Missing Istanbul

View of European Istanbul from the ferry to the Asian side.

As February draws to a close, I realize it’s been over a year since I visited Istanbul, Turkey. Even longer since I went anywhere else except Slovakia, Austria, and Hungary(not like that’s small zemiaky, but, you know, those 3 countries basically all meet at a corner and that corner is pretty much where I was living).

I’ve been in the same country for over 6 months in a row! Where is my sense of adventure?…although I guess that I have been to New York, California, Minnesota, and various spots in between, it doesn’t feel the same somehow. There’s this feeling I get when I’ve traveled somewhere for the first time, and I get back, and some time goes by, and I look at my pictures, and I think, “You know, I could do that so much better now.” Like I got smarter at traveling or something, even if I know I really didn’t.

You see, when I was in Istanbul, I got lost a lot. Or rather, we got lost a lot, dear Willow (travel name) and I.

One of our first encounters is Asia- firemen getting a cat out of a tree.

We took a ferry to Asia with nothing but an address and her iPod’s GPS to get us where Willow wanted to go (we didn’t get there).

We wandered around the bazaar for hours one day, getting heckled by various sellers- “Hey Britney! Hey Christina! Hey insert-popular-celebrity-white-girl-name!”- and then not knowing what we actually wanted to buy.

We tried to get to the airport with little knowledge of how to do so, beyond a rough knowledge of which buses might get us there and some idea of the direction and how long it might take us if we stopped at the Chora church on the way; a trip that ended in us grumpy, almost walking off in opposite directions in some mad competition to see who was smart enough to find the airport.

This is kind of our relationship the entire trip.

Shortly after that, we were at a loss for finding vegetarian food that our end-of-vacation budgets could afford, and were only sustained in the end by a strange and mysterious stand right outside the city walls, where a man was sell mozzarella-like sandwiches for practically pennies right when we’d given up hope; I was seriously considering huddling on a park bench and waiting to see if my family or my coworkers missed me when I disappeared.

Willow and I went on several trips that year, sometimes with other people, for anywhere from a day to nearly a week. Istanbul was by far both the most expensive and the most poorly planned. And yet, looking back, I still miss it and wish I could go back and try again, petting the cats and eating the street doughnuts and trying to haggle less pathetically.

Sometimes I think I miss the street doughnuts most of all.

Oddly enough, I sort of hate traveling. But I hate staying in the same place for too long even more.

I also miss Rabbit Face, my absolute best friend for about 15 minutes.

This was completely unintentional (please believe me)

I hate Valentine’s Day.

But somehow I managed to get dress this morning and put on a “I Heart Haiti” shirt…and layer pink chambray on top.

I am so hipster, I intentionally-accidentally-on-purpose wore both pink and hearts on Valentine’s day. I…I have no idea.

I tried to make a neutral expression. I ended up at least feeling like I looked even sillier than when I look silly on purpose. Oh well.

Button-down: Old Navy

T shirt: Herbivore Clothing

Shawl: Unsinkable by Kirstin Kapur, using the original kit in Wooly Wonka Fibers’ Arionrhod Sock in iceberg.

A month. A challenge.

I have all these sweaters, and I never wear them. And I have all these other sweaters, and I never finish them.

I also have all these clothes in general, but during the winter months, if I’m not working, I end up wearing sweatpants because “I’m cold”. And then when I was working as a server I wore what I had to wear every day.

So because dressing like an adult makes you act (more) like one and wearing your knitted items makes you feel accomplished, this month I’m going to challenge myself to wear something knitted every day. And not just winter hats when it’s cold, but sweaters/skirts/vests.

Today I started with Aidez again, although I switched to another sweater later after I put buttons on it (I’ll photograph that one Sunday unless I get even lazier).

Added a hat because my hair felt messy. Ended up looking like a hipster instead. My life.

Will this make me more productive? Who knows. Some days I need all the help I can get.

 

The Real Lie About Healthy Weight.

I’m mad. I’ve been mad about this for years. And I’m too mad to not write about it anymore. In fact I wish I could go up to random strangers in the street about it, because that’s how mad I am.

Do you know what a healthy woman weighs?

Do you? I bet you don’t. I bet you have no idea. And you know why? Because if you think you do, the woman in question is probably lying.

Okay, yes, that’s probably an accepted reality, but I want to take it a step further and say that even healthy women, athletic women, strong women, lie shamelessly about their weight. To the point where I just might eat an entire chocolate cake by myself because I must just be clinically obese by comparison.

Did you know that as of this very moment, Maria Sharapova is reported to weigh 130 pounds? Yes, this Maria Sharapova, the one who is over 6 feet tall, has won every single tennis grand slam at least once, the one who screams like a banshee when she hits a tennis ball.

Do you know what her BMI would be if she really weighed 130 pounds and was 6’2″, her reported weight? 16.69. That’s almost 2 whole points less than 18.5, the usual limit for being a healthy weight.

Does this woman look dangerously underweight to you?

But, as my mom put it, we refuse to believe that a “healthy” woman weighs more than 150 pounds. No matter what she looks like, no matter how tall she is or what she does for a living. On the daily show, a guest on/pundit from ABC is quoted as saying that the problem with women in the military is that “A marine who’s 6’4″ and 240 pounds” and needs to be carried to safety can’t be when the marine next to him is “5’4″ and 115 pounds”.

You really think a woman can get through basic training and still weight HALF what her male colleagues do? Do you? DO YOU? The reality is that while in some circumstances she might, my guess is she would have had to put on a significant amount of muscle to get through. Or probably never weighed 115 pounds to begin with.

Real Talk: I am 5’4″. I probably haven’t weighed 115 pounds since I was about 9.

But it’s not just pundits or Wikipedia that this affects. It’s everyone. A few months ago I visited a friend and went with her to visit her work; she works as a sporting goods/bike shop. While there, her coworker described another employee, who I think was about 5’9″ or 5’10″ and also a competitive skater. The girl in question, who was very thin, had hurt her mouth and needed to go in a liquid diet. “She’s probably going to lose about 10 or 20 pounds!” He cried. “She probably only weighs about 110 to start with!” I actually tried to correct him and said, “You know, if she has all that muscle I bet she weighs at least 10 or 20 pounds more than that.” “Oh, no, I’m sure she can’t weigh more than 120″ he corrected me.

Because as a woman, I can’t possibly have any clue what women weigh.

Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not trying to say that I know what other women weigh any more than I know what other men weigh. However, this idea that even a healthy woman can’t weigh more than a really scrawny man is detrimental. Women are expected to have breasts and butts and hips. We’re told we need to have “curves”. And yet we have to somehow fit all that into a certain number of pounds, like some sort of deranged algebra problem.

Weight+Curves+Makeup+Hair always has to = less than you could possibly imagine. And if it doesn’t, lie.

If you wonder why girls under 10 are dieting, why there are so many magazines devoted to weight loss, why everything in the store comes in “diet” as well as regular (even water, I feel like), this is one of the big reasons.

It’s why women in Hollywood can lose 20 pounds left and right (I’m looking at you, Kirstie Alley and Jessica Simpson) and yet still maintain their enormous chests. Because they never were honest about what they weighed in the first place, and they’re not starting now- they’re just throwing numbers at you and waiting to see which one gets you to buy their product.

It’s why women like Mayim Bialik can consider themselves fat- she has referred to herself more than once in her blog as “the fattest woman in Hollywood” while looking like this:

Fattest woman in Hollywood?

If you’re wondering about a proposed solution to this, it’s simple and not really new.

Weigh yourself if you want, use it to measure your own progress, but stop telling other people like it means something.

We should measure our fitness success by things like finishing more crunches, running farther, eating more vegetables and still not getting hungry. By how our pants or skirts fit and whether or not we can eat lunch without our waistbands feeling tight. Because when we compare ourselves to others, we lie to keep from falling short; and when we lie, we all fall short in the end.

FOs: First and Last of 2012 & 2013

 

It was the end of December, I was bored with sweaters and other long projects, and I wanted a hat. Something in a nice blue that was warm-ish without being really thick. Sort of slouchy. Preferably free. Nesaia fit the bill nicely, and I had just the right amount of yarn left in that shade. It was a good final thing for 2012.

I wasn’t trying to smirk here. I also think my mouth looks big. But then I think that’s because my mouth is big.

On Monday night I was clearing out yarn again and I remembered I had some bulky left and I’d wanted to try making a drop-stitch cowl. I didn’t have enough to make a whole cowl, so I made one that was about half, and only had about 3 inches of yarn left, so it worked out pretty well.

I’m kind of in a lipstick phase.

Although to be honest, it’s not my first-first thing of January, just my first for myself. Not bad for a couple of hours, though.

NaNoWriMo Redux

Me, by November 9th.

I failed in November. See, I had this idea that in order for NaNoWriMo to really count, I had to start from scratch. Never mind that I had the story I started last year that I really wanted to continue. Never mind that I have this other idea I got on my way home from Europe that occasionally comes back to burn a fire in my brain. I had to use this other idea I’d toyed with for years but never even sort of put in paper because then it was “real”.

Screw that.

Now I’m doing it over, And I’m doing it my way. I’m starting tonight with a new 30 Day Novel Challenge. That’s what I’m calling it. I’m not starting at the beginning of the month, I’m not starting it with a “new” idea, and I’m not starting it when everybody, their brother, and their slightly tired-of-life English teacher is trying to write a novel. Don’t get me wrong, I love NaNoWriMo and am not one of those people who thinks it belittles writing, not at all. I just think it’s something that adds a lot of pressure. The knowledge that other people I knew were doing it, that they knew I was, that they might be writing more and faster than I was…it was stressful. Like senior pictures or ACTs or being on the elliptical next to someone else who at least appears to be moving faster than you. Sure, you could turn to that person and tell them that you like to do your workout on the highest setting possible so it only looks like you’re barely keeping up, or you could tell the person studying an ACT prep book that you prefer to take tests without studying, but the fact is they’ll never stop thinking that they’re somehow more proficient or prepared than you. So all you can do is keep writing. But it can be hard when you miss a day and think “I bet the people who actually GET their 50k total aren’t missing days”.

So, anyway, the point is I’m doing it the way I want to.

I have written up character maps, scene lists, small character background bios, even some other various notations on my “world”.

I am following various websites of suggestions, particularly this one, although I’ve already broken the first rule by telling you I’m writing a novel (although that’s all you’re getting in the way of details right now).

I am also forgoing worrying too much about finding a second job while I do this (my other part time one has pretty much dried up). For the next 30 days, this IS my job.

On that note, back to work.

Resolutely.

That is how I hope to go into this year. Resolutely, with goals and aspirations and most importantly a work ethic. I used to have one, so I know they exist.

Anyway, I did set some goals last year and I know I met some of them (read 52 books, meet the Maccabeats, run a half marathon) and didn’t meet others (knit 12 sweaters, finish a book, run a full marathon), and this year I’m tweaking a few and adding one big one that I’ll talk about tomorrow. In the meantime, my general

Goals for 2013

Run another half marathon

Run a full marathon

Knit, start to finish, 12 Sweaters/vests/skirts this year

Finish the other 2-4 sweaters on my needles

Learn more Hebrew, Italian, and Yiddish

Finish a novel and either self-publish it or start sending it to publishers

Start auditioning and acting again

Move somewhere I’ve always wanted to live, like the east or west coast

Pay down the rest of my credit debt

Pay off my smallest student loan

I’ve decided this year not to set “blog this many times” or “run this many times” goals, because I forgot about them easily. I’m also starting small with my financial goals but might add more later on in the year, if I finish these; same with the writing ones. I also cut down my languages I want to learn a bit to the ones I actually did start working on in 2012. I also don’t know if I’ll blog any of the books I read this year, but I’ll try to keep a list on Goodreads, something I didn’t do last year.

Really though, my goals for 2013 could be summed up in one thing: Not need a day job. Is this realistic? I don’t know. What I do know is that for the last 4 months I was working part-time as a server at a local restaurant. Not a hard job. Paid pretty well for the time. And I still hated it. Not so much for the job as the fact that I had it, that I had to be on someone else’s schedule again and the amount of work I did, and the money I made, was really just up to everyone else. So if I can avoid that in any way by the end of 2013- through freelance, acting, writing, whatever- and be able to live mostly on my own schedule, I will try to do it.