April 13, 2012 (this day)

Today would have been my father’s birthday.  I guess he would have been 76?  He died when he was 33, from alcoholism.  This fact drove me to AA, and makes me fear for some of the people I know who continue to suffer.

I’ve had another week at work.  The report that will detail what I did wrong has not yet been submitted.  Meanwhile I was asked today to do something, and I said no.  I don’t often do that.  I was asked to learn how to teach people to do the physical techniques we use on our clients in emergencies.  My agency needs some people to go learn to be trainers, since in the budget cut/layoffs the whole training department was laid off.  I said no mostly because I don’t feel physically up to it.  I’m very short.  Too short to do most of the techniques.  But I’m also getting more feeble by the minute and I have something really wrong with my back and at least one knee.  But I will truly take the fact that I was asked as a compliment, and maybe a sign that all will yet be well there.  The important lesson is, as it always has been, that I need to be grateful for what I have today.  For what I had in the past, yes, and for what I will have in the future, yes, but mostly for what I have today.

There was a politician at the door earlier.  I am left of liberal and very political.  But Carole chased after him to ask how he felt about same-sex marriage.  As part of my daily moral inventory I will record that I am extremely resentful when straight people want to deny me the right of marriage.  When Democrats do it, it is all the more infuriating.  I know that this will come to be standard one day, and the only question is if I will live long enough.  And that’s selfish.  I’m sure people are dying in my state right now who didn’t get to marry and it’s just so wrong.

The ideal is for me to humbly accept that I am discriminated against and I just can’t get there.  This is very personal.

I really try to stay away from the news of politics because I know who I’m voting for, I know whose campaign I will give time and money to.  I don’t need to hear what the others have to say and I don’t need to get worked up about this stuff.  I just need to be healthy and live a really long time.

What would my father think?  I have no idea.  My mother seems OK with things . . . alcoholism made it so that I have no idea what my father would think of anything.  He’d probably be astonished that this is even a question and as for being OK with me as a daughter?  I will never know.

January 20, 2009 (This Day)

I’m at home watching, been watching all day.  It was eight years ago today that Carole and I sat watching George Bush be sworn in.  We watched, and cried, and decided that next time, we needed to do more than cry.  The last two elections (so-called) have not been good to us.  This is bitter – sweet sweet SWEET.

I’m 46 years old, and I was born when John Kennedy was president.  I was 18 months old when he died.  The first president I remember is Nixon.  The first election I was old enough to vote in, Ronald Reagan won for the first time.  My kids were both born during Reagan years.

Whatever comes of this, it is surely an awesome time.  I think that during my life time, it’s become officially not OK to discriminate against anyone.  Not that it doesn’t happen.  It happens all the time, most of the time.  But officially, it is not OK.  In the United States of America, right now.

Today, I’m really hopeful.  I really hope we will officially be about cleaning the environment, promoting peace, improving education and health care.  It feels very much like Pollyanna, but for today I’m just going to enjoy it.

January 15, 2009 (This Day)

Two things are dominating my world.  One is the very cold coldness.  Two is my monthly “friend,” who has been here for over a week, and who I didn’t want to see in the first place.  Menopause-I am waiting for the pause.  And trying to be patient.  And trying not to take drugs or have surgery.  Over the past three years, I can see that it is diminishing.  I have to remember and accept that when I’m into my second week like this.  This is worse than anything that happened in all of 2008, so most likely it will stop soon.  And if not, I’ll go to the doctor and decide if treatments are worth it.  I think too of all that is available to me, more than most women through all time ever had.  I can be brave.

The cold isn’t too bad, either.  It’s too cold to walk the dog, and that causes me lots of stress.  I’m stressed walking her and I’m stressed not being able to walk her.  And I’m working on my stress over the dog issues.  The cold is also making most of my skin hurt, and making driving difficult at times.  Yesterday, the ride that usually takes 45 minutes or a bit less took me over two hours because of snow.  The most stressful part was worrying about the dog.

I also took my prayer binder back to the staff meetings and I added several people to my list – people I resent at work.  My list is looking rather yucky and I dread finding out if these people need to be on my amends list.

I’m writing while waiting for Erika to call.  She’s having Carole and I over for dinner for the first time, and we will also get to meet her cat.  Erika is 23, and at that age I had a cat and her.  Yet I seriously worry about her ability to take care of herself and a cat.

All this sounds like tons of worrying for me, and it is true that I worry too too much.  But it doesn’t dominate my days.  Mostly I’m so glad Erika’s here and wants to see us, that we have good dog sitters and good dogs (the furniture wasn’t eaten after our lengthy absence yesterday), a warm house and a warm place to work and a car that will start in the cold.  Roads that are fairly decent.  In a way I really prefer the cold to the heat.  Though neither are great, heat makes me feel like I’m going to die, whereas cold just hurts.

This will be my second full week of work and my second week of you know what.  Monday I have off for Martin Luther King Jr Day, Tuesday I took off to watch the inauguration of Barack Obama.  We’ve invited some people over and I don’t know if anyone will come, but I’m trying very hard to get over the Rick Warren thing and be happy, happy, happy.  Hillary was confirmed as Secretary of State.  Roe vs Wade seems safer.  I’m more hopeful than I’ve been in a dog’s age for gay rights, education, the environment, health care – really for the whole world.  This was a good day and it seems it will be a good night too.

Hope and Politics

Disclaimer:  The opinions expressed here belong to me, only.  I do not speak for AA nor do I represent AA in any way.  I believe that I can express my personal views in accordance with Tradition Ten.

The topic at my meeting last night was “hope.”  I had recently written about hope, and I had some new thoughts about it.  Someone at the meeting expressed hope about the upcoming US election.  I hadn’t thought of it until then.  Do I dare to hope about that?

I was “born” a Democrat into a family of Democrats, on John Kennedy’s birthday while he was in office.  I am socially liberal, very liberal, but I also am appalled at the way I see Republicans let poor people suffer.  To me, that’s it, they do.

I work with people who have severe disabilities.  My mother started doing this when I was five, and she just recently retired.  That gives me a long enough view to see that people who need help get more from Democrats than Republicans.

I was a Hillary supporter, and now I support Obama.  I think it’s a travesty that John McCain chose Sarah Palin as a running mate.  I think it would be tragic for her to be the first female president of the US.  It kills me to see her cart around her baby and play on people’s sympathy.  People with disabilities don’t need a “friend” in the White House.  They needs funds.

Here is an excellent post detaling what all the candidates did for people with “special needs” before this election.  Not surprisingly, Obama and Biden did much, McCain and Palin did much damage.  Their ideas about school vouchers will hurt kids with disabilities further.  Private schools do not have to take kids with complicated issues.  Public schools do have to.  Vouchers take money away from public schools and give it to private, sometimes religious schools.  The poorest children can’t choose their school.  They can’t afford good schools, even with a voucher, nor can they manage issues like transportation that don’t bother wealthy people.

I’ve been telling everyone that, should Obama not become president, I’m done with politics.  I’m not moving, I’m just not giving my time to it any longer.  To my view, Gore beat Bush, Kerry beat Bush, and Hillary beat Obama.  An Obama presidency will give me energy, I think, but a defeat (as we’ve seen, not often clear) will dishearten me.

I’m giving time and money to the Obama campaign.  Not much, but some.  I feel like I can’t bear to hope.  I do know, should something awful happen, I have a potential way to make peace with it through the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.  At least I hope I do.

Tradition Ten

No AA group or member should ever, in such a way as to implicate AA, express any opinion on outside controversial issues–particularly those of politics, alcohol reform, or sectarian religion.  The Alcoholics Anonymous groups oppose no one.  Concerning such matters they can express no views whatever.

implicate -

1.	to show to be also involved, usually in an incriminating manner: to be implicated in a crime.

2.	to imply as a necessary circumstance, or as something to be inferred or understood.

3.	to connect or relate to intimately; affect as a consequence: The malfunctioning of one part of the nervous system implicates another part.

So here’s the thing.  I’m a Democrat.  I’m a Lutheran.  I have opinions and I express them.  My political life and my religious life are informed by AA, they are made possible by AA, they are intimately tied to AA.  For me, only.

I understand that there are bloggers who take this tradition to mean that they should not, while identifying as an AA member, express views on politics.  Some express views on religion but not politics.  Some do both.  Some neither.  Some one or the other.

It is the word implicate in the tradition that leads me to conclude that I can express these views as part of my personal story and my personal journey.  I do not now, nor have I ever ever, spoken for Alcoholics Anonymous in any way shape or form.  I have no degree or certificate.  I am not in contact with AA officials.  More than that, in all my time in AA including everything I’ve read and everything I’ve heard there are no official AA positions on politics, religion or any other matter.  AA is no way implicated in any opinion I express.

If I thought these things violated the tradition, I would quickly take them out of this blog.  I would not break a tradition or denigrate AA in any way, ever.  I truly believe that they do no harm being here, and that they are important to my story.  There’s a bit more about this here.

IF ONLY

I just had to come back, as I sit and hear (but not listen to) Obama talk about his victory in North Carolina.  We have been supporting Hillary Clinton in a big way.  Lots of time and money has gone into this, and I don’t know how I’d feel about Obama had he not been against her.  I’m a Democrat, never a question about that.  As all this unfolds and I know I’ve witnessed a historical event I could not have imagined (it is telling that Firefox’s spell check recognizes her name but not his), my thoughts and my heart go back to if only. If only she had not run against him, if only she could have a turn first, if only (insert random wonky detail from the primaries) had not taken place.

Instincts and desires which oppose the grace of God.  Time to grow (yet again).