I blame the patriarchy for the 17 years I lived in ignorance of the nuance and normalcy of my monthly fertility cycle. And I blame the patriarchy for the decade I spent poisoning myself with synthetic hormones as a means of thwarting my fertility cycle rather than working with it to avoid the impoverishment and denial of self that accompany young motherhood.

Awareness by the sex-class of their fertility is a threat to the patriarchy, which is why most women will spend the entirety of their reproductive years ignorant of the cyclical dance performed by their hormones, or the ways they can utilize their physiology to exert reproductive autonomy. That is not to say that fertility awareness is some sort of birth control panacea; I recognize that, particularly in a rape culture, it cannot prevent all unwanted pregnancies.

All I’m saying is that I’m outraged by the fact that fertility awareness is a virtual secret which one must seek out. This vital information should be imparted upon all pubescent girls, and women ought to live their fertile years with the knowledge of precisely how their fertility works. But to do so would grant too much agency to the sex-class, threatening the patriarchy in a way that cannot be tolerated.

Thus, beginning before they are even fertile, women are taught that vaginal secretions are dirty, that they should always be available for sex, that they are completely or mostly responsible for birth control, and that their monthly fertility cycle is a deviation from the biological norm, which is, of course, male. It is all a part of the pernicious package of social conditioning that keeps the patriarchy afloat; pornulation and the beauty ultimatum are more ubiquitous and obvious, but fertility ignorance is just as essential to the scheme of oppressing the sex-class.

I had written more on the topic, but alas, WordPress lost my insightful rant when its Save Draft button failed to do as advertised and, instead of saving my screed, lost it to the ether and presented me with a useless apology for its error. This is the best re-creation I could muster, and it will have to suffice, although I feel that it fails to accurately articulate my feminist outrage and the reasons therefore.

In any event, I’m pleased to ditch the pharmaceutical hormone regime. It allows me to engage in a small act of feminist rebellion which is a more visceral release of my ire and enmity towards the male megatheocorporatocracy than mere blogular ranting.

Much thanks to Twisty Faster, whose blog has recently not only inspired me to ratchet up my patriarchy blaming to an advanced level, but also given me a new vocabulary with which to express my observations of female oppression.

Thus, even as my hands and feet grow rough and dry as the years slough off my life, I appreciate that Life is Good: beautiful and satisfying despite the despair and suffering. This is all I need; the amazing experience of breathing, thinking, tasting, feeling, and touching. I’ll work hard and do right in the absence of threat or reward in the hereafter.

This existence is worthwhile to me in and of itself. In this, I differ from the vast majority of my fellow human beings; most require a dogmatic religion to curb their misanthropic, self-destructive proclivities.

Not so for me, which is one of the reasons I ascribe the atheist label to myself, even though my atheism isn’t altogether traditional, in that I allow myself to indulge the deep connection I feel to the natural world. That is, my atheism is not aspiritual. But my spirituality is not a crunchy or mythological variety; rather a simple existential gratitude.

And so it goes that, even as an atheist, I find much to be grateful for in this season of giving thanks. Nevermind the growing number of my years, the tragedies I’ve seen, the challenges yet to come, or the inevitable futility of my death — I’m grateful for the experience of it all.

I understand your grief with American Capitalism. I agree that institutionalized income inequality is harmful to the weakest members of our society. But do us all a favor and take your complaints to the voting booth.

Vote with your feet, and with your dollars. Don’t squat in my city’s parks, because nobody at NOLA City Hall has the power to effect the systemic socio-economic change you seek. Take your energies and expend your efforts in ways that will effect meaningful change. Lobby your senators and representatives — local, national, and state — to repeal unjust laws. Vote them out of office if they don’t act like the public servants they are. Boycott corporations. Move your money to credit unions. Go out and do stuff in furtherance of your goals.

Camping out in city parks isn’t a very effective means of bringing about widespread socio-economic change. It just isn’t.

Also, I’d like to be able to enjoy a lovely quiet lunch in the park again soon. As it is, I feel like I’m trespassing in the park even though it’s a public place, and the ambiance of your ad hoc tent city is not nearly as pleasant as the park in its usual pastoral state.

That is all.

best,
~tangle

Over the past year my body’s been changing. As I approach my thirtieth year my hormone levels are fluctuating, with the result that my trusty oral contraceptive is giving me fits: bouts of nausea, dizziness, headache, irregular cramping, and spotting. All for no apparent reason other than the passage of time.

My precocious 17 year-old self had difficulty getting acclimated to The Pill, and tried several brands and formulations before settling on the one with the most bearable side effects. Once I found it, though, I dutifully ingested it at the same time each day and thanked the universe that I had a reliable, easily available contraceptive method. When my employment and economic situation changed, however, I could no longer afford that brand of oral contraceptive. So I took the next best thing Planned Parenthood could provide for me at a cost I could afford, and I’ve stayed with this brand ever since. Even though I now have Student health insurance which offers me a plethora of contraceptive choices, I’m reluctant to put my body and mind through any such hormonal rollercoaster unless and until it becomes necessary to do so. Unfortunately, that may be sooner rather than later.

This most recent pack of pills has made for an exceptionally difficult 4 weeks for me, and my GYN nurse-practitioner tells me that I’m healthy and normal; that there’s nothing to worry about; that the changes are just a result of the ordinary hormonal fluctuations of aging reacting with the hormonal contraceptives.

Here I thought I could dutifully consume one of these little pills every day until it’s time to get knocked up, but it looks like I might just have to go through that nasty finding-the-right-pill business again. Because my rational, planning self knows that now is not the time for pregnancy, despite what my biological clock might be telling me…

Being a law student is very much unlike practice in this way, where you work with a handful of cases at a time, and the facts of the case become a part of your own life experience. As you work on a case, its details are a visceral part of your daily existence as you spend hours upon hours reading and organizing and generally mulling over documentary evidence and witness testimony, all the while interacting with the parties, the court, and opposing counsel as you navigate the course of the litigation.

Reading cases in law school is about extracting the black letter law, and/or learning the nuances of a jurisprudential doctrine, and/or understanding the art of statutory/constitutional interpretation. Facts matter, and it’s important to understand how and why they matter in any given area of law, but the Socratic Method doesn’t help me with this process.

At least I’m not the only one to criticize this pillar of legal education…

So I was completely taken aback when google chrome served me up an interview with my dearly departed father-in-law this week as I sought out the news from a source that wasn’t the New York Times. You see, since the NYT has gone to a fee-based system, I’ve been getting my news elsewhere. Google news tends to be a good starting place, so I went to type “news.google.com” into the browser on hubby’s desktop. After I had only typed “news,” chrome started guessing what my destination might be, and suggested to me an interview the local PBS affiliate had published a number of years ago with J. regarding his long career as a journalist.

And in that interview, not only were there photos, such that his thoughtful face was staring back at me from the screen in an oh-so-familiar gaze, but J. told a story in the interview that I had never heard during his lifetime, about  his days as a reporter in the Civil Rights Era. It was absolutely amazing, to be able to commune with a dearly departed soul in such an unexpected, refreshing manner. Were it not for the wonders of the digital era, I would never have received this beautiful gift of knowledge from one who is no longer here to impart it directly to me.

Oh, internet, how I love thee!

I know the money has got to come from somewhere.  I am not an idiot. People who believe in government-funded social programs are not idiots.  The difference between me and somebody who wants to cut money for public employees (to give just one example) isn’t that I don’t understand that the money has to come from somewhere.  It’s that I ultimately believe that I am part of a community.  I believe in every single person pitching in for the greater good, as opposed to every man for himself.  I believe that my life is better if my neighbor’s kids have good schools and teachers, even if I don’t myself have children who go to those schools; I believe that my world is better if we, collectively, make a commitment to caring for the elderly, for people in poverty, for our planet.  I believe that some things are more important than self-interest.

And I don’t trust that individuals will take care of those things based on their own personal affiliations and interests, and I don’t want to live in a world where all that matters is ME ME ME (or YOU YOU YOU).

But so, the money has to come from somewhere!  That’s right: maybe I don’t get another tax cut.  Maybe I have to pay more taxes.  I don’t think that there is anything wrong with that, and, in fact, I feel like there is a lot right with it.

People who believe in social programs, in education, in publicly funded research, in the arts, in the safety net are not naive, and they are not stupid.  Or, perhaps they are, but they are no more naive and stupid than people who believe that this country is a meritocracy in which all people have an equal shot, no more naive and stupid than people who insist that greed should guide public policy and that if it does all things will come out “right” in the end, as if market forces care about right and wrong.

The money does have to come from somewhere.  We all know that.  But let’s not pretend that belt-tightening in itself is a moral good, that fiscal conservatism is the path to heaven, that budgetary decisions are not motivated by ideology.  Let’s not pretend that conservatism equals realism and liberalism equals magical thinking. Let’s not pretend that we won’t get exactly what we pay for if we continue down this path at the federal and state levels.

The money does have to come from somewhere, but you don’t get something for nothing.

– Courtesy of Dr. Crazy at Reassigned Time

Thanks, Dr. Crazy! It’s as if you read my mind and then articulated my thoughts better than I ever could have hoped to do.

I’m on top of my class obligations. And, for the most part, I’m on top of everything, but I’m feeling scattered and spread too thin. I fear, though, that I’ve taken on more than any reasonable person should, and I’m questioning myself. Just because I might be able to handle it, does that really mean that I should?

I’m being overly ambitious, and I’m not sure it’s a good thing. Is the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction worth the stress? It must be, else why am I pushing myself so hard. But Jeeze, the stress is getting to me.

I’ve taken to drinking an afternoon coffee, whereas previously I didn’t do that. But the afternoon sleepies were getting the best of me, so I’m relying on the caffeine to get me over the bump. It seems to be working for its intended purpose, but I think it’s wearing on my nerves and adding to my anxiety. Which sucks because I don’t know how else to get through the afternoons productively.

So it goes. There’s worse things than afternoon coffee.

I must remember the perennial truth of my life: that my own expectations are exceptionally high, and if I’m doing well enough to meet them, even just barely, then I’m doing better than most.

And with the bit of self-encouragement, I must now persevere and get myself to class…

You see, I ended a wonderful relationship with my First Love at the tender age of 17, when I developed feelings for another (who happens to now be my husband). And in my waking moments I have no regrets as to the choice I made or the way my life turned out.

But my First Love was a great guy, and we really had something special. And in my dreams all is covered in an intoxicating Rose hue. And the feelings are mighty powerful; my unconscious mind recalls that adolescent love with all of the abandon and fancy I felt way back when.

So it goes that, when I have these dreams, I feel guilty when I first wake up. There I am, lying in bed next to my sweet, loving husband, having a romantic dream about someone I knew in another life. Alas, I cannot control the ramblings of my subconscious in dreams. (I’m sure hubby dreams of others on occasion, too.) What’s important is that I love my husband and remain faithful to him during my waking hours. And that I will do.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that law school is absolutely the best thing I could have done with my life. (And living in New Orleans ain’t half bad, either.)

I made it through the arduous first year of law school, and the future’s looking very bright indeed. The thing that strikes me, though, is the way that others consistently recognize my potential more readily than I do.

Private Law School accepted me before I was even cognizant of a desire to practice law.
The Judge for whom I’m interning this summer wanted me to work for her immediately upon receiving my application, and told me as much at my interview.
Both of the private practice attorneys I work for give me every indication that they see great things in my future. I base this not on specific conversations, but rather on the personal attention and professional investment they’ve given me.
And my summer class professor made it a point to let me know that she appreciates my willingness to work through the hard times I’ve experienced this summer (death in the family, which I’m not emotionally ready to write about just yet).

So why is this striking? Because, despite all that I’ve accomplished and as far as I’ve come from being the desolate high school drop out that I was at 16, I still see myself as merely another girl struggling to make her way in the world. Not that I want to get a big head on my shoulders, but it’s curious that others notice my ambition, drive, and conscientiousness while I take them for granted.

Perhaps this perspective serves me well, keeping me grounded and always striving to move onward and upward.

In any event, it’s encouraging to see what opportunities have presented themselves here in the year since we’ve moved. And it’s terribly exciting to imagine what’s waiting around the bend…