For Lily.

Plus, I was getting tired of looking at all that meat.

Health Care. You've been Warned.

No doubt everyone who comes here has already been over to Bless Our Hearts and read my mother's post about the health care debate, and the comments that followed. Some of the people who commented are new to her blog, and felt the need to tell her how wrong and backward she is. I of course, wanted to jump in, eyes blazing, and pick apart each comment one by one. It is the daughter in me, the badger, but I realize that her blog is not mine to defend. She does a fine job of that already. Luckily, I have my own.

This is not a democracy. This is not a newspaper. This is Roll Up The Rugs, and these are my thoughts and feelings. If you don't like them, be happy that you are free to write your own damn blog.

I'm not for communism. Okay, sure, in high school I entertained the notion that it seemed like a good idea, but since then I have seen that it is a good ideal and not a very good idea at all. It doesn't work, it never has, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with public health care. I don't know why people keep bringing it up.

I happen to like capitalism. I like the American Dream. I like that I can work for my money and buy whatever the hell I like with it. I like that, if I wanted to, I could take classes and work hard and get a job that allows me to climb a ladder and get to the top and make a bunch of money and eventually own a house in Paris and St. Tropez and go to the Isle of Capri and not worry about breaking my leg and being able to afford to go to the doctor. I like that I have that option, but the fact is that we can't all do that.

I'm not saying that we don't all have the potential to do that, I'm saying that in order for this country to run, we absolutely can't all do that. It wouldn't work. It's fine and well to say that we are all free to make our own money and take care of ourselves, but really, we can't.

Do we like our restaurants? Our grocery stores? Do we like to buy meat, purchase clothes, find new music to listen to? Do we like to have clean toilets wherever we go? Do we like to be able to walk down the street without stepping over dead dogs? Do we like to have someone else get an armpit full of hot oil as they pull the oil filters from our cars every few months so we don't have to? Do we like the service desk at Target? Do we like to stop at well-stocked gas stations when we are on long road trips? Do we like our lives, our clean and comfortable lives in this country? If so, we better be pretty damn thankful that a huge amount of people are willing to work in low paying jobs to make this lifestyle actually happen.

Poor people are not necessarily lazy, they are just poor. People, real, living breathing people pick the vegetables, slaughter the meat, cook the food, clean the restrooms, sweep the parking lots, paint the houses, stock the shelves, iron and steam the clothes (that come from Paris, that come from India, that come from Mexico), change the oil, deliver the goods. Human beings write the music that inspires, that makes our hearts open. They paint the pictures that make us think, or catch our breath, or break our hearts. They take the photographs. They self educate so that they can give us information about the toys we want to buy, they fix our phones and our computers. They write the books. People do everything that must be done in order for having money to mean anything at all.

And most of these people do so without health insurance.

Whenever I hear someone say that they don't want to pay for someone else's health care because those other people have the same opportunities as everybody else, and that it is their own fault that they haven't made more of themselves in this free country, I get confused. The ones among us that are privileged enough to have the jobs that provide the money that pay for health insurance should be pissing themselves with joy that there are so many people willing to do all the things that they do not want to do. Personally, I like being a waitress. People like being served. Do you like being served by a sick waitress? Do you want your butcher to come to work with the flu? 

That's really what it comes down to for me. I'm not even going to get into the fact that emergency care costs all of us more in the end than preventative, and so we end up paying for it anyway. I'm not even going to bring that up. (ha.) What I am going to say is this: If you like your capitalistic lifestyle, you must accept that you are able to have it because of the hard work of people who have less than you. In order to continue living the way we do, we must take care of those who provide the goods and services that keep us happy and content. This is not communism. This is simply what it takes to let the rich enjoy their riches.

Now go enjoy your filet mignon, tip your waitress, and shut the fuck up. 

Just a little bit of nothing

It's been too long between posts but the words won't come. The words come, but not the connective tissue. Wanderlust. Fall. Raindrops. Waitress. Heartbeat. Love, love, or lack thereof.

I've written for an hour and deleted every word. I feel like the world is in motion now, or my world, my world is in full spin, where it has been stalled for so long. I feel there is a change a coming, but I always feel that when the fall comes.

I like my new job. I like the restaurant, the people, the food. I like the mood of the place, the lighting is forgiving of my oh so recently sedentary ass. If I ever decide that I'm going to take time off again to figure out my life, will someone please knock me down? Please remind me that a body in motion stays in motion. Still, the time off has made me thankful for the movement. I'm sick to death of laying around, as much as I needed it.

But back to work and being busy. The working makes my mind work and perhaps that's why I cannot write. I can't sit still. I walk and paint and clean. I feel the desperate need to clear the dust out of my corners, in my body as well as my home.

The rain is really coming down now. There was no sunrise today. A long time ago I was in Guatemala and my friends and I climbed to the top of the Jaguar Temple at Tikal in the dark to see the sun rise over the ruins. We sat for hours and though we saw the purple flowers and we heard the scream of monkeys, there was no sunrise, just a slow and gradual lightening. So we climbed down.

I'd like to go back there. Who will take me? Who would like to go? I don't think they are burning buses anymore. 

I don't know if it is the motion of getting a job that gives me the wanderlust, or if it is the change of the season that gives me the motion that allows me to get a job, and the coolness of the air through my open nighttime windows that makes me dream of highways, but it is raining and there was no sunrise today. 

Lately I am thinking that I seen so many beautiful things, but those are only a tiny tiny bit of the beautiful things to see. I have seen snow on yucca. I have seen breastfeeding babies. I have seen wildflowers on train tracks. I have seen a toucan in the jungle. I have seen a scorpion as big as a kitten. What is there to see that I don't know is there to see? And so my mind jumps.

I'm going to give up on this tattered post and I do apologize for it. If you live in Tallahassee I invite you to come downtown and float boats down Franklin Avenue with me as I do not work today. We might catch cold, but we might also catch a frog, you never know.

 

Three Observations and a Roll Up The Rugs Challenge!

My cat is a crazy bitch and I can't write. Of course, it occurs to me that that sentence would be equally true if reversed.

I have a block. I am blocked. I can't even write in my journal, because the pens are too scritchy and the air is too moist and Tropical Storm Claudette is making my ass hurt and I am on my Period (sorry boys) and because of that I am so puffy, so bloated, if anyone saw me they'd think I just got off a five day bender. I only wish I had knees. You can call me M. E. Puff-in-stuff. I should be in burka, but as I am not Muslim, I am in a dress that is both too short and too wide. It reminds me of the dress Kurt Russell tried to pass off to Goldie Hawn in Overboard that inspired her to say, "I was a short..... fat..... lush?"

Really, the reason I can't write is because nothing is going on with me. I've decided that if anyone asks me what I've been up to lately I'm going to say Oh, you know, bringing sexy back but that is simply not true. I'm unemployed and under stimulated. I dropped off some resumes last week and one place told me to call back tonight so the fantasy is they'll say Yes! We'd love to hire you! You start next week! because I need the job and God forbid they want me to come in tomorrow before the swelling goes down. If they could see me now they'd say Oh, I'm sorry, we just don't have room for the Macy's Day Parade right now, but check back around Thanksgiving! Of course, there's a huge possibility that they will have already hired Boo-Boo the disher's cousin and they'll have forgotten me entirely. There is always that.

So as I have nothing to say, here are some things that I've been thinking about lately:

(1) When you buy trail mix from the health food store it tastes like what it is: dried fruit and nuts. The fruit is chewy and sweety sourish and the nuts are crunchy and meaty. It is delicious and it makes you feel very earthy and righteous, like maybe you are a lumberjack or Jesus or a Lumberjack For Jesus, or maybe a Norwegian. When you buy trail mix from the drugstore or the gas station, no matter what, it tastes like it was made in an airport out of great plastic vats that have been sitting open long enough to absorb a smell of carpet and desperation, and for the fruit to become hard and the nuts to become soft and banal. It tastes as though a donut has farted in it. 

(2) Do you remember those commercials for Summer's Eve (at least I think it was Summer's Eve) where the girl goes to her mother and says, Mom? Do you ever have that.... not so fresh feeling? I think about those commercials a lot. They came out when I was a child and they scared me. I wondered if being afraid of the smell of your own vagina was an inevitability of growing up. Now I know that if you have a not so fresh feeling that can't be taken care of by a shower, chances are you are a skanky bitch. You need to go to the doctor. Really. Also, how vague were those commercials? It wasn't exactly obvious that they were talking about the vagina. If I was the mom I'd be like, Maybe you need to shave your armpits because that is what I do when I have a not so fresh feeling and it works. Those commercials would have sold a lot more douche if they showed only men saying, Bob, I can always smell my girlfriend's vagina. THAT would've sold SHIT TONS of Summer's Eve! Or even Summer's Eve- it's a shower for your cunt! Truth in advertising.

(3) Fashion forecast: Skinny jeans and sushi are on their way out. They will try to sell you last year's skinny jeans but do not fall for it. Chances are you have a butt and some thighs maybe and they make you look like a triangle. Give them to your little brother because even if he is fat, they will look better on him. And he will need them because I think they are going to try to bring back pleated pants, which won't go over well because no one ever liked them to begin with. They have the charm of a belted garbage bag and the added bonus of creating a pocket of moist heat in your crochular area, which may give you a not so fresh feeling and will inspire a resurgence of Summer's Eve and fungal sprays. This may be good for the economy because it will force you to buy things to correct the problems that other things you bought will bring, but that does not mean it will be a Good Idea. Ass shorts will give way to stretch pants, yoga will give way to ballet, and Thai food will be the new sushi, which means that the approximately 425 new sushi restaurants in Tallahassee will be SOL but you can eat all the pad thai you want because you will only look as fat as everyone else in your pleated pants.

Okay, that's it. Three observations are pretty much my max. I'll keep you posted on my possible employment. Hopefully soon I'll have something worthy to write about. Here's a challenge to all who wish to accept: Try to bring sexy back. Report. 500 words or less. Good Luck! (Successes and failures welcomed equally. Roll Up The Rugs is not responsible for any injury due to attempts to bring sexy back. Pictures appreciated.)