Now I *am* talkin' 'bout movin' in (or out, as the case may be)

Jeezus. Astrid and I have to move out of our place in the next couple months. The landlords are putting in a new foundation and politely, more or less, asking us to leave. We've been looking at Craigslist for the last few days, and basically everything in our price range is either like a tenth of the size of our current apartment or in exactly not the neighborhoods we want to live. Here are the listings - all four of 'em (at time of writing) - in San Francisco that are comparable in size and rent to our current digs. Note that the location "Inner Sunset" in these listings actually means "Outer Sunset" (bastards!) So anyway, if we wanna stay in San Francisco, we've gotta go with a one-bedroom or even (gak!) a studio. There are 300 square foot studios in this town going for $1300! We are considering hopping the pond, as it were, and looking in Oakland/Berkeley. Getting a decently sized place there for as much or less than what we're paying now is at least a possibility; however, apartments in our price range are often in dodgy neighborhoods, as we found out from doing a couple reconnaissance trips to Oakland this weekend.

Once more with feeling: I hate money.

"I'm not talkin' 'bout movin' in..."

I was at a taqueria in the Mission the other day, and as the lady behind the counter was making my burrito, the song "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight" was floating through the sound system. The mellowly upbeat tune by '70s pop duo England Dan and John Ford Coley, unlike the very mediocre carne asada, truly hit the spot for me. I whistled the tune to myself as I walked back down 16th Street, and made a mental note to look the song up online when I got a moment. As with most of my "mental notes" this one faded into the mélange of momentary stimulations, distractions, and preoccupations, and when I tried to recall the song later (hmm...it wasn't Jackson Browne...was it Seals and Crofts?...) it had completely vanished from consciousness.

Then, by some amazing stroke of luck or fate or perhaps just the consistent marketing trends on lite rock stations throughout the Bay Area, I just heard the song again in a cafe in Berkeley! Oh happy day! I present to you "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight" by England Dan and John Ford Coley, complete with a psychedelic butterfly-chick fade-in!

Sometimes I do; sometimes I don't

We did a check-in during class tonight, in which we were supposed to share something about self-care: where it's at for us right now, what we want to be mindful of for ourselves as we engage in our clinical work and return to classes after the ordeal we've been through (see the other blog if you don't know the ordeal to which I refer.) I talked about how I'm taking multi-vitamins and fish oil supplements now, which I'm truly happy about. But it was a veneer to mask the real thing I'm not doing to care for myself: I'm nowhere near where I want to be in terms of eating healthfully. That couple-week stretch of eating well has given way to the usual pattern of eating satisfying but non-nutritive crap and eating too much of it. Sigh. Then my amazing new teacher told us she recently joined Weight Watchers. I didn't have a negative reaction to this because, A., my teacher is fierce and serene in the best combination of those qualities, and even said she could facilitate WW meetings better than their group leaders, fat and all! and B., WW is actually the one diet plan in the whole universe of the $40 billion diet industry that doesn't turn my stomach, so to speak, because it's actually a way for people to learn how to eat balanced, healthy meals and change their eating habits. So anyway, this isn't an ad for WW, but it's just to say that, damn, I didn't use that opportunity to be "out" about my contemplation of losing weight and my struggle to eat healthier.

On the flip side, I was the only one in class who commuted by bike, and that's something I can be pretty proud of, even if I ate a can of Chicken and Stars soup upon arriving home. ;)

Narcolepsy in the 'Burbs

Finishing up Shabbat with my family down in San Jose. Long into the food coma, a gorgeous meal of early-season matzo ball soup and roasted chicken with lemon and rosemary (the mouth waters again) I'm feeling very sleepy on the couch, while my sisters and Astrid play "Speed Scrabble" at a folding table. Schmend just asked for the official Scrabble Dictionary to justify her play on the word "cig" as in "cigarette," and that shit is in there! The Scrabble Dictionary is totally bogus, dude. Get the OED, I say!

I've been loopy like that all day. It's on account of having stayed up super late last night (nay, this morning) drinking beers for the birthday of the illustrious Dax. It seems that the Triple Rock Brewery in Berkeley serves up some gluten-free beers, and Dax was free to get as schnokered as she pleased. 'Twas pretty fun.

Ah, Speed Scrabble is over - back to the Big City with us.

xo
Bree

Bad Week with Food

The stress has let up somewhat, though I've got a lot of clinic work right now, and school starting up. So there's that. And the fact that I just ate a whole mini cheesecake, even though I wasn't hungry in the slightest. It looks like one serving, but it's really two, or maybe even three. Sigh. It was really fucking tasty, though. Like some of the best cheesecake ever, all velvety and lemony, with a bottom graham crust that tasted more like carmelized butter and sugar than a box of stale crackers.

I had some time to kill tonight before Dax's birthday celebration, so I ducked into a wifi café in Berkeley before heading to the pub, and there's a problem with me and cafés, see: I love 'em, but I don't drink coffee. So here I am with this gorgeous display of pastries and confections in a curved glass case in front of me, and these beautiful tiny cheesecakes staring up at me, needing a tummy to fill. Okay, you know it's bad when I start anthropomorphizing food. So, yeah, I bought it, I ate it, and now I feel really yucky. And now I'm on my way to drink beer on top of it.

Back to School!

Finally, I will be attending orientation at my new university today. Unfortunately this will be happening only after a half-day of mind-dulling number crunching at the bookkeeping gig. I'll be working for a few more hours over the next week or two, and then I'll be done with my commitment there. It's been a lifesaver to make a little bit of money while waiting for my student loans, but going back to bookkeeping makes me realize how desperately I do not want to go back to bookkeeping. After getting all oriented and shit, we'll be resuming classes on Tuesday. I feel a really weird mix of excitement, relief, and dread.

Comfort Food

Some folks eat mac'n'cheese, others prefer pork chops and apple sauce, and then there's me. When I'm stressed out, I crave Chinese food. The subject deserves several entries, but suffice it for right now, I'm an American Jew, just one generation removed from the Lower East Side, where the Jewish neighborhood rubbed up against Chinatown and Jews began eating Chinese food as early as the late 1800s. It's essentially in the makeup of my cultural genetics. If you're interested in the subject, check out the article Safe Treyf by Gaye Tuchman and Harry G. Levine.

It's a fascinating account of the socio-cultural phenomenon of intergenerational Jewish appreciation of Chinese food, and it addresses the history of the phenomenon, as well as the complexities of the race/ethnicity, economic, and religious dynamics at play.

Duck sauce and gefilte fish, like ebony and ivory, they live together on the shelf at Safeway.

So Friday night, Astrid and I ate at Red Jade on Church Street, the only Chinese restaurant in the neighborhood. It's decent, inexpensive, and more "American-Chinese" fare than authentic, like many of the restaurants I've frequented in the City. It's not on my list of all-time favorites, but in a pinch, it's fine. The food is fresh, it's not too oily, and the dishes have some flavor. But the key factor this weekend was the stress and the relief of said stress through food. I've gone my two weeks of eating sensibly, and this weekend was the bounce-back binge, starting with Friday night's excursion to the Red Jade. We really enjoyed the spinach tofu soup with button mushrooms, a clear broth soup with a delicate flavor. Their prawns with Jade greens, which ended up being an uninspired glut of conventional broccoli, were just okay. I was hoping for bok choy or gai-lan (Chinese broccoli), which would have made the dish more distinctive and tasty. We also ordered their mango ostrich, which had a really nice, savory brown sauce that contrasted well with the sweet, firm mango slices. The ostrich meat itself was kind of beef-like and a little on the chewy side. Overall, I'd give the meal almost 3 stars, but despite the moderately enjoyable mediocrity, I continued to eat and eat until I was completely gorged.

The other major indulgence of the weekend was a Saturday night wee-hours trip to Mel's Diner for my ultimate indulgence: chicken strips. Many out there may know that chicken strips (embarrassingly enough, the Denny's version of the diner classic) were the first meat I ate after three years of vegetarianism in college. They have become a huge part of what Astrid lovingly calls "the lore of Bree."

So now you know that Chinese food and chicken strips are my total fat-girl kryptonite. What's nice about beginning the week after the weekend's indulgences is this: I'm not tripping out about it.

Back to the regimen!

Nervous Energy

I'm not generally an insomniac, so it's kinda odd for me to be wide awake at 4:00am. It's a good kind of nervous in ways: we just got word, like yesterday, that the whole grad psych program is being transferred out to another university, and we have to fax in the registration papers by today at noon. Orientation is Thursday, and classes are supposed to start the following Tuesday. Big, big sigh of relief, yes, and at the same time, I'm so jumpy. Since starting the bookkeeping job just a couple weeks ago, my anxiety level has been through the roof.

There are a number of factors at play right now. Not only has the school situation moved abruptly from a lazy depressed stasis to a frenzy of registration deadlines, I'm also in the process of starting the grief group at the clinic, and saying good bye to my very first therapy client, whose last session is today. There are more kinds of grief than seeing someone die; there's also the kind of mourning when someone goes away.

My heightened energy also accounts for or has been stoked by a new project of mine. If you haven't stumbled upon it yet, feel free to swing over to my new blog and read all about my obsessions with food, my body, my health, and my reluctant desire to lose weight. All served up, if you will, with my own special sauce of chronic skepticism, critique, and celebration. Don't worry, though, Toothpicklabeling is still very much alive. Where else would you find all the grad school angst, popculture fetishes, and minutia of my daily life in one tidy online package?

I love my readers! Thanks for being there.

xo
Bree

Half a Corned Beef Sandwich

I could count the times I've eaten just half a sandwich on one hand. As a rule, I'm not good at leaving food on the plate. If there ever were a Jack Sprat's wife, she'd be me. Except for the being someone's wife thing. And the having no name except my husband's thing. And the being in a nursery rhyme thing.

You know what I mean; I can eat no lean.

So tonight, I ate at an old favorite in Berkeley, Saul's, a Jewish-style deli on Shattuck Avenue. It's a place N. and I used to go frequently, and I don't even remember whether I've been there since we broke up over three years ago. I went there after work at the clinic with my co-worker Devra. I ordered a cup of matzo ball soup and a "6-ounce" corned beef sandwich on rye. The sandwich came with a choice of cole slaw (yuck!), potato salad (meh), french fries (danger! danger!) or salad. I went with the salad. So the soup, salad, and half a sandwich were exactly enough food for me. I knew I didn't need to eat the second half, so I didn't.

I will make a minor complaint about the corned beef at Saul's: while I love that they use Niman Ranch sustainably raised, hormone-free beef, lending a very Berkeley feel to the New York style food, the truth is, and this is the kicker, it's too lean. Even Jack Sprat knows that corned beef should be juicy and fatty and lip-smackingly rich.

(*okay, so I am someone's wife. Sheesh, don't be such a stickler!)

I love my shrink

I've never blogged about my therapist before. I've mentioned being in therapy, but never anything specific about Mark, my dude. He is so light-hearted and takes my issues seriously but helps me create a relaxed, nonjudgmental space to contemplate them and start letting stuff go. Last week I went into therapy totally down on myself for how I've been eating lately. With everything going on with school, and the new bookkeeping job, I've been so fucking stressed out and eating everything in sight. I cried on the couch, feeling huge and awful and shitty. Mark basically told me to chill out and give myself some credit for coping with the stress. Since eating is one of my self-soothing strategies, it's not surprising that that's where I go when I'm freaked out. We talked about what I might do in the next week to stay grounded, and it totally calmed me down. I've been eating really healthfully all week, and feel bunches better. Just being reminded not to beat up on myself was really the key. Once I felt freer to cope by eating, and became more mindful of it and accepting of it, I wanted to do it less.

Life as I know it

Just so's everyone knows: I got a bookkeeping job to tide me over until school starts back up. No, classes still fucking haven't started yet. So a big thank you goes out to my friend Mag who landed me a temporary gig at a wonderful local community arts organization in the Mission. I'm working there Tuesdays and Thursdays, and continuing with my clinical internship Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I don't know if it's gonna be enough to live on, but I'm hoping the teach-out plans move forward soon. It looks like I'll have more news about that within the month. Crossed fingers are appreciated.

I hate bookkeeping. Hate. But it's a living.


xo
Bree

What It's About

(The first Ambivalent Fat Girl entry.)

By way of introduction, I am a fat dyke in my mid-30s, living a beautiful life in San Francisco. I'm shacked up with a really swell lady and I'm currently a grad student in clinical psychology. My academic and professional interests swim around such issues as death, sitting with the unknown, existential anxiety, body image issues, fatness, fat positivity, health and well-being, sexuality, queer/GLB identity, gender variance, genderqueer and transgender identity issues, spirituality, finding meaning in life, and yadda yadda. For fun, I like listening to music (mostly of the post-punk, folkie, political, artsy, nerdy-emo indie variety) riding my bike, lazing about, blogging, being social, drinking gorgeous cocktails, and more often than not, eating lots of yummy food.



I've been fat my whole life. I'm 5'4" and I currently weigh around 220 pounds. I've weighed as much as 235, but in the last few years, I've stayed pretty consistently between 210 and 220, most often lingering at exactly 215. I weighed 210 at the end of high school, so my weight's been fairly steady over the last 18 years.

My feelings about my weight yo-yo a bit more than that, to be true, thus with the "ambivalence." After growing up with a lot of anxiety and unhappiness about my weight, in an unforgiving fatphobic culture, with a mom (whom I adore, by the way) who constantly dieted and modeled body self-hatred for me, coming into my own sensibility about my weight involved everything from internalizing the self-hatred to rejecting the paradigm and refusing to get on a scale for more than ten years. Back in high school, I ate like absolute shit. Taco Bell, Denny's, everything fried, crispy and golden brown. I still love me some chicken strips. Moving my body as little as possible was a matter of true slacker pride. In college I went vegetarian for three years and lost a bit of weight that way, but I can't say I was eating much healthier, really. It wasn't until about five years ago that I started exercising, and now I totally dig getting myself around by bike. I actually enjoy working up a sweat, even. So since biking entered my life, and a new consciousness around healthy eating has crept slowly into my routine, things have shifted for me a bit. I'm still a chronic overeater, and tend to indulge my cravings too often, so despite an overall healthier lifestyle, I really haven't experienced a significant net weight loss. Sometimes I feel okay about that, and sometimes I don't.

I experience some health problems which I feel to be related to my weight and to overeating. My knees are stressed and weak, and I had a bad case of patello-femoral syndrome for a couple years, which still affects me, but has lessened some since doing physical therapy and getting more exercise. I can't squat or spend too much time kneeling, or else the knees crack and pop in a very unpleasant way. I've had a low-grade but chronic struggle with acid reflux, which I'm quite sure is caused mainly by overeating, and has diminished some since quitting coffee about four years ago or so. My overall and long-term health would be much improved if I were to dramatically cut back on saturated fats (main culprits: red meat and all things fried) and if I were to make a habit out of eating til satisfied and not until utterly stuffed. Though I'm a fan of salty snacks which carry their own kinds of risks (raising blood pressure and water retention) I will say I'm not much of a sweet tooth. A small square of chocolate is a totally doable limit for me, but get me near a bowl of briny green olives, and the lot of 'em will be gone before you can say "bowl of briny green olives."

It's also noteworthy that since getting into biking, I realize that if I weighed less, I would actually have more endurance and be able to bike faster and farther. Climbing the San Francisco hills is a painful and slow undertaking for me, and if I weighed even twenty pounds less, I think my biking efficiency would be vastly improved, not to mention my stamina and energy for lots of other fun stuff like sex and walking and um, sex.

So I'm inaugurating this here blog with an admission that I'm making quite public. I'm interested in losing some weight. Even as a fat-positive feminist anti-establishment dyke, I have come to understand that for my own body, for my own lifestyle, and for my own long-term health goals, this makes sense for me. I don't know if I'll be successful. I don't know if I'll be any "happier" if I weigh less. I don't know whether, even if I lose a significant amount of weight, I will keep it off or not. I just dunno. But I want to blog the progress, the literal ups & downs, and mostly the fleeting thoughts, feelings, fears, and myopic obsessions that run through this noggin when anything related to these topics floats on through. Welcome to the contradictory journey.

Please feel free to leave comments, but if you flame me for being a "fat hater" I will have to lash you roundly. Also, if you leave inane fatphobic comments like, "Oh my god, you'll look so much better when you're skinny!" I'll also have to lash you. My feelings about this subject are ambivalent for very complex personal, political, cultural and healh-related reasons. In this blog, I am attempting to be as honest as I can about my mixed feelings on weight loss, what is at stake for me emotionally, how I've been conditioned to hate myself and other fat people, and how wanting to lose weight is mired in all kinds of problematic socio-cultural ideologies, prejudices, and power relationships. In other words, I know. Don't judge me for being human, please.

Peace, y'all.

Bree