I have a confession to make. I've been living with clinically diagnosed "Major Depression" for more than 3 years. For the most part, the meds do their job and I'm a functional member of society. For the most part... Sometimes, however, the meds don't quite do the trick and I find myself spiralling downward into a very dark place. I'm fortunate, I have health insurance with reasonable mental health coverage. I can't imagine what my life would be like if I didn't. I know that one of my prescriptions costs over $700 a month of which we currently pay something like 20% thanks to prescription coverage. I know that, given that price tag, I would probably be living without medication. This is part of the reason that this election is so important to me. Health care. As seems to have been my habit before falling over the edge, I'm up way past when I should be in bed and my mind is running in circles around things that I want to say but can't type fast enough to pin down. Consider this a place-holder... Let's talk about health care...
After that, let's talk about education. I've been thinking a lot about education recently, since my daughter just started her academic career with her first day of preschool.
I spent all day today yesterday thinking that it was Monday. This is just one of the side effects of spending a long weekend in the woods with no television and no news. I think that, on some level, I expected to come home after my camping trip to find that something momentous had happened and that I had missed it. Instead, almost everything is as I left it. I guess that's why it seemed so much like today yesterday, the first day of my week, had to be monday and like I still had plenty of time to get ready for the first actual Dayton Mamas for Obama volunteer shift. I was even trying to schedule a playdate for tomorrow today with family friends. Oops!
It looks like our first kid-friendly volunteer session will be small. But that's ok. We'll build in size with word of mouth and will find the right niche for moms in this campaign. I received a call today from one of the Obama staffers at the Dayton office asking me to contact a couple of potential volunteers to talk to them about the Mamas for Obama idea and ways that they can be involved. I'm hoping that with a little time, but not too much, we'll be able to build something substantial.
I had hoped to have time to write up a detailed post, but I didn't get home tonight until late and then had some computer problems. At this point, I'm sleep typing, so I hope I don't wake up in the morning to discover that I've posted a promise to auction off my daughter in support of the Obama campaign. (Not that it is never tempting, but I suspect that one or more of her grandparents would object and I'd probably come to regret it...) I do, however, want to post something about the meeting so I'll say that it was small, but productive and that we have scheduled our first kid/mom-friendly volunteer session for next Wednesday, the 23rd of July, from 1-4 at the Obama campaign headquarters. There will be some form of semi-structured plan to appease the kids, story time, coloring pages, crafts, something and as soon as I'm more aware of the details, I'll post an event notice like the one that I did for the meeting.
I am, in my everyday life, a ceramic, metal and fiber artist. I have enjoyed finding ways to combine my interests (making shawl pins in bronze with ceramic accent beads, for example) in new and challenging ways. Recently, I began using my miniature potter's wheel to make wheel thrown spindle whorls for spinning. Once thrown, the whorls are decorated with carving and then fired/glazed/fired again before being placed on a shaft. So, what does this have to do with Obama?
When I was pregnant, or maybe it was when Sprout was an infant, I remember reading an article on playgroup politics in one of the many parenting magazines that found their way into my hands. The part of the article that made the biggest impression for me was the author's assertion that, as parents, we should get used to the idea that we were no longer in a position to choose our own friends. The author asserted that, from the moment our children begin interacting with other children, a parent's social life is transformed to play dates and kid-friendly activites with the parents/families of our children's friends.
