I'm Nature's Mosquito

 Coming from a musical family, I listen to music almost 24 hours a day, whether it's at work, when I'm on the computer, or traveling on the bus. Sometimes, it's just for background noise, or to avoid people (public transit, thank you), but it is near constant. I don't claim to have an outstanding taste in music, and what I listen to tends to be all over the place. For some reason though, I gravitate towards music that came out in the 1970s. This can be good and bad. A lot of shit came out in those ten years, but a lot of shit comes out every decade. And sometimes, I've come to understand, it's fun to like "terrible" music- I actively listen to disco and late nineties boybands. And while there was once a time when I'd rather die than let anyone think that I would listen to One Direction, one of the most important things I've learned once I got out of high school and wised up, was to stop writing off something purely because it's what I thought people expected me to like as a teenage girl. I spent a lot of time not liking something for no reason other than me being an idiot. Being a snob is no fun, and trying to impress people who don't really care is even less fun. FutureSex/LoveSounds was a good album damn it, and I wish I would have figured that out when it came out, not years later.

  I love finding new music, and at the same time, listening to the same things over and over. One artist I could listen to forever is Jonathan Richman (and the Modern Lovers). My dad used to play Back in Your Life when I was a kid, and when I moved out, I made sure to yoink that record. It's "lo-fi" at it's most low. Goofy, sincere and heartfelt, it's amazing and ridiculous at the same time. My dad saw him live once, and said it was the quietest show he'd ever seen. Ha!

Here's a selection of my favorite Jonathan Richman songs. Most are from Back in Your Life, but there are a few others thrown in




This is my first time embedding a Spotify play list, I hope it works!

Here’s the most obvious statement I’ll ever make:

I love tv.

 Having a parent who works in the industry (even at the tiny regional market level), the tv was always on when I was a kid- if it wasn’t, that meant something was “wrong at the station”. I’m not exactly sure what that means, but every time I see a network cut to their generic logo bumper, I still think of someone scrambling to find the right tape.

Television is an easy target for people who like to shit on things. Yeah, a lot of tv is stupid. A lot of tv is downright horseshit. For every Mad Men, there’s going to be ten thousand 16 and Pregnants. But, it’s all about how you use it.  The television medium is a tool.  What it can deliver depends on how one chooses to use it. 

That being said, I have a terrible habit of latching onto a show and watching it over and over and over.  Yeah, I watch a lot of tv, volume-wise. But my variety is somewhat lacking.  Because I get stuck in the same three-show-loop, I have a tendency  to miss out on a lot of great shows.  I don’t have access to the television set in the house that’s hooked up to cable (grr), nor am I super confident about “finding” tv online (double grr), so I usually have to wait around for it to hopefully be released on Netflix, as service that has become increasingly disappointing with their selection.  Luckily for me, some networks are getting internet savvy and posting stuff on places like Hulu, or even their own websites, but I still get behind, and tend to find new shows months (years) after everyone else has seen it already.

What I’m trying to say specifically is 

GUYS 

BREAKING BAD 

 

TOP TEN MOST LIFE CHANGING SHOWS I'VE EVER WATCHED

CAPSLOCK NECESSARY

 END OF POST

Ant Dress update

I'm kind of in the middle of moving the blog around, so things may look weird around here for a while.

Anyway, I've been making some minor progress on cleaning up the ants as mentioned in the last post. My great grandmother's wedding outfit was hit the worst, and so far I've only been able to work on  the skirt. The best way I've found to be able to actually get them off has been brushing the pieces with a clean paintbrush, and despite being extremely tedious, it actually is working pretty well, and I got the skirt almost ant free in about an hour and a half yesterday. Unfortunately, another storm has moved in, and the wind and rain mean it has to hang in the laundry room until the weather clears.

The jacket and the top will be harder; there are more nooks and crannies for the ants to hide in. The sleeves seem to be where they are hiding in the top. The jacket is what's going to take the most. It's almost all  stitched down ruching with lace capelet attached to the yoke, which is perfect for them to hide.

I took these poorly lit pictures in 2009-ish, when I first received the outfit. 

There are some severe holes in the skirt and some pretty bad staining in the jacket, but it's mainly in the sleeve lining, and you can't see it from the outside. I'll be able to better assess what actually is going on when I get in there and start cleaning.

There were easily a hundred thousand ants in that box, and I'm very fortunate that the damage that was done was all that there was.

NO WHY

                                  Not even I can express my feelings as well as Joe Biden can.


Last night, I discovered that a colony of ants had made a nest in my box that held a large portion of family heirlooms. It was 11 pm when I found it, so I put it in the front room for the night and dealt with it this morning. Right as I was trying to empty the box on to some towels outside, it started to POUR down rain. AHRGH NO.

I was able to get everything out of the box and transferred the items to lidded plastic tubs on the covered back stair area, since it's supposed to continue to rain off and on today. I left the lids cracked and rigged up an umbrella over the boxes with the hopes that the remaining ants will move on on their own. I won't have a chance to even go back to look at everything until tomorrow afternoon after a furnace repair person comes (the first of four appointments I have to deal with because the owner of the house wants to have three different companies come out and look at it then decide from their bids who they want to replace it. For fuck's sake, just fix it. I don't have time for this drawn out shit. Or maybe you could just maintain it instead of letting it rust for years. That's a whole other post). Luckily I have a storage/ laundry shed I can keep the tubs in to keep them dry over night.

I think most things will be able to be salvaged. It seemed like the heart of the nest was in an old check box that had autograph books from the turn of the century in it, and one of those did get pretty damaged.  I'm very concerned about my great grandmother's wedding dress, which wasn't in good condition to begin with. I was able to rinse two petticoats and a combination underwear thing in the bath tub and hang to dry with good results, but they were in much better condition than the dress. Also, a box that my great grandfather made for her was rained on when I was trying to find something to cover it with, but the contents (INCLUDING THE ANTS IN THERE GODDAMN IT) which are tintypes and ambrotypes, seem to have escaped water damage. I think I will be able to just dump it out and brush off the ants.

I'm going to buy some smaller watertight tubs and archival paper to store everything in once I get a chance to clean it all up, and hopefully that will keep them safe from stuff like this in the future.

What a great way to start off the insanely hectic week that this week is going to be. Argh!

Being Fat and Wearing Clothes

Note:  The following is a long ramble about being fat and wearing clothes. I never get comments, but I’m not interested in negative comments about fat people and health. I will be turning comments off, just in case. If you have a problem with fat fashion, and fat people in general, the red X in the right hand corner of your browser is there for a reason. Feel free to use it and move on. 

this literally has nothing to do with anything in this post

    February is a weirdo month and I think most people hate it. Sometimes, I do too (specifically the current February ARCTIC CHILL  Portland is moving headfirst into, with temperatures not getting above 25 for the next few days. I know this isn’t a big deal, but when you live in a shitty house that has weird  heating -and therefore you have to heat the whole thing with expensive and dangerous space heater- and very old crappy pipes, it’s a big deal. Ain’t no body that can afford to deal with that mess if they burst).

    There’s a lot of good things about this month too.  75% off candy on February 15^th, President’s week if you’re still in school, and rounding out the month, my birthday.  I’ve never really been into birthdays, and most of the time my plans to do anything fall through and I do nothing, but whatever. I still like buying myself and mowing fancy six dollar tiramisu cake from Fred Meyer and getting free samples from Sephora.

    BUT most of all, my favorite thing about February, is the month-long  event in the blog-o-sphere (ick, I hate that term. I immediately regret using it, and deeply apologize.) and real-o-sphere (less sorry about that one) known as FATSHION FEBRUARY. A whole month dedicated to plus sized gals (and guys, do yo, be fabu) talking about fashion, sharing outfits, and being awesome while not fitting into the mainstream idea of what is acceptable. I’m not anywhere near being a fat activist, nor am I good at participating in Fatshion February, due to a number of reasons that are lame excuses (no full length mirror or tripod, or self timer camera that isn’t my phone, or I’m poor and actually don’t have very many clothes, dress kind of boring, ect ect ect), but I always get excited to be able to see what others do.  Though the fat community is thriving (and gaining participants everyday), it’s still pretty underground.  Since there is very, very little outside inspiration that actually caters to larger people, I think  a lot of people have gain inspiration from within the community.  I know that’s how it is for me.  Seeing an outfit or style that you like on anyone is inspiring, but being able to see how to put together ideas and outfits on a body that is like yours is revolutionary. 

 

LONG SAD BACKSTORY TIME:

    I’ve been plus sized, fat, large, overweight,  whatever you want to call it (I just say fat. It’s the truth, and I don’t see it as a negative insult any more.) since I was about 13.  I’ve been roughly the same size since then (weight and height. I also stopped growing at that age.) and have always been interested in fashion and dressing up. I always admire(d) people who didn’t care and just wore whatever they wanted. When I was a teenager, I wore some weird stuff, and tried to put forth the image that I didn’t care, but I did.  I know now that stems back to some pretty severe bullying I went through in elementary school, specifically having parts of my clothing ripped off  because it wasn’t acceptable to the bully, but back then, I had a hard time with my subconscious fear of being singled out.  I remember very distinctly being in junior high, wearing a skirt to school instead of pants, and stressing out about making up excuses about why I was wearing something ‘out of the ordinary’.  In high school, I still worried about what people would think, and more so, that they would call me out on something.  All of these feelings have a tendency to double as a fat person, because aside from asshole teenagers telling you you’re weird for wearing whatever, you also have everyone else in the world saying you’re “gross” or “lazy”, “stupid” and that you should really only wear black, or bootcut jeans, a v-neck tee shirt and a long cardigan to cover anything.

    As an adult,  through a series of circumstances including moving to a new city (emphasis on city, not backwash that still thinks knock-off UGGS and a baggy sweatshirt with pot related sports brand puns are fashionable), being around new people that didn’t know or care about my lame 14-year-old baggage, and finding the fat community, I learned the singular most important lesson regarding self-esteem and happiness:

Fuck that.

    People will always feel that they are entitled to comment on your appearance. People will always hide their own insecurities by telling you you’re too fat to wear stripes (where did that come from? SERIOUSLY), or that they’re really “concerned for you” because you’re so unhealthy and you’re not a size ____ .  I’m not interested in your false concern for my health based off my  appearance. I’m not interested in your opinion of whether skinny jeans makes me look round.  And I’m most not interested in your ideas that fat people should hide themselves in baggy clothes. Being fat isn’t a character flaw. It’s other people’s that hold you back from doing things, not your appearance.  

    Recently a friend told me that seeing some of the plus sized fashion I happened to be pinning on my pinterest really inspired her, because she didn’t think that large people could dress in certain ways.  While that statement made me both angry and sad, I’m so glad she said it to me. It reminded me that there is so much left to do in the fight towards fat acceptance, and personal style acceptance. 

 As I mentioned earlier, I don’t have a great wardrobe (in my opinion) for numerous reasons. Work dress codes that force me to spend my  clothing budget on certain styles of clothing, limited availability (especially before I moved to Oregon. My hometown, barely has a Target, let alone stores that actually cater to plus sizes), financial reasons. I don’t really have the money to be able to purchase the pieces I’d like to. When a pair of the exact same pants (EXACT) is seven dollars more because of the size difference between 16 in straight sizes and an 18 in plus sizes, we have a real problem.  Charging fat people more money for barely any more fabric is a crime, and yet another way to shame and humiliate people who don’t fit into the norm. There is considerably less fabric difference between sizes 16 and 18 than there is between a 4 and a 12, yet the latter two are priced the same. WHY. But knowing that if I COULD wear whatever, I would, is very liberating. That's personal character development to the max, and one of the things that I'm most proud about myself as I approach my 25th birthday, along with going to the dentist alone and calling a taxi for myself.

    Anyway, long rambling digressions aside, I may not participate in the fatshion community as much as I’d like through outfits of the day, or blogging, but by continuing to wear whatever the hell I want, I hope that I am contributing a  tiny bit, even if it’s just inspiring others to wear what they feel good in, just as the fat community does for me.

A small selection of my favorite places to see, buy  and experience fat fashion are below.

http://fuckyeahchubbyfashion.tumblr.com/

Everyday people submit their outfits. A huge range of sizes and styles is always inspring!

http://www.nearsightedowl.com/

www.zerostyleblog.com/   plus the plus sized boutique she co manages http://www.redressnyc.com

http://www.diyfatshion.com/

Modcloth

http://www.modcloth.com

This brand has been around for a while, but they recently started carrying plus sizes. ACTUAL plus sized models too, not this throw a 10 on a size 4 model and call it good bullshit. They have a thriving community as well, and reviews that allow customers to post photographs, so you can see the item on before you buy it. 

Torrid

http://www.torrid.com

full disclosure, I worked for torrid for a bit a few years ago and sometimes their products left a lot to be desired. They are very expensive as well, but they have the best fitting jeans for my shape I’ve ever found, the Stiletto Skinny. They are a true skinny jean, with real pockets (front and back) and a zip and button closure. They have an “ankle” length 26” inseam version which fit me perfectly as regular jeans at my short height. FORMER PRO-TIP: if you can afford to shop for jeans there, and have never tried on their kind of weird sizing, please ask an employee for help with the sizing and PLEASE try it on. Some of the name descriptions are misleading and don’t actually fit like you’d expect them to. 

Asos:

http://us.asos.com/Women-Curve-Plus-Size/1122im/?cid=9577&via=top

British brand that has a pretty good plus size line. Most of it isn’t my style, but I know people who really love their products.

Fat Fancy in SW Portland.

http://www.fatfancyfashions.com/

 I can personally attest to the greatness of this secondhand shop that carries vintage and new fashions for the bigger sizes. They don’t go by numbers, but instead label their sizes with fun descriptions, and are incredibly well priced.

Pinterest is also an invaluable one-stop resource, though I advise to read comments with caution. Someone always feels the need to put their negative, unwanted two cents in.