Regarding: Sadness

I don’t often get too political on this blog.  But I live in NC.  And yesterday was our primary.  I am a registered “unaffiliated” but I still get to vote in the primary.  Especially when there are Amendments up for vote. Like Amendment 1.

Amendment 1 sent me running to the early voting location.  It is an Amendment to the State Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman. I voted AGAINST.

And it passed.  I have never been more ashamed to live in NC than today.  This amendment will impact more than just same-sex couples.  It reaches far beyond the intended audience.  It makes discrimination, hate and bigotry part of our State values.  It is reminiscent of when inter-racial marriage was also banned.  Until the 1970’s.

We haven’t come that far after all.  People should really focus more on their own marriages than worrying about the marriages of those around them.

Regarding: Sex Ed

This will be the rare political post.

I am constantly and repeatedly amazed by the number of people, celebrities and normal alike, that end up pregnant by accident.  This is not a complicated process, how one ends up pregnant (why is a whole different discussion).  It’s not long division, a word problem, or assembly instructions from Ikea.  Many act like they are not exactly sure how it happened, or when.  Like no one has seen a movie or watched tv recently  Even if you didn’t get that kind of useful education in your local public school, the clues to conception are everywhere.  If you are not actively preventing pregnancy, then you are trying to get pregnant.  I’m just saying…

I was in the 8^th grade quite some time ago and we did get basic sex education back then (Mom flipped through a book right before it was covered in school, but she skipped the best parts).  Including how one becomes pregnant and, SHOCKER, how to prevent it.  That was before abstinence only program funding and politics caused the teen pregnancy (and STD rates) to skyrocket.  School is about providing INFORMATION to kids, not withholding it.  Parents should teach them how to apply the information. But I digress.

So, in honor of my old-school education, I made the quarterly trip to my doctors office yesterday for my Depo Provera shot.  That’s right, one 15 minute office visit every 3 months, a stick in the arm and we remain child-free with little or no thought.  $25 of precaution, 4 times a year.  For those that can’t do the math, $100 a year in co-pays saves me roughly $10,000 a year (based on estimates of $190,000 to raise a child to age 18).

Safe again until Nov.

Regarding Calendars…

There are quite a few calendars that are important to me.  The Red Sox-Yankee’s calendar.  The Costco coupons calendar.  The 2011-2012 Carolina Hurricanes Calendar.  The when-do-we-get-paid calendar.  And the Guilford County School Calendar.  While we continue to remain child-free (and will be forever), the school calendar is important to me.  It means that the neighborhood pool will be empty during the day (HURRAY!).  It means that kids will be in bed earlier in the evenings.  And it means that the buses will start running through the neighborhood again.  Since I work from home full-time, I don’t really care about getting stuck behind a bus on my way to work.  What I DO care about is the kids standing at the bus stops in the morning and driving the dog, Solo, crazy.  And kids getting off the buses in the afternoon, interrupting our afternoon walks. For more on Solo, Annabelle and the rest of our brood, see my other blog Wag More, Bark….

So yes, I care about when the kids go back to school, what time school starts and the bus schedule.  It means I will also have to alter my day (and the dogs) to keep the craziness to a minimum.  Even the time I get up will change to accommodate the bus.

Another time we will get into my taxes, the school systems I will never send a child to and how it all relates to healthcare.