breaks my heart

today california once again voted to continue the ban on gay marriage and uphold prop 8.
there is so much sadness in this world, are there any real reasons why we should strive to create more of it based simply on personal or cultural religious reasons?
it is assumed that in the united states you can not outlaw something based on religious reasons alone...but when the arguments against gay marriage arise, there are no arguments that i can see that aren't somehow based on a religious belief. how does this make the united states any different from other countries that do create laws based solely for religious reasons??
honestly, i could talk politics all day long about this subject, but when it comes right down to it, the gay marriage ban just breaks my heart. it breaks my heart for some of my closest friends who are so very much in love and can't, like everyone else, make it "legal". basically each state against the legalization of gay marriage is saying to them, "you can have your civil unions, but you can't have the word 'marriage', that's reserved for us heterosexuals, who 'really' love each other and aren't sinners or 'abnormal'."
you know it wasn't that long ago that it was illegal for a caucasian and an african american to marry as well.
really? on the issue of marriage equality, have we just stopped evolving?

i did it my way

let's assess the situation...
today i spent most of the morning at the playground (i have a toddler, i'm not a weirdo).
i took a two hour nap in the middle of the day.
i walked to the corner store and bought two scratch tickets (and broke even).
i printed out applications for food stamps.
i posted, like, fifteen links on facebook.
i knitted another portion of my homemade wedding gift for a friend.

lady of leisure? maybe. scared of becoming homeless? possibly.
desperately needing some direction? absolutely.

Hallelujah, Im a Bum - Al Jolson

mbta woes

i was all set to post a whiny rant about the mass bay transportation authority, they've been pissing me off for a while now (say, since i've lived here)...and today, our ride on the subway sucked, to say the least. (stalled at MGH, 10 minutes, stalled at kendall, 10 min, stalled at central, 15 min...got off with toddler and walked to harvard square, 20 min walk in beating sun...tried to catch shuttle to davis square since train service was suspended, it was full, waited for another, 25 min...went back into tunnel to get out of sun, train finally back up and running....15 minute train ride turned into an hour and half ordeal with a very tired toddler..who was a trooper, god bless him).

it was a perfectly beautiful day today. the toddler and i went downtown to boston common to hang out with some super cool friends and rode the carousel, played at the frog pond playground, had a picnic lunch under a big shady tree, chased some squirrels...it was all peachy and wonderfully cheap entertainment. then, there was the train ride home (as mentioned above), ugh, i was 'irritable' when i finally arrived home, to say the least.

then i read the reason why the train was stalled, and i thought, my life is pretty damn good. i'm alive, and that counts for more than i often realize.

this is how we deal

my husband is in the kitchen making food. before he became the lone breadwinner, he cooked, all the time. then we antiquated our gender roles and he brought home the bacon so i could fry it up in a pan, so to speak. we'll see how it goes this time around.
he's listening to townes van zandt. quite possibly, the saddest music in the world. you see, that's what he does, to deal with the hard times. he listens to indescribably sad music. me, i use serious distraction techniques. when my first marriage was dissolving, i think i probably read close to 30 books in a six month period (many of them about whaling or artic exploration, not sure why) . even before ernie lost his job, we were stressed about money and my distraction was knitting. i like knitting, and i've been knitting so much that my left wrist is swollen. so, i think i'm going to go back to reading. which i've not really done since harlan was born. i know, i was totally one of those intellectual types who was all like, 'i'm not going to let some silly kid change my life'...blah blah blah. i can barely finish an article in people magazine, much less finish a goddamn novel.
for me, there's mcsweeny's. oh, how i love mcsweeny's...let me count the ways.
for example...my head aches today, and i'm still terrified of the future...but, this cracked me up.
SCRABBLE LETTERS EXPLAIN HOW THEY ARE COPING IN THE ECONOMIC DOWNTURN.
BY KATE HAHN

also on topic, and hilarious;
CLASSIC NURSERY RHYMES, UPDATED AND REVAMPED FOR THE RECESSION, AS TOLD TO ME BY
MY FATHER. BY JEN STATSKY