Occassionally there are perks.

One of my really great residents is moving on to bigger and better things. I’ll miss her! But before she left she did two amazing things:

1. Left her apartment in absolutely pristine condition. (A very rare occurrence.)
2. Left me two bags of Sojourner Farms dog snacks for Kiba as a parting gift.

Generally I dread the last day of the month because of all the move-in/move-out bullshit, but this was a nice change of pace.

Crying almost as soon as I walked through the door.

Probably long overdue, I finally made an appointment to see a therapist. The day-to-day has been getting steadily worse: going to work, coming home to work, going to work, coming home to work (work, work, work!!!), all set to the soundtrack of self-loathing that runs non-stop in the back of my head.

Still, there’s something cathartic about taking 50 minutes out of my day to emotionally disembowel myself in front of a perfect stranger. Over the next few sessions, I’ll probably be expected to take those guts and examine them in horrifying detail.

Sympathy for the Don

Tony Soprano is a bastard. He’s a lying, cheating, manipulative, hard-ass motherfucker with a soft spot for ducks and other little animals. He’s fiercely loyal, but doesn’t hesitate to dole out the judgments even among those he loves best. While I’ve never been terribly interested in mafia films (nope, haven’t seen that one; or that one; not even THAT one) I do enjoy The Sopranos. Tony Soprano is one of the most clearly developed TV characters I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. Just look at his Wikipedia entry! It reads like the biography of a walking, talking historical figure!

But what I like best about Tony Soprano is that he’s an emotional eater. When he walks in to the kitchen in a mood he heads to the refrigerator and goes straight for the deli meat. Now, I don’t understand the drive behind organized crime. Organized crime in my world would probably look like, I don’t know, having Kiba crap all over apartment building, and then offering people my “protection” from the dog crap….for a price, of course. But one thing I DO understand is the drive to eat after a bad day. I’m not a straight-deli-meat-out-of-the-package kind of girl, but I am a chocolate peanut butter ice cream kind of girl - no need for the bowl, thank you. I’ve even had really bad nights where I will pack Kiba into the car (because she loves a car ride) and we’ll stop at three different fast food drive thru’s to pick up my favorite comfort foods. I like Tony for his love of the little animals, and I relate to him for his habit of looking for escape in a good meal.

Reading: Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
Listening: more Hikaru Utada
Watching: When I get home tonight it’s going to be a Kyo Kara Maoh marathon! Woohoo! Maybe it will be true love for Yuri and Wolfram…

Scientifically-formulated anti-fat lip gloss

While eating remains something that I do, well, for most reasons (hell, I don’t need a reason for eating to be a good idea), shopping is something I reserve for days where I might otherwise have slept through the entire day and then spent the night watching Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil for the umpteeth time. The strange thing is that I’m usually drawn to the make-up aisle. As if a new eyeshadow or lip gloss is going to provide enough cute to cover up the fact that the rest of me is so decidedly UN-cute.

In better news, LisaMonkey has a job! I’m excited for her that this unemployment period didn’t last for very long. Selfishly, I’m even more excited that she and I can get back on track as Team FatGrrl, sharing a little accountability and support. Somehow, I always feel this need to apologize when I say that I want to be smaller, that I have to say I’m sorry because I don’t feel good about myself as a fat girl. But Lisa reminds me that what makes me comfortable is what makes me comfortable, and I don’t need to apologize for or justify it. She and I just want to get to a place that’s…comfortable. Then maybe my new bubblegum pink lip gloss could be a complement rather than a cover up.

Listening: Ultra Blue by Hikaru Utada
Reading: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Watching: Kyo Kara Maoh, God (?) Save Our King!

Fat Fridays: A Model of Fat

Model…as in, She is a model of fatty loveliness.

Kailee O’Sullivan.

Tricks of the Trade

I’ve learned a lot from this girl. She made me the apartment manager I am today. Thank you, Pearl.

Son of a…fuck, fucking, fuck-fucker. Fuck!

I could yell. I could scream about it, and throw a tantrum. However, I’d rather just tell the world about the writers over at Impact Lab - those useless gits. Thanks, Impact Lab (you gaping-asshole fucktards), for this little gem.

At first, they don’t seem so bad:

Recently rated as one of the top five science blogs in the known universe by Popular Science Magazine, the DaVinci Institute’s Impact Lab is a relentless pursuit of the future and all the critical components that will make up the world to come. We’re all about uncovering cutting edge, breakthrough, and emerging technologies and the forces impacting them. And we throw in some odd stuff just for fun.

They’re probably a little quirky, and enjoy dressing up as their favorite Star Trek character and gazing longingly into the eyes of their comrades while re-enacting Captain Kirk’s best scenes, and they likely have more than a passing crush on Joss Whedon. Quirky but harmless - the best kind of sci-fi enthusiast, in my book. But then you see this shit:

Food can be an evil thing in the wrong hands. Here are a series of obesity-enhanced photos to show you what your favorite celebrity would look like with a few extra pounds.

As we are all striving for that perfect weight, just take a few moments to have these images permanently seared in your brain, and food will begin to lose much of its appeal.

Food is evil? Obesity enhanced? Perfect weight? A FEW EXTRA POUNDS?? Looks more like a couple hundred extra pounds. Sorry Catherine Zeta-Jones, but you’ve fallen victim Photoshop Fattening Syndrome:

This is a vicious exercise in the grotesque. Fuck you, Impact Lab, you fucking fucktards.

(Incidentally, the more times I type the word ‘fuck’, the more it seems to resemble a bizarre example of phonics. How did we ever get to the point of combing the ‘eff’ sound with ‘uck’?) Hee hee. Fuck!

Wanted Dead or Alive: Corrupted Data

Long overdue for an update, Jon over at Urbansub Design helped me update Wordpress on this site. Things are pretty wonky ’round the FatGrrl world, as you’ll notice. I’m doing my best to have things up and runnin’ soon!

Fat Friday: Cosplay

Cosplay participant as Faye Valentine of Cowboy Bebop.

Projekt L

Got an e-mail yesterday from Projekt L - a collective in Germany promoting awareness of and encourage dialogue around lookism and its intersections with other forms of discrimination - inviting FatGrrl to be listed on their links resources list. (The translation to English is still in progress; find it here.)

I checked out some of the content and the discussion is worth a look. I would be interested to see more about the distinction between aesthetics/attraction and social constructions of “beauty”. From my perspective, it seems particularly apropos to the investigation of beauty paradigms and the way they manifest in eating disorders.

Listening: New NIN album - Year Zero
Watching: Ice Age, Babel
Reading: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix