Kansas

The most ridiculous NASCAR race I've ever seen.

ABORTION!!!!

Got your attention? Sorry, this isn't THAT controversial.

The Jesus of Cheese sent me this from Digg:

"This story deals with a woman whose health insurance provider denied her emergency room medical claim after she suffered a late night miscarriage. The basis of the denial, they say she had an elective abortion[Emphasis added]. Its this kind of stuff that makes Americans hate the health insurance industry. Digg this and let em' feel the burn."

The same thing happened to me in 1998. Not everyone knows this, but I don't hide it either. I miscarried a baby at 4 months, in December of that year...just in time for the holidays. Merry Fucking Christmas, BeerPup!
My circumstances were not the same as the woman the Digg is about. I had what's known as a "silent abortion." That is a medical term, which means a spontaneous miscarriage which gives no clear indications that the baby has died. No bleeding, cramping, etc. Nada. I was really tired, but most pregnant women are.

I went for my normal appointment, and what was supposed to be our first ultrasound. The JoC and I showed up with blank VHS in hand, excited to "see" the baby for the first time. And we did. The second I looked on the screen, I knew something was wrong. Then I looked at the ultrasound tech who was trying to keep her cool, and I knew it was over. No heartbeat, no movement, and I think I was just a couple of days away from a big, emotional, trip to the ER kind of miscarriage.

They scheduled a D&C for me for the next morning, which I had done. Then I got salmonella and a migrane the following week. I won't go into the emotions about it all right now. It was a REALLY bad week.

Aaaand then the insurance company rejected the D&C claim.

I called and asked why. "Oh, you didn't get the D&C pre-approved."

"Oh," I said. "Well, you see, I had a miscarriage. So you're telling me that my now-dead unborn baby was supposed to tell me that it was going to die? So the doctor could call YOU and see if that's okay? And if you had denied it, it wouldn't have happened? Yes, you're right. Guess I SHOULD have called."

"Oh, I see. I'm sorry..."

"I know why it looks weird on your claims. I did go to the doctor the day before, but only because I didn't know I'd miscarried. And I didn't have the D&C until 12 hours later because I wasn't in immediate danger of bleeding to death. But in a day or two, I would have been."

"Okay, well, then, we'll just re-process this then."

"Good. And if I it gets denied again, or if I have to call you about anything, you can BET I'll be suing you people for mental cruelty."

They paid.

What my chest is telling you

Right now my chest would tell you that I like really good beer.

And most often, if there aren't words across my chest, it would most often say in varying degrees, "What a huge rack!"

Sometimes it also screams, "I dare you to look!"

A few years ago, I gained a lot of weight. Something like 40 pounds in 3 months. There were several reasons, a couple of them medical, but mostly it was due to beer, cheese burgers, fries, and enchiladas. Not knowing how to dress my new body, I tended to just wear huge t-shirts.

All fine and well, until a couple years later (when I had lost some but not all of the weight). I looked, really looked, at a picture of myself and realized huge t-shirts were doing nothing for me or my spectacular tits. The shirts hung in such a way that masked the fact that I actually did have a waistline.

Solution: tighter t-shirts. Shirts with tailoring. Shrits that flare at the waist. Shirts that show the cleavage. Because I had forgotten my number one rule in dressing: It's All About The Cleavage. Or at least the Huge Rack.

Which leads me to tell you about the trip back from North Dakota on Sunday. I was dropped off a little early by The Boy and His Boys. I guess there's a hunting season just for youth in North Dakota, and so my nephews were anxious to ditch their embarrassing weird aunt and head to the backwoods.

This turned out to be good for me, because instead of playing CNN in the airport, they had the NASCAR race on. I couldn't have timed it better; the race ended just as they started pre-boarding. I had a nice conversation with a couple who were also watching the race.

Then in Minneapolis (because Grand Forks is the ultimate "You can't get there from here" town), since my flight wasn't late, I had a 2-hour layover. So I ate, I shopped, I eavesdropped on a cell phone conversation....which leads me to another aside:

Confidential to that woman talking on the phone by the Burger King in the MSP airport last Sunday: Maybe if you were home paying attention to your kids, they wouldn't run interference for each other when you call them, and they wouldn't be flunking classes and grade levels, and they would actually listen to you. You know, instead of pleading with the answering machine for someone to pick up the phone, and then telling them ten times in a row to listen to you. I know you're probably a single mom, and your job, which you worked hard to get so it finally earns them a decent lifestyle, requires you to travel....but, DAMN. If getting a non-traveling job will get you kids who will pay attention when you communicate with them, and will keep them from flunking 6th grade, DO IT, WOMAN! Screw the nice clothes. A good kid in a pair of Levi's is much preferable to a dropout in a pair of Lucky Brand.

Okay, I'm back to my own story now.

The Minneapolis to Dallas flight was overbooked by five people. They were offering a flight out in the morning, overnight accommodations, food, and a foot rub from the Northwest gate attendant of their choice. Oh, and also a free air ticket anywhere in the US or a $300 voucher for...something or other.

The second time the attendant made the announcement, a guy walking up said, "I'll do it! I'll take that deal!"

It was our pilot. Funny guy.

We left early. I've never seen that happen before. Flight was uneventful. I didn't talk to my seatmates. There was a family in front of us and the baby cried. I didn't mind so much, having been there myself, but I did wish for a pair of those noise-canceling earphones they sell in the catalog conveniently located in the seat-back in front of me.

I was in the back of the plane, of course, and one of the last to get off. The pilot was bidding everyone farewell in the standard airline way, until he saw me. Then, he pointed at me and said, "You're one of them 'redneck women.'"

Well that's what I get for putting the word "NASCAR" across my huge rack. I've gotta watch what my chest tells people; it might be right.

But everything about the pilot said, "Three days from retirement."

Why People Shouldn't Name Themselves

Stole this from Nick. Thanks, Nick. Loved you in The Road To Perdition!

1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car)
Freja Cruiser

2.YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (fave ice cream flavor, favorite cookie)
Vanilla Thumbprint

3. YOUR “FLY Guy/Girl” NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of your last name)
JFin

4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal)
Bronze Dolphin

5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born)
Marie Warren

6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first)
Finja

7. SUPERHERO NAME: (”The” + 2nd favorite color, favorite drink)
The Aqua Beer

8. NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers)
Paul Albert "Shorty" Louis (That's including a step-grandpa and a legal alias)

9. STRIPPER NAME: ( the name of your favorite perfume/cologne/scent, favorite candy)
Oscar de la Renta Rum Truffle

10.WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother’s & father’s middle names )
Janice Paul. Yes, I was named after my mother.

11. TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME: (Your 5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter)
Sorenson Southampton

12. SPY NAME/BOND GIRL: (your favorite season/holiday, flower)
Samhain Forget-Me-Not

13. CARTOON NAME: (favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now + "ie" or "y")
Strawberry Brassierey

14. HIPPY NAME: (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree)
Nada Magnolia

15. YOUR ROCKSTAR TOUR NAME: (”The” + Your fave hobby/craft, fave weather element + “Tour”)
The HomeBrew Thunderstorm

And Nick thought of another one,....
16. YOUR AMERICAN INDIAN NAME: (Your fave activity + "with" + a current physical ailment)
Drinks with a Headache

Things I learned from my brother:

1) In order to preserve one's own sanity, ignore Mother.

2) Never barter. Your work is worth what it's worth and it's not up for negotiation.

3) Being at ease in a variety of social situations is the mark of true class.

4) Mosquito lawn ornaments are funny.

5) When driving to the airport while transporting guns, never park; just drop off your passenger. Be sure to wave at the security guard.

Who Says You Can't Go Home?

Friday, I'm heading back to the Northland--this time for a wedding.

My brother's best friend from high school, Eddie, is getting married. I refer to Eddie as "my other brother." He was the guy who went on vacations with us, was at our house most weekends, and when he went through Basic Training, he would call our house before he called his own. After his parents died when he was legally an adult but still pretty young, my parents "adopted" him.

So I'm in that "home" frame of mind.

Which is why it was interesting that my friend NoPayneNoGain sent me this article from the new york times. It's about our high schools #1 and #2 rivals, who are [now] one school.

The article's about football. They were 9-man and we were 11-man, so we have always cheered on their football successes. Because while WE are allowed to insult them, no one else is.

Here's the article:

High School Football Teams Reflect Changes in Rural Life


By JOE SPRING
Published: September 12, 2007

ARGYLE, Minn. — The northwestern Minnesota towns of Stephen and Argyle, populations 708 and 656 respectively, are separated by nine flat miles of soybean and wheat. The highest point between them is the mounded dirt that elevates the railroad tracks connecting their grain elevators. Since consolidating their schools in 1996, they have dominated nine-man football, never missing a state semifinal.

With a state-record winning streak and four consecutive nine-man state championships, the Stephen/Argyle Central Storm has the characteristics of a high school football powerhouse. Carrying the weight of two small, declining farming towns on its shoulders, the team also manifests much larger challenges confronting towns like these throughout the Midwest.

The impact of changing demographics and farming technology in this region is apparent in the student body and, on Friday nights, on the football field.

Consolidation has brought Stephen and Argyle football glory, but the towns are shrinking and growing older. The average age in Marshall County, home to Stephen and Argyle, is 40, 10 years older than the state average. Almost a fifth of the population exceeds the age of 65, a 50 percent jump above the state average.

“It’s young people moving off the prairie and into the city,” said Tom Gillaspy, the state’s demographer.

The change is seen most starkly in the school populations. The Stephen/Argyle student body for 7th through 12th grade was 50 percent larger a decade ago, falling to about 180 from 270. It is no different in other rural towns in Minnesota.

“Boy, there’s just so many school districts with multiple names,” Gillaspy said. “You get to the point where you start adding three names, or four names, and then they become initials, or a region, like Norman County West, and eventually it will just be Norman County.”

One of Stephen/Argyle’s biggest rivals is Kittson County Central, composed of Lancaster and Kittson Central, which is a combination of the towns of Hallock, Kennedy, Humboldt and St. Vincent.

In 1893, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner said the American frontier was closed. But, as the Great Plains Restoration Council pointed out, west of the Mississippi River, the number of counties with six people or fewer per square mile has increased, from 388 in 1980, to 397 in 1990, to 402 in 2000.

“Many places are turning back to frontier,” Gillaspy said.

Just after dawn in Argyle one day in August, with the lights still on and the northern Minnesota fog hanging over the practice field and the wheat stubble that spreads beyond it for miles, offensive lineman Kolby Gruhot crouched his 6-foot-1, 230-pound frame into a three-point stance. The fingertips of his calloused right hand dug into wet grass. His right calf extended to a prepped foot ready to push off, and where his left calf would be, a metal rod picked up dew before disappearing into Gruhot’s black cleat. Having lost part of his left leg in a lawn mower accident when he was 3, Gruhot wears a prosthesis below his knee.

After the cadence, he sprung up, blocked a defensive end and barreled ahead. The rod revealed itself only after his sprint, on his way back to the huddle, in a slightly leaned gait that looked something like a strut.

When Gruhot opens holes on the line for the senior running back Kyle Gratzek, he leaves him with something like frontier to run through: up to 99 yards of short grass and only five men to the goal.

Nine-man football is the province of small towns in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. “It’s simple,” said Nic Thompson, the Storm’s defensive back coach. “Nine-man just doesn’t have tackles.”

In Minnesota, it began in the mid-1960s after teams evolved from six- and eight-man football. Now, with 81 teams, it represents the state’s largest class. To qualify, high schools need to have fewer than 165 students. Stephen/Argyle Central has 111, 68 of whom are boys.

“Good for football,” Coach Mark Kroulik said. “Tough for finding a prom date.”

Three quarters of those boys play football. “That is why they’re winning: They’re not missing an athlete,” the former coach Warren Keller said. “And even if you don’t play, you’re still a part of the team.”

Gruhot embodies the power football that defines the school’s success on the field and the hard work that defines its agricultural traditions off it. The Storm pounds the ball. In last year’s state championship victory over Wheaton, the team threw one pass and ran the ball 61 times for 380 yards.

And so during a recent morning practice, with temperatures in the mid-60s, the players finished sprints and sit-ups and started blocking drills.

“We’d start an after-school practice with 30 and end up with 13,” said Al Larson, who coached Argyle from 1965 to 1977, when many of the students had farming chores in the afternoons and evenings. “Their dads would drive up in a pickup and wave, and they’d be gone.

“I sat the kids down and said, ‘Figure out when we can practice,’ ” he said. “They said, ‘In the morning.’ ”

When school is in session, the players hit the field before 6 a.m., even though only a third of them still work on farms. The coaches like the morning practices, they say, because the players are not thinking about girls yet. The parents like them because their kids go to bed early.

“A couple of guys have hit deer,” Kroulik said. “But other than that they work out really well.”

On Aug. 21, Gruhot left the practice field at 11:30 a.m., then showered, grabbed a sandwich and drove a combine until 10 p.m. “I’m helping out my neighbor,” he said.

On the few thousand acres where his family farms wheat, sugar beets, soybeans and corn, he drives a combine, a tractor, a plow and a mower.

“You get pretty tired after practice,” Gruhot said. “And we don’t have autosteer in our combines, but one of our tractors has a G.P.S. with autosteer. That’s pretty nice after practice because you can just sit there, hit a button and listen to the radio.”

Technology has changed the family farm. Fertilizers provide nutrients to allow plants to grow bigger and more quickly. Genetically altered crops allow spraying that kills everything but the plants.

The families that run farms have become smaller because less manual labor is needed to bring in the crops. There are fewer families around since the farms have increased in size and decreased in number. In the last 30-plus years, the number of farms in Minnesota has decreased to 80,000 from almost 100,000.

“When this county was opened up in the late 1800s and early 1900s, they homesteaded 160 acres,” said Howard Person, the county extension educator. “Now if you are just going to raise crops, you better own at least 2,000 acres.”

Though consolidation is most visible in the schools, it has affected every aspect of rural life. “It’s the same thing that’s happening with everybody that supplies to farms, from machinery dealers to fertilizer dealers,” Person said. “They become regionally owned.”

The stresses of decline are alleviated by football championships. [Stephen/Argyle is 2-0 this season, extending its winning streak to 56 games on Sept. 7 with a 41-14 victory over Red Lake County Central.]

“Parents call and want to know when the state playoffs are, because they are planning their fall,” Kroulik said. “And I say, well, we got to win first.”

At the end of practice, Kroulik called the team together. He closed with a statement that suggested that the tradition of winning here has less to do with the fame of Friday night lights than the hard work of weekday morning lights.

“Good job today, but we still have a lot of stuff we need to clean up and do,” Kroulik said. “We’ll see you bright and early tomorrow morning.”

The Thing About A Uniform

Over the last couple of years I've done a lot of bitching about the carpool line. Maybe I haven't done it much out here on the interweb, but from the first day ever of my daily date with my car, that line has been a pain in the ass.

It could be worse, true. I've heard horror stories from my friends at the Hot Flashes board and I'm pretty happy that our school makes an effort.

But while they usually succeed spectacularly, they fail in the same way.

Today was free cookie day. The PTA's new fundraiser is cookie sales, and they were handing out free samples.

So I pull up (letting someone who came from the "wrong direction" go in front of me) and get the kids ready for their jump-out. Sometimes it's like I'm a pilot and they're paratroopers.

Anyway, I was happy to see there were FOUR people helping this morning: Two 5th graders and two moms, all in the requisite orange vests of the "Dads on Duty" brigade. Their job is to open the car door, help the smallest kids get out, and then make sure the door is shut. It's handy. It usually works well.

So this morning I pulled up, and I was third in line. See above, where I mentioned there were four people on duty?

The fifth graders took the first two cars, the mom at the end took the car behind me and the mom in the middle...did nothing. She was standing there holding a sign that advertised the cookies, wearing her orange vest, STARING AT THE BACK OF THE TAGBOARD SIGN.

Now if she hadn't had the vest on, I wouldn't be wondering, what the fuck?

But really, was she there to push cookies? There were at least two other people with identical signs on my right, and three moms handing out cookies on my left, so it's not like they needed an extra volunteer.

And she was wearing the vest. Which at the time and place she was, would indicate that she was supposed to do a certain thing, that being: helping my kids get out of the car so as to speed things up for the people behind me, while being overly cheery in that PTA kind of way.

Instead of holding a redundant sign and spacing out.

The fifth graders saw me trying to get her attention and once they were done with the cars ahead of me, they helped my kids get out--while giving PTA Space Case as much of a glare as they dared.

*sigh*

Oh well. Maybe she was just having a petit mal seizure or something. In which case, more power to ya, PTA mom.

On other topics, here's the new haircut. It's actually a mirror image. I forgot to flip it before I uploaded it.

Yeah, I know it looks pretty much the same.

Being Girly

I'm mourning the loss of my hair. It used to be long. Here's an example:


It actually was down to my waist at one point. I accidentally tucked it into my pants.

Deal was, though, it was pretty thin. I've always had thin, fine hair. However, at the time the photo was taken, it was as thick as it's ever been.

When it got really scraglly looking, I went to Vic at Tony Cao. He cut off about 8 inches and said that no one would notice.

Unfortunately, he was right.

Later, I cut off another 8 inches, and that time people actually noticed. And said it looked better.

Fuck.

So this last time, today...well, I got an actual " hairdo." To do it right, a blow-dryer and gel and hairspray must be used.

I'm hesitant. I mean, I OWN such things, but it's not like I used them on a regular basis. Once a month...maybe.

AND. This is the scary part.

I had my brows done. And believe me, it's been a long time coming. I'm sure the Curtsinger PTA will sigh in relief. Here's a snippet of my convo with the brow technician:

BeerPup: I've never had my brows done before.

BrowTech: Really? Do you ever just pluck them yourself?

BP: Well, if one seems to be halfway to my hairline, or infringing on my lid, yeah, but otherwise, the last time I "did" my brows was when I was 15.

BT: Um...Really?

BP: But I figured, I'm starting to look like Keith Olbermann, so I should really consult a professional.

BT: I'm sure it's not THAT bad....

(She takes a closer look...)

BT: Oh...OH MY!

So, yeah. Olbermann brows. Really.

Don't worry, no need to fear. They're gone. I'm told the pain will subside in a couple of days.

Pray for me.