Last night I saw the strangest thing.
After I play with the cats with a wand toy, I go to the end table that stands under the ceiling fan in the living room and turn the light off and ask if anyone wants a ride.
Most of the time, it's Thimble who comes running, leaps onto the table, and launches onto my shoulder. Sometimes he pauses, teasing me, on the table, wanting to be coaxed. And on rare occasions, someone else comes, sometimes Apricot, but most often Colby. Apricot doesn't like jumping so high for his (comparatively) short little legs.
And most of the time, when it's Thimble, he comes running before I even say anything, leaving me to say "anybody want a -ooph- ride?" as he hits my shoulder with all 16+ pounds.
Last night, Thimble sees me walking toward the table, putting the toy away as I do so, and he heads toward me at his usual half-run. He is so long that a full run brings him across the room too quickly and he'll slide off the table before getting a chance to change directions and leap onto my shoulder. No, he hasn't yet figured out that if he just goes from the floor to my shoulder, he could easily leap from the floor on the other side of the table to my shoulder. Please don't tell him.
Anyway, Apricot got in front of him, seemingly moving slowly but there he was. Thimble screeched to a halt without Apricot, half his size, ever saying or doing anything obvious.
The two of them then rotated in a half circle, moving so gracefully it was almost as if they simply were there in that position to begin with. Apricot touched noses with Thimble.
And Thimble bowed to him. I have no other way to describe it. His back legs moved back a step and his shoulders dipped low. Apricot gave him a look, as if to say, stay put, and then walked over to where I stood, spellbound, at the table.
He leaped gracefully up onto the table and gave me a look, a different look. It was rather satisfied and expectant. "My ride?"
I've been thinking about it, and I have come to a conclusion. I think with the times Thimble has been out of the crate all night, that Thimble was being a pain. And I think Apricot lost patience with him and decided that Thimble wasn't getting it all his own way.
This conclusion was reinforced by their behavior at their supper time (which follows playtime). Normally Thimble moves from bowl to bowl, pushing whatever cat was eating at that bowl aside. The other two simply moved to another bowl, since the same food was in all of them.
Not last night. Last night, after the food toss, Apricot came in when he heard the food pouring into the bowls and started eating. When Thimble made a move to come near--and to give him credit, he was heading toward a different bowl than Apricot was currently using, yet knowing Thimble, that wouldn't last--Apricot raised his head and gave Thimble a brief, mild, admonitory look.
Thimble stopped dead in his tracks and just stayed there, waiting, until Apricot finished eating and sauntered off, and only then did Thimble move in and start eating.
And where was Colby during this? Being an increasingly puzzled kitten. He tried to go eat, and Apricot gave him the same look, so he stopped too, but gave me a begging glance like, "mom, I'm not the one picking on everybody." So I put the crate food dish in front of him (I bring it in to fill it, and it's light and moves around anyway, thus hopefully wouldn't trigger Apricot's mild-mannered wrath) and he ate out of that quite happily ... still giving Apricot and Thimble puzzled looks every so often.
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Thimble's Graduation
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday ... All week Thimble has been trying to convince me that he was a good boy, yes he was, and he could stay out of the crate at night, yes he could, and he would be such a good boy, yes he would.
I was skeptical.
Thursday night I was so tired that in order to have enough energy to make the bed and go to bed, I had to take a nap. I lay down on top of the comforter, set my alarm for half an hour (which would make it 8) and closed my eyes.
Thimble was ever so polite. He didn't try to go under the covers (I had the quilt on top of me). He didn't try to get me to wake up. He lay down on the headboard and watched. It's a wide headboard since it's a bookshelf headboard. (Not that I can have books in it anymore as I'm allergic to them now, so it's got three dust-mite-proofed pillows in it so I don't end up with my head in the bookshelf, as has happened.)
When I made the bed, after I finally got back up at 8:30, he was extremely polite. He didn't try to kill the sheets as they moved across the bed to my tugging and straightening. He didn't try to go underneath except once and backed off immediately when I removed him from the bed, instead of bouncing back like a fur covered yo-yo as usual.
And he kept catching my eye and looking very innocent. Not the sort of look that makes you wonder, "now what's he done?" but the sort of look that says, "I can be a good boy, are you noticing?"
The only time that whole week that he hadn't been a good boy was when I tried to put him in the crate. I don't "catch" him or chase him; I simply walk after him slowly until he gives up to the inevitability of it all, but he'd been drawing this out longer and longer. He didn't want to be in the crate any longer.
That night I gave up. I said he could be out, but if I got any complaints from the others, or if he woke me up or kept me awake, back in the crate he'd go.
He was an angel. He slept on the headboard, a place the other two don't go to sleep. And I have missed my kitty on the headboard. Colby was there by my shoulder when I woke up in the morning, and Apricot came to see me.
Subsequent nights didn't go so well, and things went downhill until the next Sunday night, when I lost patience after Thimble used the door curtain as an ambush spot and wouldn't leave my walking top alone after being asked multiple times. I put him in the crate--to his astonishment and hurt horror.
So Monday night I left him out again, yet Colby didn't come back to my shoulder spot on the bed either night. It is Tuesday night, and I'm still debating if Thimble goes into the crate or not tonight.
Perhaps Apricot's peculiar behavior should influence my decision, but in which direction, I am not certain. Hm.
I was skeptical.
Thursday night I was so tired that in order to have enough energy to make the bed and go to bed, I had to take a nap. I lay down on top of the comforter, set my alarm for half an hour (which would make it 8) and closed my eyes.
Thimble was ever so polite. He didn't try to go under the covers (I had the quilt on top of me). He didn't try to get me to wake up. He lay down on the headboard and watched. It's a wide headboard since it's a bookshelf headboard. (Not that I can have books in it anymore as I'm allergic to them now, so it's got three dust-mite-proofed pillows in it so I don't end up with my head in the bookshelf, as has happened.)
When I made the bed, after I finally got back up at 8:30, he was extremely polite. He didn't try to kill the sheets as they moved across the bed to my tugging and straightening. He didn't try to go underneath except once and backed off immediately when I removed him from the bed, instead of bouncing back like a fur covered yo-yo as usual.
And he kept catching my eye and looking very innocent. Not the sort of look that makes you wonder, "now what's he done?" but the sort of look that says, "I can be a good boy, are you noticing?"
The only time that whole week that he hadn't been a good boy was when I tried to put him in the crate. I don't "catch" him or chase him; I simply walk after him slowly until he gives up to the inevitability of it all, but he'd been drawing this out longer and longer. He didn't want to be in the crate any longer.
That night I gave up. I said he could be out, but if I got any complaints from the others, or if he woke me up or kept me awake, back in the crate he'd go.
He was an angel. He slept on the headboard, a place the other two don't go to sleep. And I have missed my kitty on the headboard. Colby was there by my shoulder when I woke up in the morning, and Apricot came to see me.
Subsequent nights didn't go so well, and things went downhill until the next Sunday night, when I lost patience after Thimble used the door curtain as an ambush spot and wouldn't leave my walking top alone after being asked multiple times. I put him in the crate--to his astonishment and hurt horror.
So Monday night I left him out again, yet Colby didn't come back to my shoulder spot on the bed either night. It is Tuesday night, and I'm still debating if Thimble goes into the crate or not tonight.
Perhaps Apricot's peculiar behavior should influence my decision, but in which direction, I am not certain. Hm.
Monday, March 14, 2016
Colby's Food Toss
Colby has started a new game.
Don't ask me how I knew what he wanted, but one evening when I was gathering the leftover food into the food dish that goes in the crate with Thimble, Colby asked me to throw a kernel. So I did.
He was absolutely thrilled. He ran after it, pouncing with great vim and vigor, trapping it beneath his paws and checking to see if it was going to run away before eating it happily. And then coming back to me, asking me to throw another one.
I did, a little bemused at his enthusiasm. Again the hunt, the pounce, the happy crunching. Thimble, on the other side of the corner of the bed, asked me if possibly I could toss one his way, so after I tossed another for Colby, I threw one for Thimble.
Thimble doesn't think the game is nearly as fun, but if Colby is enjoying it, then by gumption, he'll enjoy it too.
Colby likes me to ricochet food bits off the wall, or toss them over the cat stairs at the end of the bed, or try to throw them around the corner of the other side of the bed. He often comes back all the way to me in order to get a good run-up on the next food toss. He'll try to catch them out of the air--and succeeds more often than not. Or he'll "accidentally" bat one with a paw as he "catches" it, and then he has such great fun running down the errant bit.
Sometimes he puzzles himself when he knocks it out of the air but doesn't catch it, exactly, and it landed somewhere on him, and he turns himself around several times before it falls off and he sees it, dark against the cream carpet. And then he's all excited and pounces on it.
Thimble will walk after it should it go beyond where he's sitting. He'll watch it fall in front of him if it's out of easy reach, and walk after it and eat it. And occasionally he'll forget himself and snatch it out of the air with both paws, or try to catch it and end up having it land on his legs between his paws which is puzzling to him. But it has to come at just the right angle for this to happen. Thimble's only participating in the game so as to keep Colby from having all the fun. Thimble doesn't quite realize that Colby isn't paying him any attention at all during the game.
Apricot usually stays out of the bedroom when this is going on. He's come in once or twice and eaten food bits when presented to him on the tips of my fingers, and extremely rarely he'll walk after one that's fallen from a toss to Thimble (when Thimble hasn't gone for it). But mostly he stays out, simply because I'm sitting at the corner of the bed, facing the bed. There's a giant kitten on one side (Thimble) and another giant, extremely excitable kitten on the other side of the bed (Colby) and sometimes Colby rushes by me to Thimble's "side" in order to get a better runway, so there's really no place for a small (normal sized) cat to sit where he won't eventually get run over.
Even though Colby doesn't mean to.
Don't ask me how I knew what he wanted, but one evening when I was gathering the leftover food into the food dish that goes in the crate with Thimble, Colby asked me to throw a kernel. So I did.
He was absolutely thrilled. He ran after it, pouncing with great vim and vigor, trapping it beneath his paws and checking to see if it was going to run away before eating it happily. And then coming back to me, asking me to throw another one.
I did, a little bemused at his enthusiasm. Again the hunt, the pounce, the happy crunching. Thimble, on the other side of the corner of the bed, asked me if possibly I could toss one his way, so after I tossed another for Colby, I threw one for Thimble.
Thimble doesn't think the game is nearly as fun, but if Colby is enjoying it, then by gumption, he'll enjoy it too.
Colby likes me to ricochet food bits off the wall, or toss them over the cat stairs at the end of the bed, or try to throw them around the corner of the other side of the bed. He often comes back all the way to me in order to get a good run-up on the next food toss. He'll try to catch them out of the air--and succeeds more often than not. Or he'll "accidentally" bat one with a paw as he "catches" it, and then he has such great fun running down the errant bit.
Sometimes he puzzles himself when he knocks it out of the air but doesn't catch it, exactly, and it landed somewhere on him, and he turns himself around several times before it falls off and he sees it, dark against the cream carpet. And then he's all excited and pounces on it.
Thimble will walk after it should it go beyond where he's sitting. He'll watch it fall in front of him if it's out of easy reach, and walk after it and eat it. And occasionally he'll forget himself and snatch it out of the air with both paws, or try to catch it and end up having it land on his legs between his paws which is puzzling to him. But it has to come at just the right angle for this to happen. Thimble's only participating in the game so as to keep Colby from having all the fun. Thimble doesn't quite realize that Colby isn't paying him any attention at all during the game.
Apricot usually stays out of the bedroom when this is going on. He's come in once or twice and eaten food bits when presented to him on the tips of my fingers, and extremely rarely he'll walk after one that's fallen from a toss to Thimble (when Thimble hasn't gone for it). But mostly he stays out, simply because I'm sitting at the corner of the bed, facing the bed. There's a giant kitten on one side (Thimble) and another giant, extremely excitable kitten on the other side of the bed (Colby) and sometimes Colby rushes by me to Thimble's "side" in order to get a better runway, so there's really no place for a small (normal sized) cat to sit where he won't eventually get run over.
Even though Colby doesn't mean to.
Sunday, March 6, 2016
Weighty Thoughts
I've been thinking about this post for some time.
I'm going to reference the BMI chart here, so for those of you who don't know and don't want to google it, this is how it works. There's one for men and one for women. Along the side are heights in inch increments, and across the top are weights in like 3-4 pound increments (and I'm sure there's one in normal units for each, but I live in the USA so I get to use old-fashioned units except at work). For your height, there's a block of weights, usually about 50-60 pounds wide, where you are considered "normal" weight. More and you're overweight; less and you're underweight. Since I don't particularly want to share my height and weight with the world, I'm going to use the BMI chart instead.
I think the chart is biased, and so do a lot of people. That the part considered overweight is lower than it should be. It also does not take into account physical fitness. I personally know someone overweight by the BMI chart, a woman, who is far more physically fit than I am.
Back when I was growing up, literally, I was at the lower fourth of the BMI for normal weight when I reached my final height. So, since I wasn't eating unhealthy (I thought), and I wasn't chugging sodas or eating a ton of junk food, I thought this was probably a good weight to be. And it was, don't get me wrong.
Over the next decade or so, my weight slowly crept upwards, due to a variety of factors: the metabolism slowdown that happens to everyone in their late twenties, a pair of drugs (for different conditions) that had weight gain as a side effect, and then I moved to a house with no stairs when I had been living in a house where my bedroom and the working bathrooms were on different floors.
As I wasn't in the habit of weighing myself, I didn't really notice. Oh, sure, I had to get a new pair of pants once that were the next size up. But for the most part, I like wearing loose clothing, so the fact that my shirts were less loose than before, but not tight by any means yet, didn't really register.
Until my workplace started doing insurance discounts for BMI and no-smoking, and one year I weighed in the overweight range. Sort of. Remember how I said the weights were in ~3 pound increments? Well, I weighed in the middle between the last "normal" weight and the first "overweight" weight.
So--and this is important--when I refer to myself as fat, I'm not claiming the kind of weight that most people think about as a fat person. I believe most people who were trying to be nice might have thought of me as chubby, or padded, or plush. Just a little overweight.
Well, I was horrified. Really??? How did this happen? I set about trying to lose the weight. I targeted the middle of the normal range of BMI, although I would have liked to be back at the fourth that I'd been originally ... I just didn't think it was possible.
I lost weight by eating less and exercising more. Actually that part came about a few years later, when I started walking 3 miles every morning, and it wasn't to lose weight that I did that; making me exercise required more motivation than my weight. That's a story for another day. But I didn't mind that it helped.
And I was miserable. I was hungry all the time. The weight did come off, but it crept off, in slow, agonizingly slow, increments. It took years. I struggled so hard to lose weight, and while it was working, it was so slow. I'd gotten into range where I was about 3/4 of the way to the top of the BMI normal range ... That was two years ago.
Then Pippin died. And I stopped eating. I didn't want to eat anything. I felt nauseous all the time. I wasn't interested in eating. My stomach hurt dully constantly, but eating made it worse. I did eat. I know that to function, you have to eat. So I made myself eat what I could stand to get down. Mostly comfort food like macaroni and cheese or cookies or potato soup. And not much of that.
(And two months after Pippin passed away, my dad had a seizure, forcing me to face his mortality as well, even though he was fine.)
The weight fell off. I lost almost ten pounds in the first three days after Pippin's passing, and they never came back. As time passed, and I found a place for the grief in my life and my emotions and my mind, I did find the nausea receding. I could eat a little more.
But still the weight kept falling. I blasted past the halfway mark I'd been aiming for. Flew past the idealistic quarter mark of my first grown-up weight. Finally it started slowing down as I reached the bottom of the normal range of the BMI chart.
And then things got worse, as I started being a tad alarmed at the weight loss at this point and tried to eat more. But what I ate, was more cookies, more sugar and fat and things like that.
My poor metabolism, already confused, decided to go completely wonky.
Then my uncle passed away. At that point I started eating really unhealthily, and started gaining weight again. That was last November/December. On the last day of the year I came across an ad on my Facebook feed for an app called myfitnesspal. It was free. You could find out not only how many calories you were eating, but also where those calories were coming from (fat, protein, carbs, etc). You could even enter in your recipes and have it calculate all that information for your own food. Since I bake a lot, this is important to me.
I was curious, really. Just how badly was I eating, anyway. I tracked my food for a week and found all kinds of things. My sodium was way high. My protein was extremely low. Both of these were big surprises to me. That the fat and sugar were way high was not a surprise.
I've been using the app ever since, and modifying my eating patterns to increase my protein, decrease the sodium (given my family's heart health history), and, lately, also to decrease the glycemic load of what I eat ...since I've noticed I feel better when I don't spike my blood sugar.
And if you got this far you're wondering why I'm writing this. Well, I'm writing this because I've noticed some very strange social things involving weight.
See, now you know I've had the appearance of normal, fat, and thin.
I've noticed people are far more willing to make comments about your weight, both negative and positive, if you're thin than fat. And there's an astonishing number of negative comments to a thin person. They would never dream of making the same kind of comment to a fat person.
And the assumptions are astonishing. I've run into assumptions that even I made, all unknowing.
People assume that a thin person was always thin.
People assume that a thin person can eat whatever they want to, whenever they want to.
Or they assume that a thin person has an eating disorder and can be shamed into eating more, as if that solves any type of eating disorder. Notice that most people do not assume that a fat person got that way because of an eating disorder. It's always assumed that it's just a lack of self control, eating too much. And while they will silently / behind their back condemn a fat person for this perceived lack of self control -- they will rarely do it it to their face.
I got one comment about being fat. One. During the whole time, which amounted to more than a decade, of being overweight or very close to it.
During the year and a half of being thin, I've gotten more negative comments than I can count. To my face.
When I checked the calorie count on a cookie before deciding to eat it or not, I got "Just eat the d*mn cookie. It's not like it's going to hurt you." (From a person who is decidedly overweight.) (I decided against the cookie, as it was almost four hundred calories and that would really restrict what I could eat for supper and I don't particularly like going to bed hungry.)
People assume if you're thin you need to eat more. Um, no, some of us are eating just enough, thank you. There is such a thing as maintenance weight. Which is, by the way, harder than losing or gaining weight.
I get the concerned comments "are you all right?". I get the critical comments. And I also get the "looking good" comments. Talk about mixed messages.
The point is, why do people feel free to discuss a thin person's weight in front of them but get all awkward about a fat person's weight? Yes, double standards exist, they aren't fair, I get all that. I just didn't realize about this one. And I really don't understand why this one exists.
I was taught (I had to be taught it, because otherwise I wouldn't have known on my own) that you don't discuss a person's weight. Yet, that's what I was taught. Not, "it's okay to discuss a thin person's weight but not a fat person's weight." Since I was never thin before, I never ran into this.
It seems very odd to me.
I'm going to reference the BMI chart here, so for those of you who don't know and don't want to google it, this is how it works. There's one for men and one for women. Along the side are heights in inch increments, and across the top are weights in like 3-4 pound increments (and I'm sure there's one in normal units for each, but I live in the USA so I get to use old-fashioned units except at work). For your height, there's a block of weights, usually about 50-60 pounds wide, where you are considered "normal" weight. More and you're overweight; less and you're underweight. Since I don't particularly want to share my height and weight with the world, I'm going to use the BMI chart instead.
I think the chart is biased, and so do a lot of people. That the part considered overweight is lower than it should be. It also does not take into account physical fitness. I personally know someone overweight by the BMI chart, a woman, who is far more physically fit than I am.
Back when I was growing up, literally, I was at the lower fourth of the BMI for normal weight when I reached my final height. So, since I wasn't eating unhealthy (I thought), and I wasn't chugging sodas or eating a ton of junk food, I thought this was probably a good weight to be. And it was, don't get me wrong.
Over the next decade or so, my weight slowly crept upwards, due to a variety of factors: the metabolism slowdown that happens to everyone in their late twenties, a pair of drugs (for different conditions) that had weight gain as a side effect, and then I moved to a house with no stairs when I had been living in a house where my bedroom and the working bathrooms were on different floors.
As I wasn't in the habit of weighing myself, I didn't really notice. Oh, sure, I had to get a new pair of pants once that were the next size up. But for the most part, I like wearing loose clothing, so the fact that my shirts were less loose than before, but not tight by any means yet, didn't really register.
Until my workplace started doing insurance discounts for BMI and no-smoking, and one year I weighed in the overweight range. Sort of. Remember how I said the weights were in ~3 pound increments? Well, I weighed in the middle between the last "normal" weight and the first "overweight" weight.
So--and this is important--when I refer to myself as fat, I'm not claiming the kind of weight that most people think about as a fat person. I believe most people who were trying to be nice might have thought of me as chubby, or padded, or plush. Just a little overweight.
Well, I was horrified. Really??? How did this happen? I set about trying to lose the weight. I targeted the middle of the normal range of BMI, although I would have liked to be back at the fourth that I'd been originally ... I just didn't think it was possible.
I lost weight by eating less and exercising more. Actually that part came about a few years later, when I started walking 3 miles every morning, and it wasn't to lose weight that I did that; making me exercise required more motivation than my weight. That's a story for another day. But I didn't mind that it helped.
And I was miserable. I was hungry all the time. The weight did come off, but it crept off, in slow, agonizingly slow, increments. It took years. I struggled so hard to lose weight, and while it was working, it was so slow. I'd gotten into range where I was about 3/4 of the way to the top of the BMI normal range ... That was two years ago.
Then Pippin died. And I stopped eating. I didn't want to eat anything. I felt nauseous all the time. I wasn't interested in eating. My stomach hurt dully constantly, but eating made it worse. I did eat. I know that to function, you have to eat. So I made myself eat what I could stand to get down. Mostly comfort food like macaroni and cheese or cookies or potato soup. And not much of that.
(And two months after Pippin passed away, my dad had a seizure, forcing me to face his mortality as well, even though he was fine.)
The weight fell off. I lost almost ten pounds in the first three days after Pippin's passing, and they never came back. As time passed, and I found a place for the grief in my life and my emotions and my mind, I did find the nausea receding. I could eat a little more.
But still the weight kept falling. I blasted past the halfway mark I'd been aiming for. Flew past the idealistic quarter mark of my first grown-up weight. Finally it started slowing down as I reached the bottom of the normal range of the BMI chart.
And then things got worse, as I started being a tad alarmed at the weight loss at this point and tried to eat more. But what I ate, was more cookies, more sugar and fat and things like that.
My poor metabolism, already confused, decided to go completely wonky.
Then my uncle passed away. At that point I started eating really unhealthily, and started gaining weight again. That was last November/December. On the last day of the year I came across an ad on my Facebook feed for an app called myfitnesspal. It was free. You could find out not only how many calories you were eating, but also where those calories were coming from (fat, protein, carbs, etc). You could even enter in your recipes and have it calculate all that information for your own food. Since I bake a lot, this is important to me.
I was curious, really. Just how badly was I eating, anyway. I tracked my food for a week and found all kinds of things. My sodium was way high. My protein was extremely low. Both of these were big surprises to me. That the fat and sugar were way high was not a surprise.
I've been using the app ever since, and modifying my eating patterns to increase my protein, decrease the sodium (given my family's heart health history), and, lately, also to decrease the glycemic load of what I eat ...since I've noticed I feel better when I don't spike my blood sugar.
And if you got this far you're wondering why I'm writing this. Well, I'm writing this because I've noticed some very strange social things involving weight.
See, now you know I've had the appearance of normal, fat, and thin.
I've noticed people are far more willing to make comments about your weight, both negative and positive, if you're thin than fat. And there's an astonishing number of negative comments to a thin person. They would never dream of making the same kind of comment to a fat person.
And the assumptions are astonishing. I've run into assumptions that even I made, all unknowing.
People assume that a thin person was always thin.
People assume that a thin person can eat whatever they want to, whenever they want to.
Or they assume that a thin person has an eating disorder and can be shamed into eating more, as if that solves any type of eating disorder. Notice that most people do not assume that a fat person got that way because of an eating disorder. It's always assumed that it's just a lack of self control, eating too much. And while they will silently / behind their back condemn a fat person for this perceived lack of self control -- they will rarely do it it to their face.
I got one comment about being fat. One. During the whole time, which amounted to more than a decade, of being overweight or very close to it.
During the year and a half of being thin, I've gotten more negative comments than I can count. To my face.
When I checked the calorie count on a cookie before deciding to eat it or not, I got "Just eat the d*mn cookie. It's not like it's going to hurt you." (From a person who is decidedly overweight.) (I decided against the cookie, as it was almost four hundred calories and that would really restrict what I could eat for supper and I don't particularly like going to bed hungry.)
People assume if you're thin you need to eat more. Um, no, some of us are eating just enough, thank you. There is such a thing as maintenance weight. Which is, by the way, harder than losing or gaining weight.
I get the concerned comments "are you all right?". I get the critical comments. And I also get the "looking good" comments. Talk about mixed messages.
The point is, why do people feel free to discuss a thin person's weight in front of them but get all awkward about a fat person's weight? Yes, double standards exist, they aren't fair, I get all that. I just didn't realize about this one. And I really don't understand why this one exists.
I was taught (I had to be taught it, because otherwise I wouldn't have known on my own) that you don't discuss a person's weight. Yet, that's what I was taught. Not, "it's okay to discuss a thin person's weight but not a fat person's weight." Since I was never thin before, I never ran into this.
It seems very odd to me.
A Good Day
I had a good day today, even though my tongue hurt the whole time, sometimes very badly.
What's a good day? Here, I'll tell you.
When I woke up, Colby was beside my head, and I cuddled him until I felt I really should get up and let Thimble out of his crate. After I did that, I went back to bed, and Thimble came to cuddle in Colby's place. Thimble only gets to cuddle with me like that on Sundays, because all the other days I stay out of bed once I let him out.
And after I cuddled Thimble, I played phone games for a while. Then I got up, weighed the cats since they were all visible to be carried over to the cat scale and weighed, did the litter cleaning and the fresh water, and ate my breakfast.
Then I got dressed in my walking clothes, stopped to play phone games for a minute which turned into a good half-hour, and then went for a five mile walk--two miles further than the other days, but as I don't go anywhere on Sunday so to get my 10,000 steps in, I kind of have to do more walking.
It was brisk and sunny, about 55 degrees (F), and there wasn't a lot of traffic or barking dogs. Quite pleasant, even if my legs did let me know an hour into the walk, the way they always do on Sunday, that 'hey, we're supposed to be done now.' I always find that interesting, because I add the other street, the one that gives me another two miles, at the beginning of the walk. So it's not that my muscles know the walk path and say, we're done, when I get to the end of that path. It's the amount of time I spend walking, apparently.
And by the time I got back and took a shower with Thimble's help, it was time to eat lunch.
Then, interspersed with playing phone games, I replaced the rest of the house's light bulbs with the free LED bulbs my energy company had sent me, including the recessed lights in the kitchen. I'd only had half of them using working regular bulbs anyway, because they put off so much heat. With the non-heat-generating LED bulbs, I replaced all of them. My kitchen is so much brighter.
And I sat down in the living room on the floor and asked if anyone wanted their claws clipped and treats afterwards, and got mobbed by the three boys. I just do whoever gets to me first, so the order this time was Thimble, Apricot, and then Colby. Thimble even sat there without arguing about having all his claws clipped (he thinks I should skip a few on each paw).
It's so strange clipping Apricot's claws. His paws are so tiny compared to the others, and since he got in the middle this time, it was truly a bit bizarre. When he walks, it looks like he's a ballet dancer walking on his tippy toes, because the others' paws splay out on the floor! He was funny in another way, too--he kept moving around me and bumping my arms as I was clipping Thimble's claws (which, by the way, is not helpful for accurate clipping), so you'd think he was wanting the treats ... but he only wanted two after his claws were clipped and then he was done. They get four, one for each paw, and I count them so they know, but Apricot only wanted two.
I cleaned up some of the detritus that ends up on the kitchen table, too. The LED bulb thing was part of that, as the box had been sitting there for ages. I climbed on the piano bench and the kitchen stools to change the bulbs in the living room and the kitchen (respectively), and Thimble was fascinated with the bench part (he got on it and I had to ask him to move to one side so I could have room to stand, which he did) and Colby was fascinated by the kitchen stool part (I think because they knock those down by leaving too rapidly sometimes, and he was wondering if I knew those things weren't very stable!)
Apricot mostly slept, as he usually does during the day. That's because (I think) that he patrols the house at night when the rest of us are asleep/crated.
Then I watched a tv episode and rode my new stationary bike during it. I put the bike together yesterday (successfully, in spite of the directions), and I've only done this twice, so I'm still on "very light effort" according to my app. I'm trying not to blast my muscles into pain the next day, and work into it slowly. I rode one mph faster on an average basis then I did yesterday, so I'm improving. Definitely works different muscles than the walking does, I'll tell you that! It's a semi-recumbent bike and very quiet, a necessity for me.
Colby was very interested in the biking. The other two were asleep in the next room, but Colby stuck around. As he got closer, I started asking him if he wanted up. I wasn't asking verbally, just holding out my hand in the invitation position. After a while he got the idea I couldn't pick him up from the floor and he rose up and put his paws on my hip. From there I was able to grab him and pick him up into my arms. He didn't like the initial tug (as I could only hold his arms at first) but once I had him cuddled against me in my arms (couldn't rest him on my lap as that part was moving constantly), he was quite content. I held him and petted him for about five minutes, but he weighs fifteen and a half pounds and I just can't hold that much weight for long, even if it is cuddly and furry and smells good. He was disappointed when I had to put him down.
After that was a nice meal of a mini salad and my marinated pork chops with cheddar cheese biscuits. This particular pork chop had a ridge of fat along the edge, so I cut it off and sliced it up and gave it to the cats. I have very happy cats now. (Nothing in the marinade would hurt them, don't worry, and the pork chop was already cooked; I only had to warm it up.)
And now I'm writing this.
So that's a good day. I didn't have a ton of sensory issues to overwhelm me; I didn't have to interact with anyone (even people I love); and I had lots of kitty time.
What's a good day? Here, I'll tell you.
When I woke up, Colby was beside my head, and I cuddled him until I felt I really should get up and let Thimble out of his crate. After I did that, I went back to bed, and Thimble came to cuddle in Colby's place. Thimble only gets to cuddle with me like that on Sundays, because all the other days I stay out of bed once I let him out.
And after I cuddled Thimble, I played phone games for a while. Then I got up, weighed the cats since they were all visible to be carried over to the cat scale and weighed, did the litter cleaning and the fresh water, and ate my breakfast.
Then I got dressed in my walking clothes, stopped to play phone games for a minute which turned into a good half-hour, and then went for a five mile walk--two miles further than the other days, but as I don't go anywhere on Sunday so to get my 10,000 steps in, I kind of have to do more walking.
It was brisk and sunny, about 55 degrees (F), and there wasn't a lot of traffic or barking dogs. Quite pleasant, even if my legs did let me know an hour into the walk, the way they always do on Sunday, that 'hey, we're supposed to be done now.' I always find that interesting, because I add the other street, the one that gives me another two miles, at the beginning of the walk. So it's not that my muscles know the walk path and say, we're done, when I get to the end of that path. It's the amount of time I spend walking, apparently.
And by the time I got back and took a shower with Thimble's help, it was time to eat lunch.
Then, interspersed with playing phone games, I replaced the rest of the house's light bulbs with the free LED bulbs my energy company had sent me, including the recessed lights in the kitchen. I'd only had half of them using working regular bulbs anyway, because they put off so much heat. With the non-heat-generating LED bulbs, I replaced all of them. My kitchen is so much brighter.
And I sat down in the living room on the floor and asked if anyone wanted their claws clipped and treats afterwards, and got mobbed by the three boys. I just do whoever gets to me first, so the order this time was Thimble, Apricot, and then Colby. Thimble even sat there without arguing about having all his claws clipped (he thinks I should skip a few on each paw).
It's so strange clipping Apricot's claws. His paws are so tiny compared to the others, and since he got in the middle this time, it was truly a bit bizarre. When he walks, it looks like he's a ballet dancer walking on his tippy toes, because the others' paws splay out on the floor! He was funny in another way, too--he kept moving around me and bumping my arms as I was clipping Thimble's claws (which, by the way, is not helpful for accurate clipping), so you'd think he was wanting the treats ... but he only wanted two after his claws were clipped and then he was done. They get four, one for each paw, and I count them so they know, but Apricot only wanted two.
I cleaned up some of the detritus that ends up on the kitchen table, too. The LED bulb thing was part of that, as the box had been sitting there for ages. I climbed on the piano bench and the kitchen stools to change the bulbs in the living room and the kitchen (respectively), and Thimble was fascinated with the bench part (he got on it and I had to ask him to move to one side so I could have room to stand, which he did) and Colby was fascinated by the kitchen stool part (I think because they knock those down by leaving too rapidly sometimes, and he was wondering if I knew those things weren't very stable!)
Apricot mostly slept, as he usually does during the day. That's because (I think) that he patrols the house at night when the rest of us are asleep/crated.
Then I watched a tv episode and rode my new stationary bike during it. I put the bike together yesterday (successfully, in spite of the directions), and I've only done this twice, so I'm still on "very light effort" according to my app. I'm trying not to blast my muscles into pain the next day, and work into it slowly. I rode one mph faster on an average basis then I did yesterday, so I'm improving. Definitely works different muscles than the walking does, I'll tell you that! It's a semi-recumbent bike and very quiet, a necessity for me.
Colby was very interested in the biking. The other two were asleep in the next room, but Colby stuck around. As he got closer, I started asking him if he wanted up. I wasn't asking verbally, just holding out my hand in the invitation position. After a while he got the idea I couldn't pick him up from the floor and he rose up and put his paws on my hip. From there I was able to grab him and pick him up into my arms. He didn't like the initial tug (as I could only hold his arms at first) but once I had him cuddled against me in my arms (couldn't rest him on my lap as that part was moving constantly), he was quite content. I held him and petted him for about five minutes, but he weighs fifteen and a half pounds and I just can't hold that much weight for long, even if it is cuddly and furry and smells good. He was disappointed when I had to put him down.
After that was a nice meal of a mini salad and my marinated pork chops with cheddar cheese biscuits. This particular pork chop had a ridge of fat along the edge, so I cut it off and sliced it up and gave it to the cats. I have very happy cats now. (Nothing in the marinade would hurt them, don't worry, and the pork chop was already cooked; I only had to warm it up.)
And now I'm writing this.
So that's a good day. I didn't have a ton of sensory issues to overwhelm me; I didn't have to interact with anyone (even people I love); and I had lots of kitty time.
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