In a nutshell, Fat Kid Rules the World, is about a kid named Troy Billings who is 17 and weighs 300 pounds. He’s standing on a subway platform contemplating suicide, when he is interrupted by a filthy homeless kid named Curt MacCrae who turns out to be a musical legend at Troy’s high school. A punk rock guitar god. And that fast, Troy’s world changes. Because Curt decides to start a punk rock band called Rage/Tectonic, and names Troy (who doesn’t know how to play the drums) his drummer.

Troy hates himself. His life revolves around deciding whether or not people are laughing at him (usually, he concludes that they are) and whether or not what they are laughing at is really funny. His hyper-self-consciousness is so real. His feeling of taking up too much space made my heart hurt. And then watching that unwind as he learns how to play the drums, and internalizes the idea that yes, the rock god wants to be his friend (in public even), is seriously great.

I love that the story starts with Curt saving Troy, and ends with Troy saving Curt. I love that the military dad who sends his kid to fat camp and nutritionists and obsesses over his weight, gets it at the end and turns out to be  kind of a rock star himself. I love that the story doesn’t tie up in a pretty bow, but that the main feeling at the end is hope. I love that Troy starts and ends the novel at 300 pounds and that in the final scene he embraces his bigness.

Fat Kid Rules the World is strongly grounded in the real world. There’s child abuse, neglect, homelessness, suicidal depression, drug use, several F bombs. But one of the things that turned me on the most was the feeling that when Troy meets Curt, he might has well have been following the white rabbit. The punk rock world he finds himself in is his Wonderland. I think what I love most of all is that Going has created a world where the fat kid and the skinny neglected kid can be punk rock legends in their own time. I want to live in that world.

This book wasn’t perfect. In places, Troy’s inner self-bashing dialogue was a little heavy-handed. The book is less than 200 pages long, so I think there was room for the plot to unfold a little slower. Especially at the end, when the big revelations piled on each other. But these things are so small in comparison to the awesomeness that is this book as a whole. Please read it. And then give it to a kid to read. Share it with a friend.

As a fat person who was subjected to regular doses of this kind of “talk” (you aren’t fat yet, but it you aren’t careful . . .) I can tell you this much: you run the risk of your helpful little conversation backfiring and possibly causing the sort of disordered eating that is far more dangerous to the mind and body than eating too many Oreos.

This is the talk that I have with my kids on a regular basis: Listen to your bodies, babies. If you’re hungry, eat something. If you’re not hungry, you can leave food on your plate.

Here’s some stuff that happens without a need for any conversation at all: Our fridge and pantry are full of a wide variety of food for them to choose from.  I include them in food preparation. Want to help your kid enjoy vegetables? Let them make their own. Try it. I swear, it works. My kids even eat Brussels sprouts.

One last thing: My kids don’t see or hear me bashing my own body.

Kids are human beings. They value those things they perceive as having value. Makes sense, right? We value gold because it’s expensive. People value iffy-tasting foods like truffles and caviar because they are expensive. My kids value their bodies, because they know their bodies are valuable. Billboards talking about how fat takes the fun out of childhood, or whatever, are self-fulfilling prophecies.

I was shamed for my body when I was a kid. Out of love. Out of a desire to help me be healthier. It took years of therapy for me to get back to a neutral body-view baseline after that. I firmly believe that my whole life would have changed if someone had taken the time to tell me that it was okay for me to not be as thin as my sisters. That’s the kind of billboard we need. The kind that yells out “Hey, kid! You’re okay. Want to play kickball?”

Not just to the fat kids, either. To all the kids.

Second: Here’s why I haven’t been writing: I’m taking five upper-level classes at UNR, doing revisions on my book for my new agent (!), tutoring 10 hours a week and teaching a creative writing class for teenagers at the community college. Yikes.

Okay, that all said, I wanted to share something with you.

When we joined our new gym in January, we were given a free 45 minute session with a nutritionist. I went and did that yesterday.

I had no problem connecting with the nutritionist. She was very nice, knowledgeable without being overbearing and non-pushy with the diets.

She did weigh me before we went into her office (we had to walk through the gym, and a scale, to get there.) And when we got into her office, she clearly expected me to have a weight loss goal of some kind. She seemed very confused when I didn’t. At first I was like oh, here we go, but then I remembered that people do what they know. This woman is used to women who weigh over 300 pounds coming to her because they want to lose weight.

Once we got talking, she said the goal definitely needed to be to keep my blood sugar regulated. She called it reactive. Her advice was basically to eat six times a day, every three hours. Always eat a protein when I eat a carbohydrate. She recommended 2200 calories a day. I don’t count calories, but I found this interesting enough to share because I honestly expected her to advise me at closer to 1500 or 1600. At least 2200 felt sane.

I’ve never been to a nutritionist before. It was interesting, but I’d already gathered most of the information on my own. I think I did like hearing it directly from an expert, though. I’m glad the session was free. My biggest thing these days is figuring out how to have enough energy to get through my entire day. I need to keep going from when I wake up until I go to bed at night. I can’t crash at two or three in the afternoon. (Well, clearly I can. But I really don’t want to. I screws everything up.)

Next week, I’m meeting with a ‘fitness expert’ for an hour long discussion that also came free with my gym membership. The nutritionist said that she believes it is definitely my blood sugar that caused me to feel so poorly after exercise, including severe muscle pain and gave me some advice about keeping that from happening again (basically, eat before and after I work out. Eat during if I exercise for more than an hour.) I’ve been swimming a couple of times a week and it’s so nice. Once my revisions are done, I’ll have more free time to exercise more and I’m really looking forward to that.

So what about you all? Have you ever been to a nutritionist? What was your experience?

There is something very strange about suddenly being exactly half deaf. I feel so off balance. Since I can’t hear as much, my brain believes that my right ear is also hard of hearing. I’m in my own little narrowed, insulated world, with my husband and children calling my name somewhere outside of it.  Also, I walk into things a lot. You wouldn’t think that your hearing has much to do with how well you can walk in a straight line, but apparently, for me at least, it does.

Anyway, that’s how I’ve felt basically all winter. Off-balance and insulated in my own world. I wouldn’t call it depression, because there was no sadness involved. But heavy, heavy stress.

This coming week is my last of relative sanity for a while, so I’m very glad that my metaphorical balance has returned even as my physical balance has taken a dump. School starts on Monday. I have a full load of five classes. It was six, but sometime last week it finally hit me that I was really going to sign with a literary agent (really, really, really) and that revisions on my book would be necessary and due on a time line that was not only mine. So I dropped a writing-about-literature class.

I’m pretty sure I can finagle a credit for that class from my work at Goddard anyway.

I am so excited about school. And so excited about working on my book with an agent. And so excited about joining a gym with a pool as soon as my financial aide disburses. (Next week!) So excited about not being afraid of being homeless. We made it through the winter. The off-balance, insulating fear that came with deep poverty is just about gone. There is light on our horizon. (I’m sure I could think of at least a  dozen more metaphors, but I’ll spare you. You’re welcome!)

I want to thank you all again for being incredible. Never giving up on me, even when I wasn’t writing here as much as I wanted to. Even when stress made me boring when I did write. You are my heroes. (Yes, you.) I promise, things are going to pick up here very, very soon. My inner defiant athlete has been hibernating a little lately, but she’s waking up.

XOXOX

I’ve started a Tumblr where I’ll talk about my writing. I started it with a post about my hunt for an agent. (We’re going on a bear hunt. We’re gonna catch a big one. . .) On Monday, I’ll post about the agent that I picked! I’ve put a link on the right side bar.

I had written a novel. There is really no way to adequately describe how that felt.

After Ruby was born, I went online and found a writing website. And on that website I found Melanie Harvey. Sometimes providence just works that way. Sometimes you run into the exact right person at exact right time. She had a novel that was in considerably better shape that Devil You Don’t. We took about a year and traded chapters. We sent them back to each other bleeding red revisions.

I learned how to write with that novel, and with the help of the world’s most amazing critique partner. And best of all, I got to read her book. It’s called Nobody’s Hero and it remains one of the best books I have ever read. I’m not saying that because I worked with Melanie on it, or because she’s my friend. I am biased (how could I not be?), but I’m also being completely honest. This book? It totally rocks.

And because today is Melanie’s birthday, she’s giving it away on Kindle for free through Amazon. Free. A really great, free book. I’m not sure there is anything more beautiful than that in the Milky Way. Not only that, but she’s very close to breaking the Amazon top 100 for free downloads, which is a huge deal. So, if you’re so inclined, let’s help her out, huh?

Click on the cover below and download Nobody’s Hero.

Here’s the blurb for it to help you make your decision:
When Rick Ranière, an underground white rapper with misogynistic tendencies—and the songs to prove it—runs into Carolyn Coffman, the best-selling biracial author of Fighting the Pheromone Factor, he knows she’s like no woman he’s ever met. Carolyn knows she really needs to stay upwind.

But the canyons of Manhattan keep shifting the breeze—and Rick’s policy of never trusting a woman. In the end, Rick’s only female fan who refuses to sleep with him might just have the answer to his writer’s block, and the man who sounds all wrong might just be everything Carolyn ever wanted.

When an unexpected burst of publicity lands Rick on the iTunes’ charts and brands Carolyn a hypocrite to her readers, she can either save her career or this relationship. When you got a choice, Rick had told her, you really ought to make the right goddamn one.

Or you could lose everything you ever wanted.

Let me revise that, actually. I enjoyed learning to run. Going slow and feeling my lungs and heart strengthen. That was big fun. Training for a major, long-distance race six months from now isn’t right for me. For me. I’m well aware that some people can do it. Some people adapt to running faster, or are built for it, or whatever.

So, I’m not running in the RTO this year after all. Because my priority is feeling good, and when erratic energy levels joined not being able to move, feeling good was no where to be found. I think part of that has to do with trying to run too much, too soon. I have to take it slower, even if not everyone understands that. Also, I want time to swim and lift weights, maybe take up belly dancing or fencing or start getting in shape enough for roller derby now that I have health insurance, and those things are hard to do if I cannot move my body.

Here’s what I have going on this spring: A full load of college classes, revisions to my novel, and my job. It is important to me to fit being an athlete in there. Remember this time last year, when this stuff was fun? Somewhere along the way, it’s lost its fun. It became grueling and a responsibility that meant more than my body’s limitations. It became about me ignoring how much I was hurting and pushing forward because it was I expected it of myself.

Quitting the RTO was a gut-wrenching choice that didn’t go very well and resulted in hurt feelings and awkwardness that I sincerely hope dissipate soon.  The fact is: no one lives in my body but me. No one but me knows exactly how much running hurt or how my energy level started getting erratic when I ran or whether or not I’ll even be capable of running 18 miles in a day in June.

And if I say I need to slow down or back off something, it’s a safe bet that I really do need to slow down or back off.

I am a defiant athlete. Movement and training and physicality are fun, not something I can barely get through.

I am a defiant athlete. I listen to my body and take its messages seriously. If something hurts more than it feels good, something is wrong.

I am a defiant athlete. I move forward in athleticism at my own pace, pushing myself in a way that works for me.

I am a defiant athlete, and for a minute there, I almost forgot.

Yeah. That’s what this week has been like for me.

Because last Friday a literary agent offered to represent me and my novel, Freaks and the Revolution. We talked on the phone for an hour. And then on Sunday? Another literary agent offered representation. There are still fifteen agents reading. They have until Friday to decide if they want to offer as well.

And then I  choose. Which is scary and wonderful and terrible and amazing all rolled into one.

More on Monday about this.

* * *

In other news, my ob/gyn says she thinks I have PCOS. While I don’t have the traditional symptoms of missed periods, fertility problems and male-pattern hair growth, I do have many of the other symptoms. Including, she says, insulin resistance. So she gave me Metformin, to help regulate my blood sugar. And my regular doctor put me on a very low dose thyroid medicine. Both recommend I eat more protein and less carbs, to help with my blood sugar regulation as well.

My ob/gyn also had some ideas for managing my super heavy, miserable periods. She looked at my blood tests and said that while the iron I take is keeping me from being fully anemic, my red blood cells are puny (her word) because I lose so much blood every month. First step is a pelvic ultrasound (fun stuff…not) then possibly a minor surgery. I was really afraid of a hysterectomy, which is what my mom had when her periods were just like mine in her early 40s. There is a procedure that doesn’t require hormone replacement now.

I’ve been so out of it–health wise, stress wise–the last month or six weeks. I’m ready to get back to feeling good again. I went to the doctor today (again…I swear, I feel like I’m just moving in) and the surgery site in my ear is infected. It hurts, I’m off balance, I can’t hear out of my left ear at all, and all this weird gunk keeps draining out. Not fun. I’m not sure I would have had that stupid mole removed if I knew how uncomfortable the healing process would be.

I had my very first mammogram yesterday. It wasn’t as physically uncomfortable as I expected. No serious squeezing or compressing. There is the whole stranger-manhandling-the-boobies thing to deal with, but all-in-all, it wasn’t a bad experience. Since my ENT is in the same building, I stopped by and they gave me my results: clean boob bill of health. Such a relief. I didn’t expect to be so affected by the result, but I was.

Thursday I go back to discuss my blood sugar, thyroid and the rest of my blood tests with my regular doctor. I’ll keep you all posted.

P.S. Three more agents asked for my full manuscript today! That’s 24 total. So much fun!

The First Annual Virtual Juicy 5K!

I’ll be back after my 5K is finished this afternoon to write about it.

When you’re done with yours, leave a comment and tell us how it went! Anyone can join in, even if you didn’t sign up. Just get out there and move!

**UPDATE**

Well. I walked a mile.

Not quite a 5K, but a good example that we all do what we can do.

I had surgery on my ear this week, and walking makes it hurt. Don’t ask me how walking affects my ear, but it does. Long way from me feet, right?

So, I did what I could. And that my friends–that is the entire point.

Happy New Year!!!