Goals for the new year

Tonight is Samhain, which is known as Halloween to the majority of people.  It is a night for costumes, candy, and laughter, but what most don't know is that it is also a time for reflection, endings and beginnings.  Tonight is the night when the Wheel begins another turn, ending one year and beginning another.

I've done a lot of reflecting this year, and made a lot of realizations.  Those are not what I am writing about right now, though.  This blog entry is about the future, the coming year and what I look to achieve in that time span.  This blog entry is a list that I am making for myself, a list of ideas, things that I would like to achieve.  Will I achieve them all?  Probably not.  I'm not being self-defeatist by saying that, I just know that this is going to be a long list, and there probably will never be enough time or money to complete all of the entries in the space of one year, but this will give me a starting point and where I go from here is my own choice.

Things I would like to achieve in the coming year

• Get at least 3 more short stories published
• Get my first novel written and ready to start submissions
• Continue my daily calisthenics and work up to 100 crunches, 100 wall pushups, and 50 squats
• Read 100 books
• Have my first Fat Lady Foods booth at a Farmers Market
• Adopt at least one, and as many as three, children
• Compete in my first 5k
• Learn to crochet
• Make my first quilt
• Go back and visit Sterling Renaissance Festival
• Take a vacation somewhere we've never been before
• Redecorate the dining room (paint, new curtains, buffet, etc)
• Get the mirror back up on the wall in the half bath
• Complete the front landscaping
• Get the gutters done on the house
• Get caught up on photo processing
• Start really taking photos again
• Learn the basics of drawing
• Re-learn calligraphy
• Have a garden in which I actually manage to grow something other than weeds
• Love
• Be loved

There are probably more things, and as I think of them I may come back and add them.

Here's to goals, and to working toward achieving them!

What goals do you have?

Same Words - Different Meaning

There is a church near my home that has a tendency to put very right-wing, ultra-conservative sayings on the big board out front.  You know, the one that most churches use to say things like "Services at 10:00 a.m., 2:00 p.m." and "Special Guest Speaker this week.  Welcome Dr. So-and-So from Such-and-Such Religious Institution" or quotes from the Bible that pertain to whatever the subject is going to be for the weekly sermon on Sunday.  This particular church puts up things like "Shutdown is necessary. Jesus" because apparently they have a direct line to Jesus and he told them that the shutdown of the American government was a necessary thing.  Or something.

This week's message, however, seems to have missed its intended mark.  The words that they put up there undoubtedly mean one thing to them, but mean something completely different to me.  They meant for their board this week to issue a warning to us all about how America is losing its moral center, and about how it is a slippery slope and soon we'll all be writhing in the depths of hell because we're sliding at a faster clip every day.

I read the words and found myself saying, "I certainly hope so."

What did the board say?

"What you accept today will be normal tomorrow."

You see, it is my fervent desire that things we accept today become so normal tomorrow that people wonder why there was ever such a fuss made to begin with.  I would love for someone to say, "You mean people were upset that homosexuals and lesbians wanted to marry the people that they love?  Whatever for?  That seems close-minded and an archaic way of thinking." 

I desperately hope that someday a young girl says, "Mom, you'll never guess what we learned in history class today!  Do you believe that there were actually State governments that voted to try and restrict, and even abolish, the rights of women to choose what happens to their own bodies??  Did people really used to think that way??"

I would rejoice if I could hear, "Yeah, my grandfather says he won't vote for her for President because she's a woman.  Do you believe that?  What's that got to do with how well she'll run the country?  I don't get old people...I really don't."

I would love for us to accept all of these things so that they truly do become normal tomorrow.  It is a dream that there comes a day when normal includes open-mindedness, judging people by their actions rather than their appearance, and a clear delineation between personal moral choices (religious-based or not) and government mandated freedom to MAKE those choices without legal repercussions from those who disagree based on their own personal moral code.

The church in question tends to leave their boards up for a week or two at a time.  I hope that this one stays up longer, because for the first time in a long time I have smiled every time I drive past their building and their sign.  For the first time in a long, long time I haven't driven past and ended up grumbling or wincing when I see what they have posted there.  I know that their intentions and the results are very different, but that's all right, because we finally agree on something.

"What you accept today will be normal tomorrow."

Words to live by.  

The Oppression Olympics

Being fat in modern America is hard, there's no doubt about it.  Complete strangers take it on themselves to judge, to give unasked for advice, and to even do things like throw things out of their car windows at you and shout insults when you are out taking a walk.  There are people who try to raise their voices and spread the message that this behaviour is wrong, and who try to make the point that no one has the right to judge someone else based on appearance.  Sometimes, however, these people who are trying to make the world better get so caught up in their own fight, that they forget about the many other fights that are happening at the same time.  They even forget that it cuts both ways, and if you say that someone shouldn't judge you for being fat, you shouldn't judge them for being thin.

They forget and say something thoughtless ("Eat a sammich!" immediately comes to mind).  The thin person, and others like them, then get (rightfully) angry over being judged, and they launch a counterattack.

The next thing you know, we've gotten all of the other groups involved.  Women and men arguing over sexism from both sides, LGBT's and straights shouting about the definition of love, people of varying skin tones and ethnic backgrounds each trying to one-up the next on the horrible things done to their people over the eons of recorded history, and so on.  This doesn't even scratch the surface of all of the groups out there who feel that they have an axe to grind.  It doesn't make a judgment on whether they are right or wrong.  What it DOES do, however, is become The Oppression Olympics.

It is so easy to believe that our own causes are the most important ones in the world, because to us they ARE the most important causes.  But it is imperative that we do not forget that other causes are equally as important to other people, and the fact that we are fighting for our cause does NOT diminish other causes or their validity.  My desire for the world to stop assuming that people who look like I do are something that should be eliminated and made war on does not negate the desire of a person who is recovering from anorexia to not have people tell her to "put some meat on your bones".  It does not negate the fact that a black man wearing a hoodie can't walk in certain neighborhoods without the police being called.  It does not negate the right of a female cosplayer to feel safe at a convention.  It does not negate the right of my friend, Matthew, to marry the man he loves.

None of the causes eclipses the other.  Acknowledging them does not mean that I have to renounce my own cause.

I firmly believe that one of the greatest problems keeping the wonderful diversity of humanity from coming to full fruition of its potential is because so much time and energy is spent by the representatives of all these causes in fighting one another rather than putting that energy to good use and working together to spread the simple message that we ALL have the potential for greatness, whether we are fat, skinny, black, white, red, yellow, or purple with pink spots.  We ALL have the potential to achieve humanity's peak together, whether we are gay, lesbian, bi, trans, straight, geeks, jocks, nerds, male, female, hermaphroditic, or asexual.

I have my own causes.  They are things that I believe are worth fighting for, and that I spend time and effort on because they are important to me.  They are probably different from your causes, though some may overlap.  I do my causes no good when I dismiss or try to one-up other causes, saying things like, "Yes, well that is bad, but it is WORSE for fat people because...".  No, it isn't worse.  It is different.  It isn't worse to have someone remove something from a fat person's grocery cart while telling them that they don't need it than it is to have someone walk up to a thin person with a loaded plate and tell them to eat the whole thing because they're too skinny.  Neither of those is worse.  Neither of those should be tolerated.

We aren't in The Oppression Olympics.  It is not our place to prove to other people who are fighting their own battles why OUR battle is more important.  What we need to be doing is banding together, sharing strategies, and supporting one another in our fights.  Because while I am just plain unable to devote equal amounts of time and effort to every cause out there, I CAN fight my own fights and offer encouragement to others who are fighting their own fights.  I can pass along opportunities for them to take advantage of, and information they may not have seen.  I can work to form support networks and alliances with other activists, because while our individual focus is independent of one another, our power when our voices are joined is immeasureable.

In order for us to achieve that power, though, we have to STOP fighting one another. We all have to stop trying to compete in The Oppression Olympics and start cheerleading one another.

After all, if we don't understand what it is like, then who will?

Relationships with Food

I was just going through my e-mail and I came across my daily reminder to click for charity.  You know the one, where you just click once a day and advertisers give money to various charities including animal rights, autism research, world hunger and so on.  They always have little inspirational stories on each page, to help encourage people to remember why they are taking five minutes out of their day to click on several pages.  What caught my eye today was the inspirational story on the diabetes research page.  Actually, it was a fragment of a sentence on that page, and the author was talking about how horrible it is when carbs aren't comforting, sugar is scary and so on.  This really made me stop and think about the many relationships that we have with food.

Food is such a basic need in our lives.  If we don't have it, we die.  That's a pretty simple, straightforward relationship, I think.  We could just leave it at that, and life would probably be a lot easier for so many people.  But, of course, we're human beings and we can never really be satisfied with keeping things simple, right?

So what happens?  Food becomes "comfort" or "decadence".  Different types of foods take on different meanings, like "good" or "bad", "healthy" or "unhealthy".  We start applying moral values and judgments to food and the people who eat it.  The fat man shouldn't eat a cheeseburger.  The skinny woman should eat a pork chop.

Eventually these judgments shift from the food to the people themselves.  Obviously that fat woman is a slob, stupid, and lazy.  It is apparent to the world that the skinny man is weak, a wimp, and a wuss.  The muscular guy over there obviously eats "right" and exercises.  The toned and slender woman is no doubt conceited and consumed completely by how she looks, with as much depth as a mud puddle. 

All of these judgments and they all originate from food and our dysfunctional relationships with it.

So today I give you a challenge, Dear Readers.  My challenge to you is to take a good, long, hard look at your relationships with food.  Do you use the words "good" and "bad" in association with things that you eat?  Do you see a fat person ordering a dessert and automatically judge them negatively for it?  Do you see a slender person eating a salad and automatically judge them for it in either a positive or negative way?  How do you approach food in your life? 

I'm not saying that we shouldn't take pleasure from food.  Goodness knows that I happily take pleasure in a scoop of quality ice cream, a fresh spinach salad with vinaigrette, or a plate of homemade macaroni and cheese.  But what I AM saying is that I am fully aware of how I associate these things with pleasure and I strive to enjoy them for what they are:  appealing tastes and textures.  I am still working on removing the judgments from my food, though I am getting better at it, and instead just applying actual descriptors to what is in front of me.  Words like "good", "bad", "healthy", "unhealthy", "reward", "naughty" all are slowly being expunged from my food vocabulary and being replaced with "satisfying", "creamy", "rich", "fresh", "tasty", and "just what I wanted right now".

Take a stab at letting go of the old relationships and starting some new ones.  The majority of you reading this are living in places where a huge variety of food is literally at your fingertips.  Enjoy that variety in all of its glory, and let yourself do so.  I think that you'll be surprised at how it changes your life.   Because a lessening of judgment is never a bad thing. 

Celebrate diversity, don't sneer at it

A friend recently posted a picture of a t-shirt on Facebook.  The shirt rather snarkily compared the quality of life in one State to the quality of life in another.  I have to say that this kind of thing is really a hot button for me.

I've been a long-term resident in two different States: Texas and New York.  Each State is the victim of amazing amounts of stereotyping, which frustrates me to no end because I have found that each of those States is ever so much more than those doing the stereotyping would have us believe.

New York is the victim of New York City-itis.  Apparently the entire world thinks that the whole 54,556 square miles of New York State is covered in skyscrapers, neon lights, and homeless people.  The people who believe this have obviously never been to New York.  They haven't seen the miles of orchards where apples and cherries hang heavily from the trees, bending the branches so low that you can pick them without a ladder.  They haven't bitten into an apple pulled freshly off the branch and polished on their sleeves.  They haven't felt the juice run down their chins as the sweetness fills their mouths and the scent fills their noses.  These same people haven't looked over the acres of vineyards as they sipped a sweet New York Riesling and nibbled on sharp New York cheddar cheese.  The people who believe that all there is to New York is Broadway and bohemians have never climbed in the Adirondack Mountains, slept in a cabin to awake early in the morning to mists and birds twittering sleepily.  They haven't fished for trout in the streams, or sat in a deer blind watching the graceful beauty of a doe bending her head for a drink from that same running water.  These people have never experienced the awe of staring out over Lake Ontario, or the fear of being caught in a sudden squall on a body of water the size of a small sea.  To them, all that New York will ever be is concrete, glass, and subways.  Those things exist in New York, but they are not ALL that New York was or will ever be.

These same people think of Texas and believe that it consists of nothing but herds of longhorns being rounded up by grizzled men wearing chaps and cowboy hats.  To them the entirety of Texas' 268,820 square miles is made up of tumbleweeds, desert and hay-chewing hicks.  They don't know or believe that Texas is home to some of the top names in aeronautics, computer technology and film-making.  The arts have a home in this State, with Dallas having the largest urban arts district in the United States.  There are multiple opera companies, theatre companies and performing arts companies throughout the state.  The music scene in Austin, Texas is well-known, but amazing new music is being made everywhere from the smallest town to the biggest city.  The museums in Texas are vastly diverse, ranging from the traditional to the quirky.  And the food...oh my goodness!  The same people who believe that all there is to Texas is rattlesnakes and miles of endless nothing have never explored the amazing diversity of cuisines available in this State.  Some of the top chefs in the world live and work here, and are proud to do so because they can draw inspiration from so many sources that it can almost be overwhelming at times.  So I feel sorry for the people who have never had the good fortune to wander the halls of the Dallas Museum of Art, feeling the tears well up when they stand in front of "Water Lilies" by Monet.  They have never stood in wonder, realizing that the metal module in front of them took Astronauts Gene Cernan, Ronald Evans and Jack Schmitt to the moon and back as part of the Apollo 17 mission.  Those people will probably not ever savor the perfect mole sauce at a hole-in-the-wall authentic Mexican restaurant or the perfect bowl of Pho at the small, local Vietnamese place right down the road.  They'll never move from club to club in Austin, hearing the future stars of the music world.  They will never understand how much they are missing by not walking the fence line, feeling the wind tugging against their clothing and the grit of the dust as it lightly sands the skin.  Because while that is not all of what Texas is, it IS an important part of the State's past and present.

These are my homes.  These two States share space in my heart, and to see them minimized into caricatures by anyone (even people who live there) breaks that heart because I know how much more there is to both places than the stereotypers would have us believe. 

The thing is, that is how it is for every location in the world.  There is always so much more than the casual observer can ever guess.  We do ourselves a disservice by dismissing places other than our own and by distilling them down to minimalistic, unrealistic cartoons of what they really are.  The people who live in these places know the truth, they know that Maine is more than lobster, Florida is more than Disney World, California is more than Hollywood, and Washington State is more than rain.  Africa has more than safaris, China is greater than just a Wall, and Japan has more to offer than sushi.  Yes, places become known for specific things because those things are an important PART of their identity, but we have to remember that those symbols are just a part of the whole, and in no way present a full picture of all there is to be offered to us by visiting or even living there.

So do yourselves a favor, and the next time that you find yourself making one of those snarky, dismissive comparisons or assumptions, stop and remember that the only limitations being spotlighted when you do so are your own.  The only lack of depth that exists in regards to wherever or whatever you are sneering at is your own lack of depth and your own lack of understanding.  The insult isn't to the people who live in those places, and the only ignorance on display is your own.

I am proud to be a daughter of New York, and an adopted daughter of Texas.  Both States are full of infinitely wondrous diversity.  Both States are full of people I am proud to know and love.  Both States have helped shape and mold me and how I see the world.  Both States are my homes, and I am blessed to have lived there.  I do honor to them, not by putting down other places, but by sharing the wonder of my homes with other people, then by letting them share the wonder of their homes with me.  I'll tell you this, I have yet to find a place in this country, or in this world, that doesn't truly contain a wonder of its own.  I don't think that I ever will.

Are you angry yet?

Today Governor Rick Perry signed House Bill 2 into law.  This Bill makes abortion after 20 weeks illegal with no exceptions.  It also makes it almost impossible for the vast majority of women's clinics in the State to afford to remain open.  This means that the majority of low-income women in Texas will lose access to their health care.  I'm not talking about abortions, I'm talking about things like well-woman visits, pre-natal care, and screenings for various forms of cancer.  So not only will women be forced to have babies that they may not be able to afford (financially, emotionally, etc.), but they will have to do so without basic medical care.

Are you angry yet? 

On the heels of this, three Texas State Legislators have now introduced House Bill 59.  This bill not only bans abortions after detection of a fetal heartbeat (which can happen as early as six weeks, which is before many women even realize that they are pregnant), but requires that the doctor do what is necessary to determine if there is a fetal heartbeat present, which means that they will be performing trans-vaginal ultrasounds as that is often the only way to detect a fetal heartbeat that early.  That is, in my opinion, government mandated rape.

Are you angry yet? 

Texas is an "Abstinence Works" State, which is statistically a lie as Texas rates third in the country for underage pregnancies (ages 15 to 19).  Our birth rate in that age range is 63.1 births per 1,000 which is well above the national rate of 41.5 births per 1,000.  Our young girls have a greater chance of getting pregnant as shown by Texas' teen pregnancy rate of 88 per 1,000 as opposed to the national rate of 70 per 1,000.  Texas also has the "honor" of being 12th in the country when it comes to teen cases of HIV.  All of this is possible because while Texas ALLOWS sex education, it does not require such classes.  The schools that do have sex education are required to teach abstinence over other forms of prevention.  Per the Texas State Educational Code the curriculum must:

• present abstinence from sexual activity as the preferred choice of behavior in relationship to all sexual activity for unmarried persons of school age;
• devote more attention to abstinence from sexual activity than to any other behavior;
• emphasize that abstinence from sexual activity, if used consistently and correctly, is the only method that is 100% effective in preventing pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), and the emotional trauma associated with adolescent sexual activity;
• direct adolescents to a standard of behavior in which abstinence from sexual activity before marriage is the most effective way to prevent pregnancy, STDs, and infection with HIV or AIDS; and
• teach contraception and condom use in terms of human use reality rates instead of theoretical laboratory rates, if instruction on contraception and condoms is included in curriculum content. (See SIECUS page and links therein for more information.)

So what this means is that we are lying to our children and then wondering why it isn't working.


Are you angry yet? 

And then, to top everything off, the State Legislature claims to be doing this to protect womens' health.  One would think, though, that if they were so concerned about the health of their citizens, they wouldn't be cutting health care costs with their current slash and burn policies.  In the past eight years the Governor and his lackies in the Legislature have cut hundreds of thousands of low-income Texans from government-sponsored insurance plans such as Medicaid and The Children's Health Insurance Program.  That doesn't even bring into play the fact that over 6.5 million Texas citizens are working full-time jobs and yet have NO health insurance at all.  Tell me again where this shows a concern for Texas citizens and their health?  Because from here it looks more like an attack on our health instead.

Are you angry yet? 

This wave of extremism is taking the country by storm and this storm will leave death and destruction in its wake.  I'm not just talking about theoretical death, but real death, as in the deaths of women who are so desperate that they will do anything to end a pregnancy.  I'm talking about the deaths of the women who don't get adequate pre-natal care and die from pregnancy complications.  I'm talking about the deaths of young men and women who don't fully understand their options when it comes to protecting themselves from HIV and sexually transmitted diseases along with protecting from unwanted pregnancy.  This wave of extremism which is designed specifically for punishing women who are sexually active will destroy lives and the people who are promulgating it not only don't care, but will celebrate the fates of the "wanton and loose women" who are their victims.

Are you angry yet? 

The time for sitting to the side and talking is over.  It is time to act.  We have to take our country back from this overly vocal minority and pull it back to the center.  Extremists on both sides are screaming so loudly that the rest of us are being drowned out, and the only way to end that is to get louder.  We can get louder by protesting, but we can also get louder by using the ballot box.  It is time to take our government back and to put an end to this rampant extremism.  It is time to reclaim our city governments, our State governments, and our national government.

Are you angry yet?  Whether you are a man or a woman, you should be very angry by this point.  And you should do something about it.

Vote.  Register others to vote.  Write your representatives and make your voices heard.  DO something, don't just sit back and make Tweets or Facebook posts about your outrage.  Step up and take a stand.  The time is now, the person is you.  Get angry and use that anger to change the world.

Thoughts from inside the barbed wire wall

For a long, long time I was a very bitter, hateful person. There were reasons for it, reasons that I consider to be valid in terms of understanding why my reactions to the world became what they were. I never really grasped the concept that I could be anything else because every time I had tried I ended up getting hurt. When you get hurt enough you create ways to deal with it and to prevent it from happening again. Those ways become habit, and those habits become ingrained so deeply that changing them...changing who we are and the face that we present to the world is a long, arduous process that will be filled with setbacks and reversions to "safe" behaviours under stress.

Over the past several years I have made a decided effort to change who I am and the face that I present to the world. I have tried very hard to alter the path that my thoughts automatically take when things happen, and to create different outcomes to situations that are triggering.

I have not always been successful.

I do, however, believe that I have made progress on this goal. I believe that I have become more willing to actually believe that people can be true friends, and that not everyone is out to use me until it suits them to forget about me or to actively throw me aside. I still have times when I doubt even my closest friends, but those times are getting shorter and less severe. I believe that this is good and that it means that in time I actually will wholeheartedly believe that there are people who love me without reservation. The barbed wire battlements are slowly being taken down.

Someone recently said to me that they were tired of walking on eggshells around me all of the time, and that I am just too negative a person. I have to admit that my first reaction was anger and hurt. My second reaction was also hurt, but of a different kind. I went from "How dare you say that to me??" to "Is that really the face that I'm still presenting to the world?" and it has led to another round of self-examination.

Yes, I am still quick to assume that someone is doing something to hurt me on purpose. While I would like for that thought process to finally go away forever, there is still work to be done to shake off the lessons that were taught to me by my peers as I grew up. (You would think that at 46 years old I would be free of what happened to me in my school years, wouldn't you?) But as I re-assess where I am and how I got here, I find that I think I've become a much more positive person in the past few years. It has taken a lot of hard work, and has involved the suppression of a lot of knee-jerk responses (again, not ALWAYS successfully, but better!).

I also admit that there are a select few who see more of the negativity than most, because they are (or in this case, were) people that I feel safe about venting to in order to get the feelings out of my system rather than letting them remain in place where they can poison future thoughts / emotions. That can't be easy for those folks, and I appreciate those who understand and support my need to have safe places to vent my spleen, so to speak, without holding it against me.

In the end, if that is still the face that I actually present to the world, then I have a lot more work to do. But if it isn't, and if it is just that others are still seeing the "old me" out of habit reinforced by my weak moments of relapse, then there is little that I can do to change their perceptions. I can only continue trying to become a better me and hope that someday perception and reality join in letting the world see the positive me that has hidden inside these barbed wire walls for so long.

I don't really know. All that I know is that right now I think I'm a better me than I used to be and that there is still work to be done.

I'm a better me, but still not the best me. Always a work in progress I guess.