Quodlibets

Something I don't understand

Americans.  Americans who vote for the president of the US based on what kind of lettuce he/she likes.  I'm exaggerating, of course, but we see it every single damn election:   the question of who is more like "the common man". 

Who cares?  Why does the president need to be the common man?  If you averaged out Americans, I'm guessing he or she would be a pretty unspectacular person, and frankly, by my thinking, America needs a spectacular person to be president.  (To be clear, I'm not excluding any current candidate from this designation, because as should be clear to all of us at this point, none of the three major candidates are anything like the "common man", which is just fine by me.  I don't care what kind of lettuce they like, if they prefer OJ to coffee, or what kind of damn food they ate while they were in Chicago.  In fact, I don't care about their preferences at all until they start to infringe upon their ability to govern, which arugula?  Does not.)  It's some sort of blind spot millions of Americans have, the can-I-drink-a-beer-with-him blind spot, the very one that elected George Bush. 

How about this, America?  You're NEVER going to have a beer with the president of this country.  So stop pretending it's a good criteria for electing such person.  You'll never eat a salad with the pres, or drink coffee with the pres (unless they're campaigning and shamelessly courting your vote), or sit around watching a ballgame with the pres.  Your relationship to the president shouldn't be about whether you want to be friends with the person, but whether this person is going to run this country in such a way that you will not have to worry about food or famine, war or peace, etc.  This person we elect should be INTELLIGENT, like your doctor.  Do you want a bubba doing surgery on you?  Then how about let's not let a bubba do surgery on the country. 

After all, look where it's gotten us.

My face, my face

I'm not dead.  I wasn't blogging because Sam was out of town, and I was afraid that a) I would run on and on about how weird it was or how lonely I was (which I actually wasn't incredibly lonely; not to say I didn't miss him, because I did, dreadfully) or b) I'd be broadcasting my aloneness, those opening up an opportunity for the rapist to come get me.  (Yes, THE rapist.)  So I abstained.  I haven't forgotten about the Monday cross stitch updates, but I hadn't been sewing much, so I just wasn't posting.  I will probably post an update tomorrow, as I did end up sewing a ton while Sam was gone, and the progress is crazy and scary all at the same time.

Also, I did have other things I could post about, such as the harm a wax did to my face.  It's really quite awful.  I went to a new waxer (my sister's), which was exciting because it's more convenient (being in the city and all).  Unfortunately, this person, while nice, seemed to have no clue how to handle skin with a condition such as mine, and so I ended up with a really, really nasty looking few areas of skin.  It's bumpy, and it was red for two days.  I must add that the bumps are very different from the bumps I was getting from the waxing before.  They're more tenacious, they're not soft, and they just look....bad.  So after this miserable experience (and let me say, if you saw me walking down Lincoln on Friday evening and were scared, I'm very, very sorry.  I scared myself when I got home.)  I've sort of decided that if I can't be waxed anymore.  I'm going to talk to my original waxer, the person who's been doing my face for probably....six years.  At least.  And I'm going to see if we can't work something out for my upper lip (tining it nonexistent, hopefully), and if she might agree to periodically pluck my brows.  I know that sounds silly, because I can of course pluck my own brows (and do, periodically), but the thing I can't seem to do is keep them shaped correctly if I'm just plucking on my own.  So I think if she plucked them every 8 weeks, I could keep them neat in between pluckings.  So I'm going to see what the deal is. 

Frankly, if you're wondering just how bad my face could be, let me tell you that I wore make-up to work yesterday.  Uh, yeah.  I haven't worn make-up to work once in the two and a half years I've been here, and my face was so yucky yesterday that I had to.  I'm not today, but it's merely a time thing, and not a lack of necessity on the part of my face.  The area underneath my left nostril is still disgusting.  (It sort of looks like I've got toxic snot running down my face and hurting my skin.  It's awful.) 

Lots of other stuff happened while Sam was gone, but it's not necessarily stuff I want to talk about in any great depth.  (No, that's just my face.)  And now Sam is home, and things are back to a delightful state of equilibrium. 

Questions for the esteemed Senator from New York

• May we please see your tax returns?
• Do you intend to destroy the Party, or is that just a by-product of your all-consuming need for power?
• Do you feel guilty at all about this?
• Are you trying to destroy his career or yours?
• Are you really comfortable stealing the votes to get the nomination? 
• And if so, how does that make you any different from GWB?
• Do you consider yourself a feminist?
• How can you denigrate a man in one breath and say he'd be a great veep in the next?
• Furthermore, how can you insult him by acting as if you're the front-runner?
• Have you no shame?  No, really.  Is there anything human left inside you?
• What will it take for you to just let it go?
• Are you not slightly worried about how intensely you've alienated very many Barack Obama supporters who then might not vote for you if you somehow got the nom?
• Also, how dare you say that John McCain is better than Obama?  Don't you think that crossed a line?
• Are you really that selfish?
• What other dirty tricks will you pull out of your bag before Pennsylvania?

In bad taste

I know it's ridiculous to complain about the weather in Chicago, because um, yeah, it's Chicago.

But fucking hell, one more commute in the snow and I might end up in an institution for a nervous breakdown.  This is getting slightly insane, the snow and the commute.  I've never felt so beat down about this commute.  Even podcasts and audiobooks aren't helping now.

Is it true that this is the snowiest winter since 78-79?  If so, it's definitely the snowiest winter I've ever seen, as I've seen pictures of my mother standing pregnant in front of a lot of snow, and that pregnancy turned out to be me.  So unless you think I saw the snow while in utero, this is it, and this sucks.  I wish I could urge my entire (read: extended) family to move en masse to somewhere with slighty more temperate weather.  Until that happens, I guess I need to calm down (read: play games and eat things) and prepare myself for what might be another hellish commute tomorrow morning. 

/rant

Fattie Fatster

I've been reading a lot of the "fat" blogs lately--Shapely Prose, Pound(y), Big Fat Deal, etc--and what I cannot get over is how fucked up we are about this.  I certainly knew that I was fucked up about food and eating and dieting, but I really am astonished anew each time I realize that holy shit, most of us are, I'm not alone.  It may seem evident to you people out there, but I have a really hard time realizing that I am not alone in this epic body image/eating/dieting/working out struggle.  I shouldn't, because like any other group of women, my mom, my sister and I have all played this game.  But somehow their relationship to their own bodies has nothing to do with my own; and of course, I'm wrong, because it does. 

The fact of the matter is, I'm only recently beginning to throw aside all the guilt and rage and powerlessness that comes with feeling like an outcast, feeling like someone whose body isn't right, and I'm probably in an insufferable stage where I want everyone to feel like me.  And everyone doesn't.  In one of the comments at Big Fat Deal, somebody said something along the lines of:  "Oh, yeah, diets are wrong.  But there's nothing wrong with working out a lot and not eating everything you want to eat so that you can be healthier and look a little better."  My eyes almost popped out of my head and I wanted to scream.  Because hello?  That is a diet, and that isn't any healthier than what I'm doing. 

Feeling like that?  Like you want to eat things and you can't--that's disordered.  It's not natural for human beings to watch every single thing they put in their mouth, whether they want to believe that or not.  I do believe that when you start to stop thinking so damn much, you start to normalize your own diet where it needs to be.  I've said it before and I'll say it again:  some days you want brussels sprouts (and I have some in my freezer right now) and vinegared rice, and some days you want cheesy gooey pizza and a big plate of french fries.  Any sort of disordered eating that once held me in its grips is loosening up, because I never have to worry that I'm doing something bad.  I can literally eat what I want, when I want it.  And I'm telling you, I almost NEVER eat so much that I feel uncomfortable anymore.  I used to do it all the time when eating out, and every once in a while at a very expensive restaurant I stuff it in because it's so special and I feel like I have to, but I almost NEVER kill myself with food anymore.  It's an intense and heady thing.  I can tell you without hesitation that I used to do it all the time because I used to feel like I had to--because I knew if I was eating at home it would be Lean Cuisines and egg whites. 

And I'll tell you something else about eating.  I've been eating a bagel for breakfast every morning--I toast it and cream cheese it at home, and then port it to work--and I'm not hungry by 10 anymore.  In fact, I find that hunger isn't as big an issue in my life, ever.  I still get insanely hungry when I probably shouldn't, but because what I'm eating is more satisfying, I don't feel crippled by hunger.  It's heady stuff.

I will start bike riding again in the spring (when I won't freeze my fingers and toes off, and when I won't kill myself on icy, snowy paths), and if that brings about some weight loss, ok.  And if not, ok.  I'm not going to fixate on that stuff anymore.  I know that if I worked at a place that had a gym that was close to home (and wouldn't force a miserable commute on me; this is a choice I've made for myself.  I feel my quality of life will go down if I stay after work to work out, because I'll be so miserable from the commute.  And I can't afford to pay for a gym in the city; nor do I want to.), I'd start working out again in a heartbeat.  I do enjoy the elliptical, and feeling the adrenaline from a workout.  But I'm not beating myself up about it anymore, and I feel okay.  Some days are harder than others.  Some days I can't remember to stop hating my body.  But more and more, I can just shrug and sigh and it's okay. 

I want this for the people I love.  I want them to love themselves as much as I love them.  In fact, I imagine their wish for me is the same damn thing.  I hope the people who love me don't want me to starve and sweat myself down to a what, size 14?  That's about as low as I think I could go.  I was in a size 14 in high school, for god's sake.  Is being a size 14 really so much better than where I am now?  I just can't imagine them wanting me to torture myself to look a little bit skinnier.  And I certainly don't want that for them.  I support the decisions they make regarding their bodies, but I also don't want them to be disordered.  I don't want them to eat every bite thinking about guilt.  Or not eat every bite thinking about guilt.  It's no way to live.

And then there are those strangers who feel they should have a say in how I look.  They're f-ing everywhere; all you have to do is find a blog that talks about fat in a candid, serious, accepting way and there'll be people saying things like, "Lay off the ice cream, fattie." or "Get off your fat ass and walk somewhere, fattie."  It's shameful, but it obviously doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if we're disordered, it's coming from somewhere.  My life will be so different because I'm not a size 6, and I'm aware.  I'm aware that if I order dessert in a restaurant I might get looked at funny.  I'm aware that people might look at me with pity as I huff and puff away on my bike.  But I. DON'T. CARE. ANYMORE.  That is a problem for those people, those people who think that the size of your thighs is directly proportionate to how many servings of vegetables you eat in a day.  Again, that prejudice?  That's THEIR problem, not my own.  I can't change them, and I shouldn't have to.  (And I'm just going to say this once:  all those people who think fat people don't have the SECKS are insane, because everywhere I look, there's fat people in relationships.  With people who might just want to do THAT with them.  And believe you me, there are a lot of mean words said on the internets about fat people and the SECKS, such as:  "EWWW, fat people are gross and noone wants to sleep with them?"  It drives me up the wall, and it really exposes the selfish myopia of persons who don't care to sleep with a fat person.  That's quite alright, sirs, but perhaps you can understand that everyone is not you.)   

That was a tangent.  I can't remember now where I was going after that point.  Suffice it to say that reading all this fat blogging has me feeling both exhilarated and exhausted, and it's really been interesting.  It's really been a boon for my own train of thought about the issue.  Perhaps you don't think about these issues very much.  Maybe you  just don't care.  That's fine.  You don't have to.  Congratulations for being less disordered than the rest of us.  But I don't think this is something that the rest of us should stop thinking about.  I know I won't.  These sorts of rants may crop up from time to time, as it comes to a head within me.  Bear with me.

Rumble

Me and Mother Nature?  IN. A. FIGHT.

If she could just stop with the rush hour snowing THAT'D BE SUPER GREAT.  Thanks.

O, l'amour

I didn't mention my one year anniversary with the car because it passed and I sort of forgot and it didn't seem to bear mentioning.

However, GRRRRR, now it does, only because my car and I?  We're in a fight.

Almost exactly one year to the day after I bought it, it's having problems.  Brake problems.  That isn't as ominous as it sounds, really.  The car just can't seem to understand that when I'm in park, and I put the brake down, it means I would really like to shift the car.  That second.  I just sat in front of the post office for 20 minutes trying (and failing) to shift the car out of park.  I called my local dealership immediately, and when I finally did get it out of park, I drove it straight there.  And thank GOD I have a warranty.  Thank you, car dealer, thank you, for giving me a great deal on that 100,000 mile, bumper-to-bumper godsend.

I'm back at work now (thank god for dealership shuttles!), but my car isn't, and that's worrisome.  I do need to get home tonight.  Not only that, but I do need to get home in a timely manner, as Sam and I have reservations at a very nice (very treat-y!) restaurant.  If that means I have to drive my defective car, okay.  If it's a rental, oh f-ing well.  I need a car.

I'll say this for BMW--if you needed a car, BMW made sure you had one.  Not quite so perfect at Honda.  Sigh.  What an awful way to start out the day.

Update (1:00 pm):  Yay!  Car is done.  Some part was broken/bad, but they had the part in stock (which is great, since according to most Honda dealers, they don't keep a huge stash of Hybrid parts laying around), and it's almost done being replaced.  It's a load off my mind, that's for sure.  And one of my very nice co-workers is going to give me a ride over after work, so I don't even have to depend on the shuttle.  This worked out well; the work is all covered by the warranty, too, so that's even nicer.  A bad start, yes.  But cross your fingers and let us all hope that it ends a LOT nicer with a nice dinner out.

Expletive Expletive Expletive

If it's at all possible, I've regressed with the present wrapping.  Out of 2 attempts on one box, I failed twice.  Yes, both times I had to rip the paper off (expensive, gorgeous paper) and discard it.  The box in question is now sitting unwrapped on the dining room table along with two of its cohorts, and I'm seriously considering writing the recipient's name on the damn box in colored sharpie.  I'm that exasperated.  Especially because in between those two failures, Sam thought he could fix my wrapping idiocy (it turns out he can't) and that one other wrapping attempt failed.  I did salvage the paper that time, and turn it into some nice wrapping for the only kind of present I can wrap.  A CD.  (I take that back.  I'm also quite lovely at wrapping DVDs, as long as they're not a box set.)

For years now, it's been a joke that I can't wrap a present, but the sad truth of it is this:  give me a box to wrap, and I'm sadly, utterly unable to do so.  No matter that more than one person has tried to teach me.  No matter that I'm a fairly intelligent woman with all kinds of skill sets.  It's just that apparently none of them extend to the wrapping.  Next year, I swear to god, I am just buying bags.  Tons of bags.  I mean, it's just worse than ever this year, and it's given me a headache and made me cry, and that's enough.  I'm done.

Obviously, I'm not, because there is still a PILE of unwrapped presents (including the aforementioned three boxes) and a dauntingly large number of large boxes.  (At least three, which for me, is daunting.)  If that's not bad enough, tomorrow my sister is bringing over a load of other things to wrap, and I swear I'm wrapping them candy-style.  Enough with the tape and shit.  Even worse, I don't think Sam really wants to wrap presents either, and man, they need to get done.  He's at least middlingly competent at it, whereas I truly scrape the bottom of the wrapping barrel for my skills.  He's going to have to do at least one of my bigger items (not one of the three aforementioned big boxes, sadly), but right now, we're not exactly speaking after the last box fiasco.  The second time I ripped the paper off a box with it 75% finished.  That didn't leave us in happy straits.  We're strained right now, and over what?  Present-goddamn-wrapping.

I don't want to even think about how the hell I'm going to wrap his presents.  It's going to be awful. 

Sharpie, here I come.  Sigh.

Politics Schmolitics

On Tuesday, my sister asked me about my feelings about the Iowa poll, and Obama.  And who I was going to vote for.  I put her off, essentially saying that I had no idea what the latest Iowa poll results were (I really didn't have any idea), and that I was still basically unsure of who I was voting for (I really don't know yet).  I told her that I wasn't ready to think and talk about politics, because it was too much.  And that's all true, though when Sam's dad asked me about the same damn thing (starting out the same damn way--poll results) on Tuesday night, I went into a little more depth.  Kate had gotten me thinking about it (*shakes fist at sister*), and now I had slightly more to say.

So I'm going to say this once here, and then I'm staying away from politics with a 10-foot pole, until I don't know, after the primaries.  And then I'll shut up about it until, I don't know, October.

I'm for John Edwards.  The things he is saying, they make sense to me.  I don't know how else to express that except the way I just did.  I can't really go into specifics because it isn't specific.  I'm sure there are things he has said and will say that I disagree with.  It's just that right now, I like him the best.  I'm still not sure if I'm going to vote for him.  That sounds silly, but I really am not hopeful about a Clinton nomination or presidency, and so if it has to be anyone else besides Edwards, it's going to have to be Obama.  There's no way around it; the people I actually agree with most of all pretty much have no chance (even though he's crazy, most of Mike Gravel's actual positions line up with mine; even though he's nutso, Kucinich is also pretty closely aligned with my positions).  Let me amend that: there's no way in hell either or those guys is going to win.  For that matter, I don't know that I believe Edwards has a true shot, though ironically, I believe he might have the best shot of winning the general election against a candidate such as Romney or Huckabee.  Historically, a white southern man of protestant faith is a good bet.  However, setting aside Edwards for a minute, the race probably comes down to Clinton v. Obama, and in that case, I'm 100% for the latter.

Now, my sister keeps saying that if I vote my conscience (Edwards) and Clinton wins the nod, won't that suck a lot?  Well, yes, it will.  However, something is mitigated for me by knowing that Obama might be a walk in IL.  I mean, this is his state, is it not?  I will have no issue with voting for Obama in the general election.  It will be a pleasure to do so.  But I'd rather have Edwards in that race, and so I think I must vote my conscience.

The worst thing about all of this is that it might make no difference.  Maybe Huckabee or Giuliani or Romney (though probably not the last one) will win the general election no matter what.  People seem to be unable to vote for someone who says uncomfortable things about the state of affairs.  People don't seem to want to hear about the huge debt the Bush and Co. White House have rung up, or the sad state of the poor in this country.  People smell one whiff of mandatory health care and they get all het up about freedom and choice, and then elect someone who's eroding freedom by the minute.  I'm not saying I've got the answers, or that Edwards or Obama do, but I have enough hope that they'll not be a slave to the system.  I don't have any hope that Clinton will be able to that.

Anyway, it's now 30 min later, and I can't remember what the hell I was banging on about, so this'll have to be the rather abrupt end to this post.  Don't know about the poll results, don't know who I'm voting for.  QED.

The wait commences

This entire entry is going behind the wall, so to speak, because I want to talk about these books I just finished, and I'm almost 100% certain my sister will want to read them too, and I just can't spoil them for her.  But I'm DYING to talk about them.  I don't know how interesting this will be to many of you, (probably not caring about vampires and romance and YA novels and stuff), but I'm going to write about it anyway because nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah, it's my blog.  If you're interested at all, click through.  Katie, don't you dare.  You don't want them spoiled, I promise you.  You'll just have to read them FAST so we can discuss them.  (Also, don't read this if you're anywhere in the middle of Kim Harrison's Rachel Morgan series.)