A Golden Statue to Remember
Mar 8th
I was sick all of last week. And I’m still sick. But Natalie, Sketch and I had purchased tickets to watch the Oscars (am I allowed to say Oscars or is it now like the Superbowl?) at this fancy fake red carpet event in town. Carissa was working the door, so she didn’t get to sit with us. SadFACE.
I hauled my lazy, overslept ass off the couch and away from House (Please sir, come heal what ails me. Delicious.) and put on some makeup and a pretty dress, so I wouldn’t scare the photographers. Or my friends. I even baked them some gooey butter cake to take home with them. Don’t worry, I’m no longer contagious.
If I’m to be perfectly honest (how could I lie to you guys?), I’ve never even watched the Oscars at home. It just doesn’t interest me that much. I’m not really a super avid movie watcher, so most of the time I don’t even know anything about the movies anyway. It’s three hours or more of my life I’ll never get back.
But last night’s festivities were totally worth it. And they had me at Neil Patrick Harris. Good call having him do the opening number, folks. Good call.
I can’t really tell you much about the awards. There are people far more qualified to do so. So instead I’m going to tell you about the people around us at the theater. And mind you, I was sick. So I was slightly more than GRUMPTASTIC. But totally pretty. In the face.
First, and I think solely for my amusement, the people who run the theater thought it would be a genius call to tape off the edges of the stairs. You know, to make them more visible. The only problem? They only taped off every other one. Not all of them. So people were dropping like flies up in the VIP area. Especially given that for $10 they provided every VIP with special seating, a free drink coupon, and all the Lone Star beer he or she could drink. Some people took it as a challenge.
Apparently, the VIP section drank over 1000 beers. The falling started before the beers, so it only got worse as people got drunk.
To balance out my amusement, they universe sent two people to sit in front of us and MAKE OUT for the entire show. And I don’t mean a smooch here and there. I mean full on tongue face licking she was practically in his chair MAKING OUT. I was sickened. The best part? Every time she went to the bathroom, which was a lot (Ahem. Free beer.), he would turn around and hit on our lovely Sketch (Who totally won an Inglorious Basterds DVD for correctly predicting…something about sound and The Hurt Locker). We almost barfed on them.
In a cruel turn of events, the universe completely turned against me and made this a crowd participation event. And the drunker people got, the more they felt the need to yell, scream, and shout for the people on the big screen. Who couldn’t hear them. It was like yelling at a sporting event on TV, but worse.
One woman behind me was OUT. OF. CONTROL. However, she almost made up for it by falling down the stairs twice and just falling on her ass once. Almost.
The people sitting a little further in front of us weren’t really there to watch the show. The people around them were PISSED. We heard a LOT of shushing. I have to say, it just seemed a little ridiculous, considering the Oscar’s were playing at FULL THEATER volume and no one was really saying anything important anyway. But one obnoxious woman in the group kept STANDING UP to talk to the people behind her. Blocking the entire screen. And no amount of my loudly telling her to sit down helped. I was about to go all first-step-dad on her ass and tell her she made a better door than a window.
Somewhere around the halfway point, I turned to Natalie and said, “It’s a damn good thing Graygrrrl didn’t come with us. It would be a bloody mess up in here.” Natalie agreed. Carnage, it would have happened.
Afterward, the girls came back to my place for cake and girl talk.
It’s possible that I maybe should have just stayed on the couch, as today I feel like I got run over my a train. If a train could affect my breathing. You know what I mean. I don’t feel well. So I’m leaving work in an hour and a half and going home to go back to bed. After stopping for some chicken soup, on the orders of DJ. She even found me a deli where they make it. And she doesn’t, you know, LIVE HERE. So chicken soup it is.
On my way home yesterday…
Mar 3rd
Okay, so I’m a little under the weather.
Basically, as described to Travis, I feel like dog shit. Dog shit that got run over by a big truck and then burned in a trash can. Vaguely.
So I’ll make this short and sweet. Huh, that just got a country song stuck in my head. Weird.
Yesterday, while driving home from work, I encountered the following:
1. Three police cars (a total of six police officers) screeched up with flashing lights and sirens (one of them performed an illegal U-turn on red at an intersection) to…arrest a man who was calmly sitting on a concrete retaining wall with his lunch box. Not moving. Not waving a gun in the air. Just sitting. CALMLY.
2. A woman walked into the middle of the street, into oncoming traffic to stand in the middle lane and do some kind of jig. The police officers were only about a mile away harassing the man with the lunch box. This woman got to perform without their aid.
3. An SUV that had been driven INTO a home. Cause for several more police officers, a fire truck, and an ambulance. Oh, and a LOT of traffic.
4. A woman parked in the middle of the aisle in a parking lot, blocking at least five parking spaces. I honked to get her to move. She pulled out of the way, waited until I parked, and then got out of her car to yell at me for stealing her parking space.
5. A member of the Lost Boys. I’m sorry I couldn’t get a picture, but I was driving and I went by him too fast. Suffice to say there was much leather and ’80s hair and at least some makeup.
The country song is still stuck in my head.
It’s an EPIDEMIC. And I do NOT approve.
Mar 1st
Not that anyone really cares what I think. I do know this. But I’m going to talk about this anyway, m’kay?
This leggings as pants thing you’re doing? It has. Got. To. STOP.
Okay, now I know that some of you are about to tell me that tights are also not leggings. But let’s be honest with each other here, okay? This is a safe place. You know as well as I do that those things you’re calling leggings are (most of the time) just tights with no feet. Don’t you feel better now that we’ve cleared the air?
You don’t actually want to walk around looking like this, right?
I didn’t think so. (Okay, I realize this doesn’t really look half as bad in the picture, but I was walking, so it’s blurry. It wasn’t pretty.)
There’s a chick who works at Baker’s Shoes who is a constant offender. I know more about the lumps and bumps of her ass than I know about my own. Every time I see her, I just want to grab her shoulders, shake her, and scream, “WHY?” in her face. I haven’t done it yet, but it’s building up inside.
I’m on board with the skinny jeans (it took me a while). If you can’t cover your ass, please…please just wear skinny jeans. Leggings are to be worn UNDER things. UNDER things that are long enough to COVER YOUR ASS. Is that so hard?
Trust me. Your ass doesn’t look half as good as you think it does. I don’t care who you are.
It’s Friday, we should breakup – Fear*
Feb 26th
After yesterday’s post, I know we could all use a little less political BS in our blog. I wanted to say thank you to those of you who had kind words of support for me about my experiences. I wanted to thank those of you who put yourself out there to state your opinions about the matter, whether you agreed with my take on it or not. I think it’s important to be able to have a dialogue about this.
And to the people who sent me lovely emails about being a “baby killer,” well, I’m glad that you got that off your chest. Since many of you claimed to be Christians, I’d suggest you go read that New Testament again. Think about how you’ll be judged by your God when you get to those pearly gates you’re all so excited about. I’m not going to post the contents of your emails. I deleted them. I don’t need such filth in my inbox. But you know. And I know. And since you believe in God, you believe that he knows.
Last night, I had dinner with my mom. We try to do this sort of thing at least twice a month. Our schedules are both really hectic, though, so sometimes life gets in the way. My mother has decided to respect my request that she not read my blog. Truthfully, she doesn’t really have time anyway, as she works about 18 hours everyday. Nonetheless, she said she wouldn’t read it.
She does ask me about it. She asks about the things I’m writing and such. Last night, I don’t know if she brought it up or I did, but we started talking about that law in Utah. My mom usually gets upset with me for being cynical, but if I learned to be cynical anywhere, it was from her. She wasn’t even SURPRISED by this law (she hadn’t heard about it yet), she just shook her head and said that she was sad that it had to be this way.
I tried to get her to discuss it with me, but it’s not a topic she feels comfortable discussing. Especially in public. She asked me what the response was like to what I had written. I said that it had been mostly support and outrage, but that I had gotten a few pretty nasty emails.
“What exactly did you write that would cause people to send you nasty emails?”
So I told her. I told her that I talked about the new law and it’s possible implications, using articles that other people had written and my own thoughts and opinions. And then I told her that I had related it to myself. That I had explained that the reason I felt so passionately about this topic was because of my own experiences with abortion.
Her next words came out in capital letters.
“YOU TOLD THE WHOLE WORLD YOU HAD AN ABORTION?”
In the middle of the restaurant.
“No, Mom. I didn’t tell the whole world, for cryin’ out loud. The whole world doesn’t read my blog.”
You’re probably thinking right about now that my mom either didn’t know I had an abortion, or that she didn’t agree with me having it. But you’d be wrong. She drove me to the clinic herself. Although, that’s another story entirely.
I explained to her that I didn’t think I should be ashamed to have had an abortion. I told her that I felt like if more women would just TALK about it, there wouldn’t be such a stigma. There wouldn’t be such fear. Women would realize that they DO have a choice. I said that I wasn’t scared to share something like that on my blog because I know that I might change someone’s mind about the “type of woman” who chooses to have an abortion. Or make someone else feel more normal about the choice they already made.
I’m tired of this fear we all have to talk about these things. Sexual assault. Abortion. Funny hairs that grow on your chin. Whatever. We have to stop being afraid and realize that we’re all going through the same things. And none of it makes us abnormal or bad people. We’re all women and we need to be in this together.
I wish that tomorrow could be National “Stop Judging Other Women So Harshly” Day or something. Tomorrow, you don’t make fun of the woman shopping at WalMart, because you realize that if you lost your job, you’d be there too. You don’t make fun of the random woman out there who has a hair growing in her chin or her nipple, because that just might be you in a few years. Let’s not make fun of the fat women, if you’re not fat, you have NO IDEA what they’re going through.
I’m pretty sure we can still make fun of the women wearing leggings as pants. Let’s face it, they’re doing that to themselves.
Let’s make tomorrow a day of support for our fellow woman. Or you know, you can just go get drunk and have a good time. But I’m going to spend tomorrow trying to think about women in a different way (no, not THAT way, you pervs). I’m going to spend time trying to put myself in their shoes.
If I leave the apartment, that is.
My mom’s response to my impassioned speech about fear? “Yes, yes, and you’re right. But does it have to be YOU who shares everything?”
Oh, Moms, you don’t know me at all.
From now on, I will NOT be afraid to tell people about my experiences. I will wear them proudly. Fear, you have no place in my life. GET OUT!
*Um, yeah, but I’m keeping my fears of “go fast” and “eating in the dark.” WHAT? I’m not perfect, yo. I have completely irrational fears and I LOVE them.
There’s no way I can NOT talk about this.
Feb 25th
You guys. Today I totally had a light-hearted post about leggings as pants planned, but then last night, I heard some news. From Utah. And now we’re going to get serious.
Or, well, I’m just going to tell you about this and probably get all stabby and teary-eyed and you’ll sit at your computer screens in awe of how pretty I can be while crying and then we’ll all go have coffee and talk about the douchebag Republicans that run the state of Utah. Deal?
On February 18, the Salt Lake City Tribune reported that the Utah Senate had joined the Utah House of Representatives in support of a law that would allow for criminal charges to be brought against an expectant mother who arranges for an illegal abortion.
Now, federally, abortion is legal, but I assume here that each state gets to define the term “abortion,” and decide for itself what the legal issues that surround said abortion are. In Utah, an abortion is legal:
Before 20 weeks, abortion is necessary to save mother’s life or health, if woman was raped or incest committed, or child has grave defects; after 20 weeks, necessary to preserve health, life of mother or if child would be born with grave defects
Any other kind of abortion is illegal. This law, passed now by the Utah Senate and House of Representatives, will extend criminal charges to women who have miscarriages.
It doesn’t address legal abortion, but allows punishment up to life in prison for an “intentional, knowing, or reckless act” that leads to a miscarriage or abortion without a doctor’s supervision.
They’re doing this, supposedly, because a woman in October was being held and facing criminal charges because she paid a man $150 to beat her, in an effort to try to abort her baby. Clearly, that is not on the “legal abortion” list. At that time, she was released, because there was no law criminalizing her actions. Her pregnancy did not terminate.
But she had to take such extreme measures because of the restrictive nature of what constitutes a legal abortion in the state of Utah.
If the governor signs this new law, it is feared that women could and will be prosecuted for any negligent behavior that causes a miscarriage. A glass of wine, improper diet, failure to wear a seat belt in an auto accident, or slipping and falling down the stairs. And if you’ll notice, it says up there that a woman can be charged with UP TO LIFE IN PRISON for such a careless mistake.
Even more to the point, how is Utah possibly going to police this law? Jezebel.com writer Anna N. listed a quote from Dan Savage with a possible solution. A pregnancy registry. I won’t even go into the logistics of trying to force all women who become pregnant to go sign in to a registry, so that the government has an easier time prosecute them later for possible negligent behavior.
Rachel Larris, of Reality Check, writes:
Using the legal standard of “reckless behavior” all a district attorney needs to show is that a woman behaved in a manner that is thought to cause miscarriage, even if she didn’t intend to lose the pregnancy. Drink too much alcohol and have a miscarriage? Under the new law such actions could be cause for prosecution.
I’m just amazed that ANYONE, but particularly any woman, can find this new law palatable. Some people believe that birth control pills already overstep the bounds into MURDER because they prevent (if ovulation manages to happen) the egg from implanting into the uterine wall. But what has most people so concerned about this law is that it is aimed specifically at pregnant women. Most other laws about such matter to date, have been aimed at a third-party. This makes women the criminals.
This is an issue that is very close to my heart. As a woman who has had a miscarriage and who has had an abortion, I can tell you this: Neither is easy. I don’t want children anyway, but accidents happen. Life happens. I had an abortion because I chose me over a ball of cells in my uterus. My miscarriage was caused by several things. Not realizing I was pregnant and therefore continuing to take my birth control pills for a month or longer. Not eating, because I had just gone through the most painful heartbreak of my life. And contracting the flu, because things weren’t bad enough already. If the governor signs this law in Utah, it would be possible to prosecute me for those actions. I was negligent and reckless with an unborn fetus. And in Utah, a mass of cells in a woman’s uterus is more important than the woman carrying it.
Is that really okay with you?
