Jan 22, 2018

Regret-free Abortion

Today is Roe V Wade's anniversary. The other day our shithole president addressed March for Life (butlolfuckyouifyouarealreadyalivingchildorwomanonthisplanetespeciallyawomanorchildofcolor) protest, claiming he gives a shit about the lives of children and women. Women called bullshit, of course.

Women aren't going to stand for his dumbass bullshit, trying to drag us into back alleys for our abortions. And in case you didn't know Dump was a flaccid flip flopper, here's proof he is lying to his redneck anti-woman base.  

So if you believe Dump is anti-choice, you're wrong. I bet there are dozens of women who have expelled Dump's nasty cell clumps from their uteri. I mean, christ on a cracker, we can't have more Don Jr and Erics and Ivankas running around. That's fucking disgusting. 

I have had two abortions and I have not had a single moment of regret. The first guy who impregnated me was abusive, and he was excited about the pregnancy. He wanted the baby, way more than he wanted me. He wanted to marry me. He also barred me from leaving a room when we got into a fight, and pinned me to the wall. He also cheated on me during our brief summer fling. I had no doubt that I would be having an abortion, and I did. I dodged a big bullet with him.

The second time was with a boyfriend that I later married. He supported the decision, and I don't know if he really wanted me to have the baby or not, but it doesn't matter, because I didn't.   No regrets, not a single moment wondering what if I hadn't. Two regret-less abortions. 

The situations were quite different but my decision was not and I am happy I made those decisions. The most harmful thing about the process for me was when I naively went to a Crisis Pregnancy Center expecting them to provide what they advertised, referrals for abortion. Instead a nasty old woman in polyester pants tried to convince me to keep the baby, even sent me a postcard at home, a clear violation of privacy, and called my house as "a friend." She gave me booties for my precious baby, which I threw in a dumpster.




Jan 13, 2018

The Bad Christmas

The year before we took in our nieces and nephews, they had an awful Christmas.

Their mom, though she was supposedly working full time and then some, and making tips, neglected to buy them any presents.

She should have gone to her parents. They would have made sure to buy a few things for them, if they knew my sister-in-law had nothing for her kids. But since she was leaving the house every day for 12 hours, they thought she was working (and maybe she still was at that point, I really can't say), and had no reason to believe that she couldn't provide this for her children.

My mother and father in law are raising two grandkids from another sister-in-law, so that Christmas morning the kids began opening their presents. My MIL noticed that my SIL's kids were sitting, still hopeful but sad-eyed, watching their cousins tear into gifts. When asked, my SIL teared up and said she had bought presents, but they had been stolen out of her car in the Wal Mart parking lot. All that was left was a movie for her youngest son - Toy Story 3.

The only gifts they got were what their grandparents got them; well, we had gotten them gifts but we were broke that Christmas and so only got them a few small items from the local thrift shop. The kids came over to my house that evening to play.  Some of the older kids took my daughter's brand new bean bag and tried to hang it from the rafters in the basement and swing on it.  It immediately tore and spilled out millions of staticky, white balls. I got so angry at them for that. I yelled at them. The bean bag was pink corduroy, it was really big, and my youngest daughter loved it. I made them clean up those white balls for over an hour, and I was still huffy.

Later the kids were upstairs and I asked them what they got for Christmas, and they told me they'd gotten pajama pants from Grams and Papa. They recounted the story of their presents being stolen, and I immediately got pissed because I knew it was a lie. I also immediately felt like dogshit for chastising them for breaking the bean bag.

The next Christmas came up, and we knew we had to make that up to them. We got help from the school - two different organizations got gifts for the kids. My beautiful, generous friends bought all the kids gifts. We splurged too much too, and that morning when they came up the stairs, we recorded their faces, so bright and surprised and nearly in disbelief. Three more Christmases and we spoiled them rotten. I tried not to, but I'd go overboard and it would take us several months to get caught up on the bills again.

Finally, this year we scaled it back. The kids are older now and some of them mainly wanted clothes. We decided no new electronics; they are on computers, tablets, phones, etc., enough already. So they each got about five gifts and a stocking. For seven kids, that's still 35 presents. The baby only got a couple, of course (oh, I forgot to mention, my youngest nephew is now living with his dad and doing fairly well. We also had a new baby about 18 months ago) and the kids had their stockings as well, filled with candy and small gifts. We are still behind a bit but will be caught up next paycheck. It was important to us to dim the memory of that last bad Christmas with their mom.  I doubt we succeeded, except inasmuch as kids memories do blur when they are that young.

But even if they never forget that bad day, I hope it will at least be overshadowed by the happier holidays.



Jan 7, 2018

Still Lucky

Wow!  It's been four years. I am a bad, bad blogger!

We did get pretty busy with having four extra kids. My last post detailed all the wonderful ways in which we were blessed after we took in my nieces and nephews. We were given a good queen size bed. People brought us groceries. We got help with Christmas presents through two different charity organizations. We'd just gotten stable enough to get off food stamps, but soon figured out we needed that back, so I reapplied and we were able to get about $500 a month in food stamps, which was amazingly helpful.

When we took the kids in, I was not working much; my medical transcription job had been cut severely as doctors began to use voice recognition technology and did not need transcribers. I was down to an hour of work a day or so on that. I got some work doing freelance writing, but it took tons of time and brought me very little money.

A few months later, I went on an interview for a company my best friend worked for.  It is based out of our teeny tiny hometown, and I get to work from home still.  I do have a set schedule, though. The job is in customer support, so I answer phones, emails, and chats, and as we are a pretty small company, I wear a lot of other hats too; proofreader, trainer, organizer, spreadsheet maker and editor, special project manager, etc. Most days I really like my job.  Most customers are fine people, and my coworkers remain cooperative, funny, and amazing in many ways.

To train for the job, which requires me to do support for seven different websites we own, I had to be out of town for weeks.  I'd train for a week with one customer support rep, go home for the weekend, and then train the next week with a different person. I'd rotate back to the start when I had been to everyone's houses. It was difficult to get through, as we only had one van, which I had to take, and my husband was left with seven kids to take care of. Luckily, it was summer by this time and he didn't have to worry about getting them to school, but he did have to get to work five days a week and get them to appointments (when we took in the kids, their teeth were terrible and each one needed at least three visits to pull teeth, fill cavities, etc). My in-laws were instrumental and we could not have done it without them. They babysat, took my husband to work, and helped deal with an outbreak of lice that lasted for months because I simply did not have time to comb through seven heads every night.

It wasn't long after the kids moved in that their mom went to Georgia. I am still not sure why she went, but she rode along with some friends and eventually they left her there, and she's been there ever since, no ID, no car, no possessions.

We organized our large basement so that the younger kids were on one side and the older on the other side.  As they got older, we divided them with boys on one side and girls on the other side.  the basement is sort of separated by the stairway, so they have their own spaces, sort of.

We made do. Eventually, with my job, we stopped getting food stamps. The kids are still all on Medicaid, thankfully. It is still difficult to feed the kids on our budget, but I menu plan and we do go to Family Services when we need to, such as now, right after the holidays. You never know what you're going to get from them; one time we got an entire cheesecake. Usually we get a lot of cube steak, but one time we got sirloin and New York steaks. One year my father in law was able to get a buffalo permit from the tribe and both he and my husband got a buffalo. That fed us for a whole winter and boy did I get spoiled on buffalo burger; it's quite a bit tastier than beef. We just had to pay for the processing of the meat.

The help we get has slowed down, but the school still asks us sometimes if we need snow boots, if we need help paying for instrument rentals, etc.We are still grateful. We are still a family. We are still very, very, lucky.