A few days ago, someone really hurt my feelings, my physical self-confidence.

Only a few days before, I’d decided I was going to try to not let that happen.

When I was leaving East Lansing, I was the only passenger going through security. When I went to retrieve my bag from the examination belt, the TSA agent stopped me.

“Wait a minute, ma’am.”

“Yes?”

“I just wanted to say that you’re absolutely beautiful.”

I managed to stammer out a thank you, which was hard–I wanted to deflect and/or contradict her.

I thought about that moment a lot that day, about how I’d like to remember that, to have that pop into my mind when I was feeling unattractive, instead of all the negative things that people have said. That I say to myself several times a day.

But as soon as something hurt me Thursday, Sunday’s great moment was knocked from my mind.

Until now.

I’m writing this down in an attempt to make it stronger. To manifest it when I need it most.

I haven’t touched up my gray hair in three weeks, and I can tell. I was sitting here, after working on syllabi all day, trying to figure out when I was going to be able to do so before I head out of the country for a conference on Friday.

Tomorrow, I give my car to the mechanic, give my mind to teach a class, and then give my body to the pain doctor for a procedure to put anti-inflammatory stuff into the herniated disc (and hopefully not my spinal column).

This procedure to relieve pain is, ironically, very painful, so tomorrow’s out. And then in the three days remaining, I have to teach some more, prepare for the three additional classes that start the second I get back, have four other body appointments and a few other meetings, pack, do all the misc stuff like letters of rec and bills, book group, and book group night out to see Atwood’s fathom event. I’m also fielding some Atwood-related interviews.

And I haven’t even celebrated my Simpsons’ book being out yet!!!

So a little voice just said, “why not skip dyeing your hair for a while?”

It’s been many years since I wrote this blog about why I have been dyeing; maybe it’s time to change my mind.

Me: Where’s the bathroom?

Her: By the bar.

Me: My mother taught me to always pee before an adventure.

Her: That’s a good plan.

[A few minutes later.]

Me: Does the smoke ever bother you?

Hostess: [coughs for a while] I swear on my mom’s life that was real. Can I get you some champagne?

Me: I’m going to get some whiskey at the bar. If one is going to see a Scottish play-inspired piece, one should have Scottish whiskey.

Her: Yes.

[I hear multiple people ask her where the bathroom is.]

Me: You know–it would make your job easier if we hung the head of a traitor here. We could hang a sign on him that says where the bathroom is.

Her: I enjoy you.

[I get called into the performance space.]

Me: I wish you could go with me. Goodbye, dearest partner in greatness!

Her: [taking my hand] Goodbye, whiskey girl!

Yesterday, I had delicious cuban food, saw Oklahoma and Hannah Gadsby’s Douglas. (It was FREEZING in the second theater, and now I feel gross after spending 2.5 hours there.)

Today, I’m working on my presentation, meeting with a former student for breakfast, and then heading into Central Park. I’m hitting the Neue for sure. And then my back will decide if we’re doing the Met, which won last night’s informal poll.

And then: I get to go to a comedy club and see one of my former comedy students perform!

Question from my son last night:

“What are your plans on Monday? Besides being stressed.”

He knows me very well. I leave the country to teach a summer abroad course in Oxford on Tuesday, so I will definitely be stressed. (I also have three healthcare appointments that day.)

But I want to take a moment to recognize what’s behind me before I look ahead.

Last summer, I taught four classes. And then I taught 16 classes during this school year (three were just two-units, but still).

I did six conferences.

I just finished one set of proofs on a book, and I’m about to start on another.

And this school year was hard. The fires threw ash into my already-weak lungs and chaos into my life.

I managed to get my purse stolen in Chicago during the first week of a calendar year I was hoping would be better. And then I herniated another disc in my back in February, resulting in a bunch of days when I couldn’t walk and quite a few medical procedures.

So I’m trying to be proud of myself for surviving it all.

That’s why, when I turned in the last of my grades yesterday, I decided to open my nicest bottle of wine.

It’s finals week, so I have a lot to grade. I leave to teach in the UK in less than a week. I’ve been swamped by my McFarland book proofs (there were four chapters with severe, page-number affecting mistakes).

And yesterday, the publisher of my other book just sent proofs that need to be reviewed asap.

Don’t tell me I can get it all done. I can. And will. I’m really good at working myself to death.

So, friends, I need you to tell me to take breaks, to still take time to do my yoga and PT exercises, to breathe.

My black cat, Thoth, thinks I’m his mother. He suckles my ear at night before he falls asleep. Once, Dante suggested I wear clip-on earrings to bed, to try to stop him.

A very frustrated Thoth went to the top of my ear and suckled, hard, almost like biting.

Sometimes, when I deny him my ears, he tries my nose or chin.

But that’s not what makes me a bad cat mom.

I don’t bathe him. And he really wants me to.

He sometimes hops up and hugs my face. In other words, he puts his arms around my face and presses himself against me for a moment, just like a hug.

Then he starts bathing my face. He’ll do a couple licks, and then he presses his face against my mouth.

That’s how cats teach each other about bathing.

I’m not going to lick my cat.

He hasn’t given up on me, but he must think I’m really stupid.

Or stubbornly untrainable.

Many years ago, I burned my childhood journals.

I used to journal all the time.

But when I was 19 and 20, I was in a bad relationship.

I knew he was jealous, which was I was familiar with, since my mother had always been in violently jealous relationships.

I told myself that at least my relationship wasn’t physically violent.

It’s a long story, and there were incredible mistakes on both sides leading up to this, but I was incredibly unhappy. And this relationship had been legalized, which made it harder to get out of.

At this point, I thought I couldn’t get out of it. I sometimes prayed that I would die or that he would, mostly the former because I didn’t want to be the kind of person who would pray for the latter.

It’s hard to hide that kind of unhappiness.

I came home one day to find that he’d been reading my journals. And he was yelling at me about them.

Why didn’t I love him the way I loved that guy I had a crush on when I was 14?

(The guy I had never really had a conversation with.)

I tried to explain how fourteen year old brains work.

And I also tried to explain that he shouldn’t read my journals (trying to explain back then, by the way, was yelling and crying).

He said he had every right to–that since we were married, we were one flesh.

I didn’t have the right to privacy.

I knew he believed that–that he would always feel justified in reading them, whenever he wanted. Every thought I had written down, every thought I might write on the blank pages would be used against me in his struggle to make me into what he thought I should be.

So I burned them.

And I stopped journaling.

It’s been over twenty years–I haven’t gotten back into the habit of regular journaling.

But I want to.

Here’s what we know: Access to contraception and comprehensive sex ed are what lowers abortion rates.

Banning it usually has the opposite effect, because those doing the banning also oppose contraception and comprehensive sex ed.

In general, the banners also oppose universal healthcare, funding education, raising the minimum wage, and women’s equality in the workplace.

In other words, what they’re doing will cause more unplanned pregnancies.

We will also have more:

*Women forced to be pregnant in a job market that will often lay them off for it
*Women forced to give birth in a country with the highest maternal mortality rate in the Western world
*Women thrown into poverty
*Children born into poverty
*Women with pregnancy/birth-related problems that will make them ineligible for insurance if they try to get it later
*Women who might be able to get healthcare for their child in some states, the same states who tell them they can’t have it (even though most would agree a household can’t survive when a parent is fighting chronic or potentially life-threatening illnesses)
*Women struggling to support their families with low wages, which have not caught up with inflation
*Women struggling to go to college and to send their child to college, considering tuition is over 1100% higher than it was in the 1970s
*Children struggling to stay alive in a school system where they might be murdered on any given day
*Women struggling to feed their child, as there are actually politicians who say children should be made to feel shame if they need free lunch
*Children struggling to learn in chronically underfunded education systems
*Women who will forever struggle to find firm financial footing, along with their children often trapped in a cycle of poverty
*Women struggling to pay for their child’s daycare (they have to work; they aren’t allowed to be on public assistance to stay home with their child (they will be made to feel guilty for not staying home with their child)), since daycare is sometimes more than a women will get paid

These women will be told that all of their problems are their fault for having a child.

(These same people will say that if poor women don’t have a cellphone, which employers count on them having, all of their money problems will disappear.)

Most women who get abortions are married women who already have children, who are doing what they have to keep their marriage together, to keep their existing children fed. They know the cost of a child in a struggling household. And we can’t tell them to be abstinent.

There is a three-step process to lowering abortion rates:

1. Give access to contraception

2. Provide comprehensive sex ed

3. Work to fix societal problems, so that women can choose to have that child in a world that won’t leave them and their children to starve