Here I Am, Walking on the Moon

Some days I feel like KUTX does particularly well at mining my nostalgia musically, hitting songs that resonate with specific times for me but might not connect for other people.  Today they've managed to call up the last half of 1989 for me, when I was navigating high school and struggling with my whole concept of identity, while trying to resolve feelings about my parents' divorce.

I was already thinking about it because of Mity Myhr's presentation about 1989 at last night's Dionysium, but then a couple of songs I listened to a lot that year popped up in the musical rotation:  Lyle Lovett's "Here I Am," for which I memorised the spoken part because I loved how the words fit together, and "Walking on the Moon," which was included in my mild obsession with the Police (I have no idea how my long-suffering mother endured the constant repetition of the Synchronicity album I'd appropriated from my older sister, especially when the first track started to skip and you kind of couldn't tell it was repeating...).

So here I am thinking about what it was like to BE a Smart Girl in the late 80s, especially an extroverted one.  The desire to dim your shine so you can get along and be liked is a powerful counter to the drive to excel.  That was the year I really discovered how few men in this world actually like women who are smarter or stronger than they are (and how many others are lying about it), and it started a 20-year-long fight with myself to accept "it's better to be alone than to cut off pieces of yourself to be loved."  That's when I started to have enough awareness to see the boys getting praised and called on for knowing the answers I was 'showing off' by having.  That was the year I decided a weight I'll never see again was 'obese' and really dove into that cycle of food-shaming and body-hatred that governed my 20s and early 30s.  That's the first time I can really remember being aware of all the different directions in which the world demanded I become less.

One thing I really remember about that year was how rarely I talked about the things that I loved.  In fact, several of the high school friends with whom I've reconnected are probably thinking to themselves, "I never knew she was low-key obsessed with the Police..."  None of my friends really did, because by then they'd broken up but it hadn't been long enough for them to be retro so no one else I knew was into them; I was afraid if I said, "Oh hey this thing that no one else is doing is really cool to me!" everyone would think I was weird and liked stupid things.  Enjoying them was just a thing I did on my own.

How does this tie into being an Extroverted Smart Girl?  I built my arguments like brick houses because speaking an unpopular idea opened me up to criticism and unless I could support that idea, the criticism quickly became personal.  Every point defensible, every position at least touching on if not anchored in objective fact.  I got  used to having to defend my positions in science classes with ridiculous amounts of backup because my hypotheses themselves held no value.  Even now, if you ask me what I think, you'll likely get an answer on the tip of an evidentiary iceberg.  I also got used to gauging, in a room, whether anyone wanted or needed to hear the opinion I held, and if I decided that answer was no I just opted out of voicing one.

Years later, when I started learning about different forms of intimacy, I realised that the one that's hardest for me is a specific kind of intellectual intimacy: the ability to express completely subjective opinion.  The idea of sharing my online playlists, or my reading list, or making my Netflix queue public, horrifies me.  What if I tell people what I'm reading and they think it's stupid and pedestrian?  What if I tell you the band I like, that no one else likes, and everyone else thinks they objectively suck?  How can I defend "I just like this song because it makes me feel happy," to my musically adept friends who will recognise that the beats are lame and the lyrics are trite?  What if I'm the last person I know to find out this artist who creates beautiful things is also a terrible anti-Semite?

There's an irony in this, because I'm a huge advocate for letting people enjoy the shit they like without judging them for it, and for the ability to appreciate the artistic merits of problematic stuff.  If you like a band I think is complete shit, I'll tell you they're not my cup of tea but I'm glad you enjoy them.  I'll advocate against enjoying *actively harmful media* but not shitty media.  I've got ten thousand words on why "Fifty Shades of Grey" is dangerous and promotes abuse, but if it was just badly written I'd shrug and say "Everyone enjoys different things.  Some people juggle geese."

Also, I legitimately don't *have* a lot of strong subjective opinions.  A surprising amount of how I feel about various media is "Well, it seems nice enough."  Maybe 10% of what's out there falls into either "I love that" or "I think that's terrible" territory.  The rest is reasonably pleasant and generally unremarkable.

And yet still, when I start to talk or post about something I love, I'll stop to think of the people whose opinions I particularly respect on the matter, and worry that loving a thing they think is low quality will make them think I am low quality.  For a long time, this was reinforced by the kinds of geeks I hung out with, the sort who trash one another's appreciations and play hateful one-upmanship games about who's got more cred because they like the more authentic or more complex or more...whatever...thing.  For years I avoided admitting I'm really not interested in anime because every single discussion of anime devolved into one person railing against why some series or other is complete and utter garbage before I could voice any thoughts at all.  I'm sure there's several dozen people out there under the mistaken impression that I agree with their vehement anime-related opinions because I did not have the expected opposition reaction of screaming at them and attempting to strangle them during the discussion of those opinions.

I've changed to a different sort of geek, the kind that offers reasoned and intelligent criticism and supports people finding things that they love, and it's made a real difference.  "That's not really for me," is no longer met with a wall of self-righteous advocacy, so much as "Yeah, it's not everyone's cup of tea but I really enjoy it and it's been meaningful to me."

Maybe I'll still never be comfortable voicing subjective opinions, and maybe that's OK.  For what it's worth, though, I still totally love The Police and will turn them up very very loud if they are on the radio, and probably sing.

You've been warned.

Uniforming My Ally

I have been some form of 'overweight' for my entire adult life.  For the first couple of decades out of high school, I agonised about my body, how to make it thinner, how to make it prettier, how to squish and scrape and starve it into acceptability.

As a Fat Girl, I convinced myself I deserved only frumpy, uninteresting, practical clothes.  I fooled myself that I wanted a 'classical, practical style' when what I really meant was "I don't feel comfortable wearing clothes that attract attention."  For years, my 'look' was a pair of sturdy jeans or cargo shorts, a solid-color tee for work and a funny tee for play.  Dresses were reserved, conservative.  Long skirts, dark colors, to the point that at least one set of co-workers assumed I was Pentecostal based on my style of dress.  My one concession to color and vibrancy was a collection of tie-dye dresses bought at festivals, all long and full-skirted.

I envied those other Fat Girls who wore the pretty dresses, who always looked nice and put together, who rocked the bright colors and the feminine lines.  I told myself, "Well, when I get thinner, when I look better, when I reach the goal, I can dress like I mean it, too."  I also envied them their comfort with their bodies, their ability to adorn and joyfully decorate something all social pressure pushed them to hide behind a sweatshirt or baggy pants.  A smaller voice whispered, "If I ever stop resenting my body, maybe I'll dress nice BEFORE I get thin."

Clothes shopping in America as a woman of my size is an exercise in demoralization and disappointment.  You see something lovely and fun, you envision having it, and you find out that in no universe does it exist in your size.  The brick-and-mortar stores that do carry things in your size are reinforcing the frumpy theme, or presenting you with 'fashion' garments in a style three years expired and a pattern ripped from the finest hotel wallpaper.  Online shopping's made it both better and worse, because now a dedicated shopper can struggle through ten times as many disappointments to find the few pearls and hope that the reviews are correct about 'size runs true'.  There are shops that offer better sizing and options, but they can be both hard to find and expensive, and the ability to Google search opens up a huge range of opportunities to find that for some people 8 is still a 'plus size'.

I spent a lot of time not wanting to risk that 'runs true' should have said 'runs small', and convincing myself that jeans and solid color tees and long full black skirts were a perfectly respectable style, until a friend introduced me to a site that takes your measurements and sends you a custom dress, and offers dozens of styles, colors, patterns, and fabrics.

This recommendation fell on exceedingly fertile ground.  Some five years ago, I wrote about my body as my ally, about embracing and loving myself with my own best interests as my highest priority, and I've been trying to live that since.  I've discarded the idea that my body needs to be a specific weight for me to be healthy and happy, and shifted my body goals to functional things I want to be able to do.

The health trials of my last couple of years, and the attendant weight gains and shifts, have really taxed that resolve.  Random abdominal expansion due to fibroids, plus exhaustion due to anemia and energy loss, have left me struggling to reach a space of peace with how I look and feel.  I was down to wearing broomstick skirts I bought at festivals, and a collection of black t-shirts, because so few of my clothes still fit and buying more was emotionally devastating.

But, you see, at my core I love all things that speak of luxury and the personal touch.  I couldn't pass up a dress made just for me, my own dress chosen and sewn as if I had a private seamstress.  Just one, I thought, a nice pretty dress for my wedding, that's an occasion that deserves a dress just for you, right?

So my then-fiance took my measurements for me, and I chose my dress and sent off my numbers and prepared myself for disappointment.  When it arrived, I put on my dress nervously, to find that it fit perfectly and it was so pretty and so comfortable.  The deep V neckline, though, mandated a new bra.  Off I went to the Fancy Bra Store, where they fit you and help you choose, because it's my wedding, right?  I deserve a special bra for my wedding!

It's easy to shout down the demons that tell you that you don't deserve to have nice or special things, when it's only for one occasion.  Shut up, Traitor Brain, I'm the BRIDE you know and the BRIDE can have nice things.  Not me, but this alter ego I get to wear for one day.  And sometimes you can use an alter ego as cover to sneak into an entirely new way of managing some part of your life.

Once I had tried it, I was hooked.  I culled out all my sad, battered, frumpy clothes.  Armed with a set of my measurements, I slowly began to replace my work wardrobe with clothes that not only fit and flattered, but *expressed*.  I looked at things and I thought, "I would look pretty in that," and if they fit into the budget and could be made in my numbers, I bought them regardless of whether they were flashy or brightly colored or Fat Girl Appropriate.

I replaced all my too-small bras with correctly-sized models, dropping band sizes and increasing cups to find that life is way better when you're not crushing your boobs into your armpits.  Over the course of the last year and a half, as budget has allowed, I've cut the amount of clothing my wardrobe in half, but every piece fits, looks good, and is comfortable.  I've cut my shoe collection by more than half, but replaced many of them with cute, whimsical flats.

Don't get me wrong.  I still have my funny tees and my cargo shorts and my carefully-amassed collection of Converse.  I'll never give up comfortable blue jeans, or oversized hoodies.  I'm not getting rid of who I am, just letting out the part I've been hiding behind this layer of fat all my life.

Somewhere along the way, I became one of the Stylish Fat Girls I've always envied.  I have a manicure with flowers on it, glasses chosen because they accentuate both the color of my eyes and the highlights in my hair, lots of socks with cheerful profanity, a variety of comfortable and interesting shoes, and a small collection of clothes that make me look and feel put-together and in control of my appearance.

When I started reframing my body as my ally, I began to try and consider the way I treat myself as "Would I treat my beloved friend this way?"  I am not indulging myself, I am outfitting my beloved friend.  I am putting a uniform on my ally, so we can keep fighting together.

The other day at the gym, two women about my size stopped me to compliment my dress.  I showed them the pockets and told them where I got it, and one of the women said, "Oh, I've been meaning to try them, but I wasn't sure...I thought I should wait until I lost some weight."  I saw in her eyes the reflection of my own struggles with 'deserve' and 'maybe someday', and I said, "No, really, do it now.  If you can afford it, do it.  Don't wait.  This has completely changed my relationship with my body and how I look at myself.  It's so worth it."

(I've left out the names of the sites I shop at, because this isn't an advertisement for them.  It's an advertisement for the idea that you should come to terms with your body as it is, and understand its shape and its needs, and adorn it joyfully no matter its size.)

Eviction

This post will discuss female medical issues in explicit detail.  If that's not your thing, please consider this your warning and move on.  I am talking about this because I can't possibly be the only woman experiencing it and it might help others to know they're not either.  Also, I am under the care of several competent medical professionals.  If you feel moved to offer me unsolicited medical advice, and you are not a doctor (preferably my doctor), please rethink that plan.

About a year and a half ago, in the course of the collection of medical catastrophes that was October 2015, I was diagnosed with uterine fibroids.  As they were 'merely annoying' as opposed to the several other issues rated at 'genuinely troubling' and 'potentially life-threatening', I set the matter aside to address when I had the others stable.  Once my iron levels returned to a reasonable norm, and I recovered from surgery and then from food poisoning, and got my foot out of the orthopedic boot, I set about looking for a new gynecologist (I had fired my previous gyno) who accepts my insurance and isn't an hour from home/work.

Meanwhile, my periods were moving from the moderately heavy ones I've had my entire adult life to something else entirely.  Since my 20s, I've had periods that were slightly heavier than most people's, but still didn't seem to cause the kind of anemia my late 30s offered (I could give blood about half the time up until 2010).  It was about 6-8 ounces of fluid loss (including but not exclusively blood), measured using the menstrual cup:  two heavy-heavy days, two moderate days, a day of spotting at the beginning and the end.  I've always had a lot of clotting, ever since my teens, and that hasn't changed.

They gradually got longer over the last year and a half, though only a little heavier.  By last fall, it was two heavy-heavy days, two moderate days, and ten days of intermittent spotting just heavy enough to need some form of protection.  Sometimes there'd be a day or two of nothing, then SURPRISE!  I understand this is common with fibroids, so it makes sense that as they've gotten larger the periods have gotten more annoying.  Additionally, the clotting's gotten much worse, which makes a cup particularly irritating:  Check cup on schedule, cup is empty, wash hands, walk back to desk, feel breakthrough, return to bathroom, cup is full of single clot.  Empty clot, spend rest of day anxiously waiting for another clot while nothing happens.

After consultation with my gyno and another uncomfortable vaginal ultrasound, we acknowledged that the first priority is to get the bleeding under control so that we can consider fibroid removal vs hysterectomy without the crushing pressure of the anemia driving the decision.  I also explained that the recovery from any surgery needed to take into account the festivals at which I camp in April and October.  To that end, she put me on a 14-day rotation of progesterone in February.  She said, "The next period will be as bad as usual, but after that they should start to taper off fairly soon."  I talked to a friend who's got similar issues, and was put on the same rotation; over three months her periods went from 10 days of wanting to die including 2 days of hourly bathroom trips, to four days of "hey, that's not too bad!" I did a lot of research and by and large the treatment I was put on seemed to help a lot of women.  So, I was hopeful.

It's at this point that someone invariably pops up to tell me the wonders of hormonal birth control and express amazement that I haven't been on it all along.  I agree, hormonal birth control is a wonderful thing...if you don't have migraines, especially migraines with visual auras.  I was never willing to take on a daily maintenance medication that increased my level of stroke that much.  It also turns out that it probably wouldn't have worked, if the progesterone was any indicator.

First period:  About normal.  Second period:  early.  I called the gyno and they said that since it was just a couple of days, it could just be my body adjusting to the schedule.  Slightly heavy flow, which was frustrating, but I told myself "Think how wonderful it will be when you taper off!"  Third period:  again a couple days early, arriving the Sunday morning of a camping festival I attended.  OK, annoying, but they should be tapering off now, right?  Also, gyno appt set up for the first time after festival I'm sure I won't be bleeding, because now my summer is open and I've got cleared time for recovery.  Heavy period.  Like, I've only had maybe ten periods in my life this heavy.  Three solid days of heavy bleeding, severe cramps for the first time in years.  I tell myself I'm ready for this 'tapering off' to kick in any time.

My gyno's office uses this electronic scheduler, where you go and pick out an appointment, but the scheduler doesn't allow you to differentiate between the actual doc and her nurse, who handles a lot of stuff very well but cannot have the "I think it's time to make surgery a priority" conversation with me.  The appointment I made for the first reasonable opportunity after festival gets moved because it was a nurse appointment, so I go into my fourth period of the progesterone.  The thing that I should have done was tell them how much worse it was instead of just telling them I was still having kinda heavy periods and some side effects.  They told me it usually kicks in after a month, but sometimes it could take longer, and if the side effects were too much, I could stop.  This is where I should probably have detailed the side effects, and the degree to which I meant 'still heavy' because when I told the doc about it in the appointment, her eyes got big and she said, "No, no, stop taking that, don't take any more of that."  Instead, having heard and read all the women talking about how bleeding less was so worth it, I soldiered on with it, unaware that the worst was still ahead.

So, about those side effects.  It started with headaches, which every site lists as a normal effect.  Fourteen days a month of what felt like low-grade dehydration headaches.  Lemme tell you, I was one hydrated motherfucker, because I kept drinking water to try and make them go away.  It never worked, but the massive water consumption is probably the only thing that saved my skin, when the hormonal widgeting started flinging the oil levels all over the place.  I haven't broken out this much since I was 15.  I also haven't had this much trouble regulating my moods since then either.  I've spent the last four months completely done with people's bullshit.  I've mostly managed to restrain it to 'snippy' but I've also unfriended about ten people because I just wasn't having any more pussyfooting maintenance of their delicate sensibilities and bigoted 'friends of friends'.  Turns out that part's been surprisingly good for my mental health; with 20% less fucks to give, I have heavily prioritized them.

However, the side effect that's affected me most is known as 'breakthrough bleeding'.  Randomly, at any time in my cycle, in amounts that varied from 'a few drops' to 'ruined outfit', I was bleeding.  Because this occurred in conjunction with an ankle injury that sidelined my cardio, I quit working out entirely.  It only took one instance of stopping mid-lift for a panicked rush to the bathroom to find that only the foresight of wearing a pad had kept me from bleeding all over the machine to make me extremely nervous about weights.  I stopped hiking, because a sudden rush of blood three miles from anywhere is a day-ruiner.  I've had to give up a lot of protests/rallies/marches because I couldn't be sure of bathrooms, of somewhere to check my "is that sweat or is it blood?" anxiety.  To say that I've missed these parts of my life is a tremendous understatement.

Uncertainty over whether Today Is A Bleeding Day has colored pretty much every aspect of my life for almost four months.  Yes, I carry pads everywhere, yes I wear them pretty much 100% of the time now, but the other thing about it is that it's demoralizing on a level it's hard for me to explain and the frustration and constant anxiety over whether I'm bleeding again is exhausting.  My body has been my ally, and I have been its, and now part of it is not cooperating with the plan we had by which I surrender a chunk of each month to it and I get my freedom the rest of the time.  I want to be mad at my uterus, but I know that it's not healthy, that it's decided to build itself some little fibroid friends and give away all my iron to them, but it's not really thinking as its best self right now.

Any of this, all of this, would have been on some level worth it, if it stopped the bleeding.  It hasn't.  This last period was something I can only describe as a nightmare.  Two days of showering while standing in my own blood.  A breakthrough while brushing my teeth that I was just too tired to fight so I finished brushing and then mopped up the puddle.  Less than an hour between cup changes (it holds an ounce, for reference).  The bleeding tapers off at night a little, so I can catch an hour, sometimes two, of sleep before the feeling of a breakthrough wakes me up to run to the bathroom.  I slept on a towel, just in case. I've bled on the office floor at work, I've bled on the bathroom floor at work.  Two loads of bloody towels in three days.  Just before I was ready to take myself to the ER and say "Something has gone very wrong," it slowed abruptly (there were no moderate days, just three days of non-stop then just over two WEEKS of very intermittent spotting).

Through all of this, I found the final fuck-you from the progesterone:  cluster migraines that happened to intersect with a round of weather changes to exacerbate them.  I hadn't had a migraine in two years; I got three in one week.  By the second day of excruciating pain, I had made up my mind to tell the doc that if she wouldn't take me off the progesterone I was finding a new doctor because I was absolutely done with that shit and never taking another pill.  Thankfully, her response was much more "No, no, that's not at all what was supposed to happen, clearly this is not the medicine for you."

In a perverse bit of luck, I started this entire progesterone debacle with dangerously high ferritin due to my liver's inability to cope with the last round of iron infusions.  I was lucky enough to escape any liver damage (in part because my ferritin's fallen from 1100 to 450 in the last two months to recover from the bleeding), but also lucky enough to have enough iron to turn into blood, so I am miraculously only my normal level of slightly anemic.  Score one for the Ally Body there, at least.

The only question at the gynecologist's appointment was which surgery and when, no question of whether.  I had essentially made up my own mind that fibroid removal was a losing game.  Last time I was checked, there are three and they are fairly large, so removal *could* have been an option depending on how they were attached, but I'm not even perimenopausal, so there's a strong chance they'd grow right back and I'd just begin a years-long process of regularly carving out chunks of a uterus I have no plans to use.  So, hysterectomy it is, about a month from now.  I managed to get them to move my surgery up from the last week of July, which would have been monumentally inconvenient for so many reasons.  I'll be out of work for at least a week; I plan to be hardcore serious about doing nothing that week but read books and pet cats.

Those who've seen me have been very kind not to remark on the fact that no matter how much I worked out, and especially the more I worked out, my stomach has just gotten...rounder.  The fibroids, per what I hope is the last incredibly and uncomfortable vaginal ultrasound for a very long time, currently approximate a 24-week pregnancy in size, and expand my uterus up to my navel.  When I was really heavy, this was not so noticeable.  But the reality is that the only reason I can still wear half my clothes in the waist (all the pants are long since given up on) is that I lost fat almost as fast as the fibroids grew over the last year and a half.  I don't know what my body looks like without fibroids any more; I've been holding off buying new work clothes for four months because I have no idea what will change.

The size means that I can not do the easier, quicker, vaginal removal.  I'll have a thoroughly badass lower abdomen scar, and a slower recovery.  I only asked about the fibroids on the last scan, and not if I've still got any ovarian cysts, which I've had the previous two scans; the fact that they have been in different places suggests they may just be a function of when in my cycle I was getting the procedure (usually about day 14), or it may mean that she'll be removing a couple of cysts while she's in there.  Aside from that, she won't remove or otherwise interfere with my ovaries unless she has strong reason to suspect ovarian cancer.  I have no interest in abrupt menopause, so I appreciate that.

I've been referring to this as the 'nuclear option' for resolving the anemia, and it really is.  My periods have been a contributing factor, but the absorption problem won't go away, so I'll still need to monitor my iron.  However, I expect this will end the need for infusions, and I might someday be able to give blood again.  My only real regret is that robot surgery is not an option, so I can't use this to threaten the other organs with robots if they get out of line.

Getting Blood Without Trading A Pound of Flesh for It

As many of my friends know, I have chronic anemia.  Its cause isn't really known, except that I don't appear to be bleeding internally or destroying my own blood cells, so it's more of a "hey, keep an eye on that" thing instead of a "constant battle with death" thing.

The last two weeks, I've had what could be termed a health crisis, essentially caused by my body's tremendous adaptivity.  Oh, the body says, you figured out you should go to the doctor when you feel tired?  Well, let's make you the same level of tired at life-threatening low iron, as with your sort of average regular low iron, and let's improve our efficiency at the same time we develop asthma that explains all this extreme shortness of breath.  So instead of thinking, four months ago, "Holy cow, this is heavy-duty tired!" I've been thinking, "Yeah, feels like I oughta go see my hematologist before the end of the year."

A couple weeks ago, I made an appointment with a new doctor for the newly-developed asthma and recurring foot pain.  He ordered a routine iron test, which happens most times I visit a doctor and usually triggers a call a day later that says, "Yep, time to check in with the hematologist.  I called her office, and scheduling should call you today or tomorrow," followed by a month of infusions.  This time, it triggered a call that said, "You need to go to the hospital NOW.  You have critically low iron."  They didn't tell me on the phone, but there's a high risk of heart attack and stroke when your iron gets sufficiently low, because, well, there's no oxygen getting to important things like your heart and your brain.

I let the receptionist know I was leaving, and headed to the ER.  I spent the next seven hours or so getting a blood transfusion.  Starting with that first appointment with my doctor, I have had:

• One doctor's office visit with lung capacity test
• One iron test
• One chest x-ray
• One emergency room visit
• Two blood transfusions totaling four units of blood
• One bone scan on my foot to rule out stress fracture
• One consultation at my hematologist's office, with blood tests
• One iron infusion
• One fitting for a supportive boot, including the purchase of said boot

This week I have another blood test, another hematologist consult, and another iron infusion, followed by two more over the next few weeks, and probably a prescription for a daily asthma inhaler.  Ordinarily, I'd be awash with money anxiety.  Many of these are expensive treatments (when my first iron infusion was not covered because of a 'preexisting condition' it cost me a thousand dollars out of pocket).  I know that a lot of people, including my own past self, would look at this list and despair.

I'm not, though.  At this point I have not taken a single cent out of my checking account, and it's not likely I will.  You see, not only do I have what I'm finding out is the Really Good Insurance, my company provides something called a Health Savings Account, with which most folks are familiar.  For those who aren't, I have a certain amount of money taken out of my pay and placed into a special account, and my company gives a lump-sum payment for taking the 'high-deductible' insurance plan -- a lump sum that conveniently covers almost that entire deductible.  I carry a credit card attached to that account, and what this means in practical terms is that I have a reserve of cash especially for medical expenses, that carries from year to year if I don't use it.

I don't say this to gloat over those who don't have this sort of safety net.  I say it because I want people to understand what the effect of that net has been.  Ten years ago, a call to go to the ER would have been greeted with, "I can't afford the ER.  How necessary is this?"  I'd be doing my best to struggle along with Urgent Care centers, wouldn't be able to afford a hematologist, and wouldn't *remotely* be able to afford the blood transfusions and iron infusions.  I don't make enough money that a $6,000-8,000 outlay over the course of two months every year is even a thing I can contemplate.  Every care decision, along the way, would have had to balance "How do I afford it?" and "Can I do without it?" against "I need to buy food and keep power on."  The safety net has left me free to think only of my health and the best course of treatment with regard to my healthcare decisions.

It's also drastically decreased my anxiety levels.  And, well, when you have a condition that increases your risk of a heart attack, and another one that affects your ability to breathe, anxiety can be a serious detriment to your health.  My only anxiety has been around trying to get the infusions scheduled so I can still attend an out-of-state wedding I *really* want to go to.  That peace of mind?  Directly contributing to the expectation that I'll get better.

I joke about feeling 'like an adult' because I have finally established that sort of safety net, combined with a savings account and a steady budget, so that a drop in hemoglobin doesn't completely derail me, but this is not "adulthood."  This is "what living in a developed nation should feel like for everyone."

This sort of security, this ability to make my decisions between me and my doctor, not me and my creditors, for my health is a human right and I believe that everyone deserves that right.  It should be available to the stay-at-home parent, to the entrepreneur starting a business on a shoestring budget, to the self-employed artist, to the fifth-generation farmers working their family's land.  You shouldn't have to take or keep a bad job based on the level of health security you need.

What we have now is an imperfect system.  Some aspects of the ACA, like the erasure of the 'preexisting condition' and the availability of healthcare exchanges, are great.  Others, including the penalties for people who don't buy insurance, are not the best solution for the problem because they still drag insurance companies into the mix and put some families into a pinch.

However, I look at it as a waystation stop on the road to real, fully socialized medicine.  I know that socialized medicine has its problems, but that none of those problems is "Do I go to the Emergency Room because I am having chest pains, or do I pay the electric bill next month?"  None of them is "Can I afford my meds *and* my food?"  None of them is having to do what I have done in the past: putting off essential care, even the basic doctor visits, because doctors get really angry when they tell you that you need a treatment, and you agree, but tell them, "I probably won't get it because I simply can't afford to."  And I've had more than one hear, "I respect your opinion, but I cannot afford to eat if I follow the course of treatment you deem essential," and refuse to treat me at all because I "just don't care about my health."

A lot of people I know argue that the problem is the 'high cost of medical care'.  I won't argue that's a serious problem.  But even if costs were half what they are, or a quarter, I could not easily have afforded the last week and the coming ones, and I'm relatively comfortable.  I get my infusions at a chemotherapy center.  I sit there and look at these people, many of whom can't work, who are spending tens of thousands of dollars a year in a direct and active battle with death.  Even at a tenth of the cost, most of them would have to give up treatment; 'reducing the cost of care' without keeping a safety net in place is not a viable, reasonable option.

Perhaps it's the self-interest of a chronic health condition that makes me an advocate for a centralized, single-payer healthcare system.  Perhaps it's the laziness of not wanting to have to individually bargain down the costs for every procedure I need or spend hours doing cost-benefit analyses of insurance programs, or a pessimism towards us ever having a fair system as long as it's partially run by profit-based insurance companies.  I don't know.

But what I do know is that I have something I want everyone in this country to have: peace of mind regarding my health options, and a life without the fear that a serious illness or injury will destroy everything I have built in my life and leave me stranded, dependent upon others, and hopeless.

Un-Scheduled to Within an Inch of My Life

A lot of articles and conversations have been wafting through my life lately like this one, Exhaustion is Not a Status Symbol, and each time I tell myself I'm going to talk about my experience with this destructive mentality, and then I don't.  So now I am.

One year ago, if you asked me how I had been, the answer was a sort of helpless, "Oh, you know, SO BUSY.  I am made of busy.  I am doing All The Things."  It took a lot of things, multiple articles highlighting that the glorification of busy is part of a system that was eating so many people alive, before I really started to ask myself important questions.

Important questions like, "What, exactly, are my own goals?" or "What is it that I would do if I ever stopped taking on others' priorities as my own?" or "So, what am I afraid I'll have to deal with if I ever sit still?"

My life is very full.  I work, I volunteer, I have a few creative gigs and hobbies, I am in a relationship, I'm part of a closely-knit community, I serve as a priestess, and I'm working on my own personal development, plus managing episodic depression and occasional bouts of anemia.  I also moved last year and my company underwent a transition of ownership.

I used to take a great deal of pride in that list, because the eyes of anyone who heard it got very round, and they said, "Wow, you ARE busy."  There was a sort of self-satisfaction in knowing that I lived under a schedule that others considered crushing and impressive.  I joked about being 'scheduled to within an inch of my life,' but the truth is that I wasn't really joking.  I was at the very edge of what I could reasonably live.

The primary problem, of course, lies in that episodic depression and occasional anemia.  Because there were occasionally days where I looked at the catalogue of obligations I'd built myself, and I...couldn't (I should probably also mention the migraines here, most common in January and February when dry air and pressure changes are particularly vicious).  I had to stop, to hide, to take a full day to recover from the basics of my life.  Of course, everyone tells you, when you need to take three to five 'mental health' days a year, that you're perfectly entitled to them, that you have 'every right' to the time.

But what if I didn't need it?  What if I started structuring a life I never needed to take time from, because it was ordered in a way that included time off, relaxation, and recovery time as normal facets of human existence?

I had this moment where a friend asked if I wanted to have coffee or dinner or something, and my calendar was literally full, something scheduled every single day, for weeks.  That was a trigger; the night I found myself weeping into the laundry at 2am because I couldn't sleep until I had washed the sheets and made the bed but I hadn't gotten home until almost midnight was another.  I started working towards balance, towards the notion that relaxation didn't have to represent 'hiding from' my life, that it could be an integral part.  I started to consider that maybe it might be reasonable to be able to do interesting things at the last minute.  I started offloading small tasks and obligations to people I could trust with them.

If you had told me that stepping back from a life of obligation would increase the time I had to spend managing it, I'd never have believed it.  But it's true.  Anything I dropped without a clear transition plan, without figuring out who would take it on, came back upon me with a vengeance, unpredictably and in crisis.  So I exhausted myself, carving out bits and pieces of time in hopes that it would create space for that transition.

Gradually, slowly, it worked.  I found that in spaces where I have taken leadership roles, I could comfortably delegate to trusted team members.  I found that in spaces where leadership was lacking, I could advise and suggest rather than doing the work and owning the process.  Some of it has to do with the change in work, from 'ten vacation days and five sick days a year' to 'twenty undifferentiated PTO days, plus three floating holidays to use as desired.'

I've had to let a lot go.  I've had to trust.  I've had to set boundaries.  It's been hard, because my natural tendency, when someone says, "We need this done," is to say "Of course, I can help with that.  I'll just take on that responsibility."  Rather than simply refuse all requests, which is its own trap, I've been forcing myself to stop and consider which things are good uses of my time, which things will feed me.  I am looking at trips as real plans, and not as someday hopes for 'years when the anemia and the festivals leave me enough time.'

About six months ago, I turned the corner that was "The process of transitioning things out of my life no longer occupies more space than the things I have transitioned out of my life," which is to say I started to develop occasional free time.  It's been amazing.

The hardest thing is that there are SO MANY OPTIONS for filling that time, for busying back up, for a show and a party and a movie and a dinner and a coffee every single week.  There are more hobbies I'd love to take up, and more events I'd love to see, but for now, at least, I'm stopping to take a breath and center myself at home, and establish what a healthy boundary set of my own time really looks like in the long term, rather than create another cycle of busy-and-purge down the road.

I do not delude myself that this is anything other than a landing on my life's staircase.  At each turning, I cull obligation and replace it with passion, in hopes that someday my life will be full only of things that feed and nourish me, of things that all actively contribute to me being my best self.

I love you all.

Blood Harvest

As I was taught it, the harvest comes in three parts each year.  The first harvest, generally speaking, is gathering the early bounty of fruit and tender greens, the second harvest is the late summer/early fall reaping of the fields, and the third harvest is the butchering, done once the weather has cooled enough to keep meat through the winter.

The general associations with each harvest persist, because the *concept* of the harvest is integral to modern paganism as it's practiced, but we've moved away from the practical reality of it as we've abandoned our agricultural lifestyle.  'Harvest' has come to be synonymous, for many modern pagans, with getting what you've worked for, a reward to for the energy you've expended.

We mostly talk of how we reap what we have sown and tended, how we gather in all that we've planted.  We talk of projects coming to fruition, and at most we look out over our backyard gardens, pleased with the bounty we've brought to our own table.

In that transition to metaphor, the real meaning of the darkest harvest is often lost.

The first harvest is a collection of bounty.  Fruits, new shoots, tender growth the fertile earth really can't help but lavish upon us.  We celebrate sweetness, what is rich and delicious and delicate.  We preserve little of this first harvest, because it is meant to delight, not to sustain.  Perhaps we make some jellies, flavor oil or wine or vinegar, but even what we save of this harvest serves to accentuate life, not sustain it.

My celebration of this harvest has grown out of a delighted gratitude at all the world gives me, even when I do not tend it.  I take joy in beauty, in wonder, and in the general abundance of the life in the world.  The sacred earth of the first harvest is freshly turned and fragrant, soft beneath my feet.

The second harvest, the grain and the root, is the workhorse.  We gather what we've carefully tended, pulling in all that our own hard work has brought to fruition.  We honor the seeds that we've planted, and we celebrate a world in which directed energy brings useful reward.  From the second harvest, we take the daily bread, the sturdy beer, the unglamorous turnip.  Most of it is saved away, preserved because we will depend upon it later -- and because unlike salad greens or strawberries, a few weeks in a dark cabinet doesn't much change a potato.

For the second harvest, I honor my own hard work and practicality.  I take time to appreciate the fruits of my own labor, the work of my life.  The sacred earth of the second harvest is beneath my own nails and ground into the cracks of my hands.

The third harvest is the darkest: blood, sacrifice and loss.  What you brought into the world, that which you have tended, and loved, and cared for most patiently, you must kill.  This is no bloodless scything; the dark harvest requires you to face that sacrifice, look it in the eye, and destroy it entirely.  Take something you have loved, slit its throat and spill its blood, and then butcher it for your own survival.

The sacred earth of the third harvest is the cooling earth of oncoming winter, softened and warmed only because it is soaked in blood.

For the third harvest, I honor and acknowledge my own loss.  Friends and family taken too soon, or those whose passing marked the end of suffering.  Missed opportunities, friendships broken, love that failed to sustain a relationship.  I sit with the empty spaces in my own heart, and I respect that as the veil has thinned and the Wild Hunt rides, Death walks among us not as a stranger, but as one of us -- and that I walk as Death as well.

That is the nature of this harvest.  To honor loss and sacrifice, to respect the full cycle of the year,  I can't stop short with a barrier between myself and my own identity as destroyer.  I can't stand as protector only, guarding that which I love from all who would injure it (including myself).  I cannot only nurture, I cannot only collect and tend the bounty of the world.

I must, for this harvest, be willing to look at my life, see what must die for me to thrive, and end it as quickly, mercifully, and completely as possible.

This year, nothing seems particularly fit for the blade.  In past years, I might have offered a token sacrifice, given up some trait of personality or favored object, but my understanding of sacrifice has deepened: one must not only lose something much beloved, but that spilled blood must have *purpose* to be sacred.  So I hold my blade ready, and I bide my time, and my only offering at the moment is my willingness to accept my own dark goddess.

Blessed be the light and the dark, and all those beloved.

Deciding Which End of the Electronic Leash To Be On

I have recently acquired a shiny new tablet.  One of the interesting things is that once I connected it to my Google account, it began to port over the games and apps I had downloaded.  I started adding or deleting things to customize the different devices.  The tablet, for example, is much better for netflix and several of the games I like.  I find that even though the screen is smaller, the phone works much better for chat and messaging.

I've been making choices about it based on the different roles I want each device to play, and it's been interesting to evaluate my changing relationship with technology.  Today was a pretty significant choice:  I am not going to set up my work email access from my tablet.

This goes to a deeper set of decisions I'm making about it, congruent with the fact that I got it in part to help me sort and manage my pictures (I may not be able to get tablet lightroom, but I *can* review and sort the pics so I know which ones go in the 'processing' folder and which ones go in the "I will probably never do anything with this" folder) and keep some books and movies on for downtime.  Eventually there may be podcasts, and I've already loaded a substantial chunk of my music onto it.  But I'm finding myself being very mindful of what I put on it, as far as 'productivity' goes.  Maybe I don't want to use it to increase my productivity further.

One of the defining characteristics of Gen X, more so than those who came before or after us, is that we wrestle with the changing role of technology in our lives, as it moves (for some) from servant to master.  When I graduated high school in 1991, computer literacy was a rarity.  Five years after high school, as I was looking to enter the professional workforce, suddenly computer literacy was a basic requirement.  Every desk at every job, every classroom, every home now had a computer, and life began to be increasingly affected by your ability to navigate your relationship with it.  The more you could integrate technology to 'work smarter' and get more done and be more accessible, the more likely it was you'd succeed.

Several of my first temp jobs used dialup e-mail accounts, so that you had to remember, once an hour or so, to sign on and check the company e-mail.  There was rarely any, but you had to check it anyway.  If you forgot you could still blame 'server problems' for a two-day delay and no one questioned it.  Today I can receive work e-mails minutes after they're sent pretty much anywhere, anytime, and my employer operates on that premise.

I have made the transition, as an adult, from having to seek out communication and connection to having to seek out opportunities to disconnect.  I have adapted to the world as it is, and I tend to appreciate the benefits of that connection.  But as I hear things like "I sent you a text and you didn't reply right away," or "I know you got my e-mail on your phone, why didn't you answer?" I start to wonder if I'll be among the last generation to feel that an individual has the right to set the speed of communication and response.

Lately my phone's been a source of mild anxiety for me.  If I want to play a game or check a website, it perkily lets me know that I have a voice mail, and an e-mail, and a couple of text messages, and a new update to download, and and and...

Its effectiveness lies in it maintaining that constant pipeline so that I can know, at a glance, what the world needs me to know.  The problem has been that I can't *give* that glance without getting the whole fire hose.

Enter the tablet.  It is purely for leisure, for doing things that feed me socially, personally, culturally, and intellectually.  I am deliberately choosing to use it in a wholly selfish manner.  The phone is a tool for communication, connectivity, awareness.  It shouts for my attention and points things out to me.  I'm considering uninstalling all the games and timewasters from it, so that it can be purely for staying in touch with the world. The laptop and desktop computers are for work, for things that require my words most of all, because 90 wpm on a keyboard is far preferable to 30 wpm on a tablet, and because that allows me to say "Now I will sit down, and I will work."

I'm really looking forward to the division of leisure and productivity.  With the tablet, there are no conversations I tell myself I need to be following, no messages I'm chiding myself for not having the time to respond to, no notifications that People Need Me To Tell Them Things, no work I probably ought to be doing.  I can enjoy connectivity on my terms, with the whole array of available knowledge laid out before me, or simply a mindless color-matching game to clear my head.

Over the next few years, I'm going to be closely watching my relationship with technology, as connectivity and access increase, to make sure that I don't blur too many lines between work and play, between my time and others' time, between what I want to do and what I feel obligated to do.   I expect this to be a large part of the social battlefield, the fight between whether technology gives the world the ability to control you, or gives you the ability to control the world.  I will remain firmly upon the side of "My time is mine and you can't use an electronic leash to demand my focus unless I choose to give it to you."

On Gratitude

You see it a lot, the phrase 'an attitude of gratitude'.  Over November, many people I know were doing 'thirty days of gratitude' across various social media platforms, taking some time each day to offer a general acknowledgment of something or someone for whom they felt thankful.

Here lately, I've also seen a lot of people wrapping up the end of the year with "I'm so glad for all I have!" posts, talking about wonderful communities and wonderful friends and the support they receive every day.  They gush, in glowing terms, how lucky they are to have made such wonderful friends.

I think I'd like to ask them a couple questions.

You've acknowledged your general gratitude for the things and people in your life, but have you specifically thanked and acknowledged the people who have helped you?  How often do you sit down, and instead of throwing a general thanks 'out there', seek out some person who's done something to support or empower or protect you, so that you can say "I see what you did, and I honor what you did, and I could not have achieved what I have if you had not?"

That's the thing, you see.  In the US, we glorify the culture of the 'self-made man'.  And in the culture of the self-made man, there is no room for specific gratitude, because it suggests that another person's work and love had some impact on who you are, that you are not wholly self-made.  So long as you keep your thankfulness general, you don't have to admit that there was some part of that self-making that you simply did not and probably could not accomplish on your own.

It's OK to thank God (or the gods) if you're a 'self-made person' because you can subscribe to prosperity doctrine or the law of attraction, that says that if you have the right faith, belief, or mindset, that's all that's needed for divine or universal blessings to be given to you (see also magical thinking).  You can couch your acknowledgment of what you've been given with vague gratitude so that the credit still really rests with you, for 'keeping positive' or 'being a good person'.  It's karma, you see, that your previous good deeds have put a down payment on the world rewarding you with help when you need it.  If this friend hadn't chosen to help  you, someone would have, because you deserved it.

Same thing with being grateful for your community.  Sometimes people say "I'm grateful that I have such good friends," and I hear "Congratulations to me for choosing friends who will help and support me regardless of whether I have helped and supported them!"  Keeping gratitude general still lets you, on some level, claim credit for foresight or good judgment in ensuring that community would be a resource to you.  (it is fine to be grateful that you have good friends, as long as you understand that you should probably also occasionally acknowledge why, precisely, they ARE such good friends)

When it comes to specifically looking at your life, and recognising that an individual made a deliberate choice he or she was not obligated to make, to benefit and support you, that can be very daunting for some.  To admit to real and specific gratitude to another person's free choices is to swallow your pride and acknowledge that your identity as 'self-made' is a convenient fiction.

None of us is self-made.  We must all own our decisions, and we are all in control of how we will respond to what happens to us, but we all owe gratitude to someone, somewhere.  Maybe it's as small as 'stopped to help me change a tire on the way to a job interview' or 'stayed on chat with me all night when I was stressed about my sick cat' but it's there.

So I challenge you, when you practice your attitude of gratitude, to examine your life, and pinpoint those choices that others have made for you, out of no obligation other than love, empathy, or compassion.  Then seek out those people (if you can find them) and personally thank them, not 'for all you did' but for 'that moment in time'.

Thank you for reading my blog, by the way.  Every time I see clicks or comments, it inspires me to keep writing.

Winter Driving Tips for the Uninitiated

As we head into our first winter storm weekend here in the lovely People's Republic of Austin, I hear many of my native Texan friends talking about how they have no idea how to drive in ice or snow.  People who cannot drive in ice but insist on doing it are a danger to everyone else on the road.  Therefore, your Friendly Midwestern Badger would like to give you some driving tips.  Here are the rules for driving in ice and snow:

1.  Don't.  Before you leave, ask yourself, "How much do I REALLY need to be there?"  Ask yourself if what's at stake is worth a couple grand of damage to your car or a hit on your insurance, because even if you're being really careful, someone can still hit YOU, and even if you're not hurt, accidents are expensive.

2.  Plan ahead.  Consider your route.  How many bridges and overpasses does it contain?  How many of those long curving flyovers Texans love so much?  How many times will you come over a hill to find a sharp curve or a stop light at the bottom?  These are all accidents waiting to happen.  Once you have considered your optimal route, revisit question 1 before proceeding.  If you still must proceed, double your expected trip time.

3.  Go slow.  Like really slow.  Like ten or fifteen miles below the speed limit slow.  Yes, your buddy who grew up in Wisconsin will laugh at you, but he learned to drive 60 in a blizzard at age 18 in a car made entirely out of cheese; you did not.  Allow an extra carlength above and beyond your usual caution between you and the car in front of you.

4.  You have no brakes.  Do not use them, do not touch them.  They are a trap.  Control your car as much as humanly possible using changes in direction and acceleration; if you slam on the brakes, the terrorists win.  Brakes will just add fuel to the fire of a skid.

5.  Steer into the skid.  Everyone says this, but if you've never done it, it's a really difficult thing to explain to you.  Basically, when you feel your car start to slip, you'll have this impulse to fight it.  Don't fight it.  Zen that bitch out, embrace the skid, and pull your car *through* it instead of *against* it.  If you have sufficient room, you'll be fine.  Just pull over for a few minutes to regain your composure, because that first-ever skid is very alarming.  To practice, Midwestern parents take their children for a day known as Shopping Mall Donut Day.  On the first snowy day, large parking lots (like those at shopping malls before they open) are often full of helpful parents and friends teaching new drivers what the hell 'steer into the skid' means.

6.  Aim for the ditch.  If all these other rules fail you, and you find yourself in an out-of-control car, your only option is to *aim* it.  You can't steer it, you can't stop it, you can't regain control, but you can *point* it at something.  Point it at the ditch, point it at the grassy median, point it at the bushes.  Having to wait two hours for a tow truck to pull your happy ass out of a clump of rosemary in your neighbor's front yard is vastly preferable to having to tell him you slammed into the car parked next to his driveway.

And above all, remember your manners and be aware, because not everyone has a Friendly Midwestern Badger.  Remember that someone spinning through an intersection probably didn't have time to use his turn signal (and which way would he signal, anyway?).  If you bump someone or someone bumps you, try to work it out without being a jerk about it.

Know what the inclement weather reporting rules are; in some states, during weather events you can report an accident for up to 24 hours afterwards instead of calling the police, if everyone involved agrees and no one is injured and the damage is minimal.  Take advantage of that, because waiting an hour for an irritated cop to get OUT of a warm car in 30-degree weather to sign off on your scuffed bumper is a near-guarantee that you'll be ticketed for whatever the officer can find, while filing a walk-in report (if that's legal) usually means that *if* you're ticketed, it's purely for the 'failure to maintain safe speed' or 'failure to maintain control of your vehicle'.  Just don't forget to report it, because if the other driver reports it and you don't, there can be trouble.

Be safe!

(seriously, if at all possible stay home and drink some damn cocoa instead.  Light a fire in the fireplace you never get to use.  This is Texas; it'll be 65 degrees in a day and a half)

Solutions, Tools, Sympathy, and Experience

Imagine for a moment that you are a mechanic, with an old, lovingly-maintained but still quirky car.  Periodically, some part on this car fails on you, and replacement parts are harder to get, but to you it's still worth it.  One day, this car won't start.

You investigate, and because you're pretty familiar with this car you quickly determine that the problem is a bad part in your ignition system.  You call around with no luck, but finally find one at a junkyard in another state; they tell you they're pretty sure they can have it to you early next week.  You're a little bummed out about this, because you'd planned a road trip for the weekend to see a friend and show him your car, but there's really no help for it.

One of your buddies, who is not a mechanic, drops by, and you invite him in for a beer because you've had a frustrating day and you could use some company.  You're telling him about having to reschedule your trip, and he interrupts you.

Him:  Why don't you just rent a car and go anyway?  I'll even lend you my car.
You:  That's really nice of you to offer.  But I wanted to show my other friend my car.  He's thinking of buying one, and wanted to get a feel for how working on it would be if he did.
Him:  Well, can't he come here then?
You:  No, that's not an option for him.  Next weekend will work.  I'm just bummed because we were gonna get awesome barbecue.
Him:  Are you sure the battery's not dead?  Did you try jump-starting it?
You:  Yeah, it's just a part in the ignition.  I've got another one coming, it's just inconveniently scheduled and frustrating.
Him:  Did you put gas in it?  Maybe it's out of gas.
You:  Uh, no, I'm pretty sure I learned to read a gas gauge at a pretty early age.
Him:  Well, you don't have to get defensive.  Hey, it is blue.  I read somewhere that blue cars break down more often.  I've got some time this afternoon.  Let's paint it green.  I'll help you!
You: ...
Him:  Oh!  Maybe it's out of oil.  You have to put oil in cars, you know, between oil changes.  I used to have this old Chevy, burned a quart of oil a week...let's go put some oil in your car and see if that fixes it.
You:  No, it's fine on oil, and by the way, if you've got a car losing a quart of oil a week, that's really bad...how long did you drive it like that?  Your current car isn't leaking like that, is it?
Him:  Well, it was running fine.  Anyway, why don't you just go to the part store and get the part?  I'm sure they've got whatever you need at the AutoZone.  I got headlight lamps there last week!
You:  This is a forty-year-old car.  It hasn't been made since the mid-70s.  There wasn't one at the local junkyard, but I found a guy who specializes in this model and he's getting me the part.
Him:  Well, but let's just go to the AutoZone and check.
You:  No, the AutoZone won't have it...who are you calling?
Him:  The AutoZone.  I'll just check for you, because you never know.  Hello, AutoZone, I need a...what's the part called?
You:  (specify part, plus make and model and year of the car)
Him:  (gives info)  You don't?  Since when?  Well, there's no need to be RUDE!  (*hangs up*)  The clerk laughed at me.
You:  No real surprise there.
Him:  Why don't you just let me take a look at it?  I might be able to rewire it for you.
You:  You know I do this for a living, right?  I know what I'm doing, and it's just a part I'll get replaced, OK?
Him:  Well, I'm just trying to help.  I do have a knack for mechanical things.
You:  Last year you set your workshop on fire 'fixing the toaster'.  Can't you just sit here and enjoy a beer and hang out with me?
Him:  That's your problem.  You always want to TALK about your problems, you never want to actually hear how to FIX them.

This conversation is how I feel when the men in my life talk about how "women just want sympathy instead of solutions because they're not invested in fixing their problems.  Men are solution-driven, so we have to just learn to listen tolerantly and not try to give any real help."

Generally, the 'problems' I am talking about are well beyond the three-minute understanding of anyone who's not me, and the last thing I need are simplistic, uninformed and unhelpful solutions from someone who doesn't have any idea of the full scope of what's going on, who then gets angry at me for the fact that his suggestions don't solve my problem, and accuses me of either 'not telling the whole story first' or 'just throwing up roadblocks' when I try to explain the complexities.  I don't 'just want sympathy' because I don't want solutions.  I 'just want sympathy' because you probably don't have the skills, experience, and tools to solve the problem right now, or because your goals and needs and expectations are different than mine and what would work for you in the same situation won't get me where I want to be.  Or because I've already set the solution in motion, but some part of that solution frustrates, upsets, or irritates me and I want to vent to a friend I trust to offer empathy.

If the solutions are that 'glaringly obvious' do you really believe I can't see them myself?  Or is it a more likely explanation that the glaringly obvious solution has a hidden cost, anything from incurring a social debt I don't want, to a hit to self-esteem I can't afford right now, to abandoning a larger goal that doesn't appear connected from your perspective, but is?

I'm not saying, guys, that I don't want your help or your perspectives.  But unless I've started the conversation with "I could use some advice..." or ended it with "...so what do you think I should do?" then accusing me of 'not wanting to fix' a problem I'm having just because what's readily apparent and obvious to you isn't a reasonable solution to me is pretty insulting.  And writing off the entire female gender as 'not really interested in SOLVING problems as much as talking about them' is a pretty good way to keep me from trusting you enough to talk to you about problems you can help solve.

In Which I Do Not Care Why You Made That Choice, Just That You Were Free To Make It

I'm going to tell you something I generally only discuss with people I'm considering as potential long-term committed sexual partners:

I do not believe it would be ethically or morally right for me to terminate a healthy pregnancy, so I won't do it.  If I become pregnant, and the fetus and I are physically able to survive and thrive, I will carry the baby to term and raise it.  The level of the father's involvement will be at a minimum fiscal, and based on our relationship at the time.  I won't sleep with anyone who can't accept that reality.  I have great respect for the two or three partners over the years who've said "Yeah, I am really not ready to be a father in any way shape or form and I am not willing to take that risk," and either limited involvement with me to non-risk behaviours or ended the relationship entirely.  That takes a lot of self-awareness and integrity.

Why won't I terminate a healthy pregnancy?  Because I'm physically, emotionally, and financially able to take care of a child.  Because I'm educated about birth control and pregnancy.  Because I have access to reasonably effective, reliable birth control.  Because I live in a city where I have access to emergency contraception in the event of rape, and good prenatal care in the event of accidental pregnancy.  Because, to me, an unplanned pregnancy would be inconvenient and perhaps a little awkward to explain to my conservative employers, but it would not require me to give up an education or a career or other opportunities.

There are personal reasons and spiritual reasons and all manner of other reasons, but what really matters?  Two things:

1.  That I have the right and legal protection to make whatever my choice might be, with the guidance of a trusted physician, and receive safe, legal, reasonably priced healthcare.

2.  That I understand that no part of my personal reasoning for whether or not I would choose to terminate a pregnancy has any bearing whatsoever on the decisions another woman might make.

In Texas right now, laws are being passed to deny women the right to terminate a pregnancy after 20 weeks.  Many proponents of these laws say "Well, isn't five months enough time to decide?"

You know what?  Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't.  Maybe a woman's just found out she and her husband are carriers for a potentially devastating disease.  Maybe she's escaping an abusive relationship and knows her ex will use a custody fight to keep stalking her if she has the baby.  Maybe she's got erratic periods and she didn't find out she was pregnant until her fifth month, and she's been taking medicines that cause birth defects the whole time.

And maybe, just maybe, nothing in that last paragraph matters because a woman seeking an abortion at any time, for any reason, does not need to justify it to me or to anyone else.  Maybe there should only have to BE two people in that room when the choice is made, and one of them should be the patient and the other should be the doctor.  Maybe we should trust women to know their lives, and their needs, and their capabilities, far better than any other person would know them, and make their decisions accordingly.  Maybe we should assume that a woman considering an abortion has already talked to her partner, her mother, her spiritual advisor, her therapist, or anyone else whose input she feels is important to the decision, and does not need a governmental mandate to do so.

A lot of people say "If you don't have a uterus, you don't have a right to an opinion on abortion."  I disagree absolutely.  We all, every one of us, have the right to that opinion, and the right to speak it freely, and I think that as long as we can do so respectfully, we have an obligation to speak our minds freely.  I believe that a clear and open discussion of the moral and ethical issues surrounding sexuality, pregnancy, abortion, and parenthood is long overdue in this country because we'll never stop using shame and fear to control sexuality until we can have those conversations openly and without judgment.

What we don't have?  The right to turn opinion into law.  The right to assume there is a common religious morality that should direct legislation.  We don't have the right to assume our choices are a universal ideal and judge or shame those who don't fit it.  We don't have the right to claim a moral high ground we do not actually hold, and deny essential healthcare funding (and access) in a perversion of 'Christian values'.  We don't have the right to establish rules regarding when others should have 'made up their minds' or whether someone's reasons are 'good enough'.

There are dozens of reasons a woman might end a pregnancy, and dozens of reasons she might not.  I refuse to split hairs, to even engage in the act of finding 'defensible abortions' that justify why a woman might have a 'reasonable' explanation for it.  I say, absolutely, that it does not matter to me that another woman might choose differently than I might.  It matters to me that both of us are given equal respect and freedom to make those choices, and equal care and opportunity to carry out our choices in the way that is healthiest for all concerned.

In Which I Still Expect It All To Change Every Few Years

I spent the early part of my life as an Army Brat.  The core result of this is that I tend to make new friends fairly easily, and that every four years or so I start looking to make life changes.  As of 2011, I had lived in Austin longer than I'd lived in any other city in my life.  In 2014, if I stay in my current apartment, I'll have lived there longer than at any single address.  I have, since being born, had between 20 and 30 addresses, depending on how you count dorms and subleases.

Mid-2009 I started to get itchy, to think that maybe it was time to move along.  Then I thought, "Where to?  I don't want to be anywhere but Austin!"  I made some other life changes instead, shifting my diet and exercise habits around to be healthier and more active.  I made some shifts in my friendship paradigms, stopped wasting time on people whose friendship wasn't a positive effect in my life.

Four more years have gone by, and I'm starting to feel the Time To Move Itch.  It's not time to move, because again, I love Austin and don't want to be anywhere else.  If I could think of somewhere else I'd rather be, I'd pack up my kitties and books and set out on the adventure, but this is where I belong right now.

So, what to change?  I like my job, I like my friends, I like my apartment complex.  I might move into a bigger apartment, or I could start looking at buying a house.  The changes I'm feeling, though, are very different.  I'm shifting perspective, and I'm doing 'adult' things.

Not 'adult' things in the pervy sense (though maybe I am and I'm not telling; I'm a mystery) and not 'adult' things in the 'no fun pay bills' sense.  Adult things in the sense of fleshing out the bones of my life.  Last year I started taking vacations, fully frivolous non-essential non-family non-working trips to simply get out on my own and have my own, personal experiences.  I picked up a camera to take on the trip and have begun to find that I'm really enjoying photography as a hobby.

A hobby.  You see, I never really had a hobby before.  I read a lot and I like to play role-playing games and I like to play board games, and I enjoy baking and cross stitch as time occupiers, but none of my interests previously have carried the same sense of "This is a skill set I am developing because I am having fun getting better at doing a thing.  I am researching, and learning, and accumulating physical and intellectual tools to improve my experience."

When you're an Army Brat, everything in your life is as simple as it can be, because you may need to break it down and relocate it on a moment's notice.  It was only after I moved to Texas that I started having furniture that wasn't either modular and easily disassembled, or a hand-me-down I could discard without a second thought.  The bulk of my life could be easily packed into a single ten-foot rental truck and driven anywhere the roads would take me, then set up in a similar configuration elsewhere for an instant feeling of home.  I was a living MASH unit.

Over the last ten years, as I've finally come to accept that I can put down roots, real roots, I've gradually bought sturdier furniture and accumulated kitchen gadgets and put pictures on my walls and thought about curtains as actual decoration instead of just protection from nosy neighbors.

The last aspect of my life left to finish out and decorate, then, was...me.  I've started considering that I might have 'a style' instead of just buying interchangeably utilitarian clothes.  I've added the vacations, and the hobby.  I've started setting up long-term goals as a person and thinking about who I want to be more than what I want to be.  I'm genuinely learning how to express and embrace who I am in a variety of ways, which is something I'd never even considered a thing people did, much less considered doing it myself.

I can't wait to see what this next four-year 'posting' will bring.

In Which I Am Not Yet Highly Effective, But Getting There

I used to have a genuinely horrible job selling wine over the telephone.  Truth be told, I've had a lot of horrible jobs, but that one really took the cake.

The company wasn't the problem, the manager was.  He was the worst sort of self-improvement hypocrite, spouting Napoleon Hill, Stephen Covey, and Tony Robbins in between racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic jokes.  He insulted and belittled those beneath him, and he berated us because our inability to sell $400 cases of untasted wine to strangers over the phone was obviously due to a lack of personal character and commitment.

The job paid $250 a week, on which I could barely live, and transitioned to straight commission after six weeks.  I sold two cases of wine in the two months I worked there, so I essentially gave them two weeks of labor for free.  My 'shift' ran from 1 to 10 each day, but I was expected to arrive at noon for the daily 'motivational lunch', where we all gathered around the conference table to eat our lunches (and have the morality of our dietary decisions critiqued by a chain smoking alcoholic carrying a good extra 80 pounds) and listen to self-help tapes, especially Napoleon Hill and Tony Robbins, and be lectured on 'fake it till you make it' and 'no is never an acceptable answer to any question'.  I would then sit through a prayer to begin the day, and spend nine hours on the phone, because if I took more than 15 minutes for dinner when I hadn't sold any wine, I was subjected to insults and ostentatious disappointment.

One of Pat's demands, as well, was that I spend five minutes a day reading some 'self-improvement' book.  He provided a list, topped of course by the Bible and various professional motivation texts.  He was livid when my first choice was the Tao te Ching, and my second was the Art of War.  That 'commie foreigner nonsense' couldn't possibly teach me anything worth knowing, and at that point he washed his hands of me, despairing of my ever being a 'decent woman'.  He found out from a co-worker that I read tarot, and from then on he 'jokingly' began asking every day if I'd like to begin the prayer with a ritual goat or baby sacrifice.  Why did I stay?  Because I couldn't find another office job and thought I was 'too good to go backwards to retail', and while I was at least making the $250 a week I wasn't getting evicted.

Near the top of the list he gave me was Stephen Covey's "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People."  Without reading a word of it or knowing anything about it other than "Pat thinks it will make me a better person," I dismissed it entirely out of hand as another example of the self-improvement genre geared towards becoming a pushy sales asshole.  I wanted nothing to do with that Covey fuck, whose planners all carried a bunch of (to me) hollow affirmations about personal growth and goal-setting and time management.

Fast forward fifteen years, during which many people I did respect and appreciate have said to me, "I think you'd really get a lot out of that book." Finally, last year, I saw it in the Amazon Prime Kindle Lending Library and thought, "Is it really fair to let one bigoted asshole influence my reading decisions forever?"  So, I started reading it and have been working through it slowly, reading each chapter twice before moving to the next.

I won't say it's 'changed my life' or anything that dramatic, but today I had an epiphany:  what he was talking about doing was something that, in at least one area of my life, I'd been groping around trying to accomplish without fully understanding the transition or my reasoning.  At one point he talks about changing your focus from crisis response to relationship management, and I thought about the changes that we've been working on with the Guardians.  One of the big things that, after talking to the other Chiefs and our Director, we identified as a problem was that (primarily because of staffing shortages and shifts in paperwork management) many people often only interacted with a Guardian, especially with a Chief Guardian, when something was wrong.  Outside of crisis, they knew nothing about us, didn't have any reason to trust us except the reputation of the team.  The respect and trust accorded to me came from my possession of a green glowie and a laminate badge, not from a relationship and a history of personal integrity.  Other people's integrity and right action had earned me that trust, but we weren't working to strengthen those relationships the way we needed to be.  We can't effectively serve a community that doesn't know us as people.

We've been working to get back to that, getting the Chiefs out on patrol, getting our faces and our names in front of people so that they know *us* and not our titles, making sure that they feel comfortable talking to us on or off duty, about any issue even if it seems trivial.  Instead of spending a precious few off-duty hours hiding or relaxing in my camp, I've been taking more time off duty to peruse the merchants' wares, go to workshops, visit other camps, hang out with non-Safety friends, and generally make myself known when I'm *not* wearing green.  The effect is two-fold.  First, and most important:  I hope I never face a situation where people's lives depend on them trusting and listening to me, but with wildfires and increased animal sightings and weather oddities it's going to remain a possibility, and I'd rather depend on something more than "she has a piece of laminate that says 'trust me, I'm a Guardian' around her neck."  I want it to depend on "She has used her position with integrity, to act in the best interests of the membership, and I trust her as a *person* and as a Guardian, to know what is happening, have a plan, and do her best to help us stay safe."  Second:  I'm having more fun, making more friends, and ending each festival with less stress than I had when I started it, which tells me I'm doing something right.

'Doing something right' is the conversation I've been having with this book.  As I was avoiding it, I told myself that I'm pretty happy with my life (which I am, on the whole, even when annoyances and frustrations occur) and I didn't want to fight with some motivational asshat who'd dismiss my love-centered, joy-focused existence as meaningless and irresponsible.  It turns out that the parts of my life I'm happy with (the parts where I'm consistently aware of and acting in accord with my values) are the parts that already fit into the structure of the book, and the message I'm getting isn't "You're doing it wrong."  It's, "So far, so good.  Now, let's look at the next step."

So, what happened with Pat and the wine job?  Well, one day I'd had enough of the "Jerry's Kids" jokes and I told the Assistant Manager that they made me uncomfortable and I was pretty sure they were illegal.  He assured me that I could talk to Pat, explain how the jokes and the insults and the bigoted comments made me feel, and that Pat, who after all spouted words about positive thinking and affirmations and respect for the dignity of the individual for an hour each day, could be trusted to receive that information, think about it critically, and work with me to create a more positive atmosphere.  So, I did, because I was a naive young woman with very little professional experience.

What resulted was a screaming fight while I angrily packed the contents of my desk.  He insulted my character, I insulted his management style.  He called me an uptight dyke, and I lost my temper and suggested he'd been raised by chimpanzees.  He screamed a lot of things at me, things like 'filthy whore' and 'fat lazy bitch' and 'devil worshipper' and pulled out the termination paperwork he'd made me fill out during a 'personal counseling session' the week before, then said I might as well quit because 'worthless cunt' wasn't one of the options under 'reason for separation'.  I'm still not sure whether I quit that job or was fired from it, but he swung a golf putter at my head as I walked out the door.  Later, I sent a letter off to corporate detailing conditions in the Kansas City office and the circumstances surrounding my last day, and I cc'd it to the Missouri Department of Labor and the EEOC.  I don't know what happened from there, because I never heard from anyone connected to the company again.  I called a temp agency, who told me, "We were just about to call you!  A job opened up that's perfect for your skill set.  Can you start Monday?

The thing that really gets me is that if I'd read "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" when Pat recommended it to me, at the start of the job, I'd have quit right then and there, working at McDonald's or QuikTrip or wherever I had to, to get out of that situation.  Because I would have seen, halfway through chapter one, that there was no way I could work in that environment and keep that person in my life, if I wanted to stay true to my own principles and my own ideals.

On Not Being Fearless, But Walking Anyway

Today a friend posted a link to part of this comic.  It's all about the idea of empowering women by advocating that we become fearless.  I wrote this post earlier this year on not being fearful, but I'm not *fearless*, not at all.

It's been pointed out to me that I occasionally give the impression of being 'ten feet tall and bulletproof'.  I'm not, and I know I'm not.  I am competent, and level-headed in a crisis, and pragmatic, but I am not invulnerable.  I'm just refusing to accept fear's limitations.

There was a minor kerfluffle with my dad lately, in which he said he wishes I would not hike alone, because 'something might happen'.  I tried to explain that I carry food, and water, and a jacket and a cellphone and a multitool, that I'm getting a handheld GPS so I'll be able to better know where I am, that I take reasonable trail precautions, but he's still holding on to 'something might happen.'  Later that evening, one of the dinner guests, a friend of my stepmother's, asked me about hiking, saying "And you hike by yourself?  Are you really sure that's wise?"  I said, shortly, "Yes, it is."

I know that things can happen.  I know that it's not a safe world for women, that it's specifically less safe for women than for men.  I know that the thing my father won't say out loud is not that I might get hurt or attacked by an animal.  He is afraid I will be assaulted, raped, or murdered, and he's correct in his knowledge that my gender makes me more likely to be so.  What he doesn't understand is how aware I am that I might also be assaulted, raped, or murdered by someone I meet at the grocery store, or someone who lives in my apartment complex, or the acquaintance of an acquaintance I meet at a party, or a partner, or any one of a dozen other scenarios.  There is no guarantee that any place is a 'safe place' for me, not my own house, not even his house.

It bothers me when people like my stepmother's friend offer "Are you sure that's wise?" in hushed and scandalised voices, with significant looks to make sure I understand the unspoken "...for a woman?"  They wouldn't ask this of either of my stepbrothers, one of whom has been working in bars and at after-hours parties in all sorts of parts of Austin and San Antonio pretty much since he finished college -- and neither of whom has the sort of skills and experience I have at taking care of myself.

The conversation with my father trailed off when I tried to explain that I was refusing to accept what I felt were gender-based attitudes towards my need for fear.  I said, "You wouldn't ask those questions of a son.  You're a father of two daughters you didn't raise to be cowards.  Doesn't it bother you that I'm expected to live a life in fear, that I'm just supposed to accept that the world is more dangerous for me?"  He didn't have an answer, except that "It's just the way the world is."

He thinks I'm being fearless.  I'm not being fearless.  I'm often very, very afraid, so afraid that my hands shake and my voice threatens to give out on me, but I know that being afraid must not stop me.  There are times when I am in a situation, on a trail as the sun sets or walking further than I remember to my car late at night, and I think, "If something happens to me, they will say 'she should have known better than to do that in this dangerous world' and shake their heads.  They will say I 'got myself' hurt, and that of course I didn't 'deserve' it, precisely, but what did I expect?"

But I walk on, and I force myself to hold up my head, to project confidence, to make each stride firm and decisive.  In part, it's because I have no other option.  I can't call my dad, or some other male, to come and walk me back to my car or finish that last half-mile of trail with me.  I can't just stop living, stop moving, stop having experiences just because my gender makes me a target.  I can't pass up my life just because I'm afraid to live it without an escort, a chaperone, a bodyguard, a buddy.

There's another reason, a stronger one, that makes me brave when I am scared: I never know who's watching me.  Maybe it's a predator looking for a soft target, who'll move along when he sees my squared shoulders and easy stride.  More than that?  Maybe it's another woman, another frightened woman who's being told she must stay in the light, must behave, must follow all the rules, must never walk alone, must never trust in her own companionship, and maybe she'll see me and straighten her own back, hold up her own head.  And maybe it's a little girl, building the character of the woman she'll be.  Maybe when people push her to fear, to hide, to stay with the herd, she'll remember me, walking alone in the places I have every right to be, and she'll accept the danger as I do, steady her hands, and set out to choose her own way.

In Which I Am Grateful to my Dead

I used to spend some time each summer at my grandparents' farm in eastern Missouri.  I'm sure my long-suffering mother viewed it as a blessed reprieve from her increasingly snarky younger daughter, but what it ended up being was a chance for me to really get to know my grandmother when neither of us was on 'company' behaviour.  I was a fully tempestuous teenager, and she was not as willing to overlook my attitude; we got along remarkably well despite that.

The year I turned fifteen, I suffered the agony of agonies, the most terrible trauma, that utterly awful experience: having to talk to an adult about my period because I had not planned adequately and had convinced myself that somehow, if I really really didn't want to deal with it during the visit, it would just...not happen.  Every woman reading this is snickering.  I can hear you all.

Mortified, horrified by my body's betrayal, I went to my grandmother and confessed my moon-bound shame in a barely audible mumble, wishing desperately that the earth would open and swallow me.  She merely said, "Well, then, I guess you need some of those pad things.  I got some in the mail once and I think they're in a drawer, and then you and I will just go into town to the Wal-mart and get you more."  With an utter minimum of fuss and angst (remarkable given my tendency to melodrama), the matter was resolved within an hour and I was left completely flummoxed by her practical, reasonable management of a situation that had seemed utterly daunting to me.

If anyone who knows me has ever been surprised by my ability to manage other peoples' crises pragmatically and swiftly, be assured that I come by it honestly; my mother does it as brilliantly as my grandmother ever did, and I strive to meet their example.

That hour, in which my shame and embarrassment and resentment of my own body were dispatched by calm acceptance and rational problem-solving, remains one of my core memories of my grandmother.  One of the other ones that stands out is a recurring one:  after I went away to college, got married, got divorced, and all through the years of living in Kansas and even living in Texas, every time I went to have dinner with my grandmother, she tried to have mashed potatoes on the table one way or another.  She knew they were one of my favorite foods, and for some reason they're just not a food people usually make for themselves.  Plus, she made way better gravy than I do.  Tonight, to honor her, I'm making roast beef, mashed potatoes, green beans, and those brownies she used to call the 'diet-busters', caramel and chocolate chips oozing in the middle.  I'm setting her out a little plate and a small glass of wine.

I miss my grandmother.  We only saw each other once a year, and rarely spoke on the phone, but the knowledge that she's no longer there affects my entire world.  It's been almost a year since she died, and I still occasionally look at something I've done, some way I've interacted, and hope that she would be proud of me.

As the sun sets on the last day of the year, and the night rises, I tend to think on the lessons my dead have taught me, and those I'm learning from the living.  I plan for my long winter's burning by remembering those who have brightened my own path one way or another.

From my grandmother, I learned not only that reassuring pragmatism and a delight in simple food prepared well, but an even more important truth:  kindness is never wasted energy.

From my stepfather, who made me welcome in his house and found ways to give me 'extra' meat and vegetables without either of us admitting I didn't have enough to eat in college, I learned that it's worthwhile to try and find ways to help others that allow them to keep their dignity and their sense of self-worth.

From my Aunt Justine and Uncle Warren, I learned that family is not just about direct bloodlines, and that the abundance of a home is never diminished by sharing its hospitality and laughter.

From my best friend Jen, I learned that just because you aren't the brightest star in a given constellation, that's no excuse not to shine for all you're worth, because your light adds to the beauty of the sky in ways you can't see.

From Tony, gone almost twenty years, one of the hardest lessons:  live your life for yourself, because you can't save people against their will.

From my maternal great-grandmother, a stronger woman than I ever understood while she lived, I learned that we are not only who we appear to be in any single moment of our lives.

From my father's mother, the first death I can recall, comes the understanding that the joy of freely sharing what you have is not necessarily dependent on whether the magnitude of that gift is fully understood by the recipient.

They stand around me, and more, cousins and great-aunts and friends and long-gone loved ones, each with a lesson or a blessing or a challenge, and as the veil thins between the worlds I open my heart to listen to them, to accept what they bring to me and offer my own gratitude.  I think of artists and musicians, of writers and speakers who have all added to the Beauty of this world, and I'm profoundly thankful that their passions live on.

I have been blessed in my life, to be touched by bright souls and strong ones.  I have been loved and challenged and shaped by them, and I continue to be.  Gods willing, I shall continue to be.

The old year is dying, the new one beginning, and I offer thanks and farewell to my dead for another year.  I release my own dead weight, my old habits and fears and resentments, and feed that which I do not need into my Samhain fire.  May it burn through the coming winter to illuminate my path, to give me fuel to stand as a beacon and kindle those whose fires burn low in the darkness and the cold.

So mote it be.