Bell's Palsy Chronicles, Part 9

To look at me, you'd think I was almost back to normal. I saw an otolaryngologist about a month ago, to figure out what was going on with my ear, and he didn't see any damage. We concluded that it was just muscle strain that was affecting my inner ear, and that it would just go away. I hadn't lost any of my hearing, so that was a relief! But he did insist that I see an opthalmologist because my blinking was very labored.

The opthalmologist did a very thorough exam, and didn't find any corneal scratches or loss of vision. However, I still feel like I have sand in my eye. This could be from damage to the inside of my eyelid, but he told me to wait and see if it gets better before we investigate.

I've got most of my facial functioning back, and I certainly look perfectly normal. I'm still having spasms, mostly around my eye. That has to be the strangest sensation. I'm still using eye drops like crazy, and allergy season absolutely sucked. I'm still unable to purse my lips fully, which is the only highly noticeable symptom.

It's been almost six months since my BP.

Friday Cat Blogging

This is one of my mom's cats, Stubby, named so because of his missing tail. No, he isn't a tailless cat, he was hit by a car as a kitten and had his tail amputated. This was all before he came to us.

He just might be the sweetest, most affectionate cat ever. As soon as you sit down, he jumps in your lap to give you kisses. Oh, how I miss him!








And here is my little man, hanging out in the window listening to the birds. He hates this time of year because it's so hot. Poor baby. We'll have AC soon!

Denying abortion as a means of controlling women

Via Jessica at Feministing, I read this article at Marie Claire. I know, barf. The only real "magazines" I read are Bitch and Southern Living. My coffee table is quite the conversation piece, but I digress.

The article is a personal account of one woman's experience with the abortion pill, Mifeprex. While this is a very safe drug to induce miscarriage, this particular woman had a horrible experience with infection and hormonal imbalance for months after taking the pill. Mifeprex almost always causes very uncomfortable cramping, bleeding, and some other side effects. But in my opinion, I would rather deal with these discomforts than have a surgical abortion, if only because I would rather be at home, with people I care about and trust.

As I was reading the article, I thought about how it would bring out the anti-choice zealots in full force to shame this woman for her "choices". (For a little background, the woman was about to be married, but had been a cocaine user during conception and for most of the month or so that she was pregnant, and made the admirable choice of not bringing an addicted and possibly severely disabled child into this cruel world.) After scrolling to the comments, I was proven correct. The first comment made my stomach turn. The commenter had chosen a medical abortion a few years ago, and still regrets it to this day. No mention of how it might be the pregnancy that she regretted, or the lack of support she received from her friends and family, or the fact that our society shames women who abort and induce horrendous guilt. In addition, she claims that "the idea of inserting it vaginally itself was the hardest thing". Really? Putting your fingers into your own vagina was really the hardest part of your abortion? Wow. I put my fingers in my vagina every time I menstruate in order to insert a tampon. Has this woman ever masturbated? Likely, no. Get thee a rabbit, and fast! But now I'm getting off topic.

The next comment gets into the writer's coke addiction. So predictable.

I do not think using an author who had a raging coke habit (at an age when she should have known better nonetheless!) was a wise choice.

At an age when she should have known better? Basically, what this commenter is saying is that s/he can understand if the author was a teenager, when they probably can't afford coke anyway. Not to mention that addiction is a bitch. How many meth/heroine/coke addicts out there are really enjoying their addiction? Not many, I can guarantee that. And we certainly don't encourage pregnant women to seek help for drug and alcohol addiction. In fact, we incarcerate them.

But then we hit the real nerve, abortion as birth control, in the fourth comment. There are some folks on the fence about abortion, who say it shouldn't be used as birth control. Guess what? Abortion IS birth control! Women aren't getting abortions for fun, despite what some of the more unhinged anti-choicers would like you to believe. When you get an abortion, you are deciding whether you want to give birth or not. Birth. Control. That means that proponents of "Natural Family Planning" (since what the rest of us participate in is so UNnatural) are also using a form of birth control. Even abstinence and non-penis-in-vagina sex is considered birth control.

In my opinion, there isn't a human being on this earth of reproductive age that doesn't (wish to*) participate in some form of birth control. What baffles me is why people think that abortion is so abhorrent a form of birth control. I get that it's icky, but so is every type of surgery. Is there really a myth out there that women have unprotected sex thinking, "Well, I'll have sex sans condom, and if I get pregnant I'll just get an abortion on my way to work one day"? Abortion is the last birth control resort for women, save the victims of rape.

Next on my list is the hypocrisy of the "rape exception" of most proposed abortion bans. This has become so common in the political discourse that it hardly stirs a reaction. However, it has always bothered me. By banning abortion, sexually active women are punished. By making an exception for rape victims, legislators are rubbing salt into the wound of the rest of women by basically saying that the reason they can't have an abortion is because they CHOSE to have sex, and weren't forced into it.

This is the proof that anti-choice policies are not really concerned with saving fetuses, but with controlling women. And this is what it's all about. Privileged men, so afraid of losing their power, feel the need to control women who dare to act independently. (See, street harassment, rape, domestic violence.) Scary.

* When I say "wish to" I am implying consensual sex. Rape and incest victims cannot choose birth control, unless they are using regular hormonal contraception. We cannot forget these victims whenever we talk about a right to birth control.

El Portillo Sauvignon Blanc

I'm back, bitchez!

And to get back in the swing of blogging, I'm enjoying a glass of El Portillo Sauvignon Blanc*, an inexpensive Argentinian white. So inexpensive, in fact, that it sports a screw top, which I didn't notice until I brought it home. Usually, I don't "do" screw top wine, so forgive me.

As I was wielding the Ginsu knife to open the bottle, I anticipated a sugary sweet and unclean wine. I was somewhat surprised by the clean flavor, although it is a little sweet for my taste. In other words, my father would love it!

I like my SBs to be a little tart, and this one failed to deliver. In fact, it only has the faintest of Sauvignon taste. It is uncomplicated, which, unlike most winos, I prefer. I like single, delicate notes.

In summary, of course I'll finish the bottle. Duh. But I've had better.

* The website is all Java, so it's really annoying. This also explains the lack of an image or direct link to the wine.

Missing

It's been over a month since my last post. I've had some personal issues (everyone is fine) that I won't get into here, but I think I'll start blogging again next week. Lots of stuff cooking in my brain, and I hope to serve up an intellectual feast for the handful of people who read my blog.

Letter to my Mom

Dear Mom,

It's Mother's Day, and every year I say it's a bunch of commercial crap that the corporatocracy has manipulated from the peace-loving observance it once was into a stomach-churning orgy of flowers, jewelry, and tacky cards. But then people start to talk about their mothers, without all the consumer driven hype, and I always get a little sentimental.

Historically, I've been with you on Mother's Day every year, but I've missed the past two because of moving away to an earthly hell. I'm sad when I see daughters out with their mothers today, knowing that my dipshit brothers, if they didn't forget completely, probably instructed their wives to pick out a card or send flowers, and will then show up at your house tonight wanting dinner. I'm sad because you aren't appreciated the way you should be: as a strong, frightfully intelligent, creative, compassionate human being.

I always try to reason with you, that you're letting people take advantage of you, that you're letting people walk all over you, and that you need to look after yourself more. Because these are things that I refuse to allow for myself. That is the biggest lesson I've learned from you, how not to let those those things happen to me. I know you have some dreams, somewhere in your head, snuggled closely between memories of your children, for a long life's nap. I know you are too bright to have denied yourself dreams altogether, but probably thought that life wouldn't sneak up on you.

You are more than a mother. I wish Dad and the brothers could see that. I wish you could gather the courage to throw off the shackles that they've bound you in when you were too busy caring for them to notice. I wish you would one day decide that you were going to live a life for yourself.

I have a fantasy that one day, you'll call me and tell me that it's time to escape. That you've always known you needed to escape, you just had to find the right time. Then you join up with me and we raise holy hell. Whatever your dreams are (folk art? music? teaching? lounging by a pool drinking wine with a dog?) I would support you and encourage you. It would be scary as hell for you, but I would remind you that life is scary and that is what makes it worthy.

I have visions of who you used to be, before you were a wife and mother. I have a feeling you had a bit of a hell-raising streak, an independence that has since vanished. I hope it reemerges before you are gone, and I hope you can finally understand my fierce independence.

I love you, Mom, but I don't think I'll send this letter to you. I don't think you are ready. One thing I've learned from you is that you have to let people realize what they need on their own. I'm just waiting for you to realize. I love you and respect you more than Dad and the brothers do, because I know you are more than a wife and mother. You are a human being, and you are beautiful. You are my best friend.

I love you.

Quite Contrary

Working for "The Man"

I work for "The Man."

Of course, as an academic librarian, I'm not working to make some godlike CEO a profit, since academic institutions are nonprofit. But I still feel like I am part of that culture of profit, slaving away at a job while giving little thought to my actual life. I talked with my mother the other day about this, about how we spend most of our waking hours at a job that we may or may not like. I admire self-employed folks who use their talents to support themselves. An artist has an opportunity to do what s/he loves and make a wage for it. Granted, these folks usually have to take a vow of poverty, but why is it that we are so afraid of simpler lives and automatically shudder at the thought of living on less?

With all of the talk about Linda Hirschman's latest New York Times article, encouraging women to go back to work after having children, I have been wondering if this is "the" answer to female equality. Some of the talk on feminist blogs has centered around how arrogant Hirschman's manifesto is, that many women do not enjoy their work and would rather stay home with the kid for a couple of years. Or that many women do not make high enough wages in the first place to justify a regular babysitter, so they are actually saving money by staying home with the kid for a couple of years. Or that many women really don't even have an option to stay home with the kid for a couple of years, because they are a single mother, or because they need the health insurance, or because dad doesn't make enough to support the whole family because minimum wage in this country does not equal a living wage. Is our current work model broken?

Considering someone like my brother, I think it is. At times, it seems to me that my brother is nothing more than a wage slave to his family. He has three small children, with his wife staying home to take care of them. She could go to work, but with the three kids, they would likely lose money in the process, and they see no point in working for the sake of working. That's a respectable choice. Nobody should be a wage slave. Not in this country, and not in 2007. But we all are.

I work in academia, and plan to do so after my radical life change. I am lucky, because college campuses tend to be more progressive, and are more flexible with family emergencies. It is not uncommon to see a professor's children running up and down the halls of an academic building or quietly read at a table in the library, something which can brighten up my day in an instant. But you would not see that at a for-profit workplace. There is a strict divide between work life and family life. Family matters do not belong in the workplace, yet we have no problems bringing work matters into our family lives. Blackberry, anyone?

Being a woman who wants to have kids someday fairly soon, this is something that is at the forefront of my mind, because the idea of this either-or choice scares me. I am lucky in that I will most likely have a family friendly workplace at that time, and will be able to combine a comfortable professional life with a thriving family life. But I think of the other women and men who are not as fortunate. Where is their safety net when the kid comes down with the flu and needs a parent to stay home and make sure s/he doesn't dehydrate? Currently, we don't have one, and the Hirschmans of the world don't really care. Because we should be striving for that cushy lifestyle that we see advertised endlessly on TV while neglecting time with family, or working our collective asses to the bone to outsource our childcare, for what I'm not exactly sure.

The work structure in this country needs to change. Don't force dads into the wage slave role, which in turn disengages them from family matters, simply because they are the traditional breadwinners. (Pay equity would be a good start.) Don't just give women the false "choice"* between a) staying at home and being castigated by feminists for "opting out" of the workforce or b) working and being castigated by fellow mothers for neglecting the children. Part of the solution is to drive society toward a less materialistic lifestyle of power-hungry over-consumption and to place more value on relationships with our families, friends, neighbors, pets. Make the public and private spheres less divided, and start to allow real life circumstances to be considered in the workplace. Not only will this make people happier and possibly cut down on anxiety and depression, but it will also make our way of life more environmentally sustainable. In the end, women will have a real choice about what to do with their lives. There are a whole myriad of other problems to sort out in the meantime, such as health care, living wage, and pay equity, to name a few. But change starts in the grass, folks, which is why I wrote this post.

* I don't think women really do have a choice, because cultural and financial pressures usually force women to make these "choices".

Kids get caught, lie, planet somehow doesn't implode

This story is really hilarious, once you get past the utterly ballsy bigotry. Yeah, I could go on and on about the father's bigoted views of homosexuality, particularly those dirty lesbians, but I won't. That would be too predictable.

Instead, I'm going to laugh my ass off. It is so clear that these kids were looking for this book, or at least were goofing around the "naughty" section instead of doing what they were supposed to be doing. Which was looking for information on military schools. And what teenage boy isn't going to look at pictures of HOT LEZBIONIC SEXXX?

I'm a librarian. Granted, I'm an academic librarian, not a public librarian, but the gig works pretty much the same way. We have shelves of books which are catalogued and arranged in a way to make them easy for users to locate. Academic libraries usually use the Library of Congress Classification System, while public libraries use the Dewey Decimal System. So, there is very little chance that The Whole Lesbian Sex Book was shelved near the military education books. I'd say that this book would be shelved in the 600's, while the military books were shelved in the 500's. Close, but no, um, cigar.

Unless the book magically flew off the shelf and assaulted the boys into reading it, I don't buy it. And to think the father is just so outraged that his sons learned about a very real sexuality just tops it. I can guarantee that these boys knew what lesbians were, and probably what they did together, so Dad just seems to be grubbing for money and attention.

I didn't think I'd react so strongly

As days went by this week, my reaction to the Virginia Tech shootings has grown stronger and stronger. I live about 50-60 miles from Blacksburg, which is close, but enough distance to feel insulated initially. I never feared for my safety or for the safety of my geographically local friends. To do so would be a waste of time and a waste of energy, because we can't live our lives in constant fear of what might happen.

By Wednesday, I was really starting to feel the anxiety well up in me, and was desperately hoping that my panic disorder would not be triggered. I think it was the fact that NBC had received the "packet" of materials from Cho that played a large part. Every time I turned on a TV, tuned a radio, checked my webmail, I was confronted with either a photo, video or audio clip of Cho and his painfully disturbed pleas for help. I was starting to feel overloaded, not with grief, but with anxiety.

Thankfully, a TV station out of Roanoke (which is near Blacksburg, but also broadcasts to my town, since we have no station of our own) made the excellent editorial decision to cease all broadcasting of Cho's photo, video, or writing. Not only did they pull these materials, but they did it for the right reasons: because airing these materials is painful for the community and is catering to Cho's desires and disrespecting the victims. I will be getting my news from WSLS from now on.

I don't get very emotional from events that don't affect me directly. I don't know anyone at VT, or anyone who lives in Blacksburg. I'm acquainted (barely) with folks who have children there, folks who are alumni, folks who have friends or partners that work there. None of them were victims, so I feel no real loss. So why have I missed so much sleep? Why did I have nightmares Wednesday and Thursday night about Cho's face? Why do I have such a strong reaction to the gun control debate currently circling the blogosphere?

I'm no therapist, so I don't know, I can only speculate. Maybe it's because I work on a college campus in a sleepy little town much like Blacksburg, so insulated from the evils of the outside world. Maybe it's because I've taught students who are very much like Cho in that they have antisocial tendencies, but I tried to see the best in them and let them be free citizens. Maybe it's because I know of a few mentally disturbed people who own guns, some of whom wear them constantly. Maybe it's because we can all identify, just a little bit, with the pain and frustration that Cho was feeling.

Those calling Cho a "madman" or "psycho" are only describing the troubled persona he manifested on Monday. This man was confused, in severe emotional pain, probably suffered from a psychiatric disorder, and was living in a society that values rugged individualism and shames those who reach out for help. Who among us hasn't felt like the world had turned against us? Who hasn't felt like we were suffering from institutional neglect? Who hasn't suffered grief? Who hasn't suffered a broken heart?

We can't, as a society, keep expecting people to solve these problems alone. Cho didn't have a good support system working for him. I have yet to hear about his family. He had no friends. Therefore, it is up to society to take care of people like him for the good of the rest of society. Right-wingers call that the "nanny state." I call it common sense and decency.

Friday Cat Blogging

You're getting very sleeeeeeeepy . . .

"Partial-Birth" Abortion Ban Upheld by SCOTUS, Slippery Slope Predicted

This is just really fucking scary. From what I understand, through all the medical and legal jargon, is that this procedure actually doesn't exist. The anti-choicers have mangled the language of late-term abortion to appeal to those who romanticize the fetus, and the ban was written vaguely enough to create that slippery slope into a full overturn of Roe.

I was just talking to a friend the other day about how I think all anti-choicers are basically assholes. While he agrees with me and my stance on reproductive rights, he argued that some anti-choicers are good people. He was specifically talking about a woman he knows who had an abortion as a teenager, and when her family found out, they called her a murderer because they believe abortion is murder. (For the record, he is very close friends with the woman's brother, and grew up with his family and says they're otherwise good people. I've only met the brother.) My response was that, setting aside the argument about reproductive rights and when life begins, they were assholes for not being supportive of her. She made a legal decision. I'd like to stress that: LEGAL.

The anti-choice culture is not about protecting life, it's about controlling women. Rather than seeing this woman as a human being with what is possibly the most difficult choice a person makes, they simply shamed her for her "mistake". And they are assholes for it. I have an impossible time wrapping my brain around the idea that a person can deny science and not see the hypocrisy in the anti-choice rhetoric. If a blastocyst is a potential life that is morally wrong to terminate, then why aren't the morality police punishing women for flushing ova out of the womb by menstruating? After all, an ovum is a potential life, an even more solid fact considering scientists can now create sperm from bone marrow. What about women who cannot conceive because of a uterine condition? A blastocyst could form through natural fertilization and not implant because of a medical issue, and then just exit the body with the menstrual flow without a woman even knowing. By the anti-choice logic, these women should be punished for this. If you take anti-choice logic to it's conclusion, it means that non-procreative sex should be illegal. That would include the following: fellatio, cunnilingus, anal sex, sex with barrier/hormonal birth control, sex during infertile times (this means you, natural family planning gurus), sex in sterile couples, sex with a post-menopausal woman, and of course, homosexual sex. (Although the anti-choicers probably wouldn't have a problem making that illegal, either.) This sort of attitude may also mean that it will be difficult for a woman to have a tubal ligation, or for a woman to have a hysterectomy during her fertile years due to an illness. (Remember, the new ban does not make an exception for a woman's health.)

It is absolutely crucial for women (and men) to retain the fullest of reproductive rights, and not feel shamed for doing what is right for them at certain life stages. This ban has more repercussions than most realize. We must fight this!

Virginia Tech Shootings: The Misogynist Angle

There's been a lot of talk about gun control in light of the VT shootings this week. That's highly understandable, and it's a necessary discussion to have. I do not want to address that because I am terrified of guns. As a girl, spending the night at a friend's house, I had a gun pointed at me by an intruder that forced his way into the bedroom while we were sleeping. That pretty much turned me off from guns, considering there was no way to defend myself. So I am not going to address that issue here. (Others are doing a very fine job.)

I do want to address how misogynist this act was and how our society rarely acknowledges the danger stalkers present to their victims. Lifetime movies and romance novels will describe stalking as a form of flattery, often with the woman either giving in to pressure or ending up maimed/dead before anyone pays attention. Unfortunately, this reflects real society as well.

Part of what triggered the VT shooter was rejection from a female love interest. I have no doubt that it played a major part in his rage, acting as a tipping point in a life filled with disappointment, confusion, and despair. But these feelings do not form in a vacuum. Obsessive thoughts/feelings are a product of enculturation, or, rather, what you obsess over is determined by your culture. Our patriarchy sends a rather clear message to men that they deserve the affection and attention of the women of their choosing. Just read any MRA or Nice Guy's blog post or comment. Now that I'm reading reports* that the other victim in the dorm (aka "Stack") may have been the love interest's SO, I can't help but think that a hefty sense of entitlement was at play.

I'm quite certain that other factors triggered this rampage. Could the shooter have "snapped" in the same way if the situation with the love interest had ended differently? I'm sure he could have. But we have just seen, not only through the rampage itself, but through the violent writing and stalking behavior of the shooter, just how much he valued female life. That would be not at all.

Another point I'd like to make is that the campus and Blacksburg police did not deem a "domestic shooting" urgent enough to lock down campus. That sends a very clear message to victims of domestic violence, or, females**, that when a partner physically harms them it isn't as serious as if a stranger had harmed them. Some have argued that in a domestic dispute, the perpetrator rarely targets anyone outside the relationship. That may be true. But if the police had locked down campus, they would have had a better chance of catching the shooter because he would have had a much harder time escaping. What all of this tells me is that the police simply were not that concerned about someone DYING because it was the result of a domestic situation. He only killed his love interest, and apparently that doesn't count as a real murder. Because we all know the pain of unrequited love, right? RIGHT?

Sisters, we have a long way to go.

* I'm very reluctant to believe much about the personal histories of the victims, especially the dorm victims, at this time. Our media are too quick to get the story on the wire to really check facts, thus creating a vicious rumor mill.

** Before you send me a nasty message arguing this point, YES, I realize that men can be victims of domestic violence. However, the overwhelming majority of victims are female, and I am working with generalizations here.

Tragedy in Virginia

Today has been a violent day in Virginia, as 33 people have been shot dead at Virginia Tech University. Please keep the victims and their families in your thoughts.

Clos du Bois Sauvignon Blanc

This week's wine is Clos du Bois Sauvignon Blanc. It's another reasonably priced wine (otherwise I probably wouldn't be blogging it) although a bit pricier than the Meridian. (Yup, still lusting after that one, and the local market is out!)

A bit sweet for a Sauvignon Blanc, but still enjoyable. There is a strong bouquet, which I can appreciate, but I'm not sure I want that with an SV. I'll have a Pinot Grigio for that. But, all in all, it's a delightful wine, and would compliment a fish or chicken dish well.

(Image from closdubois.com)

Friday Cat Blogging

Taking a trip? Ha! We'll see about that!