Planet NilknarfMay 2015Welcome to Planet NilknarfBlasts from the Past:Before you do anything else you may want to make yourself some popcorn, sit back and enjoy the following.http://www.neatorama.com/2015/03/25/10-far-out-kids-tv-shows-from-the-1970s/?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=5512f7e204d3012502000002&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=facebook

Or you may want to do so later...

Cover StoryYou Say I'm Fat Like It's a Bad Thing

This is me when I was five or six years old at my aunt and uncle's cottage in (where else?) Bobcaygeon. Frankly I don't see what all the fuss was about. Maybe I hate this picture when I was younger but I don't mind it so much now. In fact I think it's one of my favorites. The truth is, a year or two before this picture was taken I had no idea I was different from anyone else in any way whatsoever. Then along came kindergarten and suddenly everyone was picking on me because they thought I was FAT! FAT!? I guess the first thing I learned in school before I even learned to read or write was that fat was bad and thin was good. Whether that is true or not is a matter of asinine opinion. It was one of the many reasons my teacher hated me besides the fact that I cried all the time. I cried all the time because I was always being teased and because she was always yelling at me.

I did not know I was autistic back then. That was the reason I did not have the words to express myself and kept a lot of secrets to myself. Frankly, teachers were always telling me I was bad so I believed that about myself and took whatever came to me as par for the course because of that.

There was only one other fat girl in my class. Her name was Anita and she hated me. I hate Margaret! She's fat! she would always say and she would hit me over the head with books in the library. Truth was she was even fatter than me.

And because I was autistic and didn't know it, yelling at me always made things worse. My teacher couldn't figure out why I cried all the time. HELLO???! I cried all the time because she wouldn't stop YELLING at me. That's the WORST thing you can do to an autistic person. Yelling at me won't make me understand what you're trying to say. You're yelling and all I hear is RARAARARRARAAARAARARRAARARARARRARR...!!!!

Personally, I think maybe she shouldn't have been a teacher. A drill sergeant or a lion tamer maybe. No, those poor lions probably would have been scared shitless of her! Truth is, if you can't stand crying kids, don't be a kindergarten teacher! Back then I was the exception to the rule. But if she tried to be a kindergarten teacher in this day and age she wouldn't last 20 minutes. Kids nowadays are ALWAYS crying about SOMETHING!!! The average kindergarten or daycare in this day and age is a madhouse. I should know because part of my old job was delivering toys to these places.

So I was sent to Special Education at Dublin Public School because they couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. In those days nothing was known about autism or Asperger's Syndrome and much of special ed was experimental, taught by trial and error. Mostly error. I didn't tell my parents until it was too late but both Mrs. Wheeler and her assistant Mrs. Griffin were SO MEAN to me. Mrs. Wheeler was always making snide remarks about my spare tire and Mrs. Griffin would pinch my waist and call me Chubby Chops. And of course there was all the horrible teasing from kids not only on the school yard but also on the bus. Nothing was done to help me. All anyone ever did was tell me to ignore them. Once in awhile I'd get so mad I'd haul off and hit someone. And of course the teacher would tell them to hit me back. I don't think they taught anything in that crappy school except that Might Makes Right and Sorry doesn't mean anything.

And then there's the whole debacle about my illicit love of carousels but that's another matter.

Every day my mother would put one of those little Club chocolate bars in my lunch and the teachers couldn't be more horrified if I were juggling chain saws right in front of me or snorting cocaine! They would gasp, shake their heads and go tsk-tsk-tsk. I just glared at them and continued to eat my chocolate bar. It was only small and mostly biscuit anyway. Once in awhile Mrs. Wheeler would have the nerve to even ask me if she could HAVE my chocolate. NO! I stood my ground. Even if they thought it was the cause of all my problems, they were NOT about to deprive me of my ownly pleasure in this sucky horrible life of mine!

Look at that. I just made up a new word. It was a typo, a Freudian slip. I misspelled only as Ownly. I think it's a good way to emphasize emphasis!

I went to that school for grade one, grade two and the first month or two of grade three. Those had to be the longest months of my life. Even though Mrs. Wheeler and Mrs. Griffin were no longer there to torment me, I had a new problem. My bus driver. And he was a pervert.

Folks, don't ever let anyone tell you that child molesters aren't attracted to fat kids. Nothing could be farther from the truth. They like us all the more because we are vulnerable in a world where everyone else despises up. They like us because they can easily manipulate us with food. And because we already have boobs! More about that later.

Smokey as we used to call him, used to take an extra long route so I'd be the last person he let off his bus and then he would take me to Baskin Robbins to treat me to ice cream. But then he'd always be tickling me Down There. I always cringe when I hear the expression tickle your fancy because it always reminds me of how he'd say he wanted to tickle my pretty. The Wicked Witch of the West's catch phrase tends to make me think of that too.

Anyway, even after I stopped going to the school he would continue to be buddy-buddy with my parents and visit us, bringing me gifts and bringing them fresh green beans from his garden. I never told them Our Little Secret until I was eighteen and we had just moved to Bobcaygeon. I don't know why I never told them. I guess I just accepted it as par for the course because I believed I was bad. They said I could have told them because they were always on my side.

Still because of all the teasing and all the crap I had to put up with, I grew up hating my body. Many people nowadays will bitch that an overweight kid is a sign of bad parenting. That they're always taking us out for fast food and don't keep us active enough. The truth was that I almost NEVER ate fast food. My mom cooked wholesome, nutritious meals and we almost never went to restaurants at all. When we did, it was a huge deal. I don't think I ever even had McDonald's until I was at least seven or eight, despite the fact I always wanted to go there because of the damned clown!!

Mom thinks the reason I've always been overweight is because she started me too soon on solid food. Who can blame her. She breast-fed me until I was seven months old, but I already had my first tooth at THREE months! OUCH! In fact I had all my teeth before I was even a year old. If you don't believe that this actually happens to kids, check out this video: Warning. You may want to MUTE it if you're anything like me or my former kindergarten teacher and can't stand the sound of kids crying:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-jAGdD1H8g

The whole punch line is when baby brother just grins away at the camera like a little Cheshire Cat!!

Anyway all through my childhood I was nagged about my weight one way or another. Doctors were always trying to put me on diets which usually consisted of foods I hated and wouldn't touch. Until I was ten years old and instant oatmeal was available in tantalizing flavors I wouldn't even TOUCH porridge. I thought it looked absolutely revolting. Damned if I'm gonna eat anything that looks like it's already been digested! You don't know what you're missing. My mom would say.

I wasn't a picky eater but I was a lazy chewer. I still don't like carrot sticks or celery very much. I still tend to think of it as punishment for being fat food. Only in recent years I've really learned to really enjoy raw veggies now that broccoli and cauliflower are presented. I'll gladly eat those raw without complaint.

Recently I was appalled to see a company called Wry Baby offer onesies with the message I Hate My Thighs. Just what we need. Products that teach body-shaming at an early age. As if discovering that world of cruelty in kindergarten wasn't bad enough.

We are still bombarded with messages to hate our bodies. I try to avoid looking at the selection of magazine headlines at the checkout counter. They are always the same. If it's not about another celebrity having a baby it's about how to lose weight. Sometimes I have to wait outside the store while my husband is still in line at the counter to resist the urge to trash the place like the Incredible Hulk.

The teasing didn't stop when I changed schools. In fact it was worse. If it wasn't because of my weight, it was because I'd gone to special ed. Once they've seen you on the Short Bus they NEVER let you live it down. It is only in recent years they have acknowledged the seriousness of bullying.

I've been on many diets throughout my lifetime. I was literally raised on Kool-Aid with artificial sweetener. It was only sometime in the 80's I realized how bad Aspartame really was for me and made the link that I was allergic to it. For me Aspartame causes extreme mood-swings and suicidal depression.

My first major weight loss was in high school. I went from 175 to around 134. Nowadays I'd kill to be 175 again!! Even at 134 I still thought I was fat. Teenagers, go figure. They think anything about the eleventies is morbidly obese.

And the dating situation still didn't change. There was still the stigma of being seen with me because I was crazy. Even if a guy did really like me, he'd have to keep it a secret. And the teasing still continued. How many tons did you lose? In fact one guy even said to me No matter how much weight you lose you'll always be the laughingstock of the school. Truth hurts. GRRRRR!!!

Not only that but my immune system was compromised. What's the use of being thinner and looking better if you're always sick? I missed so much school because I caught every bug that went around. Now that I no longer worry about my weight I seldom get sick but that's another story.

I realize this is not an easy topic to write about and the discrimination has to stop.

In recent years I still have to deal with my share of assholes and the weight-loss industry is a prime example of the Devil's Economy; Enough is Never Enough. No matter how much weight I've lost it's never been enough to make teasing and rude comments stop. That's the worst thing about being overweight; rude comments and unsolicited advice from total strangers.

They know absolutely NOTHING about me or what I've been through. There's no such thing as bipolar medication that does NOT cause weight gain. With my metabolism diet and exercise is really total starvation and perpetual motion. I've lived like that before and I totally hate it. Life is too short for depriving yourself of the foods you love and wasting time with boring activities you hate while having no time for the activities you really enjoy.

Perhaps inactivity is also to blame. Within the past year I've really come to hate the expression Sitting is the New Smoking. Frankly I've come to despise the majority of this is the new that expressions but that's beside the point. I hate that I've never been really athletic. I've never really enjoyed sports. Except for roller-skating. I used to enjoy doing that every Friday night for a year or two. In my late teens I used to spend at least an hour after school pedaling away on my exercise bike while I watched Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley and Three's Company on the little black-and-shite TV in my bedroom, barely able to hear it over the noise of the bike. Plus the roller-skating on Fridays. Because I wasn't starving myself anymore I still gained back 30 of those pounds I lost. And I went to aerobic classes a couple times a week.

Nowadays I just get my exercise by walking. I should walk at least an hour a day. It takes me about 20 minutes to half an hour to walk to school every morning and I usually walk home too if it isn't too cold out or I'm not too tired. But I must admit I get tired of the same walk every day. There must be a way of varying my route without straying too far off the beaten track to get where I am going quickly enough. At least with The Living Room I have another reason to leave the house besides going to school. That's the way I am. I don't really like walking unless I have an actual destination in mind, an actual reason to leave the house other than just walking for the sake of walking.

Last year at this time my doctor wanted me to lose weight. I must have been doing something right because I was actually doing okay for awhile. My jeans were actually starting to get looser. However, it wasn't without my body putting up a fight at first. I enjoyed one last fling at the St. Lawrence Market with one of those humongous veal parmigiana kaisers and a bag of beet chips. Beets. Go figure. They have become my digestive nemesis. Truth is, I shouldn't have been having chips of ANY kind at all due to blood pressure issues but when I bought these beet chips I figured they'd at least be more salubrious than those made with potato. In the week to follow I suffered the WORST case of constipation I ever had in my life! And there was really nothing I could do about it. Nothing is worse than that feeling of the risk that you're going to shove yourself inside-out!! A whole week of feeling like I was scared I'd literally die on the toilet. I bought laxatives and herbal teas. I don't remember what finally actually worked but it caused me to clog the toilet and I must have flet at least ten pounds lighter.

I walked every day and watched what I ate, but as usual, I gradually lost interest, especially when my last art show didn't go as well as I hoped.

I'm not here to make excuses or to promote one way of life over another. I'm just saying that we need to accept one another as we are and that the world would be a happier place if we did so and did not try to change one another. It's not worth the resentment and animosity.

An excellent example of such asshattery was a woman I passed when I was walking home from school about a week or two ago. I was walking down the street minding my own business, listening to CBC radio on my MP3 player when this woman in a brown coat passes by me and says Keep on truckin'! You'll lose that weight! W...T...F>>>!!!???? I just glared at her but she went on to say I used to weigh over 200 pounds... I was too shocked to speak so I just reached for my MP3 player and turned up the volume even LOUDER to prove to her that I did NOT give a flying fuck about whatever she had to say. After all, what does she know about me? What business is it of hers.

Of course in the days to follow I kept thinking about witty comebacks I could have used such as Good luck KEEPING it off. or What are you now? 199 and three quarters? Maybe it's just as well I stayed silent. The last thing I wanted was a discussion. Which brings me to my next subject:BoundariesAt the beginning of March break, a well-meaning friend of mine tried to introduce me to a friend of his whom he thought I would hit it off with. Someone who is also artsy and creative and would be a good asset to my carousel project. So he gave me her number. I called and got her answering machine. It gave me the option of leaving a message or dialing 1 and leaving my number. So I left my number, even though I wasn't sure if I'd done it right. She phoned me back immediately and we chatted for about half an hour. Or actually, she did most of the talking. She was very positive, dynamic and upbeat. Maybe a little too much so. But I thought she sounded like someone I could like and get along with. Anyway, it was getting close to 12:30, the time I usually talk to Janette while she's at work so I asked this person if I could call back in half an hour. Long story short, we kept playing phone tag all day. She NEVER answers her phone and she ALWAYS leaves text messages. I don't have a cell phone so it goes straight to land line voice mail. And the penultimate message was garbled. All I understood was my own name. So I called back and had to leave yet another message telling her what happened. And that's when she texted me back accusing me of not respecting her boundaries and troubling me with her fears!!

You could have knocked me over with a feather. I felt like I'd been plunged into ice water! WTF did I do to deserve THIS? True, complicated phone situations are a trigger for me, but from what I understood I basically blew it with her and she basically blew it with me. I told our friend what had happened and he defended her by saying she had a strong personality. Hokay...I don't think I can be friends with someone who makes me feel like I have to tiptoe around her on eggshells because I never know what I might say or do that would make her bite my head off like this.

This whole fiasco got me thinking about boundaries and what they are. How do you know you're treading over a line. Well, a certain masked rock group probably thought Janette and I were stalkers. The less said about that situation the better.

Back when we were both living in Toronto, Janette and I attended this Bible study in our CAPS group at Bayview Glen and the study was on a book called Boundaries. I still have the book somewhere but I don't think I've EVER been able to finish it. Mostly it's about being able to say no to people so that you don't get taken advantage of. Well, one evening Janette and I had the misfortune to meet one of the most annoying people we've ever met in our lives! We were sitting next to each other at the table and this guy comes in and plonks himself between us without even asking if it's okay to sit here and asks if he can borrow my book. Before I even have a chance to say anything he grabs it out of my hand. Janette is trying to tell me she doesn't really want to come to my upcoming party after all. But when we are trying to talk to each other he keeps trying to shush us. I think I ended up tearing my book back out of his hands and storming out of the room. I don't think I've been to another Boundaries class ever since!!!

Carousel of the MonthRye Playland, 1915 Mangels/Carmel

This brings us to the penultimate carousel we visited this year during the 2014 NCA convention in New York. It is one of my favorites and probably the one that I took the most pictures of because they seemed to give us the most time to take pictures of this and the Prior & Church Racing Derby with Illions horses directly across the field from it. I hope to be sharing that one in next month's issue.

The Rye Playland carousel is still as beautiful as it was when I was there the summer of 1993 with Richard and Lisa. That was the summer I will always remember as the time I rode 20 different carousels in less that two weeks, starting with two on the first day the moment they picked me up from the airport but that is another story. At the time, both carousels had been recently repainted by R&F designs in Bristol Connecticut, but now they have begun to show a great deal of wear and tear and are just about ready to be repainted yet again!I love the exquisite details on all these majestic steeds. Here's Janette enjoying a ride on one of the magnificent armoured ones!

And here's me hamming it up for the camera.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJag3-7Z9Ko

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRjEwCLbk_0

My Latest Obsession:Extreme Scrap-booking

I've always wanted to write my own book. Last year I made plans with Jan's husband, Fede, but things got complicated and the whole project feel through. Just as well, because I was inspired by David Usher's book, Let the Elephants Run, to take a different approach. Whether this book ends up being published or not isn't nearly as important as the very existence of this book itself and all that goes into it to share my life story in its own unique way.

I bought this book on Monday, April 13th, just after my last day of the Be Your Own Boss class at Durham Continuing education. I had just stepped out of school and happened to meet my friend Lisa whom I know from my ASD support group and together we headed on down to the Art Affairs store on King Street where I found exactly what I was looking for. I also popped into the drugstore to stock up on my purple hair dye and then we went for lunch at the Viva Burrito place.

When I got home one of the first things I added to my book were my teacher's positive comments on my summative project and the first collage I did at the Livingroom. That place has got to be the greatest thing that has ever happened to this town! :)

Highlights of my scrapbook so far include my Wedding Dress:

Honeymoon pictures:And various carousel conventions I've been to so far:I have to go slowly though! Since this project began I've had to drop everything and buy more printer ink TWICE and that stuff is bloody expensive!!! >:(

As my book grows and progresses, you can find more pictures of it here:https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.554208641385568.1073741870.100003893116310&type=1&l=9440203e3d

Life at the LivingroomJust about every Thursday, Friday and Saturday, you can find me at this wonderful place!

http://www.livingroomcommunityartstudio.org/

Even if all I'm doing is working on my embroidery, it makes a difference getting out of the house and spending time with company. This place has been an oasis for me and I have met so many wonderful new friends and created so many amazing things.

Besides scrap-booking, another one of my obsessions lately has been making collages. For me this is a meditative experience. I let the images speak to me. I never know what I will end up with. We just happened to have a collage workshop on Saturday May the 2nd. More info about that in next month's issue. This is my first collage:When I made my second one I actually incorporated a copy of this one in the middle of the second one. With every collage I've completed I tend to continue this procedure. You can see them all here:https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.542203629252736.1073741868.100003893116310&type=1&l=53b5ec057a my most recent collage from yesterday's workshop is called a Soul Collage. We will be doing a Soul Collage card-making workshop on Sunday, May 24th. Admission is limited to 12 to 14 spaces so hurry if you want to be a part f this event.

Also The Livingroom is having a huge fund-raising event with an auction of small works on Saturday, June 11th.

Yesterday when Janette came to visit I brought her to the Livingroom for the first time and she enjoyed it there as much as I always do! :)See you next month!