Tonight my daughter asked me if I would come home from my next surgery alive.

I’d been telling the kids that I’ll undergo yet another surgery in a few weeks time, and that everything was going to be ok.

They didn’t want to hear it, all they wanted to know is if I would be alive after it was all said and done.

Mommy is going to be fine honey.

Everything is going to be ok.

No, it’s not cancer.

How do you explain to people that- yes, you have an illness but it probably won’t kill you? How do you ask for help when you know so many have it so much worse?

I’m going to lose a chunk of my colon in a few weeks to try to stop the infections that have been ravaging my body since last summer. This after two hospital stays and a surgery. My family and I are hoping this is the beginning of the end, and the kids are getting so used to me being sick… it’s passing as ‘normal’ life around here.

Maybe I’m naive to just pour it all out here on my blog, but it’s what I’ve always done. I’m so sick of this. So sick of being sick. So tired of being in pain. So tired of thinking one part of my body is going to be removed, only to find out another is going in its place. My reproductive system has taken a beating. My gastro system hates me. Everything is one, big, infected and inflamed mess that is just screaming to be helped and healed. It’s stressing out my husband, my kids… me.

Yet I sit here feeling guilty I whine and complain about it because it probably won’t kill me. It won’t be terminal. It won’t be life threatening and I should really save my complaints for something that really matters. Is it a huge pain in the ass? Totally. I’ve been out of the hospital a week now and I can barely function. Today I went to the doctor, the grocery store, I cooked dinner and I picked up the kids from school and I’m exhausted.

Can I live like this? The short answer is no… but I have been living like this for so long. Every turn of my torso hurts and every food I consume may or may not turn me into a writhing mess. No, it’s no way to live but one could live this way if needed.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m just getting my frustrations out. I want to yell and kick and scream about other people and their perfect bodies and how they can just eat what they like and exercise how they like and travel and run around and do whatever… I want to be mad at someone. At a doctor who missed something along the way or a friend who is over the whole ‘oh you can’t come because you are sick’ thing.

But there is no one to be mad at and no one and nothing to blame. My body has a problem, doctors are fixing it, and everyone around me is being supportive and lovely.

So I write. I write to put words in front of my face and to bang my fingers against keys that some how release my frustration. I write because, before me, someone else wrote and I read it and said ‘ah ha! yes! me too!’ and instantly felt less alone. And I write because it makes me feel alive, something I promise the kids I will be when this is all over.

I spend a lot of time around women.

I am a woman. I work for a women’s network. I’ve been a member of NOW, the Feminist Majority Foundation, Emily’s List…so on and so forth. Gender-specific causes are my thing. They always have been.

So when Sarah Palin starts throwing the “f” word around, I get nervous.

Not because I don’t think conservative feminists exist. Not because I don’t want to see more women in politics…but because I don’t think she’s done a damn thing to further women, or women-related causes. Quite the contrary.

She was chosen as a running-mate to exploit the female vote. She has been inept and uneducated on issues in debates and in the national spotlight. She’s opposed women-friendly legislation and backed women-unfriendly legislation. If this is a feminist, I’m a Republican.

But hey, call yourself whatever you like Sarah. It’s the “Mamma Grizzly” comment I’m really after. You recently remarked the conservative “pro-woman” (oxymoron much?) pink elephants will be taking on DC to take back their country.

I have news for you… we Mamma Grizzlies did rise on our hind legs, we reared-up, and we elected Barack Obama.

Don’t play the gender card unless you know how and take a note from those of us who have been down in the trenches for many, many years fighting this fight. You want in? Fine. But be prepared to fight for women’s equality in word and deed. That means letting go of those “traditional” family values you hold so dear and understanding all women encompass more than those guidelines.

My “feminist” legislation does not ignore your choices.

My “feminist” legislation works to strengthen all families, including yours.

Can you say the same about yours? Am *I* included in your platform? Because you are included in mine.

I’ll fight for you if you’ll fight for me…but the track record ain’t so good on you getting my back. Let’s face it, you’re using the female card as you see fit like a good politician. Or talk show host. Or…whatever it is you are now. Maybe you can rally the conservative Moms (if their husbands let them) and maybe you can find a few more conservative women to join your “whoo hooo girl power!” cry…but it will all come tumbling down once you actually get down to the Republican party platform. Because let’s not kid ourselves, even if we put abortion aside, there’s a reason only 21 of those elephants in Congress are pink, and it sure as hell isn’t because they are “pro-woman.”

Don’t take my word for it though, take a look at the Republican Women’s legislation … I’ll wait.

*deafening silence*

That didn’t take long, huh?

Listen, I’m all for getting more women elected. I’m all for getting women to speak up, speak out, and have their voice heard, but Sarah Palin needs to stop pretending to be something she’s not. Instead of co-opting a movement that has nothing to do with her values, she needs to create her own. Instead of riding the coattails of those of us…what did she call us…um… sitting in some faculty lounge at some East Coast women’s college…something something… she needs to organize her own conservative “pro-woman” movement, whatever conservative women think that may be.

But leave the “feminism” to the women fighting for gender equality.

p.s. Susan B. Anthony likes to pal around with Socialists

p.p.s Your party wants you back in the kitchen

p.p.p.s Once we all have a real conversation about this issue, no whining!

Gotcha!

My phone rang today…not unlike any other day….

Is this the woman that was on CNN?

I just want you to know you are a babykiller! Lady you are nothing but an unamerican babykiller! You are going to hell and you are nothing but a no good babykiller!

Why was this man so angry? Today I helped CNN commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Pill.

“Giving women control over reproduction means giving them control over their own fate. I am a wife, a blogger, a mother — when I want, how I want, and with the freedom to remain sexual. The pill means I can have it all, and sacrifice nothing. It has taken the dream of my Mother’s generation — that of “Superwoman” — and turned it into my reality.”

So to even things out, I also helped Woman’s Day talk dinners. You know, since we women clearly need to stay in the kitchen.

Enjoy.

Tomorrow I get flower-pot number six, and the flower I’ve been dreading since my son was two.

Let me explain.

I have five hand-painted flower pots. All from preschool Mother’s Day celebrations. The flower pots have come with the same songs and the same sandwiches and lemonade, from the quaint little preschool that’s been part of our lives for so many years.

Tomorrow I get to be one of the Moms that marches to the front of the school at the Mother’s Day celebration and accepts a single flower. This honor is reserved for the Moms who’s last child will be graduating and moving on to Kindergarten.

I’ve been watching those Moms stand up and be applauded and walk to the front of the playground to accept this flower since my very first Mother’s Day.

The weepy Mom casually strolls to the director and in a bitter-sweet motion says thank you for the acknowledgement. She wipes tears and begrudgingly walks back to her picnic blanket with her child, petals of love in hand. It has torn my heart out to watch these Moms for six years now. I’ve known it would, eventually, be my turn but it all seemed so far off I pushed it out of my head over and over again.

Tomorrow, I get the flower.

Tomorrow I can no longer deny that one era is over and another is about to begin.

Tomorrow I’m going to wipe away tears and hold the single flower with a mixed bag of emotions.

Maybe it won’t be so bad. Maybe I will feel relief and joy. Maybe I will be too steadfast in showing my daughter my strength to dare let her see me break down over a silly flower.

Maybe later tomorrow night, after the kids have gone to bed, I will curl up against my husband and sob over that stupid flower and stupid time and how it stupidly seems to not STOP when I’d like it to. He will remind me of all the great things that happen as children grow older and the positives of the situation.

Then I will hop online and whine to my friends…other mothers… who get it. Who will feel my pain and understand exactly why I could hate a single flower so very much. And we’ll decide, together, what I can do with that flower of finality.

Part of me wants to preserve it…dry it out or press it in a book. Part of me wants to set it on fire. But most of me just wants to cry and hold it close, because maybe if I hug it hard enough and cry long enough it won’t hurt me as much as it does.

Ugh. I hate this flower. I’ve hated it since the very first time I saw it given to another, reluctant and weeping Mom.

And tomorrow…it’s my turn.

While listening to some music at our house over the weekend my son caught a glimpse of Sade’s left boob. It was a beautiful photo scrolling by on our tv with the singer floating in a pool of water.

My 7-year old’s eyes darted at me and he grinned, he giggled, then he went about his day after we had a brief discussion about body parts and why they are neither funny nor anything to be ashamed of.

Seems Virginia’s Attorney General doesn’t feel the same way:

Virginia’s attorney general Ken Cuccinelli is hard at work on the important issues of the day — like making sure the Roman goddess depicted on his state’s official seal isn’t exposing herself.

The current seal shows “Virtus, the goddess of virtue, dressed as a warrior,” with her foot resting “on the chest of the figure of tyranny, who is lying on the ground.” She is holding a spear and her left breast is exposed.

Or at least it was exposed. At a recent meeting, Cuccinelli provided pins to his staff with a new seal on which “Virtus’ bosom is covered by an armored breastplate,” the Virginian-Pilot reported. These new pins were not paid for by taxpayer dollars, Cuccinelli’s office insisted.

Rather ironically, my daughter mentioned breasts at our house this weekend as well. She was getting a temporary tattoo applied and mistakenly asked for it to be placed next to her brown “nipple” – when she meant to say “freckle.” Of course we all giggled and then she asked “But Mommy, why are nipples funny?”

I explained it was a silly sounding word, and that actual nipples were amazing and mine helped to feed her and her brother for nearly 4 years total.

“Cool” said my son.

“Cool” said my daughter.

Too bad they don’t think breasts and all they entail are so “cool” in Virginia. Instead the message is to be ashamed, be very ashamed and for heaven’s sake cover up!

Not cool.