Vacation Vagaries
The beginning of any vacation is a wonderful thing. The expanse of days stretch out before you full of endless possibilities. About half way through the vacation, you might as well go back to work. The knowledge that the vacation is almost over sinks in, and you begin to realize you haven’t done half of what you expected to do. This would explain why I haven’t been able to sleep for the last two nights.
Although I’m happy that I have done something every day, and gotten some work done, on some level I wanted to do more, and now I am freaking out. Paradoxically, that is also why I am writing here instead of the the dissertation file. In a little while the DH and I are taking in our last vacation event – a 3D showing of Prometheus. You will not, however, be getting a review from me because when we get home I will pop a xanax, open the dissertation document, and stare at it for the next 10 hours.
For the first glorious portion of our vacation the DH and I packed up the car, grabbed the dogs, and headed to the north Georgia mountains where we had rented a cabin. I loved it! We didn’t really do half the things we could have because I was writing and stuff, but we were away from home. Also, I don’t think either of us would mind going back to do some hiking. Below the fold is the best picture from our trip.
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Share Your Story – Planned Parenthood
This week in The Malarkey Bin I followed a link to this article about Why I Can’t Afford Not to Go to Planned Parenthood. It is a powerful, required reading post that also inspired me to tell my own Planned Parenthood story.
In a way my story is a success story. There was a clinic in my home town. It was accessible, and I didn’t have to negotiate protesters or strict security to get to my appointment. It was the early 90s, and the thought that there had been a time when women weren’t able to take control of their health care amazed me. Yes, I was more than a little naive … give an 18 year old a break.
According to Wikipedia in 2010 my hometown had a population of 16, 896 people. Sounds about right, I’d be willing to bet there were a few more when I was growing up, maybe around 18,000? The population isn’t as important as knowing that our town was poor. Built up around an industry that has been dying since before I was born, the town was small, without a lot of diversions for kids. Once you got your license the first thing you did was drive 50 miles east to the State Capital to start hanging out at the mall there, or 20 miles west to the beaches. We may have grown up in the twin shadows of Ted Bundy, he had allegedly tried to pick up a friend’s mom in a bar, and the Green River Killer, still active north and east of us, but I would argue we were the last of a generation of free range kids. From the moment I moved there when I was 10 I was walking all over town. Either 6 blocks from our apartment to the public library, or the longer mile to my elementary school every morning. Before my friends and I got our driver’s licenses, and even after, we would walk all over town.
So, while it wasn’t all terrible, for the purposes of this tale the best image to leave you with is this: when I first heard of the alleged Pregnancy Pact in Gloucester, Ma., the only thing that surprised me about the story was that it happened somewhere other than my home town. Even when I graduated, I’m pretty sure no one got out of our high school without knowing at least one person who had gotten pregnant before graduation. Before I got out of the town for good, the age at which girls were getting pregnant just seemed to be getting lower. My brother, sister, and I joke that the greatest accomplishment in our family was all three of us getting out of that place without having a kid before we were 18. We don’t make that joke at anyone’s expense, many of the young parents we know are some of the best parents we know, and when you are young in our home town there is not a lot to do outside the backseat of a car. If it weren’t for the Planned Parenthood clinic in our town, I don’t think I could even estimate the number of teen pregnancies we would have seen in my high school.
Right now, you are probably imagining a much different story than the mundane one I am about to tell. Although I’d contemplated it for a couple of years before, it wasn’t until I had graduated from high school that I visited our clinic. The funniest part about high school for me was that by the time I graduated I knew that at least twice rumors had spread that I was pregnant, and at least once there was a conflicting rumor that I was a lesbian. It was all amusing to me because I was pretty sure I was the only person I knew not sexually active.
What lead me to Planned Parenthood? I’d read that when a woman turned 18 she needed to have her first Pap Smear, so I made an appointment. I also wanted birth control pills to regulate my periods and alleviate my cramps. My cramps were so bad that I routinely took 3 – 4 Advil at a time just to get through the days that I had them. I was still working part time at a grocery store without health benefits. Planned Parenthood was the only place I could afford to go for standard health care. My story isn’t dramatic, but illustrates a point often lost in the current war on reproductive rights.
Planned Parenthood is essential to all aspects of women’s health care.
What is your Planned Parenthood story?
Howdy Stranger!
You know, what? As of 5:00pm today I was officially on vacation and if vacation isn’t a time for blogging, I don’t know what is. Of course there is more SERIOUS writing I should be doing just now, but I’ll get back to that in the morning. Tonight I am on vacation.
Because I am horribly behind on everything happening in the world it was only yesterday that I finished listening to The Hunger Games Trilogy. What did I think? Well, I tell you with the fair warning that there will probably be spoilers involved, because I don’t really believe there is anyone else left who hasn’t read these books. I’m intensely amused that I’ve seen nearly all the middle aged men on my bus reading these books. This isn’t really going to be a review, just a general discussion of the books. I’m also going to treat this as one large narrative without breaking it into books.
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Breathing
Just a quick note to say I am still alive. The dissertation is taking up all my time. ALL MY TIME. The good part is that hopefully I’ll be done with it this year. The bad part is I have had no time to write about the things that really interest me.
Faking it until you can’t
You might not believe it, or maybe I’m much easier to read than I think, but I’m an introvert.
Really. It’s true. I’ll perform till the cows come home, but at the end of it all I need somewhere quiet. I need to sit.
At work, I haven’t been able to sit for about a week and a half. You can probably imagine how crazy that made me. Until today. Today I got to spend a whole 6 hours in my office, checking things off my list, and getting my life in order.
Life is seriously 50,0000 times more manageable.
Oh, and the DH got a job! Haven’t said anything because it wasn’t all smooth sailing, and I didn’t want to jinx it. Now that he’s worked two full shifts, I feel a little more confident.
Considering the red wine involved in this evening. I should probably leave it at this short update.
What I learned this week:
The last couple of weeks have been phenomenally busy at work, but it’s not like I didn’t know they would be. Much like all my instructor friends know the last few weeks of the semester mean spending all their time in grading jail, I know the first couple weeks of the semester mean spending all my time doing the “Come to the Writing Center” dog and pony show. The goal is that by the end of the 2nd and 3rd weeks of the semester someone (90% me) visits all the English 100 and 101 classes. Yes, Virginia, at a school with an undergraduate population twice as big as that of your home town, that is A LOT! You know what else it is? It is exhausting.
Yes, I do this every semester. Yes, I know it is coming. There just isn’t anyway to prepare for the amount of energy it takes to give a 10 minute monologue to different audiences 3 times an hour. In a way it is like grading jail, just front loaded.
Surprisingly, this post isn’t really about complaining. I know. Shocker. It’s about what I’ve come to realize, over the last two weeks.
- If I ever have a nervous break down it is going to happen in the middle of one of these visits. I’ll be in the middle of the “Here’s why you should use our service” spiel, and I’ll just throw up my hands and walk out. I may or may not mutter obscenities under my breath.
- This is the semester that the consultants put together a welcome video that we can shop around to hopefully lessen the number of human visits. I’ve given them no choice, and a deadline of April 15th.
- Oddly enough, when that happens I plan to use that time to start a classroom visit campaign to another set of classes. Have we discussed my masochistic nature? I’m pretty sure we have.
- If I ever finish the dissertation, and get my ‘real’ degree, I’m going to have some serious soul searching to do about whether or not this is the place for me.
- Also, I’m pretty sure you know you are a writer, when not writing/writing very little for two weeks gives you ulcers.
Really, all this week I’ve had stomach issues of one kind or another. Today they culminated in dull pain every time I ate. So, for the next week or so it is all bland food/and herbal tea for me. The caffeine headache ought to kick in tomorrow afternoon in the middle of a writing binge fest.
Other Anniversaries
For some unknown reason the DH and I were sitting on the couch doing other things while we watched football. Football. To say we never watch football is probably an understatement. The DH only watches when his home team plays, and hardly ever even then because his home team is terrible. They must have been playing though, because there was definitely football on the television.
The DH could have been drawing, or pouring over his book of 501 German verbs. If I remember correctly he was obsessed with German at that moment; and, all the man needs to learn a language is a 501 verbs book and a dictionary. I distinctly remember that I was working on another job letter. I’d just put the final touches on everything, and hit “send” for my online application. At least I assume I hit send, because I did eventually get a rejection letter from that school.
The memory isn’t all that clear because it was about then that my phone rang. When I saw that it was Dr. Phoenix I knew it wasn’t going to be good. I remembered sitting at the high butcher block table in her kitchen while Dr. Phoenix explained to me why she hated the phone. “Calling someone just seems rude. You never know what their doing, and you might be interrupting them. I prefer email because then they can respond to you on their own time.” An unexpected call from Dr. Phoenix on a Sunday. It was never going to be ‘good news.’
The shock and confusion of hearing someone else respond to my tentative “Hello?” must have registered on my face because the DH immediately muted the television. Nimue told me in a shaky voice, “Dr. Phoenix and Fender are okay.”
“What’s going on?” I demanded.
“It’s the Spawn. He’s dead.”
To this day I don’t really remember the rest of the conversation. I remember asking if I needed to come over, and what I could do. As if there was something anyone could do.
Others who were closer to Dr. Phoenix were already at her house, and others who knew Spawn better would be grieving more, would need support as well. For that night, and days to come, I did the only thing I could do – I cried.
Spawn and I rarely came into contact. In fact, it seemed impossible to me that the rosy cheeked, precocious child I met when I began my graduate work was the young man who had to bend over to hug me the last time I saw him. He had the most amazing smile. As little as I knew him, he was always kind and generous to me.
Nothing in my life, not even learning to walk again, has been as hard as seeing Dr. Phoenix’s pain – as wanting desperately to bring her peace, and knowing no one can.
All I can do is remember. Remember the child who made me laugh. The family that made me want my own. The first house I encountered that felt so much like a home that being there made it easier to breathe.
There is a a picture. Dr. Phoenix and Spawn, very young – maybe 3, in the last of the sun on a windy beach, with a dark gray sky in the background. They are laughing, smiling, and he is reaching toward someone out of the shot. It is the most perfect moment of joy. It is what I choose to remember.
Bonne Anniversaire Ma Meilleure Amie
As far as cruelty goes April has nothing on January. Back in the day when I was a teaching assistant January wasn’t so bad. You could always count on student loans to get you through the drought between December 20th and January 31st. Now that I just work for a university, and there are no loans to be had as I try to stretch a check that barely makes it 4 weeks into something that will last 6. I can’t think of an adjective to describe how poor we are – skint seems to come the closest.
As you can imagine anyone in my life with a January birthday pretty much gets the shaft. Sorry folks. Couple that with the fact that January is a busy, busy month for me at work, and everyone is pretty lucky just to get a text on the day. Oddly enough before grad school January was just a prep month for me. A respite between holiday shopping and the horror of February’s birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries. Seriously, in February it’s easier for me to count the days that don’t involve celebrating.
The assault on January began with Poppa G, my brother-in-law. One birthday in the whole month. It wasn’t bad. Then my sister-in-law got married, whoops there’s another one. My brother got married, and suddenly the month is getting down right crowded. Suddenly, the poorest month of the year is also the one rivaling February for gifting obligations.
There is, however, really only one birthday in January that matters enough to make me regret my inability to lavish my friends with tokens of my love – January 21st is the day to celebrate ma fille, the Ouiser to my Claree, the Cajun Princess.
Born on the opposite ends of the Mississippi – literally, yet I can honestly say her people are my people, and if I could ever get her north of the Mason-Dixon I know she’d feel just as at home in Frostbite Falls. It is strange and remarkable to think that I’ve only known her seven years; and, can in fact, remember seeing her for the first time at orientation, sitting in that stifling hot room looking around trying to figure out who to hang with. As in most social situations by break time I ended up outside with the smokers, and I’m pretty sure that from their our fates were sealed, not by ease of conversation, but by easy silence. It’s unbelievably difficult to find someone you can just sit with.
It is even more difficult to find someone willing to find your husbands car, visit you in the hospital every day, learn to be your “gentleman caller” as you go up and down stairs. There is no way I would have made it through the last three years without her. There are not enough words in English or French to describe how our lives have become entwined, or how much it blows that I can’t throw her a costume party
or bake her a bleeding armadillo groom’s cake.
Since we are stuck in separate cities today, and I suck at actually putting cards in the mail, I thought the least I could do was publicly declare my undying love and devotion for a woman who has been a sister to me.
Bénédictions et la joie de vous aujourd’hui et toujours.
Links
I wanted to post today, but once I got here it seemed like every idea dried up. Here are a couple of posts I’ve read lately that have stuck with me.
Here’s a post by Hugo Schwyzer everyone should read.
- Someday I’ll have a response, but I haven’t untangled it all yet.
Bitch Flicks is doing their top 10 of 2011, so there are lots of great posts up, but here is one I think is particularly important.
- The world in which my niece will grow up is so hard.
D5 Creation