Trust and Respect

Today is the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, which gives me the perfect excuse to post about the following: if you live in Virginia, you can now purchase a pro-choice license plate! Before they can go into production, however, at least 350 need to be pre-ordered. The deadline has been extended, so please consider purchasing one. Portions of the proceeds will go to Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia, which works to ensure that individuals and families have the freedom, information, and ability to make their own informed reproductive choices.

Virginia has offered specialty "Choose life" license plates since last year, selling more than 1,600 of them, with portions of their processing fees going to Heartbeat International, a Christian group that distributes the money to pregnancy resource centers across the state. NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia just concluded a year-long investigation into 52 of these centers, finding that 38 do not have medically trained or supervised personnel on staff, and that two-thirds of the centers provided "some degree of medically erroneous information."

Here are some examples of the "erroneous information" these centers have been giving women. Not only is this video frightening, it's also absolutely infuriating that these places that purport to have the best interests of women in mind can take advantage of women in crisis in such a flagrant fashion:



So if you live in Virginia and you happen to trust women and respect choice, please, please consider purchasing one of the pro-choice plates. Every little bit helps.

See below

I have a bit of conundrum on my hands at the moment. The small antiques gallery where I work does not have a maternity policy in place, and I need to pretty well come up with one from scratch. For starters, here are a few facts about where I work: the company employs less than fifty people, which means I am NOT covered by the Family and Medical Leave Act. Lame, right? Also, Virginia received a grade of F from the National Partnership for Women and Families on its national report card of maternity benefits--in short, Virginia provides no benefits beyond those mandated by federal law, i.e the FMLA. Which leaves me right back at square one with a big ol' pile of nothing.

Sounds fun, right? Well, that's where you kind readers come in. Would you mind sharing the basic gist of your workplace maternity policy with me so that I can formulate some kind of plan of action so that I'm not completely unprepared for the inevitable talk that I'll be having with my boss in the future (I figure I should probably hammer this stuff out before the kid is born)? I'd be ever so grateful.

My friend Scott, the curator at Dumbarton House shared with me their maternity policy, which offers thirty paid days of leave, and then the employee is free to take additional time off using any vacation/personal days at his or her disposal. I like the sound of that...so what kind of maternity policy is offered where you work?

My cup[s] overfloweth

Photo courtesy Torode

Captain Husband and I rang in the New Year by traveling to western Pennsylvania to spend the holiday with my family since we had spent Christmas with his mom and dad in Chester County; New Year's Eve also happens to be my mom's birthday so we managed to have a belated Christmas and celebrate her birthday all at once. We rang in the New Year like it was 1989, and spent the evening watching the Three Stooges marathon on cable and eating pizza and drinking chocolate milk (believe me, getting to stay up 'til midnight and being allowed to drink chocolate milk all night long was a very big deal when I was 10; not that much has changed, really.)

While I was home, my mom took me out shopping for some new maternity clothing and bras. Now I know that I've, ahem, expanded a bit in the chesticular region, but even I was taken aback by just how much I've grown in the last few months. Before I found myself in the family way, I was a busty 38-C. I am now the proud owner of some 42-Ds. I'm still in a slight state of shock, though CH is pretty pleased with the developments. The worst part is that I'll probably go up another size or two before this is all said and done. We're talking black-eye city if these things aren't properly restrained and I've been sleeping in a sports bra every night. And I still have six months left to go!