Near Miss

I almost had a sighting of my children today. I passed them pulling into the driveway as I was pulling out for work. Nice almost seeing you, kids!

So Robbie? If you're out there? I need a haircut. Bring the clippers with your laundry next time. I'll lay in a supply of beer.

Love, Mom

For Val

I promised Val I would e-mail her a picture of the red truck, but I apparently don't have her e-mail address (which must mean that she has only given it to me 6 or 7 times, and not the actual 12 times required to make me stumble across it at exactly the right moment and put it in my address book). I know she reads here,even though she's too shiftless to actually comment. If you need something scrubbed with a Hype-Wipe, Val's your girl. If you need a pithy comment on your blog...not so much.

So Peeps...the red truck.

Pressure! Do I Need More Pressure?

Our little Joshie is going off to the Army to make America safe for pharmaceuticals. Or something like that. I'm not exactly sure, but he assures me that no guns will be involved and that any combat he's likely to be in will more likely involve the throwing of pill bottles than the shooting of guns, so I'm thinking this most likely won't turn into a "Johnny Got His Gun" situation. However, I'll be brushing up on my Morse code, just in case.

I'm expected to be the Official Recorder of Absurdity in his absence. That task requires treading a fine line; one man's absurdity is another man's tragic unrequited love for a pregnant stripper. The important thing is to put my own biases aside and create an unvarnished record that will let Josh feel the same stomach-churning frustration the rest of us feel every time we slip on the lab coat and step into the swirling miasma of melodrama and angst that characterize our professional lives.

To that end, I ask those of you who happen to work with me to please refrain from ratting me out to the boss., and if you have any fun dirt to pass along to Josh, please forward it to me in a typed double-spaced 500 word essay, or on the back of a torn unreceived specimen list with a suspicious fluid smeared on the corner. It's the least we can do for our boy on the front lines.

Josh, you're the Cool Hand Luke of the laboratory. Please send pictures of yourself with hot chicks you picked up in the mess hall or the commissary, even if you have to pay them to stand next to you. In return, I promise to send you Photoshopped pictures of Boss in stiletto heels and a Hitler mustache holding an Employee Opinion Survey in one hand and a 10 mL pipetter in the other, and remind you why being shot at by terrorists is preferable to another day with your laboratory family.

Carpe the Carp, Josh! And remember our motto:

"I wonder if I can have some organ removed that will get me 12 weeks of FMLA? Do people actually use their spleen for anything?"

Blog Neglect

It's not like there's nothing to blog about, because we've been busy and stuff ...

Vacation:

We had a great one! The first day, we drove through Kentucky and Tennessee on the way to Cherokee, NC and got a chance to stop in Whitwell, TN. "What's in Whitwell?" I hear you asking. Whitwell is the home of the Children's Holocaust Memorial, made famous in the documentary "Paper Clips," which you should see if you haven't. We'd been planning to get there and see it and it was right on the way to Chattanooga, so that was a bonus we hadn't counted on. We weren't able to go inside the tiny German rail transport car that houses the 11 million paper clips, but we did get pictures of it. Standing in front of it, it's still impossible to truly imagine hundreds of human beings inside it.

Less inspiring was the Grand Ol' Opry in Nashville. Who knew it was now a shopping mall attraction attached to Opryland? Ye Gods, we hope to never pass through that wasteland again. Whoever the Gaylords are, they should be ashamed of themselves.

Chattanooga, however, is a beautiful city, and the gorgeous countryside and pristine whitewater rivers of eastern Tennessee scrubbed the nastiness of Nashville from our brains. Then it was a long, slow, winding drive up the foothills of the Smoky Mountains in a blinding rainstorm to get to our "free" room at Harrah's Cherokee, for which we gladly traded a hundred bucks of penny slot play. I tried to make use of all the amenities the room had to offer, but the jacuzzi tub shot me in the head and made a lake out of the bathroom, so I just stole WiFi from some other hotel that doesn't charge for it instead.

Day two we were on to Charleston and a great room at the historic Mills House Hotel downtown. We walked miles looking at the gorgeosity that is Charleston, walked the Battery, peeked in all the gardens, took lots of pictures and found a brew pub to sample the cuisine and the local beer. I picked up a copy of the New Testament in Gullah and we bought a coffee table book with before and after pictures of the places we'd just been looking at in Charleston, then returned to our hotel to sit in the courtyard and enjoy the fountain. The next morning we visited the Old Slave Market museum before heading for the beaches of North Carolina.


Day three and four were spent enjoying Wrightsville Beach and Wilmington, NC. We romped in the surf, visited the North Carolina Aquarium, took the car ferry across the Cape Fear River and toured the USS North Carolina, which is very huge and very hot and very impressive in an "oh. my. god. I can't believe they lived like this" kind of way.

We ate at another brew pub and I had the best dinner I can recall having in a long time ... shrimp and grits, Charleston style. Indescribably tasty and just spicy enough! Ev proclaimed the pale ale "excellent!" The beach was relaxing and wonderful and we got sore calf muscles from all the beach walking and shell collecting. Ev almost caught a crab (the kind you eat) and lost her favorite banjo pick out of her pocket ... so, some good and some not-so-good, but the sum total was that we've decided we have to retire to the beach. We'll be needing donations, so get those in the mail right away, won't you?

Day five we were back on the road to Cherokee for the return trip and our second free hotel night. This time we had a lot of fun spending hours taking back our original hundred dollars, thankyouverymuch, and didn't spend it at the god-awful racist tourist traps all over town.

Day six we went up and over the Smokies on the way home, and I experienced something close to religious ecstasy. It brought tears to my eyes. Maybe it's the prettiest place I've ever seen, but probably it's just the prettiest place I've seen recently. At any rate, it's damned pretty. Coming out of the mountains into Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge and Dollywood will snap you right out of it, though. We had considered Gatlinburg as a vacation destination at one time. We're very much over it.

Please feel free to enjoy the rest of our vacation snapshots here, if you're so inclined.

Home:

We arrived home and found that Katie had done a great job taking care of the compound and all the critters alive and well, except that Pickle had acquired a brown recluse bite on her little head which had swelled to magnificent proportions, requiring a trip to the vet for antibiotics and anti-inflammatories. Once her head finished draining she went back for her hysterectomy, from which she's recovering nicely. I don't think she'll require the ten weeks off work that Ev's co-worker required for the same surgery, which is a shame, because I would totally have taken FMLA to help her convalesce if necessary. I'm that kind of good dog mother! We also discovered that we have a new flat tuxedo porch kitten who had been living (just barely) in the woods. We're fattening her up and hoping to keep her an outside cat. We shall see when the weather turns cold. She loves us, loves the dogs and loves the poultry ... and tries mightily to come inside when we open the door. Not very feral for a feral cat.

The turkeys are still friendly and have learned how to fly the coop, so they spend a good part of their day wandering the yard eating bugs and weeds, but the ducks are insane and hate us now. A week with only minimal human interaction has made them feral. They run and hide in the dome if we even step out on the deck, and they go completely insane and trample each other when we attend to their feed, water and straw needs. Ungrateful little fluffy-headed bitchez!

In sad news, we lost another Rouen. We're down to the last two now, and I can't bear the idea of losing them all, so we've confined them to the pen with the other ducks. They aren't happy about it, but I'm hoping they'll bond with the others and get attached to the new flock. The upside is that they aren't hiding their eggs in Al's burn pile anymore, so we can eat them again. (Al has been intently watching and waiting for them to hatch, even after we explained that there's no male duck. He says, "I'm going to give them another week." Good luck with that ...)

Okay, that's all the news from Nowhere. Over and under.

Reconciliation - ur doin it wrong

AP Newsbreak:

"This was a whole lot more than a simple affair, this was a love story," Sanford said."A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day."

During an emotional interview at his Statehouse office with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Sanford said Chapur is his soul mate but he's trying to fall back in love with his wife.

Do you suppose Jenny Sanford can even pick her head up and crawl out of bed in the morning anymore? What an asshole.

Damn

I just heard from a friend I met through the blog ... a fellow duck lover ... that one of his Cayuga ducks was killed this morning on his pond. It brought me right back to the day we lost our first Cayuga, and it struck me that, as jaded as the world seems sometimes, I'm proud to know other people who have the kind of heart that can be broken by a duck.

There's something about taking care of these funny, helpless creatures that runs the gamut from entertaining to exasperating to emotionally draining. As our original flock dwindled slowly from ten to six, and then suddenly from six to three ... and as we discovered that 15 ducklings is, in practical terms, at least three times as much work and worry as our original eight ... I sometimes question why we ever took on the care and feeding of ducks. They can be hard work, and you worry about them. Then you forget to worry and something goes terribly wrong. Every time we've lost a duck I've felt sad and angry, and guilty that I hadn't done things differently or taken better care of them somehow.

Ev always reminds me that the ducks are happy and that the smartest of them have survived over a year despite living in a place where there are all kinds of predators ... Darwin and all that ... and that they wouldn't be happy if we kept them safely penned up all the time. I know she's right, but it's still hard to see one less duck coming to the house for feed in the morning. My heart goes out to my friend, Fritz.

Mark Sanford is Sorry

Mark Sanford, the recently misplace Governor of South Carolina, is sorry. He would like us all to know how sorry he is to have been caught violating his marriage vows. And how very sorry he is to have torpedoed his hope for a Presidential bid in 2012. Very, very sorry.

Once again, we're in the position of gleefully laughing about the schadenfreudosity of another "family values" politician who's built a career on tut-tutting the immorality of Teh Gays, getting nailed (heh) with his pants around his ankles.

Potential GOP presidential hopefuls are dropping like flies these days because of their pants problems: they can't seem to keep them on. Nevada Senator John Ensign is also sorry. So are Larry Craig, David Vitter, Newt Gingrich and a whole host of other former political hopefuls with pants problems.

And from the Dem side, Eliot Spitzer and Jim McGreevy are also sorry. Bill Clinton was very sorry (but not so sorry he didn't think DOMA was a good idea to protect the sanctity of hetero marriage from potential gay interlopers).

And once again, I'm brought to this point. Guys, whatever is going on or not going on in your primary relationship is your business as long as we can agree that the same is true for me. However, when you pontificate about the sanctity of your hetero marriage while condemning me for wanting the same right, I admit...I get an enormous amount of enjoyment from your marital pratfalls.

Whoops! Another member of the Morality Policy trips over his freshly lubed nightstick. And it's our obligation as Americans to pass judgment on your sexual habits, right? Or...did you just mean for that to be for the rest of us?

Because We're Lesbians...

...we've acquired yet another cat. This one is a stray that was waiting for us in the yard when we got back from vacation yesterday. A vacation, by the way, that truly rocked out loud. A vacation which has left us fantasizing about quitting our jobs and living on the beach with our ducks.

So anyway, about the cat...

I'm pretty sure it's the offspring of the feral cat that had a litter of kittens under our landlord's abandoned truck last year. This one, as Bob is my witless, will stay an outdoor cat. Not like Mrs. Foot, who merely pretended to be an outdoor cat to lull us into complacency and then moved indoor with a vengeance, taking over our bed and the sofa, and intimidating the dogs into snivelling cowards.

This new cat has an appointment to get spayed next week (Hey guys! I'm going to the vet to get tutored!) to prevent the inevitable litter of kittens to follow, which would cause us to have twenty feral cats living on our porch and put us in the position of trying to give them away to our friends and neighbors, leave them anonymously in baskets on stranger's doorsteps, and maybe put a few in the drop boxes of the library and post office.

Oh...and Pickle got bit on her head by a spider last night and has a vet appointment too, since her head is all bloated and she looks pathetic and even weirder than normal...which is saying a lot for Pickle.

Good Honest Sweat

More along the lines of the kind of thing you really come here to read, here's a little poultry update for you:

Despite my existential funk, the poultry must still be tended to, and I tended to them mightily today. The big duck girls are running around the house quacking for their food and they keep running over to check out the cool new yard I built for the babies this afternoon. All by myself!

I dropped Ev off at work and then went to Rural King for straw, feed and fencing. Pounded a dozen wooden fence posts into the ground and strung 50 feet of shiny new poultry fencing to it, installed a small pool for them, gave them clean straw bedding, filled their feeder and waterer and put them out in the fenced exercise yard to entice them out of the dome. They ain't havin' it. They're all lying just inside the door looking longingly out, but not a one of them is brave enough to step one webbed foot over the threshold and come out under the big wide open sky.

I dragged a few of them out by hand and put them in the pool, but they jumped out and ran screaming back to the rest of the flock huddled inside. The big girls, however, are looking like they'd like to use the pool, so I'll go out and invite them in. They've already met the babies once and no one seemed to mind eating together, so we'll give it a go. Maybe they can teach them to be ducks.

The turkeys are growing and happy in their own little coop and enclosed yard, but I attached the big yard to their pen so they can come out and enjoy it, too.

I wish I were poultry.

Fuck It

I haven't blogged because, frankly, I'm just too damn tired. Not tired as in "fatigued" or in need of a good night's sleep. Not even the kind of tired that can be relieved by the well-deserved vacation we're taking next week. I'm existentially exhausted. It's the kind of tired that even the antics of baby poultry and a great visit with out-of-town guests who bring a big fluffy puppy to play with Pickle for a week can't relieve.

Tired probably isn't the right word for it. I'm demoralized, discouraged, disheartened and downcast. I'm shot down, cast-down, bummed out and blue. My spirits are low, man. I'm forlorn.

I don't see the point in blogging about it, because a) it's not what you folks want to read, and b) there are other bloggers out there doing a much better journalistic and fact-based job of it, but really, I don't see the point in blogging about anything else, either, because the reality is that I'm not feeling funny and that's a fact.

Life in Nowhere continues as it always does, with the usual round of poultry stories, truck stories, landlord stories, work-related stories and upcoming vacation news, but in the five months since Inauguration Day it's been overshadowed by a creeping, cancerous angst.

Whatever else we are here in Nowhere, we're a middle-class gay couple who can't get married. We're in the same middle class that's drowning and disappearing in these economic times, but our little gay slice of the middle class is doubly invisible to the Obama administration we helped elect. Now it appears, according to the DoJ, that keeping People Like Us away from our civil rights and federal marriage recognition and benefits is good for the economy ... although it's not that great for our personal economy. So we hear a lot about ourselves on the news and read about ourselves in our RSS feeds and find ourselves being debated by politicians and pastors and pundits ... and it feels a bit like being a helpless bug pinned to a piece of crap encrusted cardboard. I keep telling Ev that I don't recognize this country anymore. I don't recognize the hate-filled rhetoric being broadcast on TV news shows. And I sure as hell don't recognize the man I held out so much hope for and for whom I wept tears of joy on election night.

Ev says this is the same country I've always lived in, but I was living in the other half of it ... the white heterosexual middle-class half ... for the first 40 years of my life. Now I'm living in the half that actually feels the stick the other half has always been poking someone with.

I had held out a hope during the presidential race last year that We the People could do something positive to turn this country around before it imploded. I thought we were electing someone who meant what he said about equality and civil rights and healthcare reform and transparency in Washington and fierce advocacy, but what really happened is that I got seriously schooled in the realities of politics. Everyone makes campaign promises they have no intention of keeping to get elected. Everyone curries favor and takes campaign contributions from the folks who can least afford to make them and then throws someone under the bus. Everyone lies. Next go-round I'm finding out who the fucking Anarchist Party candidate is and sending them every dime I've got. At least I'll know where they really stand.

I don't know what the country feels like right now to everyone else, but inside my head it feels like we're taking so many hits from both our gay and our middle-class sides and being so completely sold out to corporate bailouts, political pandering, religious extremism and outright bullshit that the only possible outcome is for this nation to collapse under the weight of it's own greed and ugliness, and I'm not so sure that's a bad thing anymore. Sometimes the only way to fix something is to completely dismantle it and start the fuck over.

And would someone please tell me why we spent bazillions of dollars and wasted tens of thousands of lives to go halfway around the world and fight some nebulous religious terrorist regime when we've got our own Christian Taliban right here in the good old USA?

Anyone who'd like to give me the "America, Love it or Leave it" speech is welcome to hand me a one way ticket to Canada along with it. I'll be on the next goddamn bus.

Barring that, we'll be going to Asheville, Charlotte and the Outer Banks next week to play on the beach for our birthdays. Harrah's will be giving us free accommodations, because queer money spends just like straight money and, although they aren't very generous with the jackpots, at least they have no qualms about treating us like a couple and letting us bunk together in their lovely hotels. The rest of America should buy a hint.

Duck,Duck, Poult

We're three weeks old tomorrow! Time flies when you're eating 50 pounds of poultry kibble and growing like weeds. The ducklings moved out to the Duck Dome a couple of days ago and are still industriously making duck schmuck, but they're making it in a larger area with better drainage. They're much happier. Kwach and Ev are also much happier. It's a win-win. Here's a sort of low-tech time lapse to demonstrate the progress of the babies from arrival day to yesterday.

This is the ducklings on Day One next to a three gallon waterer in a dog crate, and on Day 18 next to a five gallon waterer in the duck dome.

Next up, the turkey poults. They don't grow nearly as fast as the ducklings, because they seem to be working more on leg length, wingspan and flying ability. They're getting very tall and leggy, their wings are huge, and they fly pretty damn well for three week old flightless birds!

Here are the turkeys on Day One in their plastic bin, and on Day 18 on their first trip outside to see what grass is all about.

Cute, huh?

He Likes Us! He Really Likes Us!

See? President Obama does remember we exist! It's Pride Month, and to celebrate he'll be forming a commission to check into whether we need another commission to discuss whether we deserve to be treated like American citizens. The commission will be meeting every Feb 29th, barring any scheduling conflicts.


From The Advocate:


Presidential Proclamation for Pride
Click the byline to view more stories by this author.By Kerry Eleveld
THE WHITE HOUSEOffice of the Press SecretaryFor Immediate Release June 1, 2009
LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER PRIDE MONTH, 2009
- - - - - - -
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A PROCLAMATION
Forty years ago, patrons and supporters of the Stonewall Inn in New York City resisted police harassment that had become all too common for members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. Out of this resistance, the LGBT rights movement in America was born. During LGBT Pride Month, we commemorate the events of June 1969 and commit to achieving equal justice under law for LGBT Americans.
LGBT Americans have made, and continue to make, great and lasting contributions that continue to strengthen the fabric of American society. There are many well-respected LGBT leaders in all professional fields, including the arts and business communities. LGBT Americans also mobilized the Nation to respond to the domestic HIV/AIDS epidemic and have played a vital role in broadening this country's response to the HIV pandemic.

Due in no small part to the determination and dedication of the LGBT rights movement, more LGBT Americans are living their lives openly today than ever before. I am proud to be the first President to appoint openly LGBT candidates to Senate-confirmed positions in the first 100 days of an Administration. These individuals embody the best qualities we seek in public servants, and across my Administration -- in both the White House and the Federal agencies -- openly LGBT employees are doing their jobs with distinction and professionalism.

The LGBT rights movement has achieved great progress, but there is more work to be done. LGBT youth should feel safe to learn without the fear of harassment, and LGBT families and seniors should be allowed to live their lives with dignity and respect.

My Administration has partnered with the LGBT community to advance a wide range of initiatives. At the international level, I have joined efforts at the United Nations to decriminalize homosexuality around the world. Here at home, I continue to support measures to bring the full spectrum of equal rights to LGBT Americans. These measures include enhancing hate crimes laws, supporting civil unions and Federal rights for LGBT couples, outlawing discrimination in the workplace, ensuring adoption rights, and ending the existing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in a way that strengthens our Armed Forces and our national security. We must also commit ourselves to fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic by both reducing the number of HIV infections and providing care and support services to people living with HIV/AIDS across the United States.

These issues affect not only the LGBT community, but also our entire Nation. As long as the promise of equality for all remains unfulfilled, all Americans are affected. If we can work together to advance the principles upon which our Nation was founded, every American will benefit. During LGBT Pride Month, I call upon the LGBT community, the Congress, and the American people to work together to promote equal rights for all, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2009 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon the people of the United States to turn back discrimination and prejudice everywhere it exists.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this first day of June, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-third.

BARACK OBAMA

There's No I in "Can't," But There's an I in "I Can't"

A little more work-related ranting?

This weekend we had staffing problems. Night shift is always tough to keep staffed. It's a crappy shift with too much work and not enough love from management. The bosses only drop by once in a while to remind the night shifters that they're losers and fuck-ups who aren't smart enough to be on day shift.

Saturday night's call-in du jour was a tech with one week left before our modest hospital disappears in her taillights. She's got a bad case of Idon'tgiveadamn. Sunday it was a phlebotomist who called in...the only one on staff on Sunday nights.

So Saturday I did the usual call-in ritual. Calling the phone list and trying to find someone: a) who would pick up the phone when they saw the hospital's number in the caller I.D., and b) was sober on Saturday night.

As it turned out, there was no one able to meet both criteria. So I stayed until 3:30 a.m. when a day-shifter would be in, drove a half hour home, fell into bed, crawled out of bed, and went back for another round.

St. Evie...that's me. Patron saint of suckers.

Sunday night, however was a different story. Sunday, Angela, my shiftmate (who is so steady she makes rocks look flighty), took the call and spent her evening trying to find someone to cover. Finally she called the phlebotomy supervisor, who helpfully informed her that he was too drunk to deal with it, and then she called our boss. Boss abdicated. Figure it out, says Boss. Call the phlebotomy supervisor. Maybe he can handle it.

I don't know how much anyone else knows about hospital guidelines, but we have minimum staffing guidelines monitored by a variety of organizations like JCAHO and the FDA. Being short isn't just inconvenient, it's illegal.

But Sunday night, we were screwed. So I called the E.R. and told them they'd have to do their own blood draws. Then I called the floors and said we'd be up for the stats, but not the routines. If they want it, they'd have to collect it themselves. Then I called the house charge and told him we'd be below minimum staffing.

He said, "Did you call Boss?" I said "Yep. He said 'figure it out'."

Yesterday I went to work and confronted Boss. We need a better solution. We need someone on call. We need a sober phlebotomy supervisor, or at least a backup person. We need someone to care that we're out of compliance. I told him we didn't have time to do his job plus our own, which involved actual patients in need of medical care.

He explained that he'd been useless, not due to a lack of responsibility on his part, but as a form of empowerment for us.

Empowerment?? I told him he'd confused empowerment with exploitation, and I don't make enough money to do both our jobs.

Kids, I'm already empowerful. I know how to ask, beg, wheedle, cajole, manipulate, coerce, and outright threaten any poor employee dumb enough to pick up the phone. But once they're on to me, I'm not empowerful enough to go to their houses and drag them out of bed, slap lab coats on them, and make them fulfill our staffing requirements.

Boss asked me what to do. Ah! This happens to be what I do best! I suck at empathy, but I rock out loud at "what to do."

What to do, of course, is to stop whining about how hard it is to be the boss and start making specific requests of specific people. I told him that if it were me, instead of sending out a big generic e-mail threatening to someday create an imaginary call schedule, send three e-mails.

- One to day shift, telling them that they'll be rotating a four hour call for the second half of night shift for one week per tech.

- One to evening shift saying the same thing. They'll be rotating a four hour call for the first half of night shift, one week per tech.

- One to night shift saying they'll be the back up, rotating coverage for an entire shift, at one week per tech.

Easy? Not if you're afraid of confrontation. He said some people won't like it and they'll get mad at him. I said no one will like it, but if we all have to do it, we can all not like it together.

The meeting ended the way all meetings with Boss end. In a conversation about how no one understands how stressful it is to be the boss.

I wonder if the ditch diggers and rag pickers are hiring.

Aw, Shucks! Schmucky Duck Muck. Yuck!

Once again the volume of our things threaten to overwhelm us. We have too many trucks (3) too many dogs (3), too many cats (5), and too many ducks (18!). We have exactly the right number of turkeys, though. One per lap.

And much, much too much working. I've saved every freakin' life in Southern Illinois. Twice. Screw 'em. Next time one of you crybabies shows up in my E.R., it better be with your arm amputated and in a plastic baggie. I don't want to hear about your flu-like symptom or your vaginal itch. That's why they invented primary care doctors.

Since we're not going to winnow the pets or the poultry, the only thing that can give is the trucks. And the work. But the work, unfortunately, is firmly tied to the eating and the indoor living.

So I'm planning to round up a couple of the trucks and trade them in for one shiny truck made in this millennium. This will require a couple of things; it means that I'll have to make a Sophie's Choice about which ones to part with (Which do you love more...Cow or Chicken?). It also means that Lori and I will have to march down to Cape Girardeau and pretend we don't notice we're being swindled by a dealership that we now own, thanks to whichever round of bailout caused us to own Chrysler and G.M.

Oh...and we need to not scare the salesguy with Teh Gay, so that he doesn't screw us on our trade-in or spit in the soup or do whatever it is that Missourians do to show their disgust for the marriage sanctity-ruinin' Homosexual Agenda. Maybe the really risque Missourians make their bold statement about the sanctity of hetero marriage by plowing their fields in uneven rows.

Get it? Not straight? The rows? (sigh)

So...less trucks. Next, the ducks will have to move outside. They've spent the last couple of weeks growing to adolescence in our spare bedroom/weight room, and now we've pretty much had it. They're slobs. They mix their food, bedding and drinking water into a paste that they use to paper mache the wire of the pen every day while we're at work. Even Lori's had her fill of it.. They'll have to move out to the dome like big ducks or they'll be the duck version of veal by the weekend.

So...less trucks and less indoor ducks. And less other things that end in -uck.

By the end of this week, we plan to regain some control of our lives so that we can have out-of-town company and not look like Zsa-Zsa's lesbian neighbors on Green Acres. So consider yourself forewarned: if your name ends in "uck"...you can expect a change of venue soon. I'm just sayin'.

Pro-Life, My Ass

Why don't the "pro-lifers" just drop the bullshit and call themselves the "pro-forced-birthers," since that's what they really are?

They don't give a damn about life, they only care about enforced procreation -- up until the birth, of course. After that, it's someone else's problem. Much like the sanctity of marriage, the sanctity of life is somewhat lost on these people, as evidenced by the fact that the pro-forced-birthers have no apparent interest in (and certainly want no societal financial responsibility for) the nuts and bolts of these children's lives once they emerge from the womb ... and no moral objection to the torture or murder of adults. What, exactly, do they think infants grow up to be?

Stop calling it "life." Life is what happens between birth and death. You know, those years between the time you take away a pregnant woman's choice and the day one of you murders some elderly woman's grown child.

Sanctity, my ass. You don't know the meaning of the word.

Poultry Update

The thing about ducklings is that they're sometimes hard to identify, especially when they're similarly hued in their infancy. As they've grown and developed a more duck-ly appearance this week, we've made the discovery that we probably have five breeds ... not three.

The brown ducklings, who were first identified as Indian Runners, on closer inspection appear to be three Chocolate Runners and two Khaki Campbells. We've determined this by noting that three of them are skinny, stand up very tall, walk really funny and look like dinosaurs in profile. The other two stand and waddle and look like ducks. Ipso facto, three Runners and two Campbells. I think. I've tentatively named the Runners "Godiva," "Cadbury," and "Nestle." I'm still trying to come up with suitably Scot names for the Campbells.

Likewise, the six yellow ducklings are no longer a mystery. Only four are wearing little feather hats, so I assumed the two hatless ones were either waiting to sprout them or were defective in some way. As the week wore on, the two hatless ducklings seemed to grow less yellow and more tan, and little brown stripes began to appear beside their eyes. After some research, we appear to have four Crested Pekins and two Buff Orpingtons. One of the crested ducks is actually friendly, which is more than I can say for any of the ducks from last year ... or the other 14 from this year. I'm considering calling the friendly one "Hedwig."

The four Blue Swedish ducklings have not pulled any fast ones or changed their plumage, so I think it's still safe to say they are what we thought they were from the outset. For the moment they are "Sven," "Olle," "Helga," and "Ingrid," but their names are subject to change when their gender becomes apparent. Not that any of their names matter, since I can never tell one from the other once their all grown up, but at least it gives me something to call them while I'm moving them in and out of their crate twice a day for housekeeping.

It's clear, at this point, that a large wire dog kennel is inadequate for housing 15 fast-growing ducklings. They've already tripled in size and are nearly as tall as their waterer in a mere 10 days. Fifteen ducklings is mathematically only twice the number we had last year, but they produce at least four times the amount of poop.

The turkeys are still little, being much slower growers, but have prodigious wings already, with which they can actually achieve something like short running flights across the bedroom floor. They have turned out to be affectionate and humorous puppies with feathers. They both appear to be boys, which is a shame because we were hoping to call them "Butterball" and "Jenny-O." But based on the tiny nubbin starting to protrude from their foreheads, which I assume is going to develop into the long snood that dangles down over male turkeys' beaks, "Jenny-O" is out of the question. I've also discovered that you can hypnotize a turkey by stroking the bottoms of its feet. Once you've done this, the turkey can be laid on it's back where it will proceed to sleep like a floppy baby.

When not sleeping like a baby or practicing his fast flying, Butterball enjoys re-enacting scenes from "Turkeyzilla" on the faux lawn of my dollhouse.

According to the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), there are 1,138 federal statutory benefits, rights and privileges conferred by marriage.

The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act specifically bars any federal recognition of same sex marriage, or conveyance of marriage benefits to same sex couples through federal marriage law.

What this means to same sex couples, even in states where same sex marriage, civil union or domestic partnership are legal, is that these benefits, rights and privileges are still withheld at the federal level even if you do have a legal marriage in your state.

This is a very abbreviated list from Wikipedia, published here because some of our friends and co-workers have expressed that they "never really thought about" what they get automatically with their marriage license and what we don't get by having one withheld from us ... or even by having one that is only recognized at the state level. Sometimes people suggest that gay and lesbian couples can and should secure these rights for ourselves by drawing up legal contracts. Personally, I would resent paying tens of thousands of dollars to an attorney to get a fraction of what heterosexual couples can get for a two dollar license fee, even if it were possible. But really, good luck getting a legally binding contract to collect someone else's Social Security benefits.

Maybe we should stop assuming that people understand what we're being denied:

Rights and benefits of surviving spouse:

• Social Security pension
• veteran's pensions, indemnity compensation for service related deaths, medical care, nursing home care, right to burial in veterans' cemeteries, educational and housing assistance
• survivor benefits for federal employees
• survivor benefits for spouses of longshoremen, harbor workers, railroad workers
  additional benefits to spouses of coal miners who die of black lung disease
• $100,000 to spouse of any public safety officer killed in the line of duty
• continuation of employer-sponsored health benefits
• renewal and termination rights to spouse's copyrights on death of spouse
• continued water rights of spouse in some circumstances
• payment of wages and worker compensation benefits after worker death
• making, revoking, and objecting to post-mortem anatomical gifts

Right to benefits while married:

• employment assistance and transitional services for spouses of members being separated from military service; continued commissary privileges
• per diem payment to spouse for federal civil service employees when relocating
• Indian Health Service care for spouses of Native Americans (in some circumstances)
• sponsor husband/wife for immigration benefits

Larger benefits under some programs if married, including:

• veteran's disability
• Supplemental Security Income
• disability payments for federal employees
• Medicaid
• property tax exemption for homes of totally disabled veterans
• income tax deductions, credits, rates exemption, and estimates

Joint and family-related rights:

• joint filing of bankruptcy permitted
• joint parenting rights, such as access to children's school records
• family visitation rights for the spouse and non-biological children, such as to visit a spouse in a hospital or prison
• next-of-kin status for emergency medical decisions or filing wrongful death claims
• custodial rights to children, shared property, child support, and alimony after divorce
• domestic violence intervention
• access to "family only" services, such as reduced rate memberships to clubs & organizations or residency in certain neighborhoods
• preferential hiring for spouses of veterans in government jobs
• tax-free transfer of property between spouses (including on death) and exemption from "due-on-sale" clauses

Special consideration to spouses of citizens and resident aliens:

• threats against spouses of various federal employees is a federal crime
• right to continue living on land purchased from spouse by National Park Service when easement granted to spouse
• court notice of probate proceedings
• domestic violence protection orders
• existing homestead lease continuation of rights
• funeral and bereavement leave
• joint adoption and foster care
• joint tax filing
• insurance licenses, coverage, eligibility, and benefits organization of mutual benefits society
• legal status with stepchildren
• making spousal medical decisions
• permission to make funeral arrangements for a deceased spouse, including burial or cremation
• right of survivorship of custodial trust
• right to change surname upon marriage
• right to enter into prenuptial agreement
• right to inheritance of property
• spousal privilege in court cases (the marital confidences privilege and the spousal testimonial privilege)

Another Day, Another Gay Rant

By the end of this week the Illinois General Assembly will either vote on civil unions or table it for next year. Springfield been conspicuously quiet on the subject, so I'm assuming it won't be going to a vote anytime soon.

It's maddening. I finally want to get married for all the right reasons and can't...at least not in any meaningful way. We can have some sort of commitment ceremony, but to what end? We're already committed to each other and to the relationship; a ceremony with no legal muscle behind it seems like a waste of champagne.

Last night Lori and I were laying in bed talking about our day. She was telling me about an elderly decrepit patient who came shuffling in on a walker. Turns out the patient was only 68! Yeeks! That's only 20 years away for me, and less for Lori. We've got some time pressure here, folks. It's all well and good for marriage rights to evolve organically during the lives of our children, but we need to get on it now. There's no one who doesn't know it's coming...why don't we speed the process along so that nice middle-aged dykes like us can provide for our partner's security.

We both work in health care. My employer provides me with health insurance, but Lori's employer doesn't. I asked my H.R. department if we provide domestic partner benefits and she said, "No. There's really been no interest in something like that."

????

No interest? Who did they ask? It wasn't me or any of the other LGBT employees. Maybe there's no interest from the hospital administration or the insurance providers, but there's a lot of interest from those of us who have watched our partner file down a broken tooth with a Dremel tool or split her blood pressure pills in half to make them last longer.

We need for President Obama to do what he promised and be an agent for change. We don't need someone to pontificate about their moral conflict or sanctity of their marriage or the need for patience while the religious right gets used to us and sees what nice gals we are. We need an advocate in the White House that will tell the country that doing the right thing isn't always comfortable for everyone, but it's the best thing for our nation. That we've wasted enough time debating, and it's time to correct this injustice and move on.

Stand up and do the right thing, Barack. Don't study "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" for another decade. It's been studied to death. Even the Joint Chiefs think it's dumb. Sign the Executive Order to repeal it, and lets get down to the business of keeping the promises you made.

Start speaking out on behalf of the civil rights of 20 million gay Americans. Don't piss away your chance to be a visionary while you waste your time trying to make nice with Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney. Do the things we put you in office to do: be a voice for those of us who have gone unheard for the last decade.

I want to marry my partner. That's it. I want what you and Michelle have, what Rush Limbaugh and his last five wives have had, and what every oppositely-gendered American couple have: the safety net that the legal contract of marriage provides to our citizenry. I don't really care about your moral dilemmas and your political squeamishness. Those are your problems, made worse by the empty promises you made that are coming home to roost.

My dilemma is that the safety and security of my family are in the hands of someone who cares too much about the Bank of America, and not nearly enough about the families of America. Tear yourself away from the bailout of Wall Street for a minute and look at the families on Main Street that need your help.

Do the right thing, Barack, and do it right away. We'll be coming to see you in October. Let's make it a victory celebration instead of a protest march, okay?

A Deafening Silence

"It’s wrong to have millions of Americans living as second-class citizens in this nation. And I ask for your support in this election so that together we can bring about real change for all LGBT Americans. I will never compromise on my commitment to equal rights for all LGBT Americans. As your President, I will use the bully pulpit to urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws. I support the complete repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Federal law should not discriminate in any way against gay and lesbian couples, which is precisely what DOMA does. Americans are yearning for leadership that can empower us to reach for what we know is possible. I believe that we can achieve the goal of full equality for the millions of LGBT people in this country. To do that, we need leadership that can appeal to the best parts of the human spirit. Join with me, and I will provide that leadership. Together, we will achieve real equality for all Americans, gay and straight alike." – Barack Obama, February 2008


" " - President Barack Obama, May 26 2009

You want to know how big a pie-in-the-sky Pollyanna I really am? I believed this guy.

A Hierachy of Citizenship?

Good news, California! Your marriage will still be there when you get home from work! Your rights are still more righteous that my rights!

You won't have to turn your marriage license over to the gay couple down the street. There's no danger of Tim and Victor or Michelle and Jennifer getting the same cool rights as you. The California Supreme Court has confirmed your God-given right to be better than people like me! Woohoo!

If I were you, I'd take this opportunity to do something really uplifting to celebrate your freshly validated sanctity. Pizza? Beer? Hookers? How does one celebrate sanctity?

Mayhem in Nowhere

I've decided that if the Supreme Court of California affirms Prop 8 today, I'm going to riot in the streets of Nowhere. I'm planning to take Pickle for the menacing part, and I'll have to siphon the gas out of the mower for the Molotov cocktails. I'm woefully unprepared. You'd think I'd keep a mayhem kit around the house for occasions like this.

I'll start at the Wal-Mart, where I can cause the maximum about of fear and panic. Then, if that goes well, I'll head down the road to the John Deere dealership. Fear me, Nowhere!

Well...if the rain lets up. I hate rioting in the rain.

Poultry 2009 - Day Two

I had to reconfigure the carboard surrounding the ducks' crate this evening when I found one of them running around the bedroom. I'll be damned if I know how they're squeezing through those narrow openings, but at the rate they grow they should be too big to do it by this weekend ... I hope.

We have a runt again this year; a little brown duck I named Hershey. I always seem to have a soft spot for the underduck. Yesterday it was just a little bit smaller than the rest of them, but they grew and Hershey didn't, so today it's about half the size of the others. This puts it in the position of getting run over a lot when they're all scampering around, but it's eating and drinking and piling up with the rest of them to sleep, so hopefully it'll fluff up by tomorrow. I'm hoping it was just a late hatcher that got tossed in with some day-olds and will catch up to them soon.

The turkeys are pretty adorable. I read that overcrowding stresses them, and since I moved them to their own apartment away from the thundering horde of ducklings they've calmed down considerably, stopped pecking and become quite likeable. They're much cleaner and tidier tenants than the ducklings. They don't play in their water, they don't poop nearly as much and they're sort of dainty looking when they strut around on their long legs. Tonight they were fussing a lot, so I got them out and held them for awhile and they both fell asleep. So, we've learned that turkey poults and ducklings don't make good roommates.

Segregation is alive and well in Nowhere, IL.

In Which Katie's Room is Re-purposed

You know how, when children leave home, some parents maintain their rooms exactly as they left them, as a sort of shrine? Or maybe they turn their rooms into something else after a suitable period of time? Well, we waited almost 24 hours to turn Katie's room into a home gym and hobby room for Ev and I ... and nearly four whole days to start raising poultry in it.

That's right, it's Springtime in Nowhere, IL and you know what that means. It's time for the annual McMurray Hatchery delivery!

The attrition rate of last years' ducks has been disheartening, especially since the pond thawed. Heading into winter we still had six Rouens and one Cayuga out of the original flock, but the Cayuga got snatched almost as soon as they returned to the pond. The two drakes disappeared a few weeks ago and today only three hens showed up at the back door for their kibble. Luckily, new ducklings were already on their way, and they arrived today.

We've decided that, although the ducks love the pond, it's not condusive to their health and longevity, so Richard can get his own damn ducks. We're going to erect a big sturdy fence around ours and put a drain in the wading pool so we can change the water more easily. Hopefully the predators have had their last free duck dinner around here.

Last year we knew what kind of ducks we wanted, but this time we opted to let the hatchery surprise us, so we ordered the Ducks Deluxe package. All you know when you place your order is that you'll get fifteen ducklings from three different breeds. They always seem to throw in an extra just in case, so sixteen ducklings arrived this morning, all alive and healthy. We got an interesting assortment! Five Blue Swedish, who are supposed to be gentle and tame, good layers and good mothers, five Chocolate Runners, who are supposed to be ridiculous looking AND prolific little egg producers (I named the runt "Hershey") and six Pekins (the AFLAC ducks) ... four of whom are crested. The crested ones look like they're wearing little feather yarmulkes.

If you're being observant, you'll notice that the bird falling asleep on its feet in the foreground does not have webbed feet. That's because we bought two baby turkeys on a whim while we were at Rural King picking up duck kibble. One of them (a Spanish Black) is mean as hell and had to be put into solitary confinement almost immediately. The sleepy one is a Bronze Breasted who turned out to be an escape artist. After finding it running around the bedroom twice, I hid and watched it squeeeeeeeze itself through the narrow bars of the cage ... and then moved it in with the other one in a separate container.

The "wading pool as brooder" method we used last year seemed less than secure with three dogs in the house (and I didn't want to scrub the thing and drag it back in the house anyway), so the ducklings have taken over Pickle's wire crate. And no, we do not drink Bud Light. We are merely using the carboard box to line the bottom of the crate. The temporary loss of her home means that Pickle has to bunk with Cooper in the big crate when we're gone. I'm not sure which of them is more appalled.

The dogs have all met the poultry and Pickle likes the turkeys the best because they peck her nose and she thinks that's playing. Cooper drools at them and Sage, as usual, couldn't care less.

More pictures to come, as ducklings grow rapidly!

Katie Goes to College

Yesterday was my day off. I had originally planned to work on a couple of new Adirondack chairs for our upcoming company, but Katie reminded me Thursday night that Friday was her SIU orientation, and my presence was required. So I got up at 6:30 in the morning, which is about 4 hours before I usually get up, fortified myself with a pot of coffee, and met her at the Student Center at 8.

This event sounded like a good idea...it involved campus tours, meeting with the departmental advisor, registration assistance, help setting up bursars accounts, etc.

When we got there, everyone got a bag with a schedule, a 2009-2010 catalog and a few freebies. All the families met in a big ballroom with booths set up for different student activities...clubs, Greek stuff, GLBT stuff, ROTC, tutoring. Next we all went into an auditorium for what was billed as a Welcome! But which actually turned out to be 2 hours of speeches from Administration guys about how cool it was to be a Saluki. Unfortunately, they didn't make it sound cool. They made it sound noble and tedious, like going to church five times a week. I could see the kids disengage in the first 15 minutes...checking their phones, texting their friends, rifling through their goody bags...and the parents weren't much better. Finally, after the last Welcome to the Saluki Family! , we split off from our kids. The kids went to little Wellness workshops (Don't drink! Don't get raped!) and the parents went off with someone who was going to try to explain how we were going to afford this. I did neither. I went home to show the motor home to a guy interested in buying it. He didn't buy it, but I'm sure the hour in the truck listening to music in the sunshine was an hour better spent than listening to a speech from the University Comptroller.

So the first four hours went like that: shuffling from lecture to lecture, being welcomed repeatedly by dozens of speakers exhorting the kids to go to class, participate in campus life, and study.

Finally, after the iceberg salad and baked chicken disk lunch, we started doing the things we actually needed to do. Katie met with her College of Science advisor who was properly impressed with Katie's transcripts and ACT score and signed up for her classes (Calculus, Physiology, Honors English, Logic, and Art Appreciation). Then we went to the Math Department to see if she could test out of Calc I and into Calc II. She got information of some more scholarships available for math and science majors, and we bonded briefly with the only other woman in the math department. Apparently, it's just the two: Katie and the one female professor. Other than that, it's a boys club.

At this point it was 3 o'clock, there was less than an hour and a half left and we had a million things left to do. I was wishing for those four hours that were wasted on the speeches in the morning.

We decided to forego the tour of the College of Science in favor of getting her I.D., and setting up her Debit Dawg account (sweet deal, btw...parents pay into debit account, kids have beer money! Yay!), then took a 15 minute tram tour of the campus.

At a little after 4 0'clock we left, feeling sort of robbed. Eight hours would have been plenty of time to do all the things that needed doing, if only we hadn't wasted the first four. She's going to have to go back another day to finish the stuff we didn't get to...the financial aid stuff, the proficiency testing, and checking into the Marching Band.

But it's mostly done. She's registered, enrolled in classes, has an e-mail address, an ID card, and a bursars account. She's about to discover the secret to higher education. The secret is that there is no secret. It's like any other job...show up every day, do a good job, and eventually get a vacation. After a few years of that, you get to stop and get a paying job. After a few decades of that, you get to stop that, give up your paying job, and stay home a putter around in the yard. And then you die.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, during what sees like an absurdly short time, you have kids, raise them to adulthood, take them to their college orientation, and repeat the cycle.

It's kind of funny, isn't it? It seems like an awful lot of running around if you consider it in Geological Time. Sort of like ants, but with more bills.

WTF?

We've had some weather.

Perhaps you've read about it? Friday's thunderstorms turned into an inland hurricane, whateverthehellthatis, and life was temporarily disrupted in Southern Illinois while all of our trees fell over. Now a week later the power is mostly back on and people are sorting out the mess. And we've got a shit-ton of firewood available to us. Black cloud/Silver lining. It's all good.

"Sorry about y'all's tragedy and all, but can we have that tree in your living room? Thanks."

Work's been interesting...running a hospital on generator power means that air conditioning and potable water become a luxury. As God is my witness, I'll never eat another cold-cut sandwich again. But the cookie bars were pretty good...

We read a blog post from a guy near here who wishes more than anything that our little faux-hurricane were Hurricane Katrina and we were being abandoned by the Feds in our hour of adversity...and probably that he were Anderson Cooper. But it wasn't, we weren't, and he isn't. Oh well...life's full of disappointments, guy. Maybe a novel about surviving the Inland Hurricane of Ought Nine will make you feel like your pain has been heard.

Otherwise? It's spring, our Ducks Deluxe package is in the mail, Katie's raking in the scholarship money, and I've got my semi-monthly case of poison ivy (Maybe this time I won't be allergic! Whoops! Not this time either!).

If we can get our camera woe squared away I'll add some pictures, but for now picture the bucolic Heartland with all the trees tipped over and guys in hardhats with their hands on their hips staring up at the places where the trees used to be. Now add a monkey.*

*This is our imaginary landscape. It can have a monkey if I want.

Insomnia! It's Whats For Breakfast!

I went to be at 2 a.m. which is normal for me, and woke up at 5 a.m. which is NOT normal for me. The bed was comfy, Lori was (weirdly) snoring delicately in perfect sync with the bird outside the window (which was singing, btw...not snoring), and I was spinning like a top.

So now it's 10 a.m., I've been up for 5 hours and I have to go to work in three more, I've read the blogs, pestered everyone I can think of, lifted weights, sat on the porch with the dogs, sat on the porch without the dogs, and just for fun, tried to remember where everyone I know has moved to.

Finally, in desperation, I've returned to my long-neglected blog. Slunk back with my eye bags tucked between my legs (well, no...not really. Because if I could do THAT, I'd stop blogging and put that talent to good use.)

So in lieu of anything interesting to say, here are my thoughts:

1. Pickle is done growing, which means she'll always look like 6 different dogs welded together.

2. I'm proud of Maine and Iowa and New Hampshire for realizing that gay marriage won't hurt anyone except bigots, and they deserve to suffer anyway.

3. I spent a fun day with Lori yesterday, and I'm excited about the prospect of a week long vacation together.

4. I wish it would stop raining so I could get out and mow.

5. People you really like seem to drift away over time, but the crazies stick around forever.

6. I haven't seen my brother Daniel in 20 years, and I wonder about him all the time lately. I hope that doesn't mean something bad has happened.

7. I'm too wide awake to go back to sleep, but I'm too sleepy to get dressed and actually do something.

8. I'm worried about Katie, as usual. She's slowly recovering from her mono, while trying to rapidly get back to her life. Guess who's cooking up a little recipe for disaster flambe`?

So that's pretty much it, Friends, and Friends-We-Never-See (I'm talking to YOU, Hoosiers!). Today, Nowhere, IL is a profundity-free zone. Check your profundus at the door, pull on a pair of flannel jammie pants, and start staring out the window. Insomnia is in the house.

Healthcare Reform Needs You

Congress has begun the arduous task of battling for healthcare reform. I, like a whole lot of other Americans, have found myself among the uninsured. I became uninsured, for the first time in my adult life, a year and a half ago when I changed employers and cut my hours to part-time. I had been insured through my employer with Blue Cross/Blue Shield, so I assumed it would be a simple matter to convert to a private policy. It was not so simple. In fact, it was not possible.

I was denied private insurance because of a pre-existing condition. That's right ... I, like millions of other middle-aged Americans, have high blood pressure. It's even higher these days, since I no longer take medication or have bi-monthly check-ups for it now that every jot and tittle of my healthcare needs -- along with the inflated price of everything else -- has to come out of my middle-class recession-impacted pocket.

I'm not willing to trust that those in Washington know my opinion about healthcare reform, so I've taken the opportunity to tell them myself. You should, too.

It's easy. Just go to Contacting the Congress and click on your state. Write to your own Congresspersons or Representatives.

Whether the private insurance sector is working for you or not, it isn't working for millions of your neighbors, co-workers, friends and family members. Healthcare reform without a public insurance option will not help those who need it. If you don't need it, that's wonderful and I'm happy for you, and you can keep your insurance under a real reform plan. Please don't sit on your insured hands when so many of the rest of us are not as fortunate.

Well, Idn't That Special!

Some celebrities are lauded with honorary doctorates. Others have their body of work honored by lifetime achievement awards. The best and brightest are sometimes awarded the Nobel Prize in their field.

Sarah got a gun.

The all-white "Alaskan Hunter" - fashionable until Labor Day - is the civilian version of a modified M-4 rifle carried by U.S. troops overseas.


It's engraved with Palin's name and adorned with a map of the state on the collapsible stock - made legal after the expiration of the assault weapons ban in 2004. The Big Dipper from the state flag is etched on the magazine well behind a vented barrel guard.


The rifle is chambered in .50-caliber "Beowulf." It's the same caliber used by heavy machine guns, which can take down big game, and in war zones."

Let's see those Cheeto-eating, pj clad liberal Alaska bloggers and the gosh-darned negative nellies in the Alaska legislature try to mess with her now also too! Look out Putin, don't be rearing your head! Sarah can see your house from hers ... and she's armed to the teeth, gosh-darnit!

Oh, and Levi? Ixnay on the awyerlay.

Teabag St. Louis!!!!11!!1!! Or don't.

Thanks to Draches over at Daily Kos, I'm able to share with you this fine photo of the turnout for today's St. Louis Tax Day Teabaggapalooza and Spelling Bee.To be fair and balanced, this is only about a third of the crowd-let.

Apparently there was a "t" shortage.

Morans.

We've Got Your Stimulus, Baby

While Wall Street is puking into its million dollar toilets and the folks in Washington, DC are putting together economic survival kits and throwing a TARP over the country, one much-maligned state in the economically devastated Midwest has come up with a stimulus package of their own.

From the Des Moines Register this morning comes the news that by merely not obstructing its gay citizens right to marry each other, Iowa's economy stands to grow to the tune of 5.3 million dollars per year, create hundreds of jobs and attract new residents and new businesses to the state over the next two to five years. That's millions of dollars in tax, tourism and consumer revenue, jobs and industry by doing nothing but ending a ban on gay marriage. Hear me again. It's a gain of money, jobs and business that costs Iowa nothing ... zip ... zero ... nada ... and all they had to do was say that equal rights means equal rights for everyone. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty stimulated by that.

I'm also tickled pink to read that people are finally waking up and realizing that we are a sought-after commodity. Is the economy in your state struggling? Are businesses closing? Are people leaving your state in droves to find work elsewhere? Attract Teh Gays.

Unlike Connecticut and Massachusetts - the other states that permit gay marriage - Iowa has no nearby competitors for same-sex couples who want to marry. Businesses could see $160 million in new wedding and tourism spending over the next three years, according to a study from researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles. "Iowa pretty much has the Midwest all to itself," said Lee Badgett, a University of Massachusetts economist who co-authored the 2008 report. "It's in the middle of a lot of states that have a lot of same-sex couples. It's in a good position."

That's right. Iowa has cornered the market on us, and the rest of you Heartland states are going to have to hustle to catch the gravy train before it pulls out of the station taking all your queers with it. Compete for us, bitches.

"It makes Iowa overall a more welcoming state," Redlawsk said. "That's a good thing from the standpoint of businesses who, frankly, are concerned about quality of life issues for their employees."

Honestly, I can't wait until this trend catches on. I eagerly await the day the whole Midwest is dotted with billboards advertising gay wedding chapels and papered with ads offering gay honeymoon getaway packages.

And why are we worth so much to Iowa (and potentially to your state, too)?

Same-sex marriage will yield an estimated net gain of $5.3 million per year for Iowa state government, according to the report from UCLA's Williams Institute, a nonprofit think tank that studies sexual orientation and public policy. "It's not going to have a huge impact," Badgett said. "But the impact will be positive. "Fewer gays and lesbians in Iowa will qualify for public benefits such as Medicaid if they marry and combine incomes, the study found. Nearly 90 percent of same-sex married couples who file their taxes jointly also would pay more because of their higher earnings.

Sales tax revenue would rise because of increased spending on florists, hotels and other wedding expenses. The increases would offset the married gay couples who pay less or receive other marriage-related deductions, according to the study."What people care about right now are their pocketbooks," Redlawsk said. "The moral issues are just not as high on anybody's list right now, given the economic environment."

(See, that's what I love about moral issues. They're flexible!) I'd also like to state that, while I'm sure the wedding industry does benefit, there are other important economic reasons for getting the hell out of the obstructionist way of same-sex marriage. Dependent insurance premiums will rise thanks to the inclusion of a name on that line for "spouse." Home and automobile purchases will rise thanks to the ability to include both incomes on a loan application without having to jump through hoops and explain that, no, the other name on the application isn't your parent or your co-signer. There are just a whole hell of a lot of things heterosexual people take for granted and don't even think about with regard to what "marriage" means after the wedding is over. I'd like to thank Iowa, personally, for thinking about those.

Of course, not everyone sees the Iowa decision as a victory. There are some who still believe that the "will of the people" is for gays and lesbians to be denied their civil rights, even though polling shows that as high as 75% of voters favor some kind of legalized form of marriage or civil union for their gay and lesbian family, friends, co-workers and neighbors. For those nay-sayers who want to let the people decide this issue by voting to amend rather than follow the Constitution, they're going to have to wait awhile.

Iowa Gov. Chet Culver, an opponent of gay marriage in the past, said Friday he was reviewing the court's ruling. But there are significant hurdles to overcome to amend the Iowa Constitution.The Legislature must approve a constitutional amendment during two consecutive sessions before the issue goes to a statewide ballot, meaning the earliest that could happen would be in 2012. Massachusetts has a nearly identical process. "Opponents in Massachusetts couldn't do anything immediately," Redlawsk said. "As time went by, people realized that the sky hasn't fallen, the world hasn't ended."

That's right. While they're waiting, Iowans (and the rest of the country) are going to be learning what they've already learned in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Vermont. When gay and lesbian people get married nothing cataclysmic happens. Heterosexual marriage licenses don't become null and void. Heterosexual couples are not struck with unexplained infertility leading to death of the human species. Children are not snatched off the streets and turned into gay and lesbian sex slaves. Natural disasters don't increase in frequency or degree of devastation. No one demands the right to marry their cat.

Now, whose next in line for the Gay and Lesbian Economic Stimulus Plan? Illinois? Illinois?? Hello, Illinois? Are you listening?

Meet the New Neighbors!

We worked our butts off cleaning the rental house so we could return it to the landlord last weekend. Two days ago we walked him through it to show him the things HE needed to address ... like the still-slow drains, the still-inadequate wiring, the still-backed up septic system, the new termite trails in the wood floors, the leaking roof, the broken window, the storm door that's just an empty frame without a screen, the cracked front door you can see daylight through and the new mouse hole. He took copious notes, hugged us for the cleanup, and then promptly ignored every single one of the items on HIS list and moved a large family of skanky redneck hillbillies into the house "as is" yesterday.

If I tell you we're not thrilled, I'm underreporting.The head of this household is a sixtyish man named Barney, whose only redeeming virtue is his ability to play the banjo, dobro and mandolin (or so he claims). There is a large disabled wife who was unable to hoist herself out of her porch chair for an introduction, two thirty-something sons with the distinctive "high-as-a-kite, no teeth and facial sores" appearance that only a certain segment of the population can achieve at that age, at least one live-in girlfriend of indeterminate age who was passed out in the truck during the moving process and an obese pug dog named Dollar Bill.

On the bright side, they got rid of a lot of the broken appliances, odd junk and discarded trash we had piled up waiting for Big Trash Pickup Day next week ... by carrying it back into the house we just dragged it out of. They call us "neighbor" ... as in, "The yard looks good, neighbor!" and "Can we have that stuff you're throwin' away, neighbor?" and "Is that shed for us? Oh, it's yours, neighbor? Can we use half of it?"

We call them the Meth-Heads ... as in, "The meth-heads are going to steal our stuff," and, "Kids, you can't play with the meth-heads ... or buy their meth."

Under Every Pile of Crap There Might Be a Pony

Black Clouds:

1. My camera is dead. I hear that it may be recovering with a friend in Alabama, or it may need to be replaced, but one way or t'other, we're out of the picture taking biz temporarily, and we have things we should be taking pictures of.

2. Carrie left us a crap-ass mess to clean up in the house she was renting.

3. I inherited a boatload of pictures when my mother died that I've been carting around with me like an unexamined albatross.

4. Sage has the cancer.

Silver Lining:

Sage's cancer has had me thinking I should go through those photo boxes and find her puppy pictures, so yesterday I dragged them all out and we started going through them. I found many excellent ones of Sage, along with a ton of pictures of my son and other cool stuff, and in the very last box I discovered a treasure trove of photos of my childhood in my mom's stuff that I had no idea even existed.

One of the things Carrie abandoned in her rental house was a printer/copier/scanner.

We hooked it up and it works like a charm, so we've been scanning our brains out and will soon have photos again ... the cool old kind!

Also, my co-worker is remodeling her house after a flood and we scored a great piece of furniture she didn't want after she ordered it. Wooohooo, more bookshelves!

We love serendipity.

More Stuff About Stuff...This Time It's Family Stuff.

Last week we had a bad three-car car wreck on a highway near the hospital where I work. The center of the three car sandwich was a family who's car was rear ended and pushed into oncoming traffic, where they were hit head on. One child was ejected out onto the highway, one had his head crushed when he flew around inside the car, and the third was unharmed in her carseat.

I was working the blood bank that evening. There's nothing more awful for a parent than working a trauma with children. Most of your brain is working on work: crossmatching as fast as you can for multiple people at the same time and then sending units out the door. Again and again and again until the E.R. runners stop showing up at your elbow, the phone stops ringing, the helicopters take off, and you can look around and breathe.

But I think it's especially difficult for us parents. The thought periodically pops into our heads, "What if those were my kids?" It reminds us of ever stupid thing we ever did raising our own and how many ways it could have gone bad.

The parents in the car were relatively unharmed. The little boy died, and his sister was flown to St. Louis by helicopter to a full-service pediatric trauma center, where I suspect she'll be a guest for a fairly long time.

The parents had to leave the hospital, get in a car and go home with their new reality. The accident wasn't their fault, but the unbelted kids were. They'll have the rest of their lives to wish for that moment back.

I'm currently mad at my grown daughter. She and I have gotten crossways in about all the ways a relationship can get crossways. I'm so mad, in fact, that when she moved to Chicago last week I told her to give me a few months to cool down before she gets in touch.

I know I'll get over it. Like the lady at the City Hall said yesterday, "Honey, they don't even think about growing up until they're 30."

The juxtaposition of my anger with my daughter and the death of someone else's children nags at me. Forgiveness is a gift for everyone; it doesn't make anyone's life better to hang on to old grievences. It also doesn't make life better to be a doormat...there's a balance to be struck there somewhere. However, it's not a straight line from here to there. There's all sorts of curvy side paths on the way...a mix of how could you, sprinkled with some recognition of the same selfish behavior from our own past, plus the nagging thought that this may be my fault somehow.

I love my kids. Hell, everyone loves their kids. But it's easy to think about all the times we've done things with them that could have had disasterous consequences. It's amazing that people survive their childhoods, and that parents survive their parenthood. But we do mostly, and then the kids grow up and have their own kids who make them crazy with anger and fear and love and pride, sometimes all at once, just like we did to our own parents. It's a contract that families have: I'll forgive you for every crappy thing you did on your path to adulthood, but the price you have to pay for that is forgiving your own kids their crappy behavior.

Like Katie used to say, "It's the ciwcle of yife."

It's the Mother's Curse...Someday you'll have children just like you. We hope. If you're lucky.

Shameless Self-Indulgence Warning

Get out your hankies, because I'm going to talk about my dog. If you've heard parts of this before you'll just have to indulge me, because I need to do this from the beginning:

Sage is a 13-year-old red chow-shiba inu mix. (Ev calls her an "eeboo beeboo.") My son and I adopted her from the pound when he was ten and she was a year old. She was his first dog. He'd always begged for a dog, but we lived in rentals, so she was our first acquisition when I bought my first house.

We were three needy creatures in those days!

I'd been through three marriages that were utter failures. My son was struggling to cope with not having a dad and I wasn't filling the void. Sage had been through three owners who all gave up on her because she was a destructive chewer. It was love at first sight for all of us misfits.

We got off to a bit of a rough start. She destroyed a chair, a rug, the mail and a six foot stuffed dolphin in the first couple of months, but she was such a sweet girl otherwise that I invested in a professional dog trainer to teach us all some obedience training. She probably needed it the least of the three of us and was the quickest learner. After six months of crating her for her separation anxiety she's never again laid her mouth on another thing but kibble and chewies. Oh, and that groundhog. And that possum.

At any rate, we've gloated often in the ensuing years over what a really great dog she is and how dumb those other people were to give her up. Until she got old and cranky she was the most even-tempered and patient dog in the world with people and other animals (except that possum and that groundhog). She's always loved everything else that came into her life ... cats, dogs, ducks, ferrets ... and she probably wanted to love the possum and the groundhog too, but it didn't work out. But seriously, all you have to do is look at her eyes to know how much she wants to please you.

Sage has been struggling with arthritis for at least the past five years, but it's really been bad for the past two. She's having more and more trouble getting up and down, getting more and more stiff and sore, being less and less willing to hobble all the way outside to go to the potty ... and getting way grumpier about being groomed because even her skin hurts.

A couple of weeks ago we found a mass on her abdomen and she had surgery last week to remove it. It turned out to be an adenocarcinoma of her mammary gland ... she's got malignant breast cancer.

We've known for the past year or so that Sage was winding down and we've talked about what that will look like for her and for us. We aren't those pet owners who put our pets through extraordinary measures to prolong their lives, so we were okay with letting nature and old age take its course. Now we know what that course will be and we have a better sense of how short an amount of borrowed time we're on.

I want to talk about her while she's still alive, though, and talk about the Sage-ness of her and what she's taught me.

Sage was my son's first dog, but she's really my first dog, too, and we've had a lot to learn from each other. The other dogs in my life were childhood pets, which meant they were really my parents' dogs, or they were temporary dogs who came in and out of my life with roommates or weren't kept for one reason or another (usually because I wasn't responsible enough to keep them). Sage is the first dog I ever made a full-out, lifelong commitment to and kept it. She's shared my adult life, made every move with me, been through three relationships with me, been there while my son grew up and left the nest, and impacted my domicile choices. No Sage? No deal. I've moved her across the city and across the state and across the country, shared houses when we had them and rooms in someone else's house when we didn't. She's sometimes been the only friend I had. I've cried on her shoulder and gotten snot on her fur and she doesn't mind. She's my dog, and she's taught me what that means.

When I got Sage she was shy and nervous and had bad habits and was scared of everything. I had to teach her to play tug-of-war because she would just give up and let the human have whatever the human seemed to want. She always thought she was in trouble. I worked hard to teach her (and me) to trust herself and people, and that autonomy is a good thing and it's okay to hang onto what you want and fight for it, within reason. Today she can snarl and take no crap from the puppy instead of giving up her food and her bed. Yay, Sage!

The one thing she loves is to run. She can't run fast anymore, but when she was a youngster ... hoo, boy! She would run huge laps around our big grassy yard at breakneck speeds, almost laid over on her side taking the corners, and grinning from ear to ear. Now she walks her big grassy yard and lays in the sun. She's taught me that big grassy yards are good for the soul at all stages of life and one should always have one.

She's a tidy girl who doesn't like to get her feet wet or dirty, and until she lived on three acres she used to pick one spot in the yard for her bathroom and not leave land mines in the lawn. She's more devil-may-care about that these days. Her outside fastidiousness is occasionally overcome by her tendency to be sort of high-strung and nervous indoors (and to try and "hold it" forever), so she occasionally does what we call the "exploding dog" trick. The first time it happened (from one end of the new house to the other on the beige wall-to-wall berber carpeting) I just sat down and cried. Sage has taught me the uselessness of rage over poop on the carpet and the value of owning your own steam cleaner.

Sage has taught me that when you make a commitment to a relationship (be it with a dog or a human) you take it seriously, and it's forever. Relationships (with dogs and humans) aren't always going to be without frustration or anger, and they aren't always going to personally fulfilling. Sometimes they'll be hard, nasty work. Sometimes they'll be "stuck in the house in the winter." Sometimes, however, they'll be full of romping in the sun. Sage has taught me that relationships are much more about comfortable companionship than about tug-of-war and excitement, and you don't get there by turning in the old one for a new one when the old one isn't fun anymore.

As much as she's taught me about making a commitment, she's also taught me about letting go, and that jealousy is a wasted emotion. I used to the the primary human in her life, but I'm not anymore ... she's moved on. Katie is her first choice and Ev is her second. Dogs can be fickle that way. So can people. We've been a little bit estranged for the past couple of years even though we live in the same house. We acknowledge each other, but she doesn't come easily to me when I call her anymore, or wag and bark when I come home like she does for Ev and Katie. Maybe I'm just a part of her landscape after all these years and nothing to get excited about anymore. She's taught me that it's okay not to be the whole world to someone or have all their affection and attention ... there's plenty to go around.

Sage taught me about unconditional responsibility to another living being at a time in my life when I was clueless about such things. She's taught me loyalty.

In exchange for all the things she's taught me, I've tried to give Sage a good life. She hasn't suffered abuse or neglect from me (although her matted coat would make you wonder sometimes). She's had safety and security and some freedom to explore her world. She's had experiences and gone places and had all kinds of animal friends and sniffed a wide assortment of butts. She's been warm in the winter, cool in the summer and dry when it's raining. She's been well fed and well loved. The best thing I've ever done for her (and for me) was finding Ev and her kids and moving to Southern Illinois, where the grass is plentiful and the sunshine is warm and the bunnies are ripe for the chasing. It's been a good place for Sage to live out the last years of her life and she's a happy dog. What more can you ask, really?

I wanted to get all this down now, while she's still around for me to appreciate, and I wanted to get some of the sadness out of my system so I can enjoy the time we've got left. This is something I actually learned from my mother's death, after which we said, "Wouldn't it be great if we'd throw big memorial get-togethers for people and talk about what they meant to us BEFORE they died???" So this is that. It's Sage's pre-memorial, and we both thank you for attending.

So what do I need from Sage at this point? Not a damn thing. It's her turn to do the needing. I want the time we've got left to be good time for her, and when it's not good time for her I want to do the kindest thing I can do for her and help her go peacefully, surrounded by people who love her. And I don't want to only be able to tell her story in the past tense. I hope she gets one more Spring and Summer. She likes those the best.

Pull The Plug

I have a message from the Grassroots to the leadership in Washington:

You don't have to let it fail

... IT ALREADY HAS ...

you can turn off the life support now.

Perhaps you didn't notice, but the "financial industry" stopped serving the public quite awhile ago and has been solely in the business of stealing whatever wealth this country had and burying it in its own caves for a long damn time.

What we're engaged in here isn't a "bailout" or the shoring up of a necessary financial base for the citizens of the United States. It's a war. It's a war between the majority of US citizens and those who have manipulated our economy for their own greed and are fast leaving the rest of us jobless, homeless and penniless without a backward glance. They may have all the money, but we outnumber the bastards and we're angry. We also have the advantage of being in better shape for this war because we've actually had to work for a living (and cut way back on our food intake) than those fat pasty assholes. And really, we're getting angry enough to do something drastic, fellas. This may be the actual "bipartisanship" the country needs ... EVERYBODY is pissed off, and everybody is pissed off at the same goddamned people.

It doesn't matter how much Monopoly money we print at this point, they've already got all the real wealth ... but they'll be just as happy to take the funny money, too, just for good measure.

This is not rocket science ... or even complicated economics. I have a contract with my company which states that they will pay me "x" in exchange for my doing "y" amount of work. "X" is contingent upon my doing "y" in an ethical and legal manner and upon the company thriving, at least partly due to that work, or my contract is null and void and I will not be collecting "x" ... I will be sitting home on my couch perusing the newspaper for another job. If the economy causes my company to flounder because people cannot afford our services, it's possible that I will not be collecting "x" no matter how well I perform "y" because the company will no longer be able to afford "x" ... and I will be sitting home on my couch perusing the newspaper for another job. If I am caught stealing from my company or rifling through the purses of our customers and stealing their money, I will not be paid "x" ... I will be sitting home on my couch perusing the newspaper for another job. If the whole damn company goes under because no one can afford our services we will not be getting a bailout from anyone ... no one will be paid "x" ... we will all be sitting home on our various couches perusing newspapers for jobs. Our customers will not be perusing their respective newspapers because they will be blind due to their inability to access our services and will be receiving disability "x".

AIG is the current and handiest example of a company whose top executives have broken every one of the "if 'x' then 'y'" rules of business as the majority of Americans understand them. Why are they still collecting "x" (and "x" to the "nth" power) and not sitting on their couches perusing their newspapers looking for other jobs?

And really, here's the news flash for President Obama and the new administration:

AIG is not keeping America afloat. It is sinking the country. The country has become a life support system for a bloated corpse that has done nothing to deserve to be kept alive. The majority of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. The majority of Americans have credit scores that can't hope to be astronomically high enough to please most lenders in this economy, even though they make ample money to cover a non-usurious mortgage or car payment. The majority of Americans (those who, coincidentally, voted for CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN) are not being served by AIG ... or by the public servants we elected. The "change" we were looking for was not the pennies left in the dryer at the laundromat.

Someone will have to prove to me -- and not in convoluted theoretical economics -- how the death of a bloated economic giant could possibly make a nickle's worth of negative difference in the day to day life of the average American.

Spring Sprang Sprung

Spring dropped by to taunt us like a neighbor running up on the porch to show off her winning lottery ticket and then running away to cash it in. But in the brief couple of days it was here, teasing us with its sunshine and 70 degree temperatures, the grass turned green, the daffodils sprang up in bunches alongside the road and many trees began sporting their bright pink Spring coats. Can Easter eggs be far behind?

Today they're forecasting a light snow in the afternoon and a high of 34.

We spent our day off yesterday being frivolous and carefree and staying away from the house and out in the world for eight whole hours of grownup, kid-free girlfriend time.

I will spend today stoking the fire in the fireplace and shampooing the lakes of dog vomit out of the carpet. That's the price that must be paid for spending eight hours away from home and leaving the dogs with a softhearted teenager who thinks it's a little bit mean to crate them and was sure we'd be right back because we never go anywhere.

(We sometimes wonder exactly what Cooper gets into and eats when no one's looking that makes her barf so prodigiously, but we're pretty sure we don't really want to know. Last week I had to pry a credit card out of her mouth before she swallowed it.)

The next time Spring arrives on our doorstep we're going to club it over the head and tie it up in the yard so it can't get away again.