Disney Ponderings . . .

We often find ourselves so wholly wrapped up in Disney movies that we accept the preposterous without question. Sometimes it’s necessary to check a little realism at the door and opt for the warm embrace of the imagination. But every once in a while, we snap back to reality just enough to have some lingering questions. Like these:

Why do they even have that lever?

A trap door right in front of your secret lair with a lever that’s easily mistaken for the one to get in to your secret lair? Poor planning, we say.

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

We feel unsatisfied with the lack of answer provided by the Mad Hatter.

What was Flower’s name?

Again, he must have had one before Bambi thought it was Flower and he said that was fine and never went back.

What is the grey stuff?

We grant you that it’s delicious. But is it mousse? Cake? Pudding?

Did Elsa want to build a snowman?

She said “go away.” But that’s not no. And we all know why she said that. And then she did build one. So… we’re thinking yes? She just never said.

What is the most wonderful thing about Tiggers?

We know that technically it’s Tiggers are wonderful things, but that’s a little like using the word in the definition. No? And the rest of the song has so many possibilities it’s hard to figure out which one is the most wonderful.

How did Cruella De Vil possibly pass her driving test?

She’s just atrocious. Stay off the roads, people.

Did Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather ever learn to bake a cake (sans magic)?

Because let’s face it, their first go around wasn’t exactly bakery level.

What’s in this gumbo?

We have uses for the recipe.

Where did the Genie go at the end of Aladdin?

Beach? Log cabin? Disney World? What does one do when one’s a Genie and one is finally free?

Does Prince Charming have a brother?

Okay, this one isn’t technically from a movie. But we’re just… asking for a friend. (*wink*)

Don't we all feel better after getting those things off our chests?

Red Ribbon . . . Continued

RJ was an enigma to his family. He was the 'baby' in a white collar fiercely Italian clan. Where his siblings & parents were all in the legal profession, he lived to be onstage. He was so unlike them, he read plays and scores, learned dance moves and how move on a stage. Plus, he was gay. In a stereotypical Italian clan he would have been shunned or at least not talked about openly. Did I mention his family was not stereotypical? Instead they embraced this talented golden child and cherished him if he were a rare jewel. They paid for his actors union dues, they paid for his music & acting classes, he performed for their civic organizations and church functions, he lead the family in carols at Christmas, and at every performance they could his family was right there in front applauding and cheering as if he was Caruso or Barrymore reincarnated. They celebrated his achievements and gave support when he struggled. He hogged every spotlight, became the life of every party, fell in love 15 times a day for the length of time it took a traffic light to change, an elevator door to close, or to cross a room. He loved pretty boys, especially if they were in awe of him. He was feckless in every aspect of his life but one, his craft . . . he only truly lived when he was onstage. He fed off of the applause and the attention. Whether it came from a theatre critic, an ardent fan, or a star struck boy he ate it up like it was mannah from heaven. Did I happen to mention that our boy was a bit on the promiscuous side?

We were on our way back from a rehearsal one dreary afternoon when RJ pulled over to the side of the road and asked me to continue driving. When we walked around the car to change places I could see he looked a little green. I asked if he was ok and responded back that he'd been feeling under the weather for a while but put the blame on that on his schedule, rehearsals, and working on some new material for a solo show. He said he was just burning the candle at both ends. The first time I had heard that excuse from him was in  February, but by June you could see he had lost a lot of weight, his pallor was waxy, and he'd had that cough for months. This was more than bad schedule planning and junk food, this was getting serious and people were beginning to talk. Back in the car I kept asking if he was ok, what did his doctor say, what were they giving him, why was he losing weight? His response was that he had picked up a bug and combined with his allergies and performance schedule it had knocked him for a loop. I could see he wasn't well and that there was more to this than he was admitting to. This was the elephant in the room that he was trying to hide, pretend wasn't there, and creating as many distractions as possible to keep everyone looking anywhere but at the unasked question staring right at them. I turned to him and asked what was his HIV status, what was the result on his last test. He mumbled something vaguely sounding like "I don't know". I looked him right in the eye and asked if the reason he didn't know was because he didn't want to admit his status, or the fact he hadn't had one in a while. He again mumbled his response in a gargle of unintelligible sounds. I asked again, turning him to face me so I could understand what he was saying. "I don't know" he said again, "I don't know because I've never had an HIV test. I never wanted to know what the answer might be."

I was stunned. Here is a 25yo college educated man from a family of professionals, who's extended family also included medical practitioners, telling me he didn't want to take a test that might catch a life threatening disease early enough so that he could live a normal life, telling me he didn't want to know what the answer might be.
I exploded. I called him every variation on the words stupid, dangerous, reckless, and juvenile known to man. I railed on him for miles . . . screaming at him for his callousness against his sexual partners, for the idiocy he had been perpetrating for unknown months, for endangering himself and his medical practitioners. I made him cry . . . I had him sobbing and begging me to please stop . . . to try to see it from his side. He just made me angrier with his protestations. I didn't even want to be in the same car with him. I pulled into the BART station in Daly City and got ready to get out of the car. I turned to this sobbing mess and said I was leaving, that I'd find my own way home, and that he really needed to face reality. Make believe was all fine and good for the stage, but pretending didn't work out very well in real life when it came to life and death issues. He could bury his head in the sand as long as he wanted to, but he had better understand that they'd be coming to bury the rest of him too if he didn't face facts. He was very sick and there weren't enough cough drops in the world to cure what was going on with him. He needed to find out what really was going on and he needed to do it fast. I slammed the door to the car and walked away towards the BART station. It was not my finest hour and my compassion was left somewhere along the highway. I left him crying in the car and wrapped myself up in a cloak of righteousness and strode away. Of course, if I had been paying attention I should have covered myself in a rain jacket and an umbrella as the sky chose that moment to open up into a downpour. Fate is not only fickle but it shares the same warped sense of humour as karma.

By the time the bus dropped me off at the top of the hill, and left me to walk down to my house getting completely soaked to the skin, he was parked in front of the house waiting for me. I walked around his car and headed up the staircase to the front door. As I put the key into the lock I heard his voice over the sound of the rain. "Please help me . . . I don't know where to start." I turned and saw him standing there, looking like a wet puppy with that pity face and eyes. "Do you really want help or are you trying to placate me so I won't be mad at you", I asked. He looked down at the water rushing by and then looked me right in the eye and said "I don't want to feel this way anymore. I'm scared to find out but I'm more scared of dying. I can't do this alone." I pushed the door open and stepped over the threshold, I turned back to him and said "You're not alone you idiot, and you better come inside before you catch your death out there." Yes, my humour does have a dark and sarcastic side.

To Be Continued.

Advice We Wish We Could Give Our Youngers Selves . . . As Illustrated By Disney

Hindsight is 20/20, which is really unlucky for the younger iterations of ourselves. That’s why we wish we had given some of this priceless Disney advice to our younger selves so we could have been saved the agony of broken hearts, insecurities, long lines, jealousy–you name it.

If you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you’ll learn things you never knew you never knew.

Empathy. It’s one of the hardest things to learn as a tot, and some people never really develop it (shout out to Gaston). We wish we could go back in time and tell little us to be patient with others and look beyond our own lives, as everyone faces challenges, and stuff.

Get the FastPass, go on the ride, then go on it again.

Of course we all know this NOW but when FastPasses first came out, do you think we knew how to optimize them? No, we probably didn’t even know to run to our favorite ride first to get the earliest possible FastPass. So many wasted rides on Space Mountain.

Make an entrance.

Who impresses the Prince? Cinderella. When does she show up? Last. Okay, maybe she caught his eye because she was also beautiful, gentle, and sweet, but also maybe it was because she made an entrance, and those get made later in the night. What one thing do you know about the White Rabbit? That’s right: that he’s late. Just saying, it makes a statement. Does this mean we’re advocating lateness? Not necessarily; some can make an entrance and still be timely. Find your own brand of entrance, and work it.

It’s not what is on the outside but what’s inside that counts.

Aladdin gets slightly bummed when everyone keeps calling him riff raff and street rat, but by the end, we all realize he’s really the diamond in the rough. When we were little, we thought only princesses could be princesses, and only princes could be princes, but NOW we know that none of that matters since all your specialness comes from within.

Adventure is out there.

When you’re young, it seems like the world is a giant scary place, and even if you want to get out there and experience it all, the great big out there can be intimidating. But just think what would happen if you DIDN’T get out there and see some things while still in your youth–you’d feel like Carl when he regrets not adventuring with Ellie: sad. We wish we could tell little us to get out there and try new things, even if it is scary at first.

The seaweed is always greener in somebody else’s lake.

Okay, hear us out on this one: true, it’s good that Ariel followed her heart and became a human, since that’s what she wanted and all. However, Sebastian does have a point that the grass, err, seaweed is always greener on the other side. Think of all the times little us thought everyone else’s life was better, more fun, easier, etc. People were probably looking at our lives thinking the same thing, just like how while Ariel was wishing for legs, we were wishing we could be mermaids! Boom, point proven.

You can’t do it all in one day.

Remember when you were little and you’d go to the park and you’d totally tucker yourself out by about 2pm because you were going into overdrive trying to go on every ride, see every attraction, and eat every snack all in one day? FOMO (fear of missing out) is real, and only with maturity have we learned that you can’t possibly do everything at Disneyland in one day; you have to prioritize, potentially spread it out, pace yourself, otherwise it’s a big exhausting blur.

Let it go.

This is another one that not everyone learns by the time they’re grown up. Sometimes, the only solution to any problem is to just let. It. Go. Think about it: when you’re little and you have a mosquito bite, you scratch at it, but that only makes it worse. The only thing to do is leave it alone, and then it gets better. Oddly, a lot of life’s perceived problems are the same way. Plus, it worked for Elsa, and she’s pretty cool.

Keeping Fit . . . Disney Style

Every January, talk of workout routines spikes. The best cardio, the best green juice, the new popular class (is Cardio Barre still cool, or no?)… we’ve heard enough on these topics to last all year, and it’s only January 16. We’d like to talk about a different kind of workout. A happier kind. Follow these simple steps at least three times a week, and you’ll be in the best Disney shape of your life!



How can you not love a workout that involves making a pie?

You know you went to Catholic School if . . .

Let’s get this party started. Are you ready? Cause just like your first two hour mass, it’s going to be a loooong ride.

1. You at one point compared who got the “better” ash mark on their head from Ash Wednesday. Really they all looked like splotchy finger prints, but it kept you busy at recesses comparing noggins.

2. You feel like a rebel when you wear colored socks. Oh yeah, now that you are out, no regulation white ankle or crew socks for you! Blue! Pink! Black! The world is your stage when it comes to sock color because you know how to party.

3. When someone says “peace be with you” you say “also with you” without thinking. It’s true. The years of training sunk in, and there is no letting go.

4. While you tell everyone that going to an all-girls/ all-boys school helped you focus on school and made you more intelligent, you secretly know it also made you more desperate and socially awkward. It’s sad, and pretty embarrassing, but true.


5. You secretly miss having your clothes picked out for you 5 out of 7 days in the week. Life was easier when you were forced to wear a uniform…unless you wear a uniform for your job…then you are probably thinking  “when is my free dress day???”

6.  You still remember the names of 30 kids you spent 8 years with…their parents, and siblings too.  Aaaah, elementary school. Sure a couple kids came and went, but you got to know this core group well. You battled teachers, started puberty, and all sat through mass every Tuesday together. These are ties no graduation can break.

7. You still feel like you need say your prayer before a meal really, really fast, so you can get to recess faster. Because saying the words like you had a espresso, redbull and some crack all at the same time counts as a “real prayer” when you are starving and need that pudding cup…right? 

8. You were shocked after you graduated to find out there were other translations of the Bible than the New American Version. NIV! ESV! IHSYESYGGLSO! Okay, that last one isn’t a translation that I know of but there are so many options out there! If you decided to stay or go back to the Christian life after graduation you were probably met with some confusion when you went to the Christian book store and was met with the aisles of different translations.
Authors note: This originally cited (wrongly) the King James translation, which isn’t approved by the Catholic church.  I have since had some coffee, woke up a bit, and changed it. 

9. You’ve been dressed up like an angel, a sheep, and a shepherd at least once (but probably three) times as a child. Don’t lie. Your mother has photos.

10. …and you had to sing. A LOT. On top of the school pageants and usual fair, you had the special church events that they used your class singing off key like some secret choir reserve force when the old ladies got sick. It was probably just a plot to actually get your parents to mass every once and a while.

11. When at any non-catholic church or the train station, your right knee automatically buckles anytime you enter a pew, and you have to stop yourself from kneeling. Again, it’s true.

12. You know how to fundraise and sell stuff like a boss. Whether you went to one of the “rich kids” Catholic schools or the “very much not rich kids” schools, either way they had you out pimping cookie dough, magazine subscriptions, wrapping paper, and coupon books every year. That pizza party just became less worth the trouble as time went on.

13. Your non-Catholic friends think doing the sign of the cross is some complicated secret handshake and keep asking you to show them how to do it over and over. It really is a secret sign that makes you get the good wafers at communion. Ya know, the ones that don’t taste like cardboard.

14.  There was always some rumor about a dead saint body part, haunted room, or scary secret tradition (saying Bloody Mary into a mirror) at your church…that you totally bought. Admit it. You believed!

15. You know what “leave room for the Holy Spirit means.” One foot apart with only arms touching is the only way to slow dance and keep Jesus happy.

16. You totally made up a sin during your first confession with a priest because you were in the first grade and didn’t understand what the heck was going on.  Your friend even said adultery, because it sounded cooler than cheating or thinking bad thoughts against your parents, and no one was smart-assy enough yet to just say murder.

17. You dreaded stations of the cross day. It was long, you had to sit in a hard pew, and most of the time you couldn’t see action or hear the person speaking. So you just sat there. For all eternity.

18.  You have strong feelings about nuns. ‘Nuff said. 

19. You are still bitter that you were not picked to play Mary during May Crowning or Jesus in the Last Supper. Only the coolest kids, and teachers favorites got those roles. Not little old you. It’s still hurtful to talk about.

20. You talk more (aka are more traumatized) about your elementary school experience than anyone else who went to public school. It’s an experience that forever changed you. There was good, there was bad, there was just odd…but in the end you survived

The World Is Not A Safe Place For A Fat Girl . . . Or Boy

Today, Danielle Rezac posted this picture on facebook.

 Danielle had gone to Ace Hardware and parked next to two men. It was a tight fit, so she had to squeeze to get out of her car. When she returned to her car from shopping, the other car was gone and this was left on her windshield.

I can only imagine how she felt. I've been there. I've witnessed people I love be there. My heart goes out to her, and how she must have felt in that moment--cheeks flushing, heart pounding, feeling like a bucket of cold water had just been thrown over her. I'm sure her weight was not what she was thinking about when she returned to her car from shopping. Maybe she was thinking about going home and getting supper for her family. Maybe she was thinking about whatever she had just bought at Ace. Maybe she was worrying about something that happened at work. I can almost guarantee you she was not thinking about her size.


But these two men had to make sure she was.

Beyond the rudeness, the cruelty, the idiocy of their actions. Beyond the fact that it just highlights how a woman's body, to many people, is only meant to look attractive to them--and HOW DARE any woman not conform to that. Never mind the problem of a woman only having value if she is a certain size, race, able-bodiedness, etc. Never mind how unthinkable it is that anyone would leave a note this hurtful to someone a stranger who didn't so much as speak to them. All of that aside . . . what really bothers me is that, if confronted, these two young (I assume) men would make all sorts of excuses, and undoubtedly one of those excuses would be something like, "Look, really we were helping her. She obviously needs to lose some weight."

BULL.


I am here to tell you now that unkind words have never helped anyone make any kind of lasting change for the good of their health.

The ironic thing is, these men would probably never be satisfied. If they saw the woman who posted the picture eating a salad at McDonald's, or working out at the gym, or huffing along the bike trail trying to jog, they would still feel the need to make a crack. And they would feel justified in it, because she deserved it for being fat.

I am here to tell you that the world does not feel like a safe place for a fat woman.

It doesn't feel safe because you never know where the crack is going to come from. It might be from a stranger in the Ace Hardware parking lot. It might be your doctor (true story). It might be someone you were trying to let merge in front of you in traffic (also true story: they rolled their windows down and asked, "Could you tell me where the donut shop is?" and then laughed and drove away). It might be your own family members. It doesn't matter how often it happens--you always feel blindsided. So you begin to put up walls. Walls that are hard to take down, even around the people who love you. Walls that make it hard for people to love you. Walls that make you flip out and fight or wither and hide after the slightest jab, no matter how light-hearted.

I am here to tell you it doesn't have to be like this.

We can and must crusade to change the world, of course we must. We must teach our kids to treat every person with respect, whether they find them attractive or not. We must treat each other with love and kindness.

But--more importantly--we must learn to do this for ourselves.

The world will never completely change. People will always continue to be cruel. Learning to love yourself is the biggest, baddest armor you can give yourself. And it is only then that any kind of real change to your health or size can happen.

No one can shame someone into losing weight. It just doesn't work. And self-loathing-induced dieting is only effective for so long. There are only two options: starve yourself to death or start gaining weight back. After a youth spent restricting and binge exercising, gaining was what my body decided to do. No matter how much hate I heaped on myself for what I was becoming, I couldn't reverse the upward trend.

I am certainly no weight loss expert, and I have a long way to go myself--in both improving my health and in learning to love myself. It will be a long road. But you know what helped me get to the place where I could start to lose some weight? Loving myself, at least part of the time. Surrounding myself with people who loved me unconditionally. Not tolerating any kind of body shaming from people in my life--even if it meant making the difficult choice to cut people out of my life. Dating men who told me (and meant it!) that I am beautiful, sexy, desirable exactly the way I am. Knowing that if I stayed exactly the way I was I'd be just fine. That's when things started to change.

I visited family in Southern California over Christmas, and like any thawing Midwesterner I wanted to be at and in the ocean as much as possible. My cousin laughed and took pictures as I splashed in the Pacific on Christmas Day.

When I saw the pictures she took, I wanted to cry. "What a whale of a woman," I thought.

I posted the picture on a facebook board I frequent, seeking relief from the mean voices in my head. The biggest thing that surprised me was how many women said, "You are so brave for wearing a swimsuit in public! I couldn't do that!" Women smaller than me. Much smaller than me.

That reminded me of how far I had come. I wore a swimsuit in Ventura and a wetsuit in San Diego (second only to LA in terms of SoCal shallowness, according to my cousin) and you know what? I didn't give a rip. I figured I would never see those people again. I noticed the disgusted looks I got. As a bigger woman you're always in tune with that. But I just didn't care. I loved myself enough to do what I wanted to do, which was to be healthy and active over the holidays.

I am not friends with Danielle. But if I were, I would say: I hope you love yourself. And if you don't, I hope you work on that first. I know that the world is especially cruel to an overweight woman, but people will always find something wrong with you. Don't worry about changing your body--worry about changing your mind.

I am here to tell you that everything else will follow.

Written by AmandaFP.
Thank you for writing and posting this, I couldn't have said it any better.