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My Website is Having Issues
Hey y’all. Been having some difficulties on the back end of my website. I run Wordpress, and have since the beginning of this blog in 2008. In the past almost eight years I’ve had four big issues, three with hacks and now some backend weird issue with memory allocation. I’m still trying to get it figured out through the Wordpress tune-up service from my host. They migrated my site to a new dedicated Wordpress server, so folks who have my site cached might have to do some kind of cleansing to get to my site again. Cleansing is good for you? I’m trying to adjust my attitude to seeing this as a positive thing, even though it’s stressful to be on the road and trying to manage stuff from afar. Also I got sick in Illinois and it’s cutting our trip short. More on that later!
I would love to have a Wordpress expert person on call who can help me with this stuff as it pops up. (It always happens kind of urgently and I scramble to get someone to help.) Also looking for advice from folks who have blogs with lots of hits about how you handle your backend web stuff. Anyone out there know of a Wordpress expert who is taking new clients let me now. queerfatfemme at gmail
Until it all gets fixed, please be patient if you find weirdness trying to read entries on the site. And greetings and happy new year from Truth or Consequences, NM, where I have spent the past 18 hours sleeping, resting, and healing in the magical hot springs water of Blackstone Hot Springs!
See You Laters instead of Goodbyes: My Last Moments as a New Yorker and First Stop on the Road
Pro-tip: if you know someone going through an intense cross-country move, text them “How can I help?” Pro-tip: if you are going through a cross-country move and someone asks how they can help, take them up on it. I have had to work through some intense “I’m an independent babe, I need to appear perfect” in order to be in a place to receive help. I’m so glad I have done that work because we really needed that help. If I had said, “No, we’re okay!” I would have lost out on hanging out with Victoria AND likely devolved into sobbing and fighting with Dara.
I’m Totally Having So Much Fun on Snapchat Here’s Why
Recently a couple of bloggers I like mentioned that they were Snapchatting. When I got a new phone I decided to try it again.
Snapchat is so different now and I’m really enjoying it!
Here are some things I’ve been doing over at my Snapchat story:
Tours of where I’m at (I travel soooo much sometimes, especially in the last few months)
Narrating my favorite parts about NYC
Nightlife adventures—the last couple of weeks I’ve been going out a lot!
Cute videos of Macy
Tiny diary-like snippets (e.g. a couple weeks ago I talked about how like how I leave blank space in the calendar intentionally so I have time for mini side adventures)
Goofing off with my friends (When I hang with Victoria chances are she might be scantily clad and when I hang with Jacqueline she will usually do a boob shimmy for my snapchat viewers)
Dance party at the Bed Bath and Beyond (that happened with Dara)
A tour of a sparkly and amazing Femme apartment (Hi Bridget!)
Wedding venue I officiated
On Activism, Capacity and Seeing Yourself as “Enough”
Activist movements, as in almost all things, can suck you dry—there is always more to be done, more people to reach out to, more actions to plan, more art to make, more reaching out. But at a certain point you have to be able to say, this is my limit. But we’re not socialized in a way to know what our limits are, to think thoughtfully about our capacity, and how to use self care in order to build our capacity. We’re not socialized to be able to say, “Enough, I can’t do this any longer.” I’ve seen it wear down on people until disease forces them to make big life changes.
How Castro Valley is Not the Castro
When we were driving to Northern CA for my partner to have a work meeting in San Francisco during our post-chemo road trip last Fall, she made the mistake of confusing my hometown of Castro Valley, CA with the famous district of The Castro in San Francisco. The two places are only a 30 minute drive apart, but could not be further from one another in many ways.
I wasn’t so excited to show Dara my hometown, but it was very important for me to dispel any confusing thoughts she had about the two places. I share below some of the highlights.
Florida Keys: Wandering Key West and “The Art of Doing Nothing”
All of the locals we interacted with were fantastic and super weird. Whether weird in appearance or not, upon interacting with them they were definitely not what I would call “normals” and were lively, fun folks.* It was the tourists who had me on guard. (Unbeknownst to us, it was Spring Break.)
That first day we wandered Key West I noticed the tourist crowd, but quickly ignored it to enjoy the beauty of the old wooden houses and taking our wander through the town. It was so lovely.
Florida Keys: Big Pine Key, Key Deer and Kayaking
We had such a great time in this magical little cabin! I am glad we stayed somewhere unusual rather than in a motel or resort because I love having an adventure.
It was really a cross between glamping and a hotel room, as it is a room with walls, windows and a comfy queen size bed. But the sink, shower and toilet were all outside.
Key Deer are about the size of a small big dog. Smaller than a Great Dane, taller than a Golden Retriever. But SO cute. The first one I met followed me around the cabin as I took photos. Another one (although hard to tell if they were the same Doe or a different Doe) licked Dara’s pajamas.
Florida Keys: Paddleboard Yoga as a Paddleboard Novice Fatty
It was a you tube video that brought me to Paddleboard Yoga! As soon as we saw it, Dara and I decided this was a top priority vacation activity.
I’ve been doing yoga off and on for six years but I’ve never been on a paddleboard. If I want to scoot around on water I prefer a kayak, where I can sit and enjoy the water while paddling. The idea of doing yoga on a paddleboard seemed scary in a fun way–I have a hard enough time with balance in the studio! Dara had never been paddleboarding, either, and she is not a huge fan of yoga but was totally sold on the adventure.
We made a reservation with Lazy Dog Paddle Yoga (the studio? paddleboard rental place? featured in the video) and drove down to Key West from our cabin on Big Pine Key.
Five Ways I Shake Off Body Oppressive Rhetoric During the New Year’s Resolution Bandwagon
As I was preparing to leave Seattle I found myself really excited to go to the gym and drink green juice, smoothies and detox from sugar. And as I heard the same kind of “drink all the green juice!!!” and “get a new gym membership!!!” trumpets from the anti-fat mainstream media and billion dollar weight loss industry in conjunction with the new year’s resolution influx of people working to lose weight for the umpteenth time, I felt gross about it. Like, here I was wanting to participate in something that is also being used as weapons against bodies like mine.
I thought a lot about what was going on in my head about this stuff and how it was that I have herstorically dealt with the new year’s uptick in relentless weight loss commercials, before and after I began eating in alignment with my body and going to the gym. I came up with some ways that I’ve used to make sense of the complex and seemingly contradictory relationship I have with loving my fat body, hating the sizeist media and making choices that help my body feel its best.
Click here to read the whole article. Plus a few pictures from my holiday trip to Dollywood!
My Fun Story About the Recreational Cannabis Store in Seattle
The last day of our visit I really wanted to go do something in nature. Seattle has these pretty spectacular views of mountains (almost 360 degrees) and gorgeous parks and evergreen trees and I knew going back to Brooklyn meant WINTER in full effect. Nature chills me out and helps me reboot. Unfortunately the weather had other ideas and it wasn’t just gloomy and no views that day, but raining. No one else was game for nature so I said, “Let’s do something really Seattle-y.” We decided to go to the flagship REI store to look around and to stop at the recreational marijuana store because I had never been to a store to purchase cannabis before and I thought it might make a fun story. Like “Hey friends, guess what I did in Seattle??”