I'm only preachin' the truth here.

 

It’s time for 'moral' Christians to take a good, long look in the mirror.

The prism of morality:

Morality. That word though. So nebulous and malleable—a favourite of American Christians, in describing what they have that non-believers simply cannot. A moral guideline. You see, according to many prominent and vocal Christians, to be an atheist is to be morally deficient. For who can be good without moral guidelines such as the bible to go from?

The first thing an Atheist will say, which is a great question, is—are the ‘moral guidelines’ of your bible the only things keeping you from being a bad person? Is it the ink on the biblical pages the only thing that stops you from raping and pillaging and murdering willy-nilly? Most atheists agree, that if that is the case, you are a morally questionable person—and you don’t get to preach to anyone about morality.

You see, Christianity, or religion as a whole, does not own morality. Furthermore, morality is, going by the bible (and sometimes other religious texts), questionable. Let’s face it, the bible and its various kin are anything but bastions of morality. The bible alone suggests that while to kill is a mortal sin that it’s okay to sacrifice your children; and throughout the holy books, murder and sacrifice are rampant. The bible will tell you that being an adulterer is forbidden, that it is acceptable for the characters of the many biblical allegories, to marry as many wives as needed, to rape indiscriminately, to marry and lie with children, or to sleep with siblings’ wives and husbands are okay. The bible is filled with morally reprehensible acts, and the foundations of these stories are supposed to be the moral guidelines that Christians live by.

God, is anything but infallible on morality. I mean, to start with, the all-knowing, all-seeing word of god is so set in stone, that he had to revise his words in the New Testament—so exactly how reliable is the dogma if that’s the case? Books riddled with contradictions, which are meant to represent the word of an infallible god? Not exactly something to live by. Unless you pick and choose whatever sounds suitable to your narrative from the book. So if morality can be picked, and chosen, it is really morality? And more so, if your moral guideline is made up of carefully selected tenets, is it really a reliable guideline?

What does this all mean for the countless civilizations that existed without Christianity? And who somehow muddled through the centuries surviving, living wholesome lives, coexisting in communities with other people, raising children, building towns and cities, and doing so utterly bankrupt of Christian morality? Does the existence of Christianity negate all this history? Did morality not exist before Christ was ostensibly born and spent his short, hippie life preaching love and peace? Life did not begin when Christianity was born, and it will not end when Christianity does.

Morality has some very basic aspects that pretty much every civilization understands—with or without the imposition of some kind of overarching religious dogma to reinforce it. Pretty much anyone in the world is born with empathy. Pretty much everyone in the world, regardless of religion, knows to murder is wrong. Pretty much everyone in the world enters it with a desire to be thoughtful and kind to others. It is the programming of the immediate environment that fine-tunes how a child will grow up. And the society in which you are raised will determine, ultimately, who you are going to be. Children have shown, again and again, that acceptance and kindness is just part of their natural spirit. It is often the families themselves that teach that child whether to be accepting or not to; it is the family themselves that teach a child that it’s okay to hate. And it is the how those families choose to act and believe that will shape their prejudices. Whatever society and religious background you end up in, you may likely reflect whatever those norms are. Morality, at least the very foundation of morality; is inherent. Whatever else is placed upon you by your upbringing. And what one people think is moral, might be repugnant to another. Morality is mostly relative.

An extremist always believes he or she is the pinnacle of morality. Those ISIS guys, they’re not going around telling themselves that what they are doing is amoral. They believe that they are representing the purest of moralities when they murder and destroy. When Christian extremists attack or protest, they believe they are the defenders of moral behaviour, and they are showing the rest of the world that this is how one should be.

Most atheists are humanists. If you don’t know what a humanist is, let me define it for you (per google): Humanism is a philosophical and ethical stance that emphasizes the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively, and generally prefers critical thinking and evidence (rationalism and empiricism) over acceptance of dogma or superstition.

Most human beings of their own agency, are moral. Most human beings don’t kill one another. They don’t harm, they don’t steal. Most human beings of their own agency are kind. They share. They heal. They provide. They soothe. They show empathy. There are infinite numbers of people who are these things without once ever being told to by a religious doctrine.

Atheists are in no way different. In fact, Atheists are often willfully empathetic, and kind, and accepting because that is the way they choose to be. Choosing not to take part in a collective delusion does not in any way affect how they are as moral beings. In fact, they are less likely to be amoral, because they do not have any overarching guideline that tells them they should be. They don’t have views that make them ‘moral extremists’, as let’s say, ISIS, or the Evangelical Christians, or the KKK.  Westboro Baptist Church and its mentally deranged acolytes truly believe they are morally superior when they protest a veteran’s funeral with hateful signs and threats of fire and brimstone. Atheism does not seek to impugn anyone for not sharing their version of morality. Atheism does not threaten hell or damnation for those who don’t align their beliefs with theirs.

The moral high ground: Who’s got it?

Well, sad to say, it isn’t Christians. Especially these days. Historically, Christianity has shown itself to be anything but moral. From the serial, almost systemic abuse of children in the churches, to the consistent oppression and belittling of the women in its ranks, Christianity seems to be better suited to demonstrate amorality than anything else.

Presently, Christianity has become almost willfully and malevolently amoral. As it has attached itself to the right-wing political movement, Christianity has twisted into something even more despicable and horrible than it ever was. Promoting and supporting self-centric behaviour, supporting the idea that every person should have the right to be police, judge, jury and executioner in their promotion of firearm ownership, in the endorsement of things like the death penalty, in the cutting of resources for the poor, the old, the infirm and the ill. And it doesn’t stop there. Christians overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump, and various congressmen and women who have made some terrible moral choice, and continue to stand by them. Trump’s offenses are almost too many to count. Offenses, that if imposed by any other person centered on the political spectrum, would have been tarred and feathered for. Roy Moore, a man who serially abused teenaged girls, received an outpouring of support from the Christians in the nation—and he too stood for the idea of Christian morality, while trying to excuse away his molestation of children. Yet these people, like Kim Davis, are morally corrupt by every definition, even by the ill-defined tenets of the bible, still have the stones to stand up and preach morality to people in books and speeches, as if they are somehow ordained to do so, in spite of being some of the most morally questionable people on earth.

Christians are besieged by their own hypocrisy. And that is a problem. Hypocrites don’t get to dictate how other people should behave if they themselves cannot abide by their moral beliefs. It has become almost painfully evident just how hypocritical Christianity is, since it became synonymous with politics. Christianity’s stance on abortion would probably be more impactful if the larger part of women seeking abortions weren’t Christian, or if the churches would do more to fight on behalf of the millions of unwanted, unsupported children in the world. Christianity’s rigid views on homosexuality would probably have more footing if pastors and priests weren’t consistently hiding homosexual activities. Christians would be better respected, if they took a hard stance on the pederasty that is endemic in the churches, and didn’t fight so hard to hide the problem rather than confront and stop it. Christian women would probably be taken more seriously, if they didn’t stand for their own subjugation and oppression. Christians would benefit from re-examining its condemnation of adultery when adultery and divorce were not part and parcel of the Christian community. Christian charity would be more valued if it didn’t always come with a side of indoctrination. Kindness should not come with conditions.

Many Christians will argue that no Christian is perfect, and that is part of their spiritual journey. But the response to that is simple: We don’t expect perfection. What we do expect is that a person who claims moral superiority as a Christian, to actually BE a Christian as they claim. To abide by those moral guidelines they set for themselves, and cherry-picked from the bible, and to stop twisting their moral guide to suit whatever madness they choose to pursue.

So who has the moral high ground? What we do know, it’s not Christianity. It’s not Islam. It’s not Judaism. All belief systems are morally questionable. Atheism, as it is not a belief system, simply makes conclusions on what’s there. Atheists seek only to trust their own agency in what is good and what is bad. And atheists seem to be doing a good job of it. Does that mean atheists have the moral high ground? Who knows? What I do know is that atheism has no ulterior motives. The only thing most atheists want is to have a reasonable, rational world where what’s best for humanity is taken into consideration first—where the quality of life takes precedence over some idealized idea of the afterlife. Where we take care of other human beings and always seek progress as a species so that we can achieve greater things. Atheism does not want to hinder progress, to stifle man’s potential, to cure, to build, to forge paths into the future, to educate, to enlighten, and to learn. Religion has, historically, always stood in the way of these things, for whatever reason.

Atheists are reviled for one reason alone: theists are filled with doubt. The only thing that reinforces their beliefs is to be surrounded by others who support that belief. Atheists stand to dismantle that comfortable delusion with pragmatism, and that is dangerous and threatening to a theist. It fills them with fear because it would force them to understand the world in a completely different way. That is why atheists are accused of being amoral. Because there is nothing scarier than someone who punches through the overarching dogma to see the world for face value, and not for the fantasy created by religion, and who functions with kindness, empathy, and acceptance without being told they must or how to.

Religion is not morality. It’s narcissism.

How self-centered does a person have to be to believe that god is watching over them and not others? The other day, I was in a discussion with a woman who told me with no small amount of gushing alacrity, that Jesus was with her. Through her trials and tribulations, through a crisis with her son, that took her to California and back, “Jesus was with me. All the way,” she effused with her hands clasped. “He was with me in the car driving down to California. He changed the radio stations as I went along, in a way to inspire me,” she declared (never mind that she might be shifting from one broadcast signal area to another… c’mon). I sat there, watching her rapturous exclamations, and thought to myself: What about those Christians that were made to kneel on the edge of a large pit by extremist Muslims, shot in the head and buried in it? Or the children being murdered and raped and dying of disease all over the world? What about them? Jesus cared about what radio station you listen to, but who the hell cares about the innocents being slaughtered? Would god only look after certain Christians? Different denominations? Or is the the Mormons who have it right? Which one? Yours, naturally.

It is an exercise in narcissism to be religious. To believe that a god loves you more. Who cares about where you left your car keys, but who lets entire cities be destroyed. Prayer is just a way of turning any issue into something about you. And religion lets you believe that all of this is a moral way to behave. To be so selfish. To be so absorbed in yourself and your journey to the afterlife living in the clouds playing softball with the apostles.

Selfishness is not moral. Even in its act of kindness, there’s self-serving motives when it comes to a church. As I said before, religious charity comes with indoctrination. In the end, religious people don’t have the monopoly on morality. Maybe they do on self-absorption and indignant righteousness, and on pointing fingers and attacking and threatening people who don’t align with their beliefs. But they sure as hell don’t own morality by any means.

So my suggestion to all Christians, before you start condemning others for amoral behaviour and attacking people for not sharing your beliefs; look in the mirror before you open your mouths. Look at what's scowling back at you. And learn to accept that it's ugly, or learn to be your own agent of morality, and rise above your dogma to be a better person.

I can't believe I'd spend two hours doing this, but I did.

The Pacific Northwest: What To Do In The Event Of Snow

It begins with the coverage. Sponsored by Les Schwab.

Step 1:  The initial expected reaction, after hearing the news coverage, is to do exactly as follows: Begin by running around madly with your arms flailing.  As such:

Appropriate stages of emotional reactions expected during a PNW snow event
proportionate to actual snowfall amounts.

Be aware, however, that you should also be shrieking in horror. That is important to the process of surviving this storm.

2. Proceed directly to your nearest Les Schwab tire dealership, or any tire seller that has studded tires. Purchase four new studded tires for this single storm-event. Have them installed immediately onto your vehicle. Drive as if normal weather conditions in them, and proceed to still have an accident. And then proceed to destroy the roads with said tires until April.

The 'TaxPits' - $869 please. $$Ka-ching$$

3. From the tire dealership, proceed to your nearest grocery store, and buy enough food to carry you through the equivalent of the fallout period of a level 7 nuclear event (and don't forget the wine).

"I'm gonna starve to death."

Well, I guess that SwagRiffic Vino, from the vineyards of Delaware will have to do.

4. Proceed home, navigating as best you can around the other panicked drivers at regular speed. Be sure to gun your engine to avoid sliding, and stand on your brakes to stop. You should also continue trying to steer the vehicle when you are in a free slide.  Your car should have at least half of its value lost in damages, or be totaled in order to properly fulfill the requirements of proper weather-event preparation.

5. If you reach home alive, and hopefully without having killed anyone else in your blind panic, proceed to the television and turn it on to hear the weather coverage. Then proceed to the darkest corner of your home, and form the fetal position, while being bathed in the sound of news anchors spelling out in no certain terms, the end of humankind as we know it.

Advice is, keep your advice.

The subject of my latest diatribe is advice. More specifically, unsolicited advice. It is something I am sometimes guilty of; offering unsolicited advice. But I must say in my defense, I offer it with a sense of necessity, not out of some misplaced, smug, superior state of mind. And we ALL have that friend or other, that family member that sits in passive-aggressive judgment of you at any given chance, spewing out sanctimonious words that are completely useless and utterly irritating.

My advice usually comes when one of my friends brings some crisis or other to me. Often, it is a personal issue, of something common to my experience. When it is about surviving depression, about family dysfunction, responsibility, relationships, abuse; when it is coming from someone I truly care about, I often find myself offering fixes rather than just listening.  Being a chronic advice-giver can sometimes mean you are a shittier listener than you think you are. Again, when you have traveled that same road many times, and have met that oncoming semi truck, face-on, and have the scars to prove it, and you see a loved one running towards that same place; hell-bent on the idea that they will somehow have a different outcome, and think they know better… well, to be expected to just sit there and merely mirror their feelings and nod while they careen towards disaster, into the path of that forsaken truck; it's a lot to ask. It is a symptom of love in this case. All you want to do is protect that person from your fate. But in truth, advice is moot, because if they’re going to do something stupid, there really isn’t much of a chance to stop someone from doing it. I have to learn this. I really do have to learn this.

Then, you have the people who just always have something to say about everything. It doesn’t matter. Diet, child-rearing, hobbies, you name it. And not when their input is asked for, but whenever you bring up anything remotely connected to their favourite subjects. Any opportunity to pontificate and hear themselves talk. Whenever you open the door for them to opine, to share their invaluable wisdom, and show the ignorant world the depth of their brilliance.

The parenting experts

"Now boys, we already talked about spying on our neighbour Mrs. Murdock
when she's in her bathroom..."

Type A: The expert in the obvious

I challenge you to go on Facebook, and for the heck of it, just post an update describing anything your child is doing.  Invariably, someone will pop up with the ‘Oh, you think that’s bad… Wait until this and wait until that…’ as if you’ve just stepped out from under a rock just before your child was born and have never experienced anything to do with these tiny humans before. The tone is often: ‘good luck handling that, friend, you can in no way anticipate normal things!’ No post is left un-interpreted as some sort of cry for their infinite fount of experience in the mundane. My response is: Shut The Hell Up. Really. If I am unsure of anything, I will ask. Describing a basic thing does not automatically signify a need for you to profess the flipping obvious.

Type B: The unqualified advice giver.

I have an in-law that gives advice and makes really badly veiled criticisms of how we interact with our child. This in-law is also an alcoholic and has a child that doesn’t speak to him, and another that has also become a drunk and who has shown to have seriously questionable ethics. Listening to him spout his parental wisdom is a joke. To the parent who has little to no relationship with their children and never sees them at all, and hasn’t for years. Please don’t roll your eyes at my choices. I plan to be there for my kid and invest in him. The opposite of you. How much I hold him, coddle him, say yes or no to him is really none of your concern. Why not look more closely at your failures and stop worrying so much about what you think are mine.

Type C: The parent of an asshole.

Let us be realists here. Some kids are assholes. By no fault of their own, granted, but everyone knows one of these little kids. The one you are pretty confident will be enjoying a bright future of bar fights, date rape, criminal behavior, and all around uselessness to society—possibly in thirty years, still living in their parents’ basement sucking on a bong.  You know why these kids are dicks. Because their parents are ineffectual as disciplinarians and at providing guidance. These failed parents come in all forms, helicopter parents, detached 'let them be free' parents, 'I.wanna be your bestest friend parents'. You may not see the complete devastation your bad parenting has wreaked upon your child’s future, and you may be blind to the fact that nobody likes your kids because they’re just plain assholes.  But your kids are obnoxious, spoiled, nasty, loud asshole terrors. Nobody wants child rearing advice from you. We have all seen the products of those wise efforts. No thanks.

Experts in anything diet-related (a.k.a; the ‘annoying upstart who’s surfed on the internet for a few hours or stayed up late watching infomercials and thinks they’re an expert’ expert)

I have raged on this subject before, but man, it still rankles me. When Dan and I were really full throttle on Weight Watchers, we had lost over 110 pounds between the two of us. Changing our eating habits worked. Now that I'm breastfeeding, all bets are off, I'm eating like a pig and gaining weight back. It's not any other reason other than that. I'm not using good eating habits and I am paying the price. It is my own lack of discipline that is the problem. It isn’t my glands, or gluten, or paleolithic genes. It isn’t a lack of any miracle weight loss supplements or because I’m not drinking enough green tea. It isn’t any other reason except that I eat a lot. Period. It’s MY fault that I’m fat. It is my food addiction. It isn’t easy to overcome, but as the past two years proved, with self-regulation, it can be achieved.  It took me a long time to take responsibility for my own weight problems, and stop finding random justifications for the volume of noms I shove into my craw on a daily basis. Admitting you have a problem is the first step, right?

When we were in full swing, losing weight and shedding pounds, you’d think we would have gotten really supportive efforts from our friends and such. But boy, were we wrong!  And gawd, did the advice come rolling in from near and far, in spite of positive proof of our success. It just wasn’t enough for some folks.

“Weight watchers doesn’t work!” we were told. “There are simpler ways!” “Surely you will fail, it’s only a matter of time.” It wasn’t our resolve that would fail, it was the diet, you see, according to the ‘experts’. And yes, always, always, “There is a better way!”

Now keep in mind, this was mostly from people struggling with their own weight problems, but never getting results themselves. All manner of trend diets and miracle products were suggested. In fact, my mother just told me I should get the lap band and be done with it instead of bothering to try and fail.  We were told about all number of deprivation diets. We were told not to bother, that we were genetically predisposed to be fat. We were told that we were going to fail anyway, so why bother to begin with?  This was our support system in its full form; trying so hard to undermine us with advice that was so obviously flawed, because it wasn’t working for them.  We know what works for us. Weight Watchers worked for us. And the only reason that it’s not working is because we are not doing what we need to do to continue losing weight. It is that simple. There is no easy button. No miracle diet. The diets that work are the ones that require self-discipline and hard work. Period. So if you are overweight, and you think you know the great diet secret, you probably don’t. Sorry.

Sadly, now that I’ve gained half of the weight I’d shed back, the peanut gallery has gone quiet again. It seems some folks must be relieved because it takes the pressure off them.  I know, deep in my soul, that the only reason why I have Alex today is because I lost weight. All of my fertility problems stemmed from my weight issues. And I need to figure out how to wrangle my self-discipline again, because now that I have this beautiful child, I want to be here for him for as long as I can. I do not want to be Aunt Barbs, who fell over and died while feeding her chickens at age 52 from heart failure.  Whatever your choices are, they’re yours. But don’t hinder people with crappy advice because you can’t take responsibility for your own choices.

I have all the answers baby,
but I can barely tie my own shoes.

The sanctimonious fool

“Hi, I have absolutely no way of comparing my situation to yours, and have never lived even remotely close to your experience, but here’s what I would do in your situation…” or…

“Hi, my life is a complete mess, and has been an uninterrupted string of bad decisions from day one –OR- I have no identity, no self-esteem, no notion of self to speak of, and yet, I am pretty sure I have all the answers on everything. Let me sing you the song of my people.”

Erm… yeah. Shut it.

The advice rambler (a.k.a: ‘Oh, a chance to talk about me? Saweet!' experts)

Blahblahblahblahdeblah!

There are a couple of people on my Facebook feed that spend a good deal of time on their feed, just trembling in anticipation of a post where they can just go on and on and on and on about themselves.  One lady I know has a husband dying of cancer, and whenever she posts an update on his condition and her emotional state, another friend cannot even begin to restrain herself from posting paragraph after paragraph of comments, hijacking the whole thread, talking about her own experiences with cancer, or loss, or whatever the hell it is she is talking about in order to focus the attention on her.  It is utterly annoying.

Now as a child of someone with Borderline Personality Disorder, I confess, I too have some narcissistic tendencies. I will sometimes do those kinds of replies, but occasionally, I will type out my experiences on a comment and realize that I need to just STFU and move on. At least I have the capacity to limit my ‘all about me’ tendencies, but good god, I can spot people like my mom from a mile away. Here’s an example:

Status update: OMG! I just fell in the snow and twisted my ankle, it’s so swollen right now.

Comment from Narcissist windbag with advice hidden somewhere in there: Once, I was summiting Mount Hood, I was by myself, because two of my climbing companions had to duck out because they were concerned about severe weather, but I wasn’t daunted by the blizzard conditions and I decided I could handle it alone, which I knew I could, because I did it two winters before, and found a cozy little chasm in which to set up my winter gear, and listened to Liszt on my iPod, made Bergamot tea with my little camp stove, and sipped that while reading War and Peace while the storm raged on outside. But I digress, here I was, alone on Mount Hood, snow whipping around me. I was making record time, even without the crampons, the ones my abusive ex-boyfriend gave me just before he tried to beat me one last time, and I knocked him out with a vegetable juicer and had him arrested… and the cop that came for him totally hit on me…aaaanyway, I was at about 10,000 feet when some ice shifted and my boot slipped and bam… I twisted my ankle so hard I saw the back of my heel.  It started swelling up so big, it started straining up against the lacing like a piece trussed pork, so I hopped down the mountain to Timberline lodge, and had a cocoa while this super-smokin’ ski-instructor from Italy named Giorgio pressed an icepack on it. The swelling went down super fast under the ice. So I’d try ice.

Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Seriously.

::calms herself::

Pregnancy… Glow Schmow

This sort of thing is what makes
pregnancy tolerable. Teeny tiny socks
for teeny tiny feets.

My mother once told me that there is a biological mechanism that enables women to almost forget the time leading up to a birth because if women really and vividly remembered what they felt before their baby was born, they would have no more children.  I took what she said in stride, instead thinking it was just that she never really wanted us to begin with that motivated her to tell me that.  Instead, I listened to the women who I now wish to punch in the face; every one of them, personally… The women who said this sort of stuff to me:

“Oh, pregnancy was such a blessed time for me, it was such an amazing experience.”

“I never felt better in my life than I did when I was pregnant.”

“I didn’t even know I was pregnant until I started showing.”

Now seeing how long I’ve been trying to get pregnant, which has been more than eight years, you’d think I’d be more grateful and shut my yap… but if you know anything about me, you know that isn’t the case. I’m going to bitch incessantly about this until I’ve instilled at least one iota of humbling reality in women who are also seeking to ‘glow in the experience of pregnancy’.

For one or two women, pregnancy might indeed be a nine-month reprieve from the inconvenience of the menstrual cycle, with some mild binging on forbidden foods and a period of great hair and skin.  But for many women, pregnancy is an arduous, difficult thing, and there is NOTHING WRONG with resenting how the experience makes you feel. It is HARD. And it is something I wish men could experience, because if they did, they would respect women a LOT more… hell, we’d rule the world because they would be bowing to us in awe. 

My pregnancy has been one awful set of symptoms transitioning into another awful set of symptoms for the seven months I’ve been enjoying this state. The only thing that keeps me going and positive and laughing it all off is the knowledge that the squirmy little bugger inside me is the end result. Otherwise, I’d have probably killed at least four people by now. I’m serious. Starting with my mother, in spite of her foreshadowing wisdom I’d chalked up to her Borderline Personality Disorder.  I’ll talk more about her later—everyone probably wants a Satan update.

Anyhow, I’m sure if you’ve been reading this blog since the unexpected and downright miraculous discovery of my being pregnant after having been cut off my fertility meds in December.  When I took my pregnancy test, I just missed a couple of days’ work for being sick. At the time I thought it was something viral. I was vomiting, and I had the worst headaches. But when at work one morning after entertaining my coworkers with the sound of my violent retching, I realized there were other discomforts I hadn’t noticed. The daily morning mild migraines were constant. But I noticed my breasts were really super sore. Now my breasts, being large and annoying, are often sore even when not pregnant, it’s just the side-effect of having DDDs, I guess. But this was a special kind of sore. A ‘don’t brush my boobs on the edge of my desk’ sore. A ‘if you even look at them, hubby, I will hit you’ sore. 

Out of habit from my clomid days, I was still counting days on my calendar, tracking my cycles. Thank goodness I’d written down the last date of my cycle. It wasn’t SO late that it was alarming to me, at the time I think I was about nine days late, which wasn’t unusual when not on Clomid. I’ve always been irregular.  I resolved to watch for the next few days… usually what would happen in the past was I’d be late, I’d get my hopes up, I’d rush out and get a pregnancy test, and then the day after the negative result, my cycle would begin. I didn’t want to endure that again. I decided to wait until at least 12 days.

Meanwhile, my symptoms were increasingly telling.  I guess after years of being keenly aware of my body, looking for signs, I was really honed in on the severity of these symptoms.  I did wait three more days, got sick at work each of those days. I texted my hubby to warn him there was the possibility I would come home crestfallen and crying again, and he discouraged me from getting a pregnancy test because he didn’t want me to be disappointed.  Regardless, I was resolved. I went to Walgreens and then an errand to the bank. I couldn’t wait, so I actually took the test at the bank.

It took two of the 99% accurate tests to convince me it was POSSIBLE. It took another test at a resource center for me to text husband and to confirm that yes, I have positive pregnancy tests. It took seeing the little heartbeat of the bean for me to accept that this was indeed a real pregnancy and it was happening.  I would spend the next two months in a state of worry, knowing how high-risk this pregnancy was and how tenuous those first three months are.

The first three months were HELL.  My hormone levels were SKY HIGH. I was sick every morning. I missed so much work, I ended up having to take leave. My headaches each morning got worse and worse. And even as the nausea began to abate, the migraines got worse. Constipation, hemorrhoids, dry retching, acne, fatigue of the likes I’ve never experienced… fall asleep sitting up kind of fatigue, something I’ve never been able to do.  But this new symptom is probably the worst of all.  Now those of you who are squeamish might wish to stop reading (probably should have stopped when I talked about sore boobs).

We saw this a couple of weekends ago on our way to Pine State Biscuits.
It was that day I had my first Braxton-Hicks contraction. That was fun.
I'm sad I missed this event. Maybe I can enter when Baby-J is crowning.

The newest symptom is frickin’ AGONY. It started sometime in August and has been getting progressively worse since. I now understand why pregnant women walk the way they do. I thought it was because of the ungainly belly.  I have learned otherwise.  You see, for some women, I’m not sure how many; the pressure of having a baby’s head pressing on the pelvis creates a sharp pain that feels external… almost like the pain of a fresh burn that occurs, well, to put it delicately, in the ‘saddle’ area. In less delicate terms, I grumble about my Vajayjay a lot.  It started off as a pain that sharply appeared the moment I tried to stand from a sitting or laying down position, and would abate after a minute or two, if I didn’t lift my legs. Lifting my legs… ::shudder:::  As the weeks have worn on, the pain is pretty much constant when I’m on my feet.

Now mind you, the women who are disposed to effuse smug and unsolicited advice say things like “Walk… it’ll make you feel better.” That is 100% bull crap. Walking exacerbates the pain. Although while walking, the pain may dull down, after I sit down and get up again, the soreness is amplified by TEN. If I do a lot of walking one day, the next day is like I’m being tortured by the Spanish inquisition.  I want to slap every woman that tells me to walk.  I want to slap any woman who mentions Kegel exercises to me. Seriously? This is pain created by pressure and spreading of the PELVIS bone, it has nothing to do with your Vajayjay muscles. And honestly, the fact that the baby is sitting smack on your bladder, the kegel is getting PLENTY of straining exercise since I’m CONSTANTLY holding back the three drops of urine that feels like a deluge pressing against a dam. Shut up, you damned women! SHUT THE HELL UP! ::gargh:: 

Baby J is an active, seemingly healthy baby so far. He’s happily doing his impression of Michael Flatly and Bruce Lee inside me, and every squirm is a consolation. He’s okay. He made it through the first three months; his heartbeat is regular and steady. That is what keeps me from becoming a homicidal maniac, killing advice-giving moms.  This is what I’m going to hold onto, and I am hoping, just like that cheesy moment in ‘What to Expect When You’re Expecting’ when the long-suffering character, after nearly dying during a C-section, sighs out in relief when holding her baby and says that the past nine months were beautiful… I’m hoping that will happen.  The idea of two more months of this blinding pain in my crotch is almost unbearable.  I keep thinking Baby-J, Baby-J, Baby-J… The fatigue, I can handle, the occasional retch fest, I can handle, the softened migraine, I can live with… but this whole pain down there is absolutely dreadful. Sixty more days!

It’s a dangerous time, but not for me. It’s dangerous for women who come to me with happy faces, boasting about easy pregnancies, or giving annoying trite advice I already read on the web… It’s dangerous for them. I’m a ticking time-bomb. I may have to break my foot off in someone’s ass if they keep babbling their crap at me. ::grump::

So please, women who are actively trying to get pregnant… it may not be the blissful, golden-lit time of flowy hair and glowing skin. It may be nine months of abject humiliation, pain, discomfort, fatigue and increasing annoyance as other women feel it necessary to patronize you to death with their unwanted advice. It might be more than two months of walking like John Wayne in chaps because your crotch-area feels like someone just jammed a red-hot cattle brand onto it. It is months of going pee about nine times a night, having to get up and fight the crotch pain to shuffle to the bathroom in agony.  It is trying to be pleasant to people when you really just want to kick their face in for not having to endure this pain.

Oh, incidentally… I wanted to find somewhere where we could take pre-natal classes; newborn care and breastfeeding and such.  I found a number in Gresham and called it, it turned out it was a couple of Doulas who gave these classes. So I dialed up the number in the car with hubby listening. We were completely floored by the conversation, and laughed about it all the way home.

“Hi, I’m interested in finding some classes on newborn care and breastfeeding. Possibly pre-natal classes if need be…”

“Oh, then you’ve phoned the right person! We work with all kinds of women, preparing them for childbirth and teaching them to care for the child afterwards.”

“Cool. “

“It’s a nine week course. We work mainly with women who are hoping to have natural childbirth, but we have all sorts in the class, we don’t judge.”

“I am unapologetic about the fact that I will have an epidural if I can,” I laughingly reply. The woman hesitates and then says:

“Well, we don’t judge, but we do like to work with women who want to at least TRY to have natural childbirth…” ::eyeroll:: Way to go on not judging there, Sparky.  Good god. $35 an hour to pay for a sanctimonious granola to tell me what to do while sneering down on my epidural-using ass? No thanks.

Mean Girl

I guess with this pregnancy…I won’t lie, this pregnancy has been extremely difficult… my tolerance for stupidity and the ridiculous has been reduced to nothing.  My creativity, also, has taken a dive, and I haven’t done much of anything artistically, costumey, or bloggey.  I’ve been missing a lot of time at work, and have been working towards going on leave because I am pretty much non-functional the better part of the day. I start to find some semblance of normalcy around 2 or 3 PM in all truth, and it seems to be getting worse. For a while, I had just migraines, but now I have migraines and I’m back to retching again. Add onto that, at 22 weeks, the heartburn has escalated to the point where I feel like I’ve imbibed some battery acid for the fun of it because I have this innate desire to spend the whole night in agony.

The good side? Baby is a boy. We found out at 19 weeks. He’s an active little nugget, and has taken to doing his best Michael Flatly impression inside my womb. What I love about this is that before I could feel him, I lived in a constant state of anxiety. After so many years of not getting pregnant, so many disappointing pregnancy tests, I guess I always expect the other shoe to drop, and would chew my nails for every ultrasound, crossing my fingers that the heartbeat would be there, and the baby would be okay.  He was. Now, I can feel him ‘being okay’. When he’s Riverdancing on my spleen, I am well assured that so far, he’s doing fine.  In fact, at this moment, he’s round-housing my ovary.

So there it is. I’m still pregnant and am more than halfway through the process of growing the baby (hubby sometimes turns to me when I’m being obstinate or bratty and says: “Just grow the baby!”.  He is very excited.

Another good thing is I continue to lose weight, in spite of the growing nugget inside me. Hopefully I won’t gain a shite-load of weight with this pregnancy. I eat badly, but only in small amounts, so that’s probably the reason why I’m still dropping pounds in spite of eating crap that hasn’t crossed my threshold for decades… like Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and canned Campbell’s soup.

Other than that, my existence is mostly confined to my home. I did get out a few weeks ago to my sister’s house to go visit my horse. He looks good, and seems settled. Sister is taking very good care of him.  That’s it.

I have however, as I stated, been really short-tempered with people I usually have a lot of tolerance for.  Oh well.  I’ve been especially annoyed by people who are whiners, over sensitive, self-absorbed and know-it-alls.  I’ve gotten so much unsolicited advice from people who probably should not be giving advice. I’ve had people criticize my dietary choices, but who are completely unable to lose weight themselves yet are endowed with unending knowledge about what’s best for me; I’ve had people tell me how to raise this child, and their child is a notorious heathen.

I’ve been ignored mostly by my family with this pregnancy, only my sisters have really expressed any interest. Satan is marginally interested, mostly because 1) having a grandchild will gain her attention at the senior home, and 2) it’s a boy, which is what she wanted all along, and was quite sure to inform us girls of.  She in fact went into a litany about this when I brought her over to eat mussels a few weeks ago—she complained in none-so-many-words that I was somehow undeserving of the honour of having a male child. Yes, I wanted a girl, but this little boy is as loved and wanted as can be, and I sure as hell will never make him feel bad for being something other than a girl.  Anyway, another thing she did was to spout off to her blabbermouth friend that I had better not expect her to watch the baby all day. As if! My mother is about as nurturing as a cuckoo bird, I would rather gnaw my own arm off than leave this child in her presence for more than twenty minutes—and never alone. She was acting like this one day, and then she snapped at my sister-in-law because Jessica was excited about the new baby and apparently in my mother’s world, Jessica has no business even breathing in this baby’s general direction. God I really dislike my mother sometimes. She was so rude to Jess who was so genuinely happy.

My eldest brother and his family didn’t even say congratulations, but I suppose it’s to be expected since the only time he’s called me in the past seven years is because he accidentally pocket dialed me. The time before that, was to call to tell me that he wasn’t coming to my wedding after all, and to promise me a wedding gift that he never sent. ::shrug:: Oh well.  I got into a fight with them recently, and his wife defriended me on facebook (boohoo) and he’s been posting passive-aggressive comments on my posts. He dislikes that I’m left-leaning and really dislikes that I’m an atheist. He’s always been really condescending to me about my choices (in the four times I’ve ever had an adult conversation with him) and has always sought to ‘school’ me about my choices. He has never really been a brother to me at all, I’ve met him about as many times as I have fingers on my hands… I’m not kidding, he’s my half-brother and he is much older than I am. He’s also been pretty much absent from the family for pretty much the duration of my lifetime, and completely uninvolved with anything. He held a lot of resentment towards my father apparently for a bad childhood. I can understand him disowning my mother though. I wish I could. Yet oddly, I’m the one pretty much stuck with her.

I guess I’m just done with people who don’t really know me very well making judgment calls about me, and that includes my brother and his wife.  It also includes people who have been an annoyance to me for a long time, and who I now just don’t care if I humour them or not anymore. I was told yesterday by someone that they didn’t want to speak to me ever again; but seeing that I had to hide her Facebook feed because her posts were so irritating and sometimes gross, it really doesn’t make a difference. I apparently offended her. And if you’ve been following this blog even a short time, you know how little respect I have for easily offended people. Personally, I see people who are quickly offended as bullies. They are trying to control how other people express themselves so that they don’t have bruised feelings, and it is so wholly self-absorbed to expect everyone to walk on eggshells around them. Good god. Then they cry victim when someone lets them have it.

And the thing that started it all? This is really funny… Apparently a really sweet friend of mine posted a picture that had some joke about vegans or meat eaters or whatever. I wasn’t aware of the controversy that ensued about this image, but my friend was pretty much made to feel so shitty for posting a joke, that she felt compelled to take it down. She was pretty much bullied to take it down in a really passive-aggressive way. Of course, I didn’t know this … all I know is that my friend posted that she’d removed the post and felt terrible for offending someone. I told her she should not feel bad, and that she should not feel compelled to remove anything from her wall for the sake of some sensitive whiney brat. It wasn’t anything she could do to keep someone from taking offense at something that is ultimately and WHOLLY ridiculous. It was then that the woman who apparently raised the stink jumped all over me, calling me mean, and accusing me of glorifying my meanness. It was hilarious—but it also pissed me off because all this drama about restricted diet was at my nice friend’s expense, and that selfish woman who started it turned it into a circus for no better reason than to call more attention to herself and how special she is I guess.  I have no patience for shitty people who hide under the guise of victims while expecting the world to bend backwards to accommodate their overly sensitive nature.  I have a hard time feeling any empathy or sympathy towards people who* demand* and *expect* it from me rather than earn or deserve it. I don’t care how bad your situation is, if you live to be treated specially for your personal issues, you’re a selfish dolt.  I was sexually abused as a child... I don’t get all pissy when someone posts a pedobear joke on their wall and browbeat the poster until they take it down.  My brother is developmentally disabled, I don’t humiliate people for using the word retard… why? Because I’m pretty sure that post is NOT ABOUT ME. Obviously this woman has a hard time making that distinction because apparently *everything* is about her. Don’t post anything criticizing people with dietary restrictions or you’ll get relentless, lengthy missives in your comments until you can’t stand it anymore and you feel compelled to retract your post to make it stop.

She made an complete spectacle of herself and then blocked me. ::eyeroll:: My feelings are so hurt. I’m so offended. ::shakes head and chuckles:: That sort of defensive response to something is really telling though.  Extremely telling. It ultimately reveals that person for what they are. Insecure and self-absorbed.


Am I mean for saying this? Not in the least. I’m not mean at all. I’m truthful, harshly so sometimes. In general, I’m extremely nice and pretty freakin’ tolerant of a lot of drama and stupidity on the most part. I am also one of the most understanding people you’ll ever meet. But if you cross the line, are obnoxious to people who don’t deserve it, if you lead people astray because you think you know better, take a nebulous, generalized issue and focus it down onto one person, or who take your drama to my threshold, or the threshold of someone I care about who is too nice to defend themselves, I’m going to be honest with you and I’m going to call it as it is. It’s as simple as that. And if you cry offended over stupid shit, or take something personally because you feel guilty because there’s truth the generalization, that’s your god damned problem and I’m not going to humour you for it. It’s as simple as that.   Life is too short for that shit.  And I’m not going to expend any precious energy at this time humouring someone to spare their over-sensitive feelings. I am an expert at being polite and considerate and I am extremely diplomatic, but I am not stupid or easily manipulated… and I sure as hell won’t be browbeaten by some self-important whack-job.

::sigh:: I feel better now. It’s probably best I’m confined to my house right now on the most part because I just have no patience for this sort of crap these days. Petty, whiney, hypochondriac, classless, oversharing narcissists… no thanks. I’ll stick to people who are not so self-absorbed that they don’t think everything that’s controversial is about them, and who can take a prickly subject in stride like an adult, and laugh it off with a sense of humour and objectivity.  I’ll take the worthy souls who are worth my time, energy and caring—who don’t expect it, who don’t demand it, but who earn it with depth of character. In other words, my friends.

I’m going to go and find some chocolate now. Nom! I’ll post some ultrasound pics tomorrow.

Newsflash: 'Asshole' is not a management style.

*warning, my language is less-than-lovely in this post.

“Well, that’s just his/her /my management style”. This is something both my husband and I have heard a number of times throughout our working careers. This is a statement often offered in order to excuse what amounts to nothing more than unchecked douchebaggery. I’ve only really had *one* d-bag boss, and he wasn’t 100% d-bag, he just had d-bag moments—mostly when his wife emasculated him in front of her staff (they ran two businesses together in one location). He owned a private small business, and the guy went as far as to call me an idiot without really understanding what I was asking him, which I thought was pretty damned unprofessional. Luckily I was his only employee, and I was also free to snark back at him. My husband has had several of these cock-monkeys as bosses. My husband is also not a boastful ass-kisser, which makes him more disposed to being barked at by The Big B with an obviously little p.

I get really angry at the notion that being an unadulterated assmunch can be excused away with calling that a ‘management style’—because it’s not. It’s unadulterated assmunchery but nobody wants to call it that. For some reason, it’s accepted practice in various work environments, to protect and defend what is really nothing more than bullying. Too many times there are people promoted into management positions they are simply not suited for. They don’t have the personality to motivate and inspire their underlings, they don’t really understand the dynamics real management, of employee morale, and think that the only way to get people to do more than they should is to treat them like shit, belittle them, micromanage them, answer their questions with vagaries and expecting them to do it without any real guidance, except in the form of verbal and emotional abuse. What’s sad is that if there were a real manager, one that knows how to guide and motivate staff, the production would probably be much better, but since a douchebag is usually placed in that position, the rest of the company has no idea what they’re missing.

Why is this permissible behaviour in the workplace? Who the hell wants to get up every day, try their hardest; work to their best potential when all they have to look forward to is being harassed by a big asshole every day? How can anyone believe that being a gigantic jerkwad is going to be positive for production and efficiency? I know for me, that only has the opposite effect. I do my best work when I care about what I do. I know for a fact that when I am pushed around, verbally abused, mocked and humiliated by a ‘superior’, I sure as hell won’t put a lot of care into what I do for that buttcheese, that I can guarantee. People working under assmonkeys usually do barely is what is required of them. If they could feel positive about the person that has expectations of them, someone who knows their capacity, who understands their skillsets, and is willing to identify the ones that would thrive being challenged, they would do far above and beyond the scope of their duties. It’s common human psychology... Yet somehow, some big mouthed scro-sack from middle management succeeds in convincing the company they know what they’re doing, and they get put in the job instead, stalling out any real efficiency and production in the folks beneath them. Being continually frustrated by the demands of upper management, instead of looking into their own management choices for reasons of failure, they simply shift the blame of inefficiency and incompetence on the employees beneath them.

The Obvious Signs of an Asshole Manager:

When an employee goes to a Jerkwad Manager for guidance, they are often met with sarcasm, told ‘why don’t you know this already?’ or they receive some sort of Confucian reply like: ‘the answer is in the numbers...’. This is what I’ve come to decide is an unsubtle diversion. It’s the douchebag manager’s way of hiding the fact that the manager really doesn’t know how to answer the employee’s question. So they instead direct it back onto the employee in a humiliating way insuring they will think twice about coming to them again for answers. In the unlikely event that they do have an answer, they make sure they are as condescending and belittling as possible in the delivery of that answer to the employee, to insure that the employee is made to feel like an ignoramus.

Another Scro-Sack Manager tactic is the public humiliation tactic. Scuzmonkey Managers like to call meetings, select a person that particularly annoys them, and then subject that person to a public flogging for not being able to perform the impossible, for not being aware of something that has nothing to do with them at all, for not being able to foresee with their psychic abilities something that would be otherwise impossible for them to know, or not being experts about something that isn’t in their job description. This employee will be barraged in the meeting with a succession of questions and accusations they are not able to answer or not given a chance to answer, being talked over and shouted at repeatedly, until the end of the meeting, when the employee has been pushed to contemplating bringing a semi-automatic to the next meeting, and the manager feels this person has been sufficiently humiliated.

Skid-Mark Managers are also notorious for joking about certain employees in their small circle of butt-kissers, giving them derogatory nicknames, mocking them when they are present and also when not present, and finding a flaw and riding that flaw until the employee is pushed to the point of wanting to quit or commit homicide.

There are very few defenses in place for employees that are being victimized by these bullies. EthicsPoint may be something many companies provide for employees to use when they believe something isn’t being handled properly, but I’ve seen many times where these horrible managers receive repeated and various complaints by various employees through EthicsPoint, they are marginally reprimanded on occasion by utterly clueless superiors, and they just return to their old habits a few days afterwards, making sure that they come down even harder on the employees they suspect might have reported them.

Is your boss or supervisor one of these douchebags? Here are some key behaviours that might identify them as such:



Quizzes by Quibblo.com | SnapApp Quiz Apps

If you got 50% or greater on this quiz, your boss's management style is 'giant asshole' and should be pummeled with EthicsPoint submissions or continual and numerous complaints to upper management. No employee should have to put up with that kind of BS, it doesn't matter where you work.

My husband will be starting a new job in a few weeks. He is coming out of an environment that is dominated by one of these kinds of managers. His prior job also had a manager like that, and worse, that manager was my COUSIN. My cousin was eventually fired for taking kick-backs from vendors and stealing company assets—so in this case, this ‘manager’ got what was coming to him. He received flurries of complaints from many employees, but it took him stealing from the company and using company resources for personal gain for them to finally jettison him. My husband never really felt comfortable confronting him or getting him in trouble because he was related to me. But justice did occur in this case. Unfortunately, my cousin decided that my husband was to blame for his expulsion instead of his fault, and we no longer speak. But since my cousin is a colossal idiot, it’s no loss to me.

Let’s hope the dick my husband is now escaping will also someday learn a hard lesson that his ‘management style’ is not appropriate. :D My hubby’s new job doesn’t have any direct supervisor riding his ass. So there’s light on the horizon.

34lbs lighter and really grumpy.

December, Saturday Market. Portland's homeless
find creative ways to tug at the heartstrings.

So it’s been a while since I’ve talked about weight. And that’s because I was plateauing again for months, vacillating between 29 and 30lbs from the end of August all the way to December—so there wasn’t much to talk about. After the holidays, I finally began to see movement again. I have now lost a total of 34lbs as of this morning. It’s good to see movement again. My husband suspects that the Lupron and the Clomid might have had something to do with my weight not moving at all, who knows? I’m just relieved it’s happening again. If it was the fertility stuff, I suppose my renewed weight loss is a positive consequence of being ‘cut off’ of the fertility stuff by my doctor (I’ll elaborate upon this later). The fact that I’ve plateaued for months doesn’t mean I was going to give up—I wasn’t gaining weight during those months, but I *was* definitely was getting annoyed with my husband hitting 55lbs lost. He’s the incredibly shrinking man.

We were both exposed this weekend to the typical defensive attitude towards our weight loss, which really fired me up. A friend of ours, who has been struggling with his weight these past four years, made a comment upon seeing the incredible shrinking man, and basically told us that our efforts will inevitably fail. Wow. Thanks a lot d-bag. He then proceeded to give us advice on how to better lose weight. Looking at his unchanging weight, I was dubious at best. The whole thing sent me into a Facebook rampage. It’s annoying when the people you care about are not supportive, even though they somehow think they are being so.

Every time I post something about diet on Facebook, there’s this woman who invariably will go on some windy litany about the types of food she eats and how much they’ve helped her and blah blah blah. No offense but I don’t care! We’re doing Weight Watchers, it’s working for us, we’ve lost almost 90 lbs between both of us, shut up! We get all this unsolicited advice on diets that supposedly make you lose weight faster and blah-de-freakin’-blah... We are not interested in hearing about trend diets that don’t work. No carb diets, Atkins diet, gluten-free diet... There’s no long-term habit-changing on these deprivation diets, just momentary results that, if you stop or change, will go away and bring you more weight back in the end. Don’t tell me you skip a meal, or eat only a little bit and claim you’re losing weight, that’s just plain stupid. Nothing makes a body hoard fat more than depriving it of food when it needs it to function. Starvation mode is not dieting, and it doesn’t work for weight loss, except for maybe for anorexics—but that could ultimately result in lovely extras, like binging and barfing and sometimes a sad, rickety, always-cold, hairy body death. Oh, and death-campers and Ethiopians--starvation works for them too.


This is what weekends usually look like at home. I'm under all that.

Keeping track of what goes into your mouth every day is a good way to put your diet into perspective. Try it for a few days. Write EVERYTHING you eat down. Trust me, it’s mind boggling if you’re 100% honest with yourself and you don’t change your diet for the duration. It’s amazing, now that I look back on the last twenty years, how much I deluded myself about how much and how badly I actually ate each day. I would skip meals, pick at my food for one meal, and then gorge on another, and it all equaled out to BAD, although somehow my brain was really great about fooling me about exactly how much I was actually eating, and what horrid foods I was eating. My god, the justifications too! Thinking I was eating healthy when I was eating all the wrong things—eating a healthy meal but then eating ice cream (OMG so, so bad) or a chocolate bar, drinking lattés every day. It’s a recipe for disaster. I see it now. Don’t try to convince me, now that I’m losing weight, that there’s a better way. This way works, and I’m sorry to say, contrary to your statements Mr. D-bag, that it works for EVERYONE. Hundreds of thousands of people who stick with this program lose tons of weight and keep it off. Hundreds of thousands! The only people who are failing in my husband’s WW group are people who gave up and didn’t stick with the program, the people who always make excuses and lose no weight, or the people whose family and friends are not supportive at all, exposing them to bad foods daily, and enabling them to fail at every turn. D-bag’s attitude is, well, I don’t want to stop doing what’s easy and comfortable—but I don’t want it work for you either 'cause then I'd have no excuse, so I’m going to sabotage you as best I can and try to undermine you. Some friend. D-bag! ::argh!::

Portland's usual overreaction about a few inches of snow. This was last week
There was no snow on the ground, yet there was the reporter, preaching doom & gloom.

Anyway, other than that diatribe, nothing much else has been going on. I’ve been ‘cut-off’ on my fertility meds by my OB/GYN. So that’s the end of that. ::sigh:: I can’t afford a specialist so we will probably be a childless couple, since we are apparently not good enough to adopt from the state either. I’ve been pretty upset about the whole deal, but dealing with it. There’ve been lots of distractions at work to keep me from really getting mired in the whole ‘wah-wah-call-me-a-wahmbulance’ part. The whole thing is exhausting so I’m kind of relieved that I will no longer have to be poked and prodded anymore or put through an emotional wringer for no good reason. This whole odyssey has been such an exercise in wretchedness. Feeling like less of a woman for being unable to conceive, the devastating monthly disappointments over and over, and not being able to stop hoping every time, a day or two late, and I’m looking at cribs at IKEA... then bam... surprise, no baby for you ::said in soup Nazi voice:: The adoption process gave us such hope, only to dash them in one ten-minute home-study with a case-worker who obviously couldn’t give a bigger f**k anymore about her job. She is the honeybadger of caseworkers.

Oh well, at least the crafts and storage can stay in the spare room for the time being.

Our septic tank has been abandoned and in its place is the costly bottomless sand-filter that has completely changed the landscape of our back yard, and removed all of our shade trees, not to mention the cute river-stone retaining wall and my giant, beautiful ferns. BOO! The garage now must be entered from another direction, and next to it, where the driveway used to be is a big raised pillow of sand the size of an in-ground pool. We tried to salvage some of our other trees, and replanted them, but honestly, the cedar and Special Ed (the Christmas Tree) are not looking too pleased by the whole upheaval. And Sherry, my co-worker was talking about how backhoes can often compress soil around roots and kill trees, so I’m watching the maples closely to see if the backhoe murdered any more trees. Our backyard looks like the trenches of WWI. It’s disheartening.


This is Dan screwing in the new ply on the floor.
That is Simon, 'helping'.

We also redid our bathroom. Our toilet started sinking into the floor because of a gasket leak that had been surreptitiously going on for a long time, eating through two layers of ply (but not eating the subfloor thank God). Hubby tore it all out, we had to huck the sink console and the toilet and we redid everything. Of course it’s not perfect and that hideous bath is still there (I want a nice corner stand-up shower unit) but it’s a start.

That’s what we’ve been doing. I have hardly seen my horse at all this past month. I’m a bad mommy. I’m going to try and get some riding time in tonight. I could use the therapeutic effects being around my horse provides. Ai ai. Anyway... that’s it for today.

Natural Selection. I'm all for it.





A messy office special from yesterday. First one in forever. I'm a bit rusty.



I don’t get it. When I was a kid, I had to take public transportation to my school when I went to the local schools, or my parents drove me when I attended the American DOD School or the International School, since they were far from where we lived. But when I was in Catholic Intern School, my dad would drive me there to drop me off, but after the end of the week, I’d take the train back to Brussels, and the Metro to the embassy where my mother worked. I did that all by myself, carrying my bags for laundry. I navigated all over the place using public buses and trains from a pretty early age. In the mornings, it was up to me to get out there and to get on the bus to go to school and up to me to find the bus home when I attended a non-intern local school. There was one convenience and that was my student pass.

But I was always fascinated with the American icon of the yellow school bus that I saw in movies. Those did not exist for me. The DOD school provided bus-service for the kids that lived nearby (we did not), but they were not the yellow buses, they were the big huge flat-faced buses with mustachioed Belgian drivers. Kids filed in, kids filed out. They waited at bus stops. Got on, got off, waited to cross the street when the time was right. It was simple.

Then I moved back to the US. I was shocked to discover that the iconic yellow school bus not only has the power to stop traffic to load and unload kids, it can also disrupt traffic to stop at railway tracks. They have to stop and open their doors before they go over railroad tracks—what that accomplishes I do not know? So the kids can run off when not getting hit by a train? But that’s not the end of it; the crowning achievement of the Yellow School Bus is the arm. American school buses have a little arm affixed to the front that opens out towards the curb and bars children from crossing in front of the bus when it’s stopped.

Okay, call me heartless... but WHAT THE HELL? Seriously? What are we teaching our kids if we are coddling them to the point that the world has to stop for them to get on and off a god-damned bus? If the kid is too stupid to figure out how to cross a street responsibly, then he or she is probably better off getting run over. Natural selection! If the kid is that stupid, he'll probably grow up to be the guy that gets tragically killed doing something else incredibly stupid on the job anyway. 

Yep, that kid you protected with the yellow school bus grew up
to be the reason why this warning exists.

Reality is, SEEING EYE DOGS can be trained to cross the street safely, why can't your kids? Is this a sign of devolution? Someone, somewhere thinks your kids can't be taught to make safe choices as well as a German Shepherd can. For God's sake. ::facepalm::

And what about the bus drivers? Are they so retarded they can’t be trusted to drive safely enough not to kill your children? They have to have all these crazy precautionary measures and accessories in place to help them do their job responsibly? I mean jesus, where should the responsibility end? Oh, I don’t know... with the PARENTS??? OMG... Flash of red lights, traffic needs to stop both ways because little Bobby and little Suzie can’t be trusted to cross the street on their lonesome. ::facepalm::

What next? Are we going to start making all kids 20 or under wear Kevlar to school on the off-chance someone pulls a Columbine? Wrap them in bubble-wrap when they go out to play? OMG... it’s CRAZY! What about teaching them to be responsible in the REAL WORLD? How’s that for a concept? How about teaching them to do things like cross busy streets safely? No. Instead let’s create a massive traffic inconvenience to the countless masses that happen to be driving to and from work during the times when these buses are picking up and delivering your hapless, bumbling offspring. As long as the kiddies are safe.

What are we breeding? A bunch of mouth-breathers that don’t have to take any responsibility for anything? A pack of coddled oafs who don’t have to make a single god damned decision for themselves? Oy! It’s infuriating. It’s like those warning signs posted for the most obvious dangers... why does the lowest common denominator have that much power as to make thing inconvenient for the rest of the world? Some idiot makes a dumb-ass decision and all of a sudden everyone else who has managed to avert disaster by using their eyes and brain is stuck having to abide by the most ridiculous precautions. Thanks ASSHOLE—so sad you died doing something colossally stupid! FU!

This is the perfect microcosm of America when it comes to kids. They are increasingly turning out to be entitled, the ‘world-will-stop-for-me because it always has’ kids. It spares the parents having to bother to teach their spawn any valuable life-lessons, or for that matter, even bother to take the time to supervise them so they don’t step in front of buses.

But hey, let’s force society to make all the decisions and take all the precautions to keep your brats safe and sound. Then you don’t have to do any parenting at all!

Okay, I’m done now. 

One of my Worth1000 submissions. It seemed appropriate.