Roe v Wade

I just wanna post this here, because, honestly, I can't say what I want to say in Twitter's character limit, and I don't think that the bulk of my FB "audience" would be appreciative (scary how many uber-conservative friends I have -- they're otherwise decent people, but. Just. Scary.)

SO anyway, earlier today, my mom shared this link on FB: Lizz Winstead on Roe v Wade. She included this personal bit along with it:

The first person i ever knew who had an abortion was a 17 year old, older sister of a friend of mine. She performed it on herself, in the bathroom of her parent's home, using her mother's vacuum cleaner. She almost died. We all need to remember that the goal of the anti-choice crowd is to ensure that girls like her bleed out on the bathroom floor. Roe v. Wade did not make abortion possible-every woman with access to a vacuum cleaner or a coat hanger can perform an abortion on herself. The point of Roe v. Wade was to make it safe.

I can't really argue with any of it.

Women's physical safety and mental health are at stake. I can, in fact, kind of imagine what kind of desperation this young woman my mother knew must have felt. I managed to get pregnant just months into a brand-new relationship with a guy 11 years my senior, and, yeah, when I knew, I was pretty panicked! And I was 20, by then; I had a job, and I was pretty sure that my family would support me no matter what happened between me & the daddy, or whatever decision I made regarding the baby. As it turns out, we're still together, some 13 years later, but there are so many horrible ways that could have gone. I know just exactly how lucky I was, and am.

There is NO safe way to force your own body to abort in a bathroom... a back alley... any place other than a sterile environment with trained professionals making it happen and overseeing the process. The more restrictions we are weighed down with -- restrictions on when and how we can seek abortions, what we have to go through to get one, restrictions on contraceptives -- only make a DIY job seem more possible. And, frankly, if you're at that point, where that starts to look attractive... well, I can only imagine that you're that much closer to the suicide attempt it may well prove to be.

And now, I've procrastinated FAR too long, and must away, to the never-ending mountain of laundry and dishes.

Happy New Year's Eve!

I feel like the blogs I read are full of looking back at the past year, and looking forward to the next, and part of me wants to do that, but part of me... well, let's just say that there was a lot of crap that went down over the past year that doesn't bear looking back on -- partly because I didn't really share a lot of it with many people, and so it would require too much backstory, and I refuse to infodump on my blog, but mostly because I'm afraid if I bring it all back up again, it'll just upset me and mess up the things that are going right right now.

Which is a most awkward sentence, I'm aware.

I have a couple of things I want to write about, like VelcroBoy's social studies project (we made a wattle-and-daub roundhouse with a thatched roof and I have a TON of pictures) and Christmas presents, and things like that. And I don't really *do* New Year's resolutions -- I have a tendency to kind of overdo and then completely fail before the end of January. So let's just say we're counting a promise to the DH as one (we've got a 3-times-a-week lunch date at the gym for the ellipticals, God help me...) and I really want to make more of an effort to have people over for dinner every once in a while. We had our neighbor and her 18-month old son over the Friday before Christmas for pizza night. I gave kidlet a box of jingle bells to play with and he spent the better part of the evening hanging them off the ears of this cat statue I have, while singing "Jingie bews, jingie bews!" to himself. We cracked up, and I have pictures of the statue on my phone. And later this week, we're having a guy from DH's old unit & his wife & 2YO son over. They're getting the boys' Thomas the Tank Engine stuff that I finally talked DinoBoy & VelcroBoy into getting rid of. I may keep a piece or two around just for old-time's sake, and I like to have a few things around for when we have guests with kids littler than my own, but we don't have space for a LOT of stuff like that, so the trains get to find a new home.

Also, I have some bloggy-ness percolating in my brain on two topics -- both of them are sort-of book reviews, but one is also, and more largely, on the general topic of teacher/student relationships, and all the ways they can go wrong. I'm pretty passionate about this one, since my mom is a professor, and there are plenty of pitfalls in that type of relationship, but there are (surprisingly enough, or not-so-surprisingly, depending on how much attention you pay to little details) other issues that get completely overlooked. Like, for instance, relative ages of the two parties involved. The other one is just mostly about little details that really make a story *work* or not -- even when they're mostly peripheral details (for example, describing a house as "modest" and "average" but then filling the living room with enough furniture for three or four normal living rooms -- or a good-sized furniture showroom -- can really mess with an "average" reader's head. Just sayin'.)

Also, I have NO IDEA when my Christmas stuff is going to get packed away. I need to get one more storage container this year, and before I do anything else I want to work on the boys' bedroom (which will probably require *several* new storage containers) and honestly, I would *LOVE* to keep my houses out year-round. I just don't think that the hearth is the best place for that. Maybe I'll keep the Victorian house out; it's not all snowy or Dickensian, and kind of looks like it was made for year-round admiration. I'll have to do some furniture juggling and/or get a console table for my record player. Oh, and after 2 years, I'm finally going to break down and see about getting my dishwasher either fixed or replaced. Either one works for me, I'm not really all in to "features" or whatever. I'm just a little overwhelmed by the volume of dishes that generally need washing, and I want to wash my pretties but can't because day-to-day dishes take up so much room in my sink and on my counter.

And I love my Mommy and my Daddy. They are the absolute BEST. *blows kisses in their direction*

Thank GOD the election crap is almost over....

I will be voting for Obama. Mostly because the alternatives are WORSE, but there it is. I'd prefer it if there were an even remotely viable third-party candidate, but there isn't (that I know of). And when I vote, I'm going to err on the side of compassion, love, and your basic Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

Some stuff has happened under Obama that I'm not too thrilled about (but I'm not naive enough to believe that he's solely responsible for any of them). People make bad judgement calls every day. It's just that most of them aren't at the head of a government.

But the biggest reasons why I'm voting for Obama actually have MORE to do with Mitt Romney:

Dear (or rather, Not So Dear) Sir,

I am a woman. I am educated enough to know many many things that you seem determined to deny. Among these are the capability for self-determination, self-examination, and the ability to make decisions based on something other than hormone levels and blood flow south. I can decide for myself whether contraceptives are right for me, whether or not I believe personhood begins at conception, whether or not abortion is the right choice for me. I do not need you to tell me what I believe because, newsflash, I don't buy into your personal religion.

I am educated enough to look at reams -- REAMS -- of written words explaining, even in very very small words you might possibly understand, that being anywhere on the Rainbow spectrum is not, in fact, a matter of choice. Nor does it, surprisingly, make one different from a straight person, in the essentials of personhood. In fact, I personally fall somewhere on that arc. No, I'm not telling you where; you'd either be actually offended, or you'd pretend to be offended while secretly getting off on the idea of two college-age girls getting off together (alternatively, you'd be as squicked out as a pre-teenaged boy, which pretty much means either you're a pre-teenaged boy, or you might be hiding somewhere under the Rainbow yourself. I prefer not to speculate -- because, honestly, the thought of you anywhere near sex squicks ME out).

Republican obstructionist policies in DC a couple of years back made headlines when they messed with the federal budget. Democrats were trying to compromise. Republicans refused. Republicans were responsible for many many government employees -- including my husband, and the husbands of many women I've come to see as friends (or at least friendly acquaintances) -- worrying about their paychecks. Really, dude, it's not smart to mess with the people who know where the big guns *AND* their bullets are kept. Additionally, I think it's rankest, grossest hypocrisy to claim to support the military while actually attempting to not only cut their budget, but also expressing a desire to completely cut certain social assistance programs that are inordinately relied on by military families. That's right, far too many of those "lazy bums" on food stamps/WIC assistance are lower enlisted soldiers and their families, because they are paid LESS than a living wage, but are required to work too many hours to be able to take on second jobs to help make ends meet. And childcare is so prohibitively expensive that for many families, it's actually TOO COSTLY for Mom to work, so she's being forced to be a stay-at-home mom, even if she feels like her family would be better served by her going to work.

And then there's Medicare/Medicaid: how many of our veterans rely on this for healthcare? I know my grandfather does. Your so-called "voucher" program, how exactly is that going to work? Is my grandfather going to have sufficient vouchers to cover his current care? Is he going to have enough over to cover any major medical incidents that might happen unexpectedly beyond that? Or is my family going to be stuck trying to come up with extra money where none exists to get him care if he has another stroke, or gets pneumonia?

If my husband is, God forbid, killed while still in the military, will you see to it that our children and myself get his life insurance? Or will you have found a way around that, too? Will we be eligible for medical care, or will I have to scramble to try to find a job that might possibly offer that at something less than half my take-home pay?

Regarding your views on "bringing God back into the White House," you do realize that there are a LOT of people in the US who are not, in fact Mormons, right? There are, in fact, a lot of people in the US who aren't even Christians. Many of us were raised Christian, but for whatever reason have felt the Church has failed us, and we no longer feel affiliated with it. To those of us who believe in the separation of Church and State, that statement is a huge slap in the face; a message telling us that we better at least start paying lip service to your God or we're liable to be in trouble...

Anyway, Mr. Romney, my point is, YOU SCARE ME.

No love,
Me

thinking too hard again.

In the wake of the devastation Hurricane Sandy left in NYC (where I still have some friends I have not heard from yet) and its continuing effects further inland, and with the ongoing political battle still raging with only a few days left till the election, I've been thinking a lot about the nature of society, and the mostly unspoken contracts implied by being a part of that.

When humans, or, indeed, any creatures, join into a group, it is with the understand -- an unwritten social contract -- that the purpose of the group is to protect the weak and the young, and to fill gaps. You wouldn't want a group that was made up solely of food providers and no members capable of watching for and protecting from predators as that would leave the group wholly at the mercy of any stronger group passing by. So that social contract comes into play: You protect me, and I'll feed you.

As the animals involved get more sophisticated, or the groups get larger, so does the social contract: there are more people to do things, and more things that need doing, so jobs get more complex and specialized. A larger, more sophisticated group has different needs from a smaller group. You'll have part of the group taking care of the domesticated animals, some growing crops, hunting and fishing, taking care of children, making sure there is shelter or water, or...the list could go on. But that basic social contract is there -- everyone has a role, a task, a skill or trade they can provide, and in exchange, others in the group provide for other needs.

As our society has grown even larger and more complex, we've developed less of a need for everyone to be involved in something practical and materially rewarding, and have moved to a model where some people are able to create things purely to give pleasure to others -- music, art, dance -- or to provide a more abstract service -- education, for example. This makes a basic barter system more difficult -- I can't offer a meal to my favorite author in exchange for a book, or offer to clothe my children's teachers in exchange for a year's education. So we created money as a way to sort of keep track of "favors" owed or collected upon. And then we agreed to all give a portion of our own earnings to a specific group of citizens to be disbursed to people whose jobs benefit the entire group as a whole, rather than on an individual level -- taxes which are used to pay teachers, police, firefighters, etc. Additionally, some of that money goes to assist those who are unable to work, for whatever reason, or who have incomes insufficient to provide for their families. Yes, there are people who take advantage of these systems, but overwhelmingly, the people benefiting from social welfare programs like food stamps, WIC, Medicaid & other public assistance are people without other options. They are elderly on strict pensions that would have been enough the decade or more ago when they retired, but rising costs of living and extended life spans have made that money not stretch as far as it might have. They are people who do necessary unpleasant jobs for others, but are not paid enough to keep up with (again) the rising cost of living. They are young families having to choose between food or shelter or childcare; single parents coping with the loss of an income and/or a spouse...they are people who, not that long ago, would have been cared for by a larger family-group that is currently unable or unwilling to do so.

If you look at money as a representation of favors collected, it is easy to see where some people are breaking the "You help me and I'll help you" bedrock of society. It is one thing to set aside favors against a day of need. It is another entirely to hoard those favors with no intention of ever repaying them. To refuse to contribute to society through taxes, to plan to eliminate public assistance, to suggest that citizens do not need protection or education -- those are in direct contradiction to the very idea of living in a society that allows for an external, non-barter system of favors. If each of your dollars were a product -- food, stone, wood, animal, cloth -- what would you DO with it? Would you keep it until it rotted, just so you would not have to trade it to your neighbor? And then to do that in the name of "Christianity" -- when Christ was a proponent of helping the less fortunate, of sharing what you have with those who might need the part that you cannot use -- that is the rankest of hypocrisy.

And to support someone who wishes to remove those public assistants that you yourself have made use of in the past? I can only hope that either your candidate does not win, or that if he does, you never need to make use of those services.

True Confessions of a SAHM: I'm not an Idiot!

I had an amazingly nice phone conversation today, with the doctor I took VelcroBoy to for a diagnosis (aside: he has ADD -- no hyperactivity to contend with, just attention deficit. Which almost makes it sound like a bank account; as if it were possible to simply deposit more attention...) Anyway.

Usually, when I take one of the kids to the clinic for whatever... when I would take my hubby to his appointments after his surgery last fall... pretty much anytime, ever, I have to spend time with a professional person, whether it's as a customer/client/patient or simply as a person, it seems like the moment they find out I'm a SAHM, they assume my brain was disengaged at infancy and I'm less capable of understanding complex ideas like what they *do* all day than a five-year-old.

The worst offenders? Moms and men over 50.

I can understand the men. I mean, there are still societal conventions in place urging men to treat women like Delicate Flowers who need special, kid-glove, cotton-wrapped handling. And men of A Certain Age were pretty much drowned in that mentality from a young age, so they're at a disadvantage. Many of them still have difficulty coping with the idea that women are, in fact, capable of deep, rational thought. They don't exactly get a pass on this one, but I'm less likely to let my prickles out.

The women, on the other hand? No.

Just.

No.

Y'know what? Maybe I don't have a degree. Maybe I don't have a whole STRING of letters after my name, or a fancy engraved nameplate on the door of my office. Hell, my "office" is the most comfortable chair in my living room, plus a storage ottoman and a kitty condo (don't judge. It's a convenient height for my tea). The thing is, the lack of those superficial outward signs of privilege (yes, even if you were a scholarship student, you were privileged enough to receive that scholarship, weren't you?) don't mean a thing. I don't have a degree, officially, but that doesn't mean I don't possess the knowledge. I grew up in a lab while my mother was doing the research for her dissertation -- my mom the PhD. I pretty much didn't bother in most of my science classes throughout school because I already knew the material. Mom's a bit of a bookworm (the attic and the living room are crammed full, and that doesn't count the foot-high currently-reading stack by her bed, her home office, her work office, or the overflow in the basement) so even through two years of being a college student myself there were very few books I was reading for the first time -- or even had to actually purchase -- for any of my literature classes. I remember reading medical journals for no particular reason in my teens (ok, they helped me fall asleep. What? Is truth!)

So, yeah. I may not have quite as many years of official training for some career or another, but that does not actually mean I don't understand what's going on when you talk to me.

Ironically, many of these people would give me a pass if I were homeschooling my kids for religious reasons -- I know a few families who do this, and, frankly, I know the way they spell. Their kids are going to be in TROUBLE. Not to mention narrow-minded, but that's a whole 'nother argument. Oh, or if I were a very obviously hippie-dippie Earth Mother type, or otherwise "artistic." Or if I had a job, but lost it, and decided that, given the way the economy is, SAHM-ing was a more graceful acceptance of defeat in the job market, thus choosing to leave the Real Jobs So The Men Can Have Them, There's A Good Girl. (Which, just... GRRRRRR.)

Anyway, I was impressed, because the particular doctor I spoke to today chose not to speak down to me. She spoke to me as if she expected me to be perfectly capable of understanding her if she used multi-syllabic words. She expected me to be capable of asking questions if I didn't understand something she said. She was, quite frankly, amazing! And you don't find amazing like that all that often in the military health-care system.

Food for Thought

I know there are a lot of jokes about Chinese food, but the truth is, I kind of love the fortune cookie part of going out for Chinese. The Horde and I went out to the local buffet at the request of DinoBoy (his party was today, although his actual birthday is Monday). The Girl-child and I got some pretty basic pabulum, nothing special, but the boys both got "Food for thought" fortunes. I love those -- some random bit of truth that forces you to think about yourself and the people around you. You especially get that effect when there's a smallish child self-aware enough to ask, "What does that even MEAN?" and you have to try to explain this concept of philosophy or ethics or culture or whatever to them.

DinoBoy's fortune read "We judge others by actions; we judge ourselves by intentions." I really really love this one. It's a concept I sometimes struggle to get across to others -- my kids or my DH -- that when someone is hurting because of your words, or because your words don't match your actions, or simply don't SEEM to to this person outside of you, it really doesn't matter what you THINK or FEEL or think you're putting out there. Intentions are well and good, but we are the only ones who can really know our own intentions. I might *think* I understand my husband's, but I can't really know for sure; all I can do is judge to the best of my ability.

That's a hard concept to teach a kid: the idea that sometimes, you can say or do something intending it as a kindness, but that it doesn't always appear that way to the person you're trying to help. What to you may seem a simple offer of help or support may rub the wrong way or play on fears you don't know about and come across to the other person as a judgment on them, or an attempt on your part to show them up and make them feel inferior.

It's easy to assume that because WE know what we intend, that others will, as well. It's much harder to remember that they're not seeing those intentions; and that everyone filters other people's words and actions through a lens built on their own experiences and insecurities.

VelcroBoy's fortune was "The best way to succeed in life is to act on the advice you give to others." I like that. It's fairly simple and straightforward. If you tell someone X is the way to get to what you want, and you're not doing X, then why should they listen to you? And if X is the path then why are you not on it yourself? Although I think it's more simple than that, even. It's the antithesis of the old saw, "Do as I say, not as I do." That one's a particular trap for parents, I've found; one I'm trying not to fall into. There's a part of me that wants to avoid chores on weekends, while telling the kids to do theirs, and I recognize that that's a form of hypocrisy. Of course, at the same time, if I'm doing my chores, I can't make sure they do theirs. And goodness knows when they're at school I have a hard time following my stated household rule of "Do the things that NEED to be done before doing the things we WANT to do." Especially when there are new books to read.

And on that note...I have books to read! Catch you later!

The Thing About Gun Control...

...at least in regards to it being a political "issue," is that it's, ultimately, ridiculous. I mean, you can make arguments about how guns are designed to kill people, or about how having them is a part of your Constitutionally Protected Rights and Freedoms, or whatever, but really, what it comes down to is this: Some people are not mentally or emotionally equipped to have access to explosives. And, no, those people shouldn't be ABLE to get them.

The thing is, there are two types of gun deaths -- accidents and not accidents. Accidents are horrible and tragic, yes, but in many cases tighter gun control would not necessarily have prevented them. I am most affected by the story I read many years ago in a now-defunct women's magazine about a woman who, along with her husband, bought a handgun after a rash of home break-ins in their neighborhood. They left it, loaded, on an accessible shelf in their closet, and completely forgot its existence until, one day, their two year old daughter found it and accidentally killed herself. This was the reason this woman was shilling for tighter gun control laws -- she was stupid and irresponsible, and someone died who shouldn't have. Stupidity is NOT the government's fault, people! (Ok, well, some of it is. But not that. If you're not smart enough to figure out how to safely handle and store a handgun, you're right, you don't deserve to have one. But how is anyone supposed to test your ability to follow basic common-sense measures, or, indeed, any sort of gun/hunter's safety?)

In the non-accident category, you have your basic "Dude who has completely flipped and lost his shit" shooting sprees and you have "Dude who has no moral compass and doesn't care who he hurts" killing sprees. Some of the weapons used in these were obtained legally. Some were not. The only way to tell if someone's going to snap and turn into a killing ball of rage is MAYBE a psychological examination. But maybe not. And truthfully, anyone who's THAT determined to hurt people? Well, making it harder for him (or her) to legally purchase guns may help a little. But truthfully? Probably not much. He can go for illegal weapons. Or use non-regulated stuff like knives. Or get online and learn how to make a bomb using common household ingredients. Or, y'know. SOMEthing. Tighter regulations might delay him a bit, but they won't stop him, whatever his motivation.

So, yeah, tighten things up. People with nothing to hide won't be deterred. Some might even welcome more common-sense regulations, like the hunter-safety courses that are required to get hunting licenses, or the periodically required driving tests we have to undergo in order to renew our driver's licenses.

But really? Don't use it as the entire basis of your decision on how to vote. Because that's just as ridiculously mindless a reason to affiliate yourself politically as is the assertion (Yes, I'm sad to admit to knowing someone who thinks this) that women shouldn't vote because they only vote for the most attractive candidate, rather than the one who's "right" on the issues (and how subjective is THAT, by the way?!).

'Cause the truth is, if I voted via wet-panties, I'd have to go Republican -- some of those guys are frigging HOT. However, their ridiculous assertions and obvious backtracking, not to mention their complete disregard for such issues as "Separation of Church and State," "Women's Health and Self-Determination," and "Human Rights" make them deplorable excuses for human beings, and the only way they'd get my vote is if the Democratic side of things started suddenly spouting the same nonsense syllables my seven-year-old claims as his "made-up language" in every appearance/interview/what have you.

Not that I don't believe that most politicians  would benefit from the same discipline my kids are subject to from time to time, but that kind of backsliding can really scare a girl!