Style Cure: Day 2

Day 2: Go on a style treasure hunt

Well, this didn't go so well for me. I am terrible at window shopping. I have a tendency to see what I like, decide that I want to buy it, and I buy it. I'm not good at mulling things over or thinking about it over the weekend or "saving money" to buy things.

But, I tried.  Brian and I went into Uptown Westerville and looked in a couple of shops.  I fell in love with this long media table at Amish Originals, and I managed to take a picture of a lamp there too.  Brian and I did get the chance to talk about what we liked, and we realized we like wood furniture that's not too dark, and we're willing to spend more money on pieces that are well-made and will last for years. (This is a big deal, trust me.)

Then we went into Cinda Lou, and I found these dishes, and I absolutely fell in love.  Aaaaand I bought them. >_>  I read on the internet after I got home that this was estimated to be the most popular dish pattern in the country in 1957.  So basically it's perfect.  They're blue and brown and it's not a complete set but you can buy pieces online so I can get a complete set and I am just in love with it.

So that ended the actual window shopping portion of our day, wherein we liked one expensive thing that we didn't buy but probably will soon, and we liked another much less expensive thing that we did buy.  I am so bad at this!

Well, I suppose the point was to narrow down what I like.  And I spent some time in the Ikea catalog today and I think I have a pretty good idea, maybe.

- I like wing-back chairs
- I like color, especially blue.  I don't particularly care for red or yellow but I'm coming around to muted orange.
- I don't super like the country feel, but I definitely don't like modern either.  The only way I can describe it is "solid and comfortable".
- I like vintage, but not 70's.  Early 60's and before, but not too overboard.
- I like plants.  I want plants in our house. (But caaaaats.)
- I don't like clean, white, Scandinavian. I need the white to be broken up with color.

So there.  I succeeded even though I failed. =P

Style Cure: Day 1

My fledgling gallery wall, plus one unimpressed cat

Last time I did an Apartment Therapy Cure, I tried to blog it.  I ended up failing towards the end, but I shall try again!  If I write about it, I'm more accountable about it, which increases the odds of me actually finishing it.

Day 1: Complete the Style Cure interview

This Cure is going to be harder, because as bad as I am at organizing and cleaning, I'm even worse at decorating.

I've always felt like I have no particular sense of style, and I didn't grow up in a decorated home, so I didn't learn as I grew up.  Our apartment growing up had white walls without much on them.  There were a few pictures or art of some kind here and there, but not much, and there wasn't anything in the house that was just there to make things look nice.  (There might have been at one point, but then we kids probably broke it.  Like my grandfather's clock.  We were dancing, okay?)

Feeling like I don't have an innate knowledge of how to make things look nice made me leery about trying this, but I can't give up if I haven't begun, so let's get to it.

My answers to the interview are below the cut, in case you're interested.   What I got from it is this:

- I like actors, writers, movies, and TV shows that are funny and clever, and I've clearly been focusing on female writers more than male ones.
- I have a distinct bias towards British actors and cars.  I feel like this leads back to the enjoyment of things that are clever. 
 - I like things that are comfortable more than I like things that are beautiful.
- I like things that are vintage, either in actuality or just appear to be so.
- I'm really hungry. (Seriously, it's lunch time.)

So, whatever I do, it has to be comfortable and functional.  Having a really nice looking end table is all well and good, but if you can't find a pen or scissors or the remote when you need it, then there's no point.  I've found in the past when I try to organize especially that it all ends up getting undone because we leave out the things we use most often.  Putting them back becomes too much of a hassle.

Hm, it would appear that this interview was more helpful than I thought it'd be.  Bring on Day 2!

Fatass

Tonight, Brian asked me if I wanted to take a walk.  In the spirit of trying to make at least one healthy choice every day, I said yes.  (All I've had to eat today is bagels, and all I've done is watch romcoms on Netflix, so this literally was my one healthy choice for the day.)  As we walked, we determined that we'd try and find some kind of dinner before going home.

As we walked, something happened to me that, in all my years of being fat, has never, ever happened before: a van drove by, and some guys inside yelled "FATASS" at me.  It stung.  But, I tried to ignore it and not let it bother me and not completely ruin the nice time that Brian and I were having.  But of course, stupid is as stupid does, and the van swung back around for another go.  This time, it was a rousing "FAT WHORE".

At that point, I gave up and took a hard left towards home. I ended up crying basically the whole way home, while Brian walked along attempting the impossible task of making me feel better. (I very much appreciate his efforts.  He's a good husband.)  I took a shower after I got home, in an attempt to, I dunno, wash off the meanness?  So now I sit and try to process the feelings.

I hate that their hate got to me.  I hate that I no longer wanted to eat dinner after the incident, because I would have felt fat and ugly and disgusting doing so.  I hate that the rest of the way home, I jumped every time a car went past.  I hate that I don't want to take any more walks in my neighborhood because of one stupid idiot.  I want to find them and show them what my fat ass is capable of by beating the crap out of them.  (I have three brothers and grew up in a neighborhood with no girls. I could at least do a little damage.)

But most of all, I hate that so much of my self-esteem can be wiped out by a couple of words yelled out of a car.

In the end, I recognize that it wasn't me that caused those guys to yell out their window.  They would have yelled no matter what I looked like.  If I had been a person of color, it would have been a racial slur.  If I had been thin and pretty, it would have been a request to have sex with them, and then it would have been "slut" when I said no.  If I had been disabled, it would have been something else.  If I had been with a woman, it would have been "gay".  They wanted to yell, and I was just a target.

But it still hurts.

Becoming that which I hate

There has never been an image that more accurately describes me than this one. I am completely unable to handle someone saying or doing something stupid on the internet.  This includes advocating the Republican agenda, being racist, being sexist, being classist, or being any other kind of ist really.   

My husband is so good at rolling his eyes and not rocking the boat, and I think it frustrates him that I can't.  I have to respond to the post where someone said that Obamacare caused Bengazi to make Treyvon Martin have an abortion or whatever it is, and I'll get into real fights with people over things.  

I need to get better at it.  But my problem is that when people post things like this, other people read them, and believe them, and it propagates something that's either untrue or harmful to a group of people.  I try really really hard to only post comments when something is actually false, because I don't like it when Literally Unbelievable gets played out in real life.  Those idiotic false statements translate into votes, votes that take away rights.  I can't let that go.  

But what about the other things, the things that are someone's opinion?  If they post an opinion that abhorrent, how do I learn to scroll past it and not let them know that they are a terrible person have terrible beliefs? (Seriously, why would you post any status that includes the phrase "white panther party"?)  I can just unfriend them, but then I end up with a group of Facebook friends that just agree with me, and I like having my beliefs challenged every once in awhile.

So seriously, how do I do it?  I'm tired of being angry and sad all the time. 

On being fat but also not fat at the same time

I'm...I dunno, fat I guess? I technically weigh a lot of pounds and I wear a size that most stores don't carry, so that makes me categorically fat.  I think. 

The problem with that label is that I can't see it.  Almost ever.  I literally look in the mirror and do not see a fat person.  (The only time I can see it is when I'm sitting facing a mirror while wearing a tight shirt, or am naked looking at my profile.)  This isn't a matter of having great self-esteem or total body acceptance or anything like that - I'm usually painfully aware of the amount of space I occupy and am never comfortable with that.  It's just that my brain apparently doesn't equate "takes up a lot of space" with "fat". 

I'm really not explaining this well.  When I look in the mirror, or when I picture myself in my head, I see a normal sized person, and I'm pretty sure it's a person that wears like, a size 12.  It drives me nuts, because I want to have a proper mental picture of myself, and I can't find it. I stare at people on the street trying to find a person that's the same size as me, and I never can.

It seems like a good problem to have, to not focus on your flaws, but it's not.  It makes it easier to ignore huge (punny!) problems, and that's not good.  I'm aware that I need to weigh less pounds, for health reasons, but since I don't usually see problems when I look in the mirror, it's easier to ignore that fact and eat some more cookies.

The problem with my mental picture is - how do I fix this?  I mean, everything people say involves learning to accept yourself no matter what size you are.  My problem is that I'm too accepting of me, and I think I look completely fine even when I don't.  Maybe it's a matter of getting rid of some of my self-esteem...except I'm already painfully insecure about my size.  I just can't see that size in a mirror.

This entry is extremely babbly and doesn't make any sense and doesn't have a point.  I'm trying to remember what I was thinking about when I started it...oh, it had to do with the fact that the more I wear dresses, the more comfortable I am with shorter ones, and then I went off into body acceptance and then I started thinking about how I'm too accepting and then this happened.

But really what I was going for is: Look at my thighs, guys.  I don't care.

Cutting some slack

I suppose this should be Creativity, Part Two.

I haven't given up yet on making things, apparently.  I am currently in the process of attaching my quilt blocks together.  It looks pretty ridiculous.  My blocks are all different sizes, with crazy patterned fabric that maybe sort of coordinates if you squint a bit, and the seams are all wonky and all over the place, and clearly I didn't cut right to begin with because everything is so lopsided.

But I'm okay with all that.  I'm definitely not worried about perfection with this.  I tried to learn how to quilt once before just out of high school, and I gave up because no matter how hard I tried, I always cut something crooked, or made a wobbly seam, or otherwise horked it up.  Everyone always says how quilting is a math-based precision hobby, and they're right, it totally is.  So I gave up.

With this quilt that I'm apparently making though,  I'm not worried about any of that.  I'm making it, flaws and all, and it'll probably never lie flat because of all the weird angles.  When I see something hanging crooked, I leave it.  When I know I cut a weird angle, I leave it.  It's not that I'm not trying to cut and sew straight, it's that I'm not putting a ton of pressure on myself to get it perfect.

Brian doesn't get that - his philosophy is to do your absolute best and take pride in your work, which seems to say that you can't take pride in something that didn't take everything out of you.  The thing is, the pride I'll get from this quilt will come from the fact that I actually pushed through it and finished.  That's enough for me.  I don't even know if I like quilting - why beat myself up over it the first time through?

With knitting though, I can't seem to let perfection go.  I've completely ripped apart everything I've attempted to knit so far.  I haven't even gotten past a fifth row because I'll find some flaw (like the fact that I've randomly picked up 6 extra stitches) and start completely over. (Part of this is due to the fact that I haven't yet learned how to fix mistakes any other way.)  I just can't let myself make a lopsided, full of holes, weirdly-tensioned, clearly-first-time scarf or whatever.  It's ridiculous, because like quilting, I don't even know if I like knitting.  I'm certainly starting to hate it.

So what's the deal here?  Why am I totally cool with a terrible quilt but not a terrible scarf?  This is my second time picking up knitting, same as quilting, so it's not a need for first-time-perfection.

Fuck it, maybe I'll just switch to crochet.

Creativity

Recently apparently I decided to try and become more creative or something.  I was looking through my mother-in-law's student artwork, and I was so impressed by her ability to create something beautiful that lasts a long time.  (Seriously, look at these.)  Then my friend Alex wrote a play that's being performed, and I look at the video game controllers and consoles(!) that Brian has built, and I watch my father and my sister cook and bake these amazing things, and I look at Brian's afghan that his grandmother made for him, and I realize that I have nothing like that of my own.  I feel like I'm not creative at all.

So I decided to try and change that.  I told Brian I wanted a sewing machine for my birthday, a request which he obliged, and I have since made one small May Day pocket that I loved, two messenger bags that I like, a small purse which I absolutely do not like, and 23 quilt blocks that are poorly cut, badly sewn, and just generally look kind of weird.  But I still made them!   I also got a knitting set to learn how to knit (again), and I am very much going to attempt to not give it up again (again.)

So that's what I'm doing.  And maybe learning to do this will spark some kind of passion for creation in me, and I'll get better at it and then start to like it more and then I can say that I made lovely things too, and I'll feel like I contributed somehow to the world, even if it was just with a lopsided quilt.