Dear Saffron

Someday you will be a teenager. And when that day comes you may start to have feelings for other teens. The way they smell, the way the smile, the way they laugh. All of these things might start to make you feel like smiling and giggling and blushing. And if, heaven help you, you are like your mother you might start to get the idea that you need a certain special someone. That this other person “completes” you. That the affection of this other person gives you worth.

And when that day comes, I want to say no.

No.

No.

You don’t need to wait on anyone else to complete you. You don’t need to sink into nothingness if that someone leaves. You don’t need to do or be anything for anyone else but yourself. You don’t need to wait for someone else to come in and save you.

You, are beautiful. Even if your skin is oily and your hair is frizzy and your teeth are crooked. You are beautiful. You are whole, complete, one. Live for yourself, enjoy your life, make up your own mind, find your own happiness.

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My thoughts coming later, I just wanted to get this up now. Go ahead and start the discussion in the comments.

And I’m putting this out here now, anti-breastfeeding trolls will be deleted. Don’t like it, suck it.

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photo credit: Rob Lee 4396710

So Michael and I walk into a furniture store …

Wait, let me back up a little bit. Michael got a fat bonus from work, a really fat bonus. And we decided to spend part of it on a new bed for the boys. At the old house they each had a small bed of their own. But their room in this house is shaped different and fitting in 2 beds along with toys and a dresser doesn’t work. So we decided to go the bunk bed route.

So Michael and I walk into a furniture store. Several actually, for what felt like days and days. We walk into this last one and I’m ready to walk back out. Everything has deer or horses or elk on it. There’s a camo print recliner. There are deer heads hanging on the wall. It wasn’t a pretty sight. But they did have a bunk bed, solid wood, for a reasonable price. One that Evan loved. So we started talking, debating with each other how low we thought we could haggle and if we wanted to try just one more store.

And then, the guy earned my money.

He’s sitting on a bed frame waiting patiently for us to decide, chatting happily with the boys. And then he starts talking about his kids. Four kids, siblings, older, in the process of adoption. He’s telling me how they were in foster care for most of their lives, tossed around a lot, had more things happen in their lives than anyone should. They’re older, almost teens, coming at him with a host of issues most people will never understand. And he’s looking at my boys, smiling in a sad way, explaining how the solid oak bed frame is sturdier so it can’t be kicked apart.

And I’m thinking he probably knows that from experience. And my mind raced straight to Christine.

I gave Michael the look. He pulled out the checkbook.

With all the “save the babies, give them to adoptive families” we hear we forget about the older kids sitting in foster care for years. Sibling groups that no one wants. Kids with issues, baggage, maybe more than a few problems. The ones that get left behind for that fat little newborn.

This, this is the essence of voting with your dollars. I absolutely support a family willing to adopt and older sibling group with issues. And so I bought the bunk bed at his store. And made a mental note to buy from his store whenever we need other furniture. Even if it means decorating like we live in a hunting lodge.

I could learn to love an elk print couch.

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photo credit: kyz

Remember when I said I don’t like Christians? This doesn’t help change my mind:

The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn’t change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care.

And neither does this.

But now, it turns out, that he joins the ranks of the unjust kings of ancient Israel, unjust rulers, to which all these Biblical allusions are directed, who should be slaughtered, if not by God, then by just men.

Or this for that matter.

He describes tactics such as using girls in bikinis to pass out fliers advertising a beach party, and then, when people show up looking for drinks (which of course were non-alcoholic) and entertainment, they got a whole faceful of Jesus. Or how he and his buddies were encouraged to pose as researchers doing a survey on religious practices, so that when people would tell them they don’t go to church, they’d use that as a hook to try to get them to come into theirs. Evangelical Christians are doing the live action version of being a virus inside an email that says “Check This Out!!”

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photo credit: jetheriot

The Stupak amendment has stirred back up the abortion debate in the public sphere. Not that the debate ever really ends, just that it simmers for a while under other headline topics.

There are two areas where abortion gets people screaming mad. Fundamentalist religious people, especially those who are male and will never face this choice in their lifetimes. And mothers.

Oh we mothers can get testy over the abortion debate. Some women experience pregnancy and birth and decide a woman deserves the choice of where she wants this experience herself. Others go the other route, putting the not-quite-yet-life of a clump of cells above all else. Especially the woman who has to carry said clump of cells. After all she should have kept her legs shut/can just have an adoption/doesn’t really know what she’s doing/will be more traumatized by a quick procedure than 18 years of raising an unwanted child/fill in the blank.

I’m a mother. I’m a mother because I choose to be a mother. Not because I wasn’t legally able to prevent it. Not because the government forced me to become one. Not because someone else’s religious beliefs were shoved down my throat. Because I choose. Choice. And it’s that choice that makes my children wanted. They are not a burden or a punishment for having sex. They were my choice.

Listen to the argument enough and you start seeing a lot of talk about the “pre-born”. We have to protect the pre-born, we have to save the pre-born. I have to flush my sandwich because it’s just pre-shit. I’m going to bury you now because you’re not alive, you’re pre-dead. I should hand Evan the car keys because he’s a pre-adult.

So many get to hung up on the potential for the clump of cells that they forget that it’s just that, a potential future. And in the battle for the pre-born the ones who are already born get kicked to the way side.

I’ve seen quite a few fights breaking out between mothers on abortion. And really, I get the ones who argue for the fetus. I get that kind of maternal instinct, the fierceness, the (some would say culturally defined) role of the mother as protector as the children. But are we forgetting ourselves? We’re told time and time again not to be a martyr to motherhood, to take time for ourselves, to demand equal partnerships, to not put ourselves at the bottom of the list. Then when we expect another woman to be forced into motherhood for having sex, are we not just putting motherhood back at the bottom of the rank again? When we cast off pregnancy and childbirth as so insignificant that we offer adoption as an offer the same way we offer vanilla cake over chocolate, what does that say? When we assume a woman is too stupid to know what she is doing when she chooses abortion, then just how low is the bar for motherhood? If she’s too ignorant to know what an abortion does, why is she just smart enough to raise a(nother) child?

I am a mother. I am a mother by choice.

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For a while now I’ve had a problem with spammers. They rush in, leave long jumbled comments of nonsense, sometimes writing in what appears to be a foreign language. I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out how these spammers keep finding me.

And then, I caught a spammer in the act. Suddenly it all made sense.

Look at that sneer, her total lack of remorse, her dedication to spamming up my comment section with her garbled links despite a fully functional keyboard. Oh she’s a wily one.

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Excuse the poor quality, it’s a photo of a (very old) photo.

This is an actual photo of me when I was around 2. Take a close look at the mouth. Closer. A little closer. Come on, just a little closer.

Yes, those would be fangs. Like a vampire. Rawr!

When I was 2 I fell off my uncle’s front porch, knocking out my front two teeth and breaking the side ones into perfect fangs. Some would say this was a sign of what evil I would bring, others thought it was just a great photo op. Those same others had this picture framed inside a giant heart and displayed it near the front door for many years. Just try to imagine explaining through your teenage years that you were not, in fact, a vampire as a toddler.

Sure I had the teeth and bit a few people, but it was all a big coincidence.

I swear.

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