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Live It Now, ‘Cause There Ain’t Much to Die For

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July 24, 2013

I bulletin board

I’m a nice person. It’s actually always been a goal in my life to be a nice person, and I feel like I’m generally pretty successful at it. I’m a lot more selfish than I would like to be – mostly with my time and attention. I’m certainly not perfect. But I find it pretty easy to get along with people, I make it a point to be polite, and I’m generally pretty fucking accommodating.

I feel like I need to remind myself of that today. I’ve been having to deal with a person who feels I am none of those things a lot more than I like to have to deal with him, and it can be very easy to slip into the habit of seeing myself the way he does…especially when I’d like nothing more than to just be able to get along with this person enough to at least just get the shit done that needs to get done. The problem is, getting along with this person generally consists of doing everything this person demands or requests without question…and that’s just not something I’m willing to do. I guess, in addition to being nice, I have a pretty strong sense of fairness – and an unwillingness to compromise myself just to keep the peace.

I think to myself often how life would be so. much. fucking. easier. If I could ever make this person feel satisfied with whatever it is that he wants. The problem is, that desire is never outright stated, and is always shifting, so there’s really nothing I can do about it. And it’s not really my responsibility, anyway. In this situation, all I can do is hold tight to a strong center of what feels right and fair to me…and trust that my own intentions are good, but continue to check my intentions – allowing myself forgiveness for occasional bouts of frustrated venting.

I thought a lot today about that power. The power of never being clear about what you desire, so as to retain the power to be dissatisfied with whatever you get. My tendency is kind of on the other side of that same coin, which I imagine is equally frustrating: I am always trying to desire whatever I get, and I’m pretty fucking good at it…but that makes me pretty fucking bad at defining what I actually want.

What I need to focus on while I’m dealing with this is not how I’m expected to behave, but how I wish to behave, regardless of that expectation. To not measure myself with a flawed ruler. To not pay too much attention to the person in the distorted mirror that’s being held up to me, because that’s not the person I am.

❤

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Gone Daddy Gone

Filed under: Time Management — 1 Comment
July 22, 2013

The Fine Art of Dish Stacking

I’ve been…temporarily unavailable. After a month spent practically living at The Capitol, I’ve been pretty busy tending to my household, preparing for the upcoming school transition, taking care of myself, saying goodbye to my dear friend Pansy, who moves away in just a few days. Reacquainting myself with some familiar scars. Or attempting to. Wishing I could avoid some, but allowing myself to dwell on others.

I fell out of my rhythm, and now I need to regain. I seem to be staying up later and sleeping in until just a few minutes before work starts – falling out of bed and into work. Which is fine, but…no leisurely coffee/book transition into my day makes everything seem off. So this week I will try to have breakfast on the porch at least once. Take at least 3 3-mile walks. Write at least 3 blog entries. And Make soup and grain salad for dinner this week. This is where I’m failing myself. Not having a regular rhythm for exercise/cooking/creating…and relaxing. I end up relaxing in all the wrong ways – vegging out in front of a stupid game or something – and not doing anything useful or fulfilling.

And next week, I get back to my garden. My poor, neglected garden.

Hope all is well with you…

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July 16, 2013

Guest blog at The Rude Pundit

(Though I wasn’t as rude as I could have been, I don’t think…)

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Protecting vs. Silencing

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July 9, 2013

Let me tell you a little something about myself: I am not afraid to speak my mind, whether you are a mama, a child, a legislator, or a police officer. Wearing a badge and carrying a gun does not afford you the right to make me feel unsafe without allowing me to express my objection. When you take a crowd that has proven itself again and again to be peaceful, if not orderly, and you hem it into a corner without good reason, you are damn straight I am going to tell you that you are making me feel unsafe, and that what you are doing is not ok with me.

And to the woman who was offended and felt I was “embarrassing myself” for speaking out when I was made to feel unsafe BY PEOPLE WHO ARE ALLEGEDLY THERE TO KEEP ME SAFE. I’m so sorry if I made you feel embarrassed, but I am certainly NOT embarrassed for standing up for myself. I don’t even know who you are, and I allowed you to make me feel ashamed for a moment, but no. I am NOT ashamed. And please don’t try to shame your sisters. You have every right to disagree with me, and I’m more than happy to talk about points of disagreement, but please don’t use shame and insults to convince me to behave the way you feel I should behave.

And to everyone else – I know a lot of people have an kneejerk affinity for police officers. I have been known to indulge in a crush or two in certain overflow rooms, myself. 😛 But make no mistake – those officers are not there to serve and protect us when they are penning us in and herding us around. They are there to divide us, dissipate us, and SILENCE US. That is NOT ok with me.

Thanks so much for letting me express that. ❤

P.S. BY THE WAY – If you haven’t already noticed, the right for people to be autonomous is KIND OF what this whole thing is about. So, yeah, I get a little pissed off when my tax dollars are being used to pay for someone to police a crowd that needs absolutely no policing. There are so. many. fucking. police officers at that Capitol building now getting overtime to do what a crowd of passionate people can easily do for themselves with only the usual amount of officers there. The ONLY REASON there are that many officers there is for optics. To make us look as though we are out of control. To make playing music and chanting and singing seem like completely radical acts of near-terrorism. TO DRAG WOMEN WHO HAVE WAITED 12+ HOURS TO SPEAK OUT OF THE HEARING ROOM WHEN THEY ARE FINALLY *GIVEN* AN OPPORTUNITY TO SPEAK TO THEIR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES IN THEIR OWN FUCKING STATE HOUSE.

I’m sorry that I can’t quietly sit and watch an elected official blithely state that she is aware that the “pro-life” bill she is pushing for will, in fact, kill “some” women. I will not ask my brothers and sisters to shut their mouths while they helplessly listen to men tell us that they will “protect” our sisters to death with their laws. AND I WILL NOT APPLAUD THE DECORUM OF A CROWD SILENTLY WITNESSING A MAN GLEE AND SALIVATE OVER THE EXAGGERATED GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF A MEDICAL PROCEDURE THAT MOST WOMEN, BELIEVE IT OR NOT, DON’T FIND ALL THAT PLEASANT TO UNDERGO.

Am I angry? Yes, you are damn right I am angry. Does that make me dangerous? Should I be embarrassed? Do I need to hide that anger? Abso-fucking-lutely not.

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The Full Version Of My Anti-SB 1 Testimony

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July 8, 2013

Good afternoon. My name is Lainie Duro, I am a single mother of two boys and an unruly activist for choice. I am against this bill.

I wanted to take some time today to represent a group of people who I haven’t seen represented in these hearings in numbers proportionate to how this bill will affect them. Over 60% of abortions are performed on women who already have children. Many of them, no doubt, are single parents like me. Some may be women in abusive relationships who do not wish to further complicate the lives they are already responsible for.

I am here to stand for these women because I am fortunate. My children are older, I’m able to take time off from work to be here, I have the financial means to stay here all day to ensure my voice is heard…and I don’t THINK I currently have to fear for my or my children’s safety if my ex-spouse finds out I am here.

The same things that cause people to be excluded from the legislative process also cause them to be inordinately burdened by a pregnancy, as well as by rules that limit access to abortion clinics. As it is, 85% of Texas women live in a county that doesn’t have an abortion clinic. Being a mom makes it extremely difficult to travel long distances or schedule several appointments in order to act on a difficult decision. Voting for this bill puts these women at greater risk of either choosing an unsafe abortion or being forced to delay an abortion. Which, by the way, WE ALL KNOW is not preferred.

Rather than spending a couple million dollars attempting to further limit a woman’s right to choose, why not SUPPORT the 70% or so of women who say they chose abortion for financial reasons? I am FOR legislation that ensures NO woman has to feel compelled to terminate a pregnancy based on strictly economic reasons. Legislation such as equal pay for equal work, so women-led families don’t have to be the poorest families in our state. Medicaid expansion – so our working poor families don’t have to worry about going bankrupt when a child they already have gets sick. Family-friendly work policies that allow for parents who have kids to stay home if they are sick – or if they need to kick the asses of their elected officials. Don’t tell me you stand for women until you are doing everything you can to ensure women and their families have ENOUGH resources to live healthy, dignified lives. Until we win THAT fight, we at least need to ensure that ALL women have the right to make the choices necessary to ensure the happiest, healthiest, most dignified lives possible for themselves and the children they already have. To me THAT is the definition of Pro-Life. I am very definitely Pro-Life.

I’m also an optimist. I know we’ve already won, and I think you know it too. We won when the whole world watched you change the timestamp on a vote. We won when the whole world witnessed you silence a female senator several times before finally committing that fraud. We won, because women of Texas and across this country are rising up to take back their power. We are mighty. We do not forgive, and we do not forget.

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Things you might have missed today

Filed under: Being Mom, Politics — Leave a comment
July 1, 2013

So what you might have missed today was that Rick Perry reserved all of the rooms in the Capitol extension, so we were unable to have food delivered to us, and we couldn’t view the streams like we were able to do previously. Police were staged in the auditorium. This reservation extends, conveniently enough, for the next 30 days.

They brought mounted police in all the way from Houston to give more of an appearance that the peaceful protesters were an Unruly Mob of Rioters.

The State Preservation Board (which is essentially Perry and his cronies) made up rules about where we were able to stand and/or sit that DPS troopers attempted to enforce several times before they finally made us move. I don’t even think DPS could deal with the cognitive dissonance of telling someone they were safer sitting in the middle of a room than they were with their backs against the wall, so we did manage to stall them until they decided to call upon the power of “we have guns and handcuffs and we say so. So you must do so.”

A whole lot of women made a WHOLE LOT of noise. People who came to our assembly at 7 PM tonight told us they could hear us from outside, and those in the gallery could hear us from there. It was a beautiful, wonderful, glorious din.

I observed that pro-life people seem to be in a constant state of funeral dirge, and I wondered if their children (some of whom were praying on their knees on that hard marble floor, and I felt really bad for them) felt wistful about the celebratory atmosphere surrounding those of us who were singing and chanting and fighting for our rights

The people’s filibuster, which was an amazing idea, got drowned out by the energetic noise in the rotunda. Some amazing stories were shared by Quinn. Other stories were submitted by email and via livestream. I really would like to continue to do this action for the duration of the session, if we can get more women to tell their stories on camera. They inspired me.

I  got to hold an adorable baby.

We had an incredible march with over 1500 people.

The dems backstabbed the radicals and activists by continuing to make threats and attempting to block them from participating in the rallies outside.

 

I am one wore-out motherfucker. Tomorrow is a work day, but there is a hearing that starts at 3:30, and I’m probably going to head over after work.

I discovered I’m not a huge fan of livestreaming because I can’t keep up with twitter or facebook while livestreaming, and I prefer to just take pictures, but I have concerns that our main livestreamers are dudes…as is our main Twitterer. How can they step back if no one is stepping up? Still working through that one…

Regardless, There’s really nothing like being packed into a crowded room with a few hundred people you know and love dearly. There’s some amazing video on my ustream account: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/lainieduro

Mostly, it was a long, loud, beautiful, exhausting day. Tomorrow, it’s requested that people get to The Capitol early in the morning (7 AM if possible) so they can be ready to sign up to speak at the hearing. I hope a lot of people show up.

 

OH, and…the people united will never be defeated.

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I was a television version of a person with a broken heart

Filed under: Love, Nerdgasm, Politics — Leave a comment
June 21, 2013

(alternate title: How not to talk to your children about the impending apocalypse)

I’ve been breaking good habits. But I guess that’s allowable on occasion. Important work is always getting done. Even when the important work is completely “unproductive.”

Mostly, though, this week has  awakened a whole lot of interesting events around the world. And a whole lot of overcoming, although that never seems like enough…

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And in this time of visible and tangible overcoming of it.

in Turkey

a protester reclining in front of riot police in Turkey

Arduous, painful, but joyful overcoming of it.

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And, you know…You just gotta stay inspired…and appreciate the overcoming of it.

Revolutions In The Park – thanks to Austin Audio Co-Op ❤

 

 

 

 

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…and the sun it shined a little stronger.

Filed under: Art & Literature, Being Mom, Food!, Love, Musicness, Nerdgasm, Politics — Leave a comment
June 11, 2013

The Tao of C & mama

Over the weekend, I hosted another fine installment in a neverending series of teenage slumber parties.

Can you see the tiniest evidence of the scrap of influence I attempt to exert over these situations?

Oh, slumber parties. I don’t think TTOC slept at all, but his friend admitted he fell asleep at some point during the night. But they had fun, and they’re such good boys.

And tonight, Buddha the Grouch made a really tasty dinner that seemed to have been cursed for at least the last week. First, the rice he had been carefully saving for stir fry – allowing it to become the perfect texture – got eaten. Then he got sick. Then today, when he finally got down to cooking this epic meal, he opened the tofu to discover it smelled like, as he described it, cat butt. And it really did. I’m not sure how that happened with unopened tofu that was not yet past its expiration date, but man…that was the stankiest tofu I ever smelled. Tofu emergency!

We all survived, though I was worried when Monk told me he actually tasted the cat-butt tofu. He had cooked it first, so…I’m still hoping he doesn’t get sick. Yuck. I’ve never smelled tofu like that. So. Gross.

So, the way my work week works, I have two more days of work, then a day off, then one day of work, then two days off. It’s not bad. Not bad at all. Although my next day off is going to be spent running weird errands. I’m still trying to find a good rhythm. This week isn’t a good example because I’m a little rundown & feeling like taking it easy. I have things in the works for the next couple of weeks, though.Exciting times.

By the way…wtf, USA? What. The. Fickety. Fuck?

 

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Tread Water

Filed under: Art & Literature, Being Mom, Love, Musicness, Nerdgasm — Leave a comment
June 10, 2013

Today is an anniversary, of sorts. And because I’m a creature of ritual, I have made a ritual of acknowledging this particular passage of time. A day that I met someone who ended up being pretty damn special to me – but more…just special in general. In fact, the thought of this person’s particular nature to this day makes me grin. One of those people who make an impact, whose presence is unique. And, unfortunately, whose presence in my life was uniquely brief, as well as uniquely cherished. So I allowed those memories to occupy my mind a bit today, which was painful, but nice. And tomorrow is another day.

Spent much of the rest of the weekend in pursuit of the perfect shelves. I have 2-3 narrow little spaces in my house in which I would like to put shelves. But I’m unwilling to buy anything else new, and so have been perusing Craigslist for the perfect solution. I’m a bit obsessed with finding the perfect shelves for my room. I’m ready to get the stuff I need out of the boxes they are in and into some sort of accessible storage. I’m ALMOST there. My dream room…is ALMOST complete. hahaha.

It’s actually already my dream room. It has a comfy bed and a lock on the door. What more could I ask for?

I’ve been ignoring my garden for the most part. I pulled all of the weeds in my 4×4 beds last weekend. I’m still getting lots of green beans. A few peppers. The cucumbers are on pause.

The best part are the tomato plants by my porch. I have been threatening to transplant them for over a month now. It was my experiment to put them close to my door, so I will be sure to harvest regularly, as I am a LAZY gardener. But there’s a lot of shade where they are currently living, so it didn’t seem like they were ever going to produce fruit. However, since I’ve been too lazy to move them, they’ve been busy sprouting up high enough to grab some sunlight, and we actually have some tomatoes growing now. It’s not like a bumper crop or anything, but if it’ll allow me to be lazy, I’ll settle for a lesser yield. 🙂

I’ve actually been ignoring the news, for the most part, all weekend. Bits and pieces have been penetrating, but I’ve built up a barricade. It’s not easy, nor is it permanent. But I needed a break. Maybe I still need a little bit of a break. In the meantime, I’m figuring out how I can continue to stay connected to groups locally that will enable me to do what I can in the amount of time I have available. I’m sure I’ll be back to reading the news more diligently soon.

For the most part, I’ve spent the weekend watching Let’s Plays of The Sims 3. In other words, I’ve been watching videos of someone else playing The Sims. Hahaha. And to add to the meta-tasticness of it, I’m mostly interested in the videos because the kid who does them reminds me of my kids – who spend much of the weekend playing video games in the next room. About halfway through the weekend, I mostly just continued because the irony of it was cracking me up.

Sometimes, it’s all you can do to just tread water.

❤

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Try Not To Breathe

Filed under: Being Mom, Love — Leave a comment
June 6, 2013

Lately, someone has been attempting to pull me back into a dynamic that I do not wish to be pulled back into. It’s difficult to resist, and there is no reward in resistance or compliance.

…and navigating my emotions is like trying to find splashes of color in weedy undergrowth. It’s there. The color is there. But I can get trapped beneath layer upon layer of prickle, and upon emerging must set about removing the burrs.

This has all happened before. Many times over. Recurring themes are recurring. Difficult people are difficult. And it seems the most difficult people are the most persistent. But I refuse to allow the one major mistake I’ve made in my life to cause me to veer from a path of joy and appreciation for life, and especially not the joy and appreciation for the lives that were the fruit of that one major mistake.

This is all very difficult for me, though. When there is someone in my life insisting emphatically that I am very much the kind of person that I wish not to be. That I am unfair, untrustworthy, mean, a bad parent…regardless of evidence to the contrary, it’s difficult not to listen. Particularly because all I’ve ever wanted in life is to be fair, trustworthy, and nice (which hopefully leads to being a good parent.) Warding off statements to the contrary by my own will is contrary to my nature, as part of being fair, trustworthy, and nice includes listening to others when they tell you your behavior is causing pain or anger.

When confronted with this, I’m forced to remember what makes the person providing this feedback untrustworthy…which is almost more painful than just accepting the criticisms being levied.

I’m also forced to narrow my expectations of appreciation for life. When generally I feel pretty joyful most of the time, and ridiculously simple things inspire long-lasting happiness, in these times I look for small moments. I’m neither an adherent of the principles of AA, nor a religious person, but “one day at a time” can become “one hour at a time” or even “one moment at a time.”

So it is that I am here, carefully picking out stepping stones to support me as I cross this river of familiar frustration and pain. Helicopter arms fully deployed. Trying not to be blinded by the flashes of sunlight reflecting off of the water.

I’ll be alright. I’m already alright. I know I’ll reach the other side eventually. And I’ll try not to think about the next river I will no doubt need to ford once I get there.

 

❤

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