Hodge Podge from A Week: Lit Mags, Fitness, Asshats, Ovaries and More!

Submissions!

This weekend, I finally started sending out poems from my latest chapbook project. I haven’t submitted any work since March, so it was long overdue. Rummaging through the offerings in Duotrope, I realized that I have been sadly unaware of the many excellent new lit magazines that are out there now. There is some amazing work being published online. I think the notion that print magazines are somehow automatically of higher literary quality than online magazines is starting to fade away, and online literary magazines are poised for a renaissance of sorts. At least I hope so. There are hundreds of deserving online magazines publishing great work that would otherwise go overlooked. I’ll publish a link-fest soon so you can check out my recent "discoveries".

A Fitness Update, and How Not to be an Asshat:

After months of going nuts with the exercise and subsisting on leaf lettuce, I am finally about five pounds from my goal weight. Of course, the moment I realized that, I was sorely tempted to lower my goal weight again, because if can lose twenty-five pounds, why not ten? Or fifteen, or even another twenty-five? This is how I ended up weighing a hundred and sixteen pounds at one point in my life. Which, at my height of 5’ 9”, would be fine if I were a bikini model--but I have no plans to break into that biz in the foreseeable future, and dropping much under one-forty just makes me look scrawny and a little sick.

Speaking of which, I recently read the story of that newscaster whom some “concerned” citizen deemed to be not up to his exacting physical standards—a fact that disturbed him so deeply, he went out of his way to write her a letter demanding that she immediately begin molding her “disappointing” body into a shape and size that he judged morally and visually acceptable. And she took him down, big time. Good. What kind of a narcissistic asshat goes out of his to way to write a letter to a total stranger, demanding that said stranger change her body to meet his personal specifications? We are going completely nuts in this society with policing women’s bodies, and everyone else’s health habits in general. Please, everyone: Just get a grip. No one’s physical appearance, eating habits, health conditions, or adiposity levels are any of your damn business. Of course, we could just take our moral panic over obesity and refocus it on *actual* moral issues, but of course, that’s too scary , so we just project our own discomforting sense of powerlessness and lack of control onto fat people, or onto women who have the audacity to show up in public with visible hips and thighs.

Bye-Bye, Period! Don’t Let the Ovaries Hit You on the Way Out.

I had a little procedure done last week that is supposed to shut down my reproductive system, and I could not be happier about it. After an entire lifetime of dealing with hideous PMS and making vague, fruitless attempts to fix it with increasingly ineffective natural remedies, I finally went to a lady-doctor, who snapped her fingers and came up with the awesome solution of a Mirena implant, which releases tiny amounts of synthetic progesterone straight into your ovaries, craftily bypassing the bloodstream and drastically the reducing side effects you’d normally get from hormone therapy. This handy little device sends the message: We’re closing down shop! No more egg production! Immediately collect your personal items, punch out, and go home. You may file for unemployment at your local branch office.” It should stop my periods altogether in about two or three months. Happy dance!!!  The pain I went through during the actual procedure is going to be so worth it when I’m no longer gaining eight pounds of water weight every month, fighting the impulse to mow down old ladies who hobble too slowly in crosswalks, and consuming half a jar of pickles in one sitting because I NEED SALT, damnit! So far, there have been no side effects at all, other than the spontaneous grin that breaks out on my face when I realize I will never, ever have to put up with this period bullshit again. High-five!

I’m Reading Some Stuff Outloud in October:

I am reading at Hugo House on October 20^th with the awesome Kate Lebo, Carol Light, Belle Randall, and Carolyne Wright. I am, as usual, completely stressed out and stage-frighty over it, but I do it because 1. I always end up having fun once I just get the hell over myself and relax, and 2. The stellar David Horowitz invited me to, and he is truly the glue who holds the Seattle poetry community together. And he’s a great supporter of local poets. You can find out more about his work here: http://www.rosealleypress.com/

I Dimly Recollect What Relaxing Looks Like:

A few pictures from my trip! (The heck with trying to get them all lined up neatly; I give up.)

       

  

Entering Tracy Arm

An iceberg in Tracy Arm 

A rainbow in Juneau, whale-watching

Captain Larry

Sunset from the deck

 Sea Day

Ketchikan from the Crow's Nest

A Tlingit Ceremony at a Longhouse in Sitka

  

Swimming on deck (It was 43 degrees outside, btw!)