in lieu of flowers.

My father, as many of you already know, passed away exactly three weeks and 24 hours ago of a disease he lived with for 8½ years. (In fact, here's the earliest post I have on this blog about it.) I won't go into all of the details because many of you have already seen everything on Facebook or heard through other mediums, and this is not the point of this post tonight.

The point of this post is to show you something really amazing that we received in the mail today.

shout out to Sex+.

I spend a lot of time on the "interwebs." Like, a lot a lot. And when you spend so much time online, you get to know the people of the internet and perhaps, occasionally, start to crush on a few of them. This is about one of my internet crushes.

Her name is Laci Green and she runs a blog/YouTube channel based on her education project Sex+. She's got a passion for sex/gender studies and she knows her shit. She's body-positive, sex-positive and not afraid to dig up the deepest "taboos" (which is great, because someone's gotta). She answers all the questions people are afraid to ask and manages to do so in an extremely eloquent and well-organized manner in under 4 minutes.

If you watch nothing else of hers, take 4 minutes to watch the following video on fat-shaming. It's Eating Disorder Awareness Month and if you do nothing else for the rest of the month, I only ask that you watch this video for less than 5 minutes of your life. Fat-shaming -- weight-shaming -- needs to stop. Thanks to our fantastic, all-inclusive weight-obsessed society, fat-shaming affects each and every one of us on a daily basis whether you realize it or not. So do me a favor. Do yourself a favor, for the sake of raising awareness, and listen up.

1 week down, 14 to go.

It's totally the extended version.

Yesterday afternoon concluded my first official week of the Spring '13 semester, the first week of my second semester at FSU. This semester is clearly going to go a little differently than the last, as I image they all will from here on out. I've never been on this side -- the second-half side -- of a degree before. Rumor has it classes just get harder from here. Guess that makes sense.

I am actually pretty excited about this semester. I finally feel like I'm taking courses that are moving me through the program, now that I'm mostly taking Major requirements. I actually feel like I'm going somewhere for the first time since I started taking night courses about three and a half years ago.

"careful the things you say, children will listen."

"OY, would you just look at the waist on her? You're so lucky to be so skinny!" The number of times I heard this line in any number of variations as a child would be impossible to estimate. I got it from family members, my parents' friends, and completely random women in grocery and department stores. I heard it constantly.

The earliest I can recall someone telling me how lucky I was to be skinny is at least elementary school-aged, somewhere between 5-9. Yes, I was a child. I was an innocent, fairly healthy and active child who ate macaroni & cheese and peanut butter & jelly sandwiches as my mother put them in front of me. I was picky, but the way I looked wasn't even a concept in my head. Food was for nourishment and I was taught to eat it 3-6 times a day as my mother gave it to me. But I was apparently very lucky to be so skinny, according to everyone.

I didn't know that was meant as a compliment (and why should it be?). When I heard I was lucky to be skinny, that meant skinny was good, ideal, something everyone should aim to be. And I was there, so... success! It meant that to be something other than skinny was unlucky and would lower my quality of life, as you could hear it had for the women talking to me in their envious tones. It meant I had it good as long as I remained thin and tiny.

And those same women would later threateningly say, "Oh, it'll catch up with you one day." But I'd learned that was bad, so I wasn't about to let that happen.

And those same women would even later say, "Oh gosh, she's in the hospital? How sad. The media these days is just terrible."

babies. everywhere.

I'm going to be blunt: I don't understand why people want babies.

This is not meant to offend anyone, it's not personal toward anyone (or their child), and I should point out that I have an unbelievable amount of respect for people that have children. I just can't wrap my head around why or how you're able to do it.

Having babies is necessary to our race's survival; it's what we do and it's what makes us living organisms. Blah blah blah science blah blah. But you don't usually hear lionesses walking around going, "OMG I want cubs. I want so many cubs. They're so cute and cuddly and fluffy and GOSH I hope I have a girl cub." I don't actually speak Lion, so it's possible I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's just more of an instinctual, animalistic (if you will) desire to reproduce. Humans are... different.