I Take It Back

All yesterday morning, I heard about the Dems patting themselves on the back about passing sweeping health care reforms, with little commentary on the stranglehold the Stupak-Pitts amendment put on abortion rights. I don't believe in many things that I pay endless tax dollars to, but I accept that as part of being an American, I have to pony up for some things I think are morally wrong. But, this is not about rearranging the laws to fit my personal beliefs, that's not how it works in the this experiment called America. You take some, you give some. Unless, of course you are talking about abortion rights.

As always, the extreme right has managed to hijack the reproductive rights issue and turn it from an issue of an individuals private choice to screaming about killing babies. It's okay to spend billions to kill babies overseas in wars we start with people we don't have to look in the face, but if you start talking about federal funds to cover abortions, we get all conflicted. It's gotten to the point that shame has become synonymous with the word 'abortion' and it's become a quiet little secret in many peoples lives. The discussion has been warped, twisted away from women and giving them respect and privacy to condemnation. I hear it from both sides: the Duggars are overpopulating the earth and being irresponsible; women who have abortions are baby killers and should just have the baby and give it up for adoption; there must be something wrong with those married couples who don't want to have children, and on and on. We can't stop judging other people's lives and it all goes back to the same idea. Mind your own business. You have no idea what someone else is going through. Trust me, you don't know what's best for them.

I, for one, take this argument back and I'm giving to women to make choices for themselves with their family and their god. No one else can best make that decision for them. Continue screaming about baby killing and hell all you want, I'm going to make this about the women who need access to all their health care choices in order to pursue their life, liberty and happiness.

One month shy of a year

Well, you'll be damned, look who's posted a new blog entry!

I'm back, leaner, more educated (technically) and married. I'm less obsessed with Facebook and have become accustomed to getting some intimate information on the personal lives of kind-of strangers. Still odd, but apparently the way of the future. Or the present at least.

Goat and I had a perfect wedding. One trip to the emergency room and one stolen car, we did pretty well. The food was great, we had a blast and reveled in having so many people we love in one place celebrating. The weather shaped up an hour and a half before the ceremony and the sun didn't stop shining after that. Now to figure out how to be married.

I expected a lot more panic about being in this committed of a relationship. Prior to meeting Goat, I would get itchy a few weeks or months into the dating process and find myself bored or miserable. This speaks less to the actual people that I dated and more to my poor choice of companion. Save for a few, most of them were perfectly nice people who I had nothing in common with or who were kind of afraid of me. I met Goat and none of that happened. We kept dating, kept having fun and dated some more. Now that we're married, I figured out that marital bliss is between two people and not striving to fulfill anyone else's idea of what marriage should be. So, not much panic and so far, lots of bliss.

At the moment, I'm sitting in the nook of the couch that has become so familiar to my butt over the year that I worked out of my house. I am still unemployed, yet now a student and the view is the same but the perspective is different. I hated that job. That job was almost the polar opposite of who I was as a person and some of the people I worked with were toxic. Yet, I couldn't walk away from that job. It had to kick me to the curb in order for me to shake someone else's life off of me and get back to my own. I'm in a much better world and have shed some bad feelings and people.

Can you tell I have a cold? My head rings with the crowded echo of the sniffles around congestion. Is is obvious that I haven't written in almost a year? It will probably take a little time before things come together on the page. But my blog is for practice, so I'm practicing.

Back to my chicken noodle soup and box of Kleenex.

Things you face on Facebook

A few weeks ago, I joined the weird world of Facebook (which I usually mistype as "facebeek". What kind of site would that be?). Since I don't work at a computer all day anymore, I don't spend as much time looking for old friends and sending messages as I did when I started Myspace a few years back. It's pretty fun and, as I mentioned before, weird. Talk about a trip down memory lane. I have gotten back in touch with a few people from high school that I haven't talked to in almost two decades. Because you can check out peoples profiles once you are friends with them, it helps to avoid that awkwardness of conversation that can happen when you haven't talked to someone in 18 years or so. "So, how are you?" and "What have you been up to" are two inevitable questions that you tend to blurt out when first conversing with someone. If you haven't spoken with that someone in a long time, the questions seem kinda stupid as it would take a good long while to answer either one of them. Facebook helps fill in a few blanks before heading into some kind of regular communication.

I like going onto my home page when I first log in, so I can see what all of my 34 friends are doing without checking all of their individual profiles. I can see that my brother was laughing at old photos, or that my friend was surprised that she liked going to a Red Wings game or that my possible future sister-in-law wants to strangle her research advisers. Better yet, I get to comment on everything! Being prone to smart assery and two bittery, that is one of my favorite parts.

The downside is that you sometimes find out information that you don't know what to do with. One of my new Facebook friends is a woman I went to high school with and she is going through a devastating time with her newborn. It's a horrifying process to watch; she went from healthy and ready to deliver a week ago, to poor infant MRI results and very tough decision making. I have watched this process as she has been posting regular updates on her Facebook page. I'm embarrassed that I can't stop looking for updates, I'm totally drawn in. But I feel a little uneasy knowing intimate details about her life when I was more acquaintances with her in high school and it's been eons since we've even spoken. I feel like I shouldn't look, but how can I not? It's right there, she put it up on her profile right where all her friends can read it. It's also awkward that I get to see the outpouring of support too. It's heartwarming and wonderful, but still so personal.

It makes sense though. When you are going through a big life event like that, where things are changing many times a day, it seems logical to let everyone know in the simplest way possible. Updating on a site like Facebook seems smart from a time management standpoint. Still feels a little ooky to me. I don't know what to do. Do I comment? Do I just sit and watch? It's very peculiar and slightly upsetting.

Is this the future of our human relationships? Will we stop personal contact altogether and just send email and leave messages on social networking sites? I feel bad enough that I don't send letters anymore but I'll really miss talking on the phone and my all time favorite method of communication, rubber banding a note to a rock and throwing it through a window.

Progressive Michigan?

Ever since I have moved back to the Midwest, I have been pining for the general liberal lean of the West Coast. Out there, having a nose piercing didn't raise the eyebrows of managers interviewing me for a job, neighbors of every color, culture, gender, religion and orientation greeted me at the food co-op. The weather is better in the winter out there and everyone seems to take it a little more easy and be a little more inclusive.

I am absolutely stunned that California's preposterous Proposition 8 managed to pass. I'm so very heartbroken. I sigh as gay rights takes another step backward into the shadows and hides from the bigotry of the religious right. Why in the world would someone put the rights of a minority to the vote of a majority? Can you imagine what would have happened if segregation was put on the ballot in the southern states? That would have been insane and unjust. Just like Prop 8 was insane and unjust.

It reminds me of a wonderful bumper sticker I saw years ago while driving around Denver. Denver and it's surrounding towns are home to some of the largest evangelical groups in the country, including Focus On The Family. While zooming through in I-70, I saw a red minivan with a bumper sticker that read "Focus on your own damn family". I thought that was perfect. Groups like F.O.F. tend to be far more concerned with what's going on in other people's reproductive organs, relationships and spiritual lives when they need to start minding their own damn business. I would never tell any evangelical that their religion is backward thinking bullshit and they can kindly stay the hell out of my world.

I heard that Prop 8 and others of it's ilk are there to "protect marriage". What does marriage need protection from? Perhaps the 60% of straight folks who seem to consistently fuck them up and end up divorced. How does a gay couple getting married make a straight couple any less married? How is the "threatened" straight, married couple even going to know that a gay couple has gotten married? Would there have been email blasts announcing all the gay weddings that happen each week and paranoid straight folks can sign up for the gay wedding newsletter over which to fret and pray? My apologies for being so sarcastic and dramatic, stupidity often brings that out in me.

Michigan, on the other hand, usually that bastion of bringing up the rear managed to pass a state wide medical marijuana proposition as well one allowing stem cell research. Go Team Mitten State! Both of these will be very good for the states economy which has been in recession for about 3-4 years. What's happening to the rest of the USA right now is what has been going on around here for some time. I'm really excited to see how this changes the local economical landscape in a state that has had it's financial backbone staked in noting but automotive for the last 60 years. Winds of change are blowing through the Great Lakes State and it's pretty exciting around here.

Spellchecking the Spellcheck

Now that Barack Obama is President-Elect, it's time for spellcheck on computers to include his name and stop trying to correct it. My computer keeps wanting to change his name to Barrack Obadiah.

Feeling Groovy

For the first time in my life, I volunteered for a political campaign this year. I liked Obama so much, I felt it was totally necessary to do what I could to make sure he landed in the White House. I revamped the filing system at the local Obama HQ, made phone calls to voters and helped the comfort squad feed the volunteers (my official title: "Food Lieutenant"). It was a great time and I came away feeling like I needed to do more, but then again chronic restlessness is my natural state.

A few days after Obama's big win and many other big victories (California's Prop 8 notwithstanding) I am soaking in the warm pool of accomplishment. I am feeling hopeful for the first time in almost a decade while at the same time, wondering (much like everyone else it seems) what is next. Obama's administration is being handed one dud of an economy, a very thin, holey fabric of foreign relations and many other situations in which he will have to prove himself worthy, some of which are based on old school ideas about people of certain skin colors.

On Tuesday night, I watched the returns while gnawing at my fingernails. I was a nervous wreck. I knew Obama would win, but I didn't know what kind of shenanigans might keep him from becoming president-elect. As a girl who had had her liberal heart broken more than once I was way past cautiously optimistic and somewhere around pessimistically keeping the faith. Over the last eight years, I have felt like the ideals that would move us forward as a country such as compassion, progressive inclusiveness and personal liberty, freedom and the pursuit of happiness were ideas to be hidden away. I couldn't make it in the corporate cutthroat, "Us" versus "Them", more for the most and less for the rest, suffer quietly and you won't be seen as unpatriotic world that was so quickly created by the current administration, I was drowning. Suffocating. I truly feel that we, as a country, as a people and as a planet's population can only truly move forward and survive if we work together. Now, I feel like lots of other people agree with me. It's quite a lovely feeling.

I didn't cry with joy like I thought I would when they called the presidency for Obama. I didn't cry when I'd heard that John McCain called to concede. I didn't cry during Obama's victory speech, even when it seemed that everybody else in the world was crying. Yesterday, I finally popped and burst into tears and you know what did it? The thing that sent me over the edge? I was watching a clip of Comedy Central's "Indecision 2008" and I started to cry as I watched Stephen Colbert struggle to keep his conservative character in tact while the real Stephen fought back tears when the election was called for Obama. For whatever reason, that did it for me and not only did I start to cry, I wasn't able to stop for a good long while. I'm still getting misty this morning when I realize that I can feel hopeful again. Oh hopeful heart, you may now come out of hiding.

The whole world has been moved by this and I can't wait to see what happens next.

Better Names

In the comment section of a blog I like to read, I found new names for McCain and Palin:

"Walnuts" and "Bible Spice"

Ha!

Good Smell Day

Apparently, polyps have a place to hide, and it's up my nose. I have tried to expel them with drugs and nettie pots, but they thwart any attempt I make with their 6 fierce teeth and bug eyes (shown above). Before I knew they had moved in, I thought I was just stuffy from the weather and tried to blow them out. Ouch.

The thing about having polyps growing in my nose is that they keep me from smelling and tasting very much. It's had more of an effect on my life than I thought it would and it's not a good effect. Since they are so damn stubborn and won't move out, the days on which I can smell and taste are few and far between.

On the occasions that I regain those two elusive senses, I can usually be found running around my house, making sure there are no funky smells. Today, for about 10 minutes, I could smell and taste and that's a banner day for me. I was out and about and I caught whiffs of perfume, fall and cars. Even though I don't much like perfumes or the smells cars make, I was happy to finally smell fall. Yum.

Unfortunately, it's time for surgery, which basically amounts to, disgustingly enough, a D&C in your nostrils. Gross, but then again most surgery is. Unfortunately, I have no insurance, so it will have to wait.

I'm hoping to have them removed in time for the wedding so I can taste the catering and smell my new husband who wears bay rum and Jymn's Special Sauce.

Scenes from a Reception

Goat and I are going to have our reception at a science center. Recently, we stopped in to take a few pictures so we could get an idea of where we would set up the tables and the food and where the hell everyone is going to dance. Here are a few, but not so many as to spoil it for the people who are coming.




This is near the entrance. Upon arrival our guests will have access to a bar, a band and, as is so typical at wedding receptions, a T-Rex statue.




One of the reasons I love Goat so much is because whenever I turn my back on him for second, he finds something to play in, with, on or around. Classic only child behavior that has followed him into his adulthood. We tried to get some photos of Goat in the enormous tortoise shell and me sitting on top for our save the date cards, but they ended up looking like rather awkward. Oh well.

All the displays will be on and running during the reception, so people will be able to learn as they celebrate our love. It will be really fun! And nerdy.

Fan Club

I have a new fan club. It consists of an older Asian couple who live around the corner. I first saw them at my garage sale in June, they stopped by to look over my goods, not buying anything and not speaking any English. Since then, I have seen them almost every day, shuffling around the neighborhood for what seems like hours, enjoying their surroundings immensely. The husband is either pushing a walker on wheels or his wheelchair and the wife is walking with her hands clasped behind her back or pushing her husband in his chair when he tires. Very dear.

Yesterday, I had to pick a few things up at the pharmacy, so I hopped on my trusty cruiser, Marybeth, and headed down the block. As I cruised up Beaufield Street, I saw the elder Asian couple on their daily constitutional walking toward me. As I came closer, they stopped walking, and started waving and cheering me on like I was in the Tour de France. The husband gave me a creaky thumbs up, and the wife waved her little fists in the air, smiled widely and gave me a few little whoops. It made me giggle, and I waved back thinking how much I loved living in my neighborhood.

Ten minutes later, I was on my way back up Beaufield, heading home with my bicycle basket full of purchases. I saw the couple again, teetering up the street. They stopped as they saw me heading home and again, greeted me with the thumbs up, the cheering and the fist waving. I felt like Lance Armstrong. I waved back.

I don't know if it was the basket on my bike, that I was riding a bike, or just me, but they thought something was worthy of stopping their walk to cheer me on.

I have fans!