Then Again...

In my last post I discussed some of the things I am happy with SCOTUS for doing. This post is decidedly the opposite.

Two cases today had less than pleasing outcomes for me. The first was a case brought by the state of Michigan against the Environmental Protection Agency claiming that the EPA's demand that power companies cut mercury emissions was imposed without any thought to what it would cost power companies to comply. The court ruled against the EPA, agreeing that the EPA essentially could only protect the environment and thus the safety of the US public if it first made sure it wasn't going to cost big business too much. (It should also be noted that the EPA did eventually do a cost study for the mercury provisions in the Clean Air Act and found that the cost to public health and safety was 9 times higher than the cost of industry compliance. Big surprise there.) 

The ruling is fairly narrow and only affects the Clean Air Act, but it creates a greater possibility for future trouble between industry and the EPA. The ruling opens the door for companies to drag their heels over regulation implementation. In this case most companies have already implemented the mercury reduction standards required by the EPA, but in the future they may be able to use this case to argue that they shouldn't have to comply with EPA regulation until their case has been heard and decided (which we all know can take years). On a separate and more common sense than legal sense tangent I find this ruling deeply troubling. The idea that big business profits are more important to us as a society than the safety of our environment and our population is deeply disturbing and frankly disheartening in the extreme. I have feelings about this ruling that boil down to this: time is money and ruin. The extra time the EPA will have to spend confirming what should be common sense and the extra time companies will spend dragging their heels on implementing common sense wastes a hell of a lot more money than immediate implementation of environmental and safety standards. It seems a small price to pay for me, but then I am not an oil, gas, or electric company executive...

The other ruling handed down by the court today was Glissop v. Gross and at stake was the use of midazolam, the sedative currently used in the lethal injection cocktail to execute death row prisoners. The court upheld the legality of the drug and rejected the idea that the use of a non-barbiturate that does not induce coma constitutes cruel and unusual punishment as set out by the Constitution. Sonia Sotomayor, writing for the minority dissent, likened the experience as "being burned at the stake" in terms of the pain the inmates endure. The majority opinion, written by Samuel Alito, hinged on the point that the prisoners who brought the case had not provided an adequate substitute for the midazolam and blamed them and other groups opposed to capital punishment for making pentobarbitol harder (almost impossible) to obtain. (The reason it's harder to maintain is that drug companies don't want the stigma of providing a drug to prisons to cause death. Though undoubtedly public pressure has played a huge role in creating that stigma.) 

Overall 3 percent of lethal injections in this country are botched and 2014 was one of the worst years on record with at least 4 very prominent cases. Most botched attempts stem from the inability of poorly trained prison attendants to find a vein. But all the cases from 2014 (and what the case was arguing against) happened after the drugs started flowing. The problem boils down to the midazolam, which began wide usage in 2014. The drug is a sedative and extreme amount are needed to adequately sedate. The midazolam is combined with a paralytic drug and then two other drugs are administered to kill the inmate. Between the paralytic and the midazolam it is hard to tell how much pain prisoners are in (they are effectively paralyzed for their death). Except that during botched executions when prisoners haven't been given enough paralytic or sedative observers are privy to the gasps and screams of the dying. Often for some time. After seeing or hearing about those executions there can be little doubt that death by lethal injection can be an excruciatingly painful experience - beyond cruel and unusual punishment. Moreover, the frequency with which executions are botched in this manner is creeping up since the new cocktail's introduction. 

In the wake of increased botched executions there has been a shadow of doubt cast over the whole process. How effective is midazolam at actually stopping someone from feeling pain? How much of an execution looks peaceful as opposed to actually being peaceful? How well are we training those who are executing inmates? If we can't find any alternatives to an imperfect and sometimes agonizing method of execution does that mean we can continue on in good faith with the imperfect method? Is cruel and unusual punishment a relative term or have we ruled incorrectly in the past in favor of cruel punishments because it was the best we could do at the time?

I will admit to an immense bias on this issue. I am a staunch opponent of the death penalty. For a number of reasons. The first is that I believe it to be largely ineffective as a deterrent to criminal behavior. Overwhelmingly criminologists and law enforcement do not see the death penalty as an effective deterrent of violent crime. Though I'm sure there are many who believe it to be effective, I am more inclined to agree with those who study and see the effects of it on a daily basis. Second, cases involving the death penalty in all stages from prosecution to incarceration and execution are more expensive than cases that do not involve the death penalty. Third, the methods we use at present in my mind are clearly flawed and I think we will look back at this method of execution with the same measure of repulsion that we now view hanging, electrocution, or asphyxiation. Another big reason I don't support the death penalty is that I believe there is some clear bias surrounding who is sentenced to death. There is a tendency to give harsher sentences in this country to people of color and almost 45% of executed inmates have been non-white (a disproportionately high percentage based on population). There is also a strong correlation between the quality of representation and the possibility of receiving a death sentence. Or plainly stated - if you're poor and can't afford a good layer, you're more likely to be sentenced to death. The last reason is this - we make mistakes. We have killed innocent men, women, and even children. Death is irreversible and once a mistake is made the best we can do after execution is apologize and try to make amends with the living family, which is woefully inadequate in the face of what we have done. Our country has an imperfect past, which we see more clearly in the present. It is obvious to us now that some black men were executed because of the color of their skin during horribly racist period of our history. I wonder if we will look back on some of our current executions with similar shame in the future (like perhaps the execution of the mentally ill - though I already feel a great deal of shame about that particular issue). 

Wanting vengeance and retribution is as human as it gets. But so is prejudice, so are mistakes. I hope this ruling brings about a larger discussion of exactly what the majority pointed to in its decision: what are the alternatives? Is it time to join the more than 50% of countries that have banned the practice. There are now only 36 countries left in the world that retain and practice the death penalty. We are on that list. In fact, we are on an even more select list. We are 1 of 22 countries that carried out at least one execution in 2014. And an even smaller list. We are one of 9 countries that has executed someone who was under the age of 18 at the time of their crime in that last 10 years. There are very few other developed countries that still allow the death penalty as broadly as we do and almost none that actually practice it. Certainly just because everyone else is banning something doesn't mean we have to, but the fact certainly warrants a broader debate on the issue.

Rejoice in the Constitution!

Wow! Last week and today sure have been an exciting time to follow the Supreme Court. Right, guys? Did you know they upheld Obamacare, or at least the part of it that demands subsidies in both state and federal healthcare exchanges? Boy, that was big. Especially since the decision was far from a close one. A 6-3 ruling is pretty decisive, guys. I am hopeful the ruling will cement the law in the bedrock of our country and maybe open the way for more expansive and more effective policing and subsidizing of the health insurance industry.

And how about the decision today that upheld the right of independent, bipartisan commissions to draw districts, rather than the state legislature in a case brought by Arizona State Legislature Republicans? I hope that case ends up being a landmark shift in thinking on the issue. After all as Ginsberg wrote in her majority brief, "voters should choose their representation, not the other way around." This is a huge blow against gerrymandering in a state that badly needs an independent commission drawing the district lines.

So those are some amazing decisions right there. Pretty historical. But did you know the Supreme Court made another badass decision last week? You did? Oh, well. That makes sense since the news was all over the place that... GAY MARRIAGE IS LEGAL IN ALL 50 STATES!!!!!!!!!!!! 

I cannot contain my joy over this, you guys. I just can't. I think everyone reading this is well aware that I am bisexual and in a long-term committed relationship with another woman. Committed like, this is the person I want to spend my life with kind of committed. It gives me joy beyond words to know that my country will support the two of us in our devotion to each other. I really didn't think the decision was going to hit me so hard because I live in a state that already allowed gay marriage before the ruling and I am from Massachusetts, the first state to legalize gay marriage back in 2004. I have been fortunate to live with a minimum of discrimination and homophobia my whole life (though I still get looks, remarks, and conversations that I think are well beyond polite or appropriate.) I am also not looking to get married anytime soon - I'm happy living in a committed, but not legally binding, state of partnerhood for the foreseeable future. So, this decision didn't have a lot of practical use for me right this second. But it had a symbolic resonance that was unexpectedly deep and poignant for me.

I still remember the day the Massachusetts Supreme Court made same-sex marriage legal in my state. I was a freshman in high school, an active member of my school's GSA, though I was not yet aware that the ruling would have personal significance to me (read: I didn't think I was bi then). I remember the two co-presidents of the GSA coming to school in drag (she was in a tux, he was in a wedding dress). I remember my high school English teacher announcing his engagement to his partner and telling us with a twinkle in his eye that he was going to miss our final exam because he wasn't going to miss out on the chance to get married and hoped they could get in before the ruling could be reversed (it never was). I remember the pervasive feeling of elation - I remember celebrating the victory as part of a larger community and being swept up in the communal ecstasy and triumph of it all.

11 years later the joy is no less great and the triumph no less exhilarating than it was then, but it was different. I didn't hear the news at school, with a mass of friends. I heard it from my Raven after she threw her phone at the ground in excitement (and I imagine a fair bit of shock, too). We didn't celebrate in a mass of people, though there were plenty of impromptu celebrations all over our city. We celebrated together - just us. Then I went to work for the evening like nothing was different, except everything was. It took longer to sink in this time and the true meaning is still coming in flashes and pieces. My relationship is equal to a heterosexual relationship in the eyes of this country's highest court. I am a legal equal to my straight friends. I can enjoy the same rights and assurances other couples enjoy. I can make a conscious choice to not marry if I want (which for now I do). I have options. I have freedoms. I have a choice. I can exercise the benefit of a truth I have known for years - my love (and the love of other queer individuals) is not lesser in caliber or depth, nor is it less worthy of protection than that of heterosexual couples. 

I'm not going to dwell too much on the negative here, though it exists in abundance. The dissents were largely foolish and bordering on homophobic in a few cases. Though I will admit I felt no surprise in any them. I also feel little surprise in the response of some states that are now forces to comply with the high court's ruling. Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, and Kansas have all made official moves at some level to go against the Supreme Court's order. Louisiana, Kansas, and Alabama are flat out refusing to issue gay marriage licenses. Louisiana and Alabama say it is just a waiting period, basically to see if the law sticks. Kansas' governor and Attorney General said they needed to study the SCOTUS decision further before "making any moves" towards a lawsuit. They will presumably sue since they are one of the few states that has outlawed gay marriage by popular vote. Texas' Attorney General said in a statement to state clerks that they did not have to issue licenses that went against their religious beliefs and though they might face legal ramifications there would be lawyers lining up to defend them.

I'm not going to dwell on these now because I am hopeful that actions will be taken to enforce the ruling and these states will eventually fall in line. Change, when thrust upon the unwilling, is slow. And 11 years is a relatively short time for those unwilling to change (though it is an interminable wait for those on the other side as I can attest). For now I am choosing to remain positive and hopeful for the future. I think everyone working for equal rights and protections for the GLBT community realizes this is still only the beginning. We have so much more to work and strive for, but a victory still deserves celebration - if only to remind us that momentum matters and that victory will breed victory. Eventually enough victories will bring acceptance, tolerance, and understanding. The road is long, and much of it is uphill, but we do not walk it alone and last Friday the United States government joined the long march towards equality in a big way. I couldn't be prouder.

Best wishes,

Owl

P.S. Though not a case ruling the Supreme Court also placed a stay on an abortion law passed in Texas until the court can decide if it is going to hear the case. The law mandates that abortion providers operate like hospital surgical centers and for abortion providers to have stronger ties to local hospitals. The law has already forced the closing of almost half of Texas' 40 providers. In a big state that means a long drive to get an abortion (and probably even to get good, reliable information about getting an abortion). If SCOTUS takes the case it will be deciding if the law places a "undue burden" on abortion providers or on women's access to the service. Let's hope they take the case, but if they don't they've at least granted a brief reprieve for Texas' remaining clinics.

Earth

Tonight Raven and I started watching Earth, the documentary nature series about life on our planet in various climates and regions. It is a second watching for me (at least in full, I have seen a few of the pieces many times on their own) and I have to tell you I love it just as much this time through the last. It should be clear from the start that I love documentaries of basically all types. About basically anything.

My first watch through of Earth came during college when my one of my best friends, Crane, got the full DVD series. And then showed it in our common area every night for a few weeks. It was glorious to watch en masse, with many of us poking fun at animals we saw on screen or more often staring entranced by the beauty of the scenery before us and the incomparable calm of David Attenborough's melodious voice.

Nature documentaries have become a staple of my life since taking up as a nanny. Both children love animals and the natural world and with non-educational screen time restricted by parents, both the kids enjoy watching nature documentaries. I'll admit I enjoy them a lot more than many of the alternatives they could choose (both educational and non-educational) so I tend to encourage this habit. But I have learned something interesting from watching all these shows about nature with so many different audiences (Crane is a biologist, Raven an anthropologist, and my kids are just kids). There are some things we all hold in common in the face of the natural world and they aren't the things I expected. I expected cute animals would make basically everyone coo and that the 7-year-old with a soft spot for her cats wouldn't like animals like sharks or wolves that preyed on seals or bears, respectively. Turns out I underestimated her. She understood and accepted the cycle of life far better than I did in some cases (it's hard to watch an adorable bear cub get attacked!) I also figured that younger kids would get more entertainment out of the animal portions and less out of the sweeping vistas and glorious panoramic shots of the scenery, Wrong again. A common thread I have seen with anyone watching a video like Earth is the appreciation of the world's beauty. A great snow-swept landscape is beautiful at 6 or 106.

I hope the kids I watch don't lose their wonder at the world they live in. I hope I can hold onto mine. I am so glad Raven shares that wonder with me. And that she will help me nurture and hold that wonder by reminding me that sometimes I need to immerse myself in reality when I tune out the world.


Good night all.

~Owl

Raven is Reading: looking for alaska, Mort, The Carpet People

Lately I have been bad about making time for just sitting down and reading. Which is why I was proud of myself for dedicating a solid chunk of time towards reading today. I started John Green's looking for alaska today while waiting for Owl to get off from work, and am nearly done with it now. Even though it is a book that I am not entirely sure I like, despite trying very hard to do so, I am still grateful to have made the time to read it. (Well, almost all of it. I'll finish tomorrow, if not later tonight.)

Since I did a review of the shows Owl and I were watching a few months ago in the post "Rivendell is Watching..." I thought it would be interesting to do an occasional update for what we, or at least I, am reading, as well. If nothing else, it will help make me aware of how much, or little, I am actually reading, so that I can remind myself to devote more time to it.

I'm almost always reading at least two books simultaneously, often many more. I guess I just like to have options for what I read, depending on what mood I'm in, or what interests me in the moment.

So, here's what I'm reading currently:

looking for alaska
John Green

I still have yet to decide whether or not I actually like looking for alaska. I still have about fifty pages left, and I have enjoyed reading it, but that isn't necessarily the same as liking it. I certainly respect John Green immensely, both for his writing and for his videos, and he's done something that almost nobody else has been able to do, which is getting me to read books that center heavily on teenage angst and romance, so that's already a great credit to him. looking for alaska just isn't clicking with me the way I expected it to, and that's okay. It certainly has captured my attention, and is absolutely thought-provoking. For those who don't know, looking for alaska centers around Miles "Pudge" Halter as he experiences his first year at Culver Creek boarding school----a setting very much based on John Green's own experience with boarding school in Alabama. He is instantly drawn to Alaska Young, though I will admit this: I cannot fathom why. I find Alaska wholly unlikable. But this is redeemed by a strong and memorable cast of supporting characters that are clever, funny, and incredibly enjoyable to read, which more than makes up for my distaste for Alaska (and Miles, when it comes down to it.) The book's most notable feature is that it centers around a clear turning point. The nature of this turning point is only made clear when it happens, but the entire book is framed in two sections, before and after, with each subsection consisting of a day during Miles' first year at Culver Creek. The days are either formatted as "xxxx days before" or "xxxx days after" and it certainly added an element of suspense to the story, even if the turning point itself wasn't much of a surprise for me.

Mort
Sir Terry Pratchett

I started rereading Mort about two weeks ago. The Sunday before last, I managed, in an act of true stupidity, to injure my head, enough for it to bleed quite a bit but not enough to be concussed. The details involved a very ill-placed cavalry sword in a heavy steel sabre we were given as a gift last Christmas, a wobbly bookshelf, and me re-shelving some comics. Perhaps you can guess the details. Suffice it to say, head wounds hurt, swords don't go on high places if they're unsecured, and Owl is a trooper for, once again, tending to my bleeding war wounds.

After the blood had been sopped up, I sat on the futon in our spare room with an ice pack to my head, and Owl brought me in a book. She knows that I like to read familiar books when I'm upset, sick, or in pain, and she also knows that there's not much in the world I enjoy reading more than a good Pratchett book. (Good, in my mind, means all of them, by the by.) Without asking, she brought me one of my very favorites, and since then I have been reading it slowly, savoring it, allowing myself the luxury of returning to an old, beloved friend even though I have resolved to spend more time reading new books and less time rereading old ones.

Mort was the fourth Discworld novel to be published, in 1987. Pratchett's Discworld books are often broken up into "mini-series", based on which group or entity they focus on, and Mort is the first  book in the Death "miniseries". Though Death appears in all but one of the Discworld books, Mort is the first book to focus on him, and in Mort, he takes on an apprentice...fittingly named Mort. Mort, to me, is a prime example of what character development should look like. At the beginning, he is a somewhat simple country boy with little going for him, but when he his apprenticed by Death he begins to change, gradually but ultimately drastically, until he can stand up to Death himself. One of my favorite books, I always enjoy reading Mort, and I find myself cherishing every reading of a Pratchett novel all the more in his passing.

Which is why it shouldn't surprise anybody that the third book on my list is...

The Carpet People 
Sir Terry Pratchett

The Carpet People was Pratchett's first novel. I started reading it quite a while back (I first mention it here, when, just days after Pratchett's death, I am stunned into silence by a simple memorial to him in the form of a Barnes and Noble endcap honoring his legacy) but was interrupted several times due to various instance of Real Life getting in the way, and have not made much progress. As I am not very far along in it, I won't say much, but I will say that it is as clever and as witty as I have come to expect from Pratchett, and that if my first book could be a slim fraction as enjoyable as his was, I should be so lucky.

I am also making my way though The Runaways, which I talk about here, and Pandemonium and Parade, which I talk about here.

In closing, I am, for reasons that will soon be apparent, looking to make a number of relatively quick posts (but still interesting and informative) in a very short period of time. Do you have any queries I can answer? Lists you would like to see? Pressing questions about archaeology, video games, or Battlestar Galactica? List them in the comments and maybe I'll make a post on them! It might be a Reader's Digest version, or, if I really like your question or if it sparks a much more detailed post, it may be saved for later to get a nice long post of its own!

That's all for now,
Raven

Domestic Terrorism

Hey all,

Seems like I've been posting about a lot of depressing things on here. And I apologize for that, but I can't not do it today. Today 9 people were killed in Charleston South Carolina at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. It was a hate crime motivated by what can only be described as intense racial hatred and deep racism. I know most people out there will agree with that statement, but I have to say it because there are still some who aren't talking about it (read: commentators and guests on Fox News).

I'm not going to go into much more on the subject except to say that it's too early to jump to most any conclusions. But I think we can safely make a few tiny steps. The shooting took place at Emanuel AME Church, which has been a part of Charleston since the early 1800s. It was founded as a black church, has been persecuted as a black church, and remains a black congregation today. The church pastor was Rev. Clementa Pinckney, a member of the South Carolina State Senate since the age of 27. He was also among the victims last night. Along with 8 members of his congregation. All black. I can't stress enough how unlikely it would be for Dylann Roof, the alleged terrorist*, who sported a jacket with the flag of apartheid era South Africa and Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe) and drove a car with confederate plates, chose the place on a whim. Or because it was the first church he stumbled upon. It is a tiny step to declaring this a hate crime, motivated by race.

Raven and I have been talking about this a lot today and one of the points I wanted to share is this: race has become a topic of national conversation again in part because of the shooting of unarmed black men by police officers or community members. This attack will, I'm sure, fuel the conversation further. But events like these are not new. Our country has a history of racial violence and oppression. Our country has a history of illegally repressing or flat out silencing the voices and even lives of its black citizens. That repression has come through legitimate channels, like government and law enforcement as recently as the 1960s. We, as a country, have made poor decisions, taken morally indefensible actions, and acted as oppressors more often than liberators during our 200+ year history as a sovereign nation. It is not a legacy I am proud to live with. It is not a legacy I am proud to call myself a part of. Yet I benefit from it because I am white. We will never get anywhere in this nationwide discussion without more people understanding that very basic, but very difficult piece of our collective history. That is the narrative in which this shooting took place. That is the narrative in which the media needs to place it. Anything less is half truth.

I hope world events will give me something pleasant to post on tomorrow. I urge anyone interested to read the Washington Post article I linked to earlier (linked again here) to get a great overview of the place of AME in the broader civil rights movement.


As an apology for this very depressing post - and a reward for making it through (if you made it this far) here is a link to an hour of cat videos. Watch it until you feel joy again.



*I use alleged because he hasn't yet been convicted, not because I doubt that he is guilty - seems pretty clear he is at this point, but still... technically not guilty until convicted

Well hello there

Long time no see. Long time no write, too. Sorry everyone. It's been a busy month. We will get back into the swing of posting this week. But I'm going to start off small because I've spent 14 of the last 48 hours sleeping and almost 20 hours of the last 48 with two children under the age of 10. Not an optimal amount of spare time for blogging. Or having any energy. Because it's summertime, which means lots of activities and an exhausted owl at day's end.

So here's a brief update on my life and the summer to come: 

In the next two and a half months I will have at least two weekends spoken for by wedding. I watched two good friends tie the knot a few weeks ago and am incredibly proud and happy for them. I am at the age (26) when my friends are all starting to get married and engaged in droves. 

I have many days claimed by my two charges who will doubtless spend the time devouring every bit of summer they can, hopefully while leaving my patience and love for them both intact. So far so good, though it's only been a week. I finished tutoring a 4th grade boy I have been working with since 2nd grade. Next year will be my last year with him and I'm looking forward to finishing off elementary school with him, though I'll miss him after next year. It is pretty cool watching a little kid becoming a teenager. Though I may prefer it from a distance. 

Raven and I are basically done reorganizing and arranging the apartment after Crow's departure. We miss him a ton basically all the time, but having the house look new and different than when he lived here helps. (That doesn't mean we wouldn't have you back here in a second if you wanted it, Crow!) That said, it is really neat to have a space that feels like it was created by the two of us. It is a very adult thing we have done and it does feel a bit more like co-habitation this way. 

I have finally obtained a hard copy of a Dorothy Parker book of poems. From a secondhand shop. Who gives this away you guys? Next entry I will share some of my favorite excerpts, but you will just have to wait for that because I can't really read this entry well...

The letters are blurring so it's time to admit defeat. And go to bed. Write more soon. No really. I will. Don't you trust me? .... Maybe that's fair. 

Until next time,

Owl

Insomnia

I think by now we can dismiss all pretenses that this is in any way a daily blog. On the bright side, I've had three separate people prod Owl and I about updating, which at least means that we have followers! Well, three of them at any rate.

Instead of another tired apology for a long blogging dry spell, I'm going to talk about an issue that is near and dear to my heart.

Okay, so it's one of those things.

I've spoken a bit about Mystery Illness, but I haven't spent quite as much time addressing an issue that has plagued me for pretty much as far back as I can recall. With my clever and subtle title, I'm sure you're all chomping at the bit to find out whatever that could be.

I remember struggling with sleeping through the night, and with getting to sleep, as far back as elementary school. It wasn't dire, then, barring one memorable incident when I was in third or fourth grade where I was told a scary story at a Girl Scouts sleepover that haunted me so badly that I couldn't fall asleep without somebody else in the room. I don't remember how long this lasted---in all liklihood it was only a week or so, but to my tired, traumatized little brain it seemed like an eternity. I distinctly recall sitting in my classroom trying to attend to the teacher explaining long division to us, my eyes dry and scratchy, eyelids drooping, resisting the urge to lay my head down on my desk, and thinking that this feeling, this terrible, dull ache in the back of my skull, the fuzziness between my eyes, and the gnawing horror both from the lingering effects of that one damn story and from the creeping panic that sets in after two or three nights of restless agony, this feeling was going to last forever.

That was one isolated incident in my childhood, but it has etched itself in my brain in a way that only the most vivid struggles of an otherwise unburdened youth can---deeply and with much embellishment. Had I known that day in the classroom that I had only just gotten a small taste of what would become my future relationship with insomnia, I think tiny nine-year-old me would have broken down in tears. (Granted, we were studying long division, so tears may have been an inevitable part of the equation.)

At some point in middle school I was informed that a healthy human required, on average, eight hours of sleep to function properly. By that point my sleep issues were bad enough that eight seemed rather high, but not outside the realm of believability. By late high school and early college however, eight hours of sleep a night seemed like an utterly alien concept, a luxury that I could not imagine anybody ever being lucky enough to afford. The incident above was the only point in my life that my insomnia has been assosiated with a clear external cause, barring the occasional post-horror movie restlessness or the pre-exam stress-induced sleeplessness. Normally, though, it's just...there. This constant, inexplicable barrier that nothing I do can overcome. Some things make it better, of course, sometimes, but so far, there's no reliable fix, no instant cure, nothing I can depend on to secure those eight (or so) hours of recharging we all need to be as awesome as we can be.

Let me be perfectly clear here: Insomnia sucks. It's draining, nerve-wrecking, and seeps into areas of your life that you'd never expect. Try showing up for an 8am class or a job that starts at 7 when you haven't slept for the past two days straight. (Don't actually try this at home, kids.) You know that feeling you get when you've been sitting at your desk for too long and your back and neck ache? With insomnia, everything aches. Constantly. It can make you sick to your stomach, light headed, and irritable. It can ruin your appetite---some people gain weight, some people lose it, some people do both, fluctuating between the two like their internal mechanisms have gone entirely haywire, because that's essentially what they're doing.

If you don't have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep, count your blessings (as well as your sheep, of course). It feels not unlike what I imagine slowly going mad might feel like, once you've gone long enough without proper rest. At times, it can be not just inconvenient and exhausting, but terrifying. For me, there's still sometimes this irrational, annoying, tiny Raven in the back of my head that chimes in, just around the time dawn is breaking, after twenty- or thirty-odd hours of sleeplessness, with the suggestion that maybe, juuuuust maybe, I would never sleep again. That tiny voice in my head is a real bastard, but when you're staring at your ceiling listening to a cacophony of robins right outside your window, even that seems plausible.

I've been trying, however, not to dwell too much on the negatives, however. So, let me say this as well.

Recently I've come to understand a curious phenomenon : when something becomes a constant, pervasive force in your life, you tend to develop a relationship with it. Whehter it is a good force or a bad force, it is an important enough influence in your life that it takes on a life of its own. To a degree this has happened to me with Mystery Illness, and it has certainly happened with insomnia. And as with all relationships, we either have to find a way to tolerate them, or cut them out of my life. Unlike other relationships, however, insomnia isn't like a jealous ex or a petty coworker. You can't just walk away from it. You have to find a way to tolerate it.

Right now, my insomnia and I have a working relationship. It is not a good relationship. It's the sort of relationship that has our friends shaking their heads and warning us away from one another, as though we could do anything to resist. It's like insomnia and I are two people stuck on a deserted island. There's no sign of rescue, so we've got to buckle down and work together, or at least around one another, to survive until help comes. (Help, in this case, is sleep. Was that metaphor not clear enough? Maybe a Lost analogy will make the deserted island metaphor better: Insomnia is Jack, and I'm Locke. Or possibly Sawyer, depending on how irritable I'm feeling.) It may not be a good relationship, but right now we have an understanding. Insomnia insists its here to stay, and since it doesn't seem to be budging on this issue, I've decided to put down my foot. If it's going to crash in my house, it's playing by my rules. Just because I'm not sleeping doesn't mean I can't be productive. Do you have any idea the number of things you can get done in the middle of the night? I can reorganize my notebooks and pens without Owl looking at me funny! I can catch up on Netflix shows I'm too busy to watch normally.

Honestly, I'm more productive when I can't sleep. A night owl by nature, I do some of my best writing in the wee hours. I read more. I draw. I paint.  The number of times I've dedicated several hours in the middle of the night to troubleshooting problems with my tablet or my PC is astonishing. Just a few hours ago I solved an issue between my tablet, an app I reaaaaaally wanted to play (guys go check out Plague Inc!) and Google Play that has been bothering me all week. Lately, I've been awake to greet the dawn. Sunrise is a time of day that I adore, but generally speaking I only see it from the wrong way round. But this week, I've been making the most of it. I've been compiling to-do lists. I've been tidying. I've started heading down to the bakery/cafe down the street when they open at 6. I grab two cups of coffee and some pastries, and bring them back home so that they're there for Owl and I when it approaches normal-people hours. Then I take my notebook and head down to the pier right behind our apartment. I love sitting on the benches and the rocks and looking out at the expanse of lake before me. I can see the downtown area and the university from the pier and the capitol building wreathed in fog is an image I will never grow tired of. I would probably rather be well-rested, but as a second choice, being constantly overwhelmed by the beauty of the city that I live in and the immense fortune and joy I have in my life is not the worst option.

Basically, this is a very long-winded explaination as to why I started this blog post at four in the morning. The bakery is open now, so I'm going to go fetch us some breakfast and take a walk down to the lake. Later today we will have the delightful rhubarb and strawberry pie we made last night, and we're making somem delicious homemade iced tea to go with it! We're planning to spend much of the day cooking and baking. We went to the Farmers' Market on Saturday, so we've got garlic bulbs and scapes that we're going to turn into a delightful compound butter along with sage from our freshly potted sage plant! We're also going to figure out what to do with the rest of our rhubarb, and do some meal planning and prepping for this week. It's going to be a pretty great day, so the fact that I got to be up for all of it is a good thing, right?

...right?

Thank God for June

I love May. I really do. It's one of my favorite months, in fact, for precisely the same reason that I am now incredibly glad it's over.

Basically everything forever happens in May, at least on my calendar. For instance, Owl, my mother, and one of my best friends all have May birthdays. Both my parents and Owl and I have anniversaries in May, theirs for their wedding, ours for our (somewhat less impressive) first date. Mother's Day happens. Memorial Day happens. If you're as huge a nerd as I am, May is a big time for that as well, as May 4th is Star Wars Day (May the Fourth be with us all) and May 25th is Geek Pride Day (a.k.a. Towel Day in honor of Douglas Adams, but it also marks the anniversary of the Glorious Revolution of the Twenty-Fifth of May, and the 1977 release of Star Wars).

This May we also celebrated with my cousin at her baby shower, and with two of our good college friends on the occasion of their wedding. This last event was especially exciting, and was also the main source of my exhaustion the past few days. The wedding itself was last week, and was an absolutely beautiful affair. I couldn't be happier for the beautiful couple. The occasion was especially exciting since it meant that a gaggle of college friends flew in, and we ended up having a number of folks sleeping on our couches and futon. This includes Crow, our old roommate who abandoned us forever, except not really! It was wonderful to see him for the weekend, and he got to crash in his old room, which looks exactly the same except almost everything is different. As much as we love having a new media room/guest room/office/insomnia hideaway, I think both Owl and I would much rather it still belong to Crow, and it was hard to see him leave again yesterday.

Oh, and I also was the lucky recipient of not one, not two, not three, but five doctors visits/exams/sharp needle poking experiences in the past week. It was super fun, only exactly the opposite of that. Actually, it wasn't horrendous, but that is still many more sterile white offices than I want to see in the span of seven days.

On top of that, classes ended, I turned in final papers, I was hired on for another project, and all sorts of exciting, fun, and occasionally stressful things happened.

So, May really is a fun and exciting month for me, but perhaps now you can see why I am a bit tired, and why the blog has been awfully quiet of late.

If all goes well, we will resume regular posts this week, but I don't want to make promises that I may very well break! With any luck, though, you'll see me again on Thursday.

Ta, lovelies.

-Raven the Sleepy