Minor Irritants

The fitness center in our apartment complex is still closed for remodeling, despite the fact that it should have been finished on Monday. And since March is a long month, we’re pretty close to broke. Too close to spend almost $40 filling up the gas tank every time just so I can go to one of the gyms at Ft. Carson. On top of that, the weather has turned chilly again, so it’s no fun at all to work out outside. Yesterday I tried to make up for the lack of time in the gym by doing what I’m calling the SVU work-out. It has to be altered a bit for the content of the episode, but it’s very effective. Whenever they said the word rapist or abuser I did 5 push-ups. Whenever they said rape, perp, or victim, I did 5 crunches. Whenever they said raped, raping, or abuse, I did 5 squats. I actually had to keep track on a piece of paper because they said them so often. But it really did work, and I can definitely feel the muscles I worked. Fortunately, I’ll get a some real exercise in today because Charlee’s going to give me a ride to Spin class. It works out well because Alan and Kelby usually get out of work while we’re in class and we can just meet them at Charlee and Kelby’s house afterward, so Charlee doesn’t have to drive me home too.

Seeing as I’m jobless and have quite a lot of free time on my hands, I watch a lot of TV. Well, more precisely I have the TV on in the background and mostly ignore it. As always, there are lots of cheap ads for personal injury lawyers. In the past couple weeks they’ve started targeting women who took certain medications while pregnant and had children born with birth defects because of the medication. The three that stand out in my mind are Depakote, Topamax, and Zoloft. Don’t get me wrong. It’s horrible that these children have to suffer. But every single one of those medications is very clearly labeled warning against taking it while pregnant. I know first hand what the Depakote label says and it warns against every single one of the birth defects that the lawyers mention and says exactly what the incidence of each one is. And they give these warnings out with every single prescription, no matter how long you’ve been on it. I just want to scream at these women… "You knew the risks! You knew what could happen and stayed on it anyway because you obviously felt the risk to your own health was greater!"

Then I think about it. And yes, it is foolish to stay on a medication that you know can cause birth defects when you’re trying to get pregnant or even if you weren’t trying and just ended up pregnant. But perhaps these women don’t have the kind of relationship with their doctors that I did with my psychiatrist. We were very much on the same page about planning to have children and to get off the medications. And maybe they don’t have the resources to make safe sex practical. A lot of women put off getting health care. I know I do. Even now that I know I can afford it thanks to TriCare, I still put off routine medical care. It’s ingrained somehow in our national consciousness to avoid the doctor. Is it because we grow up seeing our parents struggle with our childhood medical bills? Would these women have better relationships with their doctors if we had "free" universal health care? Honestly, I think we might.

Eventually I hope to live in a country that does have socialized medicine. Whether it will truly happen in this country or whether it will mean I become an expatriate, I can’t tell yet.

Less seriously, I did get my passport. It’s much prettier than the old ones, and I’m impressed by the turn-around on it. I sent it the same day I sent Mandy’s pictures and since it wasn’t a package, it only took a few days to get there. That means they probably got the renewal application on Monday and processed it in ljust three days for me to get it in this Monday’s mail. Pretty awesome. I know I paid for expedited service and all, but I still wasn’t expecting it until mid-April. When Alan gets paid on the first, I’m going to book my plane tickets, just in case it costs more than the voucher my mother gave me. Of course, I’m assuming he’s going to get paid. There were rumors for a while that the military wouldn’t get paid, but the scuttlebutt (love that word) seems to have tapered off. It was pretty unbelievable that the government would even dare to try it.

For now I’m listening to "Evita" and planning out a new watercolor. It’s going to be a resist/ wash painting in a few layers. The first will probably be a wash of light gray. Once that dries I’ll use the resist to create a tree design and wash it with another color to darken the background without altering the tree. I’m also going to include two ravens, either large silhouettes as part of the background or smaller ones alighting on the tree itself. I haven’t decided yet. The tree itself will be a representation of Yggdrasil, the World Tree of Norse mythology. Hence the ravens, which are symbols of Odin. It will be all blue, gray, and black, I think. It’s still in the planning stages right now, so I’ll just have to explore.

Oh, and if anyone on the east coast would like to send me a bag or two of Bachman Jax cheese curls, I’d love you forever. I’ve been looking for them since we moved out here and have come to the conclusion that they don’t sell them out here. They’re about the only "snack food" I like, so it’s a bit of a disappointment. LOL.

~Liz