E is for Eggs

….and how the government has no right to tell me what to do with mine. Seriously. I definitely inherited my father’s righteous anger for social injustice. So far I have read (and written) about the state governments of Virginia, Arizona, and Georgia trying to interfere with the reproductive rights of women under the guise of “religious freedom”.

Now. I’m not religious. I do believe that people deserve the freedom to believe whatever they want to believe. You believe in god? Good for you. You believe in many gods and goddesses? You have a better memory than I do for all those names. You believe in the tooth fairy? Good for freaking you. Just don’t start yanking out my teeth to appease your god. Your right to religious freedom stops. Stops. With you. You do not have any right to impose your beliefs on others in the name of your religious freedom when... Shocker… it violates the personal and religious freedoms of another human being.

The government, an employer, a religious figurehead, has no right to tell me, or any woman what to do with our sexual and reproductive freedom.

I have a theory. I think that some of the reason all of these women’s reproductive rights issues are coming to the forefront now… in the year 2012… is a backlash against the recent developments and progress made in the gay rights movement.

I have a theory that old school conservative men in government feel threatened because the “traditional values” they hold are somehow being threatened. Never mind that how another person lives their life has no effect on the person living next door, but it’s a new way of living that challenges what these conservative ideals are used to.

And they don’t like it.

So in a desperate attempt to hold onto the things that they are comfortable with, they are trying to maintain their power, by taking away ours. By taking away our rights, by taking away our choice, by taking away our voice, they can hold on to the belief that the “right” way of living isn’t just an illusion of an era that no longer exists.

Tell you what. Let’s make a deal. You live your way. I’ll live mine. I won’t tell you what to do. And you can keep your politics out of my vagina. Thanks.

{C}hange and {D}eath

C is for Change, D is for Death

Twofer post today as tomorrow I will be travelling. In a little over a week I will be sitting down to get my tattoo colored in. My tattoo is a skeletal phoenix which is representation of change and {symbolic} death in my life.

Tattoo:

This is a Skeletal Phoenix. It is a marriage of two concepts that have been a part of my life for nearly as long as I can remember; the Phoenix and Death. What they represent to me is something I need to keep with me. I tend to lose my ability to hold onto things, people, concepts… and this is something I need to never forget. I need to constantly remind myself so that I do not fall to hopelessness with I am prone to. Talk about a need for some permanence.

Every year, or two, or three, my life starts over. I crash, or burn, or both and I have to pick up and begin anew. Each time a little different than the time before, but it keeps going.

Phoenix - Phoenix imagery is just that: renewal and rebirth from the ashes of the past. I can never fully forget my past, but I can learn from it; leaving the char behind me and hopefully heal into a better place than I had been before.

Death - I’ve also been constructing my own Tarot deck. Meditating and drawing each card. While working on my Major Arcana, I got to my Death card and {a variant of} this image came to me immediately. I sketched the basic idea the minute I thought of it and knew I had to have this as a permanent reminder for myself.

If you’ve ever studied the Tarot you will know that Death, is not representative of physical death. Interpretations vary slightly by deck but some of the meanings include:

Ending of a cycle – Loss – Conclusion – Sadness – Transition into a new state – Psychological transformation – Finishing up – Regeneration – Elimination of old patterns – Being caught in the inescapable – Good byes – Deep change.

Typically it implies an end, possibly of a relationship or interest, and therefore implies an increased sense of self-awareness. An opening of new opportunities from the ending of those previous. When one region in your life empties, there opens a space to allow something new to replace it.

The banner the Firebird holds says ‘Bás ’ which is Gaelic for ‘Death’.

The Death card is generally depicted as skeletal so the combination of this imagery along with the phoenix inspired this idea of a skeletal phoenix.

In my struggles, my life, becoming who I will become, the nature of life in general; it is strikingly obvious to me why all of these things are a part of me. This is a card of change. Transition. In the death of one thing springs the potential life of something else. Endings are not only endings, but also beginnings. Endings bring change. In change there is hope. With hope there is the possibility for a better life. A life worth living.

x-posted 

B is for Books

Reading is one of my favorite forms of escapism. I lose myself to the words on each page and let the inner dialogue suffuse through my soul. It may appear to just be some words on paper bound together, held by my hands but the literal description of what a book is, does not capture even the smallest glimpse of what a book does.

Each book is alive. A journey. A place I never believed possible.  Travelling through time and space beyond the ability of physics and the imagination. For a few hours I shed my skin and become someone else.

As my eyes roam across the words, without my consciousness knowing I seem to slip into a cinema. I am no longer reading, but seeing the words play out before me. My imagination so vivid as to make the words dance and sing, each with their own voice and color.

Books to me are a way to leave behind the pain and heartache I so often feel. The dreary days of stress and boredom that drags me down through the world of the mundane.

At 30 years old I still curl up in bed with a flashlight each night and read myself to sleep. Covers pulled up close, my cat cuddled near, as I shine my light into a new adventure that follows me into my subconscious. My mind picking up and placing me into the plot after my eyes close and I drift off to sleep.

There as I fall asleep. There when I finally awake.

In life I have my own little library. In this day and age of electronics, kindles, and e-Readers, I still love my books. I’ve heard all the arguments and the wonder that comes with this technology but there’s just something I can’t replace in my books. I like the look of my shelves filled with volumes and tomes of places I’ve been, gone, and seen. It may seem silly, but it’s something I simply cannot bring myself to give up.  

A is for All Aboard

I dream of travelling. I would love to live a life of adventure and discovery. I’ve spent so much of my life learning of different cultures and places that I’d like to explore. And yet I never manage to get very far.

I take one real vacation a year with the time I painstakingly save up from work. Every year my friends all come together and go to the same place. All of us bring our costumes, and gear, and tents, and booze and set up our camp for a week or two together. All of us. All together.

It’s a wonderful time but when rifts develop it’s difficult to enjoy it all. Things change. People change. And eventually nothing is really the same. The joy the brought me back year after year, slowly slips away until finally I long for a change of my choosing. I think that’s the problem. Often change is out of my hands. Against my will. It’s hard to watch the things you love get swept up and swept away in the whirlwinds of time. It makes me feel helpless and resentful of my humanity.

Even change of my choice is not easy. The anxiety that accompanies picking a new path is paralyzing. They’ll be so disappointed if I do not join them again like I always do. I never feel like I contribute to their merriment but I never feel like I’m good for much of anything despite what everyone tells me. I’ll be sad and maybe a bit jealous to let them have their fun without me. To think that they could have an even better time if I weren’t there.

But I know what that place holds. I crave something new. Something different. It’s so strange though. Dozens of us do this every year. I want to try something new… but with who?

Sometimes you have to let your past go, to see what your future will bring I suppose.

A Delightfully Uneventful Weekend =)

Wow, would you look at that, my weekend was “normal”. I declined an invitation to hang out with Tech Boy on Friday night. I was tired from stress and frankly super self-conscious. The weather has been changing and it really dries out my skin. My finger cracked and my lip cracked and I was embarrassed by how it looked.  He didn’t care but not going out in public because of an uncomfortable physical flaw is one of my more rational anti-social seclusions into self-consciousness. Egads. I drank too much wine, listened to Roommate and her bf talk about the problems with biblical inconsistencies (which was absolutely hysterical) and played my video games. I had a nice mellow night.

Saturday I woke up at 7:15a.m., still managed to get to the gym a bit late (8:05a.m.), and only had time for a 50 minute run before my 1.5 hour weights/core/abs class. My ass and my shoulders are still sore! Great workout. My body is feeling really good right now. I’m very happy with the direction my workout intensity is going.

Saturday night, Tech Boy wanted to hang out with some friends he has at work and catch a Billy Joel cover band. Come on, who doesn’t love Billy Joel? I was skeptical because it was St. Patrick’s Day, and if you know me, you know that while I may be very Irish, I HATE St. Patrick. Asshole.

He picked me up and took me to a silly nice restaurant. It was much classier than we’d expected. Almost laughably so. Right down to the valet parking that required a 10 foot drive to settle the car. Seriously? Yeah, we spent half the dinner making fun of the ambiance and pretending to be snooty. Class. We’ve got it. Right =}

He bought me dinner. He’s been doing this more and more. When we first started “hanging out” it was always split even,  paying for what we consumed so we never owed each other anything. Lately he’s been buying my drinks, paying for dinners and generally being a gentleman about such things. It’s unexpected in a really sweet way. Not that I’d let him get away with that all the time. I have to be all liberated and stuff occasionally. Not that he’d be able to forget it considering how I’ve been ranting about politics and women’s reproductive rights lately.

There’s another rant that came up that I’ll share in another post.

But yeah, I was driving for the night anyways, and he appreciated that.  We went to some bar, there were lots of drinks for him. I only had two beers and cut myself off super, super early. Being a designated driver means I probably shouldn’t have even had that, but two drinks over the course of 6 hours isn’t going to register on a breathalyzer so I figured I was fine.

We met up with one of the guys from work (another group) that he’s friends with. I’d seen this guy around but I don’t pay attention to people unless they get in my face. Some people think this is snobby. I think I’m just awkward and don’t know how to talk to people I don’t know and really want to avoid it at all costs if I can. So if I had any questions about whether some people from work knew about us, well, someone definitely does now. We’re basically an open “secret” at this point anyways. That’s what Tech Boy says. I’m choosing to remain oblivious. It’s easier for me to pretend that people don’t know. It’s easier for me to pretend that people don’t notice me at all. Which is apparently ludicrous because I’m kind of hard to miss in the environment that I’m working.

I’m feeling all gooey about him lately. I had a tremendous amount of guilt when I told him I didn’t want ot hang out Friday night. Worries that he’d be upset (even though we really had non prior plans), or that he’d find someone else to be with that would make more time for him – girl wise… I know I’m silly. These are the things that run through my mind. We got back from the bar pretty late and my gooey girly guts started leaking out. We crawled into bed and he wrapped himself around me. I couldn’t resist telling him that I had a lot of fun but this was still my favorite part of the night. Even better was when he agreed. I still think stuff like that are lines that men have learned to say back, but still. It’s sweet to hear.

Waking up. ::sigh:: I just, can’t get over how much I love sleeping with him. Feeling his lips on the back of my neck, his chest pressed against me. It drives me the best kind of crazy. When did I become so sappy? ::deeper sigh::

Eventually he left but he was coming back later. I made a big dinner for him, Roommate, and her bf. Pork Tenderloin with Caramelized Pears and a Pear Brandy Cream Sauce, Wild Mushroom Risotto, and sautéed Green Beans with Toasted Almonds. The risotto and the green beans were fabulous. I’m told the pork tenderloin was perfect (I’m strict vegetarian remember – no pork for me).  Cooking is an art form for me.  It’s also pretty zen. I love the creative process, even though sometimes my grocery trips fill me with a fantastic rage (people in grocery stores are seriously stupid sometimes). I love setting everything out. Prepping my space. Gathering all my ingredients together. Pulling it all together in one glorious presentation. And finally watching other people enjoy something that I made just for them. I love cooking for people. It makes me happy.

It makes me sad when I have to go to bed though. I still have anxiety about sleeping. Especially about sleeping alone. I need to read my book to fall asleep. And my cat if he can be bothered to curl up with me.

Monday always comes too quick. Why can’t we have more 3 day weekends?  So yeah, normal normal normal. Nothing out of the ordinary.

I did e-mail K on Friday night. I was a little drunk.  Lamenting my poor decisions that cost me her friendship in exchange for the disfunction I had with Friend. All I said was, “You were right. I’m sorry.” I didn’t expect to hear back from her. She replied with, “I honestly don’t know what to say to that.” I told her she didn’t have to say anything if she didn’t want to but I wanted her to know. ::sigh:: I wish more than most things that we could be friends again. It’s a futile wish, I know, but it still hurts that I made such a big mistake with her. So just one impulsive decision in a weekend that could have been filled with impulsive decisions. I’m not sorry I made this one either. Though I fluxuated wildly at the time.

There’s always something. I’m just glad those somethings are closer to nothings.

Bourbon Street

Because this song just makes me freaking happy

Bourbon Street by Jeff Tuohy

I’ve been living in sin for about a month

Something turns me round it’s something that I just

Can’t understand, the way I behave.

Some people you can never save.

On my right hand, I’ve got a girl in my ear

And in my left hand, I’m throwing back a beer.

What can I say? Of me, you steer clear

When I driving down on Bourbon Street, yeah

Cuz every night we through this little soiree

Gonna turn her head until she’s mine, all mine

Every night I breed a new disaster

I might be right, I might be wrong

Try to get away and I will bring you right along, so

Sit back, have a seat

Sometimes salty, sometimes sweet

Hard to swallow, but fun to eat

You ain’t never leaving Bourbon Street, come on!

When I walk the street people step aside

Twirling my cane and smiling wide

Some would say I’m a carnal slave

I put my hands on what I crave

I’m the mayor of this crazy town

Where the queens will party with the clown

Try to swim with me and you’re bound to drown

Throw you a line while you’re going down

Yeah, I know this street and I own this crowd

And my only companion is a lightning cloud

I seem real nice and easy to trust

Ashes to ashes and dust to dust

I’m gonna lead you a path to self-destruct

On this crazy train that I conduct.

And it’s a one, two, three..

Cuz every night we through this little soiree

Gonna turn her head until she’s mine, all mine

Every night I breed a new disaster

I might be right, I might be wrong

Try to get away and I will bring you right along, so

Sit back, have a seat

Sometimes salty, sometimes sweet

Hard to swallow, but fun to eat

You ain’t never leaving Bourbon Street.

Birth Control Debate

I am furious. Absolutely livid.

You may have seen or heard about the states trying to pass laws concerning insurance companies providing Birth Control to employers. Several states are trying to pass laws inhibiting the ability of women to get the birth control use covered by medical insurance.

Two cases in particular have had me pretty riled up.

1.      Democratic Women Boycott House ContraceptionHearing After Republicans Prevent Women From Testifying.

a.       First off, a male run committee is banning women from the courtroom. This is a violation of legal procedure and a blatant act of discrimination. This committee banned women from participating in a legal proceeding. This is not acceptable. This issue does not affect a man’s reproductive rights, it affects a woman's reproductive rights and they have denied the women that would be effected by this issue the right to defend her own rights and perspectives. They flat out said "No Women Allowed" to participate in this legal proceeding that effects their rights as citizens of this country. This is immoral in terms of equality in our justice system.

b.      The employer themselves are not handing out the birth control. Employees have to go through insurance companies and pharmacies for that. All the employer is doing is allowing FOR THE CHOICE of the employee to choose whether or not that option is cohesive with their lifestyle. If the employer has a religious objection to contraceptive use that is absolutely ok. The employer can choose not to use it and that is his/her choice. HOWEVER, he does not have the right to tell his employees what they can or cannot do in their personal lives. That is infringement on personal privacy and freedom.

Any man or woman is allowed to hold whatever religious beliefs they choose. That's fine. However, religious freedom stops there. They have no right to force those beliefs on others or use those beliefs to control the lives of the people around them. In fact, I believe escaping this problem was why people set sail from the mother country and started their very own colonies.

Religious freedom is a personal path. Having religious freedom does not mean you have a right to impose your beliefs on anyone else. That would be impinging on the religious freedom of others who may not feel that these mandates are sacrilegious.

c.       People assume that it is easy for women to pay out of pocket for contraceptives, and look at it as if it's just as easily accessible without insurance. Limiting the availability will make it harder to obtain. Birth control can cost over a hundred dollars a month, because there are different pills and forms of contraception for different bodies and needs. This does not always provide for an affordable solution to women who need hormone therapy for whatever their medical use.  

d.      Birth control isn't just being used as contraceptive (Which brings us to our next issue). Birth control is used to regulate and treat many female related medical problems.  Hormone contraceptives regulate hormones! Shocker.

1.      Often women have severe hormonal imbalances and hormone contraception brings the female system back into balance and establishes a normal hormonal pattern. i.e. PMDD.

2.      Birth control is used to regulate and return menstruation in women that have stopped menstruating due to hormone issues.

3.      It is used to lessen ovarian cysts in people with Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS).

4.      It reduces acne issues.

2. Use Birth Control? You’re Fired! In Arizona

Employers in Arizona are trying to force women to provide proof that their contraceptive use is for non-contraception purposes in order to have it covered by medical insurance.

How about medical confidentiality? No one besides you and your doctor has the right to private medical information. A person’s medical history is confidential. Employers have no right to access employee medical history. Forcing women to provide ‘proof of medical need’ is invasive and violates a persons right to privacy.

Think about it, how would you feel if you had to sit down with your boss and discuss your reproductive health issues? As a man, how comfortable would you be talking to your boss about your need for medication to correct erectile dysfunction or to authorize a prostate exam? So why is it ok to try and force women to talk about their reproductive medical issues. Yes, Mr. Paysme I have poly cystic ovarian syndrome which means I have small cysts lining my ovaries. The only treatment available is hormone contraceptive. Would you please authorize the insurance company to pay for my medication so that the large number of cysts developing on the interior of my ovum do not continue to grow and potentially make me infertile? Is this really a conversation that your boss has any right to be having with you? No.

Since this is running on a “religious freedom” platform… When did the x-tian males/politicians forget that Free Will is one of the religious tenets set out by their god? To deny a woman the right to choose what is best for her is to deny her 'god given right' of free will. If they run on a religious freedom platform, then it can be said that not allowing a woman the choice to be on birth control violates the woman’s religious beliefs if she believes religiously that she has free will. While I understand that many men wish women didn’t have free will, we’re no longer living in the good ole days of the 1950’s. Women can vote now and everything. Get used to it.

You can’t have a law that cries “This is my religious freedom!” when that law would potentially violate the religious freedom of the people it effects.

 That's not even touching on the issue that not everyone is the same religion and that being on birth control does not violate other peoples religious beliefs. However, I'm willing to bet that being oppressed and being persecuted by a majority would be against the beliefs of many.

How about this. In fairness to equal rights, if we are going to police womens sexual reproductive choices, we should police men’s as well. Men should have restricted and documented access to condom purchase. Women should stop taking birth control, and also offering sex, except in the sole instances that they are trying to conceive a child. Finally, men must stop masturbating. After all, spilling a man’s seed is a waste of gods gift.

No one has the right to come into your home and police your sexual activity.

No one has the right to decide when and/or if you have children.

Procreation isn’t a requirement in life, it’s a choice in life. Being on birth control doesn’t mean people won’t ever have children. It means that people are choosing when it is in their best interest to. If they choose to. Employers, politicians, the government… none of the people have the right to tell a person if and when they must have children. Preventing the ability to plan, or not, for a family is doing just that.

These laws are discriminatory. The theory is that “they’re protecting the religious freedom of the employer”. If you buy that, and while I do recognize that there are conservative women that support these laws, the majority of the politicians pushing for these regulations are overwhelmingly male. Men do not have to live with the consequences of these laws. Only women do.

All these laws come down to power. Employers trying to exert their personal power, under the guise of religious freedom, in order to control the choices of female employees.

Also as a related side note, some legislators would like to define beginning of life at the egg stage. Hah! Um, does that mean every time I menstruate I'm having an abortion? By this logic, employers should ENCOURAGE birth control pills because birth control works by stopping ovulation. If an egg is not release then it cannot be fertilized, but by extension it will also remain alive and viable in the ovary. So really, birth control is PRESERVING the potential for life by not "killing" the egg that is lost during un-impregnated menstruation.

I think I just found a flaw in someone’s logic.

Politicians are dumb.