Campfyre Stories

If you’re a regular reader and want to have the password to my current series of protected posts, please send me a message and ask.

They called me trendy, and they weren’t the first to do so.

They called me trendy and I took offense.

I’ve never been a follower and I’ve never been a sheep, and, to me, the word trendy means just that.  I’ve always been ahead of the curve.  So far ahead, in fact, that trend-setter never even applied.

As a freshman, in 1989, I found my basic comfort level of style was ripped jeans, a concert t-shirt, flannel overshirt and Chuck Taylor hi-tops.  Grunge went mainstream over the next two years and, all of a sudden, everyone is wearing exactly that.  Twenty years later, I’m pretty much wearing the same thing (most of the time) except that now  it’s embroidered jeans, a camisole, unbuttoned white (or black) button-down shirt and custom Chucks.  Same basic style, same basic outfit, still not following the crowd.

But my custom Chucks, my pink/black striped fingerless gloves, my embroidered jeans, my black and white plaid-ish purse, these things cause me to be accused (!) of being trendy.

It’s not always a compliment, either.  Sometimes I wonder if it’s ever really a compliment.  I’m not a good judge of that, though, since, to me, the word means something negative.

So I looked it up.  Just now, actually, because I was curious. 

Trendy:

2. following the latest trends or fashions; up-to-date or chic: the trendy young generation.

And there’s absolutely nothing wrong that.  The first part is how I hear it, but maybe they mean "up-to-date" or "modern" or "chic", but they never use those words…  they only ever say "trendy" with all that word implies.

I believe that I spend less money on clothes than the average American woman.  I am certain that I spend less money on both shoes and accessories than the average American woman.  Even the "trends" that I buy, I tend toward the more classic pieces, ones that will last through other seasons and styles.  It’s not even necessarily when I’m wearing a CURRENT trend that I get called trendy.  And I don’t even work at it.  I don’t go out looking for ways to put together the latest fashions and styles, I just work with what’s available when I have money to spend on clothes or accessories.

I’m just trying to figure out what it means.  To me, it’s such a loaded word that I can’t even hear any potential follow up.  "You’re so trendy, Fyre, blah blah qualifying statement."  And for the next couple of days, I’ll brood about the word trendy and how I got called it and then I’ll forget about it.  For a few months.  Until the next time someone calls me trendy };^>

I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking, "Yes there are.  There’s you, there’s me, there are these other friends of mine.  There are *lots* of fat people on Facebook, at least as many as there are in real life."  And, you know, you’re right, but only to a certain extent.  As far as population is concerned, They say that a third of the US population is obese.  I have no reason to doubt that the proportions are the same on the internet and on social networking sites.  Fat people are everywhere, whether you notice them or not, but if you really look at the profile pictures on Facebook, fat people are not represented visually.

I ask that you conduct your own experiment.  Look at your Facebook friends, specifically the ones who are heavy.  How many of them have a profile picture?  How many of those pictures are recent?  How many are of their kids or some kind of avatar?  How many heavy people photograph thinner in the face than in the body and of those, how many actually show you what they look like below their face?  How many of your friends have you not seen in years or decades?  Do their pictures show them fully, or do they only show how they want to be remembered?

There are no fat people on Facebook, not like they are in real life.

There’s this stigma that goes along with being heavy.  It has nothing to do with health or the rising costs of health care, which are often blamed on fat people and smokers.  The reality is that many heavy people are healthy.  Healthier, even, than their skinny counterparts.  We’re scorned, though, by those who refuse to have their own cholesterol levels checked; who eat fast food for most meals; who can’t tell you their blood pressure, but consider themselves healthy simply because they are able to maintain a healthy weight.  This misconception is prevalent even in the medical community and among medical professionals.  If you’re fat, you’re unhealthy.  It’s a "fact".

Another "fact" that society throws at us is that if you’re fat, you’re unattractive.  That one’s a lot harder to disprove.  While I like to think of myself as attractive, or at least cute, society tells me that I’m disgusting.  Society tells me that I shouldn’t breed (although I have successfully and my son is beautiful, healthy and thin) and that no one would ever be interested in seeing me naked.  My guy friends tell me that for every body type, for every skin color, for every body/facial feature, there are men who are attracted to that, but in anonymity, men mostly say that they’re looking for a "shapely" woman and that round is not a shape.  They say "No offense, but I’m repulsed by BBWs."  They use "politically correct" language to tell fat women why they’re not desirable.

Is it any wonder, then, that people on the internet still hide from those they consider their "friends"?  Is anyone surprised that people, and women in particular, don’t want to ruin the nostalgia of when they were thinner?  For some, it’s not even that simple.  Those who were fat before it became an "epidemic" have been subjected to that sort of thinking and the degradation that people are comfortable doling out for so long that they hide from cameras and refuse to share themselves with others.  But even people who are comfortable in their own bodies fall prey to the persecution warfare that has been launched against an easy, though incorrectly singled out, target.

I’ll admit it, I’m guilty of this, too.  First it was an avatar, then it was a picture of the tattoo on my leg.  An old friend of mine complained to me in person about how "It’s not called Thigh book.  Where’s the picture of your face?"  And he was right.  There’s no reason for me to feel ashamed of no longer being the thin teenager I was 15-20 years ago.  I like who I am, I’m a pretty successful person on most fronts.  I just happen to be fat.  I also happen to spend time on the internet where I am told time and again that I am worthless.  I hear it in real life, too.  Sometimes it’s about me, sometimes it might be about me.  Sometimes I know that it’s about someone else in my proximity, but when I hear it, I still take it in and it still hurts.  It was hard for me to post a picture that looks like me, but is unflattering.  I don’t have the kind of face that photographs as thin.  The way my body is angled makes me look even bigger than I actually am, but it looks more like me than any other picture I have.  It wasn’t until I posted my picture that I realized how few photos there are of people not looking acceptably thin.

So I stand by my title.  There are no fat people on Facebook and it’s a real shame because it means that we’re only visible in real life and that all the anonymous assholes putting us down on the internet, do so with free reign, since WE don’t actually live there, too.  At least not so anyone can see us.

It’s pretty much constant that we’re faced with choices in life.  Which sweater am I going to wear today?  What do I want for lunch?  But only occasionally are we faced with life-altering choices and options that could (speaking as a sci fi geek here) potentially create an alternate time line.  Most of the time we don’t even realize when we’re at those forks in the roads.  They seem like any other minor decision that we encounter in the course of a lifetime, but sometimes you can feel that you’re at a point where things are going to change, and the decisions that you make in the next [period of time] are going to have long-reaching outcomes.

I think I’m there, or approaching it.  I may not be standing in the intersection, trying to figure out where I go from here, but I can see that I’m going to have to veer or turn in the not-distant future.

Some of these things are the outcomes of other people’s decisions.  My mother moving 30 minutes out of town, for example, requires that I finally give in a buy a car.  The truth of the matter is that I can’t go and visit without an immediate escape route, so a car it is.  I’m also going to have to move out of my current apartment.  My upstairs neighbor’s antics and the inaction of my landlord have cemented that.  Perhaps the impending crossroad will tie in, but I get the impression that it’s something a little more immediate.  Something that has the potential to grant the unspoken wishes I’ve been making, and maybe some of the ones I’ve said out loud as well.

I can feel a change in the wind.

I actually wish I didn’t, though.  It’s one of those things where I find myself worrying about making the wrong decision before a decision has even presented itself.  I don’t even know what my forks or crossroads will be, but I’m already concerned that I’ll get it wrong, something I won’t even know for months, maybe even years.

I prefer the ones where you go along in your life in ignorance, only seeing where the key decisions were well after the fact.  I don’t think I like this feeling of impending change at my discretion.  I’d much rather prefer being surprised.

But the truth is that I can’t care anymore.

My life is falling apart.  That’s the bottom line of it all.  It’s been a slow collapse for the past, I don’t know how long, but now I can see that things are really just falling apart around me and I don’t know how to fix any of it.

Everyone seems to think that they know what’s going on and why I’m, apparently, unbearable to be around, but every single one of them is completely self-absorbed in their thinking.  I’m not even allowed to talk to very many people about what’s actually going on because they are so much worse off than I am, and have no problems telling me so and why.

My son thinks it’s funny and appropriate to call things "gay" or to call people "faggot" and that’s not bigotry.  Having told him that it is, in fact, bigoted to use those words in those ways he decided to stop using them around me.  He still uses them when he thinks I can’t hear him.  I make no difference in his opinions of pretty much anything at all.  As a result, I now just pretend not to notice when he talks about how very disgusting fat people are and how much fun they are to mock.  My pain would do one thing and one thing only, cause him to say those things when he thinks I can’t hear him - essentially behind my back.

At 16, he’s developed a martyr complex.  No one has ever had it worse than him.  He refuses to pitch in around the house, save for the bare minimum of "one productive thing" a day, choosing the simplest of jobs, but to call him ungrateful is hurtful and untrue.  He asks for money regularly and takes it as a personal affront that I don’t make enough money to just throw money at him whenever he asks.  Despite how permissive a parent I am, despite the things I do for him and the concessions that I make, I’m always the bad guy, and there’s nothing I can do to change that perception.

My living situation is terrible.  My landlord makes promises to fix things or to upgrade things that need replacing, but he doesn’t actually DO any of it.  He’s far too busy catering to the squatters upstairs who should have moved out 6 weeks ago.  Every night I fall asleep listening to the neglected dog behind me, whose owners leave him out for hours on end, even when it’s below freezing outside.  In the front, I am subjected to blasting crappy music and little kids screaming "nigga, nigga, nigga".  I want to move, but I don’t have any money right now.  I can’t afford it until the spring at least.

I also have to buy a car.  My mother seems to think that it’s because they are moving 30 minutes outside of the city that I’m 100 different kinds of upset about it.  I don’t particularly want to buy a car, it’s going to be a stretch to afford it, but I don’t care that she’s moving.  The problem is that if I want to visit and not be completely trapped there, I HAVE to have a car, otherwise, there’s no telling what kind of schedule I’d wind up being on.

Friends.  Ha.  What friends?  There was a time when I had a lot of friends and could find something to do most nights, but now my friends are few and far between.  Not to sugar coat it, there are several people whose company I don’t particularly enjoy anymore, but for the most part, my friends have moved away and I have yet to meet anyone new.  People I used to have things in common with aren’t interested in me or are too wrapped up in other things, I don’t know.  I don’t want to guess.  It doesn’t even really matter why, it’s just how things are.

I don’t even know what to say about work.  For the most part, it’s boring and unchallenging.  On the other hand, though I do an exceptional job by all measures, I don’t get paid nearly enough.  I don’t meet people, I don’t talk to people, I don’t have any social interaction through my job, which started well before I became a remote worker, so the only thing I get out of it is a paycheck, and I’m struggling to get by even with that.

But I’m not allowed to talk about those things, because everyone around me is so wrapped up in how bad off they are, that things can’t possibly be bad for me…  my circumstances are better, or so they think.

It’s getting harder and harder for me to function.  I can’t think of anything that I can change that would make a difference.  Sure, get a new job or find a new apartment, but neither of those things are feasible.  I cannot change either of those things right now.  If I had security deposit, I’d move in a heartbeat.  If there was a job that would challenge me better than my current one does, I’d take it.  I don’t know how you change things when everything that needs to change costs money I just don’t have.

Last night, someone told me to buy a lottery ticket.  Maybe I will.  It’s not like I can’t afford a dollar (or even 5), but I don’t feel like that’s enough of a change to really make a difference.  Her argument that winning the lottery would be the change that makes the difference can’t be argued, but…

So, yeah.  If you wondered where I was, why I haven’t blogged, what’s going on…  there you have it.  I’ve been trying not to fall apart, and mostly losing the battle.

The transition from August to September is difficult for me.  We have, in my family, three birthdays in four days.  My mother kicks it off on the 29th, then we have a day off, then me, then my little brother.  It’s a lot of birthday and a lot of cake and I generally wind up exhausted by the time it’s over.

This year I asked my mother what kind of cake she wanted.  She replied that she wanted "something fruity".  This is pretty vague and I had to think for a while, but I remembered a "cake" that I had made some years back and decided to revisit it.  It’s based on my regular cream puff recipe, but adds fruit to it.  It tastes wonderful and is exceptionally easy to make, so I decided to share it.

Summer’s Last Hurrah, a recipe by FyreGoddess

You start by taking 3/4 cup of water and 1/3 cup of butter and bring them to a boil.  Once they have boiled, remove them from heat and add 3/4 cup of flour.  Add 3 eggs, one at a time.  For cream puffs, you would drop the puffs onto an ungreased cookie sheet, but since this is a single cake, you instead pour all the batter into the center of an ungreased cookie sheet and cook at 400 for 15-25 minutes, or until it’s golden on top.

For the cream, you simply fold together 1 cup of vanilla pudding and 1/4 cup whipped heavy cream.

When it has cooled, cut the puff in half.  Warning:  It will fall after it comes out of the oven, but because we’re stuffing it with goodness, that’s nothing to worry about.

Layer summer fruits with the cream inside the puff shell.  For mom’s birthday I started with thinly sliced peaches and plums, a layer of cream, then a mix of raspberries, blackberries and blueberries, then another layer of cream and the lid.  The reason for the name is that August/September is the last of the summer fruit season, so I take summer fruits to use in the layers.  Were you to use a different season’s fruits, you might call it "Autumn’s Last Hurrah" or something, but I think that summer fruits work best.

Once the cake is assembled, take 4oz of dark chocolate and 1T of butter.  Melt in a double boiler and drizzle over the top of the cake.

Mmmmm.  So delicious.

Mom says she wants this cake every year.  RC2 says he also wants this cake on *his* birthday.  Chaos says I should make more cream puffs.

Heh.

I’ve been talking about it for ages, and it’s always seemed like something that should have existed before now.  Finally, FINALLY, the local bus company has gotten a public transportation option on Google Maps.

I get nothing for this post, just fyi.  It is, however, something I have been wanting and waiting for for YEARS now.  Now, instead of having to sit down with multiple bus schedules and try to figure out which buses connect where and at what time, I can just punch in where I’m starting, where I want to go and what time I want to get there and it tells me exactly what time to catch each bus, where I’m going to transfer and everything I need to know!

This makes my life so much easier.  There are all kinds of places I know I can get to - places where I know the bus goes, but because I’m not familiar with those routes, I don’t even really know how to get there.  Places like my doctor’s office.  It’s in an area of town where I just don’t go, simply because I’m not familiar with the bus(es) that run out there and how to connect to them, but now it’s not an issue!

To me this makes the entire public transit of the city infinitely more accessible to everyone.  Instead of having this vague idea that one can get almost anywhere, people can simply map it out and not have to worry about memorizing schedules or routes. 

The problem is that I doubt very many people are even aware that this exists.  I haven’t seen any real push to get it known…  it’s just a blurb that I happened to find on the Transit Authority’s website.  It’s apparently available in many places around the US, so if you’re not in my area, you can check it out and see if it lists your city, too.

It’s about damned time.

I had three good ideas this weekend on ways to enrich my life and find new ways to meet people and to engage myself in new things.

Getting a new library card was at the crux of the entire thing.  It turns out that the library has all kinds of cool programs going on that I might be able to use to meet new people or to, at least, find new interests.  The one that really appeals to me is a Tuesday lunch program.  Every week they review a different book or discuss a new topic.  I don’t know that I’ll be interested in everything they have to offer, but I’m certainly interested in some of the things.

This is put on by the Friends of the library, who, apparently, are also often looking for volunteers to help with things like book drives and book sales.  I think this is something I could be interested in, so I’m going to see what they’re about and find out if it’s actually something I’m interested in and maybe get some literature about the group that’s putting on the series.  If nothing else, I feel like I’m on the right track.

I’ve also decided to finally join the co-op.  Up to now, it’s been an issue of just not having the time to volunteer but I am significantly less busy than I used to be and I’m sure I can find the time.  Volunteering 3 hours (either a week or a month, I haven’t decided yet) will absolutely introduce me to new people and probably people I have things in common with, since co-op members tend to be at least a little bit fringey.

I doubt I’ll do all my shopping at the coop, but I’d like to at least buy my produce and my cheese there.  With a discount of 10 or 26%, it shouldn’t be any more expensive than at the supermarket, and will be better quality.  The only delay with this is that I need to attend an orientation, which appears to be about 3 hours long.  I won’t be able to attend one until some time in September, but that’s ok, I’m going today to sign up for a session and get the ball rolling.

The third idea I had is probably not going to do a whole lot to introduce me to new people, but will serve to get me out of the house.  I’ve already talked Slockin into this one, which is working from a cafe one afternoon a week.  Since Slockin and I both WFH on Thursdays, we’ll hit up a cafe with free WiFi on Thursday afternoons and force ourselves out of our respective apartments.

Having spent the past week laid up with itchy hives, I’ve had a lot of time to think.  I tried to go out and do things, at least as they came up, but by the weekend I was going pretty stir crazy and trying, desperately, to come up with a way out of this stagnancy.  The library was one of those things where I had the idea, got up and just did it.  Now I need to keep that ball rolling.  I feel pretty good about it.  We’ll see how it goes.

I love to read.  I pretty much eat books, but I’ve been without a library card for a very long time now.  I was prowling around the house looking for something to read when I decided it was time to get a new library card.  I checked their hours and headed over, stopping to pick up a magazine that came in the mail, and tucking it in my bag.

"What do I need to do to get a library card?" I asked when I got there.  They replied that I needed a photo id and a piece of mail postmarked within the last month.  I checked my bag, not thinking I would actually have any mail and found the magazine that I had tucked in my bag.  "Will this work?" I asked, knowing that for most official or government situations, this magazine wouldn’t work.  The librarian was so impressed that I just *happened* to have any kind of mail in my bag, he let me get away with it

I took out 5 novels and signed up for the waiting list for Julia Child’s "My Life in France".

Next up:  I need to find out if there are any book clubs through that branch of the library.

I’ve been in quite a funk for some time.  Part of that comes from before I started writing my whole self-examination stuff, but some of it is just new.

I didn’t really tell anyone, but I decided back in April to quit smoking after Falcon Ridge.  I went to the doc before I went to the festival and got a prescription for Zyban, which I started taking the day I left for the festival.  I smoked my last Camel shortly before we left FRFF and then used up the last of the tobacco that my brother had brought me as a gift from his time in Arizona.  10 days after I started taking the Zyban, I quit smoking.  That was 12 days ago.

A week ago (Wednesday), out of the blue, I got really weepy.  Just all of a sudden I started crying and crying for no apparent reason.  I cried myself to sleep and had some really bizarre dreams.  The next day was more of the same, only this time it was while I was trying to talk to Spawn.  I wasn’t actually upset, but it sure looked like it.  There I was, cooking dinner, trying to joke while tears streamed down my face and I kind of sobbed.

I decided to stop taking the Zyban.

But with anti-depressants, you’re not supposed to stop cold turkey, so instead I cut back from 2 a day to 1 a day and figured after a few days of that I would just stop the Zyban entirely.  The next day (Friday) I went out with Mom and my niece Moon to see a play of Charlotte’s Web.  I noticed that the palms of my hands and the soles of my feet were slightly itchy, but I brushed it off.  Mom noticed that I had some nasty bug bites on my elbow while we were at the (outdoor) play, so she put some After Bite on it…  I hadn’t really noticed it before, so there was no relief to even be had.

That night I was COVERED in an itchy rash that I was convinced was poison ivy.  I did some quick research on the internet for home remedies, but nothing at all worked on it.  I spent a mostly sleepless night trying to stop the itching and, in the morning (Saturday) I decided that I needed to go to Urgent Care and this was NOT poison ivy, but hives.

I stopped taking the Zyban.

The urgent care doc put me on Prednisone, which I have now taken fully and I’ve been covering the intermittent hives/rash with cortisone.  It’s helping, but not gone.  Sunday I went with Mom and Moon to 6 Flags, which was an ok distraction from the itchy itchy itchy that I’ve been trying to deal with…  it didn’t help fully, but it was certainly better than sitting home doing nothing.  We had a pretty good time.

So this entire week has been trying to deal with these hives.  The internet says that approximately 6% of people experience hives/rashes from Zyban and that they can last 2-4 weeks!  This is not cool, but I don’t really see how I have much of an option in terms of symptoms.

So I’m still not smoking and not really wanting a cigarette, which is good, but I have these other lingering feelings of dissatisfcation, which isn’t something new.  I have no idea how to get from where I am now to wherever it is that I want to be, but covered in hives doesn’t really seem to be on the right path.

I haven’t been writing about things because it’s all pretty depressing.  Hives and quitting smoking and the trivial stupid things that I’m not going to bother writing about don’t make for riviting reading, but it had been so long since I’d sat down and written, I decided I should just suck it up and put down the details.

And now I’m going to put on more cortisone.  *sigh*