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(awesome short message on a sign at the march last weekend in DC- a friend that went to the march shared this)


Ideal Career/Job Combination

I've never quite felt a calling as my career goes. Ever. Working with teens at Upward Bound was awesome and that was one of my favorite jobs ever.

Since starting at a library in 2001, I've felt like I finally came home. I do like this kind of work. I'm not a reference person. I like the technical processing and cataloging aspect of library work. I am anal and detail-oriented. I like classifying and retrocataloging.

Anyway, my ideal thing right now would be to work this job halftime with all the benefits but less pay and then be with my kids half days. Since I'd take a pay cut, I'd take a few other kids to watch while I was home, but at least I wouldn't miss them so much. My bulletin board at work is plastered with their pictures. My screen saver slideshow is all them. I constantly look at their pictures to remember what my life is all about. Why I work to live. Sure, every Sunday evening I am DAMN glad that I can escape and go to work the next morning--- but 40 hours a week away from them is tough. I could handle the 20--but don't take away my benefits!

One of the best ways to know you have unrealistic expectations is when you feel let down and shrug something off. I was reading something today about the ritual of birth in America (I am training to be a doula) and it set off little alarms all over the place. We, as Americans, have lots of expectations and ideas of what birth should be like and what it will look like, etc. The author of this book, Birth As An American Passage, illustrated these "normal hospital birth" images that we get in our heads from the media and movies and attach our expectations to these. The perfect example that was my disappointment was the image of the family staring into the window of the nursery at the newborn in a fishtank clear bassinet. First of all, NO I don't want my baby in the nursery. I don't want to spend a second away from them after they are born. Screw that. But if one wanted that Norman Rockwell ritual of looking in a nursery window at the babies, it isn't possible anymore anyway. People started associating it with sick people who kidnap babies from nurseries... but it is one of those familiar images that we saw countless times on TV and at the theater to signify the family "meeting" the newborn family member for the first time.

Some other TV birth images that spring to mind are water-breaking means the baby will be here any minute. Now that is just plain bologna...

There are so many of these. What comes to your mind?

According to Sean Hannity (what a loser!), when asked by a caller if Condoleezza Rice had any chance at a political career after all of this, he answered "Of course!" He then proceeded to list her strengths. To an extent, I actually do agree with him and many others that she would be a good politician. I'd take her ANY DAY over Bush or Cheney or Ashcroft or Rumsfeld--but that really isn't saying much... Anyway, the problem lies in the fact that Hannity immediately breezed into why liberals "hate" her. "Because she has moral clarity." Oh yes. That is why. Since when is lying for "the man" anywhere close to "moral clarity" and the same argument can be applied to Colin Powell for that matter. Why would liberals hate anyone for their "moral clarity"? Is it the same reason terrorists hate freedom? These statements make Hannity and Bush sound like the idiots they are. The terrorists so not sit around and say, "I just hate freedom. I hate that Americans are free. Ergo, I want them to die." That is just dumb. In the same vein, I and other liberals do not sit down for a couple, two --three beers and say, "You know what I hate? I hate moral clarity. That Condy Rice has way too much of it. So I really hate her."

Open mouth. Insert foot.

Could it just be possible that she and Powell are benefitting so much (getting paid) from being puppets in the Bush/Cheney hands that they actually believe what they say is actually true? Sure. Money does buy it. Is that "moral clarity"? Uh no.

Drink Your Worms!

It may sound revolting, but scientists say drinking a concoction containing thousands of pig whipworm eggs could protect people against bowel disease. Early trials of the drink called TSO, developed by German company BioCure, suggest it can dramatically reduce the abdominal pain, bleeding and diarrhea associated with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). "A lot of researchers couldn't believe this treatment was effective, but people are always skeptical when confronted with new ideas," JOEL WEINSTOCK, a University of Iowa gastroenterologist who developed the treatment, told New Scientist magazine. BioCure hopes to have TSO approved by regulators and on the market in Europe by May.
Weinstock came up with the TSO idea after noticing that a rise in IBD cases coincided with a drop in infections caused by roundworms and human whipworms. IBD is rare in developing countries where parasitic infections are more common. Versions of this story appeared April 8 on MEDICAL NEWS TODAY, a news Web site based in the U.K.; AL-JAZEERA.net; the AUSTRALIAN; NEW ZEALAND HERALD; and the STRAITS TIMES in Singapore.


It actually sounds worse than making a pill for women in menopause made from pregnant horse piss (Premarin= PREgnant MARe urINe). Mmmmm.

Boo hoo!

NPR had a story on this morning about the liberal bias in academia and had a soundbite with David Horowitz saying that conservative students were "second-class citizens in academia". A Republican female student at Brandeis University was talking about a professor that she refused to take classes from because he called the students who countered anti-war protests with pro-war protests "freaks". But Horowitz's complaint about the second-class status of conservatives on campus provoked a knee-jerk reaction in me. "Good." You see, four years of their entire life, they can maybe use as an opportunity to walk in the rest of the world's shoes and learn from that experience. It might even change their political leaning. I came to college a straight white Christian female whose parents were staunch Republicans (but lower than middle class) and I left college... well, quite a bit different.

99%--- no, I'll be generous--97% of college Republicans are straight, white and Christian. These young adults have never and will never again feel less than powerful. Through their privileged upbringing and after college when they take the jobs their parents or their parents' friends give them, they are the ones in power. But for four short years, they can begin to experience a non-power role and maybe grow through it.

So I still say "Good." and "Rightly so." Go to a Christian university or college if you want to remain in the majority. And quit your whining.

Hey. Not quite sure what to write today. The time change has lobotomized my brain... young children are never aware of time anyway and when daylight savings shifts in and out, their internal clocks do not (just like our own). Unfortunately, one year olds and three year olds tend to get a little cranky and fussy when you play with their schedules (what little schedule there actually is in our household). Case in point, I TRIED to get them to go to bed at bedtime which is 8:00 last night. But it was really 7:00 the night before... so around 9:15 they were actually ready.

And this morning, they looked at me like I was insane when I woke them up to get them dressed and fed. They then proceeded to double team me with tears and whines and crying fits.

I was counting down the minutes until I could sit at my desk and enjoy my decaf Sumatran coffee in peace.