My Alternate Universe

I read this column in the New York Times, and I was shocked, appalled, and then bolstered by the awesome remarks made by Meghan McCain in response. Some of you know that I've struggled with my weight a bit over the past 3 or so years due to a hypo-active thyroid. I've lost 30 pounds since my peak, and I'm feeling pretty good about myself... sometimes. When I'm in Los Angeles, the land of skinny, plasticized women, I feel pretty fat. Like even though I buy my clothes at regular stores in regular sections (not the plus-sized racks) I'm somehow disgusting. The conversations at work always center around diets, and I often receive unsolicited advice about how I should eat to lose weight. I didn't ask for your advice, but thanks, I'll remember that. This weekend I was in Boston, land of liberal intellectuals and rowdy Red Sox fans, and I felt great about my body. Yeah, it's on the chubby side for me, but it's not disgusting, it's just how I look, and it's not that important. In fact, I thought about the way I looked much less in Boston than I do in L.A. Maybe that's why people are so wicked smaht back home...
Anyway, it's upsetting to me how obsessed our culture is with body image. I know I'm ranting here, I'm almost done. I recognize how dangerous obesity can be for one's health, and think that the world's (and especially country's) problems with obesity need to be addressed. But being a healthy weight, like Meghan McCain, who isn't even overweight in the strictest sense, and still being subject of public humiliation, is disgusting to me. I'm really glad I don't listen to Conservative radio, it would probably give me bloodthirsty rage.

Here's the article, and photographic evidence:

Criticizing a woman’s weight is one of the “last frontiers” of socially-acceptable prejudice, says Meghan McCain, the daughter of Senator John McCain.

Ms. McCain, who calls herself a progressive Republican, was responding to remarks by conservative radio host Laura Ingraham. It all started when Ms. McCain, 24, criticized Republican pundit Ann Coulter for her extreme views in an online column and an interview with talk show host Rachel Maddow. That enraged Ms. Ingraham, who responded on her radio show by mimicking Ms. McCain, using a caustic “Valley girl” voice. (The blog ThinkProgress has the audio.) Among her remarks:

"O.K., I was really hoping that I was going to get that role in “The Real World,” but then I realized that, well, they don’t like plus-sized models."

Ms. McCain, who would be considered normal weight by most standards, responded in The Daily Beast with a highly personal column called “The Politics of Weight.”

"I have been teased about my weight and body figure since I was in middle school, and I decided a very long time ago to embrace what God gave me and live my life positively…. I am a size 8 and fluctuated up to a size 10 during the campaign. It’s ridiculous even to have this conversation because I am not overweight in the least and have a natural body weight.

But even if I were overweight, it would be ridiculous. I expected substantive criticism from conservative pundits for my views…. My intent was to generate discussion about the current problems facing the Republican Party. Unfortunately, even though Ingraham is more than 20 years older than I and has been a political pundit for longer, almost, than I have been alive, she responded in a form that was embarrassing to herself and to any woman listening to her radio program who was not a size 0.

In today’s society this is, unfortunately, predictable. Everyone from Jessica Simpson to Tyra Banks, Oprah and Hillary Clinton has fallen victim to this type of image-oriented bullying. Recent pictures of Pierce Brosnan’s wife, Keely Shaye Smith, on the beach in her bikini raised criticism about her weight and choice of bathing suit — as if the woman should be wearing a giant muumuu to swim in the ocean. After Kelly Clarkson’s recent appearance on “American Idol,” the first commentary I read on the Internet was about her weight gain instead of her singing.

My weight was consistently criticized throughout the campaign. Once someone even suggested I go to a plastic surgeon for liposuction. Afterward, I blogged about loving my body and suggested critics focus their insecurities about women’s bodies elsewhere. On the other side, my mother was constantly slammed for being too skinny, so the weight obsession of the media and our culture goes both ways. It also goes to both parties. Hillary Clinton has consistently received criticism for her pantsuits and figure. Whatever someone’s party, these criticisms are quite obviously both wrong and distracting from the larger issues at play.

The question remains: Why, after all this time and all the progress feminists have made, is weight still such an issue? And in Laura’s case, why in the world would a woman raise it? Today, taking shots at a woman’s weight has become one of the last frontiers in socially accepted prejudice."



Meghan McCain is hot! Look at her, all technologically savvy... I still won't vote for her dad, but I'm loving her! You can find Meghan's blog at McCainBlogette.com.

About a month ago I started exercising to supplement my diet in my attempts to get healthier so I can live to see hover crafts replace cars. Or at least to a ripe old age like 80. It definitely started slow... It took some major mental strength to get out the door to have a leisurely walk with my dog down the street. Now I wake up at 5:30am on weekdays so that I can get my hour of exercise in before I have to shower and eat breakfast. As time has gone on, my workouts have gotten more and more intense, with more weight per repetition and higher speeds or inclines or resistances on cardio machines. Only on weekends can I make my workouts longer, and I often do. I've also started doing incidental workouts... I was at Universal Studios last night and a few of my friends and I decided to run up the stairs instead of take the escalator. This is a feat I never would have attempted or let alone have thought enticing a few weeks ago, but we ran up it and giggled at the top feeling each others' pulses and enjoying a rest before everyone else made it up on the escalator. I wanted to look up how many stories tall it is to brag, and I found out that the escalator we ran up is the second longest in the world.
The picture above shows less than a quarter of the whole escalator.
Anyway, that's the endurance segment of our program. To discuss invigoration, I've also noticed with my newfound physical fitness that I feel much more energetic and peppy on days that I work out in the guten morgan. On days that I don't, I feel lethargic and it takes a lot longer for me to become fully awake---I don't feel bright-eyed and bushy-tailed until 9ish, as opposed to 6ish on days I work out. Furthermore, after a workout I feel ready to take on the world, ready to go. It's a great feeling.
Now there's a hidden agenda to my thoughts in this post, that is, to share some of my intensely personal and real feelings about the gospel. As I was sitting in church this morning contemplating the things of the soul, my mind made the connection between physical fitness and spiritual fitness. Just like I have made great strides in my cardiovascular and muscular endurance, so too have I come leaps and bounds in my spiritual endurance from where I was just a few months ago. I had a fabulous spiritual experience in July while mentoring teenage girls at a summer camp in Idaho away from technology and temptation that made me understand that one of the most important things for my salvation will be to read the Scriptures every day for the rest of my life. Now, I don't have a perfect track record, but my commitment to this goal has steadily increased and it's that much easier for me to crack open the good book every morning at 5:30 before I hop on the weight machine. I've also been given an assignment at church that makes it so that I'm in a church building for at least 5 hours every Sunday, sometimes up to 12. Today it was 10. At first I couldn't hack it, I'd skip some of my meetings to go home and take my Sunday nap, I'd complain, and I'd feel dead by the time I got home. Now I don't need that Sunday nap... I've been functioning just fine without it. And while it used to be hard to stay for my second and third meetings of the day, now I can make it to my sixth with no problem and I feel almost giddy throughout it all. Now, going to church is how it should be, and how it long has been for people much better than me--it energizes me and reboots my system for the week to come. I'm thrilled to be there, and I feel like I'm in the right place at the right time doing the right thing. With the increase in endurance came the increase in invigoration, just like with my physical fitness. There is no doubt in my mind that the gospel is true if that's the case. If it weren't, someone as imperfect and nap-loving as me would never make it through.
I know that the Lord loves us, I see it in countless ways everyday. From the children that I work with that are blessings from God, to the opportunities and mercy that I see in my life, there is no doubt in my mind that he is constantly aware of us and intricately involved, if we let him, in the inner-workings of our lives. I'm so grateful for that. Thank goodness for running shoes, and thank goodness for church pews.

I'm going to go in reverse order of the title and start with the Cray-pas. For those of you who didn't go to Winn Brook Elementary school, you might not call all oil-pastels Cray-pas. I googled the word to get the correct spelling, and apparently it's a brand name of cheap oil-pastels for "junior" artists. I don't use that brand, but I still call all oil-pastels (and all pastels, really) cray-pas. It's like calling all tissues Kleenex... same deal. So lately, since my dad put my giant tub of oils somewhere I can't find, I've been using my cray-pas to assuage my artistic cravings. Here's the latest installment, though be warned that it's a really bad picture of a great little drawing... I took it with my cellphone and it's all weird and distorted. The gunk in the sky are little stars made out of tin foil.

When I asked my notoriously loving and supportive mother what she thought it was a picture of (before the palm tree went on) she said "smog?" Thanks, mom. I guess sunrise isn't too far off... it is pretty smoggy around here!
**
Murder in the hood. Yikes. So after an uplifting weekend of General Conference, I'm thrust back into the harsh realities of life. As I drove to work, there were all these helicopters circling and the gated community that I was in was swarming with Police and security guards. Turns out, a man who was in dire financial trouble shot and killed 5 family members and then himself in his home last night... 2 blocks away from where I work. Here's a news truck that I snapped out of my windshield on the way home:

My mom told me when I got home that the headlines on the local news said "man kills family and self over economic crisis." Oh, the sensationalists. Great.
**
So when I was at Whitney's party ruining my life with some delicious homemade pizza, I talked to one of her friends about "The Master Cleanse" -- a cleanse where you basically flush the heck out of your bowels and intestines and eat nothing, but drink up to 1200 calories a day of a homemade lemonade mixture of fresh lemon juice, grade b maple syrup, cayenne pepper and water. Since I have some pretty gnarly IBS and my internals hate me, I decided to try it. A little over a week after the party (I hadn't pooped since the pizza at this point) I started the cleanse. Every night you drink a laxative herbal tea, then in the morning you drink a quart of salt water (which is like a laxative, only MUCH stronger and MUCH faster) and then you do the lemonade throughout the day, plus water. I'm at the end of day 4 out of 10 at this point, and I'm feeling pretty dang good! I'm not ridiculously bloaty like I am most of the time, and I just feel better in the tum-tum. I've kind of had enough of this whole no food thing, but I can make it a little longer. I've realize just how much I crave WHOLE WHEAT BREAD! All I've really craved is bread bread and more bread, even though I would have expected to crave mostly fruit and diet coke. Nope! Oh well, it's totally worth it. Apparently a lot of people use it as a crash diet, only drinking 500 calories a day of the lemonade and therefore losing 20 lbs in the 10 days. I've lost 2, probably because I'm drinking sufficient lemonade to stay healthy. Seriously people, 500 calories a day IS NOT GOOD FOR YOU! And on those crash diets you just gain it back anyway. Ridiculous.
**
So that's the update, sorry that I talked about pooping. It's on my mind a lot... IBS really sucks. Here's the token picture of Miss Hadley, the love of my life. It was taken during game 2 of the ALDS (GO RED SOX!). She loves to nestle herself in the pillows, and she wasn't about to let Caroline's leg get in her way!

So it's funny to me, this blogging thing. I started a blog for the first time when I was in London, mostly because it made me feel cool, and so my mom could read it
(when I reminded her to several times). Then I randomly kept blogging. And yet, it's still novel to me that people read my blog the way I read theirs, that they check back and think "poop" when I haven't updated. So then there's that thing, that if you write all the time you risk sounding mundane with every minute detail of your life. But if you only write once in a blue moon, you're so overwhelmed by the task that you put it off forever. So here's a bulleted list, some updates, and maybe some expansion beyond that.
First, here's the token Hadley picture:

Don't worry, I'll add another by the end of this post ;)

So, I could write about...
*losing 25 pounds, a process that has made me much healthier, and much more constipated.
*the joys and travails of working as a behavior therapist.
*being hired to work in my company's infant/toddler program in addition to my regular clients.
*dying my hair red.
*what attracts me to and keeps me from graduate school.
*Major League baseball... how the Red Sox didn't quite make it, and how I've adjusted to Dodger territory.

So, here's a few pictures of a Dodger's game I went to a few weeks ago! The field shot is when Manny was at bat. I was so thrilled, of course, to support my boy Manny!

The Dodgers played the Diamondbacks, with Derek Lowe pitching an outstanding win of 8-2. Here's a picture of myself and a young chap from my ward, Greg. My face looks oddly distorted, but I'd say it's recognizable.


I also thought I'd post a cute picture of one of the little guys I work with, Tyler P. I'm good friends with his cousin Kristen Rane Lanshe, which is a complete coincidence actually. Anyway, his happy face is a good example of why I do what I do. To reap the rewards of good behavior. Let's just say, I'm his mean task-master, and he smiles when I scare him into obedience.

People always assume he's my son when we're out together. I've also probably been suspected of being his kidnapper, too... once I took him to get a haircut. He has sensory problems that make his neck HYPER sensitive... if you brushed the nape of his neck by accident, he would literally perceive it as pain. So the haircut obviously didn't go over too well... he started screaming expletives and running down the street in a ghetto part of Pasadena, yelling "help me! help me! Oh SH**!!!" I smiled and waved at all of the concerned onlookers with my best Miss America wave while chasing him, hoping to keep him out of oncoming traffic. Well, it all turned out nicely in the end, no harm no foul!

Anyway, here's another picture of Hadley. We told her to dress up, but we didn't realize that she also had gender identity problems. Or maybe it was just rebellion against to bows we make her wear all the time? Either way, we're much more explicit to tell her to put on a dress or a skirt now.

Ciao!

So I saw a few amusing things the other day when I was out in the valley with a client. I thought I'd share those amusing things:
First of all, "SPEED HUMPS"??? Really? Because everywhere else in the world they're speed bumps. It's just so random and hilarious to me. Second of all, if you look at that sign and put the stress on the second syllable of "contract," it sounds like a miracle pill that allows promiscuity. Maybe I'm just sick, but hey that's what I noticed. Of course, it's a cell phone add, but hey seriously.


Another funny thing that I saw out on a walk through the La Cañada Country Club with my dog was a street sign, kid you not, "Star Trek Dr." That was a good one. I should probably take a picture of that one! I mean really, Star Trek Dr. in a ritzy country club?


As for becoming an old lady, I have arthritis! Can you believe that? I have arthritis in my wrist and maybe in my back, and I have to use "Aspercreme" to be able to use my wrist at all. It's a little sickening. How does that possibly happen to a 21-year-old???