Bitchy McBitcherson's Blog

Tag: society

  • Cars that pass in the night

    Late last night I was driving home on a surface street, but one with a 50 MPH speed limit.  As I approached an intersection I could see that something was going on.  There were cars pulled to the right, and several people standing in the fast lane, some waving their hands to signal cars coming right at them to move over.  As I slowed for my turn, I could see the problem, a dog lying in the road.  I turned so my car was perpendicular to the lane, blocking it from oncoming traffic and putting on my hazards.  Pissed off oncoming traffic was slightly more interested in moving over to avoid slamming into my car than they were in just moving around the people waving at them.  The young woman was frantically calling animal control.  I tried telling her they wouldn’t help, but she didn’t understand.  She though that they would send a doggy ambulance of sorts.  I got out, wanting to encourage somebody to give the dog a ride to a 24 hour emergency clinic I knew was nearby.  I couldn’t put the dog in my car, it already had a dog in the back who did not have the temperament to make that workable.

    Unfortunately, the dog stopped breathing, before such a plan could be put into action.  While the young crying woman had a more and more frustrating conversation with animal control, who was, of course, not set up to do anything quickly about this problem.

    I got out of my car to find a beautiful female German Shepherd lying in the road, a motley crew strangers standing around her, several crying. I turned her collar until I could find tags, so the owner could be called.  A couple of the people had seen the dog running in the road, terrified.  They pulled over and tried to get her to come, but she was panicked.  They were there trying to save her when another driver didn’t see her in time, and despite slamming on his brakes, hit her.  Another was walking his dog and was standing there with his dog, helping to block traffic.  Soon a person from nearby homes joined us with a STOP/SLOW roadwork sign and a reflective vest to put in a little time to making things more visible.  Cars continued to speed past us, faster than the speed limit, aggressively swerving at the last minute but making it clear they were not pleased at being inconvenienced.

    We got her name off the tag and talked to her about how good and beautiful she was, and waited for the owner who had been reached with that number on her tag.  He had just walked in the door and discovered her missing, and then the phone rang…

    He pulled up to the intersection and came over, already crying, but hopeful.  She was gone, but it didn’t stop him from falling to his knees and begging her to get up.  He was lost and didn’t know what to do.  The young woman explained that she had tried.  That they’d stayed with her.  We helped to load her into his trunk.  He apologized to her for having to lift her unceremoniously.  I told him that we could still take her to the emergency vet nearby, that they could arrange for cremation.  He asked if I was sure they were open, so I called them to verify.  They were.  I described where it was. He thanked me. He still looked shell shocked, so I asked if he wanted me to meet him at the vet so he wouldn’t be there alone.  A look of sheer confusion passed over his face.  It was clear that he wanted to take me up on that offer, and that every bit of social training had taught him to say, “No, that’s okay. I’ll be fine.”  “I’ll meet you there,” I said.  “I’ll pull around and you can follow me to the hospital.”

    She had jumped the fence of the 4th of July, panicked by illegal fireworks.  He recovered her on the 4th, but something had made her jump again.

    The group of strangers dispersed into the night, and I pulled my car around in front of him and led him to the pet hospital.  We went inside to get employees to come help us.  I got some paper towels to do a little bit of cleaning of the blood on his car, just so that it wouldn’t be staring hard at him in the light of day.  I waited while he filled out paperwork, and told them he wanted a wooden box for her ashes.  He told me of the three wooden boxes he had at home, all German Shepherds, but the others had all passed from old age.  There was another German Shepherd waiting at home, who would be so confused when she never came back.  He said goodbye to her, and then said goodbye to me, hugging me tightly and thanking me.

    Then I drove home with Mindy in my car, to be greeted by Watson at the door, and soon the sound of foster puppies wiggling in their crates filled my ears.

    RIP beautiful girl. I’m so sorry you didn’t make it home safely.  I know you were loved.

  • 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.

  • About Face

    I like routine and it is easy for me to fall into the habit of doing something because it is what I do, long beyond the point of that thing being important. If I do not do it, I will feel anxious, because a thing which I am “supposed” to do, is not being done.

    I disabled my facebook account a week ago. I don’t expect to remain off of facebook forever (at least not yet), but it wasn’t working well for me (from a personal, not a technical standpoint). I was spending far to much time on facebook, even though I wasn’t enjoying that time. I was also spending too much time trying to figure out how I was going to make it work better for me, so I decided to remove that from my thoughts for the moment and just go cold turkey.

    Now, with a little perspective, I’m coming closer to deciding how to relaunch my use, and manage it in a way that is less time and energy consuming, and hopefully provides more positive than negative.

    I joined facebook (and Myspace) because my daughter was interested in being able to hang out with her friends online, and I wanted to look at the sites so I could make an informed decision. She was not yet old enough to join according to their TOS, so it was not yet an option, but I knew she’d like to have an account on her 13th birthday, so I started doing my homework ahead of time. I hated myspace, but facebook was fun for me. I had a manageable number of friends and it was nice to have a window into their lives, and for them into mine.

    Four years later I have, less than, but far too close to, 200 “friends” which is absolutely ludicrous. There are not 200 people on this planet who give a shit whether I am alive or dead, much less how my day is going or what the past ten photos of my pets look like. Hell, most of my actual friends don’t really give much of a shit how my day is going, because, face it, most of my days are going the same as previous ones.

    The thing is, I basically added everyone who ever added me, as long as I sort of knew them. I have no idea why they added me to start with. Do they just like the friend number to look big? Did they give facebook access to their email address book? I know one added me so I could play facebook games with her. I added less than a dozen people first. But, I figured if I was going to add them, then I should pay attention to them. I made friend groups so that I could post to only specific people, but didn’t use them for reading. If they were on my friend list, I read their updates. All of them. This could take a very long time if I hadn’t looked recently. Yes. I know. You don’t need to say it, and neither do I.

    Some of them are really fucking annoying too.

    Plus, I didn’t block any apps or games, so I got all that spam too. The whole point was to be there so that I could check it out for my kid, and keep an eye on her and how she used it. If she started spamming people with app shit, I needed to know it. No way to guide her along if I had blocked them all. Now, she is older and I am totally confident in the care she exercises as far as facebook apps go (and really, she can go ages without even logging in to facebook, because she is busy being addicted to tumblr instead, where half the time I want to throw up over stuff I see, but hey, she is older now, so whatever).

    So, I was overwhelmed with all this stuff to read, and the first choice was to narrow down my “friend” list. It turned out that was easier said than done, because while many had no real connection to my life, they were at least the friend of a friend (or friend of a business associate), and I worried about offending somebody, or some such nonsense. While I mostly feel it is nonsense, I don’t actually want to hurt somebody’s feelings if I can easily avoid it.

    So, I believe over the course of my week break, I’ve come to accept that I’ll just need to create reading groups on facebook, and really only look at those people regularly. Plus, try to just see what I see when I happen to login, and not go back to check on everything they’ve posted about since I last checked.

    I still find it a shitty way to communicate at any level that actually matters to me. Not to say that there are not some people that I manage to have meaningful communication on there with, but for most people, even those I care about a great deal, it just isn’t a good place for that. It is a place of small talk, and I don’t enjoy small talk. It feels like a waste of time and energy.

    I’d always prefer to have a one on one conversation, or just sit home and read a book, to attending any kind of group event. Living your online life as a group event is what facebook is all about. It is a group event that invades my home every single day. I need to manage the door much better.

    Fifteen years ago, the internet was more than a great resource to me, it was a refuge from the way general society interacted everyday. That is no longer the case. There is no way I can stop the internet cold turkey. I’ve stored my brain in the cloud. Dependence aside, it is clearly time for me to make a lot of changes.

  • Fallen Princesses

    I love this photo series.

  • Joss Is Boss

    Buffy the Vampire Slayer lives on. The new comic book series, from Joss Whedon and Dark Horse Comics will pick up, with what would have been Season 8 in the story arc if they had not left TV following season 7.

    There is an interview with Joss in TV Guide, but it might have some things you would consider spoilers, depending on how much you like to just experience it as it comes.

    Here is one excerpt from the interview, which I am glad to hear.

    TVGuide.com: Does she get comic-book superheroine breast implants?
    Whedon: She really doesn’t. I’ve been fortunate that I’ve never worked with a T&A artist. I’m very specific about that.

    TVGuide.com: Isn’t that the raison d’etre of lots of comics?
    Whedon: That’s part of why I stopped reading comics for a while. All the people I work with draw actual women.

    Buffy the Vampire Slayer #1, available at your local comic book store today.

  • People Make Me TIRED

    A couple of weeks ago I made a black & white 8 X 10 ad for somebody to use in some dumbass program they were buying an ad in.

    Last week they contacted me wanting to know if I still had a copy, and wanting me to send a PDF of it to another email address. They were purchasing an ad in a new program. Let’s not even address the fact that the first ad was personalized to the program it was being printed in.

    I asked, “You are getting another 8 x 10 ad?” (It is an usually large ad.)

    He asked, “Does it matter?”

    I tried to explain to him that it did. It turned out he didn’t KNOW what size ad he was purchasing, just that he had agreed to spend a certain amount of money, so he was going to ask and get back to me.

    He got back to me and told me that it was a 5 X 7 program and he was getting a half page ad. “Can you just reuse the old ad?”

    “No, I really can’t. I’ll make a new one.”

    Now, is the half page adspace 5 X 3.5 or is that the size of the paper, with the adspace being a bit smaller? Of course I have to wait to get the answer to that because he doesn’t know.

    Today I get email that says:

    they said to make it 5 x 3.5 and they will modify the size as needed.
    they may enlarge the size to 8x 10 because kinko’s may do their
    printing for free.

    That, my friends, is why when you see ads in programs for dumbass little events they always look like total shit and the logos are completely stretched and distorted.

    I HATE that, so I will email them a 5 X 3.5 design and an 8 X 5 design. I know it doesn’t matter, because they will no doubt use the wrong one for whatever fricken size they end up with. As long as nobody ever ever ever shows me the finished product, hopefully my head will not explode.

    ETA: To be clear, yes I mind a little that he doesn’t just get the fact that an 8 X 10 ad can’t be used as a 5 X 3.5 ad, just because it means I have to work a bit to keep THAT tone out of my voice when I answer. I accept the fact that if most people feel like they “have somebody” who understands “that stuff” they call before they think. Also, you go to some portrait studio to have photos taken and they show you the proof and give you check boxes to selects photos in a variety of sizes. It is presented as if all these sizes will be the exact same visually, but in a different size. With photos they typically handle the aspect ratio problem by cropping and a lot of people won’t notice the difference. With print ads they usually distort to handle aspect ratio differences, the look of which drives me completely crazy. Or they maintain the aspect ratio and shrink to fit and create useless whitespace while a client is paying for a certain amount of advertising space.

    What really pisses me off are the people on the other end. I don’t care if they are just volunteering to help some organization raise money and this isn’t their real job. If they are asking people to give them money in order to print and distribute an ad, they should make an effort to give those purchases a chance of having the best had possible. They should have an instruction sheet detailing out everything (preferred format, resolution, various ad sizes, type of color, b&w or grayscale, bleed, etc). If the purchasers are too stupid to follow the instructions that is one thing, but don’t just plan to do a half-assed job from the get go and then have the nerve to have people pay their hard earned money for your shitty nonchalant services.

    For the people selling the ads and giving the instructions to say it should be made as a 5 X 3.5 and they will just resize it if they change to an 8 x 10 sheet (and notice they plan to resize it up, not down which will increase the quality issues) just irritates the crap out of me.

  • See What’s Become of Me

    I don’t really understand the way so many people seem so hung up on time.

    I completely understand it as a tool to coordinate. It would be much more difficult to meet somebody for lunch if we had no common reference point for when.

    I also grasp it to measure the passing of it. It is good to know how long something took to accomplish.

    I just don’t understand the random value attached to certain times of the day.

    Daylight Savings Time, for instance, to me is a big dumb piece of crap. People tell me how happy they are because “It stays light later.” What does that mean? The sun isn’t staying up an extra hour all of a sudden. It isn’t like the whole world changes, heck it isn’t even as if the whole country changes. Change the times at which things open and close, don’t change the time designation.

    I also hate “banker’s hours”. We live as part of a global economy and it is dumb that we don’t have a 24 hour society. It would make more sense to me if we worked on shifted schedules and all service industries also worked on shifted schedules so that people could find a place that was open and take care of needed errands no matter what time they worked, without taking time off. For some reason the collective mind thinks we are supposed to wake up “early” and go to bed at a “decent hour” and that no good can come of being out and about at the wrong times. Our population would not be putting as much of a drain on space an resources if we were active around the clock. Traffic would be less of a problem. Companies wouldn’t need to build or acquire buildings as much or often in order to increase their total number of employees. Everybody would be safer because there would always be activity instead of those quiet times when they claim only criminals operate.

    I pay my local and state taxes, but I cannot use the public parks most of the time I would actually want to, because they are “Closed at dusk” and don’t open again until morning. They close them because they claim it discourages crime and use of the parks for illegal activities, but making it common for law abiding citizens to use the park at all times would also do that.

    The morally superior attitude of some so-called morning people, also baffles me. So what if the early bird gets the worm? I am not a bird. I don’t eat worms, and owls are not starving to death either. Back in college we were usually up until 4 AM, and it was not at all unusual to still be up working on something at 6 or 7 AM. If we didn’t have an early class, that might lead us to still be asleep at 10 AM. However if the husband’s mother happened to call at 10 AM and find us still home and in bed, she never apologized for waking us. To her, it was like she had caught us being naughty and lazy. She had been up since 6 AM and had four productive hours of the day behind her, so she found us lacking. Of course, she had gone to bed at 10 PM. If we had called her and woken her up at 2 AM , she would have been pissed off.

    I used to consider myself a night owl, but I am no longer convinced it is that simple. Yes, I do tend to prefer the night for reasons such as, less sun, less crowds, less heat, and less distractions. The thing that made me think I was night owl, was because I typically had an extra boost of energy at night, and felt motivated and alert. I attributed this to me being a night person.

    Then I went through a stretch of time when I lived alone and had no outside obligations, and I just did whatever I wanted sleep-wise most days. What tended to happen was I would wake up, but still feel rather fuzzy and unmotivated. I’d fumble about doing mundane tasks and laze about. Eventually I’d feel semi functional and I would start to assess the things I was planning to do for the day, look through things, maybe get in touch with people I needed to be in touch with to get things done. After 2-3 hours I would eat something and then get going. I would spend 8 or 9 hours doing whatever it was I needed to do. By then I had been up for 10-12 hours. Around then I would feel very energized and alert. This was when I was most likely to get involved in a new project, get a burst of energy to finish a project. I was at my most alert and productive and also as the most receptive to social interaction as long as it didn’t interfere with something I was driven to work on. This would last for 6 hours and then it would start to fade away. I still felt amped, but no longer alert. If I was driven to finish something I would keep working, if I had no time pressure I might start reading a book or something else to help me wind down. Assuming no pressure to stay up and finish something, I would go to sleep about 20-21 hours after I woke up, and then sleep for around 5 hours.

    20 or 21 plus 5 does not equal 24, so I would not get up at the same time everyday. Instead I would chase myself around the clock. So some days I would be getting up in the morning, other days I was getting up at night. However my most alert time was typically after I had been up for about 10 hours, whether that was at night or in the morning. While I still liked running errands at night because of the things I mentioned about liking nighttime before, it became apparent that it wasn’t really that I “wasn’t a morning person” it was that I didn’t wake up alert and ready to start the day. Sleeping more did not help. Waking with an alarm versus waking on my own didn’t help. What helped was simply being awake for a while and having a chance to get moving.

    I see other people who hop out of bed and are totally ready to go. Most of them don’t get that burst of energy later in the day though. They are alert early and then have a longer slower decline cycle.

    Of course for most of my life there are external forces asking me to get up in the morning, at about the same time each day. This typically leaves me never getting enough sleep. I want to be up for 21 hours, but I want to sleep for (now that I’ve gotten older) around 6 hours. I either have to force myself to wind down while I still feel like I could really accomplish things allowing me to get the amount of sleep I’d like, or I can stay up until I feel like sleeping and then only get a few hours of sleep. I usually alternate between these two. If I do the not enough sleep option for too many days in a row I can induce insomnia. That is never good. I once had insomnia for a little over a year, and boy was I in a horrible mood.

    So, I try not to be too annoyed by the people who wake up all energized and then are blobs by the time I am ready rock, as long as they don’t treat me like I have a character flaw because I am not constantly trying to eat worms.

    I am ALWAYS annoyed by anything to do with DST. Spring ahead. Fall back. Fuck off.

  • Senators Don’t Think Americans Should Behave Responsibly

    Senate Panel Slams Abusive Credit Card Practices

    Credit cards can be used to the consumer’s benefit. Credit cards can be abused to the consumer’s downfall. They can be used in a great many ways in between. The fact that the majority of Americans use them poorly says a lot more about our education system and lack of parenting in this country than it does about the credit card companies. They are in business to make money. If people cannot be bothered to read before entering an agreement that can seriously impact the financial health of their family, they are the ones who need fixing.

    Here is an excerpt from the article about one of the people who testified at the hearing:

    Wesley Wannemacher, a Lima, Ohio resident who testified at the hearing, was one of those consumers.

    Wannemacher described how he had maxed out his $3,000 Chase Bank card to pay for his wedding, and found himself falling further and further behind in payments as he had more expenses to take care of. Despite pleas to Chase to work with him, the bank continued to pile on late fees and penalty fees.

    “Debt seems to invoke a feeling of hopelessness unlike any other problem I’ve encountered,” Wannemacher said. “When a debtor calls you on the phone and you make a minimum payment, you know that you’ve made no real progress and that in a month, they will be calling again.”

    Eventually Wannemacher ended up owing $7,500 in interest fees, late payment fees, and overlimit fees on an original debt of $3,200.

    Even after making payments totaling $6,300, he still owed $4,400 in fees. Wannamacher had contacted Levin’s office, who invited him to testify. Right before he did so, Chase agreed to forgive the balance on his account.

    WTF, seriously? This guy decided to put on a wedding more lavish than he could afford. He did it. He got the goods. He overcharged the amount of credit that he had. Guess what, that is against the terms, and they assess fees for that. It says it in every terms of service pamphlet I have gotten from a credit card company. Also, there is this thing called interest. The credit card companies charge interest when you borrow money from them. They charge interest on the interest you owe them if you don’t pay it off right away. They charge interest on the late fees if you don’t pay those off right away. Also, if you start screwing up your account, they raise your interest rate. Those pretty rates are ones that they offer to financially responsible people.

    Don’t get me wrong, I know the credit card companies prey upon the weakness and stupidity and fucked up sense of entitlement of the masses. They advertise and advertise and try to lure people in and it gives people the false sense that they should spend money they probably shouldn’t spend. I am not a fan of the credit card companies for a pile of reasons, from their marketing practices (quit offering pre-approved cards to my dog, thank you very much), to their constant mailings because of the changes in the terms of service that happen every 5 days, to their complete lack of decent customer service. Those are just more reasons to read the application carefully. Then if you choose to apply, read all the damn paperwork they send you. If you don’t agree cut up the card and close the damn account. If a chance is made to the terms of service after you already carry a balance with them, you can quit using the card and notify them in writing that you do not agree and you pay off the debt according to your old terms.

    The credit card companies are not getting people into this situation. The people are getting themselves into it. It isn’t really their fault though, at least that is what my government is telling me. I guess a government that can’t balance the fucking budget would have to believe that. I wonder how much this hearing cost our nation?

  • More On How I Feel About the Medical Industry

    First I will start with the general.

    I do not like the medical profession laying their personal, or societal opinions on an individuals medical care unless they are specifically asked, “Well, what would you do?”

    Then I will move onto a story about somebody I knew.

    There was a woman who used to clean my house. She was nice enough, but unfortunately was entirely too chatty. As the result I know a lot more about her than is reasonable. Now you will know it too.

    When I first met her she was barely 22 years old and had just given birth to her third baby. Her first one she had when she was 16. The first two were with one guy, this third one was with a different guy, but she still considered the father of the first two “The love of her life, that she knows she is meant to be with again someday.” She swore that they were using birth control for all three pregnancies. She told me that during pregnancy number two she kept telling her doctor she wanted her tubes tied when the baby was born. Her doctor insisted she was too young to make such a decision.

    Prior to baby number three being born, one of the other girls suffered a severe head injury and became disabled. The woman was 20, no reasonable education, unmarried with two children and one of whom had extra educational and medical needs. During pregnancy number three she again repeatedly told her doctor that she wanted to have her tubes tied. Again she was told that she was too young to make such a decision. When baby number three was less than a year old she became pregnant for the fourth time, again swearing that they were using birth control (who knows if they’d ever been given decent instructions on HOW to use it).

    A doctor finally agreed to sterilize her at that point, two kids after she started requesting it.

    Finally we will get on to the personal.

    I have one kid. I am pro choice. I meant to have that kid. I was not absolutely positively certain that we would stop with one kid.

    We waited. We thought about it. We talked about it. We were pretty damn sure. We waited some more. We talked about it more. We decided. This took place over the span of years, not days.

    I went and saw a doctor and told them that I was done. She laughed and told me that I would change my mind. She did not want to refer me to anyone. Nothing. She just said I was too young (which I think “they” term as under 30 with 0 or 1 kid) to make that choice, and that (I kid you fucking not, she said this to me) “It isn’t right to have your daughter grow up so lonely.”

    I did not kill her on the spot. I hope somebody is as amazed by this as I am. As far as I know, she is still alive and practicing medicine. I never saw her again. If anything happened to her, it was not me.

    Now all I was going to do was talk and get pamphlets. We were still strongly leaning toward him having a procedure rather than me having something done, but I was not done researching. At that point we knew one person who had a vasectomy that they were not happy with. We knew several who had them who were happy and felt it had been no problem at all.

    After a bit of time (as I have mentioned before we tend to avoid doctors whenever possible) we finally got to a point where we set foot into a medical setting again. This time we let him try. We got a little bit further. They were willing to give him a referral, after he attended a class. This pissed me off to no end. I was furious. We are supposed to have medical privacy and being forced by insurance to go to a group class on any sort of medical condition or procedure as a condition to getting the care that you are requesting was completely beyond acceptable to me. I began throwing fits left and right and before we got very far with that our insurance coverage changed. Yes, I am choosing publicly to talk about this NOW, but that is my choice. They were holding the procedure hostage in order to force public discussion on it.

    By the time we got back to the subject yet again we knew two more men who had vasectomies who were very unhappy with the procedure and the outcome. (chronic pain, decreased sensation from orgasms, etc) I know that the vast majority of people have no problem, and a lot of the medical community discount the complaints out there, but these were people who I did not think were likely to be having psychosomatic complaints. I needed more time to research.

    Then I got sick. I’ve talked about that before.

    Finally I was ready to look into everything again and this time I found Essure. That looked very interesting to me. First I contacted a retired gynecologist who happens to be a friend’s father to ask him what he knew about it. It had come about after he gave up his practice, so he contacted colleagues to get opinions and got back to me. He also helped me formulate some questions that he felt any decent doctor should answer.

    I took his questions, did some additional research and added questions of my own. Pulling a list of doctors listed on the Essure website that happened to be covered by my insurance, I contacted fifteen of them. Fourteen by letters and one by email. The one who responded by email responded quickly and was great, but I was not thrilled with his answers to my questions. I liked very much that he communicated effectively by email, and I also liked that he was giving up the OB portion of his practice because that would make him a more effective doctor for me. However, he just had not performed the procedure enough times and with enough success that I was comfortable seeing him in this case.

    Thirteen doctors ignored me completely.

    One other had his nurse call me to give me the answers to my questions. I wasn’t thrilled with having the nurse call, but the answers to the questions were decent. I booked an appointment to meet him in person.

    I arrived on time to a fairly empty waiting room. I had to wait for 40 minutes before they took me to a room and another 20 minutes for him to appear. We spoke and were okay with the responses to each others questions. He remembered the letter and we talked a about his history with the procedure. He actually wanted to know if, should I go ahead and use him and do the procedure, whether I would be willing to be filmed for the local evening news. We also decided I should get a shot of Depo because that gives the best chance for the procedure to go well (condition of the cervix and endometrial lining) and we worked out when the right time for the procedure would be. Sounds good, right? Then it turns out the do not have the Depo in their office and I have to go downstairs to the pharmacy to get it. They write a prescription and send me down. This eats up more of my day as I have to wait.

    In the meantime I called my husband to discuss this television news idea. On the one hand I despised the idea of having a camera anywhere near me. On the other hand it seemed like the doctor would work extra hard not to fuck it up if a camera was there. Also I very strongly believe in getting any and all reproductive choice options out there for people to be aware of. We decided it was creepy and we were not comfortable with it, but that assuming all the details, as ironed out, worked for us, we should go ahead and do it.

    When they finally had the prescription filled for me they tell me insurance will not cover it. It is ridiculously expensive. Insurance won’t cover it because they will only pay for a 30 day supply from a local pharmacy and it lasts for 90 days. They will only cover it if the doctor has it in their office and it is used as part of the office appointment.

    *sigh*

    So I paid the exorbitant fee for the liquid and returned back upstairs because, of course, they only give me a little bottle, no syringe. I give the pets vaccinations, surely I could give myself a damn shot. Diabetics do it all the time. Instead I went back upstairs to the doctor’s office and was forced to wait again in the waiting room. Finally they stuck me back into an exam room where I waited some more. Eventually a nurse showed up and gave me a shot.

    I asked her when the procedure will be scheduled for. She told me that the scheduling person wasn’t in, but that she would call me within the next 10 days. She said that if I didn’t hear from the woman within two weeks, I should call.

    Now, here is the thing. They are running a business. They get real money to do this procedure on me. They actually have a woman who gets paid specifically to schedule procedures and book the operating rooms. That is her job. I am the customer. I already reached out to get the process rolling. I do not want to be having to chase people down to convince them to do their damn job.

    I explained to the nurse that it is very important that the scheduling person call me, because I will not call back. I point out how many years it had been since my last pap. They needed to call me. She said that she usually calls and she’d be sure to mark my folder correctly and put it in the right pile.

    I told her that I had spoken to my husband and we were willing to do the TV show, so she said the doctor would speak to the PR person from Essure and they would get back to me on that with the details and paperwork.

    I left. I had been there for four hours. 4. Not, 3 hours – 4 hours. I had to go home and load the car and drive to Seattle. Really, no problem I don’t mind it taking four damn hours to spend 20 minutes interacting with the actual medical people.

    They never called.

    I’ve now switched insurance, so I can’t go to him anyway unless I want to pay it completely out of pocket, and why would I want to when their office staff can’t fucking get it together enough to call and schedule me an appointment. They had months in which they could have. This is when I was willing to do them the favor of being their promotional poster girl on the evening news!

    But wait, the reason I am writing this is that I was reminded once again when I got a past due bill from them. They need $80 from me for giving me the injection (which I only got because I was supposed to have the procedure) which my insurance would not cover because they were injecting something that was not supplied by their office. They want 80 fucking dollars to have some fucktwit put on latex gloves, tear a package with a syringe in it, stick the syringe into the vial, draw the liquid into the syringe, and then stick a needle in my ass and depress the plunger. It took her less than a fucking minute.

    So there you have it, yet another example of why I am always so aggravated whenever I even think I might need to deal with anything remotely medical.

  • Dear Buddha, please send me a pony, and a plastic rocket, and please, oh please, make me popular…

    As if elementary school, junior high school and high school wasn’t enough – I grew up and needed to worry about cyberpopularity as well. Lucky for me, there are services to help turn cyberlosers into social-networking magnets because appearing more popular actually creates popularity.

    Of course, not liking people all that much makes popularity a burden. Luckily there is Paxil.