Goats and boosters and December

I got my Covid booster today, y’all, and I am grateful AF. I stuck with Moderna, and my body is again letting me know that it does not like anything about this virus. Hooboy, I do not feel good. I have a blinding headache, some nausea, fatigue, and my arm is sore. Better than my response to Dose 2, same’ish as Dose 1. The pharmacist said that he thinks everyone will need a 4th shot roughly six months after their 3rd. You have to wonder when/if we’ll manage to get this pandemic under control. Thank you anti-vaxxers and conspiracy loons who aren’t doing your part. All the rest of us are thrilled to still be decidedly not back to normal.

And today there was another school shooting! And SCOTUS will probably uphold Mississippi’s abortion ban, thereby overturning Roe! And Lauren Boebert attacked Ilhan Omar with hideous Islamophobia and now Rep Omar received an incredibly gruesome death threat! It goes on and on, but I’ll stop there and switch to some exciting news.

We bought four of the lawnmower goats and absolutely love them. This is Lefty, a sweetie who had listeria and only turned in left circles for a while.

Lefty

And this is Apple, so named because she is extremely aggressive when we give the goats apples as treats. The woman we bought the goats from thinks Apple is pregnant. The father? Stinky Billy!

Apple

This is Jemima, so named because I have always wanted a pet named Jemima. Word on the street is that Jemima is also pregnant (also Billy), and I will tell you that she is really starting to look it.

Jemima

And lastly is Rambo, a dear castrated male.

Rambo

We get to see them again on Friday, and I can’t wait. During our last visit, we started introducing grain and hay to supplement their diet over the winter. They were EXTREMELY excited, and at one point, three of them had their heads crammed into one bucket of grain. Because of this ridiculousness, I went to Tractor Supply and bought four buckets that can be hung over gate rails and also one salt block. At one point, three of them were licking the salt block like it was the most sublime meal in the world, and later, despite each having his/her own grain pail, they continued to butt and play musical chairs with the buckets. They are very amusing.

The thought of baby goats at Christmas (purportedly they are due around Christmas) is almost more than I can bear. What is more darling than a baby goat?

Tomorrow is December 1, and I swear it was just December 1, 2020, but here we are. I am the most joyous, enthused fan of Christmas and started decorating the day after Thanksgiving. It is my hope that I feel totally fine tomorrow so that the boys and I can go get a tree and get busy with our lights and ornaments.

I treasure my boxes of ornaments. Some were Nanny’s, and I am always struck how fragile yet strong they are, what to have lasted all these decades despite being the thinnest sheet of glass. Mom and Dad and Tom’s mom have given us many, too. First home, baby’s first Christmas, one from the Obama presidency, felt enemas (the Fleet’s Enenamen) given to my Dad by a pharma rep one year (Dad was a GI), at least a dozen tributes to New York, souvenirs from trips abroad, treasures crafted by Jack and Oliver’s tiny fingers over their early years, others from Tom’s and my childhoods.

As we hang each ornament, we share its story, its history, its provenance. Some are cheap, one was a gift from Tiffany, some are ugly, many are stunning. They track interests and dates and they allow us to connect in memory and nostalgia. Trimming our tree each year is one of my favorite activities. Here’s to feeling good tomorrow and heading to the tree stand!

And in the meantime, Happy Hanukkah to all celebrating. Chag Sameach!

Texas as Gilead; more states will follow

I know you all know the depth of my fury and disgust right now. I am absolutely apoplectic, incandescent, shivering, and nauseous with rage. Not only are women in Texas being mistreated in hideously misogynistic, paternalistic ways, not only do most women have NO idea they’re pregnant at six weeks, Texas makes no exception for women seeking abortion after rape or incest.

The state is also offering $10,000 bounties to those who identify and turn in those who they think may have attempted to seek abortion. Not that it is anyone’s damn business, but some are seeking abortion because they have been raped by their father or brother or cousin or grandfather. Some are seeking abortion because they were raped by a stranger, a lover, or an abuser. In all cases, the woman no longer has any choice in what to do with the result of the incestuous, violent act: she must carry the baby to term unless she can figure out that she’s pregnant in the blink of an eye. What if she has a miscarriage? How does she prove she didn’t try to abort? Why should she have to? This is grotesque misogyny, y’all. Evil cruelty that is so far beyond the pale that I struggle to articulate it.

Don’t even get me started in this hideous ways this will impact poor women and women of color.

If she wants the child, if she doesn’t want the child, if the child is dying inside of her or will die soon after birth or will live a life beset by horrific medical challenges, she must carry the baby to term. If her inseminator doesn’t want the baby, won’t help care for the baby, may abuse the baby, doesn’t know about the baby, he’s off scott free, but she has to carry the baby to term. If she is poor or sick or lacks steady housing, if she knows Texas won’t help feed, educate, or care for her child AFTER it’s born, she must carry the baby to term. And if she tries to do anything, someone else gets $10,000. Who’s paying those? Taxpayers? The Kochs?

After Texas passed the law, SCOTUS declined to comment on it until the time to do so expired. Then, in a 5-4 decision, the smug fucks below shat upon their own Court’s 1973 ruling granting women a constitutional right to abortion. Though they, this same majority, had in April (yes, mere months ago) used an “indisputably clear” argument to block “California’s Covid-based restrictions on in-home gatherings based upon a ‘new’ interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause,” they turned around and under cover of darkness blatantly ignored the ‘indisputably clear’ fact of Roe. As UTexas law professor Steve Vladeck wrote, “When you put these rulings by the same 5-4 majority side-by-side, you see much of what’s wrong with the Texas decision: A Court untroubled by procedure went out of its way to expand religious liberty, but hid behind procedural questions to refuse to enforce a right already on the books.”

clockwise from top left: Beer, Handmaid, Smug Fuck, Gilead Leader, Wordless Idiot

The people who said we shouldn’t worry when McConnell stole a SCOTUS seat from Obama; when trump was elected; when Beer Kavanaugh was pushed through to a lifetime appointment after a sham hearing at which a woman was ignored, disrespected, and retraumatized for bravely sharing the story of her sexual assault by the man in question; when RBG died and Barbie Handmaid was shoved into her spot despite having a stunning lack of judicial experience…those people were so wrong and right now, they need to sit down and stay quiet unless they want to fight the fights that desperately need to be won by progressive, inclusive folks dedicated to equality and justice.

Our world is burning and dying, fools are ingesting horse dewormers, cancer patients and others who need medical attention are being shunted aside because of the immediate needs of desperately ill Covid patients, the vast majority of which have refused vaccination, and now women in Texas must live Under His Eye. Don’t kid yourself into thinking other red Christo-nationalist wannabe states aren’t working up their own such draconian laws now. SCOTUS had already agreed to hear Mississippi’s 15-week abortion plan later this fall, and you know Alabama and Florida are hot on their heels. I’d bet my ass Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Georgia won’t lag far behind those.

Oh wait, Florida has just announced its intentions:

Please read this article by Dahlia Lithwick, and do not even consider suggesting I calm down, not least if you are male and not completely on Team Women’s Rights. As Lithwick writes, “You only do the thing in the dead of night, without care or effort, because you believe women are so used to being gaslit that you expect them to just tolerate it. You only do the thing in the dead of night without care or effort because you genuinely believe that they’re only women, and they deserve what they get.”

I refuse to calm down or sit down in the face of such repulsive mistreatment. And Democrats, you need to do something you strategically-challenged….I can’t think of any sort of decent word to put there. Fill in the blank yourselves. Like Elizabeth McLoughlin, this is how I feel right now:

And, to stay fired up, please read Justice Sotomayor’s dissent, excerpts from which can be found in this article and this one.

If you want to donate/act, here are some incredible organizations and resources to support:

Lilithfund

West Fund (West TX)

Fund Texas Choice

Frontera Fund (in the Rio Grande area)

Jane’s Due Process

The Afiya Center (geared towards Black women)

Whole Women’s Health - TX-based

Whole Women’s Health Alliance - national with one clinic in Austin, TX

My heart hurts.

The most amazing combo delivery

Yesterday morning, around 7:30, I packed up and headed out for my last solo week in WV before I pick the boys up at camp. Tom is joining me on Friday. I feel joyous being here, though in a subsequent post I will write about listening to the profoundly upsetting, moving, and horrifying testimonies from Sgt Godell and Officers Fanone, Hodges, and Dunn yesterday in the opening meeting of the January 6 Commission. If you missed their statements, please do yourself the enormous, albeit difficult, favor of finding and watching them. Those men are incredible heroes and the very best America offers. The Republicans who enabled and continue to support the insurrection are the very worst.

Jinx, Spot, and I sat in the driveway for a while in a tangled love fest of purring, fur, and satisfied meows. Spot loves to step on me with his back two paws while being petted. It cracks me up. Ruby is also an absolute delight though still a bit more reclusive.

Anyway, I attempted to garden to process my grief, actual feelings of pride to be an American because of the four policemen, disgust in being an American because of all the Republicans who refused to even listen to those policemen’s statements (and the shill who called them all Crisis Actors), and so forth. But I was foiled after a short while because it was 105 degrees. Undeterred, I went inside, called a local farmers market, Spring Valley, and asked if they delivered mulch. As the woman from whom we bought this property told me, “out here you don’t buy bags of mulch; you order a truckload.” I laid down about 8 bags of mulch before realizing the wisdom in her words.

Spring Valley said they absolutely do deliver mulch and asked how much I’d like. I told them and then asked, in hopeful jest, if they might also bring out a cinnamon roll. THEY SAID YES!

Y’all, for about $119, I am momentarily being delivered the equivalent of 52 bags of fresh mulch AND a freshly-made cinnamon roll (theirs are the best other than Molly Wizenberg’s). It’s like the best gift I could imagine! It’s the little things. I love it out here.

Off to receive!