Weight update

Three years ago I posted about my weight loss journey. And later about reaching my goal weight. I said I'd post an update after three years, so here I am.

I haven't managed to keep all of the weight off. I've managed to keep the regain to 'slow and steady' and have only regained about half of what I lost.

Not only that, me at this weight now looks substantially better (to me, anyway) than me at this weight on the way down. I guess it's more muscle than it was that time.

I'm still not happy though. I did manage to still be down at least 30 pounds after a year. I printed the forms to apply to that Nationals Weight Control Registry. But I never sent them and no now longer qualify.

Lately I've been feeling a lot like this:

The part of me that is upset by not fitting into certain clothes and the part that makes food decisions don't seem to be on speaking terms

— Saoilí (@saoili) July 28, 2016

So I need to reopen that line of communication. Too high a proportion of my clothes have moved into the 'not right now' pile. Time to get them back. Well, soon. Soon.

Paddy -v- Patty, and the joy of acceptance

I'd bet good money that there are no actual Irish people, in Ireland, who refer to the 17th of March as 'Patty's Day'. Maybe there are some blissfully unaware that anyone at all does this. But you only only need to check out the twitter feed at the end of Paddy, Not Patty to see that they do, oh they do. 

This, understandably, frustrates a lot of Irish people. I'll admit, that the first time I found out, I spent some time, Canute-like, on Twitter, politely asking people not to do that. I don't think it helped. This feeling spawns some excellent art:

But it probably doesn't achieve much. I realised, recently, that I'm much happier just accepting that we're talking about two different holidays. St. Patrick's Day, also known as Paddy's Day, an Irish celebration, and Patty's Day, and Irish-American derivative holiday. It's okay everyone, their thing is not our thing, they can have it.

The main reason behind seems to be a noble enough one. They don't want to say 'Paddy' because it's a slur. I know that for us that's super weird, because it's not a slur here, it's just a name. The name, in fact, for the patron saint of our country. The 2nd most popular name for 52 year old men in the country. But that's here. That's us. It isn't there. They don't know what it's like to be Irish. But we don't know what it's like to be Irish-American. We don't know what it's like for Irish to be just your culture and heritage any more than they know what it's like to also have it be your nationality. If calling it Paddy's Day hurts people, why should we try to make them?

On a tangentially related note. I recently learned that Mammy is a racist term in America. I was shocked. I called my mother Mammy until I was old enough to call her Mam. I still do, occasionally, when joking or wheedling. Likewise my son with me. I'm bothered when anyone calls me his Mum or his Mom. That's not who I am. I'm his Mammy. Knowing what I know now I'll be careful with that term if I'm over there. But I won't stop using it here. They have their thing, we have ours.

And really, in the end of the day, I think it's time to sit back and accept this, 'cause we're not going to win this one:

A quick 'what not to do'

Lately, I've been dipping a toe into wearable electronics (clothes and accessories that light up or make noise, that kind of thing). On Saturday just gone, the nice folks at DAQRI sponsored a few of us to work on our own projects in the vicinity of their stand at Career Zoo. They paid us in components, and we drew interested passers-by to their stand. It was a win win situation for everyone involved.

Over the course of the day lots of people came over to ask what we were doing. We talked several people through the project we were working on, recommended Adafruit enough that I thought several times that they should be the ones sponsoring us, and had some really excellent chats with people. I mostly let my excellent sister, who has more experience with this stuff than I do, do the talking.

I'm not sure whether (the also excellent) Vicky was specifically tasked with recruiting women for this role. I do know that everyone in the group except her husband was a woman. I wasn't really aware of it though, until a man, probably not quite old enough to be my father, but approaching that age, came over to us and 'hi, I'm female friendly!'. No, sir, you are not.

'Female friendly' is a useful term when it comes to events and spaces, particularly in tech or other male-dominated fields. It's good to know before committing to something that I'm going to be welcome, and that there is at least an implication to the men there that they should be on good behaviour in relation to people that don't share their gender. Drawing attention to gender in these situations can be dangerous, risking invoking stereotype threat, among other potential problems. But often, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

But in the case of this gentleman's statement, there were no such advantages. We were the ones in the position of authority, it was not up to him to make us feel comfortable there, all that we needed was for him not to make us feel uncomfortable. And in that he failed miserably. His statement served to draw attention to our female-ness, said, in fact, that that was what was interesting about us, more so than what we were doing. The other two women at my table noticeably, understandably, went cold once they'd heard this statement. I managed to give a polite, brief introduction to what we were doing. But he had taken me out of my comfort zone. For the next hour or two I would occasionally think about that interaction and shudder slightly.

I was sorry, afterwards, that I didn't say something to him about it. After all, the fact that he was familiar with the term, and tried to use it, implies that he meant well, that he was trying to be nice. He may even pride himself in trying to make tech spaces welcoming to women. I wish that I had had it in me, right then, to tell him how badly he was failing. But I didn't.

If you don't get why this bothered me, that's okay. You don't need to understand why it's a problem. But please understand that it's a problem. And please, please do not draw attention to the 'female'-ness of women in tech spaces. Just don't do it. Thanks.