At the end, before they release you back out into the wild, you sit quietly for a few minutes with your crackers and juice.  I’m not entirely sure what the post-donation crackers and juice do, to be honest — whether they’re immediately replacing lost-fluids and getting your blood sugar back up, or whether it gives you something to do for five minutes so the nurses on duty can make sure you’re not going to faint and that the venipuncture site isn’t going to start bleeding again.

Either way, this morning I was sitting at the front of the bus, people-watching while munching on my peanut butter crackers, and I caught the eye of a passing pedestrian.

And felt immediately ashamed for being a heavy woman eating peanut butter crackers in semi-public at 10:00 on a Wednesday morning.

It’s not that guy’s fault.  He was looking up at the bus, probably curious as to what it was parked there for.  He didn’t make a face, didn’t even really react to my presence.  I’m not sure how much of my reaction was triggered by his own appearance — he was surfer-dude handsome in business casual dress.    Would I have felt the shame if it had been a woman my age?  My weight?

I don’t know.

Thankfully, my brain immediately kicked back in and said, “Hey, dumbass, you just gave blood.  As in, you just helped three people you don’t even know with your donation.  Anyone who has a problem with you eating crackers can fuck right off.”

There’s a lot to unpack here –about my own self-esteem, the way I think others perceive me/my body, how much of that is due to the way the media says I ought to look, and a hojillion other things.  I read a lot of feminist blogs, and blogs about Health at Every Size and Fat Acceptance, so intuitively I know why I felt that way.  Still, it was disconcerting how visceral my reaction was.

I know this is a fairly substance-less post.  I’m mostly leaving this here while I parse it all and will hopefully have something more coherent to say about it in a day or so, but if you’ve had a similar experience, please feel free to hop in with a comment.

Go ahead, WoW geeks, you can say it: my hair is epic.

I’ve been told that in this and the other shot I took, I look pissed off.  I swear, I’m not.  I must have taken about 50 pictures, and only kept two.  The ones where I actually smiled for the camera?  Eek.  I couldn’t hit the delete button fast enough.  I’m one of those people who can’t smile on demand, especially for pictures.  So, neutral-face it is.

GUYS MY HAIR IS PURPLE AND I LOVE IT OMG.

(Also, because I know she’s waiting for it: yes, Hill, you were right. I should’ve done this ages ago.)

No, we’re not going completely vegetarian by any means, but I realize that there are certainly ways we could cut back and improve our eating habits. I know if I go and stand in a bookstore and stare at the wall o’cookbooks, it’s going to intimidate and overwhelm me. Some of the dishes in there will seem way too fancy/complicated/involved and it’ll just languish on my bookshelf.

So, tell me what you eat. Are there brands/products I should always have on hand? Are there ones I should run screaming away from at the store? I am certainly open to suggestions from the carnivores here, too – my goal is to collect healthy recipes in general, so they don’t all have to be meatless.

And if your’e curious, this weekend I decided to kick my ass back into gear and get back on track with Weight Watchers. But, rather than filling up this blog with food-oriented posts, I started up a google doc and published it for anyone who cares to follow along. I’ll toss a link over there in the sidebar, but for now, you can find it here.

More here.

It turns out he could feed 12 zombies cannibals.

Sadly…

Created by OnePlusYou

Yeah. I can feed one more cannibal than Marty can.

This is not okay with me. Not ruined-my-day not okay, mind you. Just more of an “ugh.” And, coming on the heels of seeing a particularly horrible picture my coworker managed to sneak of me at conference, I have a new goal.

11 cannibals or less by July.

To hell with “I want to lose 20 pounds.” I want to starve two cannibals.