I feel like I had really started to find a way to live with being queer while looking pretty much like a typical straight, suburban, stay-at-home mom. I found some ways of expressing the rest of me, made my peace with most people I met making erroneous assumptions about me, and did the work to really decide whether a monogamous relationship with my spouse was worth giving up the variety of sexual experiences I really wanted.

But now this being pregnant thing is kind of tripping me up. Like, I'm still really happy with my life, but I'm feeling this internal pressure to conform more closely to my conception of what the cultural norm is for mothers. I can't even believe this, but after a trip to the children's museum where I saw a bunch of very thin, beautifully dressed moms with their babies, I actually seriously considered trying to lose weight after the baby's born. It's kind of freaking me out! Like, who has invaded my brain, and why is she totally crazy! I mean, I've come to terms with my periodic urges to lose weight so that sexy women will think I'm hot and want to come talk to me. But wanting to diet so that I'll fit in with the weird mommy cliques in the freakin children's museum? This is actually frightening me.

I think that my trust in myself, that I wouldn't stuff my poor inner baby dyke back in the closet again, was pretty tenuous even before I was pregnant. I mean, I was doing my work and all, but occasional forays to the Big City to attend queer events and some occasional journaling just wasn't a lot, you know? And now I'm not going to be doing many forays, I'm not going to be learning to ride a motorcycle, and I gave up on my cute butch hair. Add to that how I'm contemplating buying sweater sets and losing forty pounds, it just doesn't make me feel so trustworthy to myself.

It feels like time to let the word out--I'm gestating a baby! Baby's due date is July 1.

Most of you probably know about the fertility problems we've had--it took some migraine-inducing drugs and three pregnancies to have my daughter. This time, it took high doses of more intense (and more expensive) drugs. And it still took three cycles, but no miscarriages.

Now that I'm posting this, I'll probably go back and unlock my earlier posts about being terrified of miscarrying. I'm not sure I really got all my feelings down in those posts, but it's what I have. And I think it's important to share the whole experience. In our culture, the dominant baby narrative is: you get a positive pregnancy test, you barf a bit, you twirl around in a happy pastel haze, and then Baby! Really, it's like no one knows that the miscarriage rate in the general population (healthy people with no reason to expect to miscarry) is 20%. It would have helped me a lot that first time to know.

I've been really, really sick and exhausted. More so than the first time. The whole pregnancy thing has been a lot less fun than last time, because the rest of my life didn't magically stop being a concern.

But! I'm really, really happy. I was getting close to being pretty sure I wouldn't have another kid, and I wanted one. Even knowing ahead of time about the work and all, I'm getting a little bit into a dreamy pastel haze. And it's nice.

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I picked up Harry Connolly's Child of Fire off of the freebie table at WorldCon and totally enjoyed it*. There is nothing deep about it--no genderbending, no overarching metaphor or commentary about the futility of modern life, no profound study of the concept of alien, nothing. But you know what, I totally had a great time reading it. And it's been too long, you know? 

I've started doing a lot more reading lately, but it's been in a Responsible mode. Like, I've been trying to read stuff that is like what I hope my work turns out to be someday. Or that is outside the mainstream, that is maybe underread. Or is published in Strange Horizons I fantasize about someday being published. Or that is very smart and was published somewhere like Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet or a university press. I usually enjoy all these things; don't get me wrong. Often the stuff I read amazes me and moves me and inspires me. (Especially Strange Horizons. Which is why I dream of them publishing a story of mine. There's a great story up there right now.) But me picking them up and reading them is "justified" by some reason or other.

And the reading experience just isn't the same. Reading Connolly's book, I wasn't improving myself or my chances of being published. I was just kicking back and having a great time. It reminded me of being in fourth grade and finding some new awesome book that was the Best In The Whole World and slurping it right down. It was really great, and I think I need more of that in my life. So I ordered the two sequels.



*Before you all take this as me saying, "Go buy it! Now!"** I need to make some disclaimers. (1) It fails the Bechdel test. But there is one female character I really liked who has a ton of agency, just off the page. Except she's a little bit of a Strong Female Character. But at least not sexy. (2) Everyone in the book seems to be white, straight, and able-bodied. (3) Connolly has the nasty habit of making fat equate to stupid/bumbling/loserish. Also, his supervillain used to be fat, until he became evil and mightily powerful.

**But if you can set aside these pretty serious failings, seriously go buy it now. It was a super, super fun read. And it's not like Heinlein or anything.

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It has recently become clear to me that, at some point (when I decide to stop sitting on my short stories and instead start subbing them), I will want to come here (and on FB and twitter) and in some way try to induce you all to read/buy/review/link to my work. The idea of which makes me fret and feel awkward and nauseated.

In my head, I get into all these layers of inauthenticity. Like, hey, I should have more internet presence *before* I sub anything, so that it looks like I am on the internet posting things for non-self-promotion reasons! Which kind of horrifies me when I catch myself thinking it.

This whole thing would be a lot easier if I had a lifestyle which included being on the internet for fun a lot. I mean, I love surfing around, reading DW and Shakesville and Tiger Beatdown and the Fat Nutritionist. And every time I spend even a little time poking about on the internet, there are fifty million things more I want to watch/read/listen to. But I've mostly triaged internet time out of my life, to make room for parenting and householding and writing. So, really, any more posting that I do beyond the occasional DW/LJ entry like this one would truly be for self-promotion, not because I love FB or Twitter or whatever so much that I'd be there anyway.

The self-promotion thing seems important, and I've seen people (frex, Jay Lake) do it in a way that is totally not annoying. And I think I could pull it off OK by making it a regularly scheduled thing (say, every Tuesday at 11:00 or something) with a timer to remind me to stop. But I worry about alienating my internet friends--I care about you all and your good opinion of me. I hate the idea that I might write something that makes people feel like I don't care about them or that I'm trying to use them.

What do you all think? I'd love to hear opinions and anecdotes from y'all, either from the perspective of trying to promote something or from the perspective of the promoted-to.

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If you're gonna be at WorldCon and you want to see me, totally call/e-mail/dm me!

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A rather counter-intuitive thing happened with the new, time-released meds. Basically, I got all draggy and kind of low-level depressed. Turns out, I was so focused on eating "perfectly" that my blood sugar was kind of nonstop low. I was all worried that if I ate carbs, I'd be sprinting to the bathroom, so I didn't eat any and, well, that just didn't work for my body.

So I eventually worked up the courage to test out the limits of how many carbs I could eat while taking the new medicine, and it turned out that the answer is a fuck-ton. I actually seem to need /more/ that I did before I started taking this medicine. And it's actually hard to make myself sick unless I eat sweets.

It feels like one big lesson in There Are No "Bad" Foods. (At one point this weekend, I was feeling horribly ill until I ate a bunch of potato chips; then I felt great.) (I need to write one of those New Miracle Health Food! books now, about Lays potato chips.)

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I want to say how happy and loved it made me feel when you all commented on my last post with tips and sympathy and understanding. I love so much that you beautiful people are out there, all getting the body image issues and stuff, and living lives that buck the whole beauty-image ickiness. I literally get all sappy and teary-eyed about this beautiful community. I wish I could be on-line often enough to engage in non-glacially slow conversations with you all. :)

Here is an exciting thing I discovered about my medication--I can eat a perfectly carb-free meal and totally avoid the sprinting to the bathroom thing, but then my blood sugar crashes like nobody's business. Not to get all western white dude about it, but it's like Ulysses with Scylla and Charybdis. Except no one gets pulled overboard and eaten by a monster.

Also? At full dose, the medication makes me super lightheaded about 20 minutes after I take it. Like, so much so that I can't walk without assistance. That kind of freaked out the spouse, but it seems to wear off. I called my doctor's office and the nurse was pretty clueless. She told me to start taking it half-dose both morning and night, without so much noticing that I was already taking it both morning and night. Also, she suggested that I drink more water because the dizziness was probably all about dehydration. Because of course I get spontaneously dehydrated 20 minutes after taking the pill, and get un-dehydrated an hour or so later without drinking anything!

Eventually, she got around to suggesting that I take a different med, which is the same med except time-released. And costs fifteen times as much money. Which I get to pay out of pocket. (She also accidentally told me to take twice the dosage my doctor prescribed, but fortunately I remembered the conversation with him and had her double-check.)

(Aside: I know I shouldn't whine because (1) I'm actually really glad this medicine exists (I'm such a hypocrite hippie, I know. Hey! I just coined a word--I'm a hypohippie!), (2) I'm really privileged to be /able/ to pay for this crazy expensive med out of pocket, (3) I'm really privileged to have a lifestyle where I can not work right now and instead hang out and be dizzy and sleep. But still, the whining, it helps.)

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So I'm starting this medication which will cause pretty bad gastric distress if I eat carbs. (I took it before and boy did it.) This is cramping my fat activism style/endangering my precarious "I love my body and don't freak out about food" balance and it also presenting some logistical problems. If any of you have advice, I'd love to hear it.

About the not freaking out about food--have any of you ever managed to cut out a whole swath of food you like without setting up a nasty deprivation/temptation/binging cycle? If so, how did you do it? (I managed to go about five years during my adolescence and teens without letting fat or concentrated protein pass my lips except on weekends by focusing on all the things I could eat, but that whole lying to myself ("I love brown rice!" was ultimately rather self-harming and also I can't give myself weekends off this time.)

About the logistics--I have no idea what the fuck I'm going to eat! Like, cobb salads and chunks of meat with veggies are working for now, but I bet that's going to get old fast. Also, I have this weird experience where I eat a bunch of food and then am full and hungry at the same time. I'm going to have to experiment to see whether I can tolerate a moderate amount of whole grains or legumes eaten in conjunction with protein and fat (the gastric thing is related to the glycemic load) which will probably help a lot if I can do it. But I'm wondering if any of you have experience with something like a strict Atkins diet and can provide some practical advice for pulling it off without feeling all meated out and gross? I know I could probably google up some Atkins forums or whatever, but I really don't want to expose myself to a lot of fat-hating dieters, you know?

About the loving my body--I am a little worried that I will lose a little weight as a side effect and then get tracked into thoughts like "OMG, I will be so hot if I keep this up and then totally I could go bikini shopping next year and everyone will be so nice to me when I'm skinny!" It's just so fucking internalized and so easily triggered and I hate it because ultimately it makes me feel awful and actually ends up de-motivating me to continue the behaviors. But I don't know how to avoid it. I mean, I am amazingly good at lying to myself and being some gestapo-bitch to myself with the "that thought is wrong and you will be punished" stuff. But that doesn't so much serve me. Anyone got alternatives?

About the fat activism--l really love how good I feel when I wander around the water slide park in my jiggly, round-tummied self looking and feeling happy and like "this is what a human body looks like, people!" I love publically chobbling down on a big ol' mess of french fries that I'm totally digging. It's like, genuine, authentic actions are so much more powerful than words. And I'm bummed to let go of that. Thoughts?

If any of you have help or suggestions or even encouragement and understanding, I would so love to hear that.

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I'm totally dying for someone to talk to about these stories, in particular, "The Things." Because it's everything I don't like in my fiction any more--super duper male-perspective-on-everything, the use of rape as a metaphor where I really don't think the author gets it (but then maybe he does?). But the thing is, of the five stories, it's the one that really presents an alien that's alien. It reminds me of why I fell in love with sf as a child. And I haven't read any spec fic that evokes that in a long, long time. Anyone out there read that story?
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So, I've been not reading my Hugo packet. I'll be like those people who vote only in presidential elections and skip everything on the ballot but president.

But I did just today get around to reading Rachel Swirsky's "The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window." It is totally fabulous. Completely thought-provoking, with a protag who is as far from a Mary Sue as I can imagine while still being sympathetic. Serious probing into gender issues without at all getting preachy, and so beyond feminism 101. It's also a straight up enjoyable read.

I have no idea where you can buy it, though. Other than buying a membership to WorldCon and getting it in your Hugo packet. [ETA: I felt like a jerk posting it that way, so I took the three seconds to Google it. You can read this awesome story for free at Subterranean press here.]

Seriously, you guys, you should totally read this.

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