5.17.2006
Pre-pregnant? No? Well, the CDC says . . .
Forever Pregnant: "New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves -- and to be treated by the health care system -- as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon."
Holy shit.
Our infant mortality rates are terrible, yes, but I, for one, don't want to be pre-pregnant. I really really don't.
On the other hand, Thich Nhat Hanh has a nice little analogy about pregnancy, and being a plain old adult making choices that nurture your self as you develop and grow over the years. Give yourself what you would give your child.
On the third hand, jeez, pre-natal screening and abortion in cases of seriously abnormal development, or chromosome problems, or childhood lethal disease, or other embryos/fetuses with highly likely "unfavorable outcomes" - please, can we as a culture agree that this is okay? Please? Really, it's not a slippery slope to eugenics and Gattaca. It's just not.
Thanks to Shameless for the link.
Holy shit.
Our infant mortality rates are terrible, yes, but I, for one, don't want to be pre-pregnant. I really really don't.
On the other hand, Thich Nhat Hanh has a nice little analogy about pregnancy, and being a plain old adult making choices that nurture your self as you develop and grow over the years. Give yourself what you would give your child.
On the third hand, jeez, pre-natal screening and abortion in cases of seriously abnormal development, or chromosome problems, or childhood lethal disease, or other embryos/fetuses with highly likely "unfavorable outcomes" - please, can we as a culture agree that this is okay? Please? Really, it's not a slippery slope to eugenics and Gattaca. It's just not.
Thanks to Shameless for the link.
Ropeburn, eyecontact, slapstick, dogcandy
I'm typing with ropeburned hands tonight.
No, nothing kinky. Let me tell you,
I was walking the dog, having a nice time in the summer-ish twilight. I was two blocks from home when poof! there's another dog. She's a pretty little spaniel with a young couple at the other end of the leash. She comes forward to say hi, then hides behind her peoples' legs, then comes forward to say hi, etc, you get the idea.
There's a third person, he's a slightly awkward and deliberately geeky young man (wayfarers-for-eyeglasses and a tweedy 50s sweater). He looks just like I imagine ex-boyfriend Iain looked at twenty-five, eight years before I met him. He checks me out, but it takes a minute for me to notice. By the time I think, aha, he is watching me, I am thirty feet away and my dog is squatting, how droll. Not conducive to my kind of smalltalk at all, so I give up. His friends have climbed into the car but he's standing on the curb with the spaniel, watching me.
A child hollers through a windowscreen across the street, asks what the dog's name is. I holler back "He's Cosmo." The kid starts talking to my dog, and he's looking edgy since he's shitting and we're talking about him. I tell the kid, "Hey, he's busy, it's not a good time" and she pipes down. I scoop and walk on. Cosmo and I turn a corner and get thirty feet toward the nearest trashcan, he's up ahead at the end of his long leash when woop! there's a cat. He chases it back toward me, through a hedge, and we are hopelessly tangled. I follow the line around the hedge-end to the point where my dog busted through, and I'm trying to drag him back through the gap when the people with the dog (remember them?) drive by slowly, the guy with the arty glasses [the Iain-doppelganger] is turning his head slowly as the car moves, his eyes fixed on me, holding a line that goes through a hedge and is attached to a gonzo barking terrier on the other side.
Needless to say, they didn't stop and ask me to join them for a drink.
I gave up on dragging the dog through the hedge (too cruel and probably impractical as well). Instead, I let the line out all the way and walked around the hedge, grabbed my dog by the collar, and started to yank the line and its handle through the gap in the hedge. That's when the cat unfroze and my dog bolted and the line zinged through my hands. I didn't let go, my horsebreaking forebears would be proud, I held on to the [reins] cord despite ongoing injury. That's my utterly unsexy ropeburn story. *curtsy*
I'm reading R.Crumb comics tonight. Crumb draws amazon women, statuesque beauties, stacked girls striding on stack-heeled mary janes. My kind of [drooly leering] guy, makes me feel good all over. I am really really tired of the skinny-little-teenager look that so many grown women cultivate. I watched the wrong movie with the wrong skinny actress at the wrong time this week. I could get fierce about it if I allowed my mind to linger, but diving into Crumb comics for comfort is probably better for my brain chemistry in the long run.
===============================
Update: While I was typing there were slurpy plastic noises from the living room. I was ignoring them, on the grounds that if I can hear him moving around, the dog, he is not suffocating on whatever bit of plastic he is dismantling. I finally, after many minutes, remembered that there is (was) a bag of candy in my backpack, a strange gift from a coworker. The dog, he is smiling now in his crate. He is licking caramel off of his teeth.
No, nothing kinky. Let me tell you,
I was walking the dog, having a nice time in the summer-ish twilight. I was two blocks from home when poof! there's another dog. She's a pretty little spaniel with a young couple at the other end of the leash. She comes forward to say hi, then hides behind her peoples' legs, then comes forward to say hi, etc, you get the idea.
There's a third person, he's a slightly awkward and deliberately geeky young man (wayfarers-for-eyeglasses and a tweedy 50s sweater). He looks just like I imagine ex-boyfriend Iain looked at twenty-five, eight years before I met him. He checks me out, but it takes a minute for me to notice. By the time I think, aha, he is watching me, I am thirty feet away and my dog is squatting, how droll. Not conducive to my kind of smalltalk at all, so I give up. His friends have climbed into the car but he's standing on the curb with the spaniel, watching me.
A child hollers through a windowscreen across the street, asks what the dog's name is. I holler back "He's Cosmo." The kid starts talking to my dog, and he's looking edgy since he's shitting and we're talking about him. I tell the kid, "Hey, he's busy, it's not a good time" and she pipes down. I scoop and walk on. Cosmo and I turn a corner and get thirty feet toward the nearest trashcan, he's up ahead at the end of his long leash when woop! there's a cat. He chases it back toward me, through a hedge, and we are hopelessly tangled. I follow the line around the hedge-end to the point where my dog busted through, and I'm trying to drag him back through the gap when the people with the dog (remember them?) drive by slowly, the guy with the arty glasses [the Iain-doppelganger] is turning his head slowly as the car moves, his eyes fixed on me, holding a line that goes through a hedge and is attached to a gonzo barking terrier on the other side.
Needless to say, they didn't stop and ask me to join them for a drink.
I gave up on dragging the dog through the hedge (too cruel and probably impractical as well). Instead, I let the line out all the way and walked around the hedge, grabbed my dog by the collar, and started to yank the line and its handle through the gap in the hedge. That's when the cat unfroze and my dog bolted and the line zinged through my hands. I didn't let go, my horsebreaking forebears would be proud, I held on to the [reins] cord despite ongoing injury. That's my utterly unsexy ropeburn story. *curtsy*
I'm reading R.Crumb comics tonight. Crumb draws amazon women, statuesque beauties, stacked girls striding on stack-heeled mary janes. My kind of [drooly leering] guy, makes me feel good all over. I am really really tired of the skinny-little-teenager look that so many grown women cultivate. I watched the wrong movie with the wrong skinny actress at the wrong time this week. I could get fierce about it if I allowed my mind to linger, but diving into Crumb comics for comfort is probably better for my brain chemistry in the long run.
===============================
Update: While I was typing there were slurpy plastic noises from the living room. I was ignoring them, on the grounds that if I can hear him moving around, the dog, he is not suffocating on whatever bit of plastic he is dismantling. I finally, after many minutes, remembered that there is (was) a bag of candy in my backpack, a strange gift from a coworker. The dog, he is smiling now in his crate. He is licking caramel off of his teeth.
