Are You There, God? It's Me, MF

Dear Baby Jesus,

I need a job. In part because we need money, but that's not really why. The reason is that I am BORED. Could I clean the house better? Keep up with my laundry? Exercise another hour a day? Yes, I could do those things. But I have been doing those things for, oh, some time now and I'm kind of tired of doing them to the exclusion of all else. I could also read more books, look at more porn, and paint more pictures. All fun, until that is ALL YOU HAVE TO DO EVER.

Don't get me wrong, not working is still far, far superior to teaching. But, see, I've had at least one job, usually more, since I was 15, and while this whole taking it easy thing was cool for a while, I'm kind of over it. So, anyway, if you could just send a cashier position at Vintage Stock my way, that'd rock.

Thanks,
Mary Flannery-Scientist

Authority = Questioned

Last night, while reading this awesome book, I realized that this has been my summer of staring social constructions of right, wrong, good, bad, moral, and immoral right in their faces and giving them the third degree. Some, it turns out, I like and want to keep (like monogamy, although if someone else isn't into it, that's a-ok too, as long as no one gets hurt). But most of them, I realize, are illogical at best, harmful at worst.

It started when I stumbled across this slideshow. Go watch it. I'll wait. Anyway, something in the back of my mind had always been calling shenanigans on the BMI and the whole "thinner is healthier" business to begin with, but the indoctrination was so heavy that I just assumed I was being stupid, as we women are often taught to think when we're going against the norm (especially involving beauty). But the more I read about HAES and the dark side of the weight loss industry, the more everything made sense. I could go into a lifetime of disordered eating and not listening to my own body, but we all have that story.

This whole not-second-guessing-myself on when and how I feel healthy started a coup. I realized that I had received some spectacularly bad medical care in the past. So, then I'm questioning the perfect, infallibility of doctors. And hell, since everything in my life is suddenly unglued, then let's just go all the way.

Why the hell do we have to wear clothes when it's hot, I wondered. So MS and I went here. I was absolutely terrified. It was awful and humiliating. Then I got out of the car. These were the nicest people I've ever met. There was zero judgment. Zip. Nada. After a lifetime of only seeing bodies approved by the entertainment industry, I was SHOCKED at the variety of shapes and sizes and colors and ripples and bulges and dents that people come in. I had always just assumed I was defective or looked weird or wrong and under their clothes, everyone else looked like the people from movies and porn. Not so much, actually.

Ironically enough, this is the least sexualized I've ever felt in my life. There was no "gaze." The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. As a society, we sexualize what is forbidden to be seen, ergo the Victorian eroticization of ankles. The gaze is like a lazer, its intensity ratcheted up by narrow focus. Widen it out more and more, and it defuses into the ether.

So now it's like a hunger. I'm looking at everything, trying to see what I believe in because society tells me to versus what I really believe in. I'm wondering where it will go next.

Mock Chicken Legs

3 1/2 lb. pork steak (shoulder blade) 1 lb. veal steak (top round steak) Skewers (from butcher) Corn flake crumbs or bread crumbs Debone meat. Cut in cubes. Put on wooden skewers. Roll in flour and egg, beaten with a little water. Then roll in bread crumbs or corn flake crumbs. (Put a little salt in bread crumbs.) Brown in oil in frying pan. Put 1/2 inch water in large baking pan. Slice onions on top of meat and bake uncovered at 350 degrees for 1 1/2 - 2 hours. Keep checking water level. Take cover off last 20 minutes. Why?

Almost Independence Day

Transcription of an actual phone call:

Meredith: So, what are you doing tonight?
Me: It's my wedding anniversary.
Meredith: Oh wow! So what kind of specialness do you have planned.
Me: Uh...I don't know. There will probably be a movie involved somewhere. And video games.
Meredith: Oh, you're not anniversary people.
Me: Actually, uh, well, we are. We're just incredibly boring.
Meredith: I see...

In fact, it was FAR more exciting than that! While we did go to a movie (The Happening, which, by the way, ew. The dialog is worse than Phantom Menace. Swear), we also did our favorite thing in the world: fucking around town. We got tapioca tea, we went to the comic shop, we went to Toys R Us, we went to fancy dinner where we just ordered a bunch of appetizers (fried goat cheese balls. Mmmmmm.....), and then we read books and went to sleep and it was AWESOME. So, yeah.