That's My Bix!

I kind of hate this time of year. Not the winddown of the holiday madness… that’s actually kind of a relief. No, it’s the weirdness about New Year’s Eve. I really hate the idea of New Year’s Resolutions. In my opinion, if there’s something about yourself that you want to change, you freaking change it. Dates are arbitrary! Every moment of every day is the beginning of a new year, you have exactly 365 days until this very same date happens around again: it just doesn’t have a tidy little date stamp to make it look official. And most New Year’s Resolutions are cloaked in self-improvement, but are almost always about what you dislike most about yourself. Things you want to change. For instance, 48 hours from now, the entire world will become extremely concerned with how fat it is. It’s a hard time to be a person with disordered eating in their past and doubly hard to be a crusader for body acceptance. Everyone is pointing at their bits and bumps and saying how wrong, wrong, wrong it is. Wrong! As though anything that is decided by the flittering beauty ideal of the moment could be right! One image, folks: Venus of Willendorf. As that clock strikes twelve, just remember that on some New Year’s Eve in the not too distant past, a girl very much like you was wishing for a few more dimples on her thighs, pretty please.

Let’s do a little experiment this year.
Everything you want to change about yourself is a given. You don’t need the permission of a giant ball dropping in Times Square to make a change in your life, and you certainly don’t need the pressure of a starting gun and a calendar measuring your success for changing your life. You can do it anytime you want. Gradually. Sanely. Beautifully.

No, instead, give yourself a break and don’t punish yourself with your resolutions this year. Don’t say “less of this or that” but instead think “more”. More time with friends. More fresh air. More naps. More empty calorie television shows like Gossip Girl that you will enjoy without guilt or reservation. More dress-wearing or dinners on the good china. More hugs to people you love. More reminders to love yourself. More sunsets. More cups of tea or pedicures or long steamy showers. More, my dear friends, we need more in this crazy world, not less. This year, make a resolution for more. I’ll bet it’s one resolution that will be hard to keep but much more rewarding.

We rescued a kitten. Sort of on accident. You see, I didn’t want to rescue a kitten. Kittens are cute. Kittens are easy sells. Everyone wants kittens. But the people on PetFinder, I learned, are kind of free with their definition of “baby” and “young” animals. I saw animals listed as “baby” who were, if you read the description, 3 years or older. Not. A. Baby. Not even in human years! So I just started looking randomly at cats, looking for a youngish cat that was no longer an easily-adoptable kitten, and happened to have the local shelter cat search page up when Esteban walked in and pointed at a little grey and white cat and said “Oooh, find out if she’s available. She’s POSING!” and sure enough, the cat was posing for the camera, with a little twist to her tail and a proud perhaps fiendish look in her eye. I agreed to look for this cat when I went to the shelter the next day on a scouting mission, because sometimes the shelter is bad about removing adopted animals from their page (as I found out when I had fallen in love with a black and white boy cat named Gilbert, who was adopted out from under me within 24 hours), so I went in and looked around the cat rooms. No grey and white cat with the very distinguishing dark patch on half her nose. I checked the segregation cages… nada. Then I caught her shelter-given name on a card taped in the kitten room. Uh-oh. There she was, sleeping in a ball. The teeniest, tiniest, miniature cat that you ever did see. It turns out that she had been underfed, so she didn’t have the bulging tummy and cranial growth that most kittens have, where their head isn’t the right proportion to their bodies. She honestly just looked like a very sleek adult cat, except that she was small enough to fit in one hand. When the shelter worker handed her to me, the first thing she did was wake up and sneeze directly into my face fourteen times. She was wheezing and coughing and seemed unsteady on her feet, but immediately started purring and snuggling up to my neck and super clinging and then started licking my face and nostril and eyelid and nostril again and lips and purring and wheezing and nostril licking, that I realized it didn’t matter. We were in love. Grey super-tiny kitten and I. We were hopeless.

Actually adopting her turned into a semi-nightmare. The shelter wouldn’t release her to me because she needed spaying (no problem) but the vet wouldn’t be able to make a surgical appointment for another three days. The shelter had only started her on treatment that day for what was obviously a very bad respiratory infection, so they admitted that the vet probably wouldn’t be able to spay her in three days anyway, so they would just send her home with me, unspayed, until she got better. Except that it couldn’t happen until her appointment for the surgery that couldn’t have anyway. Huh? I asked if they could just bring her to the vet for a pre-surgical consult, have the vet declare that she was unfit for surgery and just send her home with me that day, so that she wouldn’t have to stay in the shelther (and get worse or possibly infect other cats), but they wouldn’t budge, not even when I said that I’d pay for the vet to board the kitten in the event that she was ok for surgery, because they weren’t allowed to do that to the vet. Then I went to the vet’s office, and explained the situation, and the vet called over and said to bring the kitten over for them to look at. After much discussion, the shelter finally admitted that they had no one who could drive the cat over (and of course, they wouldn’t release her to me or anyone else). So we went in again the next day, as soon as the shelter opened, went through the same rigamarole, but this time had someone who was willing to take the kitten to the vet, where they agreed that holy crap, that was one sick kitten and yeah, no way she was getting surgery. They gave her different antibiotics, some ear drops for her mites, some eye drops for the eye infection that she had, and sent us on our way.

We scrambled and went out to buy new cat boxes, kitten food, a collar and a million other necessities, and then brought Jincy home, where she spent the next two days in constant contact with one of us, either sleeping in our arms like a baby or sleeping on my shoulder/cleavage. We were back to the vet three days later, as the kitten started having nosebleeds, which were apparently due to the furious sneezing and coughing. We left with a new antibiotic (the other one wasn’t working as well as the vet liked), l-lysine paste, some deworming stuff (if she had worms, they would have caused coughing) and instructions to get baby nosedrops to lubricate her nostrils. Okay! We were back to the vet six days later when I noticed that what I thought was stained/discolored fur (due to the nosebleeds) was actually a bald patch and she had also gained a disturbing legion above an eye. Ringworm! Not a worm, but actually a fungus! I learn something new every week with Jincy. They did a culture, told me to buy Monistat (seriously) and then encouraged me to come back in for lime sulfur dips if she kept getting lesions. She did, of course, so we brought her in for a stinky expensive bath, and were told that she needed to be brought in weekly for at least four more treatments.

The good news is that Jincy has recovered from her very very bad respiratory infection and hasn’t had a nosebleed since I gave her first dose of the nose drops (Little Noses brand, by the way, if you ever have that problem) and we found some Lime Sulfur dip stuff on the internet and will be attempting to do her baths at home. We pretty much have to, at this point, because the alternative is $500 in baths! I mean, at this point, we’ve spent over $1500 on this cat and haven’t even had her big surgery yet, and as far as I can tell, the jury is out on how well the lime sulfur stuff actually works. And why does the vet charge more for horrible farty sulfur smelling baths than my typical trip to a Vegas spa? Especially when you can buy the stuff for $20 on Amazon? Well, probably because they have some kind of device in which to detain the cat, whereas we will likely lose pints of blood in the attempted dousing, but these are tough times and already I’m kind of wishing we would have just saved mony and bought a cat made of DIAMONDS.

Even though she’s the most expensive alley cat that ever was, Jincy is already a super sweet and hilarious kitty. We’re already realizing that she’s the polar opposite of Tilly, in that she enjoys being petted and held and loved and wants to kiss your face off if at all possible. She does enjoy attacking and leaping and has already killed and maimed one roll of toilet paper (we’re still chasing down the shreds) but so far she’s been worth every penny. Also, I keep thinking of something that the vet mentioned on one of the half dozen trips, about how she was a little concerned about seeing how sick Jincy was when we brought her in and can’t imagine what would have happened if she’d been left in the shelter, as the drugs given by the shelter were not anywhere near the dosage Jincy’s infection needed. The vet wondered on the chances of a very ill kitten getting selected from a crowd of other healthier kittens, which makes me feel a little less guilty for adopting an adorable baby instead of an older kitty. Maybe she was just telling me that to make me feel better, but judging by the change in Jincy’s personality as she got better, we’re realizing how ill she really was when we brought her home. And I’ve earned a lot of airline miles off this cat! Also, I defy you to keep yourself from wanting to rub that belly. And she wants you to rub it. Oh yes she does.

One of my favorite memories of Christmas Eve was my sister and I blowing through a gigantic pack of colored construction paper. I cut long strips out of green and red sheets and then together we used Elmer’s glue to construct a seventy-five foot paper chain. I still remember our glee when we realized that we could wrap it all the way through the kitchen, the hall, past the stairs, into the living room, the dining room and then back through the pantry into the kitchen again, making the ends touch. We probably spent 4 hours making that thing, only stopping when we were evicted from the kitchen table so we could eat dinner.

Craft projects are an integral part of the holidays, whether its popcorn garlands or paper chains or lacy snowflakes cut out in painful detail. The best part about holiday craft projects is that traditionally (despite what Martha Stewart would have you believe) they involve things that are already on hand.

• One of my favorite things to do on snowy winter days (or boring summer ones) was concoct a shoebox diorama. You just need a box of some kind and then props to put in it. I used to scrounge for twigs and rocks outside and then constructed pioneer vignettes, with a little stick log cabins, a well made from a piece of curled bark, separated cotton balls for snow and some crinkled plastic wrap to denote frozen ponds. Then I made a little pioneer Half-Pint Ingalls out of popsicle sticks and made her a frock out of a torn and stained flour-sack towel. I should also point out that I ignored the bulk of my Christmas loot to do this! If you don’t have hours to invest in your diorama, you could construct a pop-up version out of magazine cuttings too.
• Resurrect the ancient art of tatebanko, or paper perspective, and make your own little dioramas using card stock and an Xacto Knife. All you need to do is draw or cut out some shapes (either your own or found in a magazine) and then start layering. You can make one out of anything, including blown out eggs or discarded plastic containers. Some are amazingly sophisticated and chic!
• The American folk art movement was all about creating art with things that were available, usually discarded items. Dig through your recyclables bin and create a monster out of nothing!
• We get so much junk mail. So much! It always seems so sad to just throw it into the shredder or tear it up directly into the recycling bin. But what if you could do something a little more artful, a little prettier with all of those new credit card offers or circulars for local stores? Check out these adorable little trees, made from junk mail!
• Why spend $30 on a birdfeeder when it’s so easy to make them out of pinecones? You’ll just need to keep your eyes open during a neighborhood stroll and then whip up a little batch of wintery goodness for your feathered friends. Best part? You don’t have to worry about cleaning these feeders, because you can just pitch an empty one into the garden compost and start again with a fresh cone. No eco-guilt!

Still not inspired? The new digital (and free) issue of Readymade is bound to give you some ideas to use those crafty skills!

We’ve regularly discussed the lack of decent plus-size clothing in the fashion world, but why is that? One customer service person at Macy’s told a shopper that the store didn’t carry plus-size upscale clothing because their upscale clientele was thin, and if she wanted upscale plus-size clothes, she should go to a Macy’s in another part of town that catered to women of color. Pam, the Macy’s employee, stated everything very matter-of-factly, blaming demographics on her sizist and racist implications.

Yes, it’s astounding and unbelievable, but I can honestly say that I’ve been told exactly the same thing by other clerks in other store. Once a clerk told me that the best and biggest Avenue stores were in “black neighborhoods” (although Avenue doesn’t have a clue when it comes to PR) and once by a clerk at Nordstrom in San Francisco who told me that if I wanted size 12 heels, I’d have better luck across the Bay in Oakland where the women tended to be larger. Conversely, a clerk at Simply Fashion once congratulated me for being the only white girl she had ever seen that came into the store more than once.

I have so many questions. We know that weight and income are directly related, but certainly there are wealthy women who are overweight (Oprah much?) who need to buy clothing and prefer to shop in higher end stores. In Macy’s defense, the last time I was in New York, shopping with my bff, he convinced me to check out the plus-size section and I did it pessimistically, totally expecting to find three styles of appliqued t-shirts and a rounder of Mom jeans, but was ecstatic to discover that the plus-size section was extremely diverse and I even ended up trying on a slew of awesome dresses in brands that I never thought I could find in my size. It was definitely a positive Macy’s experience, but I’ve never found a Macy’s like that outside of Herald Square.

My interest was really piqued by a statement in the comments of the Consumerist thread:

The thing is, as someone who has worked in the corporate office of a major department store, what this woman (Pam) said sounds like total BS. For the past 10-15 years plus sized departments have been a total cash cow for struggling department stores. The decision to scale back on plus sized departments is madness, but many are doing it, as they believe if they gain a reputation for catering to plus sized women (perceived as being older, less on trend, less affluent) it would damage the “brand.” See what happened with Lord & Taylor in NY, for an example of this.

This is a suspicion that we’ve always had about the extinction of decent plus-size clothing in non-specialized stores like Target and Old Navy, and to be quite honest, I have a hell of a time shopping for plus-size clothes when I visit San Francisco (especially now that the Igigi boutique is no more). It’s weird, because Simply Fashion is one of my favorite stores IN THE WORLD, mostly because it serves sizes 2-38 in the same store, often carrying the same exact style across all sizes (and many of them, very very hootchie in the most fantastic way imaginable). I think the reason that I love it so much is because they don’t worry that the size 2s will be offended to shop in the same store with the size 22s. It just is what it is.

I want to believe that Simply Fashion’s business model can work. I want to believe it’s not because the African-American culture values women on their contributions while white bread America cares more about the number on your dress tag. I want to cherish the fact that more than 50 percent of the United States just elected a black president because they’ve gotten over stupid prejudices, and that they haven’t simply replaced racism with sizism. I want to believe we can change. I really really want to believe.