It’s Not Makeup, It’s War Paint

First, I’d like to credit Iliza Schlesigner for the quote I’m using for the title. It feels accurate this week. 

Content warning: brief mention of suicidal ideation.

Anxious Allergies

I have hella food allergies. A lot of people reading this already knew that. I have always had them and spent a lot of time being miserable because they weren’t diagnosed and I didn’t pay attention to them. For example: I am deathly allergic to eggs. When I eat an egg, I pass out within an hour. It’s a weird proportion things and I explain it that I can eat a cookie but not a quiche. When I was younger, growing up in a predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish community, this was a major problem. During Passover in particular I had a really tough time with starving. Passover was the one time during the year where my family was strictly Kosher and because of this we ate a lot more parve (neither dairy nor meat) foods. This included eggs. This made me feel very tired a lot and made it so I didn’t want to eat. By the end of eight days not eating anything but chocolate and matzah I was always happy for it to be over.

I cut eggs out of my diet when I was 21. It was amazing. I started getting more energy in my activities and felt a lot better. I was still experiencing some pretty intense physical issues at the time but cutting eggs did help.

Recently, I have found another food allergy: nightshades. Back in May I did an elimination diet as I suspected that I had an unidentified food allergy. When I reached the point of the diet where I was to reintroduce nightshades, the book warned that each group should be introduced separately as nightshade allergies can be quite severe. Not heeding this warning, PartnerPenguin and I made Ratatouille. I had two servings of this dish over rice and that will probably be the last time I ever eat it. In the next three days I experienced for the first time with incredible precision the effects of a nightshade allergy. Every nerve ending, inside and outside of my body felt like it was slightly on fire.

Perhaps the most important discovery with this allergy was noticing the linkage between my background levels of anxiety and the anxiety provoked by this nervous system inflammation. Specifically: I retroactively observed that several occasions when I experienced suicidal ideation were directly linked to my consumption of nightshades. Well, that’s some bull shit and completely avoidable so I have cut nightshades out of my diet entirely.

It has been a rough journey since May, on cutting these foods out. I can’t eat Mexican, Indian or really anything spicy at all anymore. I’ve recently been trying to eat more vegetarian lately because I noticed that since I can eat meat, I wind up eating a lot of it.

Pizza has been the food I have missed the most, besides Chicken Masala. Being able to just chip in for a giant pie is always so easy to do. This past Sunday we had a lovely evening planned with friends where we got together and watched The Dish. We decided to go in for pizza, but we approached the subject with great caution. We read through all of the ingredients and chose a white pizza with pesto sauce, chicken, garlic and a couple other things that were safe to eat. I ate the pizza with great gusto because I haven’t even tried to eat pizza in 5 months (again it was a white pizza).

Unfortunately by the end of the night I realized something horrible. The chicken (which had been listed as plain chicken) was actually soaked in a tomato sauce. I had eaten three slices. :< I started to feel a little queasy and asked the friends driving us home if we could leave. Everyone was really mad at the pizza company for not listing that the chicken had tomato on it. TTfDU called the store the next day and they said that they get their chicken from a third party and they don’t know what’s in it. At this point, I don’t know which disturbs me more: the fact that the ingredients weren’t accurately portrayed or that a company uses ingredients without checking what’s in them.

All told I ate about 3 tablespoons of tomato paste but that was sufficient to incite a terrible anxious reaction. Monday I canceled my plans (that I’d made weeks ago) because I couldn’t face the transit required to attend them. Mega props to the friend I was going to journey to see for offering to hang out on Skype. Now I have Skype and am starting to understand how much fun Skype dinner dates are.  

Political Thing-a-Week

As I mentioned two weeks ago, I am not interested in sitting idly by while the current President disembowels our democracy. This has been difficult to enact and I have had to remind my friends and myself that there are more than three ways to be an activist.

First, I have started to wear war paint. In my adult life I have never included makeup on a regular basis as part of my wardrobe. Since the inauguration, I found the perfect color and I have been wearing it every day. It is my war paint. It is aggressively femme and aggressively loud. It is my “smash the patriarchy” color and I’m super happy about it.

One way I have practiced activism is being there for friends. Showing up to my friends’ houses and actively listening as they decide whether or not to stay in the country. Calling and texting friends whose absence I have noticed from regular events to make sure they are ok. Adding supportive commentary on Facebook threads to make sure my friends know they are not alone in their views.

Another way I’ve been active is straight up protesting. I’d like to give a window into why that it’s not so simple. Sunday morning, the day after the Cheeto in Chief’s executive order on banning travel I felt too restless to stay inside. I made this sign:

I waited for PartnerPenguin to wake and let him know I planned on protesting. When he did wake me up, he held me closely and expressed his conflicted feelings. On one hand he did not feel like he could or should suggest I not protest. On the other hand, he was very worried about my safety. I have never been arrested. I have never been physically assaulted. We both know I’m rubbish at running. PartnerPenguin had looked into ways to get out of the airport without public transit or cars and there are basically no pedestrian exits.

I appreciated deeply feeling so cared for and knowing I have a home to return to. But on Sunday I just couldn’t stay home. I know too many people with their Green cards. I know quite a few people who have attended school through AB540 funding. I grew up with several Bosnian, Ukrainian and other USSR refugees. Members of my family are naturalized citizens. I just couldn’t sit still.

The protest itself was a lot less White than Women’s March. It was on private property but the airport as a company seemed to be in support of the protesters. They made signs to make sure protesters knew where to go. I held my sign (with its spelling error…that no one noticed) up above my head and sang “Move Trump, get out the way” with a woman whose voice makes mine look like a weak child’s.  It felt very 1920’s suffragette in nature.

 By contrast to the Women’s March, there were riot police at this protest. When they arrived I quietly took my leave and again avoided getting arrested. I felt a bit ashamed that I was there for such a short time and left when I was afraid of things getting messy but at the same time I was prioritizing being ready for the next thing and taking care of myself.

Another way I have acted is cashing in social capital I build at TLoTH. From this work it looks like the National Science Foundation is indeed part of the Executive branch and therefore cannot technically advocate or lobby on behalf of themselves when faced with the threat of defunding. But the person I contacted seemed to really appreciate my reaching out.

Children Are Monsters

Most of my experience with children for the past five years has been The Little Bear and her friends. The Little Bear has good home training, is intellectually curious but also is very cautious and shy in public. Oh Glob am I glad that going forward she may be the main kid I interact with for the next while.

The Shit Job of This Month happened this past week and good Glob was it shitty. As I mentioned last week, this company has been in touch since October and then finally offered 10 hours total. Turns out I really dodged a bullet.

The first day I showed up to a school with no instructions on how to sign in as a visitor or where the class I was to help with would take place. Eventually I showed myself to the office and signed in while I waited for the other teacher. She was about 15 minutes late, but ok. As we’re unloading her car she realizes she forgot some of the supplies. Oh well, these things happen and we could improvise. The classroom was stocked with chairs for pre-schoolers (we were seeing kids K-2) and the tables were too low to sit under. There were no paper towels and the teacher didn’t bring any cleaning supplies, but I figured that wouldn’t be relevant.

It was relevant. The activity we eventually did was measuring out water and rice. There was insufficient physical activity early in the class. By the time we got to the measurements exercise the girls were screeching and delighted to mix, splash and generally wreak havoc on the rice, water and measuring materials. The teacher also brought thumbtacks and pennies to measure? Not really sure what the original thought was there, but I’m glad the girls mostly stayed away from the thumbtacks. One girl grabbed a meter stick and began wielding it like a sword. I tried to ask for the stick back but…let’s say she did not go down without a fight. Other children were pretending to swim on the floor and by the end of class there was a lot of shrieking.

After the children left, I found a small rag that one of the children had started to clean the mess with. I used it to corral as many rice grains as I could find and had to wring it out every minute.

The other classes were not as bad as the first one, thankfully. I wore my hair in Princess Anna braids for several of the classes and I smacked down with children touching my hair without permission. In one case I said “We don’t touch people’s hair without their permission.” She said “May I have permission to touch your hair?” I said “No,” and then walked away. This is not a frequent occurrence for me, though it’s not the first time. I felt like it was a good opportunity to discuss consent and bodily autonomy.

The nice thing was that they have already paid me for my time and now I can move on. I hope your weekend is lovely. Today we’ll close out a song popped up when ParterPenguin typed in “inoffensive music for sick wives”, and YouTube returned the following.