Don't Get Me Started with Linda Sharp

The Complete Abortion of FACTS

Abortion.  The subject is contentious at best, deadly at worst.  Passions flare on both sides of the issue.   Those who firmly believe that a woman's body is her domain, therefore hers over which to make any and all decisions.  And those who are staunchly pro-life, believing that no decision making should even enter the equation.

I am 100% pro-choice.  That does not make me, as many right-to-lifers would like to grandstand, some rah-rah-PRO-ABORTION cheerleader.  It simply means I do not believe I have the right to make decisions about the body of another human being.  Not about how they treat a cold, combat cancer, strengthen a boner, pop a zit, or approach a pregnancy. 

Should I be allowed to make someone have an abortion?  To drag them from their house?  What's that?  No?  Because it's your body and your choice to stay pregnant?

Bingo. 

What if you have a tumor growing that threatens your existence.  Should I be able to bang my Bible and interfere, stating that I believe God sanctions everything, including that beautiful growth, and that the tumor is simply His way of calling you home?  I believe He guides it all, so I forbid you from seeing a surgeon and getting it removed.

Huh?  That's not my decision to make?  Why not?  God is used to hide all manner of personal quackery, why can't I use Him against YOU?

Oh, I see.  Surgery, no surgery.  Pregnancy, no pregnancy.

It simply is not my body, ergo not my decision to make.  Either way.

Sadly, the passions on the other side of the abortion debate see it differently.  Whether through the prism of their religion, politics, or personal morals, they do believe every woman's body is theirs over which to rule.

I honestly don't care where you fall in the debate.  I ask only one thing: don't bring a sponge to a brain fight.

If you want to enter a dialogue, be it about politics, programs, the Affordable Care Act, education, or abortion, you'd better come with accurate information, an understanding of the issue, and FACTS.

If you cannot do that, sit down and STFU.

Yet another lawmaker (color me shocked, another GOPer), this one in Idaho - Rep. Vito Barbieri - displayed a profound level of ignorance today during an abortion debate.

Like so many ignorant Republican men before him:  Todd "the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down" Akin; Steve "never heard of a child becoming pregnant by rape" King; Roger "they rape so easy" Rivard; Henry "the juices just don't flow during a rape" Aldridge - Vito opened his mouth, deigning to preside over a hearing dealing with women's abortion rights, and asked the question of Dr. Judi Madsen:  can a woman swallow a small camera for doctors to conduct a remote gynecological exam?

I shit you not.

Now, had I been Dr. Madsen, I would have been hard pressed to not respond with, "Just how fucking stupid are you?"

But she held it together and explained to him that it would be impossible because items swallowed by a woman DO NOT END UP IN THEIR VAGINAS.

His response?  I am quoting here:  "Fascinating."

No, Vito, not really.  Just pretty basic anatomy.

Someone please explain to me what these men, who 1. Do not have vaginas, ovaries, fallopian tubes and 2. DON'T EVEN HAVE A BASIC UNDERSTANDING OF HOW A WOMAN'S BODY IS PUT TOGETHER, are doing legislating WOMEN'S BODIES????

I really do not care what side of the debate you are on, can we at least agree that the people involved in lawmaking, debating, discussing should have, at the very least, a cursory understanding of the body in question?

It is sad enough that these dumbf*cks get into office, but that they are holding court on issues they don't even remotely understand?

Vito, no, I cannot swallow a camera so you can look at my girlie parts, but I guarantee you I could stick a camera up your ass and immediately see your brain.

You Have To Be Able To Do Nothing

I just returned from meeting up with my husband for two nights in Denver.  As our 7 years apart drags towards 8, we take what we can get, and this was the opportunity to celebrate his birthday together.

Denver.  A beautiful city.  I imagine there is  a lot to do, a lot to see, lots of ways to keep busy.  We even managed to catch it between snowfall and bitter temps - enjoying sunshine and temps near 50.

What we did was nothing.

OK, ok, maybe not the clinical definition of nothing, but in terms of couples and dating - we made no grand plans ahead of time beyond dinner reservations.

The rest of the hours?  Well, that's the part I thought about as my plane winged its way back to Austin this morning.  That's the part I want to write about.

It is not uncommon for Rudy and I to get asked the "how do you do it?" in regards to our living arrangement, or in terms of being successfully married for 24 years. 

Yes, it is easy to joke it off by combining the two in an answer, "We last because we DON'T live together.  HAHAHAHA," but the truth is a bit more complex.  But at the same time a bit simple.

The joke that we are still together because we are always apart?  Not so much.  Neither Rudy nor I would be content to just let inertia take the wheel and let one month careen into the next.  There has to be effort across the miles.  A lot of it.  In our case, YEARS of it.

The simplicity is in the fact that we don't need distractions, grand plans, events in order to share space, hours.  We just need each other.

I thought about that a lot today on the plane.  How many couples are truly comfortable just hanging out with one another?  Doing not much of anything, maybe nothing at all? 

Can you talk to your sig other for hours on end about everything, nothing?  Can you enjoy companionable silence, or do you feel the need to babble and fill the air?  Driving in the car, with no destination in mind other than "that direction," does your hand naturally seek theirs? 

Simple.

The complexities of our 24 years come as much in our geographic challenges as in our efforts to thwart them.  The secrets there are not really secrets so much as they are things so many couples allow to fall away.

You stop dating each other.  We don't.  Think about the effort you used to put into a date.  Clothing, appearance, breath, the niceties likes holding a door, pulling out a chair.  You know, the things you did to get laid.

You can't stop dating.  If you want 24+ years, you cannot stop.  You should want your partner to go "Wow" when you walk in the room, and they should want the same.

Does that mean you are not allowed to be comfortable?  Of course not. There is real beauty in laughingly stating during the first cocktail toast of the evening, "Let's be honest.  We are going to eat and drink ourselves sick tonight.  Sex can wait till morning.  Let's have a great night and then go back to the hotel, cuddle up, and watch Food Network."  Clink.

THAT IS LOVE.

(Actually I think my unique phrasing was more along the lines of "Your stomach can have all the blood tonight."  Whatevs...we finished the night with Guy Fieri.)

Just know that as much as that level of comfort is amazing, remember familiarity can also breed contempt, so never get too comfortable.  Care about your hygiene, ask questions and really listen to the answers, shut the bathroom door.

But back to the simple.  Love is in the nothing times.  Being good with just being together.

As with all of our visits, time ticks too quickly and he is back at Gateway and I am here in Austin, hands on the keyboard, cats at my feet.

Wishing I wasn't going to be watching Food Network alone tonight...

Enigma

Enigma.  Of the many definitions, one reads: a person of puzzling or contradictory character.

Basically, someone who doesn't fit into a mold; someone/something that cannot be understood.

Today I went to see The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing, the man who led a small team of mathematic misfits to break the code of the German Enigma machine - the coder through which Hitler was coordinating all attacks.

A stunning movie on several fronts - personally, because I honestly did not know the story of Alan (I plan on now reading the book), globally, because his genius literally shortened a war and saved millions of lives, and profoundly, because his personal story resonates clear through to 2015.

You see, Alan Turing was a gay man.  And while that statement still gets many a pantie in a wad today, back then in England, it was a lawbreaker, punishable by imprisonment or chemical castration.

Alan Turing and all homosexual men like him were viewed as the enigmas.  Something that could not be understood, squashed into a societal box, much less tolerated, so they were criminalized.

After breaking the code, helping to win the war, and returning to "civilian" life - where he spent years continuing to push the boundaries of computer design - Alan was caught after a pub hookup with another gentleman.  Arrested, tried, and sentenced, he chose chemical castration over incarceration.

A year later, he took his life.

A brilliant, deep, amazing human being, tortured by society's strictures and condemnations, committed suicide.

Sound familiar?

That's what resonates into 2015; that's what I carried with me from the theater today. 

Yes, we are making strides - here in the States, across the pond where Queen Elizabeth posthumously pardoned Alan in 2013 - but the persecution of people like Alan, people who fall across the very broad spectrum of human sexuality, are still being ostracized, condemned, pushed to their own heartbreaking breaking points.

Pushed there by parents who are bound more to their religions than to the child they bore.  Pushed there by lawmakers who pander to the bigoted, fearful, and self righteous.  Pushed there by those in society who deign to look down their noses, cast aspersions, and write them off.

I have news for those people.  YOU are the enigmas.  YOU are the ones I simply cannot understand.  YOU are the ones who defy true explanation, because let's face it, YOU can't even articulate how someone unlike you who desires the same rights you enjoy impacts your life even remotely.

The spectrum of human sexuality runs deeper and wider than the letters LGBT contain.  That rainbow flag includes everything from asexuality to pansexuality to homosexuality to transgender to bisexual, and on and on.  Words that sound familiar, some you may not know, descriptors yet to be created.

Personally, I just prefer human beings.  Now, more than any time in my history, I could not care less how or who a person loves.  Seriously.  It is none of my business unless someone wants to share their story with me.  It affects me in no way.  The sun still rises, the sun still sets, I still like margaritas and dick, and my dog still needs to go out to shit regularly. 

No changes that I can discern.

Again, the enigmas are the ones who are reincarnations of those who clung to "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever."  People who somehow see nothing disgusting about how they set themselves above others, how they believe it is right to discriminHATE, how they rend their garments about the apocalypse besetting us all should equality take hold and Adam and Steve can walk down an aisle.

Enigmas.  All of them.

They make so sense. 

And they will lose.  Badly.  Their pictures are being taken and will be Googled far into the future when generations to come marvel at the inanity, the pride, the fucking hubris of those digitally captured denying other's their rights.

Alan Turing was a gift to this world.  Literally.  His ability to think differently, bigger, in a more complex fashion contributed in ways that can only be summed up as profound.  And yet, in the end, he was reduced to one facet of his personal makeup - his homosexuality.

And for that he paid with his life.

That people were, and still are, choosing suicide over enduring an enigmatic piece of society simply must change. 

Rest in peace, Alan.  We will get there.

What Empty Nest?

It's been 6 months.  It's been 6 months and I can still smell the fresh laundry room.

The china has still never been used.

The sheets are only half slept in.

The empty nest was called the sh*t of dreams.

And it is, it really is.

~~~~~~~~~~

OK, I admit it.  Since Carson left for preseason 6 months ago my attention to DGMS has been thin.  Many have privately reached out and asked why - some concerned, some a little too indignant, mostly just curious.

Here's the thing.  For the past six months I have not been lost, in mourning, bereft.  I get asked that a lot.  And I do appreciate all the folks who have reached out to make sure I am bearing up under the weight of a house with no children and an absent husband who resides in Colorado.  It is no secret that I adore my daughters, and you know from years of reading that my relationship with each is close, funny, pretty damned amazing.  So I "get" that people would assume this period has taken a toll of some emotional kind.

Well, I am here to report that I am not devastated, certainly not lost, and my nest is pretty much empty mostly because I am rarely here.

I'm not kidding.

Since C left for UTD, I have traveled more in the past 6 months than I had in the past 12 years.  And no, soccer travel during those 12 years doesn't count.  There is a world of difference between waking up in a Las Vegas resort filled with tiny bottles of minibar alcohol and waking up in a Courtyard by Marriott filled with soccer players and their nose defiling cleats.

Yes, there was a period of odd transition.  My schedule was dictated by their schedule for so many years, that to have it all suddenly stripped bare?  Well, it felt strange, but in only the most glorious of ways.

My weekends were suddenly returned to me.  My nights no longer spent sweating or shivering (hell, it's Texas, sometimes that occurred in the same training session) on a soccer field.  Club season came and went and the only hotel rooms I booked were in Vegas, San Jose, Orlando, and San Diego.  Laundry is not some constant Mount St. Stank affair that needs a gas mask and a sherpa.  I have almost forgotten how to run my dishwasher.

I sleep when I want to.  I go for my run when it suits me.  I watch what I want, when I want.  I have discovered that being selfish feels delicious. 

I didn't know that. 

I have spent almost 2 decades in a mode of "do for others."  And I am not complaining - far from it.  I see the fruits of those efforts, sacrifices, and struggles in my girls as they advance on the world. 

But now?  I am reveling in being able to say YES to meeting a friend for lunch, dinner, a movie.  I love being able to see Rudy more than once in a blue moon, join him on business trips, cruise with my sister.

My house is quiet without Carson.  She and I were a "team" for so many years, especially when Kendall left for school.  For three years it really was C and I - traveling for soccer, going to training or CATZ every night, watching TV to relax, goofing around.

But I am not sad.  I miss the "presence" of all three of my girls because I raised some pretty kickass, INTERESTING human beings.  They are smart, funny, unique.  They liven up a joint.  But to be sad?  Nah.

They are out in the world doing what makes them happy.  And they keep in touch.  I still have routines with them.  Kendall and I text-watch Vanderpump Rules together on Monday nights - and we are merciless.  Carson Facetimes me on a regular basis to make me watch Youtube videos and see my reactions.  And Culley stops by with Lex just to hang out.  

A couple benefits I did not anticipate?  Toilet paper.  I have toilet paper for weeks and weeks and weeks.  Gasoline.  Good lord.  A tank literally lasts me as long as a 6 pack of Charmin.  Weeks and weeks and weeks.

Life is not over.  Life is not sad or filled with empty hours.  Life is just different, and I look at it as glass half full.  And getting fuller with each endeavor, meeting, trip.

So to any parent dreading an impending departure?  Buck up.  I am happy to report from the other side that life is good.  Life is exciting.  Life is still growing and opening up in new directions because I am open to new directions.

I am spreading my wings as they continue to spread theirs.  I spent over 2 decades setting examples for my daughters about independence, about being a strong female, about facing uncertainties unafraid, about taking the garbage out without a man.

I am not about to stop now and turn into some quivering mass of maternal Jell-o who just sits and waits for them to come home with their dirty clothes.  Far from it.  I have always taught them that "Attitude is half the battle."  And it is.  My attitude is positive and face forward.  I think they have been proud of me up to now, and I want them to be proud of me as I write MY next chapter.

So don't dread your empty nest.  Just keep it feathered because they do come home on occasion and remind you what that dishwasher is for.

(P.S.  All that being said, look for posts to start coming frequently.  My head is about to explode from the number of things that need written.)