My Nottingham

Have you ever seen Disney's version of Robin Hood?  I love that movie, as I love most Disney movies, and adore the deft mixing of humor, pathos, and excitement. It is a fun re-telling of a classic tale.  Well, I decided that this past weekend was my Nottingham.  You remember the song, don't you?  "Not in Nottingham"?  Maybe this will help...

Or the classic version...

The past weekend definitely had its ups and downs, with more downs than ups, I'm afraid.  Normally weather isn't a big deal to me.  If it rains, I get wet.  If it is sunny, I get warm.  If it snows, I put on another layer of clothing.  But this weekend the weather was particularly like that in the second video above, and THAT meant that people stayed home and didn't want to go to events.  You know, events like Fair Park Sparks on Friday evening.

They had expected between 17,000 and 25,000 people at the event based on last year's attendance.  I can tell you that by what we saw, they were lucky if they got 2,000 people, and most of those left quickly after the first, very short, shower of rain.

We didn't even sell enough to cover the cost of the food permit, much less the booth fees.  I had tried not to get my hopes up, but I at least expected to cover the booth if nothing else.  Instead, for the first time, Fat Lady Foods lost money at an event.

To put it in perspective, we made MORE money at The Marketplace in Mesquite the next morning (also rainy) than we did at what should have been an event that was supposed to be 25 to 30 times larger.

I suppose that I have been lucky until this point.  My business has gone surprisingly well, and has made enough money to pay for itself for the most part once I got past the initial boost provided by those who contributed to the fundraiser.  It was bound to happen that I had a bomb event at some point.  I just wish it had happened when I had more cash reserves in place for the company.  Now I'm struggling.  Between missing the holiday season due to website issues, then this event, I'm in a tough place.

I know that things will improve.  I know that this was one of those downs involved in ups and downs.  It will pass and things will be good.  It is just kind of stressful right now.  

I'm doing my best to breathe and to focus on moving forward....and I will.  The business will go on, and keep getting better.  Right now, though....right now I kind of want to cry.

WHAT HAVE I DONE???

This is me over here being hopeful while trying not to get my hopes up too much all while attempting to push down sheer panic and terror.  "But why?" you ask?  Because I just submitted the paperwork and fee to be a vendor at Fair Park Sparks.  It is a one afternoon/evening event at Fair Park with bands, food, fireworks, and all sorts of things.  It is the second year of the festival and, based on last year's numbers, they are projecting attendance at between 17,000 and 25,000 people.

AAAAAUUUUUGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!

That means that if only ONE percent of the people attending buy $10 worth of merchandise, that will be $1700 - $2500 dollars.  In one day.

I am currently thanking all the gods in the existence of time and space that I have, at present, the largest amount of stock I've ever had at one time in the history of Fat Lady Foods.  And I have two more kitchen days to make more.  Also, my Trusty Sidekick is going to be making as many caramels as she can turn out in the time between now and then.  Hopefully my Sherpa (aka The Husbeast) can get that afternoon off from work to help.

There is a regular Market Day the next day, so I am thinking that I may need to hold back a little stock just to be safe. I don't REALLY expect to sell out, but wouldn't that be something to experience???

Did I mention the terrified part?  Okay...just making sure.  Imma gonna go over here and try to breathe now.  Wish me luck!

"Hack"ed off

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate the term "hacks"?  Really, it drives me nuts.  Like so many things, people have taken a word, a very simple word, and turned it into something that means nothing like what the word originally meant.

Thoughts on different ways to do things are not "hacks".  They could be tips, or suggestions, or ideas.  They may even be procedures or directions!

The thing is, I don't understand why anyone would want some brilliant idea that they came up with called a "hack" since the vast majority of the definitions of the word carry negative connotations.  I would rather that if I devise a new way of accomplishing some goal, people refer to it in a complimentary way instead of a derogatory one.

Then there ate the oh-so-annoying clickbait articles that beat you over the head with the word.  "10 AMAZING KITCHEN HACKS THAT WILL SAVE OODLES OF TIME!"  or "5 UNBELIEVABLE DO IT YOURSELF HACKS!"  Most of the so-called "hacks" in these articles are things that have been around for a long, long time.  Sure, some are handy tips, but a lot are really just kind of dumb.

No one really takes anything seriously that has the word "hack" in the title.  They just don't.  So if you really want to get your ideas across, then just don't go there.  Just don't.

There you go...my random rant of the night.  Guess it kind of hacks me off.  But now I've gotten it off my chest and can get back to important things like scrolling through Facebook or playing SW:TOR.

Light vs. Dark

On my Facebook feed tonight I see news reports about politicians filing bills to allow parents to obtain conversion therapy for their homosexual children under the age of 18, politicians saying that they don't believe in science because "God can overcome those so-called facts in the blink of an eye", fundamentalist Christians being suspected of stealing the statue of a Celtic God in Ireland, the continuing widening of the chasm between "left" and "right" and the politicians who are so caught up in "winning" that they have forgotten that they are there to make the lives of our citizens better, and personal stories of things like a doctor misdiagnosing someone with blood clots in their lungs as just "needing to lose weight" and almost killing them.

It is really hard at times like this to remain optimistic about humanity.  But I try.  I make myself remember the many people who contributed to help me start my business on the ever-widening path it is currently traveling.  I make myself remember a group of people sitting in a hospital waiting room, patiently waiting turns to go in and sit by the bed of a sick friend.  I make myself remember people donating hundreds of dollars to charity on the pretext of seeing someone fall backwards into a huge mud puddle.  I think about hearing that SAPA has collected a couple of hundred dollars in just a few minutes to help one of their own who blew a tire on the way home from faire and didn't have the money for a replacement.  I think of all of the rescued animals who are now pets in the homes of so many people on my friends list and how those animals will be warm and dry and fed and loved.

It is a finely balanced tipping point, the point between optimism and pessimism.  I just have to believe that more people are like the good ones that I have the honor of knowing, than are like the ones we read about in the news.  The good ones just don't get as much publicity.  I HAVE to believe that, otherwise ... as Dr. Horrible says... "Any dolt with half a brain
Can see that humankind has gone insane. To the point where I don't know if I'll upset the status quo if I throw poison in the water main."  That isn't the place I want to be.

Be good, people.  Be good to each other, be good to strangers, be good to animals.  Just be good.  Let that goodness spread out from you and warm the world around you.  The more good there is shining in the world, the less chance that darkness will overcome.

My life is not a series of boxes

Recently I had a revelation.  I was looking over my blogs ("Confessions of a Fat Superhero" and "My Zig-Zag Journey") and realized that having my life compartmentalized was just not working out for me any more.

At one time it made sense for me to put all of my Health at Every Size and Size Acceptance posts in one place, and my general life posts in another.  They were different aspects of me, and I didn't really want people who read my HAES blog to necessarily have access to the rest of my world.  I had my life broken down into a series of boxes, each one separate and distinct from the others, with only a hint of commonality in the form of the walls between each compartment.

But things change over time, and people change along with everything else.  More and more often I found myself considering combining the two blogs into one.  You see, I've become more of a unified person in the last couple of years.  I'm spending more time doing things that matter to me, and less time worrying about being one of The Cool Kids.  As I've grown, I've also grown happier with myself.  This has led to being more confident with myself as well.

Now, here we are.  I've taken the big step and imported all of my Zig-Zag Journey posts into this blog.  I have deleted the other one, and where there were two, there is now only one.

So, hello, World...welcome to my life.  ALL of my life.  I hope that we can continue to grow together and maybe become a little stronger at the same time.

Sometimes I get tired...

I got home from work this afternoon and settled into my chair to putter on Facebook for a bit before diving into the massive To Do List waiting for me.  I don't normally work Tuesdays, but we're at peak volume for the month and so I volunteered to work extra hours.  It was an all right morning, though I didn't sleep well last night between a restless husband and three restless cats taking turns waking me up, but I while there was a nearly overwhelming urge to just turn off the alarm and roll over, I made it in on time and was pretty productive.

I ran a couple of errands on the way home, looking forward to a little relaxation.  Life is so busy with working a day job, having my own business, and maintaining a marriage and a house that those free moments are to be cherished despite the endemic exhaustion surrounding them.

The exhaustion makes me more susceptible to negativity.  I try not to let it happen, but now and then things just get to me.  Such as the incident that happened today.

My Facebook feed was scrolling along, here a video of cute baby ducks, there a friend's visit with the WADF (Weird-Ass Dream Fairy), over there a request for help in finding an inexpensive wedding dress, then a few photos from DragonCon rolled by, and so on.  The usual items that I tend to see were about, nothing overly attention grabbing, really.  And then I saw a post that caught my eye.  It was a link to an article about a young man who identifies as female and whose school required him to remove his make-up so that he would appear male, and how the school is currently being sued regarding the issue.  I was about to click the link and check the article when a comment a few posts down on the thread caught my eye.

"It was probably some fat ugly woman who isn't happy in her life who complained..." the person writing the comment said.

My heart sank, and I felt a deep moment of hopelessness.  All of the work that we do trying to change the world, all of the efforts to get people to stop treating people's body size like an indicator of anything other than ...well...their body size, all of that struggle, it seems to be for nothing some days.  I get so tired sometimes of fighting the fight and trying to be heard.  People throw the insults and the hatred around so easily, without even really thinking about it, and they don't care.  Sometimes it seems like no one cares at all, and that any hope of changing the world so that people are taken for who they are inside rather than what they look like on the outside is so far out of our reach that it might as well remain an item for fictional worlds, it will never happen in reality.

Some days I believe in the goodness of people and the rightness of the world.  Some days I believe that fairness and intellect will eventually win out over meanness and bigotry, over willful ignorance and the inclination to raise the self up by stepping on others.  Some days I'm an optimist.

Other days, like today, I wonder why we even try, and I think that maybe I should just shut up, withdraw into my own little world, and not care any more.  Some days, like today, I wonder if it wouldn't just be easier to be numb.  Some days I'm just really, really tired.

Coming to Terms with Tracking

I have a long and sordid history with Food Tracking.  It has never been a love-hate thing, it has pretty consistently involved just plain Hate.  I hated doing it.  I hated myself for feeling the need / being told to do it.  I hated the very mechanics of doing it because spending precious time weighing and measuring food then writing it down in a little notebook was not only tedious, but forced every bite I ate into Guilt Territory.

When you log your food or track your food or whatever you want to call it, you have to weigh every bite that you take and each of those bites involve an internal debate:

Eating Self:  I really want this Milky Way bar.

Tracking Self:  But if you eat that, you have to put it in the food log, and then those calories and those fat grams will be in black and white, taunting you, mocking you for your lack of willpower.

Eating Self:  Well, I could eat it and not write it down.

Tracking Self:  Sure, you could, but then you would be lying to yourself along with everyone else, because everyone knows that because you're fat you are OBVIOUSLY eating more than you think you are.  You're just so used to huge portions that you don't even realize they're huge any more.

Eating Self:  What?  Wait...my portions aren't huge!  I measure them JUST FOR YOU and I do it ALL OF THE TIME!  I haven't eaten a hot meal in months because I have to stop and weigh everything before I can actually start eating!

Tracking Self:  Likely story.  I saw the corn you ate the other day without weighing it first.

Eating Self:  ONE KERNEL!  I ate one kernel of corn that fell off the plate!

Tracking Self:  Uh huh.  That's what they all say.

Eating Self:  Fine.  I won't eat the stupid Milky Way bar.  Are you happy now?

Tracking Self:  Not really.  Are you?

Eating Self:  No.

It was even worse when I was a teenager and had to take my food log to weekly doctor's appointments, because then I not only had the pressure from myself to be perfect, but I didn't want to be a disappointment to my doctor and my parents.  Of course, I still was, because it didn't seem to matter what I ate or didn't ate, I was still fat.

Finally, I stopped doing any kind of tracking.  I discovered intuitive eating, and Health at Every Size, and learned that I can accept myself as I am and still love myself.  I don't HAVE to hate myself just because I'm fat.  This was a major revelation, let me tell you!  I'd been sure that I had to put off loving myself until I weighed 140 pounds, and I had to put everything else off too.  My whole life had centered on hating the me I was now, and loving the me I would be when I finally learned enough willpower to be Not Fat.  Now, suddenly, that had changed.  It took me a while to work through all of the loss that went with losing the one thing that had been the focus of my life until then, but I finally got there and just let myself live in the moment, enjoy myself, and love myself.

But recently I started feeling rather blah.  My blood sugars were going up ever so slightly, and I felt lethargic and just all-around mediocre.  So I decided to start tracking my food and exercise again.

This time...this time would be different.

For about a week now I have been tracking what I eat, and the movement I do, and while I did have to fight the resurgence of some old feelings at first, I have discovered that I'm actually enjoying noting this stuff down.  I think that part of it is I'm not trying to meet a certain caloric goal, and I have my settings on the website I'm using listing my goal as "remain the same weight", which means that the caloric number it DOES suggest as part of the site isn't some ridiculously small number like 1,500 calories.  Actually, amusingly, I have eaten fewer than the "recommended" number of calories just about every day so far.  And the deficit is worse because I have also been tracking my movement, and the site takes the calories burned into account when telling you how many calories you have left for the day.

The real reason I'm tracking my intake right now is that I'm trying to cut down my sodium consumption.  I didn't realize how many things I eat that have high sodium.  I love things like pretzels, and popcorn with salt, and bagels (which have a surprisingly large amount of sodium in them!).  So this first couple of weeks is going to be spent just logging and seeing where I am getting the overabundance of sodium from, then I will start looking for alternatives that I still enjoy but that might be a bit lower in the salt department.  I'm hoping that helps me feel less bloated and lethargic, especially since I've re-started my cardio and calisthenics.

Not only am I getting some good information out of tracking my food this time, I've finally reached a point in my life where I am doing it voluntarily, and getting the information I WANT out of it, rather than allowing the information I'm gathering to turn me into a miserable, self-loathing ball of hate.  And really, that's the best victory yet.