Walking the Walk?

I just finished a long and serious talk with my daughter; one I hadn't really thought I would be having with an almost-ten-year-old. That is: It's not just your body that's your own. Your time, your energy, your feelings - all your own. No one has the right to demand access to you. Being a girl sometimes means that you will be called mean for being assertive. Many people are threatened or even intensely angered by a girl (or woman) who refuses to be accessible (which is kinda what all those culturally-enforced niceties are all about). That is their problem. Not hers. We talked about boundaries and how important it is not to feel obligated to be available to a person who is actively or passively ignoring your expressed boundaries.

No, nothing horrible happened to her. She's been having trouble for quite a while with a boy who won't leave her alone. Today I witnessed it.

Feminism 101

Melissa McEwan, over at Shakesville, did a great entry about Feminism 101, a while back. I highly recommend reading it, even if you already have a pretty decent grasp of feminism. It's a link to keep in to toolbox for dealing with much of the crap that comes up, day to day.

Results of Lift-Off

A while back, just before I shut down my blog for a while, I posted about being hypomanic and then, shockingly, never followed up. So now that I'm not in that state anymore, I thought I'd go ahead and let y'all know that that part of my life is OK.

Yes, I had a hypo jag. During this hypo jag I painted, downloaded deeply inspiring music, committed to eight billion activities for the kids, got that whole back-to-school gig rolling and traveled - without kids, husband, anything - to my BFF's 40th birthday shindig in Texas.

Interesting Development

I spent another day with the dentist. Same ol same ol by now, right?

Not so much (which you probably surmised). The dentist was doing the crown prep for that root canal tooth when she saw on the tooth next to it a ridge that seemed a little dark. This is a tooth that was fine on X-ray, not slated for anything on the treatment plan. The dentist thought she'd polish the ridge off, though, just so there wouldn't be a nifty potential home for bacteria when the crown is in place.

Size-Friendly Trainers

After my morning musings, I spent some time on Teh Google and found a few size-friendly trainers. One was a woman of size, herself. So that's pretty cool. It still doesn't seem to be very common, but I'm going to keep looking and learning.

On Personal Training and Health At Every Size

I was going to be a Personal Trainer. I was going to pay my dues at a big box gym until I had the experience and clients to go off on my own and do what I wanted to do: Specialize in working with pregnant and post-partum women. I thought this was something that people really needed.

See, most easy-to-find personal trainers have never given birth to a child. If you walk into a gym in search for a personal trainer, or (in my personal experience) more commonly, when the person selling you the gym membership talks you into adding on a discounted training package and assigns you a trainer, your options are likely to consist primarily of young people really into standard forms of exercise and body building.

Damnit Jillian, I'm a Mama not a Personal Trainer

OK. Here's the deelio and stuff: Jillian Michaels was "quoted" as saying she didn't want to get pregnant because she didn't want to ruin her body. According to her Facebook posts, that is not what she said. There's some other stuff, about adoption, that's a little off, but that's not my issue.

My issue is that people - smart people I greatly admire - are pissed and bloggin' up a storm. And these very smart people I greatly admire make many good points. Mainly that she's pretty much the spokesperson for Fat Hatred and the whole industry built around getting women (although they're increasingly recruiting teh menz) to hate themselves enough to starve themselves and hate their bodies and buy billions of dollars of useless and/or harmful crap.

Grounding and Centering

I spent yesterday with the two-year-old in the ER. She has had some sort of crazy little virus for the past few weeks and had gotten very dehydrated. It was miserable, but by 10 PM she was doing well enough that they let us go home instead of admitting her. Now I'm wiped out. I want to write. I want to try to stay more engaged with blogging... but this is going to have to be it for today. Or at least for now.

News

I am a student of Anthropology and Women's Studies. Classes begin in May. I am ecstatic. Just thought you should know.

Oh. And I got a frakken awesome new(ish) minivan. Yeah.

And my hair is SUPER purple.

I feel like I need some sort of Rocky-esque anthem to convey the awesomeness.

Moving on... Moving On... Nothing to see here.

I love the sense of control I get when a day starts well. Laundry going, kitchen usable, toys out for playing, but haven't taken over the house... it's good. Bayba has been doing crafts all morning. Mugga has a cold, but is doing much better than yesterday. Right now she's chilling on the sofa watching Dora.

I recently started a new med: Clonidine. It's technically for blood pressure, but increasingly used for anxiety, PTSD and ADHD.

Simple Pleasures

I'm so very happy.

When the endodontist finished the root canal, he purposely filed the remainder of the tooth down so it couldn't be used as a chewing surface before I have the crown put on... which would probably be no big deal, except that it leaves me with no chewing surfaces. I can bite the heck out of food, but can't chew.

So that's left me with a very limited diet. I can see where people who have fewer choices in food would end up with serious, life-threatening issues. Fortunately, I am not one of those people.

Of Reasons and Dog Poo

OK. Getting a little silly with the title... but I can only take myself so seriously for so long. Still, this is a continuation of the last two posts.

We All Have Our Reasons
My Reason

Part of the shame and humiliation of 12-year-old memories is the way they force my to view myself and the way my identity is constructed. I felt weak and powerless and ugly and worthless.

My Reason

This post is a continuation of We All Have Our Reasons.

Have I mentioned my reason for all the dental stuff? I feel like I probably have. I feel like I get stuck in these loops where I say too much about it and make people uncomfortable and they wonder why I don't just shut up and get over it... why I let an event that lasted something like 2 or 3 hours (if you don't count the years leading up to it) keep interfering with my life, now approximately 12 years later.

We All Have Our Reasons

I spent a good portion of my day at the endodontist. The first hour or so was awful. I was so nervous that I forgot to bring the X-rays and referral information from my regular dentist. They were very kind and assured me it was fine. I was trying not to act nervous, mind you. But I was shaky. Distracted.

I hate anything dentistry related. And no, it's not because I'm just a big hysterical wimp. At least, I don't see it that way. It's not so bad with my regular dentist. It's the new ones that freak me out.

What they don't get and I don't know how to explain is that I am not worried about the pain.