Where We Live

I come from a family of liars. Professional liars. People who, at one time or another, got paid good money to pretend to be someone other than themselves. People who got paid to make fictitious stories up and try and present them as realistically as possible. I myself am a gifted liar. I can sit down and start typing and create a world that had not existed prior to the tippy-tapping of my lightning fast fingers on the keyboard.

And its all lies.

Oh, sure. We call it fiction to gussy it up. We call it acting to make it seem somewhat presentable. But at its core, there is an air of deception and pretension that can be seductive. It's lovely to have the ability to make things up, just for the hell of it. It's lovely and enticing and seductive. So much so, in fact, that it can difficult to come back to this world, this planet, this reality.

The difference between me and the rest of my prevaricating clan is that I live here -- I only work in Fantasyland. I was raised by a mother who was just this side of a pathological liar. I am about to move in with a father who is… well, let's just say he can tell his share of fish stories. The trouble with creative people who lie is that they tend to lie most of all to themselves. They live in a permanent state of denial in which unpleasant news is greeted, not with shock or grief, but with an immediate urge to revise and polish, changing the outcome through fabrication, rather than dealing with problems head-on.

It reminds me of when we were very small and playing make-believe, and something was proposed by a playmate in the creation of our mutual fiction that didn’t quite jibe with our own vision. So we'd attempt to change the course of the story by saying a sentence that usually began, "Let's say that…." "Let's say that you're the mommy and I'm the baby, and you have to carry me because I'm too little to walk." "Let's say that you're the velociraptor and I'm the T-rex and we have to fight to see who's meanest." Which is great. When you're seven.

If you're still doing it at seventy-seven, then we have a problem. "Let's say cigarettes aren't harmful to my health, but really are what has been keeping me alive for all these years." "Let's say that this persistent numbness in my foot isn't anything to concern myself with or see a doctor about, and let's say it'll go away by itself, and won't put me in a wheelchair the rest of my life." "Let's say that living in a squalid, filthy house full of rodent feces, with nicotine-coated walls, a leaky roof and stinky, mildewy carpet is just fine and no concern should be given whatsoever to what kind of damage such conditions have on my physical or psychological health."

Let's just say all that, because if we say it, we make it true.

Personally I like my drama on the page and the stage, thank you very much. I like to make stories up, as long as when I turn off the laptop and put it in the case, the stories go with it. Because this is where we live. This is the world and we are the people in it. Magical thinking -- the belief that just merely by wishing that something were so, it is so -- hasn't advanced the cause of the world one bit. Inventive thinking, yes. Magical thinking, no. Creative thinking, yes. Magical thinking… not so much.

How I'm going to tackle the challenge of living every day in a house with someone who is constantly rewriting his reality, as if it were a screenplay instead of real life, I'm simply not sure. This is not a drill. It is not a docu-drama. It's life. And sometimes life sucks. But it must be handled, and soon.

Or it will simply slip away, unnoticed.

~C~

Either You're All In or You're All Out

Thanks to Bring It On!'s Jet, who found this first and posted about it on BIO v.2, I now have proof that supports my conclusion that Catholics who claim to oppose abortion on moral grounds must then make the decision to use absolutely no birth control whatsoever. I've been saying it for years, ever since I attended Catholic high school as a non-Catholic, and we as young women entered into discussions about contraception and the lack thereof.

Back in the antediluvian 70s, my argument was that, if sex was an act that the Holy Roman Church had deemed appropriate only for the purposes of conceiving children, then it stood to reason that the Church was practicing hypocrisy by providing information on any attempt to foil conception -- even the rhythm method. The entire premise of the rhythm method is that a married couple has sex only at times that they can be fairly certain conception will fail. This is in direct opposition to the Church's teaching that sex is only for making babies.

Now New Scientist has published an article that points out that the success of the rhythm method as a means of preventing pregnancy relies largely on the miscarriage (i.e., spontaneous abortion) of fertilized embryos. So, if the position of the Church and Catholics at large is that a life is a life at the moment of conception, then millions of Catholics the world over who practice the rhythm method are intentionally conceiving humans using obsolete gametes, and such actions can only be defined, using a Catholic lexicon, as the murder of unborn children. By delaying fertilization until the gamete is passed its prime, couples practicing the rhythm method drastically increase their chances of miscarriage, and therefore are intentionally causing the death of the embryos.

Now, personally, I think that the rhythm method, if scientifically practiced using basal body temperature and intelligent cycle charting can be one option for hundreds of thousands of couples who are unable or unwilling, either because of medical conditions or health concerns that preclude chemical or barrier methods. Though proponents of the method claim it to be 90% effective -- one couple in ten will conceive during the course of a year -- actual statistical data yields an efficacy rate around 75% -- two to three unplanned pregnancies in the course of a year. It is therefore not an option for couples who are not in a position to raise an unexpected child, unless those couples are open to abortion.

According to the New Scientist article, the usage of a condom -- preventing conception entirely-- coupled with abortion in case of condom failure would still result in far fewer aborted embryos than the rhythm method creates.

And this goes right back to the argument I made to my hot and horny little Catholic classmates. You're either all in, or you're all out. If you declare your belief that sex was created by God for the sole purpose of frumping up new little Catholics, then you had best be prepared to get knocked up each and every time you have sex. If you aren't prepared to have a child, then your only other option is to abstain from sex until such time as you are ready to do so. The use of any method to thwart God's plan in turning a woman into nothing more than a life support system for human reproductive organs stands in direct violation of everything they claim to stand for.

I wonder how many modern Catholic women who use the rhythm method are prepared to see the size of their families return to the days of yesteryear -- to six, seven or more children -- all of whom must be fed, clothed and educated. How many modern Catholic women who were raised to believe not only that abortion and contraception are sins, but that they as women are free to follow their professional and artistic ambitions, the same as their husbands, fathers and brothers are going to be happy giving birth to what could end up being over half a dozen children because they have allowed the Church to undermine their own logic, reason and control when it comes to determining the size of their families? When will this madness ever end? And when will Catholic and fundementalist Christian women everywhere understand that men never, ever oppose abortion or birth control when they don't want a child. They only oppose it because keeping a woman permanently and perenially knocked up might be the only way he has to control her.

In any case, the rhythm method is murder, by the standards of the Roman Catholic Church and fundementalist Protestant Churches, such as Southern Baptist. Any woman using this method in an effort to prevent conception is intentionally killing her fetuses and must stop today using any form of birth control. If she gets pregnant, she gets pregnant. Serves her right for being such a wanton slut as to concede to having sex purely for the fun of it. The hellish strumpet!

Guess its time to make a decision, ladies. All in. Or all out. What's it going to be?

~C~

Yes, I'm Sure She Is a Lovely Girl! (Psst. Paul! Call Me!)

In reading CNN.com today, I was overwhelmed by the number of articles that caught my eye as potentially blog-worthy. I mean, overwhelmed. How would I ever be able to choose one? How could I write about Donald Rumsfeld testifying before the Senate Appropriations committee, assuring them that border duty wouldn't unduly stretch our already-overtaxed National Guard troups, while I ignored the news that the White House has agreed to brief Congress at large on their NSA wiretapping activities? How could I simply eschew the Senate's immigration plan, which includes the granting of citizenship to a good chunk of the 11 to 12 million illegal immigrants living within US borders, while focusing attention on the fact that The Da Vinci Code opened last night in Cannes to screams and hollers -- not from offended Christians and umbraged Catholics, but from critics and journalists who thought the movie kinda sucked? So I decided to ignore all of them, and talk about the one item that I deemed of universal, earth-shattering importance.

Paul McCartney's getting a divorce.

Shut UP! Now, that's what I call news, brother. Paul McCartney, he who was married forever to Linda, and was barely on the market for three years after her death before hooking up with Heather Mills, is now getting a very expensive divorce. Which means he's on the market again. Which means I need to really start working out.

What?

Oh, you don't think I have a shot at Paul McCartney? Puh-LEEEZE. I'm cute. Damn cute. At least as cute as Heather Mills. And smart. And I can write. And I can sing, which, let's be honest here, is more than Linda could do, may she rest in peace. Granted, I'm not a vegan, but I could learn for Paul. Soy, soy, soy... all about the soy, Sir Paul. I won't eat anything with a face... that's my motto. (She said, polishing off the first half of her avocado and swiss burger.)

And the best part for him is, I don't really want to get married. And I'm through having babies. Look, I'm not asking for something whirlwind, Paul. We've all learned that marrying haste leads to repenting in leisure. We'll take it slow. And I promise not to badmouth Heather, who is a lovely girl, I'm sure. A bit too thin for you, but otherwise quite charming, I've no doubt. It was just one of those things, I know. I know how these things go. Paparrazzi. The pressures of celebrity. Yes, yes... tell me all about it....

We'll start slow. Dinner. A movie. Maybe a little miniature golf. And we'll see where it goes. Call me.

~C~

Too Much Television

"Warning: The Army surgeon general has determined that allowing soldiers to watch movies about war is more hazardous than actually fighting in one."

That's right. Army surgeon general Lt. General Kevin Kiley has told CNN that HBO's upcoming documentary, "Baghdad ER" is so graphic that military personnel who watch it might suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Dr. Kiley is concerned, and he's not afraid to say it. He thinks that soldiers previously or currently stationed in Iraq who watch the in-depth documentary which is in an unvarnished look at wartime casualties in a war that has been largely hidden from public view could "experience many emotions." (God forbid!) He also feared that merely viewing the documentary could precipitate symptoms of PTSD.

This is fascinating, because according to this article in the Charlotte Observer (Charlotte would be in North Carolina -- that's a red state, fyi), the Army has been having a really hard time admitting that any of the soldiers who fought in Iraq actually have PTSD. Fewer than 10,000 out of 178,000 soldiers were diagnosed as being at risk for PTSD by the Army upon their return from duty. What's more, 78% of all the at-risk vets were not able to get referrals for PTSD follow-up treatment once they returned home. .

So, apparently of nearly 180,000 soldiers who actually fought in Iraq, the Army has deemed less than 10,000 of them were damaged enough to be at risk for PTSD. And of the ones who are diagnosed, only 22% were considered valuable or important enough to receive post-discharge treatment by the military. Still, the Army's top doctor is worried that sitting in an easy chair from the safety of a base rec room, viewing a documentary showing graphic depictions of injuries sustained in Iraq could be so devastating to the psyche as to drive an otherwise sane soldier into the arms of madness.

Because this is America, and these are the lies we like to tell ourselves so that we can sleep at night.

(sigh)

~C~

Who Are You and What Have You Done With My Baby?

Eighteen years ago today (at 6:11 this morning, to be precise), I became a mother. My daughter arrived one week to the day ahead of schedule -- pretty much the last time she was early for anything in her entire life. I remember sitting in the hospital room, recovering from my Caesarian, with her on the bed in front of me, using parts of my body to measure her, because I knew that it would go by so fast, and that I'd never remember it all. She was from the crook of my elbow to the tip of my fingers long. She was the length of my hand, wrist to middle finger, wide. She looked surprised a lot. She wasn't sure if she'd ever get used to the whole "light and air" thing. She didn't cry much, and only with good reason. She was what my late godmother used to call "a sensible child."

She was born with a thick mane of auburn hair, but it had gone by the time she was two months old, and she stayed fairly bald until she was about 15 months. We were forever mocking her lack of hair in photos, and adorning her melon head with velcro bows, headbands, hats (including one her grandmother bought that had to very long yellow braids), and other various silly headwear -- much of it holiday oriented.

Fortunately, eventually, her hair did grow in, and perhaps because of her baldness, we kept it very long for a very long time. Unfortunately, she is one of those people who has a sensitive scalp that hates to be brushed, so as soon as she had a say in anything beauty-oriented, she had it all hacked off short. She keeps threatening to grow it out again, but so far, its only ever hit the tops of her shoulders, and has spent most of the time since her teen years hovering around the bottom of her ears. All this with a mom who loves long hair.

Her love of offbeat headwear continues, of course. She finds it, I think, a useful way of expressing her moods. Let it now be known that she own many hats. You can take from that whatever want in relation to her moods. But she's still a pretty happy person, by and large.

She's a lot longer than from the crook of my arm to the tips of my fingers, of course. And she's a tad wider than the length of my hand from wrist to middle finger. Her hair is a different color too -- deep auburn red, which sets off the green eyes. It's all gone by in kind of a blur.

For her 18th birthday, her father's getting her a tattoo, while I'm getting her a.... HA! Almost pried it out of me, did you? thought I would fall for the old "give up the gift while blogging about the birthday" gag, did you? Boy, if I had a nickel for every time someone tried that old saw on me. Anyway, she's 18 today. Of course, she ditched school and ran off the amusement park with her boyfriend, but then so might I have, had I not turned 18 on election day, 1976. I see her now, compared to her baby pictures, and I wonder how it happened. She looks so much like my mother, its scary. But its nice -- someone who looks like my mother that I actually get along with. It's kind of cool.

She loves reptiles and hates Oreos (I swear, if she didn't look so much like me, I'd swear I brought me home the wrong baby from the hospital). She can sing and act and draw, she has a great eye for photographs (she took the black-and-white self-portrait above with the snake bracelet -- with real snake, no less -- as well as the portrait of yours truly in my profile). She has strong spiritual and political opinions... and she's a limp-wristed, commie-pinko, bleeding heart liberal (thank you.... thank you very much....). We have our differences, but I'm happy to know her, and I feel lucky to have gotten her in the mom/kid lottery.

So, Happy Birthday, Pussycat. Hope you had a good time at the amusement park. I just have one teensy little question for you -- who are you and what the HELL have you done with my baby?!


~C~

I Had a Dream... A Dream About Arms, Baby....

I awoke with the alarm this morning, and found I could not move. I was being pinned... by a one-and-a-half pound kitten, curled up and snoozing soundly under my hair, in the crook of my neck. It was her first night sleeping outside of the bathroom, with the rest of us -- in "Gen Pop" as we who watched Oz like to call it. Well, between the rhythm of her breath and her adorable fuzziness, I just lay there and promptly fell back to sleep. I had the weirdest dream....

I dreamt something was wrong with my arms (Note: When I awoke later, because my neck was in a kind of weird position, my fingertips were tingling and a little numb in my right hand). I couldn't extend my fingers all the way and closing them into a fist hurt. I went to see a doctor, who immediately launched an extensive battery of tests that took -- in "dream time" -- about fifteen minutes. He couldn't determine what was wrong with my arms, and further concluded that no one would be able to. Which left me with the dilemma that I had these annoying arms that weren't working right.

So he said, "Why don't we just cut them off. Prosthetics are so good these days, we'll fit you with new ones, and you'll learn to use them just like the originals in no time." And I said, "Sure. Why not?" And I was totally okay with this as a solution. So, the dream took on a fairly high degree of detail at this point, up to and including my calls to friends informing them that I was going to have my arms cut off -- they were puzzled, but were reassured that I had faith in the doctor (they didn't try to talk me out of it) -- and going to my GP for a pre-surgical work-up (as I actually did when I had gastric bypass).

So I'm sitting on the front step of my Dad's house, with my daughter and her boyfriend. I've been given a Xeroxed pre-surgical instruction sheet, reminding me of what to do prior to surgery -- don't eat or drink anything after ten o'clock the night before (an instruction I received from the oral surgeon before I had my tooth extracted two weeks ago), the prescriptions for post-surgical medications and painkillers had been phoned in to the pharmacy, and I should pick them up before I had the surgery (presumably because picking them up afterwards, with no arms and all, would be damn near impossible), and if I had any questions, I should call the surgical liaison -- Edema. (No, really. That was the name of the liaison printed on the sheet.) And all the while, I'm totally okay with the fact that they're going to cut off my arms in a couple of hours.

I'm explaining to my daughter that she shouldn't be concerned because, after all, this is the 21st Century and double amputation is like having a mole removed and what with the fabulous prosthetics, etc., etc., and she's looking at me oddly, but not saying anything, and as I'm talking to her, I'm gesticulating (which I do when I talk) and I catch sight of the scar on my hand that I got when I was seven years old and that reminds me to this day how, as fun as it was to play with the older kids, they could do thoughtless stuff that got you hurt if you weren't careful. I thought, "After tomorrow, I'll never see that scar again. Or my mole. Or my birthmark." I thought of all the hours of spreading lotion on my skin, of exfloliating my elbows, putting sunscreen on my forearms to keep them from aging prematurely -- all for nothing.

Then (and only then) did it occur to me that, whatever was wrong with my arms wasn't that bad. Surely there was a better, less drastic and invasive way to fix or at least manage the problems my arms are having. I decide at that point, sitting on my father's stoop, that I'm not having the surgery. The last thing I say in the dream is, "I don't care what it costs to cancel last minute, I can't let them make me a cripple."

Then I woke up.

As I'm writing about this, and laughing at the funny parts, puzzling over the weird, semi-sickening parts, the silt of the dream begins to settle and the actual issues rise to the top, like cream in a milk bottle. The most obvious message -- "they can't make me a cripple" -- undoubtedly goes to my last post -- about decisions in life that prove self-crippling. But the subtler issues -- the fact that my loved ones were dubious, but didn't try to stop me, and the fact that I was placidly fine with becoming a double amputee through a surgery that appears in the dream to have been completely elective -- didn't really arise until I turned the dream over and over in my head on the way into work.

Let me just say that, regarding the first issue -- having to do with my friends' and family's reactions -- this has nothing to do with real life. If I ever told my best friend, Deirdre, that I was having my arms hacked off in the morning, regardless of the skill of the surgeon, she'd have me committed to a locked mental health facility for my own good until I came to my senses. And my daughter would help her. The first issue ties in with the second issue -- my own passivity in the face of grave danger.

I believe the subtle message of the dream was that you can make yourself "okay" with anything that comes along, regardless of how not "okay" it actually is, so take care. If "they" (whoever "they" are) are conspiring to make you a cripple by convincing you that doing so is in your best interests, and you're not fighting for yourself, there is nothing on this earth that your loved ones can do to save you until you choose to save yourself.

But I'm still calling my oral surgeon's assistant tomorrow and asking her to change her name to Edema at her earliest convenience. Because, I really thought that was funny.

~C~