So, yeah, it rocked. ( Here be Spoi... Drag... Sharks! )

That's all for now.

Within three months of being enlisted into the IDF I put on something like 5 kg.
I had cried, tears rolled down my face, as I told my mother I had jock itch because my thighs were rubbing together, along with the very ill-fitting uniform.
I didn't wear clothes in my proper size for the two years that I served.

Food in the IDF is disgusting.

I was not vegetarian at the time, but I pretended to be, because the processed tofu schnitzels looked more appetizing and less likely to give me salmonella than the "regular" food.

Having done kitchen duty like a champ, I can tell you, the cooks are over worked, it's an yucky job, you have to deal with teenaged girls being grossed out by things (being a young aunt cured me of viewing leftover food as gross) that they've seen people eat and, well, dealing with the fact that despite having the most "practical" power (they're the wheelers and dealers of the army) they're in fact the lowest echelon of military jobs.

Yeah, the food was gross. We comforted ourselves by going to buy chocolate, biscuits, chocolate-chip cookies, crackers and cheese...

Yeah, it was good times in the barracks.

Is it any surprise girls (who do not do combat, which most of us do not) put on, on average, 10 kg of weight throughout our two year run.

I got thinking about because I saw this News article.
It made me guffaw. That's another way of saying LOL.

The IDF is going to cut out of its menu in the canteens (i.e. the cafeteria where you get your food for free) the fattening pastry foods - mainly Bourekas and rogalach - which have been traditional foods found in meetings, unit gatherings and, as mentioned, the canteens.

Nothing like promoting more resentment in the ranks!

I mean, I understand the need and want to promote "good health" which is a real oxymoron in the military - I cannot tell you how many yeast infections I had during my service because the trousers I wore five days a week was basically spun plastic.

Also, Doctors generally do not believe soldiers who come to the infirmary, their initial thought is that you are there to get sick-leave, which are days off not docked from your regular holidays.

You basically have to be dying in order to get treatment - or be at the emergency room with an actual bodily trauma.

Yeah, "good health".

Food is a big deal in the army.
It's something we arrange our time around - two hour lunch breaks are not unheard of, hell, unless I had something extremely pressing to do I could spend more time faffing around looking for chocolate and drinking seven cups of coffee a day (which was my average, I was up to ten cups a day at some point... withdrawal was a bitch after I was discharged).

Food was my comfort. Mainly because the food presented to us in the canteens was just so bad. Any other food was great and much of it was eaten.

I've spoken about the uniform before, so I don't need to tell you about the gendered aspect of it, but I remember how one day, I felt cramps, it wasn't that time of the month, so I went to the bathroom, opened my belt and instant relief.
Yeah, my belt had been pressing into me.
You can imagine what I did next.
I cried like the big baby I am/was.

Looking back, I can't say I felt bad about putting on the weight. It was something I didn't consciously think about - I mean, I hated myself for being "fat", but I was never ever willing to give up food that made me feel good.

That period of my life was full of half-assed attempts at weight loss.
"Weight Watchers" is a nightmare, as though we don't get judged enough in our lives.
Eating smaller portions got me eating more instead of less.
I got into shouting matches with my mother over my weight and what I was willing to do, or not do, in order to "control myself".

Yeah, food was a battle ground.

I don't know how much I eat today. I know that over the past few months I've lost weight, which worried me for a while, because weight loss has become something I associate with trauma and I still don't know what has caused me to become even smaller than I was.

Food in the IDF was part of what got me through it. Take outs, cakes, biscuits, the gatherings... *sigh* good times.
But they made my plastic pants split at the seam.

I'm glad it's over, never to return.

At times, it seemed to never end. I was even about to sign up for more - I was insane and full of fear of the outside world at the time - so when that fell through I suddenly had two weeks left of service.
The relief (and the weight loss that commenced simply because I was happy to be outside that framework) was unbelievable.

Related but off tangent; I don't know if Kung Fu is for me. I was in the best shape of my life while I was in those classes, but I didn't know how to protect myself, which pretty much negates the purpose...

As mentioned, I'm now thin, but very out of shape. I'm a slob, I don't exercise, I should, but I don't - I need to maלe the decision to go back to martial arts, but I need to want it and at the moment... I don't.

I recently saw a documentary about the word "slut", it's meanings etymological, social, political, personal etc.

Personally, I don't think I've ever been called a slut. If I was it was never to my face and kept secret from me.

It got me thinking though, of the pejoratives I had been called throughout my life and quite a large amount of High School Nostalgia.

Here's a list off the top of my head (with Hebrew as well, as I grew up and live in a non-English speaking environment):

כלבה - Bitch
פריקית - Freak
פוסטמה - slang for annoying or stupid female
לזבית - Lesbian (more like Dyke... in a bad way)
רעה - Mean or Bad
מכשפה - Witch (though oddly, not during my Wicca phase... funny how these things work).
חכמולוגית - Smart-ass
דפוקה - Fucked up
חצופה - Cheeky
נודניקית - Nag
כוסית - the word כוס is cunt, but the word is slang for an attractive woman, you can often hear it being hurled at you in the street, or spoken complementarity by your friends. I hate the word regardless as I'd rather not be referred to as a vagina... if someone is using the word near me I hope they're talking anatomy and not personality (or lack thereof).

In any event, the word I heard most, since I was 12 has been Bitch and it's varieties - the first time someone called me Klafta - קלעפטאה which is Yiddish for "Bitch" I burst out laughing.

Bitch is a word I like.
I've come to take pride in it, I heard it so much growing up I couldn't help but embrace it - if being called that name meant I wasn't teased and harassed every day then good, ya know.

Looking back on growing up, I can see a trend of boys being interested in me, romantically, sexually, whatever and I never noticed. Only in hindsight do I see that these obnoxious, irritating, self-entitled boys were hitting on me, coming on to me.
I mean, I thought most girls responded to that because they were dumb, not because that was the social cue of the day.
Which is still dumb - not the girls who followed the cue, the cue itself.
I was such a loner and self-involved that I'd missed the days where girls and boys were taught that language called "adolescent courtship" which I always interpreted as "stupid boys harassing me".

An anecdote:
( Cut for marginally entertaining high school drama with yours truly as protagonist )

One of the things I've come to realise is that I wasn't alone. I wasn't the only one harassed and hassled in high school. For being a weird girl, a Loner girl and all that.
And looking back on that, I have to say that without the word "Bitch", I probably wouldn't be the Grrl I am today.
So this isn't a pity-party, it's a "hmmmm, memories of a shitty adolescence" party!

I any event, I embraced the title of Bitch and carried it over to my Army service where it served me quite well. After I was discharged I toned it down, though I'm told that I'm quite aggressive still (abrasive and having "an attitude", as my family at times informs me), so I feel I live up to "Bitch".

*sigh* While hellish at the time, nostalgically High School had some good times. Though I'd slice off my nose if I had to do it again.