Blue Jays and Adulting

Recently, I had the luck to have my hair done by an amazing stylist/family friend. She did it a golden brown with individually-painted blonde highlights in the bangs and blonde, teal, and blue peek-a-boo highlights. It looked amazing, but I couldn't kept it up and I feel more natural with red anyway. Instead of trying to keep the blonde-teal-blue combo, she did red with blue covering everything else.. which I feel might be a little too much blue myself. However, as soon as she'd done the first session, blue jays started popping up all over my life. One left me a tail feather, now they're in all th yards, including mine, they follow me to the park. My animal is usually a panther, so here's what the internet has to say about blue jay symbolism: Like the crow, magpie and raven, blue jays are talkative creatures utilizing a wide range of vocalizations to express their opinions. Indeed, their speech abilities are so advanced, that they are able to mimic other birds and even humans. Blue jay's have been known to mimic hawk calls as a ploy to lure these birds of prey away from jay's nests. Likewise, those with the blue jay as their totem are quite loquaciousness, and have the gift of gab. Common vocations of those with the blue jay as their totem are sales people, lawyers, politicians, public speakers, and teachers. Animal Symbolism of the Blue Jay: Energy Clarity Vibrancy Advantage Curiosity Faithfulness Intelligence Communication Determination Assertiveness Loquaciousness Animal symbolism of determination, assertiveness, and intelligence is also a shared trait among those who claim the blue jay as their totem (and also common attributes with those having the vocations above listed). We see these characteristics in the blue jay because it is fiercely bold against its enemies. The jay is fearless when it comes to protecting its partner, young and territory. So too are those with this animal as their totem. They will defend their positions against adversaries who seem much more powerful than themselves - often with successful results.

Blue jay animal symbolism resonates truth, faithfulness, and solidarity because they are vigilant in their tasks. They also keep the same mate for life, which is symbolic of endurance, patience and loyalty. The jay is an excellent symbol for those wishing to honor their long-lasting bond between friends, family and lovers. In the spiritual realm, the blue jay speaks of clarity and vision. In Native American symbolism (namely the Sioux Nation) the azure of the jay against the blue sky indicated a "double vision" or double clarity. This visual/spiritual "blue on blue" concept speaks of purity of the soul, truth of the heart, and clarity of thought. In dreams the blue jay animal symbolism also deals with clarity - but of higher thoughts, and taking action. When we dream of blue jays our deeper selves may be telling us that we are not being honest with ourselves about something, and it's time to "come clean" with our thoughts. Blue jay's in dreams are also symbolic of taking action in the direction of our highest truth. The jay asks for honesty, and forthrightness - any other action taken (such as deceptive or dishonest action) will mean double jeopardy for us in our waking hours. These spiritual and dream impressions are especially poignant because the jay is an air animal totem. Creatures of the air naturally symbolize the realm of thought, higher ideals, spirituality and the attainment of higher truth. The Sioux also observed the jay preferring fir and oak trees for their homes and nesting areas. These trees are symbolic of longevity, endurance and strength, and so share the same animal symbolism with the blue jay. This is not to say the jay is persnickety. On the contrary, the blue jay animal symbolism includes aspects of opportunity and advantage because it will make its home anywhere. From supermarket awnings, to mailboxes, the blue jay is extremely resourceful and makes the best out of its environment. Those with the jay as their totem are likely to be the same way. Generally easy-going, jay people are able to make a turn situations around to their best advantage, and make awesome lemon aid out of the sourest of lemons. Blue jay's are vastly curious, stopping to peck at any shiny thing that catches their eye (much like crows and magpies). Those who resonate with the blue jay will also find themselves equally curious. Indeed, blue jay people have are always dabbling in new directions, gathering new insight, and slaking their curiosities. These people tend to be a jack-of-all trades, knowing a little bit about seemingly everything. This makes them fantastic trouble-shooters and quite resourceful (not to mention fascinating party guests).

Well, I haven't been feeling particularly assertive, loquacious, or determined lately.. but maybe that will rub off? I'm certainly all about clarity, honesty, and fierceness. Hopefully this is good medicine because I'm needing it. As for other animal symbolism in my life, my tarantula finally molted and.. it's a girl! I haven't named her yet. And don't look at me that way, I'm terrified of spiders, too. I just figured that if I was in charge of taking care of one for many years, I would grow less freakishly terrified over time. I guess the one thing that Jays and I have in common is resourcefulness. I was talking to someone from school and they said something so deeply meaningful that it made me cry. I had talked about my son, my relationships, family, friends, church, school, art, furry kids, moving and she said, "I don't know how you do it. You're so.. responsible. You're on top of things and getting it done. That's amazing." It's the first time anyone has ever said anything like that to me. Sure, my house looks like it might be featured on the "Top 10 Most Eclectic" episode of hoarders. Maybe I have little breakdowns. Maybe I do now have a permanent scar from my kid pretending to hug me and then bite me instead. Yes, sometimes finances are challenging. But I'm adulting. I am getting it done. It may not be picture-perfect or mani-pedi'ed like my mom or sister, but I've never been that person. I'm me, and my life is beautiful and full of magic. My son wears my hair ties as arm bands. I live in a house where there is always someone home, the house is never empty. I head to the door before people pull up. And it's absolutely, 100% me for right now (I'm ever changing), and it's fantastically beautiful, even if only I see it that way.

Where did I go?

"The real reason I haven't been writing is that- I haven't been writing. It has burst upon me like a revelation. I do what I do, and I don't do what I don't do. I feel embarrassed by this, as if everyone on earth knows this except me. The way I write more is to turn on the computer, sit in front of it, and write." -Meg Barnhouse. Something happened recently (which I may or may not discuss on here) which leads me to think I need to blog more. And possibly learn to use my camera instead of my phone, since I never could figure out how to transverse the instagram-blogspot vortex. I need a place to write, to rant, to stretch out the scraps of thought in my mind and see if I've got a quilt, a collage, or just stuff that needs to go in the recycle bin. I could claim that things got very complicated; and they did to an extent. I have a toddler (who is sometimes less than well-mannered and gracious). I had an internship with what began as an amazing experiment in ecumenical community and, through miscommunication, split my whole world (and my friend-world) in half. I have applied for candidacy with my church, which is basically a learning internship... at the end of which, my congregation could decide to locally ordain me. This is complicated by the fact that I'm trying desperately to shift my sleep schedule so that I can make it to night classes at a massage school. I love massage already, don't get me wrong... but with everything else and my hypothyroid issues, I'm having a difficult time getting myself in gear and if I can't pull things out of the toilet somehow, I will not make my hours and will have wasted tuition. Which, I don't want to do... massage is like spiritual counseling through movement, and I wake up feeling happy-sore every morning after a good class session. I'm just at a place where I need someone to hold my hand and guide me back to where I need to be. There are also some very cool people in my class, who might be friends if I were around enough to know. On top of that, our landlords want us out of the house within the next 30 days; I have not one clue how that is going to happen. Our house is currently a wreck. The one house we looked at was dirty, had a human sized hole in the ceiling of the garage, and had dead animals everywhere.. including, charmingly, stuffed into a toy chimpanzee in the backyard. We were told this was used as a daycare center. I left with a serious case of the heebie-jeebies. Having written just that has been cathartic. My poor partner has to listen to me constantly since all my friends are either on the daytime schedule or one of the coasts, and I'm used to the friendly chatter that keeps thinking at a lull until I'm alone. As the one people person in the house, I'm currently almost always alone and it's driving me to the nail-biting, dry-mouthed brink of talking to my cat. Or creating an imaginary friend. If I don't talk to them in public, I'm totally not too old for one.. right? As for my son, like his height and his insatiable ability to get into trouble early on in life, his "terrible twos" have come on very quickly. He can (and will) say "no", "stop", "don't", "tlvh-hv", and "e-e-e"... oh, and "jedi". He smacks me, pulls my hair, refuses to let me feed him (Dad, of course, is the savior parent... since he built Tos cell-by-cell and risked his life to bring him into the world), kicks me, and refuses to play with me. So I've been unashamedly attempting to buy his love. The color-on-windows crayons were/are a HUGE hit and he seems particularly enamored of the "giant" green bouncy ball I got him. Wait until he figures out he can play with it outside! However, my little ginger-man seems to think these gifts come from the gift fairy, not the life-giving fairy. I can just hope this is a phase and once he moves from wanting to be carried all the time to wanting to actually play he will see me the way other small children have always seen me- like a glitter-sweating fairy gothmother with the imagination of a kid and the height of a tall 8 year old. On the other hand, the kid has a serious music addiction. Not only does he dance to anything, but he hums and will frequently repeat songs I've sung (not children's songs...if my kid is going to hear about the black plague, it's going to be through some metal band, not ring-around-the-rosie). In other news, I'm surrounded by blue jays. I'l blog on that next.

Fat Rant

I understand that this is a very controversial issue and my personal take on this is not going to be thrilling for the "gym girls" or for the "fat-ivists". I have read many manifestos concerning "Fat Pride" and discussions about the fat pride movement. I understand railing against the mainstream beauty paradigm. However, telling people they are not damming their health by avoiding exercise is wrong. That having a doctor tell you that your weight and lack of healthy diet and exercise is causing problems is judgmental.Being over-weight can severely impact your health. Having gone from 125lbs to 220lbs (yes, I was pregnant), I can tell you what a difference extraneous weight makes. My joints ached constantly, they still do even 6 months after being pregnant. I couldn't move properly, I couldn't bend. I could not engage in the activities I enjoyed. Walking became difficult. The problem is not the form, it's the function. Can you live a healthy lifestyle? Can you do what you enjoy doing? Can you fit comfortably in public spaces? The problem is not that we should be encouraging people to become proud of being grotesquely large. It's that what we now consider "fat" is not actually fat. I was watching the movie Brand and one of the characters came up with an absolutely diabolical plot. They were going to start marketing things with Fat being beautiful! Oh, my gosh! In fact, he made a comment that it would be the biggest coup in history, that they would use marketing to change how humans viewed beauty!!!!

Utter nonsense. This has been going on forever.

If you look through history, even just the last two thousand years, the female shape has changed to suit whatever was selling. The one thing that was almost universal was that the only times androgynous or overly-thin silhouettes became in-style would be during or directly after times of war or famine. Otherwise, whether we are talking the ancient Greeks, the Greek revivalists, the Rubenesque women of portraiture, even the tightly-corseted Victorians, women were characterized by their curves.

The more meat on a woman, the better her resources, and the more likely she is to produce healthy children.

Fashion has followed; during the renaissance, women wore "bum rolls" (fabric worn tied around their hips to accentuate the difference between their waists and their hips), not to mention petticoats, farthing gales, etc. The first major emergence of the boyish figure was during and directly after WWI. If you were poor, you were restricted by extreme rationing. If you were wealthier, the best way to appear patriotic was to mimic the slimmer figures of those under strict rationing.

After WWII began to help alleviate some of the Depression-era poverty of America, the attractive female returned to her slim-waisted but hour-glass shape.

As women entered the work force during the 1960's, the ideal shape began to masculinize once more. Not only did de-emphasizing one's female shape hopefully help one become recognized as closer to equal in the career world, but women were gaining new rights which had previously been reserved only for men. They were able to control their reproduction and were socially more likely to have control over their sexual choices. Men could no longer use their normal methods of control over women. What they could do was infantalize them through raising pre-pubescent girlhood to the height of sexual attractiveness. Twiggy became a fashion icon; the eternal girl with immature or nonexistent curves. With the rise of thinness as the epitome of chic, fashion designers were blessed. No longer would they have to create clothing that looked well-tailored to the widely-differing female form! No more would they be slaves to the curves! They could design clothes based on how they wanted the clothes to look; not how they would look *on* a person. The models were no more than hangers. Unfortunately, those with free time to exercise or the money to eat the now much more expensive healthy, natural food were able to keep up- they began to thin themselves down to match the fashions. As with all fashion, it began to trickle down. If you did not have the time to work out or the cash to eat well, one could always starve themselves. As the lower classes became smaller, the highest echelons had no alternative but to become even smaller. If you compare ads from the 1990s (marked by extreme slightness) to those of today, you are faced with the realization that what was previously both thin and fit is now too large. Those that are touted as "gym girls" are very rarely in shape.. they are thin.

They do not have powerful thighs for running or pushing weight; they have tiny thighs that do not touch. This is supposed to be our ideal. If you take a look at clothing in everyday stores, the clothes are constructed for straight or almost stick-thin silhouettes. Those shirts that are attractive at a size 0-4 are the same shape as those at size 16-18. Neither of those shirts previously mentioned accommodate breasts of average size. When I graduated high school, I was a size xs or s (there was no xxs), and had A-cup breasts. A few months later, I had C-cup breasts. My was it size had not changed but I was now a medium or even large in shirts and dresses. When I began wearing bras, the smallest that were available were A cups and the enormous, ridiculous breasts were DD-cups. Now, there are AA and AAA cup bras and my "enormous" postpartum breasts are H cups. The most popular stores rarely carry anything larger than a C-cup bra. Our thin is now terrifying. I do not know a single woman that can eat a dessert and enjoy it; they will almost always think about their physique before digging in. Our jeans would not look baggy on those that were rescued from concentration camps. high fashion jeans are rarely offered over a size 26 and have been known to go down to size 18 (that's inches. an 18 inch waist was considered unreal in the days of corsets... and those jeans are not measured at the natural waist). Do you think I'm exaggerating? Look at this woman:

Versus:

Or this:

Think these may be exceptions, check out this story: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1279766/Former-Cosmo-editor-LEAH-HARDY-airbrushing-skinny-models-look-healthy-big-fat-dangerous-lie.html And that was in 2010, 3 years before now when we're in the height of the jeggings craze. As someone that has always had an hour-glass shape in a stick-figure world, things can be frustrating. Whether I am at 180 (48-36-46, 7 weeks postpartum) or at 100 (30-22-30), I never have less than an 8 inch difference between my waist and my hips. This has always made finding clothing extremely difficult. When I was skating, my thighs were too big for girls jeans. Even if I wanted to go androgynous, I couldn't... binding my chest would not hide the obvious flares of my ribs and pelvis. When I was at 115lbs and climbing regularly, I could fit into Hollister size 2-4 jeans but my calves were too muscular (yay advent of skinny jeans, huh?). I was thrilled when I noticed that some 1930's-1940's styles were coming back into style this spring! I was psyched!!! Then I tried them on and realized that though there was a "waist", the dress I tried on was still cut along a straight line. They all were. Now we're redesigning clothing meant to fit the female form for something closer to a 9 year old girl's. Every grown woman is being taught to be ashamed of her body. We need to get back to a healthy middle. We need to find balance, and create a society that lauds (and produces clothing for) all different shapes and sizes.

My Inner Demon

I have a demon inside me. I'm not talking possession or the hearing of voices necessitating anti-psychotics and electro-convulsive therapy. We've all got at least one demon- that voice hitchhiking in our mind, commenting on our thoughts. It can be loud or soft as a whisper, but it's almost always derisive. It puts down. It judges. It tears down- others, or maybe ourselves. It's the shadow of our personality, the thing we fight. My personal demon is named "Snark". She is the most intelligent, well-informed person in the room, and she knows it. She judges a person's clothing, their words, their etiquette, their posture. She comments on my own inner commentary. She wrestles with arguments in my head that I finished in the real world hours, days (sometimes years) ago. She says the rude things in my mind that I keep firmly clamped behind my smile. Though dangerous and in need of being kept in check, she can sometimes be funny. Plus, she allows me to get rid of the vitriol inside without unleashing it upon anyone. Today's conversation with Snark went thusly: A couple of tiny teen hipster girls standing nearby snicker about my weight and how poorly my clothing fits. So, Snark says to them, "Why, yes. I do have a little extra weight on me right now. I recently brought a new life into the world, thank you for noticing. Since I previously wore mostly children's sizes, I am still in my maternity clothes. However, I always feel moved to help those in need and it looks as if someone stole your pants and left you nothing but a big shirt! Bless your heart! Here's $20. I know it won't be enough to buy a new pair of skinny mint jeggings from whatever prosti-tot outlet you usually frequent, but it should cover a copy of Emily Post's book on Manners." Thankfully, I ignored Snark and waited on my take-out in peace.

Quick Update

Haven't written for a while. We got back from our trip home safely; it went very well. My son got to meet my grannie, my mamaw, my step-grandmother, my god family, and one of the first people to welcome me into this world, along with his aunt (my sister). Since then, we've been struggling to get things back in order, get caught up. Get the car inspected and all that. The daily grind.

Barefoot, No Longer Pregnant

I didn't believe them. I had heard the rumors that your foot will grow with every pregnancy, but I thought it was an old wive's tale. How foolish. Then, I got pregnant. Very pregnant. By the time I was 8 months along, my feet had been bathed in relaxin and expected to bear twice their normal weight. By the time I had Tobias, none of my regular shoes would fit- I had gone from a size 7 to size 11. I bought a pair of cheap clogs, a pair of Croc jelly flats, and was gifted a very large comfy pair of ugg-style boots. However, since I was put on bed rest at 7 months, I spent most of my time barefoot. Tos is now 3 months and I've got a confession to make. I've been waiting for my feet to shrink back down. I've had most of my shoes since late middle school, and I'm not willing to part with them. There's a pair of beaten-up big black combat boots of which I'm particularly fond. The other day, we went to the theater and I couldn't make it two blocks in my too-tiny heels; I stomped barefoot and well-dressed across campus to the auditorium. Also, shoes are expensive. I don't have the money to replace even a small part of my collection. Not only that, but I'm hoping that between the gluten-free food dissolving some of the inflammation and losing weight, they'll shrink more. I've been flopping around in my pregnancy shoes and even doing my tai qi barefoot on the back patio. No more- for my birthday, I bought myself a pair of pretty awesome cross-trainers. However, there's been an unforeseen downside to this. Wearing shoes like a civilized person has left my feet and ankles in agony. It makes me wonder at my father's family, going bare food for whole seasons of their lives. Does this represent a realignment of our souls to suit social propriety? If so, should I be trying to rework my misanthropic, post-pregnancy self into someone that can go back into the world? Isn't something like that necessary?

Gluten-Free Product Review #2

Time for my next update on attempting to go gluten-free. The first product is: Amy's Gluten-Free Rice Crust Pizza I got three different pizzas to try out... Wonder what the cashier thought with us getting so much junk food? Either way; I love Amy's food. I've been a fan of their bean and cheese burritos for a long time. This was rather disappointing. The crust as spongy and not crumbly (which I gather is a problem with non gluten products), but it was bland. It was so bland that I might as well have been eating plain toast. In the end, I added some garlic powder and seasonings with shredded cheese and it wasn't bad. If we wanted to create our own pizza and not bother putting sauce and cheese on the crust, it would be a good arrangement. Hopefully the others will be better. The second product is: Glutino's Chocolate Covered Pretzels. Justin brought me some of these as a surprise the other day. Since the crackers were so good, I expected quite a bit and they didn't disappoint. The pretzels were slightly hard, but the mixture of chocolate and salty pretzel was perfect. I will definitely keep getting these.