Friday, October 29, 2021

Marrying Mal

A few weeks ago, Mal was asking me if his cousin's son was his in-law. I told him no, he doesn't have any in-laws. He was pretty bummed by it, and I explained that he wouldn't have in-laws until he got married. He thought about it for a few moments, then said, "If, in the future, I married Kona, then you'd be her mother-in-law! And her mom would be my mother-in-law."

He was pretty excited about the idea, and that was that.

Until a few days later... 

We'd been at a homeschool gathering, and on the way home, Mal said, "Mom, you know how I've been thinking about the future? Well, Kona has another friend who was thinking about marrying her."

Then the next time we saw them, Mal told me, "His name is Andy. The one who wants to marry Kona. I hope he changes his mind."

I said, "Well, actually it's up to Kona who she marries."

Then next time, after we left, Mal was musing, "I really do hope Kona chooses me." I said, "Mal, you have a lot of time to figure that out." He shook his head and asked, "Mom, have you ever heard that kids grow up quickly?" I tried not to laugh, instead explaining that literally, it was at least eleven years before he could legally get married.

Then after all of that time, earlier this week, we came back to Urban Air for the first time in months (Delta variant is waning). Mal met a girl and played with her for a couple of hours. When she left, Mal came over to me and whispered, "I have a secret that she told me not to tell you... We went and got another piece of candy from the front desk when no one was looking." 

I laughed at that and asked, "Did you tell her we don't care what you eat?" Mal said, "No. But I have another secret." Still whispering in my ear, "You know how Kona has someone else who wants to marry her? I can marry this friend instead." "Do you know her name?" He did not. He ran after to ask, but Urban Air is really loud.

And they all lived happily ever after.

This tooth NEEDS TO COME OUT.




Thursday, October 28, 2021

"You Look Great" as blatant fatphobia

This weekend, I attended an event where one of the people there has lost upwards of 100 pounds during the pandemic. He himself was pretty low-key about it, only talking when people remarked or asked questions. He said that basically his weight loss was due to doing mental health work and realizing that he was spending a lot of time eating to avoid wrestling with his anxiety and other issues.

Twice, I heard people say, "You look great!" Both times, I cringed. Both times, I didn't say anything because I haven't seen these people in at least a year and a half, and some of them I had never met before. When my mom recently remarked that someone who'd lost a bunch of weight "looks great," I said, "She looks smaller. She looked fine before."

I wish I'd spoken up this weekend.

Fatphobia is ugly.

Complementing a person's looks when they have lost weight is fraught. You don't know whether they lost weight on purpose (in this case, it sounded like he hadn't), or even if intentional weight loss is something to celebrate. In my case, I got a LOT of positive feedback when I dropped pounds... but the reason I was doing it was to avoid losing someone's affections. That's not something for which I should have been given a pat on the back. I lost weight to comply with someone else's ideal of feminine beauty. I should have been encouraged to explore why I felt compelled to do that instead of insisting that I be treated with respect regardless of my size.

Furthermore, complementing someone on their weight loss implies that they look better now than they did before. This is problematic on several accounts. One is that, if they are like 95% of people who intentionally lose a great deal of weight, their body will fight to put that weight back on... and it will. So when they return to a larger size, they're left with the ghosts of complements past, and they know that they're being judged as having let themselves go or some other such nonsense.

Another problem is that there are often (and there were in this case) people in the vicinity who weigh in the ballpark of that person's "before." You're basically telling them that they'd be better and more attractive if they could just get it together and drop some poundage. That's thoughtless, and it's rude.

The fact is that thinner people do not objectively look "better" than bigger people. We've learned as a culture to value thinness, but one way to help fix this is to intentionally expose ourselves to a variety of body sizes. It's difficult to do that with mainstream media, because most people on television and in magazines are still extremely small. But a great thing about TikTok and Instagram and YouTube is that you can find bodies that are differently-sized, have different levels of physical ability, and whose gender expressions vary from the pretty narrow spectrum commonly seen in content generated primarily for commercial success.

It seems silly that we have to remind ourselves that fat people aren't failed thin people (thanks, Virgie Tovar), and that there are fat folks living great lives everywhere all of the time. When someone loses weight, it's just that: weight loss. It's not good. It's not bad. It just is. Same as when someone gains weight: not good, not bad... just reality.

If we could find our way to this understanding, life would be so much better for all of us.

And next time, I'm going to say something in that moment. I've really had enough.

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

Pumpkin Patch, 'tis the season

Last weekend, we visited a dog-friendly pumpkin patch in Temple I'd read about. Because my niece told me we needed to be there RIGHT when it opened (she was right), we stayed in a hotel the night before. D even went with us! It was a nice little 24-hour getaway.



Luke and Mal both settled into the hotel pretty quickly. We realized that Luke's crate wouldn't fit in our car, and I don't think it hurt his feelings at all.

Our plan had been to all (but D) go to the park together, but Mal was having fun at the hotel and wasn't interested in getting out. So I took Luke to a dog park, and my parents met me for about half an hour or so.



The kids had McD's for dinner, and James and I got sandwiches from Krazy Waffle. He had a breakfast sandwich, and I had the Monte Cristo. It was tasty, especially because I'd forgotten to eat lunch.


The night went off without a hitch, and the next morning, we drove ten minutes out to the farm. There is about a mile stretch where the road is one-way, and that's why you don't want to get there after it's open and there is a line. It's like those construction areas where one side of the road is closed. Glad we only had to do that on the way out!

There were tons of photo opportunities, and lots of neat things to do included in the entry price. We also brought home a couple of ornamental and a couple of pie pumpkins.


2 of D's 3 archery attempts. The last was close to the middle, too!








We came back home Saturday night, and Mal had his first Halloween party on Sunday. There were some crafts and he got to play with one of his good friends, so that was nice.





On both Saturday and Sunday, Mal got to play with another friend whose grandparents live around the corner. They made plans to see each other this weekend at the trunk-or-treat and outdoor movie our town is having. We also have a homeschool trunk-or-treat Friday, and one the town over on actual Halloween. Yesterday, my friend from Las Vegas said, "So you'll have candy for a year." I don't think she knows me and my family as well as I had thought... :) 

Thursday, October 7, 2021

Ennui

In the past year or so, I've had several short bouts with what I think is depression. It comes and goes. (Memo to me: check out Delta-8 gummies.)

Mal has been SUPER into swinging lately. That comes and goes, too... like in his life. It does seem like this time of the year, when it's mostly nice a lot of the day, he wants to spend a lot of time on the swing set. Problem is, he does not know how to swing himself. So there is much asking and begging and cajoling of grown-ups for assistance. Since James works most days, that typically falls to me. One day last week, he was asking me to keep pushing him (even though I already had twice, including the time we were finishing up because I needed to go inside and start on dinner), and I said something that made him cry. It almost made me cry, too, actually. 

I said, "Mal, I love you, and I love to help you do what you want to do. But sometimes I have other things I HAVE to get done. I also have things that I myself want to do, and you know when I get to do them? Never. I don't have any time to do what I want." Now, this was a little exaggeration, and a little mean, though unintentionally. Fact is, I had him because I WANTED a kid, and I wanted to take care of him. Same with the dog. Same with being the designated "homemaker." But in terms of just deciding to do a thing that makes me happy, and then doing that... my life doesn't really allow for much more of that than maybe eating a really good cookie, or watching a television show while I do something else, too.

In thinking about that, I realized that I don't even know what I like to do, or what I'd want to do with free time. Again, I can spend time on my phone throughout the day while I'm sitting with the dog so he'll calm down a bit. I can find pockets of time that randomly show up to do some volunteer work on the computer. But a pottery class? No way. In-person book club? Nope. Even a night out at the movies with a friend? It's just not feasible given how our lives are structured.

Besides, I don't know that, if I had free time, I'd want to do any of those things.

Several people have asked me lately, "What do you like to do in your spare time?" or "What are your hobbies?" And I genuinely don't know. I used to like to write. Now, ehh. I used to like to eat in restaurants. We really haven't done much of that since Mal was born, because he's not a huge "sit in one place for an hour" kind of person. Also, now that I'm out of diet culture, food is not the end-all/be-all it used to be.

All of this might be because it's possible I've entered into perimenopause. 

For the first time since I had Mal, last month, my period was late. Like 2-3 weeks late. I was hoping that I'd just never have another one, but, alas, that is not what happened. When it arrived, it made up for the time it lost, for sure. So maybe also it was heavy on the hormones.

I'm feeling much more balanced this week.

Oh, and we have some cool news coming soon. Maybe even today? Just seemed like it should go in a separate post from this downer. :) So stay tuned!