Running Highs and Lows

One of my resolution sfor 2013 is to run one race per month, and so far, I am officially signed up for all but four months worth of races, two or three of which I already know what I’ll be doing. In fact, I’ll be running the Bay Breeze 10K on Saturday.

The inspiration for my resolution, however, is the fact that I signed up for a half marathon training program, like a crazy person. And NOW, I’m signed up for five different half marathons this year, like a REALLY crazy person. And I have eleven and a half weeks before my first of them. When I put it that way, I’m fucking terrified. I feel super unprepared, even though I am reminding myself that that is plenty of time to get from where I am now to where I need to be to get myself across a 13.1 mile finish line. If I’m diligent.

Here’s where I admit that thus far? I haven’t been diligent about my training. I have INTENTIONS to be diligent and exercise. I packed my running clothes when we visited my family for Christmas, without touching them once. I packed them again when we went to Cozumel. I even ran twice while we were on vacation in Mexico. In the humid, humid Mexican sea air along the beach and in the tiny, no air circulating fitness center after midnight with my shirt covering the timer on the treadmill, until one of our fellow divers told us that exercise 12 hours after diving can lead to The Bends. But even when I’m at home, I’m not great about following a regular fitness regiment, let alone a fairly structured training program.

With 11 weeks before my first 13.1 mile race, it’s time to get fucking serious about this shit.

I only ran once last week, and it was a pretty good one: 7.84 km in 1 hour, 4 minutes. Not bad, and I felt totally badass afterwards.

When I ran this week, I started the run badly. During my five minute warm up WALK, I was asking myself why I was doing this crazy, hard thing. And then I wondered if I really, REALLY, did I REALLY want to run a half marathon? Is that something I REALLY wanted or just something to do to satisfy my inner “I’m better than you” smug bastard? Thankfully, I also realized that EVEN IF I don’t want anything to do with a half marathon, it’s too damn bad because I’m signed up for five non-refundable races. That are as EXPENSIVE as HELL. So I ran. And had a shit run. I couldn’t make it through my first 18 minute stretch of running without a walk break, and I ended up giving up and turning around before the halfway point. I. was. DONE.

Thankfully, that shitty run reminded me of how much fucking WORK I need to do. It was the kick in the butt I need to really start focusing on training and crosstraining and getting shit done. The fact that my work pants, always a little tight, are noticeably loose on me now (despite my best efforts over the weekend to shove every food ever into my face) doesn’t hurt either. I don’t want to lose that momentum, and I don’t want to want to cry anything but tears of joy and accomplishment after I finish my first half marathon.

Onward.

The Dive That Wasn’t

When we were planning our Epic Vacation, Feller was all, “LOTS OF DIVING WHOOO!” And I was all, “NOT THAT MUCH MONEY HOORAY”, and so we decided to spend just one or two days diving, including a dive at the Two Oceans Aquarium, about which I was a little apprehensive, but I figured they wouldn’t let people do it if they DIED. In hindsight, it’s interesting that I was worried about diving in the aquarium but TOTALLY chilled out about diving in the ocean. The cold, murky ocean, not the warm, crystal clear ocean of Hawaii.

Feller sets up our dives with a shop that’s been recommended to us, and he’s all, “TOMORROW, WE DIVE.” So there wasn’t a whole lot of time to think about the things I might need for this boat dive, namely Dramamine and ginger. This bitch gets seasick like whoa.

So we wake up the next day, and Mum makes us a delicious, filling breakfast, which was awesome, and we head to the shop to get geared up. Now, I don’t know how many of y’all have ever worn a wetsuit, but that shit is HARD to get into, which is sort of the point, I know, but they just don’t have enough give in them for my kickin’ curves, so not only do I have to tell strangers how much I weigh, I then have to say “Actually, yeah, this wetsuit doesn’t fit. I need a bigger one.” Which isn’t embarrassing AT ALL. To make matters even worse this time around, the water in Cape Town is cold, which means, thick ass wetsuits, or in our case, two wetsuits each, and hoods.

Now, I have a Thing about shit around my neck. I don’t like it. Most t-shirts really bother me, and I end up spending the entire day tugging the collar away from my neck. Unfortunately, wet suit hoods are DESIGNED to snuggle up on your neck and keep too much cold water from getting in your suit. I actually discovered during the pool portion of my scuba class how much that bothered me, and I was able to rent a larger sized hood for our ocean dives. This time, however, the hoods were built in.

So we get all geared up and head out to the teeny, tiny, inflatable boat. And I was fine, if a bit uncomfortable, until the guy slowed the boat down and started circling our dive spot and got us all set up. That’s when the nausea kicked in. Then it was time to put the hood up. So I’m nauseous, I’ve got Shit Around My Neck, two wetsuits on, and about 10 kilos of weight so I fucking sink when I get in the water, and then the guy tells us we’re flipping over backwards to get into the water, which…is not something I’ve ever done. It wasn’t even TALKED ABOUT in my certification class! Once we’re in the water, I’m still PRETTY uncomfortable, but now I’m also disoriented, and I discover I’ve forgotten something Very Important.

In Hawaii, the boat dives were full service. They put our gear together, they helped us into our shit, they made it as easy as fucking possible for us. In Cape Town, they practically just threw us in the ocean, without a reminder to inflate our BCD’s, which ensure that we don’t sink until we want to, and having not dived in several months, I TOTALLY blanked on this fairly crucial step. AND THEN the button that inflates the vest is RED. I don’t know what red means, where y’all come from, but here in AMERICA, red means STOP! CAUTION! GO NO FURTHER!, so it didn’t even OCCUR to me to try pushing the red button. So now I’m sinking on top of everything else. And panicking. And basically acting like this is the first time I’ve ever done this, and causing Feller to lose HIS shit because I’M NOT OKAY.

The boat guy hauls me out of the water, I throw up the lovely breakfast I’d eaten, we tow Feller back to the dive location, since the water’s super choppy and we’ve drifted quite a bit, and then he’s all, “Actually….NO.” So we’re both sitting there pathetically while everyone else is having a nice dive, and Feller looks at me and says, “Um, how about we don’t tell anyone about this, okay?”

Don’t worry, baby, it’s our little secret.

The Texture Feels So Nice

I have a kitty named David Hasselhoff. He’s ADORABLE and cuddly and chubby, and he loves to eat plastic bags and food wrappers. He always has. It’s like crack for him, and the one time I asked a vet about it he was all “Yeah…that’s pretty much the worst thing he could be eating.” AWESOME. But I can’t make him stop! If there is plastic ANYWHERE in the house, he will find it, and he will eat it. Leave him alone with a grocery bag for less than five minutes? Handles GONE. And slobbery.

And he KNOWS, he is ABSOLUTELY aware that he’s not supposed to be eating it because when you catch him, he guiltily slinks away, waiting for you to turn your back so he can scamper back and carry on his nomming. I’ve turned into this crazy plastic nazi and warn everyone who comes into our house that we need to put the plastic away. And not just stuffed in a purse or an unlidded trash can or a box or someplace that you might THINK would be safe because, for as dumb as he seems, he’s quite crafty. He can open cupboard doors and shoe boxes, and he’ll root around in trash cans all in the pursuit of plastic. Drawers are only safe if the insides can’t be reached from an adjoining cupboard. It’s RIDICULOUS.

So I really should have known better.

Before we went to Hawaii, I bought a We-Vibe because, well, why not? And it was WONDERFUL…until it recently stopped working. So I emailed the company about the issue cause that shit ain’t cheap, and they sent me instructions on returning it for a replacement. Sweet. I get it all ready to be packaged up to be shipped back, which included, per their instructions, putting the vibrator and charger in plastic zippered bag, which I then put in my work bag to mail.

At work the next day (don’t worry, I was alone in the office), I go to stick everything in an envelope, grab the plastic zippered bag, and feel little teeth marks all along the top.

Bitch’s Book List

OH, how I love Internet Drama. It is SUCH a delightful thing to watch people get all het up about something that’s taking place online. A lot of times, the Drama is over some stupid ass shit, like Snape Wives or Harmonians or something else equally ridiculous. But then sometimes, OH SOMETIMES, the drama is EVEN MORE WONDERFUL. Like that one time Marie Claire said fat people were gross. So imagine my delight when I came into work yesterday to find this post about Bitch Magazine’s list of 100 YA books that “every feminist should add to the stack of books on their bedside table”.

And THEN, a couple of days later, after a couple of negative comments about three of the books and “some emails”, Bitch REMOVED THREE OF THE BOOKS from the list! And replaced them with three DIFFERENT books, two of which, Howl’s Moving Castle and The Blue Sword, while being VERY GOOD books, are about a controversial as a kitten. Though now that I’ve said that I’ll surely see about ten different complaints about these books not being appropriate for young women. BUT! They are not TRIGGERING! Or about RAPE! So they’re SAFE TO INCLUDE!

And then the internet exploded.

Chasing Ray has a really good breakdown of who said what over in the comments thread at Bitch, though I will admit, reading the comments on that post yesterday was pretty much the highlight of my day. Oh God, seriously, some of the comments are SO WONDERFUL with the OUTRAGE! And DISAPPOINTMENT! And some with the BITCH WAS RIGHT! And dear sweet heaven, I TREASURE the comments thread.

And today, everyone who knows anything about books or YA literature has blog posts about how disappointing it is that Bitch didn’t stand by their choices and/or didn’t properly check out the books when they were compiling their list, because, OH YEAH, their staff didn’t necessary READ all of the books on the list. WHOOPS. Smart Bitches, Trashy Books has a really good write up about this whole kerfluffle, which is where I got the above advisory sticker. Scott Westerfeld, who wrote the Uglies series, has posted about why he’s upset and requested that his books be removed from the list. Margo Lanagan, who wrote Tender Morsels, one of the books removed from Bitch’s list, posted about why she feels her book was wrongly removed (because one commenter felt it “supported rape as vengeance … [and] is absolute crap on every possible level”). And here’s another great defense of Tender Morsels. And Karen Healey, another YA author (who I haven’t read, but will make a mental note that I need to), came up with her own list of Feminist YA literature based on books she has sitting on her shelves at home.

And beyond the DELICIOUS DRAMA, this issue kind of strikes a nerve with me. Like Maureen Johnson said on Bitch’s post, this is EXACTLY what happens when books are challenged. One person has a problem, one person thinks we should be “protecting” the youth from awful things that could hurt them, and NEXT THING YOU KNOW books are banned. They’re removed from shelves and lists and no one reads them and no one talks about them. No one learns from what these books offer. And Bitch may not have physically removed these books from the shelves of their lending library, but they MOST CERTAINLY made them inaccessible. Books no one knows about are books that no one reads, so removing these books from their list is tantamount to removing them from their shelves, and if it weren’t for the outrage raised by other authors, they might have gotten away it. But as one of the many blog posts I read today pointed out, book challenges in libraries DON’T happen publicly. If a library, a REAL library, had published this list, the one negative comment about Tender Morsels would have been a phone call to the library and could potentially have resulted in not only an edited version of the list, but in the book being taken off the shelves. Books challenges happen ALL THE TIME. And books are banned ALL THE TIME. Just look at ALA’s list of books challenged and/or banned in 2009/2010. And those are only the books that went through a formal challenging process! That doesn’t include ones that weren’t reported to the ALA or were just quietly taken off shelves.

It INFURIATES me that someone, ONE PERSON, thinks they know best for everyone else. Especially since quite a few abuse victims commented that, yes, these books are difficult, but also helpful for processing and healing from abuse, or that more triggering than the books is the judgment that someone else knows what’s best for them, judgment that rape shouldn’t be talked about. Look, everyone is entitled to their opinions, and it is Bitch’s prerogative to edit their list, but the way they did it was just SO SHADY and insulting to readers.

Not to mention, that thanks to this whole mess, I will be SURE to read the books removed from the list, starting with Tender Morsels, which is less than $7 on Amazon right now. Thanks to some gift card credit and the free trial of Amazon Prime, Tender Morsels is winging it’s way to me at the low LOW price of $2.87, and I know I’m not supposed to be spending money right now, but like I said on Twitter, at that price, it’s like God WANTS me buying it.

Fat Shaming

I am FASCINATED by this whole Marie Claire debacle. I won’t link to the blog post written by a formerly anorexic woman who says that fat people gross her out. She also gives some helpful advice for those who need to lose weight: exercise! Eat right! Listen, honey, there ain’t a fat person in the world who doesn’t ALREADY KNOW THAT. Her tone is so smug and degrading and the entire post is disgusting.

But there have been some terrific responses to this post, and I CAN’T GET ENOUGH. I will pretty much read any response to this that you link me to, and I just wanted to be able to point y’all towards some of my favorites:

Jezebel has a big collection of responses (that I haven’t read because I don’t have time)

I LOVED Cleolinda’s post about it (but I love pretty much everything she writes), and she links to Fatshionista which is probably the best response I’ve read.

Medical Marzipan has a good response, and I really liked all the responses SHE linked to.

I also tweeted some other responses that aren’t particularly well reasoned, but they definitely hit the nail on the head, on a visceral level. These were the first four posts I saw after reading the article, and they express all the outrage and disgust I felt.

It’s hard enough being overweight in a society that idolizes a “perfect” figure that doesn’t actually exist, without women who have an especially skewed body perception telling fat people that they are disgusting and should just DO something about it already! It just blows my mind a little that someone would think it is acceptable to write something so hateful and bigoted. I … I’ve been thinking about this post for a few days now, and I still don’t have the words to fully express what I feel, so go read some of those links up there. They say what I want to better than I ever could.