Living La Vida Alpo

How to recognize a damsel NOT in distress

Note to all my neighbors who saw me fiddling under my car's hood one sunny afternoon earlier this week:

Thank you for stopping by.  It warms my heart.  Really.

And no, it doesn't bother me in the least that you didn't stop by to say hello.  Or that you didn't want to know how my holidays were going.

In other words, I fully recognize that your response to seeing some long-haired white-looking chick with a ratchet in her hand and her car's guts exposed (and okay, okay, I admit it.  I was wearing my big ole jeans. There may have been a SMALL amount of crack as well) to the cold December air was totally instinctive:

"Oh, my goodness.  Are you okay, miss?"

"Hello there!  Ya need help?

and, oh, my favorite:

"HEY, WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THERE?!"

I get it, okay? I totally do.  Doesn't mean I appreciate it.

You people are just lucky it was snot-inducingly cold.  Tit-numbing cold.  Tears-down-frozen-cheeks cold.  Which made me just nod and go, "heh! I'm fine!" and get back to work on my car and forget about all the times I've seen guys in wifebeaters headfirst into their engine blocks, Coronas precariously balanced on a sideways tire rim in the very same parking lot, neighbors ambling by without a second glance.

Yeah.  You're lucky I was excited to finally be fixing my own car instead of paying someone else to do it like some hapless single chick and didn't care that the reason I was getting such attention was because of my long non-butch hair, two coats of mascara and ... oh, yes! MY VAGINA.

Otherwise, you woulda gotten the death-rays. 

That is all.  Thank you.

Readers are fools.

If ever I become a rich and famous author and have to answer a question about what in my writing is drawn from real life, I am so plagiarizing this from Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale.

Readers... are fools.  They believe all writing is autobiographical.  And so it is, but not in the way they think.  The writer's life needs time to rot away before it can be used to nourish a work of fiction.  It must be allowed to decay.  That's why I couldn't have journalists and biographers rummaging around in my past, retrieving bits and pieces of it, preserving it in their words.  To write my books, I needed my past left in peace, for time to do its work.

Except when I say it, I'll cuss a lot.  'Cause I'm, like, all edgy and shit.  Yeah.

AKA Winter suicide prevention

*giggles*

Seeing this kind of thing is what makes me forget I have a gas oven now.

(via failblog.org)

How's everyone else in the area dealing with the snow?  Leah has her fort built out of what living room furniture I have, Colin's staring out the window growling at the snowflakes, and I'm prowling my cabinets looking for knock-me-out drugs.

Not too bad, considering it looks like a foot of snow already in some places...

Please, please, note the sarcasm.

I don't give a shit how much people make fun of us Wamarvans for freaking out when there's snow.  I don't want it.  You think it's no big deal? You can have it.

Here's Colin looking for a place to pee this morning.  Took him forever, but he finally found one about half an hour later in the corner of my living room.  That's my baby!  Good boy! WHAT A GOOD BOY YOU ARE!

Screwed.

They shouldn't call that Essure procedure-thingy a surgery. 

Surgery implies blood and owies and anesthesia and stitches or staples and time off from work.

This was a couple of woo-woo pills and ten minutes in the stirrups and "No, I feel juuuuust fine, doctor -- BWAHAHA!" and a chauffeured drive home.

Best of all, insurance covered every last penny.  Even the co-pay.  Which is nice, finally seeing an insurance company doing something smart, as opposed to stories I've heard about companies not covering birth control for college students, but being more than happy to cover a Viagra prescription.  (Unintended pregnancies in young adults versus some geezer having a hard time with his hard-on?  C'mon.  No-boner-brainer.)

And when they told me I'd be able to see my fallopian tubes on a TV screen, I asked, "Can I bring my camera?"  And then I giggled. 

It seemed like an appropriate thing to do -- giggle, that is -- when you're asking a wacko question about things inside your body.  And you're not sure if this doctor-person is one of those people who believe things inside the body should stay inside the body.

The doctor didn't even blink. She shrugged, said, "I don't care.  Y'know... You might not be up to it 'cause I'm gonna give you some of the good stuff, but whatever.  I can take pictures for you with the telescope if you want."

THAT DOCTOR IS A GODDESS.

And so, without further ado: my fallopian tubes, screwed.

The right tube, partially obscured by tissue.

The left tube, freshly corkscrewed. Over the next three months, scar tissue will form a natural and impenetrable barrier around the metal, thus rendering me sterile and free from the pill. 

Backing away from the insert in the left tube.  *Cue angelic choir*

 
 

Eight years in a wink

Dear L'il Red,

Today you turned eight.  To you, that meant presents and parties and squeals and giggles.  To me, it meant another stake in the ground to mark how far we've come.

When I gave birth to you, I was a young, naive mother who didn't know how to get you to put your damn mouth on my goddamn teat, much less parent you.  And somehow, with the help of a really incredible daddy and a pretty cool family, you've become this rambunctious young lady of whom I couldn't be more proud. 

Yes, even when you're throwing a sobbing fit in the middle of the parking lot on the way to your birthday dinner, and yes, even when you demand, just before bedtime, that I sing happy birthday again, and again so that the dog can see it.  (Because the dog -- the DOG!!! -- was clearly upset at having been excluded, and he proceeded to show us his discontent by dragging his ass across the carpet while eyeing us.)  Yes, even then.

And when I told you today, for the seventeenth time this week, that I won't give you a freakin' baby sister, you pouted and said, "FINE!  Daddy will marry someone and give me one!" 

And darling, that's just fine.  Because no matter how many other cute babies there are in the world, you'll always be mine, all mine.

I love you.  Happy Birthday.

Mom

Too bad it involves pink.

This is what happens when people find cool ways to raise awareness.  Love it. Now if only we could do an "educating stupid people dance."

Via feministing.  Over 200 employees at a Portland hospital got together to promote breast cancer awareness.

Relationship Statuses Facebook Should Consider Adding

For some reason, advertising your relationship status and adjusting it the nanosecond it changes has become the THING to do. Why, I don't know, but it is. 

So anyway, Facebook supplies six options:

1. single
2. in a relationship
3. engaged (as if Facebook didn't get a huge payoff from the wedding industry to include this one, hello?)
4. married
5. it's complicated
6. in an open relationship (in other words, the one status no one has the ovaries to select and broadcast)

Without further ado, I would like to suggest the following.

1. Trapped for life
2. Well, [partner's name] has money and I don't mind sleeping with them, so... yeah.
3. Single bitter (wo)man-hater
4. Just friends with [partner's name] but secretly sleeping together... shh don't tell!
5. Broke up with [partner's name], but it's still too raw, so leaving their name here for now.
6. Having as much fun as I possibly can before societal pressures take my freedom away in the form of marriage.  Call me!

A post about my vagina. But alas, no porn.

So I'm getting metal springs shoved up my hoo-ha.

Or, to be more appropriately circumspect about about it, later this week, I'll be taking advantage of a relatively new permanent birth control procedure wherein "an Essure trained doctor inserts small flexible micro-inserts™ through the body’s natural pathways (vagina, cervix, and uterus) and into [the] fallopian tubes."

Whatever.  The point is, I'm getting the female equivalent of a vasectomy -- the pathway between my baby-incubator and my little baby-making seeds will forever be sealed off.  And I couldn't be more thrilled.

When I went in for my consultation, they took one look at my birthdate on my chart and asked me over and over again: "You sure? I mean, really, really sure?  You do understand doing this means no more babies?"

Yes. 

"Ever."

Yes.

*eyebrow raise*

Yeeeeesss!  I do know how to read, y'know.  I may still be under 30, but my brain is still pretty darn tootin' good, thankyouveddymuch.

And while doing the preliminary exam they asked about sexual partners and somewhere in the conversation found out I was newly separated. Apparently that throws up red flags for medical personnel who deal with vaginas: "What if you meet someone else and..."

"Let me stop you right there.  I've thought about it, don't worry.  I've already done the childbirth and mama thing and I love my kid to pieces.  No problem there.  I'm SURE."

"Okay, well, we have to ask."

Uh-huh.  Because clearly, meeting a hot, potentially partner-worthy sperm carrier someday carries with it the inherent danger of suddenly changing a woman's life goals.

Seriously? 

Methinks the problem with THAT anxiety about my reproductive goals -- or any other woman's, for that matter -- is much bigger than my teeny weeny vageeny.

I didn't know Essure existed until a few months ago when I went in for my annual pap.  I've been on birth control pills for forever, and hate them with a passion.  Hormones, hello?! But I've also tried the patch and the shot, and while I like them, hate the sticky residue on my skin (not to mention the visual reminder every time I get naked), and for the shot, was horrible about remembering to go in every three months.

So when I told my midwife I didn't want any more babies, she asked if I'd considered "more permanent options."

"Like what?" 

No, no.  Let me revise.  I said, "like what?!"  With my chin up in the air, ready to do battle and everything.  Because when you're talking about doing stuff with my body, I get a little defensive.  It's fortress QueenAlpo over here, yo.

"Well, the IUD."

Oh lawdy.  So I regaled her with THAT old story about the time years ago when I tried to get an IUD -- first visit they didn't have any IUDs left and needed to order them.  Second visit, they forgot I was coming FOR the IUD and had to send an emergency courier out somewhere to get one 'cause they felt bad about me coming twice.  And then I don't remember, I got sick or I waited too long, so I left.  Third visit, they finally had the damn thing and showed it to me.  That thing is like the size of a quarter. Sheesh.  And all this time I'd been envisioning giant braces and brackets to shove up in me.

Then I get on the table and spread my legs, breath deeply, relax, that whole thing you're supposed to do when you have a strange woman coming at you with cold sterile tools and latex gloves.  I am a champ at that, let me tell you.  It is an acquired skill of which I am proud, yes, oh, yes.  Anybody can shove their hands up in me without me even wincing.

Wait, I promised no porn. Ahem. Never mind.

So anyway, lady's fiddling down there, and I feel lots of pressure, pushing, fingers prodding, and I'm pretty sure at one point I felt a *sproing*.

And then she looks at me and says hesitantly, "Um... you're too small."

And that's how I found out that it doesn't matter if you've shoved a gazillion babies out your wazoo or if you're six feet fall.  It IS possible for women to have small vaginas and small cervixes and small uteruses.  So I went home, me and my tiny uterus, a third time sans IUD and destined for a lifetime of freakin' pills.

Until a few months ago.  And once that midwife explained to me what Essure was, I screamed, "SIGN ME UP!"

Anyway, so....

So I know the topic of birth control, or more specifically, asking a woman what birth control she uses, is kindasorta taboo (why?!).  But I'll tell you right now... I am so looking forward to the next time someone asks me about babies, and I can say:

"Oh, I'm good, thanks.  I had them shove metal springs up my hoo-ha."

Bruised fruit

It's been close to a year since I came home one day and announced I was done with my marriage.  That day surprised me almost as much as it did him.

Although in the months of retrospection and introspection, I've convinced myself it wasn't that surprising at all.  The signs were all there, in that elusive, intuitive, only-I-can-see them way.

Still, I've been told over and over again that it's easier for me; I was the one that made out, the one who got to do what I wanted to do, take control of my destiny rather than deal with the ashes I left behind. 

And maybe that's true.  Who knows?  I'll never be able to try on his experience of this whole thing, like someone else's coat from last winter.  I can only try to imagine, try to push aside my own feelings to sympathize.  But when I do -- and believe me, I do -- I find myself screaming to put my own moth-eaten coat back on.

My marriage was to a wonderful, supportive, extremely dedicated husband and father.  That has always been true. 

So why did I leave?  Well, those reasons are between me and him, so if you're reading this looking for dirt, fuck you and your little doggie too.  Go find the dirt in your own life and thank your lucky stars that you own it and no one else does.

In a community as small as ours, though, it's hard not to feel the eyes on me.  It's hard not to feel defensive, to want to explain. 

And in some ways, that's a good thing.  If I can explain, after all, then the rightness of the new direction in my life solidifies for me.  Still, the marriage that is quickly fading into my past is a semantic puzzle for me.

People leave marriages because there was something wrong, don't they?  Someone cheated.  Someone lied.  Someone wasn't committed to making it work. 

But none of that happened with me and my ex.  We were the best of friends, volatile lovers, and among the things we liked doing together, our favorite was making a home for our daughter.

I'm still at the point where I deal in metaphors.  Maybe years down the road, I'll have a blunt, straightforward way to describe what happened, but for now, the best I can come up with is bruised fruit.

What was it like leaving my marriage?  Like deciding whether to eat bruised fruit. 

Holding in your hands a gorgeous, ripened peach.  Smells delicious, and you know anyone would be lucky to have such a treat in front of them.  But in washing it and preparing to eat it and claim it for your own, you drop it.  And when you pick it up, there's a bruise on one side. 

And that's what it was like for me, that choice.  Knowing I was lucky to have the marriage I did, but also knowing if I went ahead and ate the damn thing, I wouldn't be able to avoid that bruise.  I'd obsess over it, wait for the mealy consistency that comes from eating the bruised part, ignoring the ripe, juicy flesh of the rest of it.   

And knowing that no one deserved to have to share that peach with me, thinking I was savoring it when I wasn't.