scrawls and élan vital.

if you don’t keep it down about how full you are or sing that silly song about being lazy at the top of your lungs or throw up in the hallway outside of my room (or something) or TRY TO OPEN MY DOOR AGAIN BECAUSE YOU THINK IT IS YOURS i will be upset. just because MOST people are not here doesn’t mean EVERYONE is not here.

May 09

Let’s be clear.

As a “whole lotta woman” who is 5’7” and 170 pounds, I am a fat-positive feminist. I am a body-positive feminist. I feel like I’ve had to get into too many discussions about it this week alone, and I’m annoyed. The career of my choosing is probably one of the most physically demanding out there and I HAVE to be in tip-top fighting shape in order to do it.

However.

I am working on gaining that muscle and maintaing a healthy relationship with food, my self-image, and my body in general. I am not going to deprive myself of things. I am not going to diet, or do things that don’t feel good. I am making a lifestyle change because I need to in order to do what I DREAM of doing and, in reality, I’m learning pretty quickly what foods and movements make me feel good and what don’t.

But if you come at me from any direction other than “I support you in the choices that you are making,” I call bullshit. If you come at ANYONE else in any direction other than “I support you in the choices you are making,” peace out.

Here are some articles and blog posts and resources in case there is any confusion on how fat-positivity and body-positivity is tied up in and important to intersectional feminism, because these writers have said it better than I’m currently able to.

Apr 30

That moment when

Apr 13

Writing prompt from io9

I almost never sleep through the night since Mom put the house on stilts. Sorry, not JUST stilts. Stilts with LEGS. Stilts you have to OIL so they don’t get cranky and knock dishes off the counter if they rock too hard.

It started when she got fired. She started pulling things out of the “catch-all” drawer, broken clocks that Jon had busted during his I-want-to-be-a-mad-scientist phase, toys I had thrown in there when the parts that moved stopped moving. She fixed the dishwasher next. I came home one day and she was sitting in the kitchen, the pieces spiraled out around her with a blue post-it note designating the name and order d each piece. I picked up a crummy-looking piece and she told me, without looking up, to run to the hardware store and get a new one just like it. The neighbors started bringing things over, busted toasters, slow watches, and I made more runs to the hardware store. They started paying her, and so we didn’t get too worried and it just kept happening

She pulled up half the carpet in her room for a workspace, and wouldn’t let anyone in unless she was between projects. Then she started making things. She built me a hanger-sorter, which took the empty hangers out from between the full ones, so I didn’t have an excuse to leave things on the chair anymore, she said. Jon got an alarm clock that would dump little bits of water on him if he hit the snooze button too many times.

She started installing solar panels around the windows and on the awnings, and tinkering with the water heater and wiring. I came downstairs for some water one night, and she had ripped out a section of the wall in the living room to make the outlet to the left of the door work, and it hadn’t since before we had moved in. But she made it work. She started gathering up our relatives’ addresses and asking us to draw pictures of where we wanted to visit (the world’s largest ball of twine was Jon’s, mine was lakes and snow-capped mountains somewhere) before we went to sleep.

We went to sleep-away camp that summer, at her request. And when we came back, sun-tanned and mosquito-bitten, with pen pals and stories, the stilts were there. They were splayed around the house like a spider’s legs, and the foundation had been exposed. The neighbors glared when she popped her head out from behind one of them, streaked with grease and dirt and sweat. “Hey guys,” she chirped. “Welcome back!”

She asked us about her plan the next day. There were chickens in the basement, a garden in half the kitchen, and she had bolted all the furniture to the floor. She had been living off the grid since we left that summer, recycling water for the garden, building a better heater. Jon and I stayed up all night talking about it. Neither of us had friends close by, just the ones we had made while at camp. We agreed, and she started it up as the sun set. They shuddered a little when the house left the ground, and the chickens weren’t happy about it. Jon and I stuck our head out the window like dogs, and Mom piloted from the newly-repaired outlet in the living room.

The rocking got me. Never in one direction, just back and forth and up and down and side-to-side. I’d wake up from dreams of being lost in the ocean, or trapped in a box as it tumbled downhill. I watched the moon and stars go by the first night.

After that, I’d go sit with the chickens and watch them sleep, undisturbed by the rocking. I’d oil the machinery when it started to groan in the way mom demonstrated to both me and Jon when the stilts started to complain. Once, the house shook so badly that a cabinet fell off the wall and half the plates were smashed. We used the shards to make a table, and mom disappeared into the basement for three days before we started moving again. Sometimes, after that, mom would stop the house if we were getting close to a city, and I’d drop right off to sleep.

scrawls and élan vital.

May 15

ok dudes

May 09

Let’s be clear.

Apr 30

That moment when

Apr 13

Writing prompt from io9

Apr 06

Reblog this for your URL in circular gallifreyan

Mar 16

Feb 23

Jan 30