I promise I'm not a meth head

I was carded today. I was carded and denied so my younger sister had to make the purchase.

Nope, I wasn't buying booze. I was trying to buy Claritin D.

It's always somewhat entertaining to have my drivers license recorded, sign multiple forms and then fork over thirty bucks for two weeks worth of pills that may or may not make my life bearable depending on what time of year it is, or if it's rained (or not), which way the winds from Asia are blowing, and if any of my friends have adopted dogs. But, not today. Nope, I hit my federal limit. Not of campaign contributions, but of pseudophedrines.

Here's the thing. I've needed an antihistamine with a decongestant pretty much every day of my life. Then I married someone who also learned the wonders of allergy meds. Now, I have one of those cafeteria plans (no, not for a dining hall card) but a "we take money out of your check before they tax it so you can pay for allergy meds, copays and band aids at a discount - so long as you remember to show us the receipts" card. So, that means that I buy Claritin for both of us.

According to the federal government, having a family problem with allergies isn't okay. Buying enough decongestants for two people means you probably live in a trailer that is about to blow up, cause you failed high school chemistry. Oh and did you know that the fight against meth was the same fight as the one against the terrorists? Yep, attached to the PATRIOT act. So, yes my husband can start buying our decongestants, but if you happen to have a teenager with allergy problems you're both screwed, cause minors can't buy an OTC decongenstant for themselves.

So, how about this? I promise not to make illegal substances. I only want to use a controlled substance to control my sinuses. Because achy face ain't the same as meth face:

I promise.

I want to be friends with Sarah Haskins

Because she is awesome:



So smart. So funny. Watch them all here.

Oh, and I want to work for Michelle Obama.

The Austin Chronicles: Everything is Bigger in Texas

In San Francisco I lived behind a taqueria. Near many taquerias, an Italian restaurant and a handful of corner markets, all off an alley filled with the garbage, recycling and compost bins of all the aforementioned establishments in addition to multi-family dwellings, half of which were populated by twenty somethings with limited housekeeping skills and questionable hygiene. And I never saw a cockroach. Not once. Then I moved to Texas.

Texas doesn't just have cockroaches, it has four different sizes of cockroach:

There are the small ones.

There are medium sized ones that fly. Yes, they fly. And they like to aim for the head.

There are the large ones that you don't want to kill because it feels like you are squashing a small rodent.

Then, there are the extra large "tree roaches" that I did not have the pleasure of meeting until they hitched a ride with a roommate who moved in from Houston. These are the ones that are as long as a salad fork, and when you approach them with your good-for-you-and-the-planet bug spray, they flex their muscles and give you the finger.

I'm not afraid of cockroaches. I certainly won't run out of the room. You've got to keep an eye on these suckers before they disappear. Even the giant ones can squeeze under the baseboards, and then reappear in your sock drawer. Everyone from Texas told me that they are normal. It's a hot and humid place for most of the year, so they kind of come with the territory. Uh, uh. No way was I going to spend two years with roommates that ate my food and didn't pay rent. Besides, I'm a California girl. Cockroaches aren't normal. They are the harbingers of food poisoning. And, they are gross. Oh, and did you know they like to walk on the ceiling and then let go every so often? Hell, no.

Luckily my sister came to visit shortly after I moved in. She had gone to UCLA and lived off-campus. Few people know that four neighborhoods surround UCLA: Bell Air, Hollywood, Frat and Sorority Row, and the student ghetto. If you don't live on campus, or have parents that are willing to pay for an apartment next to the Starbucks that Drew Barrymore goes to, or tan yourself into oblivion in a sorority, you live in what once was a neighborhood of quaint California bungalows, and has since been soaked in decades of cheep beer. Which means that amidst all the underage drinking, you also have cockroaches.

My sister was also not willing to live among bugs that would survive the apocalypse, so she discovered the wonders of boric acid. Forget chemical laden sprays - good old fashioned boric acid. I mean, it even has a cowgirl on it - obviously meant for Texas, right?

So, we did what any good Texan does, we went to the Home Depot (that, dear reader is another story entirely). But, we weren't sure if the 20 mule team was enough for Texas roaches, so the two sisters from California who had been in Texas all of a few weeks asked an employee. I'm pretty sure they'd taken him off a ranch in Lubbock and slapped an orange vest on him that day:

"Does boric acid get rid of all kinds of cockroaches? Even the really big ones?"

"Nah, you need something stonger."

"Really, what?"

"Shotgun."

I swear to god, he shrugged his shoulders and spat out chew right there in the Home Depot. But, I kind of wanted my security deposit back, so we asked him to point us in the direction of the boric acid, instead.

The Marriage of Economic Civil Rights

Using your "morals" as an excuse to refuse birth control, or emergency contraception, or any other prescription or medical procedure is inexcusable. This is not the 1400's: "Oh, I'm sorry, I can't save (or better) your life because the Almighty God wills it so." Uh, uh. We have moved through the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment, so lets move on and do our jobs.

But, in the argument over Prop 8 that quickly went to the economics of weddings, I tended to think that if a florist or caterer didn't want the business of non-hetero couples, so be it. It's your economic, social and (yes) moral loss. I mean we boycott businesses for political reasons all the time, this seemed to be in that vein.

In my own search for vendors, I actively sought out if not outwardly feminist folks, people who did not swallow the WIC Kool Aid.* I wasn't interested in being around people, and more importantly, giving them my money, if all they were going to do was talk about my big daaaaaaaaayyyy and freak out when then realized I wasn't wearing a veil.

But, then I read this blog by Kevin Drum. And he brought up an very good point:

After all, do same-sex couples really want to hire photographers and caterers who make it clear they loathe them? Probably not. But then, you might have asked the same thing 50 years ago: do Southern blacks really want to eat at lunch counters where they obviously aren't welcome? As it turned out, yes.

It turns out, this really isn't about a simple case of wedding vendors, after all.

But once they start covering bog ordinary commercial establishments that don't have even a tenuous connection to a church and want to discriminate merely because they don't like gays — well, that's a line that gets pretty hard to draw pretty fast. What's worse, in some places it's a line that would essentially take over entire towns. If a caterer can refuse to sell me a wedding cake just because I'm gay — despite state law that would normally outlaw such discrimination — can a landlord refuse to rent me and my newly married partner an apartment despite fair housing laws saying he has to?

So this really isn't about just hiring vendors. It is about rights, no matter how you slice it, because we cannot separate economics from civil rights. We can certainly separate marriage from religion. Have a super religious wedding if you want, not everyone needs to take communion, or jump over a broom, but everyone should have the opportunity to file a simple piece of paper with their county clerk and enjoy the municipal, state and federal rights that it provides. Thank goodness it looks like we are on our way.

*No, not the social program for mothers and children...the Wedding Industrial Complex. Trust me, this is not an exaggeration.

Hooked on Phonics Worked for Me

The other day I made up a new word. I was instant messaging a friend who was regaling me with a tale of the characters who inhabit the Oakland Public Library.

The only appropriate response was to this particular tale was an typed exclamatory groan.

But, I was distracted by the depths of the internet and what started as a nice, clean reply became a far more worthy response:

geezus

Yep. But, guess what? There truly is nothing new under the sun. Though, this isn't exactly what I was thinking:

1. Geezus
He's da man. We often invok [sic.] him when something is intense.
Geezus!Right there, what a gorgeous chick.

Gawd damnit.

The Austin Chonicles: I'm Here to Learn

I confess. I'm a nerd. I love school.

I don't just love learning--which I also love to do. I love going to school. I love having syllabi, and assignments, and deadlines, and thesis statements. I love buying a new multi-subject notebook and making sure I have pens and pencils (please, highlighters are so gauche) for the first day of class. More than anything, I love reading books and articles and discussing them in a group around a table in a room that was decorated in the mid-1970's, probably with fake wood laminate and harvest gold industrial carpet. I really rather despise the grey and blue shiny new multimedia rooms, leave that for non-humanities folks. Yes, it's true. I'm a liberal arts addict.

So, it only made sense that I go to graduate school. Ah, but to study what? Why, Women's and Gender Studies!

And at what venerable institution? The University of Texas...of course?

Yes, Women's and Gender Studies.

In Texas.

In the George W. Bush years...

Okay, okay, it was in Austin. But, let me tell you, it was still Texas.

As many, many people have pointed out, a graduate degree (especially in the humanities, and particularly in Women's Studies) won't land you a job. But, then we were doing this for the pure love of it, right? So, no. I am not employed as the person that hands out the shining new syllabus, but I don't regret my two years knee deep in books last checked out in 1982 and pdf's of the New York Times archives. Because, did I mention this was in Texas?

Sure, I could have studied in the liberal bastion of San Francisco or Boston, but there were enough of me in the Bay Area, and I couldn't bring myself to live in the snow. Besides, this was the belly of the beast! I could learn so much! Have such engaging, heated conversations! And I did. But, not quite in the way I had planned.

So, let me introduce you to "The Austin Chronicles." Snippets of my time in Texas.





...duh, you have to wait.

Teach Your Children

I'm a big fan of the DIY crafting movement that has become mainstreamed recently, just in time for this nice recession of ours (more on that later). It has so many good things about it: it values creativity, it's anti-corporate, there is a nice strain of eco-friendliness to it, and it injects new value into many skills that were previously relegated to the feminine domestic sphere.

But then we get things like "Crafting for Boys."

Okay, I get it. In some crafting circles it's hard to find projects for men, and many attempts to fill that niche have been incredibly disappointing (really, Debbie? A stripper scarf?). But, sweater patterns for adult men, which often require different sizing and shape, are far different than projects for children. Until you hit puberty, a sweater is pretty much a sweater. It just takes a color change and some embellishment to gender it up.

But, when it comes to play, why do we continue to count tents and capes for dress up as something only in the boy realm? Even the author admits that many of these projects are for girls, too. And she even talks about using some of them as a child herself. So, obviously this early indoctrination of gender isn't a given, though some people would like us to think that it is.

So, okay, you have sons and we want to make sure all our kids feel special, but is reinforcing gender roles really how to make them feel that way? And besides, its a pretty short and slippery slope until we get to this nonsense.