Archive for January, 2009

Happy inauguration day, everyone! This is one of those days that will resonate in my heart forever and ever, watching my historic president stand up and say “Everywhere we look, there is work to be done,” and yet making me feel like that work is going to be done, and well, and that everything will be well and everyone will have unicorns and–and maybe I’m getting caught up, again, in that heady rush of excitement and optimism and hope that Obama–I almost wrote President Elect Obama, but I don’t have to anymore, do I, and that thought made me bounce in my chair and tear up a little bit. I had to blow my nose.

It is exactly that kind of day, today, where, I am a mess, and completely useless, but happy to be so, because it is inauguration day, and I believe in my president for the first time in so very, very long.

Shauna is Dietgirl. She has Amazing Adventures, and writes not only a so-good blog about them, but also, recently, a book. It is, you will be astonished to learned, called The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl, and it is marvelous–it’s funny, moving, beautifully written, with a cast of wonderful characters and a story at the heart of it that will make you feel, for real, inspired and hopeful. It’s not a book about dieting, about how happiness is only achievable if you’re thin, but a book about health and about happiness. It will also make you want to go sign up for a Body Pump class right now immediately.

Shauna has embarked on a Virtual Book Tour (other stops can be found here), and has answered a few questions that I had for her, though I forgot to ask if she’ll take me home in her suitcase when she returns to Scotland. Shit.

1.

More or less officially, I am out of work. I had a contract job as a proofreader at an advertising agency; they wanted me full time, and to run the department. I said I can only do part-time! They took me on, anyway. When I didn’t change my mind about working for them full-time, they went ahead and hired someone full-time, but told me that I’d stay on part-time. Except, as it turns out, there are no great and greasy gobs of extra proofreading work to be thrown my way, so after a couple of weeks of “not yet! start your part-time schedule next week!” I have been officially told that there is no work for me, and they’ll call me when that changes. If it changes.

I’ve got some proofreading jobs that I do at home in my underpants, and I am pursuing some Leads, vis a vis some more writing jobs which I would also perform in my underpants.

Today is my beautiful mother’s birthday. She is mumblety years old, and looks about half that, which is sometimes very annoying. She has the kind of perfect pure white hair that you are forced to describe as “snowy,” the kind that you wish you will have when your hair starts to change. It is the kind of beautiful color that makes the idea of ever even considering “hiding the grey” seem like a terrible abomination.

Everyone says my mother and I look so alike, but she’s got blue eyes and cheekbones that make me grumble, because why couldn’t I have gotten them? And her nose, too? She’s got a perfect nose. Instead we share the small mouth and the little knob of a chin, the body shape that runs up and down through the line of women in our family–if you got us all in a row, every woman in our family, you could see, in a casual glance, that we are related.

Because E is ridiculously awesome, but especially so at work, they rewarded him. I am as shocked as you are–an employer recognizing that an employee goes way above and far beyond? An employer who says holy crap, dude, your sense of responsibility and commitment and dedication is magnificent, is inspiring, is beautiful to behold and we do not think that the money that we provide to you in the form of a paycheck is enough to acknowledge the fact of your awesomeness. An employer who says here is a bonus, because you deserve it and are very attractive and have many good qualities. Hooray!

E has been working his ass off doing wonderful things for his little company, and they said thanks with a very large travel voucher. You tell us where you want to go and what you want to spend it on–a hotel, a safari, airfare–and we will make the arrangements for you.

Sometimes I am taken up by such a tornado of amazement and wonder that I land three states away, blinking and with two broken legs and only one shoe. Probably because I have a gentle and completely credulous nature which makes me believe you when you say that it was you in the big dance scene in Flashdance (true story, and I don’t want to talk about it). It’s never beautiful, mystical and sensitively spiritual things like dew drops on roses and the small and wondrous pink nose of a kitten that makes me contemplate the nature of a loving Universe and blows my hair back–no, what usually astonishes me and makes me wide-eyed with awe is when I am struck anew by how much in the future we are totally living.

It’s always the little things that get me.

When I was fat, every size of fat from the 200s through the 300s, I played a game. I would look for women on the street, and I would try to decide if I was bigger than them, or smaller than them. In every room, I would rank all the fat people in terms of their size, and where I fit in. Was I the fattest in the room, or the least fat of the fat people? Where on the continuum did I fit in? What size was I really, and what do I look like, when people see me?

Because I knew I was fat–the number in my pants told me I was fat, how I fit in chairs and the bathtub, by how people looked at me, by how it usually made me feel, when I looked in the mirror–but I didn’t know how fat. I desperately wanted to know how fat I was.

The jeans in my drawers, all three pairs, all come from Old Navy. I have three pairs of jeans that are no longer my size set aside to give away, and they are all Old Navy jeans too. There is nothing wrong with Old Navy jeans, really–they are very inexpensive and come in an exciting variety of washes and shapes and styles and colors enough to turn your pretty head. But besides the fact that they aren’t quite right–for instance, the boot-cut pair are embarrassingly just a smidge too short, and too-short pants on a woman is one of my pet peeves–it somehow feels like Old Navy jeans are not enough.

There is premium denim out there, people. Premium! For a premium, admittedly. But in the world exists brands of luxury denim that are not only luxuriously made of hammered gold and pressed diamonds and sheets of fabric that have been woven by fairies in a land of dreams where wishes always come true and McDonald’s breakfast is served 24 hours a day, but they also have magical properties.