susan g. komen foundation, this one’s for you.

yesterday morning, i woke up to my favorite newscasters sharing the info that the susan g. komen foundation had decided to no longer provide funding to planned parenthood because of their relatively-new policy of not giving funding to any grantees currently under investigation. i first thought to myself, wow. this can’t possibly be a smart public relations move. and my second thought?

f*** you, susan g. komen foundation.

so basically, the same people who have an army of lawyers running about suing everyone who uses the phrase for the cure, the same people who have spent oodles of money blocking legislation that would actually help women who are patients, the same people headed by a woman who has  corporate interests in multiple organizations that might cloud her original purpose — are now messing with poor women and their ability to get cancer screenings.

particular bronx cheers go to this woman and this woman, both of whom are right-to-lifers who apparently care more about a blastocyst than a real, living human being, as blogger southernbeale shared in a righteous rant. who knows — they could be pressuring other cancer charities as well. here’s hoping those charities don’t bow to this sort of pressure.

i’m just delighted to see people taking the opportunity to send pledges to planned parenthood. many are asking that their donation be sent in honor of the susan g. komen race for the cure, which ensures that their honoree will get a lovely card from planned parenthood. i’m sure it’s suitable for framing. (i’d frame it, anyway.) in one day, over $600k rolled in to planned parenthood. so hey, all you right-to-lifers — you’d better start coughing up some cash to support SGK now.

yes, yes, they are a private nonprofit. they are entitled to give money to any organizations they want. but see, there are all these people who have dedicated time and energy toward fundraising for this behemoth of a group. those adorable ladies in pink who walk miles and miles and collect dollars upon dollars to help in the fight against breast cancer. they’re not going to shill for you anymore. they were willing to raise gazillions of dollars for you when you were a fighter for the cure. now, you’re apparently a fighter for the cure — for anti-abortion folks, only.

(note to karen handel: you’d better start your serious outreach to the teaparty types. like, yesterday.)

and another thing: people aren’t going to be buying pink shit anymore. corporate sponsors don’t like when you up and change your mission like that. they get jumpy. more importantly to them, their investors sometimes get a bit jumpy. and you know the expression: money talks, and bullshit walks. those corporate sponsors will walk right out of your big-ass, multimillion-dollar pink tent.

and now people are learning more about your history. as for me, after reading lots of material, i have come to the conclusion that you’ve turned into a big-ol’ marketing machine. fuck the cure — instead, let’s market our organization.  to paraphrase from one of my political heroes, it’s about the brand, stupid. that, and our executive paychecks and possibly our political clout.

don’t misunderstand me: i’m willing to listen about how your organization’s dollars have actually funded any sort of progress towards a cure. my mother lost both breasts to breast cancer, so believe-you-me, i am VERY interested in progress toward a cure. give me a holler when you’ve got that info.

in the meantime, what you have here is a brand, a brand supported by marketing and marketing and more marketing. and honey, lots of marketing dollars will shrivel up drier than a witch’s, well, you know what body part i’m talkin’ ’bout. SOMEONE’S got to pay all the lawyers and nancy brinker’s and karen handel’s and all those other folks’ salaries.

but it won’t be me.

i’ll just post this video for now. for the cure.

it’s official: i have become a suburban cliché.

yesterday, the kids were off from school because it’s election day and apparently, the schools haven’t figured out how to run polls and a school day simultaneously.  (okay, so i kid. a little.) but considering that they will be off again friday for veterans day, i wish they had decided instead to take thursday off and make it a big old weekend where we could actually go somewhere. but no, instead, we have tuesday and friday off, and our half-day wednesday is now a full-day of school for one day only, thus insuring chaos with the boy’s ability to complete his homework, which comes before everything else (including hebrew school, which happens about 45 minutes after he will get home from school.)

but i’m not bitter.

so anyway, back to yesterday. my relaxing day home with the kids, the day after my intensely delightful IVIg session where i was poked 13 times. the one where i returned to a house on the verge of chaos and a body full of type two reaction to the Ig. the girl had wanted to sleep over a friend’s house, but with all her plans for tuesday brewing, i could not add yet another thing to the plate. and even though i may sound like a spoilsport, i really didn’t think a sleepover with several other girls on a monday night could end well. so she stayed home, not complaining about her mean-ass mom. (the girl is very smart.)

i woke up with my IVIg headache, the one that lasts until it decides it’s time to take up residence in someone else’s head. it’s a dull sort of headache, not like a migraine. but it’s there, and it’s heavy, and it feels like someone placed some very large bees in your head. you can function, but the pain in your head makes you a bit grumpy. the three of us got it together and dropped the girl at play practice at 9:30. the boy and i then were off to target, where i hoped to do some minimal food shopping while getting the boy to write down his holiday gift list while walking through the toy aisle. throw in a return plus a few other things needed that would be unavailable in a grocery and voila! tar-jzhee is the place.

two hours later, after meeting one of jools’ friends there and arranging a playdate for 2:30, we put away groceries; i fed the boy; and then i told him he should go play outside. mommy still had a deadline for work. so i worked, met my deadline, and then took the boy over to his playdate. then, at 3, i had to pick the girl up. the girl had gone from play practice to a friend’s house, where she and her friend were completing their science experiment for the school science fair.  after dropping the boy off, i sneaked off to… vote. and then, off to BC’s friend’s house. woe is me; while i was out driving the boy, i missed the call that said that BC’s friend’s mom could drop her home.

so i found myself on the friend’s porch at 2: 50something, and no one is answering the friend’s door. of course, the minivan is in the driveway and is open, so someone must be home. but the sound of droning leafblowers (far less pleasant than the hissing of summer lawns, i assure you) is making those bees in my head angrier and angrier, push harder and harder.  i pound on the door, figuring that the doorbell must be broken and hoping that someone can hear me over the lawn men. eventually, BC’s friend comes to the door, smiling. and i hear BC’s voice trailing from their kitchen mooo-ooom, didn’t you get my message? J’s mom is going to take me hoooome.

uh, nope.

so after they clean up their experiment, i drive her home to get a quick change, as she’s off to girl scouts at 3:30. i run her over there and run home, thinking a glass of water or a coffee or SOMETHING might pacify those damn bees. and after realizing it’s just a little after 4, i remember that my eye medicine has been languishing at Walgreen’s since Friday. i decide to run to the giant to get cornbread mix (to go with the chili i snuck into the slow cooker at about 2), do the drive-thru pharmacy thang, and then rush over to jools’ playdate’s home, where he should be picked up between 4:30 and 5. good, i think, i will get there about 4:45 and life will be awesome.

only too bad for me. my doctor has changed the prescription, which doesn’t make my life happier in insurance land. i am sitting in the drive-thru line for literally 20 minutes. tick tock tick tock. a car that is behind me in line gives up and drives away. (i can’t move aside or else i would. i have been that car.) finally, it is 4:56, and i pray that BS will pick up the phone. he does. and he races over to pick up the boy.

my prescription straightened out, i race over to the boy’s playdate’s house to apologize for my lateness. when someone tells me pickup is between 4:30 and 5, i aim for the middle time. i am not a mom who leaves her kid til the last second. and now, i have that rep.

but, no time to stop. i must pick the girl up from girl scouts at 5:30. i stop at home for another drink of water, another chance that the bees might be appeased. but they keep buzzing. and i go.

i bake cornbread, i make dinner, we eat. i do dishes, i finish the laundry i had started, and i am done. i take a few motrin, and the bees go away.

until this morning. the girl has called from school. she has forgotten her lunch.

i’m back in the driver’s seat.

that noise would be ouch!

today’s post brought to you by the letter b for benadryl. sometimes, i think benadryl is what stands between me and oblivion.  i took some last night and i’m pretty sure i’ll have a better today for it.

yesterday, i had my monthly infusion of IVIg. (for those of you unfamiliar with why i do this, this is how it all started and this is pretty much my situation.  yes, i’m still having more fun with common variable immunodeficiency than humans ought to be allowed, though i am in better health than a lot of people who have it.  the new nurse was very nice, but for reasons i don’t understand, she didn’t run my line with the pump. it took several tries to get a vein working for me (in my hand, which i hate); and it wouldn’t run very fast. after a time, the line blew.

to make a long story short, i was stuck 13 times yesterday, a new record, including two times in each hand and three times by a doctor. this doctor was the first one who actually didn’t do a bad job, though if ever you are in a situation where the doctor wants to try to put in your infusion, you should generally run fast in the other direction.  unless your doctor was recently in residency, he/she hasn’t put in an IV probably in decades. (yeah, you don’t have to thank me.)

eight hours later, i was finally finished, though not without the nurse using heparin to flush out my line four times because it stopped. it was a miserable day. i felt like crap. and gues what — i broke out in hives on my hips and legs.

time for two things: 1) a call to my BTD, who told me to take more motrin next time and that it was likely just a reaction to the Ig, and 2) time to hit the benadryl.

feeling better today, but have the usual dull headache happening. i should be grateful – i get the medicine, i do pretty well, and life is pretty good.

but yesterday left me wishing someone could make everything  all better. for keeps.

so it has been a thrilling day.

i’m still fighting some upper respiratory thing, finally with some ceftin since it’s the next antibiotic in my rolling list of meds. i’m feeling stellar, and that alone, makes it a great day. then, i knew it was trouble when i heard my cell phone play “darlington county” — that’s my ringtone for our public schools. seems i had to pick the boy up from school because he was whacked in the tooth on the playground by a metal piece of playground equipment that another boy was bouncing on… then, he threw up, so i took him home. after an initial rest period, he seems okay, so i’m just going with the no-concussion track for the day. hope i’m right.

you know, mom, there goes the whole idea of adam and eve.

exactly right, i replied.

so i guess the day wasn’t a complete wash

getting old. i guess it’s better than the alternative.

for those of you who don’t know me in real life, i am, in short, a spaz. i have fallen off amtrak trains, been pushed down a metro escalator (during rush hour!), fractured my ankle while participating in a boot camp class, and destroyed my left knee while taking a leap at the ice rink (and realized that i don’t bounce the way i did when i was, er, slightly younger. like the year before, when i turned 21.) i loved being active while growing up, and yet it is no wonder that at my age, my parents grimace audibly every time i mention my interest in trying some new strenuous pursuit. this winter, when we took the kids to learn to ski, i was cautioned by basically EVERYONE related to me that i was not, repeat, NOT to take skiing lessons. even BTD, a medical professional who spends plenty of time telling people the benefits of exercise, told me to cease and desist. i really, REALLY wanted to ski, too.

but alas. i did not.

last year, after several months of PT for my ankle, i went walking with my friend. only, too bad for me: i tripped over a tree root and re-injured the aforementioned ankle. (hints from heloise’s evil sister: when you hear a snap coming from your ankle, it isn’t a good thing. ever.) so welcome to more months of PT until early this year, when i was determined to try the couch to 5k program, a program i have started and never finished about 5 times now.

see, my attempts at the couch to 5k program resemble a certain someone’s attempts to build a castle:

i would be the couch to 5k person who continually sinks into the swamp, possibly after burning down, and maybe even after getting run over once or twice.

anyway, i attempted running back in march. oh, it was an unseasonably warm day, and i loved running up and down the hills in our impossibly semi-mountainous part of the people’s republic. i felt so great afterwards, and the accomplishment made me beam. but the next day? my right knee, ever-jealous of the reconstruction that happened to her left counterpart, mutineed. no bending for you, lady! going down stairs was particularly murderous. and so i knew something was rotten and phoned up the guy who fixed the left knee.

his office never called me back.

so, in a fit of annoyance, i called another orthopedic group, which fit me in promptly…for the end of may. it’s a good thing it wasn’t some sort of emergency; but i figured that if it still bothered me in two months’ time, then it would likely be worth the trip. and today was the day.

after some x-rays, poking, prodding, and slight conversation with a doctor who looks to be about my age, i have what is called (in klingon, apparently) excessive lateral patellar compression syndrome. not to be confused with either the china syndrome or the pepsi syndrome, apparently. my patella (also known in some parts as a kneecap) doesn’t want to stay in it’s groove. (it is busy finding its groove elsewhere, like stella.) i have some try-it-at-home exercises to do that may help strengthen some of the muscles. and if that doesn’t work, they’ll gladly make me do some…PT. (not again! not three years in a row!!) i could get a shot, but that’s not really a long-term solution.

but apparently, this is also the start of arthritis in my knee. and eventually, i will have surgery in this knee’s future.  and the very best part: the doctor telling me that perhaps i ought to stop doing the things that cause this.

read: no more couch to 5k program for you, grasshopper.

someone pass me the geritol, please.

Dear, dear Charlie Sheen.  Watching you implode before the public eye like a supernova hellbent on destroying itself and anything in its path has been riveting, I admit. To be sure, I don’t think I can keep track of the various news stories that have splashed across the screen in the past few weeks. Something about prostitutes, drugs, alcohol, allegedly threatening violence to various ex-wives, having your children removed from your care, stopping production of your sitcom… all you’re missing is a link somehow to the middle east and you’ll hit some sort of perfect storm of newsworthiness.

And your words,  your nonsensical, inflammatory language. It has been captured by numerous television and radio outlets, all falling over themselves to have you on in order to boost their ratings. People love to watch a car crash, and you, my friend, are an explosion tantamount to a fiery Indy 500 moment coupled with an atomic bomb. Several web developers have created sites which do different things with your random quotables, all in the name of grabbing their 15 minutes on your back.
It all has made me think of my grandmother.

I never really knew my grandmother, you should understand; she died when I was 11. My direct memories of her involved brief Sunday night phone calls where we talked about Lawrence Welk, trips to Nathan’s for hotdog lunches, and a painting of a rose she made for me which I treasure to this day. I never went inside her Long Island apartment; it was part of a residence filled with the newly-liberated, completely unsupported mentally ill of 1970s New York, intermingled with a lot of elderly people. It was far too scary a place for me, a little girl. I often wonder what it must have been like for her.

My grandmother was, in the parlance of the day, manic-depressive. She endured shock treatments throughout her life as well as many other treatments probably unfathomable to people nowadays. There were points in my father’s and my aunt’s lives where they were sent off to live with aunts and cousins while my grandmother was getting help. How frightened she must have been, and what was worse — the illness or the cure? Back then, mental illness was not only unacceptable, it was stigmatized. You were somehow a defective specimen of humanity. Dignity never entered into the picture.

But my gram attempted a life of dignity in between these times. It couldn’t have been easy, losing her husband pretty early on in all of this. And sure, there was the day when she went out and, apropos of nothing, put money down on a house.  I don’t ever remember her babysitting my brothers and me the way my other grandparents did. My gram was not a regular fixture physically near me; she was like a star I wished upon, but not for myself: for her.

And as I watch Charlie Sheen catastrophically exploding through the cosmos, I’m wishing on him. I’m hoping someone out there will stop him on this path toward self-destruction.  I pray that someone is helping him to harness that light for something better, stronger, and more positive for himself and for his family.

Blazes are not always glorious in my book.

Originally published at Smartly.Com

…because freddy mercury should be singing bohemian rhapsody and not elton john or axel rose.

if ignorance is a pet peeve of mine, then you can bet that ignorance about HIV and AIDS goes far, far beyond mere annoyance in my book. as i have known plenty of people who lived and died from the HIV virus — and I have a friend who continues to live with AIDS, probably far beyond what doctors predicted — i have been gobsmacked by the stupidity people have shown toward those with HIV, as if you might catch it by simply breathing the same air.  in the old office where i used to get my monthly IVIG, i had less fear about being around AIDS patients than i did with someone with something actually infectious. it wasn’t like i was going to be having sex while getting my IV — not that i could even figure out how if i even wanted to, of course. (and i’m quite sure none of those patients were interested in me, anyway.)

i can’t believe we’ve hit world aids day 2010 and there still isn’t a cure. there are a lot of advances, thanks to groups like amfAR. still, funding is an issue — i know, where isn’t funding an issue these days. and you might wonder why i care about this disease; i don’t exactly fit the profile of someone who might be engaging in behaviors that might lead to trouble (although no one is ever truly perfectly immune from anything, i believe.) i guess somewhere in the back of my bear-brain, i know that i have a condition where so little is known. there’s no primary immunodeficiency day out there; we don’t have celebrities talking about what it’s like to have a crap immune system. but i feel a kinship with HIV/AIDS folks — they, too, have crap immune systems. theirs is an acquired situation, whereas mine was something i was simply born with (apparently.)

maybe it’s a slightly selfish thing — i figure that maybe, if someone out there figures out how to help those folks, that maybe someday, that research will possibly benefit my children and grandchildren. after all, someone’s going to get my genes.

so i hope you’ll join me in commemorating world aids day 2010. i hope i see a day in my lifetime when they no longer have this commemoration because the disease has a remedy.

and then maybe, we won’t lose people like freddy mercury just because he loved often but possibly not always so well.

uh oh. it’s time again for Family Life Ed…

BC was extremely vexed, announcing that Family Life Ed was about to be foisted on her class. yes, it’s that time of year again — the last week of school, the week when our elementary school does it’s unit on birds, bees, tampons, and other exciting topics of dinner conversation.  i tried to explain to BC that this is timed this way probably because the teachers hate teaching Family Life Ed just as much as the kids hate sitting through it. and this way, they don’t have to see your faces for a whole summer, giving you both time enough to forget that it all happened.

anyway, explanations or none, BC hates Family Life Ed: mooooooom, she whined, i already know all of this stuff. i know more than the kids in my class do. you talked about this stuff with me. why do i have to sit through this? it’s so embarrrrrrrrrrrrasssing!

i don’t blame the kid. i still remember a girl in my family life course in 9th grade who labeled the women’s nekkid picture with the names of male body parts. (i still marvel that this girl actually looked at a picture that was relatively just like her own body and labeled part of it a penis. i should look her up on facebook and see whether this was an early clue to her gender reassignment.) yep, family life stuff tends to stick with you.

i still remember 5th grade: they herded us into the auditorium, let us watch this 1960s movie about becoming a woman (ooooooooooohhhhh), with it’s frightfully deep overtones. and next thing you know it, you were carted out just as quickly, with this useless kit of sanitary napkins and — back then — a sanitary napkin BELT. yes, virginia, i am so old that it was around the time that i hit womanly status that they finally invented self-sticking pads.

and thousands cheered as they waddled down hallways, weighed down by a giant wad of dogknowswhat stuck onto your undies.

but i digress.

anyway, girlfriend and i do talk a lot about these sorts of things; we’ve done so from a very early age. my parents didn’t talk a ton with me about this sort of thing, so i always took it upon myself as some sort of parental ironman challenge to tackle these topics. it isn’t easy, and it took me awhile to stop calling body parts naughty bits. and while i’m not an expert, there are certain things i know for sure.

i think what kicked me into high gear on sharing my thoughts on this topic with the girl was hearing another mother talk of her daughter, a year older than BC. this child was in 5th grade at the time, and the mom still had not discussed menstruation with her daughter. visions of carrie entered my head:

nope. i’d rather struggle with finding the right words on touchy topics than have BC hit them head-on with no prior knowledge.

which brings us back to the girl and the class. mom, she continued, you know some kids are allowed to opt out of the class if their moms write a note to the school, right?

right, i replied. and you won’t be one of them, i added, smiling a little too cruelly. rite of passage, baby.

rite. of. passage.

you know the type.

so i’ve just returned from my monthly IV of gammaglobulin goodness, a ritual i endure every four weeks for the rest of my life. it’s not so bad — the ladies who take care of me are amazingly wonderful and endure ME relatively well, considering i have to go through seven bottles over the course of about 5 or 6 hours (on a good day) with veins like keith richards’. today, i blew first IV connection in my right arm thanks to having thick blood that apparently clotted, leaving the IVIG nowhere to go but backwards. poke number two in the left arm worked for a short while until something ouchy and stingy happened. luckily, by this time, i had only one bottle left, so the lady i annoy the most (and who i love to pieces) put in a butterfly on another site in my right arm and i did not move my arm for about 30 minutes. no biggie.

in fact, i was able to run to the nearby wegman’s, which was cool because jools had run out of his favorite Phillies Graham Slam ice cream, and wegmans is the only place around here that sells it.  so, since i was finished at two, i skedaddled over to the wegman’s before starting the 40 minute+ drive home.  since it was 85 degrees out, i decided to park in the “underground” lot. i zipped over to take the stairs, but as the elevator doors opened right up in front of me, i figured what the hell — i’ll climb in since it’s going up anyway.

as the doors were about nearly closed, i heard a voice shriek: hold that elevator! my pavlovian response, of course, was to stick my hand on the door and get the sensors to realize the doors shouldn’t shut. (why didn’t i press a button, you wonder? well, you need a PhD to read the actual buttons on that particular elevator; for a machine that literally only goes between two floors, it’s a bit unreal.) in walks a tall, poodley-haired suburban blonde lady and her equally tall, late teen/early 20s daughter. thanks, she said. i smiled politely, nodded at her, and did what all self-respecting people do on an elevator; i moved to the far corner.  i hurt my foot this morning she announced, perhaps to the daughter, who didn’t say anything. yes, i hurt my foot this morning, she repeated louder, clearly looking to justify why she had made a person stop an elevator that was nearly closed so that she could ride. i looked at her, wondering what exactly she wanted me to do — perhaps break out my medical kit?

then, she looked at my two bandaged arms. in a voice usually reserved for naughty children who have just pushed someone else’s child down off a cliff — or maybe her bichon frise just made a little pooh on your lawn, she exclaimed, “Uh oh! Uh oh!”

realizing that she had not, in fact, turned into a teletubby, i knew i was the reason for the uh ohs. for that split second, i wanted to say well, i was shooting up my smack today, but i missed. shit could happen to anyone, right?

but i didn’t. somehow, though, i knew she was demanding an explanation for bandaged arms. and as the nice girl i forever am, i had to give one. i had some IVs in my arms today.

Uh oh!

am i riding this elevator with rainman’s mother?

the IVs save my life.

that gave her an inscrutable look. the doors then opened, and i made a beeline for the frozen food section.

…and it’s all thanks to you, president obama!

i am not surprised by the lineup of state attornies general who are preparing to go to war over this law, though i have already called and emailed the attorney general in my state to cease and desist with his efforts. (i’m sure the intern charged with reading those things  is probably laughing his or her a$$ off at my verbage.) i don’t want my tax dollars wasted on a groundless and absurd effort to get rid of a law which frankly benefits me and all americans. but i’m sure these folks want to put on a good show (they are, by and large, mostly elected officials) for the portion of the electorate that brung them. which, in my commonwealth, would not include me.

(incidentally, if you’re in VA and would like to share your views with the attorney general, you can find him here.)

anyway, i want to share why i think this admittedly somewhat imperfect law is still the best freaking thing since sliced bread.

1) eliminating pre-existing conditions for kids immediately and for adults in 2014. unless you have what would be considered a pre-existing condition, you would have no idea what this means to a person, to a family.

i have often joked with BS that i married him for his sugar-daddy health insurance. of course, back then, i didn’t have a pre-existing condition. now, of course, i do.  if for some insane reason he lost his job, i would personally ding my entire family’s ability to get health insurance unless his next employer offered insurance without any sort of pre-existing condition clause.

this idea has hung over my head for four years now like an ominous cloud. when i first came home from the hospital four years ago, when i should have been focusing on getting well, i was instead completely wigged out at the prospect that should i ever need to get my own health insurance, i could not any longer. my family’s health was in potential jeopardy simply by virtue of being related to sickly me. how would i provide for my children’s medical care? it truly made me sad. it truly made me feel helpless, captive to a condition that i didn’t create for myself. it’s just in my genes.  and the only way to have a fighting chance at wellness was a therapy that cost upwards of $10,000 every four weeks. without insurance.

now, there’s a law on my side.

2) lifetime caps on medical coverage goes bye=bye: yes, those of us who have freakish illnesses that don’t simply require us to take an aspirin and call someone in the morning rack up an impressive set of bills, even with health insurance. honestly, no one ever expects to get sick; but when it happens, it happens. and if it happens with a hospital stay or lengthy and expensive treatment options, eventually, one wonders whether one will hit that point when his insurer and he will have to part company. someone i love had a fairly innocuous surgery, only to go into kidney failure, a coma, and infection hell and end up in the ICU for three months. (he’s better now, fret not.) that sort of thing hits the hundreds of thousands of dollars. in a lifetime, stuff happens, and you amass these costs… it’s not pretty.

but what is our choice? let people die? sorry, mrs. jones, but we can’t pay for your cancer treatments anymore. you’ve really fought hard over these past 5 years, and you’ve beaten certain odds impressively. but you’ve hit your cap. you’re done now. good luck and goodbye. GOOD LORD, it must never come to this. but i suspect for some people, it has.

and now, G-d willing, it won’t.

now a lot of people are up in arms over having to have health insurance. honest to G-d, people, you’re required to have home and car insurance by law. yeah, maybe it’s state law, but probably because that’s how it panned out at the time. who the fuck CARES whether it’s federal law? if you need to be prepared to pay somehow when your home is destroyed by fire or your car takes out another person’s car, then why the HELL shouldn’t you be responsible to have insurance about a certainty: you will one day become ill. maybe seriously. i, for one, really hoped for a public option to make things even easier for people who truly cannot afford insurance.

oh, right. it’s socialism, requiring people to buy health insurance.

let me give you a little lesson, john and jane q. teabagger. THIS is what socialism is all about. (i know it has some really big words, and i know because glenn beck isn’t providing his own special narrative that it might be difficult to understand. but i have faith in you: give it a go.) guess what: no one has taken private health insurers out of the loop. you know, health insurers are companies trying to take part in that great concept you know and love called capitalism? barack obama won’t be out there, lining people up and pushing them into some government clinic. it will still be your doctor, your country, your world.

and yes, i know the economy is awful right now. but if i have to hear one more bit about small companies possibly dying on the vine because now they have to provide their employees health insurance? well, maybe it’s that great capitalistic system telling you that you ought not be in business.  i mean, so you should be essentially using other people to make money for yourself — but not take care of them? i’m, sorry, but i don’t think so. this is a new cost of doing business. (and i’m sure a lot of you will find tax lawyers who will, in turn, find loopholes so you can escape this somehow. i’m counting on it.)

there are failings in the law, to be sure. for one thing, as i mentioned, i wished for a public option. while it wouldn’t directly benefit me, it benefits all the people who might not otherwise have the wherewithal to be insured. and i would be smacked upside my head by my BTD if i didn’t mention tort reform.

but hell. it happened. and i’m hoping that we, as a society, have not sunk to the depths of caring only about ourselves.  i’m thrilled beyond words that our elected officials — at least, SOME of them — actually put their necks on the line for something bigger than themselves.

and i feel good — really, really, good — for the first time in a long time.