Set to Drain

Something else I’ve had on my mind lately is marriage. With all the gay marriage up in NYC and some of my friends getting married, it’s just been weird. I guess the main thing I think about is how conflicted I feel about potentially being married to the military. My manfriend can testify to how much it freaks me out – pretty much every time I get really drunk (due to tequila), I start crying about how I don’t want to be part of the military.

Someone Like You

It only seems appropriate that I start typing this blog post at the same moment that Michelle Obama appears in a commercial for Joined Forces.

This is my first experience in my boyfriend’s apartment alone. I’m waiting for him to come home from a little pow-wow dinner with his little army buddies. I will be live-blogging this experience.

20:10 I had a nice conversation with my boyfriend’s friend’s wife on my ride to the apartment. From what I can tell, she’s my age. She’s cute and friendly and pregnant. She tells me she sits at the house most days, partly because she has morning sickness and doesn’t want to do anything when she’s puking her guts out. She reminds me a bit of Laya in the sense that she sits at home all day.

20:23 Watching NCIS on tv and cooking myself some dinner. Not really exciting stuff. Frozen ravioli. If my man had actually gone grocery shopping, I’d probably be cooking something amazing and I’d feature be regularly updating my cooking blog. Also, I would completely rearrange the appliances in this kitchen.

20.40 Drinky drink drink. I wish my man were home already. I’m bored. I’d like to think that, if I lived here, I would cook and bake all day, and I’d sell what I baked and donate what I cooked. I’d donate to shelters or families or disabled people. Also, I wish my man had cookies. I want something sweet.

20:57 My friends from NYC call me to catch up while drunk. This ended up taking up a lot of time, and by the time our conversation ended, I had a few minutes before my manfriend came home. Case closed?

Maybe this wasn’t the best time to try and live blog an evening in the life of a military partner. These next 16 days, however, my manfriend will be frolicking in the woods with his tanks, so I won’t be able to talk to him or see him. Maybe I’ll have something to say about that. But in the meantime, this is all I got.

Our Common Goal

I’ve read a few articles on the SpouseBUZZ blog about military partner life, and this article about families being “whiners” really caught my eye. (And this article about a family forced to leave their home the moment the husband deployed, but that’s for another post.) One of the main points she touches on is the fact that so many people in this country seem removed from war. And this is why I believe the Wikileak was so important. For some reason, we all stopped being angry about the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. And by “we” I mean the civilian population.

Waiting for the World to End

I’ve had a lot on my mind lately. I want to tell you to still be angry about what Wikileaks discovered. I want to talk about Rush Limbaugh’s impossibly stupid claim that non-profits rape the economy. I want to rant about how amazing Inception was and all the things I love about it. Instead, however, I will tell you about my personal battle with deciding to move to Atlanta.

Short Things

A short list of things I don’t want to forget and may explain later.

1. Talking about Buffy makes me want to re-watch Battlestar Galactica.

2. I’m angry that there are people in the world who are anti-choice, and make it their lives’ mission deceiving women for no one’s benefit.

3. The BSG soundtrack is so good.

4. If it weren’t for art, science wouldn’t know how to think outside the box.

No Disrespect, That’s Just How I Am

I love watching college softball. Some of my friends make fun of me because they don’t think it’s a real sport. Yes, it was taken out of the summer olympics, and it doesn’t have a professional league. (Because curling is so much more difficult and requires so much more skill.) As sad as that all makes me, it also makes me kind of happy. College is the end of a girl’s softball profession, which means they play their best like they’ve got nothing to lose. There aren’t huge sponsors depending on them or paparazzi trying to find dirt on them. They just play.

I don’t really like watching other sports (i.e. football, basketball, baseball is ok) because they’re all a bunch of dudes who do whatever they want and don’t always play for the team or the sport. Don’t get me wrong, I like watching football and basketball. (And yes, I know it seems ironic that I don’t watch the WNBA then.) But it’s like watching A League of Their Own, but in real life. Maybe because it makes me sad knowing the girls can’t pursue it any farther…maybe it makes it all seem more dramatic, more human.

I don’t know. I’m just in a Girls Rule kind of mood.

Back to Start

A very good friend of mine recently ranted about priorities as an Army partner. Her concerns are similar to the ones I raised in an earlier post about independence and womanhood. Here’s a fun fact I learned from my aunt, who is the wife of a retired 4-star general: you don’t have to do anything.

The United States military doesn’t own you, partner. They can’t tell you what you will and will not do as the significant half of their property. And that piece of property can’t tell you what you can and cannot do either. You are not property, and you do not belong to your partners. And you most definitely do not belong to the US military. So no, partner, you do not need to live with that US piece of property you’re married to, you do not need to stay in those homes while that piece of property is deployed, you do not need to follow it wherever the government tells it to go, and you most certainly are not responsible for anyone but yourself.

This is exactly the kind of issue that motivates me to do a photography project on partners of people in the military. Wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, widows, and divorcees of military personnel are just too important to ignore.

Found Myself Some Culprits

I know, I know. I’m crazy for thinking that abortion should be covered by a public option. But I recently came across Bart Stupak’s Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, and it just makes me angry again. I understand that you don’t think it’s anything different or new – abortion already isn’t covered by federal tax dollars. But if it isn’t anything new, then why did you feel a need to do it?

I agree with abortion rights supporters who say “the amendment was the biggest setback to their cause in decades.” I just don’t see a reason for it. I don’t understand why the U.S. does not recognize public access to safe abortions as a woman’s right, a health right, and an economic right. I guess because the U.S. hasn’t been good at recognizing any of those forms of human rights.

AND another thing: why is anyone who earns less than $100,000/year a republican? Why are people denying themselves their own rights? I believe that ethics and morals apply to economic, social, and political issues, but seriously. And don’t you remember this bill by Tim Ryan and Rosa DeLauro? What happened to good teamwork?

My Troubling Ways

Here’s the thing about universal health care: it’s universal. Last time I checked, universal meant “including or covering all or a whole collectively or distributively without limit or exception; especially : available equitably to all members of a society.” I understand that to mean that there is no discrimination, which means all people – including women – are covered under a universal health care system, which means abortions are covered under a universal health care system.

Why? Because it falls under health issues. And last time I checked, abortions are legal (in the majority of states). If abortions are covered under universal health care, it doesn’t mean hundreds of thousands of women will suddenly choose abortions over carrying the baby to term. It doesn’t mean that women will be aborting their fetuses for gits and shiggles. It means women can have access to affordable, safe abortions if they choose to do so. And to be honest, you’re paying for them if not through a federal universal health care system, then through taxes for E.R.s.

And since when was it your duty to tell these women what they can and can’t do? And when did it become OK to use women’s rights as a bargaining chip? Abortions are legal. They should be covered under universal health care. We’re talking about the law, not arbitrary definitions of life. I don’t understand what the problem is here.

You’re My Saving Grace

To be honest, I never thought I’d say this, but I think I’m one of those women who will never be married. And let me tell you why…

I had a conversation earlier today about relationships, long distance relationships, and some abstract concept of what it means to be in a relationship. What I’ve realized is that I can’t be with a man who won’t let me do what I want. And that takes a very secure man, my friends. I took a personality test on Facebook a while ago that told me that, of all the Hollywood female stars, I am most like Katharine Hepburn. Why? Because I will show up a man at any chance I get.

I can’t stand a man who thinks he can beat me, rule me, thinks he’s better than I am, thinks he can control me. And maybe that’s why I’ll never get married. The day I meet a man who can let me be who I am without compromising himself is the day I find my husband.

Fuck the rest, my friends. Fuck the rest. I’m going to bed.