I get a little defensive about my body sometimes, and not hardly defensive enough at others when they walk all over me.

But for this rant to make any sense, it really helps to know that the weight I consider ideal for myself is in the neighborhood of 190-200. In fact, to get down to 190 in high school after attaining my adult female body, I had to simultaneously maintain a high level of activity while limiting myself to 90 grams of carbohydrates/day, without limiting my protein intake, and not really stressing on the fat. (This was before the Atkins diet was a fad; I was modeling after the diabetic kids I babysat for.) And even then, I was pushing myself too hard -- one day I got dizzy and had to sit out the fencing class because I hadn't bothered to eat beforehand.

These days, I am well, well over my ideal weight. I know this, and anyone who points it out to me as if I hadn't noticed it, as if it was any concern of theirs, is going to die the painful one.

My ideal weight for me is just that, for me, and I don't really pay much attention to what the scale says and what the tag on the clothes say for anyone else, just that whatever it is, it's appropriate for their body type and bone structure.

So I have very little sympathy for some people who have nothing wrong with their bodies (if a doctor would not mention it to you, for example) except that somehow they can't see themselves as okay in any way, which is psychological.

I have sympathy for those who know it's psychological and are taking steps about that. There are several people who fit that description who are likely reading this; hugs for all, and I hope you come to terms with the power of your own beauty soon.

I get angry and frustrated when people with perfectly normal, healthy bodies and minds that just aren't quite aligned right with the body go and do stuff to the body that makes it unhealthy.

And then there are just the people whose ideal of beauty doesn't align with my own. (Gillian Anderson is just about perfect, from my perspective. At least, she used to be when I still watched that show.) It's frustrating to meet someone, and think, "She's pretty," and then listen to the complaint that she's too fat, when she's actually too thin to hit your "Holy mother of perl, she's HOT!" radar. And then she loses weight, and drops from pretty to "She's reasonably attractive, I guess", and then looks to be falling down out of that -- and she still thinks she's too fat?

It's enough to make me punch bricks.

For the love of gods, WHY?

"...which is of about as much importance to me as Heathrow's baggage retrieval system..." (about something utterly irrelevant to the person, especially something that someone thinks they should be worried about).

House points to the person who names the fandom and specifies the reference.


Cross-reference: Ectogenesis working journal

I have a friend from waaaaay back when, Ginger. (swallowtayle: she's one of the friends of the family, has two sisters, her dad's a lawyer, family's in Juneau, and the middle sister's name is the same as our mutual ex-girlfriend's.)

Ginger is thin. Ginger is skinny. Ginger is blonde, blue eyed, maybe 5'1", and (last I heard from her) somewhere in the neighborhood of sizes 2/0.

Ginger is in the hospital far too much, and worries about her weight. Not because she thinks she's fat, but because she knows she's dangerously thin. Every time she's sick, she loses weight, and she has to work to gain it back to where it was before, let alone to a place where she'll be comfortable.

I worry about her. Not mentally, so much, as she's got a healthy ideal of what her body should be like, but physically, because she's not able to get there.

Since the 8th was eris_raven's official birthday, she'll no longer be my little kitten. She's a full-grown cat now.

*snif*

Awwww...

Let the Little Fayoumis know that tomorrow he would have his school, with a new teacher, and new friends... and that C* E. would be in his class, and so would E*. (I'd seen the class list.)

The expression on his face when I said that --! Big old open-mouthed surprise with a grin in the eyes.

So.

I hope it won't be a pain in the ass to get him out the door tomorrow.

Have uncovered that my viewpoint on multiples and such is that the body possesses all attributes, at least in potential, but that the personalities have the capability of accessing, or not, these capabilities.

For example, we can paint. We have the body's knowledge of what a paintbrush is, access to vision, access to motion of body, and ability to do fine motor control. Anyone using the body who can do fine motor control has the *ability* to pick up the paintbrush and do things with it. Anyone who can access the knowledge of what brushstrokes do what, and what this color looks like on top of that color, and how to make shapes from color on paper is able to paint with this body.

Coping with funky emotional stuff is also a learned skill using body properties & methods. Stop train of thought is a body method. Look at from another angle is a higher-level function, but it's still pretty basic, and it can be, I am sure, broken down into calls to body functions. And with enough practice, the mental experience will become physical memory, and then will become potentially accessible to all.

I don't think I've lost any physical memories of anything with the changing of my personalities. The physical memories are still there in my brain. It's just, with the shuffling-around, that the easy paths to the memories are no longer easy to access.

I build myself, skill upon skill, using the libraries that were there before, using the created libraries, making my own. When Mona became inactive, all the things she used to do were still there, in inactive memory, but where we could use them if we willed. When Shanna became inactive, I wound up taking over that internal-message-sick-mind thing. It's still marked as her function; it feels really weird to look at her past memories and say "I", even though I'm her logical descendant. The personality tags that made her her, I have many of, so it's me that comes up in active personalities when searching on her, but I'm not her.

me, reichiere, Heidi (no lj), hinoai (the birthday girl), tasu, zzyzx ("jailbait"), hitokiri_naveed, lostgurlychick, shikka, satanclaws, athenazandrite, Jenny (no lj), loneprism ("you are not alone!"), and Jason (no lj).

Fun.

http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/gazetteer
http://www.acme.com/mapper/

Using those, I wound up finding school, home, my parents' property, and the place I used to babysit.

Amusingly enough, when I was searching around back home, I came across the following bit of map: http://www.acme.com/mapper/?lat=64.852019&long=-147.84193&scale=11&theme=Image&width=3&height=2&dot=Yes

... and I immediately knew where I was. That's the Experimental Farm, and that Y-intersection is where the cops would lurk to catch people (like Shawn) speeding in the slow zone in front of the gym.

Here's my high school, where all those fun times with the Monkeys went down. Right there is where I let Shawn borrow my virginity. (He lost it.) And the Secret Protocols of Mama dictated that swallowtayle and I wait here to be picked up after SFAC.

Wow. Home.

The potato soup got eaten all gone, so I snagged the bucket of spare rice from takeout the other night, and am making chicken rice soup.

There was random celery languishing in the vegetable drawer, so some of that went in too.

Hm. It lacks color. Maybe some carrots?

The Honorable Barbarian, L. Sprague de Camp.

Much fun. Rather fluffy, but fun. Yay for world travels with magic!

Made the soup. marxdarx ate up his and came back for seconds. Since he's a picky eater, I feel pretty good.

http://www.scamorama.com/

Playing with scammers, especially spammer scammers, is fun.

Gods, I love the links from the List [lmbujold].

the_patrician rocks my socks. Duly friended. Any Pterry fans should check it out. (Yes, hlynna, you had him friended before I did, but I'm still amused.)