I’ve been drawing line pictures in photoshop for someone’s math thesis. Yes it’s that bad.

But I made pretty pictures! I just can’t show them to you. Blogger hates them (I think Blogger is just jealous of my line drawing skills, for sure)

With Ouyangdan on her new Asian schedule, I have no one to entertain me at work. I’ve read all the internets. I am over my interior design lust. The Books on my phone appy has crapped out on me. And I got nothing pithy or witty to write.

Won’t someone take pity and entertain me? Please?

Since I cannot be made to laugh, I guess I’ll overshare about my current little family problems.

After my last post about how the Kid’s dad was freaking me out (just posting a little helped me clarify some shit in my head) I started thinking. What you get now is delayed stream-of-consciousness blogging. Lucky you.

Okay, so you’re angry. Why are you angry? Are you really just angry about child support payments. Shit the dude has never paid in a reasonable fashion, so what’s really going on here. Are you scared? Is maybe that why you’re so angry? It’s always easier to be angry than to be scared. Ok, so what are you scared of? Is it legitimate fear or is it leftover from years of trauma the asshat caused? We are safe right now. Dude doesn’t know where we live, and the Kid only has a few months left in this school. So he knows where the Kid goes to school, but the school is aware of the history and has strict instructions. And if he did figure out where we live, our rooms are on the 3rd floor. He’d have to get through a bunch of roomates to get to us, and there is no possibility of him breaking in through the bedroom window while we sleep (which he’s done before and is probably why I haven’t had a ground story bedroom since). So safeish. For now. And if things change you have picked up in the past and run off with no notice. You can do it again.

But that’s not all you’re scared about, is it? You’re scared that the Kid won’t see how awful his dad is and will become like him. His dad is affable and charming on the surface, that was part of the reason it was so hard to get help to leave. How do you keep the Kid safe while still letting him have his own relationship with his dad? Tricky. You could just tell him what’s going on, at the very least that will explain your snappishness. Besides, you’re assuming that asshat has actually changed his tune and will try to see the Kid on a regular basis. Not fricken likely. He had visitation rights for two days a week with the Kid when he was little and he only saw him once in a year. Are you scared asshat will try to get custody? Not likely. He can’t afford child support then he can’t afford a lawyer. Besides, Kid is old enough to choose and I am very sure he would choose me.

So after this lovely bit of rational dissection of my fear brain, I had a talk with the Kid. I just explained that when I get scared, I get pissed. And there is a bunch of leftover stuff from his dad that scares me. It’s not his fault, and I’m sorry for the snappishness. I also explained that his dad has some very good qualities, but that I don’t want the Kid to grow up to be anything like his dad, which is why I’ve kept those kinds of influences (drugs, misogyny, violence and possessiveness) out of his life. We hugged, we joked around, it was all good in Mom and Kid world. I think that along with the fear brain, I had forgotten that the Kid is no longer a tiny toddler but an almost grown human being. I couldn’t explain this shit to a one year old, but almost 14 year old Kid seems to get it. Besides, he has his own therapist to talk to when mom has a case of the crazies.

Now bring me some entertainment, pretty please?

After more than 5 years, no raises, no benefits and now no cheap employee bus pass, I am finally eligible to join the union for WA state employees.

Does this mean I get benefits or raises? Probably not. But it does mean that the next time the fuckers in payroll screw up my check, I’ve got a number to call.

W00T!

So out of boredom, anger, or for reasons not exactly known by me, I have been reading Washington state’s Child Support Enforcement reports and findings. Actually, I am thinking of making a push to require deadbeat parents to either pay up or attend mandatory Work First programs like we require parents on TANF to do. After I get some numbers figured out, I’ll need to see who would be the most friendly state rep to take the idea to.

In December a new report was published on state guidelines for setting support amounts. There was a bit of a debate (reading between the lines of the minority opinions published, it seems like the debate might have been a raucous) about what child to include when calculating family size. In they end they decided to count all the kids from both the non-custodial and custodial parents families, but:

A minority of the workgroup felt that later-born children should not be considered
in modifying support for the first family. Individuals supporting this position pointed out that the first family has an economic interest in the stability of the
support order and has no voice in the decision by the noncustodial parent to have
additional children in subsequent relationships. The custodial parent of a child
from a subsequent relationship enters into the relationship knowing of the
existence and financial obligations toward the child(ren) of the first relationship.

I find it funny (odd, not haha) that we have numerous ways of punishing poor custodial parents for having more children than they can afford, such as restrictions of TANF and Section 8 housing grants to the number of children in the family when the grant is first applied for, but we don’t have those kinds of measures in place for non-custodial parents who continue to have have children while not paying support on the older kids. Could it be that most poor custodial parents are women, and poor women have always been at the mercy of society when it comes to their reproductive choices, but non-custodial parents are usually men and we have an aversion to punishing men for “spreading their seed”?

Sanjay Gupta, fat-hater, misogynist, and private insurance cheerleader will not be surgeon general!

Hurray!

Now can we please please please get a single payer advocate? Pretty please with sugar on top, and a cherry?

Or can we lobby Obama to re-appoint the most kickass Surgeon General in the history of the country.

If you keep excommunicating everyone that disagrees with you, then all you’ll have left is a church membership made up entirely of pedophiles.

And that’s okay with me, cause then we’d all know to who to avoid.

But in the mean time, please tell me how Christ would think it’s okay to forgive the rapist but that the child he raped should suffer either excommunication or death because her 9 year old uterus is too small to carry one baby, let alone two?

And to all the folks about to be excommunicated for helping this poor kid out, I invite you to join my soon to be created “Church of the Real” where we believe lives of real living people are more important than the ideas of blowhard misogynists. There will be cookies instead of stale wafers, vodka tonics instead of church wine, and we don’t give up shit for lent but will still party at carnival.

First- thanks to everyone for their kind words yesterday. It helps.

But I am a wee bit of a fraud. I know that the Kid needs to know his dad on his own terms, but……

I had forgotten how angry I am at his father. And there are so many horrible things that I can’t tell the kid about that are dangerous, terrifying, unspeakable. Things I have never even told a therapist. Those dark little secrets that we push to the back of our mind and try to pretend never happened, try to talk ourselves out of admitting. And it’s all rushing back right now, boiling up so that it takes every ounce of energy to contain it. And I’m failing to contain it. Vicious little remarks about the Kid’s dad keep escaping my lips, and the Kid is avoiding the topic cause I’m pretty sure he can sense that his mom is about to blow. Just typing these two tiny paragraphs has taken forever. I have to pause and dig my nails into my palms to keep from sobbing or screaming at my desk.

So how do I let the Kid make his own choice when every fiber of my being is screaming “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”? I don’t think the Asshat would hurt the Kid in the same ways he has hurt me. I think he would stick to simple neglect with the Kid, while I got the violence and the stalking and the stuff I can’t talk about. But how can he really know his father without knowing that? Ughhhhh. Most of me wants to grab the kid and take a whatever bus is at greyhound right now and leave, which is exactly what I did 12 years ago after being stalked by the asshat for almost a year.

Anyways, that’s the state of mind I’m in right now. And since i have always been proactive when it comes to this shit I have an appointment first thing Monday to find a therapist who specializes in domestic violence trauma.

Socialism is really happening because there has never been anything else but this form of wealth production. If it was not there, if all you could you see was markets and bankers, this was because its very fact was obscured by neoliberal nonsense. All one had to do was look at, say, cotton subsidies in the US to see that even under Bush, even during the economic boom of the mid 00s, socialism was alive and well.

The real question is do we want socialism for the rich or for everyone?

Me, I’m a hybrid kind of gal. I like shiny shoes and cheap computers. But I also like making sure everyone is fed, housed, educated and treated by doctors. I don’t think we should have to give up shiny shoes to get universal health care. If you listen to the rethuglikans and their tea party protests you would think that very shortly we will be living in Soviet style apartments and only have shoes for our left foot (has everyone heard the story about the Soviet shoe factory that couldn’t respond to market pressures because it was part of a communist economy or have I just had that story crammed down my throat by free market blowhards more often than most?).

I am not generally a fuzzy brained idealist on the topic of human behavior. I believe that people act in their own self interest most of the time. I think that it is the government’s place to moderate the extremes of that. People should not be allowed to be too rich or too poor. A worker should expect that any job will pay for the basic necessities of life, but no job should give you enough wealth to topple an entire economy. Basically, I think the government is there to act as our better angel and force us to practice enlightened self-interest, or the idea that if we don’t take care of the bottom and control the top that our society will fail (For proof ask the Spartans, the Athenians, the Romans or any other “great society” that eventually failed when stratification became to much. Shit, ask the Mayans too.)

But what I really want to know is, now that Marx will be replacing Che Gueverra (murderous, sexist fuckwad) on the t-shirts of the all the young newbs of the progressive front, can some love for Antonio Gramsci be far behind?

Gramsci says “It would be a horribly ironic joke on my theory of cultural hegemony if my face was plastered on the mass marketed t-shirts of the youth”

So the Kid had his first meeting with his asshat of a father today since he was a year old. I set it up so that his school counselor would supervise the visit (when asshat and i split up, the judge ordered that asshat ONLY have supervised visits).

I need to bitch here cause I have to put on the nice face for the Kid.

Asshat hasn’t paid child support this month (or last month, or most of the last 13 years). He owes 40k in back child support. In the last 13 years I could have popped out more babies, but being a rational adult with one child already and not enough money, I didn’t. Asshat- not quite so rational. It turns out the kid has 3 siblings. Which would be fine, if asshat were supporting the Kid. But………..

It turns out he’s like some bad joke defendant on Judge Judy.

And to make it worse, just like I thought he would, Asshat comes bearing gifts for the Kid that do nothing towards feeding, housing or clothing him. But it makes asshat look good in front of the kid. I have to be the jerk mom who says “No you can’t have all your friends over for birthday dinner because we can’t afford a party” or “I know your shoes are falling to pieces, can you wear the ones that hurt your feet for a couple of weeks till I can fix it” of “Dude that box of rice crispies has to last an entire week. Stop eating them all”.

So I sent a nasty email to asshat. It was a spur of the moment, shitty thing to do. But fuck I am pissed. Here’s what it said with Kid’s name redacted.

Were you planning on paying child support anytime in the near future or should I tell Kid you can’t because your other kids are more important?

One target card does not feed or house him. But it does make you feel better. Not exactly the kind of dad Kid deserves.

I wish I could afford a bottle of vodka, cause today is totally a shot drinking day.

with Rahm Emanuel, what would you say?

Me? I’d say people first, bankers last. I’d say housing, education, health care. And I’d just keep repeating myself over and over until it stuck in his head like a Journey song.