I kept meaning to post an update with a ton of pics from Halloween through Thanksgiving, but a lot has happened in the last month and well, Life! So, here it is and I hope you enjoy!

My birthday was shit, but here’s what I wore:
RebDolls long tank dress in black with Torrid pink sweater duster.

My DIY Halloween Costume “Cookie Monster” at Full Figure Entertainment’s Costumes & Curves night.
This year I discovered that a solid color dress can work for a number of costume ideas!
This one was a clear winner. An old Eshakti dress that I also have in Red. Everyone just loved it.

Tigress as Ursula and I having cosmos at Asia SF!
We came, we drank, we danced and we always kick ass!!!

I did end up getting a bit too fancy with my hairdo for Cookie Monster…

But it took almost no time to do and the result was fun!

Fun swirly hairs + alll the chub! Win!

My puggo, the gentlman, on Halloween

I still have a couple more patches to sew onto my Torrid cropped denim jacket, but so far I love it!
(Fat Babe here & Don’t tell me to smile here – I added the lace myself.)

He really hates having his picture taken…but he’s so cute!

 I really love this outfit!

Dress and sweater from Torrid, dress was clearance, also Teggings (my personal lord and savior) from ReDressNYC.com
And my new boots are Bare Trapps from DSW that I got for a steal and LOVE!!!

I’ll do another post full of pics for part two so stay tuned! I hope you’re doing well and hanging in there. Things have been overwhelming for everyone lately, it seems. Hugs to you and yours!

Rad Fatty Love,
<3
S

My blog’s Facebook page for things I share that aren’t on this blog (body positive always, funny sometimes):
http://on.fb.me/1A18fAS
I also have an Instagram, I rarely use it but would like to more…encourage me to?:
https://instagram.com/notblueatall/
And as always, feel free to drop me a line in comments here or write me an email, I love hearing from readers:
notblueatall@notblueatall.com

I am a comedy geek. I love comedy! I often think it’s my own odd version of therapy in some ways. I mean, I love The Walking Dead and American Horror Story, but for me those are more fantasy than straight up drama. I like a good drama, mind you, but on television I tend to stick to the funnies.

Having spent most of my life watching my fair share of sit-coms, I’m used to the formulaic plotlines, often cheesy dialogue and sometimes groan-worthy jokes and gags. I feel that I watch a decent variety of sit-coms, but there are certain ones I don’t expect the kind of low-blow lay up that I saw last night on Blackish. I love that show!

I was watching Blackish last night and enjoying the smart-mouthed kids talking trash about their uninvited house guest smelling bad and being lazy and messy, but then said guest woke up from his nap. This very large man, I mean at least as large and broad as Suge Knight, stands up and says their comfy couch swallowed him up with it’s softness, “It felt like sleeping on Precious!” Um…What?!

Another show I used to love but have come to only half enjoy and mostly distrust because of this very topic, 2 Broke Girls, last year had an episode where an unexpected house guest was to arrive and Caroline (thin, blond, young, formerly rich) is putting a fitted sheet on their couch for their guest to sleep says to no one, “This is harder than trying to get a prom dress on Precious!” and the studio audience didn’t laugh! They booed, some of them. I was so upset by that shitty remark (I refuse to call it a joke, especially when no one fucking laughed!) and honestly in shock because that show very rarely goes the body shaming route.

I do not expect mainstream or network shows to be as radically accepting and awesome as my own beliefs and lifestyle, but these were particularly out of place and just odd and again no one laughed! It didn’t add anything to the scene, the character or the story line. So why bother?

And how is Precious still a punchline?! Gabourey Sidibe as nominated for an Academy Award (An Oscar!) for playing the role of Precious in the film of the same name. That film was heart wrenching, difficult to watch but a must watch at the same time. There was no punchline to be had in or about this film or that character. And Gabourey Sidibe is a confident, happy and proud woman who has excelled in every direction of her career! What is to make fun of? Oh! Right! FAAAAAAT!!!! I forget that the people who write these shows are a bunch of immature white dudes who view women as singularly purposeful/useful in their lives and society itself. Except 2 Broke Girls is also mostly created and written by Whitney Cummings, stand up comedian and a thin, white woman (whose self titled show flopped after one season, yeah I watched it, the dialogue was painful).

Lazy comedy is lazy comedy, period. Making fun of fat people, especially out of context and with no reason or explanation is still super fucking lazy comedy. And if no one even laughs at your sad attempt at a low-blow punchline, well, the joke is truly on you, sir, writer, who obviously needs more sleep.

I stopped watching How I Met Your Mother because the fat shaming was just too constant. I ended up not watching the last two seasons. No regrets! I still have a lot of issues with one of my all time faves The Big Bang Theory, but there are too many things for me to like and relate to in that show for me to bail on it. No network show is going to be perfect, I get that, but I don’t see the point of these wannabe punchlines that go nowhere.

Gabourey Sidibe is an icon! She doesn’t want to be the face of fat acceptance, but she is definitely a role model for accepting and loving yourself no matter what happens in the world and in your life…

Rad Fatty Love,
<3
S

My blog’s Facebook page for things I share that aren’t on this blog (body positive always, funny sometimes):
http://on.fb.me/1A18fAS
I also have an Instagram, I rarely use it but would like to more…encourage me to?:
https://instagram.com/notblueatall/
And as always, feel free to drop me a line in comments here or write me an email, I love hearing from readers:
notblueatall@notblueatall.com

I woke up late in the day, relying on my trusty drug store brand NyQuil knock off to keep my cold symptoms in check enough for me to get some healing sleep. I wipe the sleep dust from my eyes and roll over to grab my water bottle. The puggyman stirs in his slumber until he hears the click of my water bottle and then jumps up and into a downward dog stretch supreme. I say, “Oh good boy! Stretch it out!” in my scratchy-sick-just-woke-up voice. He leaps off the bed and goes into a stretch again as I pull on my robe and shuffle my slippers onto my feet. I go to the bathroom and return to my bed to grab my phone, glasses, kleenex and daytime cold medicine.

I grab an iced coffee from my fridge and set it beside my laptop. I open the laptop and it instantly flicks on (I love my chromebook!) and is ready for whatever task I give it. I check my email in a couple of accounts and notice a flood of spam hit my blog last night, I wonder why but move on. I open a tab to check facebook for messages or comments I may have missed. Always prefer to have it sorted to “most recent” for my feed over their “top stories” option but for some reason it doesn’t always stick. Today it didn’t and I was met with a harrowing image of police and guns at the top of my feed. “Mass shooting in California” my heart drops into my stomach. My throat begins to tighten. I click the link for the CNN story coverage but mute/pause all video, I know I can’t handle that shit yet. I read the updates on the page to find that the shooters used assault rifles and ak-47’s, they shot up a care center for the developmentally challenged and that they drove off in a black SUV. “White men!” my brain screams at me.

I close the tab and return to facebook, hoping for something positive in my feed to distract me from the tension I feel building inside of me. Cute hamster eating a carrot inside a blanket. So cute, but it doesn’t touch the sick-dark-hateful feelings in my guts. “UK okays airstrikes in Syria.” I scroll further into my feed. I feel my breaths shorten and push my laptop away for a minute to ground myself, to even out my breaths and hopefully loosen some of this tension. Nope. I stand up, as hard as it is with every muscle and joint in my body aching from this stupid cold. I tell myself to do power poses to trick my brain into not feeling like dying (science!). I do the Olympic gymnast landing pose, the wonder woman pose, the superman pose. Nothing is working and I feel dizzy now from the daytime cold meds. I worry about a panic attack coming on from this.

I see my bff pops up in my chats on the right of my screen as “online” and I hit her up with a, “hey” and we chat briefly about this feeling of being overwhelmed. She was about to suggest the power poses but I tell her I just did them. It’s all too much. The guns. The white men destroying our world with no one to take away their power or at the very least their guns. Nothing feels real, it just can’t be real, all that is happening in the world RIGHT NOW! Another shooting. Floods killing thousands. Powers that be twiddling their thumbs, blaming anyone but themselves, thinly veiled excitement in their eyes as their money keeps them and only them warm at night. I wonder what the point in anything is. I take a deep breath and remind myself that am real, I am loved, pugs exist and my little puggo is here and loves me unconditionally.

I finish my breakfast of toasted crumpets with Irish butter and cookie butter (from Trader Joe’s) and finish my coffee. My head is now pounding. Can I take Advil with the Sudafed? Best not. Maybe just water and more coffee for now for the headache. Political parties no longer matter when they’re all bought and sold and wrapped up in a bow of wealth and privilege. I worry to much and too hard. I put on Pandora in the hopes that music will soothe the savage beast that is this growing anxiety in me. Please, let’s not have a panic attack today, I say in my head. I open the dashboard for my blog to investigate the deluge of spam comments and find that they all have similar email addresses and time stamps and dump them into the abyss (that’s where spam goes, yes?) for good. I open a blank new post document. I think to myself that I never did upload the pics and things I’d wanted to from Halloween and how I’d meant to update before now.

Life. It’s too precious and yet too much all at once. Another shooting just reported in Houston, Texas at a women’s clinic. It feels very unsafe to exist in this world unless you are white, cis-gendered, heterosexual and male. My stomach flips over onto itself. My mind flashes back to the difficult time I had at the grocery store last night when I finally ventured out for supplies using every ounce of energy I had left in me and collapsed in tears when I finally returned home. The looks from people as we crossed paths in the produce section. The older white man that gave me hard eye contact until I looked away and dropped my head down. I hated that moment and myself for doing what felt like exactly what this stranger wanted. The hot guy that gave me three passing glances in different departments of the store as my imagination danced with sultry images of he and I and a thing ensuing. “As if!” I tell myself.

Everything is too much! Everything hurts, I know I’m sick but I’m overwhelmed with all it’s doing to my body. I haven’t been sick in over a year, surprisingly. I never imagined I would be out of work for this long. This frightens me so. Going into December without a job, realizing that I have been out of work more months than I have been working this past year brings the tightness back to my throat. “My problems are small compared to folks losing and risking their lives everyday”, I tell myself over and over. I take a deep breath in gratitude for the few privileges I am afforded by my state’s unemployment benefits program and knowing that my new covered California health insurance will kick in soon. I look at my sleeping puggyman, breathing in and out again to match his.

What does it mean to be a fat, cis-gendered, bi-sexual, mentally ill, unemployed female? It means living in fear. I have not known a single moment without at least a trace of fear. It sits deep down within my core. I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t create it, no more than I created my mental illnesses or the disgusting elitist culture that has overtaken the bay area where I live. I have been displaced, but back to where I came from, only it’s not my home. My home is in the hearts of those I Love. My home is spread far and wide across this incredible planet. I see very clearly the very thing that is destroying our world and it is the very thing that is waging war everywhere and every day. White men in power unchecked and unaccountable. As long as this is so, our world will be destroyed. I don’t know what the answer or solution is. We’ve seen enough death and destruction. Some have said the only solution is love. How do you love what would choose to kill you with their bare hands? How do you find that love to give warmongers? I can’t find it. I am not strong enough. I want to believe that good will prevail, but the hate is too deep, the money and power too great. I feel defeated.

Truthfully, I feel too much. That could be said of me any day, but today it’s left me shaking and gasping and tearfully pleading into the universe for humanity to save itself before it burns this planet to the ground. I am too weak to leave the house today, but I am almost grateful for that. I don’t have it in me to meet the eyes of a stranger and not fall into a puddle of tears before them. The things I have survived were horrific, but I was so young. Seeing these things play out in the world now? It’s more than I can handle. That in itself must be a privilege. I am humbled and I am in awe of those who fight on each day without ever looking back. My spirit is with you! Fight on!

<3
S

PodCast: Dedicated Fats (Yay! We have a name for our podcasts!)
This is part five
The still wonderful Sarah from Not Blue At All blog and Raven of Alternative Fats sat down again to talk about clothing companies for us fatties. This time: we talk companies who carry size 30 and above. We’re so happy to bring you this list of options.

First, I would like to thank those of you who have checked on me, reached out for support or to offer support and just the awesome people in my life who keep me going when I forget what the point of everything is. Thank you! I love you! <3

Second, well, I’m doing a bit better. These things (mental health), they come and go unpredictably and also uncontrollably much of the time. I’ve had a few good days and am doing  my absolute best to hang onto this goodness and ride it all the way out! Ha!

I have found that taking pics of randomness and sending them to friends (whether they’re interested in them or not Ha!) helps me feel more real, grounded, connected and so I have been trying to do more of that…Exhibit A:

Not sure why I felt the need to snap some selfies fresh out of the shower, but there it is, so, whatever.

Or this funny puggo who, wait…Does he think he’s babysitting that pig?! I think he does. It’s his favorite toy. *Shrugs*

After having to return nearly all of my recent Torrid order (was supposed to be for my birthday from myself) I treated myself to some comfy Payless loafers yesterday. The plaid ones are Airwalk slippers, the floral-sequin are shoes. Super comfortable! I usually wear an 8W but these are both just regular 8’s. Gotta love their endless BOGO, too!

And now I present to you my review of some plus size knee high socks from SockDreams!

It was the Harvest Rainbow that my beloved Raven bought (and then sent me a pic and insisted they would fit me) that got me excited to try SockDreams.com. And then a sweet reader-friend sent me a gift certificate out of the blue to lift my spirits and what a lovely surprise that was! Thank you again “T” you’re the sweetest thing! <3

Armed with my gift certificate and a coupon code (code: HauntedStockings for 20% off today 10/20 until midnight PST) I chose four pair of knee high socks from the plus size section (you still have to check each item’s description for measurements but they are there and accurate). They arrived last night and I couldn’t wait to see how they fit! (Click on an image to enlarge.)

For reference, my calves at their largest point measure 22 inches around, just 3 inches above my knee, my thigh measures 30 inches. I also wear a size 8c/w shoe.

The Extraordinary Harvest Rainbow Thigh High went on easy and kept going! The cuff at the top felt like it would go to my thigh, but when I let go it did, too. So I kept them at knee high level and they basically stayed at that point but the cuff kept wanting to fold or roll down. I might make or buy a sock garter for these, but I know I’ll probably only wear them at home so I’m not super worried about it. The colors are lovely!

The Dreamer Diamond Weave was hard to resist and so I totally didn’t! These are thinner and with a finer knit than the rainbow ones, but they stay up much better! I could see wearing these with skirts and boots or dresses or my pajamas! Ha-ha! I really like them. They look nice and feel pretty dang good. I will say that diamond pattern will change as it goes up your calves (see pic), the more it must stretch horizontally the more the pattern will follow.

The M45’s were the tightest and most difficult to get on. I had to really struggle to get it all the way up, but once there it wasn’t going to move! So that’s a good thing I guess. I love the weave of them and hope that they may stretch a bit over time. If not I could always slouch or fold them, no biggie. These would fit a 20 inch calf much better, I’d say. These would fit a larger foot nicely as it was a bit loose until pulled taught.

The Cotton Slouch Sock fit just great! I’m a 90’s gal and so these brought back memories of pegged jean cuffs and pastel slouchy socks from my youth. But these are way better since they go up to just under my knee and still scrunch nicely. These would fit a larger foot nicely as it was a bit loose until pulled taught. These would be great with leggings or boots or skirts or just my underwear! Ain’t no party like a solo undies party…with socks! Wooo! Ha-ha!

All in all I love my entire order! The socks were all very well made and of high quality fibers and weaves. I highly recommend SockDreams if you’ve not been able to find knee high socks for big calves previously, like myself. Fun colors and patterns but lots of basics, too. I have been eyeing their lacy ankle socks but will hold off for now. I can’t wait for the weather to cool off so I can rock these babies on the regular!

Watch out world, these chubby knees will be comin’ at ya! 😛

Thanks again to my fabulous readers and friends. I love hearing from folks from all over! It’s so wonderful to connect with folks and help/support one another. It warms my heart and puts a smile on my face.

Rad Fatty Love,
<3
S

My blog’s Facebook page for things I share that aren’t on this blog (body positive always, funny sometimes):
http://on.fb.me/1A18fAS
I also have an Instagram, I rarely use it but would like to more…encourage me to?:
https://instagram.com/notblueatall/
And as always, feel free to drop me a line in comments here or write me an email, I love hearing from readers:
notblueatall@notblueatall.com