I’m fat. I know it. I’m not ignoring the fact that my weight is incredibly unhealthy and probably will cause a myriad of problems with my organs and glands if I don’t rectify it sooner rather than later. I haven’t been living under a rock, so I’ve read all the studies showing how much obesity costs in the long run in healthcare costs and how life expectancy suffers for those who are unhealthy. I’m lucky so far that I haven’t been diagnosed with diabetes or any number of other disorders that afflict the obese.

Body acceptance is a way of telling myself that I am not a worthless piece of shit. It’s a way of accepting that this is how I am at this moment, and that I am a worthwhile human being, even though I haven’t made the best choices for myself in the last seven years or so. This wasn’t an overnight journey, and I know that. So, I am endeavoring to accept my body for what it is. It is a reflection of the last seven years of my life, and the choices that I made during those seven years. I  can’t deny that it happened, but I can choose to try not to hate myself for it. Hate and self-loathing in the past have only led m into a deeper spiral of poor decisions. It’s hard to decide to do anything positive for yourself when you hate how you look and think you’re worthless because you can’t manage to make good and healthy choices.

So, I have chosen to embrace body acceptance. I am embracing myself for what I am and also for what I can and will be. I’m making better choices for myself and for my future. I am a worthwhile human being despite my fat. I am beautiful and feminine. I am also obese. That last bit? That’s the one that has to go. The rest can stay. But I’m accepting the obesity along with the rest of it. They say the first step toward recovery is admitting that you have a problem. I’ve already done that. Now I’m remembering that beneath the problem is a person. That person is a human being just like any other. She’s one who has problems with portion control, a penchant for junk foods and a massive sweet tooth. Yep. Those are there, too. I’m me, and I’m learning to accept my bad along with my good.

What this message of personal body acceptance should not be misconstrued as is fat apology. I am not making excuses for why I got fat. I got fat because I made bad decisions. I am not saying that obesity is good in any way, shape or form. I have experienced many hardships as a result of being obese. I can’t shop in regular stores and half the time have to shop online. This leads to headaches for returns if things don’t fit or if the wrong item is sent. It’s not fun, let me assure you. I have to have a seatbelt extender on an airplane and in most theaters, I spend at least 30% of my attention trying not to encroach on anyone else’s space. It’s not fun, and I’ve ruined a number of situations for myself by sheer merit of being fat. I am not unapologetically fat. I understand that my fat has ramifications for myself as well as for others.

Fat apology has a tendency to be somewhat abrasive. It’s fat people fighting back against the public shaming that many of us have endured for (often) years and years. I’m not saying it’s okay to react in such a way, but it’s similar to other groups reacting negatively, defensively and abrasively to similar situations. These people have become so sick of being shamed for their fat that they have decided to buck the trend and instead of fighting against it, they accept it. They say, “It’s okay to be fat. It’s my choice after all, isn’t it?” I can’t get behind this mentality, even though I can understand some of the reasoning behind it. It is a form of body acceptance, but not, in my opinion, a very healthy one.

It’s not easy to be fat. Obesity rates are rising exponentially in western civilizations. We are getting fatter faster and younger. There is a huge backlash against those who are fat, as if we are somehow mentally deficient. Most of us have an unhealthy relationship with food; that much is obvious. The fat shaming that tends to go on from people who are thin either by their own volition (hard work in the form of exercise and calorie restriction) or by the blessing of biology does not help most of us abolish this unhealthy relationship with food. Teasing me or ridiculing me because I’m fat really only makes me feel worse about myself. As I feel worse about myself, I feel less like I’m worth the effort it would take to change the cycle of obesity. And then I get fatter. This tactic is not helping people. Walking around degrading fatties and teasing people who are fat is ignorant. Who are you to know what these people are doing?

I am obese. Yep. But in the last month, I’ve changed my diet and begun to exercise. I’ve started drinking more water and keeping an eye on the nutrients that I take in. If  I were to pass someone on the street, he or she might choose to ridicule me for being fat without knowing the changes that I’ve made. The fat didn’t go on quickly, so I know it won’t come off quickly. It’s a slow process, particularly since I’m actively trying not to over-fatigue myself or injure myself. Many of the fat people who are shamed could be making poor decisions. They may have already started making the change. Perhaps they’ve changed from a diet of fast food and junk to one involving lots of fresh vegetables and lean meats. Maybe they’ve already lost 20 pounds. There’s no way for a stranger to know that.

The looks that come with being fat are not easy to take. It’s embarrassing to have someone see me and cringe, as if I am a behemoth made of fat and ugliness, as if there are no redeeming qualities about me. I know there are, and the stranger does not, of course. But what if I were to look at them with the same disgust? That’s not okay. Of course it’s not okay. I don’t know them, or their story, just like they don’t know mine. The only part of my story that they know is that I’ve made some unhealthy choices about food and that I’m not, perhaps, as active as I should be. The very idea that a person deserves the right to judge me for that without knowing me is offensive. The fact that these people can judge me and think that I’m not doing anything for myself or that I think the fat is okay or even great is offensive. The very idea that body acceptance is the same as fat acceptance is offensive to me.

I am accepting my body in its current form. I accept it for all of its flaws and for all of its fat. I acknowledge that I am unhealthy. I acknowledge that my unhealthiness has ramifications for others. I am beautiful despite these things. My body is okay the way it is, but it can be much, much better. From here forward, I am making the decision to do better for myself and my body for the sake of longevity and a more active lifestyle. It’s hard to be active after not being active for so long, so I’m taking baby steps toward being able to walk around Walt Disney World all day without feeling like I’m ready to keel over at the end of the day.

My body is okay the way it is. It could be much better, and it will get much better. I’m awesome the way I am. And now it’s time to become even more awesome.

From the get-go, this show is EPIC. The music is loud and sweeping, and I’ll be honest, from our seats in the rafters, it was hard to understand what people were saying. I’m sure they have decent diction, but the Palace is a large theater, and with such a sweeping score, wordy lyrics don’t travel as well. Not to mention, the ushers were letting people in through the full first scene. It meant that I missed a lot of went on. It’s kind of a big deal when you have no idea why the eff Jean Valjean is being persecuted or what he even did because people were standing in front of you and making noise as they clamored into their seats, five full minutes after the show started. Dudes. Not cool.

I know a lot of the music from this show. More than I realized, actually. That made some of the scenes easier, as I was able to process all of the lyrics that had flown in one ear (and ostensibly right out the other, in some of the scenes). It was nice to have context for the music that I did know. The show did give me that, since of course only the show-stoppers are played. Nobody needs the set-up when the rest of the world presumably knows where the song came from and why it is being sung.

We had some problems with talkers, and then there was a long period in which I was mesmerized by the enormous shadow of the conductor that was on the wall. It was at that point that I realized that the show was simply not holding my interest. I think part of the problem was that it started out with such high drama that it was hard to keep my interest. The high drama became the norm, and then it had to top itself to make things that much better. And it didn’t. So perhaps Les Mis is just not the show for me. The songs that everyone knows are, of course, sweet and nice and sweeping.

I got through the show with a minimum of heavy sighing and foot-tapping, which makes it better than some of the movies I saw at the film festival this year, so there’s that. Les Mis is a little too overall epic for my taste. I like variety in my shows – give me slower, lower moments to temper the more dramatic moments. Not a fan.

This post is not about ladybugs.

This particular family friend used to give my dad the same gift every Christmas – a shoebox wrapped in lovely holiday paper (she even individually wrapped the lid and bottom so that it could stay pretty all year) filled with almond roca. I freaking loved that stuff, but of course it was for my dad so I couldn’t have it very often. Usually just on Christmas and other holiday-type occasions that she felt like making it for. It wasn’t often.

After I moved out on my own, I realized I wouldn’t be seeing her as often and therefore would not get to partake in chocolate-toffee-almondy goodness. What followed was natural: I would find out how to make my own.

I found a recipe… somewhere. I don’t even know where I found it. I’ve been making it for about six years, though, and certainly am not straying from this recipe now.

Ingredients

1lb real butter
2 cups granulated white sugar
2 Tbsp light corn syrup
6 Tbsp water
1 cup finely chopped almonds
1 (11.5oz) bag milk or semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions

Melt butter in a medium soup pot. While butter is melting, chop up almonds and toast them in a pan. (Alternatively, buy pre-sliced almonds and crush them in the bag before putting them in the bag; really saves time.)

Note: Once the almonds are toasted, I like to put them through a sifter or strainer to remove most of the larger pieces but keep the small bits aside to sprinkle on top at the end. This is totally optional as it is mostly decorative.

Once butter is melted in the pot, add sugar, corn syrup and water. Keep cooking the mixture, stirring constantly until it reaches hard crack temperature and turns the color of a brown paper bag. Remove from heat and stir in the almonds. Transfer to a cookie sheet (with edges) and spread it across the sheet until it is evenly distributed.

Let the candy cool for a few minutes (to harden) and then begin sprinkling chocolate chips across the top. (I like the mini chips; they are easier to distribute and the chips melt faster.)  Use a spatula to spread the chocolate over the surface as the chips melt. Once it is spread out, sprinkle the reserved almond bits across the top. Let cool at room temperature until candy is hardened and chocolate has solidified. It may take up to 12 hours for this to happen. (The candy can be put into the fridge or freezer to help it cool faster, but this will change the texture and may prevent the chocolate from staying solidified at room temperature.)

Some notes:

• I prefer unsalted butter just in general. I doubt this has much impact if any on the candy, but it’s what I use.
• I like the mini chocolate chips because it’s easier to get them spread out over the candy, and as such get a much more even coating of chocolate.
• Humidity is a bitch for this recipe. I’ve ruined more than one batch of candy because I didn’t take the humidity of the day into consideration. This wasn’t as much of a problem in Portland but has been a problem more than once in Cleveland.

I love this recipe. I usually only make it when I know I can share it with others, otherwise I end up eating a lot of candy in a short period of time. Not so good on the waistline. It has gone over very well at more than one potluck at work, and it makes a nice gift during the holidays.

Calorie content? Hell if I know. I’m not sure I want to know right now. If I did the work to figure it out, I might never make this candy again. Where’s the fun in that?

Ingredients

1 lb ground turkey (alternatively: ground beef or stewing beef cut into bite-size pieces)
2 cans kidney beans (light and dark together give it a nice color texture)
2 bell peppers, large dice
1 large onion, large dice
2 cans diced tomatoes
1 cup frozen corn
3 Tbsp chili powder
1 tsp cayenne pepper (or to taste)
1 tsp ground cumin

Directions

1. Cook ground turkey. Set aside.
2. Sautee chopped onion and pepper in the pan with the beef drippings. Drain pan.
3. Combine kidney beans, diced tomatoes, corn, cooked veggies, meat and spices in a large pot. Bring mixture to a gentle boil, then turn the temperature down to low/medium-low to simmer. The longer it simmers, the more flavor the chili will have.

Note: If the chili looks too thick after it is initially combined, water or stock can be added to thin it. It will continue to thicken as it simmers.

Serves 8.

My dad always serves cornbread with his. I’ve made mine and served pieces of french bread with it, that’s good as well. Most of the time I eat it with a bit of cheese mixed in and a dollop of sour cream, no bread necessary.  A serving of the chili is about 250 calories, which is not so unreasonable, considering the serving size is approximately 1.5 cups. It’s a very decent amount of food for a meal!

In reality, this is probably nothing like my dad’s chili. It certainly didn’t taste the same as the chili I had last time I visited my dad. The thing with this chili is that it changes. I’ve yet to make the exact same chili twice, and I’m sure he hasn’t either. Any modifications that you fancy making to the recipe would be perfectly fitting with the spirit and history of this chili. Go to town, and I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I have.

1 lb ground turkey
2 cans kidney beans (Kuner’s no salt added)
2 bell peppers, large dice
1 large onion, large dice
2 cans diced tomatoes (Hunt’s no salt added)
1 cup frozen corn
3 Tbsp chili powder
1 tsp cayenne pepper (or to taste)
1 tsp ground cumin

The first bout was full of really slow jams. They started further back and did a lot of jostling for the best strategic positioning. Strategy was top dog, so things seemed to move a little slower and definitely required a lot more attention and understanding to figure out what was going on. Johnathan’s mom was with us, and while we gave her a basic idea of how roller derby is played, it’s hard to explain all of the aspects when you’re relatively new to the sport yourself. I decided to root for the Hellbombers because they had sparkly red shorts and because I like red better than pink. Yes, it was that arbitrary, but considering they’re all excellent athletes, it was hard to make a legitimate choice as to which team with whom to align my loyalties. The women on the Hellbombers did not disappoint! Sparkles was the stand-out for me. She was able to bust out of the pack with incredible ease. She was light on her feet – er, skates – and ended up, at one point, amassing 25 points in a single jam. I was super impressed. Honorable Mention: The Eduskater (who, according to Johnathan’s mom is A+ – she could only see the number, not the skater’s name; I thought it was amusing). It was quite inspiring watching them weave through a group of other skaters whose job is to try to keep them from passing through.  Some of the girls took really hard falls, and some were hurt enough not to be able to skate for the rest of the bout. That’s a bit scary, but I also know it’s part of the sport. I took a bit of a battering when I played water polo, too (although nothing quite as bad as falling wrong at such a high speed). It’s part of the sport.

The second bout was the Rolling Pin-Ups versus the Cleveland Steamers. I rooted for the Pin-Ups because I liked their uniforms better. The match was more exciting than the first as the teams got much faster starts. There were more falls but fewer injuries, and the score was a lot closer and lower than in the first bout. I felt like the teams were pretty closely matched, though for the first period, the Steamers were consistently out-skating the Pin-Ups, which gave them a considerable edge and a modest lead. The second period was wicked exciting, though. The Pin-Ups brought their A-game and tied up the score, even pulling ahead at one point. Eva Lucien was a skater of note in that bout – she was so versatile and skilled it was hard not to watch just her while she was on the track. The second period of that bout was the most exciting. It all ended up coming down to the final bout, as the Pin-Ups were ahead by 1 point. The Steamers pulled out a two point jam to win by one point, but it was super exciting up to the last second. (I still like the uniform for the Pin-Ups better. Yellow is just not a good color for most people.)

Ultimately, what happened after my first experience with live roller derby is that I definitely want to play. It looks challenging, of course. It also looks like a wicked amount of fun, and I know there’s a huge community surrounding roller derby. I’ve been thinking about it for about a month so far, and started even getting into shape for it. I may even learn to like lunges some day. (Don’t hold your breath.) We’re looking into getting inexpensive skates that would work outdoors – starter skates, really. It’ll probably be at least a year before I can start boot camps with the local league, and probably even longer before I can do it well enough to actually make it. That’s okay. It’s something to work toward long-term. In the meantime, I’m going to hone my skating skills and get into much, much better shape. Step 1 is already in progress as we’ve cleaned up our diet and started exercising lately. I can already feel the difference. It should only get better from here!

Roller derby, man. I’m gonna play it someday.

The most heated topic on the MFP board is regarding “starvation mode.” There are people who believe that all women, regardless of height, weight or body type, should be eating a minimum of 1200 calories, and men should eat no fewer than 1500. This is, of course, one of those general rules for which there are always exceptions. Obviously someone who is 4’11″ would not need the same amount of fuel as someone who is 5’11″. A person with a small frame would need less fuel than someone with a bulky frame. But this is a good rule of thumb for beginners to pursue. It can be difficult to ascertain without the assistance of a licensed nutritionist and doctor how much food one should eat per day to accomplish weight loss. And, let’s face it, bodies are not mathematically perfect. What might work for me one day is not necessarily going to work the next day or long term. It’s just how it goes.

This 1200/1500 baseline is in place so that people can avoid going into so-called “starvation” mode. This is when your body stops consuming fat and instead stores it, because it is not getting enough nutrients and believes it is heading into a time of less available food. As such, it will put up stores just in case things get worse. This does happen to some. It can stall weight loss or even create weight gain, even though people are eating relatively little food. What can also occur when eating too few calories is that the body will consume fat and muscle, thereby giving weight loss, but the metabolism has slowed to a point of being able to accommodate the smaller amount of calories. Then, when these folks who have been eating so little start to eat an amount that should help them maintain the weight loss, it piles back on. The body has been sabotaged into believing that this new amount of food is excess, and therefore stores it as fat for the next time that food is scarce. It’s a biological response to aid in ultimate survival. Our brains might know that we’re well-off enough to be able to get a meal next time we’re hungry, but the bits of the body that control the weight loss are not that “smart.” They do what they’re biologically programmed to do.

We can’t know at what point our body is going to start storing instead of burning. Height and weight are a good way of estimating how much a person should eat for weight loss, but all the same it’s difficult to know where that line is. Even an expert nutritionist with the assistance of a doctor and a myriad of tests may not be able to ascertain that. Bodies are fickle things. The drama comes because what is right for one person is not necessarily right for everyone. But, when people seek to give advice, they most often draw on their own experience. It was that way for them, so it must work this way for everyone, right? I would wager that a majority of the people giving advice on MFP are not experts in any way. And if they are, they’re not posting their qualifications. This leads me to believe that they are not. (Just like me!) So, advice in these cases should be taken with a grain of salt, as each person’s experience is different and can’t possibly apply to everyone.

What really bothers me about these posts (and please don’t ask me why I read them – I’m apparently a glutton for punishment) is not that these people are sharing their personal experience. Those experiences are absolutely relevant, particularly for someone who has a body type similar to theirs. However, these posts often claim that their way is the Right Way. They claim that science can’t be proven and that starvation mode is a myth. These claims can ultimately be harmful to a person who is new to the weight loss process and hasn’t done excesses of research on the subject the way I tend to do. (Often it’s more confusing the more I read, yet I do it anyway.) People often believe the first thing they’re told, especially if it sounds convincing, and many of these people are. I worry about the damage that could be done to people who eat a minimum of calories per day (for instance, 1200) then exercise every single one of them away. There are people who have ended up in the negative digits for their calories in vs calories out goals. It’s not healthy to burn so many calories without putting in a sufficient amount of fuel, and it’s definitely not healthy to lose a lot of weight in a short amount of time. That’s a fact that these folks seem to pointedly ignore.

I’m not claiming to be an expert in any sense of the word – I am categorically not an expert at this (or anything else, for that matter). I’ve done a little bit of research and found some truths which I will stick to. I’m not going to give advice where I am unqualified to do so, and I’m certainly not going to feed the trolls by suggesting that starvation mode is actually real, thereby getting into a war of words over what happens to one person’s body versus another’s.

I don’t know why I keep reading the threads on MFP. It’s not beneficial to me, and only ends up frustrating me more often than not.

Science can’t be proven? Seriously, people?

There was a main problem with this meal, however: it calls for Velveeta. I have nothing against velveeta in theory. It’s great for making queso, and who wants to slave over a roux and bechamel sauce when trying to whip up dinner in half an hour? Making the meal faster shouldn’t mean I have to do an hour’s worth of work in half an hour just to be able to call it a half hour meal. So, I understand the appeal of the Velveeta. It’s pretty impossible to ruin unless you grossly overcook it, and it melts easier than most cheeses do. My main issue is that it’s high in calories for what it brings to the party. Let’s not even get started on the sodium content. (I have a hard enough time excising excess sodium from my diet – I don’t need any help from the over-processed “easy” foods.)

Given this fact, I sought a relatively easy way of re-doing the recipe to bring the caloric and sodium content down. I did searches, most of which came up with either literal Velveeta replacements (the types that hardened into blocks of meltable cheese which seemed a little bit… icky to me) or bechamel sauces. I’m not interested in concocting a cheese sauce that I could potentially screw up, particularly when this was supposed to be a quick meal. I learned in the course of my search travels that muenster is a good cheese for melting. I wanted something other than muenster cheese in the dish, though, since we don’t usually buy it and frankly I’ve never seen it on the shelf where we usually buy our (admittedly cheap, fairly low-quality) cheese. That means it’s probably expensive, right? Well, we lucked out there. Helluvagood makes muenster cheese. We combined muenster, monterey jack and fat free cheddar to substitute the Velveeta. What we came up with ended up being pretty tasty!

Ingredients

1 lb chicken breasts, cut into bite-size pieces
1 lb frozen broccoli OR 2 heads broccoli, chopped into bite-size pieces
1 can Cream of Chicken Soup (adequate substitute here)
4 cups brown rice, cooked
2 tsp minced garlic
1/2 cup fat free cheddar cheese, shredded
1/2 cup muenster cheese, shredded
1/4 cup monterey jack cheese, shredded

Directions

1. Heat a large pan. Drizzle with olive oil and begin cooking chicken.
2. When chicken is cooked through, add broccoli and reconstituted cream of chicken soup mixture. (If using condensed cream of chicken soup, dilute according to the instructions.)
3. When mixture begins to thicken, add garlic.
4. After the mixture is hot, add rice and cheese. Mix well and remove from heat.
5. Cover and let sit for 5 minutes.
6. Enjoy!

Serves 6.

The original recipe calls for instant white rice. I substituted brown rice because I prefer the complex carbohydrates. We undercooked ours, so that was a bummer, but that’s obviously not a feature of the recipe. One other thing that I’m considering changing for next time is to replace the monterey jack cheese with a more pungent cheese. The fat free cheddar is mild, and the muenster also did not bring a lot of flavor to the party, so other than adding creaminess, it felt like the cheese was lost in the dish. Perhaps a swiss or gruyere would make an excellent substitute. Either way, it was a good dinner and it was excellently filling for the serving size.

One serving of this comes out to about 370 calories and while not sodium-free at 468mg of sodium, it’s much better than it would have been with the Velveeta in it. We’re definitely keeping this one in our arsenal, particularly with the re-design.

Ingredients:
1lb stewing beef, cut into bite-sized pieces (would also work with diced chicken or pork)
1 pkg Frozen Stir Fry Vegetables
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium red bell pepper, chopped
1 Tbsp minced garlic

Sauce:
2 Tbsp Hokan Szechuan Sauce
1/2 C Light Sour Cream

Directions:

1. Heat a large pan to medium-high. Begin sauteing the beef and garlic.
2. Meanwhile, chop pepper and onion.
3. When meat is done, remove from pan and set aside. Saute pepper and onion in same pan.
4. Once pepper and onion are slightly softened, add frozen vegetables and reduce heat to medium-low.
5. Mix Szechuan sauce and sour cream together and combine with beef.
6. When frozen vegetables are heated through, combine vegetables and meat mixture.

Serve with pasta, rice or couscous, if desired. Makes four servings.

This comes out to about 300 calories for a serving of the szechuan stuff, so adding in a starch does make it a higher calorie meal, but it’s not exactly going to cause epic weight gain. It fits easily into my daily calorie “ration.”

Note: If you’re sensitive to spice, you will probably want to cut back on the Szechuan sauce. It is quite spicy, and while the sour cream helps to cut that, it doesn’t take away the spiciness completely.

Recently the bug to cook has started again. Well, I think it has. I’m thinking about food again and creative ways of using what we already have in the kitchen. I have a regular staple of things that I like to have in the kitchen, but they’re not very adventurous. Pastas, onions, certain vegetables (depending on what isn’t $5/lb at the moment), and certain meats. Sometimes jarred pasta sauces (GASP, I know). Canned tomatoes and canned tuna. We don’t do canned vegetables but I am amenable to frozen ones. (Actually, they’re kind of great. They’re easy and I like that.)

So, with health consciousness in mind, I am cooking again. There will be a lot of brown rice and a lot of searching high and low for recipe substitutions that won’t make me gain ten pounds overnight. I have about three recipes that I’d consider worth sharing, and hopefully there will be more to add to the arsenal as time goes on. Not everything will be healthy, but since I’m actually trying to lose weight (again…), there will certainly be health consciousness in mind.

Upcoming Recipes:

• Szechuan Stir-Fry (Sort Of)
• Almost Dad’s Chili
• Almond Roca
• Recipe Makeover: Chicken and Broccoli Cheese Rice

Johnathan and I made the decision that we couldn’t afford our all-access passes this year, and we truly thought we wouldn’t even miss them. We weren’t able to take the whole week off, so I figured it wouldn’t be a big deal. Oh, I was so wrong. We bought tickets for 25 films this year, which locked us in for those films. There were a few that, if we had the ability, we would have skipped on the day. So, we came away having learned a lot this year. Instead of reviewing the movies (especially because I only remember the really good ones and the really bad ones, and that’s not very fair), I’m going to give a rundown of what I learned this year:

• We need passes. Next year, we’re going back to our director level passes. (Or the executive ones if we manage to win one of the drawings! Not holding my breath on that one, but it’s nice to dream.)
• Staggering the evening blocks made it difficult to plan our schedule but it made an incredible difference in traffic. I hope they do it for weekends and Fridays next year, because it was a madhouse the first Friday and on the weekends until the blocks started to stagger.
• I don’t think I will ever really understand Second Life.
• Even when people are prompted to agree that there is no talking during festival films, they will talk anyway. I’m contemplating a shirt for next year that gives a warning that I throw hard candy at talkers. I’ll bring a bag of peanut M&Ms and throw them with abandon if I must. I don’t like peanuts anyway.
• Good films can be made based on books. I thoroughly enjoyed The Hedgehog at the festival, only to learn that it’s based on a book. I purchased it for my nook and I’m in the process of reading it now. It’s a necessarily different experience, but so far just as enjoyable. If it weren’t for the film festival, I might never have heard of this book.
• Holocaust subject matter is always devastating for me, yet I continue to be drawn to it. I came away from The Roundup quite literally sobbing. I would see it over again, because I think sometimes I need to be reminded that there are people who extraordinarily bad and also those who are extraordinarily good.
• Our method for picking films worked well for us this year. We were able to minimize the number of films that ultimately disappointed (although I expect there will always be some). It needs improvement, though – next year subject matter needs to be taken into consideration. No more starting or ending the day on a heavy film. Too rough.
• I need to avoid anything that’s labeled “thriller.” Even if I think it’s different than horror, others may not. (I’m looking at you, True Nature blurb writer.)
• The CIFF staff is incredible, from the core staffers down to the volunteers. If my biggest complaint about the festival is the talkers, that means they did their job in spades.
• It’s okay to cheer and clap after realizing you never have to see the year’s trailer again.
  • Side-note: It was then that I discovered that I wasn’t the only one not so enamored with the whole theme. Clearly others agreed!
• The relief that the festival is over only lasts a little while, and then I’m back to wanting to watch tons of movies. Thank goodness for Netflix!

My top films:

1. The Hedgehog
2. Matchmaker
3. With Love, from the Age of Reason

Runners up (in order that we saw them): 2030 – Revolt of the Young, Here Comes Lola!, These Amazing Shadows, The Rowan Waltz and The Roundup. Okay, so I liked a lot of the films we saw.

I love the film festival, and I’m glad to be a part of it, even if some of the others who also attend the festival can be trying at times. Just like in past years, there were some hallmark films that I’ll continue to remember and think about for years to come. That’s a successful festival for me.

What I have learned over the last year or so is that there seems to be a battle between the main fiber arts. Knitters seem to think that crocheters pursue an inferior craft. As a result, crocheters are very combative toward knitting, often overcompensating by saying nasty things about knitting in return. It is not a pretty sight. In fact, today I read a comment on the Knit Picks staff blog, where a crocheter took issue that the new crocheter hired at Knit Picks would want to learn to knit as well as her admitted ability to crochet. The person went so far to say: “I still will refuse to buy yarn from you because of your bad attitude.” That is, of course, her own choice. But she assumed in her comment that the crocheter in question would be entering into a hostile environment for those who enjoy crochet, which the Knit Picks staff have endeavored to show is far from the case. Over the year that I’ve been buying from Knit Picks, I’ve seen more and more crochet items showing up, and the staff seems to have taken a greater interest in crochet as a medium, including writing many posts on the blog about it. Yet, this crocheter still feels that her craft is not only underrepresented but also reviled on the site. It is a sad thing to see.

Why does this rivalry exist? Many of the same things can be made with both knit and crochet, often to incredibly similar results. The fact, however, is that each craft is used differently to create different results. A crocheted hat is just as beautiful as a knitted hat, but it is different than a knitted hat. And that is part of what makes it beautiful and special. Crocheters, as far as I am concerned, have a magical ability to create things which completely baffle me. I did try to crochet, but what I ended up with was a wobbly-looking uneven scarf… thing that I couldn’t bear to give to its intended recipient in the end. I admire crocheters for their ability to take a hook and some yarn and make things. I can’t figure it out. (I’ll need to take a class someday.)

I do not understand why people who crochet are so hostile toward people who knit. I do not understand why some people deride crochet as inferior. It makes no sense to me. The crafts are different, but equal. The people who pursue each are no different – they are people who like to use fiber and hooks or needles to create lovely things. I hope to see this warring subside. However, much like everything else in the world, it seems there will always be combative people who choose to make issues where there are none.

This issue still exists, and it may be that there will never be a time where all knitters and crocheters will respect each craft equally. In the meantime, I’d like to extend the olive branch to those crocheters out there who have ever felt slighted by a knitter. I think your craft is fantastic and I wish I could pursue it. Instead, I will look at your lovelies on Ravelry and instead continue to knit things which I believe are lovely as well. Your craft is nifty and I plan to learn how to do it someday (when I ever have free time again).

The knitter and the crocheter should be friends!

The Knitter’s Manifesto
By Donald Sutton

No longer will I be known as merely a crafter, nor will my knitting be considered a hobby. I am an artist, and my art deserves to be recognized as such by the world. If the world refuses, it will be so recognized by me, for I am the only one who can truly determine the validity of my art.

I am an artist whose medium is yarn, whose tools are simple needles, whose palette encompasses every known color of the spectrum. I paint with string, carve with sticks, and the click of needles is its own special music. I create objects out of next to nothing that are functional as well a beautiful.

I am an artist and have spent years honing my skills. That time spent is invaluable to me, and increases with each work I complete. I am the only one who can determine fair recompense for my artwork. Each stitch is well and honestly considered, and if an incorrect stitch is left in the work, it is because I have determined it should be so, not because I made a mistake. I am the only one who can accurately determine how my art is displayed.

I am an artist. My creations are as personal as the thoughts in my head. Should I choose to keep any or every piece I create, I will not be labeled selfish or uncaring. These are painstaking works; years of study are involved in each stitch, each pattern, and each color choice. They deserve to be received by someone who will recognize and appreciate the costs involved, not merely in materials, but in time and skill as well. In the event that my gifting was ill-considered I can at my own discretion retrieve the piece without being thought of as selfish, or known as someone who gives and takes back.

I am an artist and I will always retain the authority, decision and right to determine the final disposition of my works. Each recipient is matched with an original, unique creation – this is not done lightly or without thought. I do not take requests, either for articles or works in specific patterns. Each work is carefully considered based on my knowledge of my own skill and the characteristics of the intended recipient, even if that recipient is me. For the most part, my works are created for a single individual, and thus are to be considered even more priceless than an installation that will be viewed or ignored by the masses.

I am an artist. I am not selfish, stingy or greedy. I do not take myself, my skills or my art for granted. They are gifts from a power beyond me that are enviable and coveted. I pity those who will not create; I do not despise those who cannot.

I create because I must, but not because I am obligated. To not create is unthinkable. It is my desire, skill and creativity that make me an artist, not anyone else’s opinion. It is my choice to work in the medium of sticks and string.

I am a knitter, and I am an artist.

Let all of us who knit (or crochet, or sew, or cross stitch, or weave, or spin, or do beading, etc, etc, etc) stand together and make similar declarations!

My name is Laura. I am a knitter, and I am an artist.

Don’t get me wrong – I have nothing whatsoever about motorcycles. I’m happy for people who enjoy riding them even though I have absolutely no interest in riding one myself. It isn’t people who ride motorcycles in general I have problems with.

The ones who are troublesome are the ones who think they own the road. Just like anyone in a car who thinks that they’re more important than everyone else on the road, the people on bikes are creating dangerous situations as I try to safely drive to work. Last week, I saw someone on a bike with no helmet or any other protective gear that I could spot. This isn’t too unusual, and I wouldn’t really make a big deal of it if he had been riding safely and respectfully of the other people on the highway. He wasn’t, though. He decided he didn’t want to deal with the traffic which had slowed to about 5 mph below the speed limit (really slow, right?). He zoomed into the emergency lane and drove down it for a good half mile, then wove in and out of the cars until I couldn’t see him anymore. I presume his behavior continued as he drove down. I saw him drive in between two cars who were driving in their own lanes. Nobody in this scenario was doing anything out of the ordinary – just this guy on a motorcycle decided he had more important places to be and used his bike to his advantage.

That’s just one example of the crap that I’ve seen driving to work. (Interestingly, it mostly happens when I’m on my way to work, between 7 and 7:40AM on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday every week – I rarely see it on my way home.) I see this all the time and as I’m mentally calling these people jerks, or worse depending on my mood that day, I have to wonder what it is that motivates them to do things like that. If I were on a vehicle such as a motorcycle, full well knowing that there are other vehicles on the road which weigh thousands of pounds and won’t be able to stop as quickly as my bike could, I don’t think I would want to be swerving in front of vehicles or going in between the lanes to get farther up in the lane.  I guess I’m also a little more safety minded, too. I’d be wearing a helmet, for sure, and at least long pants and sleeves. I mean, one more layer between me and the pavement, right?

I imagine most people with motorcycles understand the risks and know that there are options out there to keep them safe. Why, then, wouldn’t they employ these things? In a collision, the car has the advantage. It’s bigger and has a ton of safety features built in – airbags, seat belts, crumple zones, etc. I can’t imagine many situations in which a motorcycle would survive intact, and the rider is also likely to suffer some high levels of injury from such a collision. The fact is that there are a lot more cars on the road, and they are bigger, heavier, and are a direct enemy of the motorcycle when it comes to collision.

Seeing these people act so recklessly irritates me. It’s disrespectful to the people using the roads as they’re supposed to, following traffic laws and giving reasonable distance to their fellow drivers. When these people blatantly disregard the law in this manner, they’re putting themselves at risk and spitting in the face of those who do abide by the law and try (mostly) to follow speed limits and don’t do things like driving around other cars in the emergency lanes to get places sooner. I am not wishing for someone to get hurt. I want people to be safe. I just really wish that some of these people riding these motorcycles wanted the same thing.

When it came time for me to make my first pair of socks (at least the first pair that I actually envisioned finishing – I did do one half of a sock last year, but it wasn’t until later that I realized that I hated the stitch pattern on the yarn and was probably never going to finish the first sock, let alone do a second!), I followed suit. I like the idea of socks from the toe-up, particularly for Johnathan, since he wanted knee-length socks and I wasn’t positive I’d have enough yarn for that. Plus, knowing that I have second sock syndrome (a syndrome in which the knitter indefinitely puts off beginning or finishing the second sock because said knitter has tired of the pattern; my first mittens were made well over a month apart!), I wanted to try two-at-a-time. Two-at-a-time from the toe up on one circular needle. I found a tutorial for it, and off we went!

The tutorial is for worsted weight yarn and larger needles while I was knitting with fingering weight yarn and tiny needles. They aren’t the smallest size I own, but just about. I cast on for two colorwork socks, with striped toe and heel, reversed a pattern from being cuff-down to toe-up, and just jumped in with both feet and started. It was a pretty enlightening experience, mainly in how easy this was to accomplish for me.

I won’t say I haven’t had my fair share of setbacks, however. First I made the socks about half an inch too short – uncomfortably short for Johnathan’s feet. So I ripped out the heels and knitted longer, then did the heels again. Then when I got to the color work, we found that it was too tight. Well crap. So, I got really mad at the socks, threw them across the room, fumed for a bit, then came up with a plan to fix it. I put out all sorts of fires in the knitting of these socks!

Starting out with a technique that is perceived as difficult to many makes me feel kind of good. It makes me feel fearless. Even though I’m not starting these things this way to show off, it makes me want to boast to other sock knitters how well it’s going. (Until I run into a snafu, that is.) I feel wonderful knowing that by not letting myself think something is hard, I’m able to accomplish it. Even the warnings on the tutorial that said tutorial should be for experienced knitters didn’t deter me. I have two successful socks in progress that hopefully will fit Johnathan’s feet perfectly – better than any store-bought sock could.

Now that I’ve conquered sock knitting, lace is next on my list. I couldn’t, of course, pick an easy project for that, either. No, I have in my queue (and the materials in my stash) for a shawl that, as written, can measure anywhere from 44″ square to 50″ square depending on the knitter. Start easy? Well, clearly that’s for other knitters. Not this stupidly fearless knitter!

Enter the protagonist.

We found a place on the east side of town that had two-bedrooms available for a little more than what we are paying at our current place. The apartments were bigger, though, and all came with balconies! We would have a bigger kitchen and living area, and the bedrooms were sensibly sized. We toured one and we were very impressed with not only the size and appearance but also the other amenities. There was a workout room in one of the buildings, open to all tenants, a party room in each building, and a billiard room in each building. The place has a heated garage (which I don’t foresee us paying for), a bike cage in said garage, and a big swimming pool – bigger and deeper than at our current place. We put our names down on a waiting list to be called if there was a vacancy that came up around the time we needed to move.

Johnathan called them in late June out of curiosity, just to see if they thought they would have any coming up soon. As it turns out, that waiting list meant absolutely nothing. Nada. They had a couple of apartments available, but none that fit our request (two bedroom, one bathroom in the main building – where the fitness center was). Well, actually, they did. But they had promised it to someone who would be bringing the deposit the next morning. They followed that up with, “Whoever gets here first gets the apartment.” Bzuh! Okay, so we bit. Hard.

We spent that evening figuring out how to acquire the money necessary to make the transaction happen. We withdrew cash from one bank account, then went to our local bank to get a money order (as we had neglected to ask what name to put on the check). We showed up bright and early that morning. Excessively early. The office didn’t open until 10AM, but the lady had said that they would be there starting at 9:30. I thought that meant they could let us in starting in then, but Johnathan insisted it meant that they were saying we could show up at 9:30 and be fine. The other person wasn’t schedule to get there until 11AM, so I thought it would be polite to at least wait until they were actually “open” to go in. One minute to 10, Johnathan knocked on the door. It turns out I was wrong – she was inviting us to show up at 9:30.

It didn’t matter, though. The person who had been promised the apartment came back the night before, just before the office closed for the night, to put down her deposit. She didn’t want to miss out on it! We had gone through all that, only to end up disappointed. “But,” she said,  “I have another that you might be interested in.” She gave us the details. It was a two-bedroom one-point-five bath with an L-kitchen instead of a square one. Hmm. It was $40/month more, but it also had more square feet. We said okay, we’d look at it. The advantage that I could see to this one was that it had an air conditioner in the second bedroom – something I desperately wish we had now. It was also on the eighth floor. Well, heck yes!

Oh, the apartment was wonderful, especially compared to our current abode. It has four ceiling fans – one in each bedroom, one in the dining area and one in, of all places, the kitchen. It has a pantry. It has a big storage closet and a linen closet, a coat closet, and of course closets in both bedrooms. The bathrooms are nothing really special, but I didn’t expect anything special. It has lots of windows, and a 32 foot balcony. 32 feet! There are two doors out onto the balcony – one from the smaller bedroom and one from the living area. I am just amazed by the apartment. It’s a lot more than we’re paying right now, but after juggling numbers, we can easily afford this move, and still arrange for some savings as well. Heck. Yes.

There are some downsides to the apartment, though. The kitchen is… dated, I think, is the word I’m looking for. The floors look old, and the counters and cabinets look worn. They were maybe stylish 30 years ago! The hallway is narrow, which leads to some worries about fitting furniture down the hall into the bedrooms. The master bedroom closet is a bit on the small side, which means we’re going to need to get some additional bedroom storage, I think. (Our current dressers are falling apart; they weren’t well-constructed when they were built years and years ago, and are obviously not meant to last forever.) Other than that, I ‘m pretty excited!

We asked for a new stove if they’re able and willing, and we got to pick our carpet color from four different colors since they were going to replace it anyway. We ended up picking the color they were planning on using, but it was definitely the best choice, I think. Not too dark, but certainly not white.

I am really looking forward to living on the top floor. Living in a new place where we can settle in with a little more sensibly-organized space, with thing that will hopefully not fall apart after regular use (our “brand new” refrigerator in our current place had the door come off within about a month of moving in – we fixed it ourselves because the manager couldn’t be bothered to remember). I look forward to being able to cook without tripping over the other counter, and being able to have two people in the kitchen at the same time without being stuck. Some days I feel like Sims in the kitchen, putting up protest because yet again there’s another Sim– erm, person… in the way.

We’re moving! … In the middle of September! The first day of our lease is September 15, and Johnathan and I are like-minded in that we want to make sure our stuff gets moved that weekend. I’m not sure when we’re going back to sign the lease, but I can hardly wait. A new chance to make a place into home!

Speaking of making places into home, we have big plans for this place, and many of them involve IKEA. We have built an entertainment center with many bookshelves, and a place to mount our TV. We have come up with a good sewing table for Johnathan, which will have more storage. There’s a kitchen cart for extra workspace. There’s a wardrobe for bedroom storage. There’s a couch to go with my modern/minimalist idea of what our living room should look like. There are vases and dishes and silverware — okay, I’m getting a little ahead of myself. The priority is going to be the entertainment center and sewing desk, and possibly the kitchen cart if we don’t find one locally that we like. We’re going to drive to Pittsburgh, possibly with Johnathan’s mom’s van, and pick up everything that we put on a very restricted wishlist to make this place into home. I am hoping that we can make this look like the home of two adults rather than two young twenty-somethings who are struggling along with whatever they can. We had our bookshelves fall apart lately, so I don’t want to deal with that again.

I can hardly wait to move in to our new place and make it home.

People feel very strongly about what the “right” way is to give birth (natural versus with the assistance of drugs versus c-section), and what the right way is to nurse your child and bring them up. There are the people who feel like breastfeeding should be out there in the open for all to see, arguing that the baby shouldn’t have to be hidden just because it eats “naturally.” The people who think that those who bottle-feed for any reason are lazy and gave up on the natural way. There are people who very obviously look down on anyone who had to have a c-section for any reason, or who had drugs to assist the very painful process of vaginal birth.  The more I read, the angrier I get, not because people aren’t entitled to their opinions about what is best for them and their child, but because they are projecting those beliefs onto everyone else and making bad situations worse by making women feel guilty who, for one reason or another, did not or could not do it the way that the advocates believe is the best.

I am not an expert when it comes to having children. The closest I come is having a monthly period, and that’s, well, exactly the opposite of pregnancy. So I’m as close to it as the north pole is to the south pole, really. I do, however, have some strong opinions about it, despite not having done it myself. I was around for all of my step-mother’s first pregnancy, and also around for the early stages of my older half-sister’s life. I witnessed the nine months of morning (noon and night) sickness, the changes that she went through, and then the “aftermath”, so to speak. (She was born by c-section because she was breech and they couldn’t turn her, so right there, her pregnancy gets discounted by a lot of people online. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do, you know?) I was there when the lactation specialist visited, and I was there helping when we made baby food for the baby. She wasn’t my child, but I was a major part of her life for her first ten months or so until I moved out after my graduation. So I was there for that part.

It doesn’t take a genius to take in the norms that emerge when it comes to having a baby. For instance, babies are going to poop. It happens. They spit up, they pee, they poop, they drool, they snot, they make messes with their food. It’s normal. They pretty much control the schedule for the first part of their lives, too. The fully-developed humans work around the schedule of the baby and go through sleep deprivation and lack of showers in order to facilitate the normal growth and development of this tiny, in development human being. These are the things which seem to be standard across normal early parenthood. And that’s where the “norms” stop. After that, everyone has their own way of dealing with aspect of it. Cloth diapers or disposable? Breastfeeding or formula? Jars of baby food or homemade? Do you do baby swim lessons? Do you listen to Mozart for hours to facilitate development? At this point, I have to shrug and say, “Hell if I know.”

What really bugs me is that it seems to me that parenthood is a very personal thing. I can understand giving advice and anecdotal evidence when requested to do so, but there are so many people who are willing to give out advice without being asked, or going far beyond the request so as to be pushy about it. The thread I was reading devolved into a bunch of people going back and forth about what they experienced and what was the “right” way of doing something. All of this, of course, without taking into consideration that there are plenty of reasons that it might not work or be able to work that way for any other person. It takes all kinds of people and situations to make up the world, and for as many pregnancies there are, that’s how many different parenting and child-rearing styles there are likely to be. I feel like as long as the child in question is growing up as healthy and strong as possible, it shouldn’t matter whether mom is able to breastfeed or whether she used disposable diapers to catch the refuse.

This kind of advocacy bothers me more than any other kind. It is the same as evangelism in that it doesn’t consider what the audience wants, instead pushing its own view of what’s right regardless of extenuating circumstances or differing opinions. I’m not saying that these people aren’t entitled to their opinions and views. They are every bit as entitled to theirs as I am to mine, but I should be entitled to feel differently than them without feeling persecuted by them for the difference. I guess this comes down to my dislike of someone touting any one idea as the only truth and asserting that all around them should agree.

Ultimately, I had to stop watching the thread. I ignored the user who was pushing the hardest and who started the “argument” (it was very civilized, but I didn’t understand why it had to happen at all), but that doesn’t stop the conversation from happening. I wish the lady who started the thread all the best, and I sincerely hope that she has a smooth pregnancy and that parenthood suits her perfectly. I can’t read the preaching and pushing anymore. That particular user, it seems, is just not willing to let the subject drop until she has somehow proven that she is in the right on each issue on which she believes herself to be an expert. And maybe she is an expert – I have no way of verifying or disproving this claim. But whether she is an expert or not, she is giving her expert advice in a venue that is really inappropriate, since she can have no way of seeing whether her advice is the most appropriate for the people in question. And frankly, it comes across as very judgmental for those who do not adhere to the way of behaving during pregnancy, of birth or of child rearing that she believes is best.

Opinions are all well and good, as is active and healthy discourse about those opinions. It can open up people to ideas that they maybe hadn’t considered before. However, I think we should draw the line at making actual statements of how things “should” be and what is the one and only “best” way of doing anything. Whatever happened to live and let live?

Later, news articles started to show up stating that the epicenter was in Ontario. Or else it was Quebec. Nobody was really sure yet. But they were pretty sure it was either a 5.0 or a 5.5. Really specific, right? Still later, they finally narrowed it down to the Ottowa area on the Ontario/Quebec border. The consensus seems to be that it was a 5.5. It is amazing to me how far away the quake reached. Down to Cincinnati! That’s quite a distance.

Earthquakes aren’t totally new to me. We got a couple in Oregon when I lived there. It was, of course, nothing like what is experienced in California, but we got a few. I remember one that was strong enough to merit evacuating our school until they could assess whether there had been any damage that could endanger our precious teenage lives.  It was otherwise unremarkable. We stood on the football field, whining and bored until they deemed the school safe for us to re-enter. This one wasn’t even that remarkable. Being on the third floor, we experienced some swaying, but people who were on the ground floors of buildings sometimes felt nothing. Johnathan was driving at the time and didn’t feel it at all.

The little earthquake was kind of a fun diversion. There was no real damage to speak of, even, apparently, closer to the epicenter, and nobody died as a result of the shake. We did get a little excitement with people texting friends and relatives to find out whether they felt it or not, and scouring twitter and google for results that would tell us the epicenter and more about how far-reaching it was. Nobody was scared; we all got excited instead. It was kind of like a birthday distraction from the average humdrum of everyday working.

The theater was pretty full for a Wednesday night, probably owing to the celebrity draw and the well-known and loved show. The seats are still tiny, but I’m working on becoming tinier so that it’s not quite so much a squeeze. There was a family next to me, and thankfully they were willing to seat their small-ish son in the seat next to me so I didn’t have guilt for being fat and taking up a little more space than a normal sized person. He was too precious during, too, taking in so much of the show as well as the mechanics of it. At one point, he had a conversation with his dad about how it would be a nice place to take someone on a date. I just about melted after hearing that. Yes, little boy. Take someone to the theater on a date. That is a fantastic idea! I didn’t jump into the conversation, but it was very touching.

Harvey Fierstein is an interesting Tevye. He is not Topol, that’s for sure, and his voice… took a little getting used to. The actresses who played Tseitel, Hodel and Chava were very good. They had reasonably strong voices that blended very well together. The acting was pretty strong, which was nice. All in all, what is there to say about Fiddler on the Roof? I love it from start to finish. It’s long, emotional, and entertaining. Harvey Fierstein’s portrayal of Tevye is very interesting in that it is much more loose than I am accustomed to seeing. There was a certain… flair to it that is a bit hard to describe.

Johnathan says he was unable to get past Fierstein’s voice as far as the gravelly sound and really low pitch. That did make him hard to understand on occasion. At least I already knew what the lines were supposed to be! This could usually be a disadvantage, in that I could get bored, but he delivered the lines differently than Topol did in the movie, which made “old” jokes new again. It was, for me, a different version of the same thing, and I loved that. There have been other shows that I’ve seen twice or three times and it has been the same experience each time, because the roles are played in exactly the same way. I think it probably takes a truly good performer to take an established role and perform it in a different way, while still maintaining the core of the character.

I loved the show. It reminded me why I love Broadway and the theater to begin with. I had those thrills of the “curtain” going up, of the orchestra starting and just in general of enjoying a musical. I sometimes forget exactly how much I love going to see shows. It was a wonderful “gift” for my birthday.

As a side note: the spell check in Firefox really doesn’t like anything to do with this show! Lots of red.

One laundromat was in a city a couple of miles away. It was… okay. Sketchy and old, but cheap. Unfortunately, our very first time there, we ran into disaster with one of the machines. We ended up with some snags on some of our work clothes. The clothes were salvaged, but that was the last time we ever went to that laundromat.

The second is one that Johnathan went to relatively frequently before I moved, and it was our laundromat of choice for a while, for being 24-hours and less expensive than the machines at our complex. It seemed that there were often many broken machines when we were there, though, which made things hard when you need three of washer size A and only two are functioning, particularly if someone else is already using them. So we kept looking for our perfect laundromat.

Johnathan found Leo’s.  We gave it a shot because it seemed newer than the other two places and, hey, it was worth a shot, right? They had a card system which served to simplify things as far as needing quarters. The washers were newer and faster, and there were more of the larger sizes. The dryers were faster. Heaven? We thought so. We saw their ads for laundry drop-off service, and an idea started to form. It seemed extravagant, though, so until a post on Get Rich Slowly about outsourcing parts of your life, we didn’t really consider it. The post talked about how outsourcing daily tasks (cleaning for some, cooking for others, etc) could be financially beneficial in the sense that it frees the person from the hated task, and he or she regains the time that would otherwise be spent on that task. It seemed like an endorsement for us to go ahead and try the laundry drop-off service that was offered. So we did!

The first time we tried it, we had to buy the bag. That was $5, which isn’t really so bad. Then it was about $25 to have the load done. We left it with them and went on our merry way, intending to pick it up the next day. We picked it up and took it home. We were met with a bit of an unpleasant sight when we started to unpack the clothes. A lot of the clothes had mysterious stains on them that looked like grease or oil stains of some kind. We had some irreplaceable shirts stained and some of our work clothes. I was not happy. In fact, I was livid. We took the clothes in, or rather Johnathan did, and talked to the people there. Ultimately, he ended up on the phone with the owner of the place, who offered to send the clothes off to be claimed for insurance (which meant we’d get a lot less than they’re worth and be out the clothes), or we could let one of the attendants try to get the stains out and he could offer us some credit. We took the latter since it meant we might be able to wear the clothes again. The girl was able to get the stains out for the most part, so that was a satisfactory resolution.

The next time we brought in our laundry, nothing went wrong. Hurrah! Unfortunately, the next time we brought the laundry in, we were informed that we couldn’t drop laundry off after 7PM. Really? That seemed odd. The attendant explained that his coworkers would accuse him of not doing his work if we brought it in after that, because he wouldn’t have time to complete it before closing. Well, we thought it was a stupid rule, but accepted it and went home with our full bag of laundry. We dropped it off the next day and got a clean bag of clothes back. A person could get used to that!

Then we had another problem. We dropped off and paid for our laundry to be done and got back… a bag of unwashed clothes. It didn’t get done. This was apparently due to a miscommunication where one employee put the bag in the wrong place and the other didn’t bother to check whether the work had been done. So, more fussing to make sure that the load got done. Then we would get our clothes haphazardly folded. Overdried. Not even folded at all, on occasion. Smelling like no detergent was used.

The last straw came in two parts. The last time we dropped off our laundry, the lady asked Johnathan if he was “the one who tips.” He kind of gave her a funny look, and she went on to say that, oh yeah, people tip all the time! This statement doesn’t jive with the first, since the question was, “are you the guy who tips?” He said he would talk to me about it. I should state now that I think tipping for a service that we are paying for is stupid, so I was absolutely against tipping these people for the consistently inconsistent service we’ve been getting. I tip servers at restaurants because I know they don’t make even the minimum wage that everyone else is paid. I think tipping as a rule is stupid except for when exceptional service is given, and the people at Leo’s Laundromat were certainly not giving it. I mean, we still haven’t gotten all of our credit for our original problem because apparently only one employee even knows how to use the computer. Our name is in the system something like ten times because nobody knows how to use it and apparently nobody cares to learn, either. These people were not helping their case.

We were going to drop off a load of laundry on Monday, and the same lady with the tip comment was there. The first words out of her mouth were not “Hello” or “How’s it going?”, but “Did you talk to your wife about tipping?” Johnathan restrained himself from saying what he really wanted to say (“HOW RUDE!”) and just said, “You know what? Nevermind.” And then we became former customers.

Being expected to tip for a service that we are paying for is a bit ridiculous. I don’t tip the guys who change the oil on my car or the service technician who comes to install internet service at my apartment. I am not tipping for inconsistent laundry service that I am paying for. It is an advertised service that they don’t even do very well. We won’t be going back except maybe to use up the rest of the money on our cards if we absolutely have to do that. We won’t be going back otherwise. We’re going back to the 24-hour place with the creepy lady who asks too many personal questions because at least we know what kind of service we’ll get there.

I’m sad that it happened this way. I still don’t like doing laundry because it takes so long and, well, I just don’t like doing it! But if it means we know our clothes are cleaned, unharmed, unstretched and we don’t have to tip someone for a service we’ve already paid for, I’m for it. We’ll look out for another service, but I’m not hopeful we’ll find any reasonable alternatives. The owner of that laundromat was so nice, but I have to think he must be really disconnected from his property because things there are not exactly running smoothly. It’s a great idea, and their machines are nice, but would I recommend it to anyone else? Not a chance. The swank machines are not worth the headache of dealing with the staff.

Until Sunday.

Sunday, we decided we wanted to go to Panera for an early dinner. We also wanted to go for a bike ride, but wouldn’t really have time because we wasted the morning away sleeping, and our day didn’t really get going until about 3PM. I suggested that we combine the two endeavors, and Johnathan thought that was a pretty good idea. We’ve never ridden our bikes in town before. Whenever we’ve wanted a bike ride, we’ve gone to the metroparks and ridden on the trails there, which is fine, but those aren’t very flat, and well, we’ve seen all the close ones enough before that it’s boring to ride the short lengths. Four or five miles of trail really isn’t much, and the one to Oberlin isn’t very feasible for a weeknight or a short ride. So, this was a nice change, sort of.

It’s about 2.25 miles to Panera from our house. There are sidewalks the whole way, which is nice because there’s a lot of traffic on the streets between our apartment and the restaurant. No problem, right? Most of the way there was okay. We almost had to wait two light cycles because a bunch of cars decided that, despite the fact that we had a “walk” signal, they were more important and had to turn first. I don’t know about anyone else, but I didn’t feel like risking my life just to be able to cross the street. We did go across, but we had to run to make it before the light turned red. I have to say, that really annoyed me. If they had let us get going, they all would have been able to go, and we wouldn’t have had to run the bikes across the street.

We ran into more trouble when we got to another fairly busy intersection. People have a habit of ignoring crosswalks and limit lines alike. There were four cars in the crosswalk to go across a street. We could probably have crossed in front of them all, but the point of the crosswalk is that it’s the safe place for pedestrians (and cyclists, hi!) to cross. If I got hit outside of the crosswalk, even if it’s because I couldn’t walk in the crosswalk because someone was a jerk, it’s ultimately my fault as much as the car’s. The crosswalk is my safe haven as long as I’m crossing when I’m supposed to (walk sign). Cleveland drivers don’t seem to think that the limit line is the first warning to stop, the first line of the crosswalk is the second, and the second line of the crosswalk is the third. And then there are the really big jerks who continue to creep into the intersection on red lights, as if that will cause the light to turn green faster. I’ve seen cars get totally out into the intersection, the whole vehicle past the crosswalk. I mean, really. Don’t be a jerk.

Anyway, once we got past the perils of cars and safely back onto the relatively safe sidewalk, we rode up behind the restaurant. I decided to ride up the tiny grassy hill and coast into the parking lot next to the Panera. It would have been okay if the grass were the same height as the curb, but there was a little dip. It happened really fast, so I’m not 100% on what happened, but I suspect one of my pedals bottomed out, and then my heel did, too, and my bike kind of shuddered and I came to a stop. In the process, I banged up my left index finger. I usually keep the finger on the handle while the other three fingers hover over the brake handle, so when my hand jerked off the handle, it jammed into the mechanism that holds the brake handle up onto the handle. I nicked my knuckle (good gash on it), and I really jammed my finger. I think something hit the muscle in my finger pretty hard, too, because it swelled up and it looked ready to bruise up right away.

An injury on one finger is relatively minor as far as injuries go. I mean, it was the index finger of my dominant hand, but ultimately, it wasn’t broken or anything, and it certainly wasn’t as if I broke my wrist or something. I had some range of movement, and it wasn’t excruciating to try to use it, but any pressure caused pain. So that was fun. I had to figure out how to eat my early dinner without using my left index finger. It was… interesting! I had a feeling of inner instability afterward, as if everything would go wrong if I didn’t stay very, very still and try to do as little as possible. It was a very strange reaction to have to something so simple as jamming a finger. Somehow that simple injury influenced the rest of my day, however.

We did ride our bikes home, but I did everything I could to avoid actively using that finger. It wasn’t as hard as I expected, at least as far as riding home. Typing was interesting, because it hurt to use the finger very actively, and I learned quickly that I had to pay close attention when I was picking things up, because otherwise I would tweak my finger by trying to use it too much. It’s true that you never realize how much you use a part of your body until you can’t anymore. Johnathan was worried that I didn’t just bounce back from the injury and that the swelling didn’t go down much, even after taking ibuprofen. He said that if I hurt enough the next day, we needed to go to the urgent care to get my finger looked at and possibly x-rayed. I agreed. I’ve never been to an urgent care, or at least not in a very long time, so it’s not something I think of doing right away.

Well, I woke up on Monday morning and my finger did not feel at all better. I loaded up with painkillers and it took the edge off, but it certainly wasn’t better. I decided, since it wasn’t feelinf even a tiny bit better, that a trip to ugent care was, after all, necessary. After I got home from work, we headed up to the nearest urgent care center, which also happens to be the facility where my GP’s office is. But that has absolutely nothing to do with this story. I checked in, and probably waited about 20 minutes before they were able to see me. The very nice nurse took me to an examination room and started to get the dtails of what was wrong and what happened. He joked with me a bit, which I appreciated.

We established that my finger was now turning a lovely shade of reddish-bluish-purplish-blackish. In other words, I was developing one major bruise. And it was a beauty. He checked my pulse-ox… stuff, and my blood pressure (better than it was at my last physical, whoo!), and then did a pregnancy test – just in case – before I went off to get some x-rays done. The good news is that I am not pregnant and that I did get some x-rays done.

I went back to my exam room and waited for the doctor. This is the part that amazes me most. The doctor poked and prodded my hand a bit and told me that, thankfully, the x-rays didn’t show any broken bones in my finger. Since I hadn’t fallen, my wrist was given the all-clear, too. He told me it didn’t look like I had torn any ligaments or muscles and that I didn’t appear to have punctured anything. Just a bad bruise. He told me he’d have the nurse come in and put a splint on my finger, and I was to wear that for three to four days, just to help the finger heal, and keep it elevated whenever possible to help with the swelling. And that was that. Then he left. He touched my finger and poked at my wrist, and that’s what he gets paid the big bucks for. Oh well. That’s the system.

The nurse came back, put a splint on my finger and I was free to go. No pain killers – I’ll just use OTC stuff as necessary – and just a splint to help immobilize it. It’s helping with the pain already. Although, I have to say, I kind of look like a dweeb.

So, this has been my adventure this week. Do you know how hard it is to type when your dominant index finger is in a splint? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s really hard. I can’t wait until my finger is healed. You can bet I won’t be haphazardly riding off any curbs, however short, in the future.