Wrong. Just, wrong!

Wrong
Originally uploaded by amkb

Anna: It's been a long time since I've posted a photo for the "Love My Parts" flickr group. For those unfamiliar with it, this is a group promoting body acceptance, encouraging people to post photos of those body parts they find a bit harder to love than others.

This morning, I just had to ask my husband to get this photo for me when I saw it. This rather horrifying photo is the back of my right heel. I don't have cracks in my heel. I have canyons. With little mysterious black bits in them. And pieces of fuzz caught on the rough edges.

Ew.

Ew, ew, ew.

I'm kinda glad I can't see that backs of my heels very often.

Though I have to wonder, which is worse. That fact that I asked my husband to dig out the macro lens and take the photo - or the fact that he did it! *L*

168:365 Love my Manly Polish Nose

Anna: This is another photo for the Love My Parts group.


I have my father's nose.

Not my mother's tiny nose that comes to a perfectly curved tip; little and delicate.

No, I have my father's nose with the ball-ball at the end. It's not just a very typical Polish nose. It's a very typical Polish man's nose. An assertive nose. An "in your face" kind of nose, to pardon the horrible pun.

But that's ok. It fits my face, which isn't exactly tiny or feminine. A little nose would just sort of disappear.





Photo taken by my elder daughter using her Nikon D80.

134:365 Je suis gaucher

Anna: Another one for the Love My Parts group.

For most things, I'm ambidextrous. For some things, like embroidery and other crafting, I'm right handed. With others, like writing and drawing, I'm left handed.

Writing left handed is apparently all it takes to make me a left handed person.

My hands, like most of me, are pretty rough around the edges. When my kids were younger, they would sometimes entertain themselves by counting my scars. I've got a few doozies on this hand! Some, I even remember how they got there. ;-)

There's one on my middle finger from a hatchet I was using to trim branches off a log and there was less resistance than I expected (I'm right handed with a hatchet). I've got scars across 3 fingers from when I was playing "swords" with one of my brothers. He's completely left bodied. *L* We were both holding our "swords" in our left hands (a stick for me, a long piece of tin for him), when he caught me across the fingers. He cleaned up the blood and patched me up - something we did for each other rather frequently, as I remember things. Several others are from when he and I were in the attic, melting plastic over a candle. We discovered that the yarn my mother used to knit slippers melted quite dramatically, and that if you swung the yarn, you'd get a glowing circle in the air. Which is when we also discovered that globs of plastic can go flying, and that they really like to stick to skin.

Somehow, that didn't stop me from getting more scars the same way on my other hand.

If I ever find myself with cancer or something, I could probably safely blame it on the fumes of melted plastic I breathed in my younger days. Or the lead we used to melt down in the furnace and play with.

Sometimes I wonder how my siblings and I ever made it through childhood without killing ourselves, each other, or burning the farm down.

131:365 Forty

Anna: One for the Love My Parts group.
Note: This photo was taken by Philippe for me, so it's not really a selfie. ;-)

I turn forty today, so I thought a photo of my silver hair might be appropriate. ;-)

I distinctly remember finding my first grey hair, though I don't remember how long ago it was. A fair few years. Actually, Philippe found it. He's a fair bit taller than I am, and can look down at the top of my head. When he suddenly said "you've got grey hair!" I went pulling at my hair, trying to bring it down to where I could see it. It was in a spot I couldn't see, however, so I got him to pull it out so I could look at it. I was so proud of that one shimmering hair! LOL

I've never been bothered by greying hair, and actually looked forward to getting some. I loved how my grandmother, who's hair was such a dark brown it was almost black, had these bright, glittering strands running through her hair. My mother, who's hair was as dark as her mother, now as sparkling bright streaks as well. My father, also dark haired, went grey all over. Being of the dirty blond persuasion, I wondered which way my own hair would go. Would I go grey all over, like my dad? Or get silver streaks like my mother and grandmother? That wouldn't be quite as dramatic as on my mother's dark hair.

From the looks of it, I'm going to be doing both - slowly going silver all over. I love how they shine. :-D

125:365 Love My Parts

Anna: Today, I joined my first flickr photo group. It's called Love My Parts, and is a particular self-portrait group. While I don't expect to be doing anything as fantastically creative as some talented people, I have been interested in the concept, and I think this group fits the bill.

The purpose of the group is to take pictures of those parts of your body you might not be comfortable with, and to learn learn to accept our bodies as they are. Personally, I really don't have any parts that bother me. Living in a culture that constantly bombards us with images of what we "should" look like, or what beauty is suppose to be, I think it's a great idea to show what real, non airbrushed bodies look like.

This is my first Love My Parts photo. My broken up, battered feet.


Some 15 years ago, I was a little more active than I should've been (ha! Now that's an understatement!) and hurt them pretty badly. I did mention them to the doctor during one of my regular visits, but it seemed downright silly to complain about sore feet. After all, everyone gets sore feet, right? I also come from a family that, if it isn't broken or bleeding profusely, we just patch ourselves up and keep on going. Sometimes, we keep on going even when things *are* broken, which I seem to have done all those years ago. I now believe I had developed a whole bunch of stress fractures. I should've stayed off my feet to let them heal, but that just wasn't an option.

It was about 3 years before I was able to walk without constant pain, though the bones did sometimes dislocate unexpectedly.

About 6 years later, the pain came back - and then some. Not only did my feet hurt as badly as when I'd first injured them, but I began to have shooting pains in my lower legs. It got to the point that just getting out of bed was almost more than I could bear, and walking from one end of the house to the other was a major accomplishment. I've never lived with such pain before in my life - and that's saying a lot with me!

I finally dragged myself to a doctor; someone I'd never seen before, as we were in a new province. When I told her why I was there, she looked me up and down and gently suggested that it "might be because you're a bit large." Which is a polite way of saying, your feet hurt because your fat. *eyeroll* I pointed out to her that she had it backwards. I was gaining weight because I could barely friggin' walk. So she sent me for blood tests to make sure my thyroid wasn't screwy, and that I wasn't diabetic. *sigh* I figured it would be faster to just go for the blood tests, which I was due for anyways, than argue with her. My blood tests came back, in her word, "perfect." When I reminded her of why I was there, she sent me for X-rays.

Which is when I found out that I had developed severe osteoarthritis in both feet and both knees. I also had bunions. And bones spurs in both knees. And a bone spur in one heel (I now have them in both heels).

Getting that diagnosis was the best thing ever. It didn't help my feet any - nothing helped until we moved away from the "wet coast" and back to the dry prairies - but knowing that I wasn't actually a wuss complaining about my 'poor widdle tootsies' changed my thinking.

Today, my feet still hurt sometimes, though nothing like they did while we were living on the coast. The bones still dislocate, and sometimes my knees like to "sing" to me, letting me know it's time to slow things down.

But - I can walk. Not very fast and sometimes not very far, but that's ok. I can walk. And that's something I've learned to appreciate a great deal.