May 2011
May 16, 2011 at 7:32 am
Photo by ilike / by NCND 2.0 CC
In 20 words or less: I will no longer be updating PastaQueen.com. I will now be blogging at JenFul.com
I used to be Jenny. To some I was even called Jenny Sue. But there were a lot of girls named Jenny in the early 80′s and there was always another one in my class. It made me feel less than special, like I wasn’t the unique snowflake they tell you that you are. I was Jenny F. and the “eff” sounded so harsh, though not quite as harsh as using the first two letters of my last name would have been: Jenny FU.
I’ve been PastaQueen for over six years. Actually, I’ve been PastaQueen since I had to sign up for a Hotmail account during summer camp in 1997. I registered PastaQueen.com several years after that and used it as a portfolio site. Then I set up a blog in its own folder, PastaQueen.com/HalfofMe. Eventually that folder took over the whole domain and that’s where I’ve been writing and [...]
May 14, 2011 at 3:38 pm
Photo by Audric Leperdi / by CC BY-NC 2.0
Hey, y’all. I will be making a big announcement on Monday, so be sure to stop by. Feel free to guess what it is in the comments of this post, though I suspect you will come up with ideas far more thrilling than the truth. No fair guessing if you already know!
Oh, and I’m NOT announcing another book in case that’s what your first guess was. Sorry. I tend to blurt out news of my book deals without any forewarning.
May 11, 2011 at 7:26 am
Disclosure: I received an advanced copy of this book to review for free. I also have the same literary agent as the author, whose name I will guard with the ferocity of a mother lioness. ROAR! So don’t ask. I ain’t telling.
I related a lot to author Kim Brittingham as I read her new book, Read My Hips: How I Learned to Love My Body, Ditch Dieting, and Live Large. We both moved a lot as kids. We both had frizzy unmanageable hair that I have only recently learned how to tame. We both thought we might be having a heart attack at 23. We both have old “fat” photos from our teen years in which we don’t appear fat at all. And after weight loss and weight gain we’re both at places where we’re basically cool with our bodies. (Well, cool with the weight thing, anyway. I have numerous complaints about the chronic headache, crooked teeth, bad vision, flat fleet, five wisdom teeth, etc., etc.)
You might have heard of Kim after she got [...]
May 10, 2011 at 5:56 pm
Photo by akeg / by Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic
For those of you concerned about my foot pain saga (there must be at least one of you, right, Mom?), I saw the podiatrist today. She felt up my feet, took some x-rays and told me I most likely have tendonitis and I most definitely have flat feet.
I knew I had a flat chest, but the flat feet thing is new to me. Can we complete the trifecta and get me a flat stomach, too? I’m not sure if I’ve always had flat feet or if my morbid obesity helped flatten them or if it’s a new thing unrelated to that. Regardless, I am no longer supposed to walk barefoot. Anywhere. Even if I’m just shuffling around the house I need to have sandals with a good arch support. She recommended some brands for that.
She also sprayed my foot with glue and taped it. I’m supposed to keep the tape on for the next five days and see if it helps with the pain, and if [...]
May 9, 2011 at 8:05 am
Photo by Sixth Lie / by NCND 2.0 CC
I looked up my old post about LASIK surgery recently so I could give the link to a friend who’s considering the procedure. I’m not sure what word best describes the feeling I get when reading old posts, but it’s similar to the feeling I get when looking at old yearbook photos. It’s some combination of surprised/awkward/insightful/nostalgic. Surprawkinosalgic? Take note, Merriam-Webster, the first usage of that word started here!
I haven’t read through the entire blog since I wrote Half-Assed, and I don’t have any plans (or the time) to do so any time soon. Yet it’s surprawkinosalgic to see how my writing tone and approach have evolved over the years, and even more surprawkinosalgic to see how I myself have changed .
This section jumped out at me from the LASIK post, which I wrote before the bit about a laser burning out my eyeballs:
It was a pretty fun waiting room to be in since everyone was there by choice and was going to experience an improvement [...]
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"What distinguishes us one from another is our dreams and what we do to make them come about." - Joseph Epstein
