Why eating contests bother me

I like summer. It stays light really late. We grill on the patio for dinner several times per week. Everything is lush and green and blooming, and everyone has a relaxed vibe. It's like even though most of us are working full-time just like the rest of the year, we still have somewhat of a summer break attitude. Plus it's the time for beach vacations, hikes in the mountains, and BBQ parties.

But it seems like it's also always summertime when I hear about something that really grosses me out--eating contests. Pie-eating and hot dog-eating seem to be the two most prevalent kinds. Maybe it's because these things often happen at county fairs, which tend to be a summertime event? Or maybe it's because of that relaxed, "hey, we're on vacation!" summer attitude I was describing. Either way, eating contests seem to happen in the summer. And I think they're gross.

I partly think they're gross because the physical act of stuffing as much food as possible down your throat in the shortest possible amount of time seems inherently icky. I have never observed an eating contest, and I have no desire to change that, but from what I hear from people who have seen them, it's gag-inducing to watch. And I'm not surprised. It sounds sickening, and not just for the participants.

But that's not actually what bothers me about eating contests, really. I mean, lots of people do things that I find boring or unappealing, so I don't partake, they do, and we all move on with our lives, you know? But I guess what bothers me most is the wastefulness involved.

Let me be clear: I'm not a member of the clean plate club. I'll never tell Callum that he has to finish his dinner because children in Ethiopia are starving. Him being more full than he wants to be, or choking down something he's not interested in, won't change the plight of starving children anywhere. To me, they're separate things.

But I draw the line between someone not finishing the food on their plate, food which presumably was a reasonable portion to begin with, and people making a game out of wasting food on a massive scale. Eating more than 60 hot dogs within 10 minutes? That's excessive. It's not healthy. It's not nutritious. It's not even an enjoyable indulgence. It's a miserable, gross, vomit-inducing experience done only for bragging rights. And I think it's horrifying.

I know we waste food on a massive scale in a million other ways. And those bother me too. Food supply issues are fascinating and complex, and I know very little about them, really. But something about eating contests in particular really highlights this issue for me. Leaving aside the fact that competitive eating can actually be dangerous for participants, I guess it's the way it's a pure media spectacle. It almost feels like mockery--that we have such an abundance of food that people can jam 62 hot dogs down their throat for sport--while other people, right in this country and all around the world, don't even have one hot dog, or anything else, to eat for dinner. And we're showing that off for news outlets to share with the entire country as though this were just a silly, harmless little tradition.

It just feels disrespectful. And I don't think it's harmless at all.

Bumper sticker war

Torsten and I have been living in Colorado for about two and a half years. We love it, and we're planning on staying here for the rest of our lives. But there's no denying that we aren't Colorado natives. Callum is, though. And now that I have a kid who's considered a Colorado native, does that mean I have more of a right to live here myself?

Because the thing is, Torsten and I aren't the only people who've noticed how awesome Colorado is. According to the Census bureau, Colorado's population grew by 16.9% from 2000 to 2010 (9.7% is the national average). According to the Denver Post, the state had the fourth highest growth rate in the country in 2008, and the seventh highest growth rate in the country over the past decade. The Post estimates that more than 50% of that growth came from people moving here from other states and countries.

And really, you can hardly blame them. Colorado is awesome. The weather is fantastic (we are known for our cold winters, and while we definitely have our cold moments, what some people don't realize is that we also have lots of mild snaps in the winter, with sunny days in the 60s, which more than makes up for some sub-zero snowy days, in my opinion). There's no humidity. The mountains are absolutely gorgeous, and so great for exploring in both summer and winter. The people are nice. We have a major airport. It's very dog-friendly. Denver is a good-size city and Boulder is a lovely smaller town. We have an excellent public university system. The cost of living is reasonable. And so on and so forth. Basically, there are a ton of reasons why we decided to move here when we could have moved anywhere--and obviously we weren't the only ones to come to that conclusion.

So, there are a lot of people living in Colorado who aren't from Colorado. Which is fine! Yay for an interconnected world where we don't all just set up house on our parents' property, or marry into the family on the next farm over, right?

Except that all these Colorado natives like to complain about the transplants. They complain that they're a drag on resources, that they're leading to urban sprawl, that they don't care about Colorado's heritage or its beauty, that they place undue pressure on fragile ecosystems, that they contribute to pollution and development and destruction. Some of the more conservative people also complain that the transplants, who for the most part tend to be more politically liberal and drawn to the Denver-Boulder corridor, are making this once-conservative place into a swing state.

Personally, as you can guess, I don't agree with most of these complaints. I love Colorado in a way that I've never loved anywhere that I lived before. I care about it. I take advantage of what it has to offer. And I boost its economy by living here, spending money here, and paying taxes here. I don't mind the tourists, either (and there are lots of tourists because of Colorado's great skiing), because they are a huge part of Colorado's economy as well.

I also don't see what being born and raised here has to do with how much you appreciate this state and how well you care for it. In fact, I think the argument could be reversed to say that the transplants moved here because they wanted to be here, whereas people who were born here might take it for granted. But that wouldn't make much sense either. Really, we are all given the opportunity to be responsible stewards of our homes, whether we've lived in the same place all our lives or not, you know?

But I do think it's pretty amusing that this clash has led to what I personally consider to be snooty bumper stickers. They are a play on the Colorado license plate, which looks like this:


Except they say NATIVE, like this, as though that's something transplants should be jealous of:


And of course, now there are the counter-stickers, which say TRANSPLANT, like this:


And I recently saw one that was in the same format but simply said BITE ME. Unclear if this was a big eff you to the entire back and forth, or simply a nod to Colorado's fly fishing opportunities. Either way, it made me laugh. My Google searching for these images also led me to variations that say things like XENOPHOBE and NO VACANCY. Strong feelings on both sides, apparently, as expressed through bumper stickers.

Even the state of Colorado has jumped on the bandwagon, offering a Pioneers license plate that, until recently, was only available to people who could prove that they were the descendant of someone who lived in Colorado 100 years ago (and the only reason the state stopped requiring this and started making the design available to everyone was because they found out that asking for this information was illegal):


What about where you live? Are there lots of people moving in? Or moving out? Are there tensions between people who've lived there forever and people who have newly arrived? Do you think it matters?

Listening

I need to blog more. I do. I miss it. And I don't want this blog to just be monthly letters to my baby. It would be nice if we also had some record of the stuff going on between the 24th of one month and the 24th of the next month, you know?

And there is stuff going on, but a lot of it is stuff that I can't really talk about here, and that pisses me off, and also I hate it when people go on about Unbloggable Things, and really, everything is fine, Callum is great and Torsten and I are great and things are good. But some of the non-baby details of our lives are things I don't really want to get into at the moment, but those are the same things that are on my mind a lot of the time, and therefore... silence.

Plus there are things going on in the world, and I don't really want to discuss my reaction to the Osama bin Laden thing in part because everyone's reactions seem to have turned into finger-pointing about everyone else's reactions, and I feel like we have now reached a point where if I say that my reaction was X, it will feel to people whose reactions were more like Y or Z like I am saying that X is the right reaction and Y and Z are the wrong reactions. And I don't feel that way. And I also don't fully know what my own reaction is. Suffice it to say that I have mixed feelings on a lot of counts. And I imagine that most other people do too.

You know, on September 11 I was in France. I had just moved there two weeks prior, I didn't really speak French yet, and because of the time difference the events of that day unfolded at three o'clock in the afternoon for me instead of first thing in the morning the way they did for most Americans, and really, the time of day isn't important but in my mind it seems important because that afternoon, the amount of the day that had already gone by, the classes I'd already gone through at school, the amount of sunlight that was shining when one of my French classmates came up to me in the school courtyard and tried to explain to me what had happened, with limited success because I didn't really speak French yet... all of those things are very intertwined with my memories of that day. Afternoon. Sun. Late in the daytime. A whole day of not knowing, already gone by, while in the US the day had barely started.

Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent but my point is, it happened when I was in France and I didn't get home after that for another nine months and when I got home things had changed drastically and I was startled at what felt like a very sudden change to me. And I sort of missed the more laid-back attitude of the French people I'd been surrounded with during the initial aftermath. I guess it felt, somehow, like there was more listening happening in France, and more talking happening in the US, and it was weird to go from one to the other. I liked the listening. I was there, listening. We were all listening, in France. Talking too, of course. But also listening.

And now, it's almost 10 years later and the President of the United States addresses the nation, the world really, to say that Osama bin Laden has been killed, and the reactions everywhere are varied in style but all quite intense. Torsten and I watched the news for awhile on Sunday night, I read some reactions on Twitter, and then we went to bed. Then yesterday morning I logged onto Facebook and at the top of my news feed was a comment from my French host brother which, loosely translated, read, "Obama says justice has been done. But is death really justice?"

A valid question, not too far off from some of my own thoughts on the topic... but the comments on the question, oh my. Nobody actually answered the question, or tried to. Instead, it turned into a discussion about whether bin Laden has actually been killed. The consensus was that he has not, that he continues to elude everyone's grasp, that this was a stunt for Obama's reelection campaign, that the burial at sea was nothing more than tossing the body into the ocean before anyone has a chance to notice that it isn't actually bin Laden's body, that Americans are a bunch of liars and always have been.

I know, I know, everyone posts ridiculous things on Facebook, we're all exposed to it, we should just block the wackos from our news feed and move on with our lives. But these weren't the wackos. These were the listeners from 10 years ago, now making absurd and cruel statements without any real awareness of what they're talking about.

I guess right now they aren't listeners anymore. They've morphed into talkers. But I'm still here, I'm still listening. I might be their lone American Facebook friend, but I am still there, reading what they have to say and cringing over it. The words aren't falling on a void. At least... not completely.

I'm here. I'm listening. And I don't love everything I'm hearing. But I don't necessarily want to respond to it, either. Sometimes it's easier to just choose not to engage. And therefore... silence.

Oily

Did you read that BP's Gulf-specific disaster response plan, submitted to and approved by the government last year, was flawed and full of serious errors? Like listing experts and advisors who are dead or whose numbers are disconnected, vastly underestimating the impact of a spill, even one ten times the size of the one we're currently dealing with, and including contingency plans for wildlife that don't live in the Gulf, implying that it was lifted from an Alaska-based response plan?

It is just one more horrifying thing in a list of horrifying things that are not even adequately described by the word "horrifying," because in fact they are incomprehensible. And yes, I do believe that BP should shoulder the blame for, and the cost of, this mess, but that doesn't mean we didn't all play a part in setting up a situation where something like this could happen.

We are all responsible. But some more than others.

And don't even get me started on Sarah Palin's disgusting, twisted, perverted, insane comments about how if we drilled in the Alaska Natural Wildlife Refuge like she suggested, this never would have happened. Which, of course, conveniently ignores the fact that the whole "drill, baby, drill" chant was also about offshore drilling.

Why won't this woman just go away? Though, of course, I'd take having to listen to her and her inane comments any day if the oil spill would go away instead.

Gout?!

There's a fun little story in the UK newspaper The Sun right now. I swear I found the link on Twitter, but when I went back to find it I couldn't. Regardless, the story is... well. It's special. It's about a woman in Britain who didn't know she was pregnant until three hours before she gave birth.

Now, I don't watch that show I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant, so maybe that's why I find this so shocking. But it's not so much HER that I'm shocked about. I mean, I think it's pretty clear that she's not a Mensa candidate, and if I missed my period for nine months in a row I'm guessing it would occur to me to take a pregnancy test.

But, she's overweight. Her period may never have been regular. And there's no requirement that ordinary people be smart.

But there IS a requirement that doctors be smart, or at least REASONABLE. And this woman WENT TO THE DOCTOR when she got pregnant. She has been there REGULARLY over the past nine months with stomach ailments that were diagnosed as IBS and gout. GOUT. And it never once occurred to any of her doctors to see if she were pregnant.

But the worst part? When they DID figure out that she was pregnant, they told her she was THREE MONTHS ALONG and sent her home. Three hours before the baby was born! And it wasn't a preemie... it weighed almost nine pounds. Nine pounds! Did it not occur to them to do an ultrasound when they realized she was pregnant? Because it's my understanding that ultrasounds can tell you how much a baby weighs and when they're due. They might not be right to the ounce and to the day, but I'm pretty sure that if you do an ultrasound of a nine-months-pregnant woman with a nine-pound baby in her uterus, you're not going to think that she's only three months along.

I mean, what did they do? Glance at her stomach and say, "Eh, looks like you're about three months along. Run along home now and we'll see you in another six months"?

Seriously, this story is UNBELIEVABLE. I cannot get over it. What a crappy standard of care!

But I do have to say I think this quote from the mother is hilarious: "We hardly had time to think about it; no one believed us when we told them we suddenly had a child."

I mean, imagine giving birth one day, just like that! And calling up your parents and telling them they've suddenly become grandparents. And having to call up work and say oh by the way I'll need to go on maternity leave... starting now. And the father has to run out while you stay in the hospital with the baby to buy a car seat so that you can bring the baby home from the hospital. And once you get home from the hospital if you want to put the baby down you are pretty much stuck with the old dresser drawer trick.

Am I the only one whose mind is BLOWN by this? Or are you guys shocked too?

Concerns about international adoption

I keep reading these stories about Haitian kids being brought out of Haiti as fast as possible, about adoptions being fast-tracked and paperwork being missing and orphanages saving lives. Lots of the stories take the angle of the Americans, French, etc. as saviors, bringing these children away from misery and suffering into wonderful new lives. And in some cases, maybe that's true. But the whole thing makes me squirmy.

I have to say, right up front, that I think that everyone involved has the best of intentions. But I have some serious qualms. I can maybe understand the kids whose adoptions were already finalized being taken to their new homes ahead of schedule. But the ones whose adoptions were in process, and now the paperwork is lost? It seems to me that when paperwork is lost, that should be a reason to slow down a process to make sure everything is in order, instead of speeding it up.

And the kids who were supposedly abandoned? How can you call it abandonment when a country is in chaos, officials are finding it challenging to distribute aid because it's so hard to get around, the city has literally collapsed, and people have very limited ways of communicating? How can you know if a child has been abandoned or if the family is frantically looking for them and has not yet found them?

The whole thing makes me uncomfortable. Then, a few days ago, a group called Adoptees of Color released a statement that articulated everything about this situation that makes me uncomfortable.

But it also went well beyond my feelings on the matter, and touched on aspects of all international adoptions, aspects that I had thought about in the past, but not in that framework. Frankly, the statement gave me huge reservations about international adoption in general.

I've mentioned before that Torsten and I have seriously considered adopting, and are still considering it. I lived in Senegal for five months and have an interest in Africa, so my first thought was that we might like to adopt an African child. And as I said before, I wouldn't want to cut any child off from the culture where it was born and try to force it to assimilate completely to our lifestyles here.

But this statement had some really forceful language about international adoption, and it's coming from a group of adoptees of color--basically a group of people who come from the same situation that any child we adopted from Africa would be raised in. And the statement isn't just talking about Haiti.

Some especially striking quotes:

"We resist the racist, colonialist mentality that positions the Western nuclear family as superior to other conceptions of family, and we seek to challenge those who abuse the phrase 'Every child deserves a family' to rethink how this phrase is used to justify the removal of children from Haiti for the fulfillment of their own needs and desires. Western and Northern desire for ownership of Haitian children directly contributes to the destruction of existing family and community structures in Haiti. This individualistic desire is supported by the historical and global anti-African sentiment which negates the validity of black mothers and fathers and condones the separation of black children from their families, cultures, and countries of origin."

"We bear testimony to the ways in which the intercountry adoption industry has profited from and reinforced neo-liberal structural adjustment policies, aid dependency, population control policies, unsustainable development, corruption, and child trafficking."

"Our adoptions from Vietnam, South Korea, Guatemala and many other countries are no different from what is happening to the children of Haiti today. Like us, these 'disaster orphans' will grow into adulthood and begin to grasp the magnitude of the abuse, fraud, negligence, suffering, and deprivation of human rights involved in their displacements."

"We have learned first-hand that adoption (domestic or intercountry) itself as a process forces children to negate their true feelings of grief, anger, pain or loss, and to assimilate to meet the desires and expectations of strangers."

Well. Those are some strong words, right there. And I'm not saying I disagree with them. I absolutely think they're valid, and certainly those who have gone through this experience themselves can speak about it and what it means and how it affects them in a way that outsiders cannot.

And I would hope that in our family, at least some of these things wouldn't hold true. We aren't saying that our conception of family is better; we're saying it's also good. A potential future adopted child of ours would never be expected to deny their true feelings and emotions about their history and their family. But certainly, there's a broader culture and framework to all this that anyone who adopts internationally has to buy into, at least to a certain extent.

Frankly, reading this statement made me not want to adopt a child, ever, and certainly not internationally. It has definitely given me reservations that I didn't have before. It seems that the whole adoption experience is fraught with landmines. And I can only imagine how hurt and sad I would feel as the parent of one of these children to read these strong words written about their experience, and to know that they felt this way.

And I don't know if there's a way to stop it. Perhaps I'm over-thinking this, but this has certainly opened my eyes to a whole new dimension of international adoption, all international adoption, and probably some (or all) domestic adoptions as well.

I've always felt that conceiving a child is a somewhat selfish, though completely justifiable (I do plan on doing it myself, after all) act when there are so many children in the world who need homes. But of course adoption is never easy. It's not simple, it's not quick, it's not cheap, and there are all these moral questions and complicated emotional issues to address.

I guess it always seemed to me that adoption was a good thing to do, not that it is noble and selfless (as, after all, you are fulfilling your own desire to parent a child, or multiple children), but that it benefits everyone involved. And now I'm not so sure about that.

I am thinking, though, that if we do adopt a child, it will be through the U.S. foster system. We've both been thinking that for awhile, and this statement certainly makes me lean more in that direction. Not that that process would be without its own issues and concerns, because of course it would. But right now it's looking like the most palatable option to me.

Or maybe I'm just running away from the problem. One new perspective and I give up on the whole thing? Is that what's happening? I really don't know.

Private details of a marriage

Last night I read an article from the New York Times Magazine called Married (Happily) With Issues. As I read it--the full thing, all 10 pages--I found myself almost involuntarily comparing my marriage with the author's. Not just in terms of length of marriage but also in terms of routines, affection, communication, sources of conflict. I found more differences than similarities. And yet like the author, I know that my marriage is very happy.

Only the people who are in a relationship can really know what's going on in that relationship (and sometimes even they don't know). Even if I sat here and wrote a blog post that spelled out every mundane detail, every little interaction and discussion and piece of our marriage, still nobody except Torsten and me could ever know what it's like or how it feels.

The author of this article walked us through some very intimate parts of her marriage, fights and sources of pain. She gave great detail. And as I read, I tried not to judge. Because even these things that she was describing, even the ones that sounded foreign and horrifying to me, even those things can't really be understood by anyone who wasn't a part of them. Because different things are sacred to different people. What is a horrible, cruel thing to say in one marriage is irrelevant and casual in another.

I'm reminded of a post that Slynnro wrote once (and that I now cannot find) about how she and her husband do not go grocery shopping together, and people judge them for it. I can see why some people's first reaction would be surprise, or even horror, if for them shopping is a big deal, and a source of intimacy or collaboration. But I think that's what people are really reacting to when they learn details of other people's marriages. It's not, "How can you be happy together if you can't even shop together?" (even if those are the words that are said); it's, "I interpret this detail to mean that you don't share intimacy, because I myself draw something important from this same detail in my own relationship."

This is why, even if I shared every detail of my marriage on my blog, my readers could still never really know exactly what it all means and how it all feels. Because ultimately, though of course we're capable of empathy, our reactions to other people are usually reflections of ourselves.

And still, even believing this to be true, I found myself judging some of the things the author described. For example, I was horrified when she detailed how her husband invoked divorce during a fight. For us, in our marriage, such a thing is unthinkable. If Torsten ever suggested anything about a divorce to me, I can't even imagine how I would react--it's just that unfathomable. I can't imagine any situation, ever, where I would say such a thing to him.

But that doesn't mean it's the same for all couples. And that doesn't mean that just because neither of us can even conceive of contemplating divorce in any context, our marriage is perfect. I will say that so far, we haven't had those struggles that people talk about when they say that being married is hard, and takes work. Of course, it does--I acknowledge that--and yet at the same time as I think about it, I don't think it's hard, and I don't think we work at it, exactly.

And maybe that's bad? Maybe we should be working at it. Or maybe we're just defining "work" differently--because we do take care of each other, and make a point to be thoughtful toward each other, and make compromises for each other, and make choices that we wouldn't make if we as individuals were the only factor in the equation. Maybe that's what other people call "work"? Or maybe we're missing something that is necessary for some couples to be happy together, but is not necessary for us.

Of course, we've only been married for a little over a year. We don't have kids and our lives are relatively stress-free. Perhaps what causes a marriage to require work is time, and distance, and competing priorities. Maybe right now our marriage doesn't feel like work because it's so easy and natural to focus on each other.

Certainly there are things we could do better, and this article, though the author's marriage seems quite different from my own, made me realize some of them. In some places in our marriage, I put myself first, and then I feel guilty about it. And in other places I put Torsten first without even realizing it, and to my own detriment, and in a way that isn't necessary. Maybe I feel that one balances out the other? And I'm pretty sure that the key to balancing this out without creating a competition, even if it's all in my head, is to talk to him about it and express my thoughts and needs.

The thing is that I'm so comfortable with him, and he's so easy to talk to, and we talk about so many different things, that I don't even really notice if there's something I'm not talking to him about. I don't notice that it's there or that it needs to be discussed. It isn't actively bothering me. My needs are met, as are my non-need-wants, and so are his. And so I don't even notice the little things that slip through the cracks sometimes. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't bring them up when I do notice them.

And maybe in other marriages these little things would be big things, huge problems. Or maybe they wouldn't be things at all. I can speculate about this, but I can't know. Because the only marriage I can really access and understand is my own.

Breaking out of the mold

I've been thinking a lot about social norms recently, and what sorts of expectations we project on our children from the time that they're born, or even before. I think the clearest one here is gender norms: we pick names, decor, clothing, toys, etc. based on the sex of our child. That doesn't mean we aren't open to our children expressing their gender in varied ways... but we certainly do start pushing them into a particular box from birth, based on their sex.

There's a couple in Sweden who haven't revealed the sex of their child to anyone except a few close friends and relatives who have changed the child's diaper. (See more takes on this here, here, and here.) They call their child Pop and while they are raising Pop outside of a specific gender box, they do assume that Pop will eventually choose one side of the gender binary--and they're probably right, given how deeply ingrained gender and sex are in our culture.

I can see why they're doing this, although we won't be doing the same thing with our own children. I agree that our society is overly gendered and that it shouldn't take as much work and hardship as it does to express a gender identity other than the one that you are assigned at birth. But I also don't like androgynous names very much, and know that we will choose decidedly gendered names for our own children. If we have a girl, we won't go crazy with the pink--but certainly I would pick more purple clothes for a daughter than I would for a son.

However, if I have a son who wants to wear purple, or doesn't want to be considered a son--that's fine. I guess my approach will be to assume that, like most people, when our kids are small they will be fine with whatever gender. And as they get older, if they prefer a gender other than the one we've assigned to them, I want them to know that we'll be open to that. If I have a son and he wants to wear dresses, I will definitely be OK with that. And if it goes further than clothing choices, that's fine too.

I guess what I want is for my kids to know that even though we started off by putting them in what seemed like the most logical gender box, they don't have to stay there. I don't necessarily want them to think that there are default options for everything, and if they choose something other than that, it has to be a big, shocking deal.

As another example, if we have a child who is gay, I don't want them to feel like they have to "come out" to us. I don't want to assume that our kids will have an opposite-sex partner, and that if they choose otherwise, they have to break the news to us as this big deal. I want them to always know that whatever choices they make and whatever categories they think they do or do not fit into, that's OK with us.

I guess my point is that I don't want them to feel like there's a mold they're supposed to fit into. But I also don't want to saddle them with something that will make them stand out unnecessarily in their childhoods. I want to accommodate the preconceptions of our society without necessarily buying into all of them. I wonder if that's even possible.

What about you? Do you expect your child to grow up with a certain gender? What would you do if your child rejected the gender that you had assigned to them?

Prop 8 Decision Day

I don't often get political on my blog (although I do venture there sometimes). But I feel very strongly that what I'm about to talk about transcends politics.

Today, the California Supreme Court will announce its decision on whether or not to uphold Proposition 8.

I try to be tolerant of people whose views differ from mine. In most cases, I succeed. But when it comes to gay marriage, I fall a bit short of that goal.

I cannot think of one single justifiable reason to prevent two consenting adults who wish to marry each other from doing so. I have heard all the arguments against gay marriage, and for me, none of them holds water. I am not going to start rehashing the entire debate, because I'm sure all of you are familiar with the arguments on both side. But to put it succinctly, same-sex couples getting married has no negative impact on anybody else in society. The only argument against gay marriage is founded in religion, homophobia, or both--and it's our government's job to separate religion and state, and to protect those who are undue targets of prejudice.

I truly hope and believe that one day our children will look back on the history of gay marriage the same way that we look back on the history of interracial marriage--with shock and disbelief that it was ever not allowed, that our government ever deliberately denied a group of people such a basic right.

And it is a basic right. Marriage offers several tangible benefits that are denied to those who are not legally wed. Parents and partners who have had to deal with an ill partner can attest to the difficulties faced when trying to make decisions or visit a sick family member in the hospital.

And there's the way that marriage has affected me most, personally--immigration. Now that Torsten and I are married, he can have a green card, which means that he is guaranteed the right to live and work in the US, with me, as long as he doesn't commit a crime of moral turpitude (murder or rape, basically). I cannot tell you how much peace of mind this brings both of us. I cannot tell you how happy we are to know that we always have the right to stay together, live together, support ourselves and our families in this country.

I cannot believe that other loving couples are denied this privilege. I cannot believe that caring, stable, productive citizens are forced out of this country in order to live their lives with those they love. I cannot believe that the people who oppose extending the right to marry to all those consenting adults who wish to partake in it--using personal reasons that have no legal bearing--are the ones who are supported by our government at this time.

I don't think this is a political issue. This is an issue that affects the lives and freedoms of an important, ostracized minority within our country. It is our government's job to protect that minority, and so far they have failed to do so. This is not a matter of opinion. Any individual's personal opinion about homosexuality should not be given any weight whatsoever when it comes to the legal decision about whether or not to extend equal rights to all citizens.

Of course, even if California does overturn Prop 8, it's only another tiny step--and the immigration benefits that I talked about won't be offered to same-sex couples until the day that the federal government starts to recognize same-sex marriage. But a series of tiny steps can turn into a big sprint, a big breakthrough. And all those couples who are married in California, or who wish to be, deserve to be allowed the same opportunity that heterosexual couples are offered.

I can sort of, tragically, understand why Prop 8 passed--because it essentially asked individual voters to offer their opinions about homosexuality, and what rights should be extended to same-sex couples, and unfortunately the majority of voters in California held prejudiced opinions.

But I see no excuse for the Supreme Court of California, the governing body, to uphold this law. I see no explanation for how it can possibly be constitutional to systematically deny rights to a group of people based on their sexuality. I don't care if 52% of California voters believe that gay people will burn in hell--it is not the government's place to judge that. It is the government's place to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority.

And I hope with all my heart that the Supreme Court announces the just decision today, and allows all California residents--all equally deserving citizens--the right to a stable marriage.

10 years since Columbine

Monday was the ten-year anniversary of the shootings at Columbine high school in Littleton, not far from where we live in Denver. I'm sure that the coverage has been nationwide, but obviously since this was a local tragedy, the coverage here has been pretty dense. Some of it I find distasteful; I never like footage of sobbing, distraught people because I find it invasive and manipulative, and to re-air such terrible footage ten years down the line only shows that such footage does not improve with time.

But it has definitely been an eye-opening experience for me, to see how this community has handled such a tragedy. They say that everyone remembers where they were when they found out about the shootings, but that's not true for me. I have a vague memory of where I was when I found out, but I think it's wrong because the memory I have is of my middle school and the shootings took place in 1999, when I was in high school.

Still, I do remember being very upset about it, all the more so because it was my peers who were affected; high school kids just like me. It was not difficult to make the transfer and imagine that the shootings had taken place at my high school instead of another; seeing people my own age on the news, reading about people my own age being shot... well, it was easy to relate.

I recently finished a book that I loved, The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb, a novel that focuses on a couple who both worked at Columbine High School and how they were affected by the shootings over the next ten years. The book is fascinating, and may be my favorite of Wally Lamb's books, though I love them all.

One thing that it touched on was the fury toward the two shooters, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. The refusal to acknowledge that when they turned their guns on themselves, their lives were lost too. That although they committed a heinous act, they too were victims. That, especially, their families were victims.

I can understand that attitude, and never having been in the position of having someone I love killed by another person, I don't know how I would react in that situation. But certainly if your child has been shot in cold blood, and at school, a place that's supposed to be safe--well, I doubt you'd have much sympathy for the killers. Especially right after the event.

But still, it makes me sad that ten years later, the victim count is at 13, not 15. That the two killers weren't named at any memorial services. That a woman carrying a sign asking that all 15 victims be remembered was asked to leave the memorial service.

In my opinion, anyone who is depraved enough to want to end the lives of innocent people around them... that person has a problem. A serious problem, one much bigger than himself. One that he is most likely not equipped to deal with on his own. That person is, in a different way from those people that he killed, a victim. A victim whose life ended prematurely, even if he chose to end it while his victims did not have that same choice.

And more than the killers themselves, the families of the shooters are victims. They, along with the other parents, lost their children. But unlike those other parents, they have no sympathy. They can't look back and say, Oh, I had a wonderful, beautiful, loving child who was struck down too young through no fault of his own. Instead, they have to live with guilt and horror, with questions, wondering how they managed not to see the signs, wondering if they could have done anything to prevent this from happening, wondering how they could have raised a child who would grow up to do something so terrible.

And they have no public sympathy, no support. The community is not willing to acknowledge their losses, their dilemmas. A local priest lost his job after performing a service for Dylan Klebold at the request of his father. Who is there for those families? And who is pointing fingers and making their ordeal worse, even ten years later?

But maybe I'm the only one to feel this way. Maybe it would just make all those memorial services more painful for the families of those who were killed, maybe even ten years later the community is just too close to the situation to be able to acknowledge that those who wrought the violence were victims themselves, and that their families continue to be victims. Maybe people really do believe that those two killers' actions were the result of some sort of fault or negligence on the part of their families.

What do you think? Should the killers and their families be acknowledged in these memorial services, these ways of remembering those who lost their lives or whose lives were forever altered that day?

President Obama

This inauguration gives me goosebumps. I'm in the same city as all these people, hiding from the crowd and the cold in my nice warm apartment, but just watching it on TV is amazing. The concert on Sunday was inspiring. Obama himself is inspiring. I know I am not alone in saying that I have high hopes for this country and this presidency.

I know Michelle Obama took a lot of heat for saying that for the first time in her adult life, she's proud to be an American, but I'm going to stand up there with her and say I feel the same way. Not that I'm not happy to be American, or that I don't have faith in what America can be, but for the last eight years, which comprise my entire adult life, our country has been going in a direction that I have not been proud of. And now I believe that we as a country, including our leadership, are going to try our best to do the best that we can. And I believe that the international community sees it that way as well.

When I watched that concert and Pete Seeger leading the crowd in singing This Land Is Your Land, for the first time that I can remember I felt truly patriotic. I felt that this country is a good, well-meaning place that will strive to be a positive force in the world. I felt that there is nowhere I would rather be and no country that I would rather be a part of. I haven't felt that way in a very long time.

I leave you with this:




Obama, welcome to the presidency. We are so glad you're here.

Women in the home

I've been thinking recently about sexism and all of its many subtle forms. My feeling about this is that if you aren't a woman, you just don't understand what it's like. And yes, I understand that women don't fully understand what it's like to be a man either (and please excuse my use of the gender binary here, while we're at it, but it illustrates my point). But it's different if you're a woman.

I think this is mostly an issue with the good guys, the ones who don't believe in "father knows best" and who generally respect women, or at least most women. But those same guys are blind to what it's like to be a woman in certain situations. Maybe it's because they themselves aren't overtly sexist and so they don't think about sexism that still exists, not just in the attitudes of individuals but in societal constructs and systems.

For example, most decent guys don't really understand what it's like to be a woman in a male-dominated office where guys complain about their wives and make the occasional joke at women's expense. They don't understand the hypersensitivity about salary and career advancement because they weren't raised knowing that their sex makes 77 cents to every dollar that the other sex earns. They don't walk that fine line of being assertive at work without coming across as a bitch, and they don't have to worry about hemlines and necklines being appropriate at all times. And because they never had those things in their consciousnesses, I just don't think they can really relate.

But maybe the biggest area that I don't think guys can fully understand is the threat of sexual harassment and sexual violence that women are always aware of somewhere, even if it's just in the backs of their minds. They don't see why a woman would be so upset at a casual joke from a male higher-up at work about how she might sleep her way to the top. They don't understand the nervousness about walking home alone at night. They don't understand that constant vigilance.

They might be able to understand it on an intellectual level, but I don't think they can understand it on a real, visceral level, really see how it permeates into a woman's consciousness and awareness at all times. The same way that I can imagine how I would feel if I were required to wear a burqa at all times, but I can't truly know what it's like. Your experience colors who you are as a person and the outlook that you bring to everything in your life. And men, growing up removed from these issues of which women are so aware, just can't enter into it and really wrap their heads around it the way women can.

But so many men can and do respect women, not because someone taught them they have to necessarily (although that's part of it) but because it would never occur to them not to. The Washington Post ran an article recently about how women and men are becoming more and more equal when it comes to family decisions, and I think what's most telling is that most of the guys I know would be shocked to hear of families that were structured any other way.

I love that the feminist movement right now is all about choice. I know that we're still bogged down in the details, that great rhetorical wars rage on wherein women criticize one another's choices, but the fact that we can make those choices to begin with makes me so happy. We don't have to be CEOs and high-powered lawyers to be successful, happy, feminist women. But we also know that if that's what we want, we can go after it and nobody should be able to put us down for it.

I sometimes wonder if maybe feminism will come full circle and more and more women will start making the choice to stay at home and run the household instead of working in the public sector. Even if that does happen, and it may well, I don't think that would be a step backward, and that article points to why. Staying at home doesn't have to mean what it used to. You can still be an involved, equal partner in the relationship and in the family, whether or not you're working outside the home. That's where the real victory lies.

In which I finally get political.

I don't usually talk about politics on my blog. I've mentioned that I support Obama, but that's about the extent of it. I know that politics is personal and people are sensitive about their political beliefs, and I don't want people or readers to feel alienated. I recognize that what I'm about to say is something that not everyone will agree with, and I want everyone to feel free to express their opinions in the comments. I hope that nobody will feel so alienated by what I'm going to say that they will feel that they can't continue reading my blog because of our difference of political opinion. But if people do feel that way, that's fine. What I'm going to talk about is more important.

I don't like John McCain's politics, and I really don't like Sarah Palin's politics. This has nothing to do with McCain's POW experiences, or Palin's pregnant daughter, or the fact that McCain's choice of Palin as VP was a clear case of cynical political pandering.

No. Plain and simple, I think they are wrong about the best way to lead this country forward. And the thing that makes me the angriest is that I think they know they're wrong. They know that their policy plans won't do the most good for the most people, and they don't care. They are about making policies that serve their particular constituencies, and then coming up with a bunch of justifications and platitudes about why everyone else doesn't matter. It's not like Palin didn't know that her speech was full of lies and hyperbole. How can you believe that what you're doing is right when you have to stretch and spin the truth just to sound convincing? How can you believe that you deserve to be in office if you know that you have to lie to the public to get them to elect you?

This argument about small government is bullshit. A truly small government might not provide social services for its worst-off citizens. It might not put gun control laws into effect. But it also wouldn't tell people who could and could not get married. It wouldn't start unnecessary wars and refuse to educate people about sexual health. It wouldn't try to teach the religious philosophy of creationism in public schools. It wouldn't attempt to ban books from public libraries.

So let's get this straight. Democrats don't really believe in small government, but neither do Republicans. Nobody who runs for office really believes in small government. They want to get involved in government because they want to make a difference, and they believe that the government can make a difference.

And I don't believe in small government, either. Not the way Republicans define it. I don't support Big Brother and paternalistic leadership, but I do believe that government is necessary to the smooth functioning of society, and that there are things governments can do to help make life easier for everyone. I also believe that it's totally fine to place a slightly higher burden on the best-off people in our society in order to provide a boost to the worst-off people.

John McCain claims that Obama wants to raise taxes for middle class people, exactly the ones who are suffering from the current economic downturn. In reality, Obama's tax plan would increase the middle class's take-home income by 5%, whereas McCain's would increase their income by only 3%. Obama's plan would raise taxes--but only for the people who can afford it, namely wealthy companies.

Sarah Palin sued the Bush administration over its decision to add polar bears to the list of endangered species because she was afraid it would interfere with oil drilling. She doesn't believe that humans have caused climate change. She wants to teach creationism in public schools. She wants to prohibit abortion, even cases of rape or incest. She's a proponent of banning books from public libraries. She made fun of Obama's community organizing experience as though it's a negative thing that he was working to get ordinary people involved in politics--because to her it is.

McCain and Palin have blind faith that the market will solve for everything. I believe that they are wrong. The people who believe that the market solves for everything are exactly those who have benefited from it. And not everybody has. There are so many people who don't have insurance, who can't afford healthcare, who work crappy jobs or can't get a job at all, who can't afford housing in a safe neighborhood, who can hardly make it through the day. Those are the people who get lost in the system, the ones for whom the market doesn't solve.

I am actually, literally scared of the idea of the U.S. as run by McCain and Palin. I don't think our country can take four more years of this. Certainly those people who are at the bottom of the pyramid can't. And the question is whether those at the top will notice. If McCain and Palin win, I see no evidence that they will. The rich will keep getting richer, the poor will keep getting poorer, and the rest of the world will grow more and more disenchanted with this country.

Read this (and this). Read this. Read this. And read this.

The rest of the world can't believe that the McCain-Palin ticket could win. Maybe, for once, we should take our cue from them instead of trying to force them to do as we do. Spin, exaggeration, and charisma shouldn't be enough to win an election. The strange idea that disagreeing with someone is just evidence of your political bias, rather than evidence that you have convictions about how great our country can be for all of its residents, should not be used as an excuse not to engage on the issues and really discuss what policy stances will be best for our country as a whole.

I can believe McCain and Palin could win this election. But I'm really hoping I don't have to.

I'm kind of mad at Olivier Theyskens.

Let me respond to three reader questions right now, while I'm thinking of it, at the very top of my post. First, yesterday's clothes are from Old Navy, some from the regular women's department and some from the women's plus department, because at the moment I straddle the two categories, which is great for me but means that those of you who fall firmly into one category or the other may be disappointed. Second, two weekends ago I wound up baking chocolate chip cookies from Definitely RA's recipe, and oh my god, they were the best cookies I've ever had, and I seriously did not know that anyone except a professional chef was capable of baking such wonderful cookies. Third, we don't know yet what we're going to get in terms of wedding rings, but I'm thinking of this, which matches my engagement ring, and then Torsten would get a wider version of the same thing.

Okay, I think that addresses all the questions I've been meaning to answer, but if I'm wrong and you have a burning question that requires a response, please say so in the comments and I will do another roundup soon. No promises as to exactly when, though, given that one of the questions that I just answered was asked in April and it's now June.

Oh, and speaking of? Yeah, it's June. June meaning the first month of summer, meaning less than five months until the wedding, meaning the first month of having every other Friday off instead of just one per month, meaning squabbles at night because I want to turn on the fan (ON MY SIDE OF THE BED. POINTED ONLY AT ME) and Torsten doesn't want me to turn it on because he claims he can feel the wind (NOT TRUE).

Unfortunately, June does NOT mean parathyroid surgery, because my surgeon's assistant was not able to move up my appointment. Despite my repeated (but polite) badgering. But actually I'm okay with that, because the surgery is scheduled for July 1, which is a Tuesday, and then July 4 is that Friday, and since it's a holiday that would normally be my Friday off, I get Thursday July 3 off instead, which means that I only have to use two days of personal time for the surgery and I should be all better and ready to go back to work the following Monday.

So it works out well, and I've decided to be very zen about this whole thing and not worry about the scar and if I have a scar on my neck in my wedding photos, so it goes and the world won't end. (P.S. I learned this zen attitude from Stephanie, who is a super planner like me and yet has managed to transform herself, over the past few months, into this totally laid-back, roll with the punches kind of girl who moves on with her life without getting hung up on the things she can't control. I admire her transformation and desire to emulate it.)

Oh and while we're on the subject of complete and total randomness? Let's briefly discuss the whole Sarah Jessica Parker SATC dress debacle. For those of you who haven't heard and don't feel like clicking the link, when SJP selected her dress for the New York movie premiere, she specifically asked the designer, Olivier Theyskens of Nina Ricci, if it had been worn on the red carpet before, and he assured her that it had not. He personally assured her of this, and then the day after the premiere, a photo surfaced of him standing next to Lauren Santo Domingo wearing the exact same dress at the Met Ball earlier that month.

The point is, he lied to her. And yes, we're talking about a dress and several cases of wounded vanity. But if I were SJP, I'd be pissed, and probably more than she is. She is known as a trendsetter, a fashion icon on the very cutting edge. The New York premiere of the SATC movie was the biggest possible stage for this. She asked the designer himself to assure her that she would be the first to wear the dress on the red carpet, and he flat-out lied to her face about it. That's a pretty big deal to me.

And the worst part is, he didn't have the grace to admit it afterward, to apologize for his error in judgment, send her a fantastic apology gift, and then move on. Instead, he pretended like he thought that what he had done was totally acceptable, acting like Lauren Santo Domingo doesn't count as "on the red carpet" because she isn't that famous (which I'm sure she appreciated reading--and also, it doesn't matter WHO is wearing if if someone is wearing it on the red carpet, specifically at an event as high-profile as the Met Ball) and being dismissive of people who noticed by asking if everyone looks at Style.com as though that's a bad thing (a tad hypocritical coming from a fashion designer).

I mean, come on, dude. The woman asked if anyone had worn the dress on the red carpet before because she knew what a big deal this was. You yourself know that there is way more to who wears what on the red carpet than just a pretty dress--this is a business, the bottom line is profit, and exposure means everything and is sometimes contractually obligated. You yourself KNEW that this event was a big deal, and you KNEW that if you answered the question honestly, she wouldn't wear the dress. And so you lied, and you got what you wanted, and now you are being a sleaze about it, and I hope as a result that celebrities who could be making you tons of money by shilling your clothes on the red carpet in the future choose to go with a different designer instead.

Am I alone in this? I mean, I realize--as does SJP herself--that this is a tempest in a teapot, but fashion icons and the red carpet are what this guy's career is about, and SJP's as well, particularly when it comes to her role on SATC. I can't be the only one who thinks he's only compounding the damage by trying to make her look petty for being irked. Or am I? What are your thoughts?

Good doctor, bad doctor?

The other day I was reading an article in the Washington Post about a kid who had a heart attack and was saved due to very expensive medical treatment that doctors tried despite not knowing whether it would work. And it got me thinking about the much maligned U.S. health care system, and my own experiences with it this year, and how it compares to the rest of the world.

Let me put a disclaimer right here: I am not at all educated about health care and the way it works. I know a bit about the U.S. based on my own experience. I also know a bit about health care in France, England, Germany, and Senegal, based on my experience and experiences that Torsten has had. I haven't even seen that Michael Moore movie about this. Seriously, everything I know is based on personal experience and not on any objective, researched literature.

But here's what I think about health care in the U.S.: The system sucks. But the quality of the health care itself does not suck. But I could be wrong.

The system of health care sucks for many reasons, first and foremost being that not everyone is included, and the people who aren't included are the same people who tend to be marginalized and excluded from most societal benefits. Other reasons why it sucks include that it's overburdened, that it's expensive, that insurance is complicated and confusing, that you only really get insurance if you have a traditional full-time job, that the main onus of paying for health care is placed on employers, and that there isn't much of an emphasis on preventive care, which means that more people develop serious medical conditions.

But for people who do have insurance, and do receive treatment for medical issues, the health care itself is good. At least most of the time. Sure, there are bad doctors and people sometimes have bad experiences, and that's true everywhere in the world. But we have a lot of great doctors here. We have a lot of really impressive medical technology. We have state-of-the-art hospitals. We have excellent and varied treatment.

Yes, the systems are overburdened and doctors are often rushed and on call for 36 hours (or more) straight. But compare this to Britain's NHS, which provides a basic--very basic--level of care for free to everyone. Nurses are often rude, hospitals are overflowing, people are sent home or shunted aside when they have serious conditions that need to be dealt with, waiting times are outrageous, and the overall level of care is deplorable. The NHS is infamous for this kind of service, or lack thereof.

But then I hear horror stories from people here in the U.S.--but they never come from primary sources. It's always a friend of a friend whose doctor diagnosed her in two minutes, incorrectly, and almost killed her with a mistaken prescription. I have never personally experienced anything like that. Yes, doctors run late and waiting rooms are full, but when I finally see the doctor, he treats my problem, and he treats it well. And if I don't like a doctor, I can find another doctor and get a second opinion.

I firmly believe that everyone in the U.S. should have access to this level of health care, regardless of ability to pay. I believe that the system is flawed and it needs to be fixed. But I've never witnessed poor quality of health care itself. It seems to me that the 6/7 of U.S. residents who do have insurance have it pretty good. But like I said, I really don't know much about it beyond my own experience.

So my question is, have I just been incredibly lucky with the doctors I've encountered and the insurance plans that I've had? Have you had terrible experiences in medical settings, in the U.S. or otherwise? How do you think the health care itself--not the health care system--in the U.S. measures up to that of other countries?

Bus shelter benches

So, recently the District of Columbia has undertaken a project to replace all of the crappy old bus shelters in the city with a shiny, modern version.

Now, in general this is a good thing. The old bus shelters? Well, not every stop had a shelter, for one thing. And they were generally old and rusty and most of them didn't have any information posted on them, and some of them didn't have benches. So a new, informative, clean (for now) shelter seems like a good idea. See?


But I do have a complaint about these new shelters. My complaint is that the benches suck. And this is a bigger issue than it seems at first.

So what's wrong with the benches? Well, they are very narrow, and they're also rounded at the sides, and they also have raised notches demarcating the seats (three in total). In short, they aren't comfortable, even to sit on for a minute. And if ever a bench should be designed with comfort in mind, it's in a DC bus shelter, given that often one has to sit there for a very long time because DC buses are not exactly known for their punctuality.

But this is not some accidental design error. No, the Washington Post quotes someone from the District Department of Transportation as saying that they wanted benches that were comfortable (whoops) but "discouraged long-term occupancy." In other words, DC doesn't want homeless people sleeping in their bus shelters.

I understand that having homeless people sleeping in bus shelters is less than ideal. But I think that comes from a larger problem. Having homeless people sleep in parks is less than ideal. Having homeless people sleep on the sidewalk is less than ideal. Having homeless people sleep ANYWHERE is less than ideal because people being homeless AT ALL is the problem to begin with. I really do not think that homeless people consider a bus shelter bench to be the ideal bed, either.

Originally, I thought this was a huge waste of money on the part of the District, money that could be better spent improving or expanding homeless shelters, for example. But the article in the Post says that the bus shelters are maintained by Clear Channel in exchange for control of the ad space, and that this contract to replace them is actually worth $150 million to the city.

In which case, one would think, some of that money could be used to address the homelessness problem in the city, right? Since we are apparently trying to kick homeless people out of our bus shelters? But no, the money is going toward DC's street improvement initiative. Another worthy project, of course. But I tend to think that providing for the basic needs of the worst-off people in the city is more important than a road improvement project. At the very least, the money could be split among multiple projects.

But instead this whole thing seems to me to be just another instance of marginalized citizens being pushed even further aside in DC's quest to make the city seem shiny, happy, and scrubbed clean.

What do you think?

Two voices, one vote

We voted this morning. Well, I voted. Torsten is not a US citizen and therefore does not get to vote. But he came with me to the polling station, waited in line with me while I checked in, and politely stood to the side while I cast my ballot. In case I secretly voted for Hillary without telling him? I'm not sure. I guess he did it on the same principle that causes me to look totally in the opposite direction if someone is typing their PIN. Just to make sure they don't think I'm trying to steal it, even though they know full well that I'm not.

Anyway, Torsten and I both support Obama, so I consider my vote to be cast on behalf of both of us. And if you live in DC, Maryland, or Virginia, today is the day, so go cast your vote. Especially if you're going to vote for Obama. Just kidding. Sort of.

In other news, remember how I posted yesterday about how I ordered wedding stamps? Well, last night I saw this article about how postage is going up 1 cent in May. Half the stamps that I ordered will still be good for sending out the save-the-dates, because those are going out before May. The other half will require the addition of a 1-cent stamp. And all I can say is that they had better introduce a purple 1-cent stamp, QUICK. Because I do not want to blemish our RSVP envelopes with these hideous green, lamp-adorned stamps. Oh, I am bitter about this.

Also, I've learned something about Torsten recently: when he's in pain, he gets all panicky and generally acts like a paranoid hypochondriac. It is tempting, therefore, to be dismissive of his panic. However, when he acts like that, there is always something wrong. Yesterday was no exception. He had a mild toothache over the weekend and by Sunday night was all freaking out and unable to sleep, partly because of the pain but also because he was so worried.

I, being the bad fiancée that I am, told him he probably had a cavity or something and should just make a dentist appointment and not worry about it. Of course, it turns out that he has a strong distaste for dentists ever since his old dentist in Germany inadvertently drilled into his nerve without anesthesia. So he spent a couple of hours obsessively researching dentists online and finally managed to find one that was a) highly recommended, b) across the street from his office, and c) covered under his dental insurance plan. Let me tell you, finding all three of those things in one dentist? Nothing short of a miracle. Especially given Torsten's very high standards.

Anyway, so he went to the dentist yesterday, and wound up having a root canal on the spot. I did not even know what a root canal entailed until yesterday, and believe me, I wish I still didn't know. It sounds absolutely horrible. Apparently it wasn't as bad as it sounds, but still. Ugh. Just thinking about it makes me shudder. And he'll have to go back next week to have the root canal finished, and then again to have a crown put on.

And also? We're lucky in that both of us have dental insurance. But even with? The root canal is covered at 80%, and the crown is covered at only 50%, and apparently crowns are very expensive, like possibly $1,000 or more. And he has a $1,500 annual maximum, and he's already used about half of that on x-rays and the root canal. My question is, why couldn't this have happened a month and a half ago so he could have had half the work done in 2007 and saved some of his annual maximum for this year? Now we just have to hope that he doesn't need any dental work for the rest of the year.

Now, just to re-emphasize: DC, Maryland, and Virginia readers, go vote!

Being overweight is un-PC.

I am sick of the apparently publicly accepted, PC approach to obesity in America.

I've written about what it's like to be fat before, but that was personal. This time, it's not just about me. This is about a societal attitude toward overweight people.

Doctors either don't mention it at all--hence a doctor who told me that I was "voluptuous" instead of testing my thyroid, which, as I learned years later, was underactive--or they blame everything on obesity and fail to find the real source of some overweight patients' problems. Fat prejudice is prevalent in health care, and it can keep overweight patients from seeking or getting the treatment they need.

Mississippi is proposing a bill that would prohibit restaurants from serving overweight patrons. The legislator who proposed it doesn't want it to pass, he says; he just wants to call attention to the problem. Truly, how kind. What problem is that? The problem where not enough Americans are looking down at overweight people, and assuming that body size is an indicator of health? Or the problem where not every overweight person is silently (or not-so-silently) judged by others for daily decisions like what to eat for dinner?

A New York Times article about brides' obsession with weight loss (which is, to be fair, an interesting and readable piece) mentions that over half the brides surveyed were of normal BMI. Yet the article states at the end that doctors should capitalize on this obsession to encourage engaged women to focus on losing weight the healthy way, even once the wedding is over. What about the majority of those women, the ones who were already at a healthy weight? Should they be encouraged to lose another ten pounds too?

Some doctors have suggested putting warning labels about the health risks of obesity in plus-size clothing. There's a thoughtful idea that wouldn't alienate fat people more than they already are. The condescension in such proposals is painful.

We are all obsessed with BMI, even though it's a flawed indicator that isn't particularly specific to individuals, since it depends on muscle mass and other factors. Swistle has a great post about what's classified as "plus-size," with a link to a fascinating slide show about what BMI says about real people's body types.

Obesity is a problem in the US. But it isn't a problem on its own. It's a problem because it has a lot of dangerous co-morbidities, such as increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, and certain types of cancer. It needs to be reduced. Our country needs to be healthier.

But we need to be healthier in terms of making healthy food choices, staying active, and generally taking care of our bodies. Obesity can be used as an easy indicator for those things. But it's become too easy in this country to use overweight as a stand-in for the real problem. To blame problems on that. To assume that if an overweight person has a health problem, it's because they're overweight. To make judgments about fat people, that they're lazy or that they hate themselves.

What it comes down to is that it's societally acceptable to couch our distaste for fat people in the language of good health. We have given ourselves permission to judge overweight people based on their size. And I do not understand why that's okay.

Apparently, I'm a Bridezilla.

I thought I was all cool about getting married and stuff, and flexible and laid-back and everything else that most brides are not. And then I read this article on CNN, about a bride who is suing her florist for $400,000 because they put pastel pink flowers in the centerpieces instead of rust-coloured ones, and also because the hydrangeas were wilted and brown, and presented in dusty vases without enough water. And I totally felt for her.

Seriously, I understand how upsetting that can be, since pink and rust are nothing alike. And also, it's not like this was a budget wedding--apparently, they shelled out over $27,000 for the flowers. Which is waaaay more than we're spending on our entire wedding. I would definitely be upset if the flowers were the wrong colour and all wilted, too. I probably wouldn't sue for $400,000, but I'd be really angry. And anyone who spends that much on flowers is obviously someone who wants and expects her wedding to be perfect, and cares about things like the fact that everything in the whole wedding was done in rust and green, and that pale pink clashes horribly with that colour scheme.

Also, just to do a bit of math--we are planning to spend about 7% of our wedding budget on flowers. Assume the same for this woman, and you're looking at a wedding that costs almost exactly $400,000. Coincidentally, the amount she's suing for. My feeling is that anyone who spends that much on their wedding is the type of person who will then feel like the whole thing was ruined by the hideous centerpieces clashing with everything else at the reception. She was probably really upset as soon as she saw them and that probably interfered with her enjoyment of the very expensive day. I would personally never think of suing a florist over pink vs. rust coloured flowers, but I would also never dream of dropping anywhere near that much money on flowers to begin with. And if I did, I would damn well expect them to be fresh, un-dusty, and the exact right shade of rust.

So I can sympathize with her. Am I right? Or are my days of sanity over?

Unnecessary Tasering.

I discovered this article over at CNN, and now I feel like puking. This student, Andrew Meyer, asked a long and heated question to John Kerry at a forum, and got upset when the microphone was taken away from him. Then, according to the article:

"Meyer screams for help and asks 'What did I do?' as he tries to break away from officers. He is forced to the ground and officers order him to stop resisting. Meyer says he will walk out if the officers let him go.

"As Kerry tells the audience he will answer the student's 'very important question,' Meyer struggles on the ground and yells at the officers to release him, crying out, 'Don't Tase me, bro,' just before he is Tasered. He is then led from the room, screaming, 'What did I do?'"

Watch the video below. Oh, my God.