I just re-read my "Year in Review" for 2006. Gods that seemed like forever ago.

Ok 2007....eventful but pleasent.

2007 started out at the home of the Viking and His Bride. They decided to have a party of culinery multitudes so much cooking was done on my part. I got to try a lot of new recipes which made the event a lot of fun for me. Not to mention seeing a lot of friends I hadn't seen for a long time.

My birthday fell on a karaoke night last year and I was able to convince the Viking and his Bride to attend much to the Bride's hatred of dredded karaoke. The official party was held later on which was a Triumvirate since the 3 of us all have birthdays within the months of January and February. T'was a Roman themed bash. Much fun had by all. This also included trips to the Ren Fest.

During the Spring, we three plus the Goddess decided to try re-joining the "kingdom" but found it a bit lacking in the fun department.

This was quickly followed by a move. The Angry-X (i'll get to him in a moment) and I along with the MIL found a lovely house in RetirementLand to rent. Much house Lurv!!

The week after our move was Fest. It went really well though I still had a feeling of wanting since I had been feeling very alone and unhelped.

After fest I had found that the Angry-X and I were not fighting. Not because we were getting along but because I stopped caring. A few weeks into May the Goddess started dating someone who would later become My Love. We became good friends very quickly because we had had a lot in common and we were both easy to talk to. After a few weeks of dating the Goddess, My Love realized that they were better friends than anything and they agreeably split up. At the beginning of June it became abundently clear that things with the Angry-X were ending.  I headed home to the great white north to visit family by myself and my mother gave me her car as my first step in leaving the bad situation.  After a nastygram and an inappropriate comment on my blog I told the Angry-X that it was over. The weight off my chest was so great I thought I could have run a marathon if I wanted.

A few days into my trip My Love (who was rapidly becoming such) flew up to the GWN to drive back down with me. It was that gesture of uninhibited selflessness that convinced me that I had finally found the man with whom I wanted to spend my life.

So by the middle of June I was a new person, new life, new love, new home.

There were a few bouts of nastiness between me and the Angry-X but they were quickly quelled. As predicted the Man-Vultures swooped in for my leavings. I think they quickly found that I was right about most of my accusations against him because they lost interest quickly.

In July we got a roomie. Jenny-from-the-Block (JFTB) needed a place to stay and we were happy to help.

August, September and October went off without much incident. Fest was AMAZING. My Love was a great support even with the short staff and Jeepmeister was wonderful with running the Hearth by himself. The flu after the Fest was a bit unwelcomed (Death to the Plague Bringer). After fest was very mellow. JFTB had found a new someone and was very happy. She was also talking about moving out and was moved out shortly after the end of Fest. The beginning of December brought a beautiful Proposal from My Love and for the last month we have been planning our Marriage Extravaganza.

Christmas was very nice. My Love and I bought a Christmas tree and trimmed it together while listening to carols. We were able to buy eachother lovely gifts which was nice. He thought of me, I mean truly thought of me and that was the most special gift.

New Year's Eve I had to work but it was very slow and very quiet here so I started my list of goals for 2008. I look forward to seeing how many of them I do.

Have a wonderful 2008!!!

So Tuesday night a group of us are at a friends house helping them clean for their 4th of July party. At one point during the time after we were finished we started a group discussion/debate about whether recreational drugs should be legalized and if so, which ones. The room was split regarding opinions and after a good hour, hour and a half it began to evolve into something a little more deep. We began to discuss WHY those of us opposed to legalizing every recreational drug in exsistance were opposed to it, like maybe it was in the way we were raised or perhaps it was our exposure to drugs or lack thereof. I decided to take a poll, while I was lounging in a comfy leather recliner, of who in the room who was for the legalization of every recreational drug and whether they themselves at one point found themselves addicted to the same drug they wanted legalized. As it turned out, with the exception of 1 person, the answer was yes.

Now this isn't what my "Fat and Happy" rant is about, it's what came next.

I commented on how it was possible that the reason why the other person opposed to legalization and myself were of such opinion was because we never tried drugs and that I couldn't picture myself addicted to anything which is why I choose not to indulge in things like drugs, alcohol or tobacco.

(With the exception of sex I'm pretty straightedge.)

The motivator for my rant came from a very surprising source. As he was walking back to his side of the couch E, my formerly-zaftig friend's husband (and a friend to yours truely as well) puts is hand on my tummy and in an almost condesending manner states "Oh but hunny you do have an addiction, only it's not for something most people consider a drug". It took me a few seconds of staring at him with this quizical look on my face to realize he was accusing me of being addicted to food...all because I'm fat!!!

I do not offend easily but at that moment I just realized I was being pigeon-holed because I don't look like what society and the media says I should look like. That would be like him going up to a black child and saying in the same manner...."oh hunny, you're doing bad in school because as you know black people have smaller brains because of the shape and thickness of their skulls". 
 
Why is it that being fat is the last acceptable form of discrimination and prejudice? Being fat transends gender, race, culture, religion...EVERYTHING! So apparently that makes it ok?

Why is it that being fat is suddenly an EPIDEMIC!!!!!!!! I remember another "epidemic" that seemed to be sweeping the nation until people starting suing....the nation. "Oh ma gawd Mr. Gay Man you can't adopt a baby, your Gay Cooties will confuse its little brain and it'll grow up to be a Gay like you and we can't have that because gays don't do things like pay taxes, and die for our freedom". Maybe fat people should start suing for wider turnstiles at Disney and a bigger selection of clothing in the department stores...after all, 65% of Americans are "Obese" so since that's the majority I guess that should make being skinny an epidemic shouldn't it?? (Eat a cookie instead....it might save your life)

Now, before I go on I want to say that yes, I am a fat girl. Actually I am a very fat girl. I am what the doctors call Morbidly Obese which means I weigh 100lbs more than what doctors say I should weigh. In fact...I weigh more than that 100lbs. I am however NOT unhealthy nor am I addicted to food. I eat something small in the morning, if I eat breakfast at all, a normal lunch, usually a nice salad from our work cafe or a frozen meal from home (which is usually a Lean Cuisine), I may or may not have a snack when I get home from work or sometime during the evening before bed and usually my biggest meal is dinner. So I eat 2 to 3 meals a day with the occational snack......does that make me a food addict.....NO, it make me a FRICKING HUMAN BEING!! Um HELLLLOOOO things that are alive need to eat....to stay alive. I do not binge eat, I do not eat emotionally (on the contrary, when I'm upset, depressed or stressed out i don't eat) so no....I am not addicted to food. NOT ALL FAT PEOPLE ARE FOOD ADDICTS!!!!

And to add to that, not all fat people have some sort of medical condition. Every time I go into the doctors and have my blood checked my doctor tells me all the numbers that are supposed to be high are high, the the low ones that are supposed to be low are low and I have no weird fat-induced illnesses. My thyroid and metabolism are fine, I don't have sleep apnea and the only number that is too high is my weight.

The only excuse I have going for me is genetics. I am of French-Canadian decent, both of my grandmothers were at one point overweight, my mother was overweight until she had bypass surgury. I have naturally wide hips (you can still feel my hip bone) naturally thick legs (that my mom still has despite having the bypass) and big bones (no, that's not some mythical excuse thought up by fat people. Fat people's bones can be big or slender...it depends on genetics). Even my skinny little sister who is at the ideal weight determined by her height is wide framed because of her bones.

Now regardless of being Fat and Proud I know I need to lose weight. I am at a weight where eventually it will begin to give me problems the older I get. Do I want to get as skinny as my ideal height/weight ratio says I should....no.....do i want to be able to shop at H & M, Gap, etc, etc...no thank you. But I do want to make sure that I maintain a quality of life that makes me happy and if that means being a Fat and Happy woman....then I'm fine with that!!

This is something I haven't done in a very long while. A majority of my posts on any of my various blogs are updates of the mundane things of my life, rants about people and situations that are the bane of my exsistance or reminders for the bounty of social events that seem to happen within our Chosen Family . Of all the places where I can and do post, this is the one place where I find I can post without hiding or fretting about who on my friends list is going to spread my woes to all and sundry and label me a Drama Queen (attach back of hand to forehead and swoon).

This revelation does not come from that fact that you, Josh, are the only person on my friends list, but rather that I am tired of hiding. I am tired of not being who I am and hiding how i feel for the sake of remaining in a Drama Free Zone. I do however accept that what I say and the way I say it may cause drama but I'm doing this for me, not for them, which is why this is staying off my LJ and rather being broadcast here for fellow Zaadzsters to enjoy (should they wish to indulge).

Very recently someone, a very special, amazing and important someone, reminded me that there's more to me than what my society-provided label tells me I am. I intend to find out what that is and whether I can regain some of my forgotten glory.

I remember when I was in my mid to late teens that no matter how miserable my home life was I was always a day closer to adulthood and I would soon be able to create my own life without needing permission from parental types.  Unfortunately the loss of someone who, at the time, was vital to my very exsistance coupled with a few bad choices I made after my high school graduation caused that luminous beacon of hope to fade considerably. This fading, however, was no one's fault but my own. It took me years to realize it but while I was waiting for life to start being fair I was further causing my own misery. Though, not every choice I made was a bad one.

I moved to Florida because I wanted to escape my present as well as my past and go someplace where I could hide who I was if I chose to. Needless to say that didn't stop my bad judgement, especially when it came to men. 

I spent years trying to find the equal to the one my best friend affectionately calls "the one who got away" before realizing that I was looking for someone who was an easy out. Someone who could dump me or I him and I wouldn't feel the same heart-wretching pain and emptiness I felt when "Mr. Got-Away" left me.  I chose men for the qualities I didn't like, but didn't realize I was doing that until someone wise pointed out the dangerous trend I seemed to be following.

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not the kind of girl that can have my pick of any man in the world but like every human I know what I like and I know what I want. I know what works and what doesn't and in these cases I was chosing those I knew wouldn't work.

Larry was kind-hearted and bumbling. If I had to use a title to describe him I'd say the Gentle Giant. Unfortunately he needed a mother more than a girlfriend and I quickly found myself playing mommy to Baby Huey. I didn't know how to break it to him so I treated him like crap until he got the balls to dump me. I didn't cry. I didn't fret. I had no problem being the bete noire in this situation. I just let him go and quickly began resuming my life only now as a legitimately single female.

That however lasted all of a month before I began dating #2.

Ryan was the intellectual person I was looking for. Someone who could help me regain some of the creativity I had lost the more and more cynical I became. But like many other things in my life when it rains it poors. Instead of finding someone who was my equal I instead found someone so transcendental that he made me feel like an inferior being squashed under the boot of his own intellect and he quickly went from being abstract to abstruse. Eventually we became more like roommates with me acting as his maid. I left him for warmer climes (as we had moved back North for a year). He is still happily highbrow sitting in snob heaven, making occasional trips to super-snob heaven (Northampton) and living as a single man.

One of the things that caused me to leave Ryan for greener pastures was that I began to realize that I needed to start thinking about my future. Where I was going to be at 30 (which to a cynical 24 year old seemed like a short time). So yes, I said to myself  "damnit if I can't have security in love I'm going to have security elsewhere", which I guess was the reason I got myself attached in everyway but legal to Rob.

Rob, who I am having trouble now calling a "good guy", was stable (at least physically), he had a desire to raise children and was a kind and generous person...to everyone else but me. It was this fact that caused everyone we concidered a friend to "us" to side with him no matter what was happening to me. I felt like if he were holding my head underwater in front of everyone and I were screaming for help everytime my head got free all they would say is, "well, you deserve it". After a while I began to believe it. I began to feel that this was my punishment for years of wrong doing. For a long time I had no one I could confide in and loneliness became a common feeling for me. I was made to feel like I should count my blessings to have someone like Rob because I would not have to worry about him cheating or breaking my heart. Instead I was breaking my own heart by denying myself happiness.

After what seemed like forever, Rob's shining, perfect stardom began to fade and he began to look more like a vainglorious blowhard than the humble idiot savant that people originally saw him as. They saw the blight I was suffering through and began to help build me back up. To them I am eternally grateful.

I thank them everyday because without them I may have not met the man I am in love with today. He fills my exsistance with this rushing, pulsating feeling of completion. His presence in my life makes me feel like everything I ever wanted is possible despite what I've been through and to him I give my heart and soul.

....my new 42 inch LCD monitor for the playing of World of WarCraft.

I am reading Belgarath the Sorcerer by, David Eddings.  This book (the whole series actually) is like the Harry Potter of its time. The books were very popular (from what I've heard) and frustrating to read because he would end each book in the 2 series at a random spot, not really after a big battle or a death, just......stop...then the reader had to wait a year or so for the next book to come out. Thankfully they have all been written otherwise I'd lose my mind LOL.

Definatly worth the read! Be sure to read the Belgariad first, then the Mallorean.

They've just made Sheikra......FLOORLESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, Josh:The Code Poet, you got me....be proud.

One of my goals for the new year was to become vegetarian. It's a goal I've had for a few years but not one I've followed through with. One of my New Year's resolutions is to start following through with goals I've started for myself.

So ok....I'm not a Vegan like you, Pavo, but one step in the right direction.



Random Zaadz Fact I just found awesome...Every time someone requests a page at Zaadz the servers being chanting Om Mani Padme Hum. Apparently it's an easter egg. :^)

So I haven't posted in forever. I promise...I'll remedy that.

New stuff:

Rob and I decided we're going to write a book and submit it for publication through the various places that publish Pagan books. Llewellyn, Alta Mira, New Page to start with.

We've decided it's going to be a book on writing and performing Pagan rituals. We're hoping to call it Circles, Rites and Ceremonies.  It's going to be as all inclusive as possible. Alter set up and decor ideas, an entire chapter on etiquette, feasting recipes, incorporating non-Pagan themes into the rituals to appease non-Pagan family members.

We're going to start work on it soon. Hopefully I'll have something to show for it in a few weeks.