It's a girl, er, woman!

Our brand-new baby blog. Isn’t she just cute? I’m one of the Mamas. You can call me Bess, which is not my real name. I am currently eating a sugar cookie and cursing at the crumbs on my keyboard, which is neither here nor there. I chose Bess because I have a feminist-hero crush on Queen Elizabeth 1, who was tough, amazing, and clever woman. I mean, no royal folks had it that easy back then – you turn your head and someone’s trying to assassinate you, or marry you off to some sickly weirdo from across the sea, or usurp your position, or what not. And if not that, you were getting the plague or the English Sweate. But Elizabeth Tudor was most impressive as a monarch and as a woman in the 16th century. Knowing that a husband would lessen if not erase her power as Queen--King trumped Queen almost every time—Elizabeth cleverly sidestepped every effort from Parliament to marry her off. She brought England to a time of prosperity it had never known under her less than prodigious father, Henry VIII. She ruled the shit out of England, y’all. She kicked that reign’s ASS. The dressing down of Parliament when they pushed her to get hitched? I respect the crap out of Bess, and I’m proud to use her picture and name, though I can only dream of the kind of smarts and strength that lady had.
I’ve been such a fan of Elizabeth that I took her side against Mary Tudor, Queen before Elizabeth. At a recent library book sale, in my bag of 25 books for $3 was a book about Mary Tudor called…er…Mary Tudor, by H. F. M. Prescott. Now, the sisters were often at each other’s throats and in each other’s ways. As Anne Boleyn said of Mary in Prescott’s book, so it could be said of the sisters Elizabeth and Mary: “She is my death, and I am hers.” Yeesh, that’s a chilling statement, all the more so because it was matter of fact. At any rate, I've always sided with Good Queen Bess over "Bloody Mary," but I think I gave Mary the short shrift. I mean, she had a rough time of it too, what with her father constantly bandying her about as a prize and then bastardizing her. I think Elizabeth was just a bit stronger-willed.
This is all to say Hi, I’m Bess, and I want to be a strong, fierce leader too. I want to stomp balls too. I want other, softer, kitten-like things, too, but let's save that for later. Because today you need to know that I am going to be a little bitchy on this blog. Because this is my new Bitch Place. I won’t take off my grumpy undies, I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!

So yeah, here goes. I’m what some assholes would call a welfare queen. I ride high on the hog with food stamps, WIC, and Medicaid. Not for long, though. See, I got a raise! And a promotion! I work at home, and this raise is so very needed right now, and I’m grateful to have the work. My promotion involves a lot more work, so I’ve been working pretty much all day long, with breaks to help my kids with second-grade homework or make them a peanut butter and sugar sandwich, or attend a school function. So with my raise and working my ass off, my partner and I now make too much for food stamps and WIC. Which is cool. Which is also not to say that we don’t still need those things. But we will be fine—we are fortunate in many ways. We have a support system. We’re rich with love. Yeah, the kids didn’t really buy that one either.

Now, because I’m all about awkward endings, here’s part of a poem that rocks my socks:

Sacred Trees
By Jayne Cortez

sometimes I feel like a tree
& every time I think about us women
I think about the trees
I think about
the subversive trees laden in blood
but not bleeding
the rebellious trees encrusted
but not cracking
the abused trees wounded
but still standing
I think about the proud trees
the trees with beehive tits buzzing
the transparent trees
the trees with quinine breath hovering
the trees swaying & rubbing their
stretched marked bellies
in the rain

Welcome to Alala Mamas, and thanks for stopping by, Planet Earth.