Blogging Slowdown

I started this blog almost six months ago because I really wanted to make writing a priority, and I wanted to write stuff that people would read. I found that it filled a creative need in me - and frankly, writing regularly made me a better writer. I spent all of what had been my television time on my blog, writing for a couple of hours a day (not everything made it to the site, obviously). When I wasn't working on my classes, I was working on my blog.

But now I find myself up to my eyeballs in writing projects, and my blogging seems to be taking me away from these projects (which I undertake for money, for goods, and for lines on my c.v.). And further, I'm tired - not of writing, but of the pace. It's summer, for gosh sakes, and I just want to lie out in the sun for a while.

So I need to slow down. You can see that I've slowly dropped off from my daily blog posts to a few a week. My plan now is to post at least a couple of times a week, with the hope of stepping it up in the future.

I'm making this announcement as I prepare to leave for Iowa City for the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. In case anyone is interested, I will be attending the Braided Memoir workshop. Having never attended a writing workshop, I'm not entirely sure what to expect. I will either be written out and unable to post next week, or I will be energized and inspired and will post often. I just don't know. So if you don't hear from me, you know why.

I don't know whether to be just quietly wigged out...

...or vomit.

Because my husband just asked me, after thinking about it for a while, if maybe the guy was talking about sexual experience.

I mean, ew.

Watch it and draw your own conclusions.

South Dakota: The Hick State

I'm writing this from Oakland, CA, where I'm at the National Women's Studies Association Conference. And so far today, every time I've mentioned South Dakota, people have said, "Oh."
(beat) "OH. WOW." And then offered me a supportive comment or empathetic look.

So hear this, Unruh-ites. The rest of the country feels sorry for us because of you.

iPain

I should say first that I am a gal who dislikes the directions that come with anything. I will look at them if I am putting together a bookshelf or something and I don't want to put it together backwards, but I generally read just enough of the instructions so that I can fill in the blanks myself.

And, second, I should point out that I am in fact not a tech geek (not that there's anything wrong with that), so anyone who is and is reading this will have to excuse me as I stumble along in my discussion of the technology in my life.

Anyway, my impatience with instructions may contribute to my frustration with my new iRiver. But I doubt it.

I bought a iRiver IFP-795 last summer (512MB, or something like that). I didn't want to buy an iPod for several reasons. First, iPods are an annoying shape - the iRiver is much, much smaller and not a big, flat rectangle. And the older generation of iPods didn't have rechargeable batteries, whereas the iRiver runs on an AA or AAA. Also, the iRiver is non-proprietary, which means that I am not wedded to iTunes or to Apple for anything. And I can easily listen to files from iTunes (after converting them, which is a simple process) on my iRiver. However, the IFP-795 requires iRiver software in order to download anything onto it. Not a big deal - the software is free and somewhat simple to use, once you get the hang of it.

So, I liked my iRiver so much that I just bought a new, 1G one - the iRiver T30 - which is even smaller than the other one (yay!).

Now, I realize that iRiver is getting out of the MP3 player business and that this must affect their customer service. However - if the early generations of an MP3 player require a specialized music manager...wouldn't you think that the later generations would at least be compatible with that music manager, so that you could easily transfer your music onto the new player?

No. That would be too easy.

My new T30 only uses Windows Media Player. Now, almost all of my music is already on there, so that in itself is not a huge problem. What IS a huge problem is that I seem unable to download playlists without the playlists being taken apart in the process and reorganized by artist. That's fine, if what I want to do is listen to cds by different artists. If, however, what I want is a methodically ordered mix to listen to while I work out, then I am fucked.

I am fucked.

I like to think that I'm a smart person. I managed to get through a Ph.D. program (some would argue that that is no indication of intelligence). I know how to use a computer even if I'm not a tech geek. I can usually figure things out for myself.

I have tried eight times to sync these music files to the T30. I've looked in WMP "help" and I've read the directions many, many times.

I am now considering praying to whichever saint is the saint of computers (anyone?).

If you know how to do this so that the playlists remain playlists - you know, in a directory hierarchy - and don't get reordered by artist - for my "convenience" - please advise. But I have a feeling this is just one of those stupid things that happened when they were designing the thing. What must that conversation have sounded like?

"Hey, don't forget to fix it so that they can download playlists."
"Nah, it's lunchtime. Let's not bother."

I mean, seriously. What is the point? Would the thing have had to be bigger to recognize playlists?


Much, much later:
OK, I don't know how or why, but it at least downloaded my songs in the order I wanted. But no directory.

Sick of Abortion

I am so very tired of talking and thinking about abortion. My friends who work at Planned Parenthood tell me this ALL the TIME, and now I finally know what they mean.

I got up this morning, logged on, and continued a discussion I had been having since yesterday about whether or not EC is abortion. I got pretty upset by it, actually. It was partly just the fact that email can be a somewhat limited means for having complicated discussions. So often, when I'm emailing about something I care about, I find that I am unable to clearly articulate myself. In this case, I was confused by the terminology my friend used and led to think that she thought that EC was RU-486. Eventually, we got it sorted out, but not before I got my feelings hurt and got really frustrated - and not before she felt attacked and like her thoughts on the issue were unwelcome. And that was the second part of why I got upset - because I was going through, "oh, she really thinks I'm a big jerk! Oh, she really thinks I'm dissing her! Oh, what do I do? Should I try to apologize and explain that I wasn't doing what she thought I was doing? But what about the fact that now I'm pissed off and feeling hurt?" All very exhausting. And it wasn't even 9:30 yet.

At the same time, I received an email about a project I'm working on locally, over which there is a sort of mini-turf war taking place (of course, this project has to do with abortion rights).

Meanwhile, my son and I were getting into a crying argument (the tears were on his end) over whether or not he had to go to the bathroom (I said yes, he said no. Usually, this is *his* decision, but lately he's been refusing to go even when he has to go, and he can hold it a long time, which is not good for his bladder.). Anyway, I didn't handle it well because I was so distracted by all the email confrontations and serious discussions. (Note to self: do not check email until child and self are dressed and ready for the day.)

By the time I got my cup of coffee, it was already 11:30. Then I went to Weight Watchers. All I will say about that is that it was really depressing. At least there was no talk about abortion there.

Then I went to the gym for another blissful hour of no abortion talk.

Then I went to a meeting at which there was an impromptu discussion about abortion (read: *they* had a discussion about abortion; *I* sat silently, literally biting my tongue and waiting for an excuse to get the hell out of there, and trying not to lose it completely because the issue had come up in the context of something really difficult that a friend of theirs was going through, and it was not the time or place for me to launch into anything). I was stuck for an hour and a half.

Then I came home and wrote a letter to the editor about - guess what? Someone else's stupid letter about the effing abortion ban. Sigh.

I am WIPED.

Teen Beat for the New Millennium

Warning: Rant to follow.

I was just thinking today about how irritated I am by MySpace (and, ahem, Blogger) and all of these sites that ask you to list your favorite books, bands, movies, etc.

I mean, I can understand listing what you're listening to these days or what you're reading or what movies you've seen recently. These are things we probably all have something to say about and are interested in talking about with others. But how lame is it to list your favorite bands once you're out of high school? And for those people who list 20 gazillion bands - in case, god forbid, they should leave one out and then visitors to their page wouldn't really get their core essence and know what they were all about - you know, if you list 20 gazillion bands, not only will no one take the time to read the list, but you will end up just listing the same trendy, "alternative" bands everyone else lists. Way to look cool.

(And what's up with the "current mood" bullshit? Because I think we can all agree that the better writing is generally not found on blogs that look like somebody's 10th grade diary. Can we give each day a letter grade, too? Sheesh.)
/Rant

Three Cheers for SD Pastor

I was grumpy last night. I didn't get as much done yesterday as I would have liked, my summer class started today, we're out of Froz Fruit bars...yeah, I was grumpy.

But here's something that lifted my spirits - an affirmation of gay families by (gasp) a SD pastor. It's great to see people in this red state who "get it!"

Aberdeen American News, June 7, 2006

'Family' defined by people who form it
by Riedel, minister of United Church of Christ, Aberdeen

I've given a lot of thought to what my first column should be about. Surely I should tackle something soft and cuddly, something warm and fuzzy to endear the readers to me for ages to come. Surely I should, but those who know me best know that is never going to happen.

Please turn your attention to the political ad about every child having a mother and a father in the American News of May 31, page 6A. When turning to this page a couple of harsh assumptions jumped out from the ad: first that Sen. Tim Johnson doesn't care about children and second, that apparently if homosexuals are allowed to be married it will be the ruination of life as we know it.

The basis of the ad is fiction in regard to Johnson's personal beliefs, according to his staff. The ad, paid for by Focus on the Family and others, states that "a compassionate society would not deliberately deny a child a mother or a father." It goes on to assert that the only way to protect marriage, the only way to protect our children, is to discriminate against an entire group of people and ban gay marriages.

The obvious result of this ban would be what? Perhaps we can expect an instant decline in the divorce rate amongst heterosexual couples, which is currently nearing 50 percent. Surely once we amend our Constitution, once the politicians vote to ban gays from getting married, those percentages will drop.

Will we also be able to expect a drop in the rate of unmarried pregnancies?
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 32 percent of all births are currently to unmarried women. Are gays to blame for this? Will gays being allowed to marry affect these numbers at all?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are at least 11.9 million single parents in the United States. Twenty million kids under 18 live with only one parent. Of these children who are living with one parent, 35 percent are living with a parent who was never married and 38 percent are the product of a divorce between their heterosexual parents.

The crisis in American families isn't about or caused by gay and lesbian partners who want the same status as their heterosexual neighbors.

I think that the Marriage Protection Amendment isn't so much about protecting our children as it is about protecting the homophobic from facing the reality that gay and lesbian partners seeking equal rights are not nearly the monsters they want them to be.

Before anyone starts screaming about how homosexuals will start molesting children should they be allowed to marry and adopt, let me say that they are already allowed to adopt and doing quite well as parents. According to an article in Pediatrics magazine, in a study of 269 cases of child sex abuse, only two offenders where found to be gay or lesbian. More relevant was the finding that of the cases involving molestation of a boy by a man, 74 percent of the men were or had been in a heterosexual relationship with the boy's mother or another female relative. The conclusion was that "a child's risk of being molested by his or her relative's heterosexual partner is over 100 times greater than by someone who might be identifiable as being homosexual."

What this writer finds more alarming than all of the rhetoric about gays and lesbians, is what ads like this say about children who are products of homes that the American Family Association don't find normal. In their zeal to stamp out homosexuals they are labeling children from single-parent families or what might be termed "non-traditional" families as something less than desirable.

Folks need to be careful that in their effort to make gays and lesbians second-class citizens they don't push 20 million children down with them.

What defines a family will never fit nicely in the box that the American Family Association has built for it. It will never be solely defined as one man and one woman with 2.3 children of the same race and appropriate gender identity. Rather it will be defined by those who choose to be a family. Every child understands how important family is; don't try to tell them what theirs should look like.

Rick Riedel

Lack of EC Causes Abortion

Just to reiterate: EC works the same way as the birth control pill. It's not an abortifacient. A woman who takes EC after unprotected intercourse is using birth control, not getting an abortion.

Read on.

From the Washington Post:

What Happens When There Is No Plan B?
By Dana L.
Sunday, June 4, 2006; Page B01

The conservative politics of the Bush administration forced me to have an abortion I didn't want. Well, not literally, but let me explain.

I am a 42-year-old happily married mother of two elementary-schoolers. My husband and I both work, and like many couples, we're starved for time together. One Thursday evening this past March, we managed to snag some rare couple time and, in a sudden rush of passion, I failed to insert my diaphragm.

The next morning, after getting my kids off to school, I called my ob/gyn to get a prescription for Plan B, the emergency contraceptive pill that can prevent a pregnancy -- but only if taken within 72 hours of intercourse. As we're both in our forties, my husband and I had considered our family complete, and we weren't planning to have another child, which is why, as a rule, we use contraception. I wanted to make sure that our momentary lapse didn't result in a pregnancy.

The receptionist, however, informed me that my doctor did not prescribe Plan B. No reason given. Neither did my internist. The midwifery practice I had used could prescribe it, but not over the phone, and there were no more open appointments for the day. The weekend -- and the end of the 72-hour window -- was approaching.

But I needed to meet my kids' school bus and, as I was pretty much out of options -- short of soliciting random Virginia doctors out of the phone book -- I figured I'd take my chances and hope for the best. After all, I'm 42. Isn't it likely my eggs are overripe, anyway? I thought so, especially since my best friend from college has been experiencing agonizing infertility problems at this age.

Weeks later, the two drugstore pregnancy tests I took told a different story. Positive. I couldn't believe it.

I'm still in good health, but unlike the last time I was pregnant, nearly a decade ago, I'm now taking three medications. One of them, for high cholesterol, is in the Food and Drug Administration's Pregnancy Category X -- meaning it's a drug you shouldn't take if you're expecting or even planning to get pregnant. I worried because the odds of having a high-risk pregnancy or a baby born with serious health issues rise significantly after age 40. And I thought of the emotional upheavals that an unplanned pregnancy would cause our family. My husband and I are involved in all aspects of our children's lives, but even so, we feel we don't get enough time to spend with them as it is.

I felt sick. Although I've always been in favor of abortion rights, this was a choice I had hoped never to have to make myself. When I realized the seriousness of my predicament, I became angry. I knew that Plan B, which could have prevented it, was supposed to have been available over the counter by now. But I also remembered hearing that conservative politics have held up its approval.

My anger propelled me to get to the bottom of the story. It turns out that in December 2003, an FDA advisory committee, whose suggestions the agency usually follows, recommended that the drug be made available over the counter, or without a prescription. Nonetheless, in May 2004, the FDA top brass overruled the advisory panel and gave the thumbs-down to over-the-counter sales of Plan B, requesting more data on how girls younger than 16 could use it safely without a doctor's supervision.

Apparently, one of the concerns is that ready availability of Plan B could lead teenage girls to have premarital sex. Yet this concern -- valid or not -- wound up penalizing an over-the-hill married woman for having sex with her husband. Talk about the law of unintended consequences.

By late August 2005, the slow action over Plan B led the director of the FDA's Office on Women's Health to resign her post. The agency's delay on the drug, she wrote in an e-mail to her colleagues, "runs contrary to my core commitment to improving and advancing women's health." As recently as April 7, Steven Galson, director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said that the agency still needed time to work on the issue.

Unfortunately, time was the one thing I didn't have.

Meanwhile, I hadn't even been able to get Plan B with a prescription that Friday, because in Virginia, health-care practitioners apparently are allowed to refuse to prescribe any drug that goes against their beliefs. Although I had heard of pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control on religious grounds, I was dumbfounded to find that doctors could do the same thing.

Moreover, they aren't even required to tell the patient why they won't provide the drug. Nor do they have to provide a list of alternative sources. I had asked the ob-gyn's receptionist if politics was the reason the doctor wouldn't prescribe Plan B for me. She refused to answer or offer any reason, no matter how much I pressed her. By the time I got on the phone with my internist's office and found that he would not fill a Plan B prescription either, I figured it was a waste of time to fight with the office staff. To this day, I don't know why my doctors wouldn't prescribe Plan B -- whether it was because of moral opposition to contraception or out of fear of political protesters or just because they preferred not to go there.

In any event, they were also partly responsible for why I was stuck that Friday, and why I was ultimately forced to confront the decision to terminate my third pregnancy.

After making the decision with my husband, I was plunged into an even murkier world -- that of finding an abortion provider. If information on Plan B was hard to come by, and practitioners were evasive on emergency contraception, trying to get information on how to abort a pregnancy in 2006 is an even more Byzantine experience.

On the Internet, most of what I found was political in nature or otherwise unhelpful: pictures of what your baby looks like in the womb from week one, and so on.

Calling doctors, I felt like a pariah when I asked whether they provided termination services. Finally, I decided to check the Planned Parenthood Web site to see whether its clinics performed abortions. They did, but I learned that if I had the abortion in Virginia, the procedure would take two days because of a mandatory 24-hour waiting period, which requires that you go in first for a day of counseling and then wait a day to think things over before returning to have the abortion. Because of work and the children, I couldn't afford two days off, so I opted to have the procedure done on a Saturday in downtown D.C. while my husband took the kids to the Smithsonian.

The hidden world of abortion services soon became even more subterranean. I called Planned Parenthood two days in advance to confirm the appointment. The receptionist politely informed me that the organization never confirms appointments, for "security reasons," and that I would have to just show up.

I arrived shortly before 10 a.m. in a bleak downpour, trusting that someone had recorded my appointment. I shuffled to the front door through a phalanx of umbrellaed protesters, who chanted loudly about Jesus and chided me not to go into that house of abortion.

All the while, I was thinking that if religion hadn't been allowed to seep into American politics the way it has, I wouldn't even be there. This all could have been stopped way before this baby was conceived if they had just let me have that damn pill.

After passing through the metal detector inside the building, I entered the Planned Parenthood waiting room; it was like the waiting room for a budget airline -- crammed full of people, of all races, and getting busier by the moment. I was by far the oldest person there (other than one girl's mom). The wait seemed endless. No one looked happy. We were told that the lone doctor was stuck in Cherry Blossom Parade traffic.

He finally arrived, an hour and a half late.

The procedure itself took about five minutes. I finally walked out of the building at 4:30, 6 1/2 hours after I had arrived.

It was a decision I am sorry I had to make. It was awful, painful, sickening. But I feel that this administration gave me practically no choice but to have an unwanted abortion because the way it has politicized religion made it well-nigh impossible for me to get emergency contraception that would have prevented the pregnancy in the first place.

And to think that, all these years after Roe v. Wade became the law of the land, this is what our children have to look forward to as they approach their reproductive years.

Dana L. is a lawyer and writer living in Virginia. Out of concern for her family's privacy, she requested that her last name not be published.

Who Gives a Flying....

For the record, I don't care what Brad and Angelina's baby is named, nor do I care what it looks like. I'm not interested in the pictures. I'm saddened that the pictures are worth an estimated $5-$7 million. What the hell does that say about us as a country? I'll bet more Americans know what little Shiloh's name is (see, I'm not even paying attention - I am STUDIOUSLY NOT PAYING ATTENTION - and I STILL KNOW) than know who their elected officials are. Or even what their own teacher's names are (as ridiculous as it sounds, I meet students every semester who do not know the names of their professors. How is that even possible?).

Nor do I care for the trying-to-be-clever nicknames "Brangelina," "TomKat," and "Bennifer." (Is this what we have to look forward to? Will every celebrity couple from now on have to be given a nickname? (And doesn't the press have more important matters to attend to?!))

And finally - whose business is it, really, what some couple you've never met chooses to name their baby? If you are self-righteous enough to ridicule Gwyneth Paltrow for naming her babies "Apple" and "Moses," you can bet your sweet bippy that karma is going to get you: right now, your friends and relatives secretly hate the baby name you've picked out. They think it is 1) pretentious, 2) inappropriate, and/or 3) horribly common.

(This is a general rant, not directed in particular at any of my friends who like to gossip about celebrity baby names. Your friends love your babies' names. Really.)

I Know, I Know, I Mentioned the Film Crews...

And several times, I started to blog about it, but the truth is, I just kind of feel sorry for the one director who pissed me off. The more I read about him, the more of an asshole everyone seems to think he is - I mean EVERYONE. Not one person has anything nice to say about this guy, and I'm thinking that it would suck to be a person that is so roundly disliked. So I'm just not going to add any further to his bad reputation by smearing his name here.

Besides, I already vented to one of the better-known movie sites...for which I now feel guilty. Hopefully, they won't use it.

Fetishes

I tend to fetishize things like office supplies, closet organizers, interestingly-shaped cleaning products - you know, those things that promise us better, tidier, fresher-smelling lives. Bonus if they make our environmental footprints smaller at the same time.

I love having an excuse to go to OfficeMax, and I will wander the aisles in search of the perfect pen or pencil, the one that will revolutionize my writing experience, or of the perfect calendar (the right size, shape, and subject), or of some desk organizing caddy that I have never seen before.

The pencil I've been using professionally (i.e., for grading papers) and for just about everything else for the last several years is the Papermate PhD, which is an incredible mechanical pencil experience. What I like about it is the way it feels in my hand - it's hefty enough that I can hold it comfortably without getting finger or hand cramps, even after hours of writing. But most importantly, unlike almost every other mechanical pencil I've tried, the PhD lead doesn't snap on me very often.

Plus, it's very stylish, as you can see.






But, although Office Max was my first love, lately, Target has become even more of a time and money sucking experience for me. Not that there aren't all kinds of reasons not to go to Target - for one thing, Target allows its pharmacists to decide for themselves whether or not to fill EC prescriptions.

Beginning of long tangent:
Though I sound like a broken record, it bears repeating: EC is emergency CONTRACEPTION. Not abortion. If there is an established pregnancy - which means that a fertilized egg has implanted itself in the wall of the uterus (which how the medical field defines "pregnancy," which is a medical condition, so it's not a definition that's up for grabs), EC will have absolutely no effect. So refusing to fill a prescription for EC is exactly the same as refusing to fill a prescription for birth control (which many pharmacists do, these days).

Here's what Target has to say about the matter (excerpted from AMERICAblog ):

From: Target.Response Target.Response@target.com
Date: Nov 14, 2005 11:14 AM
Subject: Filling Prescriptions

Dear Target Guest

In our ongoing effort to provide great service to our guests, Target consistently ensures that prescriptions for the emergency contraceptive Plan B are filled. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 also requires us to accommodate our team members' sincerely held religious beliefs.

In the rare event that a pharmacist's beliefs conflict with filling a guest's prescription for the emergency contraceptive Plan B, our policy requires our pharmacists to take responsibility for ensuring that the guest's prescription is filled in a timely and respectful manner, either by another Target pharmacist or a different pharmacy.

The emergency contraceptive Plan B is the only medication for which this policy applies. Under no circumstances can the pharmacist prevent the prescription from being filled, make discourteous or judgmental remarks, or discuss his or her religious beliefs with the guest.

[snip]

We're committed to meeting the needs of our female guests and will continue to deliver upon that commitment.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Hanson
Target Executive Offices

I LOVE the - what is it - irony? Doublespeak? - of that last line, I have to say.

I just need to quote a little more for you from this blog, because Target's insanity may not be completely clear from the above email. In response to the above email, AMERICAblogger has this to say:

So let's ask Target if they also support the following Target employees:
- Check out clerks who verify how fat you are before selling you that package of potato chips?
- Pharmacists who don't want to fill prescriptions for Jewish customers who killed Christ.
- Pharmacists who don't want to help customers who worship a "Satanic counterfeit" (read: "The Pope," in fundie-speak).
- Pharmacists who only dispense HIV medicine to "innocent victims" of AIDS.
- Pharmacists who want proof that women seeking emergency contraception were really raped, and that they didn't "deserve it."
- Pharmacists (or cashiers) who are Christian Scientists - can they refuse to sell any medicine, even aspirin, to anyone?
- Pharmacists who won't sell birth control pills to unmarried women, condoms to unmarried men, or any birth control at all because God doesn't want people spilling their seed.
- Can fundamentalist Christian employees refuse to interact with gay people in any way, shape or form since gays are sinners, abominations, biological errors, and very likely pedophiles?

I'm still sort of surprised that Target doesn't get it. I'm still trying to get my head around how they can make the exception for EC and still make pharmacists fill birth control pills. It's all about what people think about how EC works, and not about how it actually works.

AND CHRIST, JESUS, WOULDN'T YOU EXPECT YOUR PHARMACIST TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE?!

So there are certainly reasons not to shop at Target.

But I do. And I've given up Wal-Mart and K-Mart is closed, so I. Don't. Want. To. Hear. It.

So - long tangent over - while I don't usually have very good luck with women's Target clothes (crappy quality - nothing I buy there lasts through the washing machine), I have wonderful luck with Target everything else - storage containers, furniture, picture frames, kids' clothes, and now...cleaning supplies.

I am obsessed with Method.

I have bought green cleaning products almost exclusively for the last decade or more - despite my reference to "Ajax" in that earlier post, which was mostly for effect (I used to clean with a green cleanser, and now I clean with baking soda, which is not really a problem on dishes, but still, it's the general principle, because in my mind, dish gunk and sink gunk are two different things, even if the dishes sit in the sink.). So when I first saw Method products on the shelf at Target a couple of years ago, I ignored them. I mean, sure, they were cheap, but so are commercial cleaning products in general, compared to Seventh Generation or Ecover or whatever green products I find at the co-op.

And I was so sure that Method was just another cleaning product that, last week, when I picked up some supplies, I was outraged that the ingredients were not listed on the bottles, and I came home ready to report them to the FDA.

It turns out that non-toxic products are not required to list their contents. Score one for Method (minus one for the FDA: if your kid drinks bio-safe cleaning products, doesn't Poison Control still want to know what's in them?!).

Method also uses biodegradable ingredients. And they don't test on animals (score about 100 for Method).

Plus, their products are so CUTE!!





















They are almost - almost - as cute as the Koziol products (such as Curly, below):



And there you have it. And we're back to office supplies. Sigh. Moan.

The Abortion Ban Makes NO EXCEPTIONS

Just to reiterate, that's N-O E-X-C-E-P-T-I-O-N-S for survivors (let's start saying "survivors" instead of "victims") of rape and incest. Here's one letter to the Argus Leader that got it right:

Michelle Wolf's letters [are] all basically saying the same thing: she believes HB1215 provides an exception for rape and incest. This is not true, no matter how many times she says it.

Her idea of an exception? Emergency contraception. Of course, the same legislators who passed the abortion ban also rejected bills that would have require[d] ERs to provide rape victims with EC, so many will never know it exists. If they do, they might be in a town with one pharmacist who refuses to fill the prescription (thanks again to the Legislature). Also, victims have to access EC within 72 hours for it to be effective. Not an easy task for a 13-year-old incest victim, even if you don't consider all the other barriers.

The people who passed HB1215 were not concerned about rape and incest victims when this bill was being discussed, and now that they realize how opposed the people of South Dakota are to it, they're trying to back-pedal. It's too late. We know this bill is extreme.

Caitlin Collier

If a grown woman I know who works at Planned Parenthood can't get EC on a Friday night, what's a 13-year-old gonna do? Better make sure to get raped during the work week. Thanks, SD Legislature, for your compassion. (And thanks, Kelsey, for the heads-up.)

Little Idiosyncracies

We all have them, right? One of mine is that I'm very particular about my kitchen and bathroom. I'm strictly a toilet-lid down person, and it bothers me no end when a guest leaves the lid up. There is something about an open toilet that just strikes me as unspeakably rude (though only in my own house - it doesn't bother me in other people's homes, though I will close the lid if I use your bathroom). But more to the point, we have cats, and when we got them, I didn't want them drinking out of the toilet as have the cats of some (pretty disgusting, actually) people I've known. And then we had a kid - ditto (um, that is, I didn't want the kid throwing toys in - I don't know anyone whose kid drinks out of the toilet, and if you do, please don't tell me about it). So the toilet lid rule has been in effect for over ten years.

And still, people who've been visiting us for that long and who know us well leave the lid up.

I also have a thing about the way my dishes are washed. Right now we have houseguests who drink tea. And tea, if you have noticed, leaves a stain on cups and the teapot. Now, it never fails to amaze me how a person can take a clean mug - sans tea stain - enjoy a cup of tea, wash the cup, and put it back away with a new tea stain and see nothing wrong with that. These particular house guests do this ALL THE TIME. And they do it to the teapot, too, which never gets used unless they are visiting, so I know that they are the tea stainers.

The thing is, the tea stains come out easily with a little scrubbing - if you get at them right away and don't let them sit. But, for whatever reason - and I've had occasion to spend plenty of time wondering what the reasons might be (they're losing their eyesight? they're so accustomed to the tea stains in their own dishes that they no longer see them? they don't realize that tea stains come out? they figure tea stains are just a part of life, so why not embrace them?) - they don't seem to notice the stains, and so I am left to sneak into the kitchen later and re-wash things so they are not permanently stained.

And then there's the matter of the dish scrubby. I have a whole dishwashing system. There's the dishrag, for actually washing the dishes. I knit these myself and wash them in the washing machine every so often. There's the scrubby, which I buy at the store, for scrubbing pots, but I use this sparingly and take time to get the bits of food out of it each time so that I won't have to keep replacing it. (I really, really hate filthy dish scrubbies - ick.) There's the steel wool, which I never use but which is there for the occasional steel wool emergency. And then there's the old, filthy and disgusting scrubby, which is used for cleaning the sink.

Guess which one guests always use on the dishes?

What boggles my mind is that they ALWAYS pick that one, and it's not just our current houseguests but others, too. And I always say, "please don't use that one, it's for cleaning the sink and counters," and they are perplexed as to why I'd be bothered by them washing my dishes with the same dirty-looking scrubby that probably has AJax or whatever still in it. And then next time, they use the wrong one, again.

Along similar lines, I rewash anything that comes into contact with the mat under the dish drying basket, just on principle. I'm surprised and revolted by how frequently people will put silverware flat on the mat - I mean, ick. Or maybe everyone but me scours their mat on a regular basis. Even so, my mat does not even *look* clean.

Furthermore, I have a very picky dishwasher, and it needs to be loaded a certain way. And everytime these house guests visit, we must go through it again - please let me or my partner load the dishwasher because it's really fussy and it won't wash the dishes if you don't stack exactly the right way. And yet, I find things like upside-down silverware in the silverware basket.

It's not that I'm especially clean. I am perfectly willing to let dishes rot in the sink until I can get to them, and every so often, that means a week. I know that's disgusting to many people. I'm not thrilled about it, but I'm used to it, and I can live with it. But if I'm going to clean, I do it right, and that means that I follow all of the above "rules" and that when I wash a dish, it has no food particles or anything left on it afterward. (Unlike SOME people.)

Now, I'll be honest. You caught the title of this post, right? These are MY little idiosyncracies. I know that. I know that the world won't end if the silverware is loaded upside-down or if the toilet lid is up. I know that, at bottom, this is Plainsfeminist being OCD and not entirely an issue of cleanliness. But then - it's my kitchen, isn't it, and my bathroom. And I suspect that, what's really going on is that our houseguests are trying, from time to time, to teach me a lesson, because we end up having the same discussions each visit about these things.

(You might be thinking that any host who would let her guest do the dishes deserves to be taught a lesson. But really, I implore them not to. The only way to prevent it is to always do the dishes immediately after using them, which is so totally not my style. But seriously, if you come over for a meal, please don't do the dishes. It will cause me enormous anxiety. If you feel you must do something, just bring some foodstuff to serve with dinner, and we'll call it even.)

Cecilia Fire Thunder Suspended

Here's the article.

In case it's available only for a limited time online, I'm reproducing it below:

Tribal council outlaws abortion President suspended for alleged donations
NESTOR RAMOS
May 31, 2006

The Oglala Sioux tribal council banned all abortions on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and suspended President Cecelia Fire Thunder on Tuesday, charging that she solicited donations on behalf of the tribe for a proposed abortion clinic without the council's approval.

"It was unauthorized political activity," said Will Peters, a tribal council representative from the Pine Ridge district. "It's just a matter of failing to communicate not only with the governing body but with the people that she was elected to serve."

Peters made a motion to suspend Fire Thunder indefinitely, and when that failed, voted to suspend her for 20 days until an impeachment hearing could take place. That motion passed.

"This whole thing was an ambush," Fire Thunder said, adding that she never solicited donations and never was asked whether she had actually accepted any money.

Peters said any money donated to the tribe for the clinic would be returned.

Fire Thunder said the idea never was to open a clinic that performs abortions - she never used the word "abortion," she said - but rather to open a women's health facility that would provide family planning information and emergency and traditional contraceptives.

"Women need services. Women need support. Right now on the Pine Ridge reservation, there's very little support for women who have been raped," Fire Thunder said.

"If that's the way it was presented to people in the first place, I think she would have been OK," Peters said. "Her stand, by what we read and what we hear from all accounts, was to support abortion. I've never seen such a turn-around."

Some in the tribe were outraged when Fire Thunder, responding to Gov. Mike Rounds' signature on a bill that would ban most abortions in South Dakota, said she would work to open a Planned Parenthood clinic on the reservation, beyond the reach of state law. Many believe abortion to be against Lakota values.

Planned Parenthood issued a press release thanking Fire Thunder, but said it had no plans to open a clinic in Pine Ridge or anywhere else in South Dakota.

Today, the tribe banned abortions on the reservation.

"I do not feel comfortable telling a woman what she can or can't do with her body," Peters said. "Yet at the same time, I share the cultural viewpoint that life is sacred."

But the clinic, which will be called Sacred Choices, already has a group of women who have agreed to form a board of directors.

Betty Bull Bear, one of the women on the board, said the group would meet tonight for the first time to sign articles of incorporation.

She said Sacred Choices would be a wellness center, and the board would wait to see what happens with a statewide abortion ban referendum and any subsequent legal challenges before deciding whether to attempt to provide any abortion services.

Either way, Sacred Choices will be in Kyle, Bull Bear said.

"This is where Cecelia is from," she said. "It was her idea." But, she added, Fire Thunder is not involved now that the board has been formed.

"We have a lot of support, nationwide and, literally, globally," Bull Bear said, though she estimated support among tribal members was evenly divided.

Fire Thunder, in Iowa for an annual test of the cochlear implants that restored her hearing four years ago, said the people who brought the complaint were the same people who have been opposing her presidency since she was elected in November 2004.

"It got crazy," Fire Thunder said. "On Friday they were passing around a flyer that said 'Wilma Mankiller - Cecelia Babykiller.' "

Mankiller was the first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation; Fire Thunder is the first female president of the Oglala Sioux.

Fire Thunder also was suspended last October when the tribal council accepted a complaint brought by William Birdnecklace Tate, who alleged she had improperly secured a $38 million loan from the Shakopee, a Minnesota tribe. What was supposed to be a 20-day suspension lasted more than two months when Fire Thunder's hearing was delayed repeatedly by holidays and booked gymnasiums. The council eventually voted not to impeach her.

Peters was one of the few strong supporters on the council during Fire Thunder's previous troubles.

But "she is a hard gal to look after," Peters said. "I just believe that she has fallen out of touch with the people she was elected to represent."

But it seems that many articles quote Fire Thunder as saying that the clinic would indeed offer abortion services. Here is one interview with her in which she makes that clear.

And it does look, from a quick Google search, that she has at least encouraged donations for the effort. But what I suspect happened is this: her comments were greeted with resounding support, and people wanted to help the cause. I know that Planned Parenthood shortly thereafter made a statement that it was not interested in opening a clinic on the reservation, that it was confident that its Sioux Falls clinic would remain open, but that it appreciated Fire Thunder's support. But I imagine that several people did send checks, anyway. I have not read that Fire Thunder actively solicited donations.

Abortion Ban on the Ballot in SD

I've spent much of the past two days being interviewed for various documentaries about abortion - there were three film crews here this weekend, and frankly, it's all a little overwhelming. That's the topic for another post, however.

So we collected nearly 38,000 signatures (we needed a little under 17,000) and it looks like the abortion ban will go to a statewide referendum vote in November. Of course, the names will be closely scrutinized and some will likely be contested - I'm thinking that the pro-ban people are freaking out right about now - but we're looking at a vote.

So the next phase is to make sure that people have the correct information. The other side has already tried to mislead the public by arguing that there is a rape and incest exemption in the bill - because a pregnant woman can always get Emergency Contraception. What's ironic about this is that the same legislators who supported the ban were given the opportunity to vote to mandate EC in the ER - and they did not, leaving it up to individual hospitals and pharmacies to determine whether or not to stock EC. And if you've ever tried to get EC in SD, you know that it's very difficult to do so.

Further, they've said that EC is effective for two weeks after conception, which is simply not the case - it is most effective prior to 72 hours, and while it is still effective up to 120 hours, it loses effectiveness as the hours tick by.

So expect lots of misinformation from the Leslie Unruh camp in the months to come.

If you want to help us educate the public and get out the vote, please consider a donation to SD Campaign for Healthy Families.

Good News, South Dakota!

But I can't give you the details yet. Press conference by SD Campaign for Healthy Families tomorrow at 9am - more tomorrow!

Addiction

I can't help it - for the past several nights, I've stayed up until well past my bedtime reading archives of Overheard in the Office. Seriously. My favorites so far are the ones involving computer stupidity, like the boss looking for more gigabytes for his computer - in the supply closet - or the worker who asks the IT person to remove the hourglass cursor because it makes the computer slow down. But there are also just random stupid people exchanges.

I especially like this one:

Secretary on phone: I hate fake tans too...not cans...tans. No, tans. T as in taco, A as in anus, N as in next, and S as in swords. I hate fake tans, too.

And this one - which will only be funny if you've gotten those scam calls trying to trick you into buying toner or printer cartridges:

Co-worker on phone: Why do you need to know what type of printer I have?...Well, I guess I could read the name of the printer to you off of the printer, if you suggest that...Here's the name written right here. It's F then U, C. Are you writing this down? K and then Y. Then finally O, U...Hello, hello?

It's always good to be reminded, once again, that great idiocy is at the heart of great comedy. (Sorry, I'm completely out of control.)

Stud and Silent Bob

Something is wrong with the universe when Jason Mewes turns into a hottie. But he did. Check it out (he's the one who looks like Billy Idol's son, on the far right ):


I mean, don't get me wrong - I've always liked Jay and Silent Bob. I can tolerate Jay long enough to get through the average Kevin Smith movie (I'm the feminist who went to see Def Leppard and is headed for Rob Zombie, remember, so I can handle a lot of 12-year-old-boy behavior.) Kevin Smith (I am not worthy, I am not worthy, bow, scrape, etc.) is, I suspect, an effing genius. But eventually, Jay just gets on my nerves.

And that hair - that long blond hair - is simply not flattering.



Well, ok. That picture is a little bit adorable. But when he starts spewing filth and misogyny, the hair makes it less cute.

But now? I'm surprised the fugsters haven't commented on what is a prime example of a defugging if ever I saw one.

Well, to be honest, he's looking a little too "trying to be tough" in that family shot above. But I will give him a little leeway 'cause he's clean and sober, and he deserves to play dress up if he wants to.

And even Silent Bob's not looking so bad, himself:


They're both a long way from Clerks.

Whatever is the world coming to?!

Focus South Dakota PSA

I wrote in some earlier posts that Focus South Dakota was to blame for forcing us to try to overturn the abortion ban rather than taking it to the courts. This effort will now overshadow every other political issue this fall (including the push to get more progressives elected).

So hey, thanks, Focus South Dakota.

Right - anyway, Focus South Dakota contacted me and asked if I would direct readers to their website. Here are the URLS:
www.focussouthdakota.org
http://focussouthdakota.com/landingpage.html

(Oh, and hey - get those petitions in before the weekend, 'kay? And don't forget to get 'em notarized.)

Rude People

I was in line at the bagel place, and as always, it was full of suits, moms, and students. (I always giggle a little at the suits because they look so self-important in a place like that. I mean, it's not Starbucks, not by a long shot.)

When it's busy, the staff there have all they can do to keep the sandwiches coming. But they are always friendly, and when they get to know you, they'll joke a little - you know how it is.

So the woman at the register made a little joke to one of the suits - she said something like, "is it morning meeting time for you already? Don't you guys do any work?" Ha ha. Just kidding with the customer, making friendly conversation.

But the guy blew up at her: "It's none of your damn business! You're just like my wife!"

I regret that I didn't say anything to him. First, I was shocked, and I didn't really know what to say. In situations like this, the first words that come to mind are profanities, and while he certainly deserved them, I wasn't sure that would be the most effective response. Second, I didn't want to get her fired. It seems pretty unlikely that that would have happened, but I once had the experience of asking a barista if some customers were harassing her, and when she said yes and told me about it, she got fired. And third, I was so taken aback that I was sure I couldn't have heard him correctly - or else I thought that he must have been joking, even though her downcast eyes and forced smile let me know that he was serious.

I did tell her the next time I saw her what an ass I thought he was and why I didn't say anything.

But I wish I had turned to him and said, "Does that make you feel important, tearing down someone else like that?"

Or perhaps, "You must be having a terrible morning, to treat someone else so poorly. I hope your day gets better."

Friendship Promiscuity

A good friend of mine told me the other day that she thought that I "put myself out there" a lot - meeting people, being social, that kind of thing. She said that she herself was more reserved, more cautious, less willing to risk getting hurt.

It's true. I make friends the way that some people date. I collect phone numbers of interesting people and hope that we'll find time to meet up at some later date for coffee or a drink. Especially at restaurants and coffee shops, when I'm sitting in one place for a long time and seeing lots of people, I will become friendly with the servers, baristas, and people around me. I meet a lot of friends of friends with whom I hit it off instantly.

I am a friend slut.

But the problem with promiscuity is that it's hard, for many of us, to separate the act of being social from a committed relationship. And so I expect a lot of my friends. After getting burned a few times, I started keeping mental categories of my friends: superficial friends and real friends. "Superficial" sounds awful, but what it really means is just that superficial friends are the ones I enjoy hanging out with, or even have long and personal conversations with, but who likely won't be there for me when I need a friend. Superficial friends are people with whom I have little in common, but who I really enjoy for those things we do have in common.

Real friends are those people whom I know I can count on. They're the ones I can trust with my deepest, darkest secrets. They're the ones I can make demands on. They're the ones who, as the joke goes, won't just help me hide - they'll help me hide the body.

But as a friend slut, I give my heart away pretty easily. I get caught up in a new friend and I become infatuated with how interesting s/he is, how much fun I have when I'm with him/her. We talk for hours.

And sometimes I fall in like, and it's not reciprocated.

It says something not too nice about me and my perception of others that many of my "superficial" friends have moved over into the "real" friend category because they're such wonderful, giving, thoughtful people. And some of my "real" friends have turned out not to be real friends, after all. It's funny - usually (not always), my closest, truest friends end up being the ones I disliked immediately upon meeting them. And vice versa. So I have to wonder about my own ability to pick friends.

And truthfully, I imagine that I'm a difficult friend to have. For instance, I am entirely too self-absorbed. If you ask me about myself, I will tell you about myself, and then I will forget to ask you about yourself (it really is something I have to remember to do, much of the time. It doesn't come naturally to me).

None of this is helped by the sad fact that it's difficult to make and keep good friends at certain points in life, but I'll post about that another day.

Today I'm feeling lucky to finally have a good circle of all kinds of friends. But I'm also feeling sad as some have moved from "real" to "superficial" over the course of the last couple of months.

I'm Going To See Rob Zombie

For those of you who don't know, this is the gentleman in question.

My brother said to me the other day, "you know, I don't think there are too many Women's Studies professors who would go to a Rob Zombie concert. You're kind of unusual."

Maybe. I'm not actually a huge fan or anything - you certainly won't catch me seeing any of his films. But it's not because I fear he will be misogynist (though it wouldn't surprise me if he were); it's because I am not a gorehound.

The music is another story. Driving back from Pierre, my friend played a few tracks from his Past, Present, and Future CD. I almost never like anything I hear the first time, but after hearing "Girl on Fire," I liked it so much that I asked her to play it again.

But mostly, I'm going because all of the freaks and weirdos - my "peeps," if you will, even if I don't do the freak thing anymore - will be there. I'm going because it will feel good to walk on the dark side for a little while.

CRAY-on!

I'm thinking about this post.

What are the words that you feel the rest of the world mispronounces?

I'm from upstate New York, but I've managed to pick up a little bit of everyone else's accent, which is why, after I've spent time with any of my Canadian friends, you might catch me saying "let's go oot later, eh?" (It's not really "oot," but I couldn't figure out how to spell that most excellent Canadian sound.)

I say CRAY-on, not crain, crown, cren, cran, or any other such nonsense.

I somehow managed to grow up just far south enough that I don't say "beyath" (think nasally Janice from "Friends") for "bath."

I grew up saying "wotter" but now I kind of say "wauter" (again, think Janice) since my partner is from NYC.

I say "toilet" rather than "stool" (shudder - there is something so disgusting to me about saying "stool," mostly because when I think "stool" in the context of a bathroom, it means something else entirely). And it's "toylet" not "tollet." (I also pronounce "oil" as "oyl" rather than "oll.")

I say "iron" as "I earn."

I pronounce "Dawn" the same way I pronounce "Don" (unlike my Brooklyn-born mom, who pronounces them very differently).

I grew up saying "oarange" for "orange" (rather than the NYC "ahrange"). I also grew up pronouncing "Harry" the same way as "hairy."

I do not pronounce the silent letters in words (that's why they're called SILENT letters): chalk is chok, walk is wok, talk is tok.

I say "sammon" and "ah-monds" rather than "sal-mon" and "al-monds" (or eyah-munz, which drives me crazy).

And I use glottal stops: I don't say the t in "mountain," for instance.

"Roof" does not rhyme with "hoof."

There is no "r" in the word "wash."

The word "quarter" should be pronounced "korter," not "kwarter."

The word "wheel" should be pronounced as if it had no h.

(Notice how I've gotten away from the "this is how I say it" and am now making pronouncements about pronunciation?)

Oregon is "oar-ih-gun" not "oar-ih-gone." I know because that's how they say it there. And when you say Illinois or Cannes, you don't pronounce the "s" at the end (and Cannes doesn't rhyme with "can," either). (But I refuse to say "Missoura.")

And while I'm on the subject:
*They're only Buffalo wings outside of Buffalo. In Buffalo, they're chicken wings.

*I've been calling it pop for the last 13 years, but it's really soda.

*Selzer is not the same thing as club soda, dammit!

*It's a bag, not a sack.

*I don't think it's been made of tin since I've been alive, but I can't stop calling it tinfoil.

*I don't know if it's still ok to call a cd an album, but I often do (that's "offen," not "off-ten").

*"Kiwanis" is pronounced "kih-wah-nis," not "kee-wah-nis," or worse, "kee-yah-wah-nis."

*Store and restaurant names should be pronounced with the addition of 's, as in Friendly's, Price Chopper's, and so on. This is not true for all names, by the way. You kinda know it when you see it.

Bosses from Hell (Part II)

When I left the home health care agency job, it was to take my first job in fundraising. I was a secretary. As one of only two secretaries with a college degree in our department, I had a different job description than some of the others - or, at least, this was how it was explained to me.

What this meant was that one of the other secretaries got to read the paper every day - from cover to cover - at her desk. Another did her classwork at her desk. But M. and I were given Very Important Projects (VIPs) to work on, including VIPs that would normally be handled by our bosses.

In retrospect, this could have been a good thing. With the benefit of hindsight, I can see now that M. and I were being groomed to move up from our secretarial positions to the lofty ranks of Associate Assistant Directors, or whatever the heck it was. Only - M. and I did not want to be Associate Assistant Directors. We wanted to be secretaries.

The two of us worked for five people (two each, and then the head boss, to whom we both reported). Our head boss was Horse (she had a large mouth and always looked, to me, like a horse). She was a strange mix of extreme poise and professionalism with the occasional *really* inappropriate moment. (For example, in a staff meeting, she once made reference to giving her husband a blow job.)

Spoiled and Snobby worked for Horse. Spoiled was disliked by all of those who had worked for her, including M., who was so fed up with Spoiled that she had asked Horse for reassignment (which is how I came to work for Spoiled in the first place). Spoiled would talk on and on about her upcoming wedding, and once she even made me help her with some wedding plans. (I complained to Horse, as this was not part of my job description. I was then reprimanded by Spoiled, who told me that I should have told her myself if I was "not comfortable" helping with her wedding. Maybe so. But it wasn't exactly professional for her to put me in that position in the first place. And did I mention that I was only a year out of college?) A typical Spoiled moment: I was typing in my cubicle and my phone rang. It was Spoiled. She told me that she had some documents that needed to be three-hole-punched and asked me to come down the hall into her cubicle to get them. When I got there, she waved about 10 pages airily at me while chatting on the phone to a friend (about her wedding, natch). A three-ring binder lay open on the desk in front of her. And next to it sat the three-hole punch.

Snobby was, in general, a much easier person to work for than was Spoiled. We didn't have too much to say to each other, but she was less demanding and bitchy (always a good thing). But she was wealthy, she had gone to business school, she was married, and we came from totally different worlds.

I had also worked for Princess, who was in a class by herself, in every possible sense of the phrase. Princess was Upper Crust. Her life's ambition was to get married and be on the board of something - like her mother. (When she told me that, I had no clue as to what she meant by "on the board." That gives you a sense of how far apart we were in terms of socio-economic status.) She was around my age, and I occasionally made friendly overtures toward her, but she always seemed very freaked out when I did. I think the reason was that she didn't want to "hang out" with someone who worked for her, but it also could have been that 1) I wasn't wealthy and cultured enough, or 2) she just didn't want to hang out with me. But what was puzzling about Princess was that, while she would look at me with an expression that was half confused and half fearful and, as I remember it, say nothing when I would invite her to go out for a drink (why, I ask myself now, did I even ask a second time?!), she also asked me to come with her to look at apartments, she told me how lonely she was and how much she missed her friends, and she cried a bit on my shoulder when she broke up with her fiance.

None of these women were good bosses - at least not in my case. What they eventually did was so devastating to me on a personal level that even now I can only write about it in very general terms.

When an Associate Assistant Director position opened up, I was encouraged to apply for it. I considered it, but decided not to. Horse asked me why I had not applied for the AAD position, and I replied truthfully that I didn't want to travel as much as that job required and that I was interested in moving into a different area within the institution. Despite the weird bosses, I had enjoyed my job there very much and felt safe sharing this information with Horse. I figured I was helping her out - I wanted to be a team player, and I didn't want to cause my bosses undue stress by leaving after giving only a two-week notice.

At that point, Horse's demeanor toward me changed completely and she became cold and unfriendly. Suddenly, despite my prior, glowing evaluation, my bosses began to find fault with my work. When M. gave her own notice and went on vacation, things intensified. I was told that I was expected to know how to do all of the projects that M. had done - even though we had each been working on separate projects for the entire past YEAR. (Even M. thought that was ridiculous.) It was a horrible, vicious cycle - my bosses would watch me like a hawk for mistakes. They apparently told the other two, whom M. had worked for, to watch me as well, because one of these lit into me when I accidentally missed a page of her hand-scrawled, messy, half-scratched out and highlighted, sometimes double-sided, sometimes not, to-do list and returned it to her without having completed the items on one side of one page. (I tried to explain that it was a simple mistake, but she would not listen. It was only slight consolation that this woman quit shortly thereafter because she couldn’t handle the stress of her job.) This made me nervous and depressed, and it made it very difficult for me to concentrate on my work, so I then made other mistakes.

One such "mistake" was so important to Spoiled that she listed it on my evaluation as a representative example of my difficulty "paying attention and keeping track of projects," though it was the only such example given and it was a unique case. Here’s what happened. M. and I regularly spent hours folding letters and stuffing envelopes for mailings. We also regularly asked for help, but our bosses often did not arrange for us to have the extra staff that we needed to complete the job. For one particularly large mailing, however, Spoiled had arranged for me to have help from other workers. She was very proud of herself for having thought to do this, but I committed the cardinal sin of momentarily forgetting that she had done so. That morning, I mentioned at our staff meeting that I would need help to finish the mailing. Spoiled was not just angry, but furious, and this lapse in my memory became, in her tiny mind, a personal slight against her. This example was used against me in my evaluation, as I’ve said, and was repeatedly brought up to me. (In my final meeting, it appeared on a list of "things Plainsfeminist needs to immediately address.")

It became clear that they were looking for an excuse to get rid of me, and I had no job prospects. They wrote me a horrible evaluation that said that if I didn't change drastically, I would be fired. My emotional state got so bad that my mother came to stay with me - from another state - for a week.

During my horrible evaluation meeting, at which I remember slowly sipping a glass of ice water and willing myself not to cry (it worked, somehow), I was told that I was not completing my work in a timely manner. When I pointed out that they were expecting too much, that I routinely stayed late to finish the projects that they were piling on me ('cause of that damn college degree), Snobby responded with, "You know what they say at MIT: If you can't finish your work by the end of the day, you're not doing your job."

I wrote a long, careful response to the evaluation and requested a meeting with Horse. When Horse, Snobby, Spoiled and I sat down together, I was hopeful that Horse would simply reassign me to the other bosses. But Horse ignored my response entirely and told me, as if she were speaking to a high school student on probation, what I would need to do in order to continue working there. It was clear to me that there was nothing I could do, since the things that I was being redressed for were one-time, honest mistakes or misunderstandings written up as consistent problems with my performance. Missing the page from the to-do list and "having difficulty paying attention and keeping track of projects" were thus evidence of incompetency on my part.

So I quit (in tears, unfortunately). It was a relief to get out, though it also meant packing up and leaving my apartment and my adopted city and state and moving back home to live with my parents for several months (which is a topic for a whole 'nother blog). It also meant that my confidence and self-esteem were very badly damaged. It took some time before I began to see myself as a competent employee again, and the fact that I did was largely due to the efforts of one truly GOOD boss.

To be continued.

Bosses from Hell (Part I)

In the early '90s, recently out of college, I got my first job working as a receptionist in a home health care agency. I worked in a large room with my supervisor and five Coordinators. On my first day - and I really should have paid attention to this flashing neon sign - one of the coordinators got into a heated argument with the supervisor and quit, storming out of the office. Over the next couple of weeks, I watched as the relationship between another coordinator (S.) and the supervisor became more and more strained. S. began to look for another job. One day, S. came in and began searching through her desk: her log of all her interactions with her bosses was gone. (The supervisor later told me that she routinely went through our desks. She told me this in a matter-of-fact way, as if, of course, all supervisors regularly search their employees' belongings.) Soon, S. was fired.

I applied for and got her job, and I was told by the Big Boss that they were making me a very special offer by giving me $16,500 (about a thousand more than I had been making as a secretary). I later learned that this was about four or five thousand dollars less than all of the other coordinators were making.

I have to say that I enjoyed the work, though the work environment itself was horrible. As I said, we all worked in one big room. We could all hear every conversation that anyone else was having. The minute anyone left the room, everyone else would talk about her. It was gossip central. And everyone knew everything.

We went through a couple of receptionists, mostly because they showed up late for work or didn't show up at all.

The Big Boss would make a point of walking through or calling down at 9am on the dot to see if we were all at our desks. Then there were the desk searches (which no one knew about). I was told when I was hired that "no one really takes a lunch, but if you want to, you can go upstairs and sit in this empty room for half an hour." But the problem was that if one of us went to lunch, someone else would have to cover our cases, so we'd be making work for someone else to do. As a result, no one took a lunch break.

We were also discouraged from using comp time, but we were not paid for it, either. Those 9am phone calls and walk-throughs I mentioned? I used to use my comp time to come in at 10 instead of 9, but I would always get disapproving looks - from everyone - even though I cleared it in advance. And the reason I had so much comp time was that I worked long hours on a regular basis. If I didn't get my cases staffed, someone would not be able to have a shower and get dressed and have breakfast in the morning. So we were expected to stay at our desks until all of our cases were staffed. And, on a regular basis, people would cancel - they'd miss the bus, they'd get sick, they'd decide that they didn't want to give a racist woman in a cockroach-infested, smelly apartment a bath for $6/hour.

I had a stress headache every single day by 3pm.

We did try to unionize, in a way - we never contacted a union organizer, but we did collectively strategize and ask for a meeting with the management. I was one of the instigators of this, but perhaps because I was young (and apparently, given the size of my salary, stupid), they never questioned me about it. And we didn't get too far. We got our meeting, but as soon as we sat down, our strategy crumbled, no one stuck to the plan, and we ended up getting none of the things we asked for.

It was all pretty typical - in a rigid and oppressive hierarchy, we turn on each other. And that's what happened, from the desk searches to the gossiping to the inability to work collectively for better work conditions.

But it was certainly an interesting place to work, what with the firings here and there, and the occasional excitement. Once, when we got wind that we were going to be inspected, a few people were ordered to remove case files from the building and hide them in the trunk of a car in the parking lot. I'm not sure what that was about - insurance fraud, perhaps? - but it was my first real job, and I didn't know enough to find out to whom to report it, or even what it was I'd be reporting.

I started looking for other jobs, and as soon as I got one, I gave my two-week notice. I was called into the Big Boss's office - the same one, remember, who gave me that "special" salary. There, I was treated to a *lecture.* She had given me a chance; she had taken a risk on me even though I was so young; how could I be so ungrateful? Poor supervisor was on vacation, and she hadn't taken a vacation in all the years she's worked there, and now I was complicating poor supervisor's vacation because she would have to replace me. Why hadn't I at least let them know that I was looking for another job?

For what will probably be the only time in my career, I told off my boss, but not at all for the right reasons. I should have pointed out that, far from giving me a chance, she had in fact taken advantage of me from day one, saving herself several thousand dollars though I was doing the same work as everyone else. I should have said that her employment practices were unethical and illegal and that she should consider herself lucky that I wasn't reporting her for everything from punishing workers for union activity to hiding case files. But instead I cried, and yelled, and told her that I had watched too many people get fired to give more than a two-week notice. She looked at me with her big, unblinking eyes. She actually looked surprised.

And I felt guilty. I resolved that, next time, I'd be a team player - I'd let my bosses know when I was applying for another job.

You can see where this is going.

To be continued.

Everyone's an Expert (or, The Real Poop on Giving Birth)

The thing about giving birth is that it is not an experience that can be explained easily. The sensations are really not like any other sensations, but we nevertheless try to compare them to other experiences, whether real ("like really bad menstrual cramps") or imagined ("like having a truck smash into you").

But we also have a sort of collective ignorance about childbirth in the U.S. We're entirely divorced from the event unless it's happening to us. I mean, really, how many of us have had the chance to be present at a birth when we're not the one giving birth? We don't have the opportunity to share in the experience, so we have no first-hand knowledge to draw from. And so we rely for our information on other people, and on other people's horror stories, and we act as if, having a little information, we know all of the answers.

This is one of those situations in which a little information can be a dangerous thing.

Opinionistas.com, a blog I usually enjoy, recounted a discussion about birth by three twenty-somethings, one of whom, "T," was "a brand new med school graduate." What shocked me about this is that T - straight out of med school, people - made this comment:
“I’ve assisted with at least a dozen deliveries, and watched a lot of different types of surgery; childbirth is the worst. The pain is so horrible and incredible that you, uh, well there’s no way to say this nicely. You lose control of your bowels, to put it clinically. And not in a pleasant way.”

This is going to sound snarky - but it struck me as a typical (childless) twenty-something thing to say. It's the kind of thing that you say to your friends when you have a little bit of knowledge that they don't, and it makes you sound very important and like you know what you're talking about. Especially if you're just out of med school.

But T was wrong.

Do women sometimes poop in the process? Let's be honest: of course. I did. So did many of my friends. But not from PAIN, T, you numbskull! And it was hardly a case of loss of control. I mean, think about it. You're pushing this large object out of your body. Bearing down and straining. Sound like any other activity? Of COURSE you're going to defecate at some point!

Further, T added:
"Two rules for when you’re pregnant. One: schedule an elective C-section for the delivery. It’s a small scar, not a big procedure, you get more time off from work because you had surgery, and you don’t have to deal with stuff like enemas and vaginal stitches. Two: if you do end up giving birth the regular way, don’t let your husband stand at your feet. No way should he ever see something come out of you like that. He’ll never look at you the same way again afterwards. I’m sorry but it’s true."

This is exactly the reason why so many in the "natural birth movement" are so freaked out by the medical establishment. It is yet another case of the medical establishment scaring the crap (pun intended) out of women who haven't yet given birth - but scaring them right into unnecessary surgery?! Don't have that nasty vaginal delivery, ladies - have major surgery instead. You won't be able to walk for a while, you are more likely to have trouble breastfeeding, you are at risk for a spinal headache (which is reportedly worse than labor) - but you won't have to "deal with" enemas.

Look, don't get me wrong: I'm grateful that we have drugs and surgery available for cases that require it. A couple of my friends had to have Caesarian births, and I'm glad and relieved for them that this was an option. But geez - it's one thing to have a Caesarian because you NEED it. It's another to have one because you're scared and you don't want your childbirth experience to be embarrassing or messy. (Or painful - just for a contrasting opinion, I didn't have the easiest labor, and I remember thinking, "this is like my qualifying exams - I just have to do it, and it's over." And frankly, I'd rather go through another labor than another qualifying exam.)

And about this "no way should he ever see something come out of you like that...I'm sorry but it's true" business. Another line from the mouths of babes. Ask someone who has been married for a while about marriage and how married people view their spouses. Better still - ask your grandparents this question. Just speculating, here, but...if you're married to a man who thinks watching his child be born is gross - when, let's remember, YOU'RE the one doing the work - shouldn't you maybe be married to someone else? Because one of these days, this is the person you hope will be willing to empty your bed pan (which is what my partner did for me when I hurt my back and literally couldn't move for a week). This is the person who you hope will clean the bathroom when a stomach virus hits and the toilet backs up (I've done that job). If I recall correctly, those vows say something about "for better or for worse, in sickness and in health," not "until one of fails to maintain our Brazilian waxes."

I'm not saying that everyone has to be comfortable with blood and gore and feces. I'm just saying that if the process of birth doesn't make you love your wife a little more, or if it makes you think she's less hot, then maybe you don't deserve to be a father OR a husband. And she certainly deserves better.

Real life is not the stuff of Harlequin Romances or even Sex and The City. It is not clean, folks. It ain't pretty. It is very often embarrassing. But it's real.

I'm sorry, but it's true.

More Cell Phone Jackassery

Unlike my mom, who was with me when this happened, I DO understand the lure of sitting contentedly in Starfucks or somewhere with a nice cup of coffee and a cell phone and calling an old friend for a chat. It's not so different from meeting a friend for coffee and having that same chat - it's just that this particular friend is, maybe, 1,000 miles away at the time.

But what's weird is when people have intensely personal conversations on cell phones, in public, LOUDLY.

A guy I've seen around came into the coffee shop the other day while my mom and I were working quietly. He sat near us and rang a friend. He was wearing one of those earpiece phones that make other people think you are crazily talking to yourself - so already, there was one strike against him.

This fellow was having a difficult time with his girlfriend, who was jealous of his friendships with women who found him attractive, apparently because he had cheated on her in the past. He didn't seem to understand why she was still with him if she was having this issue - it was as if he felt she lost the right to be paranoid because she didn't break up with him - because, as he said, "I told her I would understand if she didn't want to be with me anymore after that. That's what I don't get." (Yeah. If you're going to spill it in public, loudly, while I'm trying to work at the next table, I'm going to write about it.)

As the conversation went on, it became clear that the guy was pretty torn up about the big fight they'd had, during which time the girlfriend had become hysterical ("I mean, scary."). And as he expressed his feelings, he got louder and louder, seemingly oblivious to the little glares I kept directing his way. (Which was weird because we made eye contact a couple of times, but he never lowered his voice. Most people do, even if just temporarily, until they get excited about something and raise them again.)

At the end of the second phone call (which also covered topics such as which roommates clean up after their parties and which expect everyone else to clean up after), the guy said, "I need to go study."

And left.

So, understand this: he came to the coffee shop for the express purpose of talking on the phone with his friends about his relationship issues with people who live in the area (and who could have easily walked in at any point, as could their friends) - in public. And then, when he was done, he left to go study somewhere else (that was, presumably, more private).

THAT, I don't understand.

Are Men Responsible for Ending Rape?

Professor Diana Blaine at USC has come under fire (by, can I just say, a seriously crazy-ass student blogger) for saying that USC men are responsible for stopping rape. Crazy-ass student blogger is haunting her blog, trying desperately to get some attention (which, I guess, I'm giving him here...oops.).

The ironic thing in this little scenario is that this notion of men's responsibility for ending rape is hardly original to Blaine. It's a fairly standard idea in anti-rape work - one I heard myself at our speak-out last month for sexual assault awareness. The organizer of the event spent a great deal of time pointing out how important men were in ending rape, how much responsibility they had, how many things they could do to help. My eye doctor - a man - was present and got up in front of the crowd to read a list of things men could do to end rape. Several other men of various ages were also in the crowd and took candles and marched with women around the campus, showing by their presence that they cared and that they wanted to be part of the solution.

Why are men responsible for stopping rape? Because men are able to do a few things that women can't do. First, rapists are men. Of course, most men are NOT rapists, but rapists are, 98% of the time, men. So men are responsible, first and foremost, for NOT RAPING WOMEN.

Second, men can exercise influence over other men in ways that women cannot. Think about the kinds of stories men share in locker rooms, for example (as attested to by my baseball and football player students, as well as by the sociological work on masculinity and sports). When other men object to language and behavior that demeans women or reduces women to sexual objects, it makes a difference. It lets others know that not everyone considers that behavior acceptable. And it also opens up a space for others to object to this behavior.

Third, men can look out for women. At a party, at a club, at a bar - when a man is trying to take advantage of a woman, to get her drunk, whatever - other men can watch out for her. They can report the guy to the bouncer. They can get her home safely.

So, are men responsible for ending rape? Yeah, I think so. And fortunately, a lot of men are working to do just that.

Why this notion is so distressing to the crazy-ass student is something I haven't quite figured out.

Perhaps he needs to take a Women's Studies class...if only to recognize that the ideas he's battling have their own intellectual history separate from Dr. Blaine.

Caffeine Junkie

I'm not going to delve too deeply into my past here, but let's just say that in all of my "experimentation," I've never experienced any physical withdrawal symptoms nor have I found myself with a real addiction.

But this semester, I seem to have addicted myself to caffeine.

You know those migraines I mentioned the other day? And that weird hangover I developed several weeks back? Well, I think what I have been experiencing is what is called a caffeine rebound headache. If you have a certain amount of caffeine on a regular basis, your body apparently requires more of the stuff in order to keep your head from exploding. Some people handle this by just drinking more caffeine, but what you're supposed to do is to gradually reduce the amount of caffeine you ingest - by like five ounces per week - until you either cut it out completely or get down to a reasonable amount of caffeine ingestion.

I know what did it to me, too. I like coffee with milk, but it often tastes too weak for me. So when I discovered lattes - made with espresso - I was overjoyed. I figured one cup of coffee, one latte - about equal in terms of caffeine, right?

Wrong.

According to random web sources, a 5 oz cup of coffee contains 100mg of caffeine, while a shot of espresso contains 100mg. The "small" coffee at my favorite coffee place is 12 oz, so it would seem that the latte is the better deal if I'm watching my caffeine intake.

Except: I learned that my favorite coffee place makes its lattes with not one, not two, but THREE shots of espresso.

I was coming in to work in the morning and having a cup of coffee (200+mg). In the afternoon, I'd drink a 20-oz diet Coke (about 75mg). Then I was working in the coffee shop in the evenings and having a latte (300mg). That's about 600mg of caffeine per day.

According to the FDA, the average adult consumes 200mg per day - and 300mg is generally considered to be the safe daily amount for adults.

No wonder I have headaches.

Mushroom Head

There was a great haircut that was popular in the late '80s that resembled a mushroom - albeit a very cool, alternative mushroom - that I spent some time trying to describe this evening to a somewhat confused 19 and 20 year old. (It's hard to explain the '80s to people who didn't live them.)

The picture I can find that's closest to what I'm thinking of is this one of Robert Smith, but it doesn't do justice to the cut. I saw it mostly on very cool women. The hair was close-cropped and usually black underneath, while on the top it was long, spiky, and often dyed a different color, sometimes with a cellophane dye that would allow the natural color to show through the dye, as well.

It was NOT that English schoolboy look - number 6 in this list - that became popular just a few years later.

If anyone can find a decent pic, please post a link. I can't find a picture and I'm feeling very nostalgic for one. Sniff.

Anderson Cooper Gives Me A Boner

Remember when I wrote about that t-shirt?

I just got a comment from April, the t-shirt's creator, who sent me a link to a photo of her wearing the famous shirt. Here they are, in all their glory!

Spring Cleaning

I used to clean my room, apartment, whatever it was, every Saturday. I was a good cleaner - I know how a room is supposed to be cleaned and I enjoy seeing the dust, grime, and cat hair disappear. I love being in a clean house.

But I hate picking up the clutter and crap that has to be picked up in order to get to the "real" cleaning. And as a consequence of living in a small household with one other academic (think lots of books and papers), one child, and two cats, my house doesn't get cleaned very often. And it always looks cluttered.

We have company this week, so on Thursday I made a Herculean effort to, if not thoroughly clean this cramped apartment, at least minimize the evidence of our filth and squalor. And it actually worked fairly well. Except for the visible dust on the less-noticeable surfaces and the stains of mysterious origin all over the light-colored carpet (why do they install those? no one with kids/pets/spouses should have a light-colored carpet), it looks pretty good.

And, for the past week, I've been going through our stuff in an effort to get rid of as much crap as possible. Although, in the years we've lived here, we've gained one child and a whole room's worth of child accessories, I actually think we've managed to end up with less crap than we had when we moved in. This accomplishment, by the way, is entirely due to my efforts, and owes very little to my partner, who would, if left to his own devices, become a Collier brother. (insert affectionate nudge here)

The kid and I put together an overfull box of toys to donate (I am so proud of him!), and I hauled out six garbage bags full of toddler clothes (I haven't even begun to look through the baby clothes yet). I also found enough random stuff - breast pump attachments, an electronic pest control device, a baby monitor, a couple of t.v. antennas, etc. - to fill another box, and now the hall closet is navigable again.

And for the last two nights, I've stayed up until 2am going through financial records. I've got the once stuffed "taxes" file drawer down to about half-full, just by pulling out things like credit card statements and checks for the shredder (I don't itemize, so it's ok). And even my great-aunt's secretary - which was once our version of Fibber McGee's closet - can now be opened without incurring injury from falling debris.

The rest of my household, however, are eyeing me with suspicion and guarding their stuff.

I (Heart) Stephen Colbert

OK, so this is late. The White House Correspondents Association Dinner, which Colbert hosted, was a week ago. True, my partner did call out to me last week, from the bedroom where he does all of his computering, that he'd downloaded Colbert's address. But I thought for some reason that he was talking about an address to the Press Club, and I didn't grasp the significance of the occasion until just recently.

Well, really, until tonight, when I finally watched it and was filled with admiration for a man who has the ovaries to stand just feet from Bush and rip him to shreds - but with grace and elegance. Colbert just let him have it, but he did it all completely in character, without so much as breaking a sweat. You can watch the whole thing here, and if you've been waiting for someone to finally have the guts to call out the Bush Administration - and the media that have let them get away with whatever the hell they've wanted to get away with - then I suggest you get some popcorn, a cold drink, and a comfy chair. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the moment. If you've read the transcript but not seen the clip, you really need to see the clip. Trust me on this.

And honestly, I have not been so impressed with anyone since Jon Stewart took Tucker Carlson to task for pretending to be a television journalist while really just pandering to the politicians (and you can read the transcript of that here, but it's really worth watching (I'm just too lazy to post a link)).

I would bake Stephen cookies if I thought he would eat cookies from a stranger after that performance. I'm considering sending him flowers.

Migraine.

I keep getting these headaches that start out like simple sinus headaches, but then they morph into something evil that makes me go to bed for the rest of the day and probably throw up, sometime after which I will start to feel better (after many hours). I hear this is what a migraine is like. And I'm thinking I should have figured this out years ago instead of relying on Tylenol - which, when one hits, I can't keep down, anyway - and gotten some serious migraine meds.

Probably in suppository form, the way these things have been going. Sorry.

After Sunday's migraine, I felt on Monday like I was Harry Potter recovering from a brush with a dementor. In my case, it wasn't chocolate I needed, but FOOD - I have never been so insatiably hungry. On Monday, I ate double meals, for the most part:

A bacon, egg, cheese, and tomato breakfast sandwich (a real one, on grilled bread - so, not a little sandwich)
A bran muffin
A Diet Coke and a glass of water
A hot dog with chips
Another Diet Coke
A large sugar cookie
A cheeseburger
A DQ ice cream "cupcake"
Most of my kid's DQ ice cream "cupcake" (he was done - I didn't take it away from him or anything)
A piece of bread and cheese
Some random cookies we had in the house
An Amy's Frozen Enchilada (really, two - you know, the package)
More water

And for much of this time, I was feeling ravenously hungry. That's a migraine side effect I haven't heard about before now.

Better get to bed - I hear lack of sleep is a migraine trigger.