Light and Momentary

Nobody Knows How Cold My Toes

I have been feeling niggling guilt for not following up on Mary's comment about Bush's tax cuts after saying I would do so.  It's been a busy week.  We made another trip to PCT to find short-term housing for my husband and look at some long-term housing for the rest of us.  We saw one house that we both liked a lot -- enough that we have been applying for a m-- for a mortg-- for one of those things where you pledge to give the bank a sum of money amounting to several years' earnings in exchange for the privilege of paying for the plumber's services yourselves. 

In spite of having wished for years that we could have a place of our own, I am battling frigid feet.  My sudden-onset Raynaud's syndrome is a result of my anxiety about this new job.  Once bitten = twice shy.  Twice bitten = ten purple toes.

Right now the plan is to see how it all comes together.  Elwood starts work in PCT on Monday.  If the boss does not appear to have a second head tucked under the shoulder of his sportcoat, if the financing goes smoothly, we'll look at moving by mid-March.

Gulp.

This is the house around the corner from my friend -- a 1913 house with four bedrooms and a little yard that's exactly the right size for our "I-don't-want-to-mow-the-grass-you-mow-the-grass" marriage.  The back gets lots of sunlight from the south -- just the thing for a vegetable garden.  It has pretty wood floors and high ceilings, and bay windows and a walk-up attic.  It's in good condition.  And housing costs are so low compared to Pretty Now Town that a 15-year m-- mortg-- you know would cost us less than we pay in rent now. 

There's another house for sale in the neighborhood -- slightly cheaper, slightly farther from downtown.  We're going to see if we can take a look at it together this weekend.

When my husband and I travel together, we play "B is for Botticelli."  Do you know it?  One player picks a famous person or fictional character, and everyone else has to guess who he is.  The other players earn the right to ask yes or no questions by stumping the player who is It with questions about people whose names start with the same letter.  If that was confusing, there's an example of play here.

I spent hours, off and on, trying to figure out my husband's mystery person.  The letter was A, and I laboriously learned that he was a fictional character from a mid-twentieth-century poem written by a man.  It turns out he was Anyone, from "anyone lived in a pretty how town."  I laughed out loud when I finally figured it out. 

My cold feet and I are going to bed, where it's warm.  See you later.

Kind of Blue

I have inauguration day blues this morning.

I thought about wearing a black armband today, but instead I am consoling myself with a cup of real coffee.  With two lumps of sugar, because I'm wild and crazy like that.

It is only partially about GWB, and my dread of what our country will look like in four years' time.  It is more about our current political system, under which I do not foresee feeling happy about anybody's inauguration as president anytime soon.

I am mostly a Democrat.  During the campaign I took an online quiz, one of those "Who is your candidate?" deals, and Dennis Kucinich came up as my best option -- I think the computer said his views and mine were 97% compatible.  But I am also pro-life, a position that accounts for far more than 3% of my thinking.

In my view, being pro-life is entirely consistent with being a Democrat.  It's about looking out for the little guy, speaking up for those who don't have a voice.  It's about doing what's just even when it's costly.  And so when I read last month that the Democratic Party is reviewing its position on abortion in hopes of reaching more voters, I got up from the breakfast table to do a happy dance in my kitchen.

Predictably, the responses to the party's reassessment of its position were swift and strident.  One of the most vexing things about the abortion debate in this country is the way it polarizes us.  You say, "Women's bodies, women's choices" -- you must be Gloria Feldt.  I say, "Respect life" -- I must be Nellie Gray. 

But I am not Nellie Gray.  And Gloria Feldt and I have some important common ground.  I expect, for instance, that we both deplore the idea of women choosing abortion because of external pressure from an employer, or from a boyfriend, or from family members.  I expect we could agree that it is disgraceful for any woman anywhere to feel compelled to have an abortion when she does not want to.  Perhaps we could agree on the irony that legal abortion, which was imagined as a means of protecting women's freedom and autonomy, can also be a tool men use to restrict women's choices.  Too often, I think, "you can have an abortion" becomes "you should have an abortion."

And I am certain we would agree that no woman should ever abort a baby because she cannot afford basic health care.  We might say together, "Hey, GWB, have you priced maternity care lately?  Have you looked for health insurance with maternity coverage in the past few years?"  In the summer of 2001 I was trying to find a way to have another baby while we had health insurance that covered only catastrophes, and I quickly discovered that paying out of pocket for uncomplicated obstetric care would cost about $10K in my city.  I could buy an insurance policy to cover obstetric care, but it required me to wait ten months before benefits were available, resulting in a total charge only slightly lower than paying out of pocket -- if we conceived right away.  If it took longer than a few months, insurance for a routine pregnancy became more expensive than paying the bills on our own.  We just barely qualified for a state program that became our backup in case something went wrong, and found a family practitioner with flexible payment arrangements and more reasonable fees to do our home birth.  The result was my beautiful Joe.  But if my husband had earned another $100 per month we would have been past the ceiling for the state prenatal care program.  I assure you we would not have found a $10K bill any more manageable with that extra $100 in the bank each month.

Can anyone explain to me how it can possibly be a pro-life action to try to cut federal funding for Medicaid, so that even more families are left in the cold as health care costs climb?  I have to wonder if GWB has ever walked the floor at 1 am with a screaming baby, praying that the Tylenol eases the pain in his ear enough that he can wait until morning to see the doctor.  Has he ever faced the need to take a child to the ER knowing there just is not the money in the bank to pay the bill?  I suspect that he has not.

It makes me tired just thinking about it, tired and queasy and angry -- this idea that tax cuts for the wealthy are more important than access to care for expectant mothers and their children.  And it is only one of many ways in which GWB makes me tired and queasy and angry.  The war.  The disregard for the environment.  The kowtowing to corporate interests.  The prospect of a Democratic candidate who shared my views on responsibility to the poor and stewardship of the earth and looking out for pregnant women and their babies -- well, that's a campaign I'd throw my whole self into (and given that I am now in the 28th week of this pregnancy, my whole self is a not inconsiderable entity).

The funny thing is, I know so many Catholics (and other Christians) who feel the same way.  Some of them hold their noses and vote Republican.  Some of them hold their noses and vote Democrat.  In the last election I could not bring myself to vote for Bush and could not bring myself to vote for Kerry, so I voted for a third-party candidate.  All of us would love to see more pro-life Democrats.  Why is it that Republican candidates who support abortion rights are fairly mainstream while pro-life Democrats are rarae aves indeed?

I am thinking about some of the women whose blogs I read, about Elena and Arwen, who blogged about backing Bush, and about Moxie and Summer, who were so disappointed when Kerry lost.  I am thinking there is fodder in this post to offend just about anyone.  Those of you on the right may take me to task for my scorn toward Bush, and you'd be right -- it is a failure of charity to acknowledge that the sound of his voice makes me twitch.  Those of you on the left may wonder how any thinking woman can oppose abortion rights, and you'd be justified in saying that the pro-life position doesn't appear very compassionate to some women in tough places, or very practical either. 

But practical is not the highest goal.  I have committed myself to the service of One for whom pragmatism seemed pretty far down the priority list (witness "Love your enemies," perhaps the most impractical pronouncement ever uttered by a rational being).  And when I look at the world with the "eyes of [a] heart" dedicated to a good and purposeful God, I can only say that I believe the creation of life is no accident.  As naive and quixotic as it may sound, I must also say that I reject the idea of necessary evil. 

I am troubled when I think of those women in tough places, because I have been pregnant six times now and I know it can be brutal.  I know, too, that I don't even know from brutal, because each of my pregnancies has been a planned, welcome event in a happy marriage to a man who wants to provide for us.  But I am also troubled, gravely troubled, in thinking about the times this nation has attempted to strip human personhood from those with human faces and human hearts.  From African-Americans, from the mentally ill, from the handicapped -- the results are a litany of shame.  What will our great-grandchildren say, a hundred years from now, about the 1973 decision to deny the personhood of the unborn?  As much as I ache for pregnant women facing hard choices, I cannot accept the thinking that undergirds abortion on demand.

I have so many unanswered questions about being a Christian citizen of a secular nation.  How far should I, as a woman who holds minority views on sexual morality, seek to have the laws of my country reflect my personal position?  What is the place of natural law in national law-making?  Should lawmakers aim at making a better world, or only at keeping the world from getting any worse?

But this is not a day for nuanced answers.  It is a day for bluster and bloviating, for victory speeches and still more polarization.

For me it is a day for a second cup of coffee.  And it is a day to pray for wisdom about how to be one nation -- one kinder, gentler nation -- in which some of us are blue and others red.  In which some of us are kind of red and also, in more ways than one, kind of blue.

No Magical Thinking Here

Remember how I wasn't going to expect anything unusual to happen when I sent out the tithe checks?  How I was just going to do it because I ought to?  I had to silence the Twilight Zone theme playing in my head when I realized that Plague State cut our unexpectedly large tax refund check on the day I mailed those tithe checks, and that it wung its way across the country to arrive here in our next mail delivery, on Monday.  In Tuesday's mail came an envelope from a reputable company offering me a painless $100.  Yesterday my husband came home with a job offer.

I am a little afraid to go outside because what's next?  Does a grand piano fall from heaven in front of me?

The job offer is from the company two hours away.  (Actually, it is probably more like two and a half, the T⁴ (the Tout for Truth in Travel Times) observes.)  This leaves us with many questions.

Question 1:  Accept or reject?
Will something turn up in the city?  He got a call back from a metro area firm yesterday, which is encouraging.  It's in the wrong part of the metro area, though, and would mean an unpleasant commute -- if it even turned into an offer, which is several steps from where we are.  The recruiter he's been working with says she doesn't see much on the horizon, but does she say that because she wants to close the deal and get paid or because there's really not much on the horizon?  Her objective is to make money for her employer, not to find the best fit for our family.  I don't know how much weight to give what she says.

Question 2:  Is it ethical to accept the offer and then bail?
Let me make it clear that I love my husband for his moral backbone.  He is taking a harder line on this question than I might, though.  He is reluctant to accept now and withdraw his acceptance if something local turns up before he starts work (which I don't have a problem with).  He feels that he should not begin the job and keep looking for something in the city (which I feel is a little dicier but not outright wrong).  This leads us to  --

-- Question 3:  Would we really move??
I have surprised myself with the way I've been thinking about this town.  Let's call it Cow Town (as in "anyone lived in a pretty...").  We used to live in Pretty Sow Town, which is not far from Pretty Cow Town, and they are both medium-sized university towns with a nice combination of small-town feel and university amenities.  Housing prices look jaw-droppingly low after life here in Pretty Now Town, where there is a benumbing procession of zeroes in every real estate ad.  I have one friend and several acquaintances there, and my dear friend Kate visits her parents there regularly so I might see more of her.  After my husband took the bus home last night I saw in the paper that a serial rapist was apprehended a few days ago on that selfsame bus.  There's a lot less crime in PCT.

But.  But but but.  So many buts I don't even know where to start, actually.  But no spur-of-the-moment jaunts to the museum of natural history.  But no dim sum -- I love to watch my boys' excitement when the cart wheels by.  But lots more car dependence; lots more sprawl and big box stores.  The Sunday before Christmas my husband took the boys out to his parents and I hopped on the train to the art museum to see Christmas paintings.  Can't do that from PCT. 

And I'm pregnant, for Pete's sake.  I'm in a delicate state here.  Shouldn't I be reclining on the couch eating bonbons?  Actually, I should be eating plain yogurt with wheat germ while doing elevator Kegels, but I'll hold on to the bonbon fantasy for a moment.  Delicate hooey aside, though, this is not optimal timing.  One of the ideas on the table last night was buying a house and moving before the baby comes.  And then what if this job turns out to be awful?  That makes me want to dive under the table and whimper.

Hold on, though -- it doesn't really make me want to dive under the table and whimper.  It stimulates my keenly honed table-diving-and-whimpering reflexes, but I'm actually feeling fairly calm and withstanding the urge to hurl myself under the desk (were I not, there would be many more typos in this post).  This week I finished Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies, which was largely wonderful.  She is hilarious -- there is a line in her forgiveness essay that makes me laugh every time I think of it (she writes about thinking thoughts that would make Jesus drink gin straight out of the cat dish) -- and there is an immediacy in her relationship with God that has been refreshing for me to see right now.  She quotes her pastor in another essay, saying that God guides us in small steps.  There's a little circle of light around us, and then the light moves and we know to shuffle a few steps in that direction, and then the light moves again and we go a few steps more.  And, her pastor said, the funny thing is that this little Charlie Chaplin shuffle actually gets us where we're supposed to be.

I'm holding on to that thought right now.  Holding on peacefully, even.

I am very sleepy today after a restless night, but it is a pleasant goofy kind of sleepy and not an oppressed cranky kind of sleepy.  I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm okay with that for now.  There are lots of issues to sort out here -- both kid issues (Alex's first response when he heard about M's job was to ask, unhappily, "Does this mean we have to move again?") and adult issues (the very largest issues, in fact, in our usually happy marriage).  But I don't have to untangle all of that at this moment.

To those of you who have prayed for us, thank you.  Please don't stop -- the fun is just beginning.  To those of you who commented last week that you shared my hesitation about tithing, I can only say that I was not expecting these events to follow my check-writing.  (Note to skeptics:  not asserting causal link; merely observing unexpected association.)  If you decide to go ahead and give, watch out for grand pianos.

Saganaki

If I write a post about cheese that turns inflammatory, can I call it "Saganaki"? 

Last night at dinnertime I roasted asparagus (where does asparagus come from in January?) and beat eggs for a frittata.  But just as I was ready to serve my asparagus-goat cheese frittata I thought, "Wait a minute -- is goat cheese okay in pregnancy?"

Google turned up a number of pages advising against eating soft cheese in pregnancy.  But I am unconvinced.  They all seem to be using the same guidelines, drafted by someone who doesn't know much about cheese.  They all say something about "feta (goat cheese)," but any food geek can tell you that in this country feta is rarely goat cheese and goat cheese is rarely feta.  They also say that only unpasteurized cheeses pose a risk, and unpasteurized cheese is always supposed to be labeled as such.  Telling women to avoid all soft cheese so they can steer clear of accidentally unlabeled unpasteurized cheese is like throwing out baby, bathwater, and bathtub too.

Later I looked up the incidence statistics for listeriosis:  2500 US cases per year.  For pregnant women, the risk of contracting listeria increases twenty times, which puts it at about 1 in 5,000.  If you get it, and if your baby gets it from you, it can be ugly.  But why are women being told to give up pasteurized cheeses?*

So here's the inflammatory part:  ILCA estimates that 3000 babies die in this country every year because they are not breastfed.  Do you ever see that statistic in the materials from an OB's office?  They will cheerily tell you to forswear all soft cheese because of a far smaller risk, but they simply are not putting the real numbers out there so pregnant women can make informed choices about feeding their babies.

I know what cow's milk product poses the biggest risk to babies in this country, and it is not Camembert.

[Squeeze of lemon extinguishes flames.]

So my husband's interview went well.  He should hear from them later this week.  But by the time he got home last night, I was fried -- fried like a pale and flaccid piece of saganaki.  I can't tell whether I just have less get-up-and-go now that I'm 25 weeks pregnant, or if I'm out of practice doing dinner and bedtime on my own because M's hours have been normal since October.  But I am not optimistic about managing solo while he works in another town.  I could do it. I just don't think I could do it gracefully.

We were embarrassingly late with state tax forms for 2003.  We had three to file (lived in one state, worked in another, moved to a third) and it looked like we were entitled to a piddly refund from each one.  I requested extensions in April (pregnant and sick) and then let the deadline slip by in August (pregnant and sick again).  When I finally mailed the forms in I thought, "They're going to eat up our refund with penalties for late filing."

Yesterday there was an envelope from the Plague Town state in the mail.  I thought, "Oh, no, we owe them a bunch of money somehow."  But no.  There was, in fact, a check for $462 -- more than ten times the amount I thought we would get back.  It was almost like the state maitre d' was saying, "So sorry about the unpleasantness -- have an appetizer on the house.  Perhaps an order of saganaki?"  Except $462 would buy a whole lot of saganaki.

I will leave you with a story that made me laugh, a saganaki-free story.  Last night I was lying in bed with Joe as he fell asleep.  "Mama? Mama?" he said sleepily.  He handed me something small and green and sticky, freshly excavated from his clogged-up nostril.  "Put that in your nose," he instructed me.

Does that mean the lessons on sharing are sinking in?

_____________

*Later in my googling I learned that the FDA issued a statement in November of 2003 that pasteurized cheeses were okay in pregnancy.  It's a lot less visible than the bathtub-pitching advice, though.