what i believe

There’s a race on for county commissioner here in my town. I don’t really know anything about any of the candidates. What I DO know is that the town is peppered with one candidate’s blue signs reading:

If you believe the way I do, vote . . .

Believe the way I do? Which would mean . . . what? That I believe the sun will rise in the east tomorrow? That I believe children shouldn’t sass their mothers? That I believe I’ll have another Reeses’s cup?

I suppose it means that if I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and died on the cross that I should vote for the name on the sign.

Guess what? I DO believe that.

Guess what else. I DON’T believe that being a Christian means that other Christians can guilt me into voting a certain way. And I don’t believe that being a Christian makes me any wiser or more socially, fiscally, or ethically aware than anyone else of any other faith.

I don’t believe that being a Christian automatically obligates me to vote along conservative party lines. In fact, I was infuriated a few years ago when I was standing in line at my voting precinct and noted one woman walking down the line and asking the waiting voters, “Are you a Christian?” When receiving an affirmative answer, she would follow-up with, “Then you know to vote against gay marriage.”

For one thing, she was BREAKING THE LAW! For another, no one has the right to tell another person how to vote. Not even when it’s a Christian addressing another Christian. One might even say, especially when it’s a Christian addressing another Christian.

Here’s what I believe: I believe in kindness and love and grace and mercy. I believe in the inherent goodness of humans. I believe in weighing the social, moral, physical, emotional, ethical, and fiscal impact of a decision. And that’s how I decide my votes.

I most certainly DO NOT cast my vote out of a sense of guilt or out of a fear that I will not be a good Christian if I don’t vote the “right” way.

And I don’t vote for anyone who’s enough of a bully to try that tactic with me.

The Great Virtual Breast Fest

Breastfeeding my children is at the top of my list of the most beautiful, amazing, miraculous experiences of my life. Despite being a young mother, I knew from the moment I saw the positive pregnancy test that I would breastfeed. Always a voracious reader, I had already devoured every pregnancy and parenting book I could get my hands on and was determined to give my child all of the health benefits that breastfeeding could provide. Not to mention the fact that I was determined to return to my pre-pregnancy size PDQ and breastfeeding moms lose baby weight easier than non-breastfeeding moms. Or so they say.

My first attempts at breastfeeding were clumsy and awkward. My oldest son didn’t just instinctively latch on. No matter how I positioned him, it seemed impossible for him to nurse. My mother-in-law saw my frustration grow and gave me the benefit of her experience by reaching over and cupping my breast in her hand and guiding my son’s mouth to it at the same time. It was magic. I never had trouble with him latching on again after that.

That experience, embarrassing as it could have been — I mean, it’s not every day I let a family member cup my breast in their hand– brought home to me the beauty of motherhood and power of womanhood. I realized that no pregnancy book or parenting book or lactation book could bestow upon me the wisdom that comes with experience or the instinct that’s been built into mothers by God. I felt connected to all of the women who’d felt the pins and needles, tingly sensation of milk letting down as their babies softly rooted against their breast. I felt connected to all mothers past, present and future.

My oldest son weaned himself from the breast at ten months and it was a sad day for me. I would have nursed him longer than that. It was our time. I rarely multi-tasked or watched TV while breastfeeding. Instead, I preferred to look down at his tiny face. I loved it when he was wide awake and his big, blue eyes blinked up at me and his little hands clutched at my breast or, later, gently tugged at my long hair. I loved it when he nursed himself to sleep and I got to see his face in repose, his silky eyelashes fanned against his baby cheeks, his forehead smooth. That his baby’s instinct kept him sucking at my breast even when he was deeply asleep seemed a wonder to me.

I was magical. I was a giver of life. I didn’t have to do anything but eat reasonably healthfully. My body knew what to do. I could hear my baby sigh in his sleep and my milk would let down. My mother’s body instinctively pushed my baby’s nourishment to the top of its priority list. To try to ignore it would be to experience achy, heavy breasts and milk-soaked blouses. Even if I hadn’t already been willing to step up to the plate and put my child’s needs before my own, my body would have done it anyway.

I don’t understand why anyone would sexualize breastfeeding or demonize women who breastfeed in public. I had a lightweight little nursing cape that snapped around my neck and covered my breast and my son’s head when he nursed in public but there were times when I forgot to pack it in the diaper bag and it certainly didn’t stop me from feeding my child–no matter where we were. I was always discrete. I got a few uncomfortable glances–mostly from men– but never faced any overt hostility.

I guess I was just lucky because it would seem that many other mothers have been and are still currently being harassed and persecuted for exercising their legal right to breastfeed their child in public. Facebook has banned photos of children at their mothers’ breasts. Bill Maher has stepped in doo-doo (he has no idea how deep) by condemning those who would dare to feed their child from nature’s oldest bottle, the BREAST, in public. Read more about it here.

To anyone who is immature enough to make it all about boobs and sex, I say, Grow Up. To anyone who is uncomfortable seeing a woman’s breast (or the little bit of flesh not obscured by a feeding child’s head), I say, Get Counseling; You Probably Suckled At Your Mother’s Breast Too.

Mostly, to anyone who has a problem with breastfeeding in any way, shape or form: Pffffffffffffffffffffffffttttt! Get a Life.

And SUCK THIS!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eSdQQpJh7U[/youtube]

Bugger Off!

I ordered this shirt from Sharon’s Art Shop today. It says:

BUGGER OFF!
I’m fine the way I am

I mostly just ordered it because it’s cheeky and I love it. But I also ordered it because I have been feeling fed up with the way some people take it upon themselves to judge others based on appearance.Some of you may recall a doctor friend of mine telling me I had gained weight and my arms looked fat several months ago. I was crushed at first but later became just flat out angry. Who does he think he is to tell me I have gained weight and claim that it was in the spirit of friendship? Because I wasn’t fat and, at the time, I was still regularly complimented on my appearance by my friends and even total strangers. In fact, the same doctor’s mother came to visit the United States a while back. When she met me, she told me I have the face of an angel. So HA! Right then, I should have told my friend, “Bugger off! I am fine the way I am.”

Recently I have lost some weight. About twenty pounds. And no, I didn’t lose it because of the remark the doctor made to me. I mostly lost it because I got very stressed out and couldn’t eat without feeling sick. Not a great way to lose weight, I can tell you.

You wouldn’t believe how many people tell me I look great. One of my husband’s friends has gushed every time he’s seen me. He always asks, “You’ve lost A LOT of weight, haven’t you?” Then he just goes on and on about how wonderful I look. The implication is that I didn’t look wonderful before.

I am here to tell you that anyone who couldn’t see that I was beautiful before I lost twenty pounds is not really someone I care to know. I wasn’t fat before I lost the weight. I was still in a healthy weight range for my height and my clothes fit. Even with 20 pounds melted off of my frame, most of my clothes still fit me. I am 5′7″ tall. I can shed and gain twenty pounds without a huge difference in the way I look.

But it’s not all about how I look anyway. I am a beautiful person on the inside. I am kind and compassionate. I care about others. I go out of my way to make others feel good. I care for my children tenderly. I love my husband passionately. I am a true and loyal friend. I am an attentive daughter.

I took one of my best friends to lunch yesterday simply because she is so stressed that her blood pressure is high. I went to the movies last night with another friend who is going through a rough divorce and just uprooted herself and her daughter to move here. Most of you know by now that I made a quilt for Sharon.

And yet? I have these people deeming me beautiful or not based on whether I am thin enough for their standards. I have people deciding whether or not I am worthy of their attention based on if they find me attractive or not. And I am tired of it.

So.

Bugger off! I am fine the way I am.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

This afternoon, I stopped to visit a friend of mine to congratulate him on the birth of his grand-daughter. At one point I cooed, “Oh, I just adore newborns!” That statement emboldened him and he said, “Are you growing a baby?” I quickly answered no and showed him a picture of my puppy. Next he said, “You have gained a lot of weight since I last saw you, yes?” I said, “No, not really.” He said, “I don’t notice it so much on your bottom or your belly–but your arms are especially big.” My friend is from another country and often makes cultural faux pas. So I thought I would help him out. “You really must learn not to say such things to women, you know.” He said, “You are not a woman. You are my friend and that is why I am telling you.”

Needless to say, I was crushed. I kept a brave front while speaking to my friend, but left his office and immediately e-mailed Sharon and called Brenda. As I sobbed to Brenda, she immediately began offering to order a hit on my friend. Maybe I made that part up. But she did offer to call and gripe out my friend. I asked her not to call him because I didn’t want him to know he had upset me. She told me she would definitely make his life miserable at the first opportunity, but agreed not to call him on what he said to me. Sharon was also very nice. She assured me that I don’t look fat or pregnant. Then, she called Melonie who expressed her desire to drive to Texas and cut off my friend’s testicles. She also suggested that I tell him his package was quite small and he should consider stuffing a sock down there and remind him that I was only telling him that because I am his friend. Man, do I have great friends or what?

Honestly, I was not planning to write about any of this. Why? Because it was humiliating and it shook me up. The friend who said those things to me is truly a wonderful man and someone I love and respect. He doesn’t have a lot of the societal editors that Americans have and he is known for being blunt. It hurt even more that someone I care about said such things to me.

You want to know why I decided to write about it? Because to hell with people who take it upon themselves to point out alleged flaws on other people! Did it ever occur to him that, if my upper arms are big, I have most likely noticed it myself and don’t need for it to be pointed out? I have lots of friends who have gained weight, worn ugly clothes, or gotten bad haircuts and I don’t feel a burning desire to point it out to them. Chances are–they already know! And if they don’t? Well, they are probably happy with their body, clothes and hair and it is not my place to cut them down.

I know my arms are bigger than they used to be. That’s the natural result of transitioning from a fairly active job to a very sedentary one. I also know that my face was broken out today and that I was talking funny because I am not used to my new retainer. Nobody felt the need to point those things out and I made it through the day just fine.

Oh–and for the record? I am not fat. My arms are not big. My Body Mass Index is in the “normal” range. I am also smart, pretty, and witty too. So screw anyone who tries to jack with my self-confidence!

Any of you who read my posts regularly know that I have a hard time convincing myself that I am any of the things I just listed above. The great thing is that I have so many wonderful friends who tell me that I am all of those things and more on days like today when it is even harder than usual to feel like I am worthy of taking up space on this giant rock called Earth.

To self-soothe, I went shopping tonight. I was planning to get my nails done too, but the Asian techs always take one look at me and practically beg to wax my eye brows. I couldn’t handle that tonight. But, I digress.I needed some new clothes to take to Chicago on Sunday and I have been putting it off because my life has been so hectic. The store where I spent most of the evening had a great little salesclerk. She was so helpful and kind and perky. She told me what looked good and was honest when things looked bad. She ran all over the store looking for cute outfits for me. She oohed and ahhed when I tried on an outfit she liked. At the end of the evening I said to her, “Someone said something pretty horrible to me this afternoon and I have been fragile ever since. Thank you for being so nice to me. You’ll never know how much it means.”

One lesson I am taking away from today is that one never knows how one’s words might affect someone else. My friend never though that his words would cut so deep and the salesclerk never thought her kindness would have such a positive impact. It puts me in mind of the saying, “To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world.”

By the way, I bought two pair of jeans tonight and they were the same size I have worn for years. What-his-name can put that in his pipe and smoke it!

Labels

I went to vote this evening after getting home from work. This particular election in Texas is a biggie because of the hot button issue of a proposition to change the state Constitution to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. As I stood in line waiting to vote, a woman stopped and said to a lady a few feet in front of me, “You are a Christian, right?” The woman nodded. “Then you know to vote for Proposition 2.” The casual remark made me see red.

I am not big on labels. I tend to be a non-conformist. There have been plenty of styles I have not adopted simply because I don’t want to look like everyone else. I have always loved hippie-style tunic shirts. That type of shirt has recently come into style. My mother and I saw one at Dillard’s and she remarked that it looked like something I would wear. I agreed that I would have bought it at one time but refuse to buy a tunic now because everyone else is wearing them. My point–and I do have one–is that I refuse to label myself. If I had to label myself, I wouldn’t label myself as Republican or Democrat or moderate or conservative. Rather my label would read, “Intelligent, independent woman who can make up her own mind, thank you very much.”

So, you can imagine that it irked me for the Christian woman to assume that, because a voter is Christian, that she is required to vote a certain way. Similarly, if I was a homosexual, I would be offended if other homosexuals insisted I vote according to some preconceived gay agenda. I waited for the woman to ask me if I was a Christian. I was prepared to tell her I am a Christian lesbian just to see how she reasoned her way out of that one. She didn’t ask me, though. I must look like a heathen. Or a lesbian.

I have nothing against Christians. I am a Christian myself. I also have nothing against homosexuals. I am pro-human being! I believe in showing compassion to fellow human beings from all walks of life. I believe God will judge us all and, honestly, I don’t think I will come away from that judgement any better off than most. The only thing I have against the Christian woman is that she made another voter feel like she had to vote a certain way in order to be a good Christian. I am fairly certain what she did was illegal. I know there is no campaigning allowed within a certain distance of the voting precinct. I am not sure if the rules are the same when it is an election strictly for proposed amendments.

What? You want to know if I voted for or against the proposition? Well, that is really no one’s business but my own. Be assured, gentle reader, that my vote was cast based on careful research and personal values and that not one single Christian (besides myself) or homosexual–or Christian homosexual– had anything to do with my decision. I am proud to live in a country where that is OK.

Beware the little old ladies

Back in April, I cleaned out my closets and took all of the nice clothes that I never wear to a consignment shop. The deal was that I would leave the clothes there for three months and, at the end of that time, I would get a check for half of what the clothes sold for and pick up any clothes that didn’t sell. Well, I went to the shop in July and inquired as to whether my clothes had sold. The older lady behind the counter told me she didn’t think they had sold and told me she didn’t have the store checkbook with her anyway. So, I left the clothes for another month and went back in August. She again told me that she didn’t have the store checkbook with her. I began to suspect a scam and told her I wanted either my money or my clothes because she had told me the same story about the checkbook two months in a row. I really think she had gotten away with her absent-minded old lady act for a long time. She was very flustered when I suggested she was running a racket. After an extremely frustrating conversation, she wrote down my name and address and promised to send me a check by September 19th. Guess what? September 19th came and went and I had no check.

A couple of weeks ago, I asked Brad to go in the store for me and demand my check and threaten to call the better business bureau if the old hag didn’t cough up my money. I warned him that she was a sly old bird and would try to finagle her way out of payment if he wasn’t careful. Brad walked in the store, strode up to the counter and said, “I am here to collect a check for my wife, Heather.” You know what that sneaky, manipulating, crazy old bat did? She smiled at him, handed him a check for $54.50 and told him she was sorry it had taken so long.

Old hag.

Bad Nurses

At the Hispanic Women’s event today, our hospital sponsored five booths. I staffed our cardiovascular booth and some of my nurse colleagues had booths for bariatric surgery, perinatal care, our family health center, and a national Spirit of Women table. When the participants were in their conference, my colleagues and I sat around talking about our nursing experiences over the years. Eventually, the coversation turned to how we had all been treated badly by another nurse at some time or another. One woman told how the triage nurse had told her how stupid she was for bringing her baby into the ER for a high temperature and asked her, “You are a nurse and you don’t even know how to treat a fever?” It turns out her baby had complete white out of the upper lobe of his right lung from pneumonia, but I digress. All of us had negative experiences with nurses to relate and were bummed that nurses like that give us all a bad reputation with the general public. I told them that I always tried to be kind to even my most difficult families because they are obviously crankier than usual when critically ill.

I was still thinking about how the few bad nurses make the rest of us look bad as I was checking out at the grocery store on my way home from work. I got to the checkout counter only to have my cashier distracted by another employee giving him an inservice on all of the new phone numbers in the store since they had upgraded their phone system. I stood quietly for a few minutes listening to him say, ” You dial 120 to talk to produce now instead of 220, like before. If you have an irate customer and you need to speak to a CSM, you dial . . .” I felt like that was my cue to jump in the conversation. I said, “Excuse me, but could you inservice him when there’s NOT a line from here to the frozen foods aisle?” He said, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I only have today to get all of these cashiers inserviced.” I said, “I fail to see how that is my problem. I only have a few minutes RIGHT NOW to buy groceries and get home to my children!” The employee looked at me and I could see him trying to decide if he was going to argue with me or not. He decided against it, apologized and moved to the next cashier so he could hold up somebody else’s grocery line. About the time he walked away, I looked down and realized I was still wearing my hospital name badge that says in big, bold letters: Heather, RN.

Yeah. I don’t think I am helping the public image of a registered nurse.

My first ban ever!

I don’t know what got into me? I have banned my first person EVER from commenting on my blog. This person commented on my post about my grandparents. She said, “You need to stop talking about them as if they were already gone. You need to stop avoiding them. You would feel bad if they were gone and you hadn’t spent time with them.”

Now, I know that this person did not intend to piss me off. I know she was trying to be helpful. It was her first time to ever comment on my blog. It wasn’t anyone I “know.” But, honestly? I didn’t ask for any advice. I didn’t open up the conversation for her to tell me what I need to do. I do sometimes ask for advice when I write a post. Most of you are really very sweet when you give advice. Somehow, this comment just made my blood boil. Who has their life so together that they can tell me what I need to do after reading ONE BLOG ENTRY!

I specifically recall writing that I hadn’t spoken with my grandparents in a while because August and September were such busy months. I never once said that I had avoided them for any reason. I did, however, say that I usually end up crying after I talk to them. That’s true. That doesn’t mean that I don’t talk to them, though!

I hope I am not being too mean. I have been described as having a short fuse before. It is possible that I let my temper get the better of me. It just seems like there would have been a better, less “in-your-face” way to say what she said.

On another subject, the tagboard in my sidebar causes pop-ups. I have left it there because I thought most of y’all had pop-up blockers that took care of them. However, I have recently learned that Firefox doesn’t block them. I have been hesitant to remove the tagboard because so many of you seem to enjoy it. So, now I really am asking advice. Should I get rid of the tagboard so the pop-ups will disappear? Do any of you have a suggestion for a message board that doesn’t cause pop-ups?

I have something to say

I have been reading and watching news reports of the total anarchy in New Orleans and I have some things to say.

Dear scum-sucking, yellow-bellied, sorry excuses for human beings,

I am seriously considering scooting my redneck self on over to New Orleans. You should know that I will not be alone. I will bring my good friends Smith and Wesson along with me. I do not give a damn if you steal Nike tennis shoes and flat screen TVs. I figure if you are too stupid to realize another thief is likely to shoot you to steal back the stuff you stole, then you deserve what you get.

No, I am addressing the parasitic bottom-feeding maggots who are taking advantage of the total chaos to shoot at rescue workers who are trying to help and raping innocent women and children . I completely agree with the governor’s shoot to kill order. I think anyone who is deranged enough to take satisfaction from inflicting more misery on fellow humans who have watched their very homes, loved ones and livelihood be blown and washed away is a blight on humanity and should be taken out of the human race permanently. If I pop a cap in your ass, that will ensure that you will not be around to pass on your brand of hatred and cruelty to future generations.

I am hoping that all of you get exactly what you deserve at the hands of the National Guard. I want you all rounded up and tried for rape and attempted murder. If you resist arrest, I hope they do not hesitate to shoot you where you stand. I am certain there will be some National Guardsmen from West Texas over in N’Orleans with you people and I pity the poor fool who gets a can of Texas whoop-ass opened on him. I would consider it a great honor to shake the hand of anyone who took out one of you low-life sons-of-bitches.

Gee, I hope I wasn’t unclear. I don’t think I stuttered.