Away We Go: An Open Letter

Dear Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida -

An adopted child is not a consolation prize. When you adopt a child, you don't sit around grieving your lack of a real baby unless you are a really shitty parent. If you've adopted a child, especially if you've adopted FIVE children, and you're not too busy raising those children to go out drinking every night to sublimate your feelings of failure because you couldn't have real kids, you are an unbelievably super shitty parent. Finally, when you adopt a child, you officially "have" children. Real ones.

Other than that, excellent film.

Yours,
MegBon, adoptive parent

Edited to add: This is an issue that's so near and dear to my heart. I wish people would understand that adoption is not some act of generosity made by sad people who can't have their "own kids." I wish people could get their heads wrapped around the fact that people adopt kids for exactly the same reason that lots of people give birth to them: you want a family. That's it. That's the only reason. There's nothing mysterious about it at all. I'm so disappointed that this otherwise lovely movie took that horrible misstep. I may write a real letter to Dave and Vendela and let them know that I love my daughter as much as they love their kid.

The Ideological Divide

Through a series of facebooky events, I've friended a real live small government conservative. It's good to get outside your bubble. It's good to see what makes the other side tick. It's good to see how you come across to the other side. And I'm starting to get what makes them tick: that old Reaganism about government not being the solution but the problem has moved from opinion to aphorism. It's as true to them as "absence makes the heart grow fonder" or "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence." It is a truth so true it's self-evident, unquestioned and unquestionable.

To be fair, we lefties are as prone to converting our philosophies into fact as they are. The difference is, of course, we're right. [Can you smiley face a blog? I think you're supposed to rely on your skill as a writer to get across bloggy cheekiness. I, here, am doing what Senator Franken (god, LOVE how that sounds) calls "kidding on the square."]

As I've mentioned loads of time in this here blog, the function of government is to do the will of the majority while protecting the rights of the minority. And, I've gone just on and on about how it's the second half that's so hard to do.

And right there is the crux of the divide: we lefties believe in protecting the rights of those minorities NOW. And we believe it is the sacred duty of government to do that. Conservatives believe that society will move toward social justice on its own.

Look, it's true that we probably didn't need the Civil Rights Act to start moving away from our ugly American history of Jim Crow and slavery. But, we sure as shit needed it in 1964. And eventually every state in the union would have acknowledged the right for women to vote without the 19th amendment. But that would have come a hell of a lot later than 1920.

And eventually gay people will have the same marriage rights as straight people. But they should have them NOW.

My theory is that conservatives tend to be straight white men because straight white men haven't really ever had to wait for anyone to acknowledge their rights in this country. They have no history of wanting it NOW.

For a lot of years, it's been politically vogue to claim independence. Poltickin' bona fides are established when a liberal votes republican or a conservative votes dem. But, y'all, I'm a proud liberal democrat because I believe in government and I believe that government, federal government, has an obligation to... well, hell, let's just go to the text:

establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.

And, dammit, that needs to happen NOW.

Perptual, Sustained Confusion

I haven't blogged in a long time. Instead I've been watching a lot of TV. I've given the old college try to maintaining some level of productivity- I've been sorta kinda on top of laundry, done the dishes every day, kept reasonably ahead of my work responsibilities, Laney is still in one piece. But around 8:00ish, when the house is quiet, I've been doing that same thing: popping a Norco and passing out on the couch while watching Roseanne reruns. Tons of them. TV Land has been on a nonstop Roseanne loop since I was in the hospital. There's something soothing about those old Roseanne episodes.

This odd, latter day passion for Roseanne, however, is not whence comes my titular sustained confusion. This is:

This is the ad for Cialis that runs almost nonstop on TV Land. And I. Don't. Get. It. What is the point? What are they getting it? Is there some obscure connection between bathtubs and erections? Is there something inherently erotic about bathing next to your sex partner? In an entirely different bathtub? On the beach?

I do not protest befuddlement for purposes of bloggy amusement. I am actively perplexed by the point of the side-by-side bathtubs as marketing fodder for hard-on drugs.

I tell you what it it reminds me of: some leotarded Trekkian notion of exotic sex on the pleasure planet of Risa. Like Riker and some sexy blue lady with a weird nose-to-ear piercing are in side-by-side tubs on Risa (or Geordi and the same chick on the Holodeck.... poor Geordi).

In the real world, it's just more marketing bullshit isn't it? I'm convinced there are graduate level marketing classes out there called "How To Convince the Decision Makers that your Weird and Pointless Images are Effective."

Michael Jackson, Gerard Manley Hopkins. Gerard Manley Hopkins, Michael Jackson

So, when I find myself affected by a celebrity death, my thoughts often turn to a particular Gerard Manley Hopkins poem because I am deep in a way that is not at all pretentious or annoying and is also entirely original:

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.*
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Did you read that or just skip ahead? I bet you just skipped ahead. Don't even. I know how you are. Allow me to summarize: Hopkins is laying down the hard and heavy truth that most of the time that we mourn, it's our own short stint on this planet we're mourning, it's our imminent death we have on the brain:

It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret (i.e., your own sorry hide) you mourn for.

Years and years ago, I started making the joke that in my Michael Jackson world it was always 1985. There was no Michael Jackson for me after that. It was just too goddamn sad. So, if this is my Michael Jackson reality, why was I thrown for such a loop that he died today? 1985 Michael Jackson is as he ever was.

You following me here? I'm not really mourning the death of Michael Jackson at all.

(Ah, but he used to be so good, didn't he?)

Anyway, I recently read this article about the two Our Towns that were showing in Chicago. It had never hit me that Our Town was two plays: one about the brevity of life, the certainty of its end. The other is about how awesome it is that we get to be alive at all.

(Thornton Wilder and Gerard Manley Hopkins and Michael Jackson. And I can STILL make it all about me. August company I keep, huh?)

I'll leave this blogpost sad about Michael Jackson (sadder, I think, for the sadness of his life than for the soon-ness of his death). But also glad that I got to be here when it was all new, that we get to have that music for like always and finally that I get to be alive at all (I may have let this video go on a little longer than I should have... pardons for the self-indulgence):



*Look just a quick poetry lesson - read these fivelines aloud. The way they scan kills me. This is such a great poem:

Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.*

Cops at Bars

Those of you who know me (which is, you know, both of you), know that I spent my 20s as bartender. I worked the day shift and was often the only staff member there. My only security were my afternoon regulars: a cabal of flabby, middle-aged functionally alcoholic government employees. I'll wait a minute while you do the calculus necessary to figure out that level of uselessness.

Sigh. That was mean. But I'm short one gallbladder and, as such, have fewer places to store bile. I'm letting it out.

Given my history, you can imagine that this might upset me a bit.

I know that cops do dangerous, unheralded work for not much money and even less thanks. And we owe a debt of gratitude to people who do this work. I get that. I really do.

That said, there's nothing scarier than having that cop who loves being the biggest and the baddest getting hammered at your bar. When that cop gets drunk, he is the scariest motherfucker in town. He's not scary because he's bigger and stronger than you. He's scary because no matter how wasted he is, he's got the power and he's got the control. And he's wasted.

There's an article up at the Chicago Reader about how the kind of probation Abbate got is not unusual for aggravated battery. We all have the capacity to lose ourselves, right? We all have the capacity to let that ugly something inside us rear up and strike out.

The problem is, when a person with a lot of power lets it out, the consequences are a lot more serious. That judge failed.

Last Hospital BlogPost

In summary - pancreatitis gone, gallbladder coming out at some point today and tomorrow I go home after they give me some breakfast. Breakfast. Pancakes. Excuse me while I clean the drool up off the keyboard.

Onto more exciting topics: TV grew boring, there's only so much facebooking a gal can do in one day, and the awesome book Jessica sent me proved too mentally taxing for my starved, drug-addled brain. So, I downloaded the Kindle for iPhone app and got one of the Charlaine Harris southern vampire books. These books are what my family would have deemed "good trash." God, the heights of literary snobbery we Rhems can reach too!

But I come to blog neither on Charlaine Harris nor my own snobby literary traditions. Instead, just wanted to offer the following opinion:

I love this app! Love reading books on my iPhone. Within seconds, it became a perfectly natural way to read. I can curl up on the bed or in a chair and read on the iPhone way more easily than I could with a bulky novel.

I think that electronic and print books will exist side by side for a while. Mostly because bookstores are such wonderful places. That said, I bet this rigid insistence that paper is THE ONLY way to read a book will eventually fall by the wayside.

Go on, give it a try. Reading, after all, isn't about the physical trappings of the device on which the words are conveyed. And, isn't it nice to think that no trees had to die to bring you the novel you're enjoying?

I Am Not (repeat) NOT Falling Apart at Forty

Blogging from the hospital bed. I feel so techno-age Camille. (cough cough).

So, this started a loooooong time ago. In the Meg timeline, this started before I found Pindar. And I feel like I've been with Pindar since dinosaurs roamed the earth (quick science note: people and dinosaurs never cohabited the earth. I make this point since we seem to be smack in the middle of the Glorious Stupid People Revolution). Basically, when I eat too much (which usually happens after drinking too much) I get this really painful sensation in my belly. This lasts about 12 hours and then I'm better.

Since it was something I brought on myself what with the overeating, I always figured that there was no need for medical intervention.

Then several months ago, I had an attack which came with lots of throwing up and, well, agony. I soldiered through what I self-diagnosed as food poisoning. Last weekend, I had another one. After two days of intense pain, I realized it was time to stop self-diagnosing and Don took me to the hospital.

Where I've been since. I'm on Day 4 of hospitalization, with an expectation of going home on Friday.

Here's the skinny: much like your great uncle Reuben, my gallbladder is chockablock full of stones. These attacks/episodes I have are when a stone gets loose, starts knocking around my digestion system in a frenzy of malicious petulance. Typically, my body dispatches the stone in some form. But this time, there's one that's taken up residence in my common bile duct and there it sits gleefully fucking with me and my ability to process food. This afternoon, the little fucker gets taken out. Thursday, the whole poorly functioning, malevolent, stoney gallbladder goes.

Some thoughts:

It's much easier to scare an intern than you'd think. Speak sharply to them and then they'll be afraid of you. The problem with scaring interns is that then they avoid you like the plague. And, really, they're just young folks learning a job. But when they tell you after a full 24 hours of no eating and THIRTEEEN hours after a 2:30 am MRI that no one's looked at the MRI yet because (and I quote) "I guess they're really busy", it's kind of hard to tame the wrath.

The PCT (Primary Care Technicians) and RNs here at Evanston have been really great. They come in and chat and give you drugs and pat your head when you cry (because, really, I am SUCH a giant girl's blouse and have been crying and crying and crying).

The medical doctor I have is kind of meh. He told me that there was no way they'd take out my gallbladder while I was here and then was sort of defensive about it when he turned out to be wrong. Also, he forgot to let me eat one night. I could have had BROTH, dammit, and he didn't update my order. So instead I had ice chips. I wanted the BROTH.

The surgeons have swooped in heroically and told me they'd remove my gallbladder on Thursday. I was awoken this morning by one Dr. Ujiki who I found very sexy. Not because he was all that sexy, but, guys, I would have found Dick Cheney sexy if he said he was going to relieve me of this troublesome bitch of a gallbladder. Well, that may be overstating it a bit. But you get the idea.

I've had so many friends who have been ROCK STARS through this. The Bielkes, the Kingsubrys, the Anyahs, Gillly Boo! Taking Laney for days and nights. This is the downside of living with no family nearby: no one you can impose upon without feeling guilty. But people have been so great about helping with Laney and I am so grateful to them.

Since Friday, I have consumed 10 saltines, two bowls of vegetable broth, two cups of lemon ice, one cup of cherry ice, some apple juice and some cranberry juice. I bet I've still somehow managed to gain weight.

That said, it's heartening to know that once I get up out of this bitch, I will never have another one of those episodes again

Thanks for all the kind wishes. I'm going back to Ghostbusters because, as you know, busting makes me feel good.

Out!