Stepmomming - Part Deux

Good morning, everyone. Today is Mother's Day, May 14, 2023. 

Today is also my seventh wedding anniversary to Erik, and the traditional seventh anniversary gift is wool. Friends, as a knitter, I proclaim that I WAS BUILT FOR THIS. All yarn gifts are appreciated, and if you give me a 100g ball of yarn, I will return it to you as a hat, or a pair of fingerless gloves (should your office be cold and your fingers still need dexterity for your keyboard). I promise!

As far as knitting, I have shelved the St. Jude sweater for now, because I am at a part where I need to concentrate and read. Neither of those verbs are compatible with my current state of mind. Instead, I just finished a pair of socks for a friend, and I started knitting a hex shawl with this Three Irish Girls yarn I have had forever. I am sorry I cannot stretch with one hand and photograph with the other at four in the morning, but please do zoom in on the colors and stitch definition. This yarn is just camelot through the fingers.

So, I became a wife for the second time on May 14, 2016. Wording it that way does not do my mindset justice; if you happen to be running across this post while sitting on your veranda in Lichtenstein, then you do not know I am about as feminist as they come. Instead of saying I "became a wife," it is more of my ilk to say that I entered a long-term, non-real-estate contract for the second time that day. Also, as I always look for an excuse to share the following photos, here is our Chicago-style hot dog wedding cake, courtesy of Chef Mindy Gohr of Bittersweet Pastry Shop.

This one was always my favorite, followed closely by the one taken when Erik and I went to Downers Grove South and took some photos there. 

I became a mom on July 15, 2018, three days after my own 43rd birthday. Stanley was already three and a half weeks early, but there will always be a part of me who wishes he came down that freaking birth canal a full four weeks early. Telling people I gave birth at 42 instead of 43 would have resulted in about 4% fewer ooh's and ahh's, if my calculations are correct. He is a good kid, though. Even now, with all of the turbulence in my house, he gets more joy from practicing reading than he does from acting like a punk.

Fun fact: Stanley was due on August 7th and named in honor of Chicago Blackhawks great Stan Mikita. Stan Mikita died on Stanley's actual due date of August 7th.

On January 11, 2023, I became a different kind of mom. I became a stepmom back on the wedding anniversary seven years ago. However, on January 11, my stepkids came to live with us full-time after they discovered their mom had died that morning, smack in the middle of Erik trying to rebuild from his previous three or so years of just generally giving up. 

Now, I was someone who was running a business, running a completely chaotic household, holding down a job, going from being a full-time mom to one kid to being a full-time mom to three kids, and my spare time (because calling it what it is - every single minute of the day while overlapping with the above - makes me sound a bit "extra") is spent turning three kids into good grownups. This does not count the constantly helping Erik see that what he knew about parenting was a foundation for dysfunctional abuse cycles (through no fault of his, obviously). In flits of transition, I have to figure out if my own identity is in there somewhere. 

I do not mind being a mom. I do not mind being a business owner. I do not mind even being a wife or stepmom, adult daughter, good friend, good singer, decent knitter, neighbor who watches your house, planner, or even failure. What I mind is that, while I acknowledge that life is a culmination and continuously-changing path created by our choices, I never wanted to feel like I had no choice.

Right now, I have no choice but to stay.

Please, for the love of all things woolly, do not infer from this that I had my bags packed, but now I have to unpack and stay until (insert deadline or milestone here). I choose to stay. I choose to make the best of what is currently a very, very challenging life. That said, part of the reason is because choosing to ditch everything and everyone except Stanley in favor of living in a cute condo in a big city far away from here presents a set of circumstances that are not any more appealing than the life I have been handed. Plus, I just do not have the energy.

What I can do, however, is I can make the best of literally everything. That also takes quite a bit of energy, but the reward is much more profound than the unknown. You know the old saying about needing to be careful what you wish for when you say things like, "I wish the boss would just disappear!" because the next one could be ten times worse?" Well, that is exactly my life in a nutshell. I have good people around me, some baseline stability, and a lot of yarn for the twenty minutes per week where we are all at the library, and I get to knit while the kids are checking out books. Packing up and ditching everyone for a new life would involve changing addresses to four mortgage companies, having a different type of contract in place with Erik, figuring out my job and business, blah blah blah. I think I will just stick to waking up at 3:15am every day and going to the gym, and then getting my coffee at 7-Eleven.

And, I choose yarn. I choose knitting. I choose to not take up yoga, cooking, piano, oil painting, calligraphy, vegetable gardening, mountain biking, or feng shui. I am sticking with knitting.

Today, we celebrate motherhood. I also celebrate marriage. Every other day of the year, however, I choose to celebrate just making it through the day, and doing the best I can with the choices I am making. Finally, while I may want to smack everyone who tells me, "Wow...those boys are so fortunate to have you in their lives!" I understand it comes from a sympathetic place, and I want you all to keep telling me. That one sentence helps me make the right choice every day, especially for the task of making sure as many people around me that need it can turn into good grownups one day. Thank you for reading.

Life Is An Oregon Trail

Hello, everyone...I thought I would drop you all a note, and see if anyone wanted to donate to St. Jude in the month of March. See, I joined the Knit & Fundraise Challenge for St. Jude, and then I realized my life is a smelly dumpster fire at the moment, so I may have overestimated my ability to be a prolific knitter in an allotted time frame.

That, though, is the bad news. 

I mean, there has been a ton of bad news, in my defense. But what I mean is that if I look on the bright side, at least I started to knit, at least I am sharing the fundraiser, and at least the people who know me understand that I am already doing my best. So there is that.

Here is the link to the donation page. If you don't have Facebook, you can always just go here to donate, and there is a spot to put who sent you to their page. You can donate in memory of someone, or in honor of an occasion like, say, Amy Kaspar's Knit & Fundraise Challenge:

https://www.facebook.com/donate/598504321614651/10158923877575474/

For the record, I am doing my part anyway. I am knitting, I am showing you my progress right here and right now, and I am tooting the horn of St. Jude publicly!

See? Here I am at the gym this morning, "representin'," as the cool kids say.

And yesterday, I was sitting at the Avery Coonley School in Downers Grove, waiting for Stanley to be socially evaluated. For those of you who do not know my son, you know how hilarious it is that he needed to be evaluated in the first place when it comes to social skills. The kid has boundaries, but he has no Stranger Danger whatsoever. They were having a Wellness Period while he was there, so when we were leaving, he had to go up to each dog-handler of the three dog visitors and ask them, "Is your dog friendly?" before petting their dogs.

And finally, here is your glimmer of hope for the day. Many knitters look at patterns, browse the internet for inspiration, and even wander the yarn shop with the idea that seeing a finished product will make him, her, or them want to start and finish a project. I, a short-attention-span-knitter, often start projects that take me months because I keep putting them down, in order to be stimulated by a different project. This one, however...just look at it. The project is from Lang Yarns and the yarn, in my stash, is Berroco Lustra (a throwback, for sure...it has probably been discontinued for a decade...but by all means, zoom in on the gorgeousness):

I have had a hard time. Last year was the culmination of a three-year period, where I was trying to hold my marriage together as my husband went down a horrible downward spiral, only to have him seek help and then realize how overwhelming adulthood is (I am simplifying because the details are really nobody's business). The pandemic, which happened to be the same time period, was a horrible time to be a property investor in Chicago. It resulted in me losing $70,000 in one year with no recourse from any relief program out there, and selling a building for the sake of my mental health. I then purchased a wonderful place from a wonderful man out in Rochelle, about sixty miles from my house. The tenants there are like family, just like my building in Westmont. It has not been all gloom and doom, but the bad has far, far outweighed the good.

On Christmas Eve, Erik's kids were visiting us from their mom's house for the holiday. Recently, their household situation had dramatically changed, and Christmas Eve was the first time the kids could finally be honest with us about the horrors they had been subjected to and living with. We had spent the past six years telling them, "Look...we know that's not true. Just tell us the truth instead of lying. You can trust us." Realistically, though, they could not possibly trust adults. At all. We understood this, and we had waited patiently.

So, we spent over an hour hearing about the horrors of all of the stuff we knew, but just needed confirmation. Again, the specific details are nobody's business. But on January 11, I got a call from my husband less than an hour after I arrived to work. He had been contacted by Emergency Services, and was on his way to his former house, where his ex-wife lived.

The kids, fifteen minutes previous to this, had discovered their mom dead in bed. They are eight and thirteen.

I arrived there, did what I had to do to support my husband, and then talked to God a bit about just desserts and karma and other non-religious stuff that fits in the monster-sized "What Goes Around Comes Around" file, because I was assessing the last six years and predicting the next six. My brain goes in weird places when I am the Calm One, and there are some big feelings around me. The kids had already been picked up at this point, but they immediately came to live with us, along with their two not-properly-cared-for cats.

The past two months have been challenging, for both everyone in my household and everyone who encounters us. Trauma, and the processing of trauma - especially when the kids and the husband were never given the tools to process it properly - is like pancake syrup. You see it, you wash it, it looks gone, and then you realize that it was on your fingertips and has stuck to everything you have touched since then.

The kids have outbursts like toddlers, except that they weigh about ninety pounds apiece. I feel overwhelmed but have to take care of more than my share, since I am the most enlightened in the house. Erik is overwhelmed because - let's face it - this is A LOT. Our jobs are affected. The school counselors are working overtime. Money is basically being tossed out the front door to make up for the fact that all essentials and full-time items needed to be purchased, and items on a normal parenting checklist had somehow been recently neglected. Therapists are being recruited. Moments of mistrust are tense. It is hard. 

But you know what? This knitting project represents progress. We have all come a long way in a very short time, and we are starting to come together as a beautiful unit. If details are what you want, reach out to me privately and I will decide if you are worthy or entitled to them. Other than that, though, I ask for both your donations to St. Jude, and your prayers. They don't have to be to God (the prayers, I mean). If you are the kind of person who talks to the ashes of your dead cat, then just know I totally get that. You do you, and thank you.

The Curse of the Baby Jesus

Hello, friends. This is one of those "I told you that story so I could tell you this one" moments.

First, though, I just finished knitting something that involves non-knitting construction. It is a tablet pyramid, but without the foam or poly-fil, it looks like a really depressed throw pillow. So, there is that.

So, in order to read today's post, you need to catch up on a post from 10 years ago. The Original Baby Jesus Story can be found here. I recommend reading it before going any further.

"Life-sized Baby Jesus" has been a haunting theme in my life for decades. I am Catholic, but I am the generation after the Guilt Catholics, so I can have a bit more lighthearted of a sense of humor about the stiffness of the church. It turns out, so can my mom and my aunt.

Also, my friend PJ, who is mentioned in the other blog post, has found that the phrase is an accurate depiction of life in the front yard of Chicago homes, vivid enough to be used to describe a horrific scene at Midway Airport. The phrase does not have to be humorous to be compelling.

My aunt is visiting from Florida this week, and it is more of a power-visit, racing against the clock to get their genealogy papers in order. I of course volunteer to help, whenever this comes up. I have a subscription to newspapers.com, and it is the best $150 per year I spend, including 7-Eleven coffee every morning. I looked up obituaries for them.

What made this super-duper fun is that they were looking up the Drzastwa family, so of course I got to flex my Duolingo Polish muscles. And by "flex," I mean that I could pronounce the words correctly and then say something like, "Ooh...this is the social page and the report says they were visiting friends out-of-town!" It felt like a hell of an accomplishment to learn enough of a Slavik language in a year and a half to do that.

Over the weekend, I opened the cabinet with the garbage can, so I could throw something away. Amid the papers on the dining room table going to a shredder box, and all of the organized piles of things they were keeping placed neatly in a line along one side, the garbage can held an interesting treasure. Sticking out from the side of the plastic bag was a bejeweled crown. I figured it was a silly old liquor bottle from the 1970's. Oh, no...friends, it was a porcelain Infant Jesus of Prague doll.

I walked down the hall with it in my hand. Jesus was missing one jewel from his crown, and his blessing hand had broken off, so there was a gaping hole in his right side (of course, Jesus would be depicted as both white and right-handed...why make him the Israeli lefty that he most likely was?). I see my mom and my aunt walking toward me, so I gestured to the statue. "Was this the one from Aunt Starlene, or the one from your mom?"

And...the can of emotional worms was open. This post should have come with a trigger warning, sorry.

My mom unintentionally raised her voice. "No, no...oh no. This is a third one! You should have heard me when I opened the damn box and found this thing...it was like, 'Are you kidding me?'"

So, take away the humor for a second. This is a box my mom most likely had opened in the past. It was full of her parents' financial records, other genealogical copies, and old photos. But, behold! Yet Another Infant Jesus Of Prague! Hence, the curse. I can trace the other two, but this one, I am certain, was plopped in there by a dead relative, and it was their way of saying "quit reading our Polish-language obituaries already."

Well, it turns out there was an entire box of Catholic shit accompanying this doll, including his Liberace-style regalia, clearly handmade with love and gorgeous stichery, if you could separate the fact that it is used to dress a porcelain religious figure with only one hand. 

There was a blessing from the Pope, most likely brought by Father Tom when he was visiting from California (he was my great uncle). There was a blessing from the Pope for my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary. 

There were rosaries upon rosaries upon rosaries.

There were two random medals, Our Lady of Olives, and Our Lady of Mount Carmel. We do not know their purpose in my grandmother's life, but there must have been one.

And...then there was the last photo, below. The item in the bottom left contains a seven-foot long rosary in the twist-off portion of the bottom. Then, there is the cross, the teeny Infant Jesus of Prague (I think...might be a Cardinal), the personal holy-water thermos on the right (there is a proper name for that, too), and then the thing at the top.

The item at the top is some sort of dildo-shaped box with pop-open doors, and Jesus appears like a music box to pray at you or something. What is amazing about this item is it can also be found in Joel Dovev's book, Crap At My Parents' House. Joel, I feel you.

I reached out to my friend Father Jim, who is a priest in the city. He already knew about the two original baby Jesus dolls, because when I was in his rectory once, he jokingly asked if I wanted a life-sized bust of Pope John Paul II, so I explained to him that my mom would LOVE it. The Pope landed in Mom's freezer, and it took her a few weeks to find him. 

As you may have read above, my mom was not too pro on throwing out Baby Jesus, but this third one was akin to Phoebe trying to get rid of the beeping smoke alarm on the television show "Friends." I understand why it was in the trash. I asked Father what the proper way of disposing of a porcelain Infant Jesus of Prague doll with a broken and missing blessing hand was (it should be noted that my aunt looked for the missing blessing hand in the box, and it was not there; further proof this was just a curse from a dead Polish relative). He said that the proper way was to destroy it and bury the dust.

Well. The can of worms was suddenly an art project.

This turned into the highlight of my aunt's trip. They went up to my mom's "wooden house" in Michigan, and when I called to ask what their plans were, they had really done their due diligence on how to contain Jesus' pieces. They had discussed how to keep the dust contained, how to get the larger pieces into smaller pieces for easy burial, and the best type of earth in which to bury the dust. Their original plan was to roll over it with the car.

I liked that idea, but with a house like that one, I also felt they were missing a golden opportunity to toss it off of a loft. 

Friends, here is the ceremonial pulverization of the Third Infant Jesus of Prague, in three parts. It was not smooth sailing, as it turned out; the head was on some sort of "wire lollipop." Enjoy.

https://youtu.be/QGzZuxuCIQg

https://youtube.com/shorts/FtWXUSogxJY

https://youtu.be/NU9OajXv9uo

Oh...and please, pray for us.

Dear Mister and Missus Landlord

 

Well, gosh...have I got a story for you. (Not really. My life is not terribly sensational. But I had a teachable moment, anyway.)

So, first, I have had this Zauerball Crazy yarn for probably eight years. I love it. I love to look at it, squeeze it, dream of what it could become, all of it. I recently started thinking, "You know what I need? old-school 1980's legwarmers!"

FYI:  nobody at all needs those. But in my defense, I have no thyroid, I have lost a lot of weight, and I work in a seventy-five year old building with a drafty set of windows. So there they are, below...I knit them in bed on many nights.

That said, I am part of a growing group - unofficially and with no charter or real name, for that matter - called Former Republicans Currently Without Party. The people I know of this ilk are generally money-minded white people, and before extremism literally took over politics, their determination of who gets their vote would be a balance between who handles money the best, and who handles people the best. As this rise of extremism has taken over the discourse, more and more of us can say with confidence that we want nothing to do with the "new" Republicans or the "new" Democrats. There is no party for the middle, and please read this sentence that follows as often as you need:

Neither Libertarians nor Andrew Yang is the answer to the bipartisan but directionless mush, currently swimming in our two-party system.

I have said that I will vote for Hunter Biden's Laptop before voting for Trump in 2024.

So, my story is actually a landlord story. Landlords have had a pretty brutal two years. All of the programs offered in housing were geared toward renters. Renters could apply for aid (but it was not required), landlords could not evict, and now that the eviction moratorium has expired, the eviction records from that time period have been sealed. Background checks have literally gone out the window.

I hate the word "Landlord." I use it because people use it to me, but it just sounds so English and misogynist. So, property owners were given relief, but the basis of the pandemic programs seemed to be that people who own property are rich, and people who rent property had no money in the bank. We were given a four-month forbearance option, meaning we could go up to four months without paying our mortgages, and then we would have to pay it all at once at the end of the time period or risk losing our homes.

My perspective on property investment has changed a bit in this time period. I have a six-flat in Westmont where I have a friend do background checks for me, but I am up-front with the prospective tenants. "Tell me what I am going to find," I say, "and I will take it into consideration."

First rule with this is if the person blames the former landlord for not fixing things, there is likely something going on with the tenant not paying their rent. Not to say there are no slumlords out there, but landlords do have an obligation to keep people safe, and that includes keeping their tenants safe. It is in their best interest to fix broken things, whether or not the tenant has paid. Landlords know this. So this is a red flag.

Second rule is that everyone has a past. See how things are being paid now, today, and not how things were paid seven years ago. Of course the past can indicate the future, but if you can't smell a bullshitter talking about their spending, and then you do a current-home visit (allowed by law in IL) and can't see the piles of hoarded or expensive crap and a sense that they need to be out before they are subpoenaed, then this is not the profession nor the hobby for you.

So yes, I do background checks. Yes, I verify income. Do I disqualify people for everything I used to? No. I do, however, try to imagine how someone would fit in one of the units inside a six-flat, as a member of a community with the other tenants. If someone gives me an indication that they "keep to themselves and never make noise," I am here to tell you that they start shit and always make noise. They do not belong in a building with five other groups of kids who currently do not have the money to buy their own place.

I got an instant message from a woman who said she was looking for an apartment, and I asked what her situation was. She told me she was recently divorced and looking to move with her 20-year-old kid, and that her condo complex now allowed Section 8 and it is not "safe" anymore.

I asked her where she lived now, where the complex allows Section 8. After all, I get asked on a regular basis about our complex, and Dupage County does not have many places where it is accepted. Maybe I could help someone down the road.

Her response was that she knows nothing about that (like, she doesn't know where she lives?), and that she is just stating that these low income people have also made the area low class.

My message back to her was plain and simple. "Then I'm sorry but I am not interested in renting my apartment to you. I wish you all of the fortune in your search!"

Well, what happened next was a bit of a surprise. Sorry to make this sound like clickbait, but, "WHAT HAPPENED NEXT WILL TRULY SURPRISE YOU! (click here)"

She replied that, no problem, but may she ask if she offended somehow? She is not on Section 8 and maybe could have explained herself better.

In other words, she tripled down on telling me that groups of Section 8 housing are low class.

She said that about a year ago, five of the buildings in her area started accepting Section 8 (mind you, I still do not know where she lives). She said the lifestyle and class of people have changed, meaning now that area can be unsafe at night, loud ruckus, and the police have to patrol the area. She told me she chooses not to reside with indigent people that don't work for a living and live off the state. Then she threw in her credit score, I guess as a hook in a really deep pond.

I took this as a teachable moment. Here is my response to whether she offended me somehow, word for word.

"Thanks for asking, Chris. Happy to explain. I have a sec 8 tenant in the city. She has been there for eleven years, and three hours before your message, the last thing she and I said to each other was "I love you." My six-flat in Westmont has a convicted felon, immigrants, people of color rebuilding after bankruptcy, someone who was screwed by their slum lord, a family of fast-food-chain managers, and a DREAMer. I feel strongly in getting a feeling for all tenants in the building getting along, so they can be their own mini- neighborhood-watch when crime occurs. I just feel if you think that all sec 8 voucher holders are trash, then you would not be compatible in the building, personality-wise. Is there anything I can do to help you in your apartment search?"

It should be noted that I made the decision to change how I ran my business after bringing someone in whose previous landlord filed eviction on her four days after she moved into my place. The bottom line is, you just have to get to know people.

The Republican in me would have taken her money because she has a good job and decent credit score. The Democrat in me did not like the fact that she hates a bunch of nameless, faceless people and felt that a police patrol is actually a bad thing. This is why I am without party.

Related: does anyone want to buy my house at 2251 N Laporte Ave in Chicago? It is a great starter home, a great investment if you wanted to rent it or rehab it to make it bigger (both the basement and attic can be expanded), or it is just a nice place to land if you feel you need a change.

We all need a change right now. I started with my outlook. Where will you start?

Horrible People Running Things

 Good (early) morning, everyone! My routine is thrown off at the moment; I would normally be leaving the gym right about now, but my husband and stepkids are out of town. My little guy is sleeping, and I am (seriously) making my own coffee instead of going to the 7-Eleven across the street from the gym.

I have also been knitting! Socks for a coworker, mostly...he has big feet, so I am throwing a different color in the heels and possibly toes just in case it looks like I will run out of yarn.

The pattern which landed in the back of my friend Allie Pleiter's book, Knit or Dye Trying, also has a Super-Secret Symmetrical Sisters Washcloth, and the three-washcloth pattern can be found on Ravelry. This is the original one, but when it was finished, I thought it was too symmetrical. It was based on the idea that the sister relationship is a bit off-center, so I went back and made an off-center version for the book. You can see it on the Ravelry page or in my previous blog post.

Anyway, being a single mom for the weekend has given me plenty of time to think, to look at my almost-four-year-old son and wonder if I am being too strong, or not strong enough, of a feminist role model for him. I have also spent plenty of time contemplating the overturning of Roe v. Wade. 

Disclosure to any newbies who may have wandered here:  I am not an attorney, a judge, or a Supreme Court Justice. I am not a PhD in public policy. I am not anything, really. But I do spend a lot of time verifying things I read on the internet, using sources I know that still spend a great deal of time corroborating their stories' sources and checking facts. I am also a very, very vocal advocate for proper news sites, because indoctrination is a powerful media tool, and it has convinced extremists everywhere that the media can just hide big events from people. In a world where everyone at any major media event, great or small, has a video camera in their pocket. Come on, man.

Anyway, this may sound a bit tinfoil-hat-ish coming from me, but anyone who knows me can vouch for the fact that I am not a conspiracy girl.

First, there is a reason that ruling was handed down on Friday, even though opinions are typically handed down on Tuesday and Wednesday (this is per the Supreme Court's own website). In other words, I am certain I am not the only person spending the weekend thinking about the horrific ramifications of this case while the Justices are long gone from the bench, the Court, and probably even Washington, DC this weekend.

The US Constitution is a funny thing. Seriously. It actually has the phrase "white man" in it. When Roe was originally opined in 1973, it was based on the 14th Amendment, due process and privacy. When it was overturned, it was based on the 10th amendment, government overreach. The ruling, as any pretty-far-to-the-right Republican lawmaker will tell you, is based on the fact that it was ruled incorrectly in the first place, and that the federal government has no business making decisions that should be in the hands of the states. But, this is where the last decade becomes extremely important in our history.

The United States Constitution is based on white men who own property having all the rights in the world. Don't believe me? Skip over the amendments directly related to the Office of the President (and, as long as we are dreaming, the establishment of the senate). On its own, that makes sense because that's how the world was in the 1770's and 1780's. On the other hand, there have been little stakes pounded into the ground over the years to hold onto that tent, and the past decade has seen a ton of these. And it all stems on taxation without representation.

In 1929, the number of Representatives, and therefore the number of electoral college votes, was capped due to the government not wanting to do things like reconfigure office space and provide staffing for more people who would be representing their people. Since then. the population has more than tripled, but the same 435 House seats remain. This is why the census is a big deal.

In 2020, the census was a shit show (sorry, but there is no other way to word it). It was literally at the start of the pandemic, a citizen question was added (instead of asking a person's place of birth) at a time when people have had fear instilled in them over border security, people died and were made homeless in droves, and the response rate had initially been 4% lower despite people being able to respond on the internet, causing more work for the agency to verify addresses at a time where getting help in that agency was a challenge. 

So we now have a census that was a shit show, and the same 435 people representing over 700,000 citizens each, instead of the just-over-200,000 per Representative that we had in 1929. We have people of "questionable citizenship" not being counted. And we have a population threshold per state for this allocation.

Side-note: there have been 1.1 million excess deaths in this country since the pandemic started. By 2020 census numbers, that is 1.5 Congressional seats in today's figures (if using the metric system isn't your thing).

Moving on, Senator McConnell has stated that, basically, his life's work has come to fruition by blanketing the country with conservative judges. How that works continues to be a mystery to me, as the courts should be a place where interpretation of the laws and statutes should not have a political lean, but be that as it may, McConnell is very proud of his record. Then, voting rights have basically been stripped of people all over the country in conservative states. Broad statement, I know, but let me explain it this way:  if you live in a state where your lower-than-middle class district was gerrymandered, and you are no longer allowed to vote by mail, and you work two jobs where neither of the bosses have reminded you that you cannot be fired by going to the polls on election day during your work day, do you think you are going to vote?

Okay, so there is that as well.

Felons can't vote. But they are not exempt from paying their taxes. Taxation without representation.

Our prisons are filled with people of color who are incarcerated for things that white people get incarcerated for at a much lower percentage. No representation. Oh, and if you actually believe people of color are committing this many more crimes than white people, then do your research through academic sources, and not the talking heads on your favorite conservative cable news channel.

And now, literally more than half of women in this country, a quarter of the population, will be living in a state where they are unable to seek the healthcare they need because the providers are gone. I should note here that almost all of these laws are designed to punish the abortion provider and not the woman, but women are already being punished because...I mean...if a woman can't go to her doctor to terminate her pregnancy, then do you think she is just going to carry it to term and raise it and live happily ever after? The short answer, generally, is "of course not." And why should she? 

Except now, the person aborting the fetus is the person getting punished. Which means if an unsafe abortion is performed, it can be blamed on the mother. In Texas, it is a first-degree felony if the fetus dies (side-note:  laws written by non-doctors tend to involve language like this, as the fetus is not alive or dead in the same timeline or way a person is alive or dead, just like the "week-limit" abortion bans are not written in a way which conveys gestational age versus implantation).

Then, our previous president appointed three justices to the Supreme Court after the previous president was blocked from appointing one for his vacancy. The previous president told us in his campaign that he wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade. So if you are keeping track, we have a Congress that did not want to expand because it was too expensive, a population boom, people of color and poor people continuing to be incarcerated and not counted in the census, and now women being set up to be felons. 

The amendments to the document, again excluding the ones specifically about the branches of government, are often to grant people rights that our founding fathers did not see necessary to grant rights (voting and citizenship, among other things). Supreme Court rulings have often granted people protections to the rights of life, liberty, and property as stated in the US Constitution, but being anything but a white man often requires that extra layer of protection. Like it or not, I should be able to own my own body as property, and that includes anything inside of it that is attached to me. If I choose to not get treated for cancer, that is a decision between me and my doctor. If I choose to terminate a pregnancy, that is a decision between me and my doctor. I should be entitled to medical privacy, and my doctor should be trusted to First, Do No Harm. Perhaps the medical doctors know more about biology than the writers and editors of the US Constitution?

If the US Constitution is not amended, then "government overreach" and that 10th amendment allows the white male land-owners in charge of us to interpret that document exactly as it was intended in the 1700's, so only the white male land-owners get everything. Seriously. If it weren't for the US Constitution being amended, black people are not full people even though biologists, medical doctors, historians, eye-witness testimonies, and common sense tells us otherwise. 

Read that again.

And guess what? The same thing will be happening to women (Roe, and then possibly Griswold and Eisenstadt), non-straight people (Obergefell), and possibly interracial couples (Loving), if Clarence Thomas were to either die or divorce his spouse. The US Constitution was set up to be a frame for the country, and while I used to think we were on the right path to progress, it is clear that, in the last decade, the people of power have been masters at preserving white supremacy and misogyny. And I am not having it.

Roe Versus Women

Hello, everyone. I woke up angry and scared, which are two emotions I should not be feeling because of a leaked Supreme Court majority-opinion draft. 

Wait...this is a knitting blog. Stand by.

My good friend Allie Pleiter has published almost sixty titles for both Harlequin and Berkley, and her latest Riverbank Knitting Mystery series includes a knitting pattern inspired by a passage in the book. Her most recent title features a pattern I designed for her; I made a two-washcloth set inspired by the sister story in the book. Here is where you can buy the book:

Amazon.com: Knit or Dye Trying (A Riverbank Knitting Mystery): 9780593201800: Pleiter, Allie: Books

And here is where you can just buy the knitting pattern, if you prefer:

Ravelry: Sisters Washcloths pattern by Amy Kaspar

All proceeds from the knitting pattern go to AHIHA: Stan Mikita Hockey School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, a charity near and dear to my heart.

Okay...back to why I fired this up again. Politico reported on a leaked draft of a majority opinion which would overturn Roe v Wade.

Frankly, I do not care if you think abortion is murder. I do not care if you think life begins at conception. I don't even care if you think abortion should be allowed for absolutely any reason up to the point of birth. 

What I care about is that your opinion is not a doctor's opinion for his or her patient, and someone's privacy is being legislated.

I do not think abortion should be used as birth control. That said, how would I know if someone was doing that, since I have no right to know why someone walks into her doctor's office? At that point - at the point where a woman drives to her doctor's office and walks in the door - my opinion does not matter. A doctor may determine with his patient that an abortion as birth control is the right decision for that patient. I am not a doctor.

If I take my son to the pediatrician, it is nobody's business. For any reason. Including vaccines. Yes, public health should be legislated (I am looking at you, pandemic), but it is nobody's business when and how I get my kid innoculated from measles and whooping cough. I just have to do it so kids don't die 

If Roe v Wade gets overturned, I will not be able to do any of the following without the entire American public thinking it is their business:  get a mammogram, complain about hot sweats, get a vaginal ultrasound to verify my IUD is in the correct spot, discuss menstrual pain, inquire about a lump in my breast, inquire about a lump on my thyroid, inquire about a lump on my labia, complain of abdominal pain, ask about why I am gaining weight, or find out what can be done about my moodiness.

With the rise of extremist conservativism, I have distanced myself from the Republican party. I still believe in better management of money and more responsibility from each citizen, but I can no longer support a party that spent a generation and a half gaslighting people into believing the American Dream is not based in white supremacy. And in this case, for lack of a better term, male supremacy.

Let's take out the privacy piece for a second. There are two facts that have been proven, both by sociologists and by medical anthropologists who study what is done in other countries: restricting abortion kills women, and expanding women's health care saves almost three bucks for every dollar spent. I would think that, in a world where almost an extra million people in this country have died from a pandemic and the service industry is short-staffed because of it, protecting half of the population from more death would be a good idea. I also thought Republicans liked to manage money better than their leftist-counterparts. Well, when Colorado offered free birth control, their abortion rate plummeted by 80%. IUDs, if you are keeping score, are a bit less expensive than an average of ten doctor visits, a two-day hospital stay, a lactation specialist, an epidural, and the eighteen years of formula, food, clothes, school events, and housing that follow it.

Back to privacy. Because as you will recall, Roe v Wade was a 7-2 decision regarding the 14th Amendment, the clause of due process, and privacy. Please go to the comments and tell me the number of occasions you go to the doctor where it is everybody's business. It should also be noted that this decision was sent down at a time where women were being reported in the newspaper as "Mrs. (husband's name)," and not "Mrs. (woman's name)." I am not much of a "this is a slippery slope" person, but who is to say that this will not lead to the Supreme Court thinking it is okay that vigilantes are looking under bathroom stalls to ensure trans people are "using the correct bathroom?" 

Ask yourself if due process is different than it was fifty years ago. Roe was based on a married woman who already had two kids. It was not based in what I hear described by the bigoted extremist Republicans I mention earlier. They are picturing a woman of color with three babies on her hip, ratty hair, no job, and just milking the welfare system. They are picturing the "they" to whom they refer, instead of understanding that people who get abortions are...you know...people.

Finally, look at the economic impact. People who like to say that there are so many families who want to adopt do not look at the fact that an unwanted pregnancy turns into a given-up child. Again, many women having abortions are married with other kids. Or they are kids themselves. Or they are single adults. It does not matter who they are, because ultimately, they are not you. But if you are a woman, this decision being overturned will affect you as well.

When Roe v Wade was decided, one parent could sell shoes full time and afford to buy a house and feed his family on that money. Now, two salaries are often not enough to buy a house, feed everyone, or pay all of the bills. With abortion not being an option, it means pregnant women may not be able to afford prenatal care, mental health care, adoption counseling, parenting classes, vitamins, healthier food for the fetus to grow properly, air filters, water filters, food for the other kids in the house, disposable diapers, gasoline, 

So, here comes an unwanted baby from an unwanted pregnancy. This can only go a few ways, so allow me to lay them out for you. 1) Everything will be fine! 2) The family will manage. And by "manage," I mean there will possibly be divorce, the kids will make it to high school graduation, and everyone will need years of therapy to undo all of the stress-management techniques they learned incorrectly. 3) The family will have to rely on the social services Republicans hate, just to manage, and they will not be readily available in the areas where these people live, and everyone's taxes go up in order to pay for these services. 4) (and this is most likely) Long-term, the life-expectancy of both the mother and the child will be shorter, the education system suffers, the healthcare system suffers, and the mental-health system suffers. The only people who win are attorneys and funeral directors.

I would like to live in a world where everyone wins. But, if I have to lower my bar just a bit, I want to live in a world where I can walk into a doctor's office in peace. After all, that is liberty. I want to be able to get an abortion if I were to get pregnant today (I was told yesterday that I have viable follicles), because I will not be having a baby at 47 years old. That is life. My life. I also know that if I were to get pregnant today, and I had no option to get rid of it, I would be pretty much driven to suicidal thoughts. I am not being flippant. I am very, very fortunate to have a good enough job where I could seek help if that ever happened. That is the pursuit of happiness.

Dear Extremist Republicans:  quit pandering to your base, and try to save the life of your fucking wife while you save your own.

What Hook Do You Hang Your Hat On?

Hello! I woke up thinking about Disney. I am sorry to say, this is how my brain works. 

But first, here is a nice, relaxing video of a yarn swift and ball winder, and obviously the toddler in the background. If I wind yarn without him, it is the most basic betrayal.

Things That Spin - YouTube

I am also on Square Four of the Great American Aran Afghan, and I figure if I have to stop at 9 or 12, those are both baby-blanket-sized, so time will tell what ends this sucker. I am using Berroco Weekend, which has beautiful stitch definition, is light, and is working beautifully for all of the cables. Ooh...and it is washable! So I have that going for me.

Anyway, Disney.

So, yesterday, Gina Carano was fired from LucasFilm (owned by Disney) for posting what reads as a Nazi-sympathizing blurb about having conservative views, and being treated like poop for it. Almost immediately after that, the hashtag #fireGinaCarano started trending on Twitter. Disney did. Then, almost immediately after that, the hashtag #CancelDisneyPlus started trending on Twitter. Claims from her supporters are that she was misunderstood, and that she was actually arguing the point of loving (and therefore the idea of hating) your neighbor, and not ever saying it was okay to beat or hate Jews. It was the journey that mattered, the origin, and not the end result. Nor did both matter; the claim from her supporters is that only one or the other mattered (or so it seemed to me).

The argument was that if Disney fired Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn for posting inappropriate and abhorrent tweets and then rehired him a year later, then why would they fire Gina Carano for the same thing?

Well, they are not the same. And they are. And they are not.

Take the climate of the times out of it for a second. Difficult to do, I know, but seriously. Let's pretend the ideologies of politics were not a thing. 

Every company has a code of conduct, and their employees must adhere to it. It is why employees could have tattoos exposed at, say, Big Box R Us, but they could not have an "I HEART NAZIS" tattoo exposed at Big Box R Us.

(This should go without saying, but in case there is any confusion, the tattoo referenced above is probably the most offensive, abhorrent, horrible, disgusting thing I could think of to put on someone's body, let alone even think. That said, I would bet someone in the world has one, defends it, and does not understand the big deal.)

If I had that awful tattoo, I am exercising my rights to free speech, right? I should not be able to get fired for this! These are my beliefs! Wrong. Separate from not being a person consistent with inclusivity and diversity - two values Big Box R Us embraces - you are exhibiting hate-speech. Hate speech is not allowed at Big Box R Us.

But wait - I got the tattoo before I was hired. Right?

See, that is what happened with James Gunn. His offensive posts were from before he was an employee. Social media is also pretty new, in the grand scheme of the world of employee conduct; employees know now that their employers can search their history and make a determination in their hiring decisions. They did not necessarily know this a decade ago.

Carano is in a different situation. The Nazi-sympathizing post was the last in a line of questionable social media decisions, including another post last year where she put up a photo of a bunch of people engaging in a Nazi salute, except for one guy who refused and then went on to marry a Jewish woman. She also appeared to mock people on Twitter putting their preferred pronouns in their bios, instead putting "beep/bop/boop" for her own, and refusing to apologize or even show understanding as to why that could be considered transphobic.

It is not the posts, though, that are the problem. The comparison to James Gunn is not accurate or fair, for a different reason. The first thing Gunn did was issue an apology, explanation, and another apology. He showed remorse. He had a track record of not being "that guy in the tweets" for a decade and he regretted it.

Carano not only has no regrets, she keeps pushing the idea that she is somehow being unfairly persecuted for her beliefs. I could absolutely be wrong on this, but I feel she will never apologize because she does not see a reason to apologize. She thinks she is just fine as she is. I went back and looked at some of her posts. She is anti-mask, pro-conspiracy-theory (on some level), and much of what she posts is not rooted in fact, but is also not meant as satire or animated humor.

Lets be fair:  maybe she is just fine as she is. I don't know her, I don't watch Disney+, I have such a limited pop-culture parachute that I am not exactly the authority on this. My blog is my way of getting my overnight thoughts out, and do not reflect anything other than a night of thinking. I still have plenty of thinking to do.

But, history has shown me time and again that if someone is not willing to grow, not willing to be vulnerable and teachable, and not willing to entertain the idea that they may be wrong, then that is exactly who they are.

Disney sees it this way as well, I am guessing, and this is not the kind of person they want to employ, no matter how much money she makes them.

They fired her, I would think, for a breach in their code of conduct and for her continual display of a personality incompatible with their family-oriented brand.

The people who want to cancel Disney+ may be the same people who also refuse to shop at Home Depot because their CEO supported Donald Trump, or who continue to eat at Chick-Fil-A because even though they were monetarily supporting anti-LGBTQ+ groups for years, their chicken is just too good to pass up. I don't know.

What hook do you hang your hat on? Will you boycott Disney but continue to shop at Home Depot? Will you throw more of your money at Chick-Fil-A but drive that extra ten miles to Lowes?

You can do either or neither. The hook you hang your hat on is yours, and your own. You can support, advocate or protest however you want. You can even take a knee in front of your television during the National Anthem at a football game, or stand in front of your television with your hand over your heart in the same situation. But the businesses you support have a right to conduct business in their own way, too. If Disney wants to fire an actress for portraying herself as a jerk all the time (which, in my uneducated opinion, is more Charlie Sheen and less James Gunn), they can. And you can be upset about it. And you can pull your business in protest. And the full picture of the businesses you choose to support and boycott is a slice of who you are, if you follow their political leanings and donations. You also may not care, or you may just not know enough about it because you don't care "enough."

We have enough choices here in America where you can always choose to be on your own side of history. Just remember that sometimes, people will see - and judge - where you hang your hat.