Cat bloggin.

Here is the famous Ace, taking up space on my desk.



Here he is again in part II, talking about it and then giving you the side-eye for a big finish.



This cat entertains the hell out of me every day.

What I hope will be my defining article of clothing.

I have been coveting a Prairie Underground trench hoodie for about two and a half years and haven't been able to deal with the price tag. But I won an ebay auction last night--one with a bidding war and elevated heart rate and everything--and got a very good price on the one you see here, a price only slightly higher than the amount of money sitting in my paypal account.

I'm certain that by the time I'm through with this hoodie, the price per wear will be a fraction of a cent. Because I plan to wear it EVERY DAY.

Ever since I brought this home

I would estimate our tea consumption has gone up by 300%, and that's saying something. I actually just started a subscription to it on Amazon: get stuff delivered at regular intervals, and it's cheaper. Yes please.

Sandwich party time.

Once again, it's that special time when we all rally around sandwiches, a cause pretty much everyone can get behind.



Here's a funny story, or at least a story. At the last minute and on a whim, I bought a Quorn bogus turkey roast for Thanksgiving, thinking I might just haul it along to my parents' and pop it in ye oven. Normally I'm not fussed about having some fake meat hunk for my holiday dinner, because I've found that ever since I went veg on a Thanksgiving 14 years ago, I enjoy plenty of food without that sluggish feeling that used to hit me post-turkey. But whatever, I like Quorn products, so I bought the roast.

Then the morning of Thanksgiving I got up to start making up a chipotle-glazed sweet potato recipe and working on some highfalutin green bean casserole, neither of which I'd ever made before, and I completely forgot about the damn roast thingy until we were at the gas station and I was wearing a serious pair of crabby pants about the non-functioning gas pump. At that point, we were late driving to the burbs to fetch my grandparents, so I said fuck the Quorn, let's ride. Then we decided to have a nice fight in the car. It was awesome.

But Thanksgiving was good, and I feasted sans Quorn, and I made up with my husboyf, and I baked my roast thingy today and ate it in sandwich form.


What you see here is Quorn roast, sliced, with vegannaise and sambal oelek (a kind of chili paste and a crucial condiment to keep on hand) and avocado on toasted wheat bread from New French. It was good. I drank this with it:


I'd never tried it before. It appears to be fancy hippie soda for assholes, but it's pretty tasty. Nicely carbonated, verrrry lightly sweet which is a plus, but the flavor was sort of like Smarties or Pixie Stix. I'd be down with a more herbal soda. DRY makes a lavender one too, I think, so maybe I'll make another sweet sandwich pairing sometime soon.

There are so very many things that taste as good as being thin feels.

Anyone following along with the stuff in my google reader feed may have noticed that I have lately liked to share articles debunking obesity panic and promoting Health at Every Size (HAES--it has its own abbrev!). You would think that HAES would be the kind of thing that ladymags would embrace when they're telling you how to love the body you have, but strangely enough those "love your body" articles always come with tips for, you know, weight loss and spot-toning and dressing to cover your body's "flaws." And naturally, since Health At Every Size isn't a particularly sexy concept, it never gets the same media coverage as fad diet and workout plans OR obesity studies that upon closer inspection are funded by drug companies. I mean check it out:

Health at Every Size is based on the simple premise that the best way to improve health is to honor your body. It supports people in adopting health habits for the sake of health and well-being (rather than weight control). Health at Every Size encourages:

• Accepting and respecting the natural diversity of body sizes and shapes.
• Eating in a flexible manner that values pleasure and honors internal cues of hunger, satiety, and appetite.
• Finding the joy in moving one’s body and becoming more physically vital.

Right? Refreshingly sensible and healthy, therefore completely outside a mainstream that equates thinness with health and therefore makes thinness an end in and of itself.

I've never been fat, though I was what you might call a chubster during my early teenage years, which was a source of grief, especially because all jeans back then were tapered and impossible to fit. I'm 5'8" and as an adult I've been anywhere from 145 to 170 pounds. I haven't been on a scale in ages, but I'm guessing I'm around 165, which incidentally gently nudges me into "overweight" territory on the useless BMI chart (which health professionals are inexplicably still using). When I weigh 145, on the other hand, I'm veering toward gaunt, with my build. My upper body shrivels and my nice booty disappears. Regardless of my weight, I have always had big old legs--no self hate or body snark here, that's just the plain truth. I've finally accepted that I got what I got, body-wise, and we're in it together for the long haul--but man, I wasted a lot of time as a youngster wishing I had great legs instead of appreciating the ones I have.

Anyway, all this background is to say that I guess you could now call me a fat ally or fat sympathizer, or something. It's a new idea for me, in large part because I've always had the privilege of being able to walk into a store and buy clothes off the rack, and I haven't had to struggle much to be thinner. And I didn't grow up with a bunch of wack messages from family members about how I should look or eat--I can't even imagine what that does to a kid's brain. Not to mention that it's pretty socially acceptable to make a bunch of assumptions about people who are fat, and to blame obesity for all of society's ills. This stuff is so ingrained as to be practically invisible to those of us who aren't fat and don't have to deal with the fat-shaming on a daily basis. I don't see fat as a sign of moral failure, lack of self control, or flat out ill health, and it's clear to me that a lot of what we're told regarding weight, health, and nutrition is straight up bullshit anyway. (For more on these ideas, please read the awesome Kate Harding. The first time I read that post, I bookmarked it, and I keep coming back to it.)

Still, it's tough for even a sensible person like myself to ignore all the messages that are fired at all of us on the daily. As I get older and find that my body actually seems to be happier up at the 165 end of my adult weight range, I vacillate between feeling good and fine and cute, and then thinking I better watch it or even actively work to take some weight off. And while most people I know are not into the self bodysnark, it does occasionally happen among certain groups of my friends. I want to get away from that, and I want to get away from that "better watch it" feeling.

That's why it's so refreshing to read HAES advocates/nutritionists giving very straightforward definitions of normal eating (highly, highly recommended). Normal eating is not going to look the same for every person; people have different needs and desires, and the only rule of nutrition is eat or die. There are still huge problems with access to healthy, whole foods and information about nutrition, so as with any "movement," the movement's no good unless all kinds of people are empowered by it. I suspect that HAES supporters are pretty much middle to upper middle class women right now.

Anyway. If you're still paying attention, you may be wondering what's up with the sugar-eschewing I've been doing lately, and that's a fair question. Bearing in mind that normal eating looks different for everyone, I do know folks who are off sugar completely and permanently not because they are control freaks, but because sugar is such a clear determining factor in their moods and overall sense of well-being. They'd rather not eat foods that cause them to crash and suffer depression and anxiety. So that's sort of where I am, even though I don't know how much sugar really affects my mood and energy level. Mostly I find that once I start eating the sweet stuff, I just keep eating it without necessarily enjoying it, and then afterward, I don't feel physically good at all. So it's easier and better for my brain, I find, just to cut it out. Not entirely, not permanently (you damn right I ate Thanksgiving pie), but mostly. It's pretty weird, actually, to get to a point where I'm trying to buy a baked good to go with my coffee in the morning and instead I walk out of there with Kung Pao tempeh because the muffins don't look good.

So that's what normal eating looks like to me right now. It will probably change, and I'm cool with that.

Just getting my happy thanksgiving post in under the wire. I'm so grateful for this long long weekend, and the fact that I have no responsibilities and it's about to be so cozy up in here. Hope you all are snuggled up and contented.

Willabee.

Is 2.

Awesome party pics by Em's boyf.

The last to know.

All right, fine, you already knew about Pandora internet radio, but y'all, Pandora and Roku have teamed up, and do you know what this means? I can create all these crazy music channels and stream them on the teevee, which incidentally is hooked up to the Brit's rad tuner and speakers. Pandora and Roku have totally created this year's Thanksgiving cornucopia.

I'm mavenhaven on Pandora, too, in case you're already over there.