So, politics lately... WTF. No, you know what.. I can say it, "What the fuck?" I heard that congress spent today again arguing about abortion. Yeah, you know what? No one is a fan of abortion. It is a horrible form of birth control. But! Women and their doctors need to make these horrible decisions, not congress. I am past the age of child-bearing and yet I worry about all our young women. Congress seems intent on passing legislation re: miscarriages. I don't get this. Don't these people understand that miscarriages are nature's way of correcting mistakes? Oh, yeah, I forgot. They don't believe in nature. They would prefer mothers to die in an attempt to keep an inviable fetus alive and leave the living children motherless then deny those children basic health care or support of any kind.
Since 1976 there has been a law preventing government from paying for abortions. Abortions are in fact legal in this country as long as the government doesn't pay for it. Ok. I'll buy that. Some people don't want their tax dollars spent on something that is diametrically opposed to "right to life." I get it. Why do we have to keep talking about it? This is a law on the books. If you don't believe in abortion, don't have one. If you need an abortion, pay for it yourself. Ok. Got it. Leave it. If you think it is murder, change the constitution, and then be prepared for the consequences and take care of those thousand unwanted children and those poor desperate women looking for some relief. You men need to take a little more responsibility here. Stop raping. Stop impregnating. Stop forcing. Stop cajoling. Stop threatening. Stop taking advantage. Stop. (Oh, and STOP having sex.)
The larger problem is that abortion is not what the country cares about right now. People need jobs! You've read my blog... work is hard to find. Could I help to make ends meet working at a fast-food restaurant? Well, of course. Will they hire me? No. I'm 57 years old. I have a BA and a year of graduate work. The low income employers will not spend the time to train me when they risk losing me to a better job. This is the reality. And health care? Those low income jobs do not offer health care. They will keep one to 39 hours a week so one is always a part-time worker.
I teach on Mondays at USC. It is a part-time job I've had for years. I teach on Mondays because in my business that is my day off. When I do get a "full-time" job I work Tuesdays thru Sundays. When I'm working, I work 7 days a week. Theatre is what I know and what I do well. I'm lucky right now. I've work until well into June. But my work doesn't exist unless people support the arts. (Oh, and I make less now than I did in the 1980s. Substantially less.)
I support the "Occupy Wall Street." I don't care that they don't have a concrete solution. I support and agree with their frustration. I will never understand the Supreme Court decision to make corporations individuals and allow all that 1% money to flow to ultra right conservatives. I feel like our democracy has been stolen from us.
Not what I ever want to talk about. I hate this stuff. I NEED to stay light and happy and optimistic each and every day. I have to think of my family. Day to day we have to more than survive. We have to thrive. We have to make each day count for something.
At least once a couple of weeks I have to talk to our health insurance company. We see doctors all months of the year. We talk to doctors nearly every week. That is the world one lives in when one has a spouse with a chronic disease. It's okay. I accept that. But does our do nothing congress have to make everyday life more difficult?
Who are these people controlling our lives? Why does my husband's drug for MS cost $40,000 a year? Really? Are you fucking kidding me? We already pay nearly nine grand a year for the privilege of coverage. Our co-pay is so high we have a charity paying part of it. I HATE this.
There is something just plain wrong here.
And yet, I will wake up happy every morning, hoping and looking at the new day. My husband does the same thing. Maybe today will be better.
So.. we start the day with hope and will not be deterred. The sun is up. The sky is blue. It's beautiful and so are you.
Dear Prudence. Won't you come out to play?
Friday, October 14, 2011
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Kinda Perfect Day.
No more rants right now. I'm just tired of being angry.
I love the protests going on all over the country. I love the "Occupy Wall Street." I think we are finally seeing a "grass-roots" response to what has been going on in our country. The Tea-Party was never grass-roots, as we've all finally discovered. (Though some members may still believe that so.)
I had a beautiful day. My husband can no longer walk any real distance at all. He has always taken himself to a particularly good dentist in West L.A. by himself. (He's been seeing this dentist for a very long time and when we moved was not willing to change dentists.) Parking in West L.A. and very adjacent Brentwood is expensive. In the past, he'd find a meter on the street and could use his handicapped placard and his cane. (The dentist is in a medical building that provides handicapped spaces, but they are always in use and are always VERY expensive.) He can't walk from "up the street" anymore. I drove him today. I let him off and we agreed I'd come back when he was finished with his appointment.
Well. We were very far from our home. But. We were very close to to my first school. Down the block and on the same street as Phil's dentist, St. Sebastian's School where I started kindergarten 52 years ago last month. I was 4. My mother was in labor with my sister so my older brother and my Dad had to take me to school. I didn't know it then, but my brother hung outside the kindergarten room and watched me thru the window until he was sure I was ok. Yeah! Brothers are good!
I walked around a neighborhood I hadn't walked since I was about 6. I parked near the apartment my mother rented for us all on Ohio St. I gazed up at the 2nd floor apt. and made the walk to the school as I'd done many times in 1958-1959. I remembered there was a field we crossed as a short cut. The field is long gone, all apartments now. I once lost a precious piece of jewelry my mother let me wear to school one day. A crucifix. I lost it in that field. I looked for it yet again, today.. over the paved parking lots and outside the new buildings. How could I not?
When I started school St. Sebastian's had a small wooden church across the street from the school. The parish tore it down and built a larger church. I remember, at 6 years old, "Oh, no! My Church will be too big!" I was sad. I'd had my first communion in the old church. When the new rebuilt one opened it seemed overwhelmingly large and too new. Right at that time Vatican II came in. Everything about the church was less magical. I can't explain it right now. But, at 6 years old, it all felt different, foreign and ultimately less.
I went into the church today. You know? It is still a tiny little church. It smelled right. It was open to all, in the middle of the day. I looked for someone to talk to... to say, "I've not been here in 50 years.." and there was no one. The church was wide open. I was astounded by the trust, as I trusted when I was young, that no one would dare defame a church left open. I felt welcome and safe. Hm. Hope.
Thinking I still had time I walked up the very long hill to the Dentist's Office hoping to use the restroom. By the time I'd walked a much longer distance than I'd expected, Phil was done with his appointment and ready to leave. Oh, great. The car is 1/2 a mile away. Uh. Sorry, honey, wait right here! (I walked very quickly back to the car.)
We decided to get off the freeway early to stop at Forensis Farms. (My dad knows the farmer... his name is John, so we call it: Farmer John's!) Phil and I bought the always amazingly good corn and the most beautiful and tasteful tomatoes ever grown. We bought a huge green/red/yellow/orange pepper so perfect I want to display it and never eat it. Then, encouraged, we went to Trader Joe's. Phil was feeling up to it.
Back again to home. I made some necessary calls to our insurance company and arranged for another round of meds for my dear husband. Then, both of us sat and played online on our separate computers until dinner. (I made BLT's with those beautiful tomatoes and cooked some of the luscious corn.) We watched a little Keith, we watched Ken Burn's Prohibition, we watched a little Netflix.
Right now I'm listening to coyotes howl.
Kinda perfect day.
I love the protests going on all over the country. I love the "Occupy Wall Street." I think we are finally seeing a "grass-roots" response to what has been going on in our country. The Tea-Party was never grass-roots, as we've all finally discovered. (Though some members may still believe that so.)
I had a beautiful day. My husband can no longer walk any real distance at all. He has always taken himself to a particularly good dentist in West L.A. by himself. (He's been seeing this dentist for a very long time and when we moved was not willing to change dentists.) Parking in West L.A. and very adjacent Brentwood is expensive. In the past, he'd find a meter on the street and could use his handicapped placard and his cane. (The dentist is in a medical building that provides handicapped spaces, but they are always in use and are always VERY expensive.) He can't walk from "up the street" anymore. I drove him today. I let him off and we agreed I'd come back when he was finished with his appointment.
Well. We were very far from our home. But. We were very close to to my first school. Down the block and on the same street as Phil's dentist, St. Sebastian's School where I started kindergarten 52 years ago last month. I was 4. My mother was in labor with my sister so my older brother and my Dad had to take me to school. I didn't know it then, but my brother hung outside the kindergarten room and watched me thru the window until he was sure I was ok. Yeah! Brothers are good!
I walked around a neighborhood I hadn't walked since I was about 6. I parked near the apartment my mother rented for us all on Ohio St. I gazed up at the 2nd floor apt. and made the walk to the school as I'd done many times in 1958-1959. I remembered there was a field we crossed as a short cut. The field is long gone, all apartments now. I once lost a precious piece of jewelry my mother let me wear to school one day. A crucifix. I lost it in that field. I looked for it yet again, today.. over the paved parking lots and outside the new buildings. How could I not?
When I started school St. Sebastian's had a small wooden church across the street from the school. The parish tore it down and built a larger church. I remember, at 6 years old, "Oh, no! My Church will be too big!" I was sad. I'd had my first communion in the old church. When the new rebuilt one opened it seemed overwhelmingly large and too new. Right at that time Vatican II came in. Everything about the church was less magical. I can't explain it right now. But, at 6 years old, it all felt different, foreign and ultimately less.
I went into the church today. You know? It is still a tiny little church. It smelled right. It was open to all, in the middle of the day. I looked for someone to talk to... to say, "I've not been here in 50 years.." and there was no one. The church was wide open. I was astounded by the trust, as I trusted when I was young, that no one would dare defame a church left open. I felt welcome and safe. Hm. Hope.
Thinking I still had time I walked up the very long hill to the Dentist's Office hoping to use the restroom. By the time I'd walked a much longer distance than I'd expected, Phil was done with his appointment and ready to leave. Oh, great. The car is 1/2 a mile away. Uh. Sorry, honey, wait right here! (I walked very quickly back to the car.)
We decided to get off the freeway early to stop at Forensis Farms. (My dad knows the farmer... his name is John, so we call it: Farmer John's!) Phil and I bought the always amazingly good corn and the most beautiful and tasteful tomatoes ever grown. We bought a huge green/red/yellow/orange pepper so perfect I want to display it and never eat it. Then, encouraged, we went to Trader Joe's. Phil was feeling up to it.
Back again to home. I made some necessary calls to our insurance company and arranged for another round of meds for my dear husband. Then, both of us sat and played online on our separate computers until dinner. (I made BLT's with those beautiful tomatoes and cooked some of the luscious corn.) We watched a little Keith, we watched Ken Burn's Prohibition, we watched a little Netflix.
Right now I'm listening to coyotes howl.
Kinda perfect day.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
My New Rant.
My disbelief in what Americans will buy these days is stretched to its limit. When did we become a country that was more religious and less rational? I did not grow up this way and I was raised Catholic! We, my family and I, have always believed in the separation of Church and State. When did this become an issue?
Who are these people who want to put religion back into the constitution? Why do they want to take away rights all the time saying they want the government to have less power? Do they have an inkling of understanding that to enforce what they want, they need the government? When they say, "Cut taxes, not defense" it is an oxymoron. Do they even understand the word "oxymoron."?
No, because they are "morons." I may not know where to put the period in my piece, but I know the difference between piece and peace. I know that there and their and they're are different words and mean different things. I know its and it's have very different meanings. I know were, where, we're are in fact different words and board and bored do not mean the same thing. Your, you're communicate different meanings. What the fuck.
I'm listening and reading people who can't communicate in their own language. They are running for President! Doesn't that disturb you on some level? Really? It doesn't? Is it because you don't know how to use your own language? So.. you want everyone to be as dumb as you are? Really? The President? You want to have a beer with him? Wouldn't you rather he/she make the choices you can't make? Wouldn't you rather have someone smarter than you who could lead the planet to new beginnings?
Really. Grow up. Listen. Look. Who is smarter. We want the smartest person to be President. NOT the guy we want to hang with. He's okay. But, can he talk to the world?
WAKE UP! We cannot have the religious right take over the country. I'm honestly worried about this. We need clear thinkers. We need to pay attention to our Nobel Laurate Economists. We need to listen to our scientists. We need to be smart.
Ok.
My Rant.
Done.
xo.
Who are these people who want to put religion back into the constitution? Why do they want to take away rights all the time saying they want the government to have less power? Do they have an inkling of understanding that to enforce what they want, they need the government? When they say, "Cut taxes, not defense" it is an oxymoron. Do they even understand the word "oxymoron."?
No, because they are "morons." I may not know where to put the period in my piece, but I know the difference between piece and peace. I know that there and their and they're are different words and mean different things. I know its and it's have very different meanings. I know were, where, we're are in fact different words and board and bored do not mean the same thing. Your, you're communicate different meanings. What the fuck.
I'm listening and reading people who can't communicate in their own language. They are running for President! Doesn't that disturb you on some level? Really? It doesn't? Is it because you don't know how to use your own language? So.. you want everyone to be as dumb as you are? Really? The President? You want to have a beer with him? Wouldn't you rather he/she make the choices you can't make? Wouldn't you rather have someone smarter than you who could lead the planet to new beginnings?
Really. Grow up. Listen. Look. Who is smarter. We want the smartest person to be President. NOT the guy we want to hang with. He's okay. But, can he talk to the world?
WAKE UP! We cannot have the religious right take over the country. I'm honestly worried about this. We need clear thinkers. We need to pay attention to our Nobel Laurate Economists. We need to listen to our scientists. We need to be smart.
Ok.
My Rant.
Done.
xo.
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