* Knitting as a method of self-soothing and to avoid the temptation to slap one’s classmates and/or teacher sort of backfires when one finds oneself contemplating the garotte potential of circular knitting needles. Ahem.
* You know what one of the risk factors for atherosclerosis1 is? Burning proteins and lipids for energy. You know one of the times that happens? When your body is starving. Such as, I dunno, from severe calorie restriction in the hopes of losing weight? AKA dieting? But teh death fatz is bad for you! So you better start dieting!! …right.
* Listening to people go on and on and on about how much life must SUXORZ if you have diabetes or Crohn’s disease or hypothyroidism makes me go all stabby. Or garottey. At least in my imagination.
* Everything can be blamed on obesity, apparently.
* If you’re unhealthy in any way whatsoever, it’s because you’re making bad food choices. (And, of course, you have ultimate control over what you eat. Even if you don’t actually have a farmer’s market, grocery store, produce stand, or farm anywhere within walking or busing distance of you. Or the money to shop at such. Or the time, skills, energy, or spoons to do anything with said foodstuffs.)
* The United States of America doesn’t have an official national language, but if you want to be a licensed massage therapist in the state of Oregon, you fucking better be literate in English. Right in the Statute regulating the profession of massage in Oregon, it reads: “the examination shall be administered in the English language”. Not just “yeah, we’re gonna give it in English because we’re Anglocentric and don’t care enough about brown people and immigrants to bother offering it any other language”, no, it’s in the fucking law. And yeah, massage therapists need to be able to communicate with their clientèle in some fashion, but y’know what? That means that monolingual I cannot be a good LMT for a large portion of the population. Because I am only fluent in English. But heaven forbid we allow people who are monolingual in any other language (or multilingual in a whole variety of languages none of which happen to be English) to become LMTs! Who knows what they’d gossip about when they know we can’t understand them?? Or something.
* One may be disallowed from practicing massage in the state of Oregon if one “Has a physical or mental condition that makes the licensee unable to conduct safely the practice of massage.” If you can’t safely do massage, you can’t safely do massage, and I don’t have a problem with the Board doing its job and protecting the public from that. But that “has a physical or mental condition” clause scares the shit out of me, given the culture I live in and what stereotypes some people actually believe about things like bipolar disorder (that’d be me!), schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, and so on. Why “has a condition”? Why not “is unable to conduct safely the practice of massage”? My answer? One word, starts with “able” and rhymes with “ism”. Bet you can’t guess it.
* I have knitting skilz. Not just in the refraining-from-murder-with-craft-supplies department, but I can, while simultaneously taking notes, participating in discussion, fighting fatphobia, (and refraining from murder), provisionally cast on 40 stitches in the round (without making a mobius), make a picot edged drawstring casing (which is harder than it sounds), flawlessly pick up the provisional stitches using a second 60″ circular needle, and (three inches of mind-numbingly boring stockinette stitch later) kitchener stitch the bottom closed. Without a pattern. Or reference to stitch guides or tutorials. Because I rock like that.
So what did you learn this week?
- Atherosclerosis is scarring of the arteries, which leads to plaque build up, hardening, and eventual hypertension, and potentially heart attacks, strokes, and congestive heart failure. ↩
Arwyn
In my bathroom hangs a plaque with a picture of a yin yang and the word BALANCE. I can never get it to hang straight. This probably says something deep and meaningful about my life.
I have learned this week that although anxiety disorder is, y’know, one of those “all in the head” (ha ha, and that was hollow laughter) things, it’s actually also a terribly physical thing too. The pain in my chest, the nausea, the shivering and feeling shaky and faint… yeah. Also I’ve learned that anxiety and depression don’t go away because you’ve worked out why you’re depressed and anxious. But knowing why can at least help a little if that knowledge is used to build solutions and strategies for future self-care rather than rumination and self loathing. But even that’s easier said than done. Anyway. I’m not even sure now whether or not “what have you learned this week” was an actual question to which you wanted answers. So if it wasn’t, sorry about that!
Rosemary Cottage — it very much was a real question, so thank you for answering. And I so feel you on both those things.
Oh and much <3 for pointing out the inherent classism and ableism in the whole "bad food choices!" meme.
Listening to people go on and on and on about how much life must SUXORZ if you have diabetes or Crohn’s disease or hypothyroidism makes me go all stabby. Or garottey. At least in my imagination.
Ok. STOP reading my mind. I’ve almost posted in 4 different places this week on the stabbity feelings generated by “Oh, it’d be awful if I had to take medication the rest of my life!”
Seriously? No, it’d be awful if you had to not take medication for a reasonably treatable condition.
Or, as I said to the father at the park who kept going on and on about how sad it was that my kiddo was home from the NICU with a trach and a ventilator: No, it’s not sad. He obviously doesn’t mind. If he didn’t have those things, he’d be DEAD, and THAT would be sad.” I turned and walked away rather than garoting him with the oxygen tubing.
As to what I’ve learned this week:
(1) sleep deprivation is bad. Sleep deprivation + hormonal imbalances…sucks even more.
(2) I need to not watch the Discovery Health show about the NICU. 15 months at home is still not nearly enough emotional distance for me to have sympathy for people who think a week there is the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone….we were there 9 1/2 months. (that goes back to your post yesterday on how we frame our own concerns about our bodies – that idea applies to life circumstances too)
Oh oh, I’ll play!
1. Customer service is easy (AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA)
2. Apparently a character being plural (generally through the “oh look at how crazy they are” route) is an awesome plot device for role playing. Simple craziness or insanity also work well.
3. Insanity and stupidity are synonymous. (uh wha?)
4. Playing with random people in MMORPGs may not be workable for me anymore. It used to just be in PvP, but now it seems that playing with them for regular game play leaves me incredibly drained. It got to the point where I actually went to bed at midnight last night without any real contest, which is way early for me.
5. Despite the several billion people in the world, and despite many people that I know and have good relations with (even if we’re not close close), the world is an incredibly lonely place. I can’t remember a time when it hasn’t been, though lately I’ve just been reminded of this fact.
I forgot one…
Little ones with bad decisions need to be taught a lesson. A gruesome, sexualized lesson. It doesn’t matter what their reasons behind those decisions were. They need to be taught a lesson, so they will learn not to do it ever again.
I learned that knitting can indeed be used to mess with the space time continuum.
Also that hipsters are fucking douchebags. But that was a relearning.
AND THAT NO MATTER HOW GOOD YOU THINK A GROUP OF ACTIVISTY PEOPLE ARE, THEY WILL INVARIABLY FAIL YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS LIKE A HALF BRICK TO THE FACE. I might be a little bitter.
I learned that there is no pleasing everyone in terms of my choices to work (or not). And I also learned that I feel strongly that no one else should give a damn about my choices in the first place. Because (1) they’re mine and (2) I am not imposing them on anyone else.
I’ve learned I’m spending too much time on the internetz battling social justice stuff and it’s draining my personal energy, mental and emotional health, and detracting from who I want to be in the family.
What Kelly said X2! It’s hard getting the balance right – seeing the problems of the world and lacking personal power to change it so turning to the Internet for action. But it doesn’t do the housework and like the heads of the hydra, there’s always another problem sprouting up. Today I did one “letter to the editor” and a few forum posts. but I baked apple muffins for the family first. : )
1) I (re)learned that going off my meds cold turkey isn’t a good thing.
2) I (re)learned that standing up for myself is fucking important.
3) I (re)learned that taking sleep for granted is all too easy.
Um, yeah, I have a problem with remembering.
I learned that standing up for myself makes me defensive, in a bad way. Also, that thinking you should be able to discuss certain actions with a potential partner before performing said actions makes me crazy and irrational.
Also, I hear your 4th and 5th bullet points from my mother ALL. THE. TIME. She cannot seem to understand the effect saying things like that can have on the people around her, especially her children. I may be a (mostly) full-grown adult now, and fairly comfortable with myself, but damn, did that do some damage to my self-image. And bad self-image can lead to bad decisions. I spent most of my life until recently being about 30 pounds lighter than “average” for my height, age group, etc., so when recently, I gained about 50 pounds, putting me at the top end of the range she claims is healthy (because Weight Watchers said so…don’t even get me *started*!), I started getting lectures about all sorts of things. Especially wonderful was when, on a visit, I asked if the colors in an outfit I’d put on matched, and the answer I received was that it didn’t matter because I was “too fat” to wear the outfit anyway. I wore it regardless, and it led to a fight. She also loves to pick on a friend of mine. Luckily, never to the girl’s face, but that doesn’t make it much better. My friend has a few medical conditions that don’t allow her to be any weight other than the one she is, really (and I see nothing wrong with her the way she is!), but my mother has spent a good amount of time in the four years I’ve known this girl lecturing me on how, if she ate better, she’d lose weight. It doesn’t matter if I insist that the girl eats “normal” portions, or that she’s not eating anything particularly “bad” for her, the lectures continue. I particularly hate the comment/question “How can she stand to let herself be that big?” Ugh. How can a person be so ignorant?
Well, it’s me again. But anyway.
Do you know what else I learned this week? That actually, self-pity CAN have a function. That all this “people have it so much worse than me” and “it’s not that bad really” can actually be deeply unhelpful. And that it’s okay to give yourself a break, and okay to feel sad about your circumstances, and okay to grieve the loss of the life you used to have, and it’s okay to feel a bit sorry for yourself.
Arrrggggg on the lifestyle choices gig. I am currently trying to eat high fiber ( which is working really well for controlling symtoms ) and I have given up on finding respies online because high fiber is one of those things that assumes that laziness and imorality are the only reason people don’t eat expesive organic homecooked food
I learned that when I make a schedule for who is supposed to take the late shift, I should put my shifts in my personal calendar (learning at 3 PM that I’m supposed to work at 6 PM and not go home for dinner as I thought is a bummer). I learned that sleep is better in bed than sitting up. I had an interview with a new specialist who showed me a gentle way to ask the question: “So it looks like you’ve decided not to have bariatric surgery?”-he actually said it in a non-judgmental, either answer is OK way. He then hemmed and hawed a bit over why doing my procedure with general anesthesia might be better: I supplied “because of my obesity and sleep apnea?” which is exactly the reason.
And I’m really with you on all those “wouldn’t it be awful to have (your condition)?” comments. No, really, treating my illness is a lot better than being dead. And, you know what?–I am a worthwhile, intelligent, productive member of society, not that I would be any less worthy if I were neither intelligent nor productive. I am a human being with innate worth.
Oh, and I learned that I am articulate and can express my experiences and insights in ways that benefit others.