I was a cute, skinny little kid with big brown eyes and thick curly hair. I was never going to have blonde hair and blue eyes, but in my own way I was pretty cute.

When I was about 7 my baby teeth fell out and my adult teeth grew in monstrously. I had teeth growing in front of other teeth, and my two front teeth were large and stuck out about an inch in front of my lower jaw.

From that time, I was an ugly kid. Yes, my parents still loved me. Yes, I was still a bright kid with good grades. But I would never be popular. I would always be teased and treated like a freak.

Notice how the reasons people hated me were not my fault. Notice how I never asked my teeth to grow crooked. But the other kids picked on me anyway. I was different. (I had braces for about 5 years, and my teeth are fine now.)

When I was 12 I started growing boobs, getting taller and got my first period, like all the other girls. By the time I was 14, I stopped growing. I stopped getting my period. I started growing sideburns and a moustache.

I was later diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, which I inherited from my mom. However, PCOS doesn’t cause the stunted growth and extremely high testosterone levels that were measured in me. (PCOS causes higher testosterone levels, but mine are 3x higher than a normal PCOS patient.) Right now the best guess any doctors have is that I also have some kind of genetic dysfunction of the pituitary gland.

PCOS causes weight gain. I got fat. I keep getting fatter, even if I starve myself. So I’ve given up on starving myself and I’ve just decided to be fat. (I also have a joint disorder called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which makes exercise nearly impossible, and is the reason I’ve had arthritis in some of my joints since I was 13.)

I have a full beard, which I have to shave every day so that I don’t look like a circus freak.

The latest piece of joy that I’ve gotten from this buffet of genetic anomalies is androgenic alopecia. It’s not the kind of alopecia that has support groups and leaves you entirely bald. I still have facial hair, leg hair, armpit hair, and thick arm hair. I’m just losing all the hair on top of my head. Basically, it’s male-pattern baldness, but I’m not a guy. I just look like one.

My husband doesn’t mind any of this because he’s not a shallow asshole. Which is why I married him. When we go out, we get mistaken for a gay couple. So on top of being hated for being fat and ugly, I get to be hated for being gay, EVEN THOUGH I’M NOT.

I have a low voice, and it even did that embarrassing cracking thing when I was in junior high. Like a boy. I hate talking on the phone because I don’t like having to explain that I’m female.

Am I female? I have a uterus. I have an ovary. (One of them was removed due to recurring benign tumors.) I have breasts, but they’re pretty small, proportional to how fat I am. Thanks to herbal treatments I even menstruate now and then.

On the other hand, I shave my face every morning and I have a low voice and a receding hairline. So from what anyone can see with my clothes on, maybe I’m a little bit male too.

I identify myself as female. I tick the “F” on demographic forms. More and more I wonder if my life would be easier if I just started identifying as male? Maybe. Life is always easier for ugly men than for ugly women. But my husband is not gay, so he prefers that I remain female.

So I’m ugly. Don’t try to tell me I’m beautiful. I know what I look like. I’m fat. I’m hairy. I’m going bald. Don’t patronize me by calling me beautiful. How about just accepting that not everyone needs to be pretty? It’s just not the way I was born.

I’m smart. I’m funny. I’m good at stuff. But because I identify as female, that will never be enough. The world wants me to be pretty too. It’s not a fair thing to demand from me. I didn’t decide to get PCOS. I didn’t get to have a long conversation with my pituitary gland. Being fat and ugly was not a lifestyle choice. It was something that happened to me, not something I chose to do.

So I’m ugly. So? I’m ugly. Why does it matter? Why do I have to deny it and cover it up?

Another new thing I have is a new flatbed scanner. Well, a used one. But new for me. I got a new scanner because I have mostly pretty much finished most of the text for my upcoming book about living in the UK, and I have decided that I need to have some illustrations. So I also have ordered a new sketch book (cause I lost mine) and a fountain pen with which to draw. So I will draw things and put them in my book. If I feel like it, I might draw things and post them here too.

I’m mostly out of money so I’m going to try to get the new book out soonish. Which may mean self-publishing because I may not have time to wait for a publisher to want me. I still do not have a title. Or any good ideas for a cover.

As always, I’m spending more time on Tumblr than anywhere else. And I’ve consolidated my 2 Tumblr blogs into one. So now everything I post on Tumblr is at alanaisreading.tumblr.com. I probably haven’t fixed the links all over this site yet when you read this. If you aren’t following me on Tumblr you’re missing a lot of posts about Doctor Who and pictures of other people’s hamsters.

In our hamster news, Luna is still psychotic and has started trying to pull bars off the cage. If she gets loose, we’ll warn the villagers and start a hunt. I won’t have her victims on my conscience. Leonard and Sheldon started trying to kill each other so they have been separated. The guinea pig, Spike, is doing fine. He’s over six years old, so we won’t be at all surprised if he dies soon. That’s super old for a guinea pig.

Also, I am knitting a sweater. So far it’s going okay.

Oh, and I cut most of my hair off. It’s very short. And my head is cold.

We decided to get some Russian dwarf hamsters, since that’s one of the types we haven’t had before. But we decided this a couple weeks before Christmas, and we were planning to spend Christmas in Wigan with husband’s family. So we didn’t want to get hamsters and then leave them in our house with hamster-sitters right away.

We went to Wigan and it was really nice. We both got titled estates in the highlands for Christmas, and I got some books and fluffy blankets and stuff. I got to spend time with my nieces and nephew. One of the days we were there we went out to the market and it was nice and I had a lovely time until I started having agoraphobic panic attacks in the grocery store from the crowds.

The other thing that happened at some time when we were out is that my hypermobility started acting up and my pelvis got all dislocated. I was in quite a bit of pain for about a week.

We got home and my pelvis was feeling better and we planned to go out on the 3rd of January to get hamsters. Then there was another hurricane-level wind storm on that day so we waited until Saturday.

The store was crowded and we had to stand around for a long time in the shop waiting for someone who could box up the 2 hamsters that they had and sign all the requisite forms. We ended up with two male Russian dwarf hamsters. We named them Leonard and Sheldon.

Leonard is brown and very curious. If we pick up their little hiding house, he is likely to climb out and straight up your arm. And then poop on your shoulder.

Sheldon is silvery-gray and very shy. He hasn’t been aggressive at all, but he is shy and more likely to hide in a pile of bedding.

I hope to post pictures of them soon, if not here then definitely on my Tumblr.

The night after we went out to get the hamsters, my pelvis fell apart again. I didn’t sleep the whole night because of the pain. So the hypermobility/Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome is apparently becoming less of an occasional inconvenience and more of a full-blown disability.

So, to sum up: new hamsters, painful disability.

A few years back John Green wrote a book called Looking For Alaska. In that book, he had a quote from a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Edna’s family still owns the copyright to her poems, and John’s publisher told him the quote was too long to count as “fair use” so he either had to shorten the quote or pay Edna’s family. He shortened the quote because he didn’t have money.

In real life, that was the end of it. But let’s say that John Green published his book, and several years later Edna St. Vincent Millay’s family got mad and wanted money for the quote, even though he had shortened it. As copyright law works now, John would go to court and argue that his quote was fair use. Edna’s family would argue that they wanted money and the judge would decide whether John owed them money or not.

Here’s how it would go under SOPA: Edna’s family says that John Green violated their copyright. Because of that, they track down every copy of Looking For Alaska, and every copy of An Abundance of Katherines and every copy of Paper Towns and they halt the printing of The Fault In Our Stars and every copy of every book that John Green ever wrote is piled up and burned. And after that, John can take Edna’s family to court, if he has the money for a lawyer now that his livelihood has been destroyed.

Notice how they didn’t go to court until after John’s life was destroyed? Notice how John Green was presumed guilty and punished without trial? Also notice how everything he ever wrote was destroyed, not just the one thing with potential copyright infringement? This is what congress wants to do to the internet. This is why you should be calling your congressperson and telling the president that if it goes through congress, he needs to Veto it. SOPA is unconstitutional and wrong.

• I have a fantastic husband who handles my roller coaster of moods better than I deserve.
• I have a house that, while lacking storage space, a real refrigerator, and a shower, is at least a place to keep all my books.
• The tea-mostat totally works.
• I live in a country where I can speak my mind without fear of losing my job, getting beaten, or getting pepper sprayed.
• I can go to the doctor whenever I am sick, without wondering whether I can afford it.
• I can get all of my prescription medications for free or very very cheap.
• I can afford to be a full time writer, at least for a little while.

I’m less certain than ever about moving back to the US. I’m watching the government of America treat people in ways that I formerly would have associated with fascist regimes. I see a former democracy. I see a country that was formed on the values of free speech and equal rights for all people devolve into a country where an oligarchy of the wealthy rules, and everyone else is reduced to a feudal peasant working for a corporate lord.

I can’t say with any certainty that I can return to the US. I’m not sure that I’m willing to give up that much of my rights. I’m just thankful that I have the option to stay in another country.

It holds a liter of coffee, or tea. The problem is that you can’t put tea bags into the flask because the hole in the top is too small, and if they sink you can never get them out. So I thought about it for a while and came up with many ideas involving filters and clamps and all kinds of things. In the end, I settled on this:

This is a hemostatic forceps, or hemostat. It looks like scissors, but it is actually a clampy thing used to clamp blood vessels during surgery. My plan is to clamp the teabags in the hemostat and then drop it in the flask, with the finger hole bits at the top stopping it from dropping all the way in. Then the tea can steep and I can easily remove and dispose of the teabags. Brilliant, no?

I don’t actually have the hemostat yet (I ordered one on eBay) so I’ll update and let you know if it doesn’t work. If it does work, I call my invention the tea-mostat.