Public Transit Tab on Google

Shortly after I moved here, Google and the CTA had a torrid affair. The lovechild of their union is the Public Transit tab on google maps for the greater Chicago area.

It’s kinda fantastic, huh?

 

Day Dreams

I have strange dreams.  Angry daydreams that surface whenever I read something like this or this or this, dreams that often go something like this:

1. I give birth to the child (natural birth, of course) right in front of the anti-choicers, cut the umbilical cord with my own pocket knife, hand the bloody baby + afterbirth to the most obnoxious protester, and walk away.
2. After all other legal options have been exhausted, I brandish a butcher knife from beneath my (voluminous, for some godawful reason) skirts and proceed to either stab myself in the uterus or try to give myself a c-section.
3. American women start a movement: destroy reproductive options and the right to choose? Well then, no more sex.  If women can’t have birth control, Plan B, and safe and legal abortions, then no intercourse (with men) - why risk pregnancy?  Sales of vibrators go through the roof.

(Obviously, I have some repressed angst regarding having and raising a child, which I blame fully on my own parents. They did something wrong, because seriously, how often do you have 5 out of 5 children in one family all vocally against procreation?  We also don’t like cream of wheat, celebrating holidays or birthdays, or talking about ourselves… but I digress.)

It’s not pro-life. It’s anti-choice, because, let’s not kid ourselves - it’s not about life at all. If it were about life, then anti-choicers would focus some of their efforts on those children who are 0-18 instead of concentrating exclusively on conception to birth. (And maybe it’s just me, but why are so many of those so-called ‘pro-lifers’ also pro-death penalty, anti-welfare, and pro-war? What the fuck is up with that?)

I hope none of my angry daydreams comes true. But I’m stocking up on vacation time, just in case I need to march on Washington with my fellow ovulaters.

 

Abort This

Sometimes, I don’t think people understand just how big of a deal it is.  Men and women, but more men I think, don’t realize how life-altering having a child can be, especially for a woman.  Pregnancy is huge.  Literally.  A woman can expect to gain 30 to 35 pounds.  Her eating habits change, her body changes, she has to take time off of work, and in the corporate world, just being of child-rearing age jeapardizes one’s career.  And then there’s the follow-through - the cost of pregnancy is $7,600 from conception to birth.  Natural birth - the vag will never be the same.  C-section - stomach will never be the same.  After birth - adoption into a failing foster system?  Or spending a quarter of a million dollars feeding, educating, and raising a child from 0 - 17.  This does not include the cost to the primary child-rearer’s career, typically the woman.  Women already make less money than their male peers.  Having a child often means taking significant time off to be a SAHM (stay at home mom), or paying a crap ton on babysitting.  Time off means rejoining the job-world with outdated skills and bosses who are leery of mothers (something about priorities).  Long term, less money is put into social security, 401K, and savings.

Some women want to be mothers.  Some men want to be fathers.  But for those of us who don’t… for those of us who aren’t (and possibly never will be) ready to take on the huge responsibility that is a child… we use contraception.  Our local Walgreens or Kroger or doctor’s office - condoms, pills, IUD’s, vasectomies, hysterectomies - we make the choice, the very responsible choice, to not have a child.

Bush Co. wants to change that by passing a broad, legislative “anti-discrimination” law to proect the morals of healthcare providers who don’t want to fuck up their chances of getting into heaven by providing women with contraceptive options.

Three words: my fucking body.

When someone’s freedom to intrudes on my freedom from, then we have a problem.  Health care professionals should not be in the profession if they cannot perform their duties.  Pharmacists shouldn’t have the option to choose what prescriptions they fill. Gynocologists should not have the option to not prescribe birth control.  It’s their JOB.  If they have moral issues with doing their jobs, they need to get into a new field, one that doesn’t involve stomping all over someone else’s life.

 

End of Clusterfuck

I moved to Chicago for a variety of reasons, the first and foremost being the need for a job.  But I was also running away from the circlefuck that was my friend-base.

(I just had a strong moment of deja vu, so if I’ve written this exact same post before… I apologize.)

I had a friend visit recently and I listened to her tales of friends and lovers and acquaintances with an emotion bordering on repulsion.  Why so strong a reaction?  Because this is the friend, my own personal She Who Shall Not Be Named.  (Don’t ask. It’s a long, long story.)  And I say “friend” because of the shared history, but at this point our relationship is more that of casual acquaintances.   Her lurid tales of who did what to whom and why and how everyone reacted even though it was no one’s business… this is one of many reasons we are no longer friends.  And this was reason number two for leaving A2.  Not her - we were long over by the time I climbed into Frank for my maiden voyage to Chicago.  But because I was through with the clusterfuck of ‘friends’ who only seemed to take everything I had to give and never, ever reciprocate.

I cut the people I didn’t like out of my life.  No more “friendship by association.”  No more “he said that you said that you heard from Bobbie that I didn’t like Angie and……”  Bish?  Plz.  No more.  It’s not that I have “grown-up relationships” now - there’s no difference, sometimes, between juvenile friendships and adult ones.  The difference is that the people I associate with now care about me just as much as I care about them.  A little, a lot, it’s reciprocated.  No giving without receiving, no having to deal with maliciously crafted drama just for the sake of drama, no getting frustrated or stressed out when that drama impacts my life.

I have fewer friends now.  Significantly less stress, but fewer friends.  I spend more time watching my Netflix or walking alone along the beach, but when I do go out with friends or hang in with friends, I’m happy before, during, and after.  I don’t go home feeling dirty and cheap and harassed - I have warm fuzzies about our conversations and interactions, and I revel in the fact that I don’t need to be anything but myself.