Mr. Limbaugh, I am not a slut for using contraceptives

I am a woman who planned her family carefully, so that we would not be an undue burden on society when my husband and I chose to have children. We had been married for almost 4 years before our first child was conceived, and have been together very exclusively for nearly 16 years. How long has your most recent marriage lasted, sir?

Your non-apology is not acceptable. You repeatedly point out your "problem" with insurance paying for contraceptives, medication that has many other usages other than simply preventing pregnancy. Where is your outrage over the same insurance companies (who often do NOT cover contraceptive medications) offering unquestioned coverage of medications the sole purpose of which is to make MALE reproductive organs behave in a different way than nature is directing them to? Why is Viagra OK for the rest of us to pay for, but not contraceptives? The ripple effect costs of Viagra are MUCH higher, in fact - since it increases the chances of the female partner becoming pregnant, thus putting the insurance company (or Medicaid) on the hook for prenatal care, childbirth expenses, and the associated costs of that new human being. This is why, when all is accounted for, the insurance companies actually really don't have a problem with footing the bill for contraceptives - it SAVES them money. It saves ALL of us money, when there are not more unhealthy, unwanted pregnancies happening in our country - that result in medical complications and births that the state and/or other hospital users wind up bearing the costs of instead. In my own state, about half of all births are paid for by Medicaid last I looked. If a laboring woman goes to a hospital without insurance, they can't turn her away so they wind up writing off the cost of the birth - by passing on the expense via increasing the costs of other hospital services that people who CAN pay need. We all lose.

I am also asking anyone who reads this to not send me any gifts from ProFlowers until they pull their advertising from Mr. Limbaugh's show, and advising that you think hard about whether to use their service at all with others whom you'd like to send a gift in the near future. When contacted regarding the controversy, they have been sending the following robo-reply email (I verified it is verbatum what others have posted):

Thank you for your feedback. We spend our advertising dollars across a wide spectrum of media channels. The views and opinions of the media outlets and personalities we advertise with are not necessarily those of our company.

We simply wish to delight our customers with fresh and unique gifting products, and that will continue to happen to the best of our abilities.

My response:

If the views and opinions of the media personalities are not in line with those of your company, then I respectfully ask that you cease advertising during their show. If anyone sends me flowers from ProFlowers before you cease advertising on that vile man's show, I will refuse delivery. As far as I'm concerned, you're as effectively calling women who use contraceptives prostitutes as he is, and that does NOT make me want flowers with your logo on it. Being treated to gender slurs for expecting that insurance companies that cover medication for erectile dysfunction will also cover medications that benefit WOMEN'S reproductive organs is NOT something that "delights" me, and until your company ceases advertising with the spewer of such vileness, I will envision your logo on Rush Limbaugh's face every time I see it. While that may be a UNIQUE image, it is not fresh nor delightful.

I encourage all of you to push companies you do business with to have the courage of their convictions, and ask them to find better ways than hatemongers to promote their goods and services.

Forecast (original poem)

I'm pissed, so I'm obsessively writing poetry. Some people I'm not sure I'll ever be able to really, fully forgive for how much they've hurt me over the last six months have had me crying for the four or five hours off and on. I hate crying (for myself, not others), it gives me nasty headaches. Add to it that I feel entirely stabbed in the back by one individual in particular and I'm in a bit of a rage that means I'm probably back to the insomnia that I had last week that I had JUST gotten back into some measure of control in the last two days. And it appears it was for nothing, because the jerks are going to get their way. People in positions of authority took their word over mine even though they easily verifiable mislead those authority figures. I'm not going to stop fighting this injustice, but I will NOT be engaging in this process that has been used to abuse me so thoroughly for the last several months. I wrote the following poem in reaction, if I continue to be unable to sleep I'll try working on my novel (which these asshats have distracted me from nearly every available minute I've had to work on for the last six months. I had PLANNED to have the first draft around 80,000 words done by Halloween. Because of them I barely touched it after September and I haven't written a word in it from what I can remember of the last two months.). Fuck you, gaslighters. I'm taking myself back.

Forecast

I’m not as sexy as an earthquake
or tsunami
you got me
coming at you like a hurricane
it’s all the same
no fancy telethon
to bring it on
all the sympathy
empathy
what I need
is nothing like you’ve ever seen.
Watch your step
I’ll bring you down
so much bigger on the inside
I reside
bide
my time is ticking away
yesterday
came too soon
predictable as the moon
and yet still I’m stunned
by the stab to my back
debris flying everywhere
no one cares
catch the flack
zooming past
like my son
moving on
can be done
or so I’m told
as I linger on
suffering prolonged
wonder why
I
don’t
say
good
bye.


aadpy201202010047

Symbolic Interactionism (original poem)

meant to post this yesterday when I wrote it but was battling migraines (and still am, I've been hiding in a dark room for the last 6 hours and am too wired up from the caffeine that helps with the migraine pain to have any hope of getting to sleep anytime soon), then more crap hit the fan today that added a few lines to this from a totally different direction. I share this response to the forces that keep trying to hold me down, in hopes that others who feel that they're being held down and back might find it and find strength to push back through my words.

Whoever you are, you are not what others present you to be. You are more than the sum total of their opinions of you. Find your inner core reality, find something to LOVE about yourself, and stand upon that foundation when they try to knock you down. Then go look for that inner core reality worth loving in those around you, help them find it and stand with them. This is the way to real strength, from what I've lived.

Here's the poem:

Symbolic Interactionism

"You're so stubborn" you declared
as if not knowing where
I came from - this dissolution
of dissatisfaction
is not a symptom of mule-headedness.
I cannot confess
upon my knees,
nor begging will you see
for the scraps you've ever thrown my way.
I have put away those days
where I longed for you
and not some substitute
teacher, role model worth
the intentionality of my birth.
Decades of my always being the one
to bring the olive branch home
only to have you turn it into a switch
- the scars still itch
when I forget my self
and allow ghosts to dwell
within my heart crying "if only..."
but that path got too lonely
and I left it long ago
when I decided to blaze my own -
who cares if bridges burn
if they lead nowhere? So I learned
to release my hate, sadness, and resentment.
Now all you are to me is a disappointment,
a distraction from other priorities
that have taken over my loyalties.
Looking my way, you see
what you always wished to be
but you were unwilling to do the work
so resent my reminder of your worth.
I stopped crying for you a lifetime ago,
yet there is one more thing you should know.
When you called me stubborn, you were wrong.
I'm not JUST stubborn, I am strong,
beautiful, intelligent and kind.
And you can no longer claim what's mine.

(started 201110261401 added to 201110272338 - those are date/time marks for the curious YYYYMMDDHHMM)

Dear grumpy old male customer at Best Buy

I don't know what it was about me that made you feel entitled to interfere in my interaction with my four year old child while he was trying to figure out a game on an iPad. Perhaps it was simply because I'm female and you feel entitled to criticize anything any female does. Perhaps it was my attire (jean shorts, a Toy Story t-shirt, and sandals) that had you make assumptions about my social class, education level, church-going habits (we had attended a service on bullying at our church just a few hours before this, ironically), or marital status (tho the simple gold band around my left ring finger should have been a giveaway there). Perhaps it was my disability since I had positioned my mobility scooter in such a way as to shielding my child who was seated on the floor from becoming a tripping hazard - maybe you even assumed he wasn't mine since I am not able-bodied.

Whatever your "logic" was for stepping in to criticize my child and me for his sitting on the floor playing a game on the iPad, it was flawed. The fact that you were clearly a bully used to getting your way when you go to boss someone around was revealed in your refusal to back off and mind your own business after my REPEATED requests that you do so. That you then felt the desire to call in other authority figures - first suggesting the manager of the store, then even the POLICE, over a simple matter of a four year old playing with a floor model iPad in a place of public accommodation, revealed you to be not just an asshat, but a proud wearer of a scrotal necktie. The store staff was NOT thrilled with having to intervene and TELL you to mind your own business and look at a (GASP) different iPad, seeing as there were THREE on display. Your little stalker behavior of coming across the parking lot as we were loading my scooter and children into the minivan (yes, I saw you coming, and yes, the cell phone in my hand had 911 dialed with my thumb under the "call" button) was a total dumbass move and you're lucky I had the restraint not to throw the van into reverse and run your ass over, since it had taken quite a bit of restraint earlier in the store to keep from running your feet over with my scooter or braining you with my cane (though it seems like the tissue in that cranium might have been soft enough to not be much effected by the level of blow my limited arm strength is capable of delivering, so it wouldn't have really been worth the paperwork involved).

You should also count yourself lucky that I didn't video your ass and post you on YouTube, you twit. I refrained from even taking a picture of you to post here on my blog & Facebook feed.

Instead, you sarcastically wished us a nice day and I wished you a good life. Elsewhere. Preferably measured in air miles. And hopefully you'll think twice (or, heck, maybe even think FIRST) before harassing anyone who matches any of my demographic characteristics again. Because if you keep it up, sir, SOMEONE is gonna open a can of whoopass on you that your old brittle bones won't be liking. And of you invade someone's space the way you did mine, they well might be able to justify doing such to a jury, depending on who witnesses it.

Just sayin'.

Sincerely,

The DragonMama

I loathe cell phone shopping... bring on the bathing suits

I am extremely finicky about my cell phone for several reasons, as folks who spend any time with me in face-to-face interactions tend to find out. OK, I'm extremely finicky about anything I spend more than about $10 on, especially if it comes with recurring expenses, truth be told.

I'm also rather annoyed that AT&T is buying T-Mobile. I've liked T-Mobile, we've been with them (well, with the company they were before they were T-Mobile and then with them) for seven years, since we moved back to Cleveland. They've given great customer service, the cell reception has been pretty much flawless unless I'm in an area where NO ONE gets cell service (and I often get it even where others don't, somehow), and their pricing structure has been quite good. I have not heard such glowing reviews from friends who have had AT&T, plus AT&T does lots of not-so-great things politically that I really don't want my household's money going toward, so I've been looking at alternatives.

And now we run into the problem. The problem isn't so much that other companies are charging too much for their service. Really, none of them has a plan that fits the way we use phones in our family well. We are heavy on the text, light on data - my mother is the only one of the five of us on the plan right now who even has data service - and VERY light on the phone conversations except for my mom and mother-in-law. We could seriously get by with all 5 of us on a plan with 1000 minutes shared as long as there were free nights and weekends. Toss in with Sprint that free nights start at 7 (I think that's what the girl just told me at the store?) and you can call any mobile number in the USA, any carrier, for free and we could actually probably get by with about 500min between all of us, and that's with my mom using her cell phone as her primary phone number. But they don't offer a plan with less than 1500 minutes that has data, don't have non-smartphone that meets my needs (and only one of the smartphones even really does and I didn't really like the way it felt in my hand), and the cheapest family plan would cost us nearly double what our current Tmo bill is.

URG!!!

Considering going pay-as-you-go with Boost or Virgin, but then I still am stuck with the phone-not-meeting-my-needs problem, though I think we would at least save money monthly, possibly. My father-in-law really doesn't need a phone with monthly minutes at all, one that we have to pay for every minute would be fine since it's just for emergencies and Boost lets you do that for 10 cents/minute from what I saw on their website. My mother-in-law only needs voice since she isn't English-literate enough to text if people WERE using proper English instead of txtspk (seriously, she calls us EVERY TIME we send her out to get toilet paper to spell out the name of the brand and make sure she's getting the right one.. Q-U-I-L-T-E-D N-O-R-T-H-E-R-N). My mom is addicted to her iPhone and likely isn't following us if we leave Tmo anyway from the last I heard (tho the Sprint girl said they're getting iPhones this fall so who knows).

So why am I having such a problem with phones? Ahhhh... here comes the REAL rant.

There are no effing mom-phones! I can get mom JEANS, mom UNDIES, mom BRAS... mom MOCHAS in won't-burn-the-kid-if-you-spill-it-on-them temperatures... holy crap the new 2011 Honda Odyssey seems like it may actually have been designed by an entire TEAM of mom-engineers, it's like the wet dream of any mom with 3 or more kids, I swear I had a little momgasm crawling aroud that thing in the fall when my 2007 Odyssey was in for a recall repair. LOTS of other aspects of the commercial world that CLEARLY have a little thought into at least SOME of the options that demonstrate "a mom of small children had some say in how this product came out". KUDOS to all of them. Cell phone manufactuerers? As far as I'm concerned, across the board FAIL at the moment and for the last several years.

Why? What would a mom phone have that is lacking in pretty much every single phone on the market right now?

A.) Don't make us sacrifice the goddamn QWERTY keyboard layout to get single-button-push speeddial. I do NOT mean push-button-to-speak voice recognition speed dial. How well do you think THAT works when you've got a toddler shouting for a fruit roll-up and the baby crying in the background? Yeah. Wonderful. I need to call my husband and ask him, in the space between the baby's shrieks, to please pick up an extra pack of bandaids on the way home. With the vast majority of phones on the market right now, to do that I either sacrifice QWERTY to have just the basic numeric keypad or I have to tap a crapload of times on a screen or slide-out keyboard to get to his entry in my addressbook (assuming that I have no yet had the braincells to rub together to think to put him at the top of the addressbook by putting a number before his name... why he won't be FIRST in the addressbook appears below). I sent fewer than 10 text messages in the NINE YEARS I had a cell phone before I got a QWERTY phone. I have been a touch typist since I was 16, my brain does not think ABCs when I'm trying to spell out a message, particularly when sleep deprived and covered in various forms of goo from my offspring.

B.) WHY THE FUCK CAN'T I HAVE A QWERTY FLIP PHONE?!? There have been, as far as I am aware, essentially THREE flip phones made in the last SEVEN YEARS that have QWERTY keypads: the LG Lotus (there were a couple different versions of this, I forget how many), the Blackberry Flip, and (currently the only one on the market and I *think* still being manufactured) the Blackberry Style. Why am I so obsessed with a flip form-factor? Multitude of reasons.

1. I close it and I know I hung up on the asshole that I currently want to strangle while I bite my tongue HARD to keep from dropping repeated f-bombs in front of the little featherless parrots flocking around me at every waking moment. The primary screen and keyboard are also protected as I throw the phone in a full-out Momtrum when those moments are REALLY bad. On my more calm, rational, sane days, the flip action protects the phone's main screen & keyboard from damage from being in my pocket, or used as a teething toy when I don't get it out of the baby's reach fast enough (or he just outright picks my pocket without my noticing it - his brothers act as distraction decoys quite well).
   
2. The pacifier in my pocket does not randomly decide to make a social call on whoever happens to have a name that starts with A in my address book (and as someone with an A name and the 2nd letter being earlier than most other A names so I wind up at the top of most of my friends' address books, pocket/butt dialing is rather a big pet peeve of mine). Sure, I COULD key-lock the phone, if I remember... or I could set it to automatically key-lock really quickly (which then annoys the shit out of me when I'm trying to use the phone amidst the distractions of aforementioned small children and take too long to dial the next number in the phone number I'm trying to read off a paper/computer screen and have to do key-unlock THREE TIMES in the process of trying to make ONE GODDAMN PHONE CALL - yes, this was my life before I switched to flip phones, and I made the switch when my eldest was barely a month old). For anyone reading this, regardless of phone type, a suggestion a friend gave me and I BEG of anyone with me in their phonebook to make: make the first entry in your address book named 1111 and enter your own cell phone number into it. At least then if you pocket-dial (or let your kid play with your phone - I don't let my little gnawers TOUCH mine but I have friends that apparently have better replacement plans on their phones who let their toddlers play with the devices, which results in my getting a lot of preschoolers breathing deeply in my ear) you're just annoying yourself with long somewhat intimidating sounding voicemail messages from your pocket contents. Keep the lint fairies happy and they won't threaten you with a shiv, that's my experience.
   
3. More mundanely, the sound quality on flip phones had generally been better than other phones, particularly for those of us who can't go around constantly wearing devices that are simultaneously electronic choking hazards AND diminishing our ability to track the suspicious little sounds of our kids causing chaos around us. I have to hold my phone to my ear when I'm using it, or use speakerphone (which I do when I'm driving, it's also why I have a different ring tone for pretty much every single person who calls me on a regular basis. If my general ring tone rings while I'm driving, it doesn't get answered. If I know who is calling, it depends on traffic conditions and how much that individual has annoyed me in the last week). I've tried at least half a dozen different bluetooth options, not a single one functions well enough for me to wear for an entire day while with my kids.

C.) Why the hell is it, when any phone even comes CLOSE to meeting mom-needs, it gets slapped with the crappiest camera of the entire line the manufacturer is putting out? Come ON! A mom-phone needs more than 1.3 effing megapixels. Don't be a jerk, cough up the 5-ers. I'm so damn tired of carrying around a separate camera. Since my iPod Touch is only a 2G, I have three electronic devices for a day out -cell phone, iPod in case the kids get bored or [insert sound of choir of angels] all three of them fall asleep at the same time in the car so I can get a little pleasure-reading in via the Kindle app, and the point-and-shoot camera. I'm actually waiting to see what the iPod Touch 5G has to offer in the way of a camera, if it's halfway decent (my husband has a 4G and I'd like better than that camera, thankyouverymuch) I will actually spend money on an Apple product for myself for the very first time in my life (and I've been a full-on techie sometimes employed in the field since 1993, no n00b here).

D.) I've never seen this one, but if some engineering folks at a cell phone manufacturer (or even just programmers) happen to read this and the above criteria were satisfied... an ability to LET my kids play with the phone when doing so will prevent them from sounding like a pack of rabid banshees while we wait in line at the post office that also locks them from all the other features of the phone would be WONDERFUL. I have an iPod Touch (which I got for free for opening a bank account last summer - I'm really not a fan of Apple after being a computer repair tech in the 1990s when they were proprietary-EVERYTHING and the bane of my existence... and I still pretty much hold the opinion that Macs are great computers only for people who can't be bothered to learn to actually learn to use and maintain a REAL computer... that's not a disrespectful thing, I understand that others live lives that keep them too busy to learn to defrag and such, and out-sourcing basic tasks via surrendering to having many fewer options in hardware and software with the tradeoff of that being that they've gone through more rigerous testing, that's totally our call. Me? I find going into the innards of my machine and cannibalizing it a very gratifying experience and I know how to set up software to run the maintainance tasks on a schedule without my having to think about it. And I prefer to be able to access a shitload more software, including more shareware and open-source stuff, and would install a Hackentosh if for some bizarre reason I needed to. Instead I triple-boot my main desktop with Ubuntu, Win7, and WinXP... it's usually logged in on Win7 since that's what we've got the most software for more family members running under). I would love an iPod preschooler-friendly app (or even *gasp* baby-friendly one... yes, I let the 13mo play with the Tesla Toy app on my iPod) that requires touching the screen in a specific sequence to get back out of the app. Pretty Please? Available on Android too? And can I get an Android phone that meets all of the above demands...er... requests?

Some manufacturer make this phone and you will not be able to keep them in stock. Don't be assholes and keep it locked to a single cell carrier or we may hunt you down to do many unpleasant deeds. It can even be the ugliest phone ever made, since we're generally all about the plastic protective covers anyway (pretty sure that's the only reason I've NOT had to replace my phone every six months or so, I'm OBSESSED with keeping the protective cover and screen protector on my devices). Don't even bother making them in multiple pretty colors. Glow-in-the-dark keys? Yeah, that'd be PRIME, since we use the phone to call the doctor at 3am and don't want to wake the baby by turning on a light to see the keys. Nice bright screen that works well as a flashlight - also a plus, similar reasons (our cell phones become flashlights for finding the baby in the dark nearly every night, particularly since the blackout curtains went up). Oh, and water-resistant... yeah... and durable to being teethed on, without little pieces that are likely to come off quickly and go down a baby's gullet.

Is all this REALLY too much to ask? Surely you can do it, for us, the loving moms of the world? You know, those people who tend to be the ones who make sure the cell phone bill actually gets paid in a timely manner?

Any other moms have features that would be in their dream mom-phone? And no, I don't think dads have quite the same criteria in phones, from what I've seen. I'm totally cool with getting clued in on what FATHERS would love to see in phone design too. All you iPhone fanatics who value form over function - uhh... go shove a sock in some orifice and twiddle your touch screens. I heard enough of your ranting about teh uuuuhgly of the Blackberry Style when it came out.

Facebook says this is offensive

I think it is a demonstration of utilitarian artistry.

The chain mail was made by a friend of mine at my request, and apparently my 6 week old having a meal during a wedding is offensive. (baby Col's ubercool newborn chain mail vest was made by the same couple, as far as I know they're not taking orders being busy with their OWN wedding planning)

Methinks someone is just jealous that they're not cool enough to have a chain mail nursing bra & newborn layette, or the guts to wear AND use one. Wanker.






I'm also pretty sure I know who the WOMAN who reported the image is. A breeder who spends more time complaining than being a role model worthy of the title "mother", who told me to go fuck myself for standing up for a friend of mine when she went off on her.

Guess what?

Don't fuck with the lactivist in the chain mail nursing bra.

Or her friends.



Or Doctor Who fangirls.

Hospital Gifts

Let's say that, to entice women to give birth at a specific hospital, the hospital started giving away really nice baby sleeping device to every family that birthed there. While the mom and baby were at the hospital, the baby would become accustomed to the sleeping aid, which would serve to sooth the newborn to sleep quickly and keep them asleep longer. Some were concerned that there could be potential negative side effects - such as newborns not gaining weight appropriately due to not waking often enough to feed - but the manufacturer, hospital, and society in general assured the new mothers that the device was a godsend and would help them get that thing they were constantly being told they'd long for in the coming months: a decent night's sleep.

There's one drawback to this "free" sleep device, though. It only comes with a starter battery that will last for less than a week after discharge, then the replacement batteries cost about $150 per month. And the babies have been trained to really want the device in order to go to sleep by the time it leaves the hospital, so much so that it will reject (with very loud screams) any other method used to try to get them to sleep.

Mothers are pressured - subtlety and not-so-subtlety - to use the device, in some cases being called names if they chose other methods to get their newborns to sleep and willingly "suffer" through the many night-wakings. More hospitals start feeling market pressured to provide this wonderful "free" gift to new families and institute them, until almost every baby born in the country spends their first few unconscious spans of post-birth life in one of the sleep devices.

A few hospitals start to rebel against this trend, instead teaching new parents how to sooth their newborns to sleep in their own arms, only to be criticized for not giving a nice "free" gift to new mothers who live in poverty.

Think this sounds surreal? Guess what... it's what we've been doing as a country for decades, only with infant formula/breastmilk instead of sleep device/mother's arms. And yes, people raise a rukus when hospitals stop giving away the "free" formula samples to new families, even though "free" breastfeeding education, training, and support would save the families more than a THOUSAND DOLLARS in just the first year of the child's life on groceries alone. But we tax-payers get to pay for a lot of that formula instead. Where's the ruckus to do what's right for babies and poor families from the start? Some WIC agencies will provide a breastpump for new moms if they ask for one, but from what I've heard it's a LOT easier to get the "free" formula than the breastpump, and many times the pumps given are inadequate and inefficient (which results in the moms falling back to using formula instead out of frustration).

Can this situation be changed? Only if more of us demand better for American families and stand up to support them instead of looking the other way - or worse, harrassing the new moms who DO try to breastfeed when that happens to be in the presence of others.

Do your part, for us.

Handicap-accessible bathroom stalls

So my twittering/Facebooking about my annoyance with an OBVIOUSLY able-bodied tween using the only handicap-accessible bathroom stall out of 7 stalls (5 of which were empty) at Cedar Point has a fellow UU accusing me of being closed-minded because maybe the young lady (who, I must first inform you, SKIPPED out of the stall past me without so much as an "oops, sorry!" as she headed back out toward the middle of CEDAR POINT - where a disabled person would have needed some assistance - cane, wheelchair, scooter, something - to get to from either entrance) had an "invisible disability" that lead to her needing the hand rails, thus excusing her making an actually, obviously disabled person wait to use the ONE toilet that was safely usable. The fact that the person having this discussion with me is able-bodied enough to vend at various events and is calling me out on behalf of her "disabled friends" and because she took some "Right Relations" seminars at our denomination's annual conference is irritating me a bit (I've been in chronic, daily pain since I was 10 years old - 2/3rds of my life - and have actually done advocacy work with various disabled populations since I was a child, up to and including this week when I've been interfacing with my local school district on behalf of another disabled mother and her child, who lived with us for a week earlier this month).

So, I've decided that I will make a little list of who it doesn't irritate me, personally, as a disabled person, to see coming out of a handicap-accessible stall when I've had to wait with my legs crossed to keep from making a mess on the floor when there are other stalls available for people who don't need the rails.

• Other disabled people who use some kind of assistance to move (cane, wheelchair, etc)
• People with small child(ren) in the stall with them (I totally understand not wanting/being able to squeeze into the regular stalls)
• People changing a baby's diaper (tho it annoys me greatly when the establishment puts the diaper changing station inside the accesible stall, it's obvious that sometimes they don't have any other place to put it safely because of traffic flow)
• People who are in pain (as someone who regularly tries to hide the amount of physical pain I'm in, I can tell when someone has a sore back and needs to use the rails even if they're only temporarily disabled and don't need a walking assistance tool)
• Pregnant women (the body dynamics of pregnancy make it hard for many women to stand up without something to leaver on)
• Obese people who can't get the door of a regular inward-opening stall closed around themselves
• Able-bodied people who take the accessible stall because all the regular stalls are already in use

Those are the ones that come immediately to my mind, there are probably others. Now for the list of people who get the hairy stink eye when I see them coming out of a handicap-accessible stall:

• unattended kids who skip/run out of the stall without so much as an "oops, I probably shouldn't have used that one" when they see a disabled person waiting
• teenage girls in groups who go into the handicap-accessible stall for more than just a pee
• mothers who let themselves be bullied by society into breastfeeding in the stall (I swear I'm filing an ADA complaint against a store if I ever get delayed using the toilet because of this - just hasn't happened yet tho I hear from plenty of women who are told that's where they should nurse their baby if the need arises in a public place, and I did have my local YMCA tell me last winter that I should have gone to the family changing room/bathroom to feed D after someone complained about me nursing him in the WOMEN'S locker room)
• women in heels so high there's no way they'd be able to walk if they actually had knee/hip problems

Those are pretty much the only ones that I actually give stinky-eye to (well, I wouldn't give stink-eye to the nursing mom, I'd give her some contacts for learning her and her baby's rights and offer to help her become more comfortable nursing in public - tip #1 try nursing in front of a mirror to see how little is actually visible, even without a blanket/cape/whatever.). Having been "invisibly disabled" for over a decade before I started needing a cane (and still getting comments from people occasionally when I park in a handicap-accessible parking space because apparently even when I'm dressed in a grubby t-shirt and sweatpants, the cane looks like a fashion accessory) I'm actually pretty likely to assume that the other person has an actual need for the stall's handrails or width. However, there have been several times (including last week at MSASS orientation) where the person coming out of the accessible stall to see me waiting there has actually apologized for their thoughtlessness in using that stall when regular ones were available. Some people really do just use them because they have a preference for them, not a need for them, tho I don't really get that (maybe it's the shiney of the metal hand rails?), without even thinking for a second that other people have a greater need for that stall than they do (at least, until visibly confronted with the evidence of their thoughtlessness). Thoughtlessness and lack of courtesy is pretty epidemic in our society at times, and this isn't exactly an issue people talk about, even when they're discussing manners and courtesy. This is also evidenced by how many times I've been (or seen some else obviously disabled - cane, walker, wheelchair, etc) in a women's restroom line and how rarely the person(s) in front of the disabled person will let the disabled person "skip" in line if the handicap-accessible stall comes available. At least 80% of the time (yes, this is something I'd actually like to quanifiably research), the safe-to-assume-able-bodied person walks right into the handicap-accessible stall and the handicapped person has to let people skip in front of THEM as the regular stalls come available while they wait for the able-bodied person to be done in the ONE stall the handicapped person can use. This isn't because there are so many "invisible disabilities" out there, the numbers just don't work out for how often this kind of thing happens. This is a factor of the me-first, oblivious to the actual needs of strangers around us, mentality of our culture (which, in addition to various other places, I've also encountered as a breastfeeding advocate - the "wants" of non-breastfeeders to not have to see "that" in public are assumed to be more important than the NEED of a baby to eat when it's hungry. The emotional discomfort/squeemishness of an adult who could walk away or look somewhere else are often given higher priority than the physical discomfort and basic need of a baby unable to help themselves). Personally, I refuse to excuse and enable thoughtlessness and discourtesy in our society by not offering any rebuke when someone crosses the line like this. And give me a break, it's just the freakin' stink eye! I don't even say anything to the "offending" party, and for all I know they're mildly Autistic and don't recognize the facial expression anyway (to be clear: mild autism is not generally a disability that requires the accessible stall - I know enough people with mild autism to know that as many cases as otherwise able people, they can use a stall without the rails... moderate/severe autism is of course another story). I'm not verbally confronting people as they come out of toilet stalls, I do have better things to do with my time (usually, at that moment, it's taking a pee).

What I'd really love to see is a world where ALL public restroom stalls have hand rails for people who need them. A lot of people who need the accessible stall would be able to use the other stalls with just that one little addition, the extra space isn't actually needed in many cases. My church has gone partway there - there are two stalls with rails in the women's bathroom, one that is large enough to easily maneuver a wheelchair/scooter and one that's standard stall size, and the changing table is not in a stall, plus there are two other family restrooms. Not sure how the accessibility is in the men's room but I know they've got a diaper changing station in there and I'm pretty sure it's not in a stall either.

Until then, it'd be nice if people would reserve the accessible stalls for people (such as those in my first list above) who actually need them.

Random thoughts on fish and politics

Just me blathering about the "conventional wisdom" being bandied about by our presidential potentials...

Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day.

Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.

Unless, of course, he's allergic to fish, in which case you may have just committed involuntary manslaughter.

Give a woman a fish, she'll find a way to feed at least a family of five for three days.

Teach a man to gut and clean a fish, and you turn him vegetarian.

Or the Republican strategy: teach a man to fish, then allow your corporate cronies to pollute all the fish-carrying waters with heavy metals so that anyone who actually eats the fish they catch becomes literally retarded enough to vote Republican. Then find as many ways to monetize the act of fishing as possible through requiring expensive licensure, which requires only very specific and exorbitantly supply-and-demand-priced-out-of-the-middle-class fishing tools be used. (I never said Republicans are stupid, just that they more closely resemble Sith Lords than the Christians they portray themselves to be).

I prefer land food. 99% of seafood makes me horribly nauseous. I'll just find/enlarge/dig a pit and chase deer and other such game into it, is that a viable alternative?

I keep wanting to post but not getting to it...

For the last week and a half or so I've been fibro-flaring and the kids extra demanding (probably because I'm not giving them enough positive attention - I've been a bit of a snappish momster for some points). My birthday happened, I've uploaded pictures of it (as well as November - the pictures website is actually up to date through this afternoon right now - the new profile picture here on Blogger was taken today). However I've already been interrupted 5 times in trying to get THIS blog post written so little wonder the long one I wanted to do for my birthday (which was Monday, it is now Friday) hasn't been done. Garvin just interrupted me for the 4th time this paragraph, it's not just the kids. I'd throw a pillow at his head RIGHT NOW if he wasn't carrying the baby. I'm feeling rather grumpy and behind on a lot of stuff including emails.

Anyway, what I HOPE to post about in the next 24-48 hours are my new year resolutions. I've decided it makes more sense to do those on my birthday instead of on some arbitrary date on the calendar (which January 1 is - *I* didn't set that date as important, did you?). I have several, they're not so much resolutions as goals for the year I am 31, and I've started on them even if I haven't been able to commit them to my freaking blog. Seeing as two of them directly relate to writing, this is rather ironic and ominous.

Time for another cup of coffee before I start screaming again. Both kids are pulling the "I'm not napping unless in physical contact with Mama" routine which does NOT work well with fibromyaglia trigger points. Oh, and Garvin just dropped the f-bomb over something in the other room, should probably find out why, but he's holding the baby and I can see the baby and the baby is not crying so I'm not feeling entirely concerned at the moment aside from wanting to wash his mouth out with soap since Liam is conscious and in earshot. *sigh*

Poorly targeted Gmail marketing

Damn this pissed me off, you'll probably have to click the image to view it full-screen to see exactly why:
In case you still can't read it even on the larger view, the adbar (upper arrow) has an advertisment for HOOTER HIDERS... the email list I was marking messages as read in is a BREASTFEEDING ACTIVIST ORGANIZATION (of which I'm a founding member - this is a large part of what's been distracting me from blogging and most other online activities for the last 2 months - I've been working behind the scenes on FirstRight.org and designing the website... plus we had a serious hard drive crash that I'm still not completely ready to talk about - emotionally - quite yet).

ARG! *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* I really like Google generally *sigh*

Wonder if we can get sponsorship to get advertising for ourselves in Google (especially that specific location) when the word lactivist appears in emails... hmmm.

Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows - or - Priorities, Priorities

Well, I've had very strong theories about what's going to happen in the last book(s) for ages (saw Harry and Ginny hooking up pretty much from the first time the boy got on the train, sorry all you Harry/Hermione shippers out there). I just haven't had a chance to sit down and write them where other people could access them for a while, but figured I better get to it, and trying to get it done before Liam wakes up (Del's in a sling on my chest as I type as he's having a fussy morning after a fussy night - reflux and/or indigestion I think from all the grunting). People who have had Harry Potter conversations with me know these aren't things I'm making up after reading spoilers or something (I've actually read no spoilers, mostly from lack of time - I read spoilers for the last two books judiciously).

Should be no surprise that I'm racing to get this up when I still haven't written up Del's birth story yet to people who know me, right? *blush*

I'm posting the theories as the first comment to this post so it doesn't potentially spoil anyone who stumbles upon this and doesn't want to read that kind of thing (but wants to read my other random ranting for some reason? Must be a relative looking for baby pictures - haven't updated those in a couple weeks either, sorry!).

edit: wow, even trying to keep it short, typing up my Potter theories in Word (so I could spell-check and auto-save in case Del projectile-spit-up on the keyboard or something) wound up being 5 full pages at 12 pt font with 1" margins... so be prepared for a very long read before you go read the theories I posted as the first comment to this!

Why I hate trying to delegate work...

Ugh. So I tried to delegate some of the "job" (entirely volunteer) of getting podcasts up for my church to someone that was suggested by one of the office staff members. I'm trying VERY HARD to be patient and not blow up at this person, which the pregnancy hormones and frustration with being alone with a toddler with approximately 300 times my energy level NOT helping maintain my cool even when the temperature DOES stay below 75 degrees... I had specifically asked this person to follow the steps in the tutorial I created (I even did a long and short version of the tutorial in case people involved were total beginners or a bit more experienced). Apparently all that the person retained was "this is the username and password, log in and click the words create content then audio" - the files that are getting created are NOT being named according to the naming conventions I specified (which enables them to be sorted by the date of service instead of whatever random order the files were actually created - it's too easy to have a stack of CDs get out of order when they get backlogged, which of course they did as soon as I tried to job share... I'd been getting them created and uploaded before I left the building before this, then none got created for over a MONTH because the CDs kept disappearing so I couldn't do it myself... *headdesk* *headdesk *headdesk*). The URL Path isn't getting set to ANYTHING so the URL winds up being something random instead of something the office staff who upload the text of the sermons to the main church website can predict and incorporate easily into their workflow. And the title line's been being changed instead of leaving it to the code that I had inserted to take the information from the ID3 tags.

Classic case of RTFM, and since in this case *I* created the "FM" in question, I'm fuming. But it's "just" a volunteer thing, so I can't get mad, right? Grr.... *I* am doing this as a volunteer... donating space on my own server, paid for the domain name registration myself (it's totally separate from the main church website, over which I have zero control), I took the time to create the instructions and try to organize it to be user-friendly (for the end-users, uploaders, and office staff)... and it got ignored by the first person to agree to help. I created all this so that if I get totally distracted with the new baby, I can hand the job off to someone else and trust that it will be done similarly to how I'd been doing it for continuity of the users (mind you, some of these download counts are already indicating that about 1/4th of the number of people showing up on an average Sunday are also listening online - we generally have ~200 people on a Sunday morning and a lot of the download counts are over 50, it's only been online since January and I think it wasn't even mentioned in the church newsletter until April... plus the download counts get reset when I mess with the back-end stuff sometimes).

So... what do I do? I'm trying to gently get through to this person that it needs to be standardized for several reasons, but I'm not sure it's getting through. I'm trying to remember if it was this past Sunday or the Sunday before that we spoke during coffee hour, but the other person hasn't taken the initiative to go in and edit the parts that they did wrong yet, so I'm trying to fix it up since I was working on some back-end stuff anyway (while waiting for Liam to snooze so I can work on the other computer where I'm doing some graphic manipulation that's sitting in a partially finished state - love that ctrl-s key combination). I'm not the most diplomatic person by nature, and I've been known to totally steamroller people when I get going, so I'm trying not to piss this person off so much that they decide they don't want to do it at ALL, but at the same time, I'd rather no one else was messing with it if they're not going to do it in a way that actually saves my having to redo it all anyway, ya know? *sigh*

Well, for those readers who DON'T actually go to church with me (or who missed those Sundays) at least one of the services I delivered is up on the website here... notice the standardized URL with the date of the service . I may be a narcissist and upload the others later if I feel like it, I really should probably be working on my own photography website more (I plan to advertise for portrait customers toward the end of summer, if we get the the attic studio set up enough for people to come here at least some of the time). My hosting company increased the storage and bandwidth drastically (from 5gb storage and I think 100gb transfer per month to 200gb storage and I think 2000gb transfer per month, as well as dropping the yearly subscription price by $5) so I'm feeling some momentum to actually accomplish stuff on the sites... I've been uploading pictures to yeungs.us, working on getting Garvin's family tree (which is all in Chinese, of course) uploaded so the extended family all have access to it, but that's been not working for some reason.


Liam's asking for apple juice, gotta go.

I want to slap Carly Simon

Sorry, just as I hit "publish" on that one, the song that makes me CRINGE EVERY TIME came on in the Piglet Movie. Did Carly Simon NEVER HAVE CHILDREN?!? NO IT IS NOT A MOTHER'S INTUITION TO WASH HER BABY AND CLEAN THE #$*&ING HOUSE!

How the hell could a woman of her generation (early boomer) ever bring herself to sing such demeaning rubbish in her "crone years"? Seriously, it doesn't sound like she's singing with a gun pressed to her head.

For what it's worth, it's THIS mother's intuition to NOT wash the baby so damn much. Bad for the baby's skin and BABIES DON'T STINK. Toddlers do sometimes, and rinsing off the mud is a good idea, but seriously the whole "scrub behind the ears" (yes it's in the song) thing... what's the point? When was the last time a kid got sick with e. coli because *gasp* mama didn't wash behind his ears? Wash the hands, wash the feet, wash the really stinky bits. The part behind the ears - damnit, that's the part that smells the BEST! Leave it ALONE unless the kid's been playing in something that requires washing it off! AAACK!