There's nothing like a pair of braces to make you feel like a teen-ager again. I don't have a bad perm and now wear contacts, but I still feel like I'm fourteen all over again. What's been interesting is that people stare. They stared at 14 and they stare at 47.
I have clear braces on top and metal ones on the bottom. My rubber bands on the bottom are turquoise because it's my daughter's favorite color. They didn't have fancy colors when I wore them the first time.
If the braces weren't bad enough, I have an expander in. Once I have my SARPE surgery tomorrow, it will help expand my narrow upper jaw. Right now, it only serves to make me talk weird and is a haven for food getting stuck.
Thanks to YouTube, I've been able to get the 411 on the SARPE surgery. I got some tips like using frozen peas for the swelling since they'll mold to your face.
I also recently watched the movie, Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead, on Netflix and loved it. I bought a juicer and have been enjoying some delicious juice. It will come in handy for my liquid diet post surgery.
A stack of books is on my nightstand waiting to be read. I hope I feel up to it because I relish the time I'll have to just heal and read.
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Blog: Mermaid's Musings (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: fat, surgery, braces, juicing, sick and nearly dead, SARPE, Add a tag
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Blog: Colorfly Studio (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: fat, jennifer dedonato, colorfly studio, megan tonjes, hashimotos disease, Add a tag
So being fat is a soft spot for me.

Blog: OUPblog (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: obesity, Food, exercise, genetics, fate, biology, diet, fat, nutrition, hanson, overweight, slimming, peter gluckman, communicable, developmental, lifestyle, disease, appetite, *Featured, Science & Medicine, Health & Medicine, fat fate and disease, mark hanson, non-communicable disease, Add a tag
By Mark Hanson
We are failing to deal with one of the most important issues of our time – in every country we are getting fatter. Although being fat is not automatically linked to illness, it does increase dramatically the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and other so-called non-communicable diseases. We are starting to see very high rates of these diseases in some places, sometimes affecting 50% of the population. Even in some of the poorest parts of the developing world, where such disease itself is not yet common, we nonetheless see warning signs of its arrival. There is great concern that it may soon outweigh the burden of communicable disease such as HIV/AIDS. The humanitarian and financial cost of this non-communicable disease in such parts of the world will be unbearable, and made even worse because the risk is passed across generations, so children born today and tomorrow will have a bleak future.
It seems that we don’t know how to tackle this problem, because current attempts are obviously failing and obesity continues to increase. Governments, doctors, and even NGOs seem to have adopted the same strategy – to focus on our sins of “gluttony and sloth” and to transfer the responsibility for slimming down to each of us as individuals. Of course it’s true that we can’t get overweight unless we eat more than we need to, and the wrong types of foods, and get too little physical exercise. Our biology did not evolve to protect us from obesity and its consequences in today’s sedentary world with such easy access to food. But why is it that we find it so hard to lose weight and, if we do shed the kilos, it seems very hard not to put them back on again?
What we are missing is a focus on our early development. We’re just not adopting the right approach to the problem. And it seems that the generals who are leading us in this global war on obesity and disease have adopted the wrong strategy, and they stick resolutely to it as if they were wearing blinkers. They blame us for the failure to win the war, for our greed and laziness; they blame parents for letting their children get fat; they blame the food industry for peddling unhealthy food, and so on. As if we choose to be fat. It’s important to realise just how limited this way of attacking the problem is on a global scale. Does the little girl force-fed before marriage in Mauritania have any choice in her life? Does the 12-year-old child bride in rural India have any choice when she becomes pregnant and drops out of school? Does the little toddler in Detroit have any choice when his mother feeds him French fries? Does the little boy from Tonga whose mother had diabetes in pregnancy have any choice about developing obesity? Does the little girl in Beijing have any choice in being an only child? And yet every one of these scenarios, and many more, sets that little child up to be at greater risk of becoming obese and to have non-communicable disease.
But new research is uncovering many things that will give us new tactics and strategies for the war against obesity and non-communicable disease, and so we’re hopeful. We now know that we will have to give much greater focus to the mother and unborn child. We may well have to give emphasis to the lifestyle of the father as well. And most importantly of all, we’re starting to realise that behaviours such as propensity to exercise, or appetite and taste for certain foods, which we previously thought to be based on individual choice, have a large constitutional component – in part based on inherited genes, in part on epigenetic changes to gene function in response to the developmental environment, and

Blog: OUPblog (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Law, tumblr, roller, Africa, *Featured, Sociology, fashion, feminism, obesity, beauty, body image, Online Resources, fat, Cleopatra, Duane Roller, The Oxford Comment, oxford comment, ben daniels band, fat acceptance, beauty bias, berg fashion library, body politics, deborah rhode, fashion institute of technology, jessica jarchow, margitte kristjansson, tangledupinlace, deborah, rhode, riotsnotdiets, jarchow, margitteleah, Add a tag
In this, the 10th Oxford Comment, Lauren and Michelle investigate what makes a classic beauty icon, learn about appearance-based discrimination, talk body politics, and discover the threads that tie fashion to beauty.
Want more of The Oxford Comment? Subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes!
You can also look back at past episodes on the archive page.
Featured in this episode:
Historian, archaeologist, and classical scholar, Duane W. Roller is emeritus professor at Ohio State University and the author of eight books, the most recent of which is Cleopatra: A Biography. Read his OUPblog posts here.
* * * * *
Deborah L. Rhode is the Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law and Director of the Center on the Legal Profession at Stanford University. She is the author or editor of over twenty books, including The Beauty Bias: The Injustice of Appearance in Life and Law.
* * * * *
Margitte Leah Kristjansson is a PhD student in communication at UCSD whose work is situated within the emerging field of fat studies. She is interested in all things fat, and blogs about her interests at margitteleah.com and riotsnotdiets.tumblr.com. Margitte recently completed a documentary on fat female bodies and visibility available for viewing here.
Jessica Jarchow is a body acceptance activist in San Diego, CA. When she’s not blogging at 0 Comments on The Oxford Comment: Episode 6 – BEAUTY! as of 1/1/1900
Blog: Time Machine, Three Trips: Where Would You Go? (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: woman, man, Women, guys, Humor, People, girls, Men, ugly, naked, nude, fat, sexy, hot, guy, lust, chicks, Offbeat, desire, cat fights, turn offs, turn ons, Add a tag
Men think about sex, and they think about sex a lot, so you might be amazed that something would be too sexy for a guy, but there are at least ten things that I think you may agree are too sexy, here they are.
Guys find it sexy when a girl is into the same things as him, such as a sports team, or horror flicks. What could be better than sharing a favorite past time together? Guys find it too sexy when the girl starts looking like his favorite teams best player or the killer in a horror flick. If she looks like a quarter back or an axe murderer, its not hot.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anna_Maria_Babberger-Tobler.JPG
Men love models. Men fantasize about being with a woman who is a model. Models are always hot, am I not right?
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Quentin_Massys_008.jpg
Guys find it attractive when a woman isn’t afraid to get dirty. It shows that she isn’t going to be a demanding little princess type. Guys find it scary when the woman doesn’t look like she has taken a bath for months. And before you say anything about the picture not being great, you just try to look up “dirty girl picture” and see how easy it is.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Barefoot_in_Berlin.JPG
Guys find it sexy when a girl works and spends some of her own money. It makes him happy to see her get the things she loves and wants. Guys find it too sexy when she spends all of her own money, his money, and money they don’t even have. Also, and please note: Just because you can buy anything you want, does not mean you should.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/3363028843/
Men find a damsel in distress a bit of a turn on. It gives him a chance to be a hero for a change. Men find it concerning when the same damsel is in distress all of the time. Well okay we might rescue her a few times before we clued in but I am sure eventually we would clue in. Eventually. Maybe.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/garydenness/2845530233/
Men find it kinda sexy watching a girl shave her legs. S l o w l y… with toes pointed, in the shower, water dripping off her. Not so sexy when she has to shave her face though.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jennifer_Miller_Bearded_Lady_by_David_Shankbone.jpg
Guys get turned on by a little girl on girl action or cat fight. You know what I mean. Guys do not really get too many thrills by watching actual cats fight, well hopefully not anyhow.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ecaille07.jpg
Guys find it sexy when a chick asks their opinion on something like which car to buy or what computer to get. Since women always think they know best, it is hot when they throw us a crumb or two. Guys really don’t like it when a chick tells them how to do something, like change a tire, or fix a computer. And if the chick is a chicken telling a guy how to fix the computer, well that’s just wrong.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alishav/3619318320/
Guys find it sexy when a girl cooks, or does house work in the nude. Can’t think of anything too sexy here. Doing dishes naked, vacuuming naked, mowing the lawn naked, whatever, guys are pretty cool with it.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blue_vacuum_cleaner.svg
Guys love seeing some skin. A little tease is wonderful. Careful that you don’t show too much as in the photo below, the one one the left is showing a bit too much skin and has dangerously entered the world of being too sexy.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/leekelleher/200975138/
One tip to any girl wanting to appear sexy, it helps to stand next to somebody larger than yourself.
Other Reading for Your Enjoyment
Blog: Time Machine, Three Trips: Where Would You Go? (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: art, pigs, happy new year, Sheep, fat, Laugh, led, water jump, water slide, funny video, Offbeat, optical illusion, bungee, funniest, funniest website ever, funny website, good laugh, make me laugh, pib and pob, Strangest, Add a tag
Pib and Pog
Wonderful! Superb animation, brilliantly spoof old style British narration. If you’ve got the full 6 minutes to spare this is great for a really good giggle. It’s from the minds of Aardman Animation of Wallace and Gromit and many others fame. You know it’s going to be quality animation and you know it’s going to have a corking script.
Awesome Water Slide and Jump
I don’t care if this is faked or not, it’s still great to watch, and I’ll bet my aunties prize begonias that you’ll hit that play button again for another look. If this is genuine, then that’s one brave, brave man there. I’d have liked to have seen the preparation work for this, I bet there’s some good out takes there somewhere. Come on guys, let’s see how you worked it out. Crash test dummies?
Sheep LED art
I found this one just really, really fascinating, as well as being quite funny. Hope you enjoy it too. Having become an honorary Welshman after marrying my lovely, lovely wife, I enjoyed passing this round to my English brethren. This must have taken an absolute age to get right, and all for a couple of minutes of fame on YouTube. There’s nowt so queer as folk…….
Happy New Year
A cracking take on the three little pigs story, with a superb twist. I love it. My kids love it too. Great little catchy tune and a real sense of urgency from the pigs. I’m not sure where it originated from, but it certainly bears some resemblance to The Dark Side, and it definitely has that kind of humour running through its theme. Enjoy.
Moving Dragon Illusion
These are great. There are a few more like this dotted around YouTube, if you search under optical illusions you’ll find them. The ones with people’s faces can be quite odd, but so very realistic. They are amazing. I don’t know who thought of it or came across it first, but they are brilliant.
Add a CommentBlog: Time Machine, Three Trips: Where Would You Go? (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: funniest, funniest website ever, funny website, good laugh, make me laugh, pib and pob, Strangest, water jump, water slide, art, pigs, happy new year, Sheep, fat, Laugh, led, funny video, Offbeat, optical illusion, bungee, Add a tag
Pib and Pog
Wonderful! Superb animation, brilliantly spoof old style British narration. If you’ve got the full 6 minutes to spare this is great for a really good giggle. It’s from the minds of Aardman Animation of Wallace and Gromit and many others fame. You know it’s going to be quality animation and you know it’s going to have a corking script.
Awesome Water Slide and Jump
I don’t care if this is faked or not, it’s still great to watch, and I’ll bet my aunties prize begonias that you’ll hit that play button again for another look. If this is genuine, then that’s one brave, brave man there. I’d have liked to have seen the preparation work for this, I bet there’s some good out takes there somewhere. Come on guys, let’s see how you worked it out. Crash test dummies?
Sheep LED art
I found this one just really, really fascinating, as well as being quite funny. Hope you enjoy it too. Having become an honorary Welshman after marrying my lovely, lovely wife, I enjoyed passing this round to my English brethren. This must have taken an absolute age to get right, and all for a couple of minutes of fame on YouTube. There’s nowt so queer as folk…….
Happy New Year
A cracking take on the three little pigs story, with a superb twist. I love it. My kids love it too. Great little catchy tune and a real sense of urgency from the pigs. I’m not sure where it originated from, but it certainly bears some resemblance to The Dark Side, and it definitely has that kind of humour running through its theme. Enjoy.
Moving Dragon Illusion
These are great. There are a few more like this dotted around YouTube, if you search under optical illusions you’ll find them. The ones with people’s faces can be quite odd, but so very realistic. They are amazing. I don’t know who thought of it or came across it first, but they are brilliant.

Blog: Mayra's Secret Bookcase (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: the writing life, mayra's secret bookcase, moms who write, writer moms, Add a tag
“Nothing has a stronger influence
psychologically on their environ-
ment and especially on their children
than the unlived life of the parent.”
--C. G. Jung
After a bad night of hardly any sleep, you’re sitting at the computer staring at the blank screen. You wonder if you’ll be able to do it—finish that article, short story or novel which you started months ago. The urge to write is overwhelming, yet you freeze. Not only are you exhausted, but the baby, who you put to sleep less than half hour ago, is whimpering in the crib. Your four-year old has just barged into the office and is tugging at your elbow begging for a snack, even though he had lunch an hour ago. This is hopeless, I may as well quit, you say to yourself while trying to suppress a scream. To your horror, you suddenly find yourself sympathizing with those animals that eat their young…
Don’t despair. Calm down. I’ve been there and know perfectly well what you’re going through.
The truth is, you can write, but you need to have four things:
The Right State of Mind
Before you plan a schedule, putting your mind in the right frame is the most important think you’ll do. Remember your kids will not stay small forever. Time passes quickly (I assure you it does!) and soon they’ll be old enough to go to school. Until that magical day arrives, though, you’ll have to “steal” time to work on your project. Wanting to finish a whole novel in one month at this point in your life is unrealistic. Don’t focus so much on the “end product” but on doing a little bit of that “end product” at a time. Little paragraphs are what articles, stories and novels are made of. The important thing is steady progress, and as long as you take steps to fulfil the road, you’re on the right track. These tiny bird steps, however small, will give you a sense of accomplishment and keep you guilt-free to enjoy your life and family.
Good Physical Condition
You might think, “Good physical condition? I thought this was an article about writing.” Well, you’ll bet it is. Let’s face it, moms who care for small children are always tired. And tired people don’t’ particularly like to sit at the computer and write; they want to collapse on a bed. Moms urgently need to raise their energy levels! A good diet and a little exercise can do wonders to raise energy levels. Eat high-protein foods and lots of fruits and veggies. Stay away from white flour and sugar, as well as junk food. Go for three meals a day with one light healthy snack in the afternoon and one before you go to bed. Stay away from those high energy bars, though. They are so high in carbs your sugar levels will sky rocket and then pummel down, making you feel even more tired and hungry than before. Low fat cottage cheese and a couple of almonds, with a bit of fruit are a great choice for a snack. Drink plenty of water! Scientists have found that dehydration is one of the main factors in making a person feel tired.
Finding time to exercise may be difficult, that’s why it’s a good idea to do it with your child. If you have a stationary bicycle or other exercise machine, do 15 minutes while the toddler watches the Teletubbies. You don’t have to exercise a full hour. Even 10 minutes will do the trick. Take your baby for a walk in the stroller at least 3 times a week, preferably in the mornings when it’s fresh and quiet. It will calm your nerves, rejuvenate and even inspire you. Your baby will love it, too. Not only will he/she enjoy the “sights and sounds,” but it will probably make him/her tired and eager to take a longer nap later in the day—just what you’re after!
A Well-Planned Schedule
Okay, so you have the right state of mind and are eating well and exercising. What next? A well-planned schedule that fits your lifestyle and plays around your strengths and liabilities is a must. But keep an open mind and don’t be unrealistic. If your baby naps in the afternoon, don’t set your writing time in the mornings, or vice versa. How much time each writing session will last depends on your lifestyle and children’s habits. You may choose to write half an hour each day or one hour every other day. It’s up to you. The important thing here is to keep it approachable and to stick with it.
There’s one thing I strongly advice: If you can manage it, don’t take more than two nights off from your project. Not only will it stall your momentum, but it will give your brain to much time to come up with self-doubts and excuses for procrastination.
You may be asking yourself: But how do I get rid of my children!?
If your children are old enough to go to nursery school, your problems are solved. Just set your writing schedule during those hours. For those of you whose children are still at home, there are other possibilities:
Write early in the morning before your children awake, during their daytime naps and after they go to sleep at night. (See why you have to keep yourself in good physical condition?) I have a friend who wrote two books this way.
If you can afford a babysitter—maybe your neighbour’s teenaged daughter—to look after your child while you write on the next room (that way you can keep a close eye on them) then go for it!
Write while your toddler watches his favourite video movie. He wants to watch it again? Go ahead! This is not the right time to consider the effects of too much TV on children.
Go to the local library and write while your child listens to Story Time! Almost all libraries, and even bookstores, schedule story times for children. Take advantage of these.
If you have a writer friend who is also a mom, enlist her as your “writing partner,” take the kids to Mc Donald’s and write while your kids play in those weird game tunnels. “Hey, wait a minute!” you think. “You said to stay away from junk food.” Nice try, but even McDonald’s now offers a good selection of salads and fruit cocktails. Besides, I never said one hamburger once in a while will kill you. You might even reward yourself with a hamburger… AFTER you’ve fulfilled your minimum writing quota for that day.
Invite your writing-partner mom or moms for a “writing morning” at your home and write while your children play together. You may take turns with your homes. Also, as a group, you can consider hiring a sitter for these occasions. Writing with a support-group of people who are in the same situation as yourself is usually very rewarding and productive. Plus it’s a lot cheaper when each of you contribute to pay for the sitter. You may even want to start a club and meet once a week.
Determination
None of the above will prove helpful if you lack the determination to stick to a schedule. Think about it. Do you want to reach the age of seventy without having accomplished your goal—that masterpiece of a novel that will land you multiple contracts, fame and fortune? You’ll never know unless you take the first step. Family, and especially your children, should always come first, BUT don’t use your children as an excuse not to write. The truth is, life is so hectic there NEVER will be a “perfect” time to write. I assure you, if not children, later you’ll come up with something else as your procrastinator. It may be difficult to follow the schedule at first, and you may need to modify it, but eventually you’ll be glad you did. Otherwise you’ll live with self-guilt, self-loathing, disappointment and frustration.
Do it. Start today. Now.
Don’t forget: Frustrated writers are frustrated moms. Frustrated moms are unhappy moms. Artistically fulfilled moms are happy moms who can give themselves to their loved ones without reservations.
By Mayra Calvani