More things that help me feel strong

1. Railing against Rovian Republican fables
2. Playing Connect Four with A; watching the wheels turn as she thinks one, two, three moves ahead; her delighted giggle when she wins; her resolved sportsmanship when she doesn't
3. Running the dishwasher and unloading the dishes; feeling the burn on my neuropathic fingertips from the still-hot plates
4. Listening to the local independent station on M's huge old tube radio
5. The sound of hard rain on the roof after three months of dry; trusting that the new roof will keep the water out
6. Cutting lemon for hot tea
7. Following US Open tennis
8. Donating (more) to Obama/Biden
9. Seeing M's mannerisms in A's gesticulating explanation of why he cannot go first in the next round of Connect Four ("Dada, do you get this? Because it doesn't seem even a teeny little bit to me like you get it.")
10. Being socked in with M and A on a stormy Saturday afternoon

     A is still in the excellent fairy-princess outfit we threw together this morning. She has fairy dust on her cheeks and loose, wild hair. Her fingernails, polished pink, are absolutely filthy.

Friday night

     Hurting tonight, and sad. M fetched A and took her out to meet some friends after work. Since she was expecting me to pick her up, he told her I didn't feel well, which made her sad. It breaks my heart that my five year old worries about me, as does my husband, and sister, and everyone else who loves me. Sometimes I can just barely stand to think about how they feel; most of the time I can't stand it at all.

     There is a princess tea party tomorrow for one of A's friends. I told her I would feel better by morning, and promised to help her put together a "beautiful, beautiful princess dress," as she calls it. I will eat as much pain medication as it takes to be able to do that with her tomorrow. Tonight, nerve pills. 

Adoption, children, and Cindy McCain

     I was going to step back. Focus on writing fiction. But I am compelled to write the truth here.

     Cindy McCain, in introducing her husband tonight in the final night of the RNC, said the adoption of the McCains' daughter from Bangladesh was a mercy mission.

     I cannot think of a worse reason to adopt a child (other than a determination to abuse the child). 

     M and I adopted our fabulous daughter for the same reason that we would have given birth; for the same reason other parents choose to become parents -- because we wanted a family. We wanted a baby. We wanted to be parents. 

     NOT because we were "saving" a child.

     It's the most important distinction. 

     Can you imagine growing up in a household that presented itself as your savior? Poor little child, you would have perished had it not been for us, our generosity, our sympathy. We didn't want a family, we wanted a cause. Congratulations, you're it! 

     I can't think of anything more demeaning than growing up thinking you owe not only your existence but your survival, your food, your clothes, your fortune (literally, in the case of the McCains) to two mortals who plucked you from the brink of desperation.

     Children deserve to feel unconditional love; they thrive on it. They need to feel that the reason they are in this world, in this home, in this family, is because they -- they -- are wanted for who they are. 

     Imagine anyone congratulating Cindy's humanitarianism for getting pregnant. "Oh, you've done such a generous thing." What?

     As a grownup with occasional outward signs of illness, I cannot abide pity or condescension. I appreciate when people make allowances for my infrequent limitations, but I would not hesitate to deck someone who kept company with me because it made him feel superior.

     Cindy McCain's attitude toward her beautiful daughter is shameful, elitist, and damaging. She would have done better to stroke a big fat check to Mother Teresa's orphanage and make way for people who want children because they actually want children. 

     John McCain is lauding her right now for "her concern for people less fortunate than we are," and intimated their daughter is among them. I count their daughter among those people, too. Poor, poor precious little girl.

Is this good for me? This cannot be good for me.

     I know we go all gooey over a "vigorous debate" in this democracy of ours, but truly, the heights to which my blood pressure has climbed in the last three days have got to be unhealthy, at least on the cellular level. And it's on the cellular level that my little body is giving me lip, after all. Maybe I'd better knock off rubbernecking the Twin Cities trainwreck and get back to fiction. 

     Although I've not written any fiction so brazen as that Rovian fantasy Palin laid on us last night... Gasping, still gasping...

     Here I go, to work on the novel. See me go? Here I go.

And another thing...

     Here is a quick roundup of lies lies lies the GOP has been spouting in the last day or so. Honestly, I don't get my news from Huffington Post, but it's a good spot to wallow in the collective Democrat (human?) agony at the moment.

From small minds come breathtaking lies

     M and I were destined to despise everything about Palin -- including her bizarre, grating accent -- and so we pat ourselves on the backs this morning for fulfilling our destiny. The condescension oozing from this self-righteous, small-minded fundamentalist was outdone only by her unearned swagger. The Mayor of Munchkin City actually asserted she possessed more "executive experience" and "actual responsibilities" than the Obamas (yes, both of them) when they worked as community organizers in Chicago lifting up poor, disenfranchised people whom the U.S. government had left for dead. 

     How fucking dare she.

     Do they think that saying a lie makes it true? No. They think that saying it makes us believe it.     

     Did we know, for instance, that she has "lots" of foreign policy experience because Russia and Canada are just, you know, right over there? 

     Did we know that candidates' children are off limits, except when it's politically expedient to flaunt them and promise policy around them, as she did with her youngest son? Or hold up their service to America as a personal qualification, as she did with her oldest son? 

     Did she know we could hear her when she disparaged Obama's and Biden's legitimate, honorable service to the country, but held up McCain's equally honorable military service as an ultimate qualification? 

     Did she realize she had an audience of people, apart from the frenzied masses before her, capable of discerning bullshit when she claimed that Obama will raise taxes, forfeit Iraq, negotiate with terrorists and leave us more vulnerable than George Bush?

     Did Rudith Giuliani, as an exhausted Andrea Mitchell called him, know the microphones were on and the cameras rolling when he claimed, in a laugh-out-loud moment, that the 20-month governor/Queen for a Day has more executive experience than Barack Obama and Joe Biden combined? Because she got a road paved?

     Do the McCain mouthpieces realize they are talking to live human adults when they claim that Sarah Palin is a friend to the environment and champion of alternative energy?

     Do the rightwing airbags know we can see their lips moving when they tell us this anti-choice, gun-toting mommie dearest is a feminist?

     How can they square all this? They can't. So they lie, and hope we bite. They are despicable. 

     As is her taste in eyewear.

     Even Peggy Noonan is losing her shit.

Travel, pain, Palin and babies

     Wow -- that was some trip. Eight hours in the car with a five-year-old who is *hopped up* on the prospect of changing a newborn's diaper, starting kindergarten, and eating Swedish fish. I worked on my first poetry submission for workshop, but scrapped the whole thing by the time we pulled into town. It was about a guy who is struggling to say something to his friends, who are gathered and partying in his kitchen. In other words, crap. Guess what I wrote about instead.

     The baby rocks the projects, of course, and A was a good little cousin, for the most part. Neither the new mama nor I had any clue that a big spankin' lump can form under a baby's chest when he's processing all those birth hormones; we found out by calling the emergency pediatrician. Man, the tales Old Wives never got around to telling... Anyway, he's perfect and beautiful and damn near edible.

     On Palin: call me predestined to hate her pious guts, but that pride she feels that her daughter "decided to have her baby" followed by the unmistakable nudge of a double-barrel to the ribs the boy must have felt when the world was informed his girlfriend intended to make a child-groom of him -- well, they're all smiling just a bit too hard. They say she's a feminist who would strike Roe v. Wade from existence in a sweep so broad even rape and incest victims would be forced to carry pregnancies to term. A feminist, you say? I'm supposed to like her because she has a million children? A job? A vagina? What the fuck? I pray (yes, Ms. Palin, I do) that voters will see this for what it is: the most cynical VP nomination imaginable. 

     In other news, the coverage of and response to Gustaf was breathtaking. Everybody pat everybody on the back. Over and over. In fact, let's raise money for all the victims of the relatively victimless non-event. We're all Americans today. Tomorrow we can go back to forgetting what a great job Brownie did. Today's a day for prayer and overreaction. Houma needs some help, for sure. So do the gazillion families who remain displaced, struggling, perhaps nearly destitute after the bumbling three years ago. But yeah, you boys were Johnny on the spot with this little gust called Gustaf. Unfurl the flags! Revise the McCain Web site! (Maybe if they can figure out how to raise money online for hurricane relief, they'll be able to translate this new concept into campaign fundraising... and change the face of politics in the twenty-first century!) Last thing about Palin: John McCain, when asked why he chose her, said she would "change America." How's that?

     M and I, impersonating a family of pack-mules, got A off to Kindergarten this morning. I cried, just like I did on the first day of preschool last year. I felt then like I might be on the upswing; skinny, hairless, gasping but glowing with promise that I felt better, was getting stronger. Today I'm thirty pounds heavier, can walk three miles, and know I have this thing inside me that sooner or later we're going to have to address. I'm a bit uncomfortable, physically, and I did eat some hydrocodone on the trip to take the edge off. I slept a lot. Now I have to go write a novel.