la Matriarch

him: Did you hear that Nick Cannon is making all kinds of threats against Eminem now? 

me: No, I didn’t.  Why’s that?

him: Apparently Eminem said a bunch of crap about Mirah Careyon his new album. (Eminem “dated” Mirah years ago)

me: Wasn’t Eminem talking shit about Mariah Carey on his last album?

him: Yeah, he was!  That dude has really got something against her.

me: Well, maybe he just needs some new material?

him: Either way, you can’t talk about somebodies wife like that. (Now Mariah is married to Nick Cannon)

me: So, now that she’s married, she deserves to be defended and protected?  But not before she got married?

him: Well, maybe by her father or something…

me: You know, I think it’s bullshit that just because a woman gets married, she is suddenly entitled to a whole other level of respect.  Maybe that’s why little girls dream of getting married all their lives. Because society elevates women to some whole other level just because they stand up in front of some dude, repeat a few words, then sign a paper. 

I got married last month.  It’s something I never thought I’d do.  Well, when I was in my 20’s I sort of assumed I would just because that’s what people do.  But it’s not something I ever looked forward to. 

I waited until the last minute to tell my coworkers because I knew that I wouldn’t have the response they needed me to have when discussing the wedding plans.  I didn’t want to have big unreasonably fancy hair and a Cinderella-type wedding dress.  I didn’t want to walk down an aisle where people would be sitting on church pews starting at me wearing said big gaudy dress.  That I haven’t dreamt about my wedding day all my life apparently makes me strange.  I couldn’t have cared less who was there as long as he was there and we were both present when we committed our lives to each other (and on paper.) 

I’ve never understood girls dreaming of their wedding day all their lives.  But now that I’ve gone through it myself and seen how different (special, like a rock star) people treat brides-to-be and wives (apparently I’ll get more respect now than ever), I’m starting to understand it a little more.

Wow - is that a title straight out of 4th grade or what?  Clever titles are more trouble than they are worth, sometimes.

I’ve tried to stay away from blogging about politics but if you’ve read much of my stuff and somebody were holding a gun to your head demanding you tell them who I’ll be voting for, you’d guess right (correct). 

It’s easy to sit around and argue the standard platform differences between Republicans and Democrats but at the end of the day, we stand where we stand.  Who cares.  And, it would be easy for me to sit here lecturing you about how pro-choice is the way to go, and how fucked up my womb will be should a Republican get elected, but last time I checked there’s a Republican in office for 8 years, and my womb is just fine.  

Here’s the bottom line.  I want to live in a country that I’m proud of.  I don’t want the world to see us as big mean bullies but today, that’s our reality.  I don’t want to sit here year after year watching some war that, at this point, I doubt makes sense to anybody (surely not me).  And although I know this is crybaby-crazy-talk, I’d like to be able to take every dollar of my money that’s been spent funding that war and give it to my future father-in-law who has no health insurance and a shiny new lung cancer diagnosis. 

I don’t want to be thinking the shit I’ve been thinking all week about how all great nations eventually fall and wondering if this economic crisis we’re in is the start of our fall.  I’m tired of hearing about white supremacists who we dismiss as radicals on the fringes of society but whose core beliefs we share but are unable to recognize (or admit), and hate crimes and stereotyping and restricting of rights and freedom of speech and freedom and freedom and freedom all at the same time.  It seems like we’re always going around declaring how great and free we are but we’re not really walking the walk.  Feel me?

The reason I’m so excited about this election is that it’s the first time in my life that I think we are at a point where we could really move beyond it all.  And no, I don’t have delusions of grandeur brought on by the media and great marketing.  I’m not like that.  I’m an intelligent woman - I don’t establish my beliefs and values based on what reporters think and write.  It’s something inside of me.  It’s that this is it feeling (probably the same feeling that sends you into a panic if you’re on the other side because it really does mean the kind of change that’ll make your skin crawl). 

In Eckart Tolle’s book A New Earth, he says we (the country, the world, the planet) need to “evolve, or die.”  That’s where we’re at, people.  Evolve, or die.  It’s really important that we get this one right. 

Years ago, after a year of being inseparable friends, my guy and I decided to give a relationship a try.  I was terrified and excited all at the same time.  I remember telling him “this is either going to be really really good or really really bad and I’m not all that sure which it’ll be but I am very sure that things will never be the same between us after this.  We can never go back.”  That’s exactly how I feel about this election.  It’s going to change the world - I’m sure of it.  I’m just hoping that, like my relationship did, this election goes my way.

Now that we’ve been thinking about having a baby and I’m in that forbidden age range, I’ve been reading a lot of stuff on the Internet about Advanced Maternal Age.  Scouring the Internet for information is nothing new, I do it with all my obsessions.  And in my search for information about women in my age group having babies, I’ve found discussion boards mostly related to infertility. 

From what I can tell, women who experience infertility are in like a club or something.  They have their own language with their own acronyms that I don’t know how to interpret.  And although they seem to be very supportive of each other, there seems to be a sense of victimization within the community.  This is not unique to infertility, we are pros at victimization in the name of just about anything in this country.

I realize it’s easy for me to sit here, never having tried and failed to become pregnant, passing judgement on these women, but it almost seems like they become more invested in the idea of infertility than they do in the idea of motherhood.  It reminds me of alcoholics who come to define themselves as alcoholics, hanging out at AA meetings with other alcoholics, volunteering their alcoholic status to near perfect strangers.  To me, investing that much of your soul into something like that means you’ll never get over it, and I simply don’t buy it.  Why would you want to keep reminding yourself of something so terrible all the time?  Wouldn’t it be more fun to really get beyond it?

When I went to see my OB/GYN and mentioned to to her that I was considering trying to have a baby she informed me that they’d be sending me right over to an infertility specialist.  After I basically told her to go fuck herself regarding that particular part of the plan, she reluctantly agreed to “let me try on my own for 6 months but that’s it!”  Then she instructed me to start using an ovulation prediction kit and come in 7 days after ovulation to get a blood test for progesterone.  I asked her 3 times to explain the purpose of the blood test but she just kept telling me that “it will let us know if you can support a pregnancy” ummm WTF does that mean exactly?  Anyway, when she brought me the information sheet about the harmless progesterone blood test, it said BASIC INFERTILITY WORKUP.  At this point I’m seriously offended that I’m being labeled infertile without ever even trying to become pregnant.  I brought the paper home then promptly threw it in the trash.  I refuse to own that label “infertile”.  If I accept it then I believe my chance of actually being infertile becomes my reality.

I’m of the opinion that we create our own destiny and I kind of feel like becoming totally invested in infertility is sort of writing your own maternal death sentence.  It means spending almost all the time focusing on how you are NOT having a baby, and I think that can actually keep you from it.  I realize that banning together to talk about infertility creates a support system for people who are going through something terrible, but doesn’t it just perpetuate the infertility-ness?

Tonight we went to the boyfriend’s sister’s birthday party.  There was enough alcohol to heavily intoxicate a football team and enough pork to give said football team coronary artery disease.  As usual, we passed on all of it and as usual people looked at us like we had boogers hanging from our noses.

We don’t eat meat or any non-meat item that’s been hanging around pork.  We don’t drink alcohol.  And we don’t usually tell people either of these because it seems to make them uncomfortable.  There are a variety of reasons for our abstinence ranging from religion to family addictions to personal choice, none of which should matter to anybody but us.

Our abstinence is never a problem so long as we are in the safety of our own home where there’s nobody around passing judgement on us, but parties are tricky.  You’re expected to drink at parties and you’re expected eat lots of buffalo wings or baby sausages or whatever other party-ish porks are served.  When you don’t, it’s like saying “I’m too good for your food and drinks, loser!”

When we attend functions where these things are served it’s like we sneak around trying all sorts of fancy tricks to avoid saying out-loud “we don’t drink” or “we don’t eat meat”.  Most of them time we’ll use the old “we ate before we came” but that doesn’t work for alcohol.  At some point we’ll utter those words and even though I’m sure I’m exaggerating, I expect the entire room to drop whatever is in their hand, the music to stop, and the entire crowd to gasp in our direction.  Why does abstaining feel so awkward?  It doesn’t matter if it’s meat or alcohol, it just feels shitty sometimes.

It seems like the average person somehow takes offense to other people not drinking alcohol or consuming meat.  It never fails that they start to get all “oh I could never do that” in a very condescending tone and even though they seem to feel like they are being judged, it is really us who are being judged.  At work, I’m a top secret vegetarian.  I never tell anybody unless one of the few people who knows outs me and forces me to admit it.  It’s not that I’m ashamed of it, it’s just that I get sick of people feeling the need to justify their consumption of meat when they find out.  Who cares?  Seriously?  I only care about what goes in my body, not yours.  So if we’re ever having lunch and you discover that I don’t eat meat, please do not say you are sorry before you eat your big ass steak and no it does not gross me out and no I do not feel deprived and no it wasn’t really hard to do (after the first 2 months which sucked ass). 

Someday I hope I’ll be more comfortable about my abstinence.  So comfortable that somebody’ll ask me if I’d like a drink and I’ll say “I don’t drink.  And fuck you!”

image from lonvig.dk