Tropical Depression

Every year over the kids' Christmas break from school we take a family vacation.  Which is more of an international, off the beaten path adventure.  My husband voted that we take a break this year and stay home.  Because how we travel is anything but relaxing.  But, I pleaded with him that this may be the last year that we're all together as our boys are now adults.  Technically, according to the law anyhow.  It was after we found cheap air fare that he (reluctantly) acquiesced.  Cheap tickets to Puerto Rico.  We don't even need passports! And hurricane season is over in December!  This is going to be the easiest vacation ever!  (Yes, I actually said that.)  Of course, the next week after we bought those tickets, Hurricane Maria obliterated the island.  Putting us in a tropical depression.

Turns out, we were more delusional than we were depressed.  Because we sat on those tickets for two months.  Maybe they'd have electricity and clean water by December.  They still have gorgeous beaches we could visit and spend money which would (indistinguishably) help their economy.  Or maybe we could go and volunteer our time in the relief effort.  We didn't want to abandon Puerto Rico, especially when Trump already had.  But, short of us arriving at the San Juan airport bearing federal aid, there wasn't much we could do.

The final decision came after my husband spoke with someone with family in Puerto Rico.  Not only is there still not electricity and clean water on most of island, but the beaches are contaminated with waste.  The hotels are full of people left homeless by the hurricane and relief workers who flew in to help them.  Many restaurants are only open during the day, because evenings without electricity lend themselves to crime.  And debris and garbage line the streets making it's a breeding ground for disease.  It doesn't get more depressing for the people of Puerto Rico.  And that's when we made the decision to change our travel plans.  After making donations to World Central Kitchen and UNICEF, which would help more people there then we ever could.

In the wake of all the suffering in Puerto Rico and elsewhere in the world, I feel guilty that our tropical depression story has a happy ending.  Or at least I think it does.  Because we're still in the midst of planning our trip to Cancun and then on to Cuba.  (And no, we won't be staying in a resort.  But, we may be renting a VW van.)   That is of course, if Trump doesn't reinstate the ban on Americans traveling to Cuba as he's threatening to do.  Which, with this administration, could happen at any day at any time.

How does the story end?

Will this tropical depression be lifted?

Stay tuned...

In the meantime:

Check out the good work done by World Central Kitchen and consider making a donation to help feed the hungry people in Puerto Rico (and elsewhere around the world) here.

Once a Year

It happens once a year.  Thanksgiving.  Holiday parties.  I wear a dress and heels and try to balance a heaping plate full of food at the buffet line while maintaining a smile and polite small talk at my husband's Christmas party without twisting my ankle, falling or spilling food.  This is my Olympics, people!  And it's another reason why I hate the holiday season...it's extremely social.  While I am extremely antisocial with a side of social anxiety.

During the bustling holiday festivities, you'll run into almost everyone you know.  Including the people you hardly know because you only see them once a year.  You'll see their vaguely face and think, who the hell are you?  But since you can't say that, that's when I'll introduce myself.  For the 5th year in a row.  Oops.  Well, that was really embarrassing.  Especially when someone knows things about you and your life and you don't know anything about theirs.  Which would be okay if I was good at making conversation from scratch.  However, I assure you, I am not!  But, I can make things awkward from scratch though.

Then there are the people that you do recognize and think, wow, they've really aged!   How did that happen in only a year?  Then they pull out their phone to show me pictures of their grandchildren.  And I step back.  "Is that a boy or a girl?  Can you expand that photo?  No?  Hold on...let me get my reading glasses from my purse."  And that's when I see them.  While I have my arm stretched out holding someone else's phone, with my reading glasses on...the age spots on my hands.  Maybe I think I'm not aging because I can't actually see myself all that well.  I've bathed myself in that flattering soft focus lens that they use on Elizabeth Taylor in that White Diamonds commercial.

Right after this is when the mismatched couple approaches.  Oh, you know the one I'm talking about. That couple that you can't figure out how they ever got together in the first place because one is exceedingly more attractive, intelligent and witty than the other one.  In fact, they don't seem compatible in any way.  But, yet,they've been together for years.  And you just want to inquire about the elephant in the room...which is the invisible bond that holds them together.  What is it?  While simultaneously staging an intervention.  Have you considered a trial separation?  Which is probably what people think about my husband (the life of the party) and me (the party pooper).  Why is he with her? He's so laid back and she's so pretentious!

Then there's the person you know stuff about. That you don't even want to know. But, someone you barely know told you a secret about them years ago and now every year when you see this person at that annual party, it's all you can think about. And the whole night I'm thinking, whatever you do, do NOT blurt out their secret! Or talk about any topic in any way related to it.  Which of course, then is all I can think about. (This party is coming up for me in a couple weeks and since I'm writing this, I've already started thinking about what not to say. But, I still have no idea what TO say to this person because I don't really know them, although I do know some very personal things about them.)

Thank god the holidays only happen once a year!

That Time of Year

It's that time of year.  The air is crisp and my lips are chapped.  My asthmatic cough brought on by the cold dry air is back and I won't use an inhaler because I DON'T HAVE ASTHMA!  (If I keep saying that it will be true.) And I left my chapstick in my jeans pocket and ran it through the wash again.  Why do I always do that?  On top of that, it's birthday season has begun.  (75% of my family and friends have November and December birthdays.)   Thanksgiving is just around the corner and now the stores are starting to play Christmas music.  I hate Christmas music!  In fact, I hate the whole holiday season because it's so stressful.  But, this post isn't about that.  It's about my vagina.

You see, it's time for my annual pap smear.  That I haven't had in 3 years.  Because I never got a reminder card in the mail urging me to make my annual appointment.  Or maybe I did and I lost it.   And then when I realized I did, it took me a couple of years to pick up the phone.  What is it about making a phone call that is so exquisitely painful?  Making an appointment and preparing for the appointment make me more anxious than having a stranger touch my vagina and stick a cold metal device up it.  Wait, I forgot to factor in my anxiety of peeing or farting on the stranger fingering my lady bits.  Nope, making the phone call and worrying about the appointment are still worse.  Plus, I get to lay down a table in the middle of the day, amidst the stress of birthday/holiday season.  I mean, how restful is that?

I am never more immaculately groomed than when I go to the gynecologist.  My legs are shaved perfectly smooth.  With special attention given to my knees and big toes, which I usually half ass.  But, when your legs are in stirrups and the doctor is sitting on a stool in directly in front of you, knees and toes tend to be quiet prominent.  And it's not that I take off my socks.  I don't, because it's always freezing in there.  But, I didn't take my socks off when I got a mole check at the dermatologist either.  Turns out, I was supposed to.  Then, she proceeded to take my socks off for me and spread my toes to look between each one.  Which totally freaked me out.  Because who knows what's in there?  I don't look.  Maybe I've got an embarrassing fungus.  Or sock lint.  I'll tell you what I don't have there, I don't have a cancerous mole.  So, now in addition to wearing nice, cute, coordinating underwear (just in case someone walks in when I'm still disrobing), I'll have to check between my toes before I put on a pair of unholy socks.  Wait...do I have any of those?  Oh man, I might need to buy new socks for the gynecologist.

Nothing quite prepares you for stepping on the scale at your appointment and coming to terms with  the reality that your jeans did not in fact shrink an entire size (or two) in the wash, you've just* gained weight.  And now, you've got to peel those tight jeans off to put on a paper gown and lay on a cold and crunchy paper lined table with your legs spread in stirrups, lady bits bathed in florescent lighting for the doctor.  I don't know what my vagina looks like, but I'm going to venture to guess that this isn't the best lighting or angle at which to appreciate it.  I also wonder if I have some of those outlying, long, straggly pubic hairs on my inner thigh.  Until the doctor mentions the bruises I have there.  I'd forgotten I have bruises all over my body that make me look like a battered woman.  I had to explain them to my dermatologist when she inquired too.  No, no...my husband isn't abusing me.  I'm just abusing myself.  With a metal pole.  Because I'm a pole dancer.  

 It's always the season for awkward conversations.  

The Man I Love

I thought he was good man at first.  But, I learned quickly it was all a facade.  Not only is he controlling, a self-absorbed narcissist and homophobe, I also suspect he's a criminal.  And a despicable human being.

And yet, 

I love him despite these things.  

Not because I don't see the worst in him.  Because I do.  I absolutely do.  But, because he's given me the best things in my life.  My four children.  Even though he was reluctant to do it.  Even though he had his own selfish reasons for doing so that had nothing to do with me.  He still did.  

And for that, 

I'll always love him. 

How couldn't I? 

Who could blame me, really?

Putin on the ritz.  

The only thing harder than raising kids is trying to adopt kids through a corrupt system ruled by an autocrat.  I know because I did it four times.  The first time, back in 2000 was the worst.  There was a Russian government official who "lost" our paperwork multiple times.  If you have never been subjected to criminal background checks, letters of recommendation, financial verification, home studies, and the time consuming and costly apostilles required for each document (at $25 a page depending on your state), the process is grueling.  After all that, there's a hefty adoption fee (which is supposed to go straight to the orphanage to feed the children, which I'm extremely skeptical it does).  Then there's the gifts.  To all the Russian officials who have ever touched your paperwork.  Even the ones who touched and then lost it to try to prevent you from adopting Russian kids. (Don't forget a bottle of Jack Daniels for the judge!) Russian kids who likely won't be adopted by Russian parents because adoption has a stigma in Russia.  Which only perpetuates the plight of the country's orphans.

In 2012, Putin banned adoptions of Russian children by Americans.  Not for the benefit of the over 120,000 children who reside in orphanages who are eligible for adoption.  But, for political leverage. Specifically, retaliation for the Magnitsky Act that bars Russians accused of human rights violations from traveling to or owning assets in the United States.  This was the turning point in the deterioration of relations between our countries.  And why Putin was supporting Trump, in hopes that he would  repeal the Magnitsky Act.  Because he knew if Clinton got elected, she wouldn't.  What kind of a sick bastard denies children (ones who are already destitute mind you) for political gain?  But, it's an even sicker bastard who'd repeal a human rights act to placate a power hungry tyrant.

That's why Putin remains the man I love...

...to hate.