Really?! Rocko Diesel?

I really have no words to express this, other than WHAT?! I know that I probably have a different upbringing, and background, and experiences than these people, but really. I just can't understand being so...closed minded. Telling people that gays shouldn't be allowed to have children, they shouldn't be allowed to marry, and to take your child to the doctors office wearing a onesie about how "Mommy didn't think I was just a ball of cells." And in Seattle of all places. I have NEVER encountered quite such an odd person...
The Tale of Rocko Diesel.

Well, actually I worked with a guy (in Lynnwood, north of Seattle) who was very nice except on the topics of Muslims (well, extremist towel-heads is what he called them, I am only assuming he meant Muslims), gays, and liberals. Then he was a raging bigot. It is truly bizarre to me that someone's sense of self can be so tied up in being upstanding and "good" and yet that person can become a raving lunatic, and literally be beyond reason, about things that they find obscene or offensive to one of their other beliefs. Do these people feel about me (being pro choice) the way I feel about people who torture/burn/kill/rape children and animals? There seems to be a huge gap in logic somewhere. I only hope that children born to these people don't perpetuate the hatred of others for blind reasons, but deep inside I feel that hoping that is an exercise in futility.

Unfairness

My newest sister-in-law (DRK, married to C's oldest brother, DSK) recently lost a baby. She has a daughter from a previous relationship, but this would have been DSK's first kid. They were devastated, and the whole family was very sad, when we all found out that DRK had miscarried. They are moving on, and going to try again in a few months.

C's sister's (R) brother-in law (Ron) and his girlfriend (Jenny) have a 1 year old. They hadn't wanted any children at all, aren't married (not that this really matters) and quite frankly are too selfish to be what I (or anyone else in the family) would consider truly devoted parents. Jenny is also a pathological liar (i.e. said her OB told her not to stop smoking while pg, b/c it would hurt the baby...also pretended to have gestational diabetes, which I did have, so this really pissed me off; she also just lies about all kinds of crap regarding their son). Anyway, they have just found out that Jenny is pregnant again, by accident. OK, if you don't want kids, period, and you've already had one "accidental" baby but don't want more, there are PERMANENT OPTIONS. There is no reason to bring another "unwanted" child into a house with 2 selfish parents, and a mother who is a chronic liar, when people who deserve to have kids like DRK and Bada/Dulce and many others want babies so badly but have lost their babies.

This is why I have a really hard time believing that God/Deity of your choice actually cares about things like this. Don't get me wrong, I still put requests/prayers out into the universe, but the unfairness of it all is a bit depressing and frustrating sometimes.

Politics+Religion+Hormonal Women= A Frigging Circus

Whoa nelly...I can hardly wait for this election to be over. I support people's individual views, so long as they aren't hurting anyone else. However, when anyone on any side of the political spectrum says things that aren't true, I take issue. For instance, someone on a Nest board had a picture in her signature that apparently depicted Barack Obama as a Muslim (wearing a turban) and said under it "Change you will submit to." Some people thought it was funny, more were offended, and many thought it was racism. Either way, the whole nest seems to be in a uproar, with the racists/religionists and the uneducated taking offense at the offense that's been taken, and the overwhelming majority on all sides of the spectrum in a tizzy. The hormones just make it more fun. I would like to state here and now that Barack Obama is not a Muslim. He is a Christian, and he converted of his own free will as a teenager. I am sure people would be making the same stink about John McCain if he'd been born a Muslim and converted later, just in the spirit of being "patriotic." (Or would they, since McCain is all white, and everyone is a little bit racist sometimes? If you don't "get" that: Avenue Q)

I say "patriotic" because it is apparently the "American" thing to do to hate people of the muslim faith and call them terrorists. Two of my older siblings think that Senator Obama is a Muslim, masquerading as a Christian. Of all people I would expect that they had more sympathy to his situation- they were BOTH born and raised Christian, and now have converted to Judaism (well, sort of, they're Messiahnic Jews, which is a whole other can of worms). So apparently they are the only people allowed to convert to a different religion. I work in a hospital that treats everyone in need of help for respiratory or allergy problems. My older brother actually told me that we should turn away everyone of the Islamic faith because they're all terrorists. What the fuck? Since some crazy people decided to be terrorists, we should assume that everyone of their faith is, so not treat them? How the hell is THAT a Christian/Messiahnic Jewish thing to say?! I don't think that Christianity has any room to talk (Inquisition, anyone?). It wasn't everyone of the faith that promoted that, yet somehow Christians are not branded as terrorists. Hmm. Perhaps its a matter of recent versus distant history.

For the record, I am a Liberarian. I don't particularly love any of the candidates, but I agree more with Senator Obama's views (like say, 60% agreement) and on BIG issues (for me) like the right to choose and scientific funding (ok, DUH) than Senator McCain, Bob Barr, Ralph Nader, or Ron Paul (about 10-20% agreement). I do not like Sarah Palin, and the fact that she could potentially be president scares me. She is too much like a small town girl in a big city. Sure she's intelligent or she wouldn't have become governor. I just don't think she's even remotely a good leader or sub-leader for this country. She promotes predator-control hunting, which I, as a wife and daughter of hunters who is pro-hunting, have serious moral issues with. If you need to control the population, great, but chasing animals down in an airplane and shooting them is not the way to do it. Would it be so hard to shoot them with tranquilizers and then euthanize them (perhaps this is costly, but surely the government could find some money to fund this option...after all, they found enough to bail out the banks. Hell, maybe AIG would fund it. You know, instead of the spa)? Growing up I was taught that if you aren't going to eat it or use it, don't kill it. Even animals being raised for fur are killed more humanely than that.

There are some things about Palin that are good. She's a good mother, she chose to raise a baby with Down Syndrome when the overwhelming majority of women given that choice choose to terminate (I had once found the stats on this on cdc.gov, but don't feel like tracking it down right now). She may very well be a good governor when she isn't abusing her power. I just don't want her near the White House.

And now I am tired of writing/thinking about this for today.

Summary of my Polls

Apparently, after a whopping 5 people voted, total, between my two polls, I should be an ultrasound tech, and name our spider Neith. Not sure who voted for monkey trainer, but thanks anyway. Now I made a new poll!

Fall Pictures of J

I went up to my mom's house yesterday to take pictures of J. She lives in the mountains so her autumn is better/further progressed than ours in the "lowlands" (of course, still over a mile high, ha ha). And of course, J's lucky shirt worked because the Broncos won!! YAY!


In other news, the new Nest/Bump/CRAP format SUCKS ASS. I hate it. I want my old nest back.

Also, a fun spider name poll has been added. We have a cat-faced spider living on our porch (no pictures here, because well, some people are freaked out by them. Myself included, but I am working to overcome it.). If you want to know what she looks like, feel free to Google the species.

What a pain in the ass

I don't know what to do. I am supposed to work M, T, F approximately 9-5, and W and Th I come in later because C works those mornings and I stay with J, so I end up working about 11-7. Which *seemed* to be fine, but lately every week on either W or Th or both I have sputum to process or a bronch to collect samples from at like 8 or 9 in the morning. So I have to find a sitter for J, which is a pain in the ass, because none of our family is really very close by (at least, none that can babysit, my mom is close but works 50+ hours a week), they are all 40+ minutes away from our house. The closest is my older sister, but she is 40 minutes from our house and about 30 from my work, so my commute time about doubles. She's great, but I cannot drive that far more than once every few weeks, so it's insane to try to use her as our emergency sitter every frickin week. We could put J in daycare, but what's the point for 3 hours at a time? Also, if we had to take him to daycare a couple days a week, there goes everything C makes, so therefore defeats the purpose of him having a job.

I am just so fed up with this bullshit. I need a new fucking job but there's nothing closer to our house that I am qualified for, and we can't sell our house in this market and even if we could we wouldn't be able to afford anything else. This institution claims to pay within the average range for technicians, but that's a load of crap. We looked on the state's website, we get paid in the 10th percentile. Yep, they sure love their research bitches. I could earn 40% more at another place doing basically the same job if I was willing to have an hour long commute, but I'm just not willing to spend 2 hours a day-minimum- driving instead of 1 to 1 1/2...I also can't quit right now anyway because I am indispensible. I would have to train my replacement, which would probably take a couple months. In the meantime, our money is all going to pay our bills, we don't really have enough for all that plus gas and food.

Oh, and C didn't get that job we were hoping for after all. And Sarah Palin scares me, and she gives Alaskans, women, and hunters a bad name.

Yeah, I'm just having a fan-fucking-tastic day. Is it 5 yet?!

Yay for Fall!!

Happy October! It is a lovely, albeit warm (like 80 degrees...) autumn day, and I am stuck in the lab. I have a lovely view of downtown Denver from my desk though, where the leaves are just starting to turn and the mountains are slightly visible through the haze. I took a picture with my phone, but I don't think it will turn out terribly well. I am posting it anyway though.

See? Kinda craptacular picture, but nicely represents my view...I think...

I just got off the phone with C, he may have a full time job lined up at a law firm doing clerical work. Paying 20-50% more per hour than he makes now. This would mean that I could cut down my hours to 4 days a week, and we'd only have to put J in childcare (boo!) 4 days. Hopefully with my mom's friend part of that time, maybe my older sister could watch him another day, and we did have a potential in home caregiver that would cost $110 for 2 days a week...I love when things start to work out!

Poor J, though, is cutting all 4 of his top incisors at once. There are actually tooth shaped bumps, where you can see that the teeth are just stretching the gums, so he's absolutely miserable. I really hope they pop through soon, he comfort nursed for 2 hours this morning, so I got nothing done at home before leaving for work.