All about MEEEEEE!

Not like every post isn't anyway, but this one's even a bit more so than usual. I have been Getting Fit, you guys.

Kind of. What had happened was, moving back to the US wreaked havoc on my body. The ready availability of massive quantities of delicious fatty foods combined with living with my parents for nine months meant that I put on a size and a half. It was Not Good.

It was an interesting study of how much impact food has on my body, I will say that. From when I started at my current job in July, I have had free access to a gym and have been going 2-4 times a week since then. I also saw a trainer at another gym for three months, but gave that up when I moved for reasons of cash deprivation. But nothing I was doing was making much of a difference; or rather, it wasn't helping me lose any weight - god knows how much more I'd have put on if I hadn't been making those efforts. The weight gain was entirely down to the change in my diet.

Before leaving Sydney, I wouldn't have said that I eat especially healthily. I do cook a lot, mostly from scratch, and I'm pretty good about cooking with veggies or having salad; but I traditionally eat a lot of starchy, carby goodness as well: pasta, bread, noodles, dumplings, oh my god I'm going to cry. And while my sweet tooth isn't my biggest problem, I will snack on whatever's in the house. Basically, with food as with everything, I have no impulse control.

Moving back Stateside has made me reevaluate. Yeah, I eat a lot of stuff I shouldn't, but my day-to-day cooking and eating habits are streaks ahead of how people tend to be here. I don't want to get all 'Supersize Me' on you; it's not new territory. I'll say only that it is *amazing* to me how hard it is to get my hands on good-quality fresh food. I live in the middle of a populous residential area in the city, and it just... like, fruit and veg shops don't exist, and small markets don't waste space or money on perishables, so supermarkets are the ONLY place to get fruit and veg right now. In the spring, the weekly farmers' markets will start up again and there are a couple within reach, but for now it's so limited. And people here have become used to living like that, and a lot of times don't want to - or aren't able to - put the work in to accessing fresh food, let alone preparing it. Why would you when you can get two huge pizzas to feed your family of four for the same or less than it would cost you to buy and prepare real food for them? I'm not being facetious; if I were a working parent, the temptation to save myself the time and energy involved in shopping and cooking would be strong. Hell, I only have myself to look after and it's still hard to beat back most nights.

I realised pretty quickly after I moved to Dorchester that I was starting to lose weight, and this was clearly due to the change back to my preferred eating habits: oatmeal with fruit for brekkie; homemade food for lunch; few prepared/packaged foods; more vegetables, etc. I also found that I wasn't buying bread or pasta in the amounts I usually would, which meant that a huge component of my starch overintake was cut out. I've barely touched butter or cheese, and I've had no sweets around. I've had ice cream once since Christmas.

And the thing is, I don't really miss those things. Much. There was a day a couple of weeks ago when I'd have pushed my own mother into a snowbank and left her there for a whopper with onion rings, and the last few days I've had to tell myself out loud to keep walking past the pizza places. And having just mentioned butter, all I want now is a huge pile of hot, crunchy toast. Of course. But apart from those very intense moments, it's actually fine. It's good. I've been lunching on Sophie's Magic Veggie Soup for the last few weeks, and loving it; I'm cooking a lot of casseroles and stews in my amazing Colombian clay dish (and speaking of magic, this thing... I swear, I could throw a pile of old newspaper in it, simmer for three hours, and end up with a dream of a meal); I'm playing with food again and loving it.

This has spurred me to rededicate myself to the gym. I'm going 4-6 days a week now, and have been since before Christmas. I've actually fixed my work schedule for this semester so that I can take a 2-hour lunch break every day (except Thursday) and go to the gym then, because the gym doesn't open early enough for me to go before work and if I leave it to after I just won't bother. It's not what I'd call fun, but I'm hitting the awesome point where I'm really starting to see a difference and that's encouraging me to keep at it. Today, for example, I noticed that my ass is moving back up my body and I'm starting to be able to see muscles under the mess that is my thighs, and that was all I needed to go a bit harder. I'm now into jeans that are two sizes smaller than what I had been wearing, and while they're still not *quite* as comfy as I'd like, the size up has become unflatteringly baggy so the smaller ones it is, and in a few more weeks I expect that they'll be fitting perfectly. Ideally I'd like to come down another size before US summer, and I think that's achievable if I keep this up. Mind you, Sydney's likely to bump me back up - you can't eat laksa and pies every day for three weeks without feeling some effects - but I'm okay with that. I'll fix it.

Of course, all this having been said, you-all might not notice any difference in me when I get there because as I said, the bulk of what I've got rid of so far is what I put on since I moved. But that shouldn't stop you telling me I look great. :)


XOXO

Not with a bang, but with a thud.

NYE, Caritas Carney Hospital, Dorchester, MA. Hey 2010, do you really need to get in one last dig before you sweep out the door?

[sigh.] Apparently yes, because if you were listening carefully around 8:00 p.m. local time you might have heard me crashing to the hardwood floor of a Dorchester apartment. I was the victim of an orthostatic syncope, which is I-paid-a-lot-of-money-for-these-letters-after-my-name for 'head rush'. What was tricky was that I was unconscious for... awhile... and then my blood pressure wouldn't stabilise, so the EMTs called by Flattie Karen's overly-cautious nurse girlfriend decided I had to go to the ER. They found nothing wrong with me, of course, because there's nothing actually wrong with me, so they did what they do in hospitals when they can't figure out what else to do: hook you up to a litre of saline and give you a pregnancy test. (Spoiler: I'm not.)

And that's where I stayed, alone, until about 11:30 p.m.; at which point I returned home, babbled inarticulately at a roomful of people I mostly didn't know, wandered into my room, and fell asleep face-down in my clothes. It kind of was the perfect end to that year.

Don't think for a second, though, that I didn't enjoy myself. There are certain bizarre situations in which I excel, and left to my own devices in the ER? That's about six of them. I made friends, you guys. Of course I did. I made friends with the nurse who kept complimenting my hair, and with the registrar who told me I had 'tiny, pretty feet', and with the doctor who conducted my neuro assessment in the following fashion: 'Okay, follow my finger: look up look down look right you have beautiful eyes look left'.

I swear I'm not making this up.

So yes, that was my NYE. A rather different kind of night than I had expected, but equally eventful in its way. I'm happy to say that there have been no lasting ill effects. I personally suspect that I'm fighting off a virus because I've been kind of rundown and also because it's Boston in winter, so everyone's always fighting off something. Nothing to worry about, anyway, just a typical Brain Scan Moment (hi, Marie!).

In other news, I have had a major achievement today: I have suddenly worked out how to do a full kneeling backbend, which is a belly dancing trick I've been trying to get for, seriously, years. I don't know why all of a sudden it worked, but it did. Which is how it seems to go with belly dancing, for me at least: I'll work and work and work and get frustrated and give up and try again and work and work and work and get frustrated and lather rinse repeat, and then one day I'll do exactly the same thing in exactly the same way except this time, I get it right. And then I just keep getting it right.

Let me try to explain what today's trick entails:

1. Kneel down.
2. Lean back.
3. Keep leaning back until your shoulders hit the ground.
4. Get back up.
5. Don't cripple yourself.

That's what I've learned to do. It looks like this and it feels like... well, it feels like awesome, but I don't have a good picture for that. But I'm way past psyched about it. It's really kind of a big deal, definitely not something every dancer can do; it's cool enough that Zehara's going to change the new troupe choreography to incorporate it. I'm... yeah, I'm excited about it.

And speaking of photos, here are a few from the dagger performance. The makeup looks a bit OTT because I'd done it for stage but the camera zoomed, so ignore the warpaint effect and pay attention to the fuck-off chainmail instead. In that last one, that's my final pose and I'm doing the Bruce Lee 'bring it' gesture. I have the best ridiculous hobby, you guys.

XOXO

Home Sweet Home

So yes. I've moved. Hey Dorchester, how you been?

I'm in a relatively good part of one of Boston's worst neighbourhoods - like, murder-capital-of-the-city worst - but because my house is on the main street it still looks a bit rough. Like, you know how on Enmore Road it's decent and fine but all the best houses are a block or two back and the main street looks rougher than the rest of the area? It's like that, but then drop Enmore Road and the surrounding nice houses into one of the better bits of, I don't know, Cabramatta. The odd gunshot in the night is the price you pay for low rent.

That having been said, my apartment is lovely. It's in a block of ground-floor shops with flats above, all of which were razed and fully renovated 4-5 years ago when the area was just starting to improve a bit. Flattie Karen and her ex-roommate were the first people to move into the flat after it was finished, and Karen's a neat-freak so it's still in great nick. And while it's a dodgy area generally, you definitely get the feeling in my part that it's coming back: there are lots of new businesses, people are friendly and chatty, that sort of thing. My street - Dorchester Ave, locally known as Dot Ave - is a main street and runs for miles in either direction, and it's funny to see how the gentrification is happening along it. You'll have two blocks that look pretty good, with awesome-looking bars and cafes and stuff, then suddenly you're in Fallujah. And then just as suddenly, it's fine again.

Gentrification in Boston is a constant, messy process: our population density is the 3rd highest in the U.S. (after NYC and San Francisco), and with the city at constant 98+% occupancy rates, landlords can charge pretty much whatever they like and they'll find someone to pay it. The cycle tends to be that a neighbourhood will go to shit and be a war zone for several years, then students will start to move in because it's cheap and usually convenient to uni and public transportation and all that; then property investors - often gay ones, here - will see the white kids arriving and start buying up and renovating the properties, thereby shoving out all the people who have lived there for years and need low-cost housing (who of course tend to be racial minorities and the elderly, because this fucking world); then businesses start popping up to support the new, (relatively) more affluent inhabitants; and then families come in and settle and by this point you're already several steps into the cycle in a new neighbourhood on the other side of the city. Basically it's what's happening in Redfern, but everywhere all the fucking time.

What makes Boston a particularly interesting case study for this is that it's geographically quite a small city, so the lines of gentrification are more clearly drawn here than anywhere else I've ever seen. For example, back when I worked at the health centre in Jamaica Plain, I would walk down Green St to get to work. Like much of Jamaica Plain, Green St is lovely - big, beautiful Victorian houses; lots of trees; cute little playground/park - but then you'd pass the train station and you were in another neighbourhood entirely, where the buildings were dark and heavy and everything looked dirty and dodgy and unwelcoming. Even the people looked different. But you could turn over one shoulder - you wouldn't even have to turn all the way around - and still see where everything was pretty and safe-looking. It was the difference of 10 steps, no more; but once you'd crossed it you were in another part of the city. It was still Jamaica Plain, but it was an entirely different Jamaica Plain. I walked it hundreds if not thousands of times, and it never ceased to amaze me.

Dot Ave is like that too, a series of wildly different neighbourhoods separated by 10-step border towns. But it's exciting, in a way. I don't know this part of the city at all, so I got exactly what I wanted in terms of being in a new place. As much as I love Jamaica Plain, and despite all of the reasons it would be a perfect place for me to live, I had to get away from the part of town I grew up in. I'm trying to delineate between my childhood and my current life in as many ways as possible, and this was an important part of that for me.

*****

To answer a question several of you have asked, a 'boxspring' or 'foundation' is what's called a bed base over there: the big, heavy, solid thing that goes under your mattress unless you have a futon or platform bed or are a uni student. For queen- and king-sized beds you can get them in a single piece or in two pieces; the two-piece kind is known as a split boxspring and is easier to maneuver through tight spaces.

Now, obviously, you would need both halves of the split boxspring for it to work: with only one, you'd have half your mattress hanging off it unsupported. Selling them as individual pieces makes about as much sense as selling left and right shoes separately. Yet this appears to be what Sears does... maybe. It's what they do online, for sure; but having spoken to a couple of clerks in stores, they all seemed to be under the impression that the two halves were sold as a single set for the same price. It's deranged, and a great example of why the company has been plummeting for the last few decades. Problem is, their prices can be awesome (I found the mattress on their website for less than 1/3 the regular price), so you make the deal with the devil. And sometimes it works out, like with my mattress; and sometimes not so much, like with my 0.5 boxspring.

*****

A professor here has changed her e-mail signature for the season to 'Happy Holiday.' Just the one, apparently. That's all you get.


XOXO

Enter the Confessional #3: But I've got a really good personality!

Wow. So I'm doing really well with that 'keeping to a weekly schedule' thing, huh?

It would be easy to blame my extended fail on a long list of recent events, so that's exactly what I'm going to do. Some of them are easy to discuss in a public forum: Thanksgiving, moving house, busy time at work, lead-up to Christmas, etc. etc. etc. Others are more complicated and more personal, and have involved an intense mix of joy and pain (and sunshine and rain, sing it all god's children...) and fear and triggering and triggering and triggering. I'm dating a couple of girls, one of whom is awesome and good to me, and the other of whom I actually like - and you all know me well enough to know what that means. I'm settling into a life here that after only a handful of months is already uncomfortably rife with overlaps and I'm making decisions that aren't always good. I'm broke, of course. And I'm going to rot my teeth out with candy canes if I don't slow my roll.

Returning to the topic of moving, it's been... hard. The physical move itself wasn't too bad, but this was the first time in many years that I've packed up my room in my parents' house and not been taking it all to Sydney. I've been dreaming of home a lot lately and I know it's just my brain trying to sort through things and move on, but it's exhausting and it's starting to wear me down. I never thought I'd be living in an apartment in Boston. It's a great apartment, and I have a great new flattie named Karen, and it's in an area that I don't know so it feels new. All good. But I can't help but think back to this time last year, when my life finally felt like it was coming together again after far too long - job I liked, house I liked, friends I loved, new prospects on the horizon - and then how quickly it all got pulled out from under me, and how much I lost in the process. And that's happened too many times in the last few years, that thing of going, '...finally.' right before having my whole life go tits-up, for me to be able to even begin to believe that good things may be on the horizon. Which is all apart from the fact that I still struggle to see Boston itself as a good thing. It was the right thing, I know that, but it doesn't feel like a good thing. So there's that to contend with.

On a less fraught note, my bed is cursed. I'm not sure what the hell is behind this, but it's one damn thing after another: first, the queen-size mattress and boxspring arrived as scheduled, but the boxspring didn't fit up the stairs. They took it back and advised me to order a split queen, which I did... but no one told me I had to order two of them, because for some reason they sell the halves individually at Sears (Flattie Karen said she was going to go by there and ask for one leg of pants), and none of the three people I discussed my order with saw fit to clarify it with me. And so a week later - this past Saturday - the delivery men arrived with one half of a boxspring. And when I called Sears to give them a piece of my mind, they put me on hold for 20 minutes and then asked me to call back later because their systems were down. No, really.

At this point I decided to just get a cheaper set from the furniture place downstairs, and that arrived yesterday without incident. And having the boxspring meant that the bed was high enough off the ground for me to put my brand-new, custom-designed, hand-painted doona cover on without it dangling onto the floor. So I did, only to discover that the lovely cherry-blossom detail that was meant to have bright red flowers instead had anaemic red-pink ones, which is... not what I wanted. And kind of icky. And has prompted Flattie Karen to start calling me 'Salmon'. So now I'm trying to organize a return on a custom item, which is always a joy. I also still have a stray half-boxspring lying around my room because I'm trying to arrange the return of that to Sears, but they seem unwilling to get in touch with me about it. Oh, and my actual bed frame, which I thought was being delivered at the end of this week, won't be here until sometime next week, or possibly after due to the holidays.

[Sigh.]

I mean, all I can do at this point is laugh, but it's beyond ridiculous. The rest of the move has gone pretty smoothly, and I do have furniture (and credit card debt) thanks to the proud Scandinavian meatball merchants at Ikea, but the fact that the main feature of my room is unlikely to be sorted within the first month of my living here is starting to bug me. I will say that the mattress is amazingly comfortable, though, so I'm lucky there. And half expecting it to spontaneously combust in the night, or possibly be harboring Julian Assange without my knowledge.

In better news, the dancing's going well. It's been a busy few weeks, but now I've got two shows down and only one more to go - but the remaining one is the biggest and scariest one. I'm doing a fusion number with a dagger; it's to a song called 'Dr Sin' by Chasing Shadows (highly recommended), and my character is an assassin. It's a bit martial-artsy and a bit tribal and entirely fueled by my latent rage issues, but it seems to be going over pretty well so far, apart from how I almost took out an audience member a couple of weeks ago when my dagger slipped from my hand and went shooting out into the audience. First time I've ever dropped it, let alone flung it, and of course it happened at a show. Luckily no one was hurt, but the event has already passed into legend and my teacher is never ever going to let me live it down, not that I can blame her for that.

So that's me. For now. I won't do anything so stupid as to promise another post between now and February, but I'll see what I can do.

XOXO