I can have as much as I want

My college nutrition teacher was skinny. I think it is a requirement that dieticians be skinny in order to keep their credential up to date (ok, probably not, but it SEEMS like it ought to be).

But she really went overboard with the skinny thing. I mean, aggressively skinny, "I will slice and dice you with my razor-sharp hipbones" skinny. She wore these clingy skirts of thin material that would have looked tragic on anyone with more than 10 percent body fat. She would lean up against the chalkboard with her knee bent and one foot on the wall behind her, hipbones sticking out in front of the rest of her body. The class would just sit there in stunned silence, feeling fat beyond belief.

She told us we could earn extra credit, an almost-certain "A" grade, by following her diet plan for the duration of the class and reporting to the class about our weight loss. I figured that standing up in front of fifty 19-year-olds would definitely inspire me to lose weight in a way that nothing else would, and I was right.

I followed her diet plan - small portions of food, except for vast quantities of green vegetables - and exercise plan, and I lost weight, I think 17 pounds over 18 weeks. Not bad. I had to completely obsess about food the whole time and count everything that went into my mouth and exercise like a fiend, but I was willing to do it for the A and to not humiliate myself in front of the class.

But midway through the semester, we were discussing my diet plan, which was complicated by the fact that I am a vegetarian. Someone asked about cheese pizza and she totted up the calories in a slice of pizza, then said brightly, "See? She can have a slice."

A SLICE? I CAN have a slice? That sentence just made my blood boil. Just the way she said "can" like she was granting all the fat people in the world this wonderful blessing of a slice of pizza.

Maybe it bugged me so bad because "She can have a slice" is just one letter off from "She can't have a slice" and I hate to be told CAN'T. It is almost a primal feeling that rushes up when I am faced with deprivation.

"Tell me what to do!" I thought. As soon as I got off the diet I began to eat like mad and that really hasn't subsided. I am fatter than ever. I know I am thinking about this all wrong. If I figure out how to eat much less joyfully, I will let you know how I did it.

But tonight, in honor of my nutrition teacher and her hipbones, I am sitting here eating 3 slices of frozen pizza, some broccoli (WITH mayo, not the reduced-fat kind either) and a glass of red wine.

Long live pizza. Long live my fat booty. I hope it doesn't hurt her too much to sit down on her anorexic butt.

Why must they mess with me?

I try to be clear with hairstylists. When I go in, I say that I am not the kind of person who wants to mess with my hair. To blow-dry my hair into a certain shape. To put "product" (whatever that is) into my hair.

But time after time, they ignore me and take matters into their own hands, blowing and torturing and shaping with wax and glue and gels...after I leave, the first thing I do is to take my hands and muss up their creation lest I look too plastic. The second thing I do is go home and take a shower and wash all the goop out.

Today the stylist tortured my hair to look like Marlo Thomas in "That Girl" It doesn't seem like that big a deal but my hair is naturally curly and it took major construction to get it so straight and poofy.

In case you are too young or have forgotten:


I almost wanted to go out and show the weirdness off, but I couldn't think of an appropriate place. I needed an early 70's Manhattan cocktail party.

In other news, ants have invaded.

Fear is all around*

(My homage to the Mary Tyler Moore Show theme "Love is all around")

I'm always complaining that, in the United States, people constantly want you to be afraid of something. The TV news always has teasers like: "Are chemicals in your microwave hurting your family? Find out at 11 p.m."

You can buy stuff to protect you from anything. Kids can't ride bikes without helmets. Supermarket cashiers wear latex gloves (gloves are cleaner than hands?) It's basically a fear-based economy.

I bought a small desk lamp the other day that had FOUR warning labels stuck round its cord. Things like "Do not use in the bath or shower..." The main danger with the lamp was that I might have sliced my hand whilst trying to cut the warning labels off.

All this fearmongering works incredibly well. My mom chastized me for leaving my purse in my locked car for 5 minutes in her very, very safe neighborhood where everyone knows and watches out for each other.

Our bathroom at work has a pile of crumpled paper towels on the floor next to the exit door. Everyone is so frightened of germs that they won't touch the handle with their bare hand (yet they are apparently unaffected by the social stigma of being found out as the kind of person who throws trash on the floor in an office).

When I was in Mexico, I found the blithe approach to possible danger alarming, yet funny and refreshing. People get hurt, people die, life is dangerous. Why clutter up the place with a bunch of warning signs and protective devices? Rusty rebar just at the height to poke your eye out jutted from the sides of buildings. Sidewalks were interrupted by gaping holes just in case you were in the mood to break an ankle. Buses squealed along with almost non-existent brakes. That was just life.

I knew when I moved out of white suburbia to the poor, densely populated side of town, I would encounter more danger. Did I worry? Yeah, but I know myself. If I wasn't worried about crime, I would be worried about something else, like global warming - that's just my nature - so it really wasn't a net gain of fretting time in my brain.

So here's my daily jolt of fear. This morning at 2:18 a.m. I awoke wondering "Gunfire, or fireworks?"

It had to be gunfire. It lacked that big BOOM BOOM BOOM quality of the high-powered firecrackers that people set off around here.

I heard about 3 or 4 shots. The dog did too. She cowered on the floor next to me, trembling. She would NOT make a good hunting dog.

I was wondering if I should call the cops. What would I say? "I heard shots. I don't know from where or why...?"

Then I heard six shots in a row, very even. Pow-pow-pow-pow-pow-pow. I got my cell phone and called the police and said "This is kind of unspecific, but I just heard a bunch of gunfire."

The dispatcher sounded flustered and excited. She said that they had been getting a bunch of calls. I didn't hear anything else until some sirens about 5 a.m. The dog cowered the whole time, which is unusual because she is always sleeping next to me on the bed.

But it's morning now, and we're ok. I'll go back to worrying about global warming any minute now, especially since my dad called to warn me that the river, which is right across the road, may flood any time, and that I should have my car packed just in case I have to evacuate.

Quote

The scientist stops, where all men do, at the doors of birth and death. He knows no more than you and I why a seed remembers the oak of 20 million years ago, why dust acquires the form of a woman, why we behold the earth in space and time.

He hasn't yet solved the secret of a single name upon the earth. We may pluck the nymph from the river, but we won't pluck the river from ourselves: this coiled divinity is still all murmurous and strange.

There are sacred places everywhere. The world is still man's druid grove, where he wanders hunting for the Tree of Life.

-Russ Lockridge

A relaxing Friday night...

Got off work two hours early (thanks, Boss) for the 3-day weekend, took the dog for a beach walk. We came home and made frozen pizza, cracked a bottle of red wine, and settled in to a relaxing weekend. What else do we have to do? We don't have a television, for one.

Then the alarm went off. What is it an alarm to? God knows. But this being the poor section of town (in a So Cal beach town, that means that houses in this neighborhood are only $500k, not $850k like the rest of town - I AM NOT joking), it will continue for, oh, four or five hours before the cops wander over to take a look.

ANNNNNH-ANNNNNH-ANNNNH. Get used to it. Or go insane. The choice is all mine.

Another glass of wine may be in order.