Good day, Less-good day

I know that if this is all I have to complain about, my life is pretty darned good.

The good day: Saturday, March 25, 2006

6:45 AM - Sun is coming in the window. Wake up, stretch, snuggle back under the blankets.

7:00 AM - Clock radio comes on to CBC. Weather forecast is good. Cat says prrrt! and comes to snuggle with me. She wants breakfast but will settle for petting.

8:00 AM - Bladder and cat have gotten insistent enough that I get up. Feed cat, eat breakfast, drink tea, listen to CBC.

8:30 - 10:30 - Drink tea. Listen to CBC. Pet Cat. Brush Cat. Play with Cat. Drink tea.

10:30 - Sofa that I ordered back in January delivered without any problems.

11:00 - Grocery shopping. The produce had been looking lacklustre the last few weeks, but this week it's good again.

1:30 - Assorted housework

6:00 - Battlestar Galactica with S.

8:00 - Put on Oilers jersey, go to pub, watch game. Eat pizza and wings. Drink beer.

11:00 - Oilers win. Stagger home singing Ole, Ole-ole-ole

Less-good day: Tuesday, March 28, 2006

2:00AM - Kitty has been galloping up and down the hall playing with her ball since midnight, but now she's pushed it under the fridge. She meows piteously until I get up and fish it out.

3:00AM - repeat

5:30AM - it's not pitch dark out any more, and Kitty decides it's time for breakfast NOW. I burrow under the covers to avoid her toe-biting persuasion, and get back to sleep by 6:30ish.

7:00AM - clock radio goes off. Something is wrong and there's a loud buzz that almost drowns out the voices. Hit snooze.

7:10AM - feed cat. Eat breakfast. Try to listen to the radio but the radio in the living room, but it's even worse than the one in my bedroom.

7:50AM - leave for work. Work isn't bad.

5:30PM - get home from work. Try to put on Disk Drive. CBC FM isn't working any better than CBC AM was in the morning. All non-CBC stations seem to be working fine.

6:20PM - I'm tired and grouchy but S. and I go to the gym anyway. When I change into my gym clothes, I discover the pants I brought aren't the pants I thought they were, and they have a huge hole in the crotch. My panties are zebra-striped so there's no way they'll blend with the black pants. S. promises to watch my six and let me know if the panties make an appearance.

8:00PM - workout salvaged, for the most part. S. assures me my panties were never visible. However I went too hard and did something to my shoulder, and it hurts enough that I have trouble shampooing my hair.

8:30PM - go for dinner, watch the game. S. informs me that while he never saw the hole in my pants, they were worn so thin that he could see the zebra pattern in places anyway. Oilers lose.

Yeah, call me a blinkin waaahmbulance.

Alberta Politics Prediction

Remember how Ralphie came to power?

I was just a kid then, but as I recall, the deal was, Getty had way overspent us into debt and wrecked all sorts of things and omg omg it was like, so awful, and we kept on and on hearing how awful it was.

And then (cue the trumpets, ta-da) Klein showed up to save us all and the PC Party was reborn from its ashes and we massively voted for change by re-electing the same party all over again.

Now Klein is just embarrassing himself over and over and even conservative papers like the Sun are going on about how terrible he is.

But lo, what hope from yonder window breaks? Why, 'tis the dissident Oberg, valiantly calling out the fallen saviour.

Who wants to bet, the PCs are reborn yet again under Oberg's dissident mantle, and Albertans vote for the same party that's been in charge for the last 35 years, because it's time for a change.

Where we've been (in case anybody is checking)

Banff! Pictures once I download them from my camera.

I think it was the best little holiday I've ever had. We lived like dogs, pretty much. Ate, slept, went for walks, ate some more, napped, you get the picture. (Also sat in the hotel hot tub and the hotsprings, but that's not so dog-like)

OMG the things we ate!

There's this little vegetarian/vegan restaurant tucked way up on the top floor of the building where they make fudge in the window and deliberately blow the chocolate smell on to the street through a strategically placed vent. The restaurant is called Nourish. It's all done in red and orange and brown and feels warm and cozy. Two people work there, a thin, slightly stooped old man who speaks quietly and slowly, and a vivacious young woman.

As we sit down, the old man starts his spiel - it's the same for every customer - about special dietary needs, their to die for chocolate amaretto cheesecake, and instructions to go back down to the counter to sniff all the teas, which they blend themselves. So we sniffed all the teas, a dozen or so, from traditional things like chai and jasmine and earl grey, to blueberry rooibus and things I couldn't pronounce and therefor I don't remember.

We started with a roasted garlic and red pepper soup that I'm salivating thinking about now. If we had been the only customers, we would have licked our bowls. I was tempted anyway. S had an amazing sandwich on grilled sourdough with caramelized onions, portabello mushrooms, red peppers, and organic cheddar cheese. I had one of their signature sandwiches, avocado, pear, and brie. Also very good, although a bit bland, probably better with the swiss cheese they normally make it with because that would add a bit of zip. And that to-die-for cheesecake he was selling us on when we came in? He wasn't kidding. It was When Harry met Sally good. We finished with a pot of jasmine tea - you could see the flowers - and even though we sipped it very slowly and it steeped the whole time, it never got bitter. We went back the next day and bought some jasmine and some earl grey to take home. The earl grey was, bar none, the best earl grey I've ever had.

And then another day we ate in this faux Irish pub, which was also phenomenal. It took a whole page of their menu, in three columns, to list all the beers they had on tap. I had a Wild Rose Wraspberry Ale. I couldn't taste the raspberries, but it was refreshing and had a zippiness to it that was really pleasant. S. had a Smithwick's, which he apparently liked, but it gave me bitter beer face.

Crab, asparagus, and Guinness soup, anybody? Hell yeah. Turkey, strawberry, and brie sandwich? OMG.

Other than that, our hotel was cheap, good, located just the right distance from the busy part of Banff Avenue, had a fantastic included continental breakfast with what appeared to be homemade granola, and the staff were really helpful and genuinely cheerful.

We had meant to do all sorts of stuff, like go to concerts at the Banff Centre, go up the gondola, and maybe even go for little hikes, but in the end the only hiking we did was up and down the touristy shopping strip. Somehow that didn't matter and we came home refreshed and happy.

Transparency and Accountability my Ass

Mr. Harper's decision that his cabinet ministers can't talk to the media about anything other than "a Federal Accountability Act, a GST cut, a child-care allowance, tougher criminal sentences, and a patient waiting-times guarantee" without clearing it with the PMO - and that even includes things like writing letters to the editor - is so far beyond ironic I don't know if I should laugh or cry.

Federal Accountability Act
Let's keep the media away from our cabinet ministers.
More free votes in the House of Commons.
Don't talk to the media without clearing it with me.

Yeah, it's the Liberals we should be mad at for their culture of entitlement. For their lack of accountability. For their lack of transparency and unwillingness to be forthright with the People of Canada, and that's why we voted for a new, ethical, responsible, responsive leader.

Pardon me while I go buy a bridge.

While we're on the subject of people like Michael Coren

(A continuation of my previous post)

Who the hell does this guy think he is anyway? Where does he get off thinking he can tell me what's best for the rest of my life, when he hasn't even met me? Me, and every other woman on the entire frickin' planet.

I wasn't really happy with the last post I wrote. In fact, I put it up, took it down, and put it up again. I guess I made a few decent arguments, and got in some good rhetorical jabs, but that's just not what it's all about. Logic and facts and argument have their place, but in the end, that's not what it's about. This is personal. This is about the proponents of forced childbirth thinking they can impose their will on me personally, and on every other woman who might become pregnant at a less-than-ideal time in her life. That they know me better than I do, and better than my doctor does.

So here's my story right now:

I've suffered from depression since my teen years, and been on a variety of medications. None of them has worked until this last one I've tried, and it seems to have pierced my storm clouds and let me have a bit of my real personality back. The side effects are nasty, but worth it.

I'm in a committed, monogamous relationship with the man I hope will one day become the father of my children, should we decide children are something we want. Our relationship does include sex from time to time - or at least, I hope it will again once I start feeling good enough to be up for it. We're using contraception, but it's only 99% effective, and if I should get pregnant right now, I'll have a really difficult decision to make.

The medication I'm on is known to cross the placenta in the late stages of pregnancy, and really mess up the newborn baby. It also passes into breast milk.

My choices would be:
- Carry the pregnancy to term, while still on the drug, and risk seriously messing up the baby
- Try to get off the drug before the third trimester, and have to deal with a severe discontinuation syndrome, the possible return of the depressive symptoms, and then the risk of post-partum depression
- Abort

The only person who can make that decision is me - with the input, of course, of my partner, my doctor, and anybody else close to me I want to confide in.

Every woman's decision to continue or discontinue her pregnancy is just as personal, just as intimate, as my decision would be.

Anybody who thinks s/he can make rules across the board for what every woman should do is guilty of, at best, supreme arrogance.

Please get your facts straight, Michael Coren

Pro-lifers make me tired. Especially male pro-lifers, who will never be faced with the decision of what to do about an intruder inside their body. I'd have a bit more tolerance for them if they could get their facts straight, but it's really hard to argue from facts when you're wrong. Michael Coren's March 11, 2005 piece in the Toronto Sun is no exception.

Coren claims that by day 19, an embryo has "an entire nervous system established." Which is interesting to me, since at day 16, according to the Visible Embryo website, the layer of cells that will eventually give rise to not only the nervous system, but also the skin, nails, hair, lens of eye, lining of the internal and external ear, nose, sinuses, mouth, anus, tooth enamel, pituitary gland, and mammary glands, has just formed; by day 19 there is a groove that is the precursor of the nervous system. But then pro-lifers do like to confuse potential with actual.

Here are the arms and legs at 28 days that Mr. Coren waxes so poetic about:


But let's pass on the rest of Coren's overly sentimentalized vision of fetal development and talk about the rest of his argument.

We invariably hear people who favour what they describe as "choice" say they would prefer there to be fewer abortions. Yet if abortion is merely the removal of tissue without any moral or emotional consequences there is no reason for there to be fewer of them.

Besides, um... that even if they are safer and less painful than childbirth, they still hurt, and pose some risk to the woman? (Post-born women do matter, right Mr. Coren?) And I'm sure Mr. Coren has never, ever heard people who are in favor of removing tapeworms or cancerous tumors wish that there was less cancer or fewer tapeworms.

And then Coren trots out all the standard canards - that a life is a life and has the right to live, and it doesn't matter if there's overpopulation or people who want to adopt, that life has a right to live regardless. Well what about the woman?

I'd recommend Coren try the following thought experiment:

Imagine getting home from work one snowy and frigidly cold night, and discovering an intruder in your house. His clothes are thin and if you make him leave, it's almost certain he'll freeze to death. He smells really bad and it's making you nauseous. On top of that, he's already started damaging the place, throwing trash around and getting things dirty. He's going through your fridge and eating all your food. His breath smells of alcohol and he has a crazy look in his eye. You have no way of knowing whether he'll just go to sleep, or whether he'll turn on you or attack you.

Should you be compelled to allow this person to live in your house until spring?

If not, why should a woman be compelled to allow someone to live inside her body and use its resources, leaving the body irreparably changed, for nine months?