Hanne Blank's Blog, page 3

Who You’re Sitting Next To At This Dinner Party: Kitty Stryker

This year, I’ve decided to run a series of short interviews with some of the marvelous people I know or have worked with (or both), because I know far too many fascinating people not to share. Each person answers the same questions. All of them give thought-provoking, interesting, wonderful answers.

These are the people you’re sitting next to at this dinner party. Enjoy.

Oh, Miss Kitty! Hips, whips, and mmm, those lips.

Kitty Stryker is a geeky sex worker, Burner, rabid writer and feminist activist with one high-heeled boot in San Francisco, California and one in London, England. In London, Stryker worked with the TLC Trust, an online organization connecting people with disabilities with sex workers experienced with emotional or physical limitations. She is the founder of the award-winning Ladies High Tea and Pornography Society, and was nominated by the Erotic Awards as Sex Worker of the Year for her charity and activism work.

Now back in the States, Stryker has been presenting Safe/Ward, a workshop on combating entitlement culture within alternative sexual communities. She has written for Good Vibrations, Filament, and Huffington Post, does social media marketing consulting for startup companies, and is the PR rep for the queer live sex show collective Cum & Glitter. In her copious free time, she performs for several pornographic sites, writes for anthologies, and has been interviewed for multiple documentaries.

Please describe yourself in 25 words or less.

I’m a geeky queer hardfemme with a manic pixie dream domme alterego.

What are three things about you that most people either don’t know or wouldn’t expect?

I actually agree with radical feminists on many things (we part ways on others, however- transphobia, BDSM and how to support sex workers, for example)

I’m terrified when speaking to a crowd- I enjoy it, but I shake the entire time!

I can blacksmith, and shoot a gun, and rivet, and am pretty good at all three.

Of the things you’ve done in your life so far, what are you proudest of?

I think Consent Culture is probably the thing I feel proudest of. Translating my anger at institutionalized oppression and how it’s reflected within alternative communities (particularly sexualized ones) into practical solutions and ways forward, and helping people feel some hope that we can actually *change* that rather than just be mad and/or withdraw, had been transformative for me. I’ve seen how being dedicated to combating entitlement and rape culture within kinky/poly/Burning Man spaces in a way that’s both playful but also firm can be incredibly effective, and that makes me feel incredibly proud. Even things you might not expect, like seeing how imagery on flyers in communities I move in is shifting away from slender, white, submissively posed cisgender women to reflect more diversity (and how that, then, encourages more diversity and safety within the community itself in real time) makes me feel warm and fuzzy. I think Consent Culture has a chance.

What’s an as yet nonexistent thing about which you’ve thought “why hasn’t someone created that yet?

A safe call app for anyone who is going on a date/one night stand and wants to have a safety net in place where someone knows where they are and that they’re ok. People do that anyway, but an app would be handy- it could send an sms message if you haven’t sent the right code word to your contact within, say, 15 minutes of the agreed time suggesting a call is in order.

If you could get everyone who reads this to do one thing, just once, what would you get them to do?

Educate yourself- which typically, for me, usually means read something uncomfortable that makes you check your privilege. Read about how “white anti-racists” end up replicating racist behaviours, recognize that in yourself, and take accountability. Read about what rape culture looks like, understand that it’s not just the obvious stuff, and begin to challenge is when you see/hear it. Read about how to really help someone who’s depressed rather than telling them “it gets better”, or get to know what the Spoon Theory is so you can even begin to have an idea what it’s like to live with chronic illness, and be mindful. Read the cis privilege checklist and learn to identify privileges you didn’t even recognize you had, and  take action towards equality and safety. All oppression is interlinked, and if we checked ourselves with loving kindness, compassion, ownership and awareness, we could really begin to build something better.

                                      

pimp your ride

I am a woman of a certain age, a certain degree of organic hormonal imbalance, and an Eastern European heritage.   This means that periodically I find myself looking in the mirror and seeing that although each year I get a little closer,  it seems I still can’t grow a proper beard.

Then I go check the hours of my local waxing emporium, as I did this morning, to see if I’ll be able to get in there for a nice bracing ripping out of facial hair sometime soon.

So this was what I was doing when I noticed that the waxing salon was offering some new services.

Specifically, the salon now offers pubic hair dyeing services with the “Betty” line of pubic hair dyes (an apparently fine product featured on Oprah’s website…), in “full Betty,” “shaped Betty,” and “landing strip Betty” configurations.  Available colors include all the usual natural-hair hues, but also cherry red, a “bridal” blue, and lilac.

The salon is now also offering Vajazzling. If you’ve been blissfully ignorant of this phenomenon until now, it’s basically the non-permanent attachment of little flat-backed crystals to a depilated “bikini area.”  The official Vajazzling website educates us as to its artistic and expressive potential.

Vajazzling is also a lot of fun if you wish to put forward a message – especially if it’s a sexy one! Some like having the initials “USA” on their smooth vulva regions, while others like to have a statement such as “this is for ___”. Sexy messages like “juicy”, “sugar”, “sexy”, “Miss Devil” and “horny” are awesome enough to make people drool over you! You can also be extremely suggestive with designs such as a flower, two cherries, butterflies and lips etc. What you need to understand here is that you can be as playful as you want.

I do not judge those who enjoy these things.  Nevertheless, until this product is also marketed for the gentlemen as “Disco Balls,” I shall continue to think it just the tiniest bit sexist that women are being encouraged to remove all the hair from their crotches in order to then apply soft-porno bling.

Anyhow.

Now that I know this is possible, I desperately want to know whether anyone has ever taken the truest and fullest advantage of this double dose of decorative potential, and created the style destined to be known to the history books as “The Liberace:”  a luxurious, bouffant-y quiff of lilac fur, and rhinestones… everywhere.

All I can say is that it will not be me.

                                      

Who You’re Sitting Next To At This Dinner Party: Jo Paoletti

This year, I’ve decided to run a series of short interviews with some of the marvelous people I know or have worked with (or both), because I know far too many fascinating people not to share.  Each person answers the same questions.  All of them give thought-provoking, interesting, wonderful answers.

These are the people you’re sitting next to at this dinner party.  Enjoy.

Jo can deconstruct your entire outfit in under five seconds at 50 paces. Respect.

Jo B. Paoletti teaches courses related to everyday American life, including popular culture, fashion and consumerism, and material culture at the University of Maryland. With degrees in apparel design and textiles, she has concentrated most of her research on two main questions: How does consumer culture shape identity? How does “identity work” influence consumer culture?

Please describe yourself in 25 words or less.   

Author of Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America (2012) and Sex and Unisex: Fashion, Feminism and the Sexual Revolution (2014-ish).

What are three things about you that most people either don’t know or wouldn’t expect?

I took up the fiddle when I turned 40, and used to play in a Celtic band.

My fiddle career ended with a football injury when I was 58.

I celebrated my 60th birthday by getting a tattoo and posing seminude for a charity calendar.

Of the things you’ve done in your life so far, what are you proudest of? 

I was the leader of a Girl Scout troop for 12 years, working with the same girls from 1st through 12th grade. My Brownies are all in their 30s now, and amazing women

What’s an as yet nonexistent thing about which you’ve thought “why hasn’t someone created that yet?”

Someone needs to apply the concept of Daylight Savings Time to weekends. Turn the clock back Friday at 5pm, turn it forward 8am on Monday.

If you could get everyone who reads this to do one thing, just once, what would you get them to do?

Take the California Zephyr from Chicago to San Francisco. Or San Francisco to Chicago. Either way, it’s an unforgettable trip!

                                      

100 Days: Day 10

Day 10, and I am healing up from the flu.  Enough to get back on the stick with some core muscle stuff, anyhow, without coughing up my socks.  And thankfully also enough to have been out doing rather a lot of snow shoveling the past couple of days.  As you can see in the photo below, the snow level on our front walk, here in north-central Massachusetts, was roughly up to what I fondly refer to as my firm but pliant rear end.  That, my friends, was some non-trivial shoveling.

Heather says I’m dressed for a Tolstoy reenactment. Kept my ears warm though.

For your inspirational reading, I bring you Rikibeth’s great, spot-on account of taking charge in her intake session with a personal trainer, and prose/e/yes’s blogging about her recent movement and where that’s been taking her.

Now that I’m more or less back in the saddle post-flu, I’m looking forward to having some more substantive things to say about the experience of adding something new to my body practice in days to come.

To those of you still shoveling out, I salute you.  To those of you who didn’t get smacked by this storm, count your blessings!

                                      

Win Stuff! Listen to stuff! Learn stuff!

WIN STUFF

Want to win a copy of The Unapologetic Fat Girl’s Guide to Exercise and Other Incendiary Acts?

I thought you might. Here’s how:

Go write an Amazon.com review of one of my books listed below (including the Unapologetic Fat Girl’s Guide, if you’ve read it), and leave me the link to your review or email it to me.  Heck, write more than one.  Write reviews for all five if you like!

Find the books on Amazon.com:

The Unapologetic Fat Girl’s Guide to Exercise and Other Incendiary Acts
Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality
Big Big Love: A Sex and Relationships Guide for People of Size and Those Who Love Them
Virgin: The Untouched History
Unruly Appetites

Next Friday I’ll choose 2 lucky book reviewers to get a free signed/inscribed copy sent directly to the address of your choosing, anywhere in the world, absolutely free.

(Note: If you can’t wait to see if you won and you want to buy a copy of The Unapologetic Fat Girl’s Guide to Exercise and Other Incendiary Acts, or any of my other books, though, do me a favor and buy ‘em from an independent bookstore like my good friends at Charis Books, Atomic Books, or Giovanni’s Room.  They’re all happy to do mail order.  Amazon reviews are important and drive sales and stuff.  But indie bookstores are crucial to people like me getting to do the work we do in the world.)

 

LISTEN TO STUFF

I know some of you will be snowed in tomorrow and all that stuff.  I will be too.  But since you’ll be holed up in the house anyway, why not join me tomorrow for this fantastic teleseminar about dating, love and sex?

I’ll let Golda tell you about it:

Every day, you (and I) get the message that we are not enough. We hear that in order to find love and have fun dating, we need to change our bodies to fit some ideal.

We’re constantly trying to fit ourselves into someone else’s idea of what we should be. We obsess over food to try to be thinner and obsess over our bodies because we’re not “supposed to be” this size. We’re too loud, or too quiet, too bossy or too permissive, too sexy or not sexy enough, too much or not enough.

But what if there’s another way. What if you can have the fun, sexy, wonderful dating life you want right now?

If this is what you’re looking for, you have come to the right place!

In this Body Positive Dating Master Class, you will meet and hear from our experts who know all about having a deliciously fun dating life at any size. In this engaging one-day-only event, you will discover simple ways to get more of what you want, whether that’s more great dates, a serious relationship or any other romantic situations you desire!

So c’mon and join us, won’t you?

                                      

pantry prattle

I’ve not made a food-related post in some time.  Some of you, I know, miss that sort of thing.  Truth be told, I don’t cook as much as I used to, partly because I’m cooking only for myself much of the time now.  But being that I am recovering from this godawful virus, and our furnace blew out yesterday and we are relying on space heaters, and we are anticipating a major snowstorm (and no, the furnace won’t be replaced by then)… well, I’m feeling selfindulgent and rather disinclined to attempt anything requiring more brain, so I figured I might prattle at you all about the foodways of my people, meaning me.

My bachelorette eating style is rather haphazard at times, and tends to center around a few things I presume others would find tedious, particularly since I am one of those people who will happily make a Big Pot Of Something Stewish and then eat it many days in a row, interspersed with meals of things like tunafish salad or scrambled eggs, until it is gone.

I’ve been traveling a lot, too, and when you’re only in one place for a few weeks at the most, it just doesn’t feel like it makes sense to really stock the larder and go to town.

But for the moment, I am in one place for more or less a month, and so even though I’ve been ill I have been doing more shopping, larder-filling, and cooking than I have in some time.  It’s gotten me thinking about what my pantry staples are, when I cook for myself, and how idiosyncratic these things really can be.

My pantry, for instance, always contains tinned fish of the small-and-oily family.  Herring, anchovies, sardines, sprats.  Usually I have some tuna and salmon on hand as well, in tins, but I am actually more likely to eat the little smelly oily ones, given free rein.  Sometimes I let the dog have the juice from the tin, which is just about the most exciting thing that can happen at lunchtime when you are my dog.

The salmon goes, from time to time, into salmon cakes, one of my favorite comfort foods.  Salmon cakes are also the reason I keep soda crackers in the house.  Salmon cakes do not have a particularly standard formula, as it depends on how much salmon cakeage I feel needs to happen and what my whims are, but roughly speaking, a large tin of salmon, drained and mashed, gets mixed with about a half to two-thirds cup of soda cracker crumbs made by putting the soda crackers in a plastic bag, sealing it, and whacking it with a rolling pin until crumbs occur.  I add minced onion and celery, plenty of dried dill weed, a little pinch of ground cayenne, a fair whack of fresh ground black pepper, and bind it all together with a couple of beaten eggs.  Let it stand for ten minutes or so and then form into cakes and fry in a little oil until they are nice and browned on both sides, and firm.  These are good both hot and cold.

(Don’t bother to remove the bones from tinned salmon, by the way.  They’re soft and edible and a great source of calcium and many people rather like the texture.)

I do keep pasta, couscous, and rice around but I eat them infrequently for some reason, except when I make a big batch of rice, stick it in the fridge, and then make fried rice variations with it until all the cooked rice is gone.  Medium grain jasmine rice is my favorite.

Starch-wise I’m fonder of, and more likely to be found eating, oats, either steel-cut or rolled, barley, farro, bulghur, or freekeh.  I also like polenta and grits, though not instant versions of either (c’mon, it only takes half an hour to cook them).

There are almost always frozen blueberries and green beans in my freezer, and frequently frozen Brussels sprouts.  I usually try to keep some salmon in there, too, and some quality, shell-on, frozen shrimp.  Both are good and quick and easy things to have on hand if you need Something Fancy, either for reasons of morale or unexpected company or both.  I keep good coffee in the freezer too.  I don’t drink it often but you know how it goes.  It’s a good thing to have around.

In the cupboard you’ll find flour and sugar (white, brown, and usually some jaggery or piloncillo), salt, dried chiles, dried mushrooms, lots and lots of tea, Truvia packets, some tinned tomatoes, jars of olives, variegated jams and jellies, and things I use when I bake — vanillas, espresso powder, citrus oils, rosewater.

There is always popcorn.  Ladyfinger or by preference.  But plain old plain old popcorn from the bottom shelf of the supermarket popcorn selection, at usually less than a dollar a pound bag, will do in a pinch.

Eggs.  Tofu.  Soymilk (unsweetened, unflavored).

Peanut butter.  The semi-crunchy fresh-ground-while-you-wait from Dekalb Farmer’s Market in Decatur, GA, is really kind of my Holy Grail of peanut butter.  But as it is a locally available thing only, I make do, when not in Georgia, with Peanut Butter & Co’s Bee’s Knees, which is just sweet enough that it makes me feel like it is very indulgent, but not so sweet that it makes me feel like I am basically eating peanut-flavored frosting.  I eat peanut butter only on toast, or else whole wheat crackers.  I don’t eat it on untoasted bread.

La doubanjiang. Sriracha.  Fish sauce (Three Crabs brand). Oyster sauce. Soy sauce. Sesame oil.

Olive oil. Grapeseed oil. Black vinegar. Balsamic vinegar.  Cider vinegar.  Onions.  Garlic.  Sweet potatoes.  Cabbage.  Cucumbers.

How about you?

                                      

100 Days: On Exercising When Really Quite Unwell

You remember how I was sick on Day 1?

Turns out I have been visited by the Flu Fairy.

(Yeah, I had a flu shot, so get off your high horse.  It happens.  It’s not a reason to not get a flu shot, it’s just having had the luck to get exposed to some viral varietal that the shot didn’t cover.)

I’m still sick, and have made the executive decision that, given the fact that all my trunk muscles are sore from coughing, and I actually pulled a muscle in my side by coughing so damn hard so damn often, that extended coughing jags count as a form of core-muscle exercise.

Sort of.  Definitely not the kind I wanted to do.  But since I can’t really do the kind I wanted to do right now without setting off an extended coughing jag, and yes I have found this out via the experimental method, it’s going to have to suffice.

For the same reason, I’m also not able to do my other 100 Days body practice, which is singing technique practice.  Not a flu-compatible undertaking.

All this gives me a sad.  I am bored as hell of being ill, and restless as hell, and oh so very tired of my kitchen table and my couch and my bed.  How I long for a nice sedan-chair in which a lady invalid might be carried abroad!

…and such nice young men to carry it, too. (Image from the Powerhouse Museum, UK.)

In the absence of said sedan-chair to get me out and about and peering at the world from a nice private little booth in which I and my virus could be comfortably sequestered, there’s not a lot I can do about it except  wait it out, and make another damn pot of tea.  I am drinking so much tea these days I swear I slosh when I walk.

Some of you, though, have been sharing your adventures with me in various ways, and I am enjoying them vicariously, for which I thank you.

It occurs to me to note that bearing a sedan-chair would be substantial and wholesome exercise.  Just saying.

                                      

Who You’re Sitting Next To At This Dinner Party: Cary Webb

This year, I’ve decided to run a series of short interviews with some of the marvelous people I know or have worked with (or both), because I know far too many fascinating people not to share.  Each person answers the same questions.  All of them give thought-provoking, interesting, wonderful answers.

These are the people you’re sitting next to at this dinner party.  Enjoy.

Cary Webb has your number, so watch out.

Please describe yourself in 25 words or less.  

Sales Manager at the Feminist Press, a nonprofit indie feminist publisher, and sometimes fat activist.

What are three things about you that most people either don’t know or wouldn’t expect? 

a) I was way into death metal as a teen. Everyone in my all black and latino high school knew who I was because of it and I got quite a bit of grief for it. Back then black kids just weren’t supposed to listen to rock. But by college I had become fascinated with goth music and then I was really goth.

b) Lots of people know I’ve been into sci-fi and comic books, but what they wouldn’t know is that, I’m kinda growing out of it. It’s true. I have no desire to see The Hobbit. I read the book about six times when I was 12 and I can barely remember the story…but I do remember hating all the poems. Go figure.

c) I minored in Japanese in college, but I still can’t speak it fluently.

Of the things you’ve done in your life so far, what are you proudest of?



Working at The Feminist Press is pretty good. I really like the books we do. Introducing Lesley Kinzel to our editorial director, Amy Scholder resulted in us publishing Two Whole Cakes, which was our first book about size acceptance.

What’s an as yet nonexistent thing about which you’ve thought “why hasn’t someone created that yet?”

Bra pockets, but not the ones that someone tried to sell last year with the pockets in the armpits. Yuk. Plus, how are you supposed to reach in there to get stuff without looking like a lunatic. Not sure who thought that would be a good idea. No, I mean bra pockets for chesty ladies who have room in the side of the cup to put your phone, your cards, your keys, tissue, money, lipstick, whatever will fit and still be discreet. Only reason I haven’t done it is because I haven’t yet figured out how to make a pocket that you can just attach to your existing bras without damaging your bras, knowing how to sew, or irritating your skin when the pocket is not in place. And if anyone manages to make this after reading this. I want 50% of the earnings. Seriously.

If you could get everyone who reads this to do one thing, just once, what would you get them to do?

Eat bacon ice cream. Seriously, it’s like salty, smoky, creamy, and sweet all in one spoonful. It’s soooo good.

                                      

100 Days: on exercising whilst unwell

As it happens, I began the 100 Days while in the middle of an illness.  The secret of comedy is, of course, timing.

I’ve got a nasty virus and a hell of a cough, have been getting very little sleep as a result, and basically feel like hammered hell.  But, y’know, 100 Days Project, right?  Ain’t like I’m gonna skip out on Day 1 of my own damn project.

So I did my thing.  Coughed my way through a smattering of belly dance drills, wondering if the coughing counted as bonus core-muscle exercise.  Made horrifying noises of several kinds while I found out that my earlier attempts to fix the slow leak in my fitball have, er, not worked any too well, but it held up more or less enough for me to do a few things I wanted to do.  Close enough for government work.

I was going to cough anyway, I figured.  And many of my trunk muscles were already sore from all the damn coughing I’ve been doing so a little exertion wasn’t going to make that any worse.  Plus, as we all know (we do, right?  because we either read it in my latest book or somewhere else?) exercise helps your immune system do its job better, so if I did my core strength-building stuff despite the evil bug I’ve got, I was just giving myself a little boost in the treatment department.

I used to refrain from moving around much at all if I were ill, on the theory that rest would help me get better faster.  Certainly it is a hell of a lot harder to get yourself moving when you feel like crap.  Sometimes you just feel too atrocious to even try, and I’m in full sympathy with that.  It’s almost impossible for me to force myself to move if I’m nauseous, for instance.  Just can’t do it.

Nevertheless, and against all inclination and not a small amount of logic, I have discovered that if I can actually convince myself to move my body a little — not a lot, not strenuously, just a little bit of gentle working-the-bodily-bits — when I’m sick, it tends to make me feel a little better, at least temporarily.  For me, at least, moving my body tends to temporarily reduce muscle ache and headache and sometimes also can alleviate congestion and sinus drainage for a little while.

Indeed it did.   My window of relief was short, but hey, any port in a storm.

I am, this morning, somewhat improved over how I was this time yesterday, and I was able to sleep better last night than I have the past couple of nights, and all in all I think there is a chance that I may be on the rebound.  I don’t think I can necessarily credit the fact that I  moved my body last night for this, considering that I have been moving my body at least a bit (including in a gymwise direction sometimes) every day that I’ve been actively sick.  It’s probably just that this bug is finally starting to run its course.

But that’s kind of the point.  Movement isn’t a magic bullet, it’s more like Vitamin C.  It does a lot for you but it’s not dramatic.  If you’re getting enough Vitamin C, then you don’t get scurvy.  If you are getting enough Vitamin C, then you… are getting enough Vitamin C, and your health and well-being aren’t compromised by the lack.

Movement works pretty much the same way, so far as I can make out.

Which is why I move, when I can, even if I’m sick or injured.  If it can’t really hurt to do it, and might help in the larger picture to support your body in dealing with whatever it’s dealing with and healing whatever it’s trying to heal, why not do some of it if you can?

Of course, you have to be the judge of whether you can do it, physically, without hurting yourself.  Like I say, I cannot, simply can not, manage it when I’m nauseated, and there are definitely times when I’m just too exhausted or weak from being sick and the thought of trying to move my body makes me want to cry.  That’s fair play.  You’re the only one who can know what is going to be okay for you.

Point being, it’s cold and flu season right now in the northern hemisphere.  Like me you may find that at some point during the next 99 days you get a cold or something like that.  Consider trying to keep up your 100 Days body practice anyway if you can.  At least in the bigger picture, it might help.

                                      

100 Days: Day 1

Today is Day 1 of our experiment, our 100 days of adding new body practices to our lives.  Welcome aboard, all of you who are joining me for this grand experiment!  Thank you for agreeing to be my fellow travelers on this trip.

With that, a few items of interest…

Every 5 days or so I’ll be blogging about the experiment, and my own experiences.  Here’s what I’m doing for my own private participation in this experiment, so you’ll be hearing more about those two activities as we go along.

Here’s what some of you said you are doing:

…my chosen body practice is to return to my leg lifts and my back exercises and playing the piano.

I am going to ice my knees every other day, and drink six of my contigo water bottles-worth of water each day. I feel as though I “should’ be more fitnessy, etc etc. and I’m having a hard time with the project, but I WANT to get to the place where I’m moving my body, feeling strong, feeling well and powerful…but my knees are in a lot of pain at the moment, and I think this hundred days needs to be about babying them.

My body goal is to resart my physical therapy exercises. There’s no way I’ll be able to jump into tackling all dozen at once in the beginning but I can work on building! And realizing that doing even ONE is better for my body than doing NONE.

My first reaction was “That’s a great idea, but ohhhh, not for me. I can’t do that. Too much” but the idea has rattled around in my head. 100 days…100 days…100 days. And the (very small, often not engaged) adult part of my brain whispered ‘What would be so bad about trying? What if you *do* fail? How bad would that really be? What can learn?’ So, while my inner toddler throws a fit about having to do something I don’t want to do, I am committing to doing one kind thing for my body every other day. That might be yoga, a massage, a nap, dancing – anything that I can honestly say is a kindness.

I commit to (at least) do my Hittleman yoga (Google: Richard Hittleman 28 day yoga plan) every day. If I’m feeling frisky, maybe I’ll toss in a splash of light kettlebell on top, maybe.

I’ll be cycling 20 minutes a day every day, or at least every second day, for 100 days, starting February 1st. It will absolutely not be about results (I am resolved to challenge the thoughts and expectations that will try to arise), it’ll just be about doing a new thing with my body every day to see what that feels like.

I’ve been planning/wanting/postponing/half-assing this forever. Three sun salutations. EVERY F*ING DAY. For a hundred days. I’ll do it. Even when hung over/stressed out/tired.

I want to practice squatting. I cannot squat down to, say, talk to a small child or look in the bottommost drawer in the kitchen. I need to bend over. At least every other day I’m going to practice squatting down (there is a pole in the basement I can hang onto to support myself). I reallyreallyreally want to reclaim this functionality for my body!

My goal is to move for at least 30 minutes every other day – walking, elliptical, weight training, stretching – whatever form it takes, but in the way of a regular practice and not a haphazard if-I-have-time, bottom-of-the-list priority.

I will dance every day. I’ll at least run through the three pieces I want to retain. And I’ll include a move that’s difficult for me in my warm-up.

I can do yoga, at least once every other day, for a hundred days. I like doing yoga, it makes me happy and I’m actually pretty good at it, this should not be a hardship. This should be fun.

Don’t wanna say what, but I’m in, and I’m with you.

Seriously, y’all?  How are you so freaking awesome? Your plans, and especially your attitudes, just make me smile.  (Note: the ones above are just from folks who posted their plans publicly in a comment on this blog… I know that there are many more of you out there, and some of you have told me your plans privately, and every single one of them has given me a grin.)

Do you have a blog?  Are you planning to write about your 100 Days experiences?  Every 10th day (day 10, day 20, and so on) I’d like to link out to a blog or two in which someone has written something about their experience with this experiment.  Please let me know in a comment or via email (myfirstname dot mylastname at gmail dot com) if you happen to post something about your 100 Days experience that you’d like to share with a wider audience, and chances are good that I will share them along.

Knowing that today would be Day 1, last night I went and took stock of my gym clothes situation… and had a moment of appalled OMGWTF. I had been noticing that some of my gymwear had gotten pretty worn, but apparently it had been a while since I really sat down and assessed the state of my exercise wardrobe.

Boy, am I glad I did!  All but one pair of my gym leggings were suffering, or are on the verge of succumbing to, chub rub related hull breaches in the upper-thigh region.  All but one of the sports bras I actually like are entering advanced elastic poop-out.   My favorite gym t-shirts have become downright ratty around the collars and hems as well as stained and stretched out and thinned with age and wear.

I thus ordered some replacements, one of which, on a whim, was this :

I don’t typically buy shirts with words on.  But you know what?  I think this shirt is absolutely right.  (To get your own, click on the photo.)

Enjoy Day 1, everybody!