Despite wildfires and shared cycles

Conversation that L'Ailee and I had yesterday evening:

L'Ailee: Do we have chocolate?
Me: Yeah, we do. Um, we have...
L'Ailee: We have hippie chocolate, I see. Do we have something that doesn't help the panda bears?
Me: Endangered Species stopped making my Panda bar, damn it.
L'Ailee: Are you telling me it went extinct?
Me: That's not even remotely funny, [L'Ailee].
L'Ailee: Sorry. But please, I want something cheap made by a corporation. A big one.
Me: Go *get* it if you want some! Seriously, if you want something in particular, you need to tell me when I ask you instead of being, like, whatever. There isn't a Grocery Fairy here, only me.
L'Ailee: Do *not* lecture me about the Grocery Fairy!

[I consume Koala bar with cherries as I continue reading.]
[L'Ailee stomps out to nearby store; comes back with cheap corporate candy bars. Goes to get ice out of the freezer.]

L'Ailee: What's this? [Holds up metal third pan]
Me: Chocolate cherry ice cream. Had it in the freezer this morning. It oughta be ready by now; have as much as you want.
L'Ailee: There are also cookies.
Me: Oh, the Chips Ahoy? Yeah, I got those, too. And I know you're opposed to hippie chocolate, but there's a Bat bar over here with nibs if you want it.
L'Ailee: Why didn't you tell me all this?
Me: Because you were pissing me off.
L'Ailee: Oh. I understand. Where is that Bat bar?

Guess what time of the month it is in our household? Sometimes I wonder how we both manage to survive it. As a 50/50 bisexual woman, I sometimes find myself wondering which is worse: spending Hell Week with a man who doesn't get it or spending it with another woman who is on my track and as bitchy as I am. I seem to remember that the first option was also pretty bad and that the fights were harder to wiggle my way out of; I also sort of recall that I would occasionally be accused of being premenstrual when I was simply justifiably mad. In my experience, even the sweetest, most sensitive men occasionally get tempted to go *there* when arguing with women. Once it happened to a good friend of mine. This wouldn't be at all unusual, except that she's an MTF transsexual. Her husband simply forgot!

I don't know what I want to talk about, really. That's as much a symptom of Hell Week as the chocolate cravings and the fights. It's not like things haven't gone on. George Carlin died. A whole bunch of girls in a Massachusetts high school are pregnant. L'Ailee went to see Coldplay's free show on Monday night. Increasingly, we've been accepting that we usually don't want to go to the same concerts together and taking friends instead, though we ask each other whether we want to go as a formality. We're both happier afterwards. The election's still going on. There are still floods along the Mississippi. There are still wildfires in California. I still ask the Rain Gods to please even things out just a little bit. All told, I guess it's just as well that I'm bored and inarticulate. Things can be so much worse.

This weekend, my mom called after the Sonoma race. She likes "the Gibbs boys," too. We giggled over Kyle Busch in Victory Lane and Tony Stewart getting impatient with a stupid reporter. We agreed that Tony and Kevin Harvick must really be the best friends they're reputed to be, because Tony said he would look at the video of the crash involving him and Kevin before he made any judgements. Usually Tony quickly, and sometimes wittily, writes off whoever got in his way as stupid and/or evil. Then we talked about the weather. Like me, she's on the East Coast and safely away from the current rash of bad weather, thank the Gods. Then she told me that my bitch of an aunt thinks the wildfires are God's judgement for California allowing same-sex marriage. "I'm telling you because you need to know why you might not want to talk to her for a while," she said, and I thanked her.

"This weather really is getting so freaky," I told her.
"I know," Mom said. "We need another Nostradamus. Another person who can see the future."
"Enough of those," I shuddered. "We've had more than enough. What we really need's another Henry Ford or Thomas Edison, someone who can build something new and helpful."
Mom considered. "That *would* be better."

I sort of smiled at myself. It was L'Ailee who told me that most problems, "the real problems that are not simply this group hating that group," are matters of engineering and design instead of morality and should be treated as such. I realized once again exactly how much L'Ailee had touched my brain, and vice versa. I suppose you can't spend 16 years getting to know another person without that happening. Wildfires and shared menstrual cycles aside, I still believe in same-sex marriage. I still believe in mine.

Links, links:

If you think the treatment of illegal immigrants doesn't affect you, think again. USA Today's cover featured a heartbreaking article on legally naturalized immigrants and American-born workers who were basically held hostage by the INS during a raid for illegal immigrant workers. This shit is why I worry about L'Ailee, though she has lived here way longer than she did in Russia and is milky-white.

Of course, I'm also really glad she's not in Russia.

Barack Obama taught constitutional law for 12 years. Focus on the Family's James Dobson, the aspiring Pope (or is that Ayatollah?) of Colorado Springs, accused him of having a "fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution. Huh. Bruce Wilson at Talk2Action points out that if anyone knows the taste of metaphorical "fruitcake", it would most definitely be Dobson, who brags about whipping his 12-pound dachshund into submission.

Why NYC's calorie-labeling law for restaurants is STUPID.

Artists in Cape Town, South Africa are turning trash into toys. Really quite nice!

A Few Recent Examples of Awesomely Non-Racist Political Discourse.

And for something really funny, check out Slate readers' ideas for remakes of recent movies! I'd totally go see Cloverfield redone by Judd Apatow...