In Which the Author Realizes How Privileged She Is

Although it's really difficult for me to abstain from political conversations in daily life, I have tried to keep this blog free of my personal politics.  I know too many colleagues whose blogs were closed after a "friendly suggestion" or whose comments in private spheres came back to bite them in the professional ass.  Nonetheless, I take some courage from my co-bloggers at State, who have jumped on this topic in a variety of ways.  (We'll all go down together, I guess?)  I want to talk about the current debate in the U.S. about access to birth control medication.  And as always, this is 100% my personal view.

Like a lot of my friends and loved ones, I've watched the primary debates of recent months with equal bemusement and horror.  The usual suspects for rallying political support against the Other - immigrants, gays, recipients of government assistance - made their appearance early on in the season.  Who was left?  Well, apparently it's women writ large, given the recent debate on access to birth control medications, and that's when I got pissed off.

Then I stopped myself - I was upset at the ad hominem attacks against gays, immigrants, and the economically disadvantaged, but it took an attack on something I personally identify with to pull out my credit card for donations.  At that moment, I realized two things: the extent of my white, middle class privilege, and the extent to which I will let things slide if they don't affect me personally.

I've never considered myself a particularly privileged person.  My family was pretty broke when I was a child, and after my parents' divorce my mom and I lived on almost nothing for years.  I was able to go to a good university because of this relative poverty, and after I got my financial aid package to college my mom married my stepfather, who cosigned all of my student loans because my worthless shit of a father had cast my mother and me aside.  I thought that, by all rights, I had had a Hard Life.  Sure, I was an educated liberal with a good job after graduating from college, but I'd lived a Hard Life, right?  I'm not like everyone else.

It took a panel of all men testifying before Congress about the "religious freedom" implications of mandating prescription birth control coverage to wake me up to my privilege.  I was pissed off.  I wrote angry emails to my representative and senators.  I donated money to Planned Parenthood after Komen screwed them over.  I shared angry graphics and open letters on Facebook about what certain politicians think they can do with my body for political gain.  And then I realized...  oh, shit.  I'm so angry and financially invested in this cause because it affects me.  How many other causes have I professed to support but didn't give money and time to, because I wasn't really affected?  Certain politicians have been using my uterus, and the uterus of millions of other people, as a vote-earning tool.  Why does this anger me, when using the gender identity and sexual orientation of others as a fundraising and vote-earning tactic hasn't really motivated me in the same way?  Why do I rant and rave to my friends about the effects of race and ethnicity in legal decisions, when I don't give my time and money to support causes that try to correct this bias?

So to my friends and family members and colleagues whose causes I believe in but have not fully supported, I apologize.  I truly do.  I read all the right news sources for lefty feminists, but it took the current political climate for me to take their social, racial, and gender justice messages to heart.  To my sister, my oldest friend, my mother, and countless others who have had a harder life for specific as well as intangible reasons that I cannot understand due to the privileged life I've led, I apologize.  I am trying to align my practices with my beliefs, but please tell me when you see me being deficient.  I want to learn.  I want to make things better in the grand scheme of things.  More than anything, I want everyone I know and love to have equal rights, privileges, and access to the things that have made my life easy.  I will do anything I can to make this happen.

Sick Day

I've been fighting (unsuccessfully) a low-level, persistent stomach bug for a week now.  It comes and it goes, with some days better than others.  I decided to take a mental/physical health day today to get some extra sleep and to catch up on a few pressing issues.  I think a lot of it is mental; even though I don't feel stressed at the moment, I have a lot to do in the next few months.  Here's the overall list of things to do before I arrive in Libya on 8 June.

• Wedding: plan and execute a wedding, add Eric to my travel orders/insurance/bank accounts, update all legal documents to reflect new status.
• PCS: plan for exporting the cats to the States, pack out, plan for taking only two suitcases to Tripoli, plan for home leave.
• Libya: try to find Eric a job there so he can go with me, brush up my Arabic, mentally steel myself for being in a dorm-like setting again.
• Work: wrap up my tour in the next two months, handle several large visits and Congressional reports, increase my cable productivity, prepare for a handover to my successor.

As a family friend once told me, I've got so much on my plate right now that I should really just get a platter to make things easier!

Snow Day!

For the last week Istanbul has been hit by a succession of snowstorms, creating mayhem and panic among the temperate clime-acclimated populace here.  I used to say that Istanbullus handled rain and snow as well as Washingtonians do, if Washington were 5 times bigger, built on a series of steep hills, and all of its cars were manual transmission.  However, after a series of transportation snafus leaving work last night that led me to walk to the train station, I can say that one part of winter is better here: sidewalks are obsessively shoveled at the first hint of snow.  This is no small feat, given that I have never seen a snow shovel in this city, and it took about three weeks for my block to be free of snow and ice after 2010's Snowpocolypse.  It was actually a pleasantly brisk walk to the metro, and I got to say that I walked home, uphill and in the snow.  Ha!

So the Consulate is closed today (apparently the city has asked all private cars to stay off the roads, and many busses and ferries aren't running either), and I'm at home my PJs on and a kitty in my lap.  Eric works part-time at an NGO in town while he finishes his master's thesis, and today was one of his workdays - (un)luckily for him, his office is very close to a metro station, so he can get to work with no problem.  As he left this morning, I kissed him goodbye at the door in a bizarre reversal of our normal routine - I always leave for work a few hours before he does.  30 seconds later, he knocked on the door because he realized he had forgotten his wallet, keys, and phone: apparently the switch up in our routine had thrown him off!

I feel like I should do something super domestic since I'm at home today, or at least have dinner ready when he gets home.  However, he promised to cook me dinner tonight, so I think I'll just work remotely today and enjoy upending traditional gender roles.  :)

Update: Apparently when I said work remotely, I actually meant I would register on a wedding planning website and marvel at how much people appear to obsess over weddings.  I've got a venue, I've got an officiant, I've got a date, and I've got a fiance.  Am I supposed to do anything else?  :P

Busy Busy

You'd think I'd learn that Istanbul is never slow - even in our down times at work, we're still kept busy with everything we can't do during the visit crunch.  December was great - we got a lot of reporting done, in anticipation of January being mostly a lost month for us.  On the weekend of January 6-8, we got slammed with three congressional delegations, which kept me busy the entire time.  After my delegation went wheels up for their next stop, Eric took me out to dinner at an Asian restaurant we love. (There are so few in town, and this one has a great view overlooking the Bosphorus bridge.)

I got a bit of a surprise before dinner, though - Eric proposed!  Unsurprisingly, I said yes - and now we find ourselves in a bit of a scramble planning a wedding in 2.5 months.  The big day is 31 March, here in Istanbul, just a few weeks before we PCS to Tripoli.

No rest for the weary around here - though this is the kind of busy-ness I can get on board with.  :)

A House Full of Happy

My sister Julie's visiting, Eric got home two days ago from the States, and life is, in general, pretty wonderful.  2011 has been good to me!  Happy new year, everyone!

Where Did I Come From?

It's not a metaphysical question - it's one I'm faced with every time I double down in the kitchen to cook dinner for me and a group of friends.  My mother, who it must be said is an excellent cook herself, nonetheless absolutely hates any activity reminiscent of cooking.  When my childhood home was being renovated, she tried to convince my father to turn the kitchen into a library (it had great south-facing windows and got lots of light) and to put a small wet bar at the end of our den.  "What more do we need," she asked.  "Mini-fridge, microwave, and a small freezer.  That's perfect!"  Needless to say, I didn't get a lot of practice cooking when I was growing up.  Moving to a boarding school at age 16 just compounded the matter - four years in a dorm, followed by two years as a broke-ass, stressed-out grad student did not do wonders for my cooking skills.  And in Saudi, I was too tired at the end of the day to make myself dinner - after three months of eating once a day in the embassy cafeteria and consequently losing 30 pounds, I finally paid someone to cook me a week's worth of meals every Monday so that I wouldn't starve (further).  

So my mom and the rest of my family view my recently acquired interest in cooking with confusion and no small amount of suspicion.  I'm not sure what caused it - perhaps the realization that Indian food is nearly impossible to find in Istanbul, perhaps finding plentiful and cheap produce right outside my door.  Maybe it was an attempt to impress Eric, or maybe I was trying to channel my aunt Gail and keep the baking traditions alive.  Whatever the cause, I like being able to make something that people want seconds and thirds of.  I find some small bit of zen satisfaction in slicing up onions and ginger and tomatoes after a stressful day at work.  I've gotten to the point where I don't always feel hidebound by recipes: I add spices that I think will go well with something, or I fiddle with the amounts listed to suit my tastes.  I'm not quite ready to create my own recipes, and I still need a few friends to whom I can direct all cooking questions.  (Aside: one should always have a friend who is willing to look over the recipes you find and tell you how to improve them.  Recipes in magazines can always be improved by someone with a master's touch.)  But last night, I posted my first recipe onto a website affiliated with a community website I use, and having noticed a sad lack of Arab and Turkish dishes on there, I think I can tell what my contribution to the site will be.

At the end of the day, no matter how much I confuse my family, I've noticed that they ask for seconds when I cook dinner for them.  That's a compliment I'll take to heart!

Home Alone

Eric's back in the States for a few weeks visiting his family.  This will be the longest I've gone without seeing him since March, when I went on R&R.  I have a friend staying with me this week, but he's out dancing, and I'm at home because I'm still fighting off strep throat.

So I spent the evening catching up on Google Reader (apparently I've read 1800+ items in the last 24 hours), contemplating Christmas presents for friends (Turkish coffee and spices, I think), and reading (Hunger Games trilogy, again).  It's eerily quiet in this house - even the cats are passed out asleep.

What to do with my three weeks of empty nesting?