Old Friends Are Gold

To the ones I can sit for two hours with or twelve and we never quite get to the end of the conversation:
You Are Awesome. 

When did we grow up enough to be married, to have children, to have careers, and aging parents?  Hell, when did we ever get old enough to drive, or vote, or drink, or rent a car? 

And yet here we are, sitting at the bar (the fancy one with tablecloths and candles over bottomless margaritas and buckets of salsa) talking about our few grandparents that are left, our parents that love you like you're their own and me like I'm the daughter that got away (that's a longer story isn't it?), and checking the time in case one of us needs to get home to nurse. 

I love you old friends.  I am so blessed, or lucky, or smart, or however one decides is most appropriate to describe someone who gets to have friends that knew them in their awkward stages, who knew them at their highest and loved them through their lowest, and still wants to drink bottles of wine and figure out the problems of the world together.

Lovelies

About a year and a half ago I got to finally meet Lilly in San Francisco, through our mutual friend Tommy.  Lilly's sister Fuzzy used to live with Tommy in Brooklyn, and I met her for the first time when we were first visiting NYC last January.  Now, Lilly is living in an apartment in Loring Park with their cousin Nora, and Fuzzy lives in the Whittier neighborhood.  A few days after I moved in, we figured out we live two short blocks away from each other.

I got to be sister wives with them for Halloween, along with Chelsea.  I also get to hang out with another cousin Lyz a lot.  I met Fuzzy and Lilly's mom, she told me welcome to the clan.  It make my heart smile.

These women are some that make me happy I get to be one, happy that I live here, happy to be tall, happy to be alive.  They are, individually or as a group, incredible.  Along with my loves Katie, Kate, Lauren, Erin, Anna, and Stephanie (and a few members of the male species too) they have made this city feel like home. 

I saw this video today on Fuzzy's blog.  Hard to believe, but she's even more wonderful in real life.


working from home from Fuzzy on Vimeo.

"Pro-Life" Is A Lie

Today Scott Roeder was convicted of 1st degree murder in the killing of Dr. Tiller in Wichita, Kansas.

Last May Mr. Roeder went to the church of Dr. Tiller, found him inside, pressed the gun to his forehead, and killed him.  He pointed the gun at two other churchgoers as he tried to get away, for which he was convicted of aggravated assault.

His defense focused centered around Mr. Roeder's belief that Dr. Tiller was murdering children; that is, the doctor was was an abortion doctor, including legal late term abortions, and that Mr. Roeder felt he was saving lives by murdering Dr. Tiller.


I find it preposterous and sad that this would even be presented as a legal defense.  This is a man who planned for years on killing another human being.  This is murder, regardless of that other human's actions.  

This jury seemed to agree.  They took 37 minutes to come back with a guilty verdict, which is just a little longer than it took a jury in this same courtroom last March  to acquit Dr. Tiller of 19 misdemeanor violations of Kansas's abortion law.

I don't usually write about things too far outside of my personal life, but I am compelled by this sense I have that we are becoming more and more disengaged with the importance of abortion as a right.  It was not always legal, and it could not be legal again.  I bet you know at least one person who has had at least one abortion, and I bet that they did not treat it as a frivolity.  We have to stay aware of the attacks on it's legality, and attacks on the individuals that risk their safety to provide us the equality that access to safe and legal abortion allows us.

Good Wife

I got this little nugget from my mother in an email a few months back...  (click on image to see it bigger)

Such gems include:
"Greet him with a warm smile and show sincerity in your desire to please him."  and
"A good wife always knows her place."

I love watching the suppressed rage of Betty Draper on Mad Men as much as the next person, and I got a good laugh out of this.  Then I read it again and I thought, "Holy Shit are my sisters and I lucky that my mothers and hers worked so hard and didn't mind the label of feminism...  Cheers to you women, and cheers to our grandmothers for not losing their intelligent and underused disrespected minds.  We owe you lots."