As requested, an open thread. I’ll try to get these up more often in the future. This one will be overseen by Morrissey with a cat on his head.
No trolls, no arguments.
Categories
Open Thread for Personal Stuff: January 2014 Pretty Cats Make Hats Edition
Ally, I don’t have online access to that book. The closest e-book I can find that I have access to is Visualization in modern cartography, but that’s from 1994.
Meanwhile, I mean what I say that books disappear from shelves all the time in libraries. They will show in the catalog as “not checked out” but that means nothing.
Deflect. Make escape plans with katz. I’m worried about you too.
Ally, let Katz come get you. Please.
A lot of people apparently feel the need to police every morsel that everyone else puts in their mouths. I started doing the Paleo diet about a year ago, having discovered I can’t eat wheat, and I feel much better in every way, especially and including my mental health. But holy cow, is there ever a bunch of judgmental crap on the blogs. I try to ignore it and just read the recipes, but it took me several years of work to change my relationship with food and stop being afraid of people looking at my restaurant or fast food orders, or the contents of my shopping cart.
In fact, it’s not just in Paleo circles. Somebody told me once that if you want to avoid conflict, avoid talking about politics, religion, and diets. That somebody was on to something.
I generally avoid, as much as possible, telling people about dieting or even just diets. They just want to pile on the unsolicited advice.
I saw this random FB post that I thought was funny. It said:
I’ve recently switched to a strict paleo diet. Archaeological evidence shows that prehistoric man ate pretty much whatever he could find. I am following this principle strictly.
I was amused by this.
*Note I have nothing against people doing the paleo diet, I don’t even know what it entails, but if it is working for people then sweet.
@katz
I appreciate your concern, but I’m just not ready. All I can say is that he probably won’t severely harm me if he decides to take his anger out on me. And my brother will be there to protect me. Fortunately I think I’ve found a website that will let me download the PDF for the book, so hopefully the issue will be resolved soon. (But if anyone finds the PDF online and sends it to me, that would be much appreciated.)
I’m sorry for being stubborn like this guys. A lot of people think I’m stubborn – it’s probably the thing people hate the most about me generally speaking. It’s strange because I’m often very weak-willed, passive and submissive as well. I don’t know what to think about myself, really. In any case, I apologize.
Gosh, it seems like a bad time of the year for everyone going through shitty stuff. Condolences, happy thoughts, virtual [insert animal of your choice]s to everyone.
On the diet side, I have been told by a professor of nutrition that the human body is pretty resilient. The thing is to make sure that you’ve covered off your macro and micronutrients, otherwise it’s pretty much eat what you like, and remember your energy balance (calories in vs. calories expended). If you’re concerned about what a diet is doing biochemically, the doctor can always do tests (e.g. lipid studies, haemoglobin levels) to check you out. You don’t need to balance your diet on an hour-by-hour or daily basis, nutrient intakes are all pretty much longrun requirements.
The only comments I have are:
– re the paleo diet, the food we eat now is pretty much nothing like the food that was around 1000s of years ago because science! Corn is a really good example, but even with animals there have been changes due to breeding.
– I have no idea how the blood type diet is supposed to work, and why it is only the ABO group would apparently matter if blood type was important
– there is no such thing as a “no carb” diet, although I do accept that it is possible to eat a “very, very, very small level of carbs” diet.
titianblue, that’s the witchiest I’ve ever seen witchy kitty looking! RUN RUN IS BASEMENT CAT!
eli – I hope the injection works! Inflammatory bowel disease, that’s horrible. I don’t know if there’s much point in being relieved it’s not cancer at this stage, though I am. (If that makes sense.)
auggz – I wish I had something useful to say, but I haven’t, so hugs if you want them?
Ally – I’m reading this as the part of your mind that’s afraid to go, of the unknown, talking. Call it stubborn or not, I don’t know, but reading this:
had me mentally screaming GET OUT NOW. “Not severely hurt you”? Not severely?
I suspect if you wait till you feel ready you’ll never go, because you’re in an abusive relationshp and that’s how the abuser has shaped your thinking. Please, PLEASE let katz come and get you the fuck out of there!
And if after all this you don’t feel you can go, can you get someone else to borrow the book for him?
@Ally:
Are you going to be okay, because this sentence you wrote suggests you might not be?
@auggz: the person lecturing you on proteins clearly knows nothing about bloody amino acids. Vegetarians and vegans can have excellent diets that contribute all the amino acids required (I say can because, like omnivores, some vegetarians and vegans have crap diets – it’s the individual person causing the problem, not the eating philosophy).
I’ve never understood this arbitrary policing of other people’s eating behaviour. About the only judgement I pass is “oh that looks nice” if they’re eating something that looks yummy. I have expanded my own tastes by seeing what other people eat – so it’s win/win. 🙂
@auggz (not sure if that is how I should shorten your nic if it’s okay to shorten it): yep, they’re stupid. The reason for their fixation lies with them and not you, so I’m not sure you will ever figure it out, or that you even can be bothered.
I’m only vegetarian, and even I get people freaked out by my “dietary requirements” and what will they serve me if I come to dinner. I mean, do these types of people put meat in everything? I can only imagine it is worse for you. These days, I avoid pot luck dinners like the plague as I can only guarantee I can eat what I take myself. And people don’t like being asked in detail what ingredients they put into their cooking. 🙁
But going around the supermarket is slow. I hadn’t realised that gelatine is in sour cream (only the full-fat type, not the reduced fat ones, ???), so I appreciate the regulations around food ingredient labelling.
The thing I like about Paleo is that the whole point is to methodically discover how different foods affect you, and avoid the ones that make you feel bad. That’s pretty much it. Ergo, it’s not possible for anyone to be doing it wrong. That hasn’t seemed to stop people from telling other people they’re doing it wrong. Humans. Whatcha gonna do?
Ally, when you say you’re not ready, do you mean there are strategic, concrete things that need to be done, or do you mean you’re not emotionally ready to make the leap? Because in my experience, I’m almost never ready to make the leap, but when I do it anyway, it has ALWAYS been the right choice.
OK, now I’m REALLY worried about you. I’m glad your brother is there but your dad hurts your brother too and I don’t want anything to happen to either of you.
It doesn’t have to involve me but I really want you to have some way of getting out of there in case your dad gets violent!
THIS. There’s even an ad for uni courses at the moment that says “Just because you don’t feel ready doesn’t mean you’re not ready.”
I swear I when I was little I saw Mr. Rogers make “peanut butter” on TV by mashing a bunch of peanuts (with the shells still on them) with a stick of butter. Does anyone else remember that or is my mind playing tricks on me?
(and sorry, I know that’s kind of random. hugs for everyone dealing with too much serious stuff. maybe this can be comic relief.)
@everyone
All right, I think I phrased that really badly. And I’m also really anxious, so that description sounded worse than I intended. He’s not super angry or stressed out these days, so I don’t think he’ll do anything worse than yell at me, which is also abusive but not threatening like physical assault.
And just you folks know, my dad doesn’t mess with my brother anymore; he’s actually afraid of my brother these days. My brother is also very good at breaking up fights and disputes. I’ll try to head straight to sleep tonight so that my dad won’t bother me. And right now I’m sending him an email saying “I’m sorry I forgot to get the book today. Right now I’m looking for a PDF online instead because that way you won’t have to worry about returning it, and here’s this one relevant book I found already…”
I’m sorry for making all of you worried. I know I’ll be okay. I’m thinking through this situation and realizing that it’s not as perilous as I thought.
I trust you to know yourself best, Ally. I would like to give you this to think about: you are a clear-sighted, fierce defender of others, and you repeatedly and exquisitely slice through bullshit arguments all over the internet. You always pinpoint the lack of basis of trans-phobia, homo-phobia, and MRA bullshit in general, and you always lay out your arguments and evidence meticulously and eloquently.
You can do that same thing with the bullshit your dad spews. You can be a fierce defender of yourself. If you can’t do it to his face, you can write it in your journal, and gain all kinds of clarity.
In other news, a contract broke the water main that services my neighbourhood. I hope we have running water before morning. In the meantime, I’d best go find a restaurant to feed me some supper.
*contractor. A contractor broke the line. A contract doing that would be very, very unnerving.
Googling a little, I wasn’t imagining that about Mr. Rogers. He did try to make peanut butter that way but I guess the point was he was trying to make it the wrong way, and then he went to a factory to learn about the right way. But when I was little I thought he was really trying to show me how to make peanut butter. And until now I still thought that, because that’s all I remembered.
Ally, what Unimaginative said. In really big glittery letters.
That would be one hell of a papercut.
I am vegetarian, and once one of my co-workers went into in total shock and alarm because she saw me eating a sandwich. “I though vegetarians just ate salad,” she said. . .
I was a vegetarian for a little while in the mid-90’s. One of my co-workers said, “But you can eat chicken!” Well, no…
Yeah, it’s surprising how hard it can be for people to grasp the plant/animal distinction . . .
“You look so healthy for a vegetarian” <= things actually said to me when I was a real vegetarian (these days I eat poultry and cured meats [yeah I know, but I love pepperoni!])
Um, thanks? I think?
I remember back in the heady early 90s days of bulletin boards, and having an argument against 4 others, with me being the one saying “you can’t be vegetarian if you eat chicken and fish”. And them all saying “but vegetarians just avoid red meat” erm, no.
I fly occasionally for work. And I have had very confused aircrew when I have handed the yoghurt back from breakfast saying “I can’t eat this, it is gelatine in it”. That’s in the pre-arranged vegetarian cereal breakfast. One would have thought the catering company would know this stuff.
You have to laugh so you don’t cry anecdote: Years ago I was at an all-day work function, which had one of those mass catered lunches. I indicated I was vegetarian, and was the only person who put down a dietary requirement. The caterers kindly organised a plate of vegetarian food, clearly labelled as vegetarian. It looked really nice too, unfortunately before I could get to it, I got cornered by people who had a lot of questions about the content of the workshop. The omnivores ate my lunch. 🙁 I had some slices of fruit.