An ode to my body, inspired by Twink

Warning. Extensive navel-gazing ahead. I mean it. Really. Read on at your own risk.
Someone told me the other day about the struggles her daughter was having about hitting puberty, and I started thinking about my own struggles at that age. How I felt like I didn't fit in because I wasn't blonde, tan, thin and pretty. How much fun I avoided so I wouldn't have to be seen in a bathing suit in front of the senior guys on the swim team. How much time and angst and emotion I spent by sitting in front of the mirror lamenting zits or freckles or how my mall bangs weren't tall enough or how I was too fat for Guess jeans.
What a waste.
I am 36 years old. I am not perfect. I am shorter than I'd like, chubbier than I'd like. Wrinkly. Freckly. Dry and oily at the same time. (Damn you, t-zone.) My knees hurt, my belly jiggles, I don't floss.
I don't really care.
My feet and legs carry me down the street, up the hiking trail, running around the park. My ears hear all the music I love, and my throat and mouth and lips and tongue belt it back out again, with varying degrees of success. (Bug says, "No Mama, I don't want any singing today" or "Please say that louder Mama, I like it") My eyes caress the people I love. They fill up and overflow with love, with anger, with sadness and with more happiness than I thought was possible. I carried two babies in this body. I carry them still. My arms can't do many pushups, but they hold my son when he's waking up in the morning and snuggling in my lap. They hug the friends who are having a bad day. My hands are rough because they help me climb the slide with the baby, and they cook dinner, and they make sweaters and scarves for kids who don't have other hands knitting for them. I write highly technical documentation with this brain. I make seriously low-class innuendos with the same organ. I like rhinestones and glitter but I hate pink. I straddle the Virgin/Whore paradox without much thought because, really, who cares? I don't fit in, I am not fashionable, I am not perfect. Never will be. But I am me, and life is good.
Love you, Twink.

A remedy for yesterday, plus Eye Candy

A big longer than yesterday's video, but OH. SO. WORTH. IT.



(provided to me by Cindy)

(ETA: apparently the comments aren't working right. if you feel inclined to comment and can't, lemme know and I will bug the ID people more...)

Work through the pain

Thanks to Lynn in Tucson for inflicting this upon me sending this to me...

What a day!

I have been having a lovely couple of days. And really, I think they'll only get better. TODAY, however, you must please to be going to my beloved VUBOQ's place and wish him a happy DAMN YOU LOOK GOOD 40th birthday!

It's warm again

I have been playing outside. (Tried to start cutting on that tree, but my neighbor came over to help and ended up knocking the chain off. Still trying to find the repair manual... Sigh.)
So I have some photos to warm up Joan, and LeeAnn, and Nora and Angie and Peter and whoever else lives someplace with actual winter. (You guys can return the favor this summer when even the snakes and lizards are wondering WTF they're doing living in this hellhole...)


As always, click to embiggen, should you so desire.

I choose to see the bright side

Like, Yay, I didn't actually get around to buying firewood last week, and also, wow, think how much sunlight the garden will get NOW!
Oooh, another one - Carrie's yard, now with 50% less pollen!





Shockingly bad (unedited, ha) photos due to poor lighting, poor camera, poor photography skills...

This one is still shockingly bad, but at least I brightened it up a bit, so you could better see the carnage...



No one hurt and no damage to the house, the wall, the dog run, or even the electrical lines, thank Bob. Though I did spend the next two hours wishing the other tree would fall on the house (going so far as to mentally tell the tree the best spot to fall to maximize damage without actually hurting either my family, my sewing machines or my stash) so as to render mortgage woes moot...

For next time, I have some photos to warm up Joan and the rest of you northern popsicle types, but for now, the rain wins out.

March on.

So, apparently since so many people found it necessary to tell me to be easy on myself, I sounded whinier than I'd intended last post. I wasn't really trying to whine, I swear it. I actually dunno what I was doing. Suffering from logorrhea? Trying to put Spring Fever into words? Trying to make my instant-gratification-wanting self sound grown up about the tantrum I wanted to have? WHINING, perhaps?
Sigh.
Anyway, this week things have been more On than Off. More sunlight and a few beautiful days here and there have gone a long way toward making me feel better, AND I finally sucked it up and did some of the yucky chores I didn't want to do. Still working on the IRS and the mortgage people, but as long as I'm not moving backwards I'm okay.
I did NOT finish my Olympic knitting, with which I am also okay. I did make surprisingly good progress given how little tolerance the Bug developed for the same two bloody commercials ad nauseum (yeah, okay, it was me - he was a fan of Ice Dancing and all the skiing crashes. He thinks crashing was their intent when they flung themselves down the hill at high speed with nothing but slippery sticks on their feet. I can't quite figure out where he got that idea...) I did remember how to fit a little knitting into my days, and how much happier I am when I do that. And I made progress, yo.


Horrible photo, but we've come to expect that here, no? As it turns out, the focus is way better once you turn off the macro setting. o.0

And here, and artsy silly shot, because my phone camera has a macro setting. (SIGH.)


I had hoped to get some photos of warm, but alas, my weekend looked like this.



I do love the rain, but I don't know what to make of the fact that for the last few weeks, the workdays have been sunny, mid 70s, and the weekends have been cold and rainy. Seems particularly cruel, given that we are nearing the end of our out-door season here in Satan's Blast Furnace.