Livingston, I Presume

The dreaded croup strikes again

Yes, Connery is currently croup-i-fied. Again. I guess I shouldn't complain, since he has not had croup at all yet this winter (after last year's record-breaking four croup bouts), but I just hate when he's sick. Luckily, this has been a pretty mild case, but it follows the typical croup pattern of peaking in terribleness at such handy times as 2 a.m.

Heartbreakingly, he is such a good boy about it. I told him last night to call if he needed anything, and at one point we had heard him cough several times in a row and were getting ready to go in when he quietly said, "Mommy? Daddy? Could you come here, please?" And yesterday he had tears after going down from his nap, but when I went in to see what was wrong, he said, "I just need a hug and kiss." When he got up from his nap, he was upset and we went into the living room to calm down in the rocking chair. He ended up falling asleep on my chest for nearly 45 minutes. This is the only time when his being sick does not cause me endless distress. When I have him in my arms, I feel as if I can protect him from any illness.

While I'm on the subject of protecting my progeny, here's a message for the editors of Brain, Child magazine, to which I am a new subscriber. B,C editors, I love your magazine and have since I read a photocopy of one of your stores called "Why I Hate Dr. Sears", but could you please dial back on the child death thing? I mean, one story of toddler death is way more than enough for one issue. To run two, even when one is fictional, borders on Mommy Abuse. I am paranoid and frightened enough thanks to the mainstream media. I don't need additional doses of that from my alternative press.

Why I can't ignore the political

I've been ruminating about why I feel so compelled to write about politics lately, especially because Connery is doing so many unbelievably cute things (I promise to get to those in another post!). I was thinking about that when Angry Black Bitch went and answered it for me in her inimitable style:

A bitch doesn’t understand people who have no interest in politics. Who are these people? My ass understands differing political opinions, but having no opinion at all? Nope, a bitch doesn't get that.
...

Politics is all up in your business whether you give a shit or not. A bitch wishes my ass could just throw up my hands and say fuck it. This bitch has a life. Why the hell should my ass wade into the muck when you don’t even care? Fuck it…you get the government you deserve!

Well listen up, you no giving a shit shits. This bitch doesn’t deserve this government and my ass lives here too. A bitch has no intention of living in the America apathetic fucks like you are facilitating the creation of.

You know, I couldn't have said it better myself.

When did I turn this into a political blog?

I just can't help it. I know this is supposed to be first and foremost a lighthearted look at modern mothering, but damn it all if the world doesn't keep making it impossible for me to ignore the hell-handbasket direction of things.

The Europeans are investigating our probable gulag archipelago in Eastern Europe. Just try, if you can, to ignore the irony in that. We spend billions of dollars and expend tens of thousands of lives "winning" the Cold War by fighting wars in all corners of the globe *except* those very countries where communism is crushing the souls of its population--Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Georgia, and on and on--only to declare our own victory when those countries finally rise up against their oppressors and then we use those same countries to house political prisons to outsource torture? And I won't even get started on the idea that we are using extraordinary rendition in the first place.

At home, the government has admitted that it has been spying on people who call abroad. This means that my parents and friends--who often called me while I was living in the Czech Republic, that haven of terrorism so renowned for false stories of rendezvous involving the Iraqis and Mohammed Atta--could have had their phones tapped. I still call many friends abroad. Am I being bugged?

In the Senate, our elected officials are preparing to confirm for a lifetime appointment a man who believes in forced pregnancy and strip-searching 10-year-olds. Thank goodness we'll have him to protect us from President Cheney--I mean, Bush--and his notion of an imperial presidency.

And the hue and cry from the opposition and our free media on these matters? Let's just be generous and call it underwhelming. As far as I can see, only one lone, courageous woman from Texas really gets it. And Molly, as much as I worship you and your clear head, your strong voice is not enough. What can we do to fix this mess???

Blogging for Choice Weekend, Part II

The women of my generation and younger--the Gen X'ers and below if you will--have by and large reaped the benefits of Roe v. Wade without ever having to fight for it. And this makes me angry. Not because I want each generation to have to fight the same battles over and over again, but because there are so many women of my age who have no idea how threatened those rights are. Do these statements sound familiar?

"Roe will never be overturned."

"The majority of Americans favor reproductive rights, so nothing drastic is going to happen."

"I will still be able to get the services I need."

On the face of it, all of these statements may indeed be true, but that doesn't mean anything to a woman trying to exercise that choice. In my home state of Montana, an area as large as Germany, there are currently four abortion providers. In the state's second-largest city and my hometown, Great Falls, there is no abortion provider. The trip from a remote rural area to one of the state's abortion clinics could take as much as a day.

And Montana is better off than some other states. Even with Roe standing, a poor woman in Mississippi or South Dakota has almost no chance of exercising any real choice about her pregnancy. Those states are seen as blueprints for the anti-choice movement. Both states have only one clinic to serve the entire state, and in South Dakota, courageous doctors must be flown in for one day a week. Local physicians faced too much harrassment to continue performing the legal procedure.

And yet women of my generation sit idly by, not realizing or perhaps caring that their rights are hanging in the balance. Today it's abortion--a service that not every woman will need in her lifetime--but tomorrow it's birth control. Think I'm exaggerating? Eleven states are already considering "conscience clause" laws to allow pharmacists to refuse to fill oral contraceptives and emergency contraceptive prescriptions, and four states already have such laws on the books. And forget about the costs associated with prescription birth control. Very few states have managed to pass insurance equity laws, meaning that basic women's health care costs hundreds of dollars more per year than a man's.

I always come back to this: If a woman cannot control her fertility, she cannot control any other aspect of her life. Just three generations ago, my great-grandmother bore 11 children and was pregnant a total of 19 times. How much control do you think she had over that number? I'm not saying that we're going to wake up tomorrow and find ourselves forced to have 11 children, but I am saying that we need to recognize what's going on in the United States today. And on the other side of it, I will remind the anti-choice movement that any government that can force you to have a child can just as easily decide some women may *not* have children. Choice goes both ways.

I'm glad to see the overwhelming participation in the Blog for Choice weekend. I hope it signifies a shift in my generation and among all women.

Max grows a pair!

This is beyond amazing to me: Max Baucus is going to vote against Samuel Alito.

Just when I write the guy off he goes and does something mildly principled. It's not going to make up for his capitulation on Roberts or, naturally, the supremely odious Bankruptcy Bill, but I must say that I am feeling a little more love for my senior senator today.

Blogging for Choice Weekend, Part I

I was born in 1973--July of 1973, but still the seminal year that Roe v. Wade made abortion legal in the United States.

It was because of this coincidence of timing that I used to get mad when anti-choice activists would confront me (either while I was manning the reproductive rights booth at the State Fair or passively through their seemingly omnipresent-in-Montana bumper stickers and billboards) and say things like, "Aren't you glad your mother didn't believe in abortion?"

Well, actually, my mother did and does believe in abortion, and what's more, thanks to the Supreme Court, she could have chosen abortion in the case of my pregnancy. She didn't, because I was a wanted child. The answer is not that I'm glad my mother didn't believe in abortion, it's that I'm glad to know that I was a welcome, desired addition to the family.

It used to be most amusing when someone would ask me that question when I was manning the fair booth with my mother at my side (or vice versa). Or even my father. (My father and his ersatz uterus often took his turn at the booth as well. My brother, too, although it disturbed his easily disturbed psyche to do his duty in a booth that often sold buttons containing the word 'vagina'. Good sports, my brother and dad.)

My feelings about abortion have changed as I have gotten older, but I have never wavered from my belief that abortion services should be easily available and very affordable for any woman who needs to make that decision. I thought perhaps that my views would change when I became a parent, especially since I went through a painful miscarriage before I had a successful pregnancy. They didn't and they haven't.

If anything, I would call myself more strongly pro-choice now, as a mother, than I was when pregnancy and childbirth were little more than far-off concepts. I know what a woman's body goes through during the nearly 10 months of pregnancy (that's right, nobody tells you about that great 10th month!) and the next 6 weeks to infinity of nursing. I know what a woman's mind goes through in worry about whether the baby will be healthy, happy, and supported. I know how a woman's hormones can wreak havoc with her mind, making her spacy and weepy for no reason. And I most of all know how once you have a child, your life will never, ever be the same again. Anyone, *ANYONE* entering into a mother-child relationship should do so with her full heart. I cannot imagine how my husband and I would have made it through those first few weeks--to say nothing of the rest of our lives--if we had in any way resented the presence of our son. We wanted Connery with every fiber of our beings, and that kept us going.

I am pro-choice in part *because* I am a mother. I believed in the right to choose long before the motherhood part of my life began, but it is only now that I feel I truly understand why that right is so crucial to every single woman--and to every child born into the world.

Alito, Baucus, and me

I have a Supreme Court conundrum.

About a year ago, I wrote a scathing letter to Max Baucus, Montana's senior senator, after he voted for the disgusting corporate giveaway known as the Bankrupcty Bill. Truth be told, scathing might be too mild a word...

As for me, I'm through with you. I've fought to keep you in office since I was old enough to understand politics because the alternative--a third Republican member in Montana's Congressional delegation--scared me. But at least with Republicans I know what to expect...

It's three more years until you're up for election, Max. Any primary challengers out there will have my support. I hope other Democrats will follow me.

I sent the full letter to Max's office, and a version of it appeared in the Billings Gazette. I've heard a lot about this letter, including a phone call from the chair of the Park County Democrats.

The point is that I burned a bridge there. I hardened my heart against Senator Baucus, and while I'm not narcissistic enough to think that he or his staffers would remember the letter after a year, I do feel that I am no longer entitled to send him emails and call his office about issues that concern me. What's my bargaining position? "If Senator Baucus supports the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, I'm going to vote against him *twice*!"

So while I find myself increasingly dismayed at the direction of the Alito hearings and have heard nothing at all in his testimony to convince me that he will not shred Roe into a million little pieces not by overturning it but by imposing more and more restrictions until abortion is de facto legal but almost completely unobtainable, I don't feel as if I can actively lobby my senator at all.

I'm going to participate in the Blog for Choice Day on Sunday, but beyond that I feel helpless. This man, with all of his apparent racist and sexist tendencies, is most likely going to be handed a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land.

There's windy, and then there's WINDY

Connery's eye is recovering quite nicely, assuming that you by nicely you mean looking like he went 10 rounds with Rocky. He is coping well, however, telling anyone who will listen that it is "a small cut on my eye." Quite an adventure for him, more gray hair and shaved-off years for me. As usual, my mom--having taken me to the emergency room approximately 3,752 times before I was 5 as a result of my repeated attempts to knock out my teeth and crack open my head--is not big in the sympathy department. Of course she was very worried about Connery, don't misunderstand, but she is seeing many of my parental struggles as divine retribution. I can't say the experience is giving me much room to doubt that. As my Gang of Four friends and I were fond of saying in college, "The good news is there is a God. The bad news is that he is a white, male Republican with a bad sense of humor."

Anyway.

When you tell someone in Montana that you live in Livingston, you can expect to hear some wiescrack about the wind shortly thereafter. (This is of course an improvement on telling someone from outside of Montana that you are from Livingston, since the declaration will normally be met by a blank stare.) Yes, it's windy here. Chicago may get all the credit, but Livingston, Montana is where the wind really blows...and I mean that in every sense of the verb.

The highway headed east of here was closed yesterday afternoon after the wind tipped over three semi trucks and a Winnebago. It was still closed as of this morning. The wind also knocked out power for an hour and a half, and caused surges and brownouts throughout most of yesterday and this morning. I think it's time for a new Livingston town slogan. Livingston: Blowing Over Semis and Uprooting Trees and Power Lines Since the Early 20th Century.

OK, so maybe it could use a little work. Here are some other ideas:

Livingston: It Blows, But It Doesn't Suck

Livingston: Ruining Your Hair for 110 Years

Livingston: All Clean Air, All the Time

Livingston: It's Not the Wind, It's the Lack of Humidity

Livingston: Here's Gravel in Your Eye

More suggestions?

More firsts (unwelcome)

Yes, Connery got to take his first emergency drive to the hospital tonight! After slipping on a toy, he fell down and cut his eye. It looks worse than it is, and luckily the doctor at the hospital was nice enough to tell us that without admitting him and charging us $1000 for the privilege. It's times like this that living in a small town really doesn't suck.

More later...

Kudos to Letterman

I've never been a David Letterman fan. Maybe this is because I prefer sleeping to late-night television, but I have always chalked it up more to not enjoying his generally snarky sense of humor. Well, mea culpa, Dave. Mea freakin' culpa.

Salon.com's "Video Dog" has compiled a clip reel of Dave's recent interview with Bill O'Reilly, and let me tell you, it's a doozy. All the things you've ever yelled at the TV while being forced to watch FOX News when you're on the elliptical machine at the gym (OK, maybe that's just me)? Dave says them.

As Video Dog is quick to point out, it's not that O'Reilly's outraged tone ever wavers, it's that you can see from his fidgety hand and leg just how unnerved he is. When Dave says, "I'm not smart enough to debate you point to point on this, but I have the feeling that about 60 percent of what you say is crap," I just wanted to cheer.

I think my other favorite moment is when Dave gets after O'Reilly for his rantings about Cindy Sheehan. "I'm really concerned about people like you who...have anything but endless sympathy for Cindy Sheehan. Honest to Christ."

Why in the hell is it that comedy shows are the ones doing the work of real journalists these days?