Scariest Moments

Yesterday, while driving home on 285 from what I hope to be the final trip to any store to locate school supplies, some fool ran into my lane without looking first. In an effort to keep him from hitting me and the side of the car with my son and youngest, I swerved, hit the horn and my breaks all at the same time. At that moment I lost control of my car. We started spinning and all I could see is wall so I turned the wheel and we kept spinning, almost hit the guard rail on the right side of the highway, kept spinning and then stopped in the far right lane facing oncoming traffic. Now, I am really not sure that I even had anything to do with us not hitting either guardrail on the sides of the highway or the cars that just kept on coming. All I remember is hearing my children screaming and telling that it was going to be alright and we were going to be ok. And I do remember reaching out for my son who was sitting in the front passenger seat. It was by grace that we came out of that without being hit, hurt or injuring someone else. Can someone sing, “Angels watching over me…”? In the meantime, the fool that started the chain of events just kept driving. We made it over to the emergency lane and just sat there for a moment while I made sure everyone was ok, calmed my son and my nerves. No one, not even DeKalb Police stopped to see if we were ok. Where is the love for thy neighbor??? After my hands stopped shaking, we made it home safely and life went on as usual. However, my son has now vowed to never play his PS2 racing games and none of them want to get back on the highway.

A little later last night my son asked me if that was the scariest thing to ever happen to me. Without thought I said yes, but after thinking on his question, it really wasn’t THE scariest thing to ever happen to me.

Being told my mother had passed away.

Receiving a frantic call from my mother that my baby was having a seizure, that was pretty scary.

The lead doctor of the Ob/Gyn practice I was attending at the time meet with us in his office to let us know that the baby I was carrying, the baby girl I had dreamed about, would not make it inutero another week. I had to go into the hospital immediately or else.

Hearing the fetal heartbeat of my second baby girl drop when the nurse asked me to lie on my back scared me something awful. All turned out well, but I saw on the video that she had the chord wrapped around her neck.

So no, that wasn't THE scariest, but it was definitely one of. I always thought I had angels watching over me, but now I know that my household is covered.

Be thankful for the small things and always kiss your babies!

Free Therapy Works

I guess I'm a believer, free therapy through this here blog, the listening ear of friends and PBS specials work. No need to go sit up and pay someone to help you talk through your situations, just blog. My boss has asked me, Miss Attitude, Miss Buck-Against-The-System, to present today at our staff meeting on a phrase I heard on a PBS special and then internalized. It would seem that she has seen a change in me, a sort of aura if you will, and now she thinks it would be good for staff morale if I shared my change of heart with them.

What was the phrase? When I changed the way I looked at things, the things I looked at changed. What was the show? It was one of those marathons to raise money, but Dr. Wayne Dyer was the featured PBS supporter. Simple phrase, but it has lots of meaning. It really did help me to see things differently here, well, that and the meeting I called with HR to discuss my situation.

You a Bad Mutha...Shut Yo Mouth!

Ok, I have a quickie today as I am on my way out the door. Anyway, this ish is just tickling me to no end.

Yesterday, as soon as I arrive home the celly starts ringing. It's Grandma (BD2's mom). I'm all happy to hear from her and ask if she was reading my mind because I was thinking I needed to give her a call to find out if she needed a ride from the airport when she gets in for Ayan's birthday. She tells me that she is calling to speak to "her baby" and so BD2 can talk to his daughter. WTF Why can't he just man up and call me himself? Better yet, we now live prolly 10 minutes at the most from him, why doesn't he just come see his daughter? Oh, right, he said he was done with us and I granted him that wish instead of begging him to stick around so now I'm the one keeping him from his child. I'm just living life letting you do you honey. You got my number when you are ready to be a man and a daddy instead of hiding behind your mother.

Grandma and I always have nice chats and after he exited the phone, we had another delightful chat, can't wait to see her in two weeks.

This morning I spoke to the ex and first I asked him why he didn't at least call his son to let him know he wasn't going to pick him up last week as promised. Do you know this fool said he forgot. How do you "forget" your child??? That part wasn't funny, just sad. This is the funny part, after chewing him out for that stupid ish, I asked him why his live-in baby momma always runs to the back when I come over. I've been to their place twice but each time she hides out in the back room when I'm there. He said he told her to do that and not to say anything to me that might set me off. LOL I couldn't believe that ish. Ain't no way in hell I would be banished to the bedroom in my own house (unless I was portraying the role of love-slave, but that's another subject). And besides that, I don't have anything against her. The time my kids were with her, she was good to them so there is no beef between us. I know in the past I have been known to terrorize women in his life, but 1) I was usually provoked and 2) I still had feelings for him then. None of those things are true in this case, so really, she has no reason to hide out.

I just can't get over the nonesense...too funny.

How do you define "Family"

This morning on a local radio station here in Atlanta the ignorant DJ who shall remain nameless (no free press on my blog) asked the people poll for the day. Apparently, there was a daddy, baby and girlfriend that wanted to take a vacation together and baby momma wanted to come along to look out for her baby. How you feel on that is a whole ‘nother topic. If I were uncomfortable with my baby going out of town in a situation like that, she just wouldn’t go. Anywho, others called in with their opinion and one woman stated that she, baby and baby daddy were going on a “family vacation” together and she didn’t want the girlfriend to come along.

Well, this set the I-DJ off on a tangent. I suppose he was having flashbacks about his dysfunctional relationship with his baby momma. He jumped all over her phrasing of “family vacation” because in his OPINION they were not a family. In his view, the only real families exist between people who have been married and lived together and have had children. His intern or whoever the hell she was did her best to persuade him otherwise as she apparently still considers her ex’s family to be her family, but to no avail.

Is family not something that individuals can define for themselves and therefore can consist of not only biological ties, but whatever other commonalities people choose to identify as the ties that bind us? I mean, by his definition how do we then classify married couples without children? Or couples with children who are not married, but live together? He made it clear that he didn’t think parents who were never married and who don’t live together were not a “family”. (His arrogance is astounding.) I say differently. They may not be a “family unit” pre se, but they can definitely define themselves as family if they so chose.

I have biological family members, who if I could mark them out of the picture today I would, and then I have friends that I most definitely consider family because of all we have been through. My Girl for instance, she IS my sister. As I have said before, she has seen me through some dark years and she probably doesn’t even know all that she has done for me. She invites me and my children to pretty much every get together she has with her family and we feel like we are just as much apart, but that’s how she and her husband are with their friends. We don’t even have to ask permission to walk through the house. Some people just don’t understand that kind of openness though.

But back to the situation at hand, I have two baby daddies, for lack of a better word. One is more of a Spermanator (I would like to take this moment to shout out Neme) and the other was a bit more involved, but even his parenting could have used some improvements. All of that aside, I still consider them family because we have children together, but even before that we had a friendship and a relationship. My family (on my dad’s side anyway) considers them family on GP alone. I also have relationships with their family members. Am I now suppose to disown that just because we are not a couple? I don’t think so.

Even with that said, trust that we won’t be going on any vacations with me, him, baby and girlfriend/wife.

On a completely different subject, I haven’t done this in a while and this one is waaayyyyy overdue. If you only call up your girl, or your boy when shit ain’t going right in your relationship and you need someone to listen to you bitch, then I have to question your commitment to your friendship and you too get an Ooh Darryl.

Language Arts

Copied this from an email so I cannot take the credit...


The Foreign Language of Choice

By George Lakoff, AlterNet
Posted on June 2, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/22135/

The emphasis on framing and language is not a covert attempt to push women's issues that are controversial -- be it abortion or contraception -- off the progressive agenda. Quite to the contrary, it is a refusal to accept the conservative definition of the issues involved, and put forward a positive vision, based on deeply progressive values and moral perspective.
Many of the feminist organizations have come to the conclusion that the word "choice," and the concept of choice, is a bad idea. Deborah Tannen, who is one of the best-known linguists in the country, observed over a decade ago that the word "choice" is taken from a consumer vocabulary -- as compared to the word "life," which is taken from a moral vocabulary.
Morality beats consumerism every time.

Moreover, the word "choice" versus "decision" is a bad idea because "choice" is less serious a word than "decision." From a linguistic perspective, "choice" was in itself a bad choice.
The word "abortion" is also negative -- the word "abort" as in "abort the mission," as if something has gone terribly wrong. Now you can't just immediately change a word like that to something that's more positive, and in fact, abortions are not situations where things have gone right. But if you use the word "abortion" at all these days, what you're doing is playing on the right's turf, where they have defined the issues to suit their interests, using their words.
What is necessary is a redefinition -- what I will call a "reparsing" -- of the issue. There are four different types of reparsing that are required, and each expresses a powerfully moral idea grounded in a progressive moral perspective.

Let's begin with the two ideas that Howard Dean talked about in his interview with Tim Russert. First, Dean reparsed the issue in terms of personal freedom. He brought up the case of Terry Schiavo, where many Americans felt that this right-wing administration was interfering in the personal freedom of the families involved. They did not want government interference in this most important decision in people's lives. This idea is crucial to American democracy and it was at stake in the Schiavo case -- and most people recognized it as such. Dean was saying, and rightly so, that this is one of the ways we should talk about cases of unwanted pregnancies. These are medical decisions where the government should not be making decisions for any individual or family.

The second reparsing that Dean did in that interview was to take up the question of unwanted pregnancies itself. No one wants unwanted pregnancies, and there's no reason why we should have them since have the means to prevent these pregnancies. A very high percentage of the unwanted pregnancies are among women and girls who have been denied sex education and contraception. And yet the right-wing has been denying sex education to students, and in many cases, even denying contraception through its abstinence-only programs. Now we also face "vigilante pharmacists" who are not just imposing their own will on these women and depriving them of their personal freedom, but also their access to much-needed contraception.
In other words, the right-wing is actually creating unwanted pregnancies.

I would take this analysis further and argue that we should not allow the right-wing to take ownership of the value of life -- that is our value. And the first place we have to start talking about the value of life is on the issue of infant mortality. The United States has the highest rate of infant mortality in the industrialized world, and there's no excuse for it. We have the medical care to prevent these deaths. The reason we continue to experience such high rates if infant mortality is that poor women are being denied prenatal and postnatal care, adequate health insurance, adequate food for their children -- and all this because of the attitude and policies of the conservatives.

Conservatives have been killing babies -- real babies have been born and who people want and love. They have been responsible for the death of children in this country at an astounding rate -- and we should discuss this situation openly.

In addition, by denying access to contraception -- by stopping the distribution of condoms, for example -- the right-wing is exposing people to AIDS, and therefore, again, supporting death. Furthermore, by refusing to implement policies that would lower the incidence of toxins in our environment, conservatives are actually threatening the health of newborn babies. There are about a hundred toxins, including mercury, in mothers' breast milk, which means that there are a hundred toxins in newborn babies -- all thanks to right-wing anti-environmental policies.
In short, the right-wing is imposing a culture of death on this country and we shouldn't stand for it. Progressive values and politics are committed to preserving and nurturing life.

Finally, I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but approximately 28,000 women in this country each year become pregnant as the result of a rape. That's a huge number and it occurs all over America. Here is the question that we must raise: should the federal government force a woman to bear the child of her rapist?

By denying a rape victim access to family planning, to contraception, and to medical operations to end a pregnancy, the conservatives are, in effect, in favor of forcing rape victims to bear the children of their rapist. In Colorado, for example, the governor recently vetoed a bill that would have permitted rape crisis centers to inform rape victims of the effectiveness of the morning-after pill. Now this kind of counseling is the very minimum that a rape crisis center ought to be doing for rape victims. This is an outrage. This is an outrage against victims of rape who ought to be protected, not further exploited.

So rather than trying to respond to some discussion about "abortion," we should actively, positively, put forward these four ideas -- personal freedom, zero tolerance for unwanted pregnancies, taking back life as a value, and protecting rape victims in this country from being forced to bear the children of their rapists.

Martha Burk is right in saying that the Democrats have been too afraid to address women's issues directly. But the failure is deeper and more extensive. Democrats have been slavishly adhering to polls that have been shaped by Republican framing, Republican language. As a result, they have not been raising the most important issues in our society, be it with regard to women, the environment, or peace.

George Lakoff is the author of Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate' (Chelsea Green). He is professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley and a Senior Fellow of the Rockridge Institute.

© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.