Big Fat Wonderful Cat

Typical Samson, snuggled up on the bed.

I saw your photo online. I went to meet you in Springfield. You were wary at first. I sat on the floor and tried to play with you, but you didn't care. You sat under a desk. I stayed on the floor and talked with Quinn for a while and asked questions about you to the person whose desk you were under.

Eventually you came out. Still wary, but you rubbed yourself on my back and gave me headbutts on my elbow.

You didn't cry once the whole way home.

The cat family.

For about two days you lived under the bed, nervous about your new surroundings -- somewhat interested in Desmond (who was moreso interested in your special food) and rightfully cautious of Emily whose bark is much worse than her bite. When you came out, you found a place on my pillow and you pretty much only left it to enjoy your place on my couch. Or my chair. Or my lap.

Samson's 16th birthday party.

I'd always wanted to adopt on older cat because it didn't seem fair to me for any animal to spend the rest of their lives in a cage, waiting for permanent love. I honestly didn't think you were going to last so long.

I'm so glad you did.

Here is the truth: I have had some wonderful cats in my life, but you are the best of the best. I don't know who you are -- whose soul inhabited and created your life -- but you are the most unbelievable companion.

Even people who don't really like cats like you. And those people who already liked cats love you. Because you are a cut above.

I don't know why your previous people let you go. I can't imagine why they would have. Who could

Samson and Jake sharing a head-butt moment.

willingly give up that face? Those eyes that look at you with pure love? The dog-like way you follow people around? And the big white paw that reaches up to you, demanding affection? The way your enormous, pillowy belly points upward as you roll around on the floor, your back paws clenched in a comical, endearing way. And the occasional spryness with which you manically chase a toy mouse, a ball, or nothing at all, and then promptly return to a cuddle session.

You have the worst breath ever. But it doesn't matter because a headbutt from you makes everything better.

Pillow time. 

Every time I took you to the vet she told me you were too fat. That always made me laugh. Like I was going to put my 17 year old cat on a diet. One time, she was snipping a matt away, and she accidentally nicked you and you ran into my arms. I thought that was the sweetest thing. I still do.

I'm so sorry I'm here right now instead of by your side, even though I know that you actually love Megan more than you love anyone else in the world. You were a serious consideration for me to stay. I'm so sorry I couldn't.

More than any creature I have ever met, you thrive off love. So know, remember, realize how very loved you are.

Keep my pillow warm and furry and enjoy the kisses of the spring sunshine.

Christmas isn't complete without a family photo.

Eat your Chobani and stay with us, Samson. You may be ready to go, but we're not ready to let you.

All in a Day

It's finally happened. It took ten and a half months, but the inevitable finally occurred: I got hit by a bike on my way to work.

Let me paint a picture for you. There is a sidewalk. The sidewalk is loaded with parked scooters and bicycles, vendors selling toenail clippers and smelly food, somebody doing open-air welding with construction parts all around, there are cars parked every which way. I cannot walk on the sidewalk. There is a bike path. The bike path is teeming with pedestrians, bikers, people on scooters food vendors, small trucks, and pretty regularly cars that honk incessantly like you're walking on THEIR bike path.

There is a blue truck parked, blocking half the bike path and it's hard to see around it. Because of this, people should make an effort to slow down, be slightly more conscientious.

They don't.

The parked blue truck is longer than I thought it was. I saddle up next to the side of it. An older man on a bike comes at an alarming speed around the truck right in my direction. I shimmy to the right to try to avoid him. He points his bike at me. I continue to shimmy to the right, but a little faster and he does, too, apparently not as concerned as me about the encroaching impact. This is mostly because he's gazing off into the horizon, seemingly unaware that there are too many people trying to squeeze past this truck. I've almost made it to the curb, but I really, really, really want to avoid stepping on the sewer grate, festooned with various pieces of trash, discarded food, and generally weird, wet, smelly things. Just as I try to lunge for the curb, he hits my left leg.

Could he have just kept going straight? Yes. Could he have gone right? Yes. Could he have actually looked up and/or ahead to see that I was right in front of him? Yes. Did he care? Not one iota. In fact, he didn't say A SINGLE THING - not that I would have known if he were apologizing anyway, but the fact that he didn't kind of gives you some idea of the frequency with which this probably happens - and just drove away merrily as I muttered some curse words and brushed the dirt of my black pants.

White Chick in a Wheelchair

Being in a Chinese hospital is a bit like what I imagine it would be like to be in a free clinic where copious uppers and downers and steroids are distributed. There are swarms of people – twin boys wearing matching shirts with rabbits in heart-shaped glasses; an old woman with sensible but ugly shoes who walks with a cane, a 30-something with a gaudy purple rabbit fur jacket, a young mother with a long torso and proportionately short legs who teeters on 5-inch heels while her toddler grapples for her hand, another toddler with a hot pink baseball hat on sideways whose mother hands her a Smart Phone to keep her entertained. There were just so many people. I imagined that, at home, if I was in a place with the sheer number of individuals at the hospital, at the very least, I would recognize at least ten of them – I would probably know more. But here in this sea of faces, not one was familiar.

I had said, “We can’t walk like this,” meaning double-wide in this people-circus, which Helen thought to mean I couldn’t walk at all, so she got me a wheelchair and parked me in front of the fire extinguisher while she went to get our number, like when you’re waiting at the deli. This was, as it turned out, the last convenient place she parked me.

She drove with reckless abandon otherwise – a bit like Chinese traffic – and saddled me right up to the walls so that I had to pull my bad foot in and hold my knee up by my chest. She hit two people and one person hit us – just sideswiped us because she wasn’t looking where she was going when she was entering a room – and Helen would park me in the middle of a crowded hallway so she could ask questions, very few of which were answered adequately. Hospital staff sent us to an area on the first floor were we were told to go to the fourth floor when they should have sent us to the fifth. On the fifth floor, we were told we couldn’t be served so we would have to go to the ER. The elevators were slow and could barely accommodate a wheelchair and a person. Between flashing their current floor numbers, a two-letter message appeared: “FU.”

People were generally fascinated by me ad gawked at me. Everybody asked where I was from and if I spoke Chinese and were terribly amused when I uttered a few remedial words. When the doctor asked, I asked Helen to explain to him that I could count, introduce myself, ask what something is, and buy beer, which I suppose gives me the functionality of a drunken two year old.

Two doctors touched the top of my foot and asked if it hurt. I explained the ailment to Helen who in turn translated it for the doctors, but, you know, second-hand diagnosis, and, they told me I was probably fine but sent me to get an X-Ray anyway. After I got my slides back, they took a precursory – almost flippant – look at them, decided nothing at all was the matter, which still didn’t explain why I couldn’t walk – and told me not to wrap it, which I didn’t understand because even the flimsy gauze I’d had on it prior was a huge relief. The told me it wouldn’t work, and wouldn’t even issue me a bandage. I tried to reason with them via Helen, which got messy and confusing and just resulted in the doctor shaking his head repeatedly.

As Helen wheeled me out in her own special, manic way, she said, “Okay, we do this way: I will bring you the crunch.” She meant a crutch, and it turned out, she actually meant a three-footed yet still unsteady cane with a built in stool to accommodate the world’s smallest butt, which I guess beats the pillow I had been using to slide myself around the apartment.

Every Girl's Dream

I was trolling Facebook this morning when I stumbled upon this lovely gem of an internet meme:

Click "Like" if you think women have more options than this. I'm not getting into who posted this because I'm not interested in finger pointing (that doesn't solve anything) but all I imagined was that this person - this woman - must get out of bed in the morning and think, "Hm...should I have a bagel or the Slim Fast? I should probably have the Slim Fast so I won't get fat so I can be more attractive to men."

As if women don't have any options outside of worrying about men and their weight. Not to mention how conflated the two ideas are. This meme advocates a very clear patriarchy in which men imagine women dream about falling in love and women claim to dream about staying thin. But why would they need to stay thin if it weren't for being appealing to men? And stop it with this "every girl" thing as if we all share the same values because we have vaginas. And, this is petty, but if I need someone to click "Like" to agree with my opinion, I don't think my perspective is strong or valuable enough to last.

I guess if I had to work within this dichotomy, I would choose to make every girl's dream: "To exist in a mindset free of weight and gender stigmas."

But really, women - astonishingly enough - have the capacity to dream, worry, wonder, and otherwise verb about many things apart from these two societal norms. Here are some potential dreams of some women (feel free to add your own!):

To solve world hunger.
To have a family.
To be millionaires.
To start and run a successful business.
To learn karate.
To bake a three layer cake.
To go sky diving.
To touch her toes.
To run a marathon.
To write a book.
To teach math.
To cure cancer.
To sew a quilt.
To never ever see another meme like this one.

Movement and Me

Lately I've had a prolonged case of the Februaries. The general apathy mixed with a kind of overwhelming funk. I tend to get the Februaries every year, but this year, so far away from everything I love and amassed in an almost constant, chronic phlegmy-cough inducing smog, it's been particularly bad. 

When March comes, I normally like to get out and take a few deep breaths of the hint of spring hanging high in the air. But when I did that here I just coughed on the fumes.
A bit like a caged lion, I've been pacing around the apartment, loathe to go outside and loathe to stay in.  

Today, Jake went to to play basketball with a friend and for a bit I sat around feeling sorry for myself and generally bored. I thought about doing Pilates, but I'd done it for three workouts in a row. I thought about doing Zumba, but every time I do worryingly large chunks of hair fall out. So I sat in front of the computer and sighed.

Finally, I opted to do something I don't normally do: kickboxing. I did two kickboxing workouts, then a light weight/high repetition Tae Bo. I was sweating a lot and chunks of hair were, as expected, lining the floor, but I was feeling really inspired, so I created four new Zumba routines. Two and a half hours later, my muscles were shaking and I smelled like sewer, but I felt fucking awesome.

That was a really roundabout way of saying this: movement rocks. I wasn't a kid who liked movement for several reasons. Firstly, my own preferences; I preferred to do something else than be active. Secondly, I only ever moved with the intention to lose weight from the ages of probably 10 to 20, and the results were minimal. Thirdly, other people. I didn't feel comfortable moving because I got made fun of when I did it. As I've said before: hypocrisy is ugly. You can't tell me I'm unhealthy and then ruthlessly torment me for practicing healthy habits. Make up your damn minds! Anyway, at least in this department, I've decided that those people, to put it crudely, can suck it. They do not have any jurisdiction any longer on my relationship with movement.

I know a lot of you are either going to roll your eyes or want to rip out my throat when I tell you that I actually enjoy working out. Sure, there are days when it's a struggle or a chore, and there are days when the couch is more alluring than my sneakers or my yoga mat, but most days I love the  feel of sweat beading on my forehead, the feeling of my heart pumping blood through my veins, my muscles contracting and pulling, the oddly sweet rush of water that quenches my dry mouth. More than that, I love how relaxed and accomplished I feel afterwards. 

Now, at the end of the day, I firmly believe that your health is your own business and nobody has a right to tell you what you should and should not do with your body except you, but I strongly encourage you to find a movement that you like. I know a lot of you are like me and have had a bad relationship with movement because of other people and because you've only ever worked out because you want to be skinny. If you can get past these things - for me, the first came pretty easily, by joining Curves and an African dance class, but the second required (still requires) a continual reminder that my health and my body size ARE mutually exclusive - your feelings about movement and working out might have a complete overhaul. Especially when you keep on mind that all movement is good movement. We get told quite a bit what movement we should do, and those change about as fast as diet trends. So I say find a movement you love. Find many movements you love. And throw away all your Jillian Michaels workout DVDs (unless you really like being bullied while you workout. In which case, why are you reading his blog?)
I'd also like to share some advice I recently read. In this culture, we're bombarded with misinformed and financially-motivated messages of health and beauty, most of which encourage us to give up things In order to achieve what the proverbial "they" think is the gold standard. No cookies. No cake. No chips. No pizza. No wine. No.. If you believe in reverse psychology (or you've ever dieted) you know that every time you look at that candy bar/bag of chips/whatever it is you want and say to yourself, "I can't have it," you want it more. AND THEN you have it and feel GUILTY,  which probably makes you want more. The advice I read turned that around and suggested that we try adding things. Have another glass of water. Have another piece of fruit. Have another serving of vegetables. Add another 5, 10, 15 minutes movement to our day. 

As I said, ultimately your health is your business and you can do whatever you want to do. As for me, I'm really sore, so I'm going to park it on the couch and rummage through the fridge for something for dinner. You can choose to sit here and read more of blog. You can go out and take a walk. You can dance like a champ to your Paul Simon album. But remember to move for you and not for anybody else.

Harbin: A History and a Reflection

Harbin is cold. Mind-blowingly, thigh-freezingly, toe-numbingly cold. Relatively near the Russian border -- wild Russia, not the European side -- Harbin was, for a while, actually part of Russia, and has the architecture to prove it. People come to Harbin in the winter not for its winning climate, but for its renowned ice festival. Located in three separate areas of the city, the Ice Festival is a massive tribute to ice art and certainly celebrates something this region has in abundance. By day, the sculptures are impressive -- clear and smooth, like thick, weeping glass -- but by night they transform into a neon Narnia. Lights that I think China borrowed from one of the last parties of the 1990s and never returned illuminate the structures and, in some cases, are actually embedded within the ice itself.

The Russian influence in China came with the emergence of the China Far-East Railway, which was an extension of the Trans Siberian Railway. By 1913, the census showed that the roughly 70,000 citizens came from 53 different nationalities and spoke 45 different languages. History enthusiasts among my readers will feel their ears perk up when hearing about Russia and 1913. What happened? What happened? Anyone? Bueller? The Russian Revolution and World War I, correct. Following the relatively tame Revolution of 1909, the 1917 Revolutions - there were two, one in February and one in October - toppled the Russian monarchy and brought the country under the once-exiled Lenin. And the rest is Soviet history. But, during this time, as many as 200,000 "white émigrés" or first-wave immigrants fled into Harbin.

However, in 1935, things got wonky again, when the Soviet Union sold its shares of the China Far-East Railway to Japan, who had occupied Manchuria and redubbed it "Manchukuo." The Japanese takeover received mixed reviews from Harbin's Russian population. Some sided with the Chinese to the extent that they wanted the Japanese out, while others believed that the Japanese occupation could help them deal with Soviet oppression as well as the growing opposition among Chinese who were scrabbling to regain sovereignty. Many Russians left Harbin in 1935, were captured upon entering Russia, and were killed in the Great Purge, accused of being spies.

Many of those who didn't leave stayed and formed the Russian Fascist Party, a party vehemently opposed to Communism and Jews. They harassed the Jews so much that the majority of Harbin's Russian Jewish population was forced to flee the area. In the interim, the Japanese had formed their own little puppet government for their pseudo-state of Manchukuo, and Harbin's remaining Russians had two options: return to the Soviet Union or remain stateless and under Japanese control.

While many of Harbin's Russians are long gone, their presence remains. It lies in the architecture, the shops that sell Russian nesting dolls, flasks that read "Russia" in large, imposing letters, and the blueberries. China is not a country for blueberries. I don't know why they're aren't grown here, but in Harbin, there's blueberry jams, blueberry candies, and sweet blueberry wine.

I'll admit that we didn't venture into the "Chinese" part of Harbin. We were very content to lose ourselves in the European architecture, the coffee, and the relative cleanliness and quiet of the pedestrian street, whose length we must have walked five or six times.

Harbin is still China, though, and at 6:00 p.m. you can walk outside and be covered in an industrial haze. When you breathe in, you wonder if it hurts because of the cold or because of the air quality. You'll wonder why the authorities have allowed every single gift shop to sell fur and stoles. But mostly you'll wonder why you can't just buy a carton of blueberries.

#unapologetic

In a surprising turn of events, modern history's most desired and accomplished woman has made her
debut on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. A teacher/yogi/astronaut/cowgirl/business woman/doctor/CEO/president, complete with a 39 - 21 - 33 frame, Barbie has been plaguing (or inspiring, if you're an optimist) young girls for decades.

Her maker, Mattel, paid Sports Illustrated to feature Barbie on their cover because, according to Mattel, Barbie, along with legends like Tyra Banks, Heidi Klum, and Christie Brinkley, is a role model who should be proud of everything she's accomplished and should be, to use the edition's hashtag, unapologetic. Mattel goes on to say that Barbie is "under constant criticism for how she looks" so her cover feature is well-deserved for the 54 years of body shaming that Barbie has endured.

What with the who now? Yes, it is true that Barbie's body has come under attack because of its sheer lack of reality and the correlation between lower self-image and playing with the anatomically disproportionate doll. But this play, this idea that we're going to take Barbie's "adversity" and turn it into a positive - the same as Tyra Banks endorsed Special K's doing with lack of diet language in their still obviously weight loss endorsing Special K challenge - is manipulating the idea of body and size acceptance. Yes, body and size acceptance is about acceping all bodies, which I suppose would include Barbie's, and working to project images of untraditional beauty in the media, which would certainly not include Barbie. It's also about acknowledging thin privilege and challenging the message that has long been perpetuated: that girls should look like Barbie.

Moreover, it is, in my humble opinion, a giant step backwards to replace living, breathing women - however steeped in health and beauty tropes they are - with an inanimate piece of plastic. Because that's what Barbie is. All we are is dust in the wind, and all Barbie is is a lump of rubbery plastic. Despite whatever human qualities Mattel may assign her, Barbie has never actually worked as a doctor/astronaut/veterinarian/teacher, as is apparent by her grossly negligent career habits, nor has she felt the lasting sting of body shaming in her solid plastic heart facsimile, and any words said about her and her body - positive or negative- fall deaf on her tiny plastic ears. What kind of message are we sending that this plastic doll can buy her way onto a cover an elite, objectifying magazine that most actual women could never even dream of modeling for? I'll tell you what message I hear loud and clear: If you're rich and thin, you can do whatever the hell you want.

In case this wasn't slap-your-face-with-a-stupid-fish obvious to you, this flies in the face of Mattel's size acceptance facade, as does the fact that the magazine they're paying to feature Barbie is Sports Illustrated, for an edition that profits heavily from featuring scantily clad, stereotypically beautiful women while simultaneously shoving down our throats loaded messages about health and beauty. You'll note that Mattel isn't trying to get Barbie a cover on Bitch or Ms. Next thing you know, though, they'll want her to be in Good Housekeeping because of how she flawlessly decorated her dream home without the use of opposable thumbs.

How is it that, in 2014 Barbie is still a role model? More importantly, how is possible that a plastic friggin doll continues to wield such power and influence? This is scarier than all the Chucky movies combined.