If I Lived In Iceland, I Might Still Be Healthy

On By MezzoSherriIn Fat is Just an Adjective, Health at Every Size, Memoir, Self-Acceptance4 Comments

Every now and then, when the endless brouhaha of U.S. culture and politics start wearing me down, I indulge in the mental fantasy of becoming an expatriate in Iceland. It’s one of those fantasies that’s almost completely divorced from reality: most of what I know about the country comes from seeing various friends’ vacation snapshots. I have absolutely zero understanding of what it would take to emigrate, and I presume that my professional skill set as a non-profit fund-raiser wouldn’t have much (any?) value on the Icelandic job market.

Still, any country that has such a well-established tradition of Christmas book-giving sounds like the sort of place that’d be right up my alley. So I continue to hold this Icelandic emigration fantasy—loosely, but holding onto it nonetheless.

Now it turns out that being in Iceland would also impact my recent diagnosis.

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Nothing to Prove

On By MezzoSherriIn Flagrantly Feminist, Pop Goes the Culture, The Voices in My Head1 Comment

Why yes, Virginia, I did enjoy Captain Marvel yesterday.

Now, there’s no need for me to do a full-on review: there’s enough examples of that out in the wilds of the Internet. In case you need them, here’s some recommended links:

  • Peter Travers’s review in Rolling Stone
  • Owen Gleiberman’s review for Variety
  • Alex Abad-Santos’s coverage in Vox about sexist responses to the film, in the larger context of similar buffoonery around Star Wars: The Last Jedi and other genre flicks

Instead, I’m going to focus on one small moment, recounted in as spoiler-free a fashion as I can manage.

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My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton & Jodi Meadows

On By MezzoSherriIn Books Books Books, Topics of Study1 Comment

This is one of the challenge books I’d already gotten from the library before I realized I was going to need to focus on HAES/fat activist reading for a while. It’s sad enough to know I’m likely to “fail” these reading challenges in 2019: it would have been exponentially sadder to return unread books to the library. So I vowed to complete this book.*

I did not know how personally challenging it would be to keep that vow. Almost every night as I finished some section of reading and set the book down, the same thought played through my head as is playing now that I’ve completed all the book:

What the fuck did I just read?!?

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To Infinity and Beyond

On By MezzoSherriIn Pop Goes the Culture, Topics of StudyLeave a comment

The hubs and I bought our tickets today to go see Captain Marvel this coming weekend. That got me thinking: I never got around to posting my thoughts and responses to my (incredibly belated) viewing of Avengers: Infinity War.

Certainly, there’s no objective need for me to add to the discourse here. The money has been made, the ink has been spilled, the spoilers have been spoiled. Let’s face it: once you see Thanos and his gauntlet as an Ash Wednesday meme on Facebook, you get the sense that there really isn’t anything new that can be said about this particular piece of cultural juggernaut.

Said by you, though, George. (10 years later and I still wrestle with this crap. Sigh.)

So this won’t be any attempt at a comprehensive “film review.” Instead there’s just one thematic thread that I want to riff on.

(Obviously, if you are one of the maybe two people left on the internet who haven’t seen or read about the film and its shock ending, know that there be spoilers below the jump.)

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From the Hat: New England Cuisine

On By MezzoSherriIn From the Hat, Gratitudes and Thank Yous, Memoir1 Comment

I’m at a bit of a loss for a topic tonight. No new news on the prediabetes front, no completed books,* no movies. Things are busy at work, but I don’t blog about work.**

And I’ve drawn about a dozen topics out of the box o’ prompts, but they’ve all been completely uninspiring. (Not sure whether to blame that on the prompts themselves or my current frame of mind.) It’s a touch embarrassing to admit that, however unimpressed I was by this bunch of prompts, I still put them right back into the “hatbox” to haunt me another day.***

But I finally pulled one that—even though I’m not going to answer it in a straightforward manner—at least got me reminiscing about a funny story I wouldn’t mind telling.

Do you remember any of your four grandparents? Any greats? What were their names? Any memories that you have?

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Stretching Beyond My Comfort Zone

On By MezzoSherriIn Health at Every Size, Memoir, The Voices in My Head3 Comments

For all that I have complaints about my endocrinologist’s world view,* there was one thing she said last Friday that has really resonated with me. As we were going through my lifestyle assessment—job, schedule, usual meal choices and physical activity day-to-day—she sussed out the fact that the demands of my non-profit job, both in the sense of dedication to my org’s mission, and the general workload/stress, are strong contributors to my current landscape of sketchy nutritional choices and sedentary days. And the endocrinologist said:

You should be taking your health and self-care as seriously as you do your job.

And although I’d wager that she and I have drastically different definitions for what constitutes “health” or “self-care,”** it’s still a point well taken.

I’m not the first or the last non-profit professional to fall into this trap, but I do have a pattern of neglecting my well-being in an attempt to keep up with the workload and sustain an organization I legitimately, really, truly believe in and want to see succeed. And as I figure out my approach towards handling my new diagnosis, it’s worth recalibrating a little bit.

So tonight after work, I did something very brave: I went to yoga class.

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Good Fatty, Bad Fatty

On By MezzoSherriIn Fat is Just an Adjective, Health at Every Size, Memoir, Self-Acceptance2 Comments

As I continue coming to grips with last Friday’s diagnosis, I’m facing up to some uncomfortable emotional realities around the Venn diagram of overlaps between my life, my habits, my body and my diagnoses.*

Now, I don’t think I was wrong when I theorized that part of why I was thrown for such a loop last Friday had to do with me (falsely) believing that I was off the hook, only to have a sudden reversal of fortune. But another huge piece of this is just a plain old shame spiral.

The conventional rhetoric around Type 2 diabetes and my version of prediabetes is very much that it’s, like, totally preventable. That makes it very easy for me—in my usual perfectionist, hard-on-myself way—to think of myself as being “to blame” for being prediabetic. And that self-flagellation takes me down the shame path pretty darn fast.

I am now 100% in the ranks of the “bad fatty,” and I am having all kinds of shame and sadness around that.

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February Recap and Looking Ahead

On By MezzoSherriIn Books Books Books, Health at Every Size, Life-Long Learning, Memoir, Meta-Blogging, Pop Goes the Culture, Topics of Study5 Comments

So, with the end of another month, time to milk another post out of the ongoing process of monitoring my progress on all these reading challenges. (One, two, three.) As with January, I’m going to do a small snapshot report on where I stand in regards to my initial reading plan, and where there’s been changes.

And, in light of the new diagnosis and research project I have going on, I’m also going to be putting some thought into a change of direction for the rest of 2019.

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Sweet as Sugar and Ready to Punch Someone

On By MezzoSherriIn Fat is Just an Adjective, Health at Every Size, Memoir6 Comments

I’ve spent much of the last 24 hours being low energy and feeling sorry for myself. Yesterday afternoon, I had more annoying & distressing follow-up from last Friday’s distressing news, so I gave myself yesterday evening and most of today to lick my wounds and regain some level of equilibrium.

I’ve held off on writing about what’s going on for this past week because I was waiting to get to some place where things were sufficiently processed/sorted/settled that I’d be able to lay things out clearly. However, I’m realizing that my thoughts and feelings are likely to be changeable for a nice stretch of time, so I might as well just start talking about things. So, welcome to JALC: The Messiness.

Here’s what’s up: Last Friday, I officially received a diagnosis of prediabetes.

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Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

On By MezzoSherriIn Books Books Books, Life-Long Learning, Topics of Study2 Comments
  • Around the Year #9: from one of the top 5 money-making genres
  • Book Riot #6: by an author of color and set in or about space

For the record, the five popular genres I could have chosen from were:

  1. romance/erotica
  2. crime/mystery
  3. religious/inspirational
  4. sci-fi/fantasy
  5. horror

Most of these choices are not my bag, though if there’s ever a future year where I have to take on both these “big 5” genres and the 1 Mil+ Goodreads thing again, I may finally just put a clothespin on my nose and read 50 Shades. But for this year, sci-fi was definitely the best choice for me. I don’t follow the genre nearly as well as I did back in high school, but I have more of an interest in sci-fi than in the other 4 types of book.

As, in fact, evidenced by the way I’ve collected a wee small collection of sci-fi books along the way through my addiction to Kindle daily deals. I purchased Binti because it was listed as a big award winner in sci-fi—like Hugo and Nebula awards, which are legitimately a Big Deal. I was also looking to widen my understanding of contemporary sci-fi by grabbing a title written by an African-American woman.* And I am very glad to have been introduced to Okorafor’s body of work.

Still, I have so many mixed feelings about this book.

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