I didn’t even know there was such a thing.

You know that awfulness you feel when you have the flu? The exhaustion. The all over hurtiness. That’s what I feel like everyday, even on good days. I know exactly how much time I’ve spent in the last few years not feeling pain. It was 2 hours I spent in a hot springs pool. Imagine that, counting in minutes or a few scant hours when your body feels almost normal.

I dream of being a head in a jar. Or having a cyborg body.

Fibro is this stupid disease where your brain interprets any work done by your body or pressure put on your body as pain. There are a gazillion theories. It’s autoimmune! It’s neurological! And you get to play the illness roulette. Is it MS? Is it lupus? Is it some flavor of arthritis? Chronic fatigue? You won’t know unless something definitive happens. In the mean time- it’s fibro.

A few months ago I was at a party and this woman was telling a story about how her dad is one of those guys who just won’t let go of a joke. She illustrated by poking me, repeatedly, in the arm while saying “did you get it”. For someone without fibro, this would be annoying. But for me, that stupid round of arm-poking meant 3-4 days of pain. And I knew that’s what would happen, but I felt frozen and unable to say “stop” because I didn’t want to talk about this stupid disease and explain that her actions were doing me real, actual harm.

Sometimes I wonder if part of the reason for the exhaustion is the amount of self-control I need to go out in the world and not show pain. I make it to the bus stop most nights on willpower alone, ordering my legs to move and grimacing with every step. Then there are the nights that I just can’t make the 2 block walk. Those nights are getting more frequent.

Blood pressure cuffs and those stupid rubber tourniquets they use to draw blood make me cry. I wear braces at work so that I can keep typing even when my hands are screaming at me. I have a deep and meaningful relationship with shoe insoles. They are the only thing that makes wearing shoes and walking possible for me. Every single step I take every single day is pain. The insoles cushion the blow a little.

I get tired just taking my bra off, and it’s the kind of tired where you don’t know if you can make it the 3 steps to the bed. I am pretty sure that someday soon I will be out somewhere and my body will hit the exhaustion/pain wall and I will fall down in the street and not be able to get up. 

I take a fist full of pills twice a day. Pills for pain caused by nervous system issues. Muscle relaxers. Pills to combat the horrid insomnia which may or may not cause fibro. Supplements like potassium and vitamin D that are supposed to help. I see an acupuncturist/naturopath once a week.  With extremely good health insurance, I still spend several hundred dollars a month out of pocket. And I am in this horrid loop where I have to work so I have healthcare/money to spend on treatments, so that I can make myself functional enough to work. But that’s as good as it’s ever going to get, functional enough so that I can work and not much else.

This is what the Shared Sacrifice* assholes want to happen to our country.

Mind the click-bait, btws. It says “Mothers forced to sell their children” though nothing in the article supports that. Mothers in Greece are being forced to put their children into the modern equivalent of orphanages because no jobs, no home, no money.

 *It ain’t shared anything. They don’t share the bounty, they don’t share the sacrifice. They made record profits last year. And we get….

If you’ve been around this here blog for more than a year, then consider this your annual reminder that I HATE MOTHER’S DAY!!!!

If you’re new, lemme tell you why.

Mother’s day is the day of the year when we get plied with booze, brunch, and presents that scream “my children are assholes* and instead of getting what I need I get bubble bath and an eye mask. DO I LOOK STRESSED? Why the fuckity fuck did you get me the 99cent ‘relaxation sounds’ cd from the gas station? I don’t even own a cd player!!!!!!”

I’d rather skip the day entirely and get, oh I dunno, pay that equals what men (both with kids and without) and women without children make. Or maybe I’d just like to be treated like I am competent at my job as I actually am, instead of being assumed to be shitty because my uterus once grew an alien baby. Or maybe child support that actually covers have the cost of raising a child and is collected in a timely fashion instead of 70 percent of cases having arrears on them. Or maybe affordable daycare, though I am long past the point of needing it, but I am generous and remember how hard it was to pay both rent and daycare. Or maybe enough paid days off per year so that I didn’t feel like I was constantly on the verge of burnout/failure.Or maybe affordable college tuition so I know the Kid can get an education. Or maybe an improved job market so I won’t have to support him till he’s 30. Or maybe a guarantee that the only thing between my ladybits and my doctor is a speculum and not a fucking gaggle of anti-choice, woman-hating fucknuggets. Or maybe universal healthcare plus dental since my healthcare costs for this year alone are close to 25% of my income.

Or maybe what I really want is the lip service about the hard jobs that mothers do cut the fuck out in recognition of the actual jobs mothers do.

Raising a kid to an adult benefits society way more than it benefits me. Yep, I love the Kid more than I love sex and cigarettes and cinnamon whiskey(and fuck me I love all those things hard ) but he’s gonna grow up to work and pay taxes and contribute more to society than all the fuzzy Halmark moments could possibly add up to. And that’s if he’s just your average TAB, white, cis, het male. (Not that kids who are not those things aren’t equal contributors. But except for poverty, Kid won the privilege lottery).

So once again, what I really want for Mother’s Day is for mothers to be given the tools to do the job we have agreed to take on for society’s sake. Society needs kids to grow up and do the work of supporting the generation before and after. So society should make sure that those of us who are mothers now have the tools to support the generation before and after.

Keep the fucking cards and drugstore bath products. (But hand over the booze). I don’t give a flying fuck about the platitudes.

*Kid is soooo not an asshole, obvs. He’s helpful and grateful and sweet. I don’t need him to put on a show one day of the year to make up for being an asshole the rest of the year. Though I did see this thing on the interwebs about how to make a stuffed squirrel from a lonely winter glove. I did request a Kid make me a squirrel. Will it happen? Prolly not. But it was cute. We’re spending Mother’s Day, or the day before Mother’s Day, resuming our picnic tradition. The grown-ups will be smuggling cocktails in water bottles. Tasty foods will be eaten. And apparently this year there will be croquet. We call it Drunknic. And this will be the first year since I went to awful Florida that we’ve been able to do it. And Kid made cookies.

So it turns out that a breakfast of muscle relaxers, neurontin, and advil means I actually can do more shit than just lay on the couch in pain. I built a closet organizer and did some massive cleaning. Now I am waiting on the always fashionably late Sylviaaaaa to come over and watch movies. So you all get to hear one of my favorite songs ever. I’ve been listening to funk all day long and in the bestest of moods.

This man should abso-fucking-lutely be cast as Finnick in Catching Fire.
Lets have one of him smiling, being charming and flirty and Finnick like.

Adam Yauch is dead. And I feel fucking old today.

I like to tell people that when I was about 13 I found a Ramones tape in my driveway and gave up on the crappy tween pop (New Kid’s on the Block, Debbie Gibson, you all remember that shit) that had been corroding my brain. And that’s true.

But a year or so before I found that tape, I heard the Beastie Boys. Same year I got my first period. I heard other, slightly older kids singing Paul Revere and learned the words long before I ever heard the actual song. Then at my first dance, at a tiny middle school with a 6th grade class of fewer than 50 kids, a class so small that our entire dance could be held in a classroom instead of the gym, I head the actual music of the Beasties blaring out of an old school ghetto blaster. Then, of course, one of the teachers ran over to shut it off because “THAT IS NOT APPROPRIATE!!!”

7 years later, I was in the mosh pit when the Beastie Boys played Lollapaloza while 4 months up the stick with the Kid. Responsible parenting, prolly not. But I was 19 and knocked up and all elbows and mama lion energy. And it was the Beasties. I couldn’t not be in the middle of it. Despite being a giant festival show, it remains one of my favorite concert experience. After getting all the standing ovations ever and finally leaving the stage, Billy Corrigan came out and threw an absolute tantrum because “All you fuckers just want the Beastie Boys to come back out again”. He was right (and fuck you Smashing Pumpkins!!! I’ve seen you more times than any other band and I HATE YOU!!!)

And now I am old enough that the idols of my youth are dying not (just) from a hard life of drug use and partying, but from cancer.  Fuck mortality. Fuck grey hairs and stiff joints and credit ratings and insurance deductibles.

This is from my favorite Beastie Boys album. I know the fucking music snobs are all “Paul’s Boutique 4lyfe!” But whatever, this album has more pop culture references than every Joss Whedon product combined.  And the videos are amazing. So kick off your shoes and relax your socks.

Or Grumble About Obama Day.

And I’ll be honest, I have nothing to grumble about. Not because I have seen the light and suddenly believe that President Hopey McChangey is the second coming of all that is right and good in the world. No. I have nothing to grumble about because Obama is exactly the president I thought he would be. A corporate shill. A user. A power hungry shitface who has extended Bush levels of executive over-reach into MOAR WAR!! MOAR KILLINGS!!! FEWER RIGHTS!!! And by the way ladies,

But I didn’t vote for the guy, so I am not really disappointed. 

So I got this lovely piece of shit in my email box:

Dear Bitch (or do you prefer “Cunt”?),I am writing with regard to your challenge below about something interesting to say.  I am just wondering how such a shallow witch like yourself could ever be receptive to anything truly interesting (in case you’re not getting it this is my challenge to you).  Also wondering if you’re young and dumb or experienced and bitter.  
The last bitch I confronted came up with the brilliant, “So fucking what?”
Don’t worry I am not expecting much more from you,
Q

This is from a Mr. (I assume mister because let’s be honest, this kind of random hate doesn’t usually come from ladies) Quimby Smith, or quimbys@hotmail.com

Now after having done this blogging while female shtick for so many fucking years, I have zero patience for anonymous hate mail. I will, from now on, publish the names and email addresses of shitfaces. No getting to hide behind my common decency. You want to be an asshole, you’re an asshole whose words are now attached to your (probably made up) name and address.

I am, or was a little surprised to get hater mail. I haven’t written anything in months that could be thought of as even mildly controversial. Or even mildly interesting. (Thanks gainful employment!) Why the fuckity fuck now?

And then I remembered, it’s election season. And the Obama campaign kicks off in the next week or so. Paid troll harassing the progressive non-believers? Unpaid troll just using election season to spread the misogyny? Does it matter? Nope.

Now I am not even a twee bit religious, but you reap what you sow. And the 2008 Obama campaign reaped a whole lot of lady-hating dudebros. And you know they are all just rabidly waiting to be uleashed.

But if rape threats and stalkers and shitheads didn’t make me support Obama in the last election, why on earth would I support him now? Obama is exactly the politician I thought he was in 2008. He’s a corporate shill, a warmongering shitface, and a power-hungry asshat of citizen killing proportions. And while I had thought of just sitting this election out because who wants to spend the energy arguing with fanatics that 2 percent less evil is still evil, I think that viscous and stupid shitfaces who email hate will be the thing that brings me back in.

Get the fucking popcorn. This is gonna be good.

Money is fake, yo. But debt is not.

She’s right, btw. We do need to think about debt in a different way. She talks specifically about a debt to nature, but we need to change the way we think about our debt to each other. We owe it to ourselves, our friends and families and children and the children of our friends and families and hell, even people we don’t know or care about, to make society better.

I’m all tapped out this month, so I am doing the other thing I can do to help.

Help Sasha and her partner and animals stay housed. If you can’t give, spread the word. If you can give, do that and spread the word.

I have this memory of spending 4th of July watching fireworks with one of the most painfully beautiful gay boys in history. He grabbed my hand at one point an said “I like to think of it as Happy Inter-Dependence Day!” And since we all know the government has sold out everyone but banksters and fraudsters and kleptocrats, we have to do what we can for each other. People first. You all kept Kid and I from Tent City. I am hoping we can all do the same for Sasha. Every little bit helps.