Fierce Friday!

It's Fierce Friday AND the day after my birthday! I will recap the birthday things on Sunday after the partying is done. For now, my outfit...

Me in jeans jacket, grey scarf, and blue patterned hat.

In honor of my birthday, I'm wearing something pretty and daring. Today I'm wearing lace! I have a dark blue lacy camisole that is surprisingly comfortable. I've worn it with lovers and alone in my room but never out in public. I've decided that my birthday week is the perfect week for its public debut. I even found a nail polish color that matches.

To balance this shocking display of femininity I am wearing jeans, stompy boots, and what I like to call my "dog tags for Jesus." I would've gone for the whole "leather and lace" thing but I don't wear leather. Anyone want to gift me a vegan leather jacket? No? Right. Anyway, in lieu of leather I went for my own twist on leather and lace with an entirely different masculine jacket - a jeans jacket borrowed from a friend who clearly didn't realize he's never getting it back. Muahahaha...

Ok just kidding. It's not nice to steal things. Plus he's about 6 feet tall so the jacket is too big on me. I'll give it back - eventually. You know. Some day in the future when I finally buy or make one for myself that actually fits.

Me in my Fierce Friday outfit smiling at the camera. 

Closeup of necklace and lace.

Laying down so you can see my whole body.

Throwing the devil horns and sticking out my tongue.

Also, because I've now talked about leather and lace so much, I feel obligated to post the song "Leather and Lace" by Stevie Nicks and Don Henley. It's a pretty song that I remember my mom playing in the kitchen when I was a kid.

Happy Birthday To ME!!!

My New Swolemate

When I was in college, my roommate and I were fitness buddies and we used to joke that we were each other's swolemates. (Swole = slang for swollen aka buff/fit.) After college I had a rock climbing buddy for a bit and then a long-distance friend I swapped workout plans with, but all of that trailed off when I stopped trying to lose weight.

But now I've got a new swolemate and she's awesome! She's a queer, Christian, vegan, disabled, fat femme who is also not focusing on weight loss. She made a Facebook post looking for fitness buddies so of course I was excited to sign up for the job. Her goal is just to get moving more in general, mainly with walking. She lives in another state so we can't work out together, but so far we've been able to support each other's goals in a positive way without the self-hatred that often comes from people talking about working out and eating healthfully.

Do you have a swolemate? How about partners in your other life goals?

Financial Goals

I just finished posting about my fitness goals, and since I've already talked about finances on this blog I figured I should share my financial goals. Here they are:

Pay Off Car

At my current rate of repayment, I should be done with this goal in 16 months.

Car made of money.

Pay Off Timeshare

This may have been a financial mistake - time will tell. At any rate, I need to pay the thing off.

Cartoon of people on a tiny island surrounded by sharks saying
"Could be worse - we could be surrounded by timeshare salesmen…"

Eliminate Credit Card Debt

I'm pretty sure my tax refund will be enough to finish this goal. 

Person cutting up credit cards.

Eliminate Medical Debt

This goal is going to take me a while. About $4,000 of my medical debt is in the form of a loan from a friend, who I'm slowly repaying with dog walking and other random work. The other $3,000 is owed to a bank and it's at a 4.5% interest rate.

Stethoscope on top of money.

Pay Off Student Loans
My student loans are currently deferred because I'm in school. I'll probably continue deferring them while I focus on paying off my other debt and going to school for nursing. I've got under $9,000 left, which is a big improvement from how much I had when I graduated!

College graduate shackled to large weight labeled "loans."

Save For Retirement
I have a Roth IRA, but I want to switch institutions because my current one is underperforming. Ideally I'm hoping to find somewhere good performance and solid ethics. Once I do that, I'll start putting more money in. I don't have the option of payroll deductions so I calculated out 5% of my income and my plan is to have that much money automatically transfer every two weeks when I get my paycheck. Once my credit card is paid off I'll up the amount to 10% of my income since I won't be making credit card payments.

Old woman making the devil horns hand gesture.

Set Up A Rainy Day Fund
My goal is to be putting 5% of each paycheck into a rainy day fund, with the eventual goal of having $10,000 in there. I have to figure out where to put this money, though, so it makes more interest than my bank account. Maybe in a money market or savings bonds? It has to be somewhere I can cash it quickly if I need it for an emergency.

Person under an umbrella made of money.

Give to Charity
I'd like to start out with putting aside $20/week to give to charity. My eventual goal is to increase that to at least 10% of my income. I grew up in a Christian family and I still love the idea of giving back 10% of your income to God. However, I can't in good conscience give money to the Church because I won't help finance their anti-gay, anti-trans, and anti-woman agendas. The point of tithing is to put God first and give your financial support to God's work. Because of that, I feel confident that I can tithe by giving to charities that align with my values. I'm calling it my alternatithe. Get it? Anyway, I plan to work up to 10% once I get the debt situation under better control, ideally by the end of this year.

Person holding a jar of pennies that says "charity."

What Motivates Me?

Why do I have financial goals? Lots of reasons. The most obvious one being that I want to be in charge of my life and I can't do that when I'm living paycheck to paycheck with creditors breathing down my neck. The most personal one, though, is that I want to have kids.

Chameleon (I think?) and its baby.

When my husband left I thought my dream of a family had just walked out the door with him. A couple of years and a lot of therapy (and some meds) later, I no longer feel that way. I still want to be a parent, though, and that means preparing myself to become a single parent. As I mentioned on here already, I just sterilized myself. Before I did that I did gamete banking in case I want to have a biological kid. The likelihood of that happening is rather slim since I'd need a donor and a surrogate and a buttload of money for the medical procedures, but I figured it couldn't hurt to keep the option open. That said, I've always been more excited about (open) adoption. Adoption gave me the world's most kickass brother, plus his siblings and aunt and uncle. It gave me an awesome younger cousin. I have friends who were adopted and friends who chose adoption for their children and friends who are adoptive parents. I think it's an awesome way to build a family. But whichever way I choose to make a family, I want as much financial stability as possible before I take on a kid (or two, or three) as a single parent. Hence all the financial planning.

Baby wrapped up in money.

What are your financial goals? What dreams would you like to accomplish that could benefit from more stable finances?

Friends Don't Let Friends Skip Leg Day

Ok. While looking up leg exercises, I came across this meme:

Silhouette of a man lifting weights with very buff arms and skinny legs,
text says "friends don't let friends skip leg day."

I find it problematic in ways it was obviously not intended. What the meme is trying to say is that you shouldn't neglect half of your body when you're doing your workout, which is apparently something a lot of people do.

Here's why I dislike it, in addition to the fact that it's usually written on a picture of an actual person and I don't condone mocking people for their appearances: it's ableist. Lots of folks who use crutches or wheelchairs have upper bodies that are more muscular than their lower bodies. My brother has cerebral palsy and he has this body shape. This meme makes fun of his body. For the record, my brother also thinks I'm over thinking this. He's also a much more get-along kind of guy than me. I mean, only one of us went through a stridently militant vegan phase (*shrug*). At any rate, I think this meme does a disservice to people with this body type and it could possibly make them feel bad about their bodies.

So for the record, I'm letting you know - there is NOTHING wrong with this body shape. You can be sexy and have this body shape. You can be a total badass and have this body shape. And in case you don't believe me, let me give you a few examples of rather awesome people who will be skipping leg day...

Oracle, from Batman. She is a paraplegic martial artist who is also a librarian and computer genius. What's not to like about this character? She kicks some serious ass:

Oracle comic fighting a super villain.

In real life we have Dergin Tokmak, a paraplegic dancer who was in Cirque du Soleil:

Dergin Tokmak, shirtless, doing a handstand on his crutches. 

Back to fiction we have Professor X, leader of the X-Men. He's a telepathic paraplegic super-genious:

Cover of X-Men comic with Professor X in his wheelchair.

And back to real life again there's Angela Rockwood, a paraplegic and a professional model and actress:

Angela Rockwood sitting in her chair looking good.

There's also Colt Wynn, a paraplegic and professional bodybuilder who I find hot as hell:

Colt Wynn in his wheelchair looking sexy as usual.

There are lots of other awesome disabled folks (FDR, Frida Kahlo, RJ Mitte, Sudha Chandran, Josh Blue, and my brother come to mind) who have this body type. So basically, friends don't let friends skip leg day. But they also don't let ableist memes pass by without comment.

Can you think of some more people I've missed who should be on this list? It would be awesome to fill the comments section with examples of kickass people who will be skipping leg day.

Fierce Friday!

It's Fierce Friday again and I've decided to rebel against the cold weather by wearing an outfit inspired by spring and the flowered Dr. Martens I acquired for free when they stopped fitting their original owner. Yay!

White Dr. Marten boots with pink flowers, ribbon laces, yellow socks.

I'm wearing a maroon t-shirt, my flowery scarf, jeans, the aforementioned Docs, and red nail polish. Also my bicycle bracelet, a cheerful necklace, and a ridiculous sun hat because why not?

Me on my way to work: flowered scarf, black sun hat.

Body shot: red shirt, colorful bead necklace, bike bracelet, jeans, flowered boots.

Me without the hat so you can see my new haircut.

Me with the hat and my hand with nail polish and bike bracelet.

And because I feel like sharing a song that makes me feel like spring... My ex boyfriend introduced me to the song "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" by Tom Lehrer and I particularly enjoy this Mary Poppins mashup of it. I am a bad, bad vegetarian:

Health Goals Part II - Exercise Goals

As I said in a former post, I used to hate exercise. I viewed it as a form of torture inflicted on me as punishment for being fat. Then I discovered fat acceptance and I stopped exercising entirely for a while. What a relief! But a weird thing happened… I occasionally felt like being physically active. This had NEVER happened before. After all, exercise was something I associated with punishment and who would choose to be punished? But once I wasn't requiring myself to do it I found that sometimes I just wanted to move. And so I did. Then I noticed that on the days when I was more physically active I felt better. My mood was better, I had more focus, I felt less stressed, and I slept better at night. It turns out this is a thing.

Words "I <3 ME" written in the sand.

Here's some proof: I just read a NY Times article: Rethinking Exercise As A Source of Immediate Rewards by Jane E. Brody. In it she talks about the findings of Dr. Segar, a psychologist whose specialty is helping people start and keep up with regular exercise habits. Dr. Segar wrote a book I want to read called "No Sweat: How the Simple Science of Motivation Can Bring You a Lifetime of Fitness." Basically Dr. Segar and others have found that prescribing doses of exercise like medicine for weight loss doesn't work. Duh! Instead, what does work is noticing the immediate rewards of exercise - the ones I discovered by accident - and deciding those are important to you. Exercise is one way of prioritizing your own self-care. As Dr. Segar says, "I like to think of physical activity as a way to revitalize and renew ourselves, as fuel to better enjoy and succeed at what matters most." I like to think of it that way too. I can exercise because I deserve to feel good in the body I have right now and I matter enough to take care of myself, not because I'm fat and I need to change myself. This is, coincidentally, exactly what Health at Every Size focuses on. (Here is a link if you need one.) The idea behind HAES is threefold and I'm showing it in pictures:

Respect, including respect for body diversity.
[Picture is the word "respect" spelled from news clippings.]

Compassionate Self-Care - eating in a flexible and attuned manner that
values pleasure and honors  internal cues of hunger, satiety, and appetite;
finding joy in moving one's body and being physically active.
[Picture says "Keep calm and practice self-care."]

Critical Awareness - challenges scientific and cultural assumptions;
values body knowledge and people's lived experiences.
[Picture is a man with jigsaw puzzle in his head holding a puzzle piece.]

So that's what I'm trying to do. I'm maintaining an awareness of fat phobia and the lessons I've learned through fat acceptance. I'm working on respecting people of all body types, including myself. And I'm aiming for compassionate self-care. The most relevant part to this post being "finding joy in moving one's body and being physically active."

So there it is. My primary goal with exercise is to focus on easy structural changes that make me more active and also on finding physically active things I love to do so I won't feel like I'm being punished when I exercise. This means no treadmills EVER.

Pug doing a handstand.

Here are the structural changes: 
* No more elevators or escalators. I will take the stairs unless I am with a disabled person who needs my help pushing elevator buttons.
* Walk or bike everywhere under 5 miles. This also helps the environment so it's a win-win!
* Take public transit to work. Why waste gas and pay for parking when I can take the bus? This gets me exercise because I have to walk to/from the bus stops, it saves me money, and it helps the environment.

Here are my specific fitness goals:
* Be able to do a handstand.
* Also cartwheels.
* Be able to do 25 pull ups, 50 pushups, 200 situps, and 200 squats.
* Do a split - either type.
* Run a 5K - maybe a color run? - ideally with a friend.
* Take a ballet class.
* Do some yoga.
* Try the kickboxing studio in the center of town.
* Find a rock climbing buddy and go climbing.

Picture of a fat woman hoola hooping that says
"Yes, I work out! No, I am not trying to lose weight."

Do you know about Health At Every Size? If so, have you tried applying the ideas to your life? How has that worked for you?