My body, minus the fat

I have stretch marks, and a little more skin on my midsection than I used to, and parts of me are dramatically lower (when not artificially elevated) than they used to be. Also, a significant amount of my hair has lost its pigment. So yes, I am gray, saggy, soft, and stretched. And, oddly enough, I like that. (I don't like the fatty deposits on my butt and hips, but that's a different story.)

I'm not so proud of my post-children body that I'd run around in a bikini, but I don't dream of tummy tucks and boob jobs, and if I woke up tomorrow in some 80s movie plot where I was once again a teenager, I think I would miss my more mature body. (Not my figure, but the body it is currently ruining.)

I've never liked my body. My chest was too small or my hips weren't round enough, or my legs were too spindly. But now that my body looks like it's done something, now that it shows all the badges of actually having created people, I respect it. I know that that mark there came from Ryan and those over there came from Tommy (and we'll see what the next one gives me). It's no longer a matter of being genetically cursed by bad luck but of being a mother. I like that. (I just don't like the parts that show I'm lazy and eat too much greasy food.)

naming babies

There are millions of names in the world to choose from, but not really that many after you eliminate:

• Tom's ex-girlfriends' names
• my ex-girlfriends' names
• my ex-boyfriends' names
  
• immediate family's names
• names we associate with some bitch/asshole we went to school with
• names that will give a kid stupid nicknames (Brian Allen Melton would be Bam, or worse BM)
• names that don't go with our last name (Sheldon Melton, Elton Melton, Milton Melton)
• over-used and trendy names, so anything in the top 100 for last year
• ethnic names that don't match our heritage. ( I have nothing against the name Almir, but I can't name my son that, you know?)
• names that are too dated or associated with pop culture (Hermione, Dexter, etc)
• names we just can't bring ourselves to use (I know it sounds picky but everyone has them. Hugo, Millicent, Bertha)

And after you take out all of those names, then you have to actually agree on something that you both like. Together. Twice since we're waiting to learn the sex. And we have 5 months left to do it in. And the best part is, the girl name we had last time, I don't even really like this time around. We were thinking Ivy or Lila before and this just doesn't feel like an Ivy or Lila pregnancy. So we're back to square one.

Nuts

"There oughtta be a law!" Against all sex offenders on facebook, even if the crime was consensual gay sex in states where it was illegal, or an 18 year old senior and his sophomore girlfriend, or even two eightteen year old seniors if one is in special ed classes and the DA's office decides she's too "developmentally" impaired to give consent (it's happened). And against gay couples going to the prom, or adopting, (even if one of them is the sole parent, as is the case with insemination or surrogacy), or marrying each other. And against letting the "God Hates Fags" church protest military funerals (which no one likes but, you know, freedom of speech). And against burning the flag, which is a symbol of America and not actually America, you know.

But the same republicans and conservatives who campaign on those premises swear up and down that they're against "Big Government" telling people what to do. We don't need Big Government forcing small businesses to insure employees. And we don't need Big Government making us hire gays (or, presumably, blacks or Jews or Irish or whoever it's fashionable to hate this year.) And we certainly don't need Big Government ordering us to stop raping the environment, and passing environmental laws that tell us not to run our cars on Middle Eastern hate. That's a violation of our freedoms!

So, to recap, it's not restrictive to tell gays who to marry when it affects no one else at all, but it's prohibitively restrictive to tell corporations to manufacture more ecologically sound cars, which affects everybody. Got it.

Conservatives are nuts.

This is what's wrong with America

Actual facebook update from an actual college student:

Everybody makes misstake and everybody has thougghts day. bye for now i'll be on tomorrow bye have a go noight

Update from the same high school graduate/college student one hour later:

i'm going to bed and will talk to u in the morrwing or later at the night

Do high schools have any standards for graduation at all? Community colleges take just about anyone so that doesn't surprise me, but what do they grade on in high school English?

Just one of those days

I want today to be over, I really do. It started bad and it's just gotten worse, and it isn't even noon yet. I woke up to pee at 5:48 am, and of course I couldn't fall back to sleep. Then Tommy woke up fine at quarter to eight but got cranky and pissy when I changed his diaper. He wouldn't eat breakfast but kept trying to climb over the gate into the kitchen. I finally decided he was teething and force-fed him Tylenol and then gave him a popsicle to numb his gums. He turned the thing upside down in the hallway and poured the melted grape water and ice out of the plastic tube onto the floor, then fell in love with Windex when I cleaned it and had me running around the house spritzing things so he could wipe it up. I decided to wash Kitty, his favorite stuffed animal who was getting pretty dingy, so I grabbed my lingerie bag from the laundry cart, popped Kitty in, and threw in a load of clothes, mostly Ryan's school clothes because she's low on pants.

Meanwhile, Tommy's mad that I stopped spraying Windex on everything, and Tom has hung up on me twice, either because he's touchy or I'm particularly annoying today, neither of which is outside the realm of possibility. But this time he won't pick up when I call him back, so that's fun.

Tommy got hungry early so I gave him a pear while I made mac and cheese, and he ate half the pear, spit the peel out all over the kitchen table, then threw it on the floor and cried when I wouldn't give it back. (It rolled to the edge of the floor, under the cupboards a little, where the dust bunnies hide from the mop. Ewwww. There was no way I was rinsing that off and giving it back.) So then while I was mixing the mac and cheese, and talking to the insurance company since Tom told me today that he won't call for my maternity pre-certification, Tommy climbed up on top of the table and started throwing cans of Mt Dew onto the floor, and one punctured and sprayed sticky all over while I was trying to hear how long they'd cover for me to stay in the hospital after delivery.

Tommy ate very little mac and cheese, then tried to take mine, then got mad when I refused, then ran down the hall to my bedroom. I chased him, of course, and decided to check the dryer to see if Kitty was dry yet or needed more time and . . . the lingerie bag seems to be blood-splattered. Kitty, noooooooo!

Did I mention that I lost my lipstick 3 weeks ago? Apparently, and I can't even fathom how or why, it was inside the lingerie bag. Dryers liquify lipstick, especially discontinued colors of irreplaceable lipstick. I tried to handwash the bag but it didn't work, so now Kitty is back in the washer, in an inside out bag, with a towel load. And thank God Ryan is in a goth phase and most of her school clothes are black now, because lipstick all over her stuff would not be easily forgiven. And of course by the time I got back to the kitchen, my bowl of mac and cheese had congealed into one clump of neon orange candle wax. And now I'm battling the clock to get Kitty washed and dried in time for Tommy to take a nap, because the kid will NOT sleep without him. And he's acting pretty sleepy already so I do not want to have to postpone naptime. And I won't even contemplate the possibility that the lipstick might not wash off of Kitty. As it is, the poor cat looks like he's been hit by a bus.

How porn and National Geographic could help todays women.

From birth on, girls see Cosmo and Glamour in the supermarket checkout lines. We know what grown women look like and what we're going to look like when we're older. But then we grow up and (SURPRISE!) we don't look like that. When we bend at the waist, we get creases in our belly. When we raise one arm, our breasts do not stay level. When we shave, we get bumps and cuts and strips of razor burn. And all we know, is that we don't measure up. It's sad.

Sadder still, guys know it too. I read once an old story about a man who left his bride on their wedding night when he learned that real women, unlike marble statues, had pubic hair. I doubt many modern men would run away from sex, but they do notice the creases and dimples and paunches. I've heard men call beauty pageant contestants fat or ugly. I think it would help if teenage boys went back to sneaking peeks at National Geographic instead of Playboy. If they grew up getting turned on by Amazonian women with nipples at their waistlines, I think real women would be less disappointing than when they see airbrushed models in American magazines. But you know what helped me with my self esteem?

Porn. The women in pron are supposed to be the female ideal, existing only to turn men on, and they, while generally thin and full of fake boobs, actually have flaws. In porn I've seen men slap dimpled asses, grab handfuls of cellulite butt cheeks, and kiss faces with crooked teeth. I've seen nearly flat women, slightly chubby women, women with pimples and razor burn and the occasional bruise. And if these women were hot enough to get cast in a movie with no purpose other than to arouse men, then maybe "flaws" aren't as important as confidence.

Latest disgusting trend:

French manicures on toes. It's just dumb, and here's why. A French manicure on hands is where the nail is painted some neutral beige or pink color and then the overhang, the long part of the nail that isn't attached to the finger and is normally a lighter shade because of it, is painted white. It's a lovely type of manicure to have, designed to look natural but enhanced. But on toes it's stupid because the white stripe is, by necessity, down where the nail is still attached to the toe. So at absolute best, it seems designed to look as though you've shoved something under your toenails to pry them up and away from the toes, and at worst it looks like you just have long nasty toenails that need to be trimmed. And I think some women are actually growing their toenails out for this look. And let me tell you, talons are not attractive. Not unless you have the gift of flight and a need for ocean fish.

Again

I'm pregnant, again. I'm due on Tommy's second birthday. This will be another long, hot, summer.

A sad realization

Why are some Republicans/social conservatives so selfish? And why do they deny it when you call them on it? They say "I don't think it's the government's job to take care of me" when they mean "I don't think the government should be able to help people." They say "I don't think there are really that many uninsured people" when they mean "My friends and family have insurance which is all I care about." "I don't think global warming is caused by people" means "I don't want to change anything I do so I'm going to deflect responsibility." "Gay marriage violates religious freedom" means "I don't want things I don't do to be considered as valid as things that I do do."

I used to believe that most people hadn't had the opportunity to see things from another viewpoint, that healthy debate could help bring people together. But I don't anymore. Some people wouldn't care if everyone but them were dying in the streets, as long as they were left alone and unaffected. It's Dickensian and it ruins just a little bit of my faith in the human race. But hey, at least it's not socialist.

One week and counting

Hanukkah is on the eleventh this year and while I'm not Jewish, I can't wait! Every year I make delicious yummy latkes on the first day of Hanukkah and I am in such a mood for them that it's driving me nuts. I have all the ingredients, but they're not the simplest thing to do so I don't think I'll be making them early. Plus, it's probably not a good idea to cook with hot oil when there's no one here to watch Tommy while I do it. It's just . . . the thought of yummy crispy potatoey oniony latkes with warm melty sour cream on them, it drives me crazy. I fear nothing will taste good today with this craving in my mind. But, for anyone who may want to know what I'm talking about, here is my latke recipe. Enjoy!




2 lg. baking potatoes or 4 med. potatoes, peeled
1/2 sm. onion
2 eggs
2 tbsp. flour
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
Vegetable oil

Grate potatoes into large bowl. Grate onion into bowl. Drain off excess potato liquid. Beat in eggs, then stir in flour, salt and pepper. Heat about 1/4 inch oil in a large skillet. Drop potato mixture by tablespoonfuls into hot oil. Brown just until edges are crisp. Turn and brown other side. Serve hot. Latkes are traditionally served with sour cream or applesauce. Makes about 4 servings.

Best Article Ever

From Dan Savage. In part:

When someone tells me that gay and lesbians are going to hell I concede the point—any attempt to argue with someone about their religious beliefs will be interpreted as an attack—and move on to the obvious followup question: Anybody else going to hell? Any other groups of people? Or is just us? How about the Jews? Are the Jews going to hell? Non-Catholics? Christian Scientists? Are Mormons going to hell? Seventh Day Adventists? How about the Scientologists? Atheists, obviously, but what about agnostics? Wiccans? Buddhists? Muslims? Zoroastrians?

It's the quickest way to make religious conservatives and their heavens and their hells look ridiculous. Because they don't just believe "sinners" are going to hell. They don't just believe that gays and lesbians and adulterers and murderers and other people who have committed discrete sinful acts—they don't believe in gay people, only the sin of gay sex—are going to hell. They also believe that other large groups of people—groups that number in the hundreds of millions—are going to hell too. Here's the dirty little secret that spoils the modern ecumenical anti-gay hate fest: Most "people of faith" believe that people of other faiths—Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, the wrong kinds of Christianity—are going to hell. Evangelicals think Catholics are going to hell, Catholics think everybody who isn't Catholic is going to hell, all conservative Christians think the Jews are going to hell, and on and on.

And yet you don't see conservative Christians out there attacking the civil rights of all the other people they believe are going to hell. They may proselytize, sure, they may try to save the souls lost to the Whore of Babylon (that would be the Catholic Church, according to traditional Lutherans), but they don't attempt to persecute the Jews (anymore), the atheists (anymore), the other-kinds-of-Christians (anymore), the yoga instructors (really). Conservative Christians like the mayor of Vallejo and the cardinal are capable of sharing this world with sinners and apostates and infidels who enjoy full civil equality—atheists can marry! you can't fire someone just for being Jewish! yoga is totally legal in all 50 states!—content in the knowledge that God will punish the sinners and apostates and infidels after death. So, hey, no need to punish them here on earth! Because eternal torment is punishment enough, right? At least conservative Christians regard eternal torment as punishment enough where, say, the Jews and atheists and yoga instructors are concerned—at least they do now—and so they refrain from tormenting or attempting to disenfranchise Jews and atheists and yoga instructors here on earth.

All gay people want is the same deal the Jews and the atheists and the yoga instructors have got: full legal and civil equality, all the same rights and responsibilities as other citizens, equal protections under the law while we're all here on earth together.

just to get it off my chest

• Laptop, not labtop

• Dilated, not dialated

• regardless, not irregardless

• couldn't care less, not could care less. Unless you actually care, in which case I suppose it would be possible for you to care less than you do.

• clitter-us, not clit-TORE-us

• corroded, not creoded.

• lose as in lost, loose as in not tight

• they're/their/there figure them out

• than denotes relation (more this than that), then denotes time (do this, then that). Don't say "I wish I had more then I do," unless you mean that when you wish for more, you then have it.

• there is no A in tomorrow

• 'deaf' means unable to hear. 'death' means unable to hear for a whole other reason.

• The new terrorist prison in Illinois is in Thomson, not Thompson. I don't know why it bugs me, but it's important to the Thomson population that you not butcher their name. And on the same note......

• The city is Joe-lee-ette, not Jolly-ette.

• TMI, but I have a cervix, not a cervex. Unimportant, I know, but it's up there with....

• It's nuclear, not nucular

• They're fringe benefits, not French benefits

• it's definitely (as in finite), not definately.
  

Black Friday

Today was/is Black Friday and this year, for the first time, Ryan was outside of a store in the cold waiting for the doors to be unlocked. We went to Lowe's for a purchase that can't yet be revealed, but she stormed the doors with the rest of the mob and got not only the high ticket item she had her eye on but also a gift for her brother and one for her dad as well. And tomorrow, we're decorating for Christmas.

I love Christmas. The tree, the tinsel, the lights and bells. I love Christmas cartoons and songs and tacky reindeer sweaters. I love all the winter holidays. Hanukkah cookies in blue tins, hot latkes with cold sour cream, Adam Sandler telling people to drink their "gin and tonica". All of it. What I don't like, and what really wrecks the holiday spirit for me, are the people who get militant and bitchy about it.

I hate when people get mad at the term "Happy Holidays" because somehow not excluding everythign but Christmas is detrimental to Christmas. I hate gas station signs declaring that "Jesus is the reason for the season!" (Actually, scholars pretty much agree that Jesus was born in the spring and that the celebration was only moved to winter to make it easier for Romans to convert to Christianity without giving up their winter holidays. So, technically, Saturn [god, not planet] is the reason for the season. But I digress.) It bothers me when people get so superior about their religion that they declare it the only valid reason for celebration. Nativities on courthouse lawns followed by outrage at the thought of a menorah sharing the spotlight. Parents upset because the school performance included Frosty The Snowman and not Silent Night. Christmas is no longer just a vicarious birthday celebration. It is now more representative of what Jesus preached than of the man himself. It's about peace on Earth, generosity of spirit (and yes, of gifts too), and time spent with family, about forgiveness and togetherness. And maybe, just a little, about the look on an eleven year old's face when the guy in the Lowes vast opens the doors ten minutes early.

Gosselins

I used to watch Jon & Kate + Eight, and I liked it. I liked seeing how she managed to get housework done, and cook for a family of ten, and somehow manage to get all the kids dressed and fed breakfast before noon. Sure she got help from a team of volunteers, but I still got organizational tips and stuff. It was a neat little show, like Little People, Big World, which I also enjoy.

Now, I didn't really like how Kate talked to Jon, like he was one of the kids rather than an equal. But he said on many different occasions that it didn't bother him so I figured that was just how they were. I've learned in my life that I don't have to like other peoples' relationships, and that me not liking it doesn't often matter much. My friend's boyfriend does things I wouldn't put up with but hey, my husband does things that bug my friend, and it's all fine.

Then the show got sort of gimmicky. It went from "a day in the life of this family" to "let's put the kids in fake situations and watch them react". In other words, it went being from a weekly documentary to being more of a staged reality show. I wanted to see Kate make treats for a birthday party, not watch the guys from American Chopper come by to play with the kids. I'm not going to get housekeeping tips from watching the family hang out in a rented beach house. I lost interest in the show. But then . . .

Gosselin Mania 2009!!! Jon's a douche! Kate's actually the nice one! He's boffing the nanny, the reporter, and Kate's surgeon's creepily young daughter! Kate's on The View taking the high road. Jon emptied the bank account, but claims it's all his money. A judge declares Jon to be a giant ass and demands he return the money. Jon announces that he's now a Korean Jew. Public opinion shifts from "Jon deserves to be treated better than she treats him" to "WTF did she ever see in him anyway?!"

I don't actually watch the show anyway, which is fine since Jon got kicked off and then stopped production (Korean-Jewish hissy fit), but I do love the articles. I know, it's so trashy. But it's like watching a train wreck, if the train wore sparkly Ed Hardy shirts and constantly tried to defend new crashes to the press. But my absolute favorite thing about online Gosselin news articles is the comments section, because invariably there are about 50 comments like this:

OMG WHY DO YOU PEOPLE KEEP REPORTING ON THESE PEOPLE? NO ONE CARES ANYMORE? EVERYONE JOIN ME IN A BOYCOTT OF THIS SHOW AND ALL NEWS STORIES ABOUT THIS FAMILY. THE POOR CHILDREN ARE BEING EXPLOITED JUST SO THE PARENTS CAN BE RICH. KATE'S BROTHER AND SISTER IN LAW ARE RIGHT. WHY DO YOU READ THIS STUFF??

For one thing, if you're commenting on the tabloid articles, by definition you aren't boycotting them. Also, judging by the number of comments, some people do care about these people and that is why they report on it. But perhaps most strikingly, if you know what Kate's brother and sister in law said then you have been following this whole train wreck and, far from being above it all and better than the rest of us, you are one of us. You are exactly the same as every mouth breathing housecoat clad Kate wannabe with her own spiky reverse mullet haircut, as well as those of us who read it all just to laugh at Jon's idiocy. You aren't trendy or edgy or superior. You follow the stories, you know how Hailey Glassman is, you know who Michael Lohan is.

You're one of us. Accept it.

Mythbusters, for men

1. Going to the zoo while menstruating will not cause apes and monkeys to attempt to escape and gang rape us. If they were that sensitive to the cycles of other species, they'd go batshit every time any other animal in the zoo came into heat. And speaking of heat, it's pheromones released during that time that drive the males of certain species wild. Male dogs don't swarm the yard because Fifi smells like blood, but because Fifi smells like the doggie version of Axe body spray, for at least a couple weeks after bleeding stops.
2. We can swim in the ocean with a tampon without attracting sharks. See, menstruation isn't actually blood, and there isn't really a lot of it; it just looks like it. It's actually (prepare yourself here) liquefied uterine tissue, and only a few ounces a month. The uterus grows a think inner layer every month which then melts/disintegrates and then just sort of leaks out slowly. It's gross, but it's not blood. I suppose if a woman were wearing a full maxi pad and were dropped into an existing circle of hungry sharks, she might attract more attention than usual, but a few drops of vaguely blood-colored tissue isn't likely to bring sharks from miles around right up to the beach. They'll stay out where they are and keep eating sea lions.

Growing old gracefully

When I was little, I always knew that someday I'd be old. I'd have gray hair and wrinkles, and I'd probably drive an old boat of a car, like my grandmother did. I think most little girls know this. When do they stop knowing it?

Botox, hair dye, cosmetic surgery, wrinkly cream, eye serum, light reflecting crease plumping make up. They even sell little pieces of tape you're supposed to use to give yourself a face lift by taping your eyebrows to your hairline. And it's all because people don't want to look 40 when they're 40.

We all know that half the time, the Hollywood stars who try to fight the clock don't look younger, they just look really surprised, or like The Joker, or just freaky. And that really sucks, because actresses are supposed to be able to play real people, and real people don't look like Delta Burke does now. Who is going to play the grandmothers now? Without any Jessica Tandys or Estelle Gettys, who will play old women? It's bad enough that every 40 year old role is played by some unrealistic mannequin, but the grandmothers too? I really don't want to see a remake of Driving Miss Daisy starring Teri Hatcher. And no one would understand why the people in the new Cocoon ever left Earth at all!

I worry about how attractive my husband finds me. And I worry that I look older than 33. But I honestly don't worry about not looking 21 anymore. In fact, I would love to be able to go and have my dyed-red hair dyed back to its natural color and then just let the gray grow in. I have grays, and I'm fine with that. And there's now a truly horizontal reason I need to wear a bra, not just a stabilizing issue. And that's cool too. And as for wrinkles, bring them on. I have buried friends way too young to die and my thought for each of them was "(S)he didn't get to be old." Being old, and gray and wrinkled and all of it, is a gift. It's a privilege not all of us get to enjoy. I have stretch marks, and parts that are lower than they used to be, and hair that's given up on having color. And I'm okay with that. It occasionally occurs to me that I'm "letting myself go", but sometimes it feels so free to let go. Holding on, especially to the past, just wears you out. I'm fine with looking my age - my real age, not what Hollywood tells me my age should look like .

A great quote from a movie: "There is nothing tragic about being 40, unless you try to be 25 instead."

He'll never get a chance to grow up

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned my opinion on high school athletics here before, and if I haven't I will soon. But there's a court case going on now that basically tries a high school coach for murder because he held grueling football practice in 100+ temperatures and denied the players water until one collapsed and died. Coaches across the country are watching this case, upset about it, because of the ramifications if this guy is found guilty. The general feeling seems to be, "If this guy gets convicted, it will severely limit how we can coach."

Yes, if a guy who worked a teenage boy to death, who killed a child with his whole life ahead of him just so he could win a game, gets found guilty of doing exactly that, it could interfere with your ability to kill teenage kids. Wow, what a harsh reality to live with. What a horrible limitation to work within, having to keep conditions conducive to living.

Construction workers, road workers, prisoners in chain gangs, all of these people are legally required to have water breaks and safe work conditions. Apparently high school athletes aren't. Because, it seems, working construction or laying asphalt or doing time doesn't build character, and playing football does.

I guess if you're one of those people who feel that sports are some vital part of adolescence, who value organized game playing in some child-development way, you could possibly entertain the notion that winning is worth personal pain and physical danger. But I think that if my kid wants to run around in tight pants for fun, if he wants to be part of the team and get the letter jacket, he shouldn't have to risk his life to play. Bruises, bumps, exhaustion, and even the occasional broken arm or blown out knee. These are supposed to be the possible consequences of being a team player. A concussion maybe, but not death.

I hope this coach is found guilty and sentenced to prison. I want this man, who seems to see his role in the kid's death as a professional mistake, a job thing, who has detached himself from it and chalked it up to being part of the kid's football career, to actually have to live side by side with career criminals and violent offenders, to have to wear the jumpsuit and eat off a prison tray. Maybe not just because of this one boy who died, but because of all the other boys who will continue to die year after year if this coach is acquitted and a precedent is set that implies that death is a reasonable risk of playing high school sports and that it is in no part the coach's fault for working kids harder than a warden can work a criminal on the side of the road.

We have laws that say a 40 year old man cannot have sex with a 15 year old girl, because he is older and should know better, because it would be too easy for him to take advantage of her and make her do something that might not be in her best interest, and if you violate that law you have to register for the rest of your life. But this adult made a kid do something that was dangerous and ultimately deadly, and he did it by using his position of authority and by taking advantage of the kid's desire to impress and to prove himself. If making the kid give him a blow job to make the team would have followed him for life, making the kid give him his life for it should too.

Coffee

My mother has always drank coffee. When I was a child, coffee makers were expensive, so she drank instant coffee. Bitter 1980s Folgers crystals, mixed much too strong and then nuked in the microwave until burnt, and she drank it black. To this day she is never without her coffee cup, and although she now uses an actual coffee maker, she still drinks bad coffee. She makes her morning pot around 6:30 am and drinks half of it, then turns off the warmer and goes to work. At noon she comes home for lunch, pours herself a cup of old, cold, coffee and nukes it, and drinks a couple cups that way. At 4:00 she does the same thing to the dregs in the bottom of the pot before making herself a new pot. And half the time she forgets the cup in the microwave and has to reheat it all over again. It's oily, bitter, and leaves a film of dust in the mug. It's disgusting.

When I was 15 or so, I decided I was going to become a coffee drinker, to establish myself as an adult. After a couple swallows of my mother's coffee, even fresh brewed, I went back to Mountain Dew as my caffeine source of choice.

When I was 20, in 1997, the coffee shop, Seattle, Starbucks, Central Perk, giant cappuccino mug movement was in full swing and I took a second job, at a coffee shop. This particular coffee shop was a lunch-break haven for yuppies during the day and a beat-poet 20-somethings hangout at night. To this day I equate acoustic guitars and paperback copies of On The Road with mocha lattes made with Hershey syrup. I discovered that in a 2 to 1 ration of steamed milk, I could tolerate coffee. I even learned how to make Turkish coffee, although the grounds always bothered me. But then I got pregnant and, as a single mother, exotic coffee drinks were suddenly out of my price range. Back to the Mountain Dew.

Now I'm 33, and I have to wake up to get my 11 year old daughter off to school and care for my one year old son, and Mountain Dew costs $5.00 a 12 pack. And, the same daughter whose very existence made espresso drinks a thing of the past bought me an espresso machine for Christmas a couple years back. I still use Hershey syrup, and I now microwave the milk rather than steaming it (steaming it took so long the espresso got cold and the tiny tank on the machine ran out of water), but I now start my mornings with a giant insulated mug of coffee. Hell, today I had two. I can't drink it past noon or I'll be up all night; pregnancy plus a year of breast feeding hath robbed me of my Mountain Dew induced caffeine tolerance. And my husband detests the smell or taste of coffee on my breath. But I have finally, finally, achieved the adult coffee-drinker status I wanted in high school, now that I would love to be mistaken for a teenager once again. How ironic.

Actually, it fits pretty well

I saw an article titled, "Gay Christian Network Is A Bit of A Miracle" and it made me think. Why is it such a miracle that gays could be Christian, or that some Christians might be okay with gays? So I thought about it and I realized that Christians today tend to be assholes, at least the loud ones do. I mean, Jesus, what little I know of him, was a pretty cool guy. he was progressive. He said, "Don't worry about all the little rules and all the stuff God said he hated, just be a good person and treat people well and suck it up when life craps on you and you'll be rewarded later for it." He said, "Don't morally judge people. Leave that to God. Don't pull rank you don't have." Of course, I'm paraphrasing, but that's the jist of it. We are the kids in this deal; God is the parent. And just the same way I don't let my daughter hand out punishment to my son, because she's his equal and not in authority, we should not be speaking for God.

God works in mysterious ways. There are more things in Heaven and Earth than you can conceive of. These are both ways of saying that we're not able to get it. We don't have the mental capacity to know what God wants or why he does stuff or what it all means. Just because we can come up with a reason for straight people and not one for gay people doesn't mean there isn't a reason, just that it might take a mind better than ours to grasp it. God made gay people, and cross-dressers, and fetishists, and transsexuals, and flamboyant musical theater costume designers who against all odds actually turn out to be straight. We don't have to know why He made them. We don't even have to know if He had a reason for making them. All we have to do is withhold judgment, try not to stare because that would be rude, and trust that He knows what He's doing and doesn't need us umping up to help all the time. Nobody likes a kissass, and I assume it's the same with the man upstairs. You worry about your work and let the others worry about theirs.

And as long as the gay couple down the street pay their taxes, mow their lawn, keep their stereo turned to a decent volume, and close the curtains before they shower or fight, it has nothing to do with their neighbors. You don't have to approve of everything they do; you're not that important. But if they live a good and honest life and try to bring good to the wold and not bad, then they're following that Jesus told us to do more than a lot of folks are.

"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" . . . Remember he was actually stopping a whore's criminal sentence from being carried out when he said that.

My father was a slut. Not an indiscriminate slut, and not indiscreet enough that I heard about it at school or anything, but he got around. And, I later found out, he coincidentally broke up with a woman who had a baby 8 months later who (also coincidentally) grew up to look exactly frigging like him. And that guy hates me because, somehow, I am to blame for his dad not being his dad and his entire life being a lie handed to him by his mother. Or more likely I'm just a reminder of it all, but still it sucks to get the blame. And that guy married a girl I went to school with and she went to the high school reunion tonight and they sat at the table right next to mine, with the original long-haired pizza boy. And the first maybe-brother guy worked at the pizza place too, so Oh Boy, didn't Tom have fun teasing me about the pizza boy "restraining order table".

And the people I went there to see, the asshole jocks who never turned out to be anything, didn't show. Jackasses. But I did find out that I may get an address I have wanted for a long time. I am nervous and excited, and I will write more later.