#VaginaBlogs: Sexual Equality

I'm not going to give you the details of VaginaGate, because my friend Rachel did it so well in her blog, Vagina, Vagina, Vagina. Read and react.

If there is one thing you cannot debate, it's the attack we've had, as women, on our bodies this past year. We are a constant subject on the floor of Capitols all across America and the conversation takes place as if we have no brain, no soul, no beating heart. As if we are nothing but the vagina and uterus that lie within us. 

This past week took it to new heights when Michigan House Representatives were barred from speaking further on the House floor for speaking out of turn. For using the word vagina. If adults cannot even use the word without turning to mush and falling apart, how can they have a true discussion about the topic? What right do they have to discuss the topic at all? 

They have no right. None at all.

Women are not child-bearing vessels. We are human beings. We are one half of a two part biological process required to bring life into this world. We do not create life on our own. We do not walk down the street and life spontaneously creates inside our wombs. 

We have been given the accountability to bear our young, should we decide to bring children to this earth. But let us be clear, it is a decision, regardless of whether our bodies are the more important of the two sexes at the regeneration of the human species. Jealousy of our gift does not give others the right to monitor or control it. 

If it were not a choice, the male would have equal accountability. Once his seed had been dropped off, his responsibility for his part in the process would require follow up. But America isn't willing to address the topic of reproduction on an equal basis between the two sexes required to create life. 

Until that sexual equality has been reached, feel free to steer clear of our vagina and our uterus. We have them under control. We deal with them and their actions monthly. God forbid menses be discussed on the House floor. The good news is that none of this is necessary. Our bodies, our choice. For this woman, the conversation is over. 

The True Story of the Dream Bird

I know, I have no knack for storytelling. I do in my head, but when it comes time to put it in writing, all creativity and excitement I had for the telling just disappears. So, work with me here and embellish at your will, because, trust me, you will never be able to do the true story justice, no matter how freaky you imagine this scenario. And, yes, this story is true.

When I awoke today and had the bird dream in my head, I remembered the day I was a real hero to another bird. A living bird. With wings. Flapping wings. A caught food, flapping wings, it's body beating around as it tried to free itself. I was fucking horrified. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I've had more spelling in my life where I've found myself unemployed than I care to admit. Oh, that's a lie. Some of my jobs have absolutely sucked. I've walked out, I've been fired, I've been through it all. During this particular bump in the road, I was fortunate to be living with my boyfriend in his quaint house in the middle of nowhere, yet right next to Highway 76. The same damned highway I grew up next to. I don't think I've ever lived more than 10 miles from I-76 in my entire life. How strange is that?

So, I'm unemployed, sitting at my makeshift outdoor paradise (a table made out of a copper wire spool and a fake tiki umbrella from Big Lots) and I hear the squawking and banging, just like in the dream. But it's closer. And I'm afraid of birds. This ain't no damned dream and I'm not a damned rock climbing super goddess.

My mom taught me at an early age about her fear of birds. They flwp flwp flwp sound they make when they are coming toward you and how you have no control over where they go. To duck when they come. For me, this fear has passed to all flying things. Moths, bees, flies, birds. They scare the bejesus out of me. Mind you, if I find a broken or hurt flying thing, I will do anything in my power to save it. But when it's flying, I'm scared to death.

So, there I was in my paradise (it happened to be about 100 degrees that day) and I heard the bird. The distressed bird. I tracked it down to one of the jury-rigged columns on our quaint porch. My boyfriend's ex-wife's husband took the cheap way around everything and the columns on our porch were empty fiberboard. The boyfriend, god bless him, tried to keep birds from nesting in them by stuffing the top with plastic bags.

The bird thought either a) Yay! Those bags keep the wind out of our nests, or b) Yay! More shit to make nests with! So, birds still made nests in every single column we had. In this particular column, there was a bird banging around.

Heart pounding, I ran to the garage and got a screwdriver and disassembled the cheap ass column. Inside was a crow (blackbird? what's the difference?) with a plastic bag wrapped around it's leg. In essence, this bird was now a lethal weapon out of a horror movie.

I made a half-assed attempt to move close to the bird, thinking I could calm it down (so wrong) and grab the bird, and rip the bag and set it free. Ha hahahahhahhaaaaaa. I was squealing like a fucking pig at the top of my lungs as I tried to get close to this flying, banging burst of unhappy feathers. If we had close neighbors, I have no doubt they would have called the police.

I also had no doubt that I had to save this bird. When I next stepped outside, I had on my boyfriend's motorcycle helmet (100 degrees), his motorcycle gloves, a step stool and a pair of kitchen shears in my hands. With sweat dripping down my face, deafening screams inside the helmet and 15 minutes of arduous labor while I tried deftly to slice the bag (with my eyes closed) and not stab the bird, I fought valiantly to rescue him. All of a sudden - HE WAS GONE! I have no idea what I did, or how it happened, but I saved it!

And, somehow, that tweeting bird from last night brought all of this back to my head.

Arizona Passes Abortion Law That Says Pregnancy Begins Before A Child Has Been Conceived

Arizona Passes Abortion Law That Says Pregnancy Begins Before A Child Has Been Conceived:

So, does this mean it's illegal to have your period in Arizona? What if you accidentally flush out something by accident that you didn't know what there because you were having your period. It has to be as realistic and medically possible as aborting a child before it was conceived, right?

Arizona has to be one of the most confusing states in the union. That's what sucks about being an independent. Some things I can cheer for, some things are so laughable that you want them to secede and join some other country.

My only hope is they are the first state to ban men from masturbating. After all, there are millions of lives lost every time a man ejaculates. Women like Octomom would gladly use those eggs at the cost of taxpayers. Fair is fair. And....no more viagra. Black market baby. BLACK MARKET.

'via Blog this'

Livin' the Dream....Casserole Shoes

Is it just me, or is it supposed to be a well known supposition that birds chirp in the morning and not all night? Because there was a bird chirping outside my window all night long. I kept waking up and hearing the bird. It's song? Never changed. It has to be past mating season by now, right? I had to eventually come to the conclusion that it was out there just to enter my dream, because that is exactly what it did.

In my dream I was working at a posh upscale resort. God forbid I actually be vacationing at a resort. No, I was working at one. As some sort of cruise director, but not on a cruise. On this particular day, I took people rock climbing. Because I do that almost every day in normal life and I would know exactly what to do. Assuming that rock was about 2x3 inches, we'd be good.

These rocks, not so small. At least that's what I took away from it from the state of my feet when I returned from a damned successful rock climbing adventure. They were torn apart. I obviously didn't have the right shoes for the event, nor did I have the right ones to soothe my aching and bloody feet.

Like most normal people, it was at that point that I took to the kitchen, to MacGyver my way through the need for foot repair. I picked out two mismatched Pyrex casserole dishes (with arch support!), filled them with water and duct taped them to my feet.

As soon as I was sitting snugly in my modern take on the glass slipper, all hell broke loose and a horse came into the courtyard without a rider. Dammit. A tour had gone sour in my incredible resort. Even with arch support, I didn't think the sloshing water and duct tape would make my casserole shoes the most ideal footwear in which to round up a horse (now running through the lobby) or to go trekking through the brush in search of a horseless rider.

That's when I heard the bird. A loud, squawking sound, coming from a clearly frightened bird. It drew my attention to the large silo to the left, just to the side of the lobby of my posh resort. As most resorts do, this one had a massive, old fashioned farm silo with a ladder and a switch that would open and close the roof.

A bird was inside the silo, it's foot caught (what's with the feet?), keeping it from flying properly and it was banging on the sides of the silo. Given my shoes, I wasn't able to climb the ladder, but I flipped the switch to open the silo, hoping that the open space might give the bird strength to break free of its tether and fly away.

But what I saw wasn't blue sky and a clear path to green pastures, but rather a crowded highway, the bottoms of cars and semi-trucks speeding by. I frantically worked to close the hatch to keep the bird pounding against the silo rather than get killed in traffic.

At least I had my casserole shoes.

The Green Thing

Just a little email floater my mom shared with me...Definitely makes you think. If it doesn't, what the hell is wrong with you?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.

The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days."

The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."

She was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our school books. This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books. But too bad we didn't do the green thing back then.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana . In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we older folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?