sakon76 | Entries tagged with politics

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One little boy napping in his bed, the other napping on my left arm. I would like to be sewing right now, but I'm pretty certain Jazzy will wake if I try to move him.

Mt. ToBeRead is way too tall ATM, but I've gotten through another book I should blog about soon, as well as volume 8 of A Bride's Story.

In the background I hear the humming of the 28-gallon fishtank we took possession of from my parents yesterday. A thorough cleaning, new gravel, and running the rocks and plastic plants through the dishwasher has hopefully taken care of the snail infestation. I've added in a few live plants as well, and as they grow I hope to get more and eventually phase out the plastic ones altogether. Currently the tank is inhabited by four neon tetras and one catfish.

I am so very, very unhappy with the political state in the USA right now. I remember a few years ago a friend joked that what was screwed up in comic books was not the powers or outfits or interpersonal relationships - it was the politics. Such as Lex Luthor getting elected president and declaring Gotham no longer part of the country when it got devastated by an earthquake in the No Man's Land arc. At the time, I agreed and found his point funny. I'm not laughing any more. Time to get Jazzy his passport. Partly to visit his grandparents in the UK this winter, but also partly... just in case. In case things continue to go horribly, horribly wrong.

Today is one of those days where I wish I had a flagpole in my yard. So I could fly the American flag at half-mast. A good man leaves office and is succeeded by a man who is the cream of society... in the Pratchett sense of "or at least that bit that floats to the top."

BUT!

Today redeems itself on a personal if not national level because I am now an auntie!!!! My niece Sibyll was born this morning. ^_^

Trying not to cry. Wonderful Husband and I are attempting to research (as the site has infamously crashed) immigration to Canada. It's either that or the UK, but we're a touch leery of the political situation there too, given Brexit. One country has the advantage that three of the four of us are already citizens and that we have family and friends there. The other has the advantage that we could pack all our stuff into a moving van and drive there and maybe not end up too far from my sister.

How could/did this happen?

What happened to the country I grew up believing in?

I'm going to bed, and wishing I could wake up and find out this was just a nightmare. This is not the government I want my boys to live up under, and not the world I want them to grow up in.

I'm staying well away from politics and their debates because I already know who I intend to vote for, and it's not the candidate who will send us back to the political stone age. And, honestly, my policy of not watching television is affirmed by what I see the times some comes across my radar. The cafe Wonderful Husband and I grabbed lunch at today was showing court TV. Ugh. I'm sure there is good, interesting viewing material out there. I just don't feel any need to have to search for it.

Which is not to say that my own life is so interesting at the moment, or ever has been. Big things going on: as of yesterday, Jazzy now has a bellybutton! And today we went to his first session of Mommy Matters, a group that I took Squiddle to for two years, until he aged out. While we were there, I shopped for maternity bras at the attached store. They did have some of my favored style (the Bravado Supreme, which has been discontinued) in stock... but none in my size. Sigh. I did find a working alternative, however, and bought three.

I also contacted Mother's Milk Bank today to get re-registered to donate milk to them again. I have been pumping and freezing some already, but since I'm on antibiotics at the moment, those particular bags are earmarked for Jazzy for times I need to be away from him.

I'm poking away on various quilting projects, but it's too hot this week (a high of 105 the other day!) to do more than piecing. And I'm vaguely dreading Wonderful Husband going back to work on Monday. I'll be fine, I'll do fine, I know that... it just means I'll need to stop relying on him so much for help with Jazzy in the middle of the night.

So an American President has actually given lip service to the revolutionary concept that all people are created equal, endowed with certain inalienable rights, chief among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Part of me says it's about damn time. Another, more cynical, part of me notes that it's an election year.

And then there's the whole lovely traffic situation last night, the same thing that happens every time he comes into town. :)

That all aside, though, I spent a good portion of last night working with the Singer 101 on a skirt for Faire. I have decided she (the sewing machine, not the skirt) has earned the name "Mikaela." (All my vintage machines have "m" names - Maggie the handcrank, Moraga the treadle.) The reasoning behind the 101 getting this most special name is that she may look a little trashy (the cabinet needs work), but she's long and lean and elegant, runs as smooth as silk, is mechanically sound (after a day to think about its drink of oil, the bobbin winder works again), and came through when I needed her.

The 101 is a somewhat curious machine. Singer only made it for seventeen years (1920-1937; Mikaela dates from 1931), which seems a long time until you consider that some models they manufactured for upward of fifty years. It's not popular among vintage sewing machine collectors, and I'm not entirely sure why. It was the first machine Singer made that was completely and only intended for electric use. I'm told it doesn't quite have the power of its younger sister, the much-loved 201; maybe that's why? Or maybe its visual oddities offend people's visual sensibilities. Every other sewing machine I know of has a half-moon needle plate; the 101's is square. Stitch length is controlled by a knob on the bed, rather than the trunk, of the machine.

Well, whatever the reasons, I like Mikaela. She's helping me turn two grotty pieces of fabric into a decent skirt. The body of the skirt is a cream linen-look fabric that was riddled with holes on the ends and along the selvedge; I managed to salvage a 99" circumference skirt out of it. Problem is, I could cut enough off one selvedge to get rid of the holes, but doing so on the other side as well would leave the skirt far too short. So I took some sage probably-cotton and applied a wide guard to the bottom of the skirt. The holes on the fabric can still be seen from the inside, but I will patch them by hand later. I've got one welt cut of the same fabric and will probably do a second as well, but if neither can get applied in time for tomorrow, that's fine. My main task for tonight will be pleating the skirt, sewing on a waistband, and applying hooks and eyes.

Had the final writing class for the term. There were two stories that got edited before the party part of the class began. And, in a class that's 2:1 women to men, I think I explained badly why one of the stories offended me.

Now, it's a half-military half-cow ranch setting story written by a man. And I have no problem with the fact that there are no women in the mercenary corps his main character trains and fields. The military is still an extremely male dominated area. I do have a problem with the fact that in this ten pages, the men finish a business meeting... and the women bring the food. That's all they do. I have a problem with the fact that the 3IC of the operation gets a full description of his military background... and his wife gets described solely by her looks. I have a problem with their son being a straight-A student, football quarterback who has to beat off the girls and sometimes their angry boyfriends, and he's a crack martial artist because he's his father's son... and the daughters are a pair of lovely girls who are off at college.

I am sorry. I am more than a wife, and more than a pretty face attached to a pair of tits and a vagina. I find the implication that all I'm good for is bringing the food and bearing the children to be extremely offensive.

And then, after I finished saying why I found the piece offensive, one of my other (male) classmates, concluded and dismissed with "Well, now that we've heard from Women's Lib...."

I realized I was a feminist the day one of my college professors pointed out that it was only due to feminists that any of us women were even sitting in the room. And while I don't go as far as a lot of the people whose blogs I read do, I get pissed off when anyone tries to tell me, even tacitly, that there are things I can't or shouldn't do just because my chromosomes match. That I am less than an equal. That my opinions, based as they are on the concept of all humans being equal, are not worthy of consideration.

Anyone who is in love with the idea that having a penis makes them better than someone who keeps their genitalia sensibly tucked inside? Can go insert their superior genitalia up their own anal orifices.

And I'm probably still explaining myself badly.

Sorry for venting. It's been one of those days.

So as far as I was aware, the Pit of Voles has a rule about "no fiction of real, living people."

Out of a sense of curiosity, I looked at the directory for fanfiction of The King's Speech. Which could very easily meet these requirements; I don't know if any of Lionel Logue's children are still alive, but of the other secondary characters, only Queen Elizabeth II is still around.

Except there's fiction about her in that category. She even has her own character listing.

HOW, exactly, does that fit "no RPF"?

So there are anti-abortion protestors (who seem to be led by old white men) who stand with their stupid, hurtful signs every Saturday morning on a street corner I pass to go home from bellydance class.

Am I allowed to hope that they were taken by the ~~raptors~~ Rapture?

I generally don't post about politics, feeling that they, like religion, are things best kept to oneself as they're deeply personal and easily lead to strife. I discuss them with my husband, my parents, and (far more rarely) with my close friends, and that's it.

( A small amount of politics. )

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Location: work

My coworkers are discussing the killings at Virginia Tech, and I am trying not to be sickened by their conversation. Thus far they have decried immigration, antidepressants, and Buddhism. Several of my friends, not to mention my Wonderful Husband, are immigrants to America. Several of my friends are on various antidepressant medications. If I had to label my own personal beliefs, I'd probably fall closest to Buddhism out of any organized religion I've yet encountered.

I've always known that I don't fit well into this office, but I keep my mouth shut, work in my upstairs office, and deal with it. It's a job I can do well, and they pay me decently for it. Still, I'm at least fifteen years younger than anyone else here and the only one in any kind of happy relationship. While I'm not the only person with certain political leanings, I'm apparently the only one who keeps her political and religious views to herself. Whatever happened to kindness, decency, and forgiveness? Whatever happened to compassion and politeness? I'm the one of the younger generation here--I'm supposed to be the one with no manners. Yet here I am, the one keeping her thoughts to herself.

I wish there was anything I could do to make this world a place where things like Virginia Tech don't happen. I wish some of my friends weren't fighting with one another. I wish I were a better person, stronger, more capable of fixing the things that are broken.... Instead, I feel like all I can do is cry.

Current Mood: depressed
Current Location: work