On Blogging

Sometimes when I want to torture myself I read mommy blogs.

It’s not because I want a kid.  I can have children.  I look forward to that event in the future via an amazing thing called ADOPTING.  My super hot husband and I are taking classes this fall and doing all that stuff.  kids are an impending eruption in  life that I eagerly anticipate with fear and trembling.

I am tortured by the modern day June Cleaver that is mommy blogging.  I am tortured by beautiful photos and a woman who has enough time in her day to have a photo session with wiggly children, cook TWO meals, (you freeze one for later), put together great outfits for everyone in her home, save 50 bucks with coupons at whole foods, and be web savvy enough to upload photos, edit video, and maintain a relevant banner on her website.

HELLOOOOO!!! these white middle class women live in magical lands where companies send them FREE SHIT!  and they’re all like “lalala SOooo crate and barrel sent me these SU-PER cool pillows for my kid’s room. thaanks GUYS! here are some beautiful photos…”

curse you Crate and Barrel- You with your beautiful children's quilts.

I’m just jealous.

I can usually get a healthy meal together- and it might not kill us. and Austin might eat the leftovers.  I don’t really have a camera.  I am a master at letting coupons expire.  Point made- I am not  a magical blogging homemaker who whips trendy handmade fabric flowers out her ass.

For real though- june cleaver, or betty draper would totally blog if they were around today.

Kitty Foreman wouldn’t though.  She’d have a glass of wine and be all over pinterest.  My kind of woman.

Being “healthy” should include being angry

What the hell?

I occasionally read healthy is the new skinny .  Today I saw this jpg on their blogroll:

What the hell?!  This should make you angry or at least genuinely disturbed.

The discussion about young girls dieting before they are menstruating is not news to me.  I knew about anorexia before I knew where babies came from.  A girl in my brownie troop refused to eat anything but jello or baby food (the stuff in the tiny jars) for a meal. I remember vividly the day my mother instructed me to not tell her that gelatin was an animal product (I refused to eat jell-o on principle)  for fear the news would reduce her food intake even further.

I remember dissecting and comparing information about “beauty” at slumber parties.  We all knew skinny was beautiful, and beautiful was valuable.  These ideas came from places a lot closer than Paris fashion week:  The little mermaid was thin, the evil sea queen was fat.   Then, of course Barbie was there, a picture of the ultimate modern, thin, “beautiful” woman- she had a career (I had business barbie- with a matching briefcase), a camaro, an ice cream shop, and she was a mermaid!

As soon as my friends and I were teens, Gwen Stefani and The Spice Girls were baring their midriffs to the world, and I was terrified of getting fat.  I was afraid of fatty foods, and deprived my body of a LOT of nutrients because of a very restrictive diet.  I developed bad habits in my teens that I have spent most of my 20s wrestling out of.

Training for roller derby and long distance running has helped me change my perspective about food.  Sports force you to make a decision: will you eat an unhealthy diet and be afraid of your body, or will you fuel your body well and kick ass?   Physical training has taught me to see my body as an amazing powerful machine, and food is more than fat content.  It is delicious, and It is fuel I need to be the best version of myself, strong and alert.

Our bodies work in an amazing way. Physical training actually breaks down muscle, and when the muscles recover, they grow back stronger, better prepared to handle the experience that originally broke them.  This is how we are able to take on greater speeds, distances, and weights when training athletically.  What an amazing lesson we can learn  from our own bodies!  We are actually designed to become stronger after we have been broken!  Unfortunately, these ideas are not what young girls hear about their bodies when they turn on the tv or open a magazine.

I must explain why I am especially angry about the lies children believe regarding beauty and value.  I was affected by an unhealthy picture of beauty at a young age, and I was home schooled!  The misinformation about what is attractive was so very present, that child who did not attend school, had very stable loving parents, and didn’t have cable television, was affected.

Oftentimes the issue of body image gets labeled as a  feminist topic.  Naomi wolf’s Beauty Myth argues that unrealistic concepts of beauty are a way of keeping women restrained.  Her points are interesting and worth a discussion, BUT this is NOT soley a woman’s issue. This is a human issue. The group responsible for these images, fit vs fiction, is reaching out to boys also:

Let’s be honest, sometimes it’s hard to remember that value is not derived from appearance.  We have to remind ourselves that we are fascinating creatures capable of amazing things. Whether you see yourself as a creation of God, or the result of billions of years of survival- you should feel pretty damn awesome just for being here.

Ripping off the workout band-aid.

Today was my first run of 2012.  Yes, it’s already the 10th, which means i spent 9 days thinking about running while instead doing something else, like eating queso from a jar balanced on my stomache while watching 30 Rock.  AGH! the tiny athlete in my head is freaking out over 9 days without running… BUT It gets even worse, I haven’t run since THANKSGIVING!!

 If it takes 21 days to create a habit, I created a habit of not running, and then I reinforced it.

I finally decided that if I was going to get back in gear, I had to just put on my shoes and do it, like ripping off a band-aid.  I ran my 3 mile route.  This was the “easy” route last spring, when I was building up to a half marathon.  Last fall when I got to train with the Texas Rollergirls for a few weeks, I used this route on my off days so that my muscles wouldn’t be worn out for the 3 hour practice the next day.  

Today the 3 mile route wasn’t the “easy” route anymore!  I was winded, I was sick, and I was slow.  When I got home, I had to walk around the apartment complex slowly sipping water for a few minutes because I felt so gross (The gross was partially because I had chugged 2 cups of coffee and a handful of almonds beforehand. Protein and acid do NOT fuel runs well!).  I am not as strong as I was last fall, but I am still an athlete, and I will get back there.  As I was making the last turn back into my neighborhood, I relieved myself with the realization that the next run will be better.  Next run I will properly hydrate first, and it will be easier, because I got that first uncomfortable run out of the way.  

First run of the year was definitely a success- I was reminded how much I love to be active, and now I can’t wait to go again.  

an inconvenient disconnection

Our internet went out last week. The only tv we have is netflix instant, so that means that with AT&T going awol on us, every screen in the house was dark.  It was on my day off, and Austin and I spent an uncomfortable evening on the couch.  He didn’t have his online video games, and I didn’t have my endless flow of work emails.  We weren’t sure what the hell to do with each other!  For the past few weeks we had been spending a lot of time in the same room, but we might as well have been in an office and an arcade across town from one another.  It seriously felt awkward, I think we were both embarrassed by how hard it was for us to spend time in a quiet apartment together.

“So… how’s work?” I asked akwardly.  He filled me in on some of our friends who are trying to find work and enter into various programs to transition out of homelessness. These were people i hadn’t seen in over a week, And it was news I was glad to hear.  I told him stories about dogs- because that how i spend my workdays, and shared some victories and challenges from my week.  We talked about plans for the homelessness recovery program he is helping start.  I have a lot of ideas about bringing volunteers in, and this was the first opportunity I’d had to bounce things off of him.

“this is good-” Austin said, looking thoughtfully at his feet on the coffee table, “I like talking”.  We weren’t overflowing with healthy happy conversation you expect from a couple who holds hands and sits together at social events.  Our “sharing” skills were a bit stiff, but we were working them, and it felt good.  ”I want to watch less TV” I responded.

Things are not magical and perfect, but gosh, we identified a problem last week, and we started down an awkward uncomfortable road to fixing it.   I’m happy with that.