A Most Productive Day

At 8:30, I picked up a family and brought them to BMC for their appointment at 9:00. By the time I dropped them off at home it was 11:00. (Too bad we can only bill 2 hours/day/client.) The doctor dropped the A-bomb (autism) so I made an appointment to see them later in the week to see how they're doing.

I went back to work, wrote a letter, answered phone calls, and ate lunch. I went to a home visit at 1:00 (had a great visit), a home visit at 2:15 (got stood up), back to work, and a home visit at 3:30 (good visit). I went back to work to use the bathroom, and headed to my doctor appointment. Not only did I get all of my test results and chat about all of that, I asked for the 1st shot in the 3-shot series HepB vaccine. (Since I was already in there paying a $20 copay, what the heck, right?) Bam! Shotted.

I headed back to this neck of the woods to hit the gym for a 7pm yoga class. I got there 15 minutes early so I did 15 minutes on the elliptical first. And then the yoga. I tried yoga in college and it wasn't for me, but I'm going to give it another go. Especially on frantic Mondays. I feel pretty relaxed right now, but maybe that's because I'm exhausted.

Came home. Made sandwich. Ate sandwich. I'm tired. I still have to empty the dishwasher, put dishes in, and take the garbage out. Yawn.

( Doctor appointment results )

Why not civil unions?

Okay, so when I was in yoga and I was supposed to be clearing my head and visualizing white healing light, I started thinking about the recent rhetoric surrounding the whole same-sex marriage brouhaha and how the new hip thing to say is that 'marriage' should be reserved for churches and 'civil unions' should be reserved for government and how the whole debacle would just go away if we could make this semantic shift, say, right now.

Formally, I call bullshit.

Even if we ignore the fact that terminology and process that has been in place for a bazillion years can't just be changed on a whim, what about the fact that 'marriage' has been a government institution all along? I mean, even if a church official or religious representative bequeaths the sacrament of marriage/matrimony on a couple, it is only a legal marital union if said religious official uses the power of Greyskull vested in him/her by the State to legally join the couple. Doesn't that make 'marriage' a civil term and a civil contract?

Churches have had long-standing (and oft unwavering even in the face of changing times) beliefs and policies on whom they believe should be married, and our freedoms allow them to withhold the sacrament of marriage from anyone they see as unfit. This has always been the case. Churches don't have to marry non-members, they don't have to marry those whom they perceive as sinners, and they don't have to marry anyone they just plain don't want to. Most church officials interview couples before marriage, or make them take classes, or go through other hoops to prove their worthiness to be married in a particular church. No big deal, right? So why is it a big deal now?

When interracial marriage was illegal in many (if not all) states, was there talk of allowing 'interracial civil unions,' or did we just kick the country in the pants and, one by one, force states to abandon their bigoted ways? Why eff up a perfectly good (and delicious rebellious) system?

Personally, I don't want to be 'civil unioned.' I want the whole she-bang, the M-word, the same sealed, stamped official document that my grandparents have, that my neighbors have, that some minister miles away has. Anything else is a bogus imitation, a pussy-footed compromise, a second-class attempt at a first-class procedure. And I've never been one for second best.