LaurieWrites

Trying on for size

EDIT: Clearly that didn't last long.

I can't decide if I like this color scheme and design so I'm trying it out.

I think it looks kind of wimpy, to use an equally wimpy word. I love orange and I like the stars, but I feel like the banner just bleeds into yellow into white, like a pale sigh of a color fade.

I liked the black. It's all READ ME MAN. But I also fear stagnation, so when Typepad tells me they have new designs, I feel the need to at least give them a test drive.

This is not exciting. Apologies. But until I get my ass in gear to actually design my own site, I'm going to be locked in this vacancy. And apparently I feel the need to document that here. Boring, I know.

Elsewhere

I am totally not famous, just so you know. Like, nothing's changed in that regard. But I'm popping up in more places with random randomness and it's sort of amusing me.

The "I ain't settlin'" post didn't get much of a response on BlogHer, but right here? A ton of hits, since DC Blogs linked to it. More comments than I've ever had on a post. Craziness. 

Here's an article in the Gazette about couples who use iPods for their wedding music.  That was kind of fun.

I covered the Barack Obama rally on my campus. I was in the press area and everything. That was cool. I think this link will work to the article I wrote. And now I'm feeling all of a sudden like I've mentioned this before. Hi four hours of sleep! Love ya!

I was really disappointed in my photos of the event (in here among the Chelsea shots.) There were more tall men in front of me that day than I could count. It was just ridiculous. Plus I'd had the D80 for like two days and it takes a while to get familiar with a piece of equipment. I was really hoping it'd just be magic out of the box, but nope, not really. The paper printed one of my photos, so that was nice. The others I've edited to the limits of iPhoto, which are quite...limited. Ever feel like you're doing like 497 things and none of them quite well? Welcome to my life, circa February 2008.

I kinda dig my new (very blue) post at A Girl Must Shop. I've been sorely lacking in contributions to that site, but I'm starting up again, because it's fun. (Also? Lush? Love it. The bath bombs rock, seriously. Now if I only had access to a bathtub more than a couple of times a week.)

That's it for now.      

McCain's Menagerie & Kittens for Clinton and Obama: Pet Power in Election 2008

Crossposted from BlogHer.

Super Tuesday has come and gone and the presidential candidates have moved into a race for delegates in the states that have yet to vote. Lots of humans have weighed in about who they think will be the best person to lead our country, but one question remains: who gets the animal vote?

Much has already been made of the Obamas' plan to get their daughters a dog when they make it to the White House, but cats are dominating the Obama pet blogosphere lately. First of all, and I'm sure anyone familiar with the LOLCats craze will agree, it had to happen:  Yes We Can Has (Cheezburgers.) This one's for Dana in Wisconsin:

(Via Boinkology)

Cats For Obama is on the stump as well (and in a similar vein, don't miss I Can Has Nomination or Lolbama.) Also check out Dogs for Obama on Flickr, where Honey's for Hillary, while Chili hearts Huckabee.

Gina Spadafori got serious at Pet Connection, writing about "The Politics of Dogs and the Dogs of Politics":

Nope, Westminster is over, and while our buddy David Frei and Uno the Westminster-winning beagle make the rounds of the morning talk shows, I’m thinking of that other beauty pageant, the presidential primary races. My thought for the morning: What do the pet-food recall and Barak Obama have in common? Give up? The Internet.... The fact that we’re people, not demographics, is why some of us can enjoy the Westminster Kennel Club dog show and still rescue and foster pets. Because life is not as black-and-white as some believe — it’s about shades of gray. Or maybe, about a man with a Kansan mom, a Kenyan dad who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii and has the middle name that any consultant would have sworn was as deadly as last spring’s pet food. As they rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic embarassment of the Clinton campaign, somebody ought to be paying attention. We’re not “demographics”; we’re people.  Miss that point? Well, here’s your hat, there’s the door. The “good ol’ days” are over, and thank heavens for that. The poodles aren’t winning any more at Westminster.  As Uno the everyman beagle would say, “Ahhhhhhh-rooooooooooooo.”

Commenter Emily was less than enthused with the encroachment of politics on one of her favorite pet sites:

I for one vote for being actually non-partisan rather than requiring Hillary supporters to sit through this kind of stuff which even Obama supporter Dogged Blog described as “She had a nice gloss of non-partisanship all over it, but yo, Gina, I’m so onto you. She’s an Obama fangirl, just like me.” That was how I read it too, but with less joy that one of my fav non-political blogs is now starting to join in the Obama fangrrl squee parade.

Christie Keith wrote in support of the Pet Connection post and shared her own beliefs about how politics and animal welfare intersect.

I believe mandatory spay/neuter harms animals and the people who love them. I believe it's designed to impede pet ownership in furtherance of an anti-pet agenda, not to reduce the number of animals killed in shelters. That's why I fight it. I believe that the way to change things is through free expression, speech, persuasion, and education, not legislation. I believe that the only way to shut down puppy mills is to dry up the market, because there's no just way to legislate them out of business without trampling on people's freedoms, and in the end, harming the human/animal bond. But I believe that as a liberal, and as a dog lover, and as the opponent of the mass commercial production of puppies, and someone who is against the sale of puppies and kittens in pet stores. And I don't find any of those things a contradiction.

The Baltimore Sun Mutts blog kept tabs on the current candidates' pets.

The undisputed winner in the pets-at-home category is John McCain, who has 22 pets; the loser is Barack Obama, who has none, but who -- it should be pointed out -- has promised his children that, win or lose, once the campaign is over, they will get one. So what he lacks in pets, he makes up for in being responsible enough to know that amid a run for the country's highest office is not a good time to bring a pet into one's young family. His opponent in the Democratic race, Hillary Clinton, is down to one dog now, a Labrador named Seamus. Of the Clintons' White House pets, Buddy passed on, and Socks was given to White House Secretary Betty Currie when the Clintons left office. While some at the time criticized Hillary Clinton for "dumping" Socks, that act, like Obama not having a dog, might also have been the more responsible choice, especially considering both she and Bill are allergic to cats.

Caitlin Flanagan wrote an essay called "No Girlfriend of Mine" in the Atlantic Monthly last July detailing her displeasure with Clinton, including her treatment of Socks.

In the annals of human evil, off-loading a pet is nowhere near the top of the list. But neither is it dead last, and it is especially galling when said pet had been deployed for years as an all-purpose character reference. All presidential pets become famous, but the national affection for Socks during his time in the White House was unexpected and politically miraculous. He did the impossible: He humanized the Clintons. Socks stood for Chelsea (whose cloistering lent her allure) and for something Hillary desperately wanted us to understand about herself: that no matter how powerful or successful she becomes, first and foremost, she’s a mom; that no matter how incomprehensible her marriage may appear to outsiders, at its deep center is the only imperishable bond a man and a woman can share—a child. Conveying these two simple facts during the long and punishing 1992 campaign had eluded Hillary, and by the time the family was crating up its belongings to move to the White House, even those of us who had helped punch their ticket thought they were odd ducks... Hillary’s insistence that we follow her example in pet ownership, when she should really be on Cat Fancy’s Most Wanted list, makes her a tiresome bore. But exploiting the emotions of good-natured people (including “many of the retired servicemen and women who live at the U.S. Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home in Washington, D.C.,” whose bravery and patriotism she honored by having them send out kitty-cat “greetings” to Socks’s correspondents)—well, that’s just another example of her three-decade-long drift from the girl she once was to the woman that circumstance and ambition have made her.

In the Pink Texas disagreed:

What will female voters think of this, as Hillary tries to convince them that she’s human? I’ll tell you what this female voter thinks. Me. Ow. At least she didn’t strap Socks to the roof of her car on a family vacation. “In the annals of human evil, off-loading a pet is nowhere near the top of the list,” writes Caitlin Flanagan in the current issue of The Atlantic. “But neither is it dead last, and it is especially galling when said pet has been deployed for years as an all-purpose character reference.” Oh, lighten up, Flanagan.

Sarah Baxter wrote another comparative piece in the London Sunday Times about the candidates' pets.

A dog is an essential tool of government. There is nothing like a furry friend to feature in a distracting publicity photo during a domestic or international crisis and to provide private consolation when times are hard. President Bush once said about Iraq: “I will not withdraw even if Laura and Barney [his scottie] are the only ones supporting me.” With McCain vowing to keep American troops in Iraq for 100 years if necessary, it is perhaps as well that he has a number of pets. Socks the cat was a star of the Clinton years, but should Hillary’s fortunes revive she is unlike to take back the elderly family pet that she dumped on her husband’s White House secretary when his presidency ended. There is still Seamus, a chocolate labrador who replaced Buddy, the second dog owned by the Clintons to be run over. Mike Huckabee has three dogs, Jet, a black labrador, Toby, a King Charles cavalier spaniel, and Sonic, a shih tzu, but his son, David, was accused with a friend of torturing and hanging a dog at a Boy Scout camp in 1998. Animal rights groups in Arkansas, where his father was governor, were outraged and the 17-year-old was dismissed as camp counsellor.

FourDogMom made her own tally:

It's not a good sign that Obama doesn't have any pets. McCain, on the other hand leads the group with 22. I would expect nothing less than pound rescues from Kucinich, the candidate I am most closely aligned with politically.

Hallie Sue's lab speaks up at Go Dog Go while she's at work:

Given the above information, it is really a shock that the candidates are not talking more about dogs and our concerns. It seems like labs are really an over represented breed with this group, so labs everywhere should unite and make their voices heard by their humans. As I like to say, “Go Dog Go.”

The Humane Society Legislative Fund is another source for the intersection of pets and politics. The Humane Index 2006 rated Sen. Clinton over 100 percent in animal welfare, and whereas Obama scored lower he has gotten other good marks from the organization as well.

After the Cups linked to the Fund For Animals ranking, where again Clinton came out ahead, in spite of continued scuttle over the transfer of former first cat Socks to Bill Clinton's secretary Betty Currie and the demise of Buddy the lab

I'm a total nerd for politics, but what with the US elections and everything I thought maybe other people might be interested too. This site ranks both Senators and Representatives by their voting records on various issues, including animal rights according to the agendas of the Humane Society and the Fund for Animals. I realize that neither of these groups stand up the standards that most of us have, but they still serve as some sort of baseline of what we can expect from members in regards to their voting records on animal rights... It looks like Hillary has a better voting record for animal rights than Obama or McCain based on this data at least. She voted line line with the Humane Society agenda 100% of the time, Obama 60% of the time, and McCain 40% of the time. (if anyone is curious Kucinich was of course at 100%) You can obviously look up your own members as well if you feel like writing people angry letters.

PawsConnect held a less formal but spirited competition late in 2007 to determine the pets' favorite candidate. Lizzy from Catpaign won the grand prize, and felt that Clinton came out ahead.

I'm Lizzy and American politics has gone to the dogs. I'm fed up with the good ol' boys and it's no stretch to see who's the right candidate. Look at these hound dogs: Mutt Romney, Bark Obama, Joe Bite 'Em. . .It's time we put a little feline power in the white house. After all, what would you prefer? A smelly old lazy dog or a nine-lifer that knows her mind? Hillary's the cat's meow. She puts the purrr in Prrresident. It's time to let sleeping dogs lie. Cats of America Awake! Hillary Kitten in '08!

Rock ON, baby girl.

I love Tina Fey. She hosted last night's SNL, the first since the writer's strike ended. It was fantastic. As soon as this clip ended, my sister texted me: "Bitch is the new black!" 

When you talk some

My Uncle Franny died on Tuesday. He wasn't feeling well, went to bed and just never woke up.

He was my grandfather's (my father's father) brother, one of the 18 children in a huge - yes, Catholic - family who lived in Washington just after World I. Here they are, in front of the Capitol. They were on Ripley's Believe It Or Not once.

That's my granddaddy, the oldest, on the far left. Franny's somewhere among the little kids, over towards the right.

My uncle worked in grocery stores as a produce manager his whole working life. He was still working when he died. When we saw him at the Christmas party this year, someone asked him about working, and he said he'd "die in the grocery store." Not exactly, but close.

He lived in the same neighborhood, very close to my grandparents, while my father and his brothers were growing up, and then when I was around the house as a child until I graduated from college and moved to Dayton. He stopped by the house a lot, just to hang out and talk family stuff and what was going on with everyone. Does anyone do that anymore?

I was very close to my grandparents. I love my parents dearly and they have been there for me every day I've been alive, but my grandparents' impact on me and the role they played in my life growing up can't be underestimated. When my grandfather died in 1988, it was a serious loss for me and I had a lot of trouble adjusting. I loved seeing his siblings at family events, because I was always reminded of what good people they were and what a strong family I came from. Nobody got rich, and nobody moved very far away. They just raised their families and worked and traveled and led good lives.

Today in Uncle Franny's casket there was his wedding picture, a Redskins parking pass (and an "I love them Hogs" button pinned on his lapel, in honor of one of the greatest offensive lines in pro-football history), a coupon for a free pint of Haagen-Daazs, playing cards arranged in a royal flush, a Mega-millions lottery receipt, a letter his four-year old granddaughter wrote to send along with him, three quarters for 31 (a card game we play on the beach) and a Camel in his pocket.

It's difficult to explain what it's been like to grow up in my family. A lot of people I know aren't terribly close to their extended family, so it sometimes seems almost strange to say how much mine matters to me. Although I can't say I'm close to many of my second and third (and now even fourth) cousins, we know about each other. We've been getting together as a large group for a summer and Christmas reunion every year for my entire life, and in the summer a large group of us vacation at the same condo complex in Myrtle Beach. It's really nice to see the younger generation of cousins hanging out on vacation, and staying in touch on MySpace and Facebook. They really identify as cousins, which is nice considering their parents are first cousins and it's really easy for those relationships to get diluted. This summer I chaperoned (frightening) a group of them to the mall near the beach on the night the Harry Potter movie opened up at midnight. I was so happy to do it, unreasonably so. They had no idea, because they hadn't been around when all the aunts and uncles were alive (and in my case, even my great-grandmother). But in my case, I felt like I was paying something very important forward.

This is my sister and Uncle Franny this past Christmas.

After our grandfather died, he sort of adopted us at holidays and on vacations, needling us about school and career and dating choices. He was the person you saw out on the sand every morning at the crack of dawn, staking out our huge amount of space with the umbrellas and making sure they were all set up. When we all went to Disney World in 1990, he ended up hanging out with my mom and dad and my sister in the park every day, dodging huge groups of tourists holding flags. He adopted one Japanese group's habit of screaming "MOVE QUICKLY MOVE QUICKLY" and it cracked him up every time. This year at the Christmas party, like every other, he asked me for my hand and when I pulled it away, there was a $50 check. I'd always be embarrassed after, and not know what to say, but he'd say something like all of my older relatives say, like "Buy your books" or "Spend it right," and walk away.

Every loss that I experience like this, and lately there have been too many for my comfort I have to say, takes me another step away from that security I always had while at the same time making me want to create it in my universe of people that I love and care about. I guess that's the way it's supposed to be.

My uncle, like so many of my relatives, was the ultimate good person. He was calm and collected. He required very little to be happy. He took care of his kids after his wife died many years ago, and continued to be a good dad and grandfather. He drove his sisters to the beach and helped take care of them as they've gotten older. He was everything to be proud of, and everything to miss.

Yesterday I was driving down the road, dreading the viewing today, in the very same room, as it turned out, that my grandmother was in in September, across the hall from where my grandfather was so many years ago now. I was thinking about Franny and how at family events I wouldn't feel right without him as an anchor, when a Kelly Willis song from her "What I Deserve" cd popped into my head. It's called "Talk Like That" and in it she calls to mind her family members whose accents - the particular cadence of Oklahoma voices - bring her home. And I started to cry for the first time since I'd heard the news. When you hear my older relatives speak, it's impossible to deny that at one point DC was indeed a southern city, and I've always loved to listen to them. The old-time Maryland/DC accent is hard to describe, and it makes me sad that in my family it's dying out.

I took that time in my car to play my uncle's voice back in my head, my grandfather's too. There are some things that I can't live losing sight of.

Talk like that
Well I don't know where you're from
But oh how it takes me back
When you talk some
When you're moving around
You can lose sight of your past
It's way back beyond the last town
And you're moving too fast
Well I can hear my father
And his Oklahoma drawl
I hear my grandmother
Oh I can hear them all
And oh when you talk like that
I know where I'm from
And oh how it takes me back
When you talk some
And if anyone asks me
I don't have a home
And it's more than likely
I'll always be on my own
But oh when you talk like that
I know where I'm from
And oh how it takes me back
When you talk some
Lord how it takes me back
When you talk some

Genius

This week is awkward, for some more serious reasons that I'll talk about later because I don't feel like it now, and for several others that seems to be piling up like so much FRESH FALLEN SNOW, which apparently we're getting more of soon because Maryland, oh how we love the inconsistent winter.

My tetanus arm still hurts and it's making me cranky, but the real kicker is this typhoid vaccine. It's a four-pill series and you take them a day apart. My body does not care for the typhoid vaccine, not at all. I feel really weird, mostly just nauseous, which I suppose in the long run is preferable to typhoid fever, which sounds completely awesome, but still.

So my arm's sore and I'm weird, which means one thing is different than usual. The good news is that in addition to these afflictions, I'm officially Steve Jobs's bitch. The adapter was the problem with the laptop, at least the most pressing one. $79 for an adapter. Really, Steve? Really? $79! For a power cord! And I pay it, and I'm just all happy again because my computer works. Baaaaahhhh.

I had an appointment at the Genius Bar (so stupid, really. But oh how I do love them, the flock of black-clad, oh-so-serious Mac Geniuses.) yesterday at just after noon, which I thought would be great because who's going to be at the mall on a Wednesday at 12:20? Well, it turns out that no one in this county works, or has any other pressing responsibilities, or maybe is just as sickeningly dependent on their THINKING MACHINE as I am, because the place was packed. A man who had clearly never been there before got all in my personal space as he was walking in the store and unhelpfully bellowed, "There's more people here than in the ENTIRE MALL."

This is when I say things aloud that are going to get my ass kicked one day, i.e., "Thanks, Chief. Thanks for playing." He also had a phone holster. I'm so prejudiced against men with phone holsters.

I was on time, because, right, like I'm going to be late for my Genius Bar appointment, even though I'm late for 76 percent of all of my other responsibilities? No, I will not. I had to wait for quite some time, so I ambled around, checked my e-mail, glared at the Macbook Air, went and hung out with the iMac some more and felt honestly very disappointed that it didn't have PhotoBooth which means I'm insane, and did this really embarrassing, weight-comparison move with the Macbook and the Macbook Pro to see which one would cause me more herniation in my disks as I carry it for 12 straight days in Vietnam.

Please to note that in a previous life I was a very dispassionate shopper, particularly where electronic equipment was concerned. I looked at stuff and I bought it or I didn't. I did very little cost comparing or (God forbid) research. Now, I'm that person, reaching across the table to pick up the other laptop at the same time so I can compare, several times, because the first and second time you can't really tell. It is all silly. But at least I have a hobby, an expensive, addictive hobby. And it turns out that the two laptops, despite a deceptive size difference? Not so different weight-wise.

While I was standing there and they still hadn't called my name, I noticed that the laptop I was holding as part of my experiment was plugged into a power source with a charger. Much like, nay, the same, as the charger I was carrying in my bag that wasn't doing jack crap to make my computer work. So I looked around to see if anyone cared, pulled my computer out of my bag, unplugged the store laptop, and plugged the charger into my own machine.

Hallelujah and pass the ammunition, baby, the little green light went on on the adapter, and I was all kinds of excited. Genius bar, whatever. I was intrepid girl Mac shopper, unafraid to plug something in. There is no end to my super powers, seriously, and I swear...are you familiar with that scene in Christmas Vacation where the lights finally work on Clark's house? I heard the chorus and I wept with joy. Sort of, but that was how I felt inside anyway.

I immediately began reconfiguring the emergency computer-purchasing scenarios in my head into a more long-range, workable plan. And also breathing, and not being so hateful in general as I'd been for the past 24 hours.  I also tried to act as nonchalant as I could, like it was perfectly natural to be standing there holding a big old laptop (with a Spongebob sticker, even) that just happened to be mine, plugged into the cord that really belonged to the store computer, while said store computer languished there with no power source.

Mac salesman Robbie S. was having none of this. Did I need help? Hi Robbie S, could you pose a more loaded question? Well, yes, quite literally, and no. I told him I'd been waiting and just wanted to see if my terrible problem was immediately solvable, and why yes it was, but I was going to hang around and take my spot at the bar because there was something up with my cd drive anyway so I might as well get it checked out while I was there. He was happy to sell me the ridiculously priced adapter, and also an extended warranty that I'd never bought (I swear, I kept meaning to, but I was still within the year and I hadn't gotten my fellowship money, so there.) He seemed pretty cool and didn't speak slowly or extra loud to me as some men are wont to do with women in tech environments. It's so aggravating to feel like you have to throw around a little bit of lingo to show you know what you're talking about, and I like that that's less likely to be necessary in an Apple store than anywhere, honestly. I guess that's the carrot they throw you for being Steve's bitch, but whatever.

When I explained my dilemma about computer purchasing to Robbie - that I was taking my only computer to Vietnam, and I felt it was time to have a backup but I wasn't sure if I should get a smaller laptop and make the Pro my home computer or an iMac - he listened intently and earnestly and implied that all of my ideas and conclusions were right and good, but he himself felt quite strongly that I should get a Macbook Air.

Of course he thinks I should get a Macbook Air, with its $1800 base price and its new newness and cachet of being the lightest notebook on the market ever. But the thing is, I don't want a Macbook Air, and I  don't really like them. I do not want to own a computer with "air" in the name. Macbook Airs are for, like, dainty people in corsets and white puffy wigs who will type Olde English e-mails with porcelain fingers, not people like me who'll just pound out who-what-where-when-why stories, drop by people.com and drink out of the bottle, thanks.

Seriously? I don't trust it. It's too thin, and I am so totally capable of breaking things just by looking at them. Plus, what if I want to burn a cd? I don't want to deal with external drives and I especially don't want to pay 100 bucks for one when the computer is already pricey. Call me a relic or a control freak, but sometimes I like to put cds in my computer so I can work with music and photos, and for $2000, I really want to be able to do this on my existing computer.

I listened to and then ignored the man, who got all quietly indignant when I said I didn't like to buy first-generation products, which I only really said for kicks to piss him off. Then Adam at the bar fixed my cd drive (I think, I really haven't tested it yet) and he was all competent and genius-like, and I felt infinitely better when I left than when I walked in the door. And I think given the weight issue I'm going to go ahead and get the iMac, because I'm really liking the idea of the display, and the speed, and the storage again.

And I know it might seem silly to go on about computers all this time, but the truth is that if it weren't for these machines and their capabilities I wouldn't be able to do a lot of what it is that I currently do. And what I do is mostly fun, and it makes me happy, and it connects me with a larger world and lots of cool people, so it's a good thing. Genius, even.

Inoculated

I've had my shots.

Apparently there are some health risks inherent in traveling to parts of the world you've never been to before. Yesterday I had to spend $150 on vaccinations for the (rapidly approaching, shoot me please I don't have time to travel 10,000 miles twice and still get all my shit done, help me oh God why am I doing this? Oh, right.) trip to Vietnam in March. I've already spent a zillion dollars on a new camera (Nikon D80, sorry there's been no birth announcement of THAT baby yet...I am such a blog slacker, but honestly I'm still making friends with it), and an expedited passport, and I still have to deal with the not-small issue of whether or not I'm going to buy a smaller laptop because taking my Macbook seems really, really stupid in addition to all the other very heavy stuff I'll be carrying.

Did I mention how frail I am? And also that said center of my universe Macbook is currently not working? That yesterday I plugged it in and it was all, "Haha, you expect me to work? Because you have no time for me not to? And that you might care that every ounce of information you need to conduct your life is inside this dark, hellish screen? HA! Way to take me for granted, stupid human."

If my cute little Apple Store genius man does not tell me in approximately one hour and 45 minutes that this is a result of a suddenly-faulty charger, please brace yourself world for the screams.

Seriously, I cannot freak, all the while I am currently freaking. But this was not supposed to be about that. Shots. Yes.

I went to the campus health center yesterday which houses an International Travel Clinic, all capitalized and shit, because we are a major four-year research institution. It was actually a fairly good experience as those go that involve getting stuck with needles. I waded through the sea of apparently rapidly expiring college students littering the waiting room, flu germs swimming in the air, to go to the second floor and meet with a real-live doctor. She told me I needed a Hepatitis A shot, a combo cocktail of "Tetanus/Diphtheria/Pertussis", and a series of typhoid vaccine pills. Pertussis is Whooping Cough, which apparently is making a comeback in adults who "haven't had boosters", in case you were fresh out of things to worry about this fine winter's day.

Me (because I must torture the people with my pressing need to know): What is WHOOPING cough?
Doctor: Well, it's an upper respiratory condition that results in a cough with a WHOOPING sound.
Evil voice inside my head: Well, YEAH.
Me (see above): I'm just not sure what WHOOPING sounds like. I remember my grandmother talking about it but no one I know has ever had it.
Doctor: I'm not sure I've heard it, because I'm an internist. The pediatrician here has seen cases. 
Me: Probably best to avoid it, regardless.

She also said that I need to acquire insect repellent that has at least 25 percent DEET, which will probably set me spinning because again, frail. (I just made myself laugh. Rock.) Also, she mentioned Immodium, and wrote me a prescription for Cipro, the anti-Anthrax drug, which you're supposed to take if Immodium doesn't work and you've somehow stumbled into the jaws of intestinal death.

There's really not a better way to feel all warm and fuzzy inside before noon than to have someone say things like, "Eat no fruit or salad" and "insect-borne diseases can be really serious so you need to take precautions." I have no idea what Hanoi will be like. I'm not afraid of it, not at all, but I have never traveled to Asia and much of what I read tells me to literally and figuratively fasten my seatbelt. It's really exciting, but I don't want to do anything stupid or get sick and ruin my time and more importantly my ability to work while I'm there. A good chunk my work for the semester will be based on what I do in Vietnam - pictures, footage, interviews. I have to be at full strength.

It's not like we're sleeping in the open air, it's a hotel that has a home on TripAdvisor and everything. But without going into too much nauseating detail, dude, I have the worst stomach in the WORLD right now. This is not an unusual circumstance, not at all, but I am a mess. It's quite possible that Vietnamese food and water will improve my situation. But 20 hours on a plane will not, so I'm actually looking to go on some kind of pre-trip gastric IronWoman training program or something. Google has so far not been forthcoming with that.

The shots weren't bad. I am the best little soldier, really, which is a result of having scalpels and needles wielded in my direction since I was six weeks old, I'm pretty sure. Seriously, you think this sense of humor is organic? Listen to doctors and nurses and admissions types ramble on for most of your formative years and you'll quickly learn to go to your own happy place.

The nurse yesterday told me to wiggle my toes, first on my right foot and then on my left, which I thought was some kind of accupressure technique for blood flow, but it turns out that there I go, complicating things AGAIN. After it was over she said that thinking about your toes takes the focus off the needle going in your arm. It could be the ADD, but I am completely capable of wiggling my toes while still directing the majority of my energy to the sharp thing puncturing my skin just a few feet north. Just sayin'.

She told me my arm would hurt from the tetanus, and it does.  I took one typhoid pill last night, and have to take three more on alternate days through the end of the week. That is a live vaccine in a capsule, and has to be refrigerated. It's a very involved process but it's kind of interesting, actually, to read about all the terrible things that can possibly befall you when you venture off of your continent.

I had terrible nightmares last night that I was in some kind of grave medical distress and my mother called an ambulance that somehow never came. Most dreams can currently be interpreted to reflect an unmet or rapidly approaching deadline, which is the current (due tomorrow! At least a draft!) story of my life. We leave for this trip in three weeks, and believe me I am really excited, and additionally a little bit overwhelmed. I'll just be relieved when we touch down in Hanoi, and not just because it's a 15 hour plane trip to Korea and then five more to Vietnam. I'm really ready to get this show on the road.

I'll Settle - For Awesome

Crossposted from BlogHer.

I am 37 years old, I'm single, and I have not had children. There you have the trifecta that is supposed to have me standing on a bridge right about now, or not wasting my time talking to you good people when I could be laughing at the stupid screennames on Match.com.

I've been wondering for a while now, why the hate for single women, hmm? So many people seem to stand in line to judge single, especially childless women. It bothers me. It really does. Some married people are unhappy, some single people are annoyingly jubilant, and vice versa. I didn't celebrate Valentine's Day by dressing in black and getting together with friends to listen to depressing music and drink Yellow Tail. I admit it crossed my mind that saying "I love you" and meaning it, and hearing it back, meant, again would be nice, but that's an every day kind of thing. You can't force it, friends.

The sordid, all-too-simple truth is that I'm mostly okay single, but the "no children" part makes me unhappy. Sometimes I am involuntarily very jealous of people with kids, and if you prick me with comments like, "Oh, you'd understand if you were a mom," or "Oh, you're so LUCKY, so free!", yes, I do existentially bleed. But if settling for a substandard life partnership was the only way to avoid this circumstance, as Lori Gottlieb claimed in her article "Marry Him!" in this month's "The Atlantic" online, then this was the way it had to be - for me.

I'd say I won't settle, but it's more like I can't, and what "settling" means for each of us is likely a very different matter. But whatever it is, I shouldn't have done it in my 20s - oh God no, especially not then - as Gottlieb suggests, and I won't now. And although I'm not one to judge, neither should you, or you, or you. And along with detailing how women my age are falling apart and can't be expected to attract a man at all, really, therefore making the pickings even slimmer, she says that's kind of stupid.

My advice is this: Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling “Bravo!” in movie theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go. Based on my observations, in fact, settling will probably make you happier in the long run, since many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year. (It’s hard to maintain that level of zing when the conversation morphs into discussions about who’s changing the diapers or balancing the checkbook.)

Now, I have to tell you that I've walked this walk, before I join the disingenuous chorus of denial that Gottlieb shuts down before we even start tuning up. See?

And all I can say is, if you say you’re not worried, either you’re in denial or you’re lying. In fact, take a good look in the mirror and try to convince yourself that you’re not worried, because you’ll see how silly your face looks when you’re being disingenuous.

I might be worried, but that doesn't mean I have to make poor choices. I could have married the man I lived with (Lord help me) ten years ago, who wanted to marry me. I was 28. Oh, and also? I was miserable. I think he was miserable too, maybe just because I was, because living with miserable me? Misery. He was not by any stretch a bad person, but we were totally incompatible, and I really can't even explain how we ended up living in the same apartment. What I can explain, however, is how one day I had such a suffocating fear of living my life with someone who didn't understand what made me tick at all that I had to leave. What I can explain is that every time I hung out with his family I realized that these would be my children's grandparents, and I didn't feel at home with them at all. I realized that I just wasn't feeling it - and that was before he developed the crush on another girl.

But he apologized, and said he loved me and we were still getting married, right? I had missed the proposal if there was one, but wrong. I guess I could have overlooked his lack of interest in conversing with me, his belief that we didn't need to go on dates anymore because we "lived together and saw each other all the time", his dismissal of my writing as "not his style" and a physical disconnection that had him wearing sweatsuits to bed (until I told him I was leaving the state, when all of a sudden I became a lot more attractive.)

Sure, I could have sucked it up, baby. I could have - in Gottlieb's words, not mine, because I'd choose something a lot more harsh - settled. Because maybe now I'd have a baby or two, which would probably be pretty great, but I'm not so sure about the rest of my life. I have occasional visions of chain-smoking and driving a minivan around our old neighborhood, but I force them out of my brain, quickly.

The thing is, it's not just about me. I can want children all I want, and I do. I can find it really offensive and disappointing that I, kickass potential mother that I am, don't have children when so many people do. But until I think I'd be in a situation that would be a great environment for kids, including a loving relationship for the parents, I won't do it. Marriage may be a contract, but beyond tax returns, kids are not a commodity. As much as I'd love to join the club, I don't believe that motherhood is owed to me at any cost.

The choice of with whom to share my life, my home, myself and my family is precious and intensely personal. Whittling it down to a mediocre minimum so I'll have a potential father for a child I may or may not be able to have with him isn't something my conscience or self-respect will allow. If I choose that guy who yells "Bravo!" in the movies (and let me just say right now, no. No. Stop.) and I don't have many good reasons that balance that out, then I'm putting my kids in a bad position. I'm also setting myself up for unhappiness, and cheating him out of a woman who'll think that's really cutting edge behavior, like maybe someone who'll up his ante and scream "Bravissima!" Who am I to do that? 

And this is not to say that quality people should be dismissed out of hand for minor matters.
There's a difference between being ridiculously demanding and having deal-breakers that really matter to you for valid reasons. I don't need perfect. Everyone has quirks. But what Gottlieb is suggesting is that it's okay to lack passion, companionship and even physical attraction. She delves interestingly into sitcom land to find examples. Ross and Rachel from "Friends" were doomed, and Rachel should have stuck with Barry the nice orthodontist. Her ideal married couple, however, is Will and Grace. Will is, of course, gay, and Grace's best friend.

So what if Will and Grace weren’t having sex with each other? How many long- married couples are having much sex anyway?

Gottlieb doesn't have a husband, although she does have a child, conceived with donor sperm, and this article left me wondering what kind of marriages she's observed. At least some couples I know actually seem to enjoy spending time together. Settling's not so bad, she says. It's gotten a bad rap. You don't spend so much time with your husband anyway, so it's okay if you really don't like him that much. Let's overlook the fact that you might share a bed. Whatever.

So if you rarely see your husband—but he’s a decent guy who takes out the trash and sets up the baby gear, and he provides a second income that allows you to spend time with your child instead of working 60 hours a week to support a family on your own—how much does it matter whether the guy you marry is The One?

Can you aim lower than no sex and a time share marriage to Not-the-One? It would be cheaper and less emotionally debilitating to hire a manny. What happens when the kids are older? I can't help but think that when the ultimate decision to marry is living in its own apartment and calling once a week for money that, unless some magical transformation has occurred or a divorce has already happened, there would seem little point in carrying on. I've known some couples who built their lives around the kids, and ended up strangers to each other. Why start out from that point?

I’ve been told that the reason so many women end up alone is that we have too many choices. I think it’s the opposite: we have no choice. If we could choose, we’d choose to be in a healthy marriage based on reciprocal passion and friendship. But the only choices on the table, it sometimes seems, are settle or risk being alone forever. That’s not a whole lot of choice.

That's so sad I won't even touch it, except to say that I disagree, and I blow any and all women who feel that way, for fleeting moments or all the time, a big old kiss. You - we - deserve it.

I can honestly say that the only person I ever knew with certainty that I could happily and effectively parent with was also the only person dated who I considered the best possible partner for me, at least out of anyone I'd met. Mind you, this person had the usual rack of quirks, and he had big problems with some of mine. But in the context of considerable love and support - and what I think now was mutual admiration and shared values - that we had for each other, they were just part of the fabric. What I learned in that relationship is what leads me to disagree so strongly with the premise of "Marry Him!" "Not perfect" is better than okay when it feels right, and no amount of internal negotiating will make it so if it doesn't.

Unfortunately that relationship didn't go the distance, but I also learned that the feelings I had -  that my life was immeasurably better with this person in it, that I wanted him in my heart and my home every day and missed him when he wasn't, and that I would have been proud to raise children with him, not as separate entities but as partners - were the kind I needed to have. As much as I have no idea if I'll be that lucky again, and as much as what that might mean scares me, I'm just not interested in compromising on the big stuff.

This article is burning up the blogs. Take your pick.

Maria Niles let me know about the article in the first place,  and approached it here at BlogHer from a "happiness" angle.

I'm with Jocie Fong at Autology.

Let me be clear: these are not our options. For instance, a big assumption that comes through here is that if a woman does not have a boyfriend/husband, she is alone. A more creative mind might fashion an idea of an untraditional family, of friends, relatives, pets, colleagues, communities and self, with an understanding that everyone has the ultimate choice whether to be "alone" or "all one." A woman may be surrounded by people she loves and still be considered "alone" on Gottleib's terms, and on those of society in general, and this, I believe, is something we should actively change, or at the very least, avoid reinforcing.

I enjoy Mary Elizabeth Williams's question of how this would be approached if it were men in question.

Can you imagine, for a minute, a story in a major monthly by a man that suggested, what the hell, just put a ring on the broad's finger, they all get dumpy eventually anyway. Who cares, as long as she picks your shirts up off the floor? Imagine flipping the gender on a phrase like this, "I say, 'OK, if you’re so unhappy, and if I’m so lucky, leave your husband! In fact, send him over here!'” Oh, ha ha ha. Because men can be traded like playing cards. Think how that would go over if we were talking about women.

My single friends will attest the pickings can be slim out there. And if the institution is more meaningful to you than the participants in it, if Charlotte Lucas is your idea of a good role model, grab whatever's got an Adam's apple and godspeed. I just wonder how huge a favor these women really think they're doing to their ostensible inferiors. A writer like Gottlieb is so caught up in the drama and pain of the female side, so mopily attached to the notion of having to scrape the bottom of the barrel, she's completely cavalier about the guys themselves. Have you ever been anybody's B-list? Imagine signing up for a life of that. Imagine living with someone who both considers herself your better and is also painfully grateful to you rescued her from spinsterdom. Those poor bastards.

Bella DePaulo wrote about the article on the Huffington Post and commented on  BackyardBeacon's BlogHer post about the article from a black woman's point of view.

Pandagon readers had pointed reactions to this
post at Modestly Yours that spoke out in favor of settling if you had to, and single people should shut  it:

Advice: Singles should stop pretending they're happy and OK with being single, admit that your life would be richer with a mate.  Tell yourself that you want a wife or husband, and make that a priority.  Drop the New Age "soul mate" obsession (it's wishful thinking and as baseless as the crushes you had in junior high school.)  Develop your personality and strengths so that you are an exceptional person and companion.  Relearn how to share and give and compromise.  Don't sleep around, you're wasting your energies and spirit. Remember where you came from: a married mother and father (for most of us anyway).  That institution is the underpinning of our very society, and dispensing with it isn't likely to be an improvement.

Jessica at Feministing:

But in all seriousness, we all know that the media likes nothing better than a woman telling other women how miserable they're going to be without a man. And that's what makes nonsense like this so dangerous - its potential reach. Gottlieb has already been on the Today show touting her article and going head to head with (sigh) professional matchmakers. Who knows how much more media attention this piece will get. Shit, she'll probably get a book deal out of it.

But no matter where this article ends up, it doesn't change the fact that it's pure crap, mixed in with a little sour grapes. (I'm betting it makes Gottlieb - who is so clearly dissatisfied with her life - just nuts that there are all these "disingenuously" happy single women out there. Better that they're matched up with losers than pursuing their own lives.)

So, to Gottlieb and all the others who think that us "old" straight gals should go back to the men we once rejected just so we don't end up miserable spinsters: STFU already. That kind of scare tactic nonsense may have worked in the 80s, but we're having none of it.

Full Moon at Chaos Theory has many, many links to article reactions also.

Sarah Schaefer Munoz wrote about the article in The Juggle, a Wall Street Journal blog about juggling work and family. Interesting comments here.

Andrea Smith's piece at the Irish Independent is a realistic take on the topic from a nearly-40 single woman.

Liz Funk is a 19-year-old student at Pace University who gets worried way before her time by articles like Gottlieb's.

Alarmist articles like this have huge repercussions.  Although the Atlantic is a really good magazine whose readers are probably all highly intelligent and have a decent sense of news literacy, the fact that the media emphasizes to young women over and over again that there are no guys left and that women over twenty five are about to expire like eggs sitting on the counter on a hot summer day is, in so few words, NOT OKAY.

We're Alive

I can't really explain the break I've taken from this site (well, I could, but I'm struggling to do it so that it's not so incredibly boring.) I've never stopped writing this long in the three years I've written it, but it just...felt like something I couldn't do for awhile. I might attempt to fill in some blanks later (the last three weeks have been a supercalifragilistic thrill ride, let me tell you, oh boy) but in the meantime I thought I'd share one of my first videos from the Flip camera I checked out from school. (Go to graduate school! Get stuff to try out before you buy it! Love it, sometimes I love it.)

In the video you will note that even at 13, and after a debilitating neurological episode, a squeaky football is a major motivator for any dog with a shred of remaining common sense. And in it you will also note that I sound like an absolute fool when I talk to my dog, and that this version of foolishness is kind of mild because I was recording it.

 

There are a couple more on Google video but I'll spare you, and also me, because if you thought I sounded like a fool in that one? It gets worse. Conversely, he's much better. The severity of the seizure weakened him considerably, and to make it make sense for myself I compare him an older person who's had a bunch of mini-strokes. His legs are weaker and he needs a little more help with just about everything, but he's still enjoying himself (clearly), eating like crazy and all in all leads a pretty good little life. When that changes now I'll have a little more perspective, which is probably a good thing.

The Flip is pretty cool, by the way. It costs about $130.00, and if you want the capability to shoot (very basic) video and upload it immediately to your hard drive without messing with tapes or discs, this is the way to go. I have a mini-dv camera as well that has more controls, and if I really care about a project or need high quality footage I'll use it (or if I thought I was going to shoot more than 30 minutes of video without a chance to download it and erase it, because that's as much as the Flip can hold.) But for my purposes of getting footage on the fly, and to engage in my habit of documenting pretty much everything whether everyone around me wants me to or not, this little machine is actually perfect.

Lucky

(Sorry, it appears I'm documenting this experience, not terribly riveting I know but this is what's going on and apparently I need to write it down?)

Thank you to several people who have come my way from here with messages and e-mails. That is so beautiful. I have to admit that I forget the value of that kind of reaching out, until I'm reminded of how good it feels, and how it makes me feel much less alone in this.

Anyway, we are home. I'm on the couch. He's pacing the house, still panting terribly. He is not himself, not at all. I am so upset at this point that I think I shorted out, and I really don't know what to do. The truth is there's really nothing more to be done than wait this out. I have a sick, sad feeling that whatever happened to him - the loss of oxygen to his brain during the seizure, something about white blood cells that the vet mentioned to me today - was the kicker. She had him in for observation all day and was going to keep him overnight with intravenous fluids but she said it would be just as well for him to go home when I told her he drinks water constantly. I was a little unsure about that because I instantly predicted mentally what is happening now - me sitting here panicking, my own blood pressure spiking, quietly going insane in a house alone - while he panted and paced again after night fell. I wasn't certain about the overnight observation there, though, so I guess I thought it would be better for me to sit up all night again and watch Anderson Cooper reruns than for him to sleep in a crate at the vet with an IV?

I am so smart.

In spite of what I thought when I picked him up, tonight has not gone well, not at all. Dammit. I fed him his dinner out of my hand so he could see it...talk about pitiful for both of us. He can't really see that well so he kept biting my hand, thinking it was turkey.

I'm still not at all sure this is going well. I'm way on edge. But there's nothing to do but walk through it. Or, in my case, sit on your couch and write things and watch CNN through it.

The timing, once again, is supremely bad. I'm sending out a prayer to the universe that he falls asleep and can sleep through the night and does not have a seizure, and maybe, even though I know this is a long shot, that he is more like himself. I don't know what else will help, and I don't know how long both of us can stand this. This has never, ever happened before. A recovery period of a couple three hours, sure - two days, no. It's really verging on hellish, but I really can't do much else right now. Would never leave him alone, just can't.