s t a r l e t

I hear ladybretagne has a birthday today! Happiest of birthdays to you, m'dear, and may it bring you a whole year of happiness.

In honor of All Hallow's Eve, I'm inviting trick-or-treaters to my 'door.' Comment "trick-or-treat" to this post and...well, you know the drill. Treats can be anything that strikes my fancy (pics of fave actors or pairings, one sentence fics, graphics, a few words why I'm glad to have you on my flist, etc. etc.). The more "houses" to visit the more fun it'll be, so go ahead, open your journal and help spread the fun!

This one sounds like such fun. ♥ Borrowed from the delightful kshandra!

Entirely too appropriate. :)

I begin by linking you to A Monday in Oslo, written by the brilliant Camilla Sandman. If you read nothing else in this post, please read this.

Well, and this: To everyone who has been affected by the tragedies in Oslo and Utøya, I extend my love and sorrow. I applaud your courage and your refusal to bow to this terrorist. The example you are setting the rest of the world is one we ought to take to heart.

---

Your regularly scheduled programming:

pass it along

mysteri@LJ gets inspiration from her own plea for a graphing calculator and decides to hold a virtual drive for her town. In her words: "I live in a very small rural town. Our Population is about 800 max. It used to have a lumber mill that employed a lot of people. That shut down before we even moved here and the town has not recovered. We are within 30-45 miles of a big city and some people work there. Sadly people lost those jobs to. There are a lot of people that are down on their luck. . . My son only needs one calculator. I was wondering though if those who offered would still be willing to send them. I will then donate them to the school. They have some but don’t have the funds to have anywhere near enough to use in all the math classes. I was thinking if they had a few more maybe they would even be able to let the kids check one out overnight if they were not able to finish in class and could not afford their own."

What say you, dear readers?

i wish i were surprised

Cenk Uygur gets the sack. I'm not his biggest fan, but I don't remember hearing any major scandals about him--what can he have done wrong? Just been himself?

I will say that I could barely sit through fifteen minutes of Morning Joe with my mother. I don't know how she does it. They're all so smug on that show.

silly questions

Can a boy wear a skirt to school? Hell, YES.

health

The CDC came out with a vaccine price list. I just about hit the roof when I saw how much one dose of Gardasil costs. Good grief, Merck. Go see for yourself what you might need, and what the drug companies are charging your doctors.

Before I read FEED and DEADLINE, this was not nearly as awesome: Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse. The hilarious part is that bits of those books are set in the CDC. What, you haven't read them yet? Go! Buy? Please?

What are you doing on World Hepatitis Day?

and happiness

I leave you with a joke, courtesy of Incongruous Circumspection:

The lawyer stood over the plaintiff and asked him to answer his question. "Did you or did you not tell the patrolman at the scene of the accident that you were fine. In fact, your exact words were, I'm fine!?"

The plaintiff began to speak. "You see, I was loading my favorite donkey, Bessie into my trailer that morning..."

"I asked a yes or no question. Did you say I'm fine to the patrolman at the scene of the accident?!!", the lawyer retorted.

The plaintiff kept going. "I got Bessie into the trailer and began to drive down the road."

The lawyer cut the plaintiff off again and turned to the judge, begging him to make the plaintiff answer the yes or no question. The judge, now interested in the donkey story told the plaintiff to continue.

"Thank you, your honor. As I was saying, I was driving down the road and was crossing an intersection when this big semi blew the stop sign and broadsided me. I ended up in one ditch and Bessie in the other. I was pretty hurt but heard Bessie groaning and moaning on the other side of the road. The patrolman arrived and looked at me but also heard Bessie. So, he went over to the other side of the road to check on her. I heard him looking around and then he shot her to put her out of her misery. Then, the next thing I knew, here he was, standing over me, holding his gun and asked how I was doing. What the heck would you say???!!!"

What I should do:

Email my advisor ("Hey, Dana, you still kickin'?")
Toss up another Daily (ha!) Whatnot
Meditate

What I likely will do:

Stitch down the edges of the headband I made today out of scraps
More work on the patches on my workbag-to-be
Writing? Please, word gods?
Quality time on Twitter during Countdown

Will someone please tell me who they got to play the 19 Years Later versions of the Golden Trio et al?

I cannot imagine there is enough aging makeup in the world to make them all look forty.

If we insist that abortion must be expensive and, in some states, next to impossible to get, perhaps we should sell hormonal birth control over-the-counter. Or would that give women too much control over their own fertility?

Brought to you by the Department of Having to Call For A New Prescription Every Two Frelling Months (Like It Will Have Changed).

I have a wrap skirt that no longer fits right at the waist. It is, all told, equivalent to one square yard of gorgeous dark green fabric (with light green embroidery!) plus a bit extra for pockets. What, my darlings, shall I make from it?

Ever been condescended to? Because you do not know the meaning of the word until you meet the woman I will call Dr. Duck.

I have never had a doctor address me as if I were a toddler before this afternoon. I don't even remember the staff of my preschool speaking in quite that tone of voice. You know the one. Singsong, breathy, sweet. Snow White, M.D. I don't know what prompted her to take such a tack with me. The way she sounded, she was obviously mystified that I'd managed to dress myself, never mind getting in the car and driving forty minutes to my appointment. If that was what she believed of me, I suppose she was justified in refusing to perform a tubal ligation on me.

No? Not likely? Mmm, then she really was just an ass.

So I guess the whole practice has a policy of not performing tubals on childless women, especially under a certain age. This was news to me, given that the person who scheduled me said that I'd come to the right place. Why do you think I wasn't hedging my bets and getting consults from other doctors? I distinctly recall pointing out that I had not had children and would prefer to keep it that way. Do I sound perimenopausal over the phone? I mean, there was the debt collector who mistook me for my mother some years back.

But rather than take my history and ask why I felt I was a good candidate for the procedure, she proceeded to reiterate the practice's policy, as well as some sort of law against performing tubals on women under a certain age. If there is such a law within sniffing distance of New York State, you'd think I would know about it by now. Hearing that, I admit, was enough to shock me out of my composure. She then trotted out the semi-permanent options, because fecundity is all. I told her repeatedly that neither Implanon nor an IUD were acceptable alternatives. Naturally, she handed me a leaflet detailing my birth control options. Just in case a woman who very emphatically did not wish to be pregnant was also clueless about her options for preventing same.

At no point in the visit did she express concern that I might be too willing to subject my body to the strain of a surgery. No, she spent the entire visit talking about women the practice had treated who had changed their minds shortly thereafter. I offered to sign a CYA form. Not good enough. I told her I'd come back in five years still childfree, still wanting a tubal. I don't recall whether she dared to contradict me on that. She dared everything else.

I am oddly proud that I didn't cry until I got in my car. Then I sat in the parking lot for about fifteen minutes and sobbed. I should be used to leaving doctors' offices feeling kicked in the gut. I suppose I've gotten soft. I called my parents, both of whom were enraged on my behalf. I debated driving up to see my mother, but her lunch hour was almost over, so I cranked the music and screamed along to my mix CD all the way home. That drive was sheer adrenaline. At least I didn't have a panic attack. I'm proud of that, too.

And here I am.

I know what comes next. I have to actually find the number of the woman at Strong who might hear me out. I have to come up with a way to get through to her that doesn't employ tears. I suspect I won't actually get in to see her until the fall--I did book this appointment two months ago, at least--so I have time to see this new psychiatrist. I intend to gather evidence supporting my case. I am pretty sure I would lose what remains of my sanity if I got pregnant, and I am also pretty sure there are technical terms for that eventuality. I am on medication I cannot quit nearly fast enough to spare a fetus the effects, not without going inpatient. I know that until I am sterilized, abortion is my only way out, as I am entirely unwilling to hand over something I spent nine months gestating to someone I don't know. Shonda Rhimes voiced the sentiment best through Cristina Yang: I would come to love my child. Unfortunately for that child, I would make a terrible mother, at least until it turned nine or ten. And I am not as sanguine about aborting as I used to be.

I would rather make the "mistake" of sterilization, which damages only me, than bring a "mistake" into the world. No child deserves that hell. There are plenty of children living in it already, and if I ever feel the overwhelming desire to parent, rest assured that one of these children will benefit.

I will not ask my partner to alter his body to suit me. He is unlikely to be my last partner, and there is always the possibility of rape. This is my decision, about my body. This is an issue of my agency as a woman, my right to choose. I am unequivocally pro-choice for all women, and this is mine. Laying aside all of the other reasons, guess what? These Fallopian tubes right here? They're in my abdomen. They're part of my reproductive system. That means I decide whether to have them severed, ligated, and possibly seared shut. In theory, this means Dr. Duck should have nodded, informed me that my decision was irreversible (lady, that's part of the appeal) and plotted to separate me from my money and my fertility. So much for the capitalist model of medicine, eh, America?

But I am not done. Far from it, now. This just got so much bigger for me than avoiding an unwanted pregnancy. This is me standing up for my bodily autonomy. This is me not sitting down, shutting up, and letting someone who does not live in this body tell me what to do with it. I don't care if I have to bring a lawyer to my next appointment, or possibly my nearest Catholic priest. The only thing I'm done with is hearing that I am too much of a child to make this decision. I don't need to fling myself off a building to test whether I'll bounce. I don't need to experience pregnancy or labor to know that I want nothing to do with either one. This doctor would not have tried to talk me out of a pregnancy. Why is she allowed to talk me out of the opposite?

"This year, 33 countries in the WHO European Region have reported an increase in measles. France, the source of most of the importations from the European Region, is experiencing a large outbreak, with approximately 10,000 cases reported during the first 4 months of 2011..."

(Source.)

Okay, my much-smarter friends, what's up with that? Do they not vaccinate over there? I know vaccination is kind of a crapshoot over here nowadays thanks to Andrew frelling Wakefield and Jenny McBrainless, but I'm not sure what the situation is across the pond. I know, I know, Just Effing Google It, which I will! But I'd love to hear European perspectives.

Whatnot either later tonight or tomorrow morning.