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  • Whole Lotta Nothing

    Ever the one to jump on every trend that goes by (if you can’t hear the sarcasm here, you should probably go read a different blog), I decided a while back to give The Whole 30 a try.

    Well, not exactly.

    I’d seen it mentioned approximated 19208934293859048549 times on Facebook, and somebody had asked one of my facebook friends that was on it a very basic question, so in a moment of Let Me Google That For You, Moron, I looked it up and answered, so I was aware of it. I didn’t really care.

    Then I read an article, The Boy With a Thorn in His Joints, and suddenly I became interested in… something. The article definitely doesn’t talk about The Whole 30, but it talks about food and joint pain, and well, I’ve got a whole lot of joint pain, going back three decades. More distressing to me is the level of chronic pain my daughter is in. Since The Whole 30 is basically an elimination diet (although it allows a few things I think we probably should have tried to give up too. Anyhow, knowing it is easier to get people on board when there is a website with instructions, I presented The Whole 30 as the plan to my family, and we agreed to do it. It took a while to get started because we needed to try to find 30 days when my husband would be in the country. This is more difficult than it seems like it should be.

    Yesterday was day 30. My husband ended up unexpected leaving the country on day 28. See? More difficult than one might think. He made it through day 29 via snacks brought on to the plane, and then just tried to do his best on the final day.

    So – how was it?

    I totally want to be typing about how much better I feel. Unfortunately it just isn’t true. I feel better than when I eat like crap, of course, but I don’t feel any better than when I eat my normal version of “good”. Over and above how I normally prefer to eat, the major differences were giving up dairy (I’ve never done that before), giving up gluten (I often avoid grains, but have never worried about small amounts of gluten in things), and giving up soy (which I never really paid attention to, but is in fuck all everything, ugh).

    So, now we start adding things back in.. One thing at a time, to look for a reaction, treating it more as an allergy/intolerance elimination study. Today is the first day that I can add something back in, and… I just don’t care. I mean, I am super glad it is over because it is a major inconvenience to avoid all gluten and soy. but today I mostly just feel like crap, so I’ve felt decidedly disinterested so far. Definitely not the less pain, more energy feeling I was hoping for.

  • I’m Living

    Today in the car my daughter and I were discussing an assignment she needs to do, a series of photos based around poem or book, with a theme of “family”.

    I told her, “Oh, you could do that famous children’s book.”

    “I don’t know which book you mean,” she replied.

    I couldn’t respond because I had burst into tears.

    Okay… so THAT was stable.

    I pulled myself together and attempted to continue the conversation and immediately burst into tears again.

    WTF?  Back off emotional breakdown, I don’t have time for this.

    The book I was referring to is Love You Forever, by Robert Munsh.  Clearly the recent events with my father are shoving my parents’ mortality down my throat until I am choking on it.

    Things continue to be emotionally and mentally difficult in my life for a variety of reasons, and the health of my father is just one of those.  The recent heat wave has also been brutal on me, of course.  On the good news front, my frequency and severity of migraines is getting better under control.  Working hard on remembering and appreciating the bits that are going well.

    Deep breaths.

    But all day and into the night, a verse keeps echoing in my mind.

    “I’ll love you forever,
    I’ll like you for always,
    as long as I’m living
    my daddy you’ll be.”

  • The Post I Didn’t Want to Write

    When last we spoke I said, “Tomorrow I’ll try to explain what is prompting me to share this now.”  That was more than two weeks ago, and clearly I failed to explain on “tomorrow”, but I did try.

    I tried, and tried, and kept on failing.

    Yes, I have also been busy, but let’s be honest, I have some major avoidance issues.  I really didn’t want to write this, because I don’t want it to be true.  Strangely, no matter how long I procrastinate, and no matter how well I avoid, and no matter how little I speak of it, it is still true.

    Every day I wake up, and it is still true.

    Even now, I am sitting here staring at the computer screen and I don’t know whether or not today is the day I keep writing.  I don’t know if today is the day I share what is going on in my life.

    It isn’t even really what is going on in MY life, but like most humans I am selfish and I see the universe in terms of how it impacts me.  There are several people who are impacted far more by this, but it is my impact crater that I keep picking at like a festering wound.

    My father has been really… sick?  Is that what we call it?  I don’t know.  Injured?  My father can’t walk right now.  He is mostly stuck in bed, and he gets muscles cramps that sometimes have him crying out it pain.  Sound familiar?  Well, if you read my last post it does, and it is causing me some really severe stress and flashbacks, which is just annoying self-indulgent bullshit because he is the one with the big problem right now.

    My dad was the center of my universe when I was little.  Then I got older and realized he was a fucking idiot, and then I got older still, and realized he’d gotten a lot smarter as I matured.  I hope some day my daughter thinks I am smart again.  I don’t think he was a great dad. I think he was too lenient and too easily manipulated by people he loved, namely me, but he was pretty good.  I think he is a very good man.  He is more tolerant and more forgiving than I am.  He is extremely smart and has a quirky sense of humor that was the source of plenty of embarrassment when I was a teenager.

    He never for a minute believed I was inherently less intelligent, capable, or valuable because I was a girl.  His belief was strong enough that I was baffled when I started school and discovered that other people thought differently.  His belief was strong enough that I assumed he was correct and those people were missing out.  He bought me my first computer (and more after that), and taught me how to program in BASIC.  He gave me my first text adventure game.  He taught me how to drive. He taught me that I couldn’t catch AIDS by hugging his cousin Tommy.  He taught me how to mess with a new device and figure out how to use it.  He taught me how to RTFM, and then how to trust my instincts in the many cases where the manual was written by drunk orangutans.  If I’ve ever helped you to troubleshoot any kind of problem, then my father has touched your life.

    I’ve spent months crying daily, multiple times a day.  I’m exhausted.  There is so little that I can do to help, and that is frustrating.  I hate not being able to DO much of use.  I also feel guilty, of course, because I think that if I had been there at the beginning, I might have been able to be an advocate in a way nobody else could.  I wasn’t.  I may never get over that, but I need to stop dwelling on that, because that certainly isn’t useful either.

    What I can do right now is swallow my pride and discomfort and ask people for donations.  He is at the point where he needs to be able to do some of what he knows is right, whether the insurance company is on his side or not, and that takes money that we don’t have right now.  I hate that I don’t have it to give him..

    So, that’s what I am doing.   I have put up a page on YouCaring.  I’m asking for help, because I can’t do it alone, and because I won’t let him do it alone.

    Please read the details and consider donating if you can afford to, or sharing the link with others if you cannot. I really appreciate it.  If you’d like to send a check so that no money is taken out in fees, contact me for an address (it will be mine since he can’t just run to a bank right now, but I can take care of depositing it for him).

    DavidRamstad640

    https://www.youcaring.com/DavidRamstad

    I guess today is the day.

  • The Dark Time

    1996 – my least favorite year to date.

    I refer to it sometimes, as the dark times, or the dark year, but I rarely give details. Partly that is because the events of that year still have an oppressive weight, and it is impossible to give words to them without reliving portions. Partly it is because the story is too long, and beyond what anybody has patience for.*

    I guess it starts in the early ’80s. Really, is starts earlier than that, the first signs, but it isn’t until the early ’80s that it seems more serious.  I’ve had trouble with my joints since I was young.  At first, it seemed like I was unlucky, or uncoordinated, or careless. I rolled and twisted my ankles often.  I complained of my knees hurting.  In 5th grade I broke one ankle.  In 6th grade I broke the other.  I had shoulder problems, hip problems, elbow problems, and knee problems.  My orthopedist said he suspected a specific defect with my cartilage but said the only way to prove it was via arthroscopic surgery, and he saw no point in doing that because there was no known treatment.  So, we did nothing but treat specific injuries and try to prevent further injuries.

    By junior high I was signed out of P.E. by doctor’s notes probably as often as I was in P.E.  Maybe more often.  Then I began to have back problems (look at all those joints in the spine).  Both direct back pain, and pain in other places being caused by pressure on the nerves in my spine.  Eventually tests showed severely herniated discs, but of no known (injury) origin.  At that time, back problems were treated with bed rest, limited activity, heat, and braces.  We now know that Physical Therapy is usually a more effective treatment choice, but that was not the standard of care at the time.  Things would get better, things would get worse, but better never meant pain free.  I was in pain more often than not from the time I was 10 years old until I was 13, at which point the pain became always.  For regular daily pain, I took nothing- I just lived with it.  On days of more advanced pain I took various types of painkillers, depending on the level of pain.  This meant that by the age of 20, I knew a fair amount about various painkillers.  I knew their brand names. I knew their generic names. I knew their relationships to each other.  I also knew which ones helped me under which types of circumstances, which ones didn’t relieve pain, and which ones had side effects too bad to be worth any pain relief.

    In 1994 I quit sleeping.  That’s an overstatement, but at the time, it is how I felt.  I entered into a long stretch of insomnia when I was 7 months pregnant. I couldn’t sleep for more than two hours at a time, if lucky, and I never manage more than 4 hours total per day.  This was still the case in 1996, and by then I was severely sleep deprived.

    In 1995 my husband took a job with Walt Disney Imagineering and we moved to the Los Angeles area from Seattle, along with our 6 month old daughter.  We knew nobody in the area.  We found a place to live, and tried to settle in to our new life.  It was my husband’s first job out of grad school, and with a new baby, of course everything was new and different.  With his new job, we signed up for one of their insurance options.  We picked the HMO because it seemed like the best deal.   I’d been with an HMO in Seattle for years and never had any problems dealing with that form of insurance.  They assigned us a Primary Care Physician near our home, which meant that doctor started getting his monthly payments for us.  In January of 1996 my husband slipped and fell on the kitchen floor.  He broke his ankle in 3 places and required surgery.  The whole thing was extra complicated because our PCP had never met us, and at first refused to acknowledge that he was our doctor.  My husband was left for hours in the ER with no treatment at all, while they waited for the doctor to acknowledge he was a patient and approve his treatment.  We ended up having to transfer to a different hospital to be checked in and get the required surgery.  I drove, because an ambulance would have cost money and insurance was not going to cover the transfer.  We actually, I kid you not, got a flat tire on the way to the new hospital.  He had an ankle broken in 3 places which required surgery.  He hadn’t been treated yet, so the ride was already rough, the flat tire was just the icing on the cake.  That part of the story doesn’t really matter, but it was kind of a flavor of how every aspect of the several few months went, and that does matter.

    Our assigned PCP continued to prove useless, so I selected another who was associated with the hospital he was in, and whose office was in the same building as the orthopedic surgeon who operated on him.  The change went into effect the following month.  The new PCP wasn’t great, but she was better than the one assigned to us.  During the long and difficult recovery, insurance quit paying the orthopedic surgeon, and eventually his office wouldn’t schedule my husband for follow-ups any longer until payment arrangements were made.  Again, it isn’t directly related to my problem, but it was more of the mud soup that consumed everything that year.  A year later, after a lot of battles and letters, insurance finally agreed that yes, of course it was ALL covered, and paid the surgeon, but by then a lot of his recovery had been without specialist care, and that impacted the rest of his life (he finally had a revision surgery in 2010).

    So, I had a less than 1 year old child, and a recovering husband, at first in the hospital, and then home in bed, and eventually in a wheelchair.  The kid learned to walk while her father couldn’t.  I had a kid who couldn’t walk well, quickly, or for long distances, a diaper bag, and a husband to push in a wheelchair.  At one point while he was still wheelchair bound we had to spend weeks at Disneyland so he could do an install.  We had to go to Vegas for work while he still needed a wheelchair for long distances, although he was learning to walk again with a cane.  By the time he could walk again, my back was a total disaster.  The neuropathic pain had gotten so bad it was crippling, and no medication could touch it.  Neuropathic pain is difficult to treat. Some people can find relief, many cannot.  I am one of those that cannot achieve significant relief, at least not without side effects that are more problematic than the pain alone.  My functionality and quality of life were both going to total crap, and it was getting worse, not better.

    Eventually we decided to consider surgery, and that’s where 1996 really went to hell.

    Our PCP referred me to a very well regarded rock star of a neurosurgeon.  The surgeon said he could make me better.  We were told that I’d be on my feet again the same day, and that I’d be home in a few days, that I might need a walker for a week, but that most people feel so much better, so fast, it is more of a problem to keep them from re-injuring themselves by moving too quickly.  I was told I’d be unable to lift anything over 5 lbs for 12 weeks.  We were told that getting up and around was vital to recovery, and that I’d be sent to aquatic physical therapy as soon as my incision healed, because that was the most effective way to do rehab for my condition.

    We decided to go forward with scheduling the surgery, and we made arrangements to get help with the recovery period.  We flew in a relative for the time immediately following surgery, and hired a mother’s helper to help me for the remainder of the 12 weeks.  Our ducks were as in a row as we could chase their quacking asses, and I went into surgery as neurotically sure that I’d never wake up again as I always am when they are putting me under, but also with expectations that everything would be fine.

    I woke up in recovery and everything had gone as expected.  I was able later that day to get on my feet.  Everything was going as we’d been told it would go.  The severe burning pain in my legs had abated.  The weakness was somewhat improved, the numbness was still there, but the lessened pain was a big win.  It hurt less to stand up post surgery, than it had pre-surgery.   I hated being in the hospital, and was thrilled when released to go home.  That happiness lasted about 4 hours, the stretch of time I was still covered by the IV pain killers pumped into me at the hospital.

    I began having bad muscle spasms, at first just in my lower back.  They would set off by the smallest movement side to side, and standing and moving around was nearly impossible.  We called the surgeons office and were told to double up on the pain meds.  I had been prescribed something that had only been approved for use in the US in 1995, so it was not a medicine I had experience with.  It did not work for me at all.  The next day I called the surgeon’s office again and explained that I was still in a lot of pain and couldn’t move.  They told me I had to move.  I asked for different pain medication, and explained what meds had a history of working for me.  This was a bad move.

    I’d spent my whole life up until moving to California, having a fairly reasonable relationship with most medical doctors.   There had been a few really negative incidents (like the totally incompetent anesthesiologist when I gave birth), and I had experienced some problems due to moving around and having less continuity of care, but in the decade prior to moving to California I had developed decent rapport with my doctors and we were a team, interested in improving my health and making my life better.

    In Los Angeles everything to date had been rather adversarial and much more insurance and profit focused, and less patient focused.  Once things started going wrong, there was no longer the slightest hint of teamwork.  When I wasn’t getting better, everything they did seemed more about defense against a malpractice lawsuit, rather than being the least bit about helping me get better.  Plus the doctors immediately became suspicious of me lying about my pain in order to procure drugs, which was completely offensive and ridiculous seeming to me.  For one thing they had access to my prior medical records, and for another, I hadn’t requested a single pain prescription from them during the whole time I was having the severe pain that  eventually led me to the surgery.  I had no reason to, I knew from a long history of living in my body that meds were not going to help that type of pain, and I also knew that meds would help the pain I was having post surgery.

    They left me another day with insufficient pain control, and by the next day my husband had to call to try to reason with them, because I was in too much pain to even try. They reluctantly upped the dosage of the med that wasn’t working (again), which still did not help.  I was no longer able to get up and move around, so the problem began spreading.  Like the surgeon had warned prior to surgery, getting up and moving around was vital to recovery.  Then a muscle spasm came along that was strong enough to rip open my incision and it began weeping all over the place.  That interested the surgeon’s office enough to have me brought in for a visit.  The ride there was hell.  The surgeon accused me of not taking it easy enough and causing the problem with my incision.  They reluctantly added a mild muscle relaxant prescription, and sent me home.

    I didn’t get better.  The incision didn’t get better because the muscle spasms and inflammation kept it from healing.  At my next follow-up they decided to readmit me to the hospital to have more control over incision care.  There I was put on much stronger IV pain medication, and was almost immediately better.  The spasms stopped, and I could get up carefully on my feet again and start moving around.

    A hospital doctor diagnosed me with having an infection at the surgical location. The surgeon literally yelled at me, his voice dripping with accusations, “This has never happened to me before!”

    An infectious disease specialist came to see me, and he thought the infection was mild, and not what was causing my problems.  I was given a simple dose of antibiotics.  The wound stopped seeping, and I was released from the hospital.  Again my meds were reduced upon release.  Again I ended up in bed with muscle spasms if I dared to twitch, much less get up and get active.

    At this point the relative had gone home and the mother’s helper was with us.  She had been hired to be the person to lift our daughter up during my “lift nothing over five pounds stage” and instead she was being used as primary child care and nurse.  It was ridiculous.  I was suffering from full body muscle cramps.  You know those leg cramps that almost everyone has gotten on occasion – the calf muscle cramps up, and your foot deforms, pointing your toes against your wishes, and you have to struggle and work and massage to get things back to normal?  That would happen to my whole body.  I’d bend in half backwards with my back lifting up off the bed, like some kind of possessed demon levitating.  I’d scream like I’d been possessed by a demon too.  I couldn’t help it, and couldn’t control it.  Anything could set me off.  Moving. Breathing. Somebody touching me.

    Our kid became emotionally distraught, and who could blame her?  Her mother could never hold or hug her, and oh yeah, mom would just screech suddenly, day or night, a banshee scream to rip apart the house.  She began biting herself in punishment.  I’d moan, whimper, or scream, she’d bite.

    We begged for stronger medicine.  He wouldn’t give it to us, saying that anything stronger would make me sleep all the time, and getting up and around was vital to healing.  I tried to explain that I don’t sleep anyway, and that I wasn’t getting up and around.  They eventually agreed to stronger medicine, but only in the hospital setting, so back into the hospital I went.  The “mother’s helper” was now the nanny.  It was not what we hired her for, it was not what she signed up for, we needed to figure out a better solution, but our life was falling apart and it was hard to think at all.

    Back in the hospital, I was put on a variety of things to control the pain, and once again, I improved markedly.  It also managed to cure my insomnia and I started being able to sleep up to 8 hours a day, but still in chunks.  It was a long way from the sleeping all day that he had been concerned about.  The nurses marveled at how little I slept, but I thought I was sleeping great.  Because I was clearly not making expected post surgical progress the surgeon announced that he wanted to do another surgery.  I didn’t like or trust him at that point, and I called my husband at work, in tears.  This was before the proliferation of cell phones, and the project he was working on had him away from his desk, so I needed to call a shared number.  His manager answered, and when I asked for my husband I was informed that he was busy and didn’t have time for personal calls.  I was hung up on.

    The infectious disease doctor came back again to talk to me and offer a second opinion.  He didn’t think it made sense to open me up just to poke around and see what was happening, so we decided to go the more conservative route.  My incision was healing, so I talked to them about aquatic physical therapy.  They told me my insurance wouldn’t approve it.  I was released from the hospital again because I had improved up to the point that I could walk carefully and slowly without a walker.  Once again, they put me on weaker pain medicine and weaker muscle relaxants when they sent me home.  Once again, that went poorly.

    We had run out of budget for keeping the mother’s helper, and we still needed help, so my mother rearranged her life so that she could come for a couple of weeks.  It was a horrible experience for my mother, I’m pretty sure she is still traumatized by it.  I had a walker and a wheelchair.  The wheelchair was only used for doctors appointments.  I couldn’t sit up without being in horrible pain.  The walker was only used to go to the bathroom.  Being on my feet was painful and dangerous.  I’d have to pause to let muscle spasms grip me, and then carefully shuffle a few more steps, trying desperately to not set off another spasm.  Because going to the bathroom was such an ordeal, I ate and drank as little as possible, so I could avoid needing to go to the bathroom.  I’d basically only consume what my mother would harass me into consuming, and I’d argue with her that I wasn’t hungry or thirsty.  My lips were dried and cracked like I’d been lost in the desert for weeks.  Our daughter was much better off with her grandmother and three year old aunt to help keep her distracted, but my mother could only stay a limited time.  Next we had my grandmother come to stay with us, but she also could only stay a limited time.  It was clear I wasn’t improving and we couldn’t afford full time child care.  We let our daughter go live in Nevada with my mother.

    This was devastating.  My husband worked 80 hours a week during non-crunch time, because that was what working for The Mouse was like.  I was home, alone, in misery, an utter failure as a mother.  I was basically unable to do anything but lie in bed and scream.  At least they had cured my insomnia.  Even without the hospital drugs, I could sleep.  Things had somewhat improved.  On the muscle relaxants I was on, I rarely spasmed or cramped as long as I stayed in bed.  Getting up remained a nightmare.  Sitting was a Hellraiser torture chamber of pain.  It was a constant battle to keep getting them to prescribe the muscle relaxants.  When nobody would prescribe them I’d go back to being the backbending, levitating, demon possessed screaming banshee again.

    My relationship with the surgeon had collapsed further, with them sending certified letters declaring me non-compliant because I hadn’t taken his advice on a second surgery and had not scheduled a follow-up.  I didn’t care.  My husband begged the PCP to argue with the insurance company and make a case for medical need for aquatic physical therapy.  She said she wouldn’t do it unless I agreed to start seeing the surgeon again and sign papers saying none of this was his fault.  I didn’t care.  He checked into paying for such therapy without insurance help, but it was prohibitively expensive, and they wouldn’t do it without the doctor’s prescription anyway.

    Nothing mattered to me.  I wanted to die, but I didn’t even have enough give a shit left to take action on that.  I couldn’t figure out a way to, well, except for the whole refusing to eat or drink thing, but that was slow going.

    My husband decided to drive me to Nevada to go stay with my family, so I could see our daughter regularly.  With the seat completely reclined I made it through the 9 hour drive with little enough screaming that he didn’t drive us into a ravine.  I was put into a bed in my grandmother’s guest bedroom, and there I stayed.  At least the bathroom was closer than it was at our own house

    My husband went back home and kept working.  When we could afford it he would fly to visit us for a weekend.  On a visit he convinced me to go to a developed natural hot spring in town.  It was a place that had private rooms and really wide steps down into the water.  It was  expensive, but he thought it was worth it to try.  I didn’t care, but didn’t feel like arguing.  The car ride was the usual nightmare, and the private rooms were a long way from the parking lot, shuffling along with a walker, trying to avoid starting a spasm.  He rented the room for an hour.  He helped me down the steps into the water, and I could stand, without the walker.  A few minutes later, I could move around.  I could squat, I could bend.  It was amazing.  Hey, aquatic physical therapy, look at that.  When the hour was up I was better off than I’d been in close to a year.

    We looked into what it would cost to get a used hot tub for our own backyard.  My father agreed to let us borrow the money for that.  My father-in-law agreed to travel out to run the gas and power lines to install it.  We moved back home.  Within a week of having our own hot tub and being able to exercise regularly in warm water, I was able to walk again.  I didn’t need a walker anymore.  If I wanted to get up to go get something, I could just do it.

    Of course I still had my myriad of joint problems, and I never recovered completely from the nerve damage.  I have better and worse days, but I always have some areas of paresthesia and weakness in my feet.  It impacts my ability to balance and also makes certain kinds of activities more difficult.  Actually, if the areas would stay exactly the same, it would probably be easier to compensate for, but the ever changing nature of it increases the impact.

    Still, things are much better now than they were during that year.  But, there are long lasting physical, psychological, and behavioral ramifications.

    Anyhow, that’s the story of the dark times, as much of it as I feel like telling right now. It was bizarrely difficult to type this up, and this is far from the first time I’ve tried.   I reread it and think, “It’s not really that big of a deal.  It could have been so much worse,” and it really could have been, but it still had (and has) a very large impact upon me.  Tomorrow I’ll try to explain what is prompting me to share this now.

     

    * When I started writing this, I thought I would come close to telling the “whole” story, but as I wrote, I realized that there are many details I am still unwilling to share.  They are just too big of a trigger.  Some of the details of physical and emotional pain and betrayal are just not yet fit for the light of day, and perhaps never will be.  So, this was a sanitized for my protection version of events.

  • No Emotional Pleas Here

    I don’t believe that gay marriage should be made legal in the United States of America. I believe it is already legal. I believe that every law that has been put in place to thwart this has been unconstitutional and against both the supreme law of the land and the spirit behind that law.

    For as long as I’ve had some knowledge of the existence of same sex couples, sometime before the age of 10, I’ve believed they could get married. I wasn’t completely oblivious, I knew none of them were getting married. I just figured it would take a few to decide that they wanted to enough to go through the bother of being the pioneers. I thought there would be some fuss and squabble, but that the courts would support them. It was so clear in my mind, that it wasn’t even in my mind, it was in my core.

    The first hint I had that things were not going to go “my way” was when I started to become aware of the domestic partnership movement. I was already married (in Seattle) when Seattle started registering domestic partnership. When Disney began offering benefits to same sex domestic partners (announced in 1995, after my husband was already working for them) I groaned in frustration. I did not see these things as victories. I felt that these “improvements” were just going to make it take longer until the “right” thing happened. I strongly believed that the money being spent on benefits for same sex partners should be spent to hurry up and make same sex marriage the reality in the outside world that it already was in my mind.

    I was naive. I didn’t understand the ugly battle that was ahead. I assumed that same sex marriage wasn’t happening and widely accepted yet, because overall people just weren’t thinking about it yet. I didn’t know how strong and visceral the opposition would be. Yes, you’ve read me right. I was once young and naive and expected more from people than endless annoyance and the strong, twitchy desire to stab them. Or, really, I was just self-centered and I hadn’t bothered to ask people for their thoughts on the matter. The truth is, even among most of my liberal friends at the time, domestic partnership was more than good enough.

    There was a lot I didn’t understand yet, that I hadn’t thought about yet. I hadn’t wondered why I was so accepting of things which were not the status quo. I’m still not entirely sure how it happened. By all rights, looking at my family background, and considering the people who raised my parents, and how my aunts and uncles turned out (I came from Catholics on one side and Mormons on the other) I should have been more like those other people who found the idea of same sex marriage foreign, and bizarre and abhorrent.

    I was in my thirties before I thought to ask my father why, despite not having been raised by activists who talked LGBT equality, it just seemed like the most natural thing in the world to me. We had a great talk, with flashes of insight but no definitive conclusions.  Nonetheless I am grateful for the fact that my parents basically just raised me with the notion that decent people should be treated decently, and really, assholes should be treated decently too, because the way you treat others is more of a reflection on who you are than on who they are.

    So, way back in 1994 when I got married. I didn’t look at it as a political act. I definitely didn’t see it as a religious act. By 2000, thanks to California Proposition 22, I was embarrassed to be married. I was ready to do away with the entire notion of marriage as a government institution, let the religious folks keep it, and make federal domestic partnerships (same and opposite sex) the law of the land.

    Another 13 years have gone by, and this year I will finally find out if the Supreme Court does what I’ve always been so sure they would do. In the end I don’t really give a shit what word is attached to it. I want adults to be able to create legal families under federal law, with all the rights and responsibilities attached to that formation of a family. I want it to be the same form of legal family no matter what their race, culture, or sexual orientation is.

    I expect the Supreme Court of the United States to find Proposition 8 and DOMA unconstitutional. That’s the truth. I don’t even feel anxious about it, I just expect it, even though logically I know that there is no guaranty.  I’ve carried around this belief for so long, it will be foundation shattering if they do not. Next, I’d like our lawmakers to get around to sorting out this notion of a legal family in a way that is equal. It’s not about love for me. Instead it is about government paperwork and benefits. It’s about next of kin, end of life decisions, and estates. I want things to be equally practical for all people, and separate is not equal.

    I don’t really feel much animosity to the majority of the other side on the concept of marriage. I don’t think most of them are fans of the Westboro Baptist Church. I have to assume that the issue is as tied up in their core sense of reality as it is in mine, and we just haven’t found the right way to bridge the gap. I understand they may never reach the point where they are in favor of same sex marriage. I understand they may always teach their children same sex unions are not considered positive within their religion or personal moral code. I do hope they will reach a point where they truly believe, and pass on to their children, that the best way for our government to protect their rights, is to protect the rights of those they disagree with.

  • Weclome to MsTori.com

    Welcome to my new blog…

    and my old blog…

    and my really old blog.

    By which I mean, I decided to get my own domain name and host my own blog.  I host tons of shit for other people, including blogs, but have never hosted my own blog.  I figured, for various reasons, it was time.  I imported my old wordpress blog here, so I have those old posts.  I’ve also been slowly moving selected things in from my first blog, which I never did move over to my wordpress hosted blog.  I did not do a blanket import, so this will not be a complete archive of my blogging years, but this will be the most comprehensive compilation available through one stop viewing.

    I posted only 4 times in 2012.  There are a lot of reasons for that.  I’m not going to go over all of them in this inaugural post, but over time I’ll probably cover some of those reasons.

    Because I am still fiddling with things here, please pardon the construction dust.  Due to the vagaries of RSS and subscriptions to such things, you might get erroneous notifications of new posts as I move over really old posts.  Sorry for any confusion that results in.  Think of it like time travel.

  • Desert Mirage

    I am currently in Las Vegas, because I am an idiot, or a masochist, or both.  There is just no good reason for a person with Summer SAD to “vacation” in Las Vegas in June, but that’s what I did.

    My husband had to come here for business, and because he is always extremely busy with his start-up, I decided to come on out with him. He’d be too busy working to spend time with me, but the drive to Vegas and back would give me more time to hang out and talk to him than I get in the average week, so it seemed well worth it.

    Until it was 106 fucking degrees in the fucking shade and the fucking hotel room won’t cool the fuck off.

    I used to spend parts of my summers in Vegas. My grandparents lived here when I was a child. Mornings would start early to get some good play time in before it got too hot.  My grandfather would walk me to the local playground so I could play for a little while before the metal slide got literally too hot to use safely. Then we might walk over to 7 Eleven for a Slurpee. If I didn’t get a Slurpee, there would probably be coins left on the ledge outside the house for me to get something from an ice cream truck later in the day. They sold the house when I was 8 years old and left Vegas for a cheaper town in the middle of nowhere Nevada to retire. I drove by the house yesterday. My grandmother would be horrified to see the condition that the current owners have it in. The huge sagebrush field that I explored is now completely littered with 2 story suburban cookie cutter tract homes. Overall, it felt surreal to be there. I had planned to call my father while parked out front, but decided I didn’t really like it there, so I meandered on my way.

    I stopped at a store to look for a new purse (my current one is falling apart) but had no luck with that either. Upon exit of the store into the overbearing heat, I headed back to the car when I sign across the parking lot caught my eye.

    Rita’s Ice Custard Happiness

    Ooh, ice custard. Do I want that?
    Of course you want that. It’s happiness.
    Well, yeah, but should I have it?
    What “should”? It’s happiness. Go get some happiness.
    It probably isn’t any good. It’s probably too expensive.
    It’s Happiness, it says so right in the name, plus The Beatles say Rita is lovely.
    I don’t think it is the same Rita.
    Whatever, come on, people are always accusing you of being too negative. Go get some happiness. Be a person that deserves happiness.
    Fuck you.
    HAPPINESS
    Serious, fuck you. Alright, fine, I’ll go get some fucking happiness.

    So I drag my heat exhausted ass across the hot black top toward Rita’s Ice Custard Happiness. So. Hot. I have to walk around the building when I get there, the sign was on the back of this little section of strip mall that is floating out on the street side of the parking lot. I pass the Subway that is next door, and get to the front of Rita’s Ice Custard Happiness and am greeted by a “Coming Soon” sign.

  • RIP

    Nobody listens any more.
    I can’t talk to the walls because they’re yelling at me.
    I can’t talk to my wife; she listens to the walls.
    I just want someone to hear what I have to say.
    And maybe if I talk long enough, it’ll make sense.

    -Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451

  • Indy

    Indy and the Kid and London

    16.5 years ago we brought home a puppy from the German Shepherd Rescue. She was my husband’s first dog ever. We got her before our daughter could walk, and she helped to raise our daughter. Indy was a very sweet and a little neurotic. She was family, and we loved her very much.

    This week we had to say goodbye to her. She was damn old for a dog of her size, and she lived a very good life, but I still am very sad. Our daughter, who doesn’t remember a day without her, until now, is totally devastated.

    Indy and the Kid

    The house feels so different without her. I miss her. She was such a good dog.

    Hearth

    I’m so fucking busy this week, I don’t even feel like I have enough time to grieve. It’s just a tight ball of pain and loss and sadness sitting like a rock in my gut, and I just need to keep on keeping on.

    Really, it isn’t even about the time to grieve, it is about having the space to grieve. It is about having the space to just be left the fuck alone, collapsed on the floor sobbing and snotting until I am a desiccated lump. Maybe next week.

  • Dumb Phone Update

    So, it has been quite a while since you have heard from me. I’ve got a lot going on, but I’ve been having a difficult time typing any of it out.

    Anyhow, here is a quick one, partly because somebody asked recently what happened with the experiment where I gave up my smart phone for a month. I am into my tenth month without a smart phone. Some people see that as a success, but most of my very techie friends see it as a massive fail. People who knew me prior to the experiment, and haven’t seen me since, probably find the idea of me sitting there without a phone near constantly in my hands, a surprising thing. I have so little to use my opposable thumbs for now.

    In many ways it is great, however there have been drawbacks, and I am about to embark on a very busy several months that might be helped by a smart phone, so I’ve been looking again. As I explained before, I really want certain things in a phone. What I most want is a 5 row physical QWERTY keyboard, with defined keys, in a wide format, and I want the phone to work. Also, I want the plan to not be offensively expensive, and I want the provider to only piss me off mildly. I am asking way too much.

    Anyhow, I am researching phones, and one of the friends who has been most frustrated by my more restricted communication availability happens to have an iPhone that is on a plan, but isn’t in use. It is just sitting there. The phone was offered to me, and I turned it down, because I don’t get along well with touch screens, so I need (first world problems) want something with a physical keyboard.

    A few days later, I realized that was asinine. I should at least give it a try. So, I am currently borrowing an iPhone. Only two people have the number, the friend whose phone it is, and my kid.

    The kid texted me to find out if I needed anything from the store. I tried and tried and tried to reply to her, and it wasn’t going well. Finally I sent her 3 messages. She responded by calling me.

    Here are the three messages:

    1. Ing xanod dupe on thhos thigh
    2. Oh gps cannot atop laiidnff
    3. Halo

    You can submit what you think I am trying to type in comments. It’s like the crappiest contest ever. Maybe I’ll text the winner.

    She texts, “Turn on auto-correct and then type. That would be fun.”

    I replied, “Aiyocotrdcy I’d on”

    “Perfect.” She responds.

    I did a screen cap of this exchange, and I would post that, but this is an original iPhone which did not allow the sending of photos via MMS, and I haven’t been able to set up my own email through the phone because I cannot get my password typed into it correctly.

    It’s awesome, right?