Quodlibets

Callie Romano-Miller

Sam and I got a dog. He's wanted one for a good long time, but I've held out. I have my reasons. They're expensive for one. I mean, what if you get a dog that eats sweater sleeves and then needs massive surgery to remove the blockage? And who's going to walk the dog at 5:40 am? (Me, it turns out.) Who'll walk the dog late at night? (Him, I guess.)

But something broke in me after two short encounters with dogs; I realized that I really missed having an animal in my life. I would have been perfectly happy with a cat, but a cat wasn't going to do it for Sam. He's only super-allergic, after all. I did point out that he could easily obtain allergy shots, as we have health insurance. He wasn't too keen on that idea. Even without the allergies, he doesn't have an affinity for cats. (He's never known a cat, like he has dogs. He just needs to have one, and I think he'll be convinced. I love cats.)

To be honest, though, I wanted DirectTV. I really want that stupid NFL channel. (Though I'm having trouble with football right now, to tell you the truth. That's another post, I suppose. But I'm waffling on whether I can continue to be a football consumer. Sigh.) And the other ESPNs would be nice. ESPN2 and U are the only ones we get, and ESPNU can go f$%^ itself. We used to get ESPN Classic, which showed awesome old Bulls games from the Jordan era, and awesome old football games, but someone in our building complained that they were missing out on college sports and bam! ESPN Classic is gone. Sigh.

We went to PAWS Chicago, though. I knew if we went, we'd probably come home with a dog. We didn't come home with the dog we thought we wanted, but that dog turned out to be a mild nightmare. Biting and being mean to kids and other dogs and that was going to be too much for us. The dog that ended up being our Callie was in a room with two little white puffball dogs, and she was calm and mannerly and she let me pick her up immediately. (She's not too keen on being slung around, actually. Especially when something EXCITING is going on OWNERS please put me down please please please.) She didn't (and still doesn't really) bark. She pulled at the leash (and how!), but oh my, was she cute.

So we brought her home. It's been good. Mostly. (That whole sweater thing is an incident she'll never live down. To be fair, she did BARF it all UP and not require surgery, so good dog? I suppose.) I like her. I like her warm solid presence at my side, and I like her overexcited displays of love when I come home from work.

I wonder sometimes, still, if she knows she's at home now. She's never going to leave, and we're never going to leave her. In her short life (she's three), she's already known three homes including ours. She took to living with us immediately. But I wonder how much her little doggy brain can comprehend time (not at all, according to most experts), and if it can't, is it just one day at a time for her? Is she always a day away from being abandoned? I want her to know. I want her to know that she's staying, dammit.

Things we do in the kitchen

This isn't a food blog, and I don't necessarily plan to turn it into one. But Sam and I are in a really good groove right now when it comes to cooking meals for ourselves, so I thought I'd share some of our successes and what works for us. And some recipes!

First of all, though I'm a capable cook, Sam is not. I don't mean to say he won't be, but he's certainly a beginner. Before he lost his job a year ago, he only cooked a few things, and one of them was pasta. The other was grilled meat. He couldn't even scramble eggs. But because he's home so much more than I am now, he's taken on more of the cooking. (I don't know if he likes that this is the case, but I pretty much insisted on it.) So many of the things we eat are simple simple simple for the beginner to make! And quick and easy on the nights when the better cook is in the kitchen.

We also have a fairly extensive list of things we always have in the house. It's remarkable how much you can make with this stuff. I think everyone will have their own staples, because some of the things we keep in the house aren't for everyone, and people like different spices and so on. I didn't take this list from somewhere; over time, as we've economized (unemployment and all), we've learned what works for us and what doesn't.

Things we always have:

• bagels (we each eat one for breakfast daily)
• cream cheese (for the above bagels)
• eggs
• bacon
• shallots
• heads of garlic
• 28 oz canned crushed tomatoes
• fats; butter and oil (preferably olive oil and canola)
• dry pasta (always rigatoni, sometimes bucatini)
• parmesan cheese
• white rice
• milk
• peanut butter & jelly
• condiments: soy sauce, ketchup, mustard, mayo, vinegars (more than one, always red wine, white wine and cidar),
• a stocked spice cabinet
• brown and white sugar, flour, basic baking supplies

So in addition to those items, which we restock immediately if we use up, we also have a list of items that we *usually* have but not always:

• frozen tortellini (Costco! We buy the refridgerated stuff, and freeze it. Only frozen torts I really like; many have nutmeg--puke!)
• wheat bread
• an onion or two
• sour cream
• frozen peas
• heavy cream
• chicken or beef broth
• cheddar cheese (shredded or not)
• limes
• take and bake rolls
• French (fancy!) butter

With those two lists, you can make a number of pretty tasty meals, when you add in a protein. We buy boneless skinless chicken breasts almost every week, and they always always get used. Heck, you don't even need to add a protein to have a good meal from those lists.

We do have, obviously, some standard meals. Pasta is our most successful, and I've shared this recipe on FB before, but it's so good I'm going to share it again. This is mostly invented, taking techniques from different places, and it's eminently tweakable. Basically, you saute a shallot (diced) in some oil (usually olive oil) until it gets soft. Then you add a clove of crushed garlic and saute for a minute more. Dump in a can of crushed tomatoes, and let cook while you boil pasta. Three minutes before you're done, add a dollop of heavy cream to the sauce. Serve when hot. That's it. There are no quantities because I don't measure anything. Here are some variations we've done: use onion instead of shallot, cut into rings; saute a couple chopped slices of bacon first, and drain, then cook the shallot in bacon fat instead of olive oil; leave out the cream and add milk; leave out the cream; add red pepper flakes with the garlic. You could do anything with spicing that you wanted. You could use other meats. It's very adaptable. And it makes a lot of food. We freeze half, and then we've got a meal for the next week.

Another fallback for us is fried rice. You don't need meat to make it; egg fried rice is tasty by itself. But we like mostly to throw leftover pork of some kind in, or ham and pineapple. You do need day-old cooked rice, so there is a bit of pre-planning needed. Basic recipe: put a LOT of oil in a very large skillet or saute pan. Very large, because you're going to be putting a lot of rice in it. Anyway, put more oil in than you think you need. Scramble four eggs, and when the pan and oil is screaming hot dump the eggs in. (You can salt and pepper the eggs if you like.) Oil will hopefully come up over the edges of the egg. The egg is going to start getting puffy. I can't describe it any other way, but you'll see. When the egg looks mostly cooked (and puffy), and only has a little bit of wet egg in the middle, throw the rice in, along with any meat you're using. Also, any hearty veg can go in at this point. Nothing delicate. Stir. Stir! Rice will sizzle and cook, and when it seems hot, and the meat seems hot (use only pre-cooked meat for this, btw) start adding soy sauce. A good bit. You know how fried rice looks in restaurants? You're going for that dark a color, but you need soy sauce. If you're nervous, add less and taste, add some more, taste, etc. You'll get to a point you like eventually. Stir some more; add some green onions if you like. Done. Eat.

So this is going on and on, but there are other things we do: marinate chicken and grill it, putting it into fresh tortillas with lime and avocado, use Rick Bayless pouched sauces, make ground pork chili, eat bucatini carbonara, try new recipes....we're in the kitchen almost every night. But I'm not going to lie; we go through periods where we dont want to cook, where we end up going through drive-thrus or eating cereal. We don't see that as failing, though. We're just doing the best we can. More recipes later in the week?

 

A false dichotomy of eating

Posts like this: Programmed to Eat make me WANT TO SREAM. I would have left a comment at this person's blog, but all the log-in procedures made it onerous to do so. So here is what I would have said:

There's nothing wrong with eating to fulfill pleasure centers of your brain, and as long as you think there is, you perpetuate the idea that there are two kinds of eating: bad and good.
Eating and food are neutral. There's no moral component to either thing. Demonizing food makes eating it when you're not hungry an even more desirable activity (thus setting up the systems by which our brains can get into a shame spiral about eating a donut or some cookies).
When you consider yourself virtuous because you didn't eat anything at Assembly Hall, you've thus set up a false dichotomy that won't do you any good; next time you do eat something there, you'll beat yourself up for succumbing to the bad. You're also, by extension, saying that anyone who is thin is virtuous and anyone who is fat is sinful and bad.
See anything wrong with this picture?

I don't think his initial point is that bad. The idea that we're programmed to eat at certain time is true. We're programmed to eat a big turkey dinner on Thanksgiving, after all, even if we don't want turkey (and I don't! I hate turkey.). I feel programmed to eat at breakfast, lunch and dinner, because if I don't, I feel both a physical hunger and a brain-based hunger. I like eating at those times. It's pleasurable for my body, and also fills my stomach comfortably.

Where he goes off the rails for me is when he says, essentially, that this is BAD. This programmed eating is inherently and always bad, and if we can exercise some self-control, we are good people who will no longer be obese! He might not say it explicitly, but it's pretty clear that he believes quite strongly that thinny thin thinsters are good good good people with buckets of self-control, who only eat ever when they're stomach hungry which makes them ever so virtuous and good, and fat fat fatties are people with no self-control whatsoever who *gasp* eat at cultural events because they're bad bad bad and full of hunger sin.

Obviously, my pretend comment makes it pretty clear that I think setting up a dichotomy between real (read stomach) hunger and other kinds of hunger is a Very Bad Idea. I believe quite strongly that no matter where your hunger comes from (a need for comfort, a desire to experience some pleasure, a way to connect with friends, or yes, your stomach, to name a few places) it should be honored. Ignoring hungers doesn't make you more virtuous. It makes you more hungry.

We've entrapped ourselves in a world where everything we put in our mouths has some value attached to it: it's bad or good, healthful or unhealthful, sinful or not, virtuous or not. But what if it's just a cookie? What if it's just a piece of celery slathered in cream cheese? What if it's just two or four or ten slices of pizza? What if we stop with this dichotomy and just allow ourselves to eat? Full stop. Forget about hungry or not. Forget about healthful or not. Eat when you want to eat, what you want to eat. Wouldn't that be better for all of us? If we could authentically eat like this, I'm convinced the world would be a better place.

A girl can dream, can't she?

Fat Imperative

I'm not sure I can control the hate I feel for "The Biggest Loser". I know bad TV gets made every day; I only get 50-some channels, so I'm guessing I don't even see half the crap that gets made.

But "The Biggest Loser" is a problem for me because on national TV, it's putting out the message that every fat person can be thin, if they just work hard enough. Work out for 3 hours a day! Weigh everything you eat! Spend hours thinking about your body and how you can make it better! Do it, fatties! Because then you can WIN. BY BEING THIN.

In some ways, I think the message for fat people is getting more insidious with every year we wage this stupid 'War on Obesity'. Because I think people might be starting to get the point that it's not as easy as 30 min of exercise and a 'healthy diet' for everyone. But instead of something clicking in these peoples' heads, and instead of them realizing that thin might not be a worthy goal, they've double down and instead said: "Welp, if you're fat, you need to be thin. Ergo, you need to work out three hours a day. How can you not want to be thin, and thus want this for yourself? Forget a life; your life should be devoted to being thin."  And I'm pretty sure that "The Biggest Loser" is playing to this audience like a love letter to thinness.

I don't know if anyone who's reading this saw the NY Times article about keeping it off (an article that made me sad for so many reasons), but it's worth looking at. The accompanying slideshow profiles a couple who have mostly kept if off (okay, mostly is relative; the woman had gained back 30 lbs) by obsessively (hear me: OBSESSIVELY) keeping track of food and exercise. No days off. Exercising for 2 hours a day, weighing all the food they eat, keeping written AND digital food journals. Stepping on the scale EVERY DAY, even on vacations. They're retired, so basically they've devoted their lives to thin. And the woman STILL gained back 30 lbs.

I was telling someone I know about this story. When she heard the details of the story from me, her response wasn't "Well, that isn't worth it" or "holy crap, that's not right". Her response was: "They must be doing it wrong. They need to see a nutritionist." Honestly, I can't believe those were the sentences that came out of her mouth. I was stunned. It seems self-evident to me that no one, point blank, should have to give over so much of their lives so that their bodies look a certain way. I don't WANT to work out three hours a day. And I don't think that makes me a bad person. I'm not suggesting, by the way, that this lady I was talking to DOES want to work out three hours a day. I'm sure she doesn't.

But I suspect that she might have been thinking that if she were a good person, she would want to work out three hours a day, so she could be thin. And I guess that's what I'm trying to say: shows like "The Biggest Loser", and stories like that one in the NY Times are saying that it's IMPERATIVE for a fat person to make the effort! And the effort isn't just 30 min of exercise anymore, or moderated eating. It's three hours of hard work (preferably with an attractive thin yelling at you) and weighed food, where dessert is a punishment and can make you lose at the game of life.

I don't want that life. I don't. And I don't think you can turn your nose up at me for turning that life down. I'm worried, though, that "The Biggest Loser" might be teaching you to.

Favorite books of 2011

Since my reading year is askew, I'm never quite sure how to write up my favorite books of the year. The weird compromise I've created is to do a reading year wrap-up, and then to also make a list of my favorite books written in any given year. I mostly read new(ish) books anyway, so even though I'm leaving out some older books I really enjoyed, this makes the most sense to me. Which I guess is important. This list is in no particular order, EXCEPT for the first book, which was far and away my absolute favorite book of the year.

1. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Oh. My. Fucking. God. I loved this book like crazy. The first read-through went so quickly and so easily that I had to read it again, later, because I was afraid I'd missed things. Looking back, I don't think I really did. But it was so worth reading again (and I suspect again and again and again) that I'm going to buy it.
2. Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones. Good book. The ending, though, I thought, was masterful. I have the last line of the book taped over my desk, and I read it every single day. Love it. Love that last line.
3. Alice Bliss by Laura Harrington. I've created a minor Alice Bliss cult here at work. I can't remember WHY I picked up this book, because I haven't seen it in the press anywhere.  But it's wonderful and sweet and sad and overwhelming, all at once. It's a coming-of-age story, done really well. Really beautifully.
4. Among Others by Jo Walton. I love Jo Walton's books. (Incidentally, one of my favorite older books this year was by her.) This is no exception. Magical.
5. Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. I know some people have called this book "Twilight" for adults. I guess I don't agree with that, since it's on this list. I found it...slow at parts, but ultimately, completely compelling. I'm eagerly awaiting the next book in the series. (Technically, I'm thinking I found this book compelling because I really BELIEVED in the world Harkness created.)
6. Remembrance of Things I Forgot by Bob Smith. Weird book. Weird weird book. But I loved it! Time travel! Evil George Bush and Dick Cheney! Gay men! See, doesn't that sound weird?
7. Bossypants by Tina Fey. I had a really hard time coming up with non-fiction books that I loved enough to put on this list. Really. It's not that I didn't really enjoy some of the non-fiction I've read this year, but nothing seemed memorable enough to say it was one of my favorite books of the year. Tina Fey is funny and sweet, and her book was solid and funny.
8. After the Golden Age by Carrie Vaughn. I like Vaughn's Kitty books. But I loooooved this book. Again with the world-building! But seriously, this book is done so damn well. Superheroes. Children of superheroes. A lovely love story, to boot. What's not to like?
9. The Heart Specialist by Claire Holden Rothman. Another sleeper pick. Based on a real life, and utterly heartbreaking and compelling.  I don't read a ton of historical fiction, because I often find it sleepy and uninteresting. And this book did build slowly to something wonderful. Sometimes it felt very slow. But I ended up really liking it.
10. Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff. I've been back and forth all morning about whether or not to include this book. Ultimately, it's on this list because I REMEMBER it. I think others will say Unbroken is the better book (and Unbroken didn't come out in 2011, btw), and maybe it is technically more skilled. Hillenbrand's book isn't as memorable as this one, though. I don't know if it's because her book was about one man, and this book is about a group of people including women, or if it's the element of the Pacific islanders that makes it memorable, but whatever it was, it was.

So here it is. Clearly, I didn't read every book from 2011. I'm still reading books that came out in 2011 (and will probably do so for a couple more months, until I can get my hands on 2012's big books), and actually, I debated putting the book I'm reading now on this list, because I'm loving it. The book is called "How to Live" and it's by Sarah Bakewell. It's about Montaigne, and it's so wonderful. I can't think of another book about such an...odd subject that has captivated me so fully. It helps that I read and liked Montaigne in college. Highly recommended, along with the other ten books above.

Reading Year List

Here it is, in all its glory.  I'll talk more about what I loved this year at the end of the year, when I make a "best of" list.  (Title followed by author's last name.)

Bergamot and Vetiver, Run through my head and fall away

I stole "Out of Time" from my dad.  I must've had a habit of doing such things, because later, I stole "Under the Table and Dreaming" and like REM, DMB became one of my favorite bands.  I imagine my dad bought such albums because he heard a single on the radio and liked it--probably XRT--and decided to experiment.  I don't know when I, his daughter, came along and stole the albums.  I just know that I did. 

With REM, it wasn't so much an album or two (because I, like lots of other teenagers, bought "Automatic for the People" and then "Monster" and passionately loved those albums), but because of a concert.  In June 1995, my parents took my sister and I to see REM on the Monster tour.  The show was at the Rosemont Horizon, and as you can probably imagine, the sound was terrible.  It didn't matter.  I was captivated.  I didn't know any of the older REM songs, but I wanted to.  When Michael Stipe sang "Fall on Me" I decided that after my trig/pre-calc final, I'd go to the mall and buy every REM CD I could get my hands on.  Maybe I even did that.  I don't know.  I do know that I did acquire all the CDs, and I fell headlong into a love affair with REM.

At various points since 1995, in these last sixteen years (which, holy god, has it really been?), I've loved some albums more than others, and have given these different albums as my favorite: Life's Rich Pageant, Murmur, Green, Automatic for the People, Life's Rich Pageant again, Murmur again, Out of Time, Automatic for the People again...and so on.  The truth is, I just like REM a whole lot.  In my day, I made more than one multi-volume REM "Best of" mix.  On CD, obviously.  My love for REM clearly considerably pre-dates the mp3 and the iPod.  (However, my CD ripping patience has always been a little...haphazard, and so when I discovered that Murmur and Reckoning weren't on my iPod, and that my mp3 copy of Out of Time was, ahem, muddied, well.  I bought them, clearly.  By my reckoning, that's the third time I've bought Out of Time and the only other album I've bought more times is the Indigo Girls' Swamp Ophelia.)

And people will say REM's later albums weren't that great, but I defy you to say that there aren't four REALLY great songs on Reveal, one of which probably makes my list of ten all-time favorite REM songs.  Speaking of:

1. Near Wild Heaven, from Out of Time.  Isn't it a little weird that one of my favorite songs by REM isn't even sung by Michael Stipe, but by Mike Mills?  And to be clear, Michael Stipe is probably my favorite frontman EVER for a rock band.  But who cares who sings this song?  It's lilting and beautiful and I love the way Mills and Stipe's voices really work together.
2. Find the River, from Automatic for the People.  Obviously, Everybody Hurts was the song from this album that everyone knows.  Everyone remembers the video, with the traffic jam and the captioned thoughts.  And that's a fine song, sure.  But Find the River never fails to make me FEEL something big, something I'm not sure I can name, but is there all the same.  If I'm cheating, and maybe I feel like it right now, Sweetness Follows, from the same album, hits me the same way.  They're just simply two of the best quiet beautiful songs REM ever made.  Incidentally, I've been listening to REM this morning, as a giant mix, all of their songs together, and the song that just came on? Find the River.
3. She Just Wants To, from Reveal.  There was a time in my life when I listened to this song over and over and over again on repeat, in my car.  Something in that song felt like Michael Stipe was speaking to me, about me.  I don't think this period coincided exactly with the release of the album; I think it was later, and I think I was unhappy, and I think I wasn't sure what I wanted or how to get it.  I think I wanted to, well, be somewhere. 
4. You Are the Everything, from Green.  One thing that REM never did in a straight-forward way was release love songs.  That's not to say that they've never written about love; I think this song is about love, but I think that's my own interpretation, and who can say what Michael Stipe was thinking when he wrote the lyrics?  It's not a song about love in the way that I wanted to put it on my wedding mix (in fact, I do not believe there was a song by REM on that mix, unless it was At My Most Beautiful, which is maybe their most lovey love song), but it's a song about love in a way that speaks to me, Ms. Anxiety. "Sometimes I feel like I can't even sing, I'm very scared for this world, I'm very scared for me."
5. Strange Currencies, from Monster.  I guess this is another one of those not-love love songs.
6. Fall on Me, from Life's Rich Pageant.  It's unfair to say that Fall on Me was the song that made me love REM, and then not put it in this list.  I really can't overestimate how much this song hooked me when I first heard it in concert, and probably one of the reasons that I often say that Life's Rich Pageant is my favorite REM album is because I listened to it so damn much because Fall on Me is on it.  Sometimes you can tell that Michael Stipe really loves the song he's singing (clearly most of all with Man on the Moon; if you've seen him in concert, you know that he uses lyrics for every show, but never with Man on the Moon), and I feel like Fall on Me is one of those songs that really benefits from the full weight of his conviction.
7. So Central Rain, from Reckoning.  I don't love Reckoning, and I never have.  But this song, how can you not love it?  Michael Stipe is WAILING "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry" and I don't really even know what he's saying he's sorry for, but I like it.  I like it, and I believe him. 
8. Driver 8, from Fables of the Reconstruction.  A song about trains.  Yep.  I wasn't, you know, aware of music in the mid-eighties, when this came out, so I can't tell you if it was big on the radio.  Or if  a lot of people were listening to it.  I don't know.  But I know it's catchy as hell, and it's about god-damned trains.  Tell me another catchy single about trains.
9. We Walk or Laughing or A Perfect Circle, from Murmur.  It's taken me a REALLY long time to write this post, because I seriously have no idea which of these songs I like more.  I like them all.  They sound very different from the later, polished REM.  The mix on these old songs is a little different, and Michael Stipe does LESS with his voice than on any other album.  All the same, though, these songs are immensely charming, and the fact that I can't choose should hold up as proof that I really do love Murmur, even if it does sound like a completely different band from the one that made Out of Time.  (Which really is a masterpiece, by the way.)
10. And lastly, Losing My Religion.  From the aforementioned masterpiece.  Losing My Religion is, of course, a HUGE single.  Maybe the hugest of REM's career.  It was released twenty years ago, in 1991, that seminal year for rock music, which seems fitting.  I've probably seen the video a million times; in my head, I can dance like Michael Stipe in that video, though of course, I cannot.  I've played the song a couple dozen times on Rock Band.  Still, nothing is diminished.  I don't know if it is my abiding affection for REM, and my blazing passion for this song, but I listen to it today, and I don't think it sounds dated at all.  I think it sounds as amazing as it did in 1991.  I don't quite understand how you could like rock music and NOT like this song, though I imagine it is quite out of fashion for youths to listen to REM.  Maybe it's the mandolin.  Maybe it's Michael Stipe's voice, which pulses with the conviction of this song.  Maybe they knew when they were making it that it was going to be huge, and you can hear that in the song.  I don't know.  I only know that this song goes with me, wherever I go, including to a desert island.  This songs goes on my list of all-time favorite songs, not just on the REM list.  This song, man, this song.

Sam says REM will do a reunion tour someday and make buckets of money, and I can see them live again.  I'm not so sure.  Michael Stipe, even though he's a rock star, is a little different from other rock stars, and I get the sense that money doesn't mean very much to him.  Maybe I'll never see REM live again.  That would be okay.  I've seen them twice (or three times, I can't remember now) and I'll keep listening to them probably forever.  I haven't bought their last few albums anyway (which feels embarrassing to say, given my love for them), and I don't know how invested I am in them as a current band.  But I am invested in them as a band, in general.  I believe(d) in their music, and I don't see that ending.  Ever.

9/6/11

Do you know how many times I've played "Say it Ain't So" on Rock Band?

1. Cannonball - Breeders
2. Cradle and All - Ani DiFranco
3. You're So Vain - Carly Simon
4. Pyro - Kings of Leon
5. The World Has Turned And Left Me Here - Weezer

Healthy Eating v. Dieting

As you may be aware, I am anti-dieting.  One hundred percent, no qualifications, anti-dieting.  No one should diet, ever. 

(I do understand that there are some medical conditions which might necessitate a special diet, and those circumstances are obviously different than what I'm talking about.  If you have Celiac, for instance, you will have to "diet" in the sense that you're not consuming gluten.  But let's take those with special diets due to medical circumstances out of this post from now on.)

I'm always sad when someone I know starts tweeting or blogging very heavily about their new diet, and I've unfollowed people on both Facebook and Twitter for diet talk.  I'm not sorry about that; I'm a vulnerable person, still, to diet talk.  It's not hard for my mind to bring me back to a place where dieting maybe doesn't seem so bad, and if I just start restricting on a small basis, it'll be fine.  It's never fine for me to feed my compulsions and give in to dieting.  Never.  The end.  So I cut off all diet talk ASAP, and if that means temporarily or permanently cutting off someone on a social media network, so be it.

But I'm having a little bit of a dilemma right now, because someone I enjoy very much is talking a lot (okay, only) about their new "healthy eating" lifestyle.  Yesterday this person tweeted about calling "healthy eating" instead of a diet, so it doesn't seem so much like a diet.  And today, s/he tweeted about wanting a cookie and being glad there were none nearby, because s/he's "eating healthy"!  I know this seems clear cut: I should probably just cut the person off my list (for now, until the non-diet diet talk stops) and be done with it.  But I'm having a hard time forcing myself to do so.

I don't know if this is a problem for other people trying to do intuitive eating, but when someone says "healthy eating" it doesn't always trigger a diet-thing for me.  I think there are a lot of people who are genuinely concerned with eating healthily without being at all concerned about weight.  (The above-mentioned tweeter has never once mentioned weight in reference to "healthy eating".)  For instance, there are some people (like me, in fact) who are concerned with hormones and antibiotics in dairy products.  I only buy organic, good label milk because I want to drink healthy milk.  It's not about dieting; it's about making sure I'm putting the right product in my mouth and body.  I feel the same way about meat.  I try very hard to buy only good quality, well-sourced meat.  I pay more for those things, but again, I'm concerned about the healthy eating aspect of milk and meat enough to pay more. 

The problem with my twitter friend above is that s/he is denying themselves something they want.  S/he wants a cookie, and s/he won't eat one, because apparently cookies aren't allowed as part of the "healthy eating" plan.  This "healthy eating" lifestyle won't work if you deny yourself food.  One cookie now is a whole lot more healthy than five cookies later (which you may end up eating because you let your craving for a cookie get the best of you).  I, of course, don't care if you eat one cookie now or seventy-bajillion cookies now; intuitive eating says that neither is wrong.  But intuitive eating does say that not eating a cookie when you want to eat a cookie is the very locus of disordered eating to begin with.  It's a problem.  It's setting yourself up for failure.

I don't know how intuitive eating works for everyone.  I do know that for me, my body tries really hard to balance things out.  I haven't eaten meat in a couple of days (just happened; wasn't a conscious decision/choice), and last night I started desperately wanting a burger.  My body was telling me to eat meat, because I haven't.  Lately I've been eating a fair amount of fruit (which I really don't like all that much, generally), and I'm sure there's some nutritional reason.  My theory, anyway, is that if my twitter friend ate the damn cookie, her body would move on and she'd want something else.  Maybe something that more readily falls into the definition of "healthy", at least for this person.  But by not eating the cookie, isn't there the chance that the desire for the cookie will become all-consuming?  I think there is.

Of course, I haven't unfollowed this person.  I may yet.  I may not.  What I really want to do is send him/her this link and get on my soapbox a bit.  I really want to say, "Eat the goddamn cookie and stop beating yourself up about what you like to eat" or "Healthy eating is fine as long as you're eating what you want, when you want it."  I'm not going to do these things, obviously.  Just as I don't want you to preach to me about your diet, I can't imagine anyone wants to be accosted by me.  I'm keeping my tongue. 

But it's very hard.  Now I'm going to sit at my desk and savor that burger I had for lunch.  It was really tasty.

I'm not the girl you once put your faith in, just someone who looks like me

For a while now, I've been battling the sibling demons, depression and anxiety.  If you count my first spiral down into depression (a depression that was far, far worse than the thing I deal with now), in the fall of 2004, that makes six years, nearly seven.  The first time, I got help fairly promptly, because it was bad, and Sam and my mom knew something was wrong.  This second time, I don't know how long it took me to get help, because I know now that I was in deep denial that something was wrong.  For perhaps a year, even, I pretended I didn't know what was going on, and then it wasn't depression that led me to a doctor.  It was anxiety. 

Now, my problem is almost entirely anxiety, though I personally do not think you can quite uncouple the two; to be deeply anxious is to experience at least some low level of depression.  That is why the disorders are siblings.  It is nearly impossible for someone who doesn't know clinical anxiety to understand why this kind of anxiety needs help, and perhaps even medicinal help, but I'm going to try very hard to explain what it's like for me.  But first, because you might be the kind of person who scoffs at the idea of an anxiety so deep it is pathological, I want to say something about what your arguments might be.

1. Everyone worries!  I mean, come on.  Yes, I do believe everyone does worry.  Nearly everyone, anyhow.  But not everyone worries about having skin cancer because of a black spot on their toenail.  Not everyone has panic attacks brought on by the black spot.  Not everyone wakes up in the middle of the night, with night sweats, diarrhea, and splitting headaches, with anxiety as the cause.  Not everyone is convinced that the people they love are constantly a hair's breadth away from death and danger, and actively worries about it.  Most people don't have panic attacks due to homework, or being away from home, or getting a mortgage.  Panic attacks, in fact, are not normal.
2. You're just being irrational.  You should stop thinking about this stuff.  Well no shit.  Hence the disorder.  I know I'm being irrational and yet I can do nothing. to. stop. the. fear.  I can't stop the panic attacks by telling myself I'm being irrational, or I would have stopped the goddamn panic attacks.  I can't stop the anxiety caused by thinking that Sam's going to die by telling myself that I should just stop thinking about it, because it's irrational.  Because believe me, if that worked, I'd be fine right now.
3. You just want attention.  And this, this couldn't be farther away from the truth.  I was in denial for at least a year because I DIDN'T want the attention.  I can't explain to you how awful it feels to know your brain is failing you somehow, and to not want the people around you to know.  It's still damn hard to talk about; I'm guessing that most people around me didn't know that I struggle with this, and most won't, if they don't read this.  It's embarrassing and awful for me.  I can't even believe I'm writing this.
4. Mental disorders like anxiety are all in your head.  Snap out of it.  Well, if that worked, I'd be fine right now.  But arguments like this don't work, because they're simply not true.  They are all in your head, yes, but they're not something you can snap out of.  Believe me.