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So, I mentioned in yesterday’s post that we were going to start fostering rabbits soon.  I joined a few local organizations that takes in rabbits and picked up my first foster from the county shelter today — a black and white speckled mini-lop I named Stella… and her three babies!  Stella and her mate were surrendered to the shelter last week and shelter workers were quite surprised to see three little balls of fuzz born on Monday, which may have had something to do with why she was surrendered to begin with.   Two of the babies are white with  black-ringed eyes and spots and one is a rich chestnut color; all are as big as a hamster.   I’m trying to think of names for them, but since we won’t be able to determine their genders for another two months or so, they have to be gender-neutral names.  I also have a peculiarity in that I have to give my pets proper names (side note: I got my first bunny at about age 11 and named him Snuggles.  I  always suspected this to be the reason for his cranky disposition).  Any suggestions?

Meet Stella.  She’s the gorgeous bloodhound who spent an hour happily slobbering on a bone in the backseat of my car on Saturday as part of an animal rescue transport operation I volunteer with.  An owner-surrender to an animal shelter in northern Ohio, Stella eventually reached her destination later that night with a nonprofit bloodhound rescue group in Tennessee, who will train her to work with law enforcement.

I’m passionate about many causes, but grad school really ate into any free time I had to volunteer the past couple years.  After I graduated last year, I, in typical ADD fashion, wanted to immediately throw myself in an avalanche of causes.  Part of successfully living with ADD is realizing that your zeal and enthusiasm often exceeds the grasp of your limitations and so these past few months I’ve thought long and hard about what it is that I’m most passionate about.  Yes, I’m very concerned about poverty and homelessness issues and this blog is evidence of my commitment to eating disorder awareness and promotion of healthy body images, but what I’ve been most passionate about since an early age is animal rescue.  Our house was always overflowing with both kids (there were four of us) and animals and our pets were all very much beloved members of our family.  I rescued my first animal at the age of six — a box turtle slowly meandering across the street I lived on who found a new home in the woods behind our house.  My mom worked as a 911 dispatcher at a police department and through it we adopted a black lab puppy some cruel boys tried to kill by cinching it in a plastic garbage bag and throwing in the dumpster (Bear lived to the ripe old age of 15), and a Irish Setter mix puppy, abandoned with his litter mates in the snow (all but one of the seven puppies found homes within the department).

Our family menagerie has included cats, dogs, fish, hamsters, rabbits and even a trio of baby Lovebirds I tried to nurse after their mother died.  A family who lived down the street from my childhood home had a mini-farm with cows, goats, chickens, a turkey and even burros and they’d hire me to “farm-sit” whenever they went on vacation.  The hours I spent there at the farm, laying in the hayloft with only the quiet cooing of speckled chickens insulating their eggs, are among my favorite childhood memories.  My mother sometimes referred to me as Dr. Doolittle for all the time I spent with both our critters and various wildlife and indeed, as a fat kid who was taunted and harassed virtually every day of the school year, I often preferred the company of animals to that of other kids.

Just months after moving into my first apartment, I defied my no-pets lease and rescued two kittens I’d found on the side of the road.  Word must have spread, because I was soon “found” by a succession of stray cats, none of whom I could resist.  A few years later my eating disorder struck and I went vegetarian, originally because it offered me a convenient excuse to exclude large swaths of foods from my diet.  Later, I saw a flier for a local Earthsave chapter that held monthly potlucks and was amazed to find that there were actually other vegetarians in Porkopolis.  It was then that I began to learn about the horrors of animal slaughter and the often brutal and inhumane treatment of the animals and I soon realized that I couldn’t very well say that I was for animal rights so long as I continued to eat them.  As I learned more about factory farming and animal abuses and progressed in my own personal eating disorder recovery, I became an ethical vegetarian, a lifestyle I remain firmly committed to today.

Our furfamily now consists of two rabbits, six cats and a foster-who-am-I-kidding-I’ll-probably-keep-cat and I will be picking up several bunnies this week to foster until I help them find their forever homes.  We recently got involved with rescue animal transporting, which some have called kind of like an Underground Railroad network for dogs.  The way it works is this: dogs are rescued from high-kill shelters and/or abuse and neglect and transported by volunteers to shelters or adoptive homes waiting for them.  States like Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia are considered non-adoptive states for the high numbers of unwanted/abandoned animals, so sometimes these animals can only find temporary or permanent homes in regions like the Northeast where there are more adopters than adoptees.  The transports are broken down into legs of about 60-90 miles one-way and volunteer transporters — or pet taxi drivers –  then hand off  the animal to the volunteer taking the next leg of the journey.  Sometimes these travels can be two- and even three-day long events.  We transported three dogs a couple Saturdays ago that were coming from the Midwest and going to Canada!

Volunteerism is supposed to be altruistic, undertaken selflessly in the name of helping others without the expectation of personal gain, but I have to admit that I’m a selfish volunteer.  What do I get out of animal rescue?  Joy. Pride. Laughter.  Confidence.  For me, helping animals is not only the right thing to do but I find the gratitude of a fast wagging tail and sloppy kiss rewarding beyond measure.  I get to meet lots of like-minded people who don’t think I’m crazy for the number of cats I keep and get the chance to indulge my dog fix (I can’t have one of my own as our lot isn’t suitable for a dog and Brandon is adamant that he doesn’t want one).  I also do rescue work as a tribute to all the pets who have immeasurably enriched my own life and for those I was unable to save.  But perhaps  most of all, helping animals helps me feel better about myself.  Knowing that you’re needed, that you’re making a difference even if only in the life of one dog or cat is one of the biggest self-esteem boosts I’ve ever found and the animals never gripe that you’re doing it wrong.

How about you?  Are you involved with any causes, organizations or activities that you find enriching and rewarding and help you feel more accepting of yourself?

The-F-Word has been awarded the “Beautiful Blogger Award” by Andrea Owens at Live Your Ideal Life.  Thanks, Andrea!  To claim this award I have to regift it to 15 blogs I love and read, so drumroll…. the awards go to:

1. Big Fat Deal
2. Frozen Oranges
3. Feed Me!
4. 5 Resolutions
5. A Celebration of Curves
6. Blogxygen
7. Body Love Wellness
8. Fat Nutritionist
9. ED Bites
10. Life With Cake
11. Oh, the Profanity!
12. Weighing In
13. Pretty Pear
14. Operation Beautiful
15. AnyBody

And to claim this prestigious award I also have to tell you seven things about myself, so I’ll try to tell you a few things you might not already know.  Without further adieu…

1. I have a phobia of bugs.  Ladybugs, ants and even some spiders are okay, but most other bugs send me climbing a chair and shrieking for my husband like a 1950s housewife.  My sister even has to walk me through the bug house at the zoo, eyes closed, before reaching the butterfly house at the end.
2. I am obsessed with plucking my eyebrows.  I didn’t start until my early 20s when a bunch of women I worked with talked about eyebrow waxes and I decided to get one on a whim.  I have naturally bushy eyebrows and the contouring made a big difference in the way I looked and my self-esteem, but it’s become somewhat of a stress reliever for me now.  My husband even got me a pair of eco-tweezers the other year for Christmas.
3. I have ADD, which is to say that I lose my car keys and cell phone on a weekly basis.  But I can remember weird things like phone numbers and birthdates with aplomb.  I still remember the phone numbers of some of my childhood friends from 15 years ago.
4. I absolutely despise skirts and dresses.  The only occasion of me wearing a dress (since childhood, that is) was on my wedding day and it’s the only dress I own.  Give me a nice pants suit with low heels any day.
5. I once slept beneath a freeway overpass with a homeless camp I befriended and it was a better night’s sleep than I’ve had in some hotels.
6. My name is Rachel and I have a book-buying obsession.  It’s not nearly so bad as it once was, but we still venture to the Half Price Bookstore a couple times a month to indulge my obsession.  I have stacks upon towering stacks of books in my office, boxed up in crates in the basement, and I’m loathe to part with 98 percent of them.
7. They say that the average American will have eaten 1,500 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before graduating from high school.  I can count on one hand the number I ate.  I hated peanut butter as a kid and it wasn’t until my early 20s when the college cafe was out of celery sticks and Ranch dressing and substituted peanut butter instead that I discovered I liked it.  I still don’t like PB&Js, but I’ll have a spoonful of peanut butter every so often with apples as a snack.

I cannot go through this again
I cannot go through this again
I cannot go through this again
I cannot go through this again…

The words fade and give way to a synthetic drizzle of the melody, piano following along in the background. Together, they create the calm static of a dreamlike state, where all is zen. You’re floating oh-so-comfortably…

…and then, without warning, the rest of the band hits the ground running with its assault of drums, guitars and more synth. You are suddenly shattered back to chaotic reality.

“A-with a-teeth-a,” Trent Reznor sings with a venegance only he fully understands. I picture him literally biting the object of his passion and ripping it to shreds with the intensity of emotion matched in his voice.

She will not let you go
Keeps on and on
She will not let you go
Keeps on and on
This time, I’m not coming back
(she will not let you go)
-Nine Inch Nails, With Teeth

If I ever needed a song that described my emotions during the first year of my recovery, it was this one. Put simply, I was a mess. My state of mind changed rapidly from “I’ll never purge/starve/put my body through this shit again” to chaos and self-destruction. I never knew what would flip my emotions upside-down, for better or worse; sometimes it depended on the hour, the minute, the anything.

Everything felt like punishment. If I ate, I felt disgusted with any feelings of satiety I might have given myself. If I didn’t eat, I knew I wasn’t doing what I was “supposed” to be doing as a part of recovery, and therefore I felt like crap about that as well. If I had it both ways and ate/purged, the emotions doubled in their intensity each way. No matter what I did, I couldn’t win. At least with the eating disorder, I knew what I could expect. In this mess called recovery, I still felt like a prisoner to my eating disorder, only now I was attempting escape, getting caught, and paying what seemed like even more brutal consequences than what I was dealing with before.

I hated everything. I hated myself for getting into this mess in the first place, for my lack of understanding the world – and myself – without an eating disorder. I hated gritting my teeth and moving forward with recovery, because dammit, it was hard, and I felt absolutely clueless about whether I was really getting better or if I was completely fooling myself (and everyone else). What if everything I knew was a complete farce? I felt alien in a world where everything should have felt familiar, but the rules had changed, and I no longer knew the rules. Once I thought I had them re-learned, there was always that one little exception where, of course, I screwed everything up. Or so it felt.

As much of an emotional roller-coaster 2005 was for me, I had two inspirations that guided me. The most important was my husband, Patrick, who I met in October 2005. He didn’t miraculously save me from my woes, as he can attest, but he helped me help myself by making me feel worthy of being saved. Even when in doubt, that kept me going in the years that have followed.

The other inspiration was With Teeth, the Nine Inch Nails album released in May that year. The timing and theme of this album couldn’t have come at any better time for me. After a four-year absence from releasing new music and touring, Reznor finally revealed his biggest project ever: putting himself back together.

A  near-fatal heroin overdose woke Reznor up; he realized he would lose himself to drug and alcohol addiction if he didn’t stop. He checked himself into rehab and endured a detox that “makes him shudder to this day.” He’s been sober since June 11, 2001.

Reznor warmed slowly to writing new music. He wasn’t sure if he had anything to say now that he was sober and questioned his future in the music industry altogether. However, a renewed clarity surfaced once the process began. Eventually the words came together and Reznor recorded With Teeth, the soundtrack to his journey of re-defining himself.

Learning that Trent Reznor, a musician whose music I had adored since the age of 13, had undergone his own process of recovery, sparked inspiration in me. It not only gave me a new appreciation for his music, but I also developed a deep sense of respect for him as a person – not just for surviving, but for speaking openly about his addictions and the journey back. It was exactly what I needed. He returned from his own private hell stronger than ever…and so could I.

I listened to With Teeth for about a year straight with little interruption from other music on my playlist. Every song resonates with some stage of recovery, from the confrontational “Don’t you fucking know what you are!” in the song You Know What You Are? to “What if everything around you isn’t quite as it seems?” in the ending track, Right Where It Belongs. In the same way that I identify with certain songs because I listened to them repeatedly when I was active in my eating disorder, this album became my recovery anthem. The title track, With Teeth, represents the turning point for when healthier days started outnumbering the disordered days. The album as a whole is not only Trent’s story of moving forward, but it became embedded into the soundtrack of my own story as I took a leap of faith and kept going myself.

How has music played a role in the course of your disorder and recovery?

My apologies for going AWOL last week, dear readers.  I took the week off from work and enjoyed some much needed Thoreauian time away from the time-sucking black holes otherwise known as Facebook and the internet and chose instead to lose myself in a few good books and films.  I got crazy sick on New Year’s Eve with some weird intestinal thing that saw me with my head in the toilet bowl all evening until severe stomach cramps and dehydration finally had me pony up a $150 co-pay for a trip to the ER.  It was there that I found myself for the first time actually wishing I had fat… fat veins, that is.  It took five nurses armed with needles the size of a straw poking and prodding me to find a vein.  They finally found one and and I soon felt better after some saline and morphine, but now my purple-splotched arms make me look like an amateur junkie. But the best news of the week is that good things come in threes!  While still celebrating the birth of my nephew on Dec. 17, I became an aunt again on Dec. 30 to twins Grace Caroline and Gwendolyn Marie.  They weren’t due until the end of January, but my sister-in-law went into labor early and delivered them by c-section after one was found to be breech.  They’re tiny — just over 5-pounds each — but mom and babies are all doing well.

I have lots of ideas I hope to implement on the site this year.  A site redesign, in fact, is one of my New Year’s resolutions.  Did I say resolution?  I vow each year not to make them, but there’s something symbolic about the New Year — hell, a new decade –  that still leaves me in wide-eyed anticipation of doing better, becoming better.  New Year’s resolutions carry a bad rap.  We make them.  We break them.  We get discouraged.  Some reports predict that most people will fail at their resolutions by Feb. 2.  With that in mind and in anticipation of my ADD lack of follow-through, I choose instead to call mine New Year’s goals. I realize that the semantic variances here are negligible, but it makes me feel better knowing that even if I fall short, I didn’t break some solemn affirmation.  And unlike some self-flagellations resolutions, mine are all (well, mostly) achievable, sustainable and made with regards to holistic health and wellbeing.  They are, in no particular order:

• Get organized. I already got a headstart on this goal by organizing the office, kitchen, etc.. but I still have the boxed chaos of a basement to contend with.  For someone with ADD, getting organized is more therapeutic than any amount of Adderall.

• Learn how to cook healthier and tastier meals. My limited culinary prowess is even more limited by being vegetarian and even more sharply confined by the fact that I have trouble following recipes if they contain more than five ingredients and five steps.  But while Morningstar is great and all, we are oh, so bored of variations on a veggie burger.

• Try a new fitness activity. Fitness classes can be scary, especially for someone as grossly uncoordinated as I am.  This year I hope to conquer my fears of being laughed at in public by either trying out for my local roller derby team or enrolling in a karate class — or both!

• Eat breakfast at least semi-regularly. I am not a breakfast foods kind of person and I usually try to sleep as late as I can before stumbling to my home office in a sleepy stupor, but my doctor recommends it and like the good patient I am, I’m trying to squeeze it in.  My new single-serving smoothie maker might just make this goal a reality.

• Build up our nest egg. Like virtually everyone with a 401k, ours has taken a beating.  Neither Brandon and I are budget types of people — it requires far more structure and planning than we could ever muster — but now that he’s taken a pay cut and I have more furloughs on the way and student loans coming due, we really need to look at our finances and find ways to trim the fiscal fat and save more money.

How about you?  Did you make any New Year’s resolutions (or goals) this year?  If so, what are they?  If you didn’t make any, why not?  And if you have any smoothie recipes, share ‘em!

I was so busy running around in preparation for Christmas yesterday, that I didn’t even know that actress Brittany Murphy died of “natural causes.” My first reaction is utter shock.  For years, tabloids have rumored that the actress has had anorexia, and the fact that she died of a cardiac actress seems to support such rumors.  I don’t know if it is because she’s close to my age or if it is because I love her as a comedic actress.  In any case, my mentality–which, even in recovery, still vacillates daily between wanting to be unconcerned with weight and wanting to be not-anorexic-but-just-thin-enough (whatever that means)–has just received a huge dose of reality.

Within a few months of moving back to NYC, I accidentally lost quite a bit of weight, because I went from driving everywhere to walking everywhere.  It just happened, really.  This triggered my anorexic mindset, which has not been present for years.  While I like how I look and don’t ever want to look “sick” again, my mind has become obsessed with the possibilities of losing more.  What can I say?  It takes years in recovery to recover from the ED mindset… at least for me.

My point in mentioning this, and why I am so shocked by Brittany Murphy’s death, is that the ED can kill you (or me) when one least expects it.  You’re eating a little less here, exercising a bit more there, and then, oops, you accidentally kill yourself.  Honestly, I didn’t mean to send myself into cardiac arrest… I was just trying to fit into my skinny jeans. Now I know, obviously, that there is so much more behind EDs than trying to look good in clothes.  But, a notion as innocent as wanting to try to look good in an outfit or feel more comfortable in your own skin can actually be deadly.  While my playing around with food is at a manageable or even “normal” degree, if I let it continue, which will eventually shift my behavior to a status of unhealthy and unmanageable, this could potentially happen to me.

Now, we don’t know the specifics of Brittany Murphy’s “death by natural causes”–the ED rumors have not been medically confirmed.  We never received confirmation of an ED on rail-thin Michael Jackson either… but that doesn’t mean he, nor Brittany, didn’t have one.  I’m not trying to scapegoat Hollywood, but the ridiculous standards that celebrities have to maintain if they want to continue to gain employment is just that–RIDICULOUS.  How many more celebs have to die?  When is Hollywood, and society, going to learn that public figures and celebrity role models need to start resembling real people, instead of real people trying to fit into these unrealistic and life-threatening ideals?  Now, I know that we all make choices; but, at the end of the day, most people want to feel like they fit somewhere in the world.  Hollywood anorexic iconography in the human form just doesn’t help and needs to stop.

With great happiness I present Chase Alan, born last night at 10:47 p.m. weighing 8 lbs, 13 oz and measuring 22 inches.  Both mom and baby are doing great!

(Chase and Cool Aunt Rachel)

I shouldn’t complain about the weather, considering that Charlynn is braving subzero Wyoming temps, but the Arctic freeze — and the fact that it gets pitch black now by 5:30 p.m. — really puts a damper on my fitness routine.  During my eating disorder recovery, I made a personal commitment to only engage in physical activities that I enjoy – biking, rollerblading, hiking, powerwalking, gardening, etc.  So far, it’s worked fabulously for me with only one niggling problem: Most, if not all, happen to be outdoors activities.  For me, the benefits of exercise justify the means, so the past few weeks have seen me back at my company’s on-site gym, scaling the Stairclimber to Nowhere while devouring magazine after magazine in an attempt to keep my mind from exploding from the insanely boring monotony.  I was perusing my latest edition of Time the other day when I read this rather ironically amusing tidbit in the mag’s 10 Questions feature with Al Roker.  Roker, as you might recall, is the formerly rotund Today Show weatherman (and new fiction author) who underwent weight loss surgery years ago and unlike other stars (ahem, Star Jones), has been very public about his weight loss struggles.

Looking back, would you go through [gastric bypass surgery] again or try another method to lose weight?

Yes, I would go through it again, because I tried every other method. But I’m not an advocate for gastric bypass. It’s dangerous surgery; 1 in 200 people dies from complications. It’s a very complex decision that people have to make for themselves, not because somebody on TV made that decision.

I should note that I support a person’s informed decision to have weight loss surgery even though I’m wary of the often underplayed serious health risks of such procedures, so I thought Roker’s response to be an appropriate one given that he is one of the most famous of “success” stories.  Then I read the next question…

Any suggestions for the rest of us on keeping the weight off?
It’s an amazing secret: if you eat less and exercise more, you will either maintain your weight or lose weight. It’s crazy. I’ve just discovered this.

So, Al tried “every other method” to lose weight EXCEPT eating less and exercising more?  He just now discovered this “amazing secret” even though it’s been widely regurgitated now since the late nineteenth century?  Really?   I’m sure reducing his stomach to the size of a thumb and amputating and rerouting parts of his digestive tract so that he can’t absorb calories and nutrients has absolutely nothing to do with him maintaining or losing weight.  Nope, just eating less and exercising more.  That’s it.  *Headsmack*

Look.  I’m not saying that eating less and exercising more won’t result in weight loss.  I lost 175 pounds in a year during my eating disorder by following virtually that same recipe, albeit by taking it to extremes.  What I am saying is that for many people, the simplistic calories in/calories burned equation simply doesn’t always parlay into any significant or lasting weight loss.  I maintain an ever-growing list of more than a dozen peer-reviewed studies from the past two decades that show that virtually every attempt to make fat people thin without risky surgery has failed completely and utterly — very few manage to keep it off.   At most, even WLS makes fat people only less fat and even then the weight regain rates among those who go under the knife are high.   Why doesn’t “eat less, move more” work?  Twin studies and adoptive studies show that the overwhelming determinant of your weight is not your willpower; it’s your genes.  Just as people are now taller than ever, so too are people now fatter.  And as Gina Kolata details in Rethinking Thin, studies show that fat people who lose large amounts of weight often see their normal-functioning metabolisms crawl to the point where they are clinically in starvation mode.  There are other forces at play, too.  For example, new studies coming out are finally confirming what so many people who take antidepressants have suspected for years: that many psychiatric medications carry weight gain as a side effect.

I don’t have many regrets from my eating disorder days.  Sure, I would love to have that time back for more constructive goals and I am sorry for the strain my disorder placed on my family, friends and coworkers, but I realize now that I was suffering from a psychiatric illness and so I try to focus on staying well and moving forward.  I do have a few regrets however, one of which are the false hopes I gave to those who sought me out for weight loss tips and advice.  As I dropped size after size, so many family members and colleagues approached me, imploring and begging me to share with them my “secret” for weight loss.  I wasn’t about to tell them that I exercised for hours on end each day and ate nothing for days and even weeks at a time before exploding into an all-out binge fest that left me cradling the toilet and calling Poison Control because the Ipecac hadn’t come back up.  No, instead I chirped brightly, “Oh, I just eat less and exercise more.”  I hated the lies I told them, but I hated the lie I harbored even more.

I’ve since maintained a weight loss of more than 30 percent healthily in the past five-plus years — without amputating my digestive system — and what I have discovered is this:  Maintaining a weight loss is hard and it’s not so easy as eating less and exercising more.  I eat a healthy diet and workout several times a week and yet the specter of weight regain always hovers at the periphery.  Despite doing everything “right,” I’ve still had an unexplained weight gain of about 25-30 pounds in the past four years.  Does it worry me?  Sure, but only because of my lingering psychological hangups about weight and not for my actual physical health, which is stellar, according to my doctor.  There are still times when I will run into someone from my past who knew me at my highest weight and they’ll ask for weight loss suggestions or for my “secret.” I don’t tell them that I eat a healthy, low-glycemic vegetarian diet, make fitness a priority and indulge in chocolate whenever the craving strikes because while that may work for me, there’s no guarantee that it will work for them. My advice, hard-earned and time-tested, is always the same: “Obsess less, enjoy more.”

Happy almost-Thanksgiving to all my American readers.  This post is coming to you a day early because, like so many of my fellow countrymen, I’ll be taking tomorrow off to sleep in before gorging on some Tofurkey and pumpkin pie and then vegging out in a stupified food coma with my closest friends and family.  When writing about Thanksgiving, I’m mindful that it’s traditional, especially for women, to dwell on one of these tried and true topics:

• How to Prepare the Perfect Sumptuous Thanksgiving Bounty with All The Trimmings

• How to Avoid Going Berserk and Attacking Your Annoying Relatives and In-Laws with a Carving Knife

• How Not to Eat a Bazillion Calories and Subsequently Watch Your Ass Double in Size

• Why, Two Decades After Second-Wave Feminism, Women Still Slave Away in the Kitchen While Men Get to Sit on Their Asses and Watch Football All Day

• Or, the most popular of subjects: Feeling All Thankful and Shit

I’m generally not the kind of person to make a maudlin list of things I’m thankful for, but it does seem to be the obligatory Thanksgiving cliche, so I’ll bite.  It goes without saying, of course, that I’m thankful for my friends and family, good (mental and physical) health and that I live in a country where I am free to make such sappy and mushy posts like this one.  So, here goes a list of 10 random things I am thankful for:

1.  A job

Considering all the layoffs this year, especially in my field of journalism, I am so grateful that I am still gainfully employed in a job that, for the most part, I love and doesn’t keep my ass confined in cubicle hell.

2. The Internet

I am so, so glad Al Gore invented this, because how else could I waste time when I should be working than by playing Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook?  The Internet also gives me the power to work from home, the opportunity to pursue my passions and hobbies, a soapbox by which I can unleash all my innermost rants and raves and allows me to cheaply indulge my book-buying compulsions.  But most of all, it’s allowed me to meet so many awesome people — not to mention, my husband — and to discover and read dozens of smart, witty bloggers.  Thanks, Al!

3. My furbabies

The outpouring of support I received from you all here after my cat Grayson died indicates that I’m not the only sucker for a furry face.  My kitties give me so much and all they ask for in return are food (preferably canned), shelter and the occasional rub behind the ears.  I am so grateful for them, as well as the chance to open our home this year to two more unwanted kittens and one traumatized cat.

4. Morningstar Farms

Seriously, because I think we’d be reduced to eating peanut butter and jelly most days if not for its easy-to-fix line of faux meat products.

5.  Dark chocolate, avocados, eggs, coffee, peanut butter, sunshine

And everything else “experts” warned us were harmful that have turned out to be good for us, after all.

6. My brother and sister-in-law’s poor planning

Their admitted carelessness means that I’ll be getting a new (and our family’s first) nephew in December!  I am so very grateful for the chance to mold little Chase into a Bruce Cockburn-loving, tree-hugging, feminist, vegetarian, lefty Pittsburgh Steeler’s fan.

7.  Having a great stylist on speed dial

My prematurely-bald husband simply doesn’t understand how a good or bad hair day can set the tone for the entire day.  Yay for a stylist who knows how to cut short hair well!

8.  Netflix and my DVR

I am grateful for Netflix for how else could I wile away the weekends catching up on the entire 11 seasons of Law & Order: SVU on demand?  And to my DVR, for allowing me to mercifully fast forward through those god-awful Jenny Craig and Nutrisystem TV commercials.

9.  Adderall (and a good prescription health care plan)

Since going on Adderall for ADD a couple years ago, I now no longer have to embark on a daily hunt for my car keys (and other misplaced items) and have managed to actually finish a few projects through to completion.  Hurrah for legal amphetamines!

10.  And last, but certainly not least… Readers of The-F-Word!

Because you all totally rock!

So, Americans and non-Americans alike… what are you thankful for?

Posting will probably be lighter than usual in the next few weeks.  I’ve taken on some freelance web design jobs again in an attempt to help pay down our $5,700 vet bill from Grayson’s surgeries.  I also ended up deciding to foster Nigel, the chocolate point Himalayan who’s been traumatized by demon children and will need lots of love and attention in order to recover.  You can’t see his beautiful blue eyes in this pic, but you can see how absolutely gorgeous he is.

To top it off, both Brandon and I seem to be coming down with something.  He insists that his sore throat and stuffiness are just allergies, but I rarely suffer from them and I have the same congestion.  So, consider this an open post to discuss anything on your mind or offer links to related news or sites.  Here’s a few headlines to check out.

• PsychCentral has introduced the new blog Weightless authored by new blogger Margarita Tartakovsky.  According to Tartakovsky, “Weightless is about well-being, not weight; about fostering body image, regardless of your size. It’s about exposing women’s magazines, other mediums and so-called experts, when they’re touting unhealthy tips and promoting restrictive standards.  The goal of Weightless is to help women develop a better body image and work toward accepting themselves as they are, while being healthy and happy (fad diets and skinny-mini standards prohibited!); and to become sharp consumers, who can pick apart a commercial or magazine article and know which advice is helpful or harmful.”

• Lynn Harris at Salon.com examines purging disorder, a “new” disorder discussed in an article in this month’s Archives of General Psychiatry.

• Courtney Martin, author of Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, is one of 10 finalists for the Washington Post’s “America’s Next Great Pundit” contest.  Check out Courtney’s column here.  The contest ends today at 3 p.m., so hurry up and vote!