Campfyre Stories

I’m late in writing this.

After I had my MRI and went for my follow-up with the ortho, he told me I didn’t actually have a bone fragment floating around in my ankle.  It was, instead, embedded in the ligament.  This sounds bad, but it’s actually not, since it means that it’s not moving around and/or doing any damage.  Also, the pain isn’t coming from where the bone fragment is.  Instead, it turns out, that I am structurally unstable due to being double jointed.

Now, I have since learned that I’m not an idiot for thinking this, but I always thought that double jointed meant contortionist, but it actually means being able to do things like bend your fingers so far back that people cringe.  Yeah…  I knew I could do THAT. 

Anyway, it means that my ankle, having  been injured a decade ago, isn’t very strong and (duh) is prone to turning when it shouldn’t.  So now I’ll be going to PT 2x a week for the next 4 weeks.  My first appointment was today.

I’m quite relieved to not have to be in a cast for weeks and not have to deal with crutches, but I’ve decided that I’m a little disappointed that people won’t be waiting on my a little, and that, since he’s not here on garbage night, I can’t justify making Spawn take out the garbage.

Oh well.

I’ve made peace with the fact that I’m a fat chick.  Not that I don’t intend/hope to change it at some point, but I’ve spent a lot of time and effort really looking at my habits and my lifestyle and my history and I pretty much know what it will take to change it.  It’s not something that’s entirely within my control.

This is not an excuse!  This is simply a recognition of how my body works (and how/when it doesn’t work).  I’m really focused on getting myself "fixed" and to a healthier place than I am now, but I am already quite healthy indeed, thank you very much, especially for a fat smoker.  So don’t think I’m making excuses for myself and saying "Oh well, I’ll be fat forever, it’s just how I am."

Believe me, I know exactly how I got here and why I’m still here and most of what it’s going to take to change it.  Again, though, some of those changes are not choices I can actively make.  I’m not getting into that, though, since I’m already starting to drift from my intended purpose of this post.

Being a fat chick is difficult.  People who don’t know you at all feel perfectly free to make derogatory comments and snap judgements based on your weight.  Fat isn’t even relative in these cases.  If you’re *at all* overweight, then you are fair game for people complaining about all kinds of stereotypical things that, with fat people, often don’t have a basis in reality.  Especially women.  While fat men are often thought of as jolly (thanks, Santa), fat women are generally thought of as bitter and bitchy.  In my case, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.  I’m one of those annoyingly perky, optimistic people with just enough spicing of jaded and skeptical to keep me from being actually a Merry Sunshine.

Woe be to you if you are fat and eating, or out of breath, or sweating or anything that allows someone to assume that you are lazy or smell bad or eat way too much and only things that are unhealthy.

But what fascinates me is how people who only know me a little behave.  Women, especially, who know me a little, seek to convince me that I’m not actually fat.  My close friends don’t do this.  Part of that may be that almost all of them either are or have been overweight.  This sentiment only comes from people I know tangentally or are just getting to know.  I’m not entirely sure where it comes from.  I’m not looking for any kind of argument and I don’t say it in a fishing way.  The "You’re not fat" statement ALWAYS comes out of nowhere.

And the bottom line is that I am fat.  I’m not disgustingly obese, I don’t take up two seats, I don’t have a problem getting through doors or breaking things I stand on, but I am 5’7 and I wear a size 20.  That’s fat.  When you *have* to shop in the plus size department or in specialty plus size stores, you are fat.  End of story.

I just don’t get it.  These women seem absolutely horrified that I would say something about being "a fat chick" in so flippant a manner.  They seem to think that it’s a bad thing that I’ve come to terms with my size and don’t make a big deal of it. 

Men don’t do this.  Men let the comment go by, only ever remarking if it’s something along the lines of "Well, some guys like that, Fyre."  Otherwise, no big deal is made of it.

I would understand if I were thin.  If I wore a clothing size in the single digits, then it would be DANGEROUS to allow me to think that I was fat.  If I even wore a size 12 or 14, I could accept it as a concern of anorexia or bulemia or something, but at a size 20?  It’s probably as dangerous to convince a girl my size that she isn’t fat as it is to convince a size 10 girl that she IS.

I wonder about the motivations of something like this.  I’m sure it comes from a good place, but it doesn’t make sense to me.  I know that I’m cute and fun and likeable, but I don’t know why I can’t be those things and also be "a fat chick".  It almost seems that for these well-intentioned women, you can’t be all of those things.  Maybe it’s just the stigma of the word "fat" that causes the problem.  I could (and have!) said "heavy" or "padded" or even "insulated" without getting the defensive reply from them.

Is it because I don’t fit the stereotype?  Or because the word itself carries baggage?  I’d appreciate insight from people who have done this or have seen it done or had it happen to them.  I don’t see the problem with coming to terms with my own body, however it’s shaped, but I’m kind of tired of people telling me things when all evidence points to my having gotten it right in the first place.

The first thing I asked when I got home was "So, did you have a party?"

"Oh, no, Mom.  I just had some friends over.  About 8."

I’m not entirely sure what his definition of a "party" is, but I’m not fussed.  I actually fully expected that he’d have his friends over, just not all at once.  Heh.

He told me about spending a gorgeous Saturday outside with his friends.  This is what Spawn did while I was gone:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-EXFNLkyzE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntoYbaz4vUQ

Last weekend, I headed down to NYC.  My mom was performing in an orchestra, playing mandolin for a program called Music in Desperate Times.  Since I have several friends in Brooklyn and there’s a bar that I’ve been repeatedly told I had to visit, I made up my mind to take a long weekend and have a Grand Brooklyn Adventure (with a side journey into Manhattan for the concert.)

I left on Friday and took the train down.  A peaceful, quiet, uneventful trip.  I arrived in the mid-afternoon, met up with my hostess, who I hadn’t seen in for-ev-er and we headed to the subway to make our way to her place.  I hadn’t realized quite how big Brooklyn is, and it turns out that she lives in the very far side of Brooklyn from Manhattan, nowhere near the people and place I was planning to head toward.  She lives in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, including Orthodox and Hassidic and there’s an air raid siren that BLASTS the area 5 minutes before sundown, and again *at* sundown.  I, luckily, only had to experience it once.

Friday night I got ahold of an old, dear friend who I don’t see nearly as often as I’d like.  He, his girlfriend and two of their friends met me at reBar, owned by a frat brother of a bunch of my very good friends.  There was an off chance that I might run into one or two people I knew, but that didn’t pan out.  Instead, I was treated to a GORGEOUS bar and excellent company.  We stayed until shortly after midnight, then made our way to a different part of Brooklyn to hang out at the Bushwick Country Club (BCC) until it got too late/loud, then across the street to Wombat, a much quieter bar.  We stayed out until around 4am, when I finally got into a cab and made my way back to the far side of Brooklyn.

The highlights for that night were (outside of, of course, seeing my good friend and his girlfriend – who I adore) talking politics with a man named Prince (his real name!) and making eyes at a very pretty Aussie named Garth.  The whole night, though, was wonderful.  I felt so in my element, meeting new people and exploring new locations.  It doesn’t make me want to live in the City, but it makes me want to visit more often.

I passed out pretty much as soon as I walked in the door, but woke up fairly early for me.

Saturday, we wandered around Brooklyn.  We went to Coney Island (where I had never been before) and walked along the beach, then the boardwalk, then just around what little is left of the amusement park.  It wasn’t open yet, but I could see what it used to be, what it has become and the neglected potential that it has.  We spent hours wandering around with the dog and just generally catching up.

That night was Music in Desperate times at St. John the Divine.  We got dressed, headed into Manhattan, then grabbed some dinner at Tom’s Restaurant, which happened to be right around the corner from the cathedral.  Handy that, and unplanned. 

The cathedral itself is GORGEOUS.  It is the most beautiful house of God that I have ever been in.  I would have loved to have been there during the daytime, so as to see the grounds (if that’s even allowed), but the inside of the cathedral itself was phenomenal, and with excellent acoustics.  I saw my Crew Chief from Falcon Ridge and her family (who helped me along my Grand Long Island Adventure last year), then made my way to my seat.

I hadn’t quite realized how good my seat was when I bought it, but I wanted to support the organization putting on the show, so I went for the second tier pricing.  I was about 6 rows back, but on the far right side of the audience.  Happily, while I couldn’t see the entire orchestra well, I had a clear and perfect view of MY MOM!  Woo hoo!  I couldn’t have asked for more. 

The show was introduced by Dr. Ruth Westheimer, whose radio program I listened to when I was a pre-teen.  I think, starting around 11.  While I knew that she was a very small woman, the reality of just how wee she is was shocking in person.  I walked past her after the show and, stupidly, missed my opportunity to meet her, but just seeing that she could easily walk under my arm if I held it out was a little jarring.  She’s so small that I wouldn’t be surprised to find out there are drarves who are her height or slightly taller.  But, I digress.  This amazing woman, at 90 years old, completely eschewed any help that was offered.  The priest who introduced her seemed put out, since I think it was him being a gentleman and not thinking that she needed actual help that led him to offer his arm as she climbed the stairs.  She completely ignored him and proceeded to tell us her story of being a Holocaust orphan.

The concert itself was very moving and incredible.  Through recreation of the music played, a chorus singing more modern(ish) songs and readings from the memoirs and letters of women in the original orchestra, they told a haunting tale of Jewish women kept alive through their musical ability and their horrifying situation of making music for their Nazi captors.

After the show, we met up with Mom and most everyone who had come to support her, specifically.  A group of us went out to a random restaurant in Manhattan and sat for hours, drinking coffee/tea/wine and eating appetizers.  We left around midnight to get back to Brooklyn, since my hostess had to walk her dog, who had been home alone for many hours.

On the subway back we were discussing how very small Dr. Ruth was and, in a strange coincidence, found ourselves surrounded by many wee people, none of them dwarfs, but all of them tiny.  It was actually a little creepy, since they were significantly smaller than average, even smaller than normal, many of them around the same height as Dr. Ruth herself.

Back in Brooklyn around 1:30 or 2, and I went to bed around 3ish, I think.  Sunday was mostly a lazy day, packing things back up and trying to make my giant purse not so heavy.  We went to The Strand in Manhattan on our way to Penn Station to look for the first and third books in a trilogy.  I have the second, but 1 and 3 are, as far as I can tell, out of print.  No luck on that front, but I did wind up buying about 5 other used books, most of which I have since finished.  That store is downright dangerous and I’m glad I hadn’t been exposed to it before now, otherwise I would be far poorer and have MANY more books (none of which I have room for).

Grabbed some wonderful pizza (I don’t know where), then walked the rest of the way to Penn Station.  My train was right on time and we even arrived a few minutes early back at home.  The cab driver who took me from the train station was very pleasant to talk to as well as nice to look at.  I came home to a mostly clean house and some exceptional stories of Spawn’s own adventures in having the house to himself.  I took Monday off, which was an excellent ending to a fun adventure, and then embarked on a trying week from Hell.

But that’s another story, and one that will be told in pieces as it comes to past.  This, being the story of my Grand Brooklyn Adventure, is over

The story of my Grand Adventure is going to have to wait, as I have more pressing concerns.

10 years ago I sprained my ankle while attempting to leap over a snow bank.  Since then I have regularly sprained my ankle, often doing other stupid things, sometimes just randomly walking down the street.

So I got into the habit of just assuming "I have weak ankles" and I would be careful, but as soon as my ankle would turn, I’d know that it was, at the very least, going to be tender for a few days.  You get used to it.  You get to a point where it just becomes normal.

This winter, though, things changed.  Instead of being at a weak level of normal, I was in such regular pain that I had to invest in a soft brace.  It helped, but not a whole lot.  I also noticed periodic popping and clicking during really cold, dry days.  I mentioned it to my GP and he recommended a good "ankle guy".  My appointment was yesterday.

They took x-rays.  The doc manipulated my ankle.  They took more x-rays.  Then they showed me my x-rays.  I have a bone fragment floating around in my ankle.  This is the cause of my problems and I’m going to need surgery to remove it.  Further, because it’s ankle surgery, I’m going to be off my feet for 4-6 weeks while it heals – 2 weeks on crutches, then I’ll move to a walking cast.

So, yeah, I’m broken.  But at least we’re looking at maybe making me fixed.