Quit yer bitchin'.

I thought a lot of people were wusses in the 80s. The people that sued every time their Precious fell off a swing or skinned his/her knee by slipping on a grape. The people who drove the Beloved Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich from the halls of American schools. The people who, because they once heard a story about a razor blade in a candy bar, have organized enormous Halloween orgies and have abandoned trick-or-treating.

A post I read on tonight's Amazon Crybaby Boards topped them all, however. She once caught her UPS man smoking in his truck! Being the Safety Patrol that she was, she immediately called UPS and discovered that, at least in her area, this was a permissible practice. Then she went on to wring her hands and gnash her teeth about the possible side effects this dusting of smoke would have on the stuff she bought for her baby on the inside of the package.

Today's uniformed environmentalists are a different stripe of "penny wise, pound foolish" in that they look at the most obvious thing to crucify, all the while missing all the other hazards that are slipping right by their ignorant little noses. In this woman's case, there are the toxins that go into the production and display of childrens' clothing. Everything from benzene to formaldehyde can be present in everything from the hanger to the compound used to keep the fabrics wrinkle-free during the sales process. Not only that, but the fumes emitting from the UPS truck were more toxic than the residue of smoke that might have settled on part of her box. Finally, there's the red herring in the room--assuming that the woman actually needed, and didn't just want, the item for her Precious, did she try to get it used, where it wouldn't require any new resources to produce, where it would be less expensive, and where it would, in most cases, support a charitable organization? No. I doubt none of that crossed her little mind as she went off on the most obvious thing around her child's new trinket. And you can be damned sure she never once considered the working conditions of the faraway employees that made it or all of the fossil fuels that were burned getting the item to the seller who shipped it in the first place.

The anti-LNG camp also strikes me as being part of this group. These are the same people that trucked in paid protesters, in their fossil fuel burning cars, from Portland, to help pad the numbers of LNG naysayers.

Do I think that an LNG plant is "good" for the river? No, I do not. But Bradwood is bending over backwards to make sure that they do everything possible to have as little impact as reasonably possible on the area. But these people, most of whom use natural gas in their homes and throughout their daily lives, never stop to consider that far more horrifying things sit next to them in trucks in traffic every day, that a well-aimed beebee to some of them would take out everyone around said truck. They never stop to think what exactly is in those ships going up and down that pretty river, and what would happen if any of them cracked open. You want to see devestation? You couldn't handle the devastation. An LNG plant explosion in an isolated area cannot compete with what would happen should the contents of some of those trucks run into the downtown sewers or the contents of those pretty ships poured into the Columbia. And yet, not a word about that.

An LNG plant IS going in on the Columbia River. At last count, I believe it was down to three sites. So, regardless of your pissing and moaning, it is a foregone conclusion. So let's talk about what's really at stake here. NIMBY. Not. In. My. Back. Yard. You use natural gas already, you keep yourself warm in the winter with it, you stand under your showers with water heated with it--and it doesn't get there by the natural gas fairy, nor does your electricity or even the cord of wood you've laid in for the winter. Ecosystems were razed to put in the plants that process ANY of the energy that you use. But people want to put the nastiness of that energy production somewhere else. Somewhere where you don't have to think about it.

Meanwhile, huge amounts of money, money that is so desperately needed by people in this community, by the schools, and the jobs created therein, will go somewhere else. So they can either deliver same LNG here either in a ship or in a truck, or by pipeline.

There are just too many old adages here that fit to believe. That you are cutting off your nose to spite your face. That you can't see the forest for the trees. But no matter how you slice it, all of the pseudo-environmentalists have one thing in common: you're all hypocrites. LNG-using, fossil fuel guzzling, child labor benefitting hypocrites. And until you can show me, really show me that you are one of the few that has a carbon footprint befitting your tirades, then quit yer bitchin'.

Light.

Yesterday was two weeks since my reduction surgery. And now that things are starting to get back to normal, I have had time to think about how I feel about the results so far.

In short, I am thrilled.

Don't get me wrong, the girls are still not wonders to behold. When you first get out of surgery, the shape of your breasts is almost boxy at the bottom. This is because I had a great deal removed and was given what is called an "anchor" incision. Now, two weeks later, things are settling into a more rounded, normal shape. However, the incisions are still there and it will take at least a year until they fade into almost nothingness.

But as for how I feel in my own skin? That has totally changed. I went bra shopping and got normal bras. Not enormous engineered things, but nice, normal bras. They also didn't cost a fortune. They don't pull on my shoulders, they don't pinch my neck. When I sleep at night, I just go to sleep, there's none of this endless rearranging of my shirt or sheets around them because of sweating or rash issues. I just go to sleep.

I can wear shirts that don't have to be oversized for the top of my torso, and thus don't make me look pregnant on my lower torso. I have done a purge of clothing in my closet that no longer works for me. My sister sent me things with spaghetti straps--with spaghetti straps! And I kept them because I can wear them! I can wear sports camisoles to work out, not XXL t-shirts that were too big for my husband. I don't hunch, when I walk by my reflection I don't sink a little more into darkness. I look like I should for my height and my bone structure. I have donated the large bathing suit top that still didn't fit.

SH was talking to MIL and she remarked that just because the top had been reset to 18, the bottom part was still going to be a saggy old 42. Well not for long--because once the pain of the sutures is gone I am going to run! I am going to get on that treadmill and go for as long as I can, then hit the elliptical for the rest of the hour until I am up to an hour on the treadmill. Because now I can. The last time I tried to run, I had to cross my arms over my chest and I was wearing a $50 sports bra that was supposed to prevent that.

My neck hasn't hurt once, or my lower back, and I can go braless to bed. For all the hassle and the near death experiences and everything, this has been a great thing for me.

It's not only my top that feels lighter, having the reduction surgery has made my spirit feel lighter as well.

I'm just happy to be here.

Well, a week ago, I coded at the hospital. Apparently, I had either a reaction or overdosed on the post-operative narcotics I was given. After post-op, I was given my room, and left alone. I talked SH, clicked on Oprah and promptly fell asleep.

Down the hall, an RN was making a decision: Do I take my break now, or see one last patient and get her vitals before break? I am here today because she chose the latter. When she walked in, I was blue. A code was called, I was hit with Narcan twice and bagged and I came to.

Now, let me just say, I saw no white light, nobody waving me on. I just went to sleep. So if I had never woken up, I would never have known the difference. It's retrospect that's a bitch. NOW I get to freak about how it was mere chance that I got checked before rather than after, and what that would of meant to my family. My kids are not old enough to have a dead mother.

So while all these things go through my mind, I am wondering why post-op patients just aren't hooked up to a simple, non-invasive O2 sat machine? There are like seven in every room, they're so common. That kind of bugs me.

Then people are whispering that the hospital was negligent and I should sue. Let me explain something to you about lawsuits: I grew up in a very sue-happy Southern California. A lot of shit got ruined because people sued over bullshit. They are even removing swings from certain playgrounds at this point. There are no longer those merry go rounds in Cali parks, like the ones my kids have such a great time on here. In people's zest to make this a Fisher-Price world, they drove up the cost of a ton of stuff, and took away some even cooler stuff--and, frankly, abrogated a lot of Darwin's authority. So I vowed I would never, ever sue unless it was so malicious, so cut-and-dried that there wouldn't be a question. I never thought it would be nebulous.

Because I don't believe any of those people in charge of me were malicious, and I'm not even sure any policy was ignored. I don't want to end up costing jobs or creating trouble for my plastic surgeon, whom I like and wasn't a part of the incident. On the other hand, I almost died. My son is four. He wouldn't even remember me. Not only that, but the other day, I had to get out of the house because the guys were putting something together and the noise of them working and the way they were shouting orders at each other was too much like my room when I came to and i just had to get out. Nightmares, too.

On the other hand, money won't change that. But I have to wonder if I could get them to do mandatory monitoring on all post-general anesthesia patients.

I'm not going to think about it. Today I had a great day, a great family day. I'm already a week up on time I might not have gotten. So I'm just happy to be here.

Breaking up with Obama.

I have seen the sad, realistic light of day.

Friends of mine saw it long ago, that Barack Obama is part of the same Washington DC system that has spawned ineffectual politician after ineffectual politician. It was easy to see that W. was corrupt. In terms of transparency, the Bush administration was it for seeing all that could be wrong with people's hearts when it came to greed. Even with the Clinton administration, most of us kind of liked the guy, and times were pretty good for us working stiffs under Clinton. But he was still a DC insider, selling his influence and getting his blow jobs where he could.

So, by the time Barack Obama became a blip on my radar, I had a realistic attitude about politics and the people who make their lives in them. I already realized how much money was being tossed at everyone in an elected position, I knew full well that it influenced every one of them. So why did I allow myself to be drawn into the Obama campaign? Why, for the first time ever, did I work for a campaign, put the stickers on my house, and feel energized? I think it was because he did talk in enough of a direct and common sense way, and he was a relative rookie to national politics that I thought he could be different.

Becuase one thing I detest about politicians is them talking to me as if I'm stupid, and Barack Obama spoke straight in a way I hadn't heard since Reagan.

So I voted, and he won. And I've waited. And I let it slide when he didn't insist on the public option, the deletion of which made the health care bill merely a boon for the insurance companies via insurance subsidies for the poor--paid to them. I began to sense that he was weaker on policy issues than he should be, but, like Michael Moore on Bill Maher last week, agreed to give it "until the start of the NBA season--the real season, not the fake pre-season."

But when I heard that, unlike any president, Democratic or Republican, before him, he snubbed a visit from His Holiness the Dalai Lama because he was worried what the Chinese would think, then I knew. This move told me so many things about Barack Obama on so many levels, and I spent the day in a state of disappointment and thought. But what I ended up with was a conviction that politicians are politicians--no matter what their stripe. Bush was bought off by the military industrial complex, and it's clear Obama is beholden to the Chinese.

When a regime is an environmental and human rights plague, you do not cowtow to them. When they are participating in the cultural genocide of another nation, you do not give them priority. The Chinese go against nearly everything that I believe is important for a compassionate society. The Dalai Lama represents nearly all those things I cherish. That means, when Obama chose the feelings of the Chinese over welcoming the world's single most visible diplomat for peace to the White House, I got all the information I needed to know. And though he's apparently agreed to see him--after the Chinese visit in November--it is too little, too late. He is just a man, but even more disappointing, it turns out he is just another politician.

Lest you on the conservative side think this means I might have seen it your way, this only means that I really continue not to. You may have been correct about the whole charisma thing being a smoke screen, but my basic values are unchanged. The error I made was hoping that he would uphold those values as he pledged to, which proved I had a little naievete that still needed to be stamped out. It has been, and now I can only do the things, make (or not make) the purchases, and effect the changes that I can effect. Counting on anybody else is just stupid.

Chalkboards.

Toward the end of my school career, around high school, classrooms began to have white boards installed. I remember thinking they were kind of cool and the pens smelled interesting. The errant tortuous scrape of someone's accidental fingernails on the chalkboards were now replaced by the far less offensive squeak of the white board.

Now, there are no more chalkboards at all, and when I refer to one with my white board-using daughters, they don't know what I'm talking about.

I can see the allure. Chalkboards were really messy. The chalk dust would be everywhere and would sometimes get on clothes and those erasers--it was a punishment to have to beat them clean. The dust probably gave all the bad kids that had to do it cancer.

LP Records

I know they're coming back on a fad basis, but there's no way I'm going to be spending $200 on a "fad" LP player to get the experience back. The sound quality wasn't nearly as good as digital either, but I'm feeling a little nostalgic about the way that you could stack several records atop a wobbly spindle, and the way they would still drop, one by one, and the sound as the arm engaged and those first scratchy seconds before the music would start. I miss the thing that came with the stereo that would let you play 45s. But mostly I miss cover art. I miss the large, colorful, well-thought-out art on the covers. I love what they say about the bands, I loved the collages inside and the "candid" pictures of the bands getting wasted on tour or staring out at the Rockies.

Swimming in the Ocean in just my bathing suit.

Forget it here, not going to happen. It's not a criticism, Oregon is beautiful. But it's reality. But I miss days so hot at the beach that you'd have no choice but to get in the water. And on a few days, it would be just the perfect temperature. And there you'd be, out by the pier, past the breakers and out of the rip tides. The salt water would make you feel so light that you could float for hours, and you'd have to come in when the sun started to get low. I miss the long, contemplative rides home on the sandy county bus as the sky turned gold and the coast was replaced by the dried wheat-colored grasses on the rolling hills. I miss how it would feel washing the dried sand off of my sunburned skin and how I never felt as good or worn out as I did after all day in the sun at the beach. Or how, when I would be drifting off to sleep that night, I would still be able to feel the undertow.

Being Home All Alone on a Sick Day.

So, today was supposed to be incredibly productive. Instead, for whatever reason, I got some stomach bug. In addition, Eldest and Princess were home sick. And Little Man, as well. Only Princess wasn't really that sick so she and Little Man spent the entire afternoon fighting, wrestling, yelling, and climbing all over the furniture that Eldest and I were trying to rest on. I remember being home sick when I lived alone on Roe. Absolutely nobody would come to the door, I'd turn off the phone, and lay on my couch and watch cable. I would dose myself with NyQuil and drift in and out of sleep. It was restorative, at the least. It was heavenly, at best. I missed that a lot today.

My Granny's Cooking.

The bread she walked across town to get, the way she seasoned her salads and her ravioli--those were the best of all. I miss the cinnamon bundt cake she used to make for birthdays and the biscotti.

And...

I already miss summer. We hardly knew ye.

Cheddarloo.

I have been a vegetarian since 1990. That means, unless there was some error, I have not ingested a single meat product since that time. By "error" I mean the time a year-old Maddie stuck a piece of Canadian Bacon in Mommy's mouth while Mommy wasn't paying attention at the Round Table. Mommy nearly spewed the minute it hit her taste buds.

But I gave up meat and with the exception of the occasional whiff of a Togo's Tuna Sandwich on white with Provalone, or the smell of KFC, I honestly can say I haven't much missed it.

The next thing I cut nearly out was baked goods. I used to love breads of all kinds. But now, I've gone from someone who might have had several servings a day to someone who might eat a serving of bread a month, maybe.

Eggs is another thing I am slowly eliminating, because, if I am appalled with putting my dollar toward the torture of cows and pigs for profit, then chickens have it just as bad or worse, and I need to be consistent.

One thing I have pretty successfully given up is milk. This was not difficult, because Almond Milk is amazing. It doesn't have the estrogen-heavy properties of soy, and it tastes a thousand times better than cow's milk. At least. And milk chocolate? I shouldn't be having that stuff anyway, so no problem. Even ice cream was not as hard as I thought, once I discovered the wonder of sorbet.

But there is one food item I consider so heavenly, so unbelievably amazing, that I don't know if I can ever give it up. I'm speaking, of course, of cheese.

Living this close to Tillamook is a lot like it was for my brother in law when he visited Sierra Nevada Brewery. It's Mecca. A tour through the Tillamook Factory is like the Cistine Chapel for cheese lovers. Oh, and they give you samples. Soooo many wonderful, wonderful samples. White cheddar so sharp that it makes your toes curle when you pull that tiny morsel off the toothpick. But toe-curling in a good way.

Then there's my pasta. We've changed over to whole grain, we're headed down the right track. And my marinara has always been totally vegan. But no asiago, dusting the top of the whole thing like the snowy white shavings of angels wings?

I just don't know if I can do it. I need to research alternative vegan cheeses, and I'll make sure Bug, my vegan inspiration, reads this so she can comment, because I feel that, ethically, I do need to take this next step and for my health, since the benefits of not ingesting animal protein are becoming more and more apparent to me as well.

But more than giving up In and Out Burgers, this one is gonna be rough!

Tuesday Randomness.

Kanye West is a total tool.

There comes a time in life where you go from seeing things from the kids' point of view, to that of a parent. That was my perspective when witnessing the Kanye West incident with poor Taylor Swift at the VMAs the other night. By all accounts Swift is a pretty normal 19-year-old. She's not pole dancing like Miley Cyrus, for instance. So when a very drunken Kanye West ruined her very first VMA acceptance speech with his "Beyonce Knowles was better" rant (which clearly horrified Knowles), all I could think about was how Swift's mom's heart must have been breaking for her daughter. True, Beyonce did invite her up later to give her speech again, but really, it's like redoing your wedding ceremony after you've changed your gown, because someone came up and puked on your first one. It's just not quite the same. As for West, all I can say is wow, viva Thug Life! See you in about five years...or not.

Unreasonable Expectations

Watching the news the other night, and there's some brouhaha afoot in some of the Portland suburbs about whether or not chickens can be kept, etc. So, cut once again to the irate neighbor, who looks as if someone has just stuffed a stick up his arse, complaining that he shouldn't have to hear noise because he lives in the suburbs? Excuse me? If you move to a crowded area, Einstein, it's going to be noisy. Even if everyone is trying their best, which many don't, just the sheer density of cars, slamming car doors, crying babies, arguing couples, pets, and all the ancillary noise of living, such as dragging the waste cans to the curb once a week does not equal quiet. If this man wants quiet, he should move to the country, and then pray like hell that he doesn't end up like poor Guy, who moved to the country to live an actual country life, only to be bordered by a bunch of fleeing suburbanites who just bought the suburbs with them. This reminds me of people who move in next to an existing airport and then start up protest committees to abolish the airport. Furthermore, if any of you think it's not only a matter of time before the people in the McMansions start whining about the Clatsop County Animal Shelter that's been there for a coon hound's age, you're not thinking. It won't be long before you're bankrolling the relocation of both the shelter and the baby jail on your dime because of the people who both decided to build these 5,500 square foot boxes and the ones who are buying them.

The news is just so over.

I remember Walter Cronkite, and growing up on that type of newscast, plus the investigative journalism of the 1970s, inspired me to pursue the degree I did. Except that type of journalism now seems to be dead. I remember the contortions that Woodward and Bernstein went through to break the Watergate story. I don't picture the new breed of journalists doing anywhere near as much work. I was taught that you had to get three sources in order to go with a story. But today's "journalism" is more about Kate Gosselin's new haircut or whether or not Tom Cruise is gay. You can absolutely run the story without any sources at all. You do gamble a libel suit, of which a couple of large ones are in the pipeline or just out, and the payouts are enormous. But even the celebrities allow far too much false information about them to be published without even challenging it. If it were my name, I would.

True, the news of old could be spun every bit as much as today's news, it just wasn't so blatant, and more of the real stuff was still getting through. It's sad to see how low our common denominator has gone in this country.

How can I miss you if you won't leave me the fuck alone?

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a child in my kids' dance class who is just a complete time sink for the teacher--which is totally unfair to the other kids. I got arguments about how the child should be handled, but this isn't what's bugging me the most at present. In short, her entitled, prissy, holier-than-thou, my-shit-don't-stink mother is. Because this woman is now annoying ME.

Last week, I was standing at the counter, preparing some signs for the upcoming photo services that I will be offering when the studio is not teaching dance. I noticed the woman looming above me, staring.

"Is it customary for you not to address someone who is standing in front of you?" she queried, imperiously.

I looked up. I have to admit, that day, I was bitchy to start with, and I certainly wasn't in any mood to kiss the enormous ass of this woman.

"I don't recall you greeting me, either," I said.

What followed was her huffing and this and that, and after awhile she went outside and looked at the river. I put up the signs and sat down with the rest of the parents. She ambled in about 20 minutes later. "I hope you don't think I was being rude earlier!" she said. And really, all I could do is stare, because what do you say to a person like that who is obviously so much more special than us that her kid gets to monopolize the attention that the good little girls should be getting, and who obviously thinks herself so interesting that we should all just be falling all over each other to lick her sandals.

This week, I'm bringing my iPod. I don't have any illusions that this woman won't totally disrupt me by poking at me to talk to her, but I am going to give it the old college try. If that doesn't work, perhaps a burqua so at the very least I can be making faces at her and she won't know.

I get that people have poor social skills. I am among them. But I'm not here to entertain others for free. She just wants to prattle, prattle, prattle, and I'm not interested. Poor C, who's such a nice person, ends up listening to this woman make very little sense, while I hide on the other side of her.

There's nothing to be done about people like this. They're interesting and you're not, they're entitled and your not. So an iPod and maybe a flask it is.

Got a rash?

I've now met the several people who are suffering with severe allergies to wheat, the latest being a baby who is covered with a rash, which is now healing due to removing that ingredient. But I've had friends whose undiagnosed wheat allergies literally robbed them of years of their lives. That friend sent me some links to pass on to the mom of the baby, but they're just too good not to put here, too.

The Mother lode of lists for Wheat - this guy is great for a lot of info:
http://www.facebook.com/l/e2d66;www.celiac.com/articles/182/1/Unsafe-Gluten-Free-Food-List-Unsafe-Ingredients/Page1.html

Wheat allergy testing:
http://www.facebook.com/l/e2d66;www.wheat-free.org/wheat-allergy-tests.html

Basic outline of a diet without wheat:
http://www.facebook.com/l/e2d66;www.lpch.org/DiseaseHealthInfo/HealthLibrary/allergy/wheat.html

I love my job.

So, I've been working now on two different jobs for a few weeks now, and though I am more tired than I used to be, and won't see any appreciable income until the 5th of every month, I have to say, I am really enjoying them both. I love the house cleaning job, because that is something where you can see the immediate improvement of the lives of your client (even if some of the kids can't find their stuff right now). And I LOVE the transcription job. The files are literally so intriguing (and sometimes heartbreaking) that I often cannot stop in time to go to bed at a reasonable hour. Last night, I was up until 3:30 a.m. getting to the end of one. There have been few jobs in my life that have even approximated that sort of interest with me. So I am very happy and the family doesn't seem to be suffering at all.

Drug Free!

So, about four months ago, my GP decided it was time to wean off the Prozac. I was dubious, but I did it. As a stopgap, I was given some Effexor so I wouldn't kill anyone. Frankly, Dance Mom should be super grateful.

Anyhow, I was beginning to notice that, on days I forgot the Effexor, not much was changing and I was actually a bit less agitated without it. So I haven't taken it for three days, and so far, not bad. Sure, I can be bluer--like about now with the PMS--but I also seem to laugh harder.

My physician reasoned that I might do okay without the drugs because the coping mechanisms I didn't have when I started taking it, at 25, I should have now. Well, yes and no, but a lot of yes. I would be really pleased if I didn't have to rely on any medication that could run out if Armageddon hit.

Don't waste it!

Do you see this weather? So what are you doing on your computer? I'm off right now to walk to the video store with the dog to return a movie. Awesome!