Merry Christmas

Today is Christmas eve day I woke up this morning with a lot of things on my mind. As I lay in bed trying to figure out how I was going to get my last minute shopping done my mind started to wander. You would think that it would wander to the season, or to my family but nope. I started thinking about sex. I guess that isn't really a surprise but it isn't the first thing that usually pops into my head on Christmas. But as I lay there i was thinking, Why is there no male birth control pill? I mean, obviously the technology is there. Clearly it would have something to do with hormone replacement. We have had contraceptives for women since the late 60's. I mean, come on....right? Well, i did some searching on google and I came up with a few links. This one http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3543478/ in particular looked interesting. I am not a fancy pants so I don't know how to make links work so readers, if youre interested copy and paste plzthx. (stole that from my boyfriends blog, love love love it) This is an article about male contraceptives. At first I was sad that it wasn't an original million dollar idea and after I started reading I was, truthfully, a bit sadder. I mean, yes I am excited that male contraceptives are starting to be an option, but when you read into the article they are really, like I stated earlier, the exact same thing as contraceptives for females. They inject testosterone in small doses into the male system. It seems to me from the article like they began to take this seriously in the early 90s? My question is, Why the fuck did this take 30+ years to develop, whereas we have had female contraceptives so long???? I believe there are several answers to that. The first and most prominent is the long held subconcious belief that it is a womans "fault" if she gets pregnant. Sex is never punished or noticed until a woman gets pregnant. As she is the visible sign of an invisible "problem" it has long been custom in cultures across the world for women to be blamed for pregnancy. Therefore, when first thinking about birth control, way back when women's rights were still a flicker in most eyes, the obvious way of controlled pregnancy started with women. They need to be fixed, they need to change. In reality, these two sciences should have been developed side by side. The fact that nobody thought of even trying to control a mans sperm count is just really sad. Condoms, being the only real form of male birth control seem to have gained publicity more so as a result of the AIDS and other STD crises' round the world.
I am sure that there are plenty of loving caring heterosexual relationships where the guy faithfully wears condoms and cares very much about not getting his girlfriend pregnant for selfless reasons. But, I would say many many men, given the chance to have sex with a girl with no condom and no direct consequences to them (say a one night stand perhaps?) would take it. Condoms are uncomfortable and as little problem and as inexpensive as they are, men care more often about their comfort it seems than the person with whom they are having intimate relations. (This is in no way meant to bash my very very lovely boyfriend with whom I occasionally have non protected sex. I love our sex and I want to have your babies. JK. Kind of)
Looking at this article gave rise to more suspicions about the male ego. Men don't want their sperm fucked with. It is as bad or worse I would say in this culture for men to be sterile than for women. The stigma that follows a man who is sterile is perpetuated almost solely by men. This is just an opinion but I feel like women are far more accepting of men being sterile in a relationship than a man is if he wants kids and his wife is sterile. Clearly I have no evidence of this but it just furthers my opinion that men bring this stigma on themselves. I think that this stigma, in combination with the undercurrent of belief perpetuating that women are the "temptation" and that it is all their fault if they become pregnant, has led to a delay in mens contraception. I am glad that it is finally happening and it will be interesting to see the differences of opinion among men. I mean, don't get me wrong. A lot of women don't want to be on any form of birth control because they do not want to fuck with their hormones and possibly (but unsupported by research) with their future ability to have children. So, it is a completely valid argument that a man may not want his dong fucked with either. But in some cases it will be interesting to see how taking birth control medication (or not taking it) will be directed by a man's false sense of importance and a definition of himself that is put in place by his sexuality, his performance, his ability to make children.

Now that I am done with my halfhearted, poorly worded feminist rant I would also like to say that yesterday it was three months since I officially started dating B. We were so excited to spend Christmas together all the way back in Sept. and I am still so excited to give him his gifts tomorrow night. He and I with my roommate are exchanging them. That will be really fun. We have definitely had some up and downs in our relationship so far and I can't help but wonder where the next few months will bring us. I can't quite see to the end of this relationship like I have been able to in the past and as nervous as it makes me I want to continue to put my all into it. He is my Godsend and quickly becoming one of my best friends. Merry Christmas to my lover and my boyfriend, my partner and my other half. I have a whole list of trouble I want to start with you so you best not leave me yet.

I wrote this two weeks ago

Good morning bloggers of America. I do not have access to my blog at work and therefore there has been a significant change in the status of them for the past month. I will continue to blog though, never fear. So, I should probably run over a few major changes in my life thus far such as my new JOB and oh you know, my new JOB. The last time I blogged was the day before I found out I even had an option at this job. So since then, I have taken this job expediting at a company that buys and sells small fasteners to companies like Polaris and john Deere. It’s a pretty mundane job, although I like the people I work with and they bring a lot of free food to work. My boss is very nice but I can see how it could easily be a job to suck you in. There is constantly a “fire” to put out and everybody seems stressed with the exception of two other people and myself. The politics of the job have become fascinating to me as I have finally attained status in an office position. Sure its not like The Office the show, but there is still a bit of drama and enough gossip to keep one occupied. I think that the most interesting thing about working for this company is the fact that it isn’t particularly successful. It is my first time working with people who have been laid off and then rehired, people who have stories to tell about scaling down and I can’t help but notice a marked difference in the way people go about their work. They really do work harder than I have seen for the most part, because in small ways every day they are actually all fighting to keep their jobs. It’s nothing dramatic at this point but with globalization expanding, and communication becoming easier, I am not sure that these midway companies will be getting as much business.

I had some good ideas yesterday and now I can’t really remember any of them. I know I talked with B about one of them so maybe I will ask him. Christmas is coming up soon and this is the first year in a while I have really had any money to give people what they want. I guess maybe not so much money itself but I do have the promise of money coming and a credit card. I am glad that I didn’t get a credit card until this point in my life where I have a stable job because I am already seeing how easy it is just to purchase things on credit and feel richer than you are. I have made myself a promise that after Christmas I am going to put the credit card in my Chinese puzzle box for a month while I pay off my Christmas debt and get ahead financially. I wouldn’t be sooooooo screwed financially if qwest didn’t keep overcharging me. I have a bill of 80 dollars this month that I know is overdone. It’s such a pain in the ass to call them though that I have thought about just not even saying anything. I will most likely call them however. I hate wasting money and 30 dollars is still a lot of money to be wasting at this point. I didn’t exactly budget a Christmas present for Qwest into this month.

I did however decide to get my friend Captain Tony a gift. He is this drifter guy I did a project with last year and we have kind of lost touch, mainly due to me not wanting to do any more photo for the rest of my life and him wanting me to take more pictures of him. I wish I had a digital camera that I knew how to work it because I would love to take digital pictures of him, I am just too poor and too lazy right now to work with film. I want to experiment with putting colors into black and white. His red backpack being the only thing colored and the rest of the picture in black and white, or something like that. I don’t know. Anyway, I decided to get him either a new collar for his dog or a utility knife. The latter was my friend Ben’s idea and I think it was a good one. Other than that, I am nearly done with my Christmas shopping. I think I am most excited about giving my roommate her presents.

Lately I have been getting into the Rubix Cube. Mostly, it’s B’s fault but its kinda nice to know I can do something that a lot of people think is nearly impossible. There is no way I would have figured out how to do it if it hadn’t been for B and still, I don’t have it down yet. I am fairly close though. I like the technicality of it. I like using similar moves for each layer and seeing how the moves build on eachother. I would at some point like to move past the memorization that happens at some points and figure out exactly why I am doing what I am doing. This is one of my goals.

Speaking of goals (oh how I love those smooth transitions) I met with my rugby coach last night and we talked about my goals for the spring season. From talking to her, I really started to get excited about rugby again. I can’t wait to play in the spring and I really should start doing Martha’s running program because as we talked I discovered that she’s actually got a pretty famous program (not surprising) and that unless you are on the National team or the Valkyries you have to pay to get it. So now that I feel special, I think I will focus on attempting to at least do 3 days of her program a week. I really do want to become an elite rugby player as silly as it seems when I say it out loud (or type in a blog) and I have to get my body back in shape for that.

Now that I have a job and am able to focus on something other than how I am going to keep the place in which I live, I really want to make some changes in my life. Rugby is one of those things that I have really decided I want to continue with and although I have been scared for a long time of failing in it, I don’t think I am anymore. I want to do well and I know that I will. I also need to start rebuilding my faith. Or to put it more accurately, I need to come humbly before God, confess my sins and start over. I have been so sinful these last few years that it sickens me. I really need to work on lying less, thinking of others more and looking for ways to exhibit what it means to be a real Christian. I think for this next month I am really going to focus on being truthful and watching the way in which I say things to people. I would also really like to be a better listener and learn to respond to people’s insights and stories with questions, rather than stories of my own. Don’t get me wrong people. I am a badass through and through. But, nobody wants to constantly be bombarded with (true) stories of my badassness. Yea, that’s right spell check, try to digest that word.

That’s all for now. I am not feeling especially creative, I just wanted to get something posted so this portion of my life doesn’t disappear forever.