what crap

The sanctity of marriage...whatever. I had hoped that California would have voted differently on this.

"People believe in the institution of marriage," Frank Schubert, co-manager of the Yes on 8 campaign said after declaring victory early Wednesday. "It's one institution that crosses ethnic divides, that crosses partisan divides. ... People have stood up because they care about marriage and they care a great deal."

Ooh, so I can marry Cardo and a member of the Green Party can marry a member of the Republican Party. Yeah, we're really tolerant...don't ask any more from us. (Please, please know that those sentences needs to be read with irony dripping all over the place.)

Ugh. I care about my marriage. I fail to understand, however, why we (grouping myself in the "us" category) feel any threat whatever by homosexual couples marrying. I don't get it. I never will. WHO CARES? I'm, obviously upset, hence the "yelling." And, I get that there are, obviously, plenty of people who do care, but...WHY? WHY? WHY?

Again, ugh.

In Washington, voters gave solid approval to an initiative modeled after Oregon's "Death with Dignity" law, which allows a terminally ill person to be prescribed lethal medication they can administer to themselves. Since Oregon's law took effect in 1997, more than 340 people — mostly ailing with cancer — have used it to end their lives.

This is something else I've never understood. How can committing suicide be illegal? Why do we need laws saying that we can kill ourselves? Is this because this issue involves a doctor doling out the medication necessary to commit the act? If I'm miserable and in agony, I want to be able to end things for myself.

ps

I've decided that if I was just any other English Ren woman, I'd have more say in who I married than if I were of the higher classes. Okay, I'll stop thinking about this now. I promise.

if i lived in any other time period

Okay, I tried, for about a second, but I just can’t play along with this one. I often have trouble with that whole temporary suspension of disbelief thing.

On one of the prompt sites I have saved, a recent question was something like, “If you could live in any other time period, when would you choose, and why?”

I think I have it about as great as a woman is going to have “it.” (And we’re not there yet, baby.)

I’ll go with what I used to think about, though, when I was a lot younger. I used to think that I’d like to live in Renaissance England (I was weirdly obsessed with its literature at a very young age). However, all I can think now is “Really?”

My mom tells me that I have never liked to be dirty. She says that with my first birthday cake, I daintily picked a few morsels from the top and then flipped the little cake over on my highchair tray. I wasn’t one of those babies who dug her chubby little hands and face into the cake. (It took Pic a minute to really dig into her cake. She kept looking at us like, “I’d really like to grab a handful of that, but this must be a trap. Could I possibly get away with this?”)

So, how well do you think I’d fare somewhere where regular bathing indicated something like a bath a few times a year? (Okay, so I actually have no idea how often the average person bathed, but it wasn’t often. And, I figure I’d be just some average woman, no one fancy.) Um, and there’s that whole issue of indoor plumbing (or lack thereof) and the taking of the wall. Blech. And, I wouldn’t be washing my clothes all that often, because what would I be wearing when my one ensemble was taking a soak in a probably disgusting river or washbasin?

I’m not a huge fan of body odor, not even my own, and no amount of parfum could be all that helpful. In fact, I always figured that people who tried to mask their odors with eau de toilette smelled, well, like a toilet…with maybe a really ineffective air freshener sprayed on. (On a somewhat unrelated side note, my mom also told me that once in toddlerdom, I swallowed a bottle of eua de toilette. Had I been able to read at that point, I’m sure I never would have sipped on something that included toilet in its name.)

And, there’s that whole sex issue. I am a woman. A woman who is perfectly happy having only one child (a woman who would prefer to keep it that way for always). I can’t imagine being a baby machine (a small-human-worker machine). And, there’s the whole issue of me being, essentially, chattel.

So, yeah, where do I sign up?

By the way, I don’t claim that any of the picture I’ve given of Renaissance England society is accurate, this is just how I’m imagining it based on what I’ve gleaned over the years. Feel free to right me right up.

c is for concession...

...and that's good enough for me.

McCain called Obama to concede. Looks like I'll be staying here. I had better not wake up in the morning to different news. I'm cautiously doing a(n imaginary) happy dance.

baby, it's cold outside

As is our Tuesday tradition, Pic and I went to the library today. I've been so exhausted lately that I knew if we stayed home, we'd just sit around in our pjs and watch tv. (Now that we're back home, we hanging out in our pjs, listening to NPR.) So, although Cardo's car really was only "fixed" and we don't have a working car here, we decided not to skip the library. About halfway to our mini-mecca, we were treated to some snow. Snow.

This is all my students' faults. They kept asking me, "When is it going to snow?" as if I'm in charge of these things. I am certainly not shimmying around in my living room doing a snow dance.

We took shelter in the library for a little more than an hour, putting together the dinosaur puzzle and checking out Secondhand Prose. We checked out some dinosaur books, some kids' craft books (why? I have no idea, we're not crafty people) and, once again, How to Cook Everything. We caught the bus and took it to one of our not-favorite grocery stores to pick up some highly processed foodstuffs. We hung out for an hour and caught the next bus back home.

I talked to Nana and Papa (Pic's, not mine...we're not so into the whole seance thing) and they offered financial assistance. We'll see how much Cardo's disability check is next week. We might, though, have to borrow money from my parents (so lame, so lame). I hope we don't, but we're so incredibly lucky to have them offer.

Okay, I'm off to print out some USA-map coloring pages and find some red and blue crayons so Pic and I can do a little Election Day activity. Some of the states have already closed their polls. Here begins the long hours of hearing the projections and the results.

Happy Election Day! Let's hope it stays happy.

in case you haven't...

Slip into a little something patriotic (and a little sexy, apparently) and...

[image from Google Image]

please, hold your advice

There's something about being a parent (or a parent-to-be) that brings out the advice columnist in so many other people. No matter the advice, I tended to respond with a noncommittal, "Ah," or "Mm." Sometimes, I'd just tell the giver of unsolicited advice whatever response he or she seemed to be needing to hear.

Pic is three-and-a-half and doin' alright, I believe. We're raising her the way that seems right to us right now (ah, kairos).

So, why do I bring this up? I just read this old finslippy post. I love it! I feel empathy for new parents and soon to be parents (and for, well, me) because sometimes it feels like everyone is trying to make this so much harder than it actually is (and, believe you me, sometimes it's plenty hard enough).

So...yeah.