Whether you’re a mother, a mutha, or a daughter, let’s celebrate the beautiful circle of life. Rock on with your bad selves!

(Image via 100 Ways to Kill a Peep)

Hot cross buns and Hendrick’s for the Western Churchgoers,

Or black jelly beans and bourbon for the festive yet unaffiliated;

May your Passover, Holy Week, Easter or Half-Price Cadbury Eggs Day be meaningful, joyful and full of love.

(But seriously, save me some black jelly beans. You cannot find them here.)

It’s Shrove Tuesday, more popularly known as Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras and Pancake Tuesday. People everywhere will be getting their flapjack on in order to get all their indulgent behavior out of the way before Lent which starts tomorrow for the Western Church (those Eastern guys with the awesome beards and whatnot have their own schedule. Also better baked goods. Schisms ruin everything fun).

It’s common for people who observe Lent to also observe a Lenten discipline.

Back in the olden days it was usually giving up something; meat, chocolate, booze, swearing…you know, pretty much everything that makes life fun.

That never really worked for me.

I’d give up the lot and come Easter morning…nada. I hadn’t evolved in my spiritual journey one bit. The only thing I got out of it was a habit of swearing like Wally Cleaver. Gee Willickers!

More recently the trend has been towards adding something beneficial to your life, often in the form of volunteering and study.

I’m all about that, especially the volunteering because most of us should be ashamed at how little time we dedicate to the poor and needy people of this world, but in addition to service and study, I’m going to try something a little new this year.

I’m going to work on my self-maintenance.

(photo courtesy of the wonderful and amazing Lady Mechanic Initiative of Nigeria)

This whole relocation thing has been a tough row to hoe and I’ve let myself slip the way so many of us do when we have supposedly bigger fish to fry (because apparently it’s also folksy idiom day here at Manolo for the Big Girl).

I’ve found myself making less of an effort each morning to dress “just so” or to do my hair or makeup.

Why bother? I don’t have many posh parties or elegant soirees to attend, heck, I haven’t been to a restaurant that has more than three walls in a month, I’m not going to be here long enough to need social currency (I’m moving farther south in May) and I’ve already got the single best looking man in the entire country wrapped around my little finger, among other places and he’s certainly not going anywhere. Why not traipse around in the proverbial bunny slippers until three in the afternoon?

Because habitual self-indulgence is bad for you.

Okay, okay. Self-indulgence isn’t bad for you per se, but when you exchange self-care for self-indulgence and that self-indulgence turns into self-neglect (like it can and so often does) you have found yourself careening down a dangerously slippery slope which ends in Froot Loops from a mixing bowl, unattended facial hair and yoga pants worn in non-yoga situations. Sometimes in public.

That’s just not okay.

That’s not okay because women are so devalued as it is, and fat women especially, that we can’t really afford to tell the world “Go ahead and treat me like garbage or ignore my voice and my needs. After all, I’m doing it to myself so it MUST be okay.”

A girl has got to maintain. I’m not saying you have to dress and do your hair and makeup, that’s just my own example. For someone else it could be meditation or target practice or taking better control of your finances. Whatever.

Tomorrow I’m going to get up and make myself a proper breakfast (though I’m not going to lie; a fat slice of homemade not-too-sweet sweet potato pie with a rosemary shortbread crust using ingredients from my garden, all accompanied by a large milky cafe au lait with chicory was a pretty damn fine breakfast, especially for Mardi Gras morning) and eat it outside under the shade  of my lime tree.

I might not even hurl verbal abuse at the &^%$ roses if I’m feeling charitable.

Then I’m going to get dressed like an actual grown up with a job that doesn’t involve being Jack Tripper’s landlady and get a haircut, which I need if for no other reason than to stop people asking me if I’m “growing it out for the wedding.” and then…well, then I don’t know what I’ll do. Work on the book, make a lesson plan for my English students, do a little gardening (backyard only, I learned the hard way that a white woman doing her own yard work quickly becomes a spectator sport punctuated every few minutes by a guy with a truck full of shovels offering his services).

I’m going to commit to self-care for 40 days, plus Sundays and I hope by the time Easter rolls around I’ll be back on track to treating myself the way I want others to treat me. Maybe you will too.

I still want the sweet potato pie, though.

Case in point:

This morning I woke up with my face smashed against what I’m sure was once a very pretty carnation (one of my favorite scents in the world is spicy, peppery carnation) before my nocturnal alter ego, Kicky McFlailsalot, got to it. Then I followed a trail of far less abused flowers down the stairs of stately Villa Plumcake which led to a multimedia display of looooove, featuring hundreds of hand-cut paper hearts with “Miss Plumcake & Hot Latin Boy” strewn all over the kitchen, a floral arrangement that is 100% blissfully free of a single Perfunctory Red Rose of Phoned In-ness, and an enormous multi-layered silk-screened sign spanning the entire length of my kitchen.

I, on the other hand, got him a card that had glitter on it and wrote he could use it as an excuse to hug a stripper without me knowing about it.

Ain’t love grand.

What I’m saying is this: I still kind of think Valentine’s Day is lame and commercialized past the endurance of a block and is custom designed to separate the Haves from the Have Nots by method of dopey overpriced flowers delivered in public places (and not by family money and good bone structure, the way Jesus intended) but love, whether you’ve got someone to share it with or not, is a pretty big honking deal and there are worse things we could do than pay a little attention to it.

Love, like rain and chimichurri breath, falls on the just and the unjust alike. You meet someone, you act like you are brain damaged and maybe if you’re lucky they act like they’re brain damaged too and it’s all butterflies and Lisa Frank and then you settle down to the business of trying to be good to each other and not, say, sleep with the SCORCHING HOT TORERO-in-training who was giving you the total glad eye at the birria place across from Plaza Monumental even though you have wanted to hit one of those since you first read The Sun Also Rises when you were 16 and existentialist and hadn’t yet figured out that “damaged” is not the same as “interesting”.

Ahem. Just an example.

Anyone who has ever made it past the training wheels of puberty knows love isn’t always great, or easy or anything close to permanent. I don’t need to tell you that. But it’s pretty great all the same, so whether you’re lucky (and it IS luck) enough to have a partner or if you’re doin’ it for yourself this year, Happy Valentine’s Day.

Here’s to love, romance and pudgy dudes with wings and antiquated weaponry.

Oh, and if some of these fantastic animated interviews from StoryCorps don’t make you cry, you have no soul. But I still like you.

 

Valentine’s day is on tuesday.

I can’t wait to see what Mr. Twistie does for me… though we’ll probably celebrate on monday. You see, he’s finally figured out that just getting in the car and heading for a favorite restaurant on february 14 rarely results in us getting a romantic meal. More often it results in us circling parking lot after parking lot while he apologizes over and over again. On the other hand, he still doesn’t ever make reservations. So for the last couple years, we’ve chosen a favorite place to eat on the night before Valentine’s day. It’s nice. We don’t get stuck with a prix fixe menu full of things neither of us particularly care for but that are generally considered romantic. We don’t have to deal with big crowds. In fact, Valentine’s eve is a great time to find really good restaurants nearly empty.

We’re also a tidge on the casual side about tying ourselves to the calendar. It works for us. I don’t imagine it would work for everyone, but we like it.

For some people, I imagine it would strike them as… well… something like this:

That’s okay, too. There are probably things I think are the end of the world that don’t matter to much of anyone else. Scratch that. There are things that I think are the end of the world that don’t matter to anybody else at all.

And it may be a misty watercolor memory from a heck of a lot of yonks ago, but I do remember those V-days when I was a solo act. Even then I didn’t mind the holiday. Even when I was on my own I was a little in love with love. I had my dreams. I had people I loved who loved me, even if it wasn’t in a romantic way. I was still an annoying cockeyed optimist, albeit one with a somewhat perversely dark sense of humor.

Speaking of that sense of dark humor, I find it oddly amusing that this year february 14 – yes, Valentine’s day – is National Organ Donor Day. It’s also Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Day, and in the UK, it’s National Impotence Day. I kid you not.

So what does this all add up to? Pretty much just some amusing trivia.

How about all of you? Any thoughts, funny stories, bizarre coincidences, or diatribes connected to Valentine’s day or love in general?

Welcome 2012.

So. New Year’s. That time when everyone makes huge resolutions about spending the year building world peace, inventing cures for cancer, and losing huge amounts of weight. This time for sure!

Yeah, right.

Me? I still make some resolutions… small ones. Goals I can actually reach if I put in a bit of effort. I make resolutions about finding ways to be slightly better organized, kinder to other people, and more thoughtful about how I spend some of my time. And while I make a couple for January first, I don’t necessarily make all my resolutions then, either.

There’s an art to making resolutions that stick. You have to choose things you’re actually ready to do, make them big enough to challenge you in some way, but not so huge that you’re doomed from the outset, and you have to recognize that even if you don’t succeed at all of them, that doesn’t mean you’re an utter failure. Oh, and it helps a lot to keep the list fairly short.

Me? I’m vowing to be a better, more active FA activist this year. I’m going to keep right on being visible and fat. And while I firmly believe that others have every right to do as they please with their bodies – including dieting for weight loss and having bariatric surgery – I do not believe that this right requires me to agree with their decisions or actively support actions I believe to be more harmful than otherwise. I will continue to wear my scarlet Fat proudly, eat what I darn well please in public, talk loudly about human rights, and wear my new bright orange coat with great elan. Anyone who has a problem with that? Is cordially invited to eat a great big bowl of Mind Your Own Business Flakes.

I’m resolved to re-organize my kitchen this year. I haven’t done it since we moved in in 2001 and things have gotten a bit cockeyed, what with getting more kitchen stuff and just kind of jamming it in where I found a dab of space. Now there are cupboards that are unholy vortexes and I fear I will be sucked in. It’s time to pull everything out and put it all back together in a way that makes more sense… and maybe even get rid of a couple things that aren’t worth keeping.

Yeah, those are pretty much the resolutions I’ve made for this year. More will probably pop up along the way, but those are my big goals.

How about you? Anyone out there in Big Girl Land got a good one to share with the class? Do you have a secret for keeping resolutions?

Always remember: life is too short for cheap champagne, and never eat caviar with a metal spoon!

May your holiday be as fabulous as Harvey in his seasonal drag!

Me? I’m finishing up some last-minute baking and watching Christmas movies. There are a lot of great films based on a Christmas theme. You know, like It’s a Wonderful Life:

Treacly? Yes, yes it is. But then Capra’s genius lay not in his subtlety, but in his optimism.

And then there are the not-so-greats, like Santa Claus vs the Martians:

Unforgettably craptastic.

But some of my favorite Christmas films aren’t really recognized as being holiday-centric. And a couple of my other faves… well, the theme is undeniable but they don’t make for the most traditionally heartwarming viewing.

Want to know my top five fave Christmas movies? Read on after the cut… and remember that neither of the above films is on that list.

Bad Santa. It’s rude, it’s crude, it’s full of utterly despicable characters… and yet I adore it. Billy Bob Thornton is brilliant as the slow-witted conman whose annual big con is to play a department store Santa and rob the store on Christmas Eve. Tony Cox is the elf who plans it all and does his level best to keep Thornton sober enough to keep his job. The late, great Bernie Mac turns in a gloriously wicked performance as the crooked department store security man, the late lamented John Ritter is howlingly funny as the HR guy so full of white guilt he can’t even fire a drunken Santa and his abusive elf, and the very much still with us Lauren Graham is gut wrenchingly funny as the woman with a very kinky Santa fixation. This one is not for the kiddies and it won’t give you sugarplum dreams, but it’s the perfect antidote for too much seasonal saccharine.

A Christmas Carol. Specifically, the 1984 one with George C. Scott as Scrooge. As good as various other Scrooges have been over the years, Scott is the only one I feel makes him an entirely human character. This is also the one production I can think of where Tiny Tim really looks sick, rather than just using a crutch. This boy (Anthony Walters) looks like you could knock him down with a feather. Add in terrific supporting performances by: David Warner, Roger Rees, Angela Pleasance, Frank Finlay, Susannah York, and Edward Woodward (whose turn as the Ghost of Christmas Present is clearly the deranged bastard son of Michael Caine and Richard Harris) and suddenly Dicken’s tale of redemption becomes far more plausible and touching.

The Lion in Winter. See? I told you there would be something most people wouldn’t think of as a Christmas movie. And yet the whole story takes place over Christmas. Peter O’Toole and Katharine Hepburn lead an amazing cast in this tale of treachery, in-fighting, and family holidays. It also contains my mother’s favorite line from any film ever. The first person to guess what that might be wins a gold star and my unending admiration.

The Nightmare Before Christmas. It’s not just for Halloween anymore. From the Kurt Weill-inspired music to the exquisite claymation to the wonderful vocal performances, this is hard to beat.

So those are some of my favorite films for this time of year. What about you? What do you love? What do you wish would never be shown again? And what is my mother’s favorite line ever in any film?

You tell me.