Too many bullets, too many words

Like every thinking and feeling American, I’ve had my heart broken by Sandy Hook, as well as by all the other mass (and a lot of the minor) shootings in the last few decades.  Sandy Hook wasn’t the final straw for me, but I’m glad to see that it was for a lot of people.  I’ve personally wanted to see some changes for a long time.

My background is this.  I grew up an Army Brat.   My father served in Vietnam.  On one of the bases, the house in which we lived was a little too close to the firing range, if you take my meaning.  During my teen years we settled in rural Virginia, another area where guns were commonplace.  I took rifle safety as part of my Health and PE class, and the first day of hunting was a school holiday.  Everywhere I went, everyone I knew had guns.  I don’t fear guns, nor do I believe they are inherently evil.  I do have a healthy respect for what they can do, and what they were intended to do, however.  Even as a child, I realized, as I saw eyes, fingers, and songbirds lost to BB guns, that there are no fun games to play with guns.  They were meant to destroy, whether accidentally, in self defense or in aggression.  Every year, some hunter would be mistaken for a deer, or some angry drunk would shoot up his family up in the hollers.

Moving along, I took up the family line of medicine.  I’m a third generation nurse, since my father’s medical education took up most of my young life, and I’m just not that patient.  I work in the OR at the regional trauma center.  When I first started, almost 30 years ago, on Friday nights, the drunks in bars would get in fights, and we spent a lot of time on the weekends fixing broken mandibles from fistfights.  Sometimes, broken bottles were involved, or ball bats, and the flesh wounds were startling.  The plastics service was pretty busy on the weekend, back in the day.  In the last 15 years, I’ve hardly ever seen a broken mandible from a bar fight.  Seems people don’t bother with fists anymore, they go straight for the hardware, and it’s not unusual to have 3 or 4 GSW’s hit the OR on a weekend. Plus, we only get the ones that don’t miss and hit major organs, or big vessels.  If the shooter nabs a leg or arm, you can be treated elsewhere,  because we’re usually busy with all the other ways people can get hurt: car wrecks, aneurysms, etc.  I’m not prepared to argue the demographics of this. We have a markedly different population, and a larger one, than we did 30 years ago.  I have no idea what the actual numbers of gun ownership are in the greater Seattle area.  I’m just pointing out my biases, and a trend I’ve personally noticed.

For the interests of this blog, when referring to the two sides of the gun debate, I’m just going to say free access and controlled access, though I realize that for most people, their opinions are more nuanced.  It’s just that I personally find “pro and anti” more inflammatory.

Over the years, as I’ve discussed gun control with various people I’ve noticed a couple of trends. 

One is that the free access folks overwhelmingly want to explain to me what each kind of weapon is, actually, what those words mean, as a part of the debate.  I would have been an English major if I could have made a living with that, and I love words, and definitions, but that stuff makes my brain hurt, in part because in every blog thread, and conversation, the definitions change just a tiny bit, based on the voice of the conversant.  Here’s what I have to say to that:  I get that the language is important. I've been involved in any number of threads where someone focuses on why we can't ban "assault" weapons because they don't exist, or it would mean banning all guns, or whatever. But that's a strategy of distraction, isn't it?

Because the point isn't really whether or not concerned people have got the right name for the dangerous weapon, the point is, shouldn’t we try to control how many people can own some or all dangerous weapons, and if so, which ones?

When those questions become bills, legislative wonks can assure that the language will be correct.  We need to do that to ensure that there aren’t gaping loopholes as well as to ensure that the actual “dangerous weapons” are removed from circulation.  I get it.  But for the purposes of casual conversation, I have to wonder, is the actual difference between an AK-47 and an "AK-47 like device" something I need to commit to memory in order to know that unstable and angry people shouldn't have access to them?

These same people like to make a big deal about “assault weapon” being a word someone made up during the Clinton administration.  To which I say, “big deal”.  Words get made up all the time. Some idiot made up “fiscal cliff” right after the election, and we won’t hear the end of that one for a while.  Besides, the NRA has gone and changed “gun free zone” into some sort of cosmic concept, instead of a sign.  They make it sound as if “no parking zones” could be transported off the streets and around the world at random.  We shouldn’t need to post “gun free zone” on elementary schools.  I agree that this is ridiculous, but not for the same reason as the NRA. Guns have nothing to do with learning, and no place there.  “No Skateboarding” at least makes sense.  Kids are always taking skateboards places and causing damage and distraction, because kids should have skateboards.  But who seriously arms their 6 year old? The problem isn’t the sign; it’s the societal attitudes that make it necessary.

While we’re on the NRA and schools, their response to Sandy Hook was absurd.  Apparently, Wayne La Pierre hasn’t been to school much lately.  VA Tech had a whole police department, as do most universities.  Columbine had a police officer, as do most High Schools and Middle Schools.  At least my kids’ High and Middle schools have resource officers.  Even their elementary school had a drop in liaison officer. They’re put in place by local law enforcement as a deterrent, as a resource, and so there is a recognizable face who knows the turf if things go badly.  The thing is, this is one guy.  High Schools are huge.  Are we gonna put one in every classroom?  If the shit goes down, it goes down fast.  Who will pay for this?  Or should we just take the money from the History budget, because we learned nothing from the cold war, so we needn’t bother to teach it?  Since when has an arms buildup stopped anything?  And the notion of armed volunteers responding is even more ludicrous.  Hyped up citizens used to be called lynch mobs, not helpful task forces.

I love that we are finally hearing about support for mental health.  Not the NRA notion that we blacklist those with issues, but that perhaps we should better fund programs that have taken it in the teeth since the 60’s.  I would love to see counseling, prescription, coverage, inpatient care extensions, and all of that, given teeth.  I think it’s high time we tried to stem the flow of people going out of society, and helped folks to remain sociable, employable, and contributing.  Working in what is essentially a charitable hospital, these people are my clients.  Many of them could have benefitted from programs such as the ones being suggested now for the children, and many could still benefit from some of the adult ones.

Will it absolutely stop another tragedy, though?  No.  Hopefully, it will reduce the number of angry and disaffected people roaming the country, but you can’t force someone into therapy.  Therapy is a process that comes from within, from wanting to change.  You can’t force feed psychotropic meds, and even if you could, there’s no guarantee that they will provide the desired effect.  Some people, are, as my grandma would call them, bad seed.  Don’t believe me?  Google the Tuba Man killers here in Seattle.  Those kids are bad.

I look at these mass tragedies: Sandy Hook, Columbine, Ft. Hood, the malls, Aurora theatre, too many to mention.  I see the smaller ones, too.  Kids in the ghettos, people caught in the crossfire at intersections, or at drive by shootings, Gang culture, with its need for revenge, meth heads, random armed and angry people with short tempers and bad judgment:  what do they have in common?  They have weapons.  Call me a dreamer, but take away the guns, and most of these bad things are exponentially less likely to happen. 

I know.  All of the free access people on the threads and conversations, and blogs have eagerly explained to me why This. Will. Never. Work. 

People would bury their rapid fire guns rather than turn them in.  Let them.  If the gun is buried in the back yard, your unstable child will have a harder time taking it in a fit of rage.  And if/when it’s unburied, maybe it won’t work, all rusty and dirty.  Besides, that marks those folks pretty clearly as to where they stand, doesn’t it? 

People have already stockpiled enough rapid fire rounds to fuel a shootout of Quentin Tarrantino proportions.  Fine.  We start somewhere.  Those with stockpiles will have to choose to stop playing with their guns and keep their bunkers, or sell at a profit on the black market, or participate in the buyback, or use it up and see what happens.  Either way, we stop selling the stuff.  Am I the only one who thinks it’s a little crazy to be stockpiling that kind of ammo?  Did they think the Mayans were right, and we are facing Doomsday, or do they really believe they personally are the thin red line that’s keeping the government from becoming tyrannical?  Because, if it’s the latter, I have news for them:  Heavily armed loose cannons like yourself are more likely to create oppressive laws than the opposite.  Most people look at the bunkers created by the likes of Peter Keller, and think,” Damn, I’m glad he’s not my neighbor!”

Which brings me to my next favorite argument from the free access crowd:  I’m the good guy.  It usually comes from someone who has played with and trained with guns forever, and is a self taught, or military/ law enforcement trained former something.  Strangely, none of these experts are on any legit organization’s payroll now; they all operate as independents, training anyone who wants to learn about gun usage and gun safety from someone who really knows.  Often they will have offered free training to this or that group because they’re “that kind of person” (Or maybe because they’re short paying customers, and really need to get the message out?). You will always find this or a similar phrase in the blog or thread:  “if the shit really comes down, you would want me next to you”.  These people frighten me as much as the shooters.  Why?  It’s because they really want to see some action.  They seem to have some Wild West fantasy about being the guy in the gap, the one who will save the day.  The people I know who are responsible about guns understand that in a shootout, they could actually die too.  They understand that in a shootout, innocent people can die in the crossfire.  Responsible gun owners don’t want the gun battle.  They want a peaceful solution to the standoff.

Of course we have to talk about self defense.  I have good friends who pack, because they believe that having a gun makes them safer.  They practice shooting on a regular basis, and firmly believe they could shoot to kill.  Good for them. 

That is not me.  I am not convinced I could shoot to kill, to begin with, even if my life was threatened.  My boys’ lives, maybe, but now we’re splitting hairs.  I didn’t like my firearms safety class in the 7^th grade, or any of the gun tables at the summer Army Expos where we got to jump off parachute towers and eat fried grasshoppers.  If someone demanded my wallet, I’d give it to them.  I own nothing worth my life.  Our house was robbed when I was pregnant with my youngest, and that was not fun.  So we have a home alarm system, and we use it.  But I don’t live in fear.  I go where I want to go, I do what I want to do.  I could just as easily get hit by a bus as attacked by some gun toting madman.  No way am I devoting any of my precious time to a gun range on the off chance of that.   And no way would I own a gun if I didn’t.  

Too many people don’t take the time to practice, or do the safety things with their guns, though, no matter what the laws in their states say.  And those laws are not enforced.  We’ve had too many kids in this area shot by family weapons- -some owned by police officers, who should know better!  Gun safety:  such an interesting term.  I had a boyfriend, a long time ago, who was a gun enthusiast.  He was from a war torn region, and an avid hunter.  He was smart, and funny, but paranoid enough from his childhood that he slept with a handgun under his pillow.  I finally convinced him that I couldn’t sleep with a gun that close to my head, even if he showed me the safety, and he agreed to put it on the night table.  I never slept well, though, and our relationship didn’t last.

Because isn’t part of gun safety not just the knowing how to manage guns, but knowing how to manage yourself?  My friend with the handgun under his pillow had a bit of a temper.  One of my dear free access friends has his temper managed, but has children with quick tempers whom he has taught to shoot, and given guns.  None of the people mentioned here has mental issues, or drinking problems, but where do we draw the line?   Adolescents have a known decrease in judgment.  Should we put their gun rights on hold until they get sane again?  My boys were forbidden to play at friends’ houses if they knew or found out that the friend’s family owned guns.  I didn’t think my boys would do anything stupid, but you never know.  After all, you never know who else would be over.  I reminded my boys of this the other day, and they started listing off friends of theirs who we couldn’t have allowed to play here had we owned guns, because of those boys’ poor judgment.  Great kids, mind you, they were just the ones who required a little extra supervision:  “put down the ladder and the sheet”, “no, kitchen knives stay in the kitchen,” and so on. 

Boys, they just want to have fun, and think climbing on the roof with a sheet might be fun.  They need a stable hand around to keep them from doing that.  We expect parents to do that for their children, and their children’s friends.  But once we grow up, we seem to lose that idea of collective responsibility.  I don’t understand the attitude from the free access people is that because so many stable people have “fun” shooting the crap out of something, we have to make those weapons accessible to anyone who might have “fun” with it, no matter whether we can prove they are stable or not.

Here’s an idea:  let the fun-loving folks keep their fun weapons, locked up in the ranges where they practice.  You can only buy the ammo there, and it can never leave the building.  Have all the fun you want where no one else can get hurt.  If you’re going to a meet at another range, the ranges do the transport of weapons.  My apologies to all the folks who wanted to shoot up the refrigerators and old cars in the woods.  Maybe y’all can make your own range.  It’d be good to clean up the woods anyway.

So, how then, do we control gun access, in a fair and reasonable way?  I think starting with what I like to call the really dangerous ones is good.  Guns that fire too many rounds too quickly are dangerous in my opinion, no matter what shape they take.  The whole “all guns are semi automatic” argument” can be more or less answered with the number of rounds in your clip, right?  Even if loading a clip is a single two second action, it does require you to look away from that class of first graders for an instant.  And if you have 10 bullets instead of a hundred, you’ll have to do that several times, which adds us to maybe 20 seconds, which can be more than you realize.  How long did it take for the guys on flight 93 to jump the hijacker? Or, you have to go in with 10 Bushmasters instead of 2.    Free access people spend a lot of time talking about the psychology of the shooters, how they are cowards, and if some brave armed person stands up to them they back down.  Well, how about if we make it so that they are always vulnerable in the first place?  What if they know they could be a target every time they have to reload? I’m personally not nearly as interested in stopping the next shooter as in preventing the next shooter from ever getting started.

One of my friends has proposed a solution, not unlike Chris Rock’s comedy routine, regarding the bullets.  Tax the ammo, tax the guns, on a sliding scale of dangerousness.  That would be great for making money, not so great for increasing the economic divide.  Should only rich people get to have “assault rifles”?  Or are we assuming that only poor people have mental issues (excluding the crowned heads of Europe, obviously)?  Please, don’t mistake me.  I want to make money off this vice, same as booze and cigarettes and all the other things we do that harm us.  Let’s just be sure we do it fairly.

See, here is my simplistic view of “dangerous guns”.  If its primary purpose is to kill a lot of people very quickly, it’s dangerous.  If you can use it to hunt with, but could just as easily use a smaller, less dangerous gun, why not do that?  If you want to have a handgun, for personal safety, how many rounds do you really need to have?  Exactly.  Leave the really big clips for the really bad guys. 

And now we come to the mother of all arguments: Bad guys will get guns anyway.  Absolutely, they will.  No question about it, bad guys will be armed.  And then you will know that he is a bad guy, and not some self-styled cowboy riding in on his F150 to save the day.  When Al Capone was ruling Chicago, no one had to wonder if that guy in the fancy suit with the big gun was maybe just out for a walk.  They got out of his way.  It should always be that easy, not like in VA, where you can bring your gun to dinner at the fancy restaurants.  Nothing says relaxing date night out like open carry.  I’m not talking about the gun rack in the back of the beat up pickup on grandpa’s farm.  I’m talking about shoulder holsters at the Space Needle!  Is this really the kind of world we want?  I think I can speak for the majority of the controlled access crowd when I say “No”.

So we pay the good guys to turn dangerous guns in.  Yes, only law abiding citizens will take advantage of that opportunity, and chiselers, who will try to make the Bucks for Bazookas program as ugly as Cash for Clunkers.  And, the bad guys will always have guns.   Every time a bad guy is caught, we can take his gun, too. 

But this is the thing: every day there will be fewer guns out there!  There will be fewer guns for people’s friends and children and strangers to steal and use in heinous crimes.  There will be fewer guns for overwrought folks to use in suicide attempts, and fewer guns for people to turn on their own families in fits of rage.  How is that not a good thing?

This isn’t an overnight fix.  This is a process.  It will take generations to change the attitudes we have created.  It will take generations to stabilize mental health: after all we have left it go for decades.  It will take years to find the right balance in the legislation:  but doesn’t it always?  We try something, amend it, try again.  Thus it has always been.  The point is in the trying, the beauty of our system is that we don’t make forever laws.  We can try again.

We all agree that the things done with guns are awful.  Why is it so hard to see that the outcomes would be harder to achieve without the guns?  I’m willing to let the courts decide what our actual second amendment rights are.  In my opinion, they don’t include owning dangerous guns, and enough ammo rounds to fuel a small war.  But I’m old fashioned in my belief that sometimes the rights of the individual have to bow to the rights of society as a whole.  And whatever the NRA might say, with all the guns out there, I have never felt less safe   .

Pour me another round, bartender 

Dry Gin Martini

Another word for Motherfucker?

We recently moved, which resulted in the kids having to switch elementary schools within the district.  At first we were going to allow them to finish out the school year, driving them the 5 miles the other direction to stay with their friends.  But after the first couple days, they (namely Iced Tea) decided that getting up earlier wasn’t worth being with their friends for a few months.  So they were registered in the new school and started on Monday.

They were to arrive home on the bus at 3:45 so of course I called from work at 3:47 to get the scoop on the first day at the new school.

Iced Tea:  “I love my teacher, she’s almost too nice.  (Note to self have the “she smells fear” conversation with said teacher). I finished all my homework in class so I just have to read for my homework time this afternoon and ALL the boys REALLY like me.” 

Come again?

“Yeah, we were at lunch and this one bully kid was pouring another kid’s milk into his ketchup and since I had a free milk for helping at lunch I gave it to the boy.  I also pushed the bully off the bench where we were sitting.  So the boys thought I was pretty cool.”

To myself: Ok…umm…you are ½ the size of an average 5^th grader and yet your pint-sized ass is defending other 5^th graders from bullies?  **Remind me to get her some kickboxing lessons or something, she’s gonna need it when one day a bully decides to haul off and clock her.  To her: “Honey there are other ways to handle bullies without getting physical, but I am proud of you for standing up for the other kid.  Glad you had a good day.  Let me talk to your brother.”

“I really like my new teacher mom, but she was only there ½ the day and the substitute was super mean.  She yelled a lot.  Then on the bus a big kid told me I was stupid and a weenie and that I am going to marry boys.”

SAY WHAT?!?!?!  (Mother cat claws engage.)  My poor, sweet boy had a horrible 1^st day!!!  “Lemme talk to your sister.”

“Please tell me that as a 5^th grader you are not allowing your 2^nd grade brother to get bullied on the bus – especially when you are defending complete strangers at school!!!”

“Mom, I watched the whole thing.  He had a control of the situation.  The big kid called some other kid a name and when no one said anything Pepsi stood up and said ‘That’s not very nice, you shouldn’t call people that.’ So the big kid called him ‘gay’ and a couple other things and finally Pepsi told him to ‘shut up motherfucker’ and the kid sat back down.”

Ummm, WHAT??  Not such a sweet, defenseless boy afterall I guess (sure am glad I am investing in martial arts classes for him though). I can’t be mad at my kid for cursing, when the other kid really deserved it.  Pepsi received a “we don’t say that word” speech and I moved on.

So my kids, on their first day of school, have not only identified but pissed off the bullies.  Awesome and scary all in one, this is going to be a fun year.  (I see a lot of wine in my future)

This weekend’s project – finding other words for motherfucker that pack the same punch (suggestions are more than welcome), so my 2^nd grader isn’t suspended next week for excessive profanity because, let’s be honest, that kid truly was a motherfucker.  GO PEPSI!

Cheers to my kickass kiddos! - Mimosa, M.D.

I am here to help. Please let me.

I have a friend, whose personal marital problems kept me tossing and turning last night, so I have decided to write about a not so fun and not so entertaining topic –

My Personal Experience with Spousal Abuse.

I am a firm believer in teaching my kids by example.  I try my best to be a caring friend, to be aware of my community, to show concern and compassion for others – including the less fortunate.  I try to show them that working hard does pay off and that you can do anything that you set your mind to do. 

I have worked hard to make sure that they see the best of me, but still know that I am human and that I make mistakes.  My biggest mistake??  Marrying and staying with their father.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids and I wouldn’t give then up for anything in the world.  The pain and suffering that I went through with their dad has given me the strength to reach out to others that are in the same situation and feel just STUCK.

My ex-husband began putting me down about 4 months into dating.  He was overseas, he was cheating on me with a new whore (or 3 for all I know) in every port, and he was scared/jealous/whatever that made him call me a slut, accuse me of awful things, and stalk me incessantly via email (and text when he could) if I didn’t answer him within 20 minutes.  He was so overbearing and abusive, that I was sure when he got home that we would end it and I would move on – so I actually DID begin to date.

But he came home, it was an emotional reconciliation and I decided to give him another chance.  Neither of us knew at the time of the “cheating” so we each buried our secrets and tried to move on. 

He would go out with his friends 2-3 times a week without me, come home drunk and call me every name in the book.  I spent many days in tears because (with my buried secret still looming) I started believing that I was a slut, whore, bitch – no one else would want me – I needed to stay.

He would get angry, threaten to leave, I would beg him to stay.  He would shove me, push me, and once he smacked me in the face.  He ran into me with his car as I chased him out the door once.  He tossed me down a hill; he shoved me into walls and strangled me.  The physical abuse though, was not as bad as the emotional.  It’s the emotional that hurt more – I wished for the physical, if it meant he would apologize and hug me and tell me he was sorry and how much he loved me.

We eventually married and shortly after found out about each other’s transgressions.  We spent many months fighting and hanging on to a marriage that should never have begun.  I had finally decided in my mind to leave when I missed my period.  I was pregnant.

Having always wanted kids, he was happy, overjoyed and promised to change.  Then he went out and got drunk, came home, woke me from my sleep with a hand around my neck and a fist at my stomach – threatening to kill the baby “that probably wasn’t his” and me along with it.  And still I stayed.

We moved to WA after he got out of the military – a new life, new scenery, a change – this would make things better right?  No, worse...  I now know that he was cheating on me pretty much from the moment we touched ground – he came home angry and upset, abusive and mean.  I was a bitch and a whore and a bad person.  I was lucky he didn’t leave – but he was “too good of a man to leave a pregnant woman” – not too good of a man by the way to live off my money and make me work ‘til the day I had each kid and pretty much HAVE to start working right after to make sure our bills were paid.

Then one day I found out about the cheating.  So I had the abuse, the lack of motivation and contribution to our household, the gambling (oh, did I not mention that earlier?  Yeah, he had a poker problem) and now I had the proof he was cheating – it was time to go.  This time it was him begging me to stay, I was done but he “loved his kids, he was sorry, he would change”.  I came home after a very rare night out with friends to desperate rage “why won’t you talk to me?  Let me explain.”

“Please move, I want to go to my room.  I don’t want to talk right now.”

“But if you just let me explain.” As he lunged forward my instinct kicked in, he was going to hit me again.  I raised my hand to defend myself.  The next thing I knew he was above me, on the phone with the police “I think I killed my wife” with my 3 year old daughter standing behind him crying.  I reached my hand up to find warm, sticky blood on my face – my teeth had gone through my cheek and oh lord did my head hurt.  And still…I stayed.

It took me just over a year after that horrible incident, after my daughter would tell people in the grocery store that “her daddy killed her mommy” to finally leave.  We went through all sorts of court ordered counseling, he was convicted of assault by the state, but it just wasn’t going to work.  He never hit me again, but I knew I could never trust that it wouldn’t happen.  I began to look within myself and realize that if I didn’t leave – I was teaching my daughter it was ok to stay.

This man, the father of my kids, is not a bad person.  He is a fear driven child.  That final incident broke him and he was a shell of the person he used to be, after that.  Our chemistry together was like oil and water, we just did not work.  He is a kind person inside and does try as best he can to be a good dad – he is just not made to be a husband.  I know now that he was intimidated by my strength and self-confidence and went to work immediately to squash it – and I let him.  I will not let that happen again.

If you, or someone you know, is currently subjected to abuse – emotional, physical, or otherwise – PLEASE GET HELP!  There are options, counseling CAN help in some situations, but staying and letting it continue will not only hurt you – it will hurt your kids.  They will continue the cycle.  Your sons will grow up thinking women are objects, that they can treat them like 2^nd class citizens.  Your daughters will grow up thinking it is ok to let a man trample on you – as long as he tells you he loves you when he’s done.  This is not the life that I wanted for my kids; I am pretty sure no one else does either.

I am here to help.  Please let me.

A sober and somber – Mimosa, MD

THE ABSURD WONKERY OF INANIMATE OBJECTS

All my life, I have heard men refer to objects as “she” and anthropomorphize them in fantastical ways.  My great Uncle Fred, whom I adored, worked as a mechanic at a dairy concern somewhere in New York.  His service vans were mortal enemies.  Each one had personal attributes and names.  He had a passionate love affair with his Edsel, which included loving meticulous care and ranting rages, and probably went some way towards explaining why he never married.  Sea captains regard their ocean going vessels as women and they know that with the proper attention, the boats will bring them safely home.  And so on. 

I had always assumed that this was some misogynistic attempt to explain the improbable, since as every woman knows, when you take your car in to a mechanic, and try to explain the noise the car is making, not only does the car NOT make the noise, but the mechanic kindly shakes his head at you in a knowing fashion, as if to say, “yeah, right lady, we all know cars don’t make those noises, but we can fix it anyway…”.

And I’m actually pretty good with machines, I usually can figure them out, and make them work.  My job pretty much depends on it.  I often joke that a degree in bio-mechanics would have been a handy adjunct to my nursing degree, as surgery is as much about the equipment as it is about the anatomy some days. 

This does not include computers, by the way.  Computers are a horse of a different color.  Everyone who knows me knows that I emit some strange electro-magnetic field which allows me to crash computers from thirty paces.  Geeks usually exclaim, when asked to weigh in on the problem, “but computers don’t do that”, or “I’ve really never seen that happen before.”  I’m over it.  I generally just apologize in advance when I’m around other people’s computers for some reason.  My husband jokes that the great campus of Microsoft has a photo of me with a circle/slash at all the entrances as a safety precaution.  I wouldn’t be surprised.  But I digress.

This is about my scale.  It hates me.  It really hates me.  For the past four weeks or so, I have been faithfully following the Weight Watchers system.  I’m doing the online version, because one more meeting would send me the sort of postal that ends in strait jackets and butterfly nets.  I’m counting points, exercising, the whole nine yards. I’ve eaten enough fresh produce to make the local farm board swell with pride, and the City has called about the increase in water consumption. 

 My scale, however, is not on board with this.  For the first two weeks, it stayed dutifully at _ _5.  The next week, it dipped one day, but only one day to _ _ 4, and immediately back up to _ _5 again the next.  One day I got it to budge by switching its location on the floor, but that, too, was temporary.  I’ve had this scale a long time.  I used it a decade ago to lose almost 50 pounds with the old WW system.  I have tried trading it out, but the new one weighed heavier, which was depressing.  I figured they were in cahoots.  And it works for my husband, who is also dieting.  So it is all about me.

Now, here we are another week later, and I have done everything you could ask.  I come in under points.  I don’t use my whole weekly extra allowance.  I walk in the rain, take the stairs, park at the back of the lot, I even tried tantric snow shoveling.  So help me, I’m eating breakfast, at the urging of my fellow group members.  And I hate breakfast, because I hate mornings.  So the only thing worse than having to get out of bed is having to also wake remote body parts which have no absolute need to be up.  But here I am patiently eating oatmeal and fruit concoctions for the good of someone’s theory of metabolism.  That theory and my scale are apparently not communicating. 

Today was a typical day.  I step on the scale, due for my weekly weigh in.  It registers, at _ _2.  I am exultant!    I am so astonished, that I step off the scale to get my reading glasses, just to be sure I got it right.  Now, the scale reads _ _5.  I step off and on again without the glasses, just in case, you know, I have been secretly working out with cheaters and didn’t know it.  _ _5.  So either my fat has just beat the land/sea record for movement, or my scale hates me.  We all know which one it is.  But HA!  HA!  Mr. Scale!  My jeans fit better, and the other night I wore a pair I haven’t worn in months, so the joke’s on you!  Go ahead and refuse to admit that I’ve lost weight.  As long as my clothes fit better, I’m going to be happy….

vodka straight up, club soda back, with a twist.