Run, Katie, Run!

Seriously, watching that girl come out of her marriage is like watching a friend leave her abusive man that you've never liked.  Maybe she'll start smiling again.

The ACA is why I have health insurance today

BUT
I am quite upset that the Supreme Court upheld the part that said it is mandatory for Americans to purchase health care.  The entire ACA wasn't bad; that part was.

Half Dome

If I compare life to a hike -

with all its twists and vistas and up hills and down -

and see the final destination 

not

as the summit,

but 

as the moment we get to go Home and 

have showers and 

lie down in our nice comfy beds of rest...

then I want you with me on the descent.

Of Wedding Cakes and Government Insurance

This weekend was a good reminder of why I'm getting surgery. Months ago I volunteered to make my friends' wedding cake. They're young and fresh out of college and I like to do that for people who don't have tons of cash. So they're getting married today. And sitting on the cake table is a gorgeous cake with gorgeous flowers that I poured probably 15 hours of my life into and I desperately hope they like it.

But I'm not at the wedding I was supposed to attend. And my dad had to drive me there and stand by my side while I set up the cake. And the cake itself looks different from what the bride and I discussed. Because. Because yesterday, cake-frosting day, I unexpectedly started my period and was laid up for hours and was crying in the bathroom half the night and have been hugging my heating pad to my body as if to let go would be to lose my soul.

 I don't want to miss anymore weddings.

----- 

PCIP: Pre-existing Condition Insurance Policy. This is a government insurance policy I was told about recently. I applied, was accepted, and they'll be coving about $10,000 of my surgery expenses! What a blessing from our sweet God. My sister Bekah will be changing the fundraiser to reflect the new projected cost of the surgery, so stay tuned for that. I'll still need somewhere between ten and fifteen thousand from my end, so if you're still thinking of donating please do! And thanks to those who already have. As strange as it sounds, I can't wait to have surgery!!

(PS I'll post a picture of the cake sometime.  Right now I'm going back to my heating pad. :)

Aluminum is toxic folks!

I'm not huge into conspiracy and naysaying, but this video is really important. I worked for a soil and groundwater testing and cleanup agency for 2 years, and I can tell you - these levels of metals in the soil and water are neither safe nor normal. Climate manipulation and geoengineering are stupid and dangerous.

the garden of your mind

Heads or Tails

I've always rushed headlong into life without stopping to catch my breath and never had a hard time making a decision; I know what I want, I go for it.  Then life got messy and I had to go to the ER for my endo and I suddenly realized that I'm not invincible and my "life is a grand adventure and I can do anything I set my mind to" mentality flipped, like a coin, to "I'm too sick to even commit to doing dinner with you tonight so let me go hide in the closet for a while".  I find myself internally backing out on decisions I've made for myself. Two days ago I was sold; today I want to run back into the secure arms of the status quo and pretend like I've always wanted to be there.  I hate being this old while being so completely dependent on my parents...yet at the same time I never want to leave their house, never want to work for anyone else, and always want to act like I'm 14.   I don't like this post-ER me.

Which is why I should buy a motorcycle.

Of Uteri and Wasted Babies

My appointment with Dr. Cook went well.  He determined that I probably have only stage II or III endometriosis, but he's pretty sure not stage IV.  This is good.  It means the surgery should be shorter and less complicated.  We scheduled it for August 9th, which is rushing upon us relatively quickly.  I can't wait to be in recovery, I can't wait for this thing to be over.  One other really good thing I found out was that I can get disability during my recovery period.  I initially thought I'd only be missing 2 weeks of work post-surgery, but was informed that it's more like 4-6.  That's way too many weeks to do without an income, so receiving disability checks is fabulous.

*** Warning: This part of the post is graphic and weird and contains words like "ovaries" "vaginal" and "uterus". Read at your own risk. ***

The exam itself was quite traumatizing.  A pelvic ultrasound is an internal one.  They pull out this ultrasound wand that's quite a bit bigger than a tampon, and up it goes!  So you're lying there, naked but for a paper robe with your legs spread and a stick up your vagina, speaking calmly and professionally with the male doctor about what he sees on the ultrasound monitor.  Dr. Cook was so nice and apologetic the whole time - in no way creepy about it - but that doesn't do much to minimize the weird horror of the experience. 

In the middle of the procedure I had this strange "ah ha!" moment. See, I don't really think about having children.  The only time in my whole life I've actually visualized being pregnant is when I've woken up from one of those pregnancy nightmares (*shudder*). I hate those.  I know I'm a woman, I know I'm expected to have kids someday, but this isn't something I think about - ever.  Even at 30, my biological clock has not yet started ticking. So Dr. Cook moved the wand around to see different parts of my insides, and he explained what each thing was as he went.  First he showed me my uterus.  Then he showed me my ovaries, one at a time.  The second ovary had a strange dark spot on it, which concerned me, until he explained that it just meant I would be ovulating from that side this month and that, in fact, it was getting ready to drop an egg.

And I thought,
"WOW."
Beat.
"I really AM a woman."
Beat.
"I could make a baby RIGHT NOW!"

So.bi.zaare.  I could have made a baby this weekend.  My body can make babies.  I know women can make babies, but this is me.  I can make babies.  My body does all the normal things that every woman's has throughout human history.  Weird, weird, weird.  Even stranger is that one, solitary egg that positioned itself so perfectly to be inseminated will never become a person. 

Think of all the wasted babies.
Think of all the millions of eggs that never get made into people.
Think of the one-in-a-gazillion chance that an egg will be fertilized.
Think of yourself, and how that one-in-a-million egg met that one-in-a-trillion sperm and became YOU.

It seems so desperate, so lonely, that poor egg crying out "make me into something!" then just finding itself flushed out the birth canal and down the toilet.

God is so weird.  That is my only conclusion.

Rachel Held Evans on Women of Valor

Her entire post can be found here, but here's a quote that strikes at the heart of one of the main reasons why complementarianism is so frustrating to me:

At its heart, the modern “biblical womanhood movement,” as embodied by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and organizations like it, is not really about returning to a biblical lifestyle; it’s about returning to an idealized vision of pre-feminist, 1950s America that relegates a woman’s identity to her roles as wife, mother, and homemaker. Far from being counter-cultural, it is profoundly cultural, in that it emerges as a reaction to feminism and finds its ethos in nostalgic esteem for a specific time in American cultural history.

Bekah Trumps All

There's this guy named Mr. Snowman. In reality he's probably a woman, just like our cat Mr. Tumnus was really a girl. But his name is Mr. Snowman nonetheless. My sister Bekah* and I have this joke where we hide him for each other. The best I ever did was empty her room of all furniture while she was away. She returned home to Mr. Snowman standing alone in an empty bedroom. The best she ever did was this weekend. So I'm waiting for Dr. Cook to come into the consultation room. He knocks on the door, peeks his head around the corner and says, "Rachel? I think I ran into someone up here** who knows you!" I was confused - why would my name even come up between my doctor and some random person living in Los Gatos?  Then he pulls Mr. Snowman from behind his back.  I died.

How am I ever gonna beat that one?

*The sister who started the fundraiser and who lives on the other side of the country from me. 
**My doctor is 300 miles from where I live.

The Season of the Rage Monster

For all the negative words I could use to describe myself, anger is not one of them.  I get moody, yeah, and can seriously grump out when things aren't going my way (working on that!) but anger...that's a relatively unfamiliar emotion to me, especially when it shows up in the form of rage.

I mean, Rage.  Like the Hulk.  Like Mark Ruffalo terryfing the shiz out of Scarlett Johannson at 30,000 feet then falling to the ground and surviving.  Like blood and fear and anger and hate speeding through your veins and enlarging your heart and brain til you think your body will burst with the pressure.

Rage.

In 29 years of life I never felt Rage, but at 30 it's my new worst enemy.  I don't think it's biological, I think it's because when I hit 30 my world was falling apart - I was half-raising my sister's kid while bringing in less money than my bills were taking out and my pelvic pain was getting steadily worse even while I was doing more and trying more and spending more than ever to try and make it better.  I felt trapped in a cyclone of worse, and then the cyclone became me, and now, I am the cyclone.

I am not enraged about having to have surgery.
I am not enraged that my sister returned and is being a mom again without acknowledging what she did to the family.
I am not enraged that I don't make much money.
I am not enraged that I felt, and feel, stuck.

I am enraged that that dbag cut me off in traffic.
I am enraged that we're out of dish soap.
I am enraged that the new guy at work won't put the lid down - even when asked.

Like, that's the thing about Rage - it doesn't make sense.  You think you're working on all the hard emotions that arise with hard circumstances, but all of a sudden you're having a screaming fit in your car because the grocery store was out of your shampoo.

Really?  Shampoo?

No, not shampoo.  This is really about the fact that I never got a thank you from my sister.  This is about the fact that I am scared shitless about surgery - so, so, so, so scared.  This is about the fact that surgery is really expensive and I've already poured approximately $15,000 and 10 years into trying to get better and the weight of all that money is making me tired. This is about thinking I'm taking my worry and stress and sorrow to God when really I'm just holding it behind my back while smiling and saying, "Here you go, Jesus.  It's all yours."

I need your prayers.  And please - if this has happened to you, please please leave a comment on how you dealt (still deal?) with it.

******
And for fun: