Blown Fuse

Can't...bend...from...waist! Uhhh!

I do believe the kid has engaged into my pelvis. The feeling of a big ol' head battering my crotch is the tell-tell sign. He can no longer reach my ribs, either. (Good for you, you little ruffian!)

The frequent need to piddle is indeed annoying, but hey - it's not like I have anything else to do.

Mmmmmm, tasty :p

I was skeptical, but the more I thought about it the idea of a "bean cake sandwich" started to grow on me. I saw Paula Deen make them last week on her show. Knowing full well that Scott wouldn't touch one, I thought it'd be a great way to get rid of some ingredients I've been holding on to for too long. I'll confess that it made a pretty darn good lunch (and the moistness from frying made last week's bread just soft enough to be enjoyable).

Here's the recipe: Bean Cake Sandwich.

I did alter the recipe by using black-eyed peas instead of white beans (I never buy white beans), bread crumbs instead of flour (I'm out of flour), sprinkled in some red pepper flakes, used ranch dressing instead of mayonnaise (didn't wan to use Miracle Whip)...and I stuck a slice of cheese on it. If the bread holds up, I'll have the leftovers tomorrow, perhaps with a dollop of sour cream instead of the ranch and some green veggie for texture. The probable cost of the sandwich was $0.50. Can't beat that with a stick.

Damn Cat.

Second verse, same as the first. A little bit pissier, a little more work.

That is soooooo funny.

Okay, I'm the kind of gal that likes to know everything possible about side a and side b and then choose which side I want to be on after deliberating about it for myself - that is, if I want to choose a side at all.

I got a few books on birthing from the library today and am really pissed off that I wasted my time with The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth. I'm so revolted by this book that I'm not even going to bother to include an Amazon link here.

I picked up the book because I didn't take a childbirth class and I wanted some information. You would think from reading the title that you'd be presented with unbiased (or at least balanced) information, right? Nope. What I got was a diatribe on why you should distrust the medical establishment.

Look, here's the deal. I do not plan for my birthing experience to be textbook. These situations are a la carte, and I plan to pick and choose which conveniences/procedures/tests/yada yada I want when I get to the hospital. If I don't want an I.V. because they make me itch, I'll say so.

I do NOT need some holier-than-thou woman trying to make me feel guilty for the fact that I'm going to be having this kid in a hospital and not in a birthing center.

Because I feel so strongly about this book, I went to Amazon to post my review, and guess what I noticed? Everyone with the same opinion as mine (that the book is NOT for the "thinking woman"), has their reviews rated as "not helpful." Then I also noticed that the people who praised the book as being "the only book you need to read!" (what a crock!) had very high "helpful" ratings. They also posted under the same log-in names again and again to rate the book highly (dumbasses). OF COURSE it's going to rate more highly and the people who read reviews like mine think I don't know what I'm talking about, or that I'm a "sheep." Feminists get epidurals, too.

I just love it when things like this become a frickin' political issue. It's like the pro-naturalists were told by someone (hmm, I wonder who?) to go through the reviews and mark down anything that was against the book. Almost every negative review is marked as not being helpful, even though the writers are eloquent and clearly state in non-accusatory terms why the book wasn't helpful for them.

Go check it out - it's a great laugh.

Things that do not work #1

Asking your cats where the remote control is.

Well then.

That means that there are at least nine other people who can spell it.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 10 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

via Erica.

"Y'all have sweet tea?"

We Southerners love our sweet tea, and in fact tend to get very bristly about it if people behave as if they don't know what it is.

Sweet tea, in case you do not have the distinct pleasure of living below the Mason-Dixon, is prepared tea where an entire batch (usually half a gallon at least) is pre-sweeted using sugar, honey, or simple syrup while it is still warmed. The batch is then quickly chilled with refrigeration or ice and finished off by the preparer before anyone else in the house knows that any was made. The person preparing the beverage always sweetens to his/her taste. Typically, it'll be just sweet enough to be refreshing, however at times it'll be Bojangle's sweet: super-sweet so as to cut through all the salty chicken waste you just consumed.

Restaurants founded in the South, or else who dare to put franchises here, always have a pre-sweetened tea on the menu. My friends, SWEET TEA IS NOT ICED TEA. Iced tea is a "Yankee" thing. In iced tea, the imbiber sweetens to their taste, usually having to constantly stir the sugar on the bottom of the glass (cold tea does not dissolve sugar as well as tea that is warm).

I can remember several occasions of visiting friends and family up North and making restaurant visits where the waitress gave me a blank expression when I and others in the party asked for "sweet tea." "You want what?"

Non-Americans reading this are probably wondering, "Why the hell would you want to drink cold tea?" Well, because it gets hot as hell here. Add in the humidity, and on some days it feels like death by climate. You try sipping hot tea in a mug while you're lounging on your front porch!

Tee hee!

Know what I found in the refrigerator? Strawberry jelly. And it doesn't expire until 2008! (I've had this jelly quite a while.) I have a couple of left-over Pillsbury biscuits in the oven right now awaiting a smear of fruit spread.

Giddy!

Just an isolated incident.

Here's a story from my month in that aforementioned service organization that I have disgust for. Note: this relates directly to the specific program I was working with and not the Corps itself.

One day my site supervisor had asked me to come along to a meeting that had been arranged at a company. A program had been previously set up to match employees with local youngsters to mentor. I don't know what the point of me tagging along was at that point as I had never attended a volunteer recruitment meeting and had no clue as to what I was supposed to talk about. I expressed that before we left the office when my supervisor asked "What do you want to contribute?"

Anyway, we proceeded to the meeting, and on the way there I became suspicious as to why were were taking two seperate vehicles. He had said something about having another meeting directly afterwards. I was annoyed because I knew I wasn't going to be compensated any time soon (and never will be) for the mileage, but oh well. Another tax write-off, right?

When I arrived, I grabbed myself a slice of pizza (it was a lunch meeting), and organized myself to take notes or have some information on hand. Over the course of the next half-hour to fourty-five mintues, I listened to my supervisor sell the benefits of working with the kids and field questions from the employees. At times, he would be asked direct questions which he either answered erroneously or would beat around the bush at. I sat there thinking, "Wow, he's a trained social worker, and he doesn't know anything about black kids at ALL. Poor kids, either!" He could spew statistics, but the "common sense" just wasn't there.

I couldn't believe how flippantly he answered some of those questions about whether the kids were at any risk for gang involvement. Of COURSE they are! Why do you think people join gangs in the first place? I can assure you that it has a helluva lot to do with not having money.

I kept my mouth shut because I didn't want to step on any toes (being new, and all). Keeping my raised eyebrows in check was a little more difficult.

Right after the last question was fielded, he gathered up his stuff and zipped out of there so fast that you could see a trail of smoke kicking up from his heels.

Two or three of the female employees start bring out some donated items that the company had collected for local students. Basically, it was enough stuff to fill the cargo area of my Jeep and the backseat. While these strangers, noting my pregnancy, had enough common sense to say "Don't carry that!" to me as we were loading the car, my site supervisor had taken off with no worry for my personal welfare whatsoever.

First of all, heavy lifting of materials that are NOT going to be used in the office fall directly under the category of "direct service." VISTA participants are NOT allowed to participate in direct service. They can go out and fundraise for hammers and nails to build houses, but they can't actually be out swinging the hammer.

Second of all, what the hell did he expect me to do with all that stuff in my car? I had already told him that I already had my guest bedroom filled with items that had been collected, and found the situation ridiculous. There was no way I was going to be able to park my Jeep in front of the building and make fifteen or twenty trips up the elevator with all that stuff. There was nobody to help me, and the idea of "recruiting" a volunteer for the purpose of doing that was asinine, especially when that stuff had to be distributed very quickly.

As soon as I could get a live voice on the phone at a school, I, with the assistance of a janitor and a 7th-grader, unloaded all the supplies out my car. Actually, I just stood there holding the doors open while they carried stuff. I quit immediately after that.

The stuff that was in the bedroom? I slowly, one bag at a time, carried all that crap back out to my car, and on the Wednesday after I quit, drove it out to another school where the security guard helped me unload it.

That may seem like one isolated incident of abandonment, but that actually happened at other times as well. I was actually on track to have to do one particuarly stressful heavy lifting task EVERY WEEK.

There has to be a balance and recognition of what AmeriCorps particiants can and can't do. Just like you wouldn't leave a new hire with less than one month at your company to give an important presentation to your board of directors (because you have to go babysit your kids), you also wouldn't devalue the fact that if your organization is lucky enough to get a VISTA with a college degree and solid work experience, you should USE THEM ACCORDINGLY.

To be frank, I knew I wasn't going to last at that agency when I was driving the guy back to the office from a high school one day. I made a right turn into the slow lane on a four-lane street. He clutched at the bracing handles in the Jeep and squealed like a little mouse, shouting "LOOK OUT!" I calmly finished my turn, and the car in the far left lane continued past. The car had always been in that lane and I saw that it would be safe to make my turn. I could never get out of my head that he freaked out like a little girl, and to this day I feel so sorry for him.

Um...thanks?

I'm all for getting free stuff in the mail, but what the heck was CVS thinking in sending me a Gillette Fusion razor?

Firstly, I'm a chick. While yes it is true I shave, this sucker looks like it has enough sharp edges on it to remove any offending hair as well as several layers of skin.

Secondly, my husband wouldn't use this thing even if I threatened to take away his Dr Pepper. Why risk razor cuts when you can plug your electric shaver in and be done in less than 2 minutes?

I guess I'll stick it into my drawer o' junk and save it for one of those rare emergencies where I run out of chick razors.

Bitch, moan.

I keep writing posts and deleting them.

I am SO boring at this point that I'm boring myself. The problem with waking up pissed off every morning is that my ability to think on subjects that have nothing to do with a) Oprah, b) AmeriCorps hatred, c) unemployment, d) inability to sleep due to pregnancy, or e) what's for dinner is significantly compromised.

What am I pissed off about? See b, c, and d above.

If I can't be out earning a living, I feel like I should at least be doing something productive during the daytime hours: a load of laundry, a scrapbook page - whatever. But see, the thing is I can talk myself out of ANYTHING. Even getting out of bed to go to the bathroom.

My life is a series of prenatal appointments sprinkled with the occasional pee or poop accident by the cats. Everything that happens in between those milestones is just frosting. This feels sort of what being like a kid too young to enter kindergarten feels like. You look forward to things 2 weeks away to get through the boringness.

I don't think I'm turning into "depressed pregnant woman you should keep an eye on" but I could probably do with more ice cream in my life.

Not gonna hold my tongue anymore.

The more I speak with others about my negative Americorps experience, the more I want to see some actual figures of how many participants complete a full year in the program. I want to see what kind of background they took into the program with them and what their degree of financial independence was. I don't want to discourage anyone who's interested in finding out more about joining, but someone has to stick their neck out to put some of the more negative aspects out there.

Out of the four VISTAs in my orientation group that were involved in the same community organization, two of us quit within 45 days. The guy from another NC city who had quit had a better opportunity fall into his lap and had basically stated in his resignation letter that he would be "foolish" to remain in Americorps when he could recieve full-time pay for doing similar work. When we corresponded during the first week on the job, we were both having similar experiences of doing a lot of grunt work and not having any real accountability.

I don't know the status of the other two participants, however given that their supervisors were present at the orientation or else active in their on-boarding, I'm almost certain that they recieved more support from their work sites than we did.

Every so often I run a Google search looking for other negative participant accounts of the program or else for some statistics. All I can find is the form you fill out to quit early (because if you quit, it's something wrong with you, not them). I just wanted to make myself feel better for leaving something I was so incredibly unhappy with.

I want to make it very clear that this program may NOT be suitable for people who have accumulated assets and benefits from previous work experiences, because the chance that you'll lose what you've gained is pretty high. You shouldn't need to have thousands of dollars in savings to be able to do AmeriCorps - that would have been the only way I could have been able to get through the program, even if I had wanted to stay. The living allowance they provide is supposed to help you cover your living expenses, but what it DOESN'T do is ensure that you'll be able to maintain your quality of life (the rationale is that you're supposed to be at the same income level as the people you serve). If you have a car, good health insurance, and a nice apartment, chances are good that you'll have to give up those things to make ends meet. Seeing as how bus transportation in Durham is neither particuarly safe nor running close to my home, giving up my car was out of the question.

The interesting thing is that many of these programs depend on you using your personal vehicle to get around. While Americorps provides "health benefits," after a full month of tenure, I had yet to recieve my card. They also insist that if you have other insurance, you use that as your primary because, well, the benefits aren't that good. I STILL HAVEN'T RECIEVED PAY STUBS or endorsed copies of all those forms I signed in duplicate, but they sure yanked my payroll entry fast after I quit.

Basically, anybody with enough smarts to apply for food stamps and section VIII and such before entering Americorps will do so. And can someone explain to me the point of enlisting volunteers to go out and help the community when those very volunteers are DRAINING THE SYSTEM OF THE LIMITED RESOURCES IT HAS TO GIVE OUT? UH, duuuuuuuuuuuuh!

The real kick in the ass is that because you're a "paid volunteer" and not an employee, if you have to leave the program you can't apply for unemployment benefits. Americorps doesn't make any effort to help participants re-enter professional/academic society smoothly after their service year. True, if you apply for the "stipend" instead of the educational award, they'll give you $1000 or so at the end (broken up over several pay periods) for the purpose of transitioning out of the program. In a lot of cities, you can't even put a deposit on an apartment without a full month's rent - who are they kidding?

I have an arm's length of complaints that I want to put out there, but for right now I'm going to cut this off. I've stated in the past why I left my particular program site, and now I'm stating why the program as a whole is deficient.

I now have the great displeasure of tactfully explaining to everyone I interview with why I was only at that place for a month. While some people are understanding, I can imagine that there are even more jobs that I've applied for that I haven't been called in to interview with because of that one-month stint. I AM NOT A FLAKE.