Self-Improvement--Or Maybe Not.

Almost everyone wants to be a Better Person in some way or other. And we try, the best we can, on so many different fronts. But what about those categories where we don't try--or where we tried before, maybe many times, but we finally just gave up?

Do you have any areas of Abandoned Personal Growth? You know, where instead of a garden with fountains and blue birds and gazebos you've settled on a weed-choked vacant lot with scummy puddles and mosquitos and piles of old tires?

Crabby sure hopes so! Because it means you're human. And she's hoping you'll share some of these with her. She'll share some of hers first--but please help her out with yours, too. Don't leave her hanging out there all by herself.

Women's magazines and Self-Help books make it sound like we should want to do Everything and Do it Well. But this is silly, we can't. Sometimes, we don't even care. Other times we do kind of care, but not enough considering how many other more important things there are to worry about. And as far as Crabby is concerned, Giving Up is sometimes a perfectly sensible thing to do!

So first up is the Don't Give a Crap Category. These are things that many people work really hard on, but for whatever reason, you just don't feel very ambitious about. What areas do you just write off wholesale?

Here are some of Crabby's Top "Forget About It" categories:

1. Parenting. (That's easy: no kids!)

2. Spiritual. (She's a big ol' skeptic about everything in that department).

3. Personal Appearance, Beyond Basic Hygiene. (Happily coupled, and never that much of a Hottie to begin with).

4. Arts and Crafts. (At least not since second grade).

5. Domestic Skills and Housekeeping. (Ha ha ha ha ha ha!).

Isn't it convenient to wipe out entire huge categories by not caring about any of it? Think of all the time you save! Crabby hopes she's not the only one who has done this.

Next up is stuff that falls within Important Categories that we care about, but these particular items just didn't work out. Crabby's list is very, very long, so she'll only share a few of them:

1. Meditation.

Crabby is so ridiculously bad at meditation she's going to write a whole post about it later. She tried for years. And please don't tell her you can't be "bad" at meditation, because yes, yes you can. Some of us just are. We have different brains. You meditation people need to start believing us on this.

2. Posture.

This is another one where Crabby has tried so very hard, year after year, and now she's starting give up hope, which will only make things worse. She has slumpy shoulders. She's tried the exercises and the stretches and nagging herself. The nagging works for a nanosecond and then she forgets again. Can anyone really think about their posture all day? Crabby sure can't.

3. Country/Line Dancing.

Crabby likes music and she likes stomping and whirling around to a nice catchy tune and Country Dancing seems like one of the few sensible ways to combine exercise and beer. But Crabby is self-conscious and has no short term memory for sequences of steps. She hates stomping when everyone else is whirling and vice versa. She tried the "free lesson before the serious people arrive" sort of deal many, many times, and watched all the other beginners start to get the the hang of it, but she never did.

4. Grammar, Vocabulary, and Spelling.

As much as Crabby values the written word, and as much as she respects all the pesky rules that make the English language way more complicated than it needs to be, she can't seem to learn anything new! And she's pretty much given up trying. After about thirty, her mastery of spelling and grammar started to slip, and now she can't even hang on to new vocabulary words! She used to collect them like a greedy child stuffing Milky Ways into a pillowcase on Halloween. But now there seems to be a hole at the bottom of the bag or something!

So what about you folks, any quests for self-improvement that you've given up on, or never much cared about in the first place? Or do you seek Mastery in all areas of life? Please tell Crabby all about it!

Frontiers of Cosmetic Surgery: "Designer Vaginas"

Oh dear, were you at the office when you decided to check on the latest in wholesome health news? Sitting in the same room with your kids? So sorry!

Actually, a good friend suggested this for a topic, and indeed it is a perfect one for Cranky Fitness: Weird, Slightly Off-Color, and Health Related! The triple crown, as far as Crabby is concerned. But she realizes there is a time and place for everything, including vaginas, and if this is neither for you right now you are most certainly excused.

She was going to post earlier this week. However, that very day she discovered that her friend Jennifer had just kindly linked to Crabby from the Family Resource Blog, saying nice things and including her in a list of "Great Family Blogs."

So she decided she might postpone the Vagina Post for a few days.

Anyway, so what is a "Designer Vagina" and why would a woman contemplate cosmetic surgery in order to have one?

Well, according to this article, the British Medical Journal released a report saying that "women are increasingly seeking cosmetic surgery to make their vaginas match pornographic pictures."

The article does go on to say, however, that some women were having their labias reduced for reasons that had nothing to do with their appearance. They were uncomfortable exercising or wearing tight clothing, for example. Crabby just wants to clarify that she's not making fun of these women. If a woman is experiencing physical discomfort because of the way she's built? Sounds completely reasonable to get it fixed.

But then one doctor said a lot of his patients told him they had better sex because they felt more comfortable. "It's more based on the self-esteem issue than how the labia look...they feel more self-assured."

The British Medical Journal commentary argues that appearance may not be a good enough reason to undergo this type of medical procedure, especially since risks include loss of sensitivity to the genitals. A physician who does these surgeries also warned against going to inexperienced doctors, saying that patients risked scarring, infection and bleeding.

Yikes.

So here's what Crabby thinks:

There may be some rare cases in which even just for appearance, the surgery might make sense. Say a woman is really, really, unusually proportioned. And say she's had a series of terrible experiences with insensitive sexual partners, brutes who have ridiculed her and scarred her emotionally far worse than anything a surgeon could do to her physically. Crabby says: well, okay. As long as you understand the risks and the discomfort you may have to endure for the sake of your "looks," go ahead and let them slice. (Shiver).

But short of that, it just seems insane to have expensive, painful, and dangerous surgery to make your hoo-hoo look more like the one your boyfriend admired so much the other night when you came home early and caught him screening "Eight Women...who Ate Women."

The increasing "need" for this surgery raises all kinds of confusing questions for Crabby. Do women really need yet another part of their anatomy to feel insecure about? And for women who think they look "unusual," how do they know? Do they really believe that porn actresses represent the entire range of normal female appearance? And if it's not through porn, how many "average" vaginas does a typical woman come across at close range in order to make a comparison? (Unless, of course, seekers of the surgery are disproportionately gynecologists, lesbians, and specialists in "Brazilian" waxes, but Crabby seriously doubts this is the case).

She wonders if yet again, insecure women are buying into the idea that there is some sort of "perfect" body out there, and that no amount of sacrifice is too much in order to obtain it. Crabby would like to convince these women otherwise, but she suspects that not many of them are regular readers of Cranky Fitness.

And for those women who might be contemplating this surgery in order to please a disapproving boyfriend, husband, or other sexual partner? Ladies: it's not excess labial tissue you need to cut loose.

Still No Crab in Sight

Crabby is taking yet another day off, but will be back tomorrow in some form or another, perhaps with an actual post about health and fitness!

She hopes many of you are not reading this at all, because you're off on a Road Trips or you're hiking or playing tennis or spending a day at the beach (please say hello to any Crabs you see there) and not stuck back at work. If you don't have a long holiday (or any holiday at all) then Crabby hopes that you are at least having a nice day.

For those of you with mixed feelings about the whole Fourth of July Long Weekend Celebration, Crabby would like to refer you to this column by Jon Carroll at the SF Chronicle. Crabby is a longtime admirer of Jon Carroll.

Crabby has seen your comments coming in and she is eager to get back and chat with everyone. She is thinking of you all even as she makes herself go outside and do other things.


See you all soon!

UPDATE:
So Crabby did finally figure out how to disable comments for this post--she thought it might help her stay away for the day if no one could leave any tempting comments for her to respond to.

But she finds she hates it! It seems so unwelcoming. So even though most of you have already come and gone, she's going to turn comments back on again.

Happy Independence Day!

Since Crabby has been yammering on and on lately about Priorities and Balance and such, she is hereby declaring her Independence from Cranky Fitness for the day. And possibly the 'Morrow as well. You never know. Actually, something will probably be here, but it may not be a "real" post.

Crabby is going to disable Comments for this post. But if you have anything you want to let her know about just put it in another post and Crabby will find it when she gets back to responding to comments.

And until she returns, visit some other great blogs! Here are some fine friends of Cranky Fitness, both recent and not-so-recent acquaintances:

The Goat's Lunch Pail

The Cricket Chronicles

Remaindered Random Musings

Beauty for Ashes

Sylvia's Journal


And y'all have a great holiday (if this is one for you)!

UPDATE:
Well, I can't seem to disable comments on one post without doing it on them all. So I'll open this up again, and will still enjoy reading people's thoughts. But I probably won't respond except in a general way in this post.

And to those of you with feed readers, I hope publishing this post three times in a row isn't messing you up!

Crap. Make that four times. I forgot to switch it back on.

Housekeeping

This is the sort of post Crabby would normally save for a weekend, because other than one sad little research citation, the whole thing is about blog "housekeeping," not health. But she wants to catch all her Beloved Readers before they scurry off to enjoy the long holiday weekend, leaving Crabby alone by herself in her Crab House, pretending she doesn't notice it needs dusting and vacuuming.

Anyway.

Crabby had planned to be discreet and low-key about the Recent Changes at Cranky Fitness around commenting. She did not want to get anyone who may still be lurking out there too riled up. But then she decided what the hell. Readers knew something was up.

So Crabby has decided to stop being all mysterious about it. It may in fact be a good time to set forth a few Blog Commenting Policies, just to prevent any future misunderstandings.

As Alert Readers may have noticed, the Comments, formerly unrestricted, are now being "moderated." Moderation just means that Crabby gets your Comments in her email and has to approve them before they are released for public consumption.

Moderation is annoying from both ends, but probably worse for Readers. Crabby at least gets to see her words in print as soon as she hits Publish, while you all have to wait and come back later.

And then what happens when you come back? Maybe Crabby is still off doing Crabbish things so you have to return yet again. (Or worse, you might decide Crabby's blog is just not worth the effort!) And then when you do return you find Crabby has released a whole bunch of comments at the same time, many of which appear before yours does. And maybe some of those comments say the exact same thing you did! But no one knows you thought of it first! Or whatever--you may not be nearly as neurotic as Crabby. But in any event, it's a pain.

We'll dump Moderation soon, but if necessary, it may return.

Basically, what happened was that a new visitor did not believe it was fair of Crabby to delete his comments, and so he vowed he would outlast her and keep putting them up over and over again until she relented and let him air his thoughts.

But Crabby didn't like his thoughts much, nor the way he expressed them. And Crabby was too lazy to keep deleting the same comments over and over, so instead she enabled moderation.

Crabby wants to be the first to point out that she was indeed being arbitrary and possibly unfair. If hers were the only blog in the world, it would be inexcusable for her to say "some people may speak and others may not."

But since there are something like 75 million blogs out there, Crabby isn't too worried about this sort of unfairness. Those who find Cranky Fitness an unfriendly forum can find plenty of other places to make their points. There is no First Amendment Right to air your thoughts on someone else's "publication," whether that publication be a small blog or Fox News or the front page of the New York Times.

That said, Crabby really does want to keep an open mind about allowing a variety of different points of view. She lets stuff slide in the Comments section sometimes that others might delete as offensive. But then every now and then a comment seems to "cross a line" and she deletes it. It is her blog and therefore her line. (And these sorts of comments have never been from regular visitors; only first timers with no previous connection to the blog).

So for clarification, Crabby reserves the right to be completely arbitrary about deleting comments. But as examples, here are some things she might delete:

1. Spam. (Which does not mean Reader Recommendations. Crabby loves these! She means things that appear out of nowhere and don't seem to have anything to do with health or fitness). If somehow she messes this up (which she may have actually done once before) and you're a regular reader and she mistakenly deletes you as spam, just come back and make it clear you're really Cranky Fitness fan and are not here trying to sell something.

2. Insults or threats directed at other Commenters or Crabby;

3. Graphic sexual discussions that seem to have little to do with topic at hand; (and sometimes our subjects are quite racy, so context is everything) and

4. General inappropriate weirdness of the sort that suggests that you are (a) mentally unbalanced; (b) intoxicated or (c) at the wrong blog.

(Note: there are some #4 type comments scattered about that Crabby let slide; if you're ever REALLY bored and decide to prowl around the archives some of them are quite amusing).

Does this all make sense?

And now it is time for Crabby to direct you to our Health Research Study for the day, a random and not particularly recent paper chosen only because it involves Housekeeping! Or at least the study of "structured tasks such as cleaning dishes and clothes." This thing is so pompous and pointless, that Crabby can't even bring herself to make fun of it!

It starts off: "As the prevalence of obesity has increased, so has sedentariness..." and doesn't get any better after that. She won't even tell you what it concludes. Crabby's hoping a brave reader or two will take a look here and report back to the class what they think of this ground-breaking research.

So, Crabby hopes you'll all be patient with Moderation just a bit longer until it is gone. We have some posts coming up in the following week that could be considered offensive or controversial, so Crabby may leave it on just a bit longer. Or she may take it off and put it back on again as needed. Either way, she hopes this will not keep you from Commenting on Commenting, or on anything else that occurs to you!