My back hurts.

That's pretty much all I have to say. I must have pulled or twisted something, because my lower back is just a riot of agony and when I walk I get shooting pains from my ass all the way up my spine. Sciatica? Who knows.

All I know is that I took two Flexeril and they aren't working, so I am going to lay down and go to bed.

What a waste of a day.

A reprieve.

Mandating an invasive procedure in order to give informed consent is not a proper role for the state. No person should be directed to undergo an invasive procedure by the state, without their consent, as a precondition to another medical procedure. 

Virginia will not require invasive vaginal ultrasounds.

But what's next?

Today's balls.

I have mentioned this before, but I feel like I have a million balls in the air and that at any moment some of them might come crashing down around me and I will just fail. Perhaps I take on too much at once?

I haven't done any writing challenges in weeks because I have been trying to get ready for that super secret project that I have been working on - now we are less than a week away from the scheduled launch date and I am scrapping things and starting over. I haven't told my partner this yet, but I suppose if he wants my help he will have to deal.  Long story short, since I don't want to reveal much before the launch, I offered to create a website using Wordpress. However, it's been ages since I've managed a Wordpress site, and frankly, after using Squarespace for so long, I don't really want to use anything else, ever. 

I figure that if I am going to be the manager on this project and do most of the work, I have to at least make it enjoyable for me, right? I don't want to struggle with Wordpress when I can sail through things happily with Squarespace. I should seriously be a spokesperson for them. I just love the company that hosts this blog so much.

So yeah, there's that. There's also been a lot more writing of my secret porn stories. I haven't published another one yet, but I finished one yesterday and I want to get its sequel written before publishing so that I can market them before publishing a third and then bundilng them into an anthology. Yup, I have a plan. I really want to make 2012 the year that writing pays off - literally. I've spent way too much time lately on the erotic writer's forum, way too much time gaping over other people's sales figures and the fact that most of them on there are making thousands of dollars a month and have quit their jobs. Yes, I am fueled by my desire for the money. It might not be becoming of me, but whatever. There it is. I want to write for a living and I am really giving at a go, so unfortunately more creative and friendly bits of writing are going to take a backseat in the meantime. I'm okay with that. 

And that's just the stuff I've been doing online. My life? Sometimes I think I just want to go live in a hut somewhere in the woods where no one can bother me. I'm pushing more people away lately than I ever thought I would, and yet I am not doing it with any sense of regret or apprehension, I'm doing it with relief. Because just as I am pushing people out of my life, people who I feel have been toxic for me, I'm pulling in people who are just the opposite - it just takes... time. Something I always feel is in too short supply.

So anyway, that's what's up. Busy busy and feeling like my blogs are falling flat and being boring lately - another thing that I want to change. One day at a time..

Say hello to my little friend.

Last night's D&D game featured a jungle library - a library built into the trees and flowering shrubs of a jungle that was populated by these pretty parrots and oh my god, the alliteration. I'm a dork.

The Compound, by S.A. Bodeen

I picked this book up at the library a week or so ago without ever having read about it on a book blog or anywhere - I had never heard of it, never read any reviews, and in my mind I was really taking a chance. There are just SO MANY books that I want to read, I don't usually take chances on things that I might not like based on reviews and such, but I was intrigued by the book blurb so gave it a shot. I was not let down. Here's the blurb from Amazon: 

Eli and his family have lived in the underground Compound for six years. The world they knew is gone, and they’ve become accustomed to their new life. Accustomed, but not happy. No amount of luxury can stifle the dull routine of living in the same place, with only his two sisters, only his father and mother, doing the same thing day after day after day. As problems with their carefully planned existence threaten to destroy their sanctuary—and their sanity—Eli can’t help but wonder if he’d rather take his chances outside. Eli’s father built the Compound to keep them safe. But are they safe—really?

When I started reading this, I got a little nervous that it would be a boring book about a family in a compound, going about their day to day. Based on the fact that it was just a family in there I didn't expect any sort of Anne Frankish romance or anything, and there wasn't one - which, to be honest, was sort of refreshing. It's nice to read a book, especially a YA book, that doesn't revolve around teen romance. I don't think it would have worked at all in this story, and it didn't touch on it at all. Instead, it was more about the love between Eli and his twin brother Eddy who was lost outside of the compound, and the strange and tenuous relationship that Eli had with his two sisters and parents while in the compound.

Eli finds out pretty quickly that his father is hiding some big piece of information from the family about what is going on in the world outside of the compound, and there are many tense moments when Eli is searching for information, not trying to get caught. What was more interesting (surprisingly) was the descriptions of the compound itself, and the way Eli's billionaire father had prepared and stocked it for their duration inside. It came complete with an indoor farm, complete with livestock, and every amenity and more that you might enjoy on the outside. It was really pretty neat.

But then, there was an extremely dark twist to the story, something so (excuse me) FUCKED UP, that just made me appreciate the book even more. I say it a lot, but when I find something that is BRAVE in a story, I really admire it. I really admire the bravery this author took with what she was willing to put her characters through to get out and survive. 

This was a really quick and enjoyable read, I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a break from the mainstream young adult fiction that is out there right now.

I still believe.

I still believe in the resilence of the human heart and the validity of love; I still believe that connections between people can be made and that the spirits which inhabit us sometimes touch. I still believe that the cost of these connections is horribly, outrageously high...and I still believe that the value received far outweighs the price which must be paid.

~ Stephen King

Leave my vagina alone.

"... the law provides that women seeking an abortion in Virginia will be forcibly penetrated for no medical reason. I am not the first person to note that under any other set of facts, that would constitute rape under state law."

I got into an argument today on Facebook over this. I am not one to argue on Facebook, or debate, or whatever it is you call it, but this is really, really getting to me.

I am a woman. I have anatomy that requires different doctors and proceedures than males get on a regular basis. I take medication every day - birth control pills - to control a painful, debilitatitng, and even potentially life threatening medical condition that a man can never have, because it's regarding my ovaries. I have a child that I am raising pretty much on my own. I know how hard it is to carry a baby to term, to give birth, to recover from birth - and that's just the beginning. Children need nurturing, they need financial security, they need clothing and shelter and food and love and time and devotion. Knowing what I know now, as a single mother, I know that if I were to have irresponsible sex and find myself pregnant again - pregnant and unloved and alone - I would have an abortion as soon as possible. Immediately. Without a second thought. Because I have thought about it for a long time, what being a mother means to me as compared to what it means to other moms I know. It's sort of hard to say it, but I know I never want to go through it again: pregnancy, birth, infancy, motherhood. I have my child. I'm done. But mistakes happen, accidents happen, anything could happen. And I should never, EVER have to be punished or shamed for asking for a medical procedure that is currently legal under federal law, and no one else should be either.

So my argument was that it wasn't necessary for all women having abortions to have a trans-vaginal ultrasound. Gestational age and the size of a fetus can be determined by the date of the last period and from feeling the size of the uterus from palpating the abdomen. It's not rocket science. Any woman who has been pregnant knows that she didn't get an ultrasound the first day she went to the doctor with her positive home test and sore boobies. You have to wait for that goodnees. At least most of us do. But regardless, an ultrasound MAY be part of an abortion PROCEDURE. That's what I was arguing. That when a woman is about to have an abortion, a doctor may use an ultrasound to guide the procedure. Maybe. 

It isn't necessary to have a trans-vaginal ultrasound BEFORE an abortion procedure. That is my argument and I am sticking to it, and thankfully, so are many members of congress. 

Listen. Wait. Look at this picture, and then listen.

 I had my first trans-vaginal ultrasound about a year and a half after Elise was born. Now they are more common during pregnancy, but six or seven years ago when I was pregnant I never had one. It was only after, when I started having problems. 

I'd been having really rough, heavy periods ever since Elise was born and things got back to their new normal. They were worse than they had ever been, and they were accompanied with debilitating cramps, and when I say debilitating I mean I missed work over them sometimes, because all I could do was lay curled up in bed, moaning and motionless, until the searing pain the spread from my abdomen to my back let loose its grip and subsided. Before giving birth, I had hardly cramped during periods. Something was wrong, I knew, but I didn't deal with it as fast as I should have.

One night I was at a bar with Brian and Alisha and I had some sort of attack. I didn't know it at the time, but it was a cyst on my left ovary bursting. I was in agony, but I was also a couple three or four beers past being totally drunk, so I half laughed and half cried and went to sleep, promising to make a doctor's appointment in the morning, which I did. I called my OBGYN and was referred right away to have a trans-vaginal ultrasound to figure out what the heck was going on in there.

The day I went for the appointment, Alisha and Michelle came with me. They waited outside and I was led into a dim little room with a massive wedge on top of a rickety gurney. A woman, not quite friendly, told me to undress and get up on that wedge, get my butt as high in the air as I could with my butt right on the edge of the wedge. I did it, squirmed around while she watched, and it was remarkably uncomfortable.  I had put my feet in many a pair of stirrups and spread my knees, but this was different. 

The tech lubed up the probe - there is nothing else really to call it. It was huge - I mean well over a foot long, and wider than I had expected. It had a curved, nubby edge like a penis. 

The tech asked me to relax while she inserted it into me. Now, years later, I know that most doctors or ultrasound techs will ask you to reach under a sheet and insert the probe yourself, which is in my opinion a testament to the fact that the trans-vaginal ultrasound is much more invasive than other gynocological procedures. You certainly don't have an OBGYN asking you to please insert your own speculum and swab your own cervix for a pap smear.

The probe went in and in and in, the tech was twisting and turning it as she slid it in, and then she hit the cervix and the pain began. The pain that didn't stop for next ten minutes as she took pictures of my ovaries, particularly the left one, which looked as it were as cratered as the moon. 

It hurts when things touch your cervix. It just hurts. It makes you cramp, it makes you ache, and it's something no man - like, for instance, the men on the panel against contraception yesterday - will ever feel.

But then we come back to the basics of it. Your ass is in the air, your legs are spread wide up on a wedge of hard foam that, let's face it, belongs in the bedroom, not a doctor's office. You're being vaginally probed by a stranger, and it's hurting you. It's hurting you.

When it comes to abortion, it is not necessary. It is just a tool for bigots to hurt and shame women into not exercising their right to an abortion, the right granted to them under federal law. 

Damnit, it makes me so angry. I'm ANGRY!!! Aren't you?