for days and days and days!  So yes, I'm going to speak of the things that are making me happy. I'm going to bask in a few hours where I feel safe and protected and OKAY with the world. It seems that is so rare anymore. I need to do what I can to really enjoy it.