cutest purse indeed

Nice pube cereal, there, Torque.

A pool, a pool cover, a ping-pong ball, and two kittens: [link]

vw, that purse is gorgeous. You are the queen of beautiful craftiness!

Daniel, those auditions were painful. I can only hope that the reason they had so many obvious non-actors (the flat affect! the pauses! the distracting jewelry! the SWAYING!) is that most of the actual actors who got called in took one look at the sides and walked out in disgust. (And oh, the man in the first reel who started at about 6:00 pinged my gaydar so hard, it was completely heartbreaking to hear him recite those lines.)

Thanks so much, guys! I'm SO pleased with how it turned out. I saw that fabric, and I HAD to make a purse out if it. Mom had just bought a pattern, and I thought it would be too perfect. So we made the most non-matchy matching purses ever. I'm hoping to get a picture of them together today, because it's quite striking!

I'm shamelessly ignoring the pubic hair discussion.

With the health discussion (I'm late on this I know) there is definitely a virtue/vice when it comes to weight and weight related issues. That's why all kinds of ads and recipes for "guiltless" whatever.

You look at celebrities - Jessica Simpson gains about 10 lbs and it's on the news. There's a "Scandal" because a picture of Kim Kardashian is run untouched and it shows her with cellulite. Then the retouched picture was ran , not only was the cellulite gone, she was slimmed down (and her skin tone was lightened, but that's another issue). And she had to defend that.

John McCain's daugther as been under attack for her weight because she's not a stick and it's another weapon that people can use against her.

Beyonce gained some weight to play Etta James, but she was still far skinnier than Etta James actually was. It was a a big deal she gained that weight, she was brave. And of course she shed it. There's no way I think anyone involved with the movie would want Beyonce to actually look like Etta. And if Beyonce gained all that weight?

Look at all tabliod rags talking about "worst beach bodies."

Then read magazine articles , or the weekly people feature about people who have lost weight. There's always talk about "I'm so ashamed I let myself get that big" or "I can't believe I did that to myself".

Women (and more and more men) risk their health with fad diets or semi starvation so they won't be ashamed of the way they look. So they won't be considered lazy or slobs.

I hear it and read it all the time, fat people are slobs, they are lazy, they have no self control, they are disgusting. And that is directed at me and people like me. It becomes personal. If you are like me (and Steph and whoever else) you have to fight against what that does to your self image and self worth.

It becomes so personal and so painful.

Edit sorry that this kinda turned into a rant.

That was an excellent rant. Excellent.

I stlll fight against those self worth issues every. damned. day.

The other part that I think that might be hard to understand if you are not in the situation is that women in offices talk about eating, their weights and their diets ad nauseum. I think a good seventy five percent of chit chat at my office involves this.

Grown women berating themselves for having cake and talking about how bad they are being or how they didn't eat all day in prep for it. Talkingabout how disgusting they are for allowing themselves to become a size six or eight. Showing either their "flab" and pinching it so we can see how "disgusting" they are or showing how their clothes are hanging off their bodies but they won't buy new ones until they are the desired size. Mocking themselves by saying they are an impossibly huge size, which happens to be smaller than my size.

And these are just examples from the last month. This is what I have seen getting worse and worse my whole working life. And I am so mad; because I used to do it. Because when you are paying attention so closely to everything you eat and drink, that is all you can think about, the only way to keep yourself on the straight and narrow.

Personally; I like to eat meals; with vegetables and a main dish and some good taste. I need food for energy and i get weird and light headed and weepy if I only eat a 400 calorie lunch. I am Italian and German and almost everyone in my family is fat. We are of hearty peasent stock where I can only imagine that the ability to keep on weight was good and allowed us to live and prosper. We have excellent blood pressure and cholesterol to a one, mental health issues, and tend to die of cancer and not heart disease. My doctor is so flabbergasted by my good health that he suggests eating like a diabetic Even though I have no signs that this is a problem.

And, I guess that is my rant...

I'm still not seeing how going to the gym and then riding the bus home automatically makes someone an asshole who hates fat people. If I whack you with my bag, I'm an asshole whether it's a gym bag or a Target bag or a briefcase. My personal views on health have nothing to do with it.

And in a way, I come from the opposite end of the spectrum-- I'm not designed to be overweight. And I've been there. I weighed, at my heaviest, 250lbs on a 5'2" frame and looked and more importantly, felt all wrong. Much more than 150lbs, actually, and I start feeling bad, physically. But having been both extremely overweight and extremely underweight (as a kid, and again, as a young adult), I would never dream to presume that someone's unhealthy simply because they're overweight. Even with me, overweight (for me) that I am right now, my blood pressure is still good, my heartrate is excellent, oxygen levels are at 100%-- only thing "wrong" with me was that my blood levels were at 5.5 (normal is 12/13) presumably because of the fibroids and subsequently, I had no energy, no matter what I ate or how I exercised or anything.

There are just too many factors that go into a person's physical makeup for society to judge on one thing only.

Which... I guess is my rant. *g*