Mantisland

You know you want to check out the rest....

Exquisite photos. I may be ordering some prints (now that I may no longer be dirt desperate uninsured poor!) if I can figure out how.

Light At the End of the Tunnel

There appears to be some light at the end of the health insurance tunnel, which is good cause today was the day I was going to drop $1154 on health care premiums through Sinclair.

I was able to place my pod order without a problem (!! really !!), and tho our account still shows up as "inactive," I'm told that doctors are taking and processing the claims, which will be back up to date by the time anything we do this week actually gets processed, so at least we don't have to pay out of pocket at the hospital or get turned away.

Still paying out of pocket for prescriptions, but that wasn't my urgent concern. The terror and sleepless nights were in trying to figure out how to come up with $1100 for my pump supplies and $3,000 for J's twice-yearly post-cancer scan (which he was due to have last week).

We are both a lot less hysterical now, and should hopefully be sleeping a lot better. Man, what a nightmare. It's not quite over, but it's a fuck of a lot less urgent. It's like the difference between wondering how you'll survive and just wondering how many nights a week you'll be eating ramen.

Oh, there was some other good news today, too.

As J said, "IT'S LIKE CHRISTMAS!"

Women in the Fight

Images of Women in WWII.

(via Elizabeth Bear)

The Autumn Feast!

Full set here. Here's what we cooked:

Ranch Style Chicken
Sweet-Roasted Rosemary Acorn Squash Wedges
Spicy Pumpkin Soup

Maple syrup substitute for the pumpkin soup and acorn squash consisted of Splenda mixed with no-carb maple "syrup" substitute. Honey called for in the ranch style chicken was substituted with no-carb maple "syrup" (and turned out very well!).

Booklife

So, I'm, like, a writer fighting to get my first book into stores. At least into Kindles? Published would be great. It's been languishing, but hopefully that'll change soonish.

Anyway, I'm also an introvert. I write books. I don't market them. I'm an introvert by nature... it's one of the reasons I became a writer. One of the toughest things for introverted writers to negotiate has always been the marketing of their books, and with the rise of ever more "social" and viral ways to market books, the landscape has gotten tougher to manage. Most of the time, I feel little overwhelmed.

I'm often caught in this weird place where people tell me I share too much, or too little, or don't engage enough, or engage too much. And you know, all I want to do is write. I can write here or plunk away in cool silence in this big 1890s house, but at some point, if you want anybody to read anything you write, you need to crawl out of the house and back into the world.

Booklife came to me at just the right time. I'd sold a book, had it get caught in limbo, and was happily cocooning in my real life. Trouble is there are two big parts to The Writing Life. There's the writing, and there's the marketing. There's the interacting with the world, and there's creating worlds. Today, it often feels like I can do one or the other but not both at once. And... well, let's say that interacting with the world makes me tired. I'm in marketing at the day job, and that means people and politics and social media all day. It's the last thing I want to do when I come home.

I enjoyed Booklife because I got to see how another writer negotiated the writing vs. marketing portions of life. Because let me tell you - it often feels like they're directly opposing forces. He gives some great strategies on how to move from writing to marketing mode and leverage social media tools. Yes, the tools he talks about may be obsolete soon, but the rules of social media (thus far) are pretty portable across mediums.

For me, it was the right book at the right time. How do you interact with the world without exhausting yourself? How do you withdraw enough that you can be creative but not lose momentum with your social media audience? It's a tough negotiation that I'm right smack in the middle of right now, and seeing how VanderMeer is negotiating his own booklife was... comforting? I want to know it can be done. That I can build a writing career and still have some part of my life that's still mine. I need enough left to create something.

Because I've spent a year being battered around by publishing woes, and I'm far too young and unpublished to become a bitter midlister just yet.

The Irrational Politics of Web 2.0

ME: One of the folks I know is dating one of my exes! And she unfriended me on LJ!

J: Well, yanno, that’s what happens when you start dating someone. You have to unfriend all their exes on the LJ, honey. It's, like, a rule or something.

ME: But!

J: It's a RULE.

ME: But!!!

J: When was the last time you talked to this person?

ME: Well… um. I haven’t been going to cons, really, which is where everyone is… and, um, OK, I don’t comment much on the blogs anymore, and um…. I sort of dropped off the face of the writing earth last year. But!! I do LIKE her!! Now she will NEVER TALK TO ME AGAIN.

J: I think you will be OK.

ME: So I guess I shouldn’t friend her on Facebook?

J: Probably not.

This is the trouble with web 2.0. Sometimes it makes you feel just like you did in high school, and the feelings are just as ridiculously irrational.

Particularly because I’m terribly happy for both of them.

Scurvy Dogs (happy Friday)

This is Not My Beautiful Life...

I first noticed this phenomenon in the photos of folks I have on my Yahoo IM chat list. More often than not, women with young children would use the photo of their children as their avatar photo. The first couple times, you figure, hey, they're just really proud of their kids. Then I saw my mom use a photo of my neice and nephew as her user pic on Facebook and I thought... huh?

On the one hand, as the author points out, it's almost refreshing to see a focus other than me-me-me on traditionally me-centric social media sites. On the other hand... um? I'm proud of a good many things in my life, and no doubt if I ever have a child, I'll be proud of them too, but why use the photo as a stand in for... me?

There are plenty of photos of folks with their best friends, mothers *with* their kids, fathers with their kids, and of course, whole families together that sit in as user pics. So it's not like this is as huge a trend as the author points out. But it does come up often enough for me to go "hm," too. I haven't seen any fathers use pics of their children as their user photo, for instance. But I may just not be looking, or I don't note them as much when I see them?

I wonder if it's a mix of pride and guilt? Are you more likely to see working mothers using photos of their kids as avatars? I don't buy that it's about creating anonymity, as there are plenty of folks who just use objects/random scenery shots to hide behind. Is it really a flight from aging, like the author suggests? I don't buy into that so much. I'd be interested to find the commonalities and differences among men and women alike (because there must be some guy, somewhere) who use their children's photos for their social media pics.

I'd be interested, for instance, if it's more likely working moms or stay at home moms who do it. Or is there a class distinction? Is it really an age difference? Do over-30s just view the web differently, and shy away from its me-centric nature more than 20-somethings? Or has our culture really shifted... now that we all have less children, we invest more in them... and more of ourselves in them, and carry them close the same way we would anything else we'd invested so much of our youth in?

Children have always been a source of pride. I just can't ever see my grandmother posting a photo of her children as her user pic, if I could ever get her to join FB...

Batten Down the Hatches

I've spent some time tightening up our budget this week, which is rough to say the least. Monday morning I'll be sending J. in to Sinclair community college with a credit card authorization giving UHC $1145 to cover the two of us through J's account since they're no longer honoring my work account.

As noted elsewhere, I can't go more than 60 days without coverage, and tho once this whole debacle is sorted out they'll retroactively cover me for the gap... well, let's just say I don't want any paperwork in exsitence anywhere that says I went more than 60 days without coverage. I have to live my whole life as a t1, and trust me - insurance companies will find every crazy way possible to shunt the most expensive folks from their ranks. And I'm one of them. And tho I could fight them when they pulled out that "no coverage since Sep 1st" letter... it would take 6 months to sort out, and I would be fighting it my whole life. Every time I changed insurance providers or J. or I had a big medical bill, they'd root through our account. We'd never escape it.

So Monday morning we're out $1154. It's an 80/20 plan, so we've started stuffing money toward paying for expenses. He's got an MRI every 6 months that runs $3,000. My drugs, if I drop my pump and get real lean, may "only" run $350 if I'm careful. Add that to regular endo appointments for me and port flushes for him (J.'s a cancer survivor. There's another year of follow-up before he's insurable again outside a major employer-sponsored group plan), and we're looking at about $11-12,000 a year in bare bones medical expenses. You figure we'll need to come up with, what, $2400-3000 of that out of pocket in addition to the $1145.

Hopefully we'll only be out coverage for 3-6 months. So let's say $1500 out of pocket over the next 3 months in addition to the $1145.

That's an extra $500 a month we need to pull from thin air (not counting the $1145, which is going on the credit card I had nearly paid off).

Sorry this has become the "all shitty health insurance, all the time blog," the last couple of weeks, but these issues weigh pretty heavily on me, and getting all the facts and numbers down on paper actually helps me cope and process the whole thing.

I've shaved about $150 from the budget right now by tossing out netflix and severely cutting our "misc./fun" budget from $200 a month to $100 a month (we already live pretty lean. You don't go from having $17,000 in credit card debt to $2,800 in 3 years if you aren't already living lean). We'll be making up the rest by paying a little less toward that fucking credit card bill (did I mention I was just $2,800 and 5 months away from paying it off completely?), and relying on J's new part-time job. I'm also working on hunting down a few freelance gigs. One of the roughest things going on right now is that my student loans have come due this month. That was fine when the credit card was going to be paid off. Now I have to juggle those with the CC payments and medical costs.

We'll make it through this. But it doesn't make me any happier about it. The most frustrating part is that it's totally out of my hands. At least when UHC was only fucking *me* over, I had some control over it. I could spend hours and hours yelling at them and get the issue resolved. Now I'm totally powerless to do anything but pay for a second policy. That's incredibly, brutally frustrating. Because ya'll know me: I'm a fighter. I fight to the end. Being on the passive end of this whole fiasco drives me crazy.

So, I'm doing what I can. Cutting back, paying bills, eating a lot of soup and beanless chili... Recipes to come! Because when it looks like everything is crap, it's good to remember that you can still afford to eat. And with how rough it is out there right now, that's nothing to sniff at.

Happy 80th to Le Guin

Happy 80th birthday, Ursula K. Le Guin.

Here's to many more! (and many more books!)

Pathfinder

This was not the movie I wanted to see. See, I wanted somebody to take the opportunity to tell the story about complex, fully developed Native American societies whoopin some Viking ass.

Instead, it's just another cliched ramble about "noble savages" getting saved by The Great White Hope.

It was like watching 10,000 BC... in Saskatchewan.

What Would...

OmniPod Upgrade: Solo Patch

Slimmer than my current pod... but the big bonus - as you can see on some of the later pictures - is that the default medical adhesive is (WAIT FOR IT!!): hypafix.

Watch the video demo here.

Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. "Hey, let's make our *default* medical adhesive the one that folks *won't develop a medical adhesive allergy to*!"

Yes. Let's!

These aren't yet for sale (and battling to get insurance to cover them... let's not get into that), but it's fun to see the tech improving for insulin pumps. Looks like there will be a huge cost savings, as the base is replaced every 3 MONTHS instead of every 3 days (the plastic interior is replaced every 3 days with the Solo, but should cost less than replacing the whole mechanism, like you do with the omipod now, every 3 days). Another awesome feature: being able to bolus even without the remote.

And I can get a remote in red!

Love it. Love it. Love it.

I just ordered a demo kit.

Welcome Back to the Ranks of the Uninsured

Last Saturday, I was alerted that UHC had dropped my insurance coverage due to an "administrative" error. I had been completely uninsured since October 1st.

Now, I have dealt with a lot of “administrative” errors at United Healthcare. Every three months, I spend about 6 hours over three days on the phone screaming at customer service reps, their supervisors, rapid resolution managers, *their* supervisors, customer care coordinators, benefit coordinators, and (when you finally reach somebody with any weight in the hierarchy), the actual medical “advisors” who approve and deny my actual claims.

You learn the buzzwords. “Attorney general.” “Lawyer.” “Sue.” “Medical necessity.” “Death.” And, “Gross negligence.”

And in about three days, you get shipped the medical hardware they approved for you a year before.

Yes, I go through this every time I need my medical hardware. But it does get covered. You know, eventually.

Folks who have yet to experience a major medical issue are often ignorant of how insurance companies actually work. They are also largely ignorant of what happens when you get a major illness like any form of cancer, diabetes (including juvenile, the immune disorder that I’ve got),lupus, CFS, or any of the long list of over 30 “uninsurable” medical conditions that – as my shorthand name implies – means that you are completely uninsurable outside a major employer group plan… for life.

Let me say that again:

If you get a chronic illness and/or cancer, any form of cancer, you are TOTALLY UNINSURABLE for at least 24 months. And in the case of certain cancers like leukemia, you are uninsured FOR LIFE outside of an large employer-sponsored plan (so long as you go less than 60 days without coverage. More about that later).

If your employer drops you for any reason – because you’re laid off, because they don’t pay their bill, because of an “administrative” error – you have just 60 days to find major medical coverage through another company, or you will be totally uninsurable for 12-24 months EVEN UNDER AN EMPLOYER SPONSORED PLAN. That’s right: 60 days without coverage and I will have to wait 12-24 months to get insurance covered for the insulin that keeps me breathing. After 60 days, insulin becomes part of me “pre-existing condition” and will not be covered – EVEN UNDER A MAJOR EMPLOYER SPONSORED PLAN – for 12-24 months.

If I bare bones my medical costs, I’m out about $300-$500 a month. Right now, I’m out about $8,000 a year in medical costs with the pump. If I go back to shots and get a cheaper, crappy testing meter (testing strips alone run me $180-$250 a month), I can winnow that down to that $300-$500 range.

And that’s JUST TO STAY ALIVE.

That doesn’t include any preventative care. I’d have to drop my 4x yearly endocrinologist visits, gyno care, urgency care visits for antibiotics, etc. That $300-$500 covers the costs of keeping me breathing.

That’s why I include health insurance benefits in my salary negotiations. If I have a comprehensive plan, I can put up with being paid a little bit less.

But when you drop my insurance… you’ve effectively cut my monthly salary by over $500.

And when you drop my insurance… the clock starts ticking.

I have been uninsured for 17 days.

I have just 43 days to get comprehensive coverage, or I become uninsurable EVEN UNDER AN EMPLOYER SPONSORED GROUP PLAN.

I have been here before. When I was diagnosed three years ago, I had very cheap health insurance with a very high deductible. But I was "insured." And I was about to find out just how incredibly "lucky" that was.

What “insurance” means is that I was out ONLY $6,500 out of pocket for my 3 days in the ICU instead of $30,000.

That’s what being “insured” means. It means you get forcibly fucked, but not gang raped.

Over the next few months (again, as an insured person), I was still spending $300 a month out of pocket for medical expenses. I had a $2500 deductible and 80/20 plan. I was shelling out a lot of hard earned cash to stay alive. But hey, we all need to pay to stay alive, right?

And I was INSURED.

Six months after being diagnosed, I was laid off.

COBRA was nearly $400 a month. Rent was $550. Utilities were $200. Unemployment was $328 a week.

You do the math.

I was forced to either cash out my 401(k) or become uninsured completely.

I cashed out my 401(k).

I started living on expired insulin and reused my needles. I saw my endo half as much as recommended. I did the bare minimum I had to to stay alive.

When money ran out, I moved in with friends in Dayton. I lived in their spare bedroom rent free. I continued to live on expired insulin. I had trouble paying for food. I went almost 30 days without insurance.

I signed up with my temp company’s health insurance plan. It was cheap, and nearly worthless. It covered NO pre-existing conditions for 12 months. It was completely useless to pay for any of my diabetes drugs or appointments or any hospital stays I may incur that had anything to do with my illness.

But by signing up for it, it insured I didn’t go more than 60 days without coverage and become totally uninsurable under a “real” insurance plan.

By the time I got employed at my current job, I had over $17,000 in credit card debt. Over half of that was related to medical expenses. The other half was composed primarily of moving, traveling, and grocery expenses.

At my new job, I got day one health insurance coverage. I paid $20 for insulin and nothing for syringes. Co-pays were minimal. Costs were suddenly manageable. I could start living on non-expired insulin again. I had fewer crazy lows and started seeing an endocrinologist again. Life improved remarkably.

When we switched plans to a no-deductible plan, my health insurance costs went down to basically nothing. I now pay just $50 a month for coverage for J. and I.
It sounds too good to be true…

And, of course, that’s because it sometimes... is.

I spent the first 6 months of the new plan arguing with UHC because my account had some kind of “administrative” error that required me to pay the $1,000 deductible out of pocket instead of through the company HRA. Six months this went on. Six months. After six months, they finally “reimbursed” me for the $1,000 out of pocket.

OK. Fine.

Then came the whole fiasco with trying to get my insulin pump approved. It took a year of Insulet fighting with my insurance company before they got approval. Then once they had approval, the paperwork was filed incorrectly. We fought for weeks over that to get Insulet paid. But every three months, UHC found some reason or another not to send my shipment. The shipment they'd APPROVED a year before.

They couldn’t find my paperwork. Or my paperwork was automatically denied because it wasn’t processed correctly. Or there was now an in-network provider for my pump… but no one had the actual phone number of the in-network provider (it took me three days and six hours of screaming and threats to get… a... phone number. I’m serious).

And now… now I’m 12 days from needing my next shipment, and here we go again.

UHC once again dropped coverage. Not just for me, but for everybody at the company. Just dropped it. “Oops.” Just like that.

And just like that, I’m completely uninsured.

I have $186 worth of testing strips that I need to come up with the cash for next week. I have $90 worth of insulin I need to get the week after that.

And I have 43 days to find insurance again. Or J. and I will be turning off our heat completely and living primarily on rice, hot dogs, and expired insulin.

Welcome to America. We have the best healthcare system in the world.

And this is how it works.

Quote of the Day

"In my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign... of promise, you keep writing anyway."

-Junot Diaz

Support of Public Services Health Insurance

Apparently, John Boehner hasn't "met one American" who supports a public health insurance option (you know, like our public postal option, public library option, and public security [police] option). I think our current public services have improved the public good and kept private costs down for the same services, and I believe it will do the same for health insurance.

If you think so too, you can sign the petition here.

It Occurs to Me...

... that I shared a lot more on "teh Internets" when "everybody" wasn't reading it.

Sad.

In other news... I got the biggest of my book checks today! Big CC debt will all be paid off on Monday!

Divide and Conquer

Excellent.

Katha Pollitt Moneyshot

"The widespread support for Polanski shows the liberal cultural elite at its preening, fatuous worst. They may make great movies, write great books, and design beautiful things, they may have lots of noble humanitarian ideas and care, in the abstract, about all the right principles: equality under the law, for example. But in this case, they're just the white culture-class counterpart of hip-hop fans who stood by R. Kelly and Chris Brown and of sports fans who automatically support their favorite athletes when they're accused of beating their wives and raping hotel workers.

No wonder Middle America hates them."

Read the rest.

Someday I Will Be Famous Enough to Fix My Covers

I saw the initial row over this, but somehow the resolution totally passed me by (I don't spend nearly as much time on the internets these days). There are lots of stories about SF/F publishers whitewashing covers. So even if you've got a heroine who's a far darker shade of pale, it's unlikely it'll be seen on the bookshelf.

This was one of those, "Yeah, and this surprises people because...?" But it's important to remember that our silence as authors can be read as complicity. If you don't say something publicly - even if you're fuming - readers assume you're just going along with it. And that's a shame. Because as somebody who has sometimes wanted to drag a publisher out and kick them in the shins publicly, I can tell you I'm not so keen on doing it because it means, you know, I might be out a meal ticket.

That said, I need to choose my battles. Because if I end up with a whitewashed cover someday, I'm going to have to say something about it. Even if it means the loss of a meal ticket. Because at the end of the day, it's about systematic silencing, erasing. It's about lying.

That said - and understanding what JL was up against - I find this to be a pretty cool win.

Bloomsbury backs down in Larbalestier race row

Spicest Soup in the Universe

I made it, I did.

Also, I am back from a weeklong vacation, which was very nice.

And now I have a whole lot of work to do.

My First Podcast Interview!

Podcast interview with me at Buena Vista U! (oh man, I had no idea she was going to use *all* this stuff)

Listen in!

Quote of the Day

"Tarantino, I think, gets a lot of pleasure out of demonstrating over and over again that you can get the 18-45 male audience that Hollywood desires into seats, and you can give them a story about a hyper-competent female hero who kicks ass in every way, and they won’t run screaming out of the theater clutching their balls in fear."

Pretty much...ditto everything she says in this review. It was a fantastic movie, and in my opinion - Tarantino's best.

(read the rest)

Boxers, Before & After Fights

Before and after.

(via Tyim)

Perspective

"He bested the heroes, killed the defenders, overtook the world. Then he killed the narrator and he was the villain no more."
- Vijayendra Mohanty

How (not ) to Write About Africa

I've read Binyavanga Wainaina's essay How (not) to Write About Africa a few times, but here's a great spin on it: How (not) to Write About Africa read by Djimon Hounsou.

(via deadbrowalking)

You can bet this is showing up in a GW book or two....

Moscowitz is founder of the International Security Coalition of Clergy, whose mission is to train Jews in self-defense and advance fighting techniques in the event of a terrorist attack on a synagogue. He says business was slow for his Coalition until May, when the FBI arrested a group accused of plotting to blow up synagogues in The Bronx. But now Moscowitz's 100-hour synagogue self-defense course is in high demand.

Squee

Lena Headey, my favorite Spartan (and second fav Sarah Conner) is playing Cersei.

OMG.

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!

Quote of the Day

"We're trying to make our life into a fairy tale."

The Importance of Tragedy

One of the things I always thought odd about American taste in fiction and cinema is our aversion to tragedy. Filmmakers, in particular, are constantly changing movie endings for American audiences to "lighten" them up. Many British books just aren't carted over the ocean for the simple fact that they're just "too depressing."

I had a lot of trouble understanding this phenomenon. I figured it had something to do with our belief in the American Spirit and Manifest Destiny. I figured we were terrified of tragedy, and in love with the idea that science and progress and good, god-fearing folks could overcome everything.

But it still bugged me. Because I love tragedy. I love watching the inexorable trudging on events toward a inevitable end knowing there's no way to stop it... but watching our heroes bravely try anyway. I like the cathartic rush.

Then I watched this TED talk with Alain de Botton and was suddenly stuck by what he had to say about our aversion to tragedy. Tragedy, he points out, was created to teach us compassion. Instead of looking at somebody who's down on their luck and saying, "God, she's such a loser. She must have done something pretty terrible to end up that way," we learn the old "there but for the grace of god go I" lesson. We learn that each person who's down on their luck isn't a loser, but merely "unfortunate."

But in America, we don't believe in misfortune. We believe in pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps. We figure that bankrupt people living out of a friend's house, unemployed, with chronic medical conditions, working temp jobs, are just... losers. Lazy. Meritless. After all, if they worked hard and had merit, they'd be winners, right? They'd be successful American entrepreneurs.

But what our American dream ignores - each and every time - is the influence of tragedy on people's lives. We don't like tragedy. We don't like the idea that sometimes you really do get hit on the back of the head with a shovel for no reason. Sometimes, shit happens.

Because if shit happens, then we can't ignore the bum on the street. We can't plead entitlement for healthcare. We can't just say, "If you don't own your own house, you're a loser," or "if you don't have a car, you're a loser."

Without tragedy, without teaching compassion and morality by putting us all in the shoes of good people who experience bad things, we look down on the poor, the uninsured, the bankrupt, the destitute, with scorn, derision, and not one ounce of compassion. After all, they must have *done* something (or *not* done something) to get there, right? I'm good, I'm hard working. That will never happen to *me.*

I mourn our lack of tragedy.

Excuse me, ma'am, I'm busy trying to figure out which way I'll choose to prevent you from receiving healthcare

In conversation with my mother:

"Well, with this Obamacare thing, we'll all get rationed healthcare."

"Mom, do you even know what `public option' means?"

"The government's taking over healthcare!"

"Mom, the government isn't running healthcare. All they want to do is expand Medicare to cover people who don't have insurance or are underinsured. That's it."

(long pause)

"Are you SURE?"

"Yes, mom. I have a chronic health condition. This is something I actually looked into."

"Well, what's to stop employers from just dropping our insurance then, if there's a public option?"

"Because Medicare SUCKS, mom. Doctors treat you like crap. You still pay copays for insurance. It's a shitty insurance program for poor and desperate people. Nobody fucking wants to be on Medicare. But for poor people, or people with chronic conditions, or other folks who can't afford health insurance - it's *something.*"

"But --"

"Ok, mom. Think of it this way. It's like the post office. You can go to the post office and have a letter sent for cheap, and it takes 5-7 days to get there, right? And you wait in a long line and the employees are surly. Or you can go to UPS or Fedex and get it shipped overnight and walk right up to the counter and everyone treats you great. You still get your letter sent. It's just that the service and speed you get from the post office sucks compared to UPS and Fedex. But! It's affordable. The postal service makes it possible for everyone to send a letter, not just rich people. All they want to do is create an insurance version of the U.S. postal service. And the post office certainly hasn't put DHL, Fedex, or UPS out of business."

"Are you SURE?"

"Yes, mom."

"But... then why do they make it sound like a government takeover of healthcare?"

"Speaking as somebody in marketing and communications, I can tell you exactly what I'd say as a communications manager at a big insurance company... and `government takeover of healthcare' is it. These are the same talking points the insurance companies dragged out back in 1993, the last time we tried to get healthcare reform going. Because the other stuff in this bill - which the insurance companies aren't keen on advertising - is that there's going to be a lot more regulation for the insurance companies. Dropping bank regulations on the banking industry in the 90s helped create the greedy meltdown last year, and having an unregulated insurance industry is what's turning health care into a greedy meltdown. The bill will eliminate lifetime caps on coverage and force them to cover people with pre-existing conditions (among other things). These companies make billions of dollars a year. This is their marketing strategy. Tell people the government's taking over healthcare, and people freak out. I do a lot of marketing stuff. I provide people with a lot of talking points. Now think of somebody who's making about 8 times what I make sending press releases to every talk show host and major news outlet in America about what's become a totally political issue and spending millions in money lobbying your representatives. Scary talking points make much better news than `expanding Medicare.' People who are afraid are really easy to manipulate."

"Well, I just don't know how it'll all turn out."

"I don't either. But it'll be really interesting to find out."

(for those interested, here is the actual latest version of the bill. Wiki-like forum where you can actually comment on diff't sections of the bill. Very cool.)

Real News

"After months of committee meetings and hundreds of hours of heated debate, the United States Congress remained deadlocked this week over the best possible way to deny Americans health care."

I love The Onion.

V Remake

Would not be at all excited about this... except that got the absolute most perfect person to play the alien leader, Anna. This clip shows just how perfect she is.

Perrrrrfect.

When Your Results Confirm Existing Biases, Check Your Controls

I do love it when somebody has one of those, "Oh, shit, we totally missed something incredibly obvious" moments.

The mere act of physically approaching their potential romantic partner, behavior far more typical of men than women, makes people more confident and increases their attraction to their potential partner. In other words, by acting more like men (by physically approaching their dates), they begin to think more like them as well (by being more confident, aggressive, and less selective). In support of their embodied cognition hypothesis, Finkel and Eastwick show that, whether they are men or women, “rotators,” who approach their dates, have greater self-confidence than “sitters,” who are approached, and once they statistically control for self-confidence, the institutional arrangement (whether men or women rotate) ceases to have any effect on whether men or women were more selective.

Quote of the Day

All life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other.

— H. P. Lovecraft

Ya Think?

Why, YES, this IS a TWO-PERSON crime.

Seriously, people, why has it taken us thousands of years to put this together?

In most communities, prostitution has been a one-sided battle focused on the women who offer sex. Their customers, when they are arrested, are usually cited for a misdemeanor and fined.

By comparison, prostitutes are often charged with more severe sentences and jailed for months, depending on the offense.

But in Nashville, the johns' faces are shown on a police Web site.

Whether it works or not? No idea. But it's a step in the right direction.

Take a Nap

So, what are ya'll doing next Thursday?

I will be one of 8 guest speakers at Dayton's first Pechu Kucha night held at C{space (20 N. Jefferson St.) in downtown Dayton, OH on Thursday, August 27th (that's next Thursday!).

Doors open at 6:30 pm for mingling. Program starts at 7:20 (if you're just coming for me... (oohhhh, imagine that!!) I'm currently on the program as the second-to-last speaker. Each presentation is just 6 min 40 secs, so you do the math).

I'll be talking about, "Why science fiction (and/or fantasy)?" as a popular creative medium. This will also brush up on the old "Where do all your ideas come from?" question, and I will try not to be snarky about it. The person who asked me to participate in this event is largely unfamiliar with my work, so I think they're going to be a little startled with my answers.

Should be a good time.

Admission is $20, but includes free beer and sandwiches. I'm not actually getting paid for this, so best guess is the $$ are going toward your beer and sandwiches... and supporting the Dayton creative community (?), etc. etc..

So if you come, indulge, and indulge often!

Another Interesting Tidbit

This was a tidbit of particular interest to me from the article I link to below:

Indeed, some scholars say they believe the reason Muslim countries have been disproportionately afflicted by terrorism is not Islamic teachings about infidels or violence but rather the low levels of female education and participation in the labor force.

Like everyone else, I, too, am curious about how a female dominated society whipped up into religious fervor would act. There's a lot of reasoning that societies of women will be inherently more peaceful than those where men predominate in public life.

As you'll see in God's War (and much of my short fiction), this isn't a belief I ascribe to. The issue may not even be religion (see the recent reaction in the U.S. to healthcare reform). I think there's a deeply human fear of change and "the other," and I just don't believe that switching the genders of the participants will change anything.

It's like saying that since I'm a woman, it's impossible for me to be a misogynist. Um, hello? I was raised in a misogynist society. I've said on many occasions that I'm one of the biggest misogynists I know. I'm *aware* of that casual misogyny (and casual racism, also a byproduct of growing up in a racist society), and I work hard every day to fight it. But if you put somebody - no matter their gender - into a society that glorifies war/conquest/God/bloody triumph, you will create a violent people.

Viking women spent a good deal of time alone on their islands while men were away, and they were more than capable of slaughtering any wayward band of mauraders who came their way. I think that glorifying violence is what makes people violent. If violence truly was considered repugnant, effeminate (for lack of a better word), cowardly, debase, and truly morally wrong under any circumstances, our lives - in a society run by women or men - would be far different.

The question then being, "Are societies of women less likely to glorify violence than societies of men?" To which I'd reply, "It depends."

Where did their beliefs come from? Have they risen to "power" from within a violent society? Did they have to do it violently? Is there religion/society already glorifying violence? How would they distort themselves to fit the culture? Because let's take a good, hard look at how women distort themselves to fit into our culture. Think about that for a minute. Old beliefs remain, and if you're a women dominated society that's constantly under attack from the outside, you're either going to find ways to defend yourself... or your women-friendly society isn't going to last very long.

It's the Women, Stupid

In many poor countries, the greatest unexploited resource isn’t oil fields or veins of gold; it is the women and girls who aren’t educated and never become a major presence in the formal economy. With education and with help starting businesses, impoverished women can earn money and support their countries as well as their families. They represent perhaps the best hope for fighting global poverty.

And yet, for all the great information in this story... I was struck by how there was little to no mention of changing *men's* behaviors and *men's* attitudes toward women. Yes, give women aid, education, to lift populations out of poverty... but how does one go about changing the cultural attitude that women are beasts of burden?

By allowing them to make a buck, I guess. Which seems like an oddly capitalist solution. We measure the value of a life... by how much money it can make.

Hrm.

Not arguing with the solution. Just... concerned about that solution. Read the very excellent, For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts' Advice to Women for more about how the industrial revolution actually contributed to the *devaluation* traditional "women's work."

Like everybody else, we've just had to learn to do new things.

But you know what? Men have - and continue to need to - learn new ways of living, too. Giving women all the burden of change while excusing men who spend their family's money on alcohol and prostitutes... well.

Seriously.

For those tired of reading about this crap and want to make a difference, I recommend Kiva.

Excellent

Michelle Rodriguez has signed on to the cast of Robert Rodriguez's Machete, which will be out next year.

Change has Always Been Bloody, Yo

History suggests that major social policy unfolds on a continuum. The Social Security Act of 1935 disappointed liberal New Dealers because what was called "old-age insurance" covered only about half the adult population. It excluded farmhands, domestics, employees of small businesses, and most blacks. That was because FDR needed the votes of Southern Democrats, the Blue Dogs of their day. (The bill cleared the House Ways and Means Committee with only one Republican vote.) Similarly, the Civil Rights Act of 1957, immortalized in Robert Caro's Master of the Senate, was weak tea. It had to be strengthened by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In the later bills, Lyndon Johnson betrayed Southerners he had made deals with in 1957. If Nancy Pelosi can't break Rahm Emanuel's promise to Big Pharma's Billy Tauzin this year, she can try to break it in the future. And Tauzin will lobby for more favors as the all-important new regulations are issued. Nothing in Washington is ever set in stone.

Real World Application of SF

It's all been an allegory for years on the page, but here's an example of folks putting SF tropes to good use in real world interactions.

Badass of the Week

Meet Juliane.

Must Read

On being trustworthy.

Urgency Care Tomorrow

What I love about reading Diabetes Mine (she's another Omnipod Pump user) is that pretty much anything that's happened to her while using the pump also, eventually, happens to me. She's got an incredible resource of t1 diabetes information that has really helped me get a handle on my illness and the most up to date info. There's nothing like reading the musings of another t1 who strives for optimum health.

I've been debating about whether to visit Urgency Care for my pump site infection, which, sadly, has not gotten better despite cleaning and dressing twice a day for the last two days (discovered it Thursday night when I pulled off my old pump to change it out).

Finally, I did some googling today and found this post about Amy's own pump site infection, which pretty much looks exactly like mine (only mine is on my thigh, and is redder than hers, as I was silly enough not to jump over to the doc immediately, as she did).

As I cleaned and drained the wound again tonight, I realized that if J. had something that looked this bad, I'd make him go to Urgency Care.

Yeah. Urgency Care tomorrow for me. Bah. I fucking hate doctors.

West Coast Trip Photos

For those who haven't seen them, here's the full set of J and I's West Coast Trip photos.

Osama

My God, that was a depressing movie.

Don't get me wrong: the Taliban is utterly fucking depressing (and fascinating. What made the movie are the ways people get around laws enforced by Draconian regimes. I've looked a lot into how Iranians have gotten around these sorts of laws, and it's a good illustration of why a Draconian society eventually breaks down, but I digress). But my God, could we get just one good thing happening for this kid?

I kept expecting her to stand up for herself. Her mother and grandmother basically force her to dress like a boy so she can go out of the house to work. The three of them are starving, her mother's always trying to get a man to escort her (since her husband is dead and she can't go outside without a male relative). But the kid never gets a break. Not once. And she's been so cowed by the system that her disguise... well, let's just say that this girl-dressing-up-as-boy story doesn't end as happily as Alanna's.

What's rough about these sorts of drag-you-down-and-out-constant-badness movies is that they always end up feeling unbalanced. There's some scenes of her jump roping where she appears to be having fun, but basically, all joy, happiness, love, and laughter is totally absent from this movie. I realize some of the lament may be cultural ("if we talk about good things, we'll jinx ourselves, so we must lament our fate"), and a good deal of it is just true... but this really needed a "life can be enjoyable" scene. Just one. Otherwise, life is not worth living, and these women should have all killed themselves by now (and, granted, many women in Afghanistan do and have, but: many don't. Why? It's not just for religious reasons. Even the worst life must have a moment - even fleeting - of joy).

At the same time, the film did what it set out to do, which is allow you to feel a fraction of what it's like to grow up a girl in Afghanistan under the Taliban. This whole time she's running around, I had this sinking feeling in my gut, this low-level terror of getting caught... and what would be done to her when she got caught. Which... inevitably, she is. This isn't a happy ending American movie. Not by a long shot.

I was horrifically sad for the heroine, as well. I wanted so badly to see her stand up for herself, to take an active role, to be an Alanna, basically. But this wasn't about an exception. This was about someone who'd grown up beaten and cowed by a system of oppression. And this is the most likely way things would turn out.

And that sure doesn't make me feel any better about it.

A good film, but don't expect to walk away feeling positive about the current state of the world or how long we have to go.

Facts About Healthcare Reform

I'm all for healthy debate, but please, folks, read the facts before you go debating. Otherwise it's not debate, it's "OMG MY DEEP SEATED FEARS VOMITED IN PUBLIC AND CRAZY KNEE JERK REACTIONS TO DEEP SEATED PERSONAL ANXIETIES AND OMG DEATH PANELS" and that's just... not helpful.

Facts about healthcare reform here.

Rough Nite

J. is out at GenCon til Sunday, so I have this nice big house to myself. Nice change of pace, but I enjoy his company quite a bit. The bed has remained unmade for the last three days...

Trying to save money by trying to eat in and eat reasonably. Failed, but not miserably. Drove around for awhile getting lost. Cheap Friday night entertainment, tho with the price of gas these days, I should have opted for the bike. Would have if my sugar was better. It's been a rough sugar week.

Pod site infection isn't getting any better. May need to pop by Urgency Care tomorrow for antibiotics if it's still red and gooey tomorrow. Antibiotics are a diabetic's best friend.

Life, overall, has been good, but busy. Health annoyances always feel more annoying when life is good. When life is bad, you just come to expect them. Like an old friend.

I need to go write something.

Back in the Saddle

Back in Ohio after a long, good, but tiring break-neck vacation in the Portland/Seattle/Vancouver area. A few highlight below.

Other highlights included: the Space Needle, eating far too much clam chowder, the excellent latte at Pike's Place Market (best I ever had), hanging with my crazy family Saturday night, the incredible view of Seattle from our hotel and amazing back porch and firepit overlooking the ocean at the Seaside beach house.

An all around swell time. More pictures later.















Cannon beach!




















Beating up a defenseless penguin on the Seattle waterfront.




















Pirate store victuals!















Moulton Falls, a bit north of my home town. One of my favorite places.
















Small Powell's bookstore outlet at PDX, right after we arrived on Tuesday.





















Voodoo doughnut Queen. The line to get into this place was half a block long.





















J's very convincing Sasquatch impression at Camp 18 on the way home from Seaside, OR.
















Cannon Beach!





















Falling asleep at the Space Needle while we waited for our table...

I'm a good writer. Now I need to fucking finish things.

For serious.

The Happening

That movie was just... retarded.

The Blood of Heroes

How had I never watched this movie?

Classic late-80s apocalypse movie with strange blood sports that make no sense and people who make a living making armor out of spare tires in a desert wasteland while these pale vampire people rule the abandoned underground cities and watch the more formalized version of the blood sport for fun. It even has Rutger Hauer. It was apparently written by the same guy who wrote Blade Runner, which is how I found it. Comb through IMDB profiles and you can find some interesting stuff.

The surprising part about this movie was that the main character - our plucky hero who wants to join the blood sport team heading through his little town so he can make it to the big leagues in the city - is actually a she, played by Joan Chen of Twin Peaks fame. And holy crap - unlike a lot of other crappy post-apocalypse movies, she actually gets to kick ass! And have meaningless sex! And kick some more ass!

The brutal band of blood sport folks (who go by the ridiculous name "juggers" and run around with chains and dog skulls and yeah, but Mad Max made no sense either handwave handwave) also includes a tough female equivalent of a line backer whose whole face is a mass of scars and a big African American guy with tribal tattoos.

Did I mention that Chen's character breaks people's legs and bites a guy's ear off? Brutal blood sport, right? And she doesn't even have to die at the end! Oh frabjuous day!

J. and I enjoyed this little post-apocalypse romp for its sheer ridiculousness, lame dialogue, silly storyline, and crazy blood sports, but it really stood out to me not because of its B-movieness (I'll watch just about any 80s post-apocalypse show and get some kind of enjoyment out of its craziness), but because it did that thing that is, sadly, really different - I got big brutal heroines and a diverse cast of characters.

I just wish they'd been better actors with a budget and a non-ridiculous script. There's a lot of window dressing here that makes no sense (and let's not even get into the ridiculous of the dog skull thing. Or the chain wielding. Or the... yeah, anyway).

I'm telling you, the Nyx books would be awesome on film.

For a more coherent summary of this bad movie, which helped explain some of the absent, meandering plot to ME, as well, see here (it is worth mentioning - which the reviewer doesn't - that our heroine has sex with two people on the team, not just the team leader, and eyes up some male prostitutes, and she pays no whore price for doing so. Her sexuality feels totally on par with the men's [read: a real person], which I appreciated).

I can be satisfied....

...when just *one* reader "gets" a story.

I'm not sure this makes me a very marketable writer.

I think we are far too in love with being mass-loved. I don't write the sorts of stories that get me mass love. I write about machete-wielding matriarchs.

It does make me wonder, tho, what all of us are writing for? The day job writing pays the bills. The night job writing... more and more these days, I wonder what it's for. It used to be a great way to funnel a lot of anger; a great way to wake people up. We get so complacent in our soft, cozy lives. I've spent the last year oh-so-cozy in mine after nearly two years of terror involving crazy people (one of them being me), chronic illness, job loss, homelessness, grunt work, and soaring medical costs. I live knowing full well that Bad Things can and will happen. You roll the dice. I know what I'm in for. And it makes the soft, quiet, cozy time that much more precious.

I already know what's in the closet. So it does make it hard to visit the horrorshow on purpose at the keyboard every night, when you know it's really out there somewhere - waiting.

Thoughts on Spock/Uhura

One of the quibbles I had about the new Star Trek was the "oh man, the one female character is having sex with her commanding officer" thing. It sucked, cause Uhura was in all other ways such a great update of the character. But see, I was reading this from the perspective of a white chick.

Here's a much more interesting take, which turns Spock/Uhura from EpicFail to EpicWin:

Uhura being single in TOS was not empowering.

She was single because the male leads were all white and as a black woman she was less of a person than them, she was less of a person than a white woman, and the fact that this serendipitously ended up meaning that she didn't have to spend all of her time mooning pathetically after dismissive men does not make that any more acceptable.

She got to sit in the back and rarely do anything and have her sexuality ignored not because they respected her so much as a colleague and a person, but because she was not a full, real human being and when you're not a full, real human being the idea that actual people would ever desire you or romance you or love you is ridiculous. You are invisible.

I love it when somebody points something out that makes me read an entire situation totally differently.

#EAFail

For fuck's sake, you guys.

Link roundup.

Busy

Yes. That is me. But I'm alive. Posting will continue when I learn to manage my time more wisely.

"Wonder Maul Doll" Live at Escape Pod!

You can check out my story, "Wonder Maul Doll" today at EscapePod!

Bonus graphic violence warning!

Twitterbots

I think the reason so many porn spammers try to follow Nyx is because she uses the word "fuck" a lot.

Today's Stats

Only had two regular workout days last week instead of four. Annoying. On the other hand, it was a short and busy week.

When J. and I stopped at Wendy's at 1 am for a "snack" on the way home from our fireworks party on Saturday and I ordered a baconater, I turned to him and said, "This is why married people get fat."

"It's one roadtrip!" he protested.

Then I was reminded of why I don't eat fast food anymore. I felt sick after eating the damn thing, and wished I would have just kept to the almonds and string cheese. But oohhhhh the IDEA of a baconator is just... well, the idea is better than the real thing.

Hot hot hot!

15 min free weights this morning
10 min bike ride to work
20 min weight lifting w/ trainer at work
20 min cardio w/ trainer at work
10 min bike ride home
20 min Wii Fit

Hot Eats

Breakfast: Egg mixed with spinach, tomato, & cheese
Lunch: Chicken curry, low carb tortilla, and string cheese
Snack: 2 tbs peanut butter mixed with 1/4 cup peanuts
Dinner: Pork chop and asparagus
Snack: 5 low carb peanut butter cookies (they were DELICIOUS)


Hot Sugar

Breakfast: 98
Lunch: 161 (had to lower my insulin before cardio at the gym)
Post lunch: 209 (I always forget that the peas in the curry have more carbs than I think they do)
Dinner: 77
Post-dinner: 80

East and West

"Superman and his buddies will be uniting with The 99, superheroes already popular in the Middle East and who personify the 99 attributes of Allah.

Created by Kuwaiti-based Teshkeel Media, The 99 are ordinary people who develop special abilities after coming into contact with a mystical glass. They do not have secret identities and include five female superheroes with one, Batina, who is fully veiled.

The characters — created by five writers who have worked either with DC or Marvel — pray or read the Qur'an."

Ok, time to do some searching on Batina...

UPDATE: Open letter from the creator about why he created The 99.

The Writing Life (or, lack thereof)

I worry these days that my writing isn’t as good as it used to be, because all the choices I make seem to be poor ones. I’ll go through a story or a scene and realize that what I chose during the first pass was totally inappropriate. I keep thinking I’ve lost touch with the words, that there’s some kind of innate feeling for plot, character, structure, that went by the wayside. It’s made the last year of writing incredibly slow-going and difficult.

It wasn’t until tonight, as I went through and worked on the heroes story, that I realized what I was doing. There wasn’t anything different about the choices I made the first time through now than there was three years ago. The difference is, they’re *transparently wrong choices* now. As I go through and clean up the words, I’m seeing the errors – and where those errors will lead – a lot sooner than I would have a couple years ago. It’s like playing a chess game. You can see where this one wrong piece is going to get you somewhere you don’t want to go. So you go back, and back, and back, and figure out exactly where it’s going wrong. You fix that piece. You go forward. Then back, back, then forward.

It’s such a slow fucking process that it makes me feel retarded. I feel like I’m making stupid mistakes that I never used to make. But when I look back at my old fiction, I can see the same mistakes. The differences is, when I wrote them then I wasn't aware of them. When I write a story very quickly - something incredibly inspired that I feel in my gut the whole way through - sometimes the emotional weight of it can mask some of the bullshit for me. That's what those nice gut-punching writing sessions were like. Now, usually, my stories come out like this: bursts and spurts and lame-duck circling.

I feel like a completely broken writer because I can actually see where things are broken. It’s not that they weren’t broken before. It’s just that I can see it now. And it gets me stuck.

I’d call it a blessing, except that’s it’s slowed my writing down considerably, in no small part because it’s caused a total lack of confidence. I just sit here and look at all these broken pieces and I think, “How the hell do these fit together?”

I’m working through the writing funk slowly, but it’s torturous, and it’s been paralyzing me this last year. I started up regular writing times again this week, for the first time in... well, the first time since I had a book 1 deadline. I gave up regular writing times when I moved out of Steph and the Old Man's place, and writing has been sporadic since then. Again, I don’t know if this is good or bad. There’s a big change going on in my writing life, and I don’t know if it’s for the best or not. I won’t know for awhile yet.

I can see broken things now. I just need to stop letting that paralyze me. Failure only really happens when you give up, and not writing much this last year has come perilously close to that. Sticking in the trenches… well, I don’t know. Sometimes you get to hop into another trench on down the line. You get to advance. But in the meantime, you’re keeping your head down a lot, and pissing in a bucket, and that does get old after awhile. I mean, when you start drinking your urine out of the bucket, do you figure you've been in long enough to quit? Or do you wait for dehydration to set in and just pray for rain?

I'm thinking I'll dig a well.

Must be a holiday

Heavy thump-thump of fireworks outside my window. We're less than a mile away from the downtown fireworks show, which plays on the 3rd and 4th. I can see the fireworks from my window here as I'm typing. If I wanted a proper show, I only need to walk out my front door and sit out on the grass in the park next to my house. J. and I did that during the memorial day fireworks.

I really like this house, especially now, when the weather's not too hot or too cold. Everything in my life feels just right.

This Month's Budget

June Budget = -$176.49

+ $247.85 in celebratory expenses

= -$424.34 last month.

All of that went on my credit card, but at least the IRS got their payment for the month?

Bah.

Doing math for July.

Burn Notice

I love this show. Yes, it's formulaic, and silly at times, but man - it's got smart writing and consistently strong female characters, which you just don't see very often in these "damsel in distress" types of shows (let's face it - you don't see this very often, period). I like that all the characters aren't white bread (this is Miami, afterall), tho they could do a lot better on that front (I heard season three mixes it up a bit more, but I'm only halfway thru season 2 right now).

I also love the formulaic episode paired with movement of the overall "bigger" plot. Reminds me a bit of Quantum Leap in that sense. Each episode is self-contained, but there's a bigger story riding just underneath, to the point where it ends up being the subplot.

Smart writing, lovable characters.

Yeah, you just don't see enough of that.

New Writing Time

Some work-in-progress. Trying to get back on the wagon here. I've got a new writing time from 8-9:30 every night. Let's try it on for size.

I've tried starting this particular story several times, but this is the first opening I've written where the setting feels right and the main character isn't a total asshole.

----------------
Yousra had always feared the bodies. Not the ones she killed, no, but the ones out on the hill that the heroes had left to the dung beetles and markflies. The children she killed were marked for death from birth – deformed children, dumb and blind, their twisted bodies already rotten and gangrenous in the womb. Those were the bodies she was tasked with gutting and burning before dawn. Some wombs drew up the pollution of the world, condensed it, spat it back out. That offal was hers.

But the bodies on the hill were men, just men. Tawny and smooth-featured, they were beautiful, all of them... The heroes skinned them from claws to tail and left them to die in the sun. A reminder to others of what waited for them beyond the thorny fence of the village. Some nights, before the double dawn, Yousra would climb up on the hill amid the babies' ashes and listen to the men scream from beyond the thorn fence.

Most days, she merely did her duty and came home. Burned her clothes. Washed her hair in her mothers' blood. Then she slept the peculiar sleep of the priests, the sleep-that-was-not. Her body remained alert while she dreamed, and dreamed, and dreamed. Sometimes she remembered the conversations she had with those who visited while she slept, but more often – especially now – she remembered little more than the dreaming.

So when Ashet, the priest from the neighboring village, greeted her that day and said they had an appointment, she followed after him willingly, blindly. She pulled on a fresh robe of hemp and thorns and tied her machete at her hip. She had never done much more with the machete than murder the village's mewling monsters and cut back weeds, but the weight of it comforted her. A silly thing, to fear another priest enough to wear her machete. What did she have to fear, from a priest? They were not heroes. She knew that well enough. But she also knew that as things got worse, the people were becoming more desperate. Just three days before, a woman burned her husbands and herself. She had run out beyond the thorn fence, covered in flaming pitch, and died screaming and clawing at the earth.

Yousra and Ashet walked to the edge of the village, side by side. She nearly took his hand. It would have been polite. But instead, they strolled along the thorn fence a hands' length apart. Above them, the heroes' ships roared across the purple sky, so high up they were merely silver thrushes.

The big amber leaves of the walking trees shivered as they passed. Every year, the trees grew a new root, pulled up the old, and slowly crept out past the thorn fence. Another three or four years and half their flock would have escaped the thorn fence. Half the flock gone over into the wastelands, the unprotected lands, would leave their fields with barely enough shelter from the ravages of the autumn winds. Ten years more, and the fields would simply blow away.

“Have you thought much upon my offer?” Ashet asked.

Yousra had to think long and hard about that. What was the last offer he'd put to her?

“The marriage?” she said, because in her mind, all of his requests – for milking ale, more time at the village school, a day with her lending library – blurred together into one long litany of need, a black hole of desires she had no interest in filling.

“Marriage is an outdated notion,” he said. “We make families from the dust out here, or no families at all. My brother is anxious to meet with you. I believe the three of us will be a fine fit.”

A fine fit, three to a bed. Yousra had never wanted more than two husbands. She was not greedy. A man to work the fields and bring in income, and a man to raise her babies and keep her house. But there were fewer and fewer women now, and she had to think of the others first. If she wanted to be headwoman someday, she must do what was right for the village, not her comfort. Was it fair to expect her sisters to marry three brothers, while she took only two?

“I'm thinking on it,” she said, which was a polite way to refuse. He knew that as well as she, but he persisted.

“It would be a good life, Yousra. My brother has a fine farm in --”

“I've seen his farm,” Yousra said. She'd tended every farm for thirty kilometers in every direction. Every farm left within the thorn fence. Fewer every year, as the wasteland encroached. “I delivered his wife's babies. All of them.”

“Yes,” Ashet said, and his expression darkened. He fell silent.

Yousra tried to remember the wife, but could recall nothing of her but the sour smell of milk and wine gone to vinegar. Yousra had delivered her twins – two sets of them – all monsters. The woman killed herself not long after. She was not the first. Would not be the last. A waste and a terror, to lose so many women to pollution and madness.

“Is it the labor you fear?” Ashet asked.

Yousra looked at him sideways, then turned away, to look out past the fence. Out on the dry, desiccated land, the skeleton of a thorn tree marked the horizon. In her youth, the tree marked the beginning of her mother's starch farm. Three hundred acres of soy, yams, and grizzled water pears. Waves and waves of it, all through the growing season. Now... just death. Barren and diseased, like Yousra's people. She absently touched the machete at her hip, thought of the dead woman.

“I don't fear birth. I fear that marriages and more children won't be what saves us.”

Ashet smiled. “It's the only thing that can.”

“Is it? To continue with a way of life that's dying? When a man comes to you with a rotten wound, do you tell him to continue with his work?”

“We aren't rotten.”

“Aren't we?” She pointed out beyond the skeletal tree. “My mothers are buried out there. Their bodies ate them from the inside, long before the heroes came. Something rotten has been planted here, and we must cut it out.”

Ashet sighed. He pulled his hands behind his back, paused. “Marry us, Yousra. There is still happiness to be had here.”

“Happiness, yes,” Yousra said, but she was not looking at him. She was looking out at the tree. “But not a future.”

On "Promoting" Obesity

Isn't there some inherent sexism in focusing on the weight of a woman who is making a living because of her singing and songwriting skills? Does every Jack Black interview have to include "relevant" information about his weight? Seth Rogen became a star without a svelte physique. No one cared if we posted about those guys without mentioning their weight, but women must be small and tiny and delicate and therefore feminine, right? And let's not pretend this is a health issue: We see images of stars smoking and drinking and frighteningly thin, and never get emails about how we're "promoting" those unhealthy lifestyles.

Tofu Shirataki

Low carb pasta (no, really!). A blend of yam and tofu that... tastes like noodles! For serious!

I ate a huge plate of this last night that only cost me 25 carbs. HUGE PLATE. It was excellent!

Right after we took our first bite, J. insisted that he's been itching to make me a threeway... (I knew it).

What about low-carb chili, you ask? That's why Skyline chili was invented.

Halva: Fudge for Diabetics

2.5 carbs a serving. No joke! It is tasty and delicious!

This was a totally random find at Jungle Jim's yesterday.

Eating well gets easier and easier as I expand my shopping range.

Team

J is a full-time student now, which means he has a flexible schedule and a bit more time around the house than I do. It means that when I come home from work, he's just come in from working out in the yard, swept the whole house, finished up the dishes, and is usually cooking dinner (I cook on Fri, Sat, Sun, and Thurs is usually a leftover day. He cooks Mon, Tues, Weds).

I clean the bathroom once a week, help with yardwork when I get the chance (generally maintaining my flower beds, sweeping, collecting yard waste), and we generally share dishes and meal cleanup.

We each do our own laundry. Once a week, I also wash the sheets. We take turns taking out trash as it piles up around the house. It's fun to see who gets to it first.

Strangely enough, the only part of this we had the conversation about was laundry. I said I'd prefer to keep it separate, since I still had a weird laundry aversion from my first relationship, where I did... well, every fucking thing. Including his laundry (this would be the relationship that woke me up to feminism. If that was what a het relationship was, I wanted no part in it).

We didn't split costs down the middle, though. We sat down and based our portion of expenses on what each of us brought in. I bring in 2/3 the money, I pay 2/3 the bills. J. still isn't thrilled about this, but I reminded him that if our positions were reversed, he'd have done the same. In time, what we're each bringing in will change considerably, and we can budget accordingly.

I really like this. Every bit of it. For the first time in my life, I feel like I'm in a truly equal partnership. I don't feel like I'm the one always picking up after somebody. I don't feel like I've got four jobs. I feel like I'm with somebody who's got my back. I feel totally supported.

It's odd to me that in many relationships (het or not, but particularly het), the more-messy partner doesn't get how much of a burden that daily chores put on the person who ends up doing them. If you actually share? My god, it's amazing. It really is. All of a sudden you have energy to do things, you're a lot more interested in sex. You're a lot less stressed. And - this is the big one - you don't you resent your partner.

And that's the big part of it that people don't get, I think. If you're a woman and you're doing more than 50% of the housework, chances are you're going to resent your husband. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But the irritation wears you down over time. For me, that kind of irritation is just unbearable. I can't stand it. Some people can let it grind away, and then they fight over it periodically, but for me... yeah.

The sheer inequality in the amount of work we did in my first relationship drove me over the edge. I was working 6 days a week, going to school, writing, doing the laundry, doing the dishes, cooking, cleaning... I was exhausted. All the time. And I thought that's just how it was, and I was the problem because I just didn't "get it." I just needed to buckle down and accept it.

But doing that... it was sacrificing some core piece of myself. Housework is a symbol. Your participation - or not - signals how truly egalitarian you believe your relationship to be (I really think this).

And I'm sure I'll get all sorts of people who say, "Oh no, it's not like that!" but it is (I also, of course, know many instances where partners pick up the slack because their spouse isn't physically capable of doing the work - because of illness or constant travel. That's obviously not what I'm talking about here. If J. or I get sick, our responsibilites will adjust accordingly).

There's just so much bound up in the "woman doing all the housework" thing. It feels so much like institutionalized slavery. This strange, nebulous expectation that so many of us hold ourselves to. I never wanted a husband. I wanted a partner. I wanted somebody who would stand next to me. Not run out in front of me screaming at me to catch up or stand behind me with a whip urging me on. I wanted a buddy. A friend. A companion.

I got that.

And yes, partnership is about a lot more than housework. But how much of your own weight you're willing to pull for your team says a lot about how you regard your teammate.

I like my team.

Motivation!

I could use some!

Also, another air conditioner!

Why I Still Love My IUD

One word:

Libido.

Today's Stats

Today is hotter than hell. I plan to spend the rest of the evening reading in the bedroom where the box air conditioner resides. I should prob'ly start tracking my wordcount here too. Need to get back on the writing bandwagon.

Hot hot hot!

15 min free weights this morning
10 min bike ride to work
10 min bike ride home
20 min on the elliptical
10 min Wii Fit

Hot Eats

Breakfast: Egg mixed with spinach, tomato, & cheese
Snack: 2 tbs peanut butter mixed with 1/4 cup peanuts
Lunch: Spaghetti squash spaghetti and 1/2 cup pecans
Snack: 2 string cheese
Dinner: Chix strips, spinach salad, and peas
Snack: Perhaps a choc covered banana later?

Hot Sugar

Breakfast: 91
Snack: 157
Lunch: 129
Post lunch: 101
Dinner: 89
Post-dinner: 137

Huzzah!

The Money Shuffle

Nobody's immune to it, and I've been hearing more and more about it as those of us who had contracts, savings, and other reserves and fall-backs slowly eat through them.

Things aren't so bad here at Hacienda Dayton, but a judder of nervousness just went round the house this evening when we realized we were very nearly just shy of being able to pay rent on time next week.

J. is now going to school full time, relying on grants and student loans - all of which have been delayed until next week (the quarter started two weeks ago). We've been getting by on my salary and his savings for the last month. I also had $300 in savings, $150 of which we burned through yesterday for a mini-celebration celebrating good things that needed to be celebrated, and which we didn't expect would suddenly mean so much.

A little creative (read: groceries on the credit card) accounting (I get paid Thursday), solved the rent issue, but it was a good reminder that now that he's in school and I'm the sole breadwinner, we need to tighten things up around here... especially with how wacky student loan payouts are (nearly as bad as book check payouts, and on the same bizarre "we're not giving it all to you at once!" sort of schedule - like they'll blow it all on twizzlers and coffee if given a lump sum).

I got the crazy news at work last month that all raises had been suspended and they'd put a hiring freeze in effect (for reasons various and sundry which I won't relate here, but suffice to say, we'd done very, very well last year and this came as a big shock to all of us. Turns out it doesn't matter how well you do if your lending bank tightens its standards because of Great Depression madness). We're not anticipating layoffs right now, but we won't know for sure until mid-July. We've had to dump some core outside help my dept. was getting, tho, and it's meant a bigger workload with no raise (and I already bust my ass at work), which was a big morale buster for me.

In any case, the "what about rent?" fiasco reminded me of just how tenuous our position is, and how much it relies on my continued steady employment (and a late - as usual - book check which I should have signed the paperwork for by now). I don't think we'll have to cancel our August and September vacations, but I was conscious when I put together the September package that I wouldn't have to pay for it until August, so we still have time to back out (i.e. it's not paid yet, just booked and a small down payment made).

Overall, we're going to be a little more frugal, going forward. I'll be going through the budget again tonight and seeing how much of the "fun" bucket can be deferred to the "savings" bucket. With just one of us employed, that savings bucket is going to be more and more crucial going forward.

There's a big neighborhood yard sale this weekend that J. is going to make possible by cashing in his petty change jar so we can free up a few dollars for deals.

We've been living very well. I just got a cold reminder of how tenuous that wellness really is.