read an article in O Magazine about weight loss, “I Was A 51-Year-Old Desk Muffin” by Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks, with disdain.

The entire article was self-flagulation and self-deprecation for being, according to the BMI Calculator a NORMAL WEIGHT.

Guess how much the self-discribed “aging hippo” weighed? 123 pounds. She was 5′2″ and over the course of 23 years she gained a whopping 19 pounds. Big Freaking Whoop!

Negative terms she used to describe her normal body were: brandy snifter, Bosc pear, pear-shaped corpse, slightly mushy 123 pound pear, aging hippo, curvaceous deposit of midriff fat, upper arms jiggle so much,

I think I can safely speak for Oprah, my self and my BFF Violet – we’d do a boogie dance if we hopped on any scale that read 123 pounds in our lifetimes.

But, since you can’t see quite how wonderful you have it at your 123 pound high I’ll steal a quote from Joy Behar from The View, “Shut up Skinny Bitch!”

Oh and that goes double for the buffest, slimmest, fittest woman in my gym class who won’t shut up about how she’ll “never lose this fat.” In reality the woman has like 1% body fat.

Here’s a Miss Manners lesson – if you’re normal-sized and blathering on about your fat to women who really are fat – you’re being RUDE.

I’m bored to death with the hobby of American women to incessantly talk about their fat. Especially if they are perfectly normal.

I don’t think it’s harmless, I think it’s costing us self-esteem in a very real way.

Try this challenge – avoid self-deprecation and fat-renouncing-of-self for 30 days. I bet almost no one can do it. I bet, even, that trying it for one day will illustrate just how much of women’s conversation is dependent on it.

Post from: Blisstree

Shut Up Skinny Bitch!

Since we bought a little piece of land I’ve felt this pull, from inside, to plant a little garden and grow some food.

My husband’s grandfather recently died and my parents generously gave us money for a natural memorial. We’ve decided on a Gilbert R. Thornton Memorial Garden, we’ll make a stone.

Groceries are out of control and this is an attempt to keep us in produce without breaking the budget. So far I’ve planted 12 strawberry plants and 4 cherry tomatoes. My kids are begging for cantaloupes, watermelons, grapes and raspberries. I want to plant our favorite vegetables; asparagus and artichokes, cucumbers and squash.

If there is enough, I’ll learn to some up for winter.

Every generation in both sides of my family, my husband’s grandparents’ too, have gardened. I’ve reaped the rewards of home grown food and now I feel a desire to keep it going.

The catch is that we’ll have to plant our garden in the front yard on the side of the house. It’s the only place that doesn’t have shade trees or red brick. I think the builder of this home got a fantastic deal on red brick – it’s everywhere.

There is a beautiful piece about Detroit’s community gardens in O Magazine (unfortunately they don’t have it online so I can’t link to it), describing an Urban Eden. With its economy in the toilet and the city burdened with vacant lots from much of the population fleeing the unemployment rate, those who have stayed in Detroit have taken up gardening. They have grant money and use it to buy seeds and supplies. There are 220 family gardens, 115 community gardens and 20 school gardens. They’ve used the food to feed the homeless and hungry. They’ve used the hard work to give the unemployed a sense of purpose. They’ve taught the students where food really comes from. The article made it sound so good – and cheap enough to buy a lot for a few hundred dollars – I considered moving there or at least investing in some land.

The article describes a brilliant mingling of inner-city and Eden.

In a way, I expect our garden to simplify and declutter our minds like a back-to-earth meditation, our own Eatable Eden. (Not to mention lower the grocery bill and take up time we might otherwise use to spend money.)

I plan on milking my extended family’s collective knowledge about gardening and visit Mother Earth’s Garden. Yesterday she had a story about the benefits of gardening for children. Truthfully, I remember my childhood time gardening as “the reason I can’t go play” and as hard labor. But, in retrospect I’m really grateful to know what I know from that experience.

Image: AtDetroit.net

Post from: Blisstree

Eatable Eden

Endometriosis is a painful, chronic disease that affects 5.5 million women and girls in the USA and Canada, and millions more worldwide. It occurs when tissue like that which lines the uterus (called the endometrium) is found outside the uterus.This misplaced tissue develops into growths or lesions which respond to the menstrual cycle in the same way that the tissueof the uterinelining does:each month the tissue builds up, breaks down, and sheds. Menstrualbloodflows from the uterus and out of the body through the vagina, but the bloodand tissue shed from endometrial growths has no way of leaving the body.This results in internal bleeding,breakdown of the blood and tissue fromthe lesions, and inflammation — and can cause pain,infertility, scar tissue formation, adhesions, and bowel problems.

Obviously this is terrible to undergo. But, what is really upsetting to Jeanne and others in her support group is the way their pain has been dismissed by the medical community because it is of a feminine nature. Many go decades having their condition undiagnosed because their pain is completely dismissed by doctors. I hear similar stories from women about predominantly female pain diseases like fibromyalgia. 

Oh, I totally get that. During my first birth when my entire labia was severed and required about 25 stitches it was excruciating and I had to literally throw a temper tantrum before my OB/GYN would give me pain medication. “I can only give you 15,” she said. I felt I would have gotten more sympathy,empathy, compassion and medicine had I severed my finger. When the intern ripped through the stitches (to figure out why I had pain – uh, I just pushed a human through my vagina and my labia had to be reattached) there was no “fix” available and I was told I’d have to wait until the next baby to repair my mangled labia. And as the second OB/GYN ripped 25 more stitches out of my most tenderest skin without pain medication or a local anesthetic after my second and last child, I thought, “Why do they allow psychotic sadists to become obstetricians?”

As I could barely sit with my poor pained pudenda, my husband went in for a vasectomy. I noticed a huge discrepancy within the medical community when compared to men getting vasectomies. He was given a valium, a local anesthetic both during the procedure and the removal of stitches and a big bottle of refillable pain medication. Not to mention my undying gratitude for permanently preventing my vajayjay more heinous pain. They even gave him porn to make the semen testing process enjoyable. 

Why?  

According to an article, Women, Men and Ouch! the Painful Truth by Cathleen Medwick in O Magazine there is a very real difference in how the medical community perceives pain and treats it in women versus men.

In other words, this is not just a hysterical perception of mine and Jeanne’s this is a documented fact. Medwick talks about how difficult it was for her mother, who was dying of breast cancer, to get her pain treated or even garner any sympathy for it.

Medwick interviewed pain guru Jeffrey Mogil, PhD, director of the pain genetics laboratory at McGill University in Montreal. Mogil has apparently done something unheard of and revolutionary – he includes females in his pain studies.

That’s right. The scientific community has traditionally excluded women under the erroneous assumption that “females show too much variability in their responses due to hormonal cycling,” according to the article. 

Mogil is revolutionary because he noticed that women made up the vast majority of clinical pain patients. And so he thought to study them. (Am I the only one screaming, It’s 2008, what the hell took you so long? That’s a nose on your face.)

In his research he has discovered that women and men have a different genetic makeup and they experience pain differently. He believes, according to the article, that there are actually different neural circuits for men and women. He says this means that treating women with pain medication which is effective for men is not going to treat women’s pain adequately. Visa versa. 

Since most research excludes women, he believes, that’s resulted in inadequately treating women’s pain by using medications that were made for men. He also says women have a documented lower pain threshold. Saying that not only are women more likely to report pain, but we experience it as more painful. Other species do too, he says, citing female rats that flinch more than male rats responding to the same stimulus.It has recently been shown that estrogen influences pain sensitivity. Male rats given the hormone flinched in more pain than they did without the hormone. Testosterone, when injected in the female rat, reduced the response to pain. 

Women feel pain more acutely and yet:
Women are still twice as likely as men to be under-treated for pain.

Post from: Blisstree

Women’s Pain News

You were rude to your husband,

I responded to her criticism by going into defensive hyper-sensitive justification mode that quickly turned into sobs.

I’ve been internalizing every hateful, critical and harsh comment against Kate Gosselin mother of sextuplets and star of Jon & Kate, Plus 8, that has been written on my BlogFabulous post Kate Gosselin, Time’s Person of the Year.   Evidently, many, many people find Kate’s treatment of Jon despicable beyond redemption.

My friend’s benign comment simply provided an excuse for all that internalized criticism to bubble over into weeping. 

I don’t know Kate. But, I do share her flaw.

I have a tone and I speak rudely to my husband. Often. I sometimes yell at my kids. I’m aware of what it’s costing me in my marriage. I’m aware that it’s destructive to my children, especially my daughter who has already developed a tone that mimics mine, as you can see in this article Tone Turtle.

Every single day I try to “just stop doing it.” And every single day I fail. Miserably some days.

I spent a number of hours on Sunday in bed crying and loathing myself for my many failures as a wife and a mother. I got up and I failed again by screaming at my kids. 

I won’t bore you with my justifications or excuses about why I do it, obviously that would be utterly pointless. If sextuplets is no excuse for a little bitchiness, I’ve got nothing to top it.

Then, I decided to follow the advice I recently read in an O Magazine article, The Woman Who Fell to Earth, by Martha Beck.

“Every moment you lose yourself by trying to be perfect, you’re failing. And the moment you accept that you’re failing, you’re succeeding again,”

Martha advises that whenever we fail as wives and mothers we should just accept the inevitability of failure and say, Oh well.

Here goes:

Some days I’m a total failure as a wife and mother (just like Kate Gosselin). Oh Well.

Post from: Blisstree

Internalizing Kate

I heard Sarah Jessica Parker, say on Oprah, that her new line Bitten includes no low-waisted jeans because she’s over it. I’ve been over it since they were in.

Hallelujah!

Let’s face it, during the low-waisted trend I’ve been non-16. I’ve been doing feminine things like having babies and nursing them and lugging them around on my hip, which often causes shirts to ride up. Such things are not conducive to wearing low-rise pants, the sole intention of which is to let a little tummy show. No thank you.

Bitten offers such jeans for less than $20, and I’m dying to try some on. But, I’d have to drive three hours to the nearest Steve and Barry’s, no online store.

I love Sarah’s fashion manifesto: It is every woman’s inalienable right to have a pulled-together, stylish, confident wardrobe with money left over to live.

We probably shouldn’t amend the constitution to add that, but it’s a great principal to build a retail fashion line on. It’s so inclusive.

I ran in to Old Navy to see what their new denim collection was all about.

For those who can pull it off, they still carry a low-waisted and a mid-waisted style. (Oddly enough the mid-waisted jean made my belly sit like a flat tire right on top and were worse than the low-wasted jean.)

The Sweetheart has stolen my heart, sitting just below the waist. On the website they have a Goddess fit, which is at the natural waste, but my store didn’t have that style to try on. 

There are three beautiful things about an Old Navy pair of jeans.

• Sizes run big so I can celebrate that I’ve made it down to a size 10! That makes me feel like all this exercise and eating right has paid off.
• They make a “short,” in most sizes.
• The regular price is $30.

Post from: Blisstree

Death to Low-Waisted Jeans

But if you are an employee who has children or you are the care-taker of an elderly parent — Flex time can be a life-saver.

In many companies, “Flex Time” is a benefit given to employees who need a certain amount of balance between their personal and professional lives. It’s a incalculable benefit if you are an employee, but if you are the boss, the rules change significantly. In the May issue of O Magazine, writer Suzy Welsh provides advice to on how flex time needs to be both administered and observed.

Did you know for instance:

• Technically, flextime is full-time work, or close to it, but with an elastic, negotiated schedule. Still, some employees persist in seeing flextime as if it were a part-time deal in terms of hours or, worse, from a boss’s point of view, as a defined benefit, like the company dental plan.

Or this:

• Your boss sees flextime as an old-fashioned chit system in which the more you deliver, the more freedom you earn. To be blunt—no matter what the official company policy, bosses see flextime as a reward for outstanding performance. They don’t particularly like giving it to average players, and they loathe giving it to the barely-hanging-in-theres.


If you get a chance, check out this article, but more importantly, speak to your boss about what the policies are and how they can affect your work/home situation. You could be thinking one thing and your boss and colleagues could be thinking another. There may be some resentment that you may have to smooth out, or you may just have to re-think what your options are and what is expected.

Post from: Blisstree

Flex-time, schmex-time