Rogue Roasting Company
12oz double Soy Vanilla Mocha
Breadpudding Muffin
I have created my own axiom. It reduces to the utterly simple philosophy, "Don't do big things dumb." I have dubbed it: Miller's Facepalm.
I have formally announced it on Facebook, and I have now begun to use it as a short-hand in the comment sections of friends' posts. An example, you ask? The 2008 economic implosion was principally caused by the irresponsible and/or illegal actions of major financial institutions on Wall Street. The obvious response would be to increase and improve regulation and incarcerate those responsible for the actual illegal actions, if not for the actions that should have been illegal. As of 2013, we have fewer regulations and the banks responsible for crashing our economy have been declared too big to prosecute.
Miller's Facepalm.
Homeowners who were illegally evicted have received less in their settlements than the the consultant paid to look at the fraudulent paperwork used to evict them.
Miller's Facepalm.
Austerity.
Miller's Facepalm.
Chained CPI may or may not be the more efficient way to calculate inflation for the elderly, but to implement it when these "wildly" inflated Social Security checks have not led to the current economic crisis, nor to Social Security checks being enough to keep many seniors out of poverty...
Miller's Facepalm.
Obviously, I'm on an economics kick here, but this principle applies to anything big, anything systemic. This is not your everyday "d'oh!" This is not leaving your keys in the refrigerator, or on top of your car as you go walking downtown (twice). This is big time dumbass. This is waging an ill-conceived and illegal war. This is instituting a huge reform to the broken healthcare system that does little to nothing to rein in the main drivers of increasing health care costs. This is mandating that the woman keep the baby but cutting any assistance that would help her care for it. This is obsessing about tax rates but completely ignoring wages and other forms of compensation.
Speaking of wages... I literally did a fist pump, jumped up and down, and shouted, "About damn time!" at the TV when the president mentioned raising minimum wage in the State of the Union this year. My biggest reason for moving to Oregon was the minimum-wage-to-cost-of-living ratio, as compared to that of California's. The cost of living in Cali is about 2 to 3 times that of Oregon, yet Oregon has the higher minimum wage. How has this come to pass? Unlike California, Oregon's minimum wage adjusts automatically every year based on inflation. Shockingly, this has not crashed the Oregon economy, though wage-stifling California has come oh-so-close to complete implosion. Obviously, economies are complex and cannot be reduced to one simple factor, but this does seem to conflict with the prevailing argument that raising minimum wage in a recession (or at any other time) absolutely cannot be done.
Since minimum wage is the baseline around which the whole economy must harmonize, it is the first and most important piece to tune correctly. Right now, in most parts of the country, it is striking a bitter chord. Sometimes literally (have you heard about the fast food workers' strike in New York?). What we first need to ask ourselves - in order to avoid a Miller's Facepalm - is what should minimum wage cover? This is a question of our values.
Should it cover the cost of living for a single person, or should it be assumed that, at some point, a minimum wage worker will have to cover expenses of a spouse, child, or other relative? Should we presume that a minimum wage worker should not have to pay the full cost of housing because they must live with someone else, like a parent or roommate? Isn't that real cost deferred to other people? Won't their income be decreased proportionally by covering the additional expenses of housing (and feeding, and the additional use of utilities by) the minimum wage worker? Should costs of living include savings for long-term costs and eventualities? What about raising a family? If our ideal is a married two-parent family unit, but a single income can't support the cost of raising even one child, haven't we broken that ideal? If both parents are economically required to work, then a third party must be introduced to raise the child while the parents work. And even if there is a willing social partner (Grandma, Aunt Ida, mom's bff who has a tot or two of her own, etc.) available to take on the childcare responsibilities to enable the second parent to work, there is an additional cost - paid in kind by the caregiver, or by the parent to the daycare or babysitter.
There is a cost paid by the child, too. It may not be a calamity to have an additional caregiver in their life - that can be a great asset. But there is a limit to that benefit. A young child is only awake about a dozen hours of the day. If they're spending a full work day, plus commute - maybe 8, 10 hours a day - with other people, then who is really doing the parenting? Don't we have the right to raise our own children, even if we're poor?
And should there be such a thing as the "working poor"? If a man or woman puts in a full day's, and a full week's work, even if it's a menial job, a little pitiful "meaningless" job, shouldn't they be entitled to a living wage? They are not pursuing their own projects or ambitions - not on the clock. They are not back-packing across Europe to "find themselves" or working on their Great American Novel. They are working to help another person's business thrive. These are the hours of their life - they do not get them back. Doesn't that earn them a decent, independent living?
If you agree to these things in principle, that even menial workers should be able to afford to take care of themselves on a basic level, save a little for the future, and maybe even start a tiny family, without having to ask anyone else for help, then you should be at least figuratively rioting in the virtual streets over the injustice of the current minimum wage. Even in Oregon, where an individual worker has a fighting chance of living alone on a minimum wage income, wages still fall far, far short of providing these things we believe in. No one is talking about minimum wage covering 19 kids or a 30-year mortgage, but could I maybe live somewhere that doesn't have my neighbor's cigarette smoke coming through the heating vent? Could I maybe not have to flash my economic undies for the state every few months to feed my 2 kids and make sure they can go to the doctor? Where is the dignity in that? in being degraded for working hard for a real small business that can't afford to be the only business in their market to pay you fairly? Where is the respect for the worker who doesn't dare quit the job that treats him so inhumanely because he is so easy to replace, and not enough money is better than no money at all?
Okay, this is just the beginning of the conversation wherein I debunk all the nonsensical arguments against paying people what they are due. I am, unfortunately, running out of coffee money and must wrap this up.
There are, clearly, many dumb ways to go about raising minimum wage. However, not raising it at all, playing these shell games with costs, and allowing millions of people to continue to suffer and exhaust themselves for no good reason, that is the dumbest damn thing of all.
Everybody now...
Miller's Facepalm.
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Saturday, March 30, 2013
To the new pope...
Starbucks
12oz Decaf Coffee (yes, just coffee)
Everything Bagel w/cream cheese
and a salted caramel brownie-pop thingy
(Okay, I had a tall iced soy caramel macchiatto already, too - happy?)
I was glad to hear about Starbucks' support of gay marriage (it's a free country, take your stock money elsewhere if you don't like it, buddy...), so I thought that was a good excuse for a return visit. But this bloggy-blog is not about the Catholic Church's stand on homosexuality, or at least the right of homosexuals to legally marry. Nor is it about women in the church, nor there being no biblical reason that priests should not marry (nor the sick and abusive results of that unnatural abstinence), nor anything that would pertain to exclusively church matters. No, there is one piece of church doctrine that I want to focus on, and it is affecting the fate of all mankind on this planet: Contraception.
Okay, so global overpopulation is not the sexy topic that is climate change. But while we might - possibly - succeed in keeping the earth habitable for human beings, if we do not stop the exponential increase in our number, then it won't matter. We are going to run out of the resources we need to survive on this planet. Period. Even assuming the best-case scenario for developing sustainable agriculture world-wide, just think of water. Even if we could tap into all the frozen fresh water, desalinate the oceans for our drinking - disregarding the consequences to all ecosystems around the world - we're still dealing with a finite amount of water. We are not, however, dealing with a finite amount of people.
I can remember as a child thinking about one day maybe seeing humans reach the 6 billion mark. I remember as an adult when we reached it. We're already to seven. How many billions more by the time my boys are my age? (Which is not that old, by the way... just sayin'...). The problem is of our own making, of course. We're just not dying enough. And yet we're still rutting like we've never discovered vaccines or refrigeration or social programs to feed the hungry.
All of our biological programming - be it natural or divine in origin - is designed to accommodate a world in which we have to have several children just to replace our existing numbers, because many of them won't make it to birth, let alone survive to their own reproductive years. That is not the world we live in today, thankfully. Our mothers rarely die in childbirth now, our children are nourished and protected and thrive. We live, as a rule. We live more often than we die... and that is the problem. The old and not so old are not making way for the new fast enough. So, how should we deal with that?
Fortunately, we are not without options. **winky, smiley face** Unfortunately, not everyone is willing to endorse them. **frowny face**
The reason contraception is banned by various religious organizations is a grand excuse. Contraception interferes with God's Plan, they say. Abstinence is the only form of acceptable birth control, they say. To which I say...
Okay, first question. Doesn't abstinence interfere with God's Plan? If I'm not allowing myself to get pregnant because I'm not letting my husband's baby maker anywhere near my baby greenhouse, then I'm thwarting God's ability to create life. Why is acceptable to cock-block God from a distance, but not when He's oh-so-close to the finish line? The end result is identical... except that condoms have a 95% effective rate (or higher) and abstinence-only has about the same odds of producing a child as plain old nookie (1 in 5)... and your spouse is less likely to be all wound-up and "throwy" when they're getting some on a regular basis...
If abstinence is the only acceptable form of family planning, and we need to limit our population growth to only replace the mother and father, then the math works out to a husband and wife having procreative marital sex about 10 times ever (as I said before, about 1 in 5 chance of getting preggers if you're not using protection of some kind). Ever. Okay, maybe you guys can "go to town" while she's pregnant, but that's still another 18 months, best case. We're living into our late seventies, on average, but that's all the sex we can have in our entire lives? What about a naturally infertile or elderly couple? Sex is okay then, right? So why, after we've had our two population-replacing offspring and we know we're not going to have anymore, can we not use contraception? Are we not supposed to touch each other ever again, until one of us dies (probably of acute sexual frustration)? The ferocity of our biological sexual imperatives, and the joy in the successful fulfillment of those desires, were not made for only a handful of experiences in our entire lifetime.
There are some who say that no contraception should be used at all, not even abstinence. We were given the order to be fruitful and multiply, a few thousand years ago, and they believe that we must continue to follow that order even when it is no longer fruitful to multiply. But we can't have it both ways. The numbers, the reality on the ground, shows us that we are on track to multiply ourselves out of existence. And if they believe that God will provide the answer, let us remember what an "act of God" is, and how he would answer the problem of overpopulation. Floods, plagues, some fiery rocks from the sky... God uses catastrophes when His subtler alternatives are ignored.
How do we know that God did not plan for the development of contraception alongside the development of all these life-saving, life-extending advancements? Isn't it an extraordinary lack of imagination on God's part if He were to inspire penicillin and anti-bacterial soap, and yet have no answer for the consequences of these wonders? Who are any of us to say what is God's Plan - even the pope? He may be a "man of God" - but he is a man. Even if God speaks to him directly, he has only the ears of a man to listen, ears of the culture, of the time from which he has come.
I leave the new pope, and all religious leaders who preach this catastrophic philosophy, with this final question: If life is sacred, why isn't the end of life sacred? Why is it preventing God's will when you prevent a conception but not when you prevent a natural death? Is death not God's will as well? I, for one, do not want to go back to a time of more people dying - children dying from diseases we can now prevent, women dying in childbirth, men dying from infected boo-boos... And I certainly don't want to give up the nookie. That's not healthy. Science says so. But if we're not going to go back, then we must take responsibility for the world we want to live in now.
If this is a hard argument to accept, Mr. Pope, coming from a godless heathen like me, I ask you to put me aside and ask God His opinion. Trust that He can roll with the times and that His answers may not be the same as you thought they once were.
Just pray on it.
12oz Decaf Coffee (yes, just coffee)
Everything Bagel w/cream cheese
and a salted caramel brownie-pop thingy
(Okay, I had a tall iced soy caramel macchiatto already, too - happy?)
I was glad to hear about Starbucks' support of gay marriage (it's a free country, take your stock money elsewhere if you don't like it, buddy...), so I thought that was a good excuse for a return visit. But this bloggy-blog is not about the Catholic Church's stand on homosexuality, or at least the right of homosexuals to legally marry. Nor is it about women in the church, nor there being no biblical reason that priests should not marry (nor the sick and abusive results of that unnatural abstinence), nor anything that would pertain to exclusively church matters. No, there is one piece of church doctrine that I want to focus on, and it is affecting the fate of all mankind on this planet: Contraception.
Okay, so global overpopulation is not the sexy topic that is climate change. But while we might - possibly - succeed in keeping the earth habitable for human beings, if we do not stop the exponential increase in our number, then it won't matter. We are going to run out of the resources we need to survive on this planet. Period. Even assuming the best-case scenario for developing sustainable agriculture world-wide, just think of water. Even if we could tap into all the frozen fresh water, desalinate the oceans for our drinking - disregarding the consequences to all ecosystems around the world - we're still dealing with a finite amount of water. We are not, however, dealing with a finite amount of people.
I can remember as a child thinking about one day maybe seeing humans reach the 6 billion mark. I remember as an adult when we reached it. We're already to seven. How many billions more by the time my boys are my age? (Which is not that old, by the way... just sayin'...). The problem is of our own making, of course. We're just not dying enough. And yet we're still rutting like we've never discovered vaccines or refrigeration or social programs to feed the hungry.
All of our biological programming - be it natural or divine in origin - is designed to accommodate a world in which we have to have several children just to replace our existing numbers, because many of them won't make it to birth, let alone survive to their own reproductive years. That is not the world we live in today, thankfully. Our mothers rarely die in childbirth now, our children are nourished and protected and thrive. We live, as a rule. We live more often than we die... and that is the problem. The old and not so old are not making way for the new fast enough. So, how should we deal with that?
Fortunately, we are not without options. **winky, smiley face** Unfortunately, not everyone is willing to endorse them. **frowny face**
The reason contraception is banned by various religious organizations is a grand excuse. Contraception interferes with God's Plan, they say. Abstinence is the only form of acceptable birth control, they say. To which I say...
Okay, first question. Doesn't abstinence interfere with God's Plan? If I'm not allowing myself to get pregnant because I'm not letting my husband's baby maker anywhere near my baby greenhouse, then I'm thwarting God's ability to create life. Why is acceptable to cock-block God from a distance, but not when He's oh-so-close to the finish line? The end result is identical... except that condoms have a 95% effective rate (or higher) and abstinence-only has about the same odds of producing a child as plain old nookie (1 in 5)... and your spouse is less likely to be all wound-up and "throwy" when they're getting some on a regular basis...
If abstinence is the only acceptable form of family planning, and we need to limit our population growth to only replace the mother and father, then the math works out to a husband and wife having procreative marital sex about 10 times ever (as I said before, about 1 in 5 chance of getting preggers if you're not using protection of some kind). Ever. Okay, maybe you guys can "go to town" while she's pregnant, but that's still another 18 months, best case. We're living into our late seventies, on average, but that's all the sex we can have in our entire lives? What about a naturally infertile or elderly couple? Sex is okay then, right? So why, after we've had our two population-replacing offspring and we know we're not going to have anymore, can we not use contraception? Are we not supposed to touch each other ever again, until one of us dies (probably of acute sexual frustration)? The ferocity of our biological sexual imperatives, and the joy in the successful fulfillment of those desires, were not made for only a handful of experiences in our entire lifetime.
There are some who say that no contraception should be used at all, not even abstinence. We were given the order to be fruitful and multiply, a few thousand years ago, and they believe that we must continue to follow that order even when it is no longer fruitful to multiply. But we can't have it both ways. The numbers, the reality on the ground, shows us that we are on track to multiply ourselves out of existence. And if they believe that God will provide the answer, let us remember what an "act of God" is, and how he would answer the problem of overpopulation. Floods, plagues, some fiery rocks from the sky... God uses catastrophes when His subtler alternatives are ignored.
How do we know that God did not plan for the development of contraception alongside the development of all these life-saving, life-extending advancements? Isn't it an extraordinary lack of imagination on God's part if He were to inspire penicillin and anti-bacterial soap, and yet have no answer for the consequences of these wonders? Who are any of us to say what is God's Plan - even the pope? He may be a "man of God" - but he is a man. Even if God speaks to him directly, he has only the ears of a man to listen, ears of the culture, of the time from which he has come.
I leave the new pope, and all religious leaders who preach this catastrophic philosophy, with this final question: If life is sacred, why isn't the end of life sacred? Why is it preventing God's will when you prevent a conception but not when you prevent a natural death? Is death not God's will as well? I, for one, do not want to go back to a time of more people dying - children dying from diseases we can now prevent, women dying in childbirth, men dying from infected boo-boos... And I certainly don't want to give up the nookie. That's not healthy. Science says so. But if we're not going to go back, then we must take responsibility for the world we want to live in now.
If this is a hard argument to accept, Mr. Pope, coming from a godless heathen like me, I ask you to put me aside and ask God His opinion. Trust that He can roll with the times and that His answers may not be the same as you thought they once were.
Just pray on it.
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Alternative thoughts.
The Beanery
12oz Soy I'm not sure what it's called but it's some kind of awesome white chocolate lemon mocha thingy.
I used to do a lot of night driving through the desert and other California terrain. The darkness of the road used to disturb me. I used to cringe as the bright lights of the scarce oncoming car would half blind me in the otherwise black night. I would be tensed even without the opposing traffic, bracing for a coyote, deer, (elk), or some small rodent to come shooting across the road out of the darkness on either side of my headlights. I've known people who've totaled their cars colliding with an animal or trying to avoid one. These are hazardous conditions, I would think to myself. But how to fix it...?
What I came up with on my long drives may or may not be a financially practical idea. But that should not be our first reaction when it's an idea that could potentially save lives. Right? Sure. Here we go... Instead of towering street lights crisscrossing the landscape like landing strips for very small UFOs, we could have solar-powered, motion-sensor footlights lining these less-used roads. It would still take some innovation to figure out the most durable, cost-effective design, but also, these footlights would need to be able to "talk" to each other so that when one sensed the motion of the oncoming car or roadside animal, lights further ahead would need to light up as well for the effect to work. Just having the other ambient light - ahead of the speeding car - to counter the oncoming brights would diminish some of that blinding effect that makes this night driving so dangerous. The sensors would also have to be sensitive enough and have enough of a range to pick on even small animals before they were too near the road.
This might be too sophisticated a system, though I'm betting it could be figured out pretty cost-effectively. It might be that footlights that charged during the day and simply stayed illuminated throughout the night would be unobtrusive enough and still be safer than what we currently have now (even if they wouldn't indicate the movement of an approaching animal, you'd have a better chance of seeing it).
But then two more thoughts occurred to me. Solar power is good for sunnier locales - I have a little solar-powered daisy that dances on my windowsill even on cloudy days - but for colder, darker regions, there might simply not be enough light to generate the power necessary. And that's when I started thinking about our power-grid. If we had power lines embedded in or near our roads instead of mostly overhead, we could tap into those lines directly and bleed off just enough to supplement the extra power needed for the illumination. We know we need to do all this infrastructure rebuilding and power redesigning, this seems like it would be a good time to be thinking about this.
Think of how many miles of road there are in this country. Imagine if, instead of swathes of solar panel farms, our roads were lined with solar panels that emitted a soft glow after dark. Think of all the rooftops in even the smallest of towns. What about using that space for other kinds of power generation as well? Instead of giant wind turbines on outlying hillsides, micro-wind-turbines, mini-rainwater-mills, lining the perimeters of buildings, incorporated into the design as part of the architecture. Any single spinning piece couldn't produce that much, but when multiplied... who knows? The technology of today might not be able to garner much of a yield, but if we start down this path, challenge the thinkers in all the colleges and high school physics classes to find designs to lead us in a new direction, I think it is inevitable that we will find better solutions than what the old fossil fuel technologies could ever produce.
Okay, I'm going to just publish this and cringe later because the coffee house has already closed and I'm finishing this outside in my car... wasting energy to run the CD player and wear down my very old copy of Play just a little bit more. Which reminds me... Machete is a great track, and I think it's probably the best representation of Moby's techno and punk sensibilities in a single song. Just saying. Carry on.
12oz Soy I'm not sure what it's called but it's some kind of awesome white chocolate lemon mocha thingy.
I used to do a lot of night driving through the desert and other California terrain. The darkness of the road used to disturb me. I used to cringe as the bright lights of the scarce oncoming car would half blind me in the otherwise black night. I would be tensed even without the opposing traffic, bracing for a coyote, deer, (elk), or some small rodent to come shooting across the road out of the darkness on either side of my headlights. I've known people who've totaled their cars colliding with an animal or trying to avoid one. These are hazardous conditions, I would think to myself. But how to fix it...?
What I came up with on my long drives may or may not be a financially practical idea. But that should not be our first reaction when it's an idea that could potentially save lives. Right? Sure. Here we go... Instead of towering street lights crisscrossing the landscape like landing strips for very small UFOs, we could have solar-powered, motion-sensor footlights lining these less-used roads. It would still take some innovation to figure out the most durable, cost-effective design, but also, these footlights would need to be able to "talk" to each other so that when one sensed the motion of the oncoming car or roadside animal, lights further ahead would need to light up as well for the effect to work. Just having the other ambient light - ahead of the speeding car - to counter the oncoming brights would diminish some of that blinding effect that makes this night driving so dangerous. The sensors would also have to be sensitive enough and have enough of a range to pick on even small animals before they were too near the road.
This might be too sophisticated a system, though I'm betting it could be figured out pretty cost-effectively. It might be that footlights that charged during the day and simply stayed illuminated throughout the night would be unobtrusive enough and still be safer than what we currently have now (even if they wouldn't indicate the movement of an approaching animal, you'd have a better chance of seeing it).
But then two more thoughts occurred to me. Solar power is good for sunnier locales - I have a little solar-powered daisy that dances on my windowsill even on cloudy days - but for colder, darker regions, there might simply not be enough light to generate the power necessary. And that's when I started thinking about our power-grid. If we had power lines embedded in or near our roads instead of mostly overhead, we could tap into those lines directly and bleed off just enough to supplement the extra power needed for the illumination. We know we need to do all this infrastructure rebuilding and power redesigning, this seems like it would be a good time to be thinking about this.
Think of how many miles of road there are in this country. Imagine if, instead of swathes of solar panel farms, our roads were lined with solar panels that emitted a soft glow after dark. Think of all the rooftops in even the smallest of towns. What about using that space for other kinds of power generation as well? Instead of giant wind turbines on outlying hillsides, micro-wind-turbines, mini-rainwater-mills, lining the perimeters of buildings, incorporated into the design as part of the architecture. Any single spinning piece couldn't produce that much, but when multiplied... who knows? The technology of today might not be able to garner much of a yield, but if we start down this path, challenge the thinkers in all the colleges and high school physics classes to find designs to lead us in a new direction, I think it is inevitable that we will find better solutions than what the old fossil fuel technologies could ever produce.
Okay, I'm going to just publish this and cringe later because the coffee house has already closed and I'm finishing this outside in my car... wasting energy to run the CD player and wear down my very old copy of Play just a little bit more. Which reminds me... Machete is a great track, and I think it's probably the best representation of Moby's techno and punk sensibilities in a single song. Just saying. Carry on.
Sunday, March 17, 2013
I am not a magical flippin' unicorn.
Rogue Valley Roasting Co.
Sweet & Spicy Soy Chai
Frittata
Wherein I bitch about shopping and body image and retailing for the lowest common denominator. Fair warning, especially to my male friends and family members: if you read any further you're going to find out my exact bra size and other squirmy details.
I have been neglecting this blog of late because my Out Days have been overtaken by shopping. There's been no avoiding it, I have lost too much weight (thank you, breastfeeding) and I now need to replace basically everything I own. Even jackets and "forgiving" shirts can't be synched or tucked or otherwise fudged. You would think I would be happy. As a girl, aren't I supposed to be all into clothes, and spending money I don't have to buy them, and time I could otherwise be using to grow as a person to find them? Alas, I was raised by wolves. Male wolves, who do not esteem material trappings.
I have made ovations to femininity over the years. I've made a concerted effort to tone down my hostility toward pink, and I discovered dresses were, generally, to my liking. I've found it's nice to feel all femmie once in a while, but I can't quite bring myself to be girly. Not even when I was a girl. I think I still own make-up, though I am basically inept at applying it should the occasion ever arise. I don't have pierced ears, though I have a couple tattoos. And I still can't get into shoes. (That lead to many a (gentle) gay joke among my friends, and an Onion-style piece entitled, "Woman with short hair, comfortable shoes defends sexuality.")
But wolves and hippy anti-materialism do not adequately justify my dread and loathing of shopping. That belongs to American culture's body image hostility. And the fashion industry. And one of my own forebears - Issac Singer. Sonofabitch.
An unhappy body image? There's a shocker. I can remember thinking I was fat when I was in kindergarten. Flippin' kindergarten! That's how early all the messaging gets in. Earlier than that, even. It's almost old-hat to rattle off all the examples of it. It's all the many, many diet commercials. It's the casting, the storylines of every commercial, TV show, anything, ever. The woman is beautiful, thin, and getting thinner... to be desired... And happiness always follows - only follows - from achieving her as the prize. Anyone who deviates from this is a second-class story citizen.
And then there's the fashion industry. Designers love unusually tall and skinny women because it better shows off their clothing. There are women who are tall and there are women who are naturally thin (not just nearly starving themselves to get a modeling job), and there are women who are both. I don't hate those women at all. But that intersection of tall and thin is a comparatively small percentage and in no way representative of most women, let alone all women. There is a range in heights, and weights, and all sorts of combinations of the two, not to mention all the deviant curvations. But we are so inundated with skewed imagery that we don't know what we're supposed to look like anymore. Not on average, not our specific self. We couldn't pick a healthy body out of a mannequin line-up, and only partly because it probably wouldn't be there. We wouldn't know a healthy body if it came jogging - nude - past this coffee shop with an entourage of lab-coat-clad doctors bellowing from bullhorns, "THIS IS A HEALTHY BODY," and "YOU COULD GO UP OR DOWN 20 LBS AND STILL BE GOOD. SERIOUSLY."
---
The paper apartment
Hot Cocoa/Herbal Tea mashup
with Marshmallows
---
So, given that I was leaning toward "fat and ugly" on my way into the changing room as a fragile teenage girl, what happened inside was enough to put me in tears when I got home. Nothing fit. Ever. And I used to think it was my fault. It took many years, but I have finally come to the realization that the culprit for my post-dressing room tears is my great-grand-sire.
When Isaac Singer invented his sewing machine, he started a social revolution. By bringing down the cost of clothing, and thereby creating the mass-production of clothing, even poorer people could be modestly well-dressed. People could afford more than just one or two outfits. In other words, they no longer had to look the part of whatever class they belonged to. And let's not forget that a family with a sewing machine at home had the opportunity for additional income from "taking in" tailoring jobs. The sewing machine made class mobility, a healthy middle class, a true possibility.
The downside for this descendent, however, is that mass-produced clothing has confined bodies to a handful of shapes and sizes. People used to have clothes that were made specifically to fit their body. Now all clothes have to be manufactured to fit the masses. They are also designed to be disposable, like the rest of the products we consume. Even if you don't care about which season you're wearing, the material is going to fade and fall apart so fast that the idea of bothering to get a t-shirt or jeans tailored to fit is completely alien to most of us.
Unfortunately, what I didn't realize when I was young was that I deviate significantly from the masses, and that, "it's not me, clothes, it's you." And I am tired of it. I recognize that a retailer has to keep its waste down, so it can't be expected to always accommodate every size. But I am not a magical flippin' unicorn! I exist and I need a goddamn pair of jeans and a bra. Jeans, we have actually come a long way on since I was a kid in the eighties. Target - though I am officially shunning them for making their employees work on Thanksgiving - has an assortment of "Fit" break-downs for their jeans. Even if they are not there when I am shopping for them, at least I know that I am a size 10, Short, Fit 4. I think. But when it comes to bras, we've got a goddamn way to go, people.
It has been a saga just to find out what the right size actually is, mainly because almost no one carries it. When I was in high school, I thought I was a 36D. Now that I am almost back down to my high school weight again, I know that I was probably a 34D or DD. Good luck finding an anything-DD at Target. But I'm not quite a 34DD now. No, I need a 34DDD nursing bra. And keep in mind that I have been dropping weight. The bra I just threw out - completely worn out and in no way hold up the girls anymore - was a 36F/G nursing bra. That bra came from a specialty shop and cost an electric bill. Unfortunately, that shop has stopped carrying nursing bras with underwires, and even their selection of regular non-nursing 34Fs isn't extensive, so my recent excursions haven't been very successful. So what has that left me?
The mall. Four hours yesterday. Four goddamn hours I will never get back, scouring racks at two department stores. And I found two. Two 34DDDs out of hundreds, maybe thousands of bras. No nursing bras whatsoever. And here's my big beef with these stores, especially Kohls: If you are going to designate so much floor space to your bra department, why don't you try offering some products to more women instead of offering more products to fewer women?
Really, Kohls, you have too much product on the floor, period. It's too much to browse - it's really too much to take in, even if you had my size. But this space is so congested, you can't see the tags easily, so you have to try to shift each hanger - flick, flick, flick - and half the time you end up knocking some off because there's not enough room to hang there, even undisturbed. It is no wonder no one offered me help, even though I did encounter one polite but distracted employee. There is simply too much product which is too disorganized to manage it all and provide any customer service. (That's a staffing model that Borders followed - to their demise! But that's another blog...)
The way retailers stock clothing, the way designers create for a sub-category of the overall population, and the way manufacturers scale their production, together has created a frustrating and limited system which marginalizes significant portions of the population. It's akin to having a Borders-sized bookstore that only stocked books on the bestseller list. We can do this better. Stop trying to maximize profits by reducing the number of people you can serve. Stop trying to relegating us to specialty shops which may or may not exist. We deviants are a market, and there is room for us on the floor.
I could go on, I could say this better, but my brain is done for the day. Thank you for letting me bitch. (See? I am getting in touch with my girly side.)
Sweet & Spicy Soy Chai
Frittata
Wherein I bitch about shopping and body image and retailing for the lowest common denominator. Fair warning, especially to my male friends and family members: if you read any further you're going to find out my exact bra size and other squirmy details.
I have been neglecting this blog of late because my Out Days have been overtaken by shopping. There's been no avoiding it, I have lost too much weight (thank you, breastfeeding) and I now need to replace basically everything I own. Even jackets and "forgiving" shirts can't be synched or tucked or otherwise fudged. You would think I would be happy. As a girl, aren't I supposed to be all into clothes, and spending money I don't have to buy them, and time I could otherwise be using to grow as a person to find them? Alas, I was raised by wolves. Male wolves, who do not esteem material trappings.
I have made ovations to femininity over the years. I've made a concerted effort to tone down my hostility toward pink, and I discovered dresses were, generally, to my liking. I've found it's nice to feel all femmie once in a while, but I can't quite bring myself to be girly. Not even when I was a girl. I think I still own make-up, though I am basically inept at applying it should the occasion ever arise. I don't have pierced ears, though I have a couple tattoos. And I still can't get into shoes. (That lead to many a (gentle) gay joke among my friends, and an Onion-style piece entitled, "Woman with short hair, comfortable shoes defends sexuality.")
But wolves and hippy anti-materialism do not adequately justify my dread and loathing of shopping. That belongs to American culture's body image hostility. And the fashion industry. And one of my own forebears - Issac Singer. Sonofabitch.
An unhappy body image? There's a shocker. I can remember thinking I was fat when I was in kindergarten. Flippin' kindergarten! That's how early all the messaging gets in. Earlier than that, even. It's almost old-hat to rattle off all the examples of it. It's all the many, many diet commercials. It's the casting, the storylines of every commercial, TV show, anything, ever. The woman is beautiful, thin, and getting thinner... to be desired... And happiness always follows - only follows - from achieving her as the prize. Anyone who deviates from this is a second-class story citizen.
And then there's the fashion industry. Designers love unusually tall and skinny women because it better shows off their clothing. There are women who are tall and there are women who are naturally thin (not just nearly starving themselves to get a modeling job), and there are women who are both. I don't hate those women at all. But that intersection of tall and thin is a comparatively small percentage and in no way representative of most women, let alone all women. There is a range in heights, and weights, and all sorts of combinations of the two, not to mention all the deviant curvations. But we are so inundated with skewed imagery that we don't know what we're supposed to look like anymore. Not on average, not our specific self. We couldn't pick a healthy body out of a mannequin line-up, and only partly because it probably wouldn't be there. We wouldn't know a healthy body if it came jogging - nude - past this coffee shop with an entourage of lab-coat-clad doctors bellowing from bullhorns, "THIS IS A HEALTHY BODY," and "YOU COULD GO UP OR DOWN 20 LBS AND STILL BE GOOD. SERIOUSLY."
---
The paper apartment
Hot Cocoa/Herbal Tea mashup
with Marshmallows
---
So, given that I was leaning toward "fat and ugly" on my way into the changing room as a fragile teenage girl, what happened inside was enough to put me in tears when I got home. Nothing fit. Ever. And I used to think it was my fault. It took many years, but I have finally come to the realization that the culprit for my post-dressing room tears is my great-grand-sire.
When Isaac Singer invented his sewing machine, he started a social revolution. By bringing down the cost of clothing, and thereby creating the mass-production of clothing, even poorer people could be modestly well-dressed. People could afford more than just one or two outfits. In other words, they no longer had to look the part of whatever class they belonged to. And let's not forget that a family with a sewing machine at home had the opportunity for additional income from "taking in" tailoring jobs. The sewing machine made class mobility, a healthy middle class, a true possibility.
The downside for this descendent, however, is that mass-produced clothing has confined bodies to a handful of shapes and sizes. People used to have clothes that were made specifically to fit their body. Now all clothes have to be manufactured to fit the masses. They are also designed to be disposable, like the rest of the products we consume. Even if you don't care about which season you're wearing, the material is going to fade and fall apart so fast that the idea of bothering to get a t-shirt or jeans tailored to fit is completely alien to most of us.
Unfortunately, what I didn't realize when I was young was that I deviate significantly from the masses, and that, "it's not me, clothes, it's you." And I am tired of it. I recognize that a retailer has to keep its waste down, so it can't be expected to always accommodate every size. But I am not a magical flippin' unicorn! I exist and I need a goddamn pair of jeans and a bra. Jeans, we have actually come a long way on since I was a kid in the eighties. Target - though I am officially shunning them for making their employees work on Thanksgiving - has an assortment of "Fit" break-downs for their jeans. Even if they are not there when I am shopping for them, at least I know that I am a size 10, Short, Fit 4. I think. But when it comes to bras, we've got a goddamn way to go, people.
It has been a saga just to find out what the right size actually is, mainly because almost no one carries it. When I was in high school, I thought I was a 36D. Now that I am almost back down to my high school weight again, I know that I was probably a 34D or DD. Good luck finding an anything-DD at Target. But I'm not quite a 34DD now. No, I need a 34DDD nursing bra. And keep in mind that I have been dropping weight. The bra I just threw out - completely worn out and in no way hold up the girls anymore - was a 36F/G nursing bra. That bra came from a specialty shop and cost an electric bill. Unfortunately, that shop has stopped carrying nursing bras with underwires, and even their selection of regular non-nursing 34Fs isn't extensive, so my recent excursions haven't been very successful. So what has that left me?
The mall. Four hours yesterday. Four goddamn hours I will never get back, scouring racks at two department stores. And I found two. Two 34DDDs out of hundreds, maybe thousands of bras. No nursing bras whatsoever. And here's my big beef with these stores, especially Kohls: If you are going to designate so much floor space to your bra department, why don't you try offering some products to more women instead of offering more products to fewer women?
Really, Kohls, you have too much product on the floor, period. It's too much to browse - it's really too much to take in, even if you had my size. But this space is so congested, you can't see the tags easily, so you have to try to shift each hanger - flick, flick, flick - and half the time you end up knocking some off because there's not enough room to hang there, even undisturbed. It is no wonder no one offered me help, even though I did encounter one polite but distracted employee. There is simply too much product which is too disorganized to manage it all and provide any customer service. (That's a staffing model that Borders followed - to their demise! But that's another blog...)
The way retailers stock clothing, the way designers create for a sub-category of the overall population, and the way manufacturers scale their production, together has created a frustrating and limited system which marginalizes significant portions of the population. It's akin to having a Borders-sized bookstore that only stocked books on the bestseller list. We can do this better. Stop trying to maximize profits by reducing the number of people you can serve. Stop trying to relegating us to specialty shops which may or may not exist. We deviants are a market, and there is room for us on the floor.
I could go on, I could say this better, but my brain is done for the day. Thank you for letting me bitch. (See? I am getting in touch with my girly side.)
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Hard Choices... Part 2...
Starbucks
12oz Soy Caramel/Vanilla Latte
(a.k.a. tall soy Caramel Macchiato)
Cranberry Orange Scone
I have known many people denied various kinds of social services and benefits, even when they clearly qualified. They have to fight, appeal, fight again. And should the aid finally come through, it is too often insufficient to meet all their needs. And for all, there is ever the specter of funding cuts.
So it was not for lack of love that I had to consider inflicting that terrible pain again. It was for love of a child and a realistic look at what kind of life they might face. Could we really afford everything they needed? What kind of circumstances might we find ourselves in if we came up short and couldn't provide them with some kind of special equipment? medication? who knows what? And would we be emotionally resilient enough to give them the emotional support they would need, even more than an otherwise "normal" child?
If I had traditional insurance with high co-pays and deductibles - or no insurance at all - I might have made a different choice. Since I had Oregon Health Plan, and my extra ultrasounds and amniocentesis and all the labs were fully covered, we were able to determine that our boy did not have some of the more severe conditions, and that he had about a 95% chance of being completely in the clear. We decided to take the chance - that much smaller chance - that our one and only child would be alright, that we could care for him, even if the worst case were to come true. Again, my husband still had good credit...
We continued to monitor the anomaly through additional ultrasounds, and by the time our little Henry was born, his brain appeared to have normalized. He has been robustly healthy and appeared to be developing normally, or faster - except in his speech. By the time he turned two, he was still about half a year behind where he should have been for his age, and it appeared to be contributing to some behavioral problems. So, with a recommendation from our doctor, Henry was evaluated by the school district and has been receiving early intervention services over the last year.
He has come along wonderfully but still seems to be a bit behind. He's going to be evaluated again soon to see if he is still eligible for additional intervention services. Still, the help we've already received from Henry's teacher has made a huge difference in his behavior. It would have been a much harder year in our home without it. A lot more screaming and crying from the both of us, and, probably, from Henry's little brother.
Oliver... the other one who made it.
Like his older brother, Oliver's conception was not exactly planned, just not intentionally prevented. Henry was about 11 months old and my husband and I had just decided that, yes, we wanted one more child. Because there was help there if we needed it, we would try for just one more child, to complete our family. A little later, though... because we wanted to be more financially comfortable (or less desperate), and one baby is plenty hard as it is, and, oh wait, we're pregnant again. Ah, Valentine's Day...
So, we're off! Again! And this time's going to be harder, we know, but we wouldn't think of not going through with it now... And then something unlikely comes along to put the fear, the uncertainty back in me.
The Ryan Budget.
I'm not trying to pick a partisan fight, or to engage in demagoguery. This is truly the level of panic that was instilled in me when the details of the budget started coming out, just weeks after I had gotten my pregnancy confirmed (again) by Planned Parenthood (being without OHP or insurance again, after I had gone back to work). We had a prologue as soon as the new Congress had been sworn in. They had been swept in to get us jobs and the first thing they went after was Planned Parenthood and WIC. Now, the Ryan Budget was supposedly going to try to cut more from these programs we relied on.
It was extremely uncertain how deep these cuts would go, and what they would mean, bottom line, in our own budget. But the truth is, without the food stamps and WIC, month to month, we don't make it. Even with them we've been living in the red all year, and that great big refund check is going to pass straight through our checkbook at the speed of our sigh and bullet to the credit card companies that have been propping us up. (VISA and MasterCard would be most distressed if anything were to happen to that Earned Income Credit). There's still going to be a little balance after we make that payment.
What would we do if we didn't qualify anymore, if our benefits were cut? What if there was something wrong again, on that first ultrasound? What if we had to start paying for some of the medical tests because of cuts to Medicaid? What if we couldn't cover the kids anymore? What if they got sick, or any one of us? Medical cost are absolutely insane, even with insurance. But with none...? I had already destroyed my credit, so what would happen if we had to max out my husband's credit, too?
I began to regret that I had told people I was pregnant. I cursed myself for not waiting a few more weeks, so they wouldn't have known... if... How could I explain how terrifying that specter of budget cuts was to me? To end the growing life of a wanted child? To have already experienced the birth of a child, of holding him in my arms, and the love that has grown every day since his first breath... To know that and still consider it? Yes. That is how much being poor has hurt. That is how much the constant anxiety I have lived with has deteriorated me physically and mentally. I wish I was stronger, but I am not. Maybe I would have been if things hadn't always... always.. been like this.
But people knew already and I would have to explain. I would have to explain to my husband that I was scared enough that we wouldn't be able to afford to care for two kids that I would chose to not have a child we both wanted. I was afraid we wouldn't be able to afford just the three of us if these kinds of cuts went through... I don't think I could have made him understand, though. He had a much more stable life, and subscribes to that flimsy platitude that things will work out somehow, and we'll always get by. I have learned, on the other hand, that things don't work out, or that deep and irreparable damage can be done in the getting by.
All this was greatly disturbing to him when we finally talked about it months later, after little Oliver was born. He was shocked that I could even consider not having the baby. He was more upset when I told him how often I had been thinking about suicide. Not considering it - I'm a mother now, so checking out is not an option. But it had been on my mind. As I watched the play by play of the political theatre, and wondered bleakly if we'd come out safely on the other side of each successive deadline. The feeling of doom... the feeling that things just never get better... It felt like this abstract talk of budget cuts in far off Washington was a real sword of Damocles poised above my growing belly, and that I had made the wrong decision to have another child under that constant threat.
I still don't know if I made the right call, though I love and adore my boys and I could not now go back and unchoose either of them. I don't know if I could have chosen differently with Bean, even knowing the pain it caused. But if I had the chance to go back and have her, I would almost certainly be giving up one or both of my boys. There is no way to have them all, though with all my heart, I wish I could. I tell this deeply personal story now only to give a glimpse. This lengthy story only sums up all the thoughts, the fears, that go into such a decision.
It's like that marshmallow test...
Many years ago, researchers put a marshmallow in front of a series of 4 year-olds and told them that if they didn't eat the marshmallow then they could have two marshmallows when the adult came back. They found that the kids who lasted the longest, who waited for the bigger reward, did better later in life. They concluded that it was their superior willpower. However, a new study was done recently that showed that kids who didn't trust the adults around them to come back with a second marshmallow later, were first to eat the marshmallow in front of them (the researchers had biased the some of the kids by not coming through on a promise of stickers prior to promising the extra marshmallow).
So, if you're the kid who has learned to mistrust the world, that adults - your well-meaning family and friends, your elected representatives - will fail you at best, or screw you at worst; what kind of decisions do you think that kid is going to make in a situation as grave as this? How much confidence do you think someone like that - like me - has to invest in something so important as a human being's lifetime happiness and well-being?
I've seen enough failings in the system to choose an abortion once, and to seriously consider it twice more. But I have received help, and I had enough hope in the social safety nets to take the chance twice, to invest in the Future of America, as it were.
Just keep all this somewhere in mind during all this talk about how we're all going to have to make hard choices, how we're all going to have to make sacrifices... Ask yourself who is doing the sacrificing, and what is the real cost.
** finished after an additional decaf espresso con pana, and some kind of chicken pannini thingy, because this took way too long, and if I weren't in a hurry I'd probably edit it down...
12oz Soy Caramel/Vanilla Latte
(a.k.a. tall soy Caramel Macchiato)
Cranberry Orange Scone
I have known many people denied various kinds of social services and benefits, even when they clearly qualified. They have to fight, appeal, fight again. And should the aid finally come through, it is too often insufficient to meet all their needs. And for all, there is ever the specter of funding cuts.
So it was not for lack of love that I had to consider inflicting that terrible pain again. It was for love of a child and a realistic look at what kind of life they might face. Could we really afford everything they needed? What kind of circumstances might we find ourselves in if we came up short and couldn't provide them with some kind of special equipment? medication? who knows what? And would we be emotionally resilient enough to give them the emotional support they would need, even more than an otherwise "normal" child?
If I had traditional insurance with high co-pays and deductibles - or no insurance at all - I might have made a different choice. Since I had Oregon Health Plan, and my extra ultrasounds and amniocentesis and all the labs were fully covered, we were able to determine that our boy did not have some of the more severe conditions, and that he had about a 95% chance of being completely in the clear. We decided to take the chance - that much smaller chance - that our one and only child would be alright, that we could care for him, even if the worst case were to come true. Again, my husband still had good credit...
We continued to monitor the anomaly through additional ultrasounds, and by the time our little Henry was born, his brain appeared to have normalized. He has been robustly healthy and appeared to be developing normally, or faster - except in his speech. By the time he turned two, he was still about half a year behind where he should have been for his age, and it appeared to be contributing to some behavioral problems. So, with a recommendation from our doctor, Henry was evaluated by the school district and has been receiving early intervention services over the last year.
He has come along wonderfully but still seems to be a bit behind. He's going to be evaluated again soon to see if he is still eligible for additional intervention services. Still, the help we've already received from Henry's teacher has made a huge difference in his behavior. It would have been a much harder year in our home without it. A lot more screaming and crying from the both of us, and, probably, from Henry's little brother.
Oliver... the other one who made it.
Like his older brother, Oliver's conception was not exactly planned, just not intentionally prevented. Henry was about 11 months old and my husband and I had just decided that, yes, we wanted one more child. Because there was help there if we needed it, we would try for just one more child, to complete our family. A little later, though... because we wanted to be more financially comfortable (or less desperate), and one baby is plenty hard as it is, and, oh wait, we're pregnant again. Ah, Valentine's Day...
So, we're off! Again! And this time's going to be harder, we know, but we wouldn't think of not going through with it now... And then something unlikely comes along to put the fear, the uncertainty back in me.
The Ryan Budget.
I'm not trying to pick a partisan fight, or to engage in demagoguery. This is truly the level of panic that was instilled in me when the details of the budget started coming out, just weeks after I had gotten my pregnancy confirmed (again) by Planned Parenthood (being without OHP or insurance again, after I had gone back to work). We had a prologue as soon as the new Congress had been sworn in. They had been swept in to get us jobs and the first thing they went after was Planned Parenthood and WIC. Now, the Ryan Budget was supposedly going to try to cut more from these programs we relied on.
It was extremely uncertain how deep these cuts would go, and what they would mean, bottom line, in our own budget. But the truth is, without the food stamps and WIC, month to month, we don't make it. Even with them we've been living in the red all year, and that great big refund check is going to pass straight through our checkbook at the speed of our sigh and bullet to the credit card companies that have been propping us up. (VISA and MasterCard would be most distressed if anything were to happen to that Earned Income Credit). There's still going to be a little balance after we make that payment.
What would we do if we didn't qualify anymore, if our benefits were cut? What if there was something wrong again, on that first ultrasound? What if we had to start paying for some of the medical tests because of cuts to Medicaid? What if we couldn't cover the kids anymore? What if they got sick, or any one of us? Medical cost are absolutely insane, even with insurance. But with none...? I had already destroyed my credit, so what would happen if we had to max out my husband's credit, too?
I began to regret that I had told people I was pregnant. I cursed myself for not waiting a few more weeks, so they wouldn't have known... if... How could I explain how terrifying that specter of budget cuts was to me? To end the growing life of a wanted child? To have already experienced the birth of a child, of holding him in my arms, and the love that has grown every day since his first breath... To know that and still consider it? Yes. That is how much being poor has hurt. That is how much the constant anxiety I have lived with has deteriorated me physically and mentally. I wish I was stronger, but I am not. Maybe I would have been if things hadn't always... always.. been like this.
But people knew already and I would have to explain. I would have to explain to my husband that I was scared enough that we wouldn't be able to afford to care for two kids that I would chose to not have a child we both wanted. I was afraid we wouldn't be able to afford just the three of us if these kinds of cuts went through... I don't think I could have made him understand, though. He had a much more stable life, and subscribes to that flimsy platitude that things will work out somehow, and we'll always get by. I have learned, on the other hand, that things don't work out, or that deep and irreparable damage can be done in the getting by.
All this was greatly disturbing to him when we finally talked about it months later, after little Oliver was born. He was shocked that I could even consider not having the baby. He was more upset when I told him how often I had been thinking about suicide. Not considering it - I'm a mother now, so checking out is not an option. But it had been on my mind. As I watched the play by play of the political theatre, and wondered bleakly if we'd come out safely on the other side of each successive deadline. The feeling of doom... the feeling that things just never get better... It felt like this abstract talk of budget cuts in far off Washington was a real sword of Damocles poised above my growing belly, and that I had made the wrong decision to have another child under that constant threat.
I still don't know if I made the right call, though I love and adore my boys and I could not now go back and unchoose either of them. I don't know if I could have chosen differently with Bean, even knowing the pain it caused. But if I had the chance to go back and have her, I would almost certainly be giving up one or both of my boys. There is no way to have them all, though with all my heart, I wish I could. I tell this deeply personal story now only to give a glimpse. This lengthy story only sums up all the thoughts, the fears, that go into such a decision.
It's like that marshmallow test...
Many years ago, researchers put a marshmallow in front of a series of 4 year-olds and told them that if they didn't eat the marshmallow then they could have two marshmallows when the adult came back. They found that the kids who lasted the longest, who waited for the bigger reward, did better later in life. They concluded that it was their superior willpower. However, a new study was done recently that showed that kids who didn't trust the adults around them to come back with a second marshmallow later, were first to eat the marshmallow in front of them (the researchers had biased the some of the kids by not coming through on a promise of stickers prior to promising the extra marshmallow).
So, if you're the kid who has learned to mistrust the world, that adults - your well-meaning family and friends, your elected representatives - will fail you at best, or screw you at worst; what kind of decisions do you think that kid is going to make in a situation as grave as this? How much confidence do you think someone like that - like me - has to invest in something so important as a human being's lifetime happiness and well-being?
I've seen enough failings in the system to choose an abortion once, and to seriously consider it twice more. But I have received help, and I had enough hope in the social safety nets to take the chance twice, to invest in the Future of America, as it were.
Just keep all this somewhere in mind during all this talk about how we're all going to have to make hard choices, how we're all going to have to make sacrifices... Ask yourself who is doing the sacrificing, and what is the real cost.
** finished after an additional decaf espresso con pana, and some kind of chicken pannini thingy, because this took way too long, and if I weren't in a hurry I'd probably edit it down...
Hard Choices... Part 1...
Rogue Valley Roasting Company
Soy Mocha
Coconut Dream Bar
** This is in two parts because I keep running myself out of time to finish these while I'm actually Out of the house. Also, some of the State of the Union speech was relevant to this wide-reaching topic, so I'm doing a little modifying of what I've already written and will post two separate blogs from about where I left off last week. Hopefully the dramatic conclusion will follow fast. **
I'll write about drones next week (or not). This week, I've decided to talk about hard choices. All this talk about sequesters and minimum wage and mental health and other public services, kind of provoked this, though I've been thinking about writing this for a long time.
This is a story about three abortions - the one I had, and the two I didn't. This is the story of how public policies played a part in each decision. I'll try to keep it brief.
In the vice presidential debate last year, Paul Ryan mentioned his "little Bean" in his response to a question about abortion. Well, I had a little Bean, too. In fact, I got a tattoo of the kanji symbol for "Bean" on my belly on the day she would have been born. My ex - her father - was with me, too, getting his own tattoo over his heart. This was not an unwanted pregnancy. Unintended, yes. Unprepared for... but not unmourned for. And we chose it - I chose it.
I was not a scared kid, either, with my whole future ahead of me. I was 28. And it was the past behind me, and the unstable present, that had driven my decision. Everything I had learned in a lifetime of poverty, and debt-driven almost-middle-class poverty, was that what little help there is is usually not enough. I had learned that the public assistance programs were so over-burdened that I usually didn't qualify, and the process could take weeks, months, years longer than you could last without the help. I had learned that working hard - even above minimum wage, even more than 40 hours a week - wasn't enough to even pay for myself, let alone start a family on. I had learned that something is always looming - the tires are getting balder, the cavities are burrowing deeper, and the people who have offered to help are about to be crushed with their own crises, and you're two breaths from being on your own again. I had learned that I could live in my car if I had to, but I couldn't force all that stress and uncertainty and insecurity on a child.
It was not until that moment, though, that I knew how badly I wanted to be a mother. And I learned then that, you can have a fair idea of your mind, but you really don't know what you would or would not do until you must decide what you will or will not do. I didn't know if I'd ever get the chance again to have a child, but I knew that I'd never put myself in the situation where I would have to make that choice again.
I was wrong.
I had vowed at the time to get myself more financially stable so that I could raise a child without all the risks that Bean would have faced. Instead, my finances basically imploded. I tried going through one of those debt management services, but this was before the reform act that was passed in 2009. The company got their fee up front, none of my creditors made me any offers - some of them pretended that the debt management company didn't exist - and on my thirtieth birthday I got court papers from my biggest creditor. I suspect they decided to sue instead of negotiate a settlement because according to the paperwork the mediator had, I own a rafting company. Imagine my surprise. And still, when I try to get my credit report, I keep getting asked about my home mortgage. (Anyone else see that report on 60 Minutes this last Sunday? That's a whole other travesty. Anyway...)
After the mediation hearing, where it was decided that I was going to have to file for bankruptcy, I turned to my future husband and said, "Well... it doesn't get any better than this!" and we stopped using protection. We were pregnant surprisingly quickly. He still had good credit, after all. And we had decided that we were willing to go into complete financial ruin if we had to, just to become parents in this lifetime.
Fortunately, there is such a thing as public assistance, and here in Oregon, it is much easier to navigate than in California where I had been with Bean. Almost all my medical care was covered. I received food stamps and WIC vouchers, not to mention invaluable nutritional advise and breastfeeding classes through WIC. I also qualified for state and federal assistance for school, so I got a couple of classes in before I popped. I could still get financial aid, now that I have dependents, but now that I have dependents, it's a little too difficult for me to manage going to school, too.
(I also have to give an extra shout-out to my bosses for being extremely accommodating of my extreme morning sickness. It probably wasn't as bad as Kate Middleton's, but it was pretty debilitating and I missed a lot of work. Very few employers would be so supportive, so thank you guys again).
So things were looking good, and I was uncharacteristically happy going into our first ultrasound. We were expecting a boy - woo-hoo! But we also found out then that we were expecting a boy who had an abnormality in his brain. It's called an isolated ventriculomegaly. It could signify a range of disabilities, including Down Syndrome and other developmental delays, some mild, some severe. We weren't sure what we were facing, and we had to consider how able we would be to care for a child if he required intensive financial and other special care.
For the second time, I found myself facing the choice I never dreamed I would face.
** see the next blog for the dramatic (long) conclusion...
Soy Mocha
Coconut Dream Bar
** This is in two parts because I keep running myself out of time to finish these while I'm actually Out of the house. Also, some of the State of the Union speech was relevant to this wide-reaching topic, so I'm doing a little modifying of what I've already written and will post two separate blogs from about where I left off last week. Hopefully the dramatic conclusion will follow fast. **
I'll write about drones next week (or not). This week, I've decided to talk about hard choices. All this talk about sequesters and minimum wage and mental health and other public services, kind of provoked this, though I've been thinking about writing this for a long time.
This is a story about three abortions - the one I had, and the two I didn't. This is the story of how public policies played a part in each decision. I'll try to keep it brief.
In the vice presidential debate last year, Paul Ryan mentioned his "little Bean" in his response to a question about abortion. Well, I had a little Bean, too. In fact, I got a tattoo of the kanji symbol for "Bean" on my belly on the day she would have been born. My ex - her father - was with me, too, getting his own tattoo over his heart. This was not an unwanted pregnancy. Unintended, yes. Unprepared for... but not unmourned for. And we chose it - I chose it.
I was not a scared kid, either, with my whole future ahead of me. I was 28. And it was the past behind me, and the unstable present, that had driven my decision. Everything I had learned in a lifetime of poverty, and debt-driven almost-middle-class poverty, was that what little help there is is usually not enough. I had learned that the public assistance programs were so over-burdened that I usually didn't qualify, and the process could take weeks, months, years longer than you could last without the help. I had learned that working hard - even above minimum wage, even more than 40 hours a week - wasn't enough to even pay for myself, let alone start a family on. I had learned that something is always looming - the tires are getting balder, the cavities are burrowing deeper, and the people who have offered to help are about to be crushed with their own crises, and you're two breaths from being on your own again. I had learned that I could live in my car if I had to, but I couldn't force all that stress and uncertainty and insecurity on a child.
It was not until that moment, though, that I knew how badly I wanted to be a mother. And I learned then that, you can have a fair idea of your mind, but you really don't know what you would or would not do until you must decide what you will or will not do. I didn't know if I'd ever get the chance again to have a child, but I knew that I'd never put myself in the situation where I would have to make that choice again.
I was wrong.
I had vowed at the time to get myself more financially stable so that I could raise a child without all the risks that Bean would have faced. Instead, my finances basically imploded. I tried going through one of those debt management services, but this was before the reform act that was passed in 2009. The company got their fee up front, none of my creditors made me any offers - some of them pretended that the debt management company didn't exist - and on my thirtieth birthday I got court papers from my biggest creditor. I suspect they decided to sue instead of negotiate a settlement because according to the paperwork the mediator had, I own a rafting company. Imagine my surprise. And still, when I try to get my credit report, I keep getting asked about my home mortgage. (Anyone else see that report on 60 Minutes this last Sunday? That's a whole other travesty. Anyway...)
After the mediation hearing, where it was decided that I was going to have to file for bankruptcy, I turned to my future husband and said, "Well... it doesn't get any better than this!" and we stopped using protection. We were pregnant surprisingly quickly. He still had good credit, after all. And we had decided that we were willing to go into complete financial ruin if we had to, just to become parents in this lifetime.
Fortunately, there is such a thing as public assistance, and here in Oregon, it is much easier to navigate than in California where I had been with Bean. Almost all my medical care was covered. I received food stamps and WIC vouchers, not to mention invaluable nutritional advise and breastfeeding classes through WIC. I also qualified for state and federal assistance for school, so I got a couple of classes in before I popped. I could still get financial aid, now that I have dependents, but now that I have dependents, it's a little too difficult for me to manage going to school, too.
(I also have to give an extra shout-out to my bosses for being extremely accommodating of my extreme morning sickness. It probably wasn't as bad as Kate Middleton's, but it was pretty debilitating and I missed a lot of work. Very few employers would be so supportive, so thank you guys again).
So things were looking good, and I was uncharacteristically happy going into our first ultrasound. We were expecting a boy - woo-hoo! But we also found out then that we were expecting a boy who had an abnormality in his brain. It's called an isolated ventriculomegaly. It could signify a range of disabilities, including Down Syndrome and other developmental delays, some mild, some severe. We weren't sure what we were facing, and we had to consider how able we would be to care for a child if he required intensive financial and other special care.
For the second time, I found myself facing the choice I never dreamed I would face.
** see the next blog for the dramatic (long) conclusion...
Friday, February 1, 2013
Toilet Coffee, Suspenders, and Hypnotic Henry.
Home
Sleepytime tea
Ramen (Oriental flavor) and night-night pills
Three things: Toilet Coffee, Suspenders, and Hypnotic Henry.
1. No, this is not a euphemism for something else. A while ago, a friend suggested using coffee grounds as an air freshener/odor absorber. So we put a little tupperware cup with coffee grounds on the back of the toilet (we have the diaper changer in the bathroom, as well...). Then I got the brilliant idea to make it into a little zen garden instead.
Unfortunately, I didn't really think through my temporary instant coffee grounds idea. Instant coffee likes water. Where is there a lot of moisture? Yep. So after scraping the half-dissolved coffee into the trash next to the toilet, I refilled the zen garden with some lovely holiday coffee (on clearance, of course, because I'm not going to drop organic Kenya AA money on bathroom coffee). As you might have guessed, during this process some instant coffee grounds got into the bowl of the toilet and... ta-da! Toilet coffee.
2. I have taken to wearing suspenders around the house. I have a deviant body shape, and because I am a cheap bastard (as evidenced above) I will not shell out the money (and equally spare time) to get my pants properly fitted. But wearing a belt actually hurts my hips and overall posture. The suspenders relieve the pressure on my hips but the downside is twofold: they are made for men and, thus, the support is not perfect, and also availability and wearibility are limited for women. So if anyone can score me some more lady-friendly suspenders... drop me a line...
3. Yesterday, Henry took a piece off the ladder of his toy firetruck (I say "off" as if it has ever stayed "on") and swung it pendulum-like in front of my face while repeating, "cwose eyes, cwose eyes..." I have no idea where he learned how to "hypnotize" people. (Who's supervising this kid, anyway?). I did, of course, cwose my eyes. :)
Real blogs will resume this weekend. Maybe.
Sleepytime tea
Ramen (Oriental flavor) and night-night pills
Three things: Toilet Coffee, Suspenders, and Hypnotic Henry.
1. No, this is not a euphemism for something else. A while ago, a friend suggested using coffee grounds as an air freshener/odor absorber. So we put a little tupperware cup with coffee grounds on the back of the toilet (we have the diaper changer in the bathroom, as well...). Then I got the brilliant idea to make it into a little zen garden instead.
Unfortunately, I didn't really think through my temporary instant coffee grounds idea. Instant coffee likes water. Where is there a lot of moisture? Yep. So after scraping the half-dissolved coffee into the trash next to the toilet, I refilled the zen garden with some lovely holiday coffee (on clearance, of course, because I'm not going to drop organic Kenya AA money on bathroom coffee). As you might have guessed, during this process some instant coffee grounds got into the bowl of the toilet and... ta-da! Toilet coffee.
2. I have taken to wearing suspenders around the house. I have a deviant body shape, and because I am a cheap bastard (as evidenced above) I will not shell out the money (and equally spare time) to get my pants properly fitted. But wearing a belt actually hurts my hips and overall posture. The suspenders relieve the pressure on my hips but the downside is twofold: they are made for men and, thus, the support is not perfect, and also availability and wearibility are limited for women. So if anyone can score me some more lady-friendly suspenders... drop me a line...
3. Yesterday, Henry took a piece off the ladder of his toy firetruck (I say "off" as if it has ever stayed "on") and swung it pendulum-like in front of my face while repeating, "cwose eyes, cwose eyes..." I have no idea where he learned how to "hypnotize" people. (Who's supervising this kid, anyway?). I did, of course, cwose my eyes. :)
Real blogs will resume this weekend. Maybe.
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