I've been watching the series Dollhouse, mostly because I like Eliza Dushku--although I think she's way, way too skinny now--and I'm rather pleased with one of the characters, played by Miracle Laurie. She's by no means fat, that would be too much to hope for from a show paired with that stupid Terminator thing for its "sexiness". But I am pleased that Miracle Laurie isn't a stick figure. I mean, here we have a beautiful woman on a prime time show ... who actually looks like she has room for her internal organs!

Although, in watching more of the show, it's clear that the producers are trying to hide her "weight". Her body seems to be mostly hidden behind other characters; we don't get the up-close, scandalous shots of her body like we do the skinny girls; and the clothing they put her in the designed to be slenderizing--black, layered, ruffled, etc. But at least we have one average sized person on the show--and she's a love interest for a main character!

I've been thinking a lot lately about how some things seem to come so easy for most of the world, and yet are so difficult for me. I'm not talking special skills here, either; I'm talking things as basic as keeping up on the housework. I suck at that. My dad's always lecturing me about if I just spend thirty minutes a day on it, I'll keep on top of it--but the problem tends to be getting on top of it in the first place. And another problem is that I tend to fall in to an all or nothing mindset--if I don't have time to finish cleaning and sorting the entire house, why start? I'll just have to do it over, right? So why start?

Don't get me wrong; it's not like I live in a shit-smeared hovel with gravel on the floor. But I haven't vacuumed in about a week; there's laundry all over my room; there are spots on my stovetop; and I have three bags of trash I put outside the back door because I was too lazy to walk them another twenty yards to the dumpster in the cold.

Sometimes this doesn't bother me. Other times, I feel like I suck at life. This is one of those times. And I don't want to suck at life.

I hate you.

Love,
Me

(I have an exam in nine hours that I am, in typical me fashion, woefully unprepared for.)

I've suspected for a while that there's a ghost in my house; but some of the stuff was easy enough to brush off as just me being a ditz. Things like my hairbrush not being where I put it, or my Ped-Egg not being where I thought it was ... then turning up again in that same spot. But the first thing that happened that I couldn't dismiss was the re-appearance of my gloves in my coat pockets when I knew they weren't there the night before because I had my hands in my pockets coming in the house.

Since my roommate moved it, we've had more creepy stuff happen. She told me once that two of the cats started staring at the same spot, then both jumped off the couch, crouched next to each other on the floor, and stared at the same spot for a long time. One time, her allergy medicine vanished and turned up in the bottom of her laundry hamper. Last week, I knew she wasn't home but kept thinking I was hearing coughing coming from her room, to the point I opened the door to be sure. Yesterday I was sitting here at my computer and got the strongest feeling that someone was looking over my shoulder.

So sometimes it's creepy .... and sometimes, it's just plain silly. Three weeks ago, I was at Wal-Mart and got a copy of the movie Waiting for $5. I also got dog food, cat food, paper towels, and a bunch of other stuff. The pet food and paper towels I didn't bother to drag in that night, since they were just to stock up. But that night when I got home, I pulled Waiting out of one of the bags and said "Look what I got!" and showed it to my roomie, since we're both restaurant slaves. We both remember me excitedly waving the movie and saying it was $5, and then we decided not to watch it right then.

I went to get it one day to loan it to another coworker ... and couldn't find it. It wasn't with the other movies, or on the kitchen table, or anywhere else I could find. Well, tonight I found it ... when I brought in the plastic sack with the paper towels in it. Harmless, but creepy.

So I'm talking to my mom today, and she feels the need to pass along "concerns" my grandmother apparently has about me being a lardass. This is the same grandmother who's smoked a pack a day for about forty years.

But I now have felt like shit most of the day. See, although I'm aware that fat can be a genetic issue, I don't actually think it is my case. I used to think so, because my mom was overweight for most of my life ... and then a few years ago she got super skinny. Now, the way she got super skinny was because she couldn't afford food sometimes. But she hasn't gotten fat again, and she eats normally. My dad has a beer gut, but otherwise has always been skinny. I have a cousin who's a little chubby; my grandmother thinks she's overweight but is at a pretty average weight for a sedentary seventy year old woman.

Basically nobody in my family is significantly fat except me. Which I've obviously known for a while, but sometimes it just really hits me and I start to wonder ....

No, I'm just scatterbrained and keep forgetting what I was going to write about!

So my textbook, which is totally anti-fat, naturally has all the standard suggestions of how to cut the evil fats out of your diet. The one I just ran across was that instead of butter, or cheese, or anything that sounds good .... cover your broccoli in lemon juice! Yeah!

Except, you know, the acids degrade the chlorophyll, turning it brown and nasty, and possibly causing magnesium loss. On, and it tastes like ass. But at least it's LOW FAT.

My textbook for my nutritional assessment class is full of fatphobia and obesity panic. Pretty much what I expected. What I didn't expect in a textbook for firmly entrenched in the party line is contradictions to their own stupid claims. I'm reading along and I suddenly come to ...

"No RDA or AI have been established for total fat because there are insufficient data available to determine a level of total fat intake associated with risk of inadequacy or prevention of chronic disease. There is no UL (upper limit, means toxicity) established for total fat because no level has been identified that is associated with averse effect."

Followed by more GLOBESITY boogaboogabogga crap.

Another gem from my asscrackofdawn nutritional assessment class. We're talking, much to my general disgust anyway, and BMI charts, specifically for children--because we've got to give those fat kiddos what for! In the course of talking about percentiles and distribution curves, the professor says (paraphrasing) "Some kids are born leaner and stay that way, and others have a little more fat, so we do see this curve naturally."

Hold your freaking horses! You mean .... people are different? People are born different sizes, and develop differently, almost like it's, I don't know genetic? Get the fuck out of town!

And three slides later, she did (get the fuck out of town, that is) when she made the pronouncement that women's waists shouldn't be bigger than 35 inches and men can be up to 40 inches around before they have the DEATHFAT.

This is why I hate going to this class. Everytime she says "diabeetus" or "obesity epidemic" I want to throw something at her. Like a chair. And my self-control isn't limitless.